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[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER
From a portrait in Occleve's Poems in the British Museum]
Stories of Authors
_British and American_
BY
EDWIN WATTS CHUBB
Professor of English Literature
in the Ohio University.
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1910
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1910
BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910
Reprinted May, 1910
PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to help in making literature and the
makers of literature alive and interesting. Few schools have libraries
including the bound volumes of the magazines of the past quarter of a
century. But what an aid such a collection is to the appreciation of
literature! The dignified and abbreviated history of literature cannot
indulge in such delightful gossip as is found in the freer essay and
fuller biography. To show the excellences of the art and the
lovableness of the artist rather than to hunt for defects is the duty
and the delight of the teacher of literature. This does not mean,
however, that one dare never see the weaker side, the foibles and
eccentricities of the man of genius.
I like Macaulay none the less because his cock-sureness and loquacity
came dangerously near to making him a bore; Dr. Johnson grows in
interest when I learn that he found it a continual and almost hopeless
struggle to become an early riser, that he feared death, and could
drink tea as long as the housekeeper could brew it; that Tennyson was
a slave to tobacco and acted like a yokel when the newly-wedded
Muellers entertained him at breakfast does not detract from my
enjoyment of the exquisite pathos of _Tears, Idle Tears_; that the
marriage of the Brownings was a runaway romance is a whole commentary
of explanation when I read their poems of romantic love; that
Longfellow is said to have declined an invitation to the Adirondacks
because he was told that Emerson was to carry a gun is really far more
delightful, and I may add valuable, information than to know the exact
date of the birth of either. Of knowledge such as this is the kingdom
of literary interest. It is not well to place our literary lights upon
a pedestal so lofty that the radiating warmth and light never reach
our hearts.
While many of the articles may be somewhat gossipy in tone, the
serious phase has not been overlooked. The sketches have been gathered
from many sources. Some have been written by myself, others have been
gathered from magazines and books. I wish to acknowledge the kindness
of _Scribners' Magazine_, of the _Bookman_, and of the _New England
Magazine_ in permitting me to use articles originally appearing in
these respective magazines. To all who have wittingly or unwittingly
made it possible for me to gather my material I wish to acknowledge my
indebtedness. Every article has been written, selected, or adapted
because of some special value. In these pages the reader may find what
Lamb earned during the years of his famous clerkship, or the exciting
details of Shelley's death. How many times have we heard of Sir Philip
Sidney's immortal act of chivalry as he _lay_ on the field at Zutphen!
But definite information has it otherwise. To learn of the prodigious
industry of the youthful Mill, the perseverance of Darwin, the heroic
struggle of Scott, the gentleness of Stevenson, the modesty of
Browning, the lifelong consecration of Motley,--is not the leaven of
inspiration made of knowledge such as this?
I have an unshaken conviction that the highest art of the teacher is
manifested in the awakening of such an interest that the pupil shall
forever after be an eager learner. Am I wrong in hoping that no one,
though with but a meager knowledge of literature, can read these
sketches without a desire to know more of the men and women who are
the glory of England and America? Here is but a taste of a more
sumptuous feast.
Dreams, books are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
EDWIN WATTS CHUBB.
