When Hero is charged by Claudio with unchastity, she fancies that

something must be wrong with him, and says: "Is my lord well, that he

doth speak so wild?" Of Othello's accusation Desdemona thinks that

"something, sure, of state ... Hath puddled his clear spirit." In a

similar frame of mind Ophelia entreats: "Ye heavenly powers restore

him," and bewails the overthrow of Hamlet's reason. These three tender

hearted women are singularly alike in their mental attitudes under the

accusation, and but too willing to extenuate the cruel blow and to

forgive it. But both Hero and Desdemona defend themselves against the

charge, whilst Ophelia, maintaining her habitual reticence, neither

admits nor denies anything, and Hamlet's conviction of her wrongdoing

with the King remains unchanged.

Thus far Hamlet has made no direct charge of the transfer of Ophelia's

affections from him to another, but he seems to do this at their next

interview, which takes place at the time of the play of 'Gonzago's

Murder.' There is a bitterness towards her in his speech, a brutality

in his obscene allusions, and a degree of heartlessness in it all,

which can be excused--if indeed it be deemed excusable--only on the

theory that he believes her to have herself become a heartless, wicked

woman. When he is commenting on the facts of the play, and Ophelia

suggests that he is "as good as a chorus," he snarlingly replies: "I

could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets

dallying." Everything which Hamlet says is pregnant with meaning, and

Ophelia evidently regards this as a keen thrust at her, which it

plainly is. Both of them know that they two are no longer lovers, and

each of them therefore understands that the allusion is to some other

man with whom she treads "the primrose path of dalliance." As usual

Ophelia does not deny the charge, and it would not be singular if

Hamlet were to accept her silence as an admission of its truth. To whom

she thinks that he refers does not appear, but there can be no doubt

that his conviction is that her new lover is the King.

The next incident indicating this conviction is the interview in which

Polonius undertakes with much complacency to "board" the Prince:

"_Pol_. Do you know me, my lord?

"_Ham_. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

"_Pol_. Not I, my lord.

"_Ham_. Then I would you were so honest a man.

"_Pol_. Honest, my lord?

"_Ham_. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one

man picked out of ten thousand.

"_Pol_. That's very true, my lord.

"_Ham_. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god

kissing carrion--Have you a daughter?

"_Pol_. I have, my lord.

"_Ham_. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing,

but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to it.

"_Pol_. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet

he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone,

far gone." [_aside_].

There has been much discussion of this passage, but no satisfactory

solution of it. It is a good sample of the enigmatic style of speech

characteristic of Hamlet, which presumably the audiences of

Shakespeare's day comprehended, which of course the astute Polonius did

not understand, and which puzzles later generations because they have

lost the ancient significance of certain words. Polonius is so

prejudiced in favor of his theory that it was "the very ecstacy of

love" that troubled Hamlet, that he does not even attempt to fathom his

allusions. And yet Hamlet's last remark, warning him about his

daughter, rivets his attention, and he demands to know what is meant by

it; but it is only for an instant, his illusion again diverts him from

the matter, and the chance of explanation thus escapes.

Malone says that "fishmonger" was a cant term for a "wencher"; and in

Barnabe Rich's 'Irish Hubbub' is the expression "senex fornicator, an

old fishmonger." Possibly this is its primary significance in Hamlet's

mind, for shortly afterwards he satirically says of Polonius to the

players: "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." In

several instances Shakespeare similarly alludes to "fishing"; as in

'Measure for Measure,' i, 2, 91: "Groping for trouts in a peculiar

river"; 'Winter's Tale,' i, 2, 195: "And his pond fish'd by his next

neighbor"; and possibly in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' i, 4, 4: "He fishes,

drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revels." The word "monger" in

compound words, as used by Shakespeare, does not always mean a trader

in the article, but sometimes one who merely indulges in the act; as in

'Love's Labour's Lost,' ii, 1, 253: "Thou art an old love-monger";

in 'Romeo and Juliet,' ii, 4, 30: "These strange flies, these

fashion-mongers"; and in 'Measure for Measure,' v, 1, 337: "Was the

Duke a fleshmonger?" In common usage the word has this double

significance, indeed, dependent upon whether its adjunct refers to a

thing or to an act; as, for example, cheesemonger and scandalmonger,

and other similar compounds which will readily suggest themselves.

Hence "fishmonger" means both one given to "fishing" and a trader in

fish. And doubtless the latter is its most important significance in

Hamlet's mind, when Polonius denies that he is a fishmonger, namely

that he is a trader in a food which from time immemorial has been

supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Wherefore we are to understand Hamlet as

meaning that Polonius is not so honest a man as the fishmonger that

Polonius has in mind, or the senex fornicator that he originally

had in mind, but that he is a fleshmonger,--a pander, as Tieck puts

it;--"traders in flesh" such persons are termed in 'Troilus and

Cressida,' v, 11, 46. It is supposed by Tieck that the allusion is to

the way in which Polonius threw Hamlet and Ophelia together, by Friesen

that it refers to his pandering to the desires of Claudius and the

Queen before the old King's death, and by Doering that it points to his

promotion of the o'er-hasty marriage of the King and Queen. But the

foregoing discussion shows that the secondary thought in Hamlet's mind

is that for some personal end Polonius permits Ophelia to accept the

King's attentions, knowing the necessary effect of her youth and beauty

on his licentious nature; for at his last interview with her he saw her

father also, though apparently hiding from both of them, and therefore

believes that he was cognizant of the fact that she had gone to the

palace privately to meet the King. It is evidently this belief which

inspires him with the contempt which he afterwards exhibits towards

Polonius.

His next speech manifests this contempt in a notable degree, but it has

been unappreciated because of the failure to perceive the significance

of the word "sun." It is an argument intended to enforce what he had

already said, and, supplying the omitted portion, the whole runs thus:

You are not honest, and you cannot be honest; "for if the sun (in the

sky) breed maggots in a dead dog, being a (heavenly) god kissing

carrion," even so will the sun of this realm (the King) engender

misdeeds in you, a corrupt man caressed by an earthly god. In

characteristic fashion Shakespeare uses "sun" in a double sense, as he

has just used "fishmonger," and again the occult reference is to

Polonius as a procurer for the King.

And Hamlet follows this up by the warning concerning Ophelia; "Let her

not walk i' the sun (shine of the King's favor); conception is a

blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive (if she does so)."

"Sun" in this passage means "sunshine" or "sunlight," as in ordinary

usage it often does, but it is the light of the sun of royalty that he

has just mentioned.

Hamlet's meaning is made so plain by this construction, that it

scarcely needs argument to enforce it. It may however be remarked that,

assuming its correctness in respect of the declaration that Polonius is

not so honest as a fishmonger, its correctness as to the sun's breeding

maggots in carrion and causing conception in Ophelia necessarily

follows. The three enigmatical statements, thus interpreted, complement

and explain each other, and therefore tend to prove each other; and the

proof is strengthened by the fact that they are the sequelae of a

single thought, namely, his belief in an intrigue between Ophelia and

the King. On the other hand, conceding such a belief, a man of Hamlet's

character would most naturally think these thoughts, and utter them in

characteristic style to Ophelia's father:--The King breeds corruption

in you as does the sun in a carrion dog, you are risking your

daughter's honor to win his favor, and the experiment will probably end

in her dishonor. Hence Hamlet's alleged belief, deduced from his three

interviews with Ophelia, and these three resulting comments tend to

prove each other's correctness.

Again, the sun is plainly credited by Hamlet with a double function,

namely, corruptly breeding life in a dead dog and in a living woman,

and the only possible means of harmonizing the two' statements, and of

making sense out of the latter, is to assume that some man is typified

by the second sun. It is generally admitted that an uncompleted

argument is introduced by the particle "for," and, such being the case,

it is a fair assumption that that also shall contain a reference to

"the sun" as doing something which a man may do. On such an assumption,

the argument is readily followed up: "For if the sun breed maggots in a

dead dog," so must "the sun" breed dishonesty in you, and so may "the

sun" cause your daughter to conceive. These three propositions are

consistent, the logical connection between them is perfect, and their

reason and purpose is clear, if the term "sun" may figuratively

indicate "the King."

Now, it is to be observed that Shakespeare not infrequently refers to

kings as suns, and likens them to gods. When the King has pardoned her

son, the Duchess of York exclaims: "A god on earth thou art"; 'Richard

II,' v, 3, 136. "Kings are earth's gods," says Pericles; 'Pericles,' i,

1, 103. And again he says of the King, his father, that he "Had princes

sit like stars about his throne, And he the sun, for them to

reverence," _Ibid_., II, iii, 40, In 'Henry VIII,' i, 1, 6, Buckingham,

referring to the meeting of the Kings of England and France on the

Field of the Cloth of Gold, styles them "Those suns of glory, those two

lights of men." And Norfolk tells of the wondrous deeds done there,

"when these suns (For so they phrase them) by their heralds challenged

The noble spirits to arms"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 33. Again, adverting to the

manner in which Cardinal Woolsey overshadows all other men in the

King's favor, Buckingham says: "I wonder That such a keech can with his

very bulk Take up the rays o' th' beneficial sun, And keep it from the

earth"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 56. When the Cardinal has procured the King to

arrest him, Buckingham foresees his speedy death, and again uses this

metaphor in a passage which has been much misunderstood, _Ibid_., i. 1,

236: "I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this

instant cloud puts on By dark'ning my clear sun"; that is, whose body

was even that moment entombed by the darkening of the King's

countenance against him; he was already a dead man. (Compare the

thought: "Darkness does the face of earth entomb When living light

should kiss it"; 'Macbeth,' ii, 4, 10).[1] In like manner, in 'King

John,' ii, i, 500, the Dauphin of France refers to himself as King,

when he says to his father that his shadow, visible in the eye of the

Princess, "Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow." In Richard II,'

iii, 2, 50, the King, likening himself to the sun, says that, as the

"eye of heaven" reveals the dark deeds of night when he fires the proud

tops of the eastern pines, "So when this thief, this traitor,

Bolingbroke ... Shall see us rising on our throne, the east, His

treasons will sit blushing in his face." And again, _Ibid_., iv, 1,

260, transferring the metaphor to Bolingbroke, he wails: "O, that I

were a mockery King of snow Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To

melt myself away in waterdrops." In '1 Henry IV,' iii, 2, 79, the King

speaks of "sunlike majesty, When it shines seldom in admiring eyes." In

'Richard III.' i, 1, 1, Gloster says, referring to the King: "Now is

the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York."

In 'Hamlet,' i, 2, 67, the King asks Hamlet: "How is it that the clouds

still hang on you?" and he ironically replies: "Not so, my lord, I am

too much i' the sun." Here again "sun" means "sunshine," and Hamlet,

choosing to understand the King literally, and referring to the fact

that clouds are dissipated by a genial sun, sneeringly protests that he

is too much in the sunshine of royalty to have clouds hanging about

him. Referring to a different effect of the sun's warmth, Prince John

speaks of "The man that sits within a monarch's heart And ripens in the

sunshine of his favor"; '2 Henry IV,' iv, 2, 12. There are other

similar uses of the word "sun," which need not now be cited.

The last reference to Ophelia's supposed relation to the King occurs

when Polonius comes to announce the presence of the players:

"_Ham_. 'O Jephthah, judge of Israel,' what a treasure hadst

thou!

"_Pol_. What treasure had he, my lord?

"_Ham_. Why 'One fair daughter, and no more, the which he loved

passing well.'

"_Pol_. Still on my daughter [_aside_].

"_Ham_. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?

"_Pol_. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that

I love passing well.

"_Ham_. Nay, that follows not.

"_Pol_. What follows then, my lord?

"_Ham_. Why, 'As by lot, God wot.'"

