PART I

REGINALD BATEMAN

STUDENT AND TEACHER

FRANCIS THOMPSON

_A paper given before the Faculty Club in 1913_

The recent publication, April 1913, of the first collected edition of

Francis Thompson's works, followed in August by an authentic biography

of the poet, has focussed general attention upon the man and his work.

Hitherto, if known to the general reader at all, he has been known

mainly by one poem, _The Hound of Heaven_, and the majority of the

reading public has not yet discovered that Thompson is the author of a

large body of poetry fully worthy to rank with _The Hound of Heaven_ in

poetical quality. Even to the few who are familiar with his poetry,

the story of his life, one of the most romantic in the annals of our

literature, came as a revelation.

To the inner circle of literary people Thompson as a poet has been

known for twenty years. With his first volume of poems, published

1893, Thompson, as one admirer expressed it, "reached the peak of

Parnassus at a bound." The critics, usually so conservative in their

estimate of a new poet, were not only favourable, but in most cases so

far forgot themselves as to become enthusiastic. For parallels to the

austere passion and purity of Thompson's love-poetry, to the richness

and strangeness of his imagery, the splendour and luxuriance of his

vocabulary, and the loftiness of his inspiration, they turned without

apology to the greatest names of our literature.

From this unusually favourable first opinion there was naturally a

reaction. Thompson's second volume of 1895, _Sister Songs_, and still

more his third volume of 1897, _New Poems_, with its increased

symbolism and mysticism, met with vicious abuse as well as generous

praise. By 1907, however, the date of Thompson's death, his reputation

was well established, and from that time to the present, the tide of

criticism seems to have set strongly in his favour. To-day few critics

would deny him to be the most remarkable of recent poets.

A fresh wave of interest was aroused last year when the complete and

final edition of his works was published. This reawakened interest is

likely to have the effect of passing his merit again under review, and

we shall have some opportunity of judging whether he is to fade from

the sight of men like a brilliant but unlasting meteor, whether he is

to be like Keats and Shelley, the chosen poet of a small and select

circle of readers, or whether, like Tennyson and Browning, he is to win

the suffrages of the man on the street.

Personally, while I believe that Thompson will ultimately take a place

among the greatest of our nineteenth century poets, I think it

extremely unlikely that he will ever be popular. The atmosphere he

lives in is too rare for the ordinary man to breathe with comfort. His

emotions are too subtle, his passion too austere, his harmonies too

refined to catch the ear of the crowd. A few of his poems, like _The

Hound of Heaven_, which is already widely known, may become popular,

but I can recall no other which seems to me likely to make an universal

appeal.

Before passing to a sketch of Thompson's romantic career, let me dwell

for a short while on the more striking qualities of his genius. My

first impressions of Thompson have to do more with style than with

subject matter. To the literary critic making the acquaintance of a

new poet it matters less, perhaps, what the poet says than how he says

it. Harmony, rhythm, language, technique--these things are of vital

importance. It is true that we may often desire of our poets "more

matter and less art," but on the other hand matter without art has

never won the name of great poetry. There is a largeness and finality

of utterance, an appearance of inevitability about the best work of the

great masters, that is unmistakable. It is as if the Muse of Poetry

herself had spoken and not a mere mortal man.

Last came and last did go

The Pilot of the Galilean lake.

Such words as these grow not upon mortal soil.

What one looks for, then, first of all in a new poet is the grand

style, the authentic note, the phrases stamped with the tool of the

eternal graver. In the search for it, one's only guide is instinct, an

instinct formed by constant study of what is admittedly the best. And

the search for this distinction of style is doomed so often to be

disappointed that even a line or a phrase which seems to possess it is

gladly welcomed.

But in Thompson's case the inspiration is not confined to occasional

flashes. No matter where I opened his book, almost every line seemed

to me to bear the hall-mark of great poetry. Take even the six lines

of the dedication of _New Poems_ to Coventry Patmore; you find, I

think, that they ring true, that they have the great utterance.

Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down,

Under the banner of your spread renown!

Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme

Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time,

Yet this one page shall find oblivious shame,

Armed with your crested and prevailing Name.

In reading Thompson's poems one has neither, as in the case of most

moderns, to adjust oneself to a completely new and perhaps freakish

style, nor to reconcile oneself to a more or less obvious imitation of

our greatest recent poets. Thompson is not at all modern; to one

familiar with seventeenth century English literature he comes like an

old friend; and yet he is no imitator; he is absolutely individual. If

a student of literature were given the poems without being told the

author, he would probably get the impression that some forgotten poet

of the seventeenth century had been re-discovered. For Thompson's

poems do not smack of the nineteenth century; they have few echoes of

Tennyson or Browning or Swinburne or any nineteenth century poet

except, perhaps, Shelley; they have rather a strong flavour of our

elder poetry, and while rich, perhaps over-rich, in imagery, give one

an impression of close-knit, sinewy strength very different from the

milk-and-watery mildness or the sensuous lusciousness of much modern

verse. This effect is enhanced by their vocabulary, which contains

many words strange to the modern ear, and which takes one back to Sir

Thomas Browne, Milton, Cowley, and Crashaw.

The _Ode to the Setting Sun_ and the _Anthem of Earth_ illustrate to

some extent another very prominent characteristic of Thompson, that he

is a daring and successful experimenter in metre and language. He does

not follow slavishly in the beaten track of other poets; he frames

metrical moulds for himself to suit the quality of his own glowing

thought. The poems are full of new and difficult metres, handled with

perfect mastery; they are full of experiments with language which most

modern poets would not dare to make, but which in Thompson nearly

always seem to justify themselves.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Thompson's poetry is the quality

of his imagery. A great poet must be rich in imagery, for it is the

imagery of poetry that discloses to us its hidden soul. Thompson's

imagery at once astonishes by its ingenuity and captivates by its

beauty. In the former quality he rivals Cowley and Crashaw, in the

latter he is far beyond them. One critic remarked that Thompson must

surely be Crashaw born again, but born greater. If Thompson's imagery

has a fault, it is that there is too much of it; he himself recognized

this fault and endeavoured to correct it. Alice Meynell remarked that

many poets could be furnished with imagery, not from the abundance of

Thompson's, but from its super-abundance.

Here are a few samples, chosen almost at random, of the quality of

Thompson's imagery:

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Under my ruined passions fallen and sere

The wild dreams stir, like little radiant girls,

Whom in the moulted plumage of the year,

Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls.

In a more commonplace style of imagery, but still splendidly handled,

is the following from _Sister Songs_:

Or may this treasure-galleon of my verse,

Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,

Set with a towering press of fantasies,

Drop safely down the time,

Leaving mine isled self behind it far,

Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,

(As down the years the splendour voyages

From some long-ruined and night-submerged star).

The foregoing extracts impress one also with another noteworthy and

very important quality of Thompson's verse--its remarkable metrical

effects. Watts-Dunton rightly says that in addition to intellectual

and emotional life, great poetry must have rhythmic life. Unless the

rhythm of any metrical passage is so vivid, so natural, and so free

that it seems as though it could live, if need were, by its rhythm

alone, that passage, according to Watts-Dunton, has no right to exist

as poetry. One sign by which one may know that poetry possesses

rhythmic life is that passages of it will sing themselves in one's head

for days after reading them. Arnold Bennett tells us that after

reading _Sister Songs_ he went about for days repeating such passages

as:

The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,

Moves all the labouring surges of the world.

After reading Thompson first, I went about for days repeating over and

over again passages from his poems, not for their meaning, for the

meaning in many cases was not clear, but just for the sound and beat of

them, such passages as:

On Ararat there grew a vine...

or

I am Daniel's mystic mountain...

Everyone knows Kipling's picture of sunrise in _Mandalay_:

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay.

This is commonplace beside Thompson's version of the same thought in

_The Mistress of Vision_:

East, ah, east of Himalay

Dwell the nations underground;

Hiding from the shock of Day,

For the sun's uprising sound:

Dare not issue from the ground

At the tumults of the Day,

So fearfully the sun doth sound,

Clanging up beyond Cathay,

For the great earth-quaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay.

Lastly, Thompson's poetry impresses one with a sense of sublimity, in

the strict, literal meaning of the word, which is _upliftedness_.

Thompson seems always uplifted to a high level of inspiration; his wing

seems never to flag nor his voice to tire. The reason for this

consistent loftiness of Thompson's poetry is probably that to Thompson

the writing of poetry was an act of worship, and that the main spring

of his inspiration is religious enthusiasm. He never wrote except when

he felt that he must write. He was only, he says, the conduit-pipe

through which flowed the divine utterance. Speaking of poets he says:

We speak a lesson taught we know not how,

And what it is that from us flows

The hearer better than the utterer knows.

In every line of Thompson's verse one finds evidence of "the vision and

the faculty divine," and when after his brief period of song that

vision faded and that faculty failed, he wrote no more. Thompson wrote

because he must write. Like Keats he was haunted perpetually by an

image of the ideal Beauty, to which he was ever striving to attain.

Poetry sometimes seems to him his curse, and not his blessing.

Deaf is he to the world's tongue;

He scorneth for his song

The loud

Shouts of the crowd.

