V.

To begin with what is more external. If we are so wholly Anglo-Saxon and

Germanic as people say, how comes it that the habits and gait of the

German language are so exceedingly unlike ours? Why while the _Times_

talks in this fashion: ‘At noon a long line of carriages extended from

Pall Mall to the Peers’ entrance of the Palace of Westminster,’ does the

_Cologne Gazette_ talk in this other fashion: ‘Nachdem die Vorbereitungen

zu dem auf dem GürzenichSaale zu Ebren der Abgeordneten Statt finden

sollenden Bankette bereits vollständig getroffen worden waren, fand heute

vormittag auf polizeiliche Anordnung die Schliessung sämmtlicher Zugänge

zum Gürzenich Statt’? {97} Surely the mental habit of people who express

their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other

slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other

striding, cannot be essentially the same. The English language, strange

compound as it is, with its want of inflections, and with all the

difficulties which this want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made

itself capable of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready,

direct, and clear, as French or Latin. Again: perhaps no nation, after

the Greeks and Romans, has so clearly felt in what true rhetoric,

rhetoric of the best kind, consists, and reached so high a pitch of

excellence in this, as the English. Our sense for rhetoric has in some

ways done harm to us in our cultivation of literature, harm to us, still

more, in our cultivation of science; but in the true sphere of rhetoric,

in public speaking, this sense has given us orators whom I do think we

may, without fear of being contradicted and accused of blind national

vanity, assert to have inherited the great Greek and Roman oratorical

tradition more than the orators of any other country. Strafford,

Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, Fox,—to cite no other names,—I imagine few

will dispute that these call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in

extent, in power, coming nearer than any other body of modern oratory to

the oratory of Greece and Rome. And the affinity of spirit in our best

public life and greatest public men to those of Rome, has often struck

observers, foreign as well as English. Now, not only have the Germans

shown no eminent aptitude for rhetoric such as the English have

shown,—that was not to be expected, since our public life has done so

much to develop an aptitude of this kind, and the public life of the

Germans has done so little,—but they seem in a singular degree devoid of

any aptitude at all for rhetoric. Take a speech from the throne in

Prussia, and compare it with a speech from the throne in England.

Assuredly it is not in speeches from the throne that English rhetoric or

any rhetoric shows its best side;—they are often cavilled at, often

justly cavilled at;—no wonder, for this form of composition is beset with

very trying difficulties. But what is to be remarked is this;—a speech

from the throne falls essentially within the sphere of rhetoric, it is

one’s sense of rhetoric which has to fix its tone and style, so as to

keep a certain note always sounding in it; in an English speech from the

throne, whatever its faults, this rhetorical note is always struck and

kept to; in a Prussian speech from the throne, never. An English speech

from the throne is rhetoric; a Prussian speech is half talk,—heavy

talk,—and half effusion. This is one instance, it may be said; true, but

in one instance of this kind the presence or the absence of an aptitude

for rhetoric is decisively shown. Well, then, why am I not to say that

we English get our rhetorical sense from the Norman element in us,—our

turn for this strenuous, direct, high-spirited talent of oratory, from

the influence of the strenuous, direct, high-spirited Normans? Modes of

life, institutions, government, and other such causes, are sufficient, I

shall be told, to account for English oratory. Modes of life,

institutions, government, climate, and so forth,—let me say it once for

all,—will further or hinder the development of an aptitude, but they will

not by themselves create the aptitude or explain it. On the other hand,

a people’s habit and complexion of nature go far to determine its modes

of life, institutions, and government, and even to prescribe the limits

within which the influences of climate shall tell upon it.

However, it is not my intention, in these remarks, to lay it down for

certain that this or that part of our powers, shortcomings, and

behaviour, is due to a Celtic, German, or Norman element in us. To

establish this I should need much wider limits, and a knowledge, too, far

beyond what I possess; all I purpose is to point out certain

correspondences, not yet, perhaps, sufficiently observed and attended to,

which seem to lead towards certain conclusions. The following up the

inquiry till full proof is reached,—or perhaps, full disproof,—is what I

want to suggest to more competent persons. Premising this, I now go on

to a second matter, somewhat more delicate and inward than that with

which I began. Every one knows how well the Greek and Latin races, with

their direct sense for the visible, palpable world, have succeeded in the

plastic arts. The sheer German races, too, with their honest love of

fact, and their steady pursuit of it,—their fidelity to nature, in

short,—have attained a high degree of success in these arts; few people

will deny that Albert Dürer and Rubens, for example, are to be called

masters in painting, and in the high kind of painting. The Celtic races,

on the other hand, have shown a singular inaptitude for the plastic arts;

the abstract, severe character of the Druidical religion, its dealing

with the eye of the mind rather than the eye of the body, its having no

elaborate temples and beautiful idols, all point this way from the first;

its sentiment cannot satisfy itself, cannot even find a resting-place for

itself, in colour and form; it presses on to the impalpable, the ideal.

