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diff --git a/75456-0.txt b/75456-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c7fed0 --- /dev/null +++ b/75456-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4171 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75456 *** + + + + + + BOOKS AND MEN + + BY + + AGNES REPPLIER + + [Illustration] + + BOSTON AND NEW YORK + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY + The Riverside Press, Cambridge + 1899 + + + + + Copyright, 1888, + BY AGNES REPPLIER. + + _All rights reserved._ + + ELEVENTH IMPRESSION + + _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ + Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. + + + + + CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + +CHILDREN, PAST AND PRESENT 1 + +ON THE BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION 33 + +WHAT CHILDREN READ 64 + +THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT 94 + +CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM 125 + +SOME ASPECTS OF PESSIMISM 157 + +THE CAVALIER 191 + + + + + BOOKS AND MEN. + + + + + CHILDREN, PAST AND PRESENT. + + +As a result of the modern tendency to desert the broad beaten roads of +history for the bridle-paths of biography and memoir, we find a great +many side lights thrown upon matters that the historian was wont to +treat as altogether beneath his consideration. It is by their help +that we study the minute changes of social life that little by little +alter the whole aspect of a people, and it is by their help that we +look straight into the ordinary every-day workings of the past, and +measure the space between its existence and our own. When we read, for +instance, of Lady Cathcart being kept a close prisoner by her husband +for over twenty years, we look with some complacency on the roving +wives of the nineteenth century. When we reflect on the dismal fate +of Uriel Freudenberger, condemned by the Canton of Uri to be burnt +alive in 1760, for rashly proclaiming his disbelief in the legend of +William Tell’s apple, we realize the inconveniences attendant on a too +early development of the critical faculty. We listen entranced while +the learned pastor Dr. Johann Geiler von Keyersperg gravely enlightens +his congregation as to the nature and properties of were-wolves; and we +turn aside to see the half-starved boys at Westminster boiling their +own batter-pudding in a stocking foot, or to hear the little John +Wesley crying softly when he is whipped, not being permitted even then +the luxury of a hearty bellow. + +Perhaps the last incident will strike us as the most pathetic of +all, this being essentially the children’s age. Women, workmen, and +skeptics all have reason enough to be grateful they were not born a +few generations earlier; but the children of to-day are favored beyond +their knowledge, and certainly far beyond their deserts. Compare +the modern schoolboy with any of his ill-fated predecessors, from +the days of Spartan discipline down to our grandfathers’ time. Turn +from the free-and-easy school-girl of the period to the miseries of +Mrs. Sherwood’s youth, with its steel collars, its backboards, its +submissive silence and rigorous decorum. Think of the turbulent and +uproarious nurseries we all know, and then go back in spirit to that +severe and occult shrine where Mrs. Wesley ruled over her infant brood +with a code of disciplinary laws as awful and inviolable as those of +the Medes and Persians. Of their supreme efficacy she plainly felt no +doubts, for she has left them carefully written down for the benefit +of succeeding generations, though we fear that few mothers of to-day +would be tempted by their stringent austerity. They are to modern +nursery rules what the Blue Laws of Connecticut are to our more languid +legislation. Each child was expected and required to commemorate its +fifth birthday by learning the entire alphabet by heart. To insure +this all-important matter, the whole house was impressively set in +order the day before; every one’s task was assigned to him; and Mrs. +Wesley, issuing strict commands that no one should penetrate into the +sanctuary while the solemn ordeal was in process, shut herself up for +six hours with the unhappy morsel of a child, and unflinchingly drove +the letters into its bewildered brain. On two occasions only was she +unsuccessful. “Molly and Nancy,” we are told, failed to learn in the +given time, and their mother comforts herself for their tardiness by +reflecting on the still greater incapacity of other people’s bairns. + +“When the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to +revere and stand in awe of its parents,” then, and then only, their +rigid judge considers that some little inadvertences and follies may +be safely passed over. Nor would she permit one of them to “be chid +or beaten twice for the same fault,”--a stately assumption of justice +that speaks volumes for the iron-bound code by which they were brought +into subjection. Most children nowadays are sufficiently amazed if a +tardy vengeance overtake them once, and a second penalty for the same +offense is something we should hardly deem it necessary to proscribe. +Yet nothing is more evident than that Mrs. Wesley was neither a cruel +nor an unloving mother. It is plain that she labored hard for her +little flock, and had their welfare and happiness greatly at heart. In +after years they with one accord honored and revered her memory. Only +it is not altogether surprising that her husband, whose ministerial +functions she occasionally usurped, should have thought his wife at +times almost too able a ruler, or that her more famous son should stand +forth as the great champion of human depravity. He too, some forty +years later, promulgated a system of education as unrelaxing in its +methods as that of his own childhood. In his model school he forbade +all association with outside boys, and would receive no child unless +its parents promised not to take it away for even a single day, until +removed for good. Yet after shutting up the lads in this hot-bed of +propriety, and carefully guarding them from every breath of evil, he +ended by expelling part as incorrigible, and ruefully admitting that +the remainder were very “uncommonly wicked.” + +The principle of solitary training for a child, in order to shield +it effectually from all outside influences, found other and vastly +different advocates. It is the key-note of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth’s +Practical Education, a book which must have driven over-careful and +scrupulous mothers to the verge of desperation. In it they are +solemnly counseled never to permit their children to walk or talk +with servants, never to let them have a nursery or a school-room, +never to leave them alone either with each other or with strangers, +and never to allow them to read any book of which every sentence has +not been previously examined. In the matter of books, it is indeed +almost impossible to satisfy such searching critics. Even Mrs. +Barbauld’s highly correct and righteous little volumes, which Lamb +has anathematized as the “blights and blasts of all that is human,” +are not quite harmless in their eyes. Evil lurks behind the phrase +“Charles wants his dinner,” which would seem to imply that Charles must +have whatever he desires; while to say flippantly, “The sun has gone +to bed,” is to incur the awful odium of telling a child a deliberate +untruth. + +In Miss Edgeworth’s own stories the didactic purpose is only veiled by +the sprightliness of the narrative and the air of amusing reality she +never fails to impart. Who that has ever read them can forget Harry and +Lucy making up their own little beds in the morning, and knocking down +the unbaked bricks to prove that they were soft; or Rosamond choosing +between the famous purple jar and a pair of new boots; or Laura forever +drawing the furniture in perspective? In all these little people say +and do there is conveyed to the young reader a distinct moral lesson, +which we are by no means inclined to reject, when we turn to the +other writers of the time and see how much worse off we are. Day, in +Sandford and Merton, holds up for our edification the dreariest and +most insufferable of pedagogues, and advocates a mode of life wholly +at variance with the instincts and habits of his age. Miss Sewell, in +her Principles of Education, sternly warns young girls against the +sin of chattering with each other, and forbids mothers’ playing with +their children as a piece of frivolity which cannot fail to weaken the +dignity of their position. + +To a great many parents, both in England and in France, such advice +would have been unnecessary. Who, for instance, can imagine Lady +Balcarras, with whom it was a word and a blow in quick succession, +stooping to any such weakness; or that august mother of Harriet +Martineau, against whom her daughter has recorded all the slights +and severities of her youth? Not that we think Miss Martineau to have +been much worse off than other children of her day; but as she has +chosen with signal ill-taste to revenge herself upon her family in +her autobiography, we have at least a better opportunity of knowing +all about it. “To one person,” she writes, “I was indeed habitually +untruthful, from fear. To my mother I would in my childhood assert or +deny anything that would bring me through most easily,”--a confession +which, to say the least, reflects as little to her own credit as +to her parent’s. Had Mrs. Martineau been as stern an upholder of +the truth as was Mrs. Wesley, her daughter would have ventured upon +very few fabrications in her presence. When she tells us gravely how +often she meditated suicide in these early days, we are fain to smile +at hearing a fancy so common among morbid and imaginative children +narrated soberly in middle life, as though it were a unique and +horrible experience. No one endowed by nature with so copious a fund +of self-sympathy could ever have stood in need of much pity from the +outside world. + +But for real and uncompromising severity towards children we must turn +to France, where for years the traditions of decorum and discipline +were handed down in noble families, and generations of boys and girls +suffered grievously therefrom. Trifling faults were magnified into +grave delinquencies, and relentlessly punished as such. We sometimes +wonder whether the youthful Bertrand du Guesclin were really the +wicked little savage that the old chroniclers delight in painting, or +whether his rude truculence was not very much like that of naughty +and neglected boys the world over. There is, after all, a pathetic +significance in those lines of Cuvelier’s which describe in barbarous +French the lad’s remarkable and unprepossessing ugliness:-- + + “Il n’ot si lait de Resnes à Disnant, + Camus estoit et noirs, malostru et massant. + Li père et la mère si le héoiant tant, + Que souvent en leurs cuers aloient desirant + Que fust mors, ou noiey en une eaue corant.” + +Perhaps, if he had been less flat-nosed and swarthy, his better +qualities might have shone forth more clearly in early life, and it +would not have needed the predictions of a magician or the keen-eyed +sympathy of a nun to evolve the future Constable of France out of +such apparently hopeless material. At any rate, tradition generally +representing him either as languishing in the castle dungeon, or +exiled to the society of the domestics, it is plain he bore but slight +resemblance to the cherished _enfant terrible_ who is his legitimate +successor to-day. + +Coming down to more modern times, we are met by such monuments of +stately severity as Madame Quinet and the Marquise de Montmirail, +mother of that fair saint Madame de Rochefoucauld, the trials of whose +later years were ushered in by a childhood of unremitting harshness +and restraint. The marquise was incapable of any faltering or weakness +where discipline was concerned. If carrots were repulsive to her little +daughter’s stomach, then a day spent in seclusion, with a plate of the +obnoxious vegetable before her, was the surest method of proving that +carrots were nevertheless to be eaten. When Augustine and her sister +kissed their mother’s hand each morning, and prepared to con their +tasks in her awful presence, they well knew that not the smallest +dereliction would be passed over by that inexorable judge. Nor might +they aspire, like Harriet Martineau, to shield themselves behind the +barrier of a lie. When from Augustine’s little lips came faltering some +childish evasion, the ten-year-old sinner was hurried as an outcast +from her home, and sent to expiate her crime with six months’ merciful +seclusion in a convent. “You have told me a falsehood, mademoiselle,” +said the marquise, with frigid accuracy; “and you must prepare to leave +my house upon the spot.” + +Faults of breeding were quite as offensive to this _grande dame_ as +faults of temper. The fear of her pitiless glance filled her daughters +with timidity, and bred in them a _mauvaise honte_, which in its turn +aroused her deadliest ire. Only a week before her wedding-day Madame +de Rochefoucauld was sent ignominiously to dine at a side table, as a +penance for the awkwardness of her curtsy; while even her fast-growing +beauty became but a fresh source of misfortune. The dressing of her +magnificent hair occupied two long hours every day, and she retained +all her life a most distinct and painful recollection of her sufferings +at the hands of her _coiffeuse_. + +To turn from the Marquise de Montmirail to Madame Quinet is to see the +picture intensified. More beautiful, more stately, more unswerving +still, her faith in discipline was unbounded, and her practice in +no wise inconsistent with her belief. It was actually one of the +institutions of her married life that a _garde de ville_ should pay +a domiciliary visit twice a week to chastise the three children. If +by chance they had not been naughty, then the punishment might be +referred to the account of future transgressions,--an arrangement +which, while it insured justice to the culprits, can hardly have +afforded them much encouragement to amend. Her son Jerome, who ran +away when a mere boy to enroll with the volunteers of ’92, reproduced +in later years, for the benefit of his own household, many of his +mother’s most striking characteristics. He was the father of Edgar +Quinet, the poet, a child whose precocious abilities seem never to +have awakened within him either parental affection or parental pride. +Silent, austere, repellent, he offered no caresses, and was obeyed +with timid submission. “The gaze of his large blue eyes,” says Dowden, +“imposed restraint with silent authority. His mockery, the play of an +intellect unsympathetic by resolve and upon principle, was freezing +to a child; and the most distinct consciousness which his presence +produced upon the boy was the assurance that he, Edgar, was infallibly +about to do something which would cause displeasure.” That this was a +common attitude with parents in the old _régime_ may be inferred from +Châteaubriand’s statement that he and his sister, transformed into +statues by their father’s presence, recovered their life only when he +left the room; and by the assertion of Mirabeau that even while at +school, two hundred leagues away from _his_ father, “the mere thought +of him made me dread every youthful amusement which could be followed +by the slightest unfavorable result.” + +Yet at the present day we are assured by Mr. Marshall that in France +“the art of spoiling has reached a development which is unknown +elsewhere, and maternal affection not infrequently descends to folly +and imbecility.” But then the clever critic of French Home Life had +never visited America when he wrote those lines, although some of +the stories he tells would do credit to any household in our land. +There is one quite delightful account of a young married couple, who, +being invited to a dinner party of twenty people, failed to make their +appearance until ten o’clock, when they explained urbanely that their +three-year-old daughter would not permit them to depart. Moreover, +being a child of great character and discrimination, she had insisted +on their undressing and going to bed; to which reasonable request they +had rendered a prompt compliance, rather than see her cry. “It would +have been monstrous,” said the fond mother, “to cause her pain simply +for our pleasure; so I begged Henri to cease his efforts to persuade +her, and we took off our clothes and went to bed. As soon as she was +asleep we got up again, redressed, and here we are with a thousand +apologies for being so late.” + +This sounds half incredible; but there is a touch of nature in the +mother’s happy indifference to the comfort of her friends, as compared +with the whims of her offspring, that closely appeals to certain past +experiences of our own. It is all very well for an Englishman to +stare aghast at such a reversal of the laws of nature; we Americans, +who have suffered and held our peace, can afford to smile with some +complacency at the thought of another great nation bending its head +beneath the iron yoke. + +To return, however, to the days when children were the ruled, and not +the rulers, we find ourselves face to face with the great question +of education. How smooth and easy are the paths of learning made now +for the little feet that tread them! How rough and steep they were +in bygone times, watered with many tears, and not without a line of +victims, whose weak strength failed them in the upward struggle! +We cannot go back to any period when school life was not fraught +with miseries. Classic writers paint in grim colors the harshness +of the pedagogues who ruled in Greece and Rome. Mediæval authors +tell us more than enough of the passionless severity that swayed the +monastic schools,--a severity which seems to have been the result of +an hereditary tradition rather than of individual caprice, and which +seldom interfered with the mutual affection that existed between master +and scholar. When St. Anselm, the future disciple of Lanfranc, and his +successor in the See of Canterbury, begged as a child of four to be +sent to school, his mother, Ermenberg,--the granddaughter of a king, +and the kinswoman of every crowned prince in Christendom,--resisted +his entreaties as long as she dared, knowing too well the sufferings +in store for him. A few years later she was forced to yield, and these +same sufferings very nearly cost her son his life. + +The boy was both studious and docile, and his teacher, fully +recognizing his precocious talents, determined to force them to the +utmost. In order that so active a mind should not for a moment be +permitted to relax its tension, he kept the little scholar a ceaseless +prisoner at his desk. Rest and recreation were alike denied him, while +the utmost rigors of a discipline, of which we can form no adequate +conception, wrung from the child’s over-worked brain an unflinching +attention to his tasks. As a result of this cruel folly, “the brightest +star of the eleventh century had been well-nigh quenched in its +rising.”[1] Mind and body alike yielded beneath the strain; and +Anselm, a broken-down little wreck, was returned to his mother’s hands, +to be slowly nursed back to health and reason. “Ah, me! I have lost +my child!” sighed Ermenberg, when she found that not all that he had +suffered could shake the boy’s determination to return; and the mother +of Guibert de Nogent must have echoed the sentiment when her little +son, his back purple with stripes, looked her in the face, and answered +steadily to her lamentations, “If I die of my whippings, I still mean +to be whipped.” + +The step from the monastic schools to Eton and Westminster is a long +one, but the gain not so apparent at first sight as might be supposed. +It is hard for the luxurious Etonian of to-day to realize that for +many years his predecessors suffered enough from cold, hunger, and +barbarous ill-treatment to make life a burden on their hands. The +system, while it hardened some into the desired manliness, must have +killed many whose feebler constitutions could ill support its rigor. +Even as late as 1834, we are told by one who had ample opportunity +to study the subject carefully that “the inmates of a workhouse or a +jail were better fed and lodged than were the scholars of Eton. Boys +whose parents could not pay for a private room underwent privations +that might have broken down a cabin-boy, and would be thought inhuman +if inflicted on a galley-slave.” Nor is this sentiment as exaggerated +as it sounds. To get up at five on freezing winter mornings; to sweep +their own floors and make their own beds; to go two by two to the +“children’s pump” for a scanty wash; to eat no mouthful of food until +nine o’clock; to live on an endless round of mutton, potatoes, and +beer, none of them too plentiful or too good; to sleep in a dismal cell +without chair or table; to improvise a candlestick out of paper; to be +starved, frozen, and flogged,--such was the daily life of the scions +of England’s noblest families, of lads tenderly nurtured and sent from +princely homes to win their Greek and Latin at this fearful cost. + +Moreover, the picture of one public school is in all essential +particulars the picture of the rest. The miseries might vary somewhat, +but their bulk remained the same. At Westminster the younger boys, hard +pushed by hunger, gladly received the broken victuals left from the +table of the senior election, and tried to supplement their scanty fare +with strange and mysterious concoctions, whose unsavory details have +been handed down among the melancholy traditions of the past. + +In 1847 a young brother of Lord Mansfield being very ill at school, +his mother came to visit him. There was but one chair in the room, +upon which the poor invalid was reclining; but his companion, seeing +the dilemma, immediately arose, and with true boyish politeness +offered Lady Mansfield the coal-scuttle, on which he himself had been +sitting. At Winchester, Sydney Smith suffered “many years of misery +and starvation,” while his younger brother, Courtenay, twice ran away, +in the vain effort to escape his wretchedness. “There was never enough +provided of even the coarsest food for the whole school,” writes Lady +Holland; “and the little boys were of course left to fare as well +as they could. Even in his old age my father used to shudder at the +recollections of Winchester, and I have heard him speak with horror of +the misery of the years he spent there. The whole system, he affirmed, +was one of abuse, neglect, and vice.” + +In the matter of discipline there was no shadow of choice anywhere. +Capricious cruelty ruled under every scholastic roof. On the one +side, we encounter Dean Colet, of St. Paul’s, whom Erasmus reported +as “delighting in children in a Christian spirit;” which meant that +he never wearied of seeing them suffer, believing that the more they +endured as boys, the more worthy they would grow in manhood. On the +other, we are confronted by the still more awful ghost of Dr. Keate, +who could and did flog eighty boys in succession without a pause; and +who, being given the confirmation list by mistake for the punishment +list, insisted on flogging every one of the catechumens, as a good +preparation for receiving the sacrament. Sir Francis Doyle, almost the +only apologist who has so far ventured to appear in behalf of this +fiery little despot, once remarked to Lord Blachford that Keate did +not much mind a boy’s lying to him. “What he hated was a monotony of +excuses.” “Mind your lying to him!” retorted Lord Blachford, with a +keen recollection of his own juvenile experiences; “why he exacted it +as a token of respect.” + +If, sick of the brutality of the schools, we seek those rare cases +in which a home education was substituted, we are generally rewarded +by finding the comforts greater and the cramming worse. It is simply +impossible for a pedagogue to try and wring from a hundred brains the +excess of work which may, under clever treatment, be extracted from +one; and so the Eton boys, with all their manifold miseries, were at +least spared the peculiar experiments which were too often tried upon +solitary scholars. Nowadays anxious parents and guardians seem to labor +under an ill-founded apprehension that their children are going to hurt +themselves by over-application to their books, and we hear a great deal +about the expedience of restraining this inordinate zeal. But a few +generations back such comfortable theories had yet to be evolved, and +the plain duty of a teacher was to goad the student on to every effort +in his power. + +Perhaps the two most striking instances of home training that have been +given to the world are those of John Stuart Mill and Giacomo Leopardi; +the principal difference being that, while the English boy was crammed +scientifically by his father, the Italian poet was permitted to +relentlessly cram himself. In both cases we see the same melancholy, +blighted childhood; the same cold indifference to the mother, as to +one who had no part or parcel in their lives; the same joyless routine +of labor; the same unboyish gravity and precocious intelligence. Mill +studied Greek at three, Latin at eight, the Organon at eleven, and Adam +Smith at thirteen. Leopardi at ten was well acquainted with most Latin +authors, and undertook alone and unaided the study of Greek, perfecting +himself in that language before he was fourteen. Mill’s sole recreation +was to walk with his father, narrating to him the substance of his +last day’s reading. Leopardi, being forbidden to go about Recanati +without his tutor, acquiesced with pathetic resignation, and ceased to +wander outside the garden gates. Mill had all boyish enthusiasm and +healthy partisanship crushed out of him by his father’s pitiless logic. +Leopardi’s love for his country burned like a smothered flame, and +added one more to the pangs that eat out his soul in silence. His was +truly a wonderful intellect; and whereas the English lad was merely +forced by training into a precocity foreign to his nature, and which, +according to Mr. Bain, failed to produce any great show of juvenile +scholarship, the Italian boy fed on books with a resistless and craving +appetite, his mind growing warped and morbid as his enfeebled body +sank more and more under the unwholesome strain. In the long lists +of despotically reared children there is no sadder sight than this +undisciplined, eager, impetuous soul, burdened alike with physical and +moral weakness, meeting tyrannical authority with a show of insincere +submission, and laying up in his lonely infancy the seeds of a sorrow +which was to find expression in the key-note of his work, Life is Only +Fit to be Despised. + +Between the severe mental training of boys and the education thought +fit and proper for girls, there was throughout the eighteenth century +a broad and purposeless chasm. Before that time, and after it, +too, the majority of women were happily ignorant of many subjects +which every school-girl of to-day aspires to handle; but during the +reigns of Queen Anne and the first three Georges, this ignorance +was considered an essential charm of their sex, and was displayed +with a pretty ostentation that sufficiently proves its value. Such +striking exceptions as Madame de Staël, Mrs. Montagu, and Anne Damer +were not wanting to give points of light to the picture; but they +hardly represent the real womanhood of their time. Femininity was then +based upon shallowness, and girls were solemnly warned not to try +and ape the acquirements of men, but to keep themselves rigorously +within their own ascertained limits. We find a famous school-teacher, +under whose fostering care many a court belle was trained for social +triumphs, laying down the law on this subject with no uncertain hand, +and definitely placing women in their proper station. “Had a _third +order_ been necessary,” she writes naively, “doubtless one would have +been created, a _midway_ kind of being.” In default, however, of this +recognized _via media_, she deprecates all impious attempts to bridge +over the chasm between the two sexes; and “accounts it a misfortune +for a female to be learned, a genius, or in any way a prodigy, as it +removes her from her natural sphere.” + +“Those were days,” says a writer in Blackwood, “when superficial +teaching was thought the proper teaching for girls; when every science +had its feminine language, as Hindu ladies talk with a difference +and with softer terminations than their lords: as The Young Ladies’ +Geography, which is to be read instead of novels; A Young Ladies’ Guide +to Astronomy; The Use of the Globes for Girls’ Schools; and the Ladies’ +Polite Letter-Writer.” What was really necessary for a girl was to +learn how to knit, to dance, to curtsy, and to carve; the last-named +accomplishment being one of her exclusive privileges. Lady Mary Wortley +Montagu received lessons from a professional carving-master, who taught +her the art scientifically; and during her father’s grand dinners her +labors were often so exhausting that translating the Enchiridion must +have seemed by comparison a light and easy task. Indeed, after that +brilliant baby entrance into the Kitcat Club, very little that was +pleasant fell to Lady Mary’s share; and years later she recalls the +dreary memories of her youth in a letter written to her sister, Lady +Mar. “Don’t you remember,” she asks, pathetically, “how miserable we +were in the little parlor at Thoresby?” + +Her own education she always protested was of the worst and flimsiest +character, and her girlish scorn at the restraints that cramped and +fettered her is expressed vigorously enough in the well-known letter +to Bishop Burnet. It was considered almost criminal, she complains, +to improve her reason, or even to fancy she had any. To be learned +was to be held up to universal ridicule, and the only line of conduct +open to her was to play the fool in concert with other women of +quality, “whose birth and leisure merely serve to make them the most +useless and worthless part of creation.” Yet viewed alongside of her +contemporaries, Lady Mary’s advantages were really quite unusual. She +had some little guidance in her studies, with no particular opposition +to overcome, and tolerance was as much at any time as a thoughtful +girl could hope for. Nearly a century later we find little Mary +Fairfax--afterwards Mrs. Somerville, and the most learned woman in +England--being taught how to sew, to read her Bible, and to learn the +Shorter Catechism; all else being considered superfluous for a female. +Moreover, the child’s early application to her books was regarded with +great disfavor by her relatives, who plainly thought that no good was +likely to come of it. “I wonder,” said her rigid aunt to Lady Fairfax, +“that you let Mary waste her time in reading!” + +“You cannot hammer a girl into anything,” says Ruskin, who has +constituted himself both champion and mentor of the sex; and perhaps +this was the reason that so many of these rigorously drilled and +kept-down girls blossomed perversely into brilliant and scholarly +women. Nevertheless, it is comforting to turn back for a moment, and +see what Holland, in the seventeenth century, could do for her clever +children. Mr. Gosse has shown us a charming picture of the three +daughters of Roemer Visscher, the poetess Tesselschade and her less +famous sisters,--three little girls, whose healthy mental and physical +training was happily free from either narrow contraction or hot-house +pressure. “All of them,” writes Ernestus Brink, “were practiced in +very sweet accomplishments. They could play music, paint, write, and +engrave on glass, make poems, cut emblems, embroider all manner of +fabrics, and swim well; which last thing they had learned in their +father’s garden, where there was a canal with water, outside the city.” +What wonder that these little maidens, with skilled fingers, and clear +heads, and vigorous bodies, grew into three keen-witted and charming +women, around whom we find grouped that rich array of talent which +suddenly raised Holland to a unique literary distinction! What wonder +that their influence, alike refining and strengthening, was felt on +every hand, and was repaid with universal gratitude and love! + +There is a story told of Professor Wilson, that one day, listening to +a lecture on education by Dr. Whately, he grew manifestly impatient at +the rules laid down, and finally slipped out of the room, exclaiming +irately to a friend who followed him, “I always thought God Almighty +made man, but _he_ says it was the schoolmaster.” + +In like manner many of us have wondered from time to time whether +children are made of such ductile material, and can be as readily +moulded to our wishes, as educators would have us believe. If it be +true that nature counts for nothing and training for everything, then +what a gap between the boys and girls of two hundred years ago and +the boys and girls we know to-day! The rigid bands that once bound +the young to decorum have dwindled to a silver thread that snaps +under every restive movement. To have “perfectly natural” children +seems to be the outspoken ambition of parents, who have succeeded in +retrograding their offspring from artificial civilization to that pure +and wholesome savagery which is too plainly their ideal. “It is assumed +nowadays,” declares an angry critic, “that children have come into the +world to make a noise; and it is the part of every good parent to put +up with it, and to make all household arrangements with a view to their +sole pleasure and convenience.” + +That the children brought up under this relaxed discipline acquire +certain merits and charms of their own is an easily acknowledged fact. +We are not now alluding to those spoiled and over-indulged little +people who are the recognized scourges of humanity, but merely to the +boys and girls who have been allowed from infancy that large degree +of freedom which is deemed expedient for enlightened nurseries, and +who regulate their own conduct on the vast majority of occasions. They +are as a rule light-hearted, truthful, affectionate, and occasionally +amusing; but it cannot be denied that they lack that nicety of breeding +which was at one time the distinguishing mark of children of the upper +classes, and which was in a great measure born of the restraints that +surrounded them. The faculty of sitting still without fidgeting, of +walking without rushing, and of speaking without screaming can be +acquired only under tuition; but it is worth some little trouble to +attain. When Sydney Smith remarked that the children of rank were +generally so much better bred than the children of the middle classes, +he recognized the greater need for self-restraint that entered into +their lives. They may have been less natural, perhaps, but they were +infinitely more pleasing to his fastidious eyes; and the unconscious +grace which he admired was merely the reflection of the universal +courtesy that surrounded them. Nor is this all. “The necessity of +self-repression,” says a recent writer in Blackwood, “makes room for +thought, which those children miss who have no formalities to observe, +no customs to respect, who blurt out every irrelevance, who interpose +at will with question and opinion as it enters the brain. Children +don’t learn to talk by chattering to one another, and saying what comes +uppermost. Mere listening with intelligence involves an exercise of +mental speech, and observant silence opens the pores of the mind as +impatient demands for explanation never do.” + +This is true, inasmuch as it is not the child who is encouraged to +talk continually who in the end learns how to arrange and express his +ideas. Nor does the fretful desire to be told at once what everything +means imply the active mind which parents so fondly suppose; but rather +a languid percipience, unable to decipher the simplest causes for +itself. Yet where shall we turn to look for the “observant silence,” +so highly recommended? The young people who observed and were silent +have passed away,--little John Ruskin being assuredly the last of the +species,--and their places are filled by those to whom observation +and silence are alike unknown. This is the children’s age, and all +things are subservient to their wishes. Masses of juvenile literature +are published annually for their amusement; conversation is reduced +steadily to their level while they are present; meals are arranged +to suit their hours, and the dishes thereof to suit their palates; +studies are made simpler and toys more elaborate with each succeeding +year. The hardships they once suffered are now happily ended, the +decorum once exacted is fading rapidly away. We accept the situation +with philosophy, and only now and then, under the pressure of some new +development, are startled into asking ourselves where it is likely to +end. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Life of St. Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury._ By Martin Rule. + + + + + ON THE BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION. + + +“We in England,” says Mr. Kinglake, “are scarcely sufficiently +conscious of the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which +presides over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about +this splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest +of us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious; so that really +a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a foolish +belief in ghosts, or witchcraft, or any other supernatural topic, than +the Lord High Chancellor or the leader of the House of Commons.” This +delicate sarcasm, delivered with all the author’s habitual serenity +of mind, is quoted by Mr. Ruskin in his Art of England; assentingly, +indeed, but with a half-concealed dismay that any one could find it +in his heart to be funny upon such a distressing subject. When he, +Mr. Ruskin, hurls his satiric shafts against the spirit of modern +skepticism, the points are touched with caustic, and betray a deep +impatience darkening quickly into wrath. Is it not bad enough that we +ride in steam-cars instead of post-chaises, live amid brick houses +instead of green fields, and pass by some of the “most accomplished +pictures in the world” to stare gaping at the last new machine, with +its network of slow-revolving, wicked-looking wheels? If, in addition +to these too prominent faults, we are going to frown down the old +appealing superstitions, and threaten them, like naughty children, with +the corrective discipline of scientific research, he very properly +turns his back upon us forever, and distinctly says he has no further +message for our ears. + +Let us rather, then, approach the subject with the invaluable +humility of Don Bernal Dias del Castillo, that gallant soldier who +followed the fortunes of Cortés into Mexico, and afterwards penned +the Historia Verdadera, an ingenuous narrative of their discoveries, +their hardships, and their many battles. In one of these, it seems, +the blessed Saint Iago appeared in the thickest of the fray, mounted +on a snow-white charger, leading his beloved Spaniards to victory. Now +the _conquestador_ freely admits that he himself did not behold the +saint; on the contrary, what he _did_ see in that particular spot was +a cavalier named Francisco de Morla, riding on a chestnut horse. But +does he, on that account, puff himself up with pride, and declare that +his more fortunate comrades were mistaken? By no means! He is as firmly +convinced of the presence of the vision as if it had been apparent to +his eyes, and with admirable modesty lays all the blame upon his own +unworthiness. “Sinner that I am!” he exclaims devoutly, “why should I +have been permitted to behold the blessed apostle?” In the same spirit, +honest Peter Walker strained his sight in vain for a glimpse of the +ghostly armies that crossed the Clyde in the summer of 1686, and, +seeing nothing, was content to believe in them, all the same, on the +testimony of his neighbors. + +Sir Walter Scott, who appears to have wasted a good deal of time +in trying to persuade himself that he put no faith in spirits, +confesses quite humbly, in his old age, that “the tendency to belief +in supernatural agencies seems connected with and deduced from the +invaluable conviction of the certainty of a future state.” And beyond +a doubt this tendency was throughout his life the source of many +pleasurable emotions. So much so, in fact, that, according to Mr. +Pater’s theory of happiness, the loss of these emotions, bred in him +from childhood, would have been very inadequately repaid by a gain in +scientific knowledge. If it be the true wisdom to direct our finest +efforts towards multiplying our sensations, and so expanding the brief +interval we call life, then the old unquestioning credulity was a +more powerful motor in human happiness than any sentiment that fills +its ground to-day. In the first place it was closely associated with +certain types of beauty, and beauty is one of the tonics now most +earnestly recommended to our sick souls. “Les fions d’aut fais” were +charming to the very tips of their dewy, trembling wings; the elfin +people, who danced in the forest glades under the white moonbeams, +danced their way without any difficulty right into the hearts of +men; the swan-maiden, who ventured shyly in the fisher’s path, was +easily transformed into a loving wife; even the mara, most suspicious +and terrible of ghostly visitors, has often laid aside her darker +instincts, and developed into a cheerful spouse, with only a tinge of +mystery to make her more attractive in her husband’s eyes. Melusina +combing her golden hair by the bubbling fountain of Lusignan, Undine +playing in the rain-drenched forest, the nixie dancing at the village +feast with her handsome Flemish lad, and the mermaid reluctantly +leaving her watery home to wed the youth who captured her magic +seal-skin, all belong to the sisterhood of beauty, and their images did +good service in raising the vulgar mind from its enforced contemplation +of the sordid troubles, the droning vexations, of life. + +Next, the happy believers in the supernatural owed to their simplicity +delicious throbs of fear,--not craven cowardice, but that more refined +and complex feeling, which is of all sensations the most enthralling, +the most elusive, and the most impossible to define. Fear, like all +other treacherous gifts, must be handled with discrimination: a thought +too much, and we are brutalized and degraded; but within certain +limits it enhances all the pleasures of life. When Captain Forsyth +stood behind a tree on a sultry summer morning, and saw the tigress +step softly through the long jungle grass, and the affrighted monkeys +swing chattering overhead, there must have come upon him that sensation +of awe which alone makes courage possible.[2] He knew that his life +hung trembling in the balance, and that all depended upon the first +shot he fired. He respected, as a sane man would, the mighty strength +of his antagonist, her graceful limbs instinct with power, her cruel +eyes blinking in the yellow dawn. And born of the fear, which stirred +but could not conquer him, came the keen transport of the hunter, who +feels that one such supremely heroic moment is worth a year of ordinary +life. Without that dread, not only would the joy be lessened, and the +glad rebound from danger to a sense of safety lost forever, but the +disciplined and manly courage of the English soldier would degenerate +into a mere brutish audacity, hardly above the level of the beast he +slays. + +In children, this delicate emotion of fear, growing out of their +dependent condition, gives dignity and meaning to their courage when +they are brave, and a delicious zest to their youthful delinquencies. +Gray, in his chilly and melancholy manhood, years after he has resigned +himself to never again being “either dirty or amused” as long as he +lives, goes back like a flash to the unlawful delight of a schoolboy’s +stolen freedom:-- + + “Still as they run they look behind, + They hear a voice in every wind, + And snatch a fearful joy.” + +And who that has ever watched a party of children, listening with +bright eyes and parted lips to some weird, uncanny legend,--like that +group of little girls for instance, in Mr. Charles Gregory’s picture +Tales and Wonders,--can doubt for a moment the “fearful joy” that +terror lends them? Nowadays, it is true, their youthful ears are but +too well guarded from such indiscretions until they are old enough to +scoff at all fantastic folly, and the age at which they learn to scoff +is one of the most astonishing things about our modern progress. They +have ceased to read fairy stories, because they no longer believe in +fairies; they find Hans Andersen silly, and the Arabian Nights stupid; +and the very babies, “skeptics in long-coats,” scorn you openly if you +venture to hint at Santa Claus. “What did Kriss Kringle bring you this +Christmas?” I rashly asked a tiny mite of a girl; and her answer was as +emphatic as Betsey Prig’s, when, with folded arms and a contemptuous +mien, she let fall the ever memorable words, “I don’t believe there’s +no sich a person.” + +Yet the supernatural, provided it be not too horrible, is legitimate +food for a child’s mind, nourishes its imagination, inspires a +healthy awe, and is death to that precocious pedantry which is the +least pleasing trait that children are wont to manifest. While few +are willing to go as far as Mr. Ruskin, who, having himself been +brought up on fairy legends, confesses that his “first impulse would +be to insist upon every story we tell to a child being untrue, and +every scene we paint for it impossible,” yet a fair proportion of the +untrue and the impossible should enter into its education, and it +should be left to the enjoyment of them as long as may be. Those of +us who have been happy enough to believe that salamanders basked in +the fire and mermaids swam in the deeps, that were-wolves roamed in +the forests and witches rode in the storm, are richer by all these +unfading pictures and unforgotten memories than our more scrupulously +reared neighbors. And what if we could give such things the semblance +of reality once more,--could set foot in spirit within the enchanted +forest of Broceliande, and enjoy the tempestuous gusts of fear that +shook the heart-strings of the Breton peasant, as the great trees +drew their mysterious shadows above his head? On either side lurk +shadowy forms of elf and fairy, half hidden by the swelling trunks; the +wind whispers in the heavy boughs, and he hears their low, malicious +laughter; the dry leaves rustle beneath his feet,--he knows their +stealthy steps are close behind; a broken twig falls on his shoulder, +and he starts trembling, for unseen hands have touched him. Around +his neck hang a silver medal of Our Lady and a bit of ash wood given +him by a wise woman, whom many believe a witch; thus is he doubly +guarded from the powers of evil. Beyond the forest lies the open path, +where wife and children stand waiting by the cottage door. He is a +brave man to wander in the gloaming, and if he reaches home there will +be much to tell of all that he has seen, and heard, and felt. Should +he be devoured by wolves, however,--and there is always this prosaic +danger to be apprehended,--then his comrades will relate how he left +them and went alone into the haunted woods, and his sorrowing widow +will know that the fairies have carried him away, or turned him into +stone. And the wise woman, reproached, perhaps, for the impotence of +her charms, will say how with her own aged eyes she has three times +seen Kourigan, Death’s elder brother, flitting before the doomed man, +and knew that his fate was sealed. So while fresh tales of mystery +cluster round his name, and his children breathe them in trembling +whispers by the fireside, their mother will wait hopefully for the +spell to be broken, and the lost given back to her arms; until Pierrot, +the charcoal-burner, persuades her that a stone remains a stone until +the Judgment Day, and that in the mean time his own hut by the kiln is +empty, and he needs a wife. + +But superstition, it is claimed, begets cruelty, and cruelty is a +vice now most rigorously frowned down by polite society. Daring +spirits, like Mr. Besant, may still urge its claims upon our reluctant +consideration; Mr. Andrew Lang may pronounce it an essential element of +humor; or a purely speculative genius, like Mr. Pater, may venture to +show how adroitly it can be used as a help to religious sentiment; but +every age has pet vices of its own, and, being singularly intolerant +of those it has discarded, is not inclined to listen to any arguments +in their favor. Superstition burned old women for witches, dotards +for warlocks, and idiots for were-wolves; but in its gentler aspect +it often threw a veil of charity over both man and beast. The Greek +rustic, who found a water-newt wriggling in his gourd, tossed the +little creature back into the stream, remembering that it was the +unfortunate Ascalaphus, whom the wrath of Demeter had consigned to this +loathsome doom. The mediæval housewife, when startled by a gaunt wolf +gazing through her kitchen window, bethought her that this might be her +lost husband, roaming helpless and bewitched, and so gave the starving +creature food. + + “O was it war-wolf in the wood? + Or was it mermaid in the sea? + Or was it man, or vile woman, + My ain true love, that misshaped thee?” + +The West Indian negress still bestows chicken-soup instead of scalding +water on the invading army of black ants, believing that if kindly +treated they will show their gratitude in the only way that ants can +manifest it,--by taking their departure. + +Granted that in these acts of gentleness there are traces of fear and +self-consideration; but who shall say that all our good deeds are not +built up on some such trestle-work of foibles? “La vertu n’iroit pas +si loin, si la vanité ne lui tenoit pas compagnie.” And what universal +politeness has been fostered by the terror that superstition breeds, +what delicate euphemisms containing the very soul of courtesy! Consider +the Greeks, who christened the dread furies “Eumenides,” or “gracious +ones;” the Scotch who warily spoke of the devil as the “good man,” +lest his sharp ears should catch a more unflattering title; the Dyak +who respectfully mentions the small-pox as “the chief;” the East Indian +who calls the tiger “lord” or “grandfather;” and the Laplander, who +gracefully alludes to the white bear as “the fur-clad one,” and then +realize what perfection of breeding was involved in what we are wont to +call ignorant credulity. + +Again, in the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that +most comfortable vanity which whispers in our ears that failures are +not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall +upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means +ruin. But before the world had grown so pitilessly logical there was +no lack of excuses for the defeated, and of unflattering comments for +the strong. Did some shrewd Cornish miner open a rich vein of ore, then +it was apparent to his fellow-toilers that the knackers had been at +work, leading him on by their mysterious tapping to this more fruitful +field. But let him proceed warily, for the knacker, like its German +brother, the kobold, is but a capricious sprite, and some day may +beguile him into a mysterious passage or long-forgotten chamber in the +mine, whence he shall never more return. His bones will whiten in their +prison, while his spirit, wandering restlessly among the subterranean +corridors, will be heard on Christmas Eve, hammering wearily away till +the gray dawn brightens in the east. Or did some prosperous farmer save +his crop while his neighbors’ corn was blighted, and raise upon his +small estate more than their broader acres could be forced to yield, +there was no opportunity afforded him for pride or self-congratulation. +Only the witch’s art could bring about such strange results, and the +same sorceries that had aided him had, doubtless, been the ruin of his +friends. He was a lucky man if their indignation went no further than +muttered phrases and averted heads. Does not Pliny tell us the story of +Caius Furius Cresinus, whose heavy crops awoke such mingled anger and +suspicion in his neighbors’ hearts that he was accused in the courts of +conjuring their grain and fruit into his own scanty ground? If a woman +aspired to be neater than her gossips, or to spin more wool than they +were able to display, it was only because the pixies labored for her +at night; turning her wheel briskly in the moonlight, splitting the +wood, and drawing the water, while she drowsed idly in her bed. + + “And every night the pixies good + Drive round the wheel with sound subdued, + And leave--in this they never fail-- + A silver penny in the pail.” + +Even to the clergy this engaging theory brought its consolations. +When the Reverend Lucas Jacobson Debes, pastor of Thorshaven in 1670, +found that his congregation was growing slim, he was not forced, +in bitterness of spirit, to ask himself were his sermons dull, but +promptly laid all the blame upon the _biergen-trold_, the spectres +of the mountains, whom he angrily accused, in a lengthy homily, of +disturbing his flock, and even pushing their discourtesy so far as to +carry them off bodily before his discourse was completed. + +Indeed, it is to the clergy that we are indebted for much interesting +information concerning the habits of goblins, witches, and gnomes. +The Reverend Robert Kirke, of Aberfoyle, Perthshire, divided his +literary labors impartially between a translation of the Psalms into +Gaelic verse and an elaborate treatise on the “Subterranean and for the +most part Invisible People, heretofore going under the name of Elves, +Faunes, and Fairies, or the like,” which was printed, with the author’s +name attached, in 1691. Here, unsullied by any taint of skepticism, +we have an array of curious facts that would suggest the closest +intimacy between the rector and the “Invisible People,” who at any rate +concealed nothing from _his_ eyes. He tells us gravely that they marry, +have children, die, and are buried, very much like ordinary mortals; +that they are inveterate thieves, stealing everything, from the milk +in the dairy to the baby lying on its mother’s breast; that they can +fire their elfin arrow-heads so adroitly that the weapon penetrates to +the heart without breaking the skin, and he himself has seen animals +wounded in this manner; that iron in any shape or form is a terror to +them, not for the same reason that Solomon misliked it, but on account +of the proximity of the great iron mines to the place of eternal +punishment; and--strangest of all--that they can read and write, and +have extensive libraries, where light and toyish books alternate with +ponderous volumes on abstruse mystical subjects. Only the Bible may not +be found among them. + +How Mr. Kirke acquired all these particulars--whether, like John +Dietrich, he lived in the Elfin Mound and grew wise on elfin wisdom, +or whether he adopted a less laborious and secluded method--does not +transpire. But one thing is certain: he was destined to pay a heavy +price for his unhallowed knowledge. The fairies, justly irritated at +such an open revelation of their secrets, revenged themselves signally +by carrying off the offender, and imprisoning him beneath the dun-shi, +or goblin hill, where he has since had ample opportunity to pursue +his investigations. It is true, his parishioners supposed he had died +of apoplexy, and, under that impression, buried him in Aberfoyle +churchyard; but his successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, informs us of the +widespread belief concerning his true fate. An effort was even made +to rescue him from his captivity, but it failed through the neglect +of a kinsman, Grahame of Duchray; and Robert Kirke, like Thomas of +Ercildoune and the three miners of the Kuttenberg, still “drees his +weird” in the enchanted halls of elfland. + +When the unfortunate witches of Warbois were condemned to death, on +the testimony of the Throgmorton children, Sir Samuel Cromwell, as +lord of the manor, received forty pounds out of their estate; which +sum he turned into a rent-charge of forty shillings yearly, for the +endowment of an annual lecture on witchcraft, to be preached by a +doctor or bachelor of divinity, of Queen’s College, Cambridge. Thus +he provided for his tenants a good sound church doctrine on this +interesting subject, and we may rest assured that the sermons were +far from quieting their fears, or lulling them into a skeptical +indifference. Indeed, more imposing names than Sir Samuel Cromwell’s +appear in the lists to do battle for cherished superstitions. Did not +the devout and conscientious Baxter firmly believe in the powers of +witches, especially after “hearing their sad confessions;” and was +not the gentle and learned Addison more than half disposed to believe +in them, too? Does not Bacon avow that a “well-regulated” astrology +might become the medium of many beneficial truths; and did not the +scholarly Dominican, Stephen of Lusignan, expand the legend of Melusina +into so noble a history, that the great houses of Luxembourg, Rohan, +and Sassenaye altered their pedigrees, so as to claim descent from +that illustrious nymph? Even the Emperor Henry VII. was as proud of +his fishy ancestress as was Godfrey de Bouillon of his mysterious +grandsire, Helias, the Knight of the Swan, better known to us as the +Lohengrin of Wagner’s opera; while among more modest annals appear the +families of Fantome and Dobie, each bearing a goblin on their crest, in +witness of their claim to some shadowy supernatural kinship. + +There is often a marked contrast between the same superstition as +developed in different countries, and in the same elfin folk, who +please or terrify us according to the gay or serious bent of their +mortal interpreters. While the Keltic ourisk is bright and friendly, +with a tinge of malice and a strong propensity to blunder, the English +brownie is a more clever and audacious sprite, the Scottish bogle is a +sombre and dangerous acquaintance, and the Dutch Hudikin an ungainly +counterpart of Puck, with hardly a redeeming quality, save a lumbering +fashion of telling the truth when it is least expected. It was Hudikin +who foretold the murder of James I. of Scotland; though why he should +have left the dikes of Holland for the bleak Highland hills it is hard +to say, more especially as there were murders enough at home to keep +him as busy as Cassandra. So, too, when the English witches rode up the +chimney and through the storm-gusts to their unhallowed meetings, they +apparently confined their attention to the business in hand, having +perhaps enough to occupy them in managing their broomstick steeds. +But when the Scottish hags cried, “Horse and hattock in the devil’s +name!” and rushed fiercely through the tempestuous night, the unlucky +traveler crossed himself and trembled, lest in very wantonness they +aim their magic arrows at his heart. Isobel Gowdie confessed at her +trial to having fired in this manner at the Laird of the Park, as he +rode through a ford; but the influence of the running water turned her +dart aside, and she was soundly cuffed by Bessie Hay, another witch, +for her awkwardness in choosing such an unpropitious moment.[3] In +one respect alone this evil sisterhood were all in harmony. By charms +and spells they revenged themselves terribly on their enemies, and +inflicted malicious injuries on their friends. It was as easy for them +to sink a ship in mid-ocean as to dry the milk in a cow’s udder, or to +make a strong man pine away while his waxen image was consumed inch by +inch on the witch’s smouldering hearth. + +This instinctive belief in evil spells is the essence, not of +witchcraft only, but of every form of superstition, from the days of +Thessalian magic to the brutish rites of the Louisiana Voodoo. It has +brought to the scaffold women of gentle blood, like Janet Douglas, +Lady Glamis, and to the stake visionary enthusiasts like Jeanne d’Arc. +It confronts us from every page of history, it stares at us from the +columns of the daily press. It has provided an outlet for fear, hope, +love, and hatred, and a weapon for every passion that stirs the soul of +man. It is equally at home in all parts of the world, and has entered +freely into the religion, the traditions, and the folk-lore of all +nations. Actæon flying as a stag from the pursuit of his own hounds; +Circe’s swinish captives groveling at their troughs; Björn turned into +a bear through the malice of his stepmother, and hunted to death by +his father, King Hring; the Swans of Lir floating mournfully on the +icy waters of the Moyle; the _loup-garou_ lurking in the forests of +Brittany, and the _oborot_ coursing over the Russian steppes; Merlin +sleeping in the gloomy depths of Broceliande, and Raknar buried fifty +fathoms below the coast of Helluland, are alike the victims + + “Of woven paces and of waving hands.” + +whether the spell be cast by an outraged divinity, or by the cruel hand +of a malignant foe. + +In 1857, Mr. Newton discovered at Cnidos fragments of a buried and +ruined chapel, sacred to Demeter and Persephone. In it were three +marble figures of great beauty, some small votive images of baked +earth, several bronze lamps, and a number of thin leaden rolls, pierced +with holes for the convenience of hanging them around the chapel walls. +On these rolls were inscribed the diræ, or spells, devoting some enemy +to the infernal gods, and the motive for the suppliant’s ill-will was +given with great _naïveté_ and earnestness. One woman binds another who +has lured away her lover; a second, the enemy who has accused her of +poisoning her husband; a third, the thief who has stolen her bracelet; +a fourth, the man who has robbed her of a favorite drinking-horn; a +fifth, the acquaintance who has failed to return a borrowed garment; +and so on through a long list of grievances.