He measureth world's pleasure

World's ease, as Saints might measure;

For hire

Just love entire.

He asks, not grudging pain;

And knows his asking vain,

And cries

Love, love, and dies,

In guerdon of long duty

Unowned by Love or Beauty;

And goes--

Tell, tell who knows.

Francis Thompson was accustomed to crest all his manuscripts with the

sign of the cross; and just as all his verse may be said to have been

written under the inspiration of the cross, so his life may be said to

have been lived under its shadow. The Hand that wrought out his

destiny must have placed over its finished work the sign of mingled

shame and glory, of suffering and triumph. Life was too strong for

Thompson; it crushed him beneath its hurrying feet; it stunned him with

its tumults; it withheld from him the love for which his soul craved;

but out of the defeat of his life rose the triumph of his verse.

It seems that Thompson sank to the lowest depths of life's misery that

he might rise to its highest pinnacle of inspiration. It was when

pitiless London had almost crushed the life out of him, and when his

eyes were blinded with pain to the things around him, that the heavenly

vision was clearest. On the day when he, "poor thief of song," was

nailed to his bitterest cross, he heard most clearly a voice saying,

"To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

It was in recollection of some such mood, experienced as an outcast on

the London streets, that he wrote the verses, _The Kingdom of God_,

found in manuscript among his papers after his death, which illustrate

as well as any other single poem the extraordinary inter-blending of

the seen and the unseen in his poetry. His own words about Shelley

apply with equal force to himself: "He stood at the very junction lines

of the visible and invisible, and could shift the points as he willed."

Francis Thompson was born at Preston, Lancashire, in 1859, the son of

Charles Thompson, a doctor, afterwards in practice at

Ashton-under-Lyne. His literary genius cannot be explained on any

theory of heredity. The fact that his father seemed absolutely (and

almost culpably) blind to his son's artistic nature seems to me to

account in large measure for the tragedy of Thompson's youth. Later,

when the son became famous, no one was more surprised than Charles

Thompson, but though the success of his son's poetry must have touched

his pride, it did not penetrate to his intellect, for he confessed that

he was quite unable to understand it. We must, then, acquit Charles

Thompson of having any act or part in his son's literary attainments;

and from all accounts, his mother was equally innocent of literary

talent.

But, though the poet owed none of his genius to his parents, he owed

them something more important, something which proved to be the very

life-spring of that genius, namely, his religious enthusiasm. Thompson

is first and last a religious poet. In him and his contemporary,

Patmore, Roman Catholicism, which had for centuries, almost, in fact,

since the days of Dante, relinquished to poets of other faiths the

chief glories of song, found a voice. The mysteries of religion were

Thompson's chief inspiration, the interpretation of them his highest

task. His father and mother, and the majority of his uncles and aunts

were converts to the Roman Catholic Church; but whereas their spirit of

worship was dumb, in Thompson all that is best in Roman Catholicism is

glorified in shining verse.

Thompson, however, is not a sectarian poet. He is too great for that.

It is the spirit of universal religion that breathes in his verse. The

poetry of the Victorian era, which for many years had been groping

after religious faith, found with Thompson the note of absolute

certainty. "The people that walked in darkness saw in him a great

light." "To be the poet of the return to Patmore is somewhat," he

said, "but I would be the poet of the return to God."

Thompson, a sensitive, delicate child, was brought up with his two

sisters, and seems to have been remarkable in childhood chiefly for his

gentleness and capacity for make-believe. At the age of eleven he left

the shelter of his home for Ushaw, a Roman Catholic college near

Durham, where he endured at first the same miseries as fall to the lot

of most high-strung, sensitive boys, when exposed to the brutalities of

a large English boarding school. His was the fate of Cowper and

Shelley, and in Thompson's _Essay on Shelley_, which (leaving aside its

magnificence as a piece of prose writing) is valuable less for its

comments on Shelley than for the light which it throws on Thompson

himself, the remarks on the persecution endured at school by Shelley

are suggested by Thompson's own experiences. Probably none of either

Thompson's teachers or schoolfellows perceived in him the tokens of

future greatness. He passed through his school-days, as in the main he

passed through life, with his true self hidden from all observers under

an impenetrable reserve.

Thompson's father intended him for the priesthood, and to that end his

studies were directed during the whole seven years of his stay at

Ushaw. Probably the training he received, particularly his study of

the Missal and hymns of the Church, had no small effect upon his later

verse. Though he took a high place in his literary classes,

particularly in English, and though his teachers thought highly of his

ability, they became gradually convinced that his nervous timidity and

constitutional indolence rendered him unfit for the priesthood. The

principal of the college wrote to that effect to his father in 1877,

while at the same time expressing his belief that if Thompson could

shake off his natural indolence he had ability to succeed in any career.

Thompson therefore returned home in 1877, to the great disappointment

of his parents. The indolence which proved his undoing was, says his

biographer, Everard Meynell, only "one name of many for the

abstractions of Thompson's mind and the inactivities of his body."

Against this indolence he struggled nobly all his life. Not a lifetime

of mornings spent in bed killed his desire to be up and doing. Even in

the trembling hand of his last months he wrote out in big capitals on

pages torn from exercise books such texts as were calculated to

frighten him into his clothes. In the morning when he woke his eyes

fell upon such words as these, "Thou wilt not he abed when the last

trump blows," "Thy sleep with the worms will be long enough," and so

on, but all in vain. Thompson's indolence was not a mental but a

physical characteristic. His poor, disordered body refused exertion

and was too sluggish for all Thompson's spiritual energy to rouse.

Apparently, however, this indolence and absence of mind would have

caused Thompson to fail in any regular profession, and perhaps his

father is as much to be pitied as blamed for his next strenuous attempt

to make Francis capable of earning his own livelihood.

After Thompson's failure at Ushaw, his father decided to prepare his

son for his own profession, and sent him to take a medical course at

Owen's College, Manchester. For the following six years Thompson

pretended to study medicine. He made the journey from home to lectures

every morning under compulsion, but once out of sight of the parental

eye his day was his own, and was spent anywhere rather than at the

lecture or in the dissecting room. He wandered about Manchester, an

untidy, abstracted figure with trailing shoe-laces and careless dress,

indifferent to passers-by, and muttering a continual soliloquy. He

haunted the libraries, museums, and galleries of the city, and while

his father thought his son was preparing himself to earn a competence

as a respectable practising physician, the son was really equipping

himself all unconsciously for the career which was to win him, not

indeed a competence, but an undying name in English poetry. It was at

this time, in poring over our sixteenth and seventeenth century

writers, that Thompson acquired his wonderful vocabulary, which

contains so many forgotten words that the critics later accused him of

wholesale coinage, and which gives his verse that rich flavour of

antiquity which is no small part of its charm.

At this time, too, Thompson made the acquaintance of De Quincey, "his

very own De Quincey," a writer to whose career Thompson's in many

respects bears an extraordinary resemblance. De Quincey naturally drew

his attention to opium, with disastrous results. Opium-eating was in

the air of Manchester, the cotton-spinners being much addicted to its

use, and Thompson became a victim. With a short interval he was a user

of opium to the end of his days. It is difficult to estimate the

effect of the drug habit on Thompson's writings; personally, I doubt

that it had any effect. It certainly had no direct effect, for we have

his own solemn assurance that none of his published verse (except one

poem, _The Dream Tryst_) was written under its influence. In fact, his

first outburst of poetry came apparently as a result of his temporary

breaking-off of the drug habit, after he had been rescued from the

London streets; and during the few years of his poetic productiveness

he seems to have freed himself from the influence of opium. Thompson

thought too highly of poetry and of his mission as a poet to use opium

as a stimulus to verse-making. In the latter years of his life he went

back again to the drug as a relief from incessant physical weakness and

misery, and who that has not suffered equally can blame him?

But though opium affected Thompson's genius little, if at all, it

certainly affected his character, and made whatever was weak and slack,

weaker and slacker. He proved a complete failure at Owen's College,

and was given a trial at Glasgow with similar results. His father was

in despair. Hundreds of pounds from his scanty income had been spent

for lectures to which his son had not listened, for the fees of

examiners who got no papers to examine, and for courses in dissection

during which Francis had not been once to the dissecting table. Opium,

however, cannot be blamed for Thompson's failure; he must have failed

anyway; it only made his failure more complete and hopeless. On the

other hand, it had undoubtedly in one way a beneficial physical effect.

On this subject his biographer remarks: "It staved off the assaults of

tuberculosis; it gave him the wavering strength that made life just

possible for him, whether on the streets, or through all those other

distresses and discomforts that it was his character deeply to resent,

but not to remove by any normal courses."

Dr. Thompson took Francis away from college and next set him to work

with a surgical instrument maker. There he remained two weeks. His

next attempt at work was as agent for a new encyclopaedia. This book

it took him two months to read through, and he did not sell a single

copy. His father then told him that he must enlist. Thompson obeyed

without a word. He was rejected as physically unfit, but not before he

had gone through a weary period of marching and drill in the endeavour

to expand his chest to the necessary inches. Thompson once more

returned home, as he did from each successive failure, saying simply,

"I have not succeeded," and vouchsafing no explanation. There were

apparently no confidences between Thompson and his father; Dr. Thompson

knew nothing of his son's literary ambitions. His comment when later

he found his son welcomed as a poet was: "If the lad had but told me!"

but it is doubtful, as Mr. Mills says, "that the worthy doctor regarded

the greenest of poetic laurels as a fair exchange for a thriving

medical practice."

