ESSAYS
LITERARY, CRITICAL
AND HISTORICAL
BY
THOMAS O’HAGAN,
M.A., Ph.D.
Author of “Canadian Essays,”
“Studies in Poetry,” “In
Dreamland,” “Songs of
the Settlement,”
etc.
AUTHOR’S EDITION
TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS
1909
Copyright, Canada, 1909, by
THOMAS O’HAGAN.
TO
HIS FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN,
THE FRENCH CANADIANS AND ACADIANS
Who, speaking the language of Bossuet
and Lamartine, have added Lustre
to our Canadian Citizenship,
Virtue to our Canadian
Homes, and Joy to our
Canadian Firesides,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
IN SINCERE ADMIRATION,
BY THE AUTHOR
PREFACE.
Four of the five essays which make up this volume have appeared during
the past few years in the _American Catholic Quarterly Review_ and the
_Champlain Educator_. The author begs to acknowledge particularly his
indebtedness to Dr. S. E. Dawson’s admirable work on Tennyson’s “The
Princess,” in the preparation of his study of that poem. Indeed, without
Dr. Dawson’s fine analysis of the poem the first essay in this volume
could never have been written.
The paper on “The Italian Renaissance and the Popes of Avignon” was
prepared while the writer was sojourning at Louvain University, Belgium,
in the autumn of 1903, and at Grenoble University, France, during the
summer of 1904. It may be well to add that the libraries of both these
ancient and renowned seats of learning are very rich in works relating
to medieval history and literature, and afforded the author unusual
opportunity in the preparation of the essay.
In the writing of the essay on “Poetry and History Teaching Falsehood,”
the author has been motived by a desire to set forth in the clearest
light possible the misrepresentation of Catholic truth which obtains in
much of the history and poetry of our day.
The third essay in the volume, “The Study and Interpretation of
Literature,” is based by the author upon ideals gained in post-graduate
courses pursued in this subject at several of the leading American
universities, as well as upon a practical knowledge in the teaching of
literature obtained in the High Schools of Ontario.
The paper on “The Degradation of Scholarship” has never before appeared
in print. Let the reader, divested of every predilection and bias,
examine it carefully, remembering that the courage to state the truth is
a more valuable asset of character than the gift of bestowing false
praise, though that praise should secure friends.
T. O’H.
Toronto, Canada, March, 1909.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A STUDY OF TENNYSON’S “PRINCESS” 11
POETRY AND HISTORY TEACHING 45
FALSEHOOD
THE STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF 65
LITERATURE
THE DEGRADATION OF SCHOLARSHIP 83
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND THE 101
POPES OF AVIGNON
A STUDY OF TENNYSON’S
“PRINCESS”
A STUDY OF TENNYSON’S “PRINCESS.”
Few poems written within the Victorian era of English literature have
been so singularly underrated and misunderstood as Tennyson’s
“Princess.” At its very birth—as if it had been born under an
unfavorable star—it encountered the adverse breath of criticism; and
even now, after nearly fifty years have rectified many a past error of
judgment in literary matters, this, the first long and sustained poem of
the late Poet Laureate, receives but grudging recognition and
commendation in a general review and study of the author’s works. We
think it was a little unfortunate that its second title, “A Medley,” was
tacked to it when the poem first appeared, for it gave some of the
critics who had neither the gifts nor disposition to study it aright a
pretext, and, in some measure, justification, for the violent onslaughts
which they from time to time made upon it.
In the light of the progressive views held to-day of the higher
education of woman, this poem may be regarded as a prophecy voicing the
advent of a broader, rounder and deeper culture for the race upon a
plane of civilization in which woman as a primal factor and true
complement of man shall unfold her being in a ceaseless striving for
truth, beauty and love. The attainment of this higher condition of life
will not, however, be hastened by isolated Idas walled within colleges
of their own pride and sex, and vainly and foolishly waging war upon
their own brothers; and every movement which starts out with the purpose
of setting up woman as a rival of man in achievement, is not only a
detriment to the cause of human progress, in which man and woman alike
are shareholders, but the end thereof must be abasement and defeat.
The “Princess” appeared first in print in 1847, at a time, by the way,
when the surface thought of England was largely given up to corn-laws
and free-trade; and this may account, in some measure, for the coldness
of the reception accorded it, as the English are a people who have
proverbially little time or thought for “bainting and boetry” when a
commercial or economic question is on the boards. The poem is a medley
in form, but not in essence, as it possesses the real and deep-seated
unity which all art demands—that of a consistent purpose and a
pervading harmony of tone. The medley consists in the poem being
serio-comic, constructed of ancient and modern materials—a show, as
Edmund Clarence Stedman says, of medieval pomp and movement observed
through an atmosphere of latter-day thought and emotion. It is such a
mixture as we find in Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale,” and, indeed, in the
prologue the name of that drama is introduced as if to justify by
precedent the incongruities of the narrative.