CONTENTS
ENGLISH WRITERS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Ancient Tabard Inn 1
II. Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen 4
III. About Shakspere 9
IV. John Milton 17
V. Charles Lamb, the Clerk of the India House 24
VI. Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb 28
VII. The Death of Dr. Johnson 33
VIII. Gray Writes the Elegy 37
IX. Cowper as a Letter Writer 42
X. Gibbon and His Visit to Rome 46
XI. Burns Falls in Love 50
XII. Burns' First Book of Poems 54
XIII. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in School and College 59
XIV. Byron as Swimmer and Feaster 64
XV. Shelley as a Freshman 71
XVI. The Death of Shelley 76
XVII. The School-days of John Keats 82
XVIII. The Heroism of Sir Walter Scott 88
XIX. Walter Savage Landor 93
XX. Leigh Hunt's Business Ability 100
XXI. De Quincey Runs Away 102
XXII. Macaulay's Childhood 108
XXIII. Macaulay Becomes Famous 114
XXIV. Dickens Writes the Pickwick Papers 119
XXV. Charles Dickens as Reader 123
XXVI. On the Death of Dickens 126
XXVII. Ruskin's Childhood 130
XXVIII. The Marriage of the Brownings 135
XXIX. Robert Browning 140
XXX. Knight's Reminiscences of Tennyson 145
XXXI. Emerson on Carlyle and Tennyson 150
XXXII. Literary Recollections of Max Mueller 156
XXXIII. The Early Education of John Stuart Mill 162
XXXIV. Carlyle Goes to the University 167
XXXV. Carlyle and His Wife 170
XXXVI. Carlyle as Lecturer 175
XXXVII. Carlyle on Wordsworth and Browning 180
XXXVIII. The Author of "Jane Eyre" 184
XXXIX. Thackery in America 189
XL. George Eliot Becomes a Writer of Fiction 194
XLI. The Author of "Alice in WonderLand" 200
XLII. About Darwin 203
XLIII. Anecdotes of Huxley 209
XLIV. Stevenson at Vailima 214
XLV. Kipling in India 221
AMERICAN WRITERS
XLVI. Benjamin Franklin Runs Away 226
XLVII. Washington Irving 234
XLVIII. Cooper and "The Spy" 242
XLIX. John Lothrop Motley and Bismarck 249
L. The Youth of George Ticknor 254
LI. Fitz-Greene Halleck 259
LII. The Author of Thanatopsis 262
LIII. Curtis and Hawthorne at the Brook Farm 266
LIV. Hawthorne and the Scarlet Letter 270
LV. Max Mueller's Recollections of Emerson, Lowell and Holmes 279
LVI. Howells Calls on Emerson, and Describes Longfellow 284
LVII. Longfellow, the Universal Poet 290
LVIII. Henry David Thoreau 297
LIX. The Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe 303
LX. Artemus Ward 313
LXI. Edmund Gosse Visits Whittier 317
LXII. Personal Recollections of Whittier 320
LXIII. Henry Ward Beecher 329
LXIV. The London "Times" on Lowell 333
LXV. The Writing of "America" 338
LXVI. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and her First Story 340
LXVII. Sidney Lanier 344
LXVIII. The Story of Mark Twain's Debts 349
LXIX. Hamlin Garland's Literary Beginning 358
LXX. Stephen Crane: A "Wonderful Boy" 361
LXXI. Eugene Field 364
ILLUSTRATIONS
Geoffrey Chaucer _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The Old Tabard Inn 2
William Shakspere 8
John Milton 16
Robert Burns 50
Lord Byron 64
Percy Bysshe Shelley 70
Charles Dickens 122
Robert Browning 134
Alfred Tennyson 144
Ralph Waldo Emerson 150
Thomas Carlyle 175
Benjamin Franklin 226
William Cullen Bryant 262
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 290
John Greenleaf Whittier 320
STORIES OF AUTHORS
I
THE ANCIENT TABARD INN
The picture we see here is that of an inn whose fame is as widespread
as the love of English poetry, for it is at the Tabard Inn that
Chaucer more than five hundred years ago assembled his nine and twenty
pilgrims who were preparing to visit the tomb of Thomas a Becket at
Canterbury. The witchery of the springtime had stirred the blood of
these Londoners who, perhaps, were enticed from home more by the soft
April showers and the melody of the birds than by their need of
spiritual consolation. This, at least, is the impression we receive as
in imagination we join these immortal pilgrims at the Tabard. Our
guide is
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still,--
and as he moves among his motley group, let us take a glance at the
Tabard.
The picture we have is that of the typical old English inn. "As late
as 1870 the ruins of the famous Tabard could be found. It was near St.
Saviour in the Borough High Street. Turning from the street into one
of those courtyards which abound in the east of London, the visitor
comes upon the ruins of the once famous inn the very name of which has
been transformed by time. It is now known as the '_Talbot_,' but the
inscription above the doorway contradicts the modern signboard and
proclaims the house to be '_The Ancient Tabard Inn_.' The whole yard
is redolent of dilapidation. Facing the visitor on entering is an
interesting block of old buildings, forming part of the left side, and
the bottom of what once was an ample courtyard. This part of the
building contains not improbably the shell of the corresponding
portion of the original inn. The doors of the first floor all open
into one of the wide balustraded galleries or verandas so common in
the genuine old English hostelry. Until recently the landlord of the
_Talbot_, then a small public-house, and still forming part of the
modern mass of brick building that blocks up the right side and part
of the center of the courtyard, rented the rooms by which this
balustraded gallery was, and still is, surrounded. They were then let
as bedrooms, and kept in good repair; and are supposed to occupy the
site of the very rooms once tenanted by the Canterbury pilgrims; the
gallery probably differing but little in appearance from what it was
when Chaucer frequented it in search of good wine. The landlord
eventually became insolvent; the paltry tavern was shut up, and the
bedrooms were dismantled. In that plight they might be seen some years
ago, may still possibly be seen--empty, dusty, dreary--ranged above
ground-floor premises which do duty as a parcels' conveyance office,
and abutting on a mean, ill-kept yard. Until within the last few
years the coigne of the old balustraded gallery was connected on the
right with the modern brick mass by an ancient wood-work bridge,
coeval at least with the oldest portion of the building as it stands.