This time Thompson's reception seems to have been unusually chilling,

and in a hopeless mood he left home without saying good-bye, and

started for London with no money but his fare, and with no baggage but

a volume of Blake in one pocket and Aeschylus in another. Friendless,

incompetent, aimless, he threw himself into the maw of the great city

which has devoured so many poets, and soon plumbed the very depths of

poverty and despair. For three years he drifted about London, sinking

continually lower, and the astonishing thing is that he came through

the ordeal alive.

His feeble attempts at finding and doing "work" soon ceased, and then

he knew what it meant to walk in rags and herd with the outcasts of the

street, to sleep in a fourpenny doss-house, or, if he had no money, on

the Embankment, to suffer hunger and pain and cold. An attempt to

establish himself as a boot-black met with the usual ill-success that

attended all Thompson's practical efforts, and the time came when, for

a week, his only earning was sixpence for holding a horse's head.

Later still, he was on the streets day and night successively for

fifteen days, and sank into a kind of stupor, moving about in a sort of

half-consciousness as in a walking nightmare.

From this pitiable state he was rescued temporarily by a Mr. McMaster,

a pious and kindly boot-maker who made a practice of assisting such

unfortunates. He had designs on Thompson's soul, but when Thompson,

even in his destitute condition, refused to allow his soul to be

tampered with, McMaster wisely concluded that the next best thing was

to save Thompson's body; and he did so. Thompson was taken into the

shop, and proving hopeless at boot-making, was made errand-boy at five

shillings a week. Here he got a chance to write, and covered the

bootmaker's discarded account books with prose and poetry; and,

according to McMaster, even submitted manuscripts to several magazines,

but apparently without success.

Opium, the effects of which were mistaken by McMaster for those of

drink, lost Thompson this situation, and he was again thrown on the

streets to sink even lower than before. It was at this time that he

received the indelible impressions of the London streets which he

recorded years after in his review of General Booth's _Darkest

England_: "A region whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is

chilled to stone; where flowers are sold and women; where the men

wither and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day

are black. For I unveil their secret meanings. I read their human

hieroglyphs. I diagnose from a hundred occult signs the disease which

perturbs their populous pulses. Misery cries out to me from the

kerb-stone; despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden

with fetters impalpable but not imponderable; I hear the shaking of

invisible lashes; I see men dabbled with their own oozing life."

It was at this time that Thompson, like De Quincey, was befriended by a

girl of the streets, who noticed his forlorn condition and whose

motherly instincts were roused by his helplessness. "Weakness and

confidence, humility and reverence, were gifts unknown to her except at

his hands, and she repaid them with graces as lovely as a child's, and

as unhesitating as a saint's." When Thompson was finally rescued by

Wilfrid Meynell, she fled from him, fearing that his friendship with

her might prejudice his chances of better things. "They will not

understand our friendship," she said, and then, "I always knew you were

a genius." She changed her lodgings and Thompson sought her in vain.

In _Sister Songs_, in a passage addressed to Sylvia (that is, little

Madeline Meynell) he pays a beautiful tribute to the childishness of

this girl.

Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt

My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant--

* * * * *

I waited the inevitable last.

Then there came past

A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower

Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,

And through the city-streets blown withering.

She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!

And of her own scant pittance did she give,

That I might eat and live:

Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.

Therefore I kissed in thee

The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;

And her, through what sore ways,

And what unchildish days,

Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.

In February 1887 came the crisis of Thompson's fate. At that time

Thompson scraped together a few shillings somehow and began to decipher

and put together the half-obliterated manuscript of his article on

_Paganism, Old and New_, written, I suppose, at McMaster's. "I came

simultaneously to my last page and my last halfpenny," says Thompson,

"and went forth to drop the manuscript in the letter-box of the

Catholic magazine, _Merrie England_. Next day I spent the halfpenny on

two boxes of matches and began the struggle for life."

Among all the important letters that have been posted since man became

a letter-writing animal, that letter of Thompson's to the editor of

_Merrie England_ holds, it seems to me, a prominent place. One

trembles to think what might have happened if that manuscript had never

reached the editor or been overlooked by him. In all probability

Thompson would have died of starvation in the streets of London, and a

poet who may prove to be one of the first in our literature would have

gone "mute and inglorious" to an outcast's grave. But though it lay

pigeon-holed for six months without receiving the attention of a busy

editor, in due course the letter and accompanying manuscript were read.

To no better man could Thompson have appealed than the editor of

_Merrie England_, Wilfrid Meynell, a man whose hand was ever stretched

out to help the unfortunate. At present, however, he knew nothing of

Thompson except that his essay showed a master-hand. After some

difficulty Meynell managed to get into communication with the author

through a druggist to whom Thompson owed money for opium, and many days

after, Mr. Meynell, in his workroom, was told that Mr. Thompson wished

to see him. "Show him up," he said, and was left alone. What follows

is told in the words of Everard Meynell:

"Then the door opened and a strange hand was thrust in. The door

closed but Thompson had not entered. Again it opened, again it shut.

At the third attempt, a very waif of a man came in. No such figure had

been looked for; more ragged and unkempt than the average beggar, with

no shirt beneath his coat, and bare feet in broken shoes, he found my

father at a loss for words."

Wilfrid Meynell then, with immense patience and kindness, set about the

task of rescuing Thompson. Thompson was not an easy man to rescue.

Reserved and secretive by habit, he made no confidences and asked no

favours. He did not seem at first to realize that salvation for him

was possible, and that he could earn his living by writing. At any

rate, it was only by the exercise of considerable tact and patience

that Mr. Meynell succeeded in obtaining any of his confidence.

Physically, Thompson had suffered severely in his long struggle with

starvation. "He will not live," was the doctor's verdict, "and you

hasten his death by denying his whims and opium." Meynell, however,

took the risk and sent Thompson to a private hospital.

The experiment succeeded. Thompson secured a fresh lease of life, and,

for the time, renounced opium. All lovers of literature owe a debt of

gratitude to Meynell for his astonishing kindness and unselfishness

towards Thompson at this time and to the end of the poet's life. Few

would have taken the trouble, amid the cares of a busy life, to look

after Thompson, who in many ways was as incapable of managing his own

affairs as a child. Meynell found him work, and for the remaining

years of his life Thompson secured a scanty living by his pen. His

poetry brought him little, but review work and occasional articles for

such magazines as the _Athenæum_ gave him generally enough to live on,

and anything that was lacking was supplied by Meynell.

Soon after Thompson's rescue comes the extraordinary spectacle of the

outburst of his poetic talent. Here was a man of letters of the first

rank whose genius had blossomed fresh and fair from the filth of the

London streets. His long proximity with vice and degradation of the

worst kind had not cast even a shadow on the purity of Thompson's

spirit; and his poetry rose from the slums of London as stainless as

Venus from the ocean.

The Meynells furnished Thompson with much of his poetic inspiration.

Meynell had introduced Thompson to his own family. His wife, Alice

Meynell, the poetess, became the saint of Thompson's adoration, two of

the children, Monica and Madeline, were revelations to him of the

beauty of girlhood; and he repaid the sheltering care and attention

shown him by the family by conferring on them all he had to give, the

best fruits of his genius.

To Mrs. Meynell he addressed the beautiful poems of his first volume,

entitled _Love in Dian's Lap_; to Monica Meynell several of the best

poems in that volume; and to Monica and Madeline his second volume

entitled _Sister Songs_. His affection for Wilfrid Meynell is

expressed in a few lines entitled _To W. M._

O Tree of many branches! One thou hast

Thou barest not, but graftedst on thee. Now

Should all men's thunders break on thee, and leave

Thee reft of bough and blossom, that one branch

Shall cling to thee, my Father, Brother, Friend,

Shall cling to thee unto the end of end.

Thompson's verses were all he had to give in return for the Meynells'

kindness, and to my mind they were a rich recompense for the continual

trouble, anxiety, and petty annoyances which he dealt out to his

friends with lavish hands.

In the ordinary intercourse and business of daily life, Francis

Thompson was not only deficient, he was impossible. The practice of

the elementary habits of order and method, which to other men are the

necessities and commonplaces of daily life, was to Thompson an

insurmountable difficulty. His life is one long record of broken

promises, unkept appointments, and other trials of the patience and

tempers of all who had to do with him. He would keep an appointment

anywhere from an hour or more to two or three days late, and be full of

contrition, excuses, and explanations. The inherent sweetness and

loveableness of the man atoned for much, but still we cannot but praise

the Meynells for their unwavering kindness to this difficult genius.

Wilfrid Meynell had to act continually as a buffer between Thompson and

irate landladies, impatient editors, exasperated publishers, and

disappointed interviewers. He had to see that the poet's rent was

paid, and that he had the wherewithal to clothe and feed himself.