Here Hamlet again mystifies Polonius about his daughter, quoting from

an old English ballad. Jephthah is pilloried in history as the man who

sacrificed his daughter in payment for his worldly success. Shakespeare

also refers to him in '3 Henry VI,' v, 1, 91: "To keep that oath were

more impiety than Jephthah's when he sacrificed his daughter." Hamlet

dubs Polonius "Jephthah," because he believes that he has paid for

political preferment by yielding his daughter to the King. And when

Polonius says that, if he is to be called Jephthah, he admits that like

Jephthah he loves his daughter, Hamlet replies in characteristic vein,

"Nay, that follows not"; meaning that it follows instead that like

Jephthah he has sacrificed her. But when Polonius presses him to say

what does follow, he conceals his real meaning, as his custom is, and

diverts the old man's mind by answering the line from the ballad. As

was the case with regard to Ophelia, Hamlet is reluctant to make the

open charge against her father.

Thus in every instance in which Hamlet comes in contact with Ophelia,

or refers to her, his actions and his words consistently point to the

fact that he renounces her because he believes her to have thrust him

aside while engaging in an intrigue with the King. And the fact that

from this point of view there is a connected story of their relations

told by the several interviews above discussed, that Hamlet's conduct

and language in them all are adequately explained, and that a single

belief of his accounts for each of them, is strong confirmation of the

theory's correctness. It is in harmony with the general scheme of the

drama also, all of whose important movements hinge on "purposes

mistook"; and it furnishes Hamlet with an adequate motive for his

treatment of Ophelia, and removes from him the stigma of mere

brutishness or insanity. Coleridge well says that there must have been

"some profound heart truth" under the story, and the theory herein

advanced seems to disclose it. _David A. McKnight_.

Washington, D. C., February 26, 1898.

* * * * *

CLEWS TO EMERSON'S MYSTIC VERSE.

(Third Paper.)

"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit

seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more

dead than a great reckoning in a little room."--_Touchstone_.

The phantasmal lords of life of the poem 'Experience,' which we

considered at the close of the last paper, were presumably suggested to

Emerson by the following lines from Tennyson's 'Mystic,' published in

1830 (Emerson imported these early volumets of young Tennyson, and

never tired of praising them to his friends):--

"Always there stood before him, night and day,

Of wayward vary-colored circumstance

The imperishable presences serene,

Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,

Dim shadows but unwaning presences

Four-faced to four corners of the sky."

The "silent congregated hours," "daughters of time, divinely tall,"

with "severe and youthful brows," in this same poem of Tennyson gave

Emerson his "daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days," congregated in

procession. Tennyson's mystic, who hears "time flowing in the middle of

the night" recalls Emerson's 'Two Rivers,' in which the living All, the

Infinite Soul, is figured as a stream flowing through eternity:--

"I hear the spending of the stream,

Through years, through men, through nature fleet,

Through love and thought, through power and dream."

At the close of the poem 'Wealth' there is a bit of scientific

nature-ethics which is a little obscure. The greater part of the

poem is a series of graphic pictures, detailing the process of

world-development through the geologic ages down to the advent of man.

Suddenly, at the end,--just as at the end of the prose essay on the

same subject,--he remembers his manners and makes his bow to the august

Soul, kindles a light in the Geissler tube of nature, sets it aglow

interiorly with spiritual law:--

"But, though light-headed man forget,

Remembering Matter pays her debt:

Still, through her motes and masses, draw

Electric thrills and ties of Law,

Which bind the strength of Nature wild

To the conscience of a child."

The logical link connecting this part with the rest has dropped out in

the poem, but is clear enough in the essay. The lines mean simply this:

that, though man may forget to obey the laws of the universe, Nature

never forgets her debt of obedience; she bites and stings the

transgressor and caresses and soothes him who obeys. In her own

submission to law she has that artlessness and quasi-moral sense that

affines her to the moral nature of a child. The "awful victors" and

"Eternal Rights" of 'Voluntaries' are only "remembering Matter" in

another mask: with all their innocent obedience they are themselves

terrible executors:--

"They reach no term, they never sleep,

In equal strength through space abide;

Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,

The strong they slay, the swift outstride."

In the following high pantheistic strain the seer chants the old rune

that God is all:--

"The living Heaven thy prayers respect,

House at once and architect,

Quarrying man's rejected hours,

Builds therewith eternal towers;

Sole and self-commanded works,

Fears not undermining days,

Grows by decays,

And, by the famous might that lurks

In reaction and recoil,

Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil;

Forging, through swart arms of Offence,

The silver seat of Innocence."

--'Spiritual Laws.'

When the Living Universe builds a house, it builds it out of its own

soul substance; while man sleeps and loiters, the Unconscious

ceaselessly toils. In the phrase "grows by decays," Emerson embodies, I

believe, the law of the conservation of energy. The magazine of divine

power is exhaustless; does energy sink out of sight here, it is only to

reappear yonder; the tree decays, but out of its fertilizing substance

new plants may spring up; the coal under the steam boiler of the

locomotive is consumed, but the swart goblin has lost no whit of his

might: he just slips darkling up into the steam, makes the driving-rods

his swift-shuttling arms, and, grasping with his steel fingers the

felloes of the wheel, whirls you half a thousand miles over the green

bulge of the earth ere set of sun, The mystic Power grows by decays;

and also, by "the famous might that lurks in reaction and recoil,"

reconciles apparent antinomies and opposites, and is the agent that

visits evil upon the head of the evil doer and mercy upon the merciful.

If a heavy body be rolled up an inclined plane, it acquires potential

and kinetic energy just equal to the force expended in getting it

there, and in reaction develops such a famous might that, if massive

enough, it will knock you down if you stand in its way. If you lift the

big pendulum of the clock in the corner, you also confer latent, or

reactionary, energy upon it. Only it is of course hyperbolical for the

poet to say that reaction is potent enough to actually freeze flame and

make ice boil your kettle. That is only one of Emerson's rhetorical

Chinese crackers, his startling thaumaturgic way of illustrating his

thesis.

The key-thought of the essay 'Spiritual Laws,' to which the occult

lines we are considering were prefixed, is, Be noble; for, if you are

not, your face and life will, by the law of reaction and return,

publish your lapse. Punishment and reward are fruits that ripen

unsuspected in the deeds of men.

The pertinency and application of many of Emerson's titles are not at

once apparent.

In 'Merops' the bard affirms that in his high philosophical soarings he

cares not whether he can at once ticket his intuitions and perceptions

with names or not. Merops was changed into an eagle, says Ovid, and

placed among the constellations,--hence, I suppose, is selected by

Emerson as a good type of the kind of soaring thinker he is describing.

That he also has in mind that Merops was the putative father of

Phaethon is shown perhaps by the allusion (in the last stanza) to

Phaethon's mishap:--

"Space grants beyond his fated road

No inch to the god of day,

And copious language still bestowed

One word, no more, to say."

'Alphonso of Castile' is a dramatic monologue containing a whimsical

suggestion for compounding a Man out of ordinary weak-timbered manikins

by killing nine in ten of them and "stuffing nine brains in one hat."

It is put into the mouth of Alphonso, King of Castile, born in 1221,

called _El Sabio_, "The Wise." He was a man who suffered much in his

life. He wrote a famous code of laws, and first made the Castilian a

national language by causing the Bible to be translated into it.

Emerson chooses him as the vehicle of his own whimsey about the

condensed homunculus chiefly on account of one famous sentence

attributed to him: "Had I been present at the creation, I could have

given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe."

Emerson, in his rhymed soliloquy, put into Alphonso's mouth,

sarcastically twits Nature with her depleted stocks, her run-out

strains of lemons, figs, roses, and men. The remedy proposed in the

case of man, and outlined above, has the true Emerson-Swift bouquet, is

colored and veined with a right Shakespearian scorn of the mob.

'Mithridates' is a monologue put into the mouth of Mithridates the

Great, King of Pontus, who is said to have discovered an antidote for

poisons which made him poison-proof against his many enemies:--

"I cannot spare water or wine,

Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;

From the earth-poles to the line,

All between that works or grows,

Everything is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat;

Give me cantharids to eat;

From air and ocean bring me foods,

From all zones and altitudes."

As late as 1787 "mithridate" was the name for an antidote against

poison included in the London pharmacop[oe]ia. In Jonson's 'Every Man

in his Humour,' Kitely, thinking he is poisoned, calls for mithridate

and oil. It was composed of many ingredients and given in the form of

electuaries. In our modern pharmacopoeias we have plenty of antidotes

against virulent poisons; _e. g_., atropine for the deadly amanita

mushroom. And counter-poisons are often used, as the tincture of

foxglove for aconite, atropine for morphia, or morphia for belladonna.

According to the tradition, Mithridates gradually inured his system to

counter-poisons, and became poison-proof. At any rate, Emerson uses him

for his metaphor, which, in untropical speech, is this: "lam tired of

the nambypamby and goody-goody; give me things strong and rank; give me

evil for a change and a spur.

"Too long shut in strait and few,

Thinly dieted on dew,

I will use the world, and sift it,

To a thousand humors shift it,

As you spin a cherry.

O doleful ghosts and goblins merry!

O all you virtues, methods, mights,

Means, appliances, delights,

Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,

Smug routine, and things allowed,

Minorities, things under cloud!

Hither! take me, use me, fill me,

Vein and artery, though ye kill me!"

In brief, "I have run the gauntlet of experience, sounded all the

depths of passion, joy, woe, evil. I am dipped in Styx, more

invulnerable than Siegfried, and strong now to use the world and be

used by it." The mood of the poem is the wild longing that sometimes

comes over the good man to break loose and have his fling, come what

may, cry, _Vive la bagatelle!_ or run amuck and tilt at all he meets.

It is needless to say that the staid Emerson never carried this mood

farther than to smoke a cigar now and then, or take an Adirondack

outing. His contemporary, the untrammelled Whitman, could both preach

and practise (within the bounds of reason) the Mithridatic doctrine;

and he was a more many-sided and symmetrical man in consequence.

The last two lines of 'Mithridates,' as printed from the autograph

copy, were,--

"God! I will not be an owl,

But sun me in the Capitol."

These lines Emerson wisely dropped.

'Forerunners' ("Long I followed happy guides)" mean one's brave hopes

and ideals of good to come, our dreams and aspirations. The lines

"No speed of mine avails

To hunt upon their shining trails"

Thoreau evidently utilized as text for his well-known fable in 'Walden'

of the lost hound, bay horse, and turtle-dove.

The portrait of Hermione, the patient-sweet wife of Leontes in 'The

Winter's Tale' of Shakespeare, serves Emerson, in his poem 'Hermione,'

as the model of a perfect wife, and a more acceptable one to this age

than Chaucer's abject Griselda. Such a lady as Shakespeare's Hermione,

beautiful in person and of rare self-control and virtue, is an

adumbration or epitome of the universal beauty. Looking at nature, the

American poet finds the features of his Hermione there: "mountains and

the misty plains, Her colossal portraiture." I suppose that this

sketch, tender and delicately toned as if with a silver point, is

autobiographical, and is a shadowing forth of the character of

Emerson's first wife, the ethereal souled Ellen Tucker, who died of

consumption after only a year and a half of married life. When her

"meteor glances came," he says, he was "hermit vowed to books and

gloom," and dwelling alone. In the lines

"The chains of kind

The distant bind;

Deed thou doest she must do,"

he anticipates (does he not?) the telepathy of our days,--kindred minds

seeking similar places and thinking like thoughts, although in this

case, to be sure, the kindred soul is thought of as merged with the

inorganic world,--the winds and waterfalls and twilight nooks.

Search the whole world through, you shall find no predecessor of

Emerson the poet. The only verse resembling his in general style is

that of the enigmatic 'Phoenix and the Turtle,' attributed to

Shakespeare, and much admired by Emerson:--

"Let the bird of loudest lay,

On the sole Arabian tree.

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey."