[4] It is evident this +form of prayer was quite a common occurrence, and, as combining a +religious rite with a comfortable sense of retaliation, must have been +exceptionally soothing to the worshiper’s mind. Persephone was appeased +and their own wrongs atoned for by this simple act of devotion; and +would that it were given to us now to inscribe, and by inscribing doom, +all those who have borrowed and failed to return our books; would +that by scribbling some strong language on a piece of lead we could +avenge the lamentable gaps on our shelves, and send the ghosts of the +wrong-doers howling dismally into the eternal shades of Tartarus. + +The saddest thing about these faded superstitions is that the very +men who have studied them most accurately are often least susceptible +to their charms. In their eagerness to trace back every myth to a +common origin, and to prove, with or without reason, that they one +and all arose from the observation of natural phenomena, too many +writers either overlook entirely the beauty and meaning of the tale, +or treat it with a contemptuous indifference very hard to understand. +Mr. Baring-Gould, a most honorable exception to this evil rule, takes +occasion now and then to deal some telling blows at the extravagant +theorists who persist in maintaining that every tradition bears its +significance on its surface, and who, following up their preconceived +opinions, cruelly overtax the credulity of their readers. He himself +has shown conclusively that many Aryan myths are but allegorical +representations of natural forces; but in these cases the connection +is always distinctly traced and easily understood. It is not hard for +any of us to perceive the likeness between the worm Schamir, the hand +of glory, and the lightning, when their peculiar properties are so +much alike; or to behold in the Sleeping Beauty or Thorn-Rose the +ice-bound earth slumbering through the long winter months, until the +sun-god’s kisses win her back to life and warmth. But when we are +asked to believe that William Tell is the storm-cloud, with his arrow +of lightning and his iris bow bent against the sun, which is resting +like a coin or a golden apple on the edge of the horizon, we cannot +but feel, with the author of Curious Myths, that a little too much is +exacted from us. “I must protest,” he says, “against the manner in +which our German friends fasten rapaciously upon every atom of history, +sacred and profane, and demonstrate all heroes to represent the sun; +all villains to be the demons of night or winter; all sticks and spears +and arrows to be the lightning; all cows and sheep and dragons and +swans to be clouds.” + +But then it must be remembered that Mr. Baring-Gould is the most +tolerant and catholic of writers, with hardly a hobby he can call his +own. Sympathizing with the sad destruction of William Tell, he casts +a lance in honor of Saint George against Reynolds and Gibbon, and +manifests a lurking weakness for mermaids, divining-rods, and the +Wandering Jew. He is to be congratulated on his early training, for he +assures us he believed, on the testimony of his Devonshire nurse, that +all Cornishmen had tails, until a Cornish bookseller stoutly denied the +imputation, and enlightened his infant mind. He has the rare and happy +faculty of writing upon all mythical subjects with grace, sympathy, +and _vraisemblance_. Even when there can be no question of credulity +either with himself or with his readers, he is yet content to write as +though for the time he believes. Just as Mr. Birrell advises us to lay +aside our moral sense when we begin the memoirs of an attractive scamp, +and to recall it carefully when we have finished, so Mr. Baring-Gould +generously lays aside his enlightened skepticism when he undertakes to +tell us about sirens and were-wolves, and remembers that he is of the +nineteenth century only when his task is done. + +This is precisely what Mr. John Fiske is unable or unwilling to +accomplish. He cannot for a moment forget how much better he knows; +and instead of an indulgent smile at the delightful follies of our +ancestors, we detect here and there through his very valuable pages +something unpleasantly like a sneer. “Where the modern calmly taps +his forehead,” explains Mr. Fiske, “and says, ‘Arrested development!’ +the terrified ancient made the sign of the cross, and cried, +‘Were-wolf!’”[5] Now a more disagreeable object than the “modern” +tapping his forehead, like Dr. Blimber, and offering a sensible +elucidation of every mystery, it would be hard to find. The ignorant +peasant making his sign of the cross is not only more picturesque, +but he is more companionable,--in books, at least,--and it is of far +greater interest to try to realize how _he_ felt when the specimen +of “arrested development” stole past him in the shadow of the woods. +There is, after all, a mysterious horror about the lame boy,--some +impish changeling of evil parentage, foisted on hell, perhaps, as +Nadir thrust his earth-born baby into heaven,--who every Midsummer +Night and every Christmas Eve summoned the were-wolves to their secret +meeting, whence they rushed ravenously over the German forests. The +girdle of human skin, three finger-breadths wide, which wrought the +transformation; the telltale hairs in the hollow of the hand which +betrayed the wolfish nature; the fatality which doomed one of every +seven sisters to this dreadful enchantment, and the trifling accidents +which brought about the same undesirable result are so many handles +by which we grasp the strange emotions that swayed the mediæval man. +Jacques Roulet and Jean Grenier,[6] as mere maniacs and cannibals, fill +every heart with disgust; but as were-wolves an awful mystery wraps +them round, and the mind is distracted from pity for their victims to +a fascinated consideration of their own tragic doom. A blood-thirsty +idiot is an object that no one cares to think about; but a wolf-fiend, +urged to deeds of violence by an impulse he cannot resist, is one of +those ghastly creations that the folk-lore of every country has placed +sharply and persistently before our startled eyes. Yet surely there +is a touch of comedy in the story told by Van Hahn, of an unlucky +freemason, who, having divulged the secrets of his order, was pursued +across the Pyrenees by the master of his lodge in the form of a +were-wolf, and escaped only by taking refuge in an empty cottage, and +hiding under the bed. + +“To us who are nourished from childhood,” says Mr. Fiske again, “on +the truths revealed by science, the sky is known to be merely an +optical appearance, due to the partial absorption of the solar rays +in passing through a thick stratum of atmospheric air; the clouds are +known to be large masses of watery vapor, which descend in rain-drops +when sufficiently condensed; and the lightning is known to be a flash +of light accompanying an electric discharge.” But the blue sky-sea of +Aryan folk-lore, in which the cloud-flakes floated as stately swans, +drew many an eye to the contemplation of its loveliness, and touched +many a heart with the sacred charm of beauty. On that mysterious sea +strange vessels sailed from unknown shores, and once a mighty anchor +was dropped by the sky mariners, and fell right into a little English +graveyard, to the great amazement of the humble congregation just +coming out from church. The sensation of freedom and space afforded by +this conception of the heavens is a delicious contrast to the conceit +of the Persian poet,-- + + “That inverted Bowl they call the Sky, + Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die;” + +or to the Semitic legend, which described the firmament as made of +hammered plate, with little windows for rain,--a device so poor and +barbaric, that we wonder how any man could look up into the melting +blue and admit such a sordid fancy into his soul. + +“Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest men,” confesses Dr. +Oliver Wendell Holmes, “has mingled with it something which partakes of +insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep +company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.” Such an +admission from so genial and kindly a source should suffice to put us +all on the defensive. It is not agreeable to be bullied even upon those +matters which are commonly classed as facts; but when we come to the +misty region of dreams and myths and superstitions, let us remember, +with Lamb, that “we do not know the laws of that country,” and with him +generously forbear to “set down our ancestors in the gross for fools.” +We have lost forever the fantasies that enriched them. Not for us are +the pink and white lions that gamboled in the land of Prester John, +nor his onyx floors, imparting courage to all who trod on them. Not for +us the Terrestrial Paradise, with its “Welle of Youthe, whereat thei +that drynken semen alle weys yongly, and lyven withouten sykeness;”[7] +nor the Fortunate Isles beyond the Western Sea, where spring was ever +green; where youths and maidens danced hand in hand on the dewy grass, +where the cows ungrudgingly gave milk enough to fill whole ponds +instead of milking-pails, and where wizards and usurers could never +hope to enter. The doors of these enchanted spots are closed upon us, +and their key, like Excalibur, lies hidden where no hand can grasp it. + + “The whole wide world is painted gray on gray, + And Wonderland forever is gone past.” + +All we can do is to realize our loss with becoming modesty, and now and +then cast back a wistful glance + + “where underneath + The shelter of the quaint kiosk, there sigh + A troup of Fancy’s little China Dolls, + Who dream and dream, with damask round their loins, + And in their hands a golden tulip flower.” + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] _The Highlands of Central India._ By Captain James Forsyth. + +[3] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_. By Sir Walter Scott. + +[4] _The Myth of Demeter and Persephone._ By Walter Pater. + +[5] _Myths and Mythmakers._ + +[6] _Book of Were-Wolves._ By Baring-Gould. + +[7] _Travels of Sir John Mandeville._ + + + + + WHAT CHILDREN READ. + + +It is part of the irony of life that our discriminating taste for books +should be built up on the ashes of an extinct enjoyment. We spend a +great deal of our time in learning what literature is good, and a great +deal more in attuning our minds to its reception, rightly convinced +that, by the training of our intellectual faculties, we are unlocking +one of the doors through which sweetness and light may enter. We are +fond of reading, too, and have always maintained with Macaulay that we +would rather be a poor man with books than a great king without, though +luckily for our resolution, and perhaps for his, such a choice has +never yet been offered. Books, we say, are our dearest friends, and so, +with true friendly acuteness, we are prompt to discover their faults, +and take great credit in our ingenuity. But all this time, somewhere +about the house, curled up, may be, in a nursery window, or hidden in +a freezing attic, a child is poring over The Three Musketeers, lost +to any consciousness of his surroundings, incapable of analyzing his +emotions, breathless with mingled fear and exultation over his heroes’ +varying fortunes, and drinking in a host of vivid impressions that are +absolutely ineffaceable from his mind. We cannot read in that fashion +any longer, but we only wish we could. Thackeray used to sigh in middle +age over the lost delights of five shillings’ worth of pastry; but +what was the pleasure of eating tarts to the glamour cast over us by +our first romance, to the enchanted hours we spent with Sintram by +the sea-shore, or with Nydia in the darkened streets of Pompeii, or +perhaps--if we were not too carefully watched--with Emily in those +dreadful vaults beneath Udolpho’s walls! + +Nor is it fiction only that strongly excites the imagination of a +child. History is not to him what it is to us, a tangle of disputed +facts, doubtful theories, and conflicting evidence. He grasps its +salient points with simple directness, absorbs them into his mind +with tolerable accuracy, and passes judgment on them with enviable +ease. To him, historical characters are at least as real as those of +romance, which they are very far from being to us, and he enters into +their impressions and motives with a facile sympathy which we rarely +feel. Not only does he firmly believe that Marcus Curtius leaped into +the gulf, but he has not yet learned to question the expediency of +the act; and, having never been enlightened by Mr. Grote, the black +broth of Lykurgus is as much a matter of fact to him as the bread and +butter upon his own breakfast table. Sir Walter Scott tells us that +even the dinner-bell--most welcome sound to boyish ears--failed to win +him from his rapt perusal of Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry; but +Gibbon, as a lad, found the passage of the Goths over the Danube just +as engrossing, and, stifling the pangs of hunger, preferred to linger +fasting in their company. The great historian’s early love for history +has furnished Mr. Bagehot with one more proof of the fascination of +such records for the youthful mind, and he bids us at the same time +consider from what a firm and tangible standpoint it regards them. +“Youth,” he writes, “has a principle of consolidation. In history, +the whole comes in boyhood; the details later, and in manhood. The +wonderful series going far back to the times of old patriarchs with +their flocks and herds, the keen-eyed Greek, the stately Roman, the +watchful Jew, the uncouth Goth, the horrid Hun, the settled picture of +the unchanging East, the restless shifting of the rapid West, the rise +of the cold and classical civilization, its fall, the rough, impetuous +Middle Ages, the vague warm picture of ourselves and home,--when did we +learn these? Not yesterday, nor to-day, but long ago, in the first dawn +of reason, in the original flow of fancy. What we learn afterwards are +but the accurate littlenesses of the great topic, the dates and tedious +facts. Those who begin late learn only these; but the happy first feel +the mystic associations and the progress of the whole.”[8] + +If this be true, and the child’s mind be not only singularly alive +to new impressions, but quick to concentrate its knowledge into a +consistent whole, the value and importance of his early reading can +hardly be overestimated. That much anxiety has been felt upon the +subject is proven by the cry of self-congratulation that rises on +every side of us to-day. We are on the right track at last, the press +and the publishers assure us; and with tons of healthy juvenile +literature flooding the markets every year, our American boys and girls +stand fully equipped for the intellectual battles of life. But if we +will consider the matter in a dispassionate and less boastful light, we +shall see that the good accomplished is mainly of a negative character. +By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly +succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; +yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the +characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged +with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness. These little +volumes, nicely written, nicely printed, and nicely illustrated, are +very useful in their way; but they are powerless to awaken a child’s +imagination, or to stimulate his mental growth. If stories, they +merely introduce him to a phase of life with which he is already +familiar; if historical, they aim at showing him a series of detached +episodes, broken pictures of the mighty whole, shorn of its “mystic +associations,” and stirring within his soul no stronger impulse than +that of a cheaply gratified curiosity. + +Not that children’s books are to be neglected or contemned. On the +contrary, they are always helpful, and in the average nursery have +grown to be a recognized necessity. But when supplied with a too lavish +hand, a child is tempted to read nothing else, and his mind becomes +shrunken for lack of a vigorous stimulant to excite and expand it. +“Children,” wrote Sir Walter Scott, “derive impulses of a powerful +and important kind from hearing things that they cannot entirely +comprehend. It is a mistake to write down to their understanding. Set +them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out.” Sir Walter himself, be +it observed, in common with most little people of genius, got along +strikingly well without any juvenile literature at all. He shouted the +ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of his aunt’s visitors, +long before he knew how to read, and listened at his grandmother’s knee +to her stirring tales about Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, +Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and a host of border heroes whose +picturesque robberies were the glory of their sober and respectable +descendants. Two or three old books which lay in the window-seat +were explored for his amusement in the dreary winter days. Ramsay’s +Tea-Table Miscellany, a mutilated copy of Josephus, and Pope’s +translation of the Iliad appear to have been his favorites, until, when +about eight years old, a happy chance threw him under the spell of the +two great poets who have swayed most powerfully the pliant imaginations +of the young. “I found,” he writes in his early memoirs, “within my +mother’s dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes +of Shakespeare; nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sate +up in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment, +until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it was +time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely +deposited since nine o’clock.” And a little later he adds, “Spenser +I could have read forever. Too young to trouble myself about the +allegory, I considered all the knights, and ladies, and dragons, and +giants in their outward and exoteric sense, and Heaven only knows how +delighted I was to find myself in such society!” + +“How much of our poetry,” it has been asked, “owes its start to +Spenser, when the Fairy Queen was a household book, and lay in the +parlor window-seat?” And how many brilliant fancies have emanated +from those same window-seats, which Montaigne so keenly despised? +There, where the smallest child could climb with ease, lay piled up +in a corner, within the reach of his little hands, the few precious +volumes which perhaps comprised the literary wealth of the household. +Those were not days when over-indulgence and a multiplicity of books +robbed reading of its healthy zest. We know that in the window-seat +of Cowley’s mother’s room lay a copy of the Fairy Queen, which to her +little son was a source of unfailing delight, and Pope has recorded +the ecstasy with which, as a lad, he pored over this wonderful poem; +but then neither Cowley nor Pope had the advantage of following Oliver +Optic through the slums of New York, or living with some adventurous +“boy hunters” in the jungles of Central Africa. On the other hand, +there is a delicious account of Bentham, in his early childhood, +climbing to the height of a huge stool, and sitting there night after +night reading Rapin’s history by the light of two candles; a weird +little figure, whose only counterpart in literature is the small John +Ruskin propped up solemnly in his niche, “like an idol,” and hemmed +in from the family reach by the table on which his book reposed. It +is quite evident that Bentham found the mental nutrition he wanted +in Rapin’s rather dreary pages, just as Pope and Cowley found it in +Spenser, Ruskin in the Iliad, and Burns in the marvelous stories +told by that “most ignorant and superstitious old woman,” who made +the poet afraid of his own shadow, and who, as he afterwards freely +acknowledged, fanned within his soul the kindling flame of genius. + +Look where we will, we find the author’s future work reflected in the +intellectual pastimes of his childhood. Madame de Genlis, when but six +years old, perused with unflagging interest the ten solid volumes of +Clélie,--a task which would appall the most stout-hearted novel-reader +of to-day. Gibbon turned as instinctively to facts as Scott and Burns +to fiction. Macaulay surely learned from his beloved Æneid the art of +presenting a dubious statement with all the vigorous coloring of truth. +Wordsworth congratulated himself and Coleridge that, as children, they +had ranged at will + + “through vales + Rich with indigenous produce, open grounds + Of fancy;” + +Coleridge, in his turn, was wont to express his sense of superiority +over those who had not read fairy tales when they were young, and +Charles Lamb, who was plainly of the same way of thinking, wrote to him +hotly on the subject of the “cursed Barbauld crew,” and demanded how he +would ever have become a poet, if, instead of being fed with tales and +old wives’ fables in his infancy, he had been crammed with geography, +natural history, and other useful information. What a picture we have +of Cardinal Newman’s sensitive and flexible mind in these few words +which bear witness to his childish musings! “I used to wish,” he says +in the third chapter of the Apologia, “that the Arabian Nights were +true; my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers +and talismans.... I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and +all the world a deception, my fellow angels, by a playful device, +concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of +a material world.” Alongside of this poetic revelation may be placed +Cobbett’s sketch of himself: a sturdy country lad of eleven, in a +blue smock and red garters, standing before the bookseller’s shop +in Richmond, with an empty stomach, three pence in his pocket, and +a certain little book called The Tale of a Tub contending with his +hunger for the possession of that last bit of money. In the end, mind +conquered matter: the threepence was invested in the volume, and the +homeless little reader curled himself under a haystack, and forgot all +about his supper in the strange, new pleasure he was enjoying. “The +book was so different,” he writes, “from anything that I had ever read +before, it was something so fresh to my mind, that, though I could not +understand some parts of it, it delighted me beyond description, and +produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I +read on till it was dark, without any thought of food or bed. When I +could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket and tumbled down +by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds of Kew Gardens +awakened me in the morning.... I carried that volume about with me +wherever I went; and when I lost it in a box that fell overboard in the +Bay of Fundy, the loss gave me greater pain than I have since felt at +losing thousands of pounds.” + +As for Lamb’s views on the subject of early reading, they are best +expressed in his triumphant vindication of Bridget Elia’s happily +neglected education: “She was tumbled by accident or design into a +spacious closet of good old English books, without much selection +or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome +pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up exactly in this +fashion.” It is natural that but few parents are anxious to risk so +hazardous an experiment, especially as the training of “incomparable +old maids” is hardly the recognized summit of maternal ambition; but +Bridget Elia at least ran no danger of intellectual starvation, while, +if we pursue a modern school-girl along the track of her self-chosen +reading, we shall be astonished that so much printed matter can yield +so little mental nourishment. She has begun, no doubt, with childish +stories, bright and well-written, probably, but following each other +in such quick succession that none of them have left any distinct +impression on her mind. Books that children read but once are of scant +service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations +and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that +they have become a portion of our thinking selves. At ten or twelve the +little girl aspires to something partly grown-up, to those nondescript +tales which, trembling ever on the brink of sentiment, seem afraid to +risk the plunge; and with her appetite whetted by a course of this +unsatisfying diet, she is soon ripe for a little more excitement and a +great deal more love-making, so graduates into Rhoda Broughton and the +“Duchess,” at which point her intellectual career is closed. She has +no idea, even, of what she has missed in the world of books. She tells +you that she “don’t care for Dickens,” and “can’t get interested in +Scott,” with a placidity that plainly shows she lays the blame for this +state of affairs on the two great masters who have amused and charmed +the world. As for Northanger Abbey, or Emma, she would as soon think +of finding entertainment in Henry Esmond. She has probably never read +a single masterpiece of our language; she has never been moved by a +noble poem, or stirred to the quick by a well-told page of history; she +has never opened the pores of her mind for the reception of a vigorous +thought, or the solution of a mental problem; yet she may be found +daily in the circulating library, and is seldom visible on the street +without a book or two under her arm. + +“In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate,” wrote +little Marjorie Fleming in her diary, nearly eighty years ago, and +added somewhat plaintively, “Isabella will not allow me to speak of +lovers and heroins,”--yearning, as we can see, over the forbidden +topic, and mutable in her spelling, as befits her tender age. But +what books had _she_ read, this bright-eyed, healthy, winsome little +girl,--eight years old when she died,--the favorite companion of +Sir Walter Scott, and his comfort in many a moment of fatigue and +depression? We can follow her path easily enough, thanks to those +delicious, misspelt scrawls in which she has recorded her childish +verdicts. “Thomson is a beautiful author,” she writes at six, “and +Pope, but nothing to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. +Macbeth is a pretty composition, but awful one.... The Newgate Calender +is very instructive.” And again, “Tom Jones and Grey’s Elegy in a +country churchyard,” surely never classed together before, “are both +excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men.... +Doctor Swift’s works are very funny; I got some of them by heart.... +Miss Egward’s [Edgeworth’s] tails are very good, particularly some +that are much adapted for youth, as Laz Lawrance and Tarleton.” Then +with a sudden jump, “I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much +interested in the fate of poor poor Emily.... Morehead’s sermons are, +I hear, much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read +novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it or my prayers.” + +It is apparent that she read a great deal which would now hardly +be considered desirable for little girls, but who can quarrel with +the result? Had the bright young mind been starved on Dotty Dimple +and Little Prudy books, we might have missed the quaintest bit of +autobiography in the English tongue, those few scattered pages which, +with her scraps of verse and tender little letters, were so carefully +preserved by a loving sister after Pet Maidie’s death. Far too young +and innocent to be harmed by Tom Jones or the “funny” Doctor Swift, +we may perhaps doubt whether she had penetrated very deeply into the +Newgate Calendar, notwithstanding a further assertion on her part that +“the history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing.” But +that she had the “little knolege” she boasted of Shakespeare is proven +by the fact that her recitations from King John affected Scott, to use +his own words, “as nothing else could do.” He would sob outright when +the little creature on his knee repeated, quivering with suppressed +emotion, those heart-breaking words of Constance:-- + + “For I am sick and capable of fears, + Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears;” + +and, knowing the necessity of relaxing a mind so highly wrought, he +took good care that she should not be without healthy childish reading. +We have an amusing picture of her consoling herself with fairy tales, +when exiled, for her restlessness, to the foot of her sister’s bed; +and one of the first copies of Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy found its +way to Marjorie Fleming, with Sir Walter Scott’s name written on the +fly-leaf. + +Fairy tales, and Harry and Lucy! But the real, old-fashioned, earnest, +half-sombre fairy tales of our youth have slipped from the hands of +children into those of folk-lore students, who are busy explaining +all their flavor out of them; while as for Miss Edgeworth, the little +people of to-day cannot be persuaded that she is not dull and prosy. +Yet what keen pleasure have her stories given to generations of boys +and girls, who in their time have grown to be clever men and women! +Hear what Miss Thackeray, that loving student of children and of +childish ways, has to record about them. “When I look back,” she +writes, “upon my own youth, I seem to have lived in company with a +delightful host of little play-mates, bright, busy children, whose +cheerful presence remains more vividly in my mind than that of many +of the real little boys and girls who used to appear and disappear +disconnectedly, as children do in childhood, when friendship and +companionship depend almost entirely upon the convenience of grown-up +people. Now and again came little cousins or friends to share our +games, but day by day, constant and unchanging, ever to be relied +upon, smiled our most lovable and friendly companions: simple Susan, +lame Jervas, the dear little merchants, Jem, the widow’s son, with his +arms around old Lightfoot’s neck, the generous Ben, with his whip-cord +and his useful proverb of ‘Waste not, want not,’--all of these were +there in the window corner waiting our pleasure. After Parents’ +Assistant, to which familiar words we attached no meaning whatever, +came Popular Tales in big brown volumes off a shelf in the lumber-room +of an apartment in an old house in Paris; and as we opened the books, +lo! creation widened to our view. England, Ireland, America, Turkey, +the mines of Golconda, the streets of Bagdad, thieves, travelers, +governesses, natural philosophy, and fashionable life were all laid +under contribution, and brought interest and adventure to our humdrum +nursery corner.”