Thompson's incurable shabbiness and eccentricities made it difficult to

introduce him into polite society, even if he had been capable of

arriving in time for any social function; and though a brilliant talker

when _tête-à-tête_ with a sympathetic listener, in ordinary

conversation he was more remarkable for the futility of his endless

repetitions than for anything else. And yet he was never uncouth or

awkward. His manners were gentle; his speech was that of a polished

gentleman; his worn face could light up with beautiful ardour, and his

frail body never lost its essential dignity. His laugh, too, was

always ready at the slightest pleasantry.

He made a wildly picturesque figure as he wandered through the London

streets in these latter days, generally completely unconscious of his

surroundings, and with a continual muttered soliloquy. With his old

brown cape, which he wore in the hottest weather, "his disastrous hat,"

his old satchel for review books slung over his shoulder, and his wild

worn face, he looked like some picturesque pedlar who had just stepped

out of a romance of the Middle Ages. In all the countless times that

Everard Meynell met Thompson in the streets of London he never once

surprised him in a conscious moment. That Thompson ever took the right

turning or found his way home safely is a fact for which his friends

could offer no adequate explanation. Mr. Lewis Hind, editor of _The

Academy_ while Thompson was a contributor, says: "In memory I see him

one miserable November afternoon, communing with the Seraphim and

frolicking with the young-eyed Cherubim in Chancery Lane. The roads

were ankle-deep in slush; a thin icy rain was falling; the yellow fog

enwrapped the pedestrians squelching down the lane, and going through

them in a narrow path, I saw Francis Thompson, wet and mud-spattered.

But he was not unhappy. What is a day of unpleasant weather to one who

lives in eternity? His lips were moving, his head was raised, for

above the roof of the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company, in the murk

of the fog, he saw beatific visions."

Thompson's affection for his few friends was perhaps the brightest spot

in this latter part of his life. For the rest, the record of it is

mainly one of loneliness and poverty. He ate at poor tables of

boarding-house or restaurant fare, he lived in comfortless rooms

rendered more comfortless still by his untidiness, he had no

possessions, not even books. All that he left at his death was a tin

box of rubbish, "pipes that would not draw, pens that would not write,

unopened letters, a lamp without a wick."

It would not be right to regard Thompson as an entirely unhappy man. I

should think his hours of joy were at least as many as his hours of

sorrow, and as intense. One observer speaks of him thus: "He gave me

the impression of concealing within him two inexhaustible reservoirs of

sorrow and joy; ebullitions from each appear in his poetry; but in his

talks with me he rarely drew except from the fountain of joy." He

practised in his life the "stark doctrine of renunciation" which alone

can lead man to the higher levels of inspiration, and which he has

stated for us in _The Mistress of Vision_. In this poem the "Land of

Luthany" represents for Thompson the poet's supreme vision.

Thompson's worst trial was not being able to write poetry. For the

last six years the consolations of poetry, as well as the pains of

poetry, were denied him. After the volume of 1897 his Muse deserted

him, and he would not sing without inspiration. With the exception of

a few occasional pieces, he wrote, in these later years, nothing but

prose, prose as fine in its way as his poetry.

In November 1907 Thompson's rare spirit was set free from the fetters

of his worthless body. "He left to those who loved him," said Meynell,

"the memory of an unique personality and to English poetry an

imperishable name."

I shall conclude with a very brief review of Thompson's work. Francis

Thompson's writings are not remarkable for their bulk. Three

fair-sized volumes hold them all. What is remarkable about them is the

consistently high quality of both prose and poetry; they both possess

the stamp of distinction, the master-touch, the great utterance.

Of the prose perhaps the finest thing is the Essay on Shelley, but

Thompson seemed incapable of writing anything that was not fine.

Within certain limits he seems to me to be a critic of the very highest

calibre. A complete and sound literary theory could be put together

from his critical essays.

The poetry was published in three volumes during Thompson's lifetime.

We saw that it was the first volume of 1893 that took the literary

world by storm, and justly so. It is nearly all magnificent. Besides

_The Hound of Heaven_, by general consent the greatest religious poem

and one of the greatest odes in the language, and _The Dead Cardinal of

Westminster_, it contains a series of love-poems of the very highest

quality addressed to Alice Meynell, some exquisite verses on children,

and many other gems. Thompson's love-poems are among the finest in our

language, but are not, of course, love-poems in the ordinary sense of

the word. They express, as one critic said, "a sort of sublimated

enthusiasm for the beauty of womanhood," and their enthusiasm was

linked to Thompson's religion by being for him an earthly type of his

adoration of the Virgin Mother, the crown and pinnacle of idealized

womanhood.

The second volume, published in 1895, consisted of one long poem in two

parts, _Sister Songs_, addressed to the sisters Monica and Madeline

Meynell. The first part seems to me to be spoiled by over-luxuriance,

but the second is grand poetry. One short quotation must suffice:

Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek

On the burning brow of the sick earth,

Sick with death, and sick with birth,

Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,

Than thy shadow soothes this weak

And distempered being of mine.

In all I work, my hand includeth thine;

Thou rushest down in every stream

Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge;

Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;

Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge!

As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,

Moves all the labouring surges of the world.

Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me

And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,

As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.

This poor song that sings of thee,

This fragile song, is but a curled

Shell outgathered from thy sea,

And murmurous still of its nativity.

Thompson's third and last volume was published in 1897, under the title

_New Poems_. This volume contains some of his longest and most

elaborate compositions. Like many of the poems in Volume One outside

those already noticed, the most important poems of Volume Three are

expressions of Thompson's religious mysticism, and with this is

combined a free use of symbolism derived from the Hebrew Prophets and

the Eastern mythologies. Although no one can fail to recognize the

splendour of the poetry in this third volume, a full appreciation of it

requires a somewhat special equipment. "The main region of Mr.

Thompson's poetry," says Patmore, "is the inexhaustible and hitherto

almost unworked mine of Catholic philosophy." To one not specially

versed in that philosophy, an attempt to give an appreciation of the

poems is a dangerous task, and one full of pitfalls.

Suffice it to say that Thompson's mysticism is not an apparently

aimless plunging about in the darkness of the void like that of

Maeterlinck and other modern mystics. Thompson's mysticism was kept

within bounds and given a definite direction by common sense and the

authority of the Church. "Dante," he said, "is a perfect rebuke to

those who believe that a mystical genius must be dissociated from

common sense. Every such poet should be able to give a clear and

logical prose _résumé_ of his teaching as terse as a page of scholastic

philosophy." And so we find that the rule of Thompson's practice is

summed up in the words, "To the Poet life is full of visions, to the

Mystic it is one vision." Having regarded the visions as a poet, and

set them down as a mystic, he would call them one. The one great

vision enfolded and explained them all. Such is the explanation of his

poems, _The Orient Ode_, _The Anthem of Earth_, and _The Ode to the

Setting Sun_.

To treat Thompson fairly one should give his deeper poems careful

study, but Thompson does not always write of deep and doubtful things.

More often indeed his faith is as the faith of a little child. We are

told on high authority that we must become as little children if we are

to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It was as a little child that Thompson

sought to enter there, and it is among the children of Heaven that

Thompson would take his place.

To his godchild he writes:

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,

And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;

Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance

The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,

Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod

Among the bearded counsellors of God;

For if in Eden as on earth are we,

I sure shall keep a younger company:

Pass where beneath their rangéd gonfalons

The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,

The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears;

Pass where majestical the eternal peers,

The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet--

A silvern segregation, globed complete

In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;

Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,

Your cousined clusters, emulous to share

With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair;

Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:--

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

MILTON

AN UNDERGRADUATE POEM

From out the darkness of the vanished years,

The voice of Milton peals; his mighty song

Rings down the centuries, its note still strong

As when it burst upon our fathers' ears.

Amid the unnumber'd harmonies that swell

From bards of earth to break round heaven's throne,

His part, clear heard amid the mingled tone,

Rolls full and solemn, like a deep-voiced bell.

A spirit strong with more than mortal strength,

When in life's battle he had borne his share,

He passed from out the tumult and the care,

And climbed upon the mountain tops at length.

There, with blind eyes turned to the Promised Land,

Waiting the dawn of an unending day,

His soul went forth in that tremendous lay

The eternal heights and breadths and depths which spanned.

Poor, lonely and forgot, though he endured

The bitter thought of labour spent in vain,

And saw invaded by a godless train

The land whose liberty he deemed assured;

Yet not for that did he "abate one jot

Of heart or hope"; scorning to cringe or cower,

Steadfast he stood like some majestic tower,

That feels the tempest's blast, but wavers not.

From rulers of the earth he asked no grace,

Nor leaned upon the love of human heart,

Lofty and passionless he drew apart,

And communed with the Highest face to face.

Far from the din and toil of mortal kind

His spirit's barque was borne; serene and high

He brooded on the unfathomed mystery

Of thoughts that burden the Eternal Mind.

For Freedom he had stood, in her defence

His best had given; where'er the fight was keen,

Ever amid the foremost had he been

Down-bearing tyranny's battalions dense.

For that he left his ease and hopes of fame;

Endured the heat and burden of the day;

And while his lyre mute and forgotten lay,

Laboured to clear from wrong his country's name.