Emerson's verses have also a slight Persian tinge now and then, caught

from his studies of Saadi and Hafiz. In his fine lyric cry 'Bacchus,'

in which he calls for a wine of life, a cup of divine soma or amrita,

that shall sinew his brain and exalt all his powers of thought and

action to a godlike pitch,--

"Bring me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

* * * *

That I intoxicated,

And by the draught assimilated,

May float at pleasure through all natures;

* * * *

Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock,"--

he unconsciously gave his lines, I think, the outward form of some

verses by Hafiz, in which that singer intimates that, give him the

right kind of wine, and he can perform wonders as if with Solomon's

ring or Jemschid's wine-cup mirror. Emerson himself in one of his early

editions gives a spirited verse translation of Hafiz's poem. Mr.

William R. Alger ('Specimens of Oriental Poetry,' Boston, 1856)

translates Hafiz thus:--

"Bring me wine! By my puissant arm

The thick net of deceit and of harm

Which the priests have spread over the world

Shall be rent and in laughter be hurled.

Bring me wine! I the earth will subdue.

Bring me wine! I the heaven will storm through.

Bring me wine, bring it quick, make no halt!

To the throne of both worlds will I vault.

All is in the red streamlet divine.

Bring me wine! O my host, bring me wine!"

'Etienne de la Boece' gets its title (with Emersonian variations) from

the name of one of Montaigne's most intimate friends,--Estienne de la

Boetie. Montaigne tells us about him in Chapter xxvii of his Essays,

affirming that he would have accomplished miracles, had he lived. He

died when only thirty-three at Bordeaux (1563). His scholarship was

solid, his translations from the Greek excellent. He was so eager to

read Greek that he copied whole volumes with his own hand. A French

critic says, "Les qualites qui brillaient en lui imprimaient a toute

sa personne un cachet distingue et un charme severe." Yet he seems to

have been something of an imitator of his great friend; and it is in

this aspect of his life that Emerson regards him, using him, perhaps

somewhat unjustly to his powers and developing genius, as the type of a

too imitative disciple:--

"I serve you not, if you I follow,

Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;

* * * *

Vainly valiant, you have missed

The manhood that should yours resist."

Probably most Americans, if asked to explain the relevancy of the title

of Emerson's poem 'Guy,' would be unable to answer offhand. The verses

celebrate the lucky man:--

"The common waters fell

As costly wine into his well.

The zephyr in his garden rolled

From plum-trees vegetable gold.

Stream could not so perversely wind

But corn of Guy's was there to grind."

The reference, of course, is to a man well known in England,--Thomas

Guy (d. 1724), founder of Guy's Hospital in London. He was the George

Peabody of his day. Beginning life as a bookseller, he made a good deal

of money in printing Bibles, but acquired most of his enormous fortune

by financial speculations. He was extremely economical; for example,

always ate his dinner on his shop counter, first spreading out a

newspaper to catch the crumbs. His charities were boundless. To his

hospital he gave $1,000,000; and at his death his will was found to

contain an enormous number of special benefactions, including bequests

to over ninety cousins. Emerson in his poem compares Guy to Polycrates,

who was King of Samos some five hundred years before Christ. He says

that Polycrates "chained the sunshine and the breeze"; that is, the

very elements seemed to be in his pay. This run of luck was without a

break up to his death; his fleet of a hundred ships was the largest

then known; he conquered all his enemies, and amassed great treasure.

His ally, Amasis, King of Egypt, was so alarmed at his prosperity,

fearing the envy of the gods, that he advised him to make some

noteworthy sacrifice. The story goes that Polycrates accordingly threw

his emerald signet-ring into the sea, but it came back to his kitchens

in the belly of a large fish, as in the Arabian Nights story. The fears

of Amasis were finally justified; for the Persian satrap Or[oe]tes

enticed Polycrates to the mainland, and crucified him.

'Xenophanes' embodies poetically the doctrine of the earnest old

Greek agnostic and monist of that name, that God, or the All, is

uncreated, immovable, and one,--not immovable in its parts, but as a

whole, and just because it is all. Xenophanes saw the grandeur and

incomprehensibility of the universe, he violently opposed what seemed

to him the disgraceful polytheism of Homer, and anticipated the modern

atomic theory and the doctrine of the unity of life as revealed by the

spectroscope and the discovery of the conservation and mutual

convertibility of forces. Or, as Emerson puts it in his haunting

numbers,--

"By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave

One scent to hyson and to wall-flower,

One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,

One aspect to the desert and the lake.

It was her stern necessity."

The title of the poem 'Hamatreya' seemed at first to baffle a perfect

and indubitable explanation. The word can be found in no English or

foreign dictionary that the largest libraries afford. We are indebted,

however, to Col. T. W. Higginson (_The Critic_, Feb. 18, 1888) for not

only giving us a clew to the title, but for pointing out the portion of

the Vishnu Purana (Wilson's translation, 1840) on which Emerson based

his 'Earth Song' in 'Hamatreya,' and, in fact, got the hint for the

whole poem; namely, at the close of Book IV. Maitreya is a disciple of

Parasara, who relates to Maitreya the Vishnu Purana. Among other things

he tells Maitreya of a chant of the Earth, who said, "When I hear a

king sending word to another by his ambassador, 'This earth is mine:

immediately resign your pretensions to it,' I am moved to violent

laughter at first; but it soon subsides in pity for the infatuated

fool." Again, the Purana says, "Earth laughs, as if smiling with

autumnal flowers, to behold her kings unable to effect the subjugation

of themselves"; which is Emerson's

"Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs."

And again: "These were the verses, Maitreya, which Earth recited, and

by listening to which ambition fades away, like snow before the sun."

Here are Emerson's lines:--

"When I heard the Earth-song,

I was no longer brave;

My avarice cooled

Like lust in the chill of the grave."

Colonel Higginson suggests that Emerson may also have had in mind, in

writing 'Hamatreya,' Psalm, xlix. 11. As he rightly says, the title

evidently is meant to give a hint of the Hindoo source of the argument

of the poem. It is in line with the uniform custom of Emerson in giving

historical catch-words, especially proper names, as his titles. After

an exhaustive search through all the Hindoo scriptures, I have reached

a conviction which approaches absolute certainty that Hamatreya is

Emerson's imperfect recollection of Maitreya or that he purposely

coined the word. Emerson, it is nearly certain, read the Vishnu Purana,

translated by H. H. Wilson (a large and costly work), by the copy then

in the Harvard Library or the Boston Athenaeum, perhaps taking brief

notes, but omitting to write down "Maitreya." In his exhaustive index

of proper names, appended to the Vishnu Purana, Wilson has no such word

as Hamatreya, nor does it occur anywhere in the book. To clinch the

argument, Prof. Charles R. Lanman, the well-known Sanskrit scholar of

Harvard University, writes me that "Hamatreya is not a Sanskrit word."

"The Atreyas," he says, "were the descendants of Atri." "It is an easy

mistake to make _Hamatreya_ out of _Maitreya_. I really think you will

have to assume a simple slip here."

Emerson is not wilfully obscure. But he comes dangerously near to being

so in the demand he often makes upon his readers for out-of-the-way

knowledge. 'Casella' is the title of an Emersonian quatrain,--

"Test of the poet is knowledge of love,

For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove.

Never was poet, of late or of yore,

Who was not tremulous with love-lore."

The reference is to Dante's friend Casella ("Casella mio"), whom he

meets in Purgatory, and who sweetly sings (as of yore on earth he was

wont) a canzone by Dante himself,--"_Amor, che nella mente mi

ragiona_." Emerson's favorite poet, Milton, in his sonnet to Henry

Lawes, alludes, as Mr. Norton points out, to this friendship:--

"Dante shall give fame leave to set thee higher

Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."

The title [Greek: adakrun nemontai aiona] is from Pindar, I believe.

Emerson took it from _The Dial_, where (July, '43) it appears as the

motto to a poem by Charles A. Dana on 'Manhood.' It means, literally,

"They pass a tearless life"; or, very freely rendered, "They live a

life of smiles,"--a sentiment explained by the first lines,--

"A new commandment, said the smiling Muse,

I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach."

Even in so slight a matter as choosing a name for his verses 'To Rhea,'

Emerson's philosophical belief is glimpsed; for Rhea was the mother of

gods, and such he believed all women to be. The thought of this

remarkable poem, which its author feigns to have received from the

thousand chattering tongues of the poplar-tree, is extremely subtle and

somewhat difficult to formulate. The analysis is this. If you, a wife,

have lost your supremacy in your husband's affections, take a strange

and noble revenge, not by hating, but, in a kind of calm altruistic

despair, endowing him with all the gifts and blessings at your command.

The poem is headed 'To Rhea' (Rhea being the wife of the cruel Saturn,

who devoured his own children) as to a wife whose husband had merely

"drank of Cupid's nectar cup," married her from sex-instinct alone, and

then, the "bandages of purple light" fallen from "his eyes," treated

her with indifference. But she continues to love him; and more the poet

gives her the advice just noted, illustrating by the supposed case of a

god loving a mortal maid, and warily knowing that she, with her

inferior ideals, can never adequately requite his love, yet nobly

endowing her with all gifts and graces, which are the hostages he pawns

for freedom from "his thrall." He does this in an altruistic spirit, in

order by her to "model newer races" and "carry man to new degrees of

power and comeliness." But what thrall? We must walk warily here. In

order not to seem to give his verses an autobiographical cast (although

the god, the "wise Immortal," of them is really such a type as the seer

Emerson himself), he withdraws into dim recesses and speaks in subtlest

metaphors. The thrall, I think, is the bondage a lover or husband is in

to his beloved, in whom the solecisms and disenchantments of possession

have supplanted the poetic illusions of romantic love. The man of

supreme wisdom, by the magic of self-sacrifice and boundless profusion

of gifts turns the trap or prison in which nature has caught him into a

bower of Eden. By the road of generosity he escapes. He cunningly

builds up in her mind gratitude and friendship in place of the lost

romanticism. There is in this treatment of love a touch of the

coldblooded philosophy of the Emersonian critique of friendship. But if

it is not a marriage of ideal kind, such as that of the Brownings,

which he celebrates, he at least embodies in his verse the shrewd

love-philosophy of the practical-poetical Englishman, united to the

average woman for the furtherance of the ends of the species.

Mr. George Brown, in his Emerson primer, thinks that the key-thought of

'Rhea' is in these lines from 'The World-Soul' about the gods:--

"To him who scorns their charities

Their arms fly open wide."

But the parallelism somewhat halts. For mark: In the one case

Napoleon's maxim is embodied, that God is on the side of the strongest

battalions. The one who scorns the favoritisms and alms of Heaven, and

yet, will he nill he, receives its aid, is really the strong God

himself in mask, the noble and resolute man executing his will in time

and space. But in the case supposed in 'Rhea,' of husband and wife, the

ones who scorn love are those not deserving of gifts at all (although

Nature finds her account in them), but persons who receive gifts in

charity from one altruistically nobler than themselves. It is just this

idea of sublime self-sacrifice that gives to 'Rhea' its strange

subtlety and its uniqueness among poems on love. There is a consolatory

under-thought in the palimpsest, too. By his illustration of the god

and the mortal maid the poet wishes Rhea to divine that, if wives make

moan over husbands' lost love, husbands no less often have reason to

lament the cooled affection of wives.

The central idea in 'Uriel' is that there is no such thing as evil.

This thesis is put into the mouth of Uriel, one of the seven

archangels, because he was the "interpreter" of God's will. So Milton

says, in the _locus classicus_ on Uriel in Book III of 'Paradise Lost.'

He also says he was

"The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heav'n."

His station was in the all-viewing sun. Uriel, in Milton, tells how,

when the universe was yet chaos,

"Or ever the wild Time coined itself

Into calendar months and days,"

he saw the worlds a-forming,--earth, sun, and stars. Emerson (or

"Sayd") takes Milton at his word, and leads us back into that dark

backward and abysm of time, and lets us overhear a conversation between

Uriel and the other seraphs. At his speech "the gods shook," because if

there is no sin, if all comes round to good, even a lie, then good-bye

gods, hells and heavens, and their punishments. But note that, though

the All turns your wrong to good in the end, yet you, an individual,

suffer for your wrongdoing.