We think, however, that the critics have made too much out of the
improbability of the incidents in the poem. Surely to be consistent such
critics should extend their reproach to “The Tempest” and “Midsummer
Night’s Dream.” To us the impossible elements and anachronisms render
the poem more attractive. In estimating a poem we must always take for
granted the conditions assumed by the poet, and these being assumed, we
have only to inquire whether the poem possesses unity, congruity and a
definite and worthy object. There are, however, two things we have a
right to demand: that the characters are congruous with themselves, and
that the treatment of the incidents is poetic. But as far as art is
concerned, we should not lose our literary tempers or prepare to let
fall the axe of condemnation merely because some idealized scene in a
poem or drama does not harmonize in every particular with our own
workaday world. We mention this fact because in all fairness we consider
that this poem, “The Princess,” should be judged and appraised according
to some canons and rules that apply to similar works of imagination and
fancy.
The prologue and epilogue form the setting of the poem, and it would be
difficult to find in all English literature a more truly natural and
graceful picture than the scene from English life of to-day which the
poet paints for us in the opening lines of the poem. The place is the
South of England. The occasion a festival upon the grounds of a wealthy
baronet. Sir Walter Vivian has thrown open his grounds for a summer’s
day, and the people of the neighboring town, and especially the members
of its scientific institute, throng the park and give themselves up to
recreation and pleasure. A party of young collegians on vacation, in
company with some of the wellborn and cultured girls of the Hall and the
neighboring country seats, have made a select picnic of their own in a
ruined abbey. The baronet’s son, young Walter Vivian, is of the company.
One of the collegians, a dreamy youth—the poet himself—has been
looking through the library and has come across a book telling of
knightly deeds of the medieval ancestors of the stately Hall. Taking the
book with him, he joins the party, keeping his finger on the place where
is told the story of a fearless dame of the house, who, in defending her
castle against a lawless king, had armed
“Her own fair head, and sallying thro’ the gate
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.
‘O miracle of women,’ said the book;
‘O noble heart who, being strait besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent nor broke nor shunned a soldier’s death.’”
These last lines form a key to the story which Tennyson employs in
giving us his views as to the proper sphere of woman, for this “miracle
of women” is the prototype of the Princess Ida. While discussing the
character of this heroine who defended her castle in days agone, the
question at once arises among the members of the picnic party—are there
such women now? One of the young ladies, Lilia, the baronet’s daughter,
answers:
“There are thousands now
Such women, but convention beats them down,”
and in a half serious, half sportive way protests against the way in
which nowadays the powers of her sex are dwarfed by insufficient
culture, and as a consequence women are no longer capable of exhibiting
such heroic qualities. Young Walter Vivian in the course of his remarks,
which are banteringly addressed to his sister, mentions a favorite game
which he and his college companions used to play, of telling a story
from mouth to mouth, each one in succession taking up the thread till
among them they brought the story to a close. It is then forthwith
agreed that the seven youths should transfer this medieval miracle of
womanhood to modern times in a story to which each should contribute a
chapter. Of course, the conception out of which the plot is developed is
the founding of a Ladies’ University by the Princess Ida, who has set
before her the task of
“Raising the woman’s fallen divinity
Upon an equal pedestal with man.”
It may be added that the question discussed in this poem by Tennyson is
one of vital importance to the human race, and is in every way worthy of
the attention of the best and most earnest minds of our century. The
poem proper is made up of seven cantos, written in semi-heroic verse,
each story linked to and growing out of the previous canto. The first
canto represents the Prince, who is none other than the poet himself, as
longing for the bride betrothed to him in childhood. She, however,
disregarding all pledge and promise, has conceived the idea of founding
a University for Women, from which men are to be excluded on pain of
death. To carry out her strange project she obtains from her father one
of his castles with the domain surrounding it. Here the Princess Ida
establishes her faculty, and rains down the dews of knowledge upon the
thirsty flowers that bud and bloom under her high-souled care. This
lofty enterprise is, however, in no way acceptable to the Prince, nor to
the King, his father, who, inflamed with rage at her refusal to marry
his son, swears
“That he will send a hundred thousand men
And bring her in a whirlwind.”