And now, that task fulfilled, his voice once more

Breaks forth into a fuller, richer song,

"Not changed to hoarse or mute," sublime and strong,

The noblest heard among the sons of men.

A strain full worthy of his subject high--

Sin, Death, and Hell, and our eternal woe;

The gloomy majesty of Heaven's great foe,

Hurling defiance to the vaulted sky;

The work of Christ, Immortal Son of God,

The warring hosts of fiends to darkness hurl'd,

Creation and the birth of this round world,

And man brought low beneath th' Almighty rod.

His throne is set where the immortals are,

Where Dante, crowned with laurel, smiles serene,

And Virgil wears his garland ever green,

And Homer shines undimmed, a fadeless star.

TO THE MEMORY OF DR. BIGGS

AN UNDERGRADUATE POEM

An old Portora boy's tribute to the late Dr. Biggs (accidentally

drowned in Lough Erne, July 1904)

Calm was the evening; and the lake as calm

Showed not a ripple on its placid breast;

Peaceful was Nature, when the one we loved

Passed quietly to his rest.

Not racked by pain, nor marred by fell disease,

He bowed beneath the Almighty's chastening rod---

With heart at ease, and praise upon his lips,

He went to meet his God.

The tears and anguish of the bed of death

A loving Father spared his closing eye--

The gentle murmuring waters sang his dirge;

The soft winds breathed a sigh.

Not far were ready hands and loving hearts--

His voice they heard not, nor his peril knew;

Alone God met him; and that solemn scene

Was veiled from human view.

O raise him gently from the wat'ry depths;

And gaze with reverence on that noble head

Stamped with the beauty of a lofty soul,

A spirit that is fled.

All lines of grief, all trace of human care

Death's kindly hand has smoothed from his brow;

And perfect peace alone and holy calm

Are seen there now.

Weep ye no more, sad mourners; let us cease

To wail the sudden stroke with idle breath;

Pure was his life; his soul seven times refined

And ripe for death.

With eyes that strove to pierce the veil of time

And view the Unseen, he ran his mortal race;

The veil is passed; with clearer vision now

He sees Him face to face.

Perhaps some coming grief, some sorrow dread

Or wasting sickness, fraught with heavy woe,

The All-seeing saw, and stretched His saving arm

To snatch him from the blow.

Weep not for him, but for ourselves bereft

Of a strong champion in this earthly strife;

A rock to which his weaker brethren clung

Amid the storms of life.

Weep not for him, but mourn for those young lives

Orphaned so soon of teacher and of guide;

The flock left shepherdless, their loved one's form

Torn quickly from their side.

Where, in the wide world, shall we find again

So wise a counsellor, a friend so true?

Nay, cease regrets, but let us up and strive,

As he has done, to do.

Still from the grave he speaks; revealed by death,

Shines clearer forth the beauty of his life;

Still the good fight he fought gives us new strength

To conquer in the strife.

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

_Two Lectures given to the Class in Education

in the University_

LECTURE I

In this lecture I propose to tell you not how English ought to be

taught, but simply how I teach English. I know nothing of pedagogy; I

have never attended a Normal School; I have read very few books on

teaching in general, and only one on the teaching of English in

particular; I know nothing of the methods which you yourselves are

being taught to employ. I ask you, then, to take my lectures simply as

a personal document, a relation of what I have gathered from my own

experience. Such a document, if sincere, must be valuable, and I need,

I think, make no apology if I mention as discoveries of my own, methods

and principles which are, perhaps, commonplaces with the educationalist.

In the matter of teaching every man must work out his own salvation; I

believe that he cannot take his methods ready-made from another. The

method which suits me and gets me the best result may not suit you.

And so, though I believe that every teacher of English ought to follow

certain general principles which I will try to lay down, I believe also

that it is a fatal mistake for any man to attempt to model his way of

teaching exactly upon that of another. To-day, then, I propose simply

to tell you of some of the things which I discovered for myself, some

of the difficulties I met with, some of the faults which I have

overcome, or am still trying to overcome.

I see before myself still a long and weary road, which must be

travelled before I reach anything approaching my ideal. In fact, I

hope, as every teacher ought to hope, that I shall never reach a point

where I can say I am satisfied, for as sure as I do, I shall know that

I have ceased to make progress. As long as a man struggles, he is

advancing; when he ceases to struggle, he has ceased to advance; and

when he ceases to advance, it is almost certain that he has commenced

to go backward.

For the purposes of this lecture I shall take the teaching of English

to mean the teaching of English literature only. I have had no

experience of High School work, and therefore my remarks refer to the

teaching of average University students of the first or second year,

very much the same sort of students as you have to deal with in your

High Schools. The methods I adopt with my Honour Classes differ widely

from those I use with pass students.

Before one attempts to describe his method of teaching, he should make

very clear his conception of the object for which the subject is

studied. One may read a piece of literature, for example, in many

different ways. One may treat it as a piece of art, a record of life,

a truth that some fellow-man has seen in a moment of clear-sightedness,

has "snatched from the eternal silence," and has set down that we may

see it too. Again, one may read it with a view to its structure, as an

example of literary technique; or one may treat it as an historical

document, a reflection of the spirit of the age which produced it; or,

again, as an exercise in philology, as material for the study of words.

According as one object or another predominates, so will the method of

teaching change; if one object is sought to the exclusion of all

others, the method of teaching will, of course, vary with the object in

view. The philologist will subordinate everything to the study of

philology; the historian will fasten all his attention on the evidences

of date, the local references, the flavour of contemporary philosophy,

politics, religion, or whatever it may be; the technician will be

entirely occupied with form, metre, structure.

_Hamlet_, for example, may be treated as a work of art, as the history

of a man doomed to destruction through an inherent and fatal flaw, a

human soul caught in the web of circumstance and tortured to death; or

it may be treated as a study in the language of the Elizabethans; or as

an example of the stagecraft of Shakespeare; or even as material for

constructing ingenious cipher messages revealing the fact that, as

Shakespeare was utterly unable to write plays for himself, Bacon kindly

wrote them for him.

The first question which the teacher of literature must ask is, what is

the relative importance of all these objects for which literature may

be studied. Which should be the main end of our teaching, and which

should be subordinate? On the answer he gives to that question will

depend the method of his teaching.

Personally, I have no doubt whatever as to which of these things is the

most important, although I may have some doubts as to the relative

importance of the others. To me a piece of literature is first and

foremost a work of art, a record of life in forms of truth and beauty,

a spiritual revelation; it speaks to my intellect, but only that,

through my intellect, it may reach my heart. If it reaches my

intellect only, if it penetrates no farther, if it does not become part

of my being, if the experience it records does not become _my_

experience, then it is of little value to me, it is not _my_ piece of

literature, and I want no literature that I cannot make my own.

I wish sincerely that we could root out for ever and utterly abolish

the false notion that most students and many teachers have, that

Literature is not an important subject, that it is only a side-line,

very nice to know something about, but not in the same class with

"useful" and practical subjects like history and science. This is a

tremendous and a fatal misconception. It is by Art and Art alone that

Humanity progresses; progress in Science or in mere knowledge does not

necessarily mean progress in any of those things in which Man stands

supreme above the rest of creation, those spiritual qualities which

raise him to the level of the Divine. We know that a man may take a

course in Science, or any purely intellectual subject, and come out at

the end of it still uncultured and coarse-minded, with low ideals, with

the higher instincts undeveloped; he may go through a course of

Literature, too, it is true, and emerge in a similar condition, but not

if the Literature has been properly presented to him, and if he has

really assimilated the best thoughts of the highest minds.

Art is the source of our highest pleasure, the capacity for which

raises us above the beast. Without that capacity, men are no better

than sheep or goats "who nourish a blind life within the brain."

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Not only is Literature the source of our highest pleasure, but it is

the source of our highest development. It is the most potent factor in

the slow process of raising Humanity to a higher spiritual level; it is

the true motive power of the world.

Well might the poet say of himself and his fellow poets:

We are the music-makers,

We are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;--

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

We are the movers and the shakers

Of the world for ever it seems.

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown:

And three with a new song's measure

Can trample a kingdom down.

Assuming, then, that the appreciation of literature as art, as the

record of spiritual experience, is the principal thing to be gained

from its study, the question arises how is such an appreciation to be

taught?

In what I am going to say on this subject, I will speak of poetry, and

you will understand my remarks to apply in a lesser degree to prose.

Poetry is the finest flower of the human mind; and therefore the most

difficult of all things to appreciate. In writing poetry the whole of

a man's being is in a state of intense activity. His intellect, his

emotion, his imagination, are all roused to the highest pitch. He is

lifted for the time being to a plane of experience much higher than the

normal; he is giving out the very best that is in him.

Wordsworth has described for us how the poetic mood drove him

distracted with intensity of thought over hill and dale, and how when

the mood had passed he would return to his friends pale and utterly

exhausted both in mind and body.

His own mind did like a tempest strong

Come to him thus and drove the weary wight along.

All poetry worth reading is the result of some such exalted mood as

that, and poetry so written cannot be read in cold blood. Poetry which

leaves you cold, with your emotions untouched, which does not in some

measure lift you out of yourself, is either not poetry at all, or else

poetry which you have not the capacity to appreciate.