But the bridge is gone, and the lust of gold and the pride of life
have so destroyed that spirit of reverence and refined superstitious
love for the venerable which should characterize an advanced
civilization, that it is greatly to be feared the rest of the
structure will soon follow. Yet it was in this courtyard, and before
this very inn, that Chaucer and his nine-and-twenty pilgrims stood in
picturesque confusion in the early dawn of that spring morning, long,
long ago; and agreed for their common amusement on the road each one
of them should tell at least one tale in going to, and another in
returning from Canterbury; the best story teller to be treated to a
supper by his fellow travelers on their return to the Tabard Inn. The
company comprises representatives from all classes of society except
the two extremes; there is neither a prince nor a beggar. The
characters are taken from middle-class life, of which they may be
accepted as fair and truthful types; being described with a vigorous
fidelity which has never been surpassed in the whole range of art.
Every figure stands out from the canvas sharp and clear like pictures
seen through a stereoscope. Not a touch, not a line is wanting; each
trick of speech and peculiarity of feature or of dress, is
photographed with Preraphaelite fidelity."
[Illustration: THE OLD TABARD INN
From a drawing by Herbert Railton]
II
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN
Whenever the name of Sir Philip Sidney is mentioned one involuntarily
thinks of noble generosity and knightly gentleness and self-sacrifice.
And here is the story of the act that forever united his name with the
highest ideals of chivalry:
In August, 1586, Leicester assembled his troops at Arnheim, which he
made his headquarters. After reducing Doesburg, he prepared to besiege
Zutphen, an important town on the Yssel. The garrison was in sore need
of provisions, which Parma, before marching to its relief, determined
to supply. A convoy of corn, meat, and other necessaries, sufficient
to victual the place for three months, was accordingly collected, and
on the twenty-second of September left the Spanish camp. So high was
Parma's estimate of the importance of preserving Zutphen, that the
escort despatched with the convoy numbered twenty-nine hundred foot
and six hundred horse. Leicester was informed of the enemy's movement,
but not of the force which protected it. An ambuscade of five hundred
men, under Sir John Norris, was held sufficient to intercept the
convoy. About fifty young officers volunteered to add their services.
This gallant band was composed of the flower of the English army....
It was indeed "an incredible extravagance to send a handful of such
heroes against such an army," but Leicester can scarcely be blamed for
failing to restrain the impulsive ardor which animated his entire
staff. Sidney's characteristic magnanimity betrayed him that day into
a fatal excess. He had risen at the first sound of the trumpet and
left his tent completely armed, but observing that Sir William Pelham,
an older soldier, had not protected his legs with cuishes, returned
and threw off his own. The morning was cold and densely foggy, as the
little company galloped forth to join their comrades in ambush. Just
as they came up, Sir John Norris had caught the first sounds of the
approaching convoy. Almost at the same moment the fog cleared off and
revealed at what terrible odds the battle was to be fought that day.