The Prince, in company with two friends, Cyril and Florian, steals away
by night from his father’s court for the purpose of making a personal
appeal to his affianced bride, encouraged by a mysterious voice, borne
upon the winds in the woods, which whispered,
“Follow, follow, thou shalt win.”
In his interview with Gama, the King, father of the Princess Ida, who,
by the way, was powerless to oppose the wishes and designs of his
daughter and her two widow companions, we learn the two fallacies which
mislead the Princess in her design to found a Ladies’ University: that
the woman is equal in all respects to the man, and that knowledge is all
in all. These are the very two fallacies which to-day are productive of
most mischief to the true advancement of woman.
The second book or canto brings the Prince and his two companions,
disguised as women, to the University, where the detection of Florian by
his sister, Lady Psyche, one of the lady lecturers, is narrated. The
description of the grounds and walks leading to the University shows
Tennyson’s keen knowledge of feminine nature. Just note, please, the
following appointments in the grounds. Do they not reflect the artistic
taste of woman?
“We follow’d up the river as we rode,
And rode till midnight, when the college lights
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse
And linden alley: then we past an arch,
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings
From four wing’d horses dark against the stars;
And some inscription ran along the front,
But deep in shadow: further on we gained
A little street, half garden and half house;
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise
Of clock and chimes, like silver hammers falling
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir
Of fountains spouted up and showering down
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:
And all about us peal’d the nightingale,
Rapt in her song and careless of the snare.”
The only thing wrong in this nice bit of description, as Dr. S. E.
Dawson has pointed out in his study of “The Princess,” is in reference
to the song of the nightingale. It is only the male bird which sings.
Scientifically, therefore, Tennyson is wrong, though historically and
poetically he is correct, for, according to the Greek myth, Philomela
was a princess who was turned into a nightingale which sang.
Lady Psyche having discovered that her three visiting friends are men,
not women, the Prince and his two companions, upon promising a speedy
departure, prevail upon the fair professor to conceal their real
identity. Disguised as women, and keeping their hoods about their faces,
the three young men stroll through the lecture-rooms and listen to the
“violet-hooded doctors” descant on the ancient glories of Greece and
Rome, now reciting some scrap of thunderous epic, now lilting off some
throbbing ode, now dipping into the science of star and bird and shell
and flower, electric, chemic laws and all the rest, and whatsoever can
be taught and known—with what result? We will let the Prince tell:
“Till like three horses that have broken fence,
And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn,
We issued gorged with knowledge.”
Cyril, however, is not pleased with the condition of things, and thinks
that violence is done to woman’s nature in this isolated institution.
This plain-spoken fellow evidently regards the heart and its affections
in woman as of much more importance than the intellect, for how
otherwise are we to interpret his opinion, as expressed to Florian:
“A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls,
And round these halls a thousand baby loves
Fly, twanging headless arrows at the hearts,
Whence follows many a vacant pang.”
In the third canto the mock damsels pursue still further their studies,
and mounted on horses, in company with the Princess, make a geological
excursion in the neighboring country. The Prince and Princess ride side
by side, and out of their conversation grows a reference to her
betrothal to the young prince in the North. Her reply to the statement
of her disguised companion, that her persistence in refusing to make
good her pledge of marriage would surely lead to the death of the
Prince, is characteristic of a woman who is waging war with her womanly
instincts and the rooted affections of her heart, and undertakes the
heavy task of breasting the current of nature with its strong and
irresistible tide. Here is the crumb of consolation she offers him in
his disappointment:
“‘Poor boy,’ she cried, ‘can he not read—no books?
Quoit, tennis, ball—no games? nor deals in that
Which men delight in, martial exercise?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
As girls were once, as we ourself have been;
We had our dreams; perhaps he mixt with them.’”
This reminds one of the advice given in Donald G. Mitchell’s “Reveries
of a Bachelor” to a disappointed lover—to adopt a diet of vegetables
and read Jeremy Taylor’s sermons.
The fourth canto contains the grand crash. It is also the canto which
closes the humorous or serio-comic part of the story, the transition
being made from jest to earnest at the request of Lilia, who, as
spokeswoman for the ladies in the poem, objected to the banter in the
first four cantos;
“They hated banter, wished for something real,
A gallant fight, a noble Princess—why
Not make her true heroic,—true sublime?
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet,” replies the poet, “scarce could be.”