The forest of trees and the forest of rocks, not hewn timber and carved

stones, suit its aspirations for something not to be bounded or

expressed. With this tendency, the Celtic races have, as I remarked

before, been necessarily almost impotent in the higher branches of the

plastic arts. Ireland, that has produced so many powerful spirits, has

produced no great sculptors or painters. Cross into England. The

inaptitude for the plastic art strikingly diminishes, as soon as the

German, not the Celtic element, preponderates in the race. And yet in

England, too, in the English race, there is something which seems to

prevent our reaching real mastership in the plastic arts, as the more

unmixed German races have reached it. Reynolds and Turner are painters

of genius, who can doubt it? but take a European jury, the only competent

jury in these cases, and see if you can get a verdict giving them the

rank of masters, as this rank is given to Raphael and Correggio, or to

Albert Dürer and Rubens. And observe in what points our English pair

succeed, and in what they fall short. They fall short in

_architectonicé_, in the highest power of composition, by which painting

accomplishes the very uttermost which it is given to painting to

accomplish; the highest sort of composition, the highest application of

the art of painting, they either do not attempt, or they fail in it.

Their defect, therefore, is on the side of art, of plastic art. And they

succeed in magic, in beauty, in grace, in expressing almost the

inexpressible: here is the charm of Reynolds’s children and Turner’s

seas; the impulse to express the inexpressible carries Turner so far,

that at last it carries him away, and even long before he is quite

carried away, even in works that are justly extolled, one can see the

stamp-mark, as the French say, of insanity. The excellence, therefore,

the success, is on the side of spirit. Does not this look as if a Celtic

stream met the main German current in us, and gave it a somewhat

different course from that which it takes naturally? We have Germanism

enough in us, enough patient love for fact and matter, to be led to

attempt the plastic arts, and we make much more way in them than the pure

Celtic races make; but at a certain point our Celtism comes in, with its

love of emotion, sentiment, the inexpressible, and gives our best

painters a bias. And the point at which it comes in is just that

critical point where the flowering of art into its perfection commences;

we have plenty of painters who never reach this point at all, but remain

always mere journeymen, in bondage to matter; but those who do reach it,

instead of going on to the true consummation of the masters in painting,

are a little overbalanced by soul and feeling, work too directly for

these, and so do not get out of their art all that may be got out of it.

The same modification of our Germanism by another force which seems

Celtic, is visible in our religion. Here, too, we may trace a gradation

between Celt, Englishman, and German, the difference which distinguishes

Englishman from German appearing attributable to a Celtic element in us.

Germany is the land of exegesis, England is the land of Puritanism. The

religion of Wales is more emotional and sentimental than English

Puritanism; Romanism has indeed given way to Calvinism among the

Welsh,—the one superstition has supplanted the other,—but the Celtic

sentiment which made the Welsh such devout Catholics, remains, and gives

unction to their Methodism; theirs is not the controversial,

rationalistic, intellectual side of Protestantism, but the devout,

emotional, religious side. Among the Germans, Protestantism has been

carried on into rationalism and science. The English hold a middle place

between the Germans and the Welsh; their religion has the exterior forms

and apparatus of a rationalism, so far their Germanic nature carries

them; but long before they get to science, their feeling, their Celtic

element catches them, and turns their religion all towards piety and

unction. So English Protestantism has the outside appearance of an

intellectual system, and the inside reality of an emotional system: this

gives it its tenacity and force, for what is held with the ardent

attachment of feeling is believed to have at the same time the scientific

proof of reason. The English Puritan, therefore (and Puritanism is the

characteristic form of English Protestantism), stands between the German

Protestant and the Celtic Methodist; his real affinity indeed, at

present, being rather with his Welsh kinsman, if kinsman he may be

called, than with his German.

Sometimes one is left in doubt from whence the check and limit to

Germanism in us proceeds, whether from a Celtic source or from a Norman

source. Of the true steady-going German nature the bane is, as I

remarked, flat commonness; there seems no end to its capacity for

platitude; it has neither the quick perception of the Celt to save it

from platitude, nor the strenuousness of the Norman; it is only raised

gradually out of it by science, but it jogs through almost interminable

platitudes first. The English nature is not raised to science, but

something in us, whether Celtic or Norman, seems to set a bound to our

advance in platitude, to make us either shy of platitude, or impatient of

it. I open an English reading-book for children, and I find these two

characteristic stories in it, one of them of English growth, the other of

German. Take the English story first:—

‘A little boy accompanied his elder sister while she busied herself with

the labours of the farm, asking questions at every step, and learning the

lessons of life without being aware of it.