Mounted arquebusiers, pikemen and musketeers on foot, Spaniards,
Italians, and even, it is said, Albanians, to the number of
thirty-five hundred, guarded the wagons before and behind. The English
were but five hundred and fifty men. Yet among them all, the historian
has the right of blood to say with confidence, "There was no thought
of retreat." The indomitable national spirit embodied itself in the
war-cry of young Essex: "Follow me, good fellows, for the honor of
England and England's queen!" At the word a hundred horsemen, Sidney
in the midst, with lance in hand and curtel-axe at saddle-bow, spurred
to the charge. The enemy's cavalry broke, but the musketeers in the
rear fired a deadly volley, under cover of which it formed anew. A
second charge re-broke it. In the onset Sidney's horse was killed, but
he remounted and rode forward. Lord Willoughby, after unhorsing and
capturing the Albanian leader, lost his own horse. Attacked on all
sides, he must have fallen and yielded, when Sidney came to the rescue
and struck down his assailants. Individual valor, however, proved
unavailing against the might of numbers. After nearly two hours'
desperate opposition, the convoy still made way. Charge succeeded
charge in the vain effort to prevent its effecting a junction with the
garrison, two thousand of whom were waiting for the right moment to
sally forth. In the last of these onsets, Sir Philip's impetuosity
carried him within musket-shot of the camp. A bullet struck his
unprotected leg, just above the knee, and shattered the bone. He
endeavored to remain on the field, but his horse became unmanageable,
and in agonies of pain and thirst he rode back to the English
quarters, a mile and a half distant. An incident of that ride, as told
in the quaint language of Lord Brooke, retains the immortal charm of
pathos which commands our tears, how often soever repeated:
In which sad progress, passing along by the rest of the army,
where his uncle the general was, and being thirsty with excess
of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought
him, but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a
poor soldier carried along who had eaten his last at that same
feast, ghastly, casting up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir
Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and
delivered it to the poor man with these words, "Thy necessity
is greater than mine." And when he had pledged this poor
soldier, he was presently carried to Arnheim.
The golden chain of heroic actions, Christian and pagan, may contain
examples of self-denial sublimer and more absolute than this; but in
the blended grace and tenderness of its knightly courtesy, we know not
where to find its parallel.
Leicester met his nephew as he was borne back to the camp, and burst
into a genuine passion of sorrow. Many a rough soldier among those
who, in returning from the failure of their impossible enterprise, now
came up with their comrade, was unmanned for the first time that day.
Sir William Russell, as tender-hearted as he was daring, embraced him
weeping, and kissed his hand amid broken words of admiration and
sympathy. But Sidney needed no consolation. "I would," said Leicester,
in a letter to Sir Thomas Heneage, "you had stood by to hear his most
loyal speeches to her Majesty, his constant mind to the cause, his
loving care over me, and his most resolute determination for death;
not one jot appalled for his blow, which is the most grievous that
ever I saw with such a bullet."
The English surgeons at first gave hopes of his speedy restoration to
health, and the favorable news was sent to England. Lady Sidney, who
had followed him to Flushing some months before, at once hastened to
him, but with no idea of his danger. The nation at large thought him
convalescent. He himself, however, never expected to recover, although
submitting with fortitude to whatever systems of treatment were
proposed. Nothing was left untried that affection could suggest or the
imperfect science of the age effect. His wife tenderly nursed him, and
his two younger brothers were constantly at his side. His quondam foe,
Count Hohenlo, though himself dangerously wounded, sent off his own
physician, Adrian Van den Spiegel, to his aid. After examining the
injuries Adrian pronounced them mortal, and then hastened back to the
Count, whose case was not so desperate. "Away, villain!" cried the
generous soldier in a transport of wrath; "never see my face again
till thou bring better news of that man's recovery, for whose
redemption many such as I were happily lost!"
From the first to the last moment of his suffering Sir Philip's temper
was calm and cheerful. During the three weeks that he lingered at
Arnheim he occupied himself with the thoughts befitting a
death-bed.... On the 17th of October he felt himself dying, and
summoned his friends to say farewell. His latest words were addressed
to his brother Robert: "Love my memory; cherish my friends; their
faith to me may assure you they are honest. But, above all things,
govern your will and affections by the will and word of your Creator;
in me beholding the end of this world with all her vanities." When
powerless to speak, he replied to the entreaty of friends, who desired
some token of his trust in God, by clasping his hands in the attitude
of prayer, and a few moments afterwards had ceased to breathe.
--Adapted from the _Edinburgh Review_.
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKSPERE
From the portrait by Martin Droeshout]
III
ABOUT SHAKSPERE
What would we not give to be able to relate a half-dozen good
anecdotes about Shakspere? It is true there are traditions, the best
known of which is the story that he poached deer in the park of Sir
Thomas Lucy. Men have discussed the pros and cons of this
deer-stealing tradition with a gravity and fulness worthy of a
weightier cause. Suppose he did engage in the exciting sport of
worrying a nobleman who had a game preserve. Does that fact blacken
the youth's character? It is said the students at Oxford were the most
notorious poachers in the kingdom, although expulsion was the penalty.