The crash comes when Cyril, honest-hearted Cyril, after the party, tired
from geologizing and astronomizing, are seated in a silken pavilion
indulging in meat, wine and song, responds to the request of the
Princess for a song that would have in it something of the flavor and
manners of his countrywomen in the North. Cyril is a merry fellow and
reminds one not a little of Shakespeare’s Mercutio. He is the least
sentimental of the three friends, and while the Prince has been dwelling
in cloudland, rocked in airy dreams, Cyril has given himself up to the
excellent vintage of the southern kingdom, and so, wrought upon by the
purple grape and his own sense of sport, he trolls out, in absolute
forgetfulness of his disguise, a rollicking love-song in mellow and
melodious tenor. Such song was not, of course, meant for the ears of the
Princess and her companions, and so Florian nods at him frowning, Psyche
flushes and wans, Melissa droops her brows, the Prince smites him on the
breast, while the noble Ida, shocked beyond all endurance, cries,
“Forbear, sir!” and “Home! to horse!” and dashing off on her steed falls
into the river and is rescued from death by the Prince.
In the fifth canto the Northern King has marched with his army into the
Southern kingdom, and, anxious for the safety of his son, has surrounded
the Princess Ida’s domain. He has taken the King, her father, a
prisoner. Meantime, by judgment of the Princess Ida, the Prince and his
two companions have been ignominiously thrust out of the University and
reach the camp of the investing army in draggled female attire. Ida’s
warlike brothers, fearing for their sister’s safety, march their troops
northward to protect her. After a parley between the two armies, it is
decided that the matter be finally settled by a tournament between fifty
knights on each side—the hand of the Princess to be the reward of the
Prince if his side win. The fight takes place and terminates
unsuccessfully for the Prince, who loses his bride and is wounded nearly
to death.
The tournament scene is, indeed, a magnificent passage and has about it
a certain Homeric swiftness of movement and action that is in strong
contrast to some of Tennyson’s more labored narrative. We feel the shock
of combat and shiver of lance as we read the following vehement lines,
full of the pulse and power of the lists:
“Empanoplied and plumed
We entered in and waited, fifty there
Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared
At the barrier like a wild horn in a land
Of echoes, and a moment, and once more
The trumpet, and again: at which the storm
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears
And riders front to front, until they closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering points
And thunder. Yet it seem’d a dream I dream’d
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed,
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance,
And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire.
Part sat like rocks: part reel’d but kept their seats:
Part roll’d on the earth and rose again and drew:
Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down
From those two bulks at Arac’s side and down
From Arac’s arm, as from a giant’s flail,
The large blows rain’d, as here and everywhere
He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists,
And all the plain,—brand, mace and shaft and shield—
Shock’d like an iron-clanking anvil bang’d
With hammers.
* * * * * *
With that I drave
Among the thickest and bore down a Prince,
And Cyril one. Yea, let me make my dream
All that I would. But that large-moulded man,
His visage all agrin as at a wake,
Made at me thro’ the press and staggering back
With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came
As comes a pillar of electric cloud,
Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains,
And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes
On a wood, and takes, and breaks and cracks and splits,
And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth
Reels and the herdsmen cry; for everything
Gave way before him: only Florian, he
That loved me closer than his own right eye,
Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down:
And Cyril seeing it, push’d against the Prince,
With Psyche’s color round his helmet, tough,
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms;
But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote
And threw him: last I spurr’d; I felt my veins
Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand,
And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung,
Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced;
I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth
Flow’d from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.”
The sixth canto is, perhaps, taken all in all, the finest in the poem.
In it the full strength of the poet is put forth. The field of battle,
the wounded knights, the old king’s haggard face stooping over the
prostrate body of his son—all are themes for touching and pathetic
pictures. How beautifully the poet traces in this canto the growth and
final supremacy of the true womanly elements in Ida’s nature. The tender
domestic instincts, first awakened by the care of Psyche’s child, are
now quickened into new and stronger life by the presence of suffering
and sorrow around her.
The seventh canto, which opens with one of the sweetest songs in the
English language, “Ask Me No More,” shows the complete transfiguration
of Ida’s nature under the influence of the affections. The college has
been turned into an hospital, and the ministry of the heart in all its
tenderness has taken the place of mere pride of intellect. Love has
built its lily walls and transformed the cold hearth of solitude and
selfishness into a radiant altar of self-sacrifice, devotion and love.
“Everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talk’d,
They sang, they read: till she not fair began
To gather light, and she that was, became
Her former beauty treble.”
Ida sits by the couch of the Prince, watching him in his delirium of
fever. Her name is ever on his lips. Finally, in the still summer night,
consciousness returns, and observing Ida at his bedside he murmurs:
“If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I knew,
I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.”
The transforming power of love has done its work. Ida, who sought far
less for truth than power in knowledge, is defeated in her purpose, but
rises in this apparent defeat to the supreme height of her womanhood.