‘“Why, dear Jane,” he said, “do you scatter good grain on the ground;

would it not be better to make good bread of it than to throw it to the

greedy chickens?”

‘“In time,” replied Jane, “the chickens will grow big, and each of them

will fetch money at the market. One must think on the end to be attained

without counting trouble, and learn to wait.”

‘Perceiving a colt, which looked eagerly at him, the little boy cried

out: “Jane, why is the colt not in the fields with the labourers helping

to draw the carts?”

‘“The colt is young,” replied Jane, “and he must lie idle till he gets

the necessary strength; one must not sacrifice the future to the

present.”’

The reader will say that is most mean and trivial stuff, the vulgar

English nature in full force; just such food as the Philistine would

naturally provide for his young. He will say he can see the boy fed upon

it growing up to be like his father, to be all for business, to despise

culture, to go through his dull days, and to die without having ever

lived. That may be so; but now take the German story (one of

Krummacher’s), and see the difference:—

‘There lived at the court of King Herod a rich man who was the king’s

chamberlain. He clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and fared like

the king himself.

‘Once a friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for many years, came

from a distant land to pay him a visit. Then the chamberlain invited all

his friends and made a feast in honour of the stranger.

‘The tables were covered with choice food placed on dishes of gold and

silver, and the finest wines of all kinds. The rich man sat at the head

of the table, glad to do the honours to his friend who was seated at his

right hand. So they ate and drank, and were merry.

‘Then the stranger said to the chamberlain of King Herod: “Riches and

splendour like thine are nowhere to be found in my country.” And he

praised his greatness, and called him happy above all men on earth.

‘Well, the rich man took an apple from a golden vessel. The apple was

large, and red, and pleasant to the eye. Then said be: “Behold, this

apple hath rested on gold, and its form is very beautiful.” And he

presented it to the stranger, the friend of his youth. The stranger cut

the apple in two; and behold, in the middle of it there was a worm!

‘Then the stranger looked at the chamberlain; and the chamberlain bent

his eyes on the ground and sighed.’

There it ends. Now I say, one sees there an abyss of platitude open, and

the German nature swimming calmly about in it, which seems in some way or

other to have its entry screened off for the English nature. The English

story leads with a direct issue into practical life: a narrow and dry

practical life, certainly, but yet enough to supply a plain motive for

the story; the German story leads simply nowhere except into bathos.

Shall we say that the Norman talent for affairs saves us here, or the

Celtic perceptive instinct? one of them it must be, surely. The Norman

turn seems most germane to the matter here immediately in hand; on the

other hand, the Celtic turn, or some degree of it, some degree of its

quick perceptive instinct, seems necessary to account for the full

difference between the German nature and ours. Even in Germans of genius

or talent the want of quick light tact, of instinctive perception of the

impropriety or impossibility of certain things, is singularly remarkable.

Herr Gervinus’s prodigious discovery about Handel being an Englishman and

Shakspeare a German, the incredible mare’s-nest Goethe finds in looking

for the origin of Byron’s Manfred,—these are things from which no

deliberate care or reflection can save a man; only an instinct can save

him from them, an instinct that they are absurd; who can imagine Charles

Lamb making Herr Gervinus’s blunder, or Shakspeare making Goethe’s? but

from the sheer German nature this intuitive tact seems something so

alien, that even genius fails to give it. And yet just what constitutes

special power and genius in a man seems often to be his blending with the

basis of his national temperament, some additional gift or grace not

proper to that temperament; Shakspeare’s greatness is thus in his

blending an openness and flexibility of spirit, not English, with the

English basis; Addison’s, in his blending a moderation and delicacy, not

English, with the English basis; Burke’s in his blending a largeness of

view and richness of thought, not English, with the English basis. In

Germany itself, in the same way, the greatness of their great Frederic

lies in his blending a rapidity and clearness, not German, with the

German basis; the greatness of Goethe in his blending a love of form,

nobility, and dignity,—the grand style,—with the German basis. But the

quick, sure, instinctive perception of the incongruous and absurd not

even genius seems to give in Germany; at least, I can think of only one

German of genius, Lessing (for Heine was a Jew, and the Jewish

temperament is quite another thing from the German), who shows it in an

eminent degree.