In a genial paper in the _Andover Review_ for March, 1887, Dr. C. C.

Everett says that Dr. Hedge suggested to him that 'Uriel' probably took

its origin in the discussions of the Boston Association of Ministers on

the theme (then rife), "There is no line in nature": all is circular,

and by the law of reaction every deed returns upon the doer. At any

rate, it was written in 1838, soon after his Divinity School Address.

('Emerson in Concord,' by Edward Emerson.)

The god of boundaries in ancient Rome--Terminus--gives his name to the

cheeriest of monodies or anchoring songs sung by the gayest of old

sailors on the sea of eternity, and at last approaching port. Terminus,

like Hermes, the Greek god of bounds, was shown in his statues without

hands or feet, to indicate that he never moved. Was Emerson a little

rusty in his classical lore, or did he boldly and knowingly defy

classical verities when he says the divinity came to him "in his fatal

rounds"? He seems to have attributed to Terminus patrolling functions

like those of his own New England village fence-viewers. Or, rather,

speaking in noble and more adequate terms, has he not added to the

world's mythologies a new and poetical deity,--the god of the bounds of

human life, a kind of avant-courier or Death's dragoman to announce to

men their approaching end? 'Terminus' was written about 1866, when

Emerson was in or near his sixty-third year, and sixteen years before

his death. _William Sloane Kennedy._

* * * * *

A DEFENCE OF BROWNING'S LATER WORK.

If a defence of Browning's work were to include all he has written

since the date when Edmund Gosse said his books were chiefly valuable

as keeping alive popular interest in the poet, and as leading fresh

generations of readers to what he had already published, it would needs

begin as far back as 1868; and considering the amount of work done

since that time would require at least a volume to do the subject

justice.

Fortunately it has long been admitted that Homer sometimes nods,

though not with such awful effect as was said to attend the nods of

Jove--Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted eminence as a critic, we

may dare to assume that in this particular instance he fell into the

ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.

If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere

advertising scheme many poems which have now become household

favorites. Take, for example, 'Herve Riel.' Think of the blue-eyed

Breton hero whom all the world has learned to love through Browning,

tolerated as nothing more than an index finger to 'The Pied Piper of

Hamelin!' Take, too, such poems, as 'Donald,' whose dastardly

sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that it has the power to arouse

strong emotion in strong men, who have been known literally to break

down in the middle of it through excess of feeling; 'Ivan Ivanovitch,'

in which is embodied such fear and horror that weak hearts cannot stand

the strain of hearing it read; the story of the dog Tray who rescued a

drowning doll with the same promptitude as he did a drowning child--at

the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of little children grow

eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is there in any poet's

work, a more vivid bit of tragedy than 'A Forgiveness!'

And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of

the imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out? The exquisite

lyric girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are

fair playfellows.

As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered

Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a

snore."

These and many others which might be mentioned as having appeared since

the date when Mr. Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's

genius are now so universally accepted that any defence of them would

be absurd.

There are again others whose tenure of fame is still hanging in the

balance like 'The Red Cotton Night-cap Country,' 'The Inn Album,'

'Aristophanes' Apology,' 'Fifine at the Fair'; but as they have had

already some able defenders, I shall not attempt any defence of them

further than to say, in passing, that the longer I know them, and the

more I read them, the more I am impressed with their masterly portrayal

of human motives as they either reflect a given social environment or

work contrary to it. Only a genius of the greatest power could have

grasped and moulded into palpitating life beings of the calibre of the

brilliant complex and illogical Aristophanes, or the dunderheaded, well

meaning and equally illogical Miranda and set them to act out their

little parts in a living historical environment--one in decadent Athens

with her petty political and literary rivalries and dying religion; the

other in ultramontane France where superstition and materialism were

fighting for the mastery. Such art as is illustrated in these poems on

in 'Fifine at the Fair' or in 'The Inn Album,' may not be of the kind

to give one direct ideals for the conduct of life; but it represents

the most splendid realism from which as from life itself deep moral

lessons may be drawn. There is an actuality of realism in these poems

of Browning's that puts into the shade, that of the great apostle of

realism, Zola, for his realism too often presents what I venture to

call obverse idealism--evil apotheosized, not evil struggling toward

good as it invariably appears in life.

Among the poet's later works, 'Ferishtah's Fancies' and 'The Parleyings

with Certain People of Importance in Their Day' have perhaps been more

obscured by mists of non-appreciation than any others. I shall,

therefore, confine myself for the present to making here and there a

rift in these mists in the hope that some glimpses of the splendor of

the giant form behind them may be gained.

Without particularizing either critics or criticism, it may be said

that criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three

branches,--one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to

their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This

last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it as in part

true. The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are

ministered unto by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as

'Twinkle, twinkle little star' might not at once grasp the significance

of the Parleying with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised

that some minds might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and

fathom the doctrine of the equivalence of being and non-being and yet

be led into a slough of despond by this same cantankerous George.

But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling

of an eye--after a proper amount of study and hard thinking--into an

elevated plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or

smiling.

Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous

than dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the

wideness of the seas? Or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson,

say, among the meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes with silken

cushions? Beauty and peace is the reward of such poetical pleasures.

They fall upon the spirit like the "sweet sound that breathes upon a

bank of violets, stealing and giving odor," but shall we never return

from the land where it is always afternoon? Is it only in such a land

as this that we realize the true power of emotion? Rather does it

conduce to the slumber of emotion; for progress is the law of feeling

as it is the law of life, and many times we feel,--yes--feel--with

tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing Matterhorns with great

iron nails in our shoes, with historical and archaeological, and

philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we reach the summit

what unsuspected beauties become ours.

Advancing a step more seriously into the subject, I may say that these

two series of poems form the key-stone to Browning's whole work. They

are like a final synthesis of the problems of existence which he has

previously made analyses of from myriad points of view in his dramatic

presentation of character. It has been said that in these poems his

philosophy loses its intuitional and assured point of view, to become

hard-headed and doubting. But does not a careful comparison with his

early work disprove this assertion?

In his two early poems, 'Pauline' and 'Paracelsus,' before the poet's

personality became merged in that of his characters, he presents us

with his poetic creed and his theory of the universe in no mistakable

terms. In 'Pauline' we get a direct glimpse of the poet's own artistic

temperament, and may literally put our fingers upon those qualities

which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.

As described by himself the poet of 'Pauline' was

"Made up of an intensest life

Of a most clear idea of consciousness

Of self, distinct from all its qualities,

From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;

And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:

But linked in me to self-supremacy,

Existing as a centre to all things,

Most potent to create and rule and call

Upon all things to minister to it."

This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective

poet--one who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of

humanity,--interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy,

and at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct. The poet of

this poem discovers that he can no longer lose himself with enthusiasm

in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul constituted as

his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth of that

greater, broader love of the fully developed artist-soul which, while

entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true

complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.

This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his

large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man's

relation to the universe involved in 'Paracelsus' where it is shown

that the Absolute cannot be fully realized by mankind either through

knowledge or love. Aprile's doctrine has an element of fatalism in it.

He sees and loves God in imperfection, but does not seem to have much

notion of progress. On the other hand, Paracelsus sees God only in

perfected Mankind, until he is really made wise to know that

"Even hate is but a mask of love's

To see a good in evil and a hope

In ill success,"

and so is led to combine his own former standpoint with Aprile's by

perceiving God and God's love in progress from lesser to ever greater

good, and that evil and failure are the spurs that send man onwards to

a future where joy climbs its heights "forever and forever."

From this point in his work Browning, like the Hindu Brahmah, becomes

manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait

we get in 'Pauline' is the same poet who sympathetically presents a

whole world of human experiences to us, keeping his own individuality

for the most part intact, and the philosopher whose portrait is drawn

in 'Paracelsus' is the same who interprets these human experiences in

the light of the great life-theories therein presented.

But as the creations of Brahmah return into himself, so the human

experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to

enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when like his own

Rabbi Ben Ezra, he reaches the last of life for which "the first was

planned" in these 'Fancies' and 'Parleyings'.

Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet's own

mature conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things

are gained in this way. First, the poems are saved from didacticism,

for the poet expresses his opinion as an individual and not as a seer,

trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second,

variety is given and the mind is stimulated by having opposite points

of view presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount

of emotional force through the heat of argument.

It has, of course, been objected that philosophical and ethical

problems are not fit subjects for discussion in poetry. It should be

remembered, however, that there is one point the critic of AEsthetics

has not yet learned to realize; namely, that the law of evolution is

differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life.

It is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry

to this or that subject, or say that nothing is dramatic that does not

deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to declare

that no poem would ever be worthy the name that did not contain a

catalogue of ships.

These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas,

in which character development is of prime importance; dramas, wherein

action and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the

action means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann's

'Sunken Bell,' or Ibsen's 'Master Builder,' then why not dramas of

thought and dramas of mood when the brain and heart become the stage of

action instead of an actual stage. Surely, such dramas are a natural

development of this Nineteenth Century. As the man in 'Half Rome' says

"Facts are facts and lie not, and the question 'How came that purse i'

the poke o' you admits of no reply.'" Art has a great many forms of

drama in its poke already, so we would better be careful how we make

authoritative statements on the subject.

Another advantage, gained from the dramatic form and this is most

important, is that the poet has been enabled by means of it to hold the

mirror up to the turmoil of thought that has racked the brains and

hearts of the last half of the Nineteenth Century. Victorian England in

its thought phases lives just as surely in these poems as Renaissance

Italy in its art phases in 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' 'Andrea del Sarto,'

'Pictor Ignotus' and 'The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's;' and

this is true though the first series is cast in the form of Persian

Fables and the second, in the form of Parleyings with worthies of past

centuries.

We who have grown up under the dispensation, so to speak, of the

doctrine of evolution, now acknowledged to be the guiding principle in

every department of knowledge find it hard to enter into the spirit of

that mid-century Sturm and Drang period which resulted upon the

publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' This book is the landmark

of the century, and commemorates at once the triumph of knowledge, and

its failure. The triumph of science in the realm of phenomena, its

failure to pierce into the ultimate causes of these phenomena. What a

hard fight scientific methods of investigating the phenomena of nature

and life had had up to that time, in the teeth of opposition from the

less instructed religious world, has been summarized for us in the

fascinating pages of Andrew D. White's 'Warfare Between Theology and

Science.' One by one, Science won the outposts held by prejudice and

conservatism. It had to be admitted that the earth was not flat and

that it did not float upon an infinite sea supported on the back of a

tortoise. It had to be admitted, even, that it did not occupy the chief

seat in the synagogue of the firmament, but went rolling about the sun

like any common little asteroid. Finally, the great guns of science

were trained upon man himself and he was forced to retire from his

lofty position of Lord of Creation to the much more humble one of

outcome of creation.

To a large proportion of mankind it seemed as if, should these things

be admitted as truth, the whole fabric of society must fall to pieces

and religion become a mockery. Those who felt so fought, as for their

life, against the conclusions of science. There was a large minority,

however, which, intellectually constrained to accept the conclusions of

science, yet differed much in temperament and were by consequence,

affected in very different ways by the new truths. There were men like

Matthew Arnold who no longer believed in the revelations of the past,

yet who clung to the beauty of religious forms, in despair at the

thought of the wilderness life would be without them. There were others

like George Eliot, who became positivists, and gained comfort only in

the thought of a religion of humanity and an immortality of nothing

more tangible than human influence. There were those like William

Morris who accepted cheerfully this life as being all and who devoted

their energies to making it as lovely as possible and working to make

it more lovely for the future. There were still others, like Clifford,

entirely hopeless, but who like Childe Roland put the slug horn to

their lips, and lived brave, noble lives in the certainty of coming

annihilation; a divine melancholy seized upon some, such as we see

reflected in much of Tennyson's verse.