Frankly she confesses her failure and the cause thereof:
“She had failed in sweet humility.”
Still she will not relinquish her high hopes of a nobler future for
woman; nor is it necessary that she should do so. “Rather,” says the
Prince,
“Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know
The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink
Together, dwarf’d or godlike, bond or free.
* * * * * *
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow? but work no more alone!
Our place is much: as far as in us lies
We two will serve them both in aiding her—
Will clear away the parasitic forms
That seem to keep her up but drag her down—
Will leave her space to burgeon out of all
Within her—let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.”
And then, in the following beautiful passage, which for majesty of
thought and delicacy of feeling can scarcely be matched in the whole
realm of poetry, the poet describes the relations of man’s nature to
woman’s and paints the ideal of a perfect marriage:
“For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the child-like in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summ’d in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other ev’n as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men;
Then reign the world’s great bridals, chaste and calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.”
Then follows the epilogue or conclusion, whereby the reader is
transferred from the fairy-land of imagination back to the festival
crowd in the park, with which the poem commenced. There is not a jar in
the transition, and the mind of the reader, translated from the stirring
incidents of trumpet and tournament, finds repose in the idyllic beauty
which reigns in the heart of English life and scenes.
Having traced the motive of the story and the unity of its conception
throughout, let us now see whether the separate characters are congruous
within themselves, and in what way they have a share in the development
of the plot.
The Princess Ida is drawn as the prototype of “the miracle of women” who
beat the king and his forces with slaughter from the walls. She
possessed a noble enthusiasm, a quality which would have made her an
ideal wife for Arthur. As a wife she would have sympathized with him in
his lofty aims and purposes, and been willing to share with him in his
failures and lost hopes:
“She sees herself in every woman else,
And so she wears her errors like a crown.”
With what a loving hand Tennyson does justice to her unselfish nature,
even with the failure of her enterprise inevitable. Cold natures cannot
understand her enthusiasm for the cause which she has espoused:
“They know not, cannot guess
How much their welfare is a passion to us.
If we could give them surer, quicker proof—
Oh! if our end were less achievable
By slow approaches, than by single act
Of immolation; any phase of death;
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,
Or down the fiery gulf, as talk of it,
To compass our dear sisters’ liberties.”
And as the womanly elements gain ascendancy in her nature, how
beautifully the poet tells of the dawning of love in her heart:
“Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gathered color day by day.”
The Prince represents the poet himself, and when he speaks it may be
taken for granted that his opinions relative to woman’s sphere and
duties are the opinions of Tennyson himself. It may be noticed that his
character is not defined in very strong colors, simply because he is a
foil to the Princess, and would, if brought out more strongly, detract
from the brilliancy of the Princess as well as mar the general unity of
the poem. The character of the Prince must have given Tennyson a great
deal of trouble, for it was not until after the fourth edition that he
ceased to elaborate it. It is hard to understand why the poet added the
passages relating to the weird seizures of the Prince. Perhaps his
object was to set forth the weakness and incompleteness of the poet side
of the Prince’s character until he has found rest in his ideal.
It will be observed, too, that the Prince aims at elevating woman, but
he differs from Ida as to the means. Ida dreams of intellectual
advancement alone. The Prince recognizes moral elevation to be the
higher of the two. He pays tribute to the moral greatness of woman where
he says they are,
“Not like that piebald miscellany, man;
Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire;
But whole and one; and take them all in all,
Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind,
As truthful, much that Ida claims as right
Had ne’er been mooted.”
And when the Prince sets forth the mission of woman as the conservator
of the results of civilization hardly won by the struggles of man, and
paints his ideal of a perfect marriage, the Princess asks:
“What woman taught you this?”
To which the Prince replies, in language which touches the heart of
every man:
“One
Not learned, save in gracious household ways;
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants;
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the gods and men,
Who looked all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seem’d to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and tho’ he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.”
As to the characters of the two kings, they are well conceived and
drawn. Ida’s father has an easy, loving disposition, and it is very
evident that she inherits her strength of character from her mother. The
Northern King is of a rough and violent type, which recalls the time
when marriage was a capture:
“Look you—Sir!
Man is the hunter; woman is the game;
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
They love us for it and we ride them down.”
While the character of Florian is vague and indefinite, that of Cyril is
well and clearly conceived. The latter is a wholesome, jovial and
honest-hearted fellow. He is no dreamer and can always tell the
substance from the shadow. He is not at all impressed by stately women,
and so he tells the Princess that Love and Nature are more terrible than
she.