If we attend closely to the terms by which foreigners seek to hit off the

impression which we and the Germans make upon them, we shall detect in

these terms a difference which makes, I think, in favour of the notion I

am propounding. Nations in hitting off one another’s characters are apt,

we all know, to seize the unflattering side rather than the flattering;

the mass of mankind always do this, and indeed they really see what is

novel, and not their own, in a disfiguring light. Thus we ourselves, for

instance, popularly say ‘the phlegmatic Dutchman’ rather than ‘the

sensible Dutchman,’ or ‘the grimacing Frenchman’ rather than ‘the polite

Frenchman.’ Therefore neither we nor the Germans should exactly accept

the description strangers give of us, but it is enough for my purpose

that strangers, in characterising us with a certain shade of difference,

do at any rate make it clear that there appears this shade of difference,

though the character itself, which they give us both, may be a caricature

rather than a faithful picture of us. Now it is to be noticed that those

sharp observers, the French,—who have a double turn for sharp

observation, for they have both the quick perception of the Celt and the

Latin’s gift for coming plump upon the fact,—it is to be noticed, I say,

that the French put a curious distinction in their popular, depreciating,

we will hope inadequate, way of hitting off us and the Germans. While

they talk of the ‘_bêtise_ allemande,’ they talk of the ‘_gaucherie_

anglaise;’ while they talk of the ‘Allemand _balourd_,’ they talk of the

‘Anglais _empêtré_;’ while they call the German ‘_niais_,’ they call the

Englishman ‘_mélancolique_.’ The difference between the epithets

_balourd_ and _empêtré_ exactly gives the difference in character I wish

to seize; _balourd_ means heavy and dull, _empêtré_ means hampered and

embarrassed. This points to a certain mixture and strife of elements in

the Englishman; to the clashing of a Celtic quickness of perception with

a Germanic instinct for going steadily along close to the ground. The

Celt, as we have seen, has not at all, in spite of his quick perception,

the Latin talent for dealing with the fact, dexterously managing it and

making himself master of it; Latin or Latinised people have felt contempt

for him on this account, have treated him as a poor creature, just as the

German, who arrives at fact in a different way from the Latins, but who

arrives at it, has treated him. The couplet of Chrestien of Troyes about

the Welsh:—

. . . Gallois sont tous, par nature,

Plus fous que bêtes en pâsture—

is well known, and expresses the genuine verdict of the Latin mind on the

Celts. But the perceptive instinct of the Celt feels and anticipates,

though he has that in him which cuts him off from command of the world of

fact; he sees what is wanting to him well enough; his mere eye is not

less sharp, nay, it is sharper, than the Latin’s. He is a quick genius,

checkmated for want of strenuousness or else patience. The German has

not the Latin’s sharp precise glance on the world of fact, and dexterous

behaviour in it; he fumbles with it much and long, but his honesty and

patience give him the rule of it in the long run,—a surer rule, some of

us think, than the Latin gets; still, his behaviour in it is not quick

and dexterous. The Englishman, in so far as he is German,—and he is

mainly German,—proceeds in the steady-going German fashion; if he were

all German he would proceed thus for ever without self-consciousness or

embarrassment; but, in so far as he is Celtic, he has snatches of quick

instinct which often make him feel he is fumbling, show him visions of an

easier, more dexterous behaviour, disconcert him and fill him with

misgiving. No people, therefore, are so shy, so self-conscious, so

embarrassed as the English, because two natures are mixed in them, and

natures which pull them such different ways. The Germanic part, indeed,

triumphs in us, we are a Germanic people; but not so wholly as to exclude

hauntings of Celtism, which clash with our Germanism, producing, as I

believe, our _humour_, neither German nor Celtic, and so affect us that

we strike people as odd and singular, not to be referred to any known

type, and like nothing but ourselves. ‘Nearly every Englishman,’ says an

excellent and by no means unfriendly observer, George Sand, ‘nearly every

Englishman, however good-looking he may be, has always something singular

about him which easily comes to seem comic;—a sort of typical awkwardness

(_gaucherie typique_) in his looks or appearance, which hardly ever wears

out.’ I say this strangeness is accounted for by the English nature

being mixed as we have seen, while the Latin nature is all of a piece,

and so is the German nature, and the Celtic nature.

It is impossible to go very fast when the matter with which one has to

deal, besides being new and little explored, is also by its nature so

subtle, eluding one’s grasp unless one handles it with all possible

delicacy and care. It is in our poetry that the Celtic part in us has

left its trace clearest, and in our poetry I must follow it before I have

done.