[9] + +And have these bright and varied pictures, “these immortal tales,” +as Mr. Matthew Arnold termed them, lost their power to charm, that +they are banished from our modern nursery corners; or is it because +their didactic purpose is too thinly veiled, or--as I have sometimes +fancied--because their authoress took so moderate a view of children’s +functions and importance? If we place Miss Edgeworth’s and Miss +Alcott’s stories side by side, we shall see that the contrast between +them lies not so much in the expected dissimilarity of style and +incident as in the utterly different standpoint from which their +writers regard the aspirations and responsibilities of childhood. +Take, for instance, Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond and Miss Alcott’s Eight +Cousins, both of them books purporting to show the gradual development +of a little girl’s character under kindly and stimulating influences. +Rosamond, who is said to be a portrait of Maria Edgeworth herself, +is from first to last the undisputed heroine of the volume which +bears her name. Laura may be much wiser, Godfrey far more clever; but +neither of them usurps for a moment their sister’s place as the central +figure of the narrative, round whom our interest clings. But when we +come to consider her position in her own family, we find it strangely +insignificant. The foolish, warm-hearted, impetuous little girl is of +importance to the household only through the love they bear her. It is +plain her opinions do not carry much weight, and she is never called +on to act as an especial providence to any one. We do not behold her +winning Godfrey away from his cigar, or Orlando from fast companions, +or correcting anybody’s faults, in fact, except her own, which are +numerous enough, and give her plenty of concern. + +Now with Rose, the bright little heroine of Eight Cousins, and of its +sequel A Rose in Bloom, everything is vastly different. She is of the +utmost importance to all the grown-up people in the book, most of +whom, it must be acknowledged, are extremely silly and incapable. +Her aunts set the very highest value upon her society, and receive +it with gratified rapture; while among her male cousins she is from +the first like a missionary in the Feejees. It is she who cures them +of their boyish vices, obtaining in return from their supine mothers +“a vote of thanks, which made her feel as if she had done a service +to her country.” At thirteen she discovers that “girls are made to +take care of boys,” and with dauntless assurance sets about her +self-appointed task. “You boys need somebody to look after you,” she +modestly announces,--most of them are her seniors, by the way, and all +have parents,--“so I’m going to do it; for girls are nice peacemakers, +and know how to manage people.” Naturally, to a young person holding +these advanced views of life, Miss Edgeworth’s limited field of action +seems a very spiritless affair, and we find Rose expressing herself +with characteristic energy on the subject of the purple jar, declaring +that Rosamond’s mother was “regularly mean,” and that she “always +wanted to shake that woman, though she was a model mamma”! As we read +the audacious words, we half expect to see, rising from the mists +of story-book land, the indignant ghost of little English Rosamond, +burning to defend, with all her old impetuosity, the mother whom she +so dearly loved. It is true, she had no sense of a “mission,” this +commonplace but very amusing little girl. She never, like Rose, adopted +a pauper infant, or made friends with a workhouse orphan; she never +vetoed pretty frocks in favor of philanthropy, or announced that she +would “have nothing to do with love until she could prove that she was +something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender.” In fact, she was +probably taught that love and matrimony and babies were not proper +subjects for discussion in the polite society for which she was so +carefully reared. The hints that are given her now and then on such +matters by no means encourage a free expression of any unconventional +views. “It is particularly amiable in a woman to be ready to yield, and +avoid disputing about trifles,” says Rosamond’s father, who plainly +does not consider his child in the light of a beneficent genius; while, +when she reaches her teens, she is described as being “just at that age +when girls do not join in conversation, but when they sit modestly +silent, and have leisure, if they have sense, to judge of what others +say, and to form by choice, and not by chance, their opinions of what +goes on in that great world into which they have not yet entered.” + +And is it really only ninety years since this delicious sentence was +penned in sober earnest, as representing an existing state of things! +There is an antique, musty, long-secluded flavor about it, that would +suggest a monograph copied from an Egyptian tomb with thirty centuries +of dust upon its hoary head. Yet Rosamond, sitting “modestly silent” +under the delusion that grown-up people are worth listening to, can +talk fluently enough when occasion demands it, though at all times her +strength lies rather in her heart than in her head. She represents that +tranquil, unquestioning, unselfish family love, which Miss Edgeworth +could describe so well because she felt it so sincerely. The girl who +had three stepmothers and nineteen brothers and sisters, and managed +to be fond of them all, should be good authority on the subject of +domestic affections; and that warm, happy, loving atmosphere which +charms us in her stories, and which brought tears to Sir Walter +Scott’s eyes when he laid down Simple Susan, is only the reflection of +the cheerful home life she steadfastly helped to brighten. + +Her restrictions as a writer are perhaps most felt by those who admire +her most. Her pet virtue--after prudence--is honesty; and yet how +poor a sentiment it becomes under her treatment!--no virtue at all, +in fact, but merely a policy working for its own gain. Take the long +conversation between the little Italian merchants on the respective +merits of integrity and sharpness in their childish traffic. Each +disputant exhausts his wits in trying to prove the superior wisdom +of his own course, but not once does the virtuous Francisco make use +of the only argument which is of any real value,--I do not cheat +because it is not right. There is more to be learned about honesty, +real unselfish, unrequited honesty, in Charles Lamb’s little sketch of +Barbara S---- than in all Miss Edgeworth has written on the subject in +a dozen different tales. + +“Taking up one’s cross does not at all mean having ovations at dinner +parties, and being put over everybody else’s head,” says Ruskin, +with visible impatience at the smooth and easy manner in which Miss +Edgeworth persists in grinding the mills of the gods, and distributing +poetical justice to each and every comer. It may be very nice to see +the generous Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, extolled to the +skies by a whole room full of company, “disturbed for the purpose,” +while “poor dear little Rosamond”--he too has a weakness for this small +blunderer--is left in the lurch, without either shoes or jar; but it +is not real generosity that needs so much commendation, and it is not +real life that can be depended on for giving it. Yet Ruskin admits +that Harry and Lucy were his earliest friends, to the extent even of +inspiring him with an ambitious desire to continue their history; and +he cannot say too much in praise of an authoress “whose every page is +so full and so delightful. I can read her over and over again, without +ever tiring. No one brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser +people; no one tells you more truly how to do right.”[10] + +He might have added that no one ever was more moderate in her +exactions. The little people who brighten Miss Edgeworth’s pages are +not expected, like the children in more recent books, to take upon +their shoulders a load of grown-up duties and responsibilities. Life is +simplified for them by an old-fashioned habit of trusting in the wisdom +of their parents; and these parents, instead of being foolish and +wrong-headed, so as to set off more strikingly the child’s sagacious +energy, are apt to be very sensible and kind, and remarkably well +able to take care of themselves and their families. This is the more +refreshing because, after reading a few modern stories, either English +or American, one is troubled with serious doubts as to the moral +usefulness of adults; and we begin to feel that as we approach the age +of Mentor it behooves us to find some wise young Telemachus who will +consent to be our protector and our guide. There is no more charming +writer for the young than Flora Shaw; yet Hector and Phyllis Browne, +and even that group of merry Irish children in Castle Blair, are all +convinced it is their duty to do some difficult or dangerous work in +the interests of humanity, and all are afflicted with a premature +consciousness of social evils. + + “The time is out of joint; oh, cursed spite! + That ever I was born to set it right!” + +cries Hamlet wearily; but it is at thirty, and not at thirteen, that he +makes this unpleasant discovery. + +In religious stories, of which there are many hundreds published every +year, these peculiar views are even more defined, presenting themselves +often in the form of a spiritual contest between highly endowed, +sensitive children and their narrow-minded parents and guardians, who, +of course, are always in the wrong. The clever authoress of Thrown +Together is by no means innocent of this unwholesome tone; but the +chief offender, and one who has had a host of dismal imitators, is +Susan Warner,--Miss Wetherell,--who plainly considered that virtue, +especially in the young, was of no avail unless constantly undergoing +persecution. Her supernaturally righteous little girls, who pin +notes on their fathers’ dressing-tables, requesting them to become +Christians, and who endure the most brutal treatment--at their parents’ +hands--rather than sing songs on Sunday evening, are equaled only by +her older heroines, who divide their time impartially between flirting +and praying, between indiscriminate kisses and passionate searching for +light. A Blackwood critic declares that there is more kissing done in +The Old Helmet than in all of Sir Walter Scott’s novels put together, +and utters an energetic protest against the penetrating glances, and +earnest pressing of hands, and brotherly embraces, and the whole vulgar +paraphernalia of pious flirtation, so immeasurably hurtful to the +undisciplined fancy of the young. “They have good reason to expect,” +he growls, “from these pictures of life, that if they are very good, +and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach +the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman who has been +in love with them all along will declare himself at the very nick of +time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of +life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder.... Mothers, +never in great favor with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in +their black books,--there is a positive jealousy of their influence; +while the father in the religious tale, as opposed to the moral or +sentimental, is commonly either a scamp or nowhere. The heroine has, +so to say, to do her work single-handed.” + +In some of these stories, moreover, the end justifies the means to +an alarming extent. Girls who steal money from their relatives in +order to go as missionaries among the Indians, and young women who +pretend to sit up with the sick that they may slip off unattended to +hear some inspired preacher in a barn, are not safe companions even +in books; while, if no grave indiscretion be committed, the lesson of +self-righteousness is taught on every page. Not very long ago I had +the pleasure of reading a tale in which the youthful heroine considers +it her mission in life to convert her grandparents; and while there +is nothing to prevent an honest girl from desiring such a thing, the +idea is not a happy one for a narrative, in view of certain homely +old adages irresistibly associated with the notion. “Girls,” wrote +Hannah More, “should be led to distrust their own judgment;” but if +they have the conversion of their grandparents on their hands, how can +they afford to be distrustful? Hannah More is unquestionably out of +date, and so, we fear, is that English humorist who said, “If all the +grown-up people in the world should suddenly fail, what a frightful +thing would society become, reconstructed by boys!” Evidently he had +in mind a land given over to toffy and foot-ball, but he was strangely +mistaken in his notions. Perhaps the carnal little hero of Vice Versâ +might have managed matters in this disgraceful fashion; but with Flora +Shaw’s earnest children at the helm, society would be reconstructed on +a more serious basis than it is already, and Heaven knows this is not +a change of which we stand in need. In fact, if the young people who +live and breathe around us are one third as capable, as strenuous, as +clear-sighted, as independent, as patronizing, and as undeniably our +superiors as their modern counterparts in literature, who can doubt +that the eternal cause of progress would be furthered by the change? +And is it, after all, mere pique which inclines us to Miss Edgeworth’s +ordinary little boys and girls, who, standing half dazed on the +threshold of life, stretch out their hands with childish confidence for +help? + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] _Literary Studies_, vol. ii. + +[9] _A Book of Sibyls._ + +[10] _Ethics of the Dust._ + + + + + THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT. + + +That useful little phrase, “the complexity of modern thought,” has been +so hard worked of late years that it seems like a refinement of cruelty +to add to its obligations. Begotten by the philosophers, born of the +essayists, and put out to nurse among the novel-writers, it has since +been apprenticed to the whole body of scribblers, and drudges away at +every trade in literature. How, asks Vernon Lee, can we expect our +fiction to be amusing, when a psychological and sympathetic interest +has driven away the old hard-hearted spirit of comedy? How, asks Mr. +Pater, can Sebastian Van Stork make up his mind to love and marry and +work like ordinary mortals, when the many-sidedness of life has wrought +in him a perplexed envy of those quiet occupants of the churchyard, +“whose deceasing was so long since over”? How, asks George Eliot, +can Mrs. Pullet weep with uncontrolled emotion over Mrs. Sutton’s +dropsy, when it behooves her not to crush her sleeves or stain her +bonnet-strings? The problem is repeated everywhere, either in mockery +or deadly earnestness, according to the questioner’s disposition, and +the old springs of simple sentiment are drying fast within us. It is +heartless to laugh, it is foolish to cry, it is indiscreet to love, +it is morbid to hate, and it is intolerant to espouse any cause with +enthusiasm. + +There was a time, and not so many years ago, when men and women found +no great difficulty in making up their minds on ordinary matters, and +their opinions, if erroneous, were at least succinct and definite. +Nero was then a cruel tyrant, the Duke of Wellington a great soldier, +Sir Walter Scott the first of novelists, and the French Revolution +a villainous piece of business. Now we are equally enlightened and +confused by the keen researches and shifting verdicts with which +historians and critics seek to dispel this comfortable frame of +darkness. Nero, perhaps, had the good of his subjects secretly at +heart when he expressed that benevolent desire to dispatch them all at +a blow, and Robespierre was but a practical philanthropist, carried, +it may be, a little too far by the stimulating influences of the +hour. “We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., and +devotional exercises to Cromwell,” observes Mr. Bagehot, in some +perplexity as to where this state of things may find an ending; and he +confesses that in the mean time his own original notions of right and +wrong are growing sadly hazy and uncertain. Moreover, in proportion +as the heavy villains of history assume a chastened and ascetic +appearance, its heroes dwindle perceptibly into the commonplace, and +its heroines are stripped of every alluring grace; while as for the +living men who are controlling the destinies of nations, not even +Macaulay’s ever useful schoolboy is too small and ignorant to refuse +them homage. Yet we read of Scott, in the zenith of his fame, standing +silent and abashed before the Duke of Wellington, unable, and perhaps +unwilling, to shake off the awe that paralyzed his tongue. “The Duke +possesses every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher degree than +any other man either does or has ever done!” exclaimed Sir Walter to +John Ballantyne, who, not being framed for hero-worship, failed to +appreciate his friend’s extraordinary enthusiasm. While we smile at +the sentiment,--knowing, of course, so much better ourselves,--we feel +an envious admiration of the happy man who uttered it. + +There is a curious little incident which Mrs. Lockhart used to relate, +in after years, as a proof of her father’s emotional temperament, +and of the reverence with which he regarded all that savored of past +or present greatness. When the long-concealed Scottish regalia were +finally brought to light, and exhibited to the public of Edinburgh, +Scott, who had previously been one of the committee chosen to unlock +the chest, took his daughter to see the royal jewels. She was then +a girl of fifteen, and her nerves had been so wrought upon by all +that she had heard on the subject that, when the lid was opened, she +felt herself growing faint, and withdrew a little from the crowd. +A light-minded young commissioner, to whom the occasion suggested +no solemnity, took up the crown, and made a gesture as if to place +it on the head of a lady standing near, when Sophia Scott heard her +father exclaim passionately, in a voice “something between anger and +despair,” “By G--, no!” The gentleman, much embarrassed, immediately +replaced the diadem, and Sir Walter, turning aside, saw his daughter, +deadly pale, leaning against the door, and led her at once into the +open air. “He never spoke all the way home,” she added, “but every +now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from that time I fancied he +began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me +better, too, than he had ever done before.” + +The whole scene, as we look back upon it now, is a quaint illustration +of how far a man’s emotions could carry him, when they were nourished +alike by the peculiarities of his genius and of his education. The +feeling was doubtless an exaggerated one, but it was at least nobler +than the speculative humor with which a careless crowd now calculates +the market value of the crown jewels in the Tower of London. “What +they would bring” was a thought which we may be sure never entered Sir +Walter’s head, as he gazed with sparkling eyes on the modest regalia +of Scotland, and conjured up every stirring drama in which they had +played their part. For him each page of his country’s history was the +subject of close and loving scrutiny. All those Davids, and Williams, +and Malcolms, about whom we have an indistinct notion that they spent +their lives in being bullied by their neighbors and badgered by their +subjects, were to his mind as kingly as Charlemagne on his Throne of +the West; and their crimes and struggles and brief glorious victories +were part of the ineffaceable knowledge of his boyhood. To _feel_ +history in this way, to come so close to the world’s actors that our +pulses rise and fall with their vicissitudes, is a better thing, after +all, than the most accurate and reasonable of doubts. I knew two little +English girls who always wore black frocks on the 30th of January, +in honor of the “Royal Martyr,” and tied up their hair with black +ribbons, and tried hard to preserve the decent gravity of demeanor +befitting such a doleful anniversary. The same little girls, it must +be confessed, carried Holmby House to bed with them, and bedewed their +pillows with many tears over the heart-rending descriptions thereof. +What to them were the “outraged liberties of England,” which Mr. Gosse +rather vaguely tells us tore King Charles to pieces? They saw him +standing on the scaffold, a sad and princely figure, and they heard +the frightened sobs that rent the air when the cruel deed was done. +It is not possible for us now to take this picturesque and exclusive +view of one whose shortcomings have been so vigorously raked to +light by indignant disciples of Carlyle; but the child who has ever +cried over any great historic tragedy is richer for the experience, +and stands on higher ground than one whose life is bounded by the +schoolroom walls, or who finds her needful stimulant in the follies of +a precocious flirtation. What a charming picture we have of Eugénie +de Guérin feeding her passionate little soul with vain regrets for +the unfortunate family of Louis XVI. and with sweet infantile plans +for their rescue. “Even as a child,” she writes in her journal, “I +venerated this martyr, I loved this victim whom I heard so much talked +of in my family as the 21st of January drew near. We used to be +taken to the funeral service in the church, and I gazed at the high +catafalque, the melancholy throne of the good king. My astonishment +impressed me with sorrow and indignation. I came away weeping over this +death, and hating the wicked men who had brought it about. How many +hours have I spent devising means for saving Louis, the queen, and the +whole hapless family,--if I only had lived in their day. But after much +calculating and contriving, no promising measure presented itself, and +I was forced, very reluctantly, to leave the prisoners where they were. +My compassion was more especially excited for the beautiful little +Dauphin, the poor child pent up between walls, and unable to play in +freedom. I used to carry him off in fancy, and keep him safely hidden +at Cayla, and Heaven only knows the delight of running about our fields +with a prince.” + +Here at least we see the imaginative faculty playing a vigorous and +wholesome part in a child’s mental training. The little solitary French +girl who filled up her lonely hours with such pretty musings as these, +could scarcely fail to attain that rare distinction of mind which all +true critics have been so prompt to recognize and love. It was with +her the natural outgrowth of an intelligence, quickened by sympathy +and fed with delicate emotions. The Dauphin in the Temple, the Princes +in the Tower, Marie Antoinette on the guillotine, and Jeanne d’Arc at +the stake, these are the scenes which have burned their way into many +a youthful heart, and the force of such early impressions can never +be utterly destroyed. A recent essayist, deeply imbued with this good +principle, has assured us that the little maiden who, ninety years +ago, surprised her mother in tears, “because the wicked people had cut +off the French queen’s head,” received from that impression the very +highest kind of education. But this is object-teaching carried to its +extremest limit, and even in these days, when training is recognized +to be of such vital importance, one feels that the death of a queen is +a high price to pay for a little girl’s instruction. It might perhaps +suffice to let her live more freely in the past, and cultivate her +emotions after a less costly and realistic fashion. + +On the other hand, Mr. Edgar Saltus, who is nothing if not melancholy, +would fain persuade us that the “gift of tears,” which Swinburne prized +so highly and Mrs. Browning cultivated with such transparent care, +finds its supreme expression in man, only because of man’s greater +capacity for suffering. Yet if it be true that the burden of life grows +heavier for each succeeding generation, it is no less apparent that +we have taught ourselves to stare dry-eyed at its blankness. An old +rabbinical legend says that in Paradise God gave the earth to Adam and +tears to Eve, and it is a cheerless doctrine which tells us now that +both gifts are equal because both are valueless, that the world will +never be any merrier, and that we are all tired of waxing sentimental +over its lights and shadows. But our great-grandfathers, who were +assuredly not a tender-hearted race, and who never troubled their +heads about those modern institutions, wickedly styled by Mr. Lang +“Societies for Badgering the Poor,” cried right heartily over poems, +and novels, and pictures, and plays, and scenery, and everything, in +short, that their great-grandsons would not now consider as worthy of +emotion. Jeffrey the terrible shed tears over the long-drawn pathos of +little Nell, and has been roundly abused by critics ever since for the +extremely bad taste he exhibited. Macaulay, who was seldom disposed +to be sentimental, confesses that he wept over Florence Dombey. Lord +Byron was strongly moved when Scott recited to him his favorite ballad +of Hardyknute; and Sir Walter himself paid the tribute of his tears to +Mrs. Opie’s dismal stories, and Southey’s no less dismal Pilgrimage to +Waterloo. When Marmion was first published, Joanna Baillie undertook to +read it aloud to a little circle of literary friends, and on reaching +those lines which have reference to her own poems, + + “When she the bold enchantress came, + With fearless hand, and heart in flame,” + +the “uncontrollable emotion” of her hearers forced the fair reader to +break down. In a modern drawing-room this uncontrollable emotion would +probably find expression in such gentle murmurs of congratulation as +“Very pretty and appropriate, I am sure,” or “How awfully nice in Sir +Walter to have put it in that way!” + +Turn where we will, however, amid the pages of the past, we see this +precious gift of tears poured out in what seems to us now a spirit of +wanton profusion. Sterne, by his own showing, must have gone through +life like the Walrus, in Through the Looking Glass, + + “Holding his pocket handkerchief + Before his streaming eyes;” + +and we can detect him every now and then peeping slyly out of the +folds, to see what sort of an impression he was making. “I am as weak +as a woman,” he sighs, with conscious satisfaction, “and I beg the +world not to smile, but pity me.” Burns, who at least never cried +for effect, was moved to sudden tears by a pathetic print of a dead +soldier, that hung on Professor Fergusson’s wall. Scott was always +visibly affected by the wild northern scenery that he loved; and +Erskine was discovered in the Cave of Staffa, “weeping like a woman,” +though, in truth, a gloomy, dangerous, slippery, watery cavern is +the last place on earth where a woman would ordinarily stop to be +emotional. She might perhaps cry with Sterne over a dead monk or a +dead donkey,--he has an equal allowance of tears for both,--but once +inside of a cave, her real desire is to get out again as quickly as +possible, with dry skirts and an unbroken neck. It may be, however, +that our degenerate modern impulses afford us no safe clue to those +halcyon days when sentiment was paramount and practical considerations +of little weight; when wet feet and sore throats were not suffered to +intrude their rueful warnings upon the majesty of nature; when ladies, +who lived comfortably and happily with the husbands of their choice, +poured forth impassioned prayers, in the Annual Register, for the boon +of indifference, and poets like Cowper rushed forward to remonstrate +with them for their cruelty. + + “Let no low thought suggest the prayer, + Oh! grant, kind Heaven, to me, + Long as I draw ethereal air, + Sweet sensibility.” + +wrote the author of The Task, in sober earnestness and sincerity. + + “Then oh! ye Fair, if Pity’s ray + E’er taught your snowy breasts to sigh, + Shed o’er my contemplative lay + The tears of sensibility,” + +wrote Macaulay as a burlesque on the prevailing spirit of bathos, +and was, I think, unreasonably angry because a number of readers, +his own mother included, failed to see that he was in fun. Yet all +his life this mocking critic cherished in his secret soul of souls a +real affection for those hysterical old romances which had been the +delight of his boyhood, and which were even then rapidly disappearing +before the cold scorn of an enlightened world. Miss Austen, in Sense +and Sensibility, had impaled emotionalism on the fine shafts of her +delicate satire, and Macaulay was Miss Austen’s sworn champion; but +nevertheless he contrived to read and reread Mrs. Meek’s and Mrs. +Cuthbertson’s marvelous stories, until he probably knew them better +than he did Emma or Northanger Abbey. When an old edition of Santa +Sebastiano was sold at auction in India, he secured it at a fabulous +price,--Miss Eden bidding vigorously against him,--and he occupied +his leisure moments in making a careful calculation of the number of +fainting-fits that occur in the course of the five volumes. There are +twenty-seven in all, so he has recorded, of which the heroine alone +comes in for eleven, while seven others are distributed among the male +characters. Mr. Trevelyan has kindly preserved for us the description +of a single catastrophe, and we can no longer wonder at anybody’s +partiality for the tale, when we learn that “one of the sweetest smiles +that ever animated the face of mortal man now diffused itself over the +countenance of Lord St. Orville, as he fell at the feet of Julia in a +death-like swoon.” Mr. Howells would doubtless tell us that this is +not a true and accurate delineation of real life, and that what Lord +St. Orville should have done was to have simply wiped the perspiration +off his forehead, after the unvarnished fashion of Mr. Mavering, in +April Hopes. But Macaulay, who could mop his own brow whenever he felt +so disposed, and who recognized his utter inability to faint with a +sweet smile at a lady’s feet, naturally delighted in Mrs. Cuthbertson’s +singularly accomplished hero. Swooning is now, I fear, sadly out of +date. In society we no longer look upon it as a pleasing evidence +of feminine propriety, and in the modern novel nothing sufficiently +exciting to bring about such a result is ever permitted to happen. +But in the good old impossible stories of the past it formed a very +important element, and some of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines can easily +achieve twenty-seven fainting-fits by their own unaided industry. They +faint at the most inopportune times and under the most exasperating +circumstances: when they are running away from banditti, or hiding +from cruel relatives, or shut up by themselves in gloomy dungeons, +with nobody to look after and resuscitate them. Their trembling limbs +are always refusing to support them just when a little activity is +really necessary for safety, and, though they live in an atmosphere +of horrors, the smallest shock is more than they can endure with +equanimity. In the Sicilian Romance, Julia’s brother, desiring to speak +to her for a minute, knocks gently at her door, whereupon, with the +most unexpected promptness, “she shrieked and fainted;” and as the key +happens to be turned on the inside, he is obliged to wait in the hall +until she slowly regains her consciousness. + +Nothing, however, can mar the decorous sentimentality which these +young people exhibit in all their loves and sorrows. Emily the +forlorn “touched the chords of her lute in solemn symphony,” when the +unenviable nature of her surroundings might reasonably have banished +all music from her soul; Theodore paused to bathe Adeline’s hand +with his tears, in a moment of painful uncertainty; and Hippolitus, +who would have scorned to be stabbed like an ordinary mortal, +“received a sword through his body,”--precisely as though it were a +present,--“and, uttering a deep sigh, fell to the ground,” on which, +true to her principles, “Julia shrieked and fainted.” We read of the +Empress Octavia swooning when Virgil recited to her his description +of the death of Marcellus; and we know that Shelley fainted when he +heard Cristabel read; but Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines, though equally +sensitive, are kept too busy with their own disasters to show this +sympathetic interest in literature. Their adventures strike us now +as being, on the whole, more amusing than thrilling; but we should +remember that they were no laughing matter to the readers of fifty +years ago. People did not then object to the interminable length of a +story, and they followed its intricate windings and counter-windings +with a trembling zest which we can only envy. One of the earliest +recollections of my own childhood is a little book depicting the +awful results of Mrs. Radcliffe’s terror-inspiring romances upon +the youthful mind; a well-intentioned work, no doubt, but which +inevitably filled us with a sincere desire to taste for ourselves of +these pernicious horrors. If I found them far less frightful than I +had hoped, the loss was mine, and the fault lay in the matter-of-fact +atmosphere of the modern nursery; for does not the author of the now +forgotten Pursuits of Literature tell us that the Mysteries of Udolpho +is the work of an intellectual giant?