The two widows, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, are in sharp contrast to
each other. The former remains womanly under every circumstance. Even
when discoursing on the nebular hypothesis in the lecture-room, we find
that her babe, sweet Agläea, is by her side, and when she has lost it
she bitterly reproaches herself for having left it behind.
Lady Blanche is the most unlovely woman in the whole gallery of
Tennyson’s women. She has no thought but for herself, and even asperses
the memory of her dead husband. She is full of envy and jealousy, nor
has she even the affection of a mother for her sunny-hearted and winsome
daughter, Melissa. She is a type of not a few who identify themselves
with the Woman’s Rights movement of to-day, ostensibly to better the
social and intellectual position of woman, but virtually to blow a
bubble before the eyes of the world and gather about them an atmosphere
of notoriety.
Having analyzed the poem as to its motive and plot, and shown the part
which each character contributes to the development of the plot, we will
now consider the purpose and import of the songs or ballads which the
young ladies sing during the pauses or interludes in the poem. The songs
did not appear at first, but were added by the poet to the third
edition, which appeared in 1850. It will be noticed that they nearly all
relate to children, and serve as choruses to guide and interpret the
sympathies of the reader in the progress of the poem. Let us take them
in their order, one by one. The first tells of a quarrel between a man
and his wife, and of the reconciliation caused by the memory of their
dead child:
“As thro’ the land at eve we went,
And pluck’d the ripen’d ears,
We fell out, my wife and I,
O we fell out I know not why,
And kiss’d again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!
For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave,
We kiss’d again with tears.”
Here we have the abiding influence of the child reaching back from the
grave and uniting by its memory the tearful and desolate hearts of the
estranged parents.
The second represents how the toil and labor of the father are ennobled
and lightened amid the perils of the deep through the memory of the
little babe for whose life and love he fondly braves every danger:
“Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me,
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
“Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.”
Sweet influence, indeed, this of the babe which reaches across the ocean
and unites loving hearts.
The next song, “The Bugle,” is regarded by many as the finest lyric that
has been written since the days of Shakespeare. Its real meaning is
frequently not grasped by the casual reader. It is based upon the
contrast between the echoes of a bugle on a mountain lake, which grow
fainter and fainter in proportion to the receding distance, and the
influence of soul upon soul through growing distances of time:
“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
“O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
_Our_ echoes roll from soul to soul
And _grow_ forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.”
The stress of meaning is in the words _our_ and _grow_. _Our_ echoes
roll from _soul to soul_—from generation to generation—from
grandparent to parent and grandchild. This poem represents unity through
the family in its relation to the future, just as the first two songs
represent that unity through the past and present.
The fourth is intended to show the influences of home and wedded love in
nerving a man for the shocks and conflicts of life:
“Thy voice is heard thro’ rolling drums,
That beat to battle where he stands;
Thy face across his fancy comes,
And gives the battle to his hands:
A moment while the trumpets blow,
He sees his brood about thy knee;
The next, like fire he meets the foe,
And strikes him dead—_for thine and thee_.”
We see by this lyric that patriotism and heroic effort have their root
and origin in home affection.
The next song represents the influence of the family, of which the child
is the bond, upon the mother:
“Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon’d nor utter’d cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’
“Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call’d him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
“Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
“Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee—
Like summer tempest came her tears—
‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’”
In this poem we see that desolation and despair have sealed the fountain
of tears in the widowed wife—that the light of love has gone from her
life and returns only through the influence of childhood, with all its
tender links and memories.
The last song, “Ask Me No More,” is like the sestette in a sonnet—the
application of all the preceding. These influences of the family, with
all its sacred ties and affections, are too much for the strong and
noble soul of the Princess, who throws aside all theories of
intellectual independence for woman, and, yielding to the impulse of
love and affection, proclaims the triumph of the womanly elements in her
nature in the following sweet and tender lines:
“Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea;
The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape,
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But O too fond, when have I answered thee?
Ask me no more.
“Ask me no more; what answer should I give?
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye:
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die!
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
Ask me no more.
“Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal’d:
I strove against the stream and all in vain:
Let the great river take me to the main:
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
Ask me no more.”
What bearing these six lyrics, which are truly miracles of workmanship,
have upon the main theme of the story will be readily perceived. They
not only contribute to the unity of the poem proper but are in
themselves linked together by a kindred bond and purpose. They are the
voice of the heart singing through the night, cheered by the kindly
stars of faith, hope and love.