But there were a few who beheld the triumph of science undismayed, for

they saw that her sway could not pass beyond the realm of phenomena,

that the failure of the intellect to penetrate behind the mysteries of

nature and life must be the saving of religion. Herbert Spencer is

among scientists undoubtedly the greatest of this type of mind.

Whatever misunderstandings and vituperations he may have been subjected

to, from the positivist who thinks him inconsistent for his religious

tone to the religionist who dubs him an atheist, the fact still remains

that his was the genius that stood out against the advancing flood of

materialism saying "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." He it was

who declared that underlying phenomena was an Infinite power that

transcended all human faculties of imagination, and that this fact was

the most certain intuition of the human mind.

So great an upheaval of thought, changing, as it finally has, man's

whole outlook upon the universe from one more or less static with fixed

codes of morals and standards of art to one that is dynamic and

progressive, brought in its wake the consideration of many ethical as

well as philosophical problems.

Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than

blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this

doctrine in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern

form because it seems to have scientific sanction in the doctrines of

the conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity and the

survival of the fittest, and tends to positive atrophy of the will.

Even wise and thoughtful men now-a-days take such a philosophic view of

events that they hesitate to throw in their voice on either side in the

solution of a national problem because things are bound to follow the

laws of development either way. This is equivalent to admitting that

you are simply a heap of burnt out ashes in the furnace of life, and

that you have no longer any part to play in the combustion that leads

to progress. In the first of 'Ferishtah's Fancies,' a strong plea is

made for those human impulses that lead to action. The will to serve

the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he be the last

link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can at least

have a determining influence upon the direction in which the next link

shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a fatalist,

leaving himself wholly in God's hands until he is taught by the dream

God sent him that man's part is to act as he saw the eagle act,

succouring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings

who were taken care of. Another phase of the same thought is touched

upon in 'A Camel Driver.' The discussion turns upon punishment and the

point is, if, as Ferishtah declares, the sinner is not to be punished

eternally, then why should man trouble himself to punish him. The

answer amounts to this. Man must regard sin from the human point of

view as something evil and to be got rid of and must, therefore, will

to work for its annihilation. It follows then that the sinner should be

punished as that is a means for teaching him to cease sinning.

Another doctrine upon which the Nineteenth Century belief in progress

as the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of

happiness, or the striving for the greatest good of the whole number

including oneself. With this Browning shows himself in full sympathy in

'Two Camels,' wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the

development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms

of joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in

'Plot Culture,' the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing

the soul is emphasized.

The relations of good and evil have also had to be re-considered in the

light of Nineteenth Century thought, the dualism of the past not being

compatible with the evolutionary doctrine that good and evil are

relative, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in two

ways:--first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society

in which they exist, and what may be good in one phase of society, may

become evil in a more developed phase. Second, were it not for evil, we

should never be able to appreciate the superiority of good and so to

work for good, and in working for it to bring about progress. To his

pupil worried over the problem of evil Ferishtah points out in 'Mihrab

Shah' that evil in the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the

beautiful sentiments of pity and sympathy. But though it be recognized

that good comes of evil, shall evil be encouraged? No! Ferishtah

declares, Man bound by man's conditions is obliged to estimate as "fair

or foul Right, wrong, good, evil, what man's faculty adjudges such,"

therefore the man will do all he can to relieve the suffering of poor

Mihrab Shah with a fig-plaster. The answers, then, that Browning gives

to the ethical problems of the century growing out of the acceptance of

modern scientific doctrines, are, in brief, that man shall use that

will-power of which he feels himself possessed, and which really

distinguishes him from the brute creation, in working against whatever

appears to him evil; while the good for which he shall work is the

greatest happiness of all.

What of the philosophical doctrines to which Browning gives expression

in the remaining poems of the group? We find it insisted upon in

'Cherries', 'The Sun', in 'A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating', and

especially in that remarkable poem 'A Pillar at Sebzevar' that

knowledge fails. Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as

gain to be mistrusted. Curiously, enough, this contention of Browning's

has been the cause of most of the criticisms against him as a

philosopher, yet as far as I have been able to discover, there has been

no deep thinker of this century, and there have been many in other

centuries, who has not held in some form or another the opinion that

intellect was unable to solve the mysterious problems of the universe.

Even the metaphysicians who build very wonderful air castles on _a

priori_ ideas declare that these ideas cannot be matters of mere

intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason.

Browning, however, does not rest in the assertion that the intellect

fails. He draws immense comfort from this failure of knowledge. Though

it is to be distrusted as gain, it is not to be mistrusted as means to

gain. "Friend" quoth Ferishtah in 'A Pillar at Sebzevar'

"As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:

Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,

We learn,--when what seemed ore assayed proves dross--

Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity

I' the lode were precious could one light on ore

Clarified up to test of crucible.

The prize is in the process: knowledge means

Ever-renewed assurance by defeat

That victory is somehow still to reach."

For men with minds of the type of Spencer's, this negative assurance of

an infinite ever on before is sufficient, but human beings, as a rule,

will not rest satisfied in such cold abstractions. Though Job said

thousands of years ago "Who by searching can find out God," mankind

still continues to search.

Now comes Browning and says that it is in that very act of searching

that the absolute becomes most directly manifest. From the earliest

times of which we have any record man has been aspiring toward God.

Many times he has thought that he had found God, but later discovered

it to be only God's image built up out of his own human experiences.

This search is very beautifully described in the Fancy called 'The

Sun,' under the symbol of the man who seeks the prime giver that he may

give thanks where it is due for a palatable fig. This search for God

Browning calls Love, meaning by that the moving, aspiring force of the

whole universe, and many are its manifestations, from the love that

goes forth in thanks for benefits received, through the aspirations of

the artist toward beauty, of the lover toward human sympathy, even of

the scientist toward knowledge, to the lover of humanity like

Ferishtah, who declares "I know nothing save that love I can

boundlessly, endlessly."

The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever increasing

fervor aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward

broader conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that

in his nature God has something which corresponds to human love, though

it transcend our most exalted imagining of it. In John Fiske's recent

book 'Through Nature to God' he advances a theory identical with this,

evidently unaware that Browning had been before him, for he claims it

as entirely original. Fiske's originality consists in his having based

his proof upon analogies drawn from the evolution of organic life in

following out the law of the adjustment of inner to outer relations.

For example, since the eye has through aeons of time gradually adjusted

itself into harmony with light, why should not man's search for God be

the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony with the infinite

spirit. Other modern thinkers have advanced the idea that love was the

ruling force of the universe; nor need we confine ourselves to the

moderns, for like nearly every phase of thought, it had its counterpart

or at least its seed in Greek thought. Thus we find that Empedocles

declared that the ruling forces of the universe were Love and Strife

and that the conflict between these was necessary for the continuance

of life. As far as I know, however, no other thinker or poet has

emphasized with such power the thought that the only true basis of

belief is the intuition of God that comes from the direct revelation of

feeling in the human heart, and which has been at once the motive force

of the search for God and the basis of a conception of God's nature. A

natural corollary of such a theory is that every conception man has had

of the Infinite had its value as a partial image since it grew out of

the divine impulse planted in man, but that in the Christian ideal, the

highest symbolical conception was attained through the mystical

unfolding of love in the human soul.

The thought of the 'Fancies' is optimistically rounded out in 'A Bean

Stripe also Apple Eating' in which Ferishtah argues that life, in spite

of the evil in it, seems to him on the whole good, and he cannot

believe that evil is not meant for good ends since he is so sure that

God is infinite in love.

From all this it will be seen that our poet accepts with Spencerians

the negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect, but

adds to it the positive proof derived from emotion.

It was a happy thought of the poet to present such problems in Persian

guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism which

Ferishtah denies in his recognition of the part evil plays in the

development of good, and through Mahometanism for the Fatalism,

Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian atmosphere is preserved

throughout not only by the introduction constantly of Persian allusions

traceable to the great Persian epic the Shah Nameh, but by the telling

of fables in the Persian manner to point the morals intended. With the

exception of the first Fancy, which is derived from a fable of

Bidpai's, we have the poet's own word that all the others are

inventions of his own, but they are none the worse for this. These

clever stories make the poems lively reading, and we soon find

ourselves growing fond of the wise and clever Ferishtah, who like

Socrates is never at a loss for an answer, no matter what bothersome

questions his pupils may propound.

If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the 'Fancies'

proper, we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate

Browning in the lyrics which add such variety and charm to the whole.

This feature is also borrowed from Persian form, a beautiful example of

which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's 'Gulistan' or

'Rose Garden' of the poet Sa' di. In fact Sa' di's preface to his 'Rose

Garden' evidently gave Browning the hint for his humorous prologue, in

which he likens the poems to follow to an Italian dish made of ortolans

on toast with a bitter sage leaf, symbolizing sense, sight and song

"Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent--so's a quince:

Eat each who's able!

But through all three bite boldly--lo, the gust!

Flavor--no fixture--

Flies, permeating flesh and leaf and crust

In fine admixture.

So with your meal, my poem masticate

Sense, sight, and song there!

Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state,

Nothing found wrong there."

Similarly Sa' di says "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom

the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware

that herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on

strings of right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is

constantly mingled with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of

listeners grow not sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings

of acceptance."

A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series

of emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom I think, we may

be justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning themselves. I always

think of them as companion pictures to 'The Sonnets from the

Portuguese.' In these the sun-rise of a great love is portrayed with

intense and exalted passion while the lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies'

reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the

awakening of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is

enlarged, criticism from the one beloved, welcome; all the little

trials of life dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized

with a force never before possible. Do we not see a living portrait of

the two poets in the lyric 'So the head aches and the limbs are faint'?

Many a hint may be found in their letters to prove that Mrs. Browning

with just such a frail body possessed a fire of spirit that carried her

constantly toward attainment while he, with all the vigor of splendid

health could with truth have frequently said "In the soul of me sits

sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics which, whether they conform to

Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as anything ever done in that

line, are crowned by the epilogue in which we hear the stricken husband

crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he had called his "lyric

love" in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the thought that his

optimism is the light radiating from the halo which her human love had

irised round his head.

In 'The Parleyings' the discussions turn principally upon artistic

problems and their relation to modern philosophy, four out of the seven

being inspired by artist, poet, or musician. The forgotten worthies

whom Browning rescued from oblivion, make their appeal to him upon

various grounds that connect them with the present. Bernard de

Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy because in his satirical

poem 'The Grumbling Hive' he forestalled, by a defence of the Duke of

Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good and

evil. One might have imagined that this subject had been exhausted in

'Ferishtah's Fancies,' but it seems to have had a great fascination for

Browning, probably because the idea was a new one and he felt the need

of thinking his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is

added in this case because the objector in the argument was a

contemporary of Browning's--Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism over

the existence of evil is graphically presented. Browning clenches his

side of the argument with an original and daring variation upon the

Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most magnificent passages in

the whole range of his poetry, and probably the finest example anywhere

in literature of a description of nature as interpreted by the laws of

cosmic evolution. He describes the effect of the sun-light in

developing the life upon the earth, tracing it as far as the mind of

man. But the mind of man is not satisfied with the purely physical and

phenomenal.

"What avails sun's earth-felt thrill

To me? Mind seeks to see,

Touch, understand, by mind inside me,

The outside mind--whose quickening I attain

To recognize--I only."

But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is satisfied. He

drew Sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in little:

made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its scientific

and mystical symbolism Browning makes the Prometheus myth teach his

favorite doctrine, namely that the image of love formed in the human

heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is a

symbol of infinite love.

Daniel Bartoli, an extremely superstitious old Jesuit of the 17th

century is set up by Browning in the next poem, simply to be knocked

down again on the ground that all the legendary saints he worshipped

could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The romantic story

of this lady is told in Browning's most fascinating narrative style, so

rapid and direct that it has all the force of a dramatic sketch. Her

claim upon his admiration consists in her recognition of the sacredness

of love which she will not dishonor for worldly considerations, and

finding her betrothed love incapable of attaining her height of

nobleness, she leaves him free. This story only bears upon the poet's

philosophy as it reflects his attitude toward human love, which he

considers so clearly a revelation, that any treatment of it not

absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a sin against heaven

itself.