--“a mighty magician, bred and +nourished by the Florentine muses in their sacred solitary caverns, +amid the pale shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness +of enchantment.” + +That was the way that critics used to write, and nobody dreamed of +laughing at them. When Letitia Elizabeth Landon poured forth her soul +in the most melancholy of verses, all London stopped to listen and to +pity. + + “There is no truth in love, whate’er its seeming, + And Heaven itself could scarcely seem more true. + Sadly have I awakened from the dreaming + Whose charmed slumber, false one, was of you,” + +wrote this healthy and heart-whole young woman; and Lord Lytton has +left us an amusing account of the sensation that such poems excited. +He and his fellow-students exhausted their ingenuity in romantic +speculations concerning the unknown singer, and inscribed whole reams +of fervid but indifferent stanzas to her honor. “There was always,” +he says, “in the reading-room of the Union, a rush every Saturday +afternoon for the Literary Gazette, and an impatient anxiety to hasten +at once to that corner of the sheet which contained the three magical +letters L. E. L. All of us praised the verse, and all of us guessed +the author. We soon learned that it was a female, and our admiration +was doubled, and our conjectures tripled.” When Francesca Carrara +appeared, it was received with an enthusiasm never manifested for +Pride and Prejudice, or Persuasion, and romantic young men and women +reveled in its impassioned melancholy. What a pattering of tear-drops +on every page! The lovely heroine--less mindful of her clothes than +Mrs. Pullet--looks down and marks how the great drops have fallen like +rain upon her bosom. “Alas!” she sighs, “I have cause to weep. I must +weep over my own changefulness, and over the sweetest illusions of my +youth. I feel suddenly grown old. Never more will the flowers seem so +lovely, or the stars so bright. Never more shall I dwell on Erminia’s +deep and enduring love for the unhappy Tancred, and think that I too +could so have loved. Ah! in what now can I believe, when I may not even +trust my own heart?” Here, at least, we have unadulterated sentiment, +with no traces in it of that “mean and jocular life” which Emerson so +deeply scorned, and for which the light-minded readers of to-day have +ventured to express their cheerful and shameless preference. + +Emotional literature, reflecting as it does the tastes and habits of +a dead past, should not stand trial alone before the cold eyes of the +mocking present, where there is no sympathy for its weakness and no +clue to its identity. A happy commonplaceness is now acknowledged to +be, next to brevity of life, man’s best inheritance; but in the days +when all the virtues and vices flaunted in gala costume, people were +hardly prepared for that fine simplicity which has grown to be the +crucial test of art. Love, friendship, honor, and courage were as real +then as now, but they asserted themselves in fantastic ways, and with +an ostentation that we are apt to mistake for insincerity. When Mrs. +Katharine Philips founded her famous Society of Friendship, in the +middle of the seventeenth century, she was working earnestly enough +for her particular conception of sweetness and light. It is hard not +to laugh at these men and women of the world addressing each other +solemnly as the “noble Silvander” and the “dazzling Polycrete;” and it +is harder still to believe that the fervent devotion of their verses +represented in any degree the real sentiments of their hearts. But +Orinda, whose indefatigable exertions held the society together, meant +every word she said, and credited the rest with similar veracity. + + “Lucasia, whose harmonious state + The Spheres and Muses only imitate,” + +is for her but a temperate expression of regard; and we find her +writing to Mrs. Annie Owens--a most unresponsive young Welsh-woman--in +language that would be deemed extravagant in a lover:-- + + “I did not live until this time + Crowned my felicity, + When I could say without a crime, + I am not thine, but thee.” + +One wonders what portion of her heart the amiable Mr. Philips was +content to occupy. + +Frenchwomen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found their +principal amusement in contracting, either with each other or with +men, those highly sentimental friendships which were presumably free +from all dross of earthly passion, and which rested on a shadowy basis +of pure intellectual affinity. Mademoiselle de Scudéry delighted in +portraying this rarefied intercourse between congenial souls, and the +billing and cooing of Platonic turtle-doves fill many pages of her +ponderous romances. Sappho and Phaon, in the Grand Cyrus, “told each +other every particular of their lives,” which must have been a little +tedious at times and altogether unnecessary, inasmuch as we are assured +that “the exchange of their thoughts was so sincere that all those in +Sappho’s mind passed into Phaon’s, and all those in Phaon’s came into +Sappho’s.” Conversation under these circumstances would be apt to lose +its zest for ordinary mortals, who value the power of speech rather as +a disguise than as an interpretation of their real convictions; but +it was not so with this guileless pair. “They understood each other +without words, and saw their whole hearts in each other’s eyes.” + +As for the great wave of emotionalism that followed in Rousseau’s +train, it was a pure make-believe, like every other sentiment that +bubbled on the seething surface of French society. Avarice and honor +alone were real. To live like a profligate and to die like a hero were +the two accomplishments common to every grand seigneur in the country. +For the rest, there was a series of fads,--simplicity, benevolence, +philosophy, passion, asceticism; Voltaire one day, Rousseau the next; +Arcadian virtues and court vices jumbled fantastically together; the +cause of the people on every tongue, and the partridges hatching in the +peasant’s corn; Marie Antoinette milking a cow, and the infant Madame +Royale with eighty nurses and attendants; great ladies, with jewels in +their hair, on their bosoms, and on their silken slippers, laboriously +earning a few francs by picking out gold threads from scraps of +tarnished bullion; everybody anxiously asking everybody else, “What +shall we do to be amused?” and the real answer to all uttered long +before by Louis XIII., “Venez, monsieur, allons-nous ennuyer ensemble.” +Day and night are not more different than this sickly hothouse +pressure and the pure emotion that fired Scott’s northern blood, as +he looked on the dark rain-swept hills till his eyes grew bright with +tears. “We sometimes weep to avoid the disgrace of not weeping,” says +Rochefoucauld, who valued at its worth the facile sentimentality of his +countrymen. Could he have lived to witness M. de Latour’s hysterical +transports on finding Rousseau’s signature and a crushed periwinkle +in an old copy of the Imitatio, the great moralist might see that his +bitter truths have in them a pitiless continuity of adjustment, and fit +themselves afresh to every age. What excitation of feeling accompanied +the bloody work of the French Revolutionists! What purity of purpose! +What nobility of language! What grandeur of device! What bottled +moonshine everywhere! The wicked old world was to be born anew, reason +was to triumph over passion; and self-interest, which had ruled men for +six thousand years, was to be suddenly eradicated from their hearts. +When the patriots had finished cutting off everybody else’s head, +then the reign of mutual tenderness would begin; the week--inestimable +privilege!--would hold ten days instead of seven; and Frimaire and +Floréal and Messidor would prove to the listening earth that the very +names of past months had sunk into merited oblivion. Father Faber says +that a sense of humor is a great help in the spiritual life; it is +an absolute necessity in the temporal. Had the Convention possessed +even the faintest perception of the ridiculous, this friendly instinct +would have lowered their sublime heads from the stars, stung them into +practical issues, and moderated the absurd delusions of the hour. + +At present, however, the new disciples of “earnestness” are trying +hard to persuade us that we are too humorous, and that it is the +spirit of universal mockery which stifles all our nobler and finer +emotions. We would like to believe them, but unhappily it is only to +exceedingly strenuous souls that this lawless fun seems to manifest +itself. The rest of us, searching cheerfully enough, fail to discover +its traces. If we are seldom capable of any sustained enthusiasm, +it is rather because we yawn than because we laugh. Unlike Emerson, +we are glad to be amused, only the task of amusing us grows harder +day by day; and Justin McCarthy’s languid heroine, who declines to +get up in the morning because she has so often been up before, is but +an exhaustive instance of the inconveniences of modern satiety. When +we read of the Oxford students beleaguering the bookshops in excited +crowds for the first copies of Rokeby and Childe Harold, fighting over +the precious volumes, and betting recklessly on their rival sales, +we wonder whether either Lord Tennyson’s or Mr. Browning’s latest +effusions created any such tumult among the undergraduates of to-day, +or wiled away their money from more legitimate subjects of speculation. +Lord Holland, when asked by Murray for his opinion of Old Mortality, +answered indignantly, “Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last +night! Nothing slept but my gout.” Yet Rokeby and Childe Harold are +both in sad disgrace with modern critics, and Old Mortality stands +gathering dust upon our bookshelves. Mr. Howells, who ought to know, +tells us that fiction has become a finer art in our day than it was +in the days of our fathers, and that the methods and interests we +have outgrown can never hope to be revived. So if the masterpieces +of the present, the triumphs of learned verse and realistic prose, +fail to lift their readers out of themselves, like the masterpieces +of the past, the fault must be our own. We devote some conscientious +hours to Parleyings with Certain People of Importance, and we are +well pleased, on the whole, to find ourselves in such good company; +but it is a pleasure rich in the temperance that Hamlet loved, and +altogether unlikely to ruffle our composure. We read The Bostonians +and The Rise of Silas Lapham with a due appreciation of their minute +perfections; but we go to bed quite cheerfully at our usual hour, and +are content to wait an interval of leisure to resume them. Could Daisy +Miller charm a gouty leg, or Lemuel Barker keep us sleepless until +morning? When St. Pierre finished the manuscript of Paul and Virginia, +he consented to read it to the painter, Joseph Vernet. At first the +solitary listener was loud in his approbation, then more subdued, then +silent altogether. “Soon he ceased to praise; he only wept.” Yet Paul +and Virginia has been pronounced morbid, strained, unreal, unworthy +even of the tears that childhood drops upon its pages. But would Mr. +Millais or Sir Frederick Leighton sit weeping over the delightful +manuscripts of Henry Shorthouse or Mr. Louis Stevenson? Did the last +flicker of genuine emotional enthusiasm die out with George Borrow, +who lived at least a century too late for his own convenience? When +a respectable, gray-haired, middle-aged Englishman takes an innocent +delight in standing bare-headed in the rain, reciting execrable Welsh +verses on every spot where a Welsh bard might, but probably does not, +lie buried, it is small wonder that the “coarse-hearted, sensual, +selfish Saxon”--we quote the writer’s own words--should find the +spectacle more amusing than sublime. But then what supreme satisfaction +Mr. Borrow derived from his own rhapsodies, what conscious superiority +over the careless crowd who found life all too short to study the +beau ties of Iolo Goch or Gwilym ab Ieuan! There is nothing in the +world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania, especially if it be +of that peculiar literary order which insures a broad field and few +competitors. In a passionate devotion to Welsh epics or to Provençal +pastorals, to Roman antiquities or to Gypsy genealogy, to the most +confused epochs of Egyptian history or the most private correspondence +of a dead author,--in one or other of these favorite specialties our +modern students choose to put forth their powers, and display an +astonishing industry and zeal. + +There is a story told of a far too cultivated young man, who, after +professing a great love for music, was asked if he enjoyed the opera. +He did not. Oratorios were then more to his taste. He did not care +for them at all. Ballads perhaps pleased him by their simplicity. He +took no interest in them whatever. Church music alone was left. He had +no partiality for even that. “What is it you _do_ like?” asked his +questioner, with despairing persistency; and the answer was vouchsafed +her in a single syllable, “Fugues.” This exclusiveness of spirit may +be detrimental to that broad catholicity on which great minds are +nourished, but it has rare charms for its possessor, and, being within +the reach of all, grows daily in our favor. French poets, like Gautier +and Sully Prudhomme, have been content to strike all their lives upon a +single resonant note, and men of far inferior genius have produced less +perfect work in the same willfully restricted vein. The pressure of the +outside world sorely chafes these unresponsive natures; large issues +paralyze their pens. They turn by instinct from the coarseness, the +ugliness, the realness of life, and sing of it with graceful sadness +and with delicate laughter, as if the whole thing were a pathetic or +a fantastic dream. They are dumb before its riddles and silent in its +uproar, standing apart from the tumult, and letting the impetuous +crowd--“mostly fools,” as Carlyle said--sweep by them unperceived. +Herrick is their prototype, the poet who polished off his little +glittering verses about Julia’s silks and Dianeme’s ear-rings when all +England was dark with civil war. But even this armed neutrality, this +genuine and admirable indifference, cannot always save us from the +rough knocks of a burly and aggressive world. The revolution, which he +ignored, drove Herrick from his peaceful vicarage into the poverty and +gloom of London; the siege of Paris played sad havoc with Gautier’s +artistic tranquillity, and devoured the greater part of his modest +fortune. We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in +the struggle. Vexation is no heavier than _ennui_, and “he who lives +without folly,” says Rochefoucauld, “is hardly so wise as he thinks.” + + + + + CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM. + + +There is a growing tendency on the part of literary men to resent what +they are pleased to consider the unwarrantable interference of the +critic. His ministrations have probably never been sincerely gratifying +to their recipients; Marsyas could hardly have enjoyed being flayed by +Apollo, even though he knew his music was bad; and worse, far worse, +than the most caustic severity are the few careless words that dismiss +our cherished aspirations as not even worthy of the rueful dignity +of punishment. But in former days the victim, if he resented such +treatment at all, resented it in the spirit of Lord Byron, who, roused +to a healthy and vigorous wrath, + + “expressed his royal views + In language such as gentlemen are seldom known to use,” + +and by a comprehensive and impartial attack on all the writers of his +time proved himself both able and willing to handle the weapons that +had wounded him. On the other side, those authors whose defensive +powers were of a less prompt and efficient character ventured no nearer +to a quarrel than--to borrow a simile of George Eliot’s--a water-fowl +that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel +with a boy who throws stones. Southey, who of all men entertained the +most comfortable opinion of his own merits, must have been deeply +angered by the treatment Thalaba and Madoc received from the Edinburgh +Review; yet we cannot see that either he or his admirers looked upon +Jeffrey in any other light than that of a tyrannical but perfectly +legitimate authority. Far nobler victims suffered from the same bitter +sting, and they too nursed their wounds in a decorous silence. + +But it is very different to-day, when every injured aspirant to the +Temple of Fame assures himself and a sympathizing public, not that a +particular critic is mistaken in his particular case, which we may +safely take for granted, but that all critics are necessarily wrong +in all cases, through an abnormal development of what the catechism +terms “darkness of the understanding and a propensity to evil.” This +amiable theory was, I think, first advanced by Lord Beaconsfield, who +sorely needed some such emollient for his bruises. In Lothair, when +that truly remarkable artist Mr. Gaston Phœbus, accompanied by his +sister-in-law Miss Euphrosyne Cantacuzene,--Heaven help their unhappy +sponsors!--reveals to his assembled guests the picture he has just +completed, we are told that his air “was elate, and was redeemed from +arrogance only by the intellect of his brow. ‘To-morrow,’ he said, +‘the critics will commence. You know who the critics are? The men who +have failed in literature and art.’” If Lord Beaconsfield thought +to disarm his foes by this ingenious device, he was most signally +mistaken; for while several of the reviews were deferentially hinting +that perhaps the book might not be so very bad as it seemed, Blackwood +stepped alertly to the front, and in a criticism unsurpassed for +caustic wit and merciless raillery held up each feeble extravagance to +the inextinguishable laughter of the world. Even now, when few people +venture upon the palatial dreariness of the novel itself, there is no +better way of insuring a mirthful hour than by re-reading this vigorous +and trenchant satire. + +Quite recently two writers, one on either side of the Atlantic, have +echoed with superfluous bitterness their conviction of the total +depravity of the critic. Mr. Edgar Fawcett, in The House on High +Bridge, and Mr. J. R. Rees, in The Pleasures of a Book-Worm, seem +to find the English language painfully inadequate for the forcible +expression of their displeasure. Mr. Fawcett considers all critics +“inconsistent when they are not regrettably ignorant,” and fails to +see any use for them in an enlightened world. “It is marvelous,” he +reflects, “how long we tolerate an absurdity of injustice before +suddenly waking up to it. And what can be a more clear absurdity than +that some one individual caprice, animus, or even honest judgment +should be made to influence the public regarding any new book?” +Moreover, he has discovered that the men and women who write the +reviews are mere “underpaid vendors of opinions,” who earn their +breakfasts and dinners by saying disagreeable things about authors, +“their superiors beyond expression.” But it is only fair to remind +Mr. Fawcett that no particular disgrace is involved in earning one’s +breakfasts and dinners. On the contrary, hunger is a perfectly +legitimate and very valuable incentive to industry. “God help the bear, +if, having little else to eat, he must not even suck his own paws!” +wrote Sir Walter Scott, with good-humored contempt, when Lord Byron +accused him of being a mercenary poet; and we probably owe the Vicar +of Wakefield, The Library, and Venice Preserved to their authors’ +natural and unavoidable craving for food. Besides, if the reviewers are +underpaid, it is not so much their fault as that of their employers, +and their breakfasts and dinners must be proportionately light. When +Milton received five pounds for Paradise Lost, he was probably the +most underpaid writer in the whole history of literature, yet Mr. Mark +Pattison seems to think that this fact redounds to his especial honor. + +But there are even worse things to be learned about the critic +than that he sells his opinions for food. According to Mr. Fawcett +he is distinguished for “real, hysterical, vigilant, unhealthy +sensitiveness,” and nurses this unpleasant feeling to such a degree +that, should an author object to being ill-treated at his hands, the +critic is immediately offended into saying something more abominable +still. In fact, like an uncompromising mother I once knew, who always +punished her children till they looked pleasant, he requires his +smarting victims to smile beneath the rod. Happily there is a cure, +and a very radical one, too, for this painful state of affairs. Mr. +Fawcett proposes that all such offenders should be obliged to buy the +work which they dissect, rightly judging that the book notices would +grow beautifully less under such stringent treatment. Indeed, were it +extended a little further, and all readers obliged to buy the books +they read, the publishers, the sellers, and the reviewers might spare +the time to take a holiday together. + +Mr. Rees is quite as severe and much more ungrateful in his strictures; +for, after stating that the misbehavior of the critic is a source of +great amusement to the thoughtful student, he proceeds to chastise that +misbehavior, as though it had never entertained him at all. In his +opinion, the reviewer, being guided exclusively by a set of obsolete +and worthless rules, is necessarily incapable of recognizing genius +under any new development: “He usually is as little fitted to deal with +the tasks he sets himself as a manikin is to growl about the anatomy of +a star, setting forth at the same time his own thoughts as to how it +should be formed.” Vanity is the mainspring of his actions: “He fears +to be thought beneath his author, and so doles out a limited number +of praises and an unlimited quantity of slur.” Like the Welshman, he +strikes in the dark, thus escaping just retribution; and in his stupid +ignorance he seeks to “rein in the wingèd steed,” from having no +conception of its aerial powers. + +Now this is a formidable indictment, and some of the charges may be +not without foundation; but if, as too often happens, the “wingèd +steed” is merely a donkey standing ambitiously on its hind legs, who +but the critic can compel it to resume its quadrupedal attitude? If, +as Mr. Walter Bagehot warned us some years ago, “reading is about to +become a series of collisions against aggravated breakers, of beatings +with imaginary surf,” who but the critic can steer us safely through +the storm? Never, in fact, were his duties more sharply defined or +more sorely needed than at present, when the average reader, like the +unfortunate Mr. Boffin, stands bewildered by the Scarers in Print, and +finds life all too short for their elucidation. The self-satisfied who +“know what they prefer,” and read accordingly, are like the enthusiasts +who follow their own consciences without first accurately ascertaining +whither they are being taken. It has been well said that the object of +criticism is simply to clear the air about great work for the benefit +of ordinary people. We only waste our powers when we refuse a guide, +and by forcing our minds hither and thither, like navigators exploring +each new stream while ignorant of its course and current, we squander +in idle researches the time and thought which should send us steadily +forward on our road. Worse still, we vitiate our judgments by perverse +and presumptuous conclusions, and weaken our untrained faculties by +the very methods we hoped would speed their growth. If Mr. Ruskin and +Mr. Matthew Arnold resemble each other in nothing else, they have +both taught earnestly and persistently, through long and useful lives, +the supreme necessity of law, the supreme merit of obedience. Mr. +Arnold preached it with logical coldness, after his fashion, and Mr. +Ruskin with illogical impetuosity, after his; but the lesson remains +practically the same. “All freedom is error,” writes the author of +Queen of the Air, who is at least blessed with the courage of his +convictions. “Every line you lay down is either right or wrong: it may +be timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong; the +aspect of the impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and +is what they commonly call ‘free’ execution.... I have hardly patience +to hold my pen and go on writing, as I remember the infinite follies of +modern thought in this matter, centred in the notion that liberty is +good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to make of it.” + +But he does go on writing, nevertheless, long after this slender stock +of patience is exhausted, and in his capacity of critic he lays down +Draconian laws which his disciples seem bound to wear as a heavy yoke +around their necks. “Who made Mr. Ruskin a judge or a nursery governess +over us?” asks an irreverent contributor to Macmillan; and why, after +all, should we abstain from reading Darwin, and Grote, and Coleridge, +and Kingsley, and Thackeray, and a host of other writers, who may or +may not be gratifying to our own tastes, because Mr. Ruskin has tried +and found them wanting? It is not the province of a critic to bar us in +a wholesale manner from all authors he does not chance to like, but to +aid us, by his practiced judgment, to extract what is good from every +field, and to trace, as far as in us lies, those varying degrees of +excellence which it is to our advantage to discern. It was in this way +that Mr. Arnold, working with conscientious and dispassionate serenity, +opened our eyes to new beauty, and strengthened us against vicious +influences; he added to our sources of pleasure, he helped us to enjoy +them, and not to recognize his kindly aid would be an ungracious form +of self-deception. If he were occasionally a little puzzling, as in +some parts of Celtic Literature, where the qualities he detected +fall meaningless on our ears, it is a wholesome lesson in humility to +acknowledge our bewilderment. Why should the lines + + “What little town by river or sea-shore, + Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, + Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?” + +be the expression of a purely Greek form of thought, “as Greek as a +thing from Homer or Theocritus;” and + + “In such a night + Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, + Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love + To come again to Carthage,” + +be as purely Celtic? Why should + + “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows” + +be Greek, and + + “Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves” + +be Celtic? That harmless nondescript, the general reader, be he ever +so anxious for enlightenment, is forced to confess he really does not +know; and if his ignorance be of the complacent order, he adds an +impatient doubt as to whether Mr. Arnold knew either, just as when he +“comes up gasping” from a sudden plunge into Browning, he is prompt to +declare his firm conviction that the poet never had the faintest idea +what he was writing about. + +But there is another style of enigma with which critics are wont to +harry and perplex us, and one has need of a “complication-proof mind,” +like Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to see clearly through the tangle. Mr. +Churton Collins, in his bitter attack on Mr. Gosse in the Quarterly +Review, objected vehemently to ever-varying descriptions of a single +theme. He did not think that if Drayton’s Barons’ Wars be a “serene and +lovely poem,” it could well have a “passionate music running through +it,” or possess “irregular force and sudden brilliance of style.” +Perhaps he was right; but there are few critics who can help us to know +and feel a poem like Mr. Gosse, and fewer still who write with such +consummate grace and charm. It is only when we pass from one reviewer +to another that the shifting lights thrown upon an author dazzle and +confuse us. Like the fifty-six different readings of the first line of +the Orlando Furioso, there are countless standpoints from which we are +invited to inspect each and every subject; and unless we follow the +admirable example of Mr. Courthope, who solves a difficulty by gently +saying, “The matter is one not for argument, but for perception,” we +are lost in the mazes of indecision. Thus Mr. Ruskin demonstrates most +beautifully the great superiority of Sir Walter Scott’s heroines over +his heroes, and by the time we settle our minds to this conviction +we find that Mr. Bagehot, that most acute and exhausting of critics, +thinks the heroines inferior in every way, and that Sir Walter was +truly felicitous only in his male characters. + +Happily, this is a point on which we should be able to decide for +ourselves without much prompting; but all disputed topics are not +equally intelligible. There is the vexed and vexing question of +romantic and classical, conservative and liberal poetry, about which +Mr. Courthope and Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Myers have had so much to +say of late, and which is, at best, but a dimly lighted path for the +uninitiated to travel. There is that perpetual problem, Mr. Walt +Whitman, the despair and the stumbling-block of critics, to whose +extraordinary effusions, as the Quarterly Review neatly puts it, +“existing standards cannot be applied with exactness.” There is Emily +Brontë, whose verses we were permitted for years to ignore, and in +whom we are now peremptorily commanded to recognize a true poet. +Miss Mary Robinson, who, in common with most female biographers, is +an enthusiast rather than a critic, never wearies of praising the +“splendid and vigorous movement” of Emily Brontë’s poems, “with their +surplus imagination, their sweeping impressiveness, their instinctive +music and irregular rightness of form.” On the other hand, Mr. Gosse, +while acknowledging in them a very high order of merit, laments that +such burning thoughts should be “concealed for the most part in the +tame and ambling measures dedicated to female verse by the practice of +Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon.” So far, indeed, from recognizing +the “vigorous movement” and “irregular rightness of form” which Miss +Robinson so much admires, he describes A Death Scene, one of the finest +in point of conception, as “clothed in a measure that is like the +livery of a charitable institution.” “There’s allays two ’pinions,” +says Mr. Macey, in Silas Marner; but we cannot help sometimes wishing, +in the cause of perspicuity, that they were not so radically different. + +As for the pure absurdities of criticism, they may be culled like +flowers from every branch, and are pleasing curiosities for those +who have a liking for such relics. Were human nature less complacent +in its self-sufficiency, they might even serve as useful warnings to +the impetuous young reviewers of to-day, and so be not without their +salutary influence on literature. Whether the result of ignorance, +or dullness, or bad temper, of national or religious prejudices, or +of mere personal pique, they have boldly challenged the ridicule of +the world, and its amused contempt has pilloried them for all time. +When Voltaire sneered at the Inferno, and thought Hamlet the work of +a drunken savage, he at least made a bid for the approbation of his +countrymen, who, as Schlegel wittily observes, were in the habit of +speaking as though Louis XIV. had put an end to cannibalism in Europe. +But what did Englishmen think when Hume informed them that Shakespeare +was “born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without +instruction from the world or from books;” and that he could not uphold +for any time “a reasonable propriety of thought”? How did they feel +when William Maginn brutally declared that Keats + + “the doubly dead + In that he died so young,” + +was but a cockney poet, who wrote vulgar indecorums, “probably in +the indulgence of his social propensities”? How did they feel when +the same Maginn called the Adonais “dreary nonsense” and “a wild +waste of words,” and devoted bitter pages to proving that Shelley +was not only undeserving, but “hopeless of poetic reputation”? Yet +surely indignation must have melted into laughter, when this notable +reviewer--who has been recently reprinted as a shining light for the +new generation--added serenely that “a hundred or a hundred thousand +verses might be made, equal to the best in Adonais, without taking +the pen off the paper.” This species of sweeping assertion has been +repeated by critics more than once, to the annoyance of their friends +and the malicious delight of their enemies. Ruskin, who, with all his +gifts, seems cursed with what Mr. Bagehot calls “a mind of contrary +flexure, whose particular bent it is to contradict what those around +them say,” has ventured to tell the world that any head clerk of a +bank could write a better history of Greece than Mr. Grote, if he would +have the vanity to waste his time over it; and I have heard a man of +fair attainments and of sound scholarship contend that there were +twenty living authors who could write plays as fine as Shakespeare’s. + +Jeffrey’s extraordinary blunders are too well known to need repetition, +and Christopher North was not without his share of similar mishaps; +Walpole cheerfully sentenced Scandinavian poetry in the bulk as the +horrors of a Runic savage; Madame de Staël objected to the “commonness” +of Miss Austen’s novels; Wordsworth thought Voltaire dull, and Southey +complained that Lamb’s essays lacked “sound religious feeling;” George +Borrow, whose literary tastes were at least as erratic as they were +pronounced, condemned Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock as “tiresome, +trashy, and unprincipled,” and ranked Shakespeare, Pope, Addison, +and the Welsh bard Huw Morris together as “great poets,” apparently +without recognizing any marked difference in their respective claims. +Then there is Taine, who finds Pendennis and Vanity Fair too full of +sermons; Mr. Dudley Warner, who compares the mild and genial humor of +Washington Irving to the acrid vigor of Swift; and Mr. Howells, who, +perhaps in pity for our sense of loss, would fain persuade us that +we could no longer endure either the “mannerisms” of Dickens or the +“confidential attitude” of Thackeray, were we happy enough to see these +great men still in our midst. + +Imagine, ye who can, the fiery Hazlitt’s wrath, if he but knew that +in punishment for his youthful admiration of the Nouvelle Héloïse a +close resemblance has been traced by friendly hands between himself +and its author. Think of Lord Byron’s feelings, if he could hear Mr. +Swinburne saying that it was greatly to his--Byron’s--credit that +he knew himself for a third-rate poet! Even though it be the only +thing to his credit that Swinburne has so far discovered, one doubts +whether it would greatly mollify his lordship, or reconcile him to +being classed as a “Bernesque poet,” and the companion of those two +widely different creatures, Southey and Offenbach. Perhaps, indeed, his +lively sense of humor would derive a more positive gratification from +watching his angry critic run amuck through adjectives with frenzied +agility. Such sentences as “the blundering, floundering, lumbering, and +stumbling stanzas of Childe Harold, ... the gasping, ranting, wheezing, +broken-winded verse, ... the hideous absurdities and jolter-headed +jargon,” must surely be less deeply offensive to Lord Byron’s admirers +than to Mr. Swinburne’s. They come as near to describing the noble +beauty of Childe Harold as does Southey’s senseless collection of +words to describing the cataract of Lodore, or any other cataract in +existence; and, since the days when Milton and Salmasius hurled “Latin +billingsgate” at each other’s heads, we have had no stronger argument +in favor of the comeliness of moderation. + +“The most part of Mr. Swinburne’s criticism,” hints a recent reviewer, +“is surely very much of a personal matter,--personal, one may say, +in expression as well as in sensation.” He has always a “neat hand +at an epithet,” and the “jolter-headed jargon” of Byron is no finer +in its way than the “fanfaronade and falsetto of Gray.” But even the +charms of alliteration, joined to the fish-wife’s slang which has +recently so tickled the fancy of Punch,[11] cannot wholly replace +that clear-headed serenity which is the true test of a critic’s worth +and the most pleasing expression of his genius. He should have no +visible inclination to praise or blame; it is not his business, as +Mr. Bagehot puts it, to be thankful, and neither is he the queen’s +attorney pleading for conviction. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who considered +that Byron was “the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary +power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare,” +presented his arguments plainly and without the faintest show of +enthusiasm. He did not feel the need of reviling somebody else in order +to emphasize his views, and he did not care to advance opinions without +some satisfactory explanation of their existence. Mr. Courthope may +content himself with saying that a matter is one not for argument, but +for perception; but Mr. Arnold gave a reason for the faith that was +in him. Mere preference on the part of a critic is not a sufficient +sanction for his verdicts, or at least it does not warrant his +imparting them to the public. Swinburne may honestly think four lines +of Wordsworth to be of more value than the whole of Byron, but that +is no reason why we should think so too. When Mr. George Saintsbury +avows a strong personal liking for some favorite authors,--Borrow and +Peacock, for instance,--he modestly states that this fact is not in +itself a convincing proof of their merit; but when Mr. Ernest Myers +says that he would sacrifice the whole of Childe Harold to preserve one +of Macaulay’s Lays, he seems to be offering a really impressive piece +of evidence. The tendency of critics to rush into print with whatever +they chance to think has resulted in readers who naturally believe that +what they think is every bit as good. Macaulay and Walter Savage Landor +are both instances of men whose unusual powers of discernment were +too often dimmed by their prejudices. Macaulay knew that Montgomery’s +poetry was bad, but he failed to see that Fouqué’s prose was good; and +Landor hit right and left, amid friends and foes, like the blinded Ajax +scourging the harmless flocks. + +It is quite as amusing and far less painful to turn from the critics’ +indiscriminate abuse to their equally indiscriminate praise, and to +read the glowing tributes heaped upon authors whose mediocrity has +barely saved them from oblivion. Compare the universal rapture which +greeted “the majestick numbers of Mr. Cowley” to the indifference which +gave scant welcome to the Hesperides. Mr. Gosse tells us that for half +a century Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda, was an unquestioned +light in English song. “Her name was mentioned with those of Sappho and +Corinna, and language was used without reproach which would have seemed +a little fulsome if addressed to the Muse herself.” + + “For, as in angels, we + Do in thy verses see + Both improved sexes eminently meet; + They are than Man more strong, and more than Woman sweet.” + +So sang Cowley to this much admired lady; and the Earl of Roscommon, in +some more extravagant and amusing stanzas, asserted it to be his unique +experience that, on meeting a pack of angry wolves in Scythia, + + “The magic of Orinda’s name + Not only can their fierceness tame, + But, if that mighty word I once rehearse, + They seem submissively to roar in verse.” + +“It is easier to flatter than to praise,” says Jean Paul, but even +flattery is not always the facile work it seems. + +Sir Walter Scott, who was strangely disposed to undervalue his own +merit as a poet, preserved the most genuine enthusiasm for the work of +others. When his little daughter was asked by James Ballantyne what she +thought of The Lady of the Lake, she answered with perfect simplicity +that she had not read it. “Papa says there is nothing so bad for young +people as reading bad poetry.” Yet Sir Walter always spoke of Madoc +and Thalaba with a reverence that would seem ludicrous were it not so +frankly sincere. Southey himself could not have admired them more; and +when Jeffrey criticised Madoc with flippant severity in the Edinburgh +Review, we find Scott hastening to the rescue in a letter full of +earnest and soothing praise. “A poem whose merits are of that higher +tone,” he argues, “does not immediately take with the public at large. +It is even possible that during your own life you must be contented +with the applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare +taste for discriminating in poetry. But the mere readers of verse must +one day come in, and then Madoc will assume his real place, at the feet +of Milton.”[12] The mere readers of verse, being in no wise responsible +for Milton’s position in literature, have so far put no one at his +feet; nor have they even verified Sir Walter’s judgment when, writing +again to Southey, he says with astonishing candor, “I am not such an +ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, +probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor.” The same +spirit of self-depreciation, rare enough to be attractive, made him +write to Joanna Baillie that, after reading some of her songs, he had +thrust by his own in despair. + +But if Sir Walter was an uncertain critic, his views on criticism +were marked by sound and kindly discretion, and his patience under +attack was the result of an evenly balanced mind, conscious of its +own strength, yet too sane to believe itself infallible. He had a +singular fancy for showing his manuscripts to his friends, and it is +quite delicious to see how doubtful and discouraging were their first +comments. Gray, when hard pressed by the “light and genteel” verses +of his companion, Richard West, was not more frugal of his doled-out +praises. But Scott exacted homage neither from his acquaintances nor +from the public. When it came--and it did come very soon in generous +abundance--he basked willingly in the sunshine; but he had no uneasy +vanity to be frightened by the shade. He would have been as sincerely +amused to hear Mr. Borrow call Woodstock “tiresome, trashy, and +unprincipled” as Matthew Arnold used to be when pelted with strong +language by the London newspapers. “I have made a study of the +Corinthian or leading-article style,” wrote the great critic, with +exasperating urbanity; “and I know its exigencies, and that they are no +more to be quarreled with than the law of gravitation.” In fact, the +most hopeless barrier to strife is the steady indifference of a man +who knows he has work to do, and who goes on doing it, irrespective of +anybody’s opinion. Lady Harriet Ashburton, who dearly loved the war of +words, in which she was sure to be a victor, was forced to confess that +where no friction was excited, even her barbed shafts fell harmless. +“It is like talking into a soft surface,” she sighed, with whimsical +despondency; “there is no rebound.” + +American critics have the reputation of being more kind-hearted than +discriminating. The struggling young author, unless overweeningly +foolish, has little to fear from their hands; and, if his reputation +be once fairly established, all he chooses to write is received with +a gratitude which seems excessive to the more exacting readers of +France and England. If he be a humorist, we are always alert and +straining to see the fun; if a story-teller, we politely smother +our yawns, and say something about a keen analysis of character, a +marked originality of treatment, or a purely unconventional theme; +if a scholar, no pitfalls are dug for his unwary feet by reviewers +like Mr. Collins. Such virulent and personal attacks we consider +very uncomfortable reading, as in truth they are, and we have small +appetite at any time for a sound kernel beneath a bitter rind. Yet +surely in these days, when young students turn impatiently from the +very fountain-heads of learning, too much stress cannot be laid on +the continuity of literature, and on the absolute importance of the +classics to those who would intelligently explore the treasure-house +of English verse. Moreover, Mr. Collins has aimed a few well-directed +shafts against the ingenious system of mutual admiration, by which +a little coterie of writers, modern Della Cruscans, help each other +into prominence, while an unsuspecting public is made “the willing +dupe of puffers.” This delicate game, which is now conducted with such +well-rewarded skill by a few enterprising players, consists, not so +much in open flattery, though there is plenty of that too, as in the +minute chronicling of every insignificant circumstance of each other’s +daily lives, from the hour at which they breakfast to the amount of +exercise they find conducive to appetite, and the shape and size of +their dining-room tables. We are stifled by the literary gossip which +fills the newspapers and periodicals. Nothing is too trivial, nothing +too irrelevant, to be told; and when, in the midst of an article on +any subject, from grand-dukes to gypsies, a writer gravely stops to +explain that a perfectly valueless remark was made to him on such an +occasion by his friend such a one, whose interesting papers on such a +topic will be well remembered by the readers of such a magazine, we are +forcibly reminded of the late Master of Trinity’s sarcasm as to the +many things that are too unimportant to be forgotten. + +People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite +for the black broth of honest criticism. There was a time, now happily +past, when the reviewer’s skill lay simply in the clever detection +of flaws; it was his business in life to find out whatever was weak +or absurd in an author, and to hold it up for the amusement of those +who were not quick enough to see such things for themselves. Now his +functions are of a totally different order, and a great many writers +seem to think it his sole duty to bring them before the public in an +agreeable light, to say something about their books which will be +pleasant for them to read and to pass over in turn to their friends. +If he cannot do this, it is plain he has no sanction to say anything +at all. That the critic has a duty to the public itself is seldom +remembered; that his work is of the utmost importance, and second in +value only to the original conception he analyzes, is a truth few +people take the pains to grasp. Coleridge thought him a mere maggot, +battening upon authors’ brains; yet how often has he helped us to +gain some clear insight into this most shapeless and shadowy of great +men! Wordsworth underrated his utility, yet Wordsworth’s criticisms, +save those upon his own poems, are among the finest we can read; and, +to argue after the fashion of Mr. Myers, the average student would +gladly exchange The Idiot Boy, or Goody Blake and Harry Gill, for +another letter upon Dryden. As a matter of fact, the labors of the true +critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader. It +is natural that poets and novelists should devoutly believe that the +creative faculty alone is of any true service to the world, and that +it cannot rightly be put to trial by those to whom this higher gift is +rigorously denied. But the critical power, though on a distinctly lower +level than the creative, is of inestimable help in its development. +Great work thrives best in a critical atmosphere, and the clear light +thrown upon the past is the surest of guides to the future. When the +standard of criticism is high, when the influence of classical and +foreign literature is understood and appreciated, when slovenly and +ill-digested work is promptly recognized as such, then, and then +only, may we look for the full expansion of a country’s genius. To be +satisfied with less is an amiable weakness rather than an invigorating +stimulant to perfection. + +Matthew Arnold’s definition of true criticism is familiar to all +his readers; it is simply “a disinterested endeavor to learn and +propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” But by +disinterestedness he did not mean merely that a critic must have no +distinct design of flattering either his subject or his audience. He +meant that in order to recognize what is really the best a man must +free himself from every form of passion or prejudice, from every fixed +opinion, from every practical consideration. He must not look at things +from an English, or a French, or an American, standpoint. He has no +business with politics or patriotism. These things are excellent +in themselves, and may be allowed to control his actions in other +matters; but when the question at issue is the abstract beauty of a +poem, a painting, a statue, or a piece of architecture, he is expected +to stand apart from his every-day self, and to judge of it by some +higher and universal law. This is a difficult task for most men, who +do not respire easily in such exceedingly rarefied air, and who have +no especial taste for blotting out their individuality. With Macaulay, +for instance, political considerations frankly outweigh all others; he +gives us the good Whig and the wicked Tory on every page, after the +fashion of Hogarth’s idle and industrious apprentices. Mr. Bagehot, +while a far less transparent writer, manifests himself indirectly in +his literary preferences. When we have read his essay on Shakespeare, +we feel pretty sure we know his views on universal suffrage. Mr. Andrew +Lang has indeed objected vehemently to the intrusion of politics +into literature, perhaps because of a squeamish distaste for the +harsh wranglings of the political field. But Mr. Arnold was incapable +of confusing the two ideas. His taste for Celtic poetry and his +attitude towards home rule are both perfectly defined and perfectly +isolated sentiments; just as his intelligent admiration and merciless +condemnation of Heinrich Heine stand side by side, living witnesses +of a mind that held its own balance, losing nothing that was good, +condoning nothing that was evil, as far removed from weak enthusiasm on +the one hand as from frightened depreciation on the other. + +It is folly to rail at the critic until we have learned his value; it +is folly to ignore a help which we are not too wise to need. “The best +that is known and thought in the world” does not stand waiting for +admission on our door-steps. Like the happiness of Hesiod, it “abides +very far hence, and the way to it is long and steep and rough.” It is +hard to seek, hard to find, and not easily understood when discovered. +Criticism does not mean a random opinion on the last new novel, though +even the most dismal of light literature comes fairly within its scope. +It means a disinterested endeavor to learn and to teach whatever wisdom +or beauty has been added by every age and every nation to the great +inheritance of mankind. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] + + “But when poet Swinburne steps into the fray, + And slangs like a fish-wife, what, _what_ can one say?” + +[12] Compare Charles Lamb’s letter to Coleridge: “On the whole I expect +Southey one day to rival Milton; I already deem him equal to Cowper, +and superior to all living poets besides.” + + + + + SOME ASPECTS OF PESSIMISM. + + +When Mr. Matthew Arnold delivered his lecture on Emerson in this +country, several years ago, it was delightful to see how the settled +melancholy of his audience, who had come for a panegyric and did not +get it, melted into genial applause when the lecturer touched at last +upon the one responsive chord which bound his subject, his hearers, +and himself in a sympathetic harmony,--I mean Emerson’s lifelong, +persistent, and unconquerable optimism. This was perhaps the more +apparent because Mr. Arnold’s addresses were not precisely the kind +with which we Americans are best acquainted; they were singularly +deficient in the oratorical flights that are wont to arouse our +enthusiasm, and in the sudden descents to colloquial anecdote by which +we expect to be amused. For real enjoyment it was advisable to read +them over carefully after they were printed, and the oftener they were +so read the better they repaid perusal; but this not being the point +of view from which ordinary humanity is apt to regard a lecture, it +was with prompt and genuine relief that the audience hailed a personal +appeal to that cheerful, healthy hopefulness of disposition which we +like to be told we possess in common with greater men. It is always +pleasant to hear that happiness is “the due and eternal result of +labor, righteousness, and veracity,” and to have it hinted to us that +we have sane and wholesome minds because we think so; it is pleasanter +still to be assured that the disparaging tone which religion assumes +in relation to this earthly happiness arises from a well-intentioned +desire to wean us from it, and not at all from a clear-sighted +conviction of its feeble worth. When Mr. Arnold recited for our benefit +a cheerless little scrap of would-be pious verse which he had heard +read in a London schoolroom, all about the advantages of dying,-- + + “For the world at best is a dreary place, + And my life is getting low,”-- + +we were glad to laugh over such dismal philosophy, and to feel within +ourselves an exhilarating superiority of soul. + +But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of +collapsing when full-blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to +melt away in the sunshine of a smile. Mr. Arnold, like Mr. Emerson, +preached the gospel of compensation with much picturesqueness and +beauty; but his arguments would be more convincing if our own +observation and experience did not so mulishly stand in their way. +A recent writer in Cornhill, who ought to be editing a magazine for +Arcady, asserts with charming simplicity that man “finds a positive +satisfaction in putting himself on a level with others, and in +recognizing that he has his just share of life’s enjoyments.” But +suppose that he cannot reach the level of others, or be persuaded +that his share is just? The good things of life are not impartially +divided, like the spaces on a draught-board, and man, who is a covetous +animal, will never be content with a little, while his comrade enjoys +a great deal. Neither does he find the solace that is expected in the +contemplation of the unfortunate who has nothing; for this view of the +matter, besides being a singular plea for the compensation theory, +appeals too coarsely to that root of selfishness which we are none of +us anxious to exhibit. The average fustian-clad man is not too good to +envy his neighbor’s broadcloth, but he _is_ too good to take comfort +in his brother’s nakedness. The sight of it may quicken his gratitude, +but can hardly increase his happiness. Yet what did Mr. Arnold mean +in his poem of Consolation--which is very charming, but not in the +least consoling--save that the joys and sorrows of each hour balance +themselves in a just proportion, and that the lovers’ raptures and the +blind robber’s pain level the eternal scales. It is not a cheering bit +of philosophy, whatever might have been the author’s intention, for the +very existence of suffering darkens the horizon for thoughtful souls. +It would be an insult on the part of the lovers--lovers are odious +things at best--to offer their arrogant bliss as indemnification to the +wretch for his brimming cup of bitterness; but the vision of his seared +eyeballs and sin-laden soul might justly moderate their own expansive +felicity. Sorrow has a claim on all mankind, and when the utmost +that Mr. Arnold could promise for our consolation was that time, the +impartial, + + “Brings round to all men + Some undimm’d hours.” + +we did not feel that he afforded us any broad ground for +self-complacency. + +The same key is struck with more firmness in that strange poem, The +Sick King in Bokhara, where the vizier can find no better remedy for +his master’s troubled mind than by pointing out to him the vast burden +of misery which rests upon the world, and which he is utterly powerless +to avert. It is hardly worth while, so runs the vizier’s argument, for +the king to vex his soul over the sufferings of one poor criminal, whom +his pity could not save, when the same tragic drama is being played +with variations in every quarter of the globe. Behold, thousands are +toiling for hard masters, armies are laying waste the peaceful land, +robbers are harassing the mountain shepherds, and little children are +being carried into captivity. + + “The Kaffirs also (whom God curse!) + Vex one another night and day; + There are the lepers, and all sick; + There are the poor, who faint away. + + “All these have sorrow and keep still, + Whilst other men make cheer and sing. + Wilt thou have pity on all these? + No, nor on this dead dog, O king!” + +Whereupon the sick monarch, who does not seem greatly cheered by this +category, adds in a disconsolate sort of way that he too, albeit envied +of all men, finds his secret burdens hard to bear, and that not even to +him is granted the fulfillment of desire,-- + + “And what I would, I cannot do.” + +Unless the high priests of optimism shall find us some stouter +arguments than these with which to make merry our souls, it is to be +feared that their opponents, who have at least the knack of stating +their cases with pitiless lucidity, will hardly think our buoyancy +worth pricking. + +As for that small and compact band who steadfastly refuse to recognize +in “this sad, swift life” any occasion for self-congratulation, they +are not so badly off, in spite of their funereal trappings, as we are +commonly given to suppose. It is only necessary to read a page of +their writings--and few people care to read more--to appreciate how +thoroughly they enjoy the situation, and how, sitting with Hecate in +her cave, they weave delicate thoughts out of their chosen darkness. +They are full of the hopefulness of despair, and confident in the +strength of the world’s weakness. They assume that they not only +represent great fundamental truths, but that these truths are for the +first time being put forth in a concrete shape for the edification and +adherence of mankind. Mr. Edgar Saltus informs us that, while optimism +is as old as humanity, “systematic pessimism” is but a growth of the +last half century, before which transition period we can find only +individual expressions of discontent. Mr. Mallock claims that he is +the first who has ever inquired into the worth of life “in the true +scientific spirit.” But when we come to ask in what systematic or +scientific pessimism differs from the older variety which has found a +home in the hearts of men from the beginning, we do not receive any +very coherent answer. From Mr. Mallock, indeed, we hardly expect any. +It is his province in literature to propose problems which the reader, +after the fashion of The Lady or the Tiger? is permitted to solve +for himself. But does Mr. Saltus really suppose that Schopenhauer +and Hartmann have made much headway in reducing sadness to a science, +that love is in any danger of being supplanted by the “genius of +the species,” or that the “principle of the unconscious” is at all +likely to extinguish our controlling force? What have these two subtle +thinkers said to the world that the world has not practically known +and felt for thousands of years already? Hegesias, three centuries +before Christ, was quite as systematic as Schopenhauer, and his system +begot more definite results; for several of his disciples hanged +themselves out of deference for his teachings, whereas it may be +seriously doubted whether all the persuasive arguments of the Welt als +Wille und Vorstellung have ever made or are likely to make a single +celibate. Marcus Aurelius was as logically convinced of the inherent +worthlessness of life as Dr. Hartmann, and, without any scientific +apparatus whatever, he stamped his views on the face of a whole nation. +We are now anxiously warned by Mr. Saltus not to confound scientific +pessimism with that accidental melancholy which is the result of our +own personal misfortunes; but Leopardi, whose unutterable despair +arose solely from his personal misfortunes, or rather from his moral +inability to cope with them,--for Joubert, who suffered as much, has +left a trail of heavenly light upon his path,--Leopardi alone lays bare +for us the + + “Tears that spring and increase + In the barren places of mirth,” + +with an appalling accuracy from which we are glad to turn away our +shocked and troubled eyes. + +It is a humiliating fact that, notwithstanding our avaricious greed +for novelties, we are forced, when sincere, to confess that “_les +anciens ont tout dit_,” and that it is probable the contending schools +of thought have always held the same relative positions they do +now: optimism glittering in the front ranks as a deservedly popular +favorite; pessimism speaking with a still, persistent voice to those +who, unluckily for themselves, have the leisure and the intelligence +to attend. Schopenhauer hated the Jews with all his heart for being +such stubborn optimists, and it is true that their records bear ample +witness to the strong hold they took on the pleasures and the profits +of the world. But their noblest and clearest voices, Isaias, Jeremias, +Ezekiel, speak a different language; and Solomon, who, it must be +granted, enjoyed a wider experience than most men, renders a cheerless +verdict of vanity and vexation of spirit for “all things that are done +under the sun.” The Egyptians, owing chiefly to their tender solicitude +about their tombs, have taken rank in history as a people enamoured +rather of death than of life; and from the misty flower-gardens of +Buddha have been gathered for centuries the hemlock and nightshade that +adorn the funeral-wreaths of literature. + +But the Greeks, the blithe and jocund Greeks, who, as Mr. Arnold justly +observed, ought never to have been either sick or sorry,--to them, +at least, we can turn for that wholesome joy, that rational delight +in mere existence, which we have somehow let slip from our nerveless +grasp. Whether it was because this world gave him so much, such rare +perfection in all material things, or because his own conception of the +world to come promised him so exceedingly little,--for one or both of +these reasons, the average Greek preferred to cling tenaciously to the +good he had, to the hills, and the sea, and the sunshine, rather than to + + “Move among shadows, a shadow, and wail by impassable streams;” + +and his choice, under the circumstances, is perhaps hardly a matter for +amazement. That a people so richly endowed should be in love with life +seems to us right and natural; that amid their keen realization of its +fullness and beauty we find forever sounded--and not always in a minor +key--the same old notes of weariness and pain is a discouraging item, +when we would like to build up an exhaustive theory of happiness. Far, +far back, in the Arcadian days of Grecian piety and simplicity, the +devout agriculturist Hesiod looked sorrowfully over the golden fields, +searching vainly for a joy that remained ever out of reach. Homer, in a +passage which Mr. Peacock says is nearly always incorrectly translated, +has given us a summary of life which would not put a modern German to +the blush:-- + + “Jove, from his urns dispensing good and ill, + Gives ill unmixed to some, and good and ill + Mingled to many, good unmixed to none.” + +Sophocles says uncompromisingly that man’s happiest fate is not to be +born at all; and that, failing this good fortune, the next best thing +is to die as quickly as possible. Menander expresses the same thought +more sweetly:-- + + “Whom the gods love die young;” + +and Euripides, the most reverent soul ever saddened by the barrenness +of paganism, forces into one bitter line all the bleak hopelessness of +which the Greek tragedy alone is capable:-- + + “Life is called life, but it is truly pain.” + +Even as isolated sentiments, these ever-recurring reflections diminish +perceptibly the sum of a nation’s gayety, and, if we receive the drama +as the mouthpiece of the people, we are inclined to wonder now and then +how they ever could have been cheerful at all. It is easy, on the other +hand, to point to Admetos and Antigone as two standing examples of the +great value the Greeks placed upon life; for the sacrifice of Alkestis +was not in their eyes the sordid bargain it appears in ours, and the +daughter of Œdipus goes to her death with a shrinking reluctance +seemingly out of keeping with her heroic mould. But Admetos, excuse him +as we may, is but a refinement of a common type, old as mankind, and no +great credit to its ranks. He may be found in every page of the world’s +history, from the siege of Jerusalem to the siege of Paris. À Kempis +has transfixed him with sharp scorn in his chapter On the Consideration +of Human Misery, and a burning theatre or a sinking ship betray him, +shorn of poetical disguise, in all his unadorned brutality. But to +find fault with Antigone, the noblest figure in classical literature, +because she manifests a natural dislike for being buried alive is to +carry our ideal of heroism a little beyond reason. Flesh and blood +shrink from the sickening horror that lays its cold hand upon her +heart. She is young, beautiful, and beloved, standing on the threshold +of matrimony, and clinging with womanly tenderness to the sacred joys +that are never to be hers. She is a martyr in a just cause, but without +one ray of that divine ecstasy that sent Christian maidens smiling +to the lions. Beyond a chilly hope that she will not be unwelcome to +her parents, or to the brother she has vainly striven to save from +desecration, Antigone descends + + “Into the dreary mansions of the dead,” + +uncheered by any throb of expectation. Finally, the manner of her +death is too appalling to be met with stoicism. Juliet, the bravest of +Shakespeare’s heroines, quails before the thought of a few unconscious +hours spent in the darkness of the tomb; and if our more exalted views +demand indifference to such a fate, we must not look to the Greeks, nor +to him who + + “Saw life steadily, and saw it whole,” + +for the fulfillment of our idle fancy. + +Youth, health, beauty, and virtue were to the ancient mind the natural +requisites for happiness; yet even these favors were so far at best +from securing it, that “nature’s most pleasing invention, early death,” +was too often esteemed the rarest gift of all. When Schopenhauer says +of the fourth commandment, “‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy +days may be long in the land,’--ah! what a misfortune to hold out as a +reward for duty!” we feel both shocked and repulsed by this deliberate +rejection of what is offered us as a blessing; but it is at least +curious to note that the happy Greeks held much the same opinion. When +the sons of Cydippe--those models of filial devotion--shamed not to +yoke themselves like oxen to the cart, and with strong young arms to +drag their mother to the feast of Hera, the ancient priestess begged +of the dread goddess that she would grant them her best gift; and the +prayer was answered, not with length of days, nor with the regal power +and splendor promised of old to Paris, but with a boon more precious +still than all. + + “Whereat the statue from its jeweled eyes + Lightened, and thunder ran from cloud to cloud + In heaven, and the vast company was hushed. + But when they sought for Cleobis, behold, + He lay there still, and by his brother’s side + Lay Biton, smiling through ambrosial curls, + And when the people touched them they were dead.”