Having analyzed the poem and reached its central thought, let us now
consider who is the hero or heroine of the story. Assuredly it is not
the Prince, for he has been ignominiously thrust out of Ida’s gates in
draggled female clothes. Nor is it his jovial-hearted companion, Cyril,
nor Arac, who cares for nothing save the tournament. It cannot even be
the high-souled and stately Princess, for has she not been vanquished at
the very moment of triumph? The only one who comes out triumphantly is
Psyche’s baby—she is the real heroine of the epic. The little blossom,
sweet Agläea, is the central point upon which the plot turns. In the
poem, in the songs—everywhere—this unconscious child, the concrete
embodiment of nature itself, exerts an overpowering influence, shaping,
directing, nurturing the tender instincts of womanhood and clearing away
all intellectual theories which tend to usurp the sacred offices of
mother and home.
In the despatch which Ida sends to her brother she acknowledges the
power of the child in the following lines:
“I took it for an hour in mine own bed
This morning: there the tender orphan hands
Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence
The wrath I nursed against the world.”
And again:
“I felt
Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast
In the dead prime.”
Notice, too, how ubiquitous the babe is. Ida carries it with her
everywhere. It is on her judgment seat, it shares in her song of triumph
when the tournament is ended, and is with her on the battlefield when
she is tending her wounded brothers.
The babe is indeed the heroine of the story, holding the epic along the
channel of its main motive, despite every current and breeze stirred by
foreign elements in its course.
It is not hard to read in this poem Tennyson’s solution of the woman
question, though there are some who maintain that it is vague and
unsatisfactory. Such persons forget that it is the office of the poet
not so much to affirm principles on a subject as to inspire the
sentiments which ought to preside over the solution.
It seems to us that the transfiguration of Ida’s nature under the
influence of the affections is the only solution possible that could be
offered by the poet for the questions raised in “The Princess.” It is
the office of poetry, not to guide the conclusions of the intellect, but
to tone the feelings in accordance with truth and duty. Poetry is not to
teach the truth—it is truth itself.
Those who have the interest of the true advancement of woman at heart
should remember that neither the whole race nor woman herself can be
benefited by any system of education for woman at variance with Nature
and not co-ordinate with the highest needs of the race. It is idle to
discuss the equality or inequality of gifts and faculties as between man
and woman. Every person knows that woman is not only the equal of man in
many respects, but his superior in not a few; yet this does not justify
her in waging a war with Nature and, with her heart clothed in an iron
panoply, riding forth into the arena of dust and turmoil to perform
services for which the strong hand and knightly heart of man as well as
the vocation of centuries have fitted him alone.
As to her education, that which enables her every faculty to grow and
unfold its beauty and power, with no harm to her distinctive
womanhood—that should be her privilege and right to enjoy, whether it
be obtained in convent or co-education hall. That woman needs a greater
breadth and solidity of intellectual culture goes without saying, and
this for two reasons—to better fit her for the high moral offices which
belong to her domestic mission, and to keep alive in her a just sympathy
with the larger social movements of which she is the passive, but ought
not to be the uninterested spectator.
If Ida’s theories were carried out, the child element in woman and the
feminine element in man would be crushed out, and it is this very
feminine element in man which gives him moral insight—it constitutes
the poetic side of his nature. Without the feminine element in his
nature Chaucer never could have written “The Canterbury Tales.”
Ida was right in seeking for a more generous culture, but the spirit in
which she sought it was wrong. Mrs. Browning’s Aurora Leigh would be an
artist first and then a woman. Ida, too, would crush out the womanly
elements in her nature in her eagerness to satisfy the claims of the
intellect. She set the claims of the head above those of the heart, and,
like Aurora Leigh, she failed.
Enthusiasts often point to the glories achieved by women through the
centuries, and make this a pretext for their vagaries and Utopian
dreams. Because Corinna won the lyric prize from Pindar, and Judith
delivered her people from Holofernes, and Joan of Arc repulsed the
English from the walls of Orleans, and Queen Elizabeth laid the
foundation of England’s supremacy upon the sea, is it meet that the
whole social order should be turned upside down and Nature wounded in
its very heart? Such enthusiasts forget that the mother of Themistocles
was greater than the vanquisher of Pindar, the mother of St. Louis of
France greater than the Maid of Orleans, and the mother of Shakespeare
greater than she who held with firm grasp the sceptre of English
sovereignty during the closing years of the Tudor period.
In spite, therefore, of all theories to the contrary, in spite of many
zealous but misguided women who are looking in the near future for the
reign of woman and the complete subserviency of man, the true mission of
woman is, and always will continue to be, within the domestic sphere,
where she conserves the accumulated sum of the moral education of the
race, and keeps burning through the darkest night of civilization upon
the sacred altar of humanity, the vestal fires of Truth, Beauty, and
Love.