George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems and gives

the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm; and

the reader a chance to use his wits in discovering that the poet

_assumes_ to agree with Dodington that when one is serving his state,

he should at the same time have an eye to his own private welfare, that

he _pretends_ to criticise only Dodington's method of attaining this--

which is to disclaim that he works for any other good than the state's,

nobody would ever believe that. He then gives what purports to be his

own opinion on the correct method of successful statesmanship--that is,

to pose as a superior being with a divine right to rule, treating

everybody as his puppet and entirely scornful of their opinion of him.

If he will adopt this attitude he may change his tactics every year and

the people instead of suspecting his sincerity will think that he has

wise reasons beyond their insight for his changes. Browning is said to

have had Lord Beaconsfield in mind when he described this proper method

for the statesman. Be that as it may the type is not unknown in this

day. Having discovered all this, the wit of the reader may now draw its

inferences--which will doubtless be that the whole poem is a powerful,

intensely cynical argument, against what we to-day call imperialism and

in favor of liberal government which means the development of every

individual so that he will be able to see for himself whether this or

that policy be right instead of depending upon the leadership of the

over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too seldom to be trusted.

The poet Browning calls out from the shades is Christopher Smart, who

was celebrated for having only once in his life composed a great poem,

'The Song of David,' that put him on a par with Milton and Keats.

Perhaps we might not altogether agree with this decision, but critics

have loved to eulogize its great beauties and whether Browning actually

agreed with their conclusions or not makes little difference, for the

fact furnishes him with a text for discussing the problem of beauty

versus truth in art. Should the poet's province simply be to record his

visions of the beauty and strength of nature and the universe, that

come to him in moments of inspiration such as that which came once to

Christopher Smart? "No," says Browning, whose feet are always firmly

based upon the earth. These visions of poets should not be considered

ends in themselves but the materials for greater ends. He asks such

poets if they would

"Play the fool,

Abjuring a superior privilege?

Please simply when your function is to rule--

By thought incite to deed? Ears and eyes

Want so much strength and beauty, and no less

Nor more, to learn life's lesson by."

He goes on to insist that the poet should find his inspiration in the

human heart and climb to heaven by its means, not investigate the

heavens first. He evidently does not sympathize with Emerson's attitude

that the poet has some mysterious connection with the divine mind which

enables him to become at one bound a seer who may henceforth lead

mankind. Rather must the poet diligently study mankind and teach as a

man may through this knowledge. Space does not permit me to dwell on

the beautiful opening of this poem which recalls the imaginative

faculty of the visions in 'Christmas Eve' and 'Easter Day.'

In 'Francis Furini' the subject is the nude in art, and Browning vows

he will never believe the tale told by Baldinucci that Furini ordered

all his pictures of this description burned. He expresses his

indignation vigorously at some length, showing plainly his own

sympathies then makes Furini pray a very beautiful prayer, then deliver

before a supposed cultured London audience a long and decidedly

recondite speech containing an attack upon that species of agnosticism

that allies itself with positivism and Furini's refutation. The upshot

of it all is that Furini declares the only thing he is certain of is

his own consciousness and the fact that it had a cause behind it,

called God.

"Knowledge so far impinges on the cause

Before me, that I know--by certain laws

Wholly unknown, what'ere I apprehend

Within, without, me, had its rise: thus blend

I, and all things perceived in one effect."

Readers of philosophy will recognize in this an echo from Descartes.

This fact of the human consciousness he further develops into an

argument that the painter should paint the human body, just as it was

argued the poet should study the human heart.

A Philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the

poet in the 'Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse' whom he makes the

scape-goat of his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in

which was described a walk through a Dutch landscape transmogrified by

classic imaginings. To this good soul an old sepulchre, struck by

lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and an old cart wheel half buried

in the sand near by, the Chariot of the Sun. In a spirit of bravado

Browning proceeds to show what he himself could make of a walk provided

he condescended to illuminate it by classic metaphor and symbol, and a

remarkable passage is the result. It occupies from the eighth to the

twelfth stanzas. It is meant to be in derision of the grandiloquent,

classically embroidered style but so splendid is the language, so

haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is as if a God

were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and through

his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously beautiful.

The double feeling one has about this passage only adds to its

interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make Euripides

himself turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks--

"Enough, stop further fooling,"

and to show how a modern poet greets a landscape he flings in the

perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric

"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."

The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely in line with his

philosophy, placing as it does the paramount importance on living

realities.

"'Do and no wise dream,' he exclaims

'Earth's young significance is all to learn;

The dead Greek lore lies buried in its urn

Where who seeks fire finds ashes.'"

The 'Parleying with Charles Avison' is more a poem of moods than any of

the others. The poet's love for music is reflected in his claiming it

as the highest expression possible to man; but sadness comes to him at

the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a fact that is borne in

on him by the inadequateness of Avison's old March styled "grand." He

finally makes of music the most perfect symbol of the evolution of

spirit of which the central truth remains always permanent, while the

form though ever changing is of absolute value to the time when the

spirit found expression in it.

Even this does not quite satisfy the poet's desires for the supremacy

of music, and his final conclusion is that if we only get ourselves

into a proper historical frame of mind, any form will reveal its

beauty, This is a truth which needs especially to be recognized in

music, for we too often hear people objecting to Haydn or Mozart and

even Beethoven because they are not modern, never realizing that each

age has produced its distinctive musical beauty.

But Browning means it of course to have the largest significance in

relation to all forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had

its living example--thus--his last triumphant mood is, "Never dream

that what once lived shall ever die."

I have been able to throw out only a few general suggestions as to

these late masterpieces. There are many subtleties of thought and

graces of expression which reveal themselves upon every fresh reading,

and each poem might well be made the subject of a special study.

I have said nothing about the Prologue and Epilogue to the Parleyings,

not because I love them less, but because I love them so much that I

should never be able to bring this paper, already too long, to a close

if I once began on them. I hope, however, I have said enough not only

to prove the point that these poems give complete expression to the

thought of the age, but that Browning appears in them, to borrow an apt

term from Whitman, as the "Answerer" of the age. That he has

unquestioningly accepted the knowledge which science has brought and

recognizing its relative character, has yet interpreted it in such a

way as to make it subserve the highest ideals in ethics, religion, and

art, and that far from reflecting any degeneration in Browning's

philosophy of life, these poems put on a firmer basis than ever the

thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first, and which constantly

find illustration indirectly and sometimes directly in his dramatic

poems.

I am just as unable to find any fault with their subject matter as with

their form. The variety in both is remarkable. Religion and fable,

romance and philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich

profusion. Everything in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty

lyrics full of exquisite emotion, and grand passages which present in

sweeping images now the processes of cosmic evolution, now those of

spiritual evolution, until it seems as if we had indeed been conducted

to some vast mountain height, whence we could look forth upon the

century's turbulent seas of thought, into which flows many a current

from the past, while suspended above between the sea and sky like the

crucifix in Simons' wonderful symbolistic picture of the Middle Ages,

is the mystical form of Divine Love. _Helen A. Clarke._

SCHOOL OF LITERATURE.

GLIMPSES OF PRESENT DAY POETS: A SELECTIVE READING COURSE.

II. A Group Of American Poets.[2]

1. Edmund Clarence Stedman.

_Readings from Stedman_:--'Hebe,' 'A Sea Change.' New York Scenes:

'Peter Stuyvesant,' 'Pan in Wall Street,' 'The Door Step.' A Sheaf of

Patriotic Poems: 'The Pilgrims,' 'Old Brown,' 'Wanted a Man,'

'Treason's Device,' 'Israel Freyer,' 'Cuba.' (In 'Poems' Household

Edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Are Mr. Stedman's local and patriotic themes

inconsistent with the highest degree of lyric grace, or does his poetic

gift appear to best advantage when enlivened by familiar home

interests?

2. Louise Chandler Moulton.

_Readings_:--'A Quest,' 'The House of Death.' Sonnets: 'The New Day,'

'One Dread,' 'Afar,' 'Love's Empty House,' 'The Cup of Death,' 'Before

the Shrine,' 'As in Vision,' 'Though We Were Dust,' 'Were but My Spirit

Loosed Upon the Air,' 'The New Year Dawns,' 'Aspiration,' 'The Secret

of Arcady,' 'Her Picture.' (The first two selections and first three

sonnets are in 'Swallow Flights.' New edition of poems of 1877 with

additional poems; the four following are in 'The Garden of Dreams'; and

the four last sonnets and the other poems in 'At the Wind's Will.'

Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $1.25 each. For general review of work see,

also, 'The Poetry of Louise Chandler Moulton.' Contemporary Writer

Series in _Poet-lore_. Vol. IV. New Series. Opening Number, 1900, pp.

114-125.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Is Mrs. Moulton too narrowly restricted to

emotional themes and emotional means of expression for bounteous poetic

cheer, or is the perfect alliance of her emotional range and

workmanship the very source of her lyric excellence.

3. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Readings:--'Unsung,' 'Nameless Pain,' 'Quits,' 'Andromeda,' 'Baby

Bell,' 'An Untimely Thought,' 'Bagatelle,' 'Palabras Carinosas,' 'On an

Intaglio of Head of Minerva.' Sonnets: 'Books and Seasons,' 'The

Poets,' 'On Reading William Watson's "The Purple East."' (In Poetical

Works. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Does Mr. Aldrich escape the usual penalty

for laying emphasis on delicacy of finish so that the result is

satisfying in its happy precision? Or does he seem cold and elaborately

superficial? Does he, so to speak, carve cherry-stones oftener than he

engraves cameos?

4. Louise Imogen Guiney.

_Readings_:--'Peter Rugg,' 'Open Time,' 'The Still of the Year,'

'Hylas,' 'The Kings,' Alexandrina, I, x, and xiii. 'The Martyr's Idyl,'

'Sanctuary,' 'Arboricide,' 'To the Outbound Republic,' 'The Perfect

Hour,' 'Deo Optimo Maximo,' 'Borderlands.' (From 'A Roadside Harp' are

selected the first five poems and the Alexandrina, from 'The Martyr's

Idyl and Shorter Poems' the others. $1.00 each. Boston: Houghton,

Mifflin & Co.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Is Miss Guiney's scholasticism too dominant

in her work? Does she lack human warmth? Or are her restraint and good

taste the index of deeper feeling? Does her cultured thought and chaste

concentrated power of expression lift her above the ranks of the minor

poets?

5. Richard Hovey.

_Readings_:--'Spring,' an Ode, 'The Wander-lovers.' 'Taliesin,' Second,

Third, Movements. Sonnets: 'Love in the Winds,' 'After Business Hours,'

Act V from 'The Marriage of Guenevere.' ('Spring' first published in

_Poet-lore_, is included in 'Along the Trail' ($1.25), which also

contains the sonnets here selected. 'Taliesin' also originally

published in _Poet-lore_, Vol. VIII, old series, January, February, and

June, 1896, pp. 1-14, 63-78, 292-306, is recently published in 1 vol.

uniform with 'The Marriage of Guenevere' ($1.50). 'The Wander-lovers'

appears in 'Vagabondia.' Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. A general review

of Hovey's work will be the second of the 'Contemporary Writer Series'

in next _Poet-lore_.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Has Hovey's way of telling the story of

Guenevere and Launcelot an advantage realistically over Tennyson's, but

none either poetically or ethically? (See on this query, 'The Disloyal

Wife in Literature: Comparative Study Programme,' _Poet-lore_, Vol. I.,

new series, pp. 265-274, Spring Number, 1897.) Does Hovey attain

greatness by his liveliness and human quality joined to varied and

skilful metrical effects? Is 'Taliesin' his best work, or is his best

work done in his short pieces?