Dr. Forman relates how a student who afterwards became a bishop was
more given to poaching than to study.
What do we know about the life of Shakspere? We know that he was born
at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, that he died there in 1616, April 23.
Some years ago I stood in the house which is reputed to be the place
of his birth; over 20,000 pilgrims from all lands each year pay their
shilling for the privilege of going through that house; the town
corporation has purchased the property and controls it; the place has
been photographed until the reading world is familiar with the
picture,--and yet we do not positively know that Shakspere was born in
that house. For Shakspere's father owned two houses at the time of the
son's birth; in which of the two he lived at this time we can but
guess. We suppose he lived in the Henley Street house, for it was the
better of the two houses and the Shakspere family was prospering when
William was born. The house itself has been remodeled. I think it is
Sidney Lee who says that the only thing that remains as it was in
Shakspere's time is the cellar. We do not know the day of Shakspere's
birth. In Holy Trinity Church one may look into the book containing
the baptismal record of the babe, William. He was baptized on April 26
and as children were usually baptized three days after their birth we
infer he was born April 23. We know that he married Anne Hathaway, a
woman eight years his senior; that in early manhood he went to London;
that he became an actor, dramatist, manager of a theater; that in
1597 he bought New Place, the stateliest residence in Stratford; that
he lived in Stratford during the last years of his life as a highly
esteemed and worthy man, and that he died in 1616 and was buried in
Trinity Church. These are the facts in the records of Shakspere's
life. They, however, are not the important facts. The main fact in his
life is his work, the matchless collection of literary masterpieces
that bear the imprint of his genius. It is also well to keep in mind
that our paucity of definite documentary records is not characteristic
of Shakspere alone. We may know little of Shakspere, but we know less
of Marlowe, his most brilliant competitor.
It is because we know so little of fact in the life of Shakspere that
we delight to let fancy paint its charming pictures. We are led into
the old Grammar School which Shakspere in all probability attended.
Tradition points out the desk at which he used to sit. We can infer
what he studied. The name of the Latin grammar then used we can deduce
from his quoting a Latin sentence just as it was misquoted in Lilly's
grammar. Artists have painted from imagination the picture of the boy
Shakspere. Poets have wandered over the Warwickshire region and in
their mind's eye have seen the youthful bard as he walked over the
same picturesque region. In _Midsummer-Night's Dream_ we read
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.--
and we see the young Shakspere, keen-eyed, observant, reveling in the
beauty of nature. In _Macbeth_ we read
This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.--
and we recall that Kenilworth and Warwick Castles are near Stratford
and we see the boyish Shakspere as he walks about these magnificent
testimonies to the might and power of feudal England, or perhaps
mingling with the crowd when Royalty has come to Kenilworth to be
entertained by the lavish Leicester. So, too, when we find in _Much
Ado About Nothing_
The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait,--
we have a picture before us of the boy standing on the banks of the
placid Avon, enjoying the sports of boyhood and unconsciously
receiving impressions that shall later be reproduced to adorn with
freshest imagery the poetry of the world's greatest genius.
After years of labor the scholars of the world have scraped together
enough definite information to make the Life of Shakspere, as Mr.
Raleigh puts it, "assume the appearance of a scrap-heap of respectable
size." But to us the great fact in the life of Shakspere is that he
has given us his masterpieces. Perhaps it is just as well that we know
so little about the facts in his life. We have all the more time to
study his works. About their quality there is little of disagreement.
Three hundred years ago Ben Jonson wrote
... I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much,--
and the critic of to-day is saying the same thing, only he uses two
volumes instead of two lines to say it. It is true an occasional
voice, like that of Tolstoy's, will be heard in protest, but the
protest and the critic are both likely to be forgotten before the
consensus of three centuries shall be set aside.
Shakspere lives and shall live as long as the human race shall delight
in the study of the human heart, not because of the chastity and
clearness of his diction, not because of the supremacy of his
imagination, nor because of the variety of his melodious verse,--not
even because of the matchless combination of all these charms; but the
Bard of Stratford lives and shall live because his sanity enabled him
to see the "God of things as they are," and his passion penetrated
into the deepest sorrows and rose to the highest aspirations of the
human heart,--and throughout all this sympathizing with goodness and
while despising the depraved yet pitying with a heart of love.