POETRY AND HISTORY TEACHING
FALSEHOOD
POETRY AND HISTORY TEACHING FALSEHOOD.
The function of the poet is to speak essential truths as opposed to
relative truths, and Mrs. Browning in “Aurora Leigh” testifies to this
fact in the following lines:
“I write so
Of the only truth-tellers now left to God,
The only speakers of essential truth
Opposed to relative, comparative,
And temporal truths; the only holders by
His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms;
The only teachers who instruct mankind
From just a shadow on a charnel wall
To find man’s veritable stature out
Erect, sublime,—the measure of a man;
And that’s the measure of an angel says
The Apostle.”
It is much to be regretted that the poetry of the present day does not
always fulfil this high purpose. The poets of to-day—and by poets of
to-day I mean the poets of the past half-century—are not “the only
truth-tellers now left to God.” Nay, they are often disseminators of
falsehood. It is true the non-Catholic poet—a Wordsworth, a Byron, a
Longfellow, or a Tennyson—by being true to art and inspiration, which
has as its basis Catholic truth, sometimes unwittingly expresses a
Catholic truth of the deepest significance. But as poetry is only a
reflection of life idealized, and as there is nothing in poetry but what
is in life, we may expect the anti-Catholic seeds scattered about by
prejudiced hearts in the garden of the world to bear the poisonous
blossoms of falsehood as they are translated and reflected in the pages
of modern poetry.
And this is sometimes done indirectly. Sometimes, too, it is done by
expressing a half truth or by seizing on some exceptional phase of
Catholic religious life and impressing it upon the non-Catholic mind
with an “_Ab uno disce omnes_.”
A concrete example will best illustrate this. Browning has a poem
entitled “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church.” Now
Browning’s poetic workshop was Italy, so this great psychological poet
wrote:
“Open my heart and you shall see
Graven on it Italy.”
He found in the land of Dante and Michael Angelo fit subjects for his
dramatic monologues. The art world of Italy opened up to Browning new
themes, new thoughts. The intense life of its people, full of the
sweetness and aroma of virtue and the dark tragedy of vice, gave him
scope which he could not find elsewhere. Pity it is that he presents
only the dark side of Italian character. Pity it is that the paganized
and sensual Bishop of the Italian Renaissance depicted by Browning in
“The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” did not find
setting, in his poems, as a foil to the pure and pious men and women who
prayed before the shrines and in the cloisters of Italy when the new
wine of old classicism poured from Homeric flasks and casks had
intoxicated the head and heart of that garden of Europe and turned
possible saints into satyrs.
De Maistre, the great French publicist, has said that history for the
past three hundred years has been a conspiracy against truth. Aye, and
poetry, too, whose countenance should reflect the beauty of heavenly
truth, often wears the mask of the assassin. To-day there are so-called
advanced and up-to-date scholars in our universities and clubs who hold
that “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” is a true
reflection of the religious life of the Italian Renaissance. They quote
Ruskin as saying of that poem:
“I know of no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which
there is so much told as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—its
worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love
of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said
of the Central Renaissance, in thirty pages of the ‘Stones of Venice,’
put into as many lines, Browning’s being also the antecedent work.”
We would say just here to students of literature and history: Let not
the shadow of a great literary name overawe you. John Ruskin did a great
deal for art and criticism, but he is far from being an infallible
apostle of truth in either domain; and though he loved the lowly,
brown-hooded friars of St. Francis, this love was not based on spiritual
affinity, but on the poetry and art bound up in their humble lives.
John Ruskin and Robert Browning, respectively art critic and poet, have
done the religious life of the Italian Renaissance a grievous
wrong—nay, they grossly misrepresent it when they say that this
abnormal picture of a Renaissance Catholic bishop truly represents and
reflects the religious life of Italy at that period. No doubt but a
certain amount of abuses and corruption prevailed in the Church at that
time, largely as a consequence of the worldly spirit which had gained
entrance into it during its exile at Avignon.
However, all was not darkness and sin. The vivifying life of the Church
was not exemplified in the Bishop of St. Praxed’s. As the great
historian of the Popes of the Renaissance, Dr. Ludwig Pastor, says, “If
those days were full of failings and sins of every kind, the Church was
not wanting in glorious manifestations through which the source of her
higher life revealed itself. Striking contrasts—deep shadows on the one
hand and most consoling gleams of sunshine on the other—are the special
characteristics of this period. If the historian of the Church of the
fifteenth century meets with some unworthy prelates and bishops, he also
meets in every part of Christendom with an immense number of men
distinguished for their virtue, piety and learning, not a few of whom
have been, by the solemn voice of the Church, raised to her altars.”