6. Bliss Carman.

_Readings_:--'Spring Song,' 'A More Ancient Mariner,' 'Envoy,' 'Beyond

the Gaspereau,' 'Behind the Arras,' 'The Cruise of the Galleon,' 'A

Song before Sailing,' 'The Lodger,' 'Beyond the Gamut,' 'The Ships of

St. John,' 'The Marring of Malyn.' (The first, second, and third are

in 'Vagabondia'; the fourth in _Poet-lore_, Vol. I., new series, pp.

321-329, Summer Number, 1897; the next five in 'Behind the Arras'

($1.50); the others in 'Ballads of Lost Haven' ($1.00). Boston: Small,

Maynard & Co.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Is Carman better in his earlier descriptive

lyrics, or better in his later symbolical lyrics because these being

richer in interest are stronger to hold the deeper reader?

7. Hannah Parker Kimball.

_Readings_:--'Revelation,' 'The Smoke,' 'The Sower,' 'Consummation,'

'Glory of Earth,' 'Primitive Man,' 'Man to Nature,' 'Eavesdroppers,'

'Social Appeal,' 'The Quiet Land Within,' 'The Saving of Judas

Iscariot.' (The first four of the poems named are in 'Soul and Sense,'

75 cents; the last in _Poet-lore_, Vol. I., new series, pp. 161-168,

Spring Number, 1897; the others in 'Victory and Other Poems.' Boston:

Copeland & Day, now Small, Maynard & Co.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Does Miss Kimball's portraiture of Judas

Iscariot reveal a capacity for dramatically creating development in

character? Are her lyrics too grave, or is it their especial blend of

high seriousness and intellectual insight with unforced expression

which gives them unusual richness?

_The Editors._

* * * * *

SONGS FROM THE GHETTO AND A VISION OF

HELLAS.

Conceived amid the heat and discomfort of the sweating-shops, born in

poverty and squalid surroundings, growing up with hunger and despair

and failure, and at last an honored guest at the table of ease and

culture--such is the history of the 'Songs from the Ghetto' by Morris

Rosenfeld. Mr. Rosenfeld was born of poor parents in Poland in 1862.

Wandering in search of work in England and Holland, he at length found

a scanty means of support as a tailor in the sweating-shops of New

York. Of miserable origin, poorly educated, struggling for the barest

necessities of life, there was yet in him a poet's soul, struggling for

expression.

The poems of Mr. Rosenfeld, written in the Judeo-German dialect, which

he has brought to great literary perfection, have been collected,

translated into English prose and edited by Professor Leo Wiener,

instructor in Slavic languages at Harvard.

The songs in this little volume are very beautiful, but whether they

sing of labour or nature, of the shop or the country, there is in every

one a strain of sadness, the melody of each is broken with tears. For

the beauty of which the poet sings, the birds and the flowers, are only

dreams from which he wakes to the misery in his life. It is not the

bitter sadness of hate and rebellion, but the sadness of the Jewish

race, resigned and oppressed, expecting no happiness among an alien

people, but looking for a life of peace in a new Jerusalem.

"Again your lime will be fragrant, and your orange will gleam," he

comforts the wanderer, "again God will awaken and bring you thither.

You will sing Shepherd songs as you will herd your sheep; you will live

again, live eternally, without end. After your terrible wanderings you

will again breathe freely; there will again beat a hero's heart under

the silent mountain Moriah."

The songs are not all of labour, or of the sorrows of the Jews. In

lighter vein is 'The Nightingale to the Labourer,' 'The Creation of

Man'--which contains the pretty idea that the poet alone was given

wings, and an angel stood always "ready day and night to attach the

wings to him whenever his holy song will rise."

The last song in the little volume, called 'In the Wilderness,' is

typical of the poet's spirit; but not, we believe, of his place in the

world. For the world is always ready to listen to a song that carries

with it the impress of truth and beauty.

"In a distant wilderness a bird stands alone and looks about him,

sadly, and sings a beautiful song.

"His heavenly-sweet voice flows like the purest gold, and wakens the

cold stones and the prairie wide and deserted.

"He wakens the dead rocks and the silent mountains round about,--but

the dead remain dead, and the silent remain silent.

"For whom, sweet singer, do your clear tones resound? Who hears you,

and who feels you? And whose concern are you?

"You may put your whole soul into your singing. You will not awaken a

heart in the cold, hard rock!

"You will not sing there long,--I feel it, I know it: your heart will

soon burst with loneliness and woe.

"In vain is your endeavour, it will not help you, no! Alone you have

come, and alone you will pass away!"

'A Vison of New Hellas' is one of the books that is destined to be more

important than interesting, more noteworthy than popular. The

conception is certainly very beautiful and very wonderful even if the

author does not always reach the height of expression towards which he

aims. But it is a book which can only appeal to the few, who are ready

to search beneath the covering of fantastic imagery and strange verse

forms which clothe a high poetic purpose and ideal. Even those who come

to the work with a knowledge of the songs of old Hellas and the

philosophy of Plato must feel deeply grateful for the elucidating of

the meaning of the book in an argument which the author has kindly

supplied to forestall the vain imaginings of the uninitiated.

The poet's aim is as serious as was that of Milton or Dante--"to

realize as best he can such visions of beauty as may be vouchsafed to

him," that through his work he may "make richer the human world in

things of the spirit that quicken and delight."

In contemplation the poet rises above the mists of sordidness which

rise from the struggle of trade and industry, beyond the clouds of

pessimism and religious doubt, and on the Pisgah heights of Hellenic

culture he sees a vision of the new life that shall come to man.

Through the beautiful world-myth, the story of Demeter and Persephone

and Dionysus, the poet is taught the lesson of the immortality of the

race, of its ceaseless progression toward a nobler and more beautiful

future. To celebrate their happiness at the discovery that Aidoneus,

dread King of Death, is none other than the Lord of Life "leader of the

blessed to the highest heaven," they resolve to bring about the

redemption of the world.

This is made possible through the union of Aphrodite, Beauty of Form,

with Apollo, Light of the Mind. From them shall spring a new race of

Gods, typifying the new ideals which shall uplift man until he is

fitted for fellowship at the banquet of the Immortals. Thence will rise

"a nobler, a larger mankind," wakened at length from "the night of

toil, unhallowed by joy in the task." Through Aphrodite will come

"feeling and loving--and art that bids death defiance," and through

Apollo "seeing and knowing and man's life-mastering science." Thence

shall come

"The lover's rapture Elysian,

The poet's fury, the prophet's vision,

The serene world-sight of the thinker."

This vision typified the future regeneration of America and through her

of the race. From the sordid reality of present conditions man must

advance ever nearer to the "eternal ideal"; from mean conditions,

inspired by lofty emotions and holy enthusiasms, shall come new

standards of life and of art.

Mr. Guthrie's work indicates in its form some of the characteristics of

the new literary art. Though his theories are undoubtedly good, the

expression is as yet too crude to form much idea of its possibilities.

Whatever may be the age of the author, his work indicates a certain

inexperience and lacks the grasp and finish of the skilled workman. His

work is too reminiscent; he has not sufficiently assimilated his

sources and impressed them with his own individuality, giving them a

distinctive unity of conception and expression. Though we are quite

willing to accept his assurance that he "did not intend his work to

resemble any known performance," we are continually reminded of

passages in other writers who had inspired him. At times we are struck

with admiration at his power for catching the very trick of his model.

His work is as "oddly suited" as was Portia's lover. For he suggests to

us--Homer and the Greek tragedians of course in theme and expression;

Milton and Dante with their lofty ideals; Piers Ploughman dreaming

about his "fair field full of folk." For the conception he owes much to

Shelley's 'Prometheus,' whose theme is very similar, but his methods

are more modern, with verse theories of Whitman, philosophy of

Browning, a Wagnerian idea of rhythm, making each rhythmical theme

represent a peculiar mood or image, which is frequently very effective

but sometimes forced.

_Harriott S. Olive._

(Songs from the Ghetto, by Morris Rosenfeld. With Introduction, Prose

Translation, and Glossary. By Leo Weiner, Instructor in the Slavic

Languages at Harvard University. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.--A Vision

of New Hellas--Songs of American Destiny. William Norman Guthrie.

Clarke Publishing Company. Chicago: $2.50.)

* * * * *

COL. HIGGINSON'S 'CONTEMPORARIES' AND MRS.

HOWE'S 'REMINISCENCES.'

Colonel Higginson might have added to his 'Contemporaries' as a

sub-title: 'Our Nineteenth Century Roll of Honor,' for he makes

mention, either brief or extended, in his book, of nearly all the men

and women of the age who would be entitled to a place on such a roll.

It gives one's patriotism a thrill, on looking down the list, to see

how long and splendid a one it is, to note what fine thoughts,

emotions, and achievements stand representative in the brief sketches

of the period of our national existence which the author has observed

and shared in. Patriotic fervor for the past, and, arguing from the

past, a renewed hope in the national future, are the dominant feelings

the book begets. Not that the author has emphasized the bequests of

statesmen and reformers to the country, to the neglect of other

influences. The volume contains nineteen sketches; and the poet, the

philosopher, the scientist, the man of private though beneficent life,

have all places therein; yet all is woven into a whole with one aspect,

the national one.

All of the sketches are, as the preface states, reprinted pieces first

published in different periodicals any time during the past fifty

years. Since from this point of view the volume can have little or no

consecutiveness, it is noteworthy that a picture of the times is

nevertheless obtained unbroken in its continuity. Every sketch, however

fragmentary a part of the life of its subject, has the vigor of its

surroundings; and the papers upon the men and women of the Abolitionist

period and the Civil War, though most of them have been somewhat

revised for their present publication, have the heart-beats of the

"times that tried men's souls" throbbing in them true and loud.

One paper, upon John Brown's Household, printed in 1859 and quite

unaltered, preserves by the splendid restraint of its simple language

the very spirit of the iron endeavor and concentred force it describes.

The value of an author's judgment upon his contemporaries, is

unquestioned; the advantage of a personal share in the lives and

actions of the men who form his theme, added to our already confidence

in his critical judgment, give it worth over other proved biography. On

the deeds of many of the men whose work he commemorates, Fame has yet

to pronounce lastly: their services are too recent for a perfect

judgment. But testimony such as this will surely have value in a

decision.

One feels a little inclined to quarrel with the author that there is so

little "I" in his book, that there are so few really personal glimpses,

but of course this is too much to ask of a book which is really a

compilation of scattered sketches; and perhaps Colonel Higginson will

remedy the lack in the future.

It is seldom that one has the pleasure of reading so satisfying and

delightful a piece of autobiography as Mrs. Howe's 'Reminiscences.' One

hardly knows, when the last page is turned, which of two capacities of

the mind has been more completely filled and brimmed over: that of

intellectual appreciation, or the well where abides the feeling of

delighted enthusiasm which is inspired by our friend. We respond to the

pleasure the reading gives us with a really personal sense of

gratitude.

The subject matter of the book could not have been of other than deep

interest. Mrs. Howe's long and beautiful life has been lived in

surroundings of the highest culture of her time; the events of which

she has written are those which will take their place in the history of

the century just closing; and finally, the men and women who were her

friends and in whose labors she shared, were the men and women whose

opinions have largely moulded the events. But it is not all this, of

unfailing interest though it must be, that gives the book its finest

quality, and that makes one wish to read it over the moment one has

read it through. It is, instead, that we have learned so much of a

beauty-gifted and beauty-giving life in words at once so simple and so

satisfying. Cheeriness and healthiness--if by the latter word one may

express a certain poise and normalness of outlook--are the

characteristics of the narrative. The great and the small of life each

receive their just due; perhaps it is by her treatment of the small

that we are best assured we have read into an intimacy with Mrs. Howe.