No system-maker or formula-builder can account for Shakspere. Genius
is ever a miracle. However, we can study the environment in which
genius moves and has its being. When we ask ourselves how does it
happen that the plays of Shakspere breathe such a wholesome and
vigorous morality, we are led to two conclusions,--first, that the
England of Shakspere's time was a wholesome and vigorous England;
second, that the man Shakspere was sound to the core.
The close of the sixteenth century is one of the most remarkable
periods in the history of the world. Indeed, so striking is the
intellectual activity of this age that lately an eminent scientist
advanced the hypothesis that some electric influence, some magnetic
current must have let itself loose to work upon the destinies of the
world in the production of great men. For in that period in Italy we
find Tasso, the greatest of modern epic poets; then too lived Galileo
and Kepler, the astronomers; in France we find the philosophic
essayist, Montaigne; in Spain the world-renowned Cervantes, the author
of the immortal Don Quixote; in England both Bacon and Shakspere,
beside a host of other writers, generals, admirals and artists. This
same age is the most flourishing period in Mahometan India; so, too,
in China, in Japan, and even in far away Persia we find an unusual
degree of intellectual activity.
The England of Shakspere! The phrase suggests a train of associations
that kindle the imagination. The age of literature, war, conquest,
adventure, and achievement. The era of Edmund Spenser, "called from
faeryland to struggle 'gainst dark ways;" of Sir Philip Sidney, the
scholar, the courtier, the gentleman; of Sir Walter Raleigh, author,
knight, and explorer; of Bacon, "the wisest, meanest, brightest of
mankind." It is the time when in the _Golden Hind_ Drake is
circumnavigating the globe; when Hawkins is exploring the Indies, and
Frobisher is becoming the hero of the Northwest passage; the age of
marvelous tales told by intrepid explorers and adventurers returning
from America, a land whose fountains renewed youth and whose rivers
flowed over sands of gold. It is the era of English sea-dogs pillaging
Spanish provinces in spite of imperial manifestos,--above all, it is
the age of the Spanish Armada.
To recall what this means it is necessary to remember that Spain was
the great dominating empire of the sixteenth century. Philip II, the
Duke of Alva, the horrors of the Spanish inquisition, condemn Spain's
power in this period. But one midsummer morn all England awoke to the
glorious news that the Invincible Armada lay at the bottom of the sea.
England had triumphed, and now for the first time national life
dreamed of the possibility of leadership in the great game of
world-politics. The atmosphere was electric with new life. In rural
England along lanes flanked with green hedges Englishmen walked with
bosoms swelling with new pride, in bustling London vigorous burghers
strode the city's streets with hearts pulsating with new warmth, and
everywhere the eyes of all Englishmen flashed with new fire.
Could a soul so sensitive as Shakspere's live in such an atmosphere
and not be influenced by it? Listen to him as he pays his beautiful,
patriotic tribute to England's national glory:
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.
And the second cause, we say, is the personality of the man himself.
Shakspere wrote pure and lofty poetry because his was a pure and lofty
nature. I know the disparagers of Shakspere and the advocates of the
Baconian theory make much of the traditional wildness of Shakspere's
youth. The common argument is that a man who is charged with the
poaching of deer in his youth is too bad to write good poetry,
therefore Bacon wrote Shakspere. Was Bacon an angel? By the same
process of reasoning Burns could not have written the Cotter's
Saturday Night. But I deny that Shakspere was profligate, and in
making this denial I need not prove the impeccability of Shakspere.
But his life was essentially pure, his heart good, because the
influence of the life is sane and wholesome.
Not alone the greatest intellect of his time, of all times, but also
the greatest heart, was that possessed by this Warwickshire poet. As a
man thinketh in his heart so he is. As Shakspere was, so he wrote.
This crystalline wholesome water dashing over this rocky cliff did
not have its origin in yonder pool. Pure water does not flow from a
mud-puddle. Here is a man who in twenty years writes in round numbers
forty productions--the task of Hercules. The product of the man
attests the nobility of his soul. No man can labor for twenty years
without putting his stamp upon his work. Shakspere was no bar-room
brawler, no prodigal spender of time and substance in riotous living.
He lived to the mature age of fifty-two and died a well-to-do man. The
prodigals of the world do not retire with a competency. I repeat that
Shakspere was not impeccable; he was no Puritan; but we cannot think
of the creator of Hamlet, Ophelia, Othello, Desdemona, Cordelia,
Portia, Rosalind, Miranda, and Prospero as other than a man of a
contrite spirit and a pure heart. As he surpassed his contemporaries
in breadth and loftiness of intellect, so too he surpassed them in the
reach and vigor of his moral feeling.