One appreciates a poem only in so far as one reproduces it

sympathetically in oneself; that is, only so far as one feels over

again the emotions which the writer who produced it felt as he gave

them expression. In other words, by the appreciation of literature one

gains at second-hand the highest spiritual experience.

It follows that one can appreciate poetry only to the extent to which

one is capable of such experience. No one can appreciate fully all

kinds of poetry; if any one could do so, it would mean that he was a

universal genius, since the whole range of emotional experience would

have to be within his control. The extent of the average man's powers

of appreciation is distinctly limited; some can sympathize only with

the more obvious and elemental emotions, while some are capable of

appreciating more subtle and refined shades of feeling. That is why

nearly every one can appreciate to some extent a poet like Shakespeare,

who always deals with big, elemental emotions, although, since

Shakespeare is at the same time able to express the most subtle

feelings, there are few who can appreciate him in full. This is why it

is more difficult to appreciate Wordsworth than

Shakespeare--Wordsworth's emotions are more out of the range of

ordinary experience--and still more difficult to appreciate Shelley,

whose range of emotion is often entirely alien from experience.

The point I wish to make is that a teacher can teach properly only

poetry which he himself is capable of appreciating, and therefore

literature is the most difficult of all subjects to teach, since it

requires in the individual certain qualifications beyond the merely

intellectual. For the lack of these qualifications, no brilliancy of

intellect can compensate.

The teacher who knows a piece of poetry with his head only can never

teach it as it ought to be taught. He may be able to repeat it word

for word, he may know all about its history, its philology, its

structure, but if he has not felt it, if he has not reproduced it

sympathetically within himself, he cannot teach it. Similarly the

student, unless he is capable of sympathizing with such emotions as are

recorded in poetry, will be unable to get more than a head knowledge of

it. If this power of sympathizing is present in ever so small a

degree, it can be indefinitely developed under the inspiration of a

good teacher.

What follows then? First, that a teacher who lacks the higher

appreciation of literature can certainly never teach it to others,

although probably thirty or forty per cent. of his pupils, more gifted

than himself by Nature in this respect, will get an appreciation in

spite of him. Secondly, that even supposing a teacher has this

appreciation, it will be of little use to him, unless he has the power

of communicating it to others, that is, of awakening in them sympathy

with what he himself feels.

Assuming, then, that the teacher has this appreciation, what is the

best way of communicating it? There are, perhaps, only two possible

ways. One is by talking about the poem, by trying to describe its

effect upon one; but the better and more effective way is by reading,

by vocal interpretation. All literature, but especially poetry, is

written not for the eye, but for the ear. Its appeal, then, should be

made, not through the eye but through the ear. The sound of the words,

not singly, but in groups, the rhythm, the intonation, all these give

the atmosphere of a poem. Sound is to a poem what colour is to a

picture. Get away from the printed word, the mere symbol; it means

something for the head, it is true, but nothing for the heart until it

is translated into sound.

The first thing a teacher of literature must do, then, is to learn to

read. He need not take a course in elocution; stamping, gesticulating,

waving his arms, shouting, whispering, hissing, and other tricks of the

professional elocutionist will benefit him little; all that is

necessary is that he should be able, by the intonation of his voice, to

convey to his students the effect which a poem has made upon himself.

Diligent practice, the subjection of the voice to the will--these are

what he needs. The average man cannot hope to reach any very high

degree of efficiency as a reader, but all that the teacher needs is to

be able to read clearly, with a voice well controlled and capable of

expressing various shades of emotion, with a good sense of rhythm and

the grouping of vowel sounds.

The first thing, then, for one who would teach literature is to

endeavour to reach at least that stage of vocal culture which I have

described. Of course, a good deal may be done in the way of conveying

appreciation of a poem by talking about it, but to talk about a poem

well is almost as difficult as to read it well, and at the best is not

nearly so effective.

Assuming that a man is equipped with these essentials, a true

appreciation of literature and the power of communicating his

appreciation to others, how is he to approach the teaching of a piece

of literature?

The first thing he must do is to assimilate it thoroughly himself, to

go over it again and again, to practise again and again the vocal

interpretation of it, to be sure that he has caught the spirit not only

of the whole, but of the smallest part, that no shade of meaning,

however subtle, has escaped him.

"We must long inhale," says Corson, "the choral atmosphere of a work of

genius before we attempt, if we attempt at all, any intellectual

formulation of it; which formulation must necessarily be comparatively

limited, because genius, as genius, is transcendental, and therefore

outside the domain of the intellect."

Then, having assimilated it, let him go further and get a background

for it. Let him know, if possible, its history, what suggested it,

under what circumstances it was composed, its relation to other

writings of the poet and of the age, what the best critics have said

about it, and so on. Let him endeavour to neglect no scrap of

information which will increase his own appreciation and understanding

of the poem. When he has done all this, then, and not till then, is he

ready to teach it. If he has plenty of time and a small class, he will

probably begin by trying to find out how far his pupils have

assimilated the spirit of the poem. His task is then to interpret the

piece of literature, to try to give the student the impression it has

made on him, what it means to him, what emotions it arouses in him.

This is to be done by reading it, or, if the piece is long, by reading

such parts of it as will form a connected whole, filling in with

descriptive narrative. In many cases it will be necessary before

attempting an interpretation to say a few words which will enable the

pupil to listen to the reading in the proper frame of mind, and will

create the proper atmosphere for him.

When the first impression has been made, the work has only just begun.

Suppose one has hit the right keynote, that the class has caught the

spirit of the poem; there will still be much of it which is

unintelligible or misty to them.

Not realizing this, I used to make a mistake when I first began to

teach. I thought it was necessary that the pupils should understand

the poem in detail before they could get the general effect. I used,

therefore, to begin by analysis, by pulling the poem to pieces, showing

its structure, the order of ideas, the meaning of words, and when I

thought everything was perfectly clear I would give the general effect,

or very often would leave that to the students themselves. This was a

fatal mistake. By going through the process of analysis first, I had

rendered an appreciation of the piece as a whole ever so much more

difficult; while if I had begun by trying to get the general effect,

and had succeeded, no amount of analysis could have destroyed that

first impression.

On this point Professor Corson says: "The spiritual appeals which are

made by every form of art, be it in colour, in sound, in stone, in

poetry, or whatever may be the medium employed, must be responded to

directly, immediately (in the literal sense of the word), or not at

all. Of course, the extent of the response may be indefinitely

increased. But there must be, to begin with, a direct, immediate

response, however limited it may be. There is no roundabout way to

such appeals. The inductive method is not applicable to spiritual

matters. The very word _induction_, is absurd, in connection with the

spiritual. It belongs exclusively to the intellectual domain."

When the first impression has been made, then will come the analysis,

and I am convinced that this analysing process is one which the

student, especially the young student, cannot dispense with, and which

is an exceedingly valuable mental training.

The analysis will include a treatment not only of the literary form of

the poem, but a thorough study of its language, of the historical and

literary allusions contained in it, of any images or metaphors which

may be obscure, and, in fact, anything which will contribute to a

better understanding of the poem as a whole. The teacher will now

probably ask: "How far is this process of analysis to go? Must one

study the philology of every word, must one analyse the metre of every

poem?" I have already given the answer to these questions. I said

that the analysis would include a study of anything which _will

contribute to the better understanding of the poem as a whole_. There

is the secret. The total effect must never be lost sight of. The

metre is to be studied only to an extent which will enable the student

to catch the rhythm and read the poem correctly for himself. Names and

technicalities matter not a whit. He may never have heard of an iambic

pentameter, or an anapaest, or a trochee, but as long as he grasps the

rhythm and sees the relations of the various parts of the literary

structure, he knows all that is necessary for a thorough appreciation

of the poem as a whole. Similarly, the derivation of a word should

never be given unless it helps to the better understanding of the sense

of the word _as that word is used in the particular passage under

discussion_; otherwise the obtrusion of the etymology is simply an

impertinence.

Some teachers make interpretation by paraphrase a prominent part of

this analytical process; this should be avoided. It may be necessary

sometimes to paraphrase difficult passages, but not one-tenth as often

as most teachers and editors consider it necessary. A paraphrase is at

best an inferior rendering, a substitution of something similar, but of

a lower kind, often a substitution of the baldest prose for the highest

poetry. "I pray thee avoid it." Some editors are over-fond of

analysis; probably because they wish to show they are earning the money

they get for editing. Let the poem, as far as possible, tell its own

story in its own words.

When the analytic or discursive process has been completed, what

remains? A return to the general. Having considered the poem in its

parts, one now endeavours to reproduce the effect of the poem as a

whole, but this time, if the analysis has been well done, the effect

ought to be greatly heightened. The student will now see, not through

a glass darkly, but will meet the poet face to face.

There are two things to be observed with regard to this process from

the general, through the discursive, back to the general again. One is

that the processes should, if possible, be kept separate; that one

should keep, if possible, at the same level throughout any one lesson.