That perennial question as to the feminine lack of humor, which has

lately been re-threshed in the newspapers, should receive final and

silencing reply--had it ever deserved a reply at all--in the

'Reminiscences.' The narrative twinkles with keen appreciation of the

humorous, the ludicrous, even of the deliciously nonsensical; also

abounding in that larger sort of humor which does not consist in seeing

the point to a joke, but which makes life bearable and judgments tender

under conditions least likely to keep them so.

Assuredly Mrs. Howe did not put together the recollections of her life

with primarily didactic purpose, just as assuredly she did not write

them down primarily for the benefit of the American young woman. Yet in

view of the cause to which she has given the work of her latter years,

it is permitted me to say that no greater encouragement could be given

it for the future than the words from which we learn her personal

services to it and to the other causes which she has aided with brain

and hands throughout her life. _Helen Tracy Porter._

(Contemporaries, By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston and New York:

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899. $2.00. Reminiscences: Julia Ward Howe.

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston and New York. $2.50.)

* * * * *

LIFE AND LETTERS.

----The last scenes in the present-day epoch of commercialism promise

to be like the last scenes in the old-time epoch of feudalism,

picturesque, violent, and significant rendings and tearings of the

whole body politic prior to a re-formation on the basis of a larger

unity. Then they portended the unification of England under the Tudors,

or the unification of France under the eleventh Louis. Now they

portend--what?

Some larger, more spiritual unity, it may be guessed, that shall

quietly and with unprecedented swiftness make use of the materialistic

objects which the short-sighted leaders of commercialism now have in

mind, and after a manner they no more dream is implied in their success

than the royal dynasties of England and France dreamed that the bloody

heads of kings would be the fruit of the new nationality.

* * *

----To the leaders of the commercial world-movement, their

materialistic objects are ends in themselves, very substance of very

substance. But the Time-spirit already laughs them to scorn and tosses

them, as mere tools out of place, to some more convenient corner of her

spacious work-shop, where they make but one with a mass of other such

tools awaiting the mastery of her history-shaping hand.

The tumults of South Africa and China are but signs of the vaster

tumult in which these tumults shall be devoured and assimilated.

* * *

----In the world of faith, too, how restless is the aggregate organism!

Ruptures and dissolutions are splitting and fusing orthodoxies and

heterodoxies.

And in the withdrawn and secret world of the human consciousness the

ferment of new desires and potencies, opposed by all the organized and

settled forces of opinion, is permeating thought, and stirring the

slumbering soul to try the unguessed faculties of its idealism, as if

the real king of the total Unquietness held there his throne.

The world of politics and commerce, the world of faith and intelligence

tend, it would seem, already, towards that synthetic development

foreseen in 1855, by one whom the obtuse world may yet have reason

enough to recognize as one of the clearest-brained statesmen of the

nineteenth century, though her trade was poetry not politics--Elizabeth

Barrett Browning, when she said of the future:

"What I expect is a great development of Christianity in opposition to

the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations."

* * *

GOETHE'S IPHIGENIE AT HARVARD.

It is an age of the universality of genius. Not only the treasures of

our own literature in our own day, but the best that has been written

in all lands in all ages, the best that is being thought and sung in

every tongue to-day is ours. And the test of what is good is no longer

that it appeals to the people of a certain period or race, but that it

appeals to and expresses the spirit of humanity, that it fills a place

in a _Welt-Litteratur_.

A striking instance of the power of the present to interpret the spirit

of the past was the performance of Goethe's Iphigenie at Harvard on the

sixty-eighth anniversary of Goethe's death. Professor Kuno Franke,

writing in the New York Evening Post speaks of Iphigenie as "the

worthiest production of artistic genius to represent German ideals to a

distinctly academic audience at the foremost of American universities."

This it seems to us Iphigenie emphatically is _not_. In conscious

imitation of Greek tragedy in the literary form and expression, as well

as in the details of the story, it is Greek; in its psychological

treatment, in the idea that personal salvation comes only through

self-sacrifice, it is distinctively modern, but not German, in subject,

expression or treatment.

Although the choice of Iphigenie as a representative German play was

not justified, certainly nothing could have better expressed the genius

of the greatest of German poets. The greatness of Goethe!--that was the

fact of all others demonstrated by the performance of Iphigenie. He has

given us a play which realizes the ideals of the Greek poets and

sculptors, a play instinct with the deepest reverence of the Greek

religion, yet at the same time a play which expressed the deepest

emotions of a great spiritual revolution in his own life; a play which

may be considered as a presentation of the very spirit of that

Christianity which findeth its soul in losing it. One of its leading

critics says of Iphigenie--"its ideals are not those of Greece or of

Germany, or of any nationality or time, but rather the realization of

the highest and noblest aspirations of mankind in all lands and all

tongues."

A universal literature is but the child of a universal religion, of

that yearning toward the good and beautiful and true which has been the

guiding star of man since the world began. The struggle in his own

soul; the mystic meaning of a pagan faith, that in passing has touched

all succeeding ages with some measure of its radiant beauty; the poet's

vision of the future spiritual triumph of the race; all these Goethe

united in one artistic expression, and the result is one of the great

poems of the world.

The presentation of the play at Harvard was a marvellous exhibition of

the power of a great artistic conception to carry an audience with it

in enthusiastic appreciation of the spirit, without the necessity for

an understanding of the medium of expression. Back of all expression is

the spirit of its author, and as a beautiful voice interprets the

meaning of the song written in an unknown tongue, so these German

actors by the power of an art statuesque in its beauty, musical in

expression, deeply spiritual in its interpretation of the poet's soul,

revealed to the audience the wondrous charm of Iphigenie. In a foreign

tongue they portrayed the emotions of mythical heroes long dead in a

distant land, and as we watched and listened the mythical dead became

living mortals, and we understood their suffering and their heroism,

saw the agony of the spiritual struggle, realized the force of the

great temptation, knew the joy of the final victory.

A great poet, a drama of transcendent power and beauty, actors of

consummate art, an enthusiastic audience,--nothing was lacking to make

the event a memorable one. _H. S. O._

* * *

----At a recent debate at the 'Philadelphia Browning Society' Miss Mary

M. Cohen, the founder and first president of the Society and now one of

its vice-presidents, opened the discussion with the following bright

paper written to the question:--

Is Browning to be ranked as a legitimate member of the Victorian

School?

Certainly he is. If any one tries to prove that he is not entitled to

the claim, it must be because the poet has so much more of brilliant

mental make-up than most of the Victorian writers that the critics are

dazzled.

They want to cut and fit a man's ability and achievement to a

particular class of work, to press him down, as it were, into a

jelly-mould and say, "There, take that shape and mind, not a drop of

you is to spill over!" It is a good deal like a woman when asked her

age; she often says, "I am twenty"; so she is, dear thing, and

frequently much more, besides. Our poet is a Victorian poet and

gloriously transcends them all. "If this be treason, make the most of

it." My opponent is no doubt carefully writing down this challenge with

a view to crushing me later, but unlike my sex in general, I do not

want the last word, if I can only get the first. "He laughs best who

laughs last" has always had rather a prejudiced sound in my ears; on

the contrary, he who makes the first score has often a tremendous

advantage. A charming young artist, a friend of mine, has thrown a

certain light upon the subject of this debate: She said, "Victorian

always suggests to me something housekeepery and mutton-choppy: Is

Browning mutton-choppy?" I suppose that the adversary will answer this.

In one of the popular manuals of English literature, we find Tennyson

and Browning described as the two masters of Victorian poetry. My

definition of a poet of the Victorian School would be that he should

combine a musical versification with ethical, philosophical and

artistic thought. I believe that Tennyson is generally received as an

example. If Shelley be accepted as a Victorian School poet, then it is

absolutely certain that Browning, having absorbed Shelley until poetic

inspiration was fused to a white heat, may be held to represent the

Victorian School in gigantic and overwhelming form. Although it has

been said that "until late years Browning has been entirely at variance

with the tendencies of his time and for nearly forty years represented

that opposition to the poetry of the age which has recently been made

prominent by a small band of poetical innovators of whom Swinburne is

the most extreme," still I feel justified in my claim. Browning

incorporated the introspective philosophy of his period in his work,

and also displayed in many of his writings the musical sweetness which

is supposed especially to mark the Victorian poets. Think of his poem

of 'Saul,' forceful, yet melodious, suffused with the intense interest

of the Biblical story, glorified by the superb imagery of a mind

dwelling in a time of psychological inquiry. Almost the whole of

'Asolando' is musical. Remember the poem 'Reverie':

"I know there shall dawn a day

--Is it here on homely earth?

Is it yonder, worlds away,

Where the strange and new have birth

That Power comes full in play?"

Note the influence which contemporary events must have on a man like

Browning: in 1851 the great Exhibition, the first of the series held

later in different countries, and stimulating in its effects upon the

intellectual, social and spiritual culture of the poet: in 1854 the

Crimean War, conducted with France against Russia who had appropriated

the Turkish principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, and made famous

by such battles as Alma, Balaklava and Inkermann. In 1853 came Florence

Nightingale with her reform in hospital service. In 1858 the Atlantic

cable was laid. In 1888 came the "Philadelphia Browning Society." No

one of the Victorian poets was mentally organized by these events, the

last excepted, as was Browning. The critic Alexander has said "A man's

work is determined not only by the character of his genius, but also by

the conditions of his age. Homer would not write a great epic, were he

alive now, nor Shakespeare great dramas."

'Prospice' is another instance of melodious verse, expressing thought

exalted, philosophical and spiritual.

Who is not impressed with the strength and sweep of 'Cristina'?

"There are flashes struck from mid-nights, there are fire-flames

noon-days kindle,

Whereby piled-up honors perish, Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle."

We cannot ignore the graceful flow of 'Confessions':

"How sad and bad and mad it was--

But then, how it was sweet!"

I must also quote what seems to me a very vital tribute to his genius:

"Browning is one of the very few men--Mr. Meredith excepted--who can

paint women without idealization or degradation, not from the man's

side, but from their own; as living equals, not as goddesses or as

toys." His poetry has been described as "superb landscape painting in

verse." Swinburne differentiates Browning's work as marked by decisive

and incisive faculty of thought, sureness and intensity of perception,

rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. 'The Ring and the Book' is the

masterpiece of this great Victorian master.

If then it be remembered that Browning ranks high as a humorist, that

he has brilliant and subtle qualities, that he could appreciate and

translate into poetry the stirring events of both sacred and profane

history; that he drew Religion in all shapes to his side, that

Mythology and Orientalism were his boon companions; that he moulded Art

to his purpose, allured Music by his call, won Philosophy by his gaze,

looked Truth in the eyes; there can be little or no doubt that he was

the greatest of all the poets of the Victorian School and in his single

person united all the highest characteristics of his literary

contemporaries. Through him the Victorian School was raised to a height

and deepened to a depth that without him it never would have had.

_Mary M. Cohen._

* * *

----Is there anything that so forcibly brings home to us the foreign

point of view or rather the point of tongue and point of ear that makes

a Frenchman's expression alien to ours, than to see how he explains the

proper English pronunciation of English? Here is the way, for example,

that he elaborately spells out the sound of 'Much Ado About Nothing' in

a dictionary of Foreign Names and Phrases: "Meutch a-dou a-boutt'

neuth' igne." And of course our point of ear is quite as droll to him.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: In 'The Broken Heart,' John Ford, 1633, Calantha,

addressing the dead body of her betrothed husband, says: "Now turn I to

thee, thou shadow Of my departed lord." Antony refers to his dead body

as "a mangled shadow"; 'Antony and Cleopatra,' iv., 2, 27. Shakespeare

elsewhere refers to disembodied spirits as "shadows"; as in 'Richard

III,' i, 4, 53; _Ibid_., v, 3, 216; 'Cymbeline, v, 4, 97; and 'Titus

Andronicus,' I, 1, 126.]

[Footnote 2: For 'I. A Group of British Poets' see _Poet-lore_, Vol.

III. (New Series), End Year Number 1899. Pp. 610-612.]

End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Heron's Feathers, by Hermann Sudermann