We cannot believe that this man who penetrated deeper than others into
the mystery of life missed the meaning of his own life. Let us hear
the conclusion of the whole matter--the power that moves the world is
not brilliancy of intellect; it is purity of heart. Nobility of
character is the essence of powerful personality. Lincoln is greater
than Webster, Washington than Jefferson, not through greater mental
grasp, but because of a purer spiritual essence. The world without
takes its meaning and color from the world within. Shakspere saw a
world of pure passion and wholesome sanity because his world within
was pure and sane.
[Illustration: JOHN MILTON
From a miniature by Faithorne, painted in 1667]
IV
JOHN MILTON
In 1623, when Milton was a boy of fifteen, John Heminge and Henry
Condell, "only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow
alive as was our Shakspere," had given to the world the folio edition
of Shakspere's works, very anxious that the said folio might commend
itself to "the most noble and incomparable pair of brethern," William,
Earl of this, and Philip, Earl of that, and exceedingly unconscious
that, next to the production of the works themselves, they were doing
the most important thing done, or likely to be done, in the literary
history of the world. Milton read Shakspere, and in the lines which he
wrote upon him in 1630, there seems to be the due throb of
transcendent admiration....
As Shakspere is the supreme name in this order of poets, the men of
sympathy and of humor, Milton stands first in that other great order
which is too didactic for humor, and of which Schiller is the best
recent representative. He was called the lady of his college not only
for his beautiful face, but because of the vestal purity and austerity
of his virtue. The men of the former class are intuitive, passionate,
impulsive; not steadily conscious of their powers; fitful,
unsystematic. Their love is ecstasy; their errors are the intoxication
of joy; their sorrows are the pangs of death....
Milton, the poet of Puritanism, stands out in bold contrast to these
imperfect characters. From his infancy there was nothing unregulated
in his life. His father, clearly a superior man, of keen
Protestantism, successful in business, well skilled in music, soon
perceived that one of the race of immortals had been born in his
house. He began, apparently with the conscious and delighted assent of
his son, to give the young Apollo such an education as Plato might
have prescribed. An eminently good education it proved to be; only not
so good, with a view to the production of a world-poet, as that which
nature, jealous of the Platos and pedagogues, and apt to tumble them
and their grammatical appurtenances out of the window when she has one
of her miraculous children in hand, had provided for that Stratford
lad who came to London broken in character and probably almost broken
in heart, some forty years earlier, to be a hanger-on of the theaters
and to mount the intellectual throne of the world. No deer-stealing
expeditions late o' nights when the moon silvered the elms of
Charlecote chase; no passionate love affairs and wild boy-marriage.
Milton, carefully grounded in the tongues, went in due course to
Cambridge University, and during those years when the youthful mind is
in its stage of richest recipiency, lived among the kind of men who
haunt seats of learning,--on the whole, the most uninteresting men in
existence, whose very knowledge is a learned ignorance; not bees of
industry, who have hoarded information by experience, but
book-_worms_.... It is important, also, that Milton was never to any
distracting extent in love. If Shakspere had been a distinguished
university man, would he have told us of a catch that could "draw
three souls out of one weaver?" And if the boy of eighteen had not
been in a fine frenzy about Anne Hathaway, could he have known how
Juliet and Romeo, Othello and Desdemona, loved?
... It is a proof of the fiery and inextinguishable nature of Milton's
genius that it triumphed over the artificiality of his training; that
there is the pulse of a true poetical life in his most highly wrought
poems, and that the whole mountain of his learning glows with the
strong internal flame. His inspiration was from within, the
inspiration of a profound enthusiasm for beauty and an impassioned
devotion to virtue. The district in which he lived during much of his
most elaborate self-education is not marked enough to have disturbed,
by strong impressions from without, the development of his genius from
within. Horton lies where the dead flat of southeastern Buckingham
meets the dead flat of southwestern Middlesex. Egham Hill, not quite
so high as Hampstead, and the chalk knoll on which Windsor Castle
fails to be sublime, are the loftiest ground in the immediate
neighborhood. Staines, the Pontes of the Romans, and Runnymede with
its associations, are near the parish church of Horton, in which
Milton worshiped for five or six years, and in which his mother is
buried, has one of the Norman porches common in the district, but is
drearily heavy in its general structure, and forms a notable contrast
to that fine example of the old English church in which, by the
willows of Avon, lie Shakspere's bones. The river Colne breaks itself,
a few miles to the north, into a leash of streams, the most
considerable of which flows by Horton. The abounding watercourses are
veiled with willows, but the tree does not seem to have attracted
Milton's attention. It was reserved for the poet-painter of the _Liber
Studiorum_ to show what depths of homely pathos, and what exquisite
picturesqueness of gnarled and knotted line, could be found in a
pollard willow, and for Tennyson to reveal the poetic expressiveness
of the tree as denoting a solemn and pensive landscape, such as that
amid whose "willowy hills and fields" rose the carol
... mournful, holy,
Chaunted loudly, chaunted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
of the Lady of Shalott....