This cannot be done if one changes from appreciation to analysis and

back again on the same day. The second is that the analytic process is

best left as far as possible to the student himself. I myself used to

make the mistake of doing too much for the student; I used to try to

analyse the poem thoroughly for him in class. I now think it better

simply to point out difficulties and leave them to the student to

solve, to suggest questions and leave them to the student to answer.

The work may not be so thoroughly done, but the student receives a

valuable stimulus which he would otherwise miss. I always give an

opportunity for any difficulties which the student is unable to solve

for himself to be brought to me.

LECTURE II

In my last lecture I tried to emphasize what I considered to be the

most important objects of literary study, _i.e._, the appreciation of

literature as art. I said that I thought it necessary that the teacher

of English should have both a true appreciation of literature himself

and the capacity for arousing appreciation in others. I pointed out

that the teacher's first duty was to awaken in his students a response

to the inner life or soul of the piece of literature with which he was

dealing, that the best way of doing so was by a good vocal

interpretation; and that it was therefore the duty of every teacher of

English to learn to read well. I suggested that after the first

response had been gained, there should come a thorough analysis, a

study of form, structure, philology, and exact meaning, but that this

process of analysis should be carried only so far as was necessary to a

thorough appreciation of the work as a whole.

I now come to the question of how far a study of the history of

literature is desirable for the ordinary student, I mean the student

who does not desire to specialize in the subject.

Personally, I am a firm believer in the historical method of dealing

with literature, not only because I think that a knowledge of the

history of literature greatly heightens one's appreciation of literary

works, but because I believe that many students, who would otherwise

never do so, are by this method led to take an interest in, and so

gradually acquire a taste for, literature.

Some books (using the word _book_ in the sense of any literary work)

are for all time--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare; some books

are for their own time only; some books are for their own time and a

limited period afterwards. But whatever be the vitality of a book, no

matter to which of these classes it belongs, there is no doubt that it

belongs in the first instance to its own time, and cannot help being to

some degree a reflection of the spirit of the age in which it was

produced. This means that not only may the book be used as an

historical document, as a means of catching the spirit of its age, but

that, conversely, a study of the epoch at which it was produced cannot

fail to illuminate to a greater or less degree the meaning of the book.

Critics like Taine and Sainte-Beuve looked on books as primarily

historical documents. Behind the book one looked for the man, behind

the man one found the innumerable circumstances which went to mould his

personality. In this way of looking at things the individual becomes

of comparatively small importance; he is interesting mainly because he

is a type of his age; his book is interesting because it reveals the

type.

Much can be said for this deterministic way of looking at literature,

and some excellent results have been produced by Taine's style of

criticism, but few critics of to-day would look on it with favour.

To-day, the book is of primary importance; the man and the age are

studied that they may throw light on the book. However exaggerated the

historical method, as carried out by Taine, may appear, I think we must

admit that in a modified form it may be of very great value.

We all know that a literary work is flavoured by the personality of the

writer. From our experience as teachers we learn that we can read a

personal document more sympathetically if we know who wrote it.

I have sometimes commenced to read an essay under the impression that

it was written by a student A, and have been annoyed at certain ways of

thinking and methods of expression that seemed to me forced and

unnatural; I have turned to the back of the essay, seen the name of the

writer, discovered my mistake, and re-read the essay with the

personality of B instead of A at the back of my mind, and then the

essay seemed to me to go smoothly, and to be characteristic of the

writer.

Undoubtedly, the book takes a distinct and peculiar tinge from the

personality of the author, and therefore to get the proper atmosphere,

to read a book with thorough sympathy, we should find out all that we

possibly can about the man who wrote it. Of course, the thing works

both ways. We study the man that we may better appreciate his book; we

study the book to find the man. How little can be done in some cases

towards determining the personality of the man from his book is shown

by the outstanding instance of Shakespeare. More than three hundred

years' study of that marvellous book has entirely failed to reveal the

personality of the author; upon that question critics are still in

hopeless conflict.

Again, since the personality of a man is undoubtedly moulded, to a

large extent, by his age and environment, we should go farther back

still, and having studied our man, we should relate him to his age.

No writer is so individualistic that he can wholly escape the tinge of

his epoch. I will venture to say that no one who has been accustomed

to study literature by the historical method, and to recognize in books

the contemporary flavour, would be likely to take, say, a piece of

prose written in the first half of the seventeenth century for the

product of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, or could possibly

mistake a typical sixteenth-century lyric for a typical

nineteenth-century one.

If we study our literature, then, historically as well as artistically,

our books will be to us not only works of art, but something more; they

will become linked to long trains of association, which will carry us

out into the life and happiness and suffering of our fellow-men, and

further still, out into the shock and sway of great world-movements,

into the sphere where the Time-spirit weaves unceasingly the web of

life.

Let me give you an example of how this way of treating literature can

be carried out with even a junior class.

I have been studying with the Freshmen some of Goldsmith's poetry, _The

Traveller_ and _The Deserted Village_. We first took the poems in

themselves, studied them as works of art, read them, tried to get the

spirit, then analysed and studied them in detail. We next went on to a

study of the life of Goldsmith. We followed his strange and romantic

career, followed him in his sufferings and struggles and triumphs, saw

him in his weakness and in his strength. Further than that, we saw him

in relation to his contemporaries. We became acquainted through him

with the famous circle of which he was a member, the circle of wits and

scholars that gathered round Johnson--Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and the

rest. We then learned something of the literary ideals of that school,

and how they determined the form of Goldsmith's work. We saw, too, how

Johnson and Goldsmith helped to set literature free from the bonds of

patronage. We saw something of the politics and the social conditions

of the age.

My claim is that, in consequence of that study, those students, when

they return to _The Traveller_ and _The Deserted Village_ to read them

again for their own pleasure or to review them for their examination,

will find their pleasure in them greatly enhanced by having at the back

of their minds the personality of the author and the spirit of his

time. Things that seemed stiff and pedantic to them before will be

forgiven or passed over now, because they will know that they do not

belong to Goldsmith himself, but are only a condition of his writing

imposed on him by his age; they will appreciate better all those

passages in which the kindliness and sympathy and generosity of the

author are strongly marked, and finally they will feel hovering around

these living documents not only the spirit of the dead author, but the

spirit of the great old Doctor Johnson, with the spook of Boswell

probably still in attendance, and all that noble and witty company who

walked and talked on earth so many years ago.

I have heard people object to the study of the history of literature by

young students on this ground--that it must mean to a large extent a

memorizing of names and dates, a mere empty repetition of facts about

works that have never been read.

To that objection I do not now attach very much weight, although at one

time I did. In the first place, the study need not be a mere empty

repetition. A skilful description of the contents of a work will give

a student a very fair idea of its spirit and meaning, and often arouse

in him a desire to read it for himself. In the second place, it is

good for him that he should have the benefit of the experience of the

most competent students and critics of English literature, so that he

may know what is best worth reading, and so that when he comes to

continue his studies for himself, if he ever does, he may spend his

time to the best advantage. One does not object to studying the map of

a country, even if there is no intention of visiting all the places

marked thereon.

I would say, then, that the best plan with the young student who has

had some elementary training in the appreciation of literature is to

take some representative works of a particular period, and through a

careful study of them in the way I have described, reach out and grasp

the whole period in its essential features.

So much for the history of literature. Now to retrace our steps, and

return to what I said in my first lecture about the method of attacking

a particular literary work. I daresay it sounded simple and easy

enough; first get your general effect, let the poem make its own

impression as a unit, as a work of art; then will come your analysis,

and then a return to the general.

But it is in the application of this simple principle to different

kinds of literature that the teacher will find his greatest problems.

Every new work will provide a new puzzle. How much need I say about

this by way of introduction? What is the best way to present this?

What illustrative extracts should I make from this? How much help

should I give the student with this?

A teacher has to teach the First Book of _Paradise Lost_. He has three

quarters of an hour or an hour to make his first impression; on that

first impression may depend the whole success of his teaching. It is

obvious that with young students it will not do to plunge straight into

a reading of the poem; they must be prepared for the reading; an

atmosphere must be created; they must come to the reading in a proper,

receptive attitude. How much introduction is necessary?

Personally, I spend one whole hour talking about the poem. I point out

as well as I can the plan of the whole poem, and how that plan is

carried out, so as to get the relation of the First Book to the whole;

I talk a little about epic poetry in general and what one is to expect

from an epic poem; I point out the magnitude of Milton's task, the

spirit in which he approached his work, the purpose and meaning of that

work, and in every way I try to arouse an attitude of interest and

expectancy.

The next day, I do not begin to take up Book I in fragments, but I give

a reading designed to give the story of the whole book in a series of

the most striking passages, strung together by connecting narrative.

We are now ready to study the poem analytically, and as we take up each

part and dissect it, the students always have in view the relation of

each part to the whole book, and, from the first lecture, to the whole

poem.

How to teach a play of Shakespeare is a subject that might well demand

a whole lecture to itself. Shakespeare is undoubtedly the best

material for teaching literature that we have, and is suitable for all

grades, from the lowest to the highest. Of course, I need scarcely say

that the method of treatment and presentation for honour students will

naturally differ entirely from that appropriate to beginners.