[13] + +It is hard to assert in the face of a narrative like this that the +Greeks valued nothing as much as the mere delight of existence. + +As for the favorite theory that Christianity is responsible for +the weakening of earthly happiness, and that her ministers have +systematically disparaged the things of this world in order to +quicken our desire for things eternal, it might suffice to hint that +Christianity is a large word, and represents at present a great many +different phases of thought. Mr. Arnold objected, rationally enough, +to the lugubrious hymns from which the English middle classes are +wont to draw their spiritual refreshment; and Dr. Holmes, it will be +remembered, has spoken quite as strongly in regard to their depressing +influence upon New England households. But Christianity and the modern +hymn-book are by no means synonymous terms, and to claim that the +early church deliberately lowered the scale of human joy is a very +different and a very grave charge, and one which Mr. Pater, in Marius +the Epicurean, has striven valiantly to refute. With what clear and +delicate touches he paints for us the innocent gayety of that new +birth,--a gayety with no dark background, and no heart-breaking limits +of time and space. Compared to it, the sombre and multitudinous rites +of the Romans and the far-famed blitheness of the Greeks seem incurably +narrow and insipid. The Christians of the catacombs were essentially +a cheerful body, having for their favorite emblem the serene image of +the Good Shepherd, and believing firmly that “grief is the sister of +doubt and ill-temper, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man.” If in the +Middle Ages the Church apparently darkened earth to brighten heaven, +it was simply because she took life as she found it, and strove, as +she still strives, to teach the only doctrine of compensation that the +tyranny of facts cannot cheaply overthrow. The mediæval peasant may +have been less badly off, on the whole, than we are generally pleased +to suppose. He was, from all accounts, a robust, unreasoning creature, +who held his neck at the mercy of his feudal lord, and the rest of his +scanty possessions at the discretion of the tax-gatherer; but who had +not yet bared his back to the intolerable sting of that modern gadfly, +the professional agitator, and socialistic champion of the poor. Yet +even without this last and sorest infliction, it is probable that life +was to him but little worth the living, and that religion could not +well paint the world much blacker than he found it. There was scant +need, in his case, for disparaging the pleasures of the flesh; and +hope, lingering alone in his Pandora box of troubles, saved him from +utter annihilation by pointing steadily beyond the doors of death. + +As a matter of fact, the abstract question of whether our present +existence be enjoyable or otherwise is one which creeds do not +materially modify. A pessimist may be deeply religious like Pascal and +Châteaubriand, or utterly skeptical like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, +or purely philosophical like faint-hearted Amiel. He may agree with +Lamennais, that “man is the most suffering of all creatures;” or with +Voltaire, that “happiness is a dream, and pain alone is real.” He +may listen to Saint Theresa, “It is given to us either to die or to +suffer;” or to Leopardi, “Life is fit only to be despised.” He may read +in the diary of that devout recluse, Eugénie de Guérin that “dejection +is the ground-work of human life;” or he may turn over the pages of +Sir Walter Raleigh, and see how a typical man of the world, soldier, +courtier, and navigator, can find no words ardent enough in which to +praise “the workmanship of death, that finishes the sorrowful business +of a wretched life.” I do not mean to imply that Leopardi and Eugénie +de Guérin regarded existence from the same point of view, or found the +same solace for their pain; but that they both struck the keynote of +pessimistic philosophy by recognizing that, in this world at least, +sorrow outbalances joy, and that it is given to all men to eat their +bread in tears. On the other hand, if we are disinclined to take this +view, we shall find no lack of guides, both saints and sinners, ready +to look the Sphinx smilingly in the face, and puzzle out a different +answer to her riddle. + +Another curious notion is that poets have a prescriptive right to +pessimism, and should feel themselves more or less obliged, in virtue +of their craft, to take upon their shoulders the weight of suffering +humanity. Mr. James Sully, for instance, whose word, as a student of +these matters, cannot be disregarded, thinks it natural and almost +inevitable that a true poet should be of a melancholy cast, by reason +of the sensitiveness of his moral nature and his exalted sympathy for +pain. But it has yet to be proved that poets are a more compassionate +race than their obscurer brethren who sit in counting-houses or brew +beer. They are readier, indeed, to moralize over the knife-grinder, +but quite as slow to tip him the coveted sixpence. Shelley, whose soul +swelled at the wrongs of all mankind, did not hesitate to inflict +pain on the one human being whom it was his obvious duty to protect. +But then Shelley, like Carlyle, belonged to the category of reformers +rather than to the pessimists; believing that though the world as he +saw it was as bad as possible, things could be easily mended by simply +turning them topsy-turvy under his direction. Now the pessimist proper +is the most modest of men. He does not flatter himself for a moment +that he can alter the existing state of evil, or that the human race, +by its combined efforts, can do anything better than simply cease to +live. He may entertain with Novalis a shadowy hope that when mankind, +wearied of its own impotence, shall efface itself from the bosom of the +earth, a better and happier species shall fill the vacant land. Or he +may believe with Hartmann that there is even less felicity possible in +the coming centuries than in the present day; that humanity is already +on the wane; that the higher we stand in the physical and intellectual +scale the more inevitable becomes our suffering; and that when men +shall have thrown aside the last illusion of their youth, namely, the +hope of any obtainable good either in this world or in another, they +will then no longer consent to bear the burden of life, but, by the +supreme force of their united volition, will overcome the resistance +of nature, and achieve the destruction of the universe. But under no +circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, +can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate. + +To return to the poets, however, it is edifying to hear Mr. Leslie +Stephen assert that “nothing is less poetical than optimism,” or to +listen to Mr. John Addington Symonds, who, scanning the thoughtful soul +for a solution of man’s place in the order of creation, can find for +him no more joyous task than, Prometheus-like, + + “To dree life’s doom on Caucasus.” + +Even when a poem appears to the uninitiated to be of a cheerful, not to +say blithesome cast, the critics are busy reading unutterable sadness +between the lines; and while we smile at Puck, and the fairies, and +the sweet Titania nursing her uncouth love, we must remember that the +learned Dr. Ulrici has pronounced the Midsummer Night’s Dream to be +a serious homily, preached with grave heart to an unthinking world. +But is Robin Goodfellow really a missionary in disguise, and are the +poets as pessimistic in their teaching as their interpreters would +have us understand? Heine undoubtedly was, and Byron pretended to be. +Keats, with all the pathos of his shadowed young life, was nothing of +the sort, nor was Milton, nor Goethe, nor Wordsworth; while Scott, +lost, apparently, to the decent requirements of his art, confessed +unblushingly that fortune could not long play a dirge upon his buoyant +spirits. And Shakespeare? Why, he was all and everything. Day and +night, sunlight and starlight, were embraced in his affluent nature. He +laid his hand on the quivering pulses of the world, and, recognizing +that life was often in itself both pleasant and good, he yet knew, and +knew it without pain, that death was better still. Look only at the +character of Horatio, the very type of the blithe, sturdy, and somewhat +commonplace young student, to whom enjoyment seems a birthright,-- + + “A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards + Hast ta’en with equal thanks.” + +Yet it is to this man, of all others, that the dying Hamlet utters the +pathetic plea,-- + + “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, + Absent thee from felicity awhile, + And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain + To tell my story.” + +Here at last is a ray of real light, guiding us miles away from the +murky paths of modern French and English poetry, where we have stumbled +along, growing despondent in the gloom. To brave life cheerfully, to +welcome death gladly, are possible things, after all, and better worth +man’s courage and convictions than to dree on Caucasus forever. + +It is ludicrous to turn from the poets to the politicians, but nowadays +every question, even the old unanswered one, “Is life worth living?” +must needs be viewed from its political standpoint. What can be more +delightful than to hear Mr. Courthope assert that optimism is the +note of the Liberal party, while the Conservatives are necessarily +pessimistic?--especially when one remembers the genial utterance +of Mr. Walter Bagehot, contending that the very essence of Toryism +is enjoyment. “The way to be satisfied with existing things is to +enjoy them.” Yet Sir Francis Doyle bears witness in his memoirs that +the stoutest of Tories can find plenty to grumble at, which is not +altogether surprising in a sadly ill-regulated world; and while the +optimistic Liberal fondly believes that he is marching straight along +the chosen road to the gilded towers of El Dorado, the less sanguine +Conservative contents himself with trying, after his dull, practical +fashion, to step clear of some of the ruts and quagmires by the way. As +for the extreme Radicals,--and every nation has its full share of these +gentry,--their optimism is too glittering for sober eyes to bear. A +classical tradition says that each time Sisyphos rolls his mighty stone +up the steep mountain side he believes that it will reach the summit; +and, its ever-repeated falls failing to teach him any surer lesson, his +doom, like that of our reforming brothers, is softened into eternal +hope. But it may at least be questioned whether the other inhabitants +of Tartarus--none of whom, it will be remembered, are without their +private grievances--do not occasionally weary of the dust and racket, +and of the great ball forever thundering about their ears, as it rolls +impotently down to the level whence it came. + +The pessimist, however,--be it recorded to his credit,--is seldom an +agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he +does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced. We +have, indeed, an anecdote of Dr. Johnson, who broadly asserted upon +one occasion that no one could well be happy in this world, whereupon +an unreasonable old lady had the bad taste to contradict him, and to +insist that she, for one, was happy, and knew it. “Madam,” replied +the irate philosopher, “it is impossible. You are old, you are ugly, +you are sickly and poor. How, then, can you be happy?” But this, we +think, was rather a natural burst of indignation on the good doctor’s +part than a distinct attempt at proselytizing, though it is likely +that he somewhat damped the boasted felicity of his antagonist. +Schopenhauer, the great apostle of pessimism, while willing enough to +make converts on a grand scale, was scornfully unconcerned about the +every-day opinions of his every-day--I was going to say associates, but +the fact is that Schopenhauer was never guilty of really associating +with anybody. He had at all times the courage of his convictions, and +delighted in illustrating his least attractive theories. Teaching +asceticism, he avoided women; despising human companionship, he +isolated himself from men. A luminous selfishness guided him through +life, and saved him from an incredible number of discomforts. It was +his rule to expect nothing, to desire as little as possible, and to +learn all he could. Want, he held to be the scourge of the poor, as +_ennui_ is that of the rich; accordingly, he avoided the one by looking +sharply after his money, and the other by working with unremitting +industry. Pleasure, he insisted, was but a purely negative quality, +a mere absence from pain. He smiled at the sweet, hot delusions of +youth, and shrugged his shoulders over the limitless follies of +manhood, regarding both from the standpoint of a wholly disinterested +observer. If the test of happiness in the Arabian paradise be to hear +the measured beating of one’s own heart, Schopenhauer was certainly +qualified for admission. Even in this world he was so far from being +miserable, that an atmosphere of snug comfort surrounds the man whose +very name has become a synonym for melancholy; and to turn from +his cold and witty epigrams to the smothered despair that burdens +Leopardi’s pages is like stepping at once from a pallid, sunless +afternoon into the heart of midnight. It is always a pleasant task for +optimists to dwell as much as possible on the buoyancy with which every +healthy man regards his unknown future, and on the natural pleasure he +takes in recalling the brightness of the past; but Leopardi, playing +the trump card of pessimism, demonstrates with merciless precision the +insufficiency of such relief. We cannot in reason expect, he argues, +that, with youth behind us and old age in front, our future will be +any improvement on our past, for with increasing years come increasing +sorrows to all men; and as for the boasted happiness of that past, +which of us would live it over again for the sake of the joys it +contained? Memory cheats us no less than hope by hazing over those +things that we would fain forget; but who that has plodded on to middle +age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with +their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is +forever pretending to regret? + +Such thoughts are not cheerful companions; but if they stand the test +of application, it is useless to call them morbid. The pessimist does +not contend that there is no happiness in life, but that, for the +generality of mankind, it is outbalanced by trouble; and this flinty +assurance is all he has to offer in place of the fascinating theory +of compensation. It would seem as though no sane man could hesitate +between them, if he had the choice, for one pleasant delusion is worth +a hundred disagreeable facts; but in this serious and truth-hunting age +people have forgotten the value of fiction, and, like sulky children, +refuse to play at anything. Certainly it would be hard to find a more +dispiriting literature than we enjoy at present. Scientists, indeed, +are reported by those who have the strength of mind to follow them +as being exceedingly merry and complacent; but the less ponderous +illuminati, to whom feebler souls turn instinctively for guidance, are +shining just now with a severe and chastened light. When on pleasure +bent they are as frugal as Mrs. Gilpin, but they sup sorrow with a long +spoon, utterly regardless of their own or their readers’ digestions. +Germany still rings with Heine’s discordant laughter, and France, rich +in the poets of decadence, offers us Les Fleurs du Mal to wear upon +our bosoms. England listens, sighing, while Carlyle’s denunciations +linger like muttering thunder in the air; or while Mr. Ruskin, “the +most inspired of the modern prophets,” vindicates his oracular spirit +by crying, + + “Woe! woe! O earth! Apollo, O Apollo!” + +with the monotonous persistency of Cassandra. Mr. Mallock, proud +to kneel at Mr. Ruskin’s feet as “an intellectual debtor to a +public teacher,” binds us in his turn within the fine meshes of +his exhaustless subtleties, until we grow light-headed rather than +light-hearted under such depressing manipulation. Mr. Pater, who at +one time gave us to understand that he would teach us how to enjoy +life, has, so far, revealed nothing but its everlasting sadness. If +the old Cyrenaics were no gayer than their modern representatives, +Aristippus of Cyrene might just as well have been Diogenes sulking in +his tub, or Heraclitus adding useless tears to the trickling moisture +of his cave. + +Even our fiction has grown disconcertingly sad within the last few +years, and with a new order of sadness, invented apparently to keep +pace with the melancholy march of mind. The novelist of the past had +but two courses open to him: either to leave Edwin and Angelina clasped +in each other’s arms, or to provide for one of them a picturesque and +daisy-strewn grave. Ordinarily he chose the former alternative, as +being less harassing to himself, and more gratifying to his readers. +Books that end badly have seldom been really popular, though sometimes +a tragic conclusion is essential to the artistic development of the +story. When Tom and Maggie Tulliver go down, hand in hand, amid the +rushing waters of the Floss, we feel, even through our tears,--and +mine are fresh each time I read the page,--that the one possible +solution of the problem, has been reached; that only thus could the +widely contrasting natures of brother and sister meet in unison, and +the hard-fought battle be gained. Such an end is not sad, it is happy +and beautiful; and, moreover, it is in a measure inevitable, the +climax being shadowed from the beginning, as in the tragedy of the +Greeks, and the whole tale moving swiftly and surely to its appointed +close. If we compare a finely chiseled piece of work like this with +the flat, faintly colored sketches which are at present passing muster +for novels, we feel that beauty of form is something not compounded of +earthly materials only, and that neither the savage strength of French +and Russian realism, nor the dreary monotony of German speculative +fiction, can lift us any nearer the tranquil realms of art. + +Nor can we even claim that we have gained in cheerfulness what we have +lost in symmetry, for the latest device of the pessimistic story-writer +is to marry his pair of lovers, and then coldly inform us that, owing +to the inevitable evils of life, they were not particularly happy +after all. Now Lady Martin (Helen Faucit), that loving student and +impersonator of Shakespeare’s heroines, has expressed her melancholy +conviction that the gentle Hero was but ill-mated with one so fretful +and paltry-souled as Claudio; and that Imogen the fair was doomed to an +early death, the bitter fruit of her sad pilgrimage to Milford-Haven. +But be this as it may,--and we more than fear that Lady Martin is +rightly acquainted with the matter,--Shakespeare himself has whispered +us no word of such ill-tidings, but has left us free, an’ it please +us, to dream out happier things. So, too, Dorothea Brooke, wedded to +Will Ladislaw, has before her many long and weary hours of regretful +self-communings; yet, while we sigh over her doubtful future, we +are glad, nevertheless, to take our last look at her smiling in her +husband’s arms. But when Basil Ransom, in The Bostonians, makes a +brave fight for his young bride, and carries her off in triumph, we +are not for a moment permitted to feel elated at his victory. We want +to rejoice with Verena, and to congratulate her on her escape from Mr. +Filer and the tawdry music-hall celebrity; but we are forced to take +leave of her in tears, and to hear with unwilling ears that “these were +not the last she was destined to shed.” This hurts our best feelings, +and hurts them all the more because we have allowed our sympathies to +be excited. It reminds us of that ill-natured habit of the Romans, +who were ungrateful enough to spoil a conqueror’s triumph by hiring +somebody to stand in his chariot, and keep whispering in his ear that +he was only human, after all; and it speaks volumes for the stern +self-restraint of the Roman nature that the officious truth-teller +was not promptly kicked out in the dust. In the same grudging spirit, +Mr. Thomas Hardy, after conducting one of his heroines safely through +a great many trials, and marrying her at last to the husband of +her choice, winds up, by way of wedding-bells, with the following +consolatory reflections: “Her experience had been of a kind to teach +her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit +through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the +path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by day-dreams rich +as hers.... And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate, +she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when +the one to whom such unbroken tranquillity had been accorded in the +adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was +but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” “What should +a man do but be merry?” says Hamlet drearily; and, with this reckless +mirth pervading even our novels, we bid fair in time to become as +jocund as he. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] The Sons of Cydippe, by Edmund Gosse. + + + + + THE CAVALIER. + + +“An evil reputation is light to raise, but heavy to bear, and very +difficult to put aside. No Rumor which many people chatter of +altogether dieth away; she too is, after her kind, an immortal.” So +moralizes Hesiod over an exceedingly thankless truth, which, even in +the primitive simplicity of the golden age, had forced itself upon +man’s unwilling convictions; and while many later philosophers have +given caustic expression to the same thought, few have clothed it +with more delicate and agreeable irony. Rumor is, after her kind, +an immortal. Antæus-like, she gains new strength each time she is +driven to the ground, and it is a wholesome humiliation for our very +enlightened minds to see how little she has suffered from centuries +of analysis and research. Rumor still writes our histories, directs +our diplomacy, and controls our ethics, until we have grown to think +that this is probably what is meant by the _vox populi_, and that any +absurdity credited by a great many people becomes in some mysterious +way sacred to the cause of humanity, and infinitely more precious +than truth. When Wodrow, and Walker, and the author of The Cloud of +Witnesses, were compiling their interesting narratives, Rumor, in +the person of “ilka auld wife in the chimley-neuck,” gave them all +the information they desired; and this information, countersigned by +Macaulay, has passed muster for history down to the present day. As +a result, the introduction of Graham of Claverhouse into Mr. Lang’s +list of English Worthies has been received with severely qualified +approbation, and Mr. Mowbray Morris has written the biography of a +great soldier in the cautious tone of a lawyer pleading for a criminal +at the bar. + +If ever the words of Hesiod stood in need of an accurate illustration, +it has been furnished by the memory of Claverhouse; for his evil +reputation was not only raised with astonishing facility, but it has +never been put aside at all. In fact, it seems to have been a matter +of pride in the grim-visaged Scottish saints to believe that their +departed brethren were, one and all, the immediate victims of his +wrath; and to hint that they might perhaps have fallen by any meaner +hand was, as Aytoun wittily expressed it, “an insult to martyrology.” +The terror inspired by his inflexible severity gave zest to their +lurid denunciations, and their liveliest efforts of imagination were +devoted to conjuring up in his behalf some fresh device of evil. In +that shameless pasquinade, the Elegy, there is no species of wickedness +that is not freely charged, in most vile language, to the account of +every Jacobite in the land, from the royal house of Stuart down to its +humblest supporter; yet even amid such goodly company, Claverhouse +stands preëminent, and is the recipient of its choicest flowers of +speech. + + “He to Rome’s cause most firmly stood, + And drunken was with the saints’ blood. + He rifled houses, and did plunder + In moor and dale many a hunder; + He all the shires in south and west + With blood and rapine sore opprest.” + +It is needless to say that Claverhouse, though he served a Catholic +master, had about as much affinity for the Church of Rome as the +great Gustavus himself, and that the extent of his shortcomings in +this direction lay in his protesting against the insults offered by a +Selkirk preacher to King James through the easy medium of his religion. + +Now it is only natural that the Covenanters, who feared and hated +Dundee, should have found infinite comfort in believing that he was +under the direct protection of Satan. In those days of lively faith, +the charge was by no means an uncommon one, and the dark distinction +was shared by any number of his compatriots. On the death of Sir +Robert Grierson of Lag, the devil, who had waited long for his prey, +manifested his sense of satisfaction by providing an elaborate funeral +cortége, which came over the sea at midnight, with nodding plumes and +sable horses, to carry off in ostentatious splendor the soul of this +much-honored guest. Prince Rupert was believed by the Roundheads to +owe his immunity from danger to the same diabolic agency which made +Claverhouse proof against leaden bullets; and his white dog, Boy, +was regarded with as much awe as was Dundee’s famous black charger, +the gift of the evil one himself. As a fact, Boy was not altogether +unworthy of his reputation, for he could fight almost as well as his +master, though unluckily without sharing in his advantages; for the +poor brute was shot at Marston Moor, in the very act of pulling down +a rebel. Even the clergy, it would seem, were not wholly averse to +Satan’s valuable patronage; for Wodrow--to whose claims as an historian +Mr. Morris is strangely lenient--tells us gravely how the unfortunate +Archbishop of St. Andrew’s cowered trembling in the Privy Council, when +Janet Douglas, then on trial for witchcraft, made bold to remind him of +the “meikle black devil” who was closeted with him the last Saturday at +midnight. + +But even our delighted appreciation of these very interesting and +characteristic legends cannot altogether blind us to the dubious +quality of history based upon such testimony, and it is a little +startling to see that, as years rolled by, the impression they created +remained practically undimmed. Colonel Fergusson, in the preface to +his delightful volume on The Laird of Lag, confesses that in his youth +it was still a favorite Halloween game to dress up some enterprising +member of the household as a hideous beast with a preternaturally long +nose,--made, in fact, of a saucepan handle; and that this creature, +who went prowling stealthily around the dim halls and firelit kitchen, +frightening the children into shrieks of terror, was supposed to +represent the stout old cavalier searching for his ancient foes the +Covenanters. Lag’s memory appears to have been given up by universal +consent to every species of opprobrium, and his misdeeds have so far +found no apologist, unless, indeed, Macaulay may count as one, when +he gracefully transfers part of them to Claverhouse’s shoulders. Mr. +Morris coldly mentions Sir Robert Grierson as “coarse, cruel, and +brutal beyond even the license of those days;” Colonel Fergusson is +far too clever to weaken the dramatic force of his book by hinting +that his hero was not a great deal worse than other men; and Scott, in +that inimitable romance, Wandering Willie’s Tale, has thrown a perfect +glamour of wickedness around the old laird’s name. But in truth, when +we come to search for sober proven facts; when we discard--reluctantly, +indeed, but under compulsion--the spiked barrel in which he was +pleased to roll the Covenanters, in Carthaginian fashion, down the +Scottish hills; and the iron hook in his cellar, from which it was his +playful fancy to depend them; and the wine which turned to clotted +blood ere it touched his lips; and the active copartnership of Satan in +his private affairs,--when we lay aside these picturesque traditions, +there is little left save a charge, not altogether uncommon, of +indecorum in his cups, the ever-vexed question of the Wigtown martyrs, +and a few rebels who were shot, like John Bell, after scant trial, but +who, Heaven knows, would have gained cold comfort by having their cases +laid before the council. On the other hand, it might be worth while to +mention that Lag was brave, honest, not rapacious, and, above all, true +to his colors when the tide had turned, and he was left alone in his +old age to suffer imprisonment and disgrace. + +But if the memory of a minor actor in these dark scenes has come down +to us so artistically embellished, what may we not expect of one who +played a leading part through the whole stormy drama? “The chief of +this Tophet on earth,” is the temperate phrase applied to Claverhouse +by Macaulay, and it sufficiently illustrates the position popularly +assigned him by his foes. Rumor asserted in his behalf her triumphant +immortality, and crystallized into tradition every floating charge +urged by the Covenanters against his fame. So potent and far-reaching +was her voice that it became in time a virtuous necessity to echo it; +and we actually find Southey writing to Scott in 1807, and regretting +that Wordsworth should have thought fit to introduce the Viscount of +Dundee into the sonnet on Killiecrankie, without any apparent censure +of his conduct. Scott, who took a somewhat easier view of poetical +obligations, and who probably thought that Killiecrankie was hardly +the fitting spot on which to recall Dundee’s shortcomings, wrote back +very plainly that he thought there had been censure enough already; +and nine years later he startled the good people of Edinburgh, on his +own account, by the publication of that eminently heterodox novel, Old +Mortality. Lockwood tells us that the theme was suggested to Sir Walter +by his friend Mr. Joseph Train, who, when visiting at Abbotsford, was +much struck by the solitary picture in the poet’s library, a portrait +of Graham of Claverhouse. + +“He expressed the surprise with which every one who had known Dundee +only in the pages of the Presbyterian annalists must see for the +first time that beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the most +pathetic dreams of romance. Scott replied that no character had been +so foully traduced as the Viscount of Dundee; that, thanks to Wodrow, +Cruikshanks, and such chroniclers, he who was every inch a soldier +and a gentleman still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian +desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in +league with the devil. + +“‘Might he not,’ said Train, ‘be made, in good hands, the hero of a +national romance, as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince +Charlie?’ + +“‘He might,’ said Scott, ‘but your western zealots would require to be +faithfully portrayed in order to bring him out with the right effect.’” + +Train then described to Sir Walter the singular character of Old +Mortality, and the result was that incomparable tale which took the +English reading world by storm, and provoked in Scotland a curious +fever of excitement, indignation, and applause. The most vigorous +protest against its laxity came from Thomas MacCrie, one of the +numerous biographers of John Knox, “who considered the representation +of the Covenanters in the story of Old Mortality as so unfair as +to demand, at his hands, a very serious rebuke.” This rebuke was +administered at some length in a series of papers published in +the Edinburgh Christian Instructor. Scott, the “Black Hussar of +Literature,” replied with much zest and spirit in the Quarterly Review; +cudgels were taken up on both sides, and the war went briskly on, until +Jeffrey the Great in some measure silenced the controversy by giving +it as his ultimatum that the treatment of an historical character in +a work of pure fiction was a matter of very trifling significance. It +is not without interest that we see the same querulous virtue that +winced under Sir Walter’s frank enthusiasm for Claverhouse uttering +its protest to-day against the more chilly and scrupulous vindications +of Mr. Morris’s biography. “An apology for the crimes of a hired +butcher,” one critic angrily calls the sober little volume, forgetting +in his heat that the term “hired butcher,” though most scathing in +sound, is equally applicable to any soldier, from the highest to the +lowest, who is paid by his government to kill his fellow-men. War is +a rough trade, and if we choose to call names, it is as easy any time +to say “butcher” as “hero.” Stronger words have not been lacking to +vilify Dundee, and many of these choice anathemas belong, one fears, +to Luther’s catalogue of “downright, infamous, scandalous lies.” +Their freshness, however, is as amazing as their ubiquity, and they +confront us every now and then in the most forlorn nooks and crannies +of literature. Not very long ago I was shut up for half an hour in a +boarding-house parlor, in company with a solitary little book entitled +Scheyichbi and the Strand, or Early Days along the Delaware. Its name +proved to be the only really attractive thing about it, and I was +speculating drearily as to whether Charles Lamb himself could have +extracted any amusement from its pages, when suddenly my eye lighted +on a sentence that read like an old familiar friend: “The cruelty, +the brutality, the mad, exterminating barbarity of Claverhouse, and +Lauderdale, and Jeffreys, the minions of episcopacy and the king.” +There it stood, venerably correct in sentiment, with a strangely +new location and surroundings. It is hard enough, surely, to see +Claverhouse pilloried side by side with the brute Jeffreys; but to meet +him on the banks of the Delaware is like encountering Ezzèlin Romano on +Fifth Avenue, or Julian the Apostate upon Boston Common. + +Much of this universal harmony of abuse may be fairly charged to +Macaulay, for it is he who in a few strongly written passages has +presented to the general reader that remarkable compendium of +wickedness commonly known as Dundee. “Rapacious and profane, of violent +temper and obdurate heart,” is the great historian’s description +of a man who sought but modest wealth, who never swore, and whose +imperturbable gentleness of manner was more appalling in its way than +the fiercest transports of rage. Under Macaulay’s hands Claverhouse +exhibits a degree of ubiquity and mutability that might well require +some supernatural basis to sustain it. He supports as many characters +as Saladin in the Talisman; appearing now as his brother David Graham, +in order to witness the trial of the Wigtown martyrs, and now as his +distant kinsman, Patrick Graham, when it becomes expedient to figure +as a dramatic feature of Argyle’s execution. He changes at will into +Sir Robert Grierson, and is thus made responsible for that highly +curious game which Wodrow and Howie impute to Lag’s troopers, and which +Macaulay describes with as much gravity as if it were the sacking +and pillage of some doomed Roman town. It is hard to understand the +precise degree of pleasure embodied in calling one’s self Apollyon and +one’s neighbor Beelzebub; it is harder still to be properly impressed +with the tremendous significance of the deed. I have known a bevy of +school-girls, who, after an exhaustive course of Paradise Lost, were +so deeply imbued with the sombre glories of the satanic court that +they assumed the names of its inhabitants; and, for the remainder of +that term, even the mysterious little notes that form so important an +element of boarding-school life began--heedless of grammar--with “Chère +Moloch,” and ended effusively with “Your ever-devoted Belial.” It is +quite possible that these children thought and hoped they were doing +something desperately wicked, only they lacked a historian to chronicle +their guilt. It is equally certain that Lag’s drunken troopers, if +they ever did divert themselves in the unbecoming manner ascribed +to them, might have been more profitably, and, it would seem, more +agreeably, employed. But, of one thing, at least, we may feel tolerably +confident. The pastime would have found scant favor in the eyes of +Claverhouse, who was a man of little imagination, of stern discipline, +and of fastidiously decorous habits. Why, even Wandering Willie does +him this much justice, when he describes him as alone amid the lost +souls, isolated in his contemptuous pride from their feasts and +dreadful merriment: “And there sat Claverhouse, as beautiful as when +he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down over his +laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to +hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them +all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance.” If +history be, as Napoleon asserts, nothing but fiction agreed upon, let +us go straight to the fountain-head, and enjoy our draught of romance +unspoiled by any dubious taint of veracity. + +Mr. Walter Bagehot, that most keen and tolerant of critics, has pointed +out to us with his customary acumen that Macaulay never appreciated in +the highest degree either of the two great parties--the Puritans and +the Cavaliers--who through so many stirring events embodied all the +life and color of English history. In regard to the former, it may be +safely said that whatever slights they have received at the hands of +other historians have been amply atoned for by Carlyle. He has thrown +the whole weight of his powerful personality into their scale, and has +fairly frightened us into that earnestness of mind which is requisite +for a due appreciation of their merits. His fine scorn for the pleasant +vices which ensnare humanity extended itself occasionally to things +which are pleasant without being vicious; and under his leadership +we hardly venture to hint at a certain sneaking preference for the +gayer side of life. When Hazlitt, with a shameless audacity rare among +Englishmen, disencumbers himself lightly of his conscience, and +apostrophizes the reign of Charles II. as that “happy, thoughtless age, +when king and nobles led purely ornamental lives,” we feel our flesh +chilled at such a candid avowal of volatility. Surely Hazlitt must +have understood that it is precisely the fatal picturesqueness of that +period to which we, as moralists, so strenuously object. The courts of +the first two Hanoverians were but little better or purer, but they +were at least uglier, and we can afford to look with some leniency upon +their short-comings. His sacred majesty George II. was hardly, save in +the charitable eyes of Bishop Porteus, a shining example of rectitude; +but let us rejoice that it never lay in the power of any human being to +hint that he was in the smallest degree ornamental. + +The Puritan, then, has been wafted into universal esteem by the breath +of his great eulogist; but the Cavalier still waits for his historian. +Poets and painters and romancers have indeed loved to linger over +this warm, impetuous life, so rich in vigor and beauty, so full to +the brim of a hardy adventurous joy. Here, they seem to say, far more +than in ancient Greece, may be realized the throbbing intensity of +an unreflecting happiness. For the Greek drank deeply of the cup of +knowledge, and its bitterness turned his laughter into tears; the +Cavalier looked straight into the sunlight with clear, joyous eyes, +and troubled himself not at all with the disheartening problems of +humanity. How could a mind like Macaulay’s, logical, disciplined, +and gravely intolerant, sympathize for a moment with this utterly +irresponsible buoyancy! How was he, of all men, to understand this +careless zest for the old feast of life, this unreasoning loyalty to +an indifferent sovereign, this passionate devotion to a church and +easy disregard of her precepts, this magnificent wanton courage, this +gay prodigality of enjoyment! It was his loss, no less than ours, +that, in turning over the pages of the past, he should miss half of +their beauty and their pathos; for History, that calumniated muse, +whose sworn votaries do her little honor, has illuminated every inch +of her parchment with a strong, generous hand, and does not mean that +we should contemptuously ignore the smallest fragment of her work. The +superb charge of Rupert’s cavalry; that impetuous rush to battle, +before which no mortal ranks might stand unbroken; the little group +of heart-sick Cavaliers who turned at sunset from the lost field of +Marston Moor, and beheld their queen’s white standard floating over the +enemy’s ranks; the scaffolds of Montrose and King Charles; the more +glorious death of Claverhouse, pressing the blood-stained grass, and +listening for the last time to the far-off cries of victory; Sidney +Godolphin flinging away his life, with all its abundant promise and +whispered hopes of fame; beautiful Francis Villiers lying stabbed to +the heart in Surbiton lane, with his fair boyish face turned to the +reddening sky,--these and many other pictures History has painted +for us on her scroll, bidding us forget for a moment our formidable +theories and strenuous partisanship, and suffer our hearts to be simply +and wholesomely stirred by the brave lives and braver deaths of our +mistaken brother men. + +“Every matter,” observes Epictetus, “has two handles by which it +may be grasped;” and the Cavalier is no exception to the rule. We +may, if we choose, regard him from a purely moral point of view, +as a lamentably dissolute and profligate courtier; or from a purely +picturesque point of view, as a gallant and loyal soldier; or we may, +if we are wise, take him as he stands, making room for him cheerfully +as a fellow-creature, and not vexing our souls too deeply over his +brilliant divergence from our present standard. It is like a breath of +fresh air blown from a roughening sea to feel, even at this distance +of time, that strong young life beating joyously and eagerly against +the barriers of the past; to see those curled and scented aristocrats +who, like the “dandies of the Crimea,” could fight as well as dance, +facing pleasure and death, the ball-room and the battle-field, with the +same smiling front, the same unflagging enthusiasm. No wonder that Mr. +Bagehot, analyzing with friendly sympathy the strength and weakness +of the Cavalier, should find himself somewhat out of temper with an +historian’s insensibility to virtues so primitive and recognizable in a +not too merry world. + +“The greatness of this character is not in Macaulay’s way, and its +faults are. Its license affronts him, its riot alienates him. He is +forever contrasting the dissoluteness of Prince Rupert’s horse with +the restraint of Cromwell’s pikemen. A deep, enjoying nature finds in +him no sympathy. He has no tears for that warm life, no tenderness +for that extinct mirth. The ignorance of the Cavaliers, too, moves +his wrath: ‘They were ignorant of what every schoolgirl knows.’ Their +loyalty to their sovereign is the devotion of the Egyptians to the god +Apis: ‘They selected a calf to adore.’ Their non-resistance offends the +philosopher; their license is commented on in the tone of a precisian. +Their indecorum does not suit the dignity of the narrator. Their rich, +free nature is unappreciated; the tingling intensity of their joy is +unnoticed. In a word, there is something of the schoolboy about the +Cavalier; there is somewhat of a schoolmaster about the historian.”[14] + +That the gay gentlemen who glittered in the courts of the Stuarts +were enviably ignorant of much that, for some inscrutable reason, +we feel ourselves obliged to know to-day may be safely granted, and +scored at once to the account of their good fortune. It is probable +that they had only the vaguest notions about Sesostris, and could +not have defined an hypothesis of homophones with any reasonable +degree of accuracy. But they were possessed, nevertheless, of a +certain information of their own, not garnered from books, and not +always attainable to their critics. They knew life in its varying +phases, from the delicious trifling of a polished and witty society +to the stern realities of the camp and battle-field. They knew the +world, women, and song, three things as pleasant and as profitable +in their way as Hebrew, Euclid, and political economy. They knew how +to live gracefully, to fight stoutly, and to die honorably; and how +to extract from the gray routine of existence a wonderfully distinct +flavor of novelty and enjoyment. There were among them, as among the +Puritans, true lovers, faithful husbands, and tender fathers; and +the indiscriminate charge of dissoluteness on the one side, like the +indiscriminate charge of hypocrisy on the other, is a cheap expression +of our individual intolerance. + +The history of the Cavalier closes with Killiecrankie. The waning +prestige of a once powerful influence concentrated itself in +Claverhouse, the latest and strongest figure on its canvas, the +accepted type of its most brilliant and defiant qualities. Readers of +old-fashioned novels may remember a lachrymose story, in two closely +printed volumes, which enjoyed an amazing popularity some twenty years +ago, and which was called The Last of the Cavaliers. It had for its +hero a perfectly impossible combination of virtues, a cross between +the Chevalier Bayard and the Admirable Crichton, labeled Dundee, +and warranted proof against all the faults and foibles of humanity. +This automaton, who moved in a rarefied atmosphere through the whole +dreary tale, performing noble deeds and uttering virtuous sentiments +with monotonous persistency, embodied, we may presume, the author’s +conception of a character not generally credited with such superfluous +excellence. It was a fine specimen of imaginative treatment, and not +wholly unlike some very popular historic methods by which similar +results are reached to-day. Quite recently, a despairing English +critic, with an ungratified taste for realities, complained somewhat +savagely that “a more intolerable embodiment of unrelieved excellence +and monotonous success than the hero of the pious Gladstonian’s +worship was never moulded out of plaster of Paris.” He was willing +enough to yield his full share of admiration, but he wanted to see +the real, human, interesting Gladstone back of all this conventional +and disheartening mock-heroism; and, in the same spirit, we would +like sometimes to see the real Claverhouse back of all the dramatic +accessories in which he has been so liberally disguised. + +But where, save perhaps in the ever-delightful pages of Old Mortality, +shall we derive any moderate gratification from our search? Friends +are apt to be as ill advised as foes, and Dundee’s eulogists, from +Napier to Aytoun, have been distinguished rather for the excellence +of their intentions than for any great felicity of execution. The +“lion-hearted warrior,” for whom Aytoun flings wide the gates of +Athol, might be Cœur-de-Lion himself, or Marshal Ney, or Stonewall +Jackson, or any other brave fighter. There is no distinctive flavor of +the Graeme in the somewhat long-winded hero, with his “falcon eye,” +and his “war-horse black as night,” and his trite commonplaces about +foreign gold and Highland honor. On the other hand, the verdict of the +disaffected may be summed up in the extraordinary lines with which +Macaulay closes his account of Killiecrankie, and of Dundee’s brief, +glorious struggle for his king: “During the last three months of his +life he had proved himself a great warrior and politician, and his name +is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons +who think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage +and ability do not atone.” No excess of wickedness! One wonders what +more could be said if we were discussing Tiberius or Caligula, or if +colder words were ever used to chill a soldier’s fame. Mr. Mowbray +Morris, the latest historian in the field, seems divided between a +natural desire to sift the evidence for all this wickedness and a +polite disinclination to say anything rude during the process, “a +common impertinence of the day,” in which he declares he has no wish +to join. This is exceedingly pleasant and courteous, though hardly of +primary importance; for a biographer’s sole duty is, after all, to the +subject of his biography, and not to Macaulay, who can hold his own +easily enough without any assistance whatever. When Sir James Stephens +published, some years ago, his very earnest and accurate vindication +of Sir Elijah Impey from the charges so lavishly brought against him +in that matchless essay on Warren Hastings, he expressed at the same +time his serene conviction that the great world would go on reading +the essay and believing the charges just the same,--a new rendering +of “Magna est veritas et prævalebit,” which brings it very near to +Hesiod’s primitive experience. + +As for Mr. Morris’s book, it is a carefully dispassionate study of +a wild and stormy time, with a gray shadow of Claverhouse flitting +faintly through it. In his wholesome dislike for the easy confidence +with which historians assume to know everything, its author has touched +the opposite extreme, and manifests such conscientious indecision as +to the correctness of every document he quotes, that our heads fairly +swim with accumulated uncertainties. This method of narration has one +distinct advantage,--it cannot lead us far into error; but neither can +it carry us forward impetuously with the mighty rush of great events, +and make us feel in our hearts the real and vital qualities of history. +Mr. Morris proves very clearly and succinctly that Claverhouse has +been, to use his temperate expression, “harshly judged,” and that much +of the cruelty assigned to him may be easily and cheaply refuted. He +does full justice to the scrupulous decorum of his hero’s private life, +and to the wonderful skill with which, after James’s flight, he roused +and held together the turbulent Highland clans, impressing even these +rugged spirits with the charm and force of his vigorous personality. +In the field Claverhouse lived like the meanest of his men; sharing +their poor food and hard lodgings, marching by their side through the +bitter winter weather, and astonishing these hardy mountaineers by +a power of physical endurance fully equal to their own. The memory +of his brilliant courage, of his gracious tact, even of his rare +personal beauty, dwelt with them for generations, and found passionate +expression in that cry wrung from the sore heart of the old chieftain +at Culloden, “Oh, for one hour of Dundee!” + +But in the earlier portions of Mr. Morris’s narrative, in the scenes +at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, at Ayrshire and Clydesdale, we +confess that we look in vain for the Claverhouse of our fancy. Can it +be that this energetic, modest, and rather estimable young soldier, +distinguished, apparently, for nothing save prompt and accurate +obedience to his orders, is the man who, in a few short years, made +himself so feared and hated that it became necessary to credit him with +the direct patronage of Satan? One is tempted to quote Mr. Swinburne’s +pregnant lines concerning another enigmatic character of Scottish +history:-- + + “Some faults the gods will give to fetter + Man’s highest intent, + But surely you were something better + Than innocent.” + +Of the real Dundee we catch only flying glimpses here and there,--on +his wedding night, for instance, when he is off and away after +the now daring rebels, leaving his bride of an hour to weep his +absence, and listen with what patience she might to her mother’s +assiduous reproaches. “I shall be revenged some time or other of the +unseasonable trouble these dogs give me,” grumbles the young husband +with pardonable irritation. “They might have let Tuesday pass.” It is +the real Dundee, likewise, who, in the gray of early morning, rides +briskly out of Edinburgh in scant time to save his neck, scrambles +up the castle rock for a last farewell to Gordon, and is off to the +north to raise the standard of King James, “wherever the spirit of +Montrose shall direct me.” In vain Hamilton and the convention send +word imperatively, “Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed.” The wily +bird declines the invitation, and has been censured with some asperity +for his unpatriotic reluctance to comply. For one short week of rest +he lingers at Dudhope, where his wife is awaiting her confinement, and +then flies further northward to Glen Ogilvy, whither a regiment is +quickly sent to apprehend him. There is a reward of twenty thousand +pounds sterling on his head, but he who thinks to win it must move, +like Hödr, with his feet shod in silence. By the time Livingstone +and his dragoons reach Glamis, Dundee is far in the Highlands, and +henceforth all the fast-darkening hopes of the loyalists are centred +in him alone. For him remain thirteen months of incredible hardships +and anxiety, a single stolen visit to his wife and infant son, +heart-sick appeals to James for some recognition of the desperate +efforts made in his behalf, a brilliant irregular campaign, a last +decisive victory, and a soldier’s death. “It is the less matter for +me, seeing the day goes well for my master,” he answers simply, when +told of his mortal hurt; and in this unfaltering loyalty we read the +life-long lesson of the Cavalier. If, as a recent poet tells us, the +memory of Nero be not wholly vile, because one human being was found to +weep for him, surely the memory of James Stuart may be forgiven much +because of this faithful service. It is hard to understand it now. + + “In God’s name, then, what plague befell us, + To fight for such a thing?” + +is our modern way of looking at the problem; but the mental processes +of the Cavalier were less inquisitorial and analytic. “I am no +politician, and I do not care about nice distinctions,” says Major +Bellenden bluntly, when requested to consider the insurgents’ side of +the case. “My sword is the king’s, and when he commands, I draw it in +his service.” + +As for that other and better known Claverhouse, the determined foe of +the Covenant, the unrelenting and merciless punisher of a disobedient +peasantry, he, too, is best taken as he stands; shorn, indeed, of +Wodrow’s extravagant embellishments, but equally free from the delicate +gloss of a too liberal absolution. He was a soldier acting under the +stringent orders of an angry government, and he carried out the harsh +measures entrusted to him with a stern and impartial severity. Those +were turbulent times, and the wild western Whigs had given decisive +proof on more than one occasion that they were ill disposed to figure +as mere passive martyrs to their cause. + + “For treason, d’ ye see, + Was to them a dish of tea, + And murder, bread and butter.” + +They were stout fighters, too, taking as kindly to their carnal +as to their spiritual weapons, and a warfare against them was as +ingloriously dangerous as the melancholy skirmishes of our own army +with the Indians, who, it would seem, were driven to the war-path by +a somewhat similar mode of treatment. There is not the slightest +evidence, however, that Claverhouse was averse either to the danger or +the cruelty of the work he was given to do. Religious toleration was +then an unknown quantity. The Church of England and her Presbyterian +neighbor persecuted each other with friendly assiduity, while Rome was +more than willing, should an opportunity offer, to lay a chastening +hand on both. If there were any new-fangled notions in the air about +private judgment and the rights of conscience, Claverhouse was the +last man in England to have been a pioneer in such a movement. He was +passionately attached to his church, unreservedly loyal to his king, +and as indifferent as Hamlet to his own life and the lives of other +people. It is strange to hear Mr. Morris excuse him for his share in +the death of the lad Hyslop, by urging in his behalf a Pilate-like +disinclination to quarrel with a powerful ally, and risk a censure from +court. Never was there a man who brooked opposition as impatiently, +when he felt that his interests or his principles were at stake; but +it is to be feared that the shooting of a Covenanter more or less was +hardly, in his eyes, a matter of vital importance. This attitude of +unconcern is amply illustrated in the letter written by Claverhouse to +Queensberry after the execution of John Brown, “the Christian carrier,” +for the sole crime of absenting himself from the public worship of +the Episcopalians, says Macaulay; for outlawry and resetting of +rebels, hint less impassioned historians. Be this as it may, however, +John Brown was shot in the Ploughlands; and his nephew, seeing the +soldiers’ muskets leveled next at him, consented, on the promise of +being recommended for mercy, to make “an ingenuous confession,” and +give evidence against his uncle’s associates. Accordingly, we find +Claverhouse detailing these facts to Queensberry, and adding in the +most purely neutral spirit,-- + +“I have acquitted myself when I have told your Grace the case. He [the +nephew] has been but a month or two with his halbert; and if your +Grace thinks he deserves no mercy, justice will pass on him; for I, +having no commission of justiciary myself, have delivered him up to the +lieutenant-general, to be disposed of as he pleases.” + +Here, at least, is a sufficiently candid exposition of Claverhouse’s +habitual temper. He was, in no sense of the word, bloodthirsty. The +test oath was not of his contriving; the penalty for its refusal was +not of his appointing. He was willing enough to give his prisoner the +promised chance for life; but as for any real solicitude in the matter, +you might as well expect Hamlet to be solicitous because, by an awkward +misapprehension, a foolish and innocent old man has been stabbed like a +rat behind the arras. + +When Plutarch was asked why he did not oftener select virtuous +characters to write about, he intimated that he found the sinners more +interesting; and while his judgment is to be deprecated, it can hardly +be belied. We revere Marcus Aurelius, but we delight in Cæsar; we +admire Sir Robert Peel, but we enjoy Richelieu; we praise Wellington, +but we never weary of Napoleon. “Our being,” says Montaigne, “is +cemented with sickly qualities; and whoever should divest man of the +seeds of those qualities would destroy the fundamental conditions of +human life.” It is idle to look to Claverhouse for precisely the +virtues which we most esteem in John Howard; but we need not, on that +account, turn our eyes reproachfully from one of the most striking +and characteristic figures in English history. He was not merely a +picturesque feature of his cause, like Rupert of the Rhine, nor a +martyr to its fallen hopes, like the Marquis of Montrose; he was its +single chance, and, with his death, it died. In versatility and daring, +in diplomatic shrewdness and military acumen, he far outranked any +soldier of his day. “The charm of an engaging personality,” says a +recent critic, “belongs to Montrose, and the pity of his death deepens +the romance of his life; but the strong man was Dundee.” + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[14] _Literary Studies_, vol. ii. + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + +Page 12: “Marquis de Montmirail” changed to “Marquise de Montmirail” +“to the acount” changed to “to the account” + +Page 44: “La virtu n’iroit” changed to “La vertu n’iroit” + +Page 60: “Jacque Roulet” changed to “Jacques Roulet” + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75456 *** |