But there is one thing certain, that a play of Shakespeare, whether one

teaches it to beginners or to advanced students, demands on the part of

the teacher a most intense study. He must be soaked in it; he must be

thoroughly familiar with it down to the smallest detail; he must have

thought out the setting of every scene; he must have formed a clear

conception of every character; he must have decided definitely the

exact tone and emphasis with which every speech should be delivered;

and lastly, he must decide how he may most effectively present it to

his students.

But this, you will say, is putting too big a demand upon the teacher.

It is a demand which few of us are able to fulfil, but I am convinced

myself that every teacher should keep such an ideal in view, and work

toward it patiently. I have been studying _Hamlet_ off and on myself

for ten years, I have been teaching it for four, and I am only just

beginning to get some confidence about it now. I hope perhaps if I

study it for ten years more to be able to teach it with some success.

The great actor Salvini studied the part of Lear for eight years before

he made any attempt to commit it to memory.

Shakespeare is thus, in a sense, the most difficult of all authors to

teach, for one can never exhaust him; in another sense he is the

easiest, for even the poorest teacher cannot help making some effect

with him. The latter fact, however, should not make us content with

slovenly work.

In this connection I may say that I am convinced that the greatest aid

to success on the part of the teacher of English literature is

painstaking and exact study for himself--not to be content with

something that will do, but to absorb and reabsorb the spirit of the

best works, and never to be satisfied that he knows them well enough.

The number of works that he can know thus thoroughly will be limited at

first, but their range will be constantly increasing; and therefore the

work that he will be compelled to do in a more or less imperfect

fashion will be constantly decreasing.

As an example of how a single poem can be made sometimes to serve as an

introduction to the whole of an author's work or to a large portion of

it, let us take a very short and simple poem of Browning and see what

can be made of it. Let me read to you _A Woman's Last Word_.

Probably this poem, like many of Browning's, produces at the first

reading only a vague and indefinite impression, a sort of groping

sensation, in short, a wonder as to what it is all about.

Let us analyse it. Whence did the difficulty arise? Evidently not

from the language. It was from the fact that we did not know what went

before; that from what is given us here, a mere scrap of experience, we

had to construct the whole; and from the fact that we had to follow a

sequence of thoughts suggested by circumstances unknown to us, instead

of, as is usual in poetry, a series of actions or events which serve as

a backbone or substructure for the thought.

Herein lie the two main difficulties of appreciating that large class

of Browning poetry known under the heading, _dramatic monologues_.

They are _dramatic_ because they are spoken not in the person of the

author, but in that of some imaginary character, whose personality the

author assumes, but they differ from drama, as it is generally

understood, first, because they are monologues, not dialogues;

secondly, the circumstances, occasions, and settings of the monologues,

instead of being suggested at the outset, are only indicated from time

to time, and have to be picked up as we go along; thirdly, we have to

follow a sequence of thoughts without any help from accompanying events

or actions; and lastly, we are given no information, except

incidentally, as to what goes before and comes after.

In other dramatic monologues of Browning the problem becomes more

complicated, first, from the fact that in most of them he attempts to

reveal a character, not merely a psychological situation, as in _A

Woman's Last Word_; secondly, from the extraordinary variety of the

characters he attempts to present.

The characters into whose mouths Browning puts his poems are a very

varied assortment. In one poem, perhaps, it is a Greek philosopher who

speaks, in the next a modern English divine; now it is an Italian duke

of the sixteenth century, and now an Italian patriot of the nineteenth

century. Each of these personages has a definite atmosphere and a

typical environment, and that atmosphere and environment we must

construct for ourselves before we can appreciate the poem properly.

Take, for example, the two poems, _Fra Lippo Lippi_ and _Andrea del

Sarto_. Each of these deals not only with the character and some of

the history of an individual Italian painter, but sets forth in

addition a particular phase in the development of Italian art, and at

the same time gives us an insight into Browning's theory of art. To

appreciate these poems, then, we must know something of the history of

the historic personages who are represented as speaking, something of

the Italy of their time; we must know in outline at least something of

the history of Italian art, and have some knowledge of the

technicalities of painting. Very many of Browning's poems are

concerned with periods and personages about whom the ordinary reader

knows nothing, hence the absolute need of some sort of a commentary, or

of constant recourse to an encyclopaedia in reading him.

There is another difficulty connected with Browning's favourite form,

the dramatic monologue. Most of these poems are only scraps of

experience; we get no information, except by hints, of what has gone

before; we are equally left to guess what comes after. The problem

before us is something like that of reconstructing a whole conversation

of which we have overheard only a small part.

Again, many of the poems do not describe a series of events, but only a

series of thoughts or reflections. Hence there is nothing or very

little to guide us in grasping the connection between the various parts

of the poem, and many of the poems have to be read and re-read many

times before the meaning begins to dawn on us.

In _A Woman's Last Word_ there is not a single difficult phrase. The

whole difficulty arises from the fact that it is a scrap, and from the

fact that it is a series of thoughts without any action to thread them

together and to make them definite.

Browning's poems are sometimes difficult to read because the ideas

which he is expressing are profound and difficult to grasp; but far

more often they are difficult because of his extraordinary way of

expressing perfectly simple and easy ideas.

For example, here is a perfectly easy and obvious thought--that every

day we see men winning money and reputation by mere imitation of some

style that has caught the public taste, while the original inventor or

discoverer of that style lives in obscurity and neglect. How does

Browning express it?

Hobbs hints blue--straight he turtle eats,

Nobbs prints blue--claret crowns his cup,

Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats--

Both gorge. Who finished the murex up?

What porridge had John Keats?

The point about the murex in this extract illustrates another

difficulty with Browning, his assumption of knowledge on the part of

his reader of all sorts of curious and out-of-the-way information. He

is full of allusions to technical points in such things as painting,

music, medicine, and classical scholarship which are as a rule known to

only specialists in these particular subjects.

I might mention lastly in this connection a peculiarity of Browning's

thought, namely, its tremendous rapidity. Let me illustrate. A

beginner works out a problem in mathematics; he feels his way step by

step; he puts down everything in order, and in going over the question

we can follow easily every detail of the reasoning. A master

mathematician confronted with the same problem would see his way from

the beginning right through to the end; he would leave out half of the

intermediate steps because to him they were quite obvious and not worth

putting down, and when we came to look over his work we might

completely fail to see how he had reached his conclusion.

So with Browning. Browning skips from thought to thought with great

rapidity, leaving intermediate steps to be filled in by the

intelligence of the reader. As Chesterton says, if Browning had to

describe a quarrel between two men which culminated in one calling the

other a liar and knocking him downstairs, he would probably do it

something like this:

What then? You lie--and doormat below stairs

Takes bump from back.

That is to say, he would be in such a hurry to get his man to the

bottom of the stairs that he would leave out half of the intermediate

steps.

I have given you this fairly full discussion as an example of how a

rather difficult thing may be done, namely, how a single poem may

sometimes be used to give an introduction to a poet and prepare a class

for reading the remainder of his work.

Before I close let me give you a couple of things I have discovered

about teaching which may be useful to you. First, it is more important

to be physically fit than to be well prepared. If you feel well and

look it, your class will be in good humour even if you are not well

prepared. Be worried and tired, and your class will soon become

worried and tired too. Secondly, it is better to teach too little than

too much. Do not subject your class to mental indigestion. Thirdly,

one should always try to appear interested. Lastly, one should never

appear to be in a hurry. Nothing annoys a class more than to be rushed

madly from point to point without a breathing space.

MY LAST DUCHESS

_A paper given in 1911 to a Church Society that wished

guidance for literary study_

In this poem Browning takes his subject from the midst of the

Renaissance period in Italy, a period when the revival of classical

learning was accompanied by a breakdown in the authority of the Church.

The conventions of ages were swept away in a few years, and side by

side with the new culture, scepticism, cynicism, robbery, lust, and

murder prevailed in high places, even in the palaces of the Popes

themselves. Under a thin veneer of culture, society became rotten to

the core.

The word _Ferrara_ at the head of the poem gives us the clue to the

period. Ferrara is an ancient Italian town, and was at one time the

seat of a powerful duchy. The ancient ducal palace still frowns down

from its eminence upon the country around. The Duke of Ferrara at the

period of our poem was one of the most powerful noblemen of Italy.

The speaker in this monologue is the Duke of Ferrara, a typical

Renaissance product, cultured and cold and cruel. He is showing the

picture of his late wife to an envoy from some Count or other who has

sent to negotiate a marriage for his daughter with the widowed Duke.

The first thing to do with a poem like this is to make it live. We

will read it.

The character we have represented here is one probably not uncommon at

the period. The Duke is a man of intellect, imbued with the new

culture, a critic and collector of art treasures. He combines with

this appreciation of art, an utter selfishness and cynicism. His heart

is incapable of tenderness or emotion. He has an immense pride in his

rank and in his ancient name, and an impatience of anything that would

derogate from his dignity.

Can you picture him, the polished old villain, as he stands before the

picture of the girl he has cruelly done to death and points out its

beauties with delicate jewelled finger? On his cultured but sensual

features the critical appreciation of a connoisseur for the skill of

the artist mingles with some recollection of and pride in the beauty of

his former duchess; but of affection there is not a sign, of remorse

not a trace.