Milton's bodily appearance at this time was in brilliant
correspondence with the ideal which imagination might form of a
youthful poet. Perfect in all bodily proportions, an accomplished
fencer, with delicate flowing hair, and beautiful features through
which genius, still half in slumber, shed its mystic glow, he was all
that the imagination of Greece saw in the young Hyperion or Apollo.
... His three daughters, Anne, Deborah, and Mary, were the children of
his first wife. He was twice married after her death in 1653, but had
no more children. So early as 1644 his sight began to fail, and when
his little girls were left motherless, they could be known to him, as
Professor Masson touchingly says, "only as tiny voices of complaint
going about in the darkness." The tiny voices did not move him to love
or pity. His impatient and imperious nature had doubtless undergone
exquisite misery from the moaning discontent of his wife; the
daughters took the mother's part so soon as they were able to
understand her sorrows; and the grave Puritan displeasure with which
Milton regards the mother seems to have been transferred to the
children. His austerity as a Puritan and a pedagogue, and the worse
than old Hebrew meanness of his estimate of women, appear to the
greatest disadvantage in connection with his daughters. Had they been
sons, he would have thrown all his ardor into the enterprise of their
education. The training of boys was one of his enthusiasms; but his
daughters were taught nothing except to read, and were ordered to read
aloud to him in languages of which they did not understand a word.
Naturally they never loved him; his fame, which they were not able to
appreciate, cast on them no ray of comforting light; and they thought
probably in sad and scared bewilderment of the relations between their
unhappy wraith-like mother, and their Titan father. How different the
warm and tender relations between Shakspere and his children! In that
instance it was the daughter, the pet Judith, that was the demure
sweet Puritan, yet with a touch of her father's wit in her, and able
to enjoy all the depth of his smile when he would ask her whether
cakes and ale were to be _quite_ abolished when the reign of the
saints came in.
... To the man himself we turn, for one brief glance before laying
down the pen. In the evil times of the Restoration, in the land of
the Philistines, Agonistes but unconquerable, the Puritan Samson ended
his days. Serene and strong; conscious that the ambition of his youth
had been achieved, he begins the day with the Hebrew Bible, listens
reverently to words in which Moses or David or Isaiah spake of God.
But he attends no church, belongs to no communion, and has no form of
worship in his family; notable circumstances which we may refer, in
part at least, to his blindness, but significant of more than that.
His religion was of the spirit, and did not take kindly to any form.
Though the most Puritan of the Puritan, he had never stopped long in
the ranks of any Puritan party, or given satisfaction to Puritan
ecclesiastics and theologians. In his youth he loved the night; in his
old age he loves the sunlight of early morning as it glimmers on his
sightless eyes. The music which had been his delight since childhood
has still its charm, and he either sings or plays on the organ or
bass-violin every day. In his gray coat, at the door of his house in
Bunhill Fields, he sits on clear afternoons; a proud, ruggedly genial
old man, with sharp satiric touches in his talk, the untunable fiber
in him to the last. Eminent foreigners come to see him; friends
approach reverently, drawn by the splendor of his discourse. It would
range, one can well imagine, in glittering freedom, like "arabesques
of lightning," over all ages and all literatures. He was the prince of
scholars; a memory of superlative power waiting, as submissive
handmaid, on the queenliest imagination. The whole spectacle of
ancient civilization, its cities, its camps, its landscapes, was
before him. There he sat in his gray coat, like a statue cut in
granite. England had made a sordid failure, but he had not failed. His
soul's fellowship was with the great Republicans of Greece and Rome,
and with the Psalmist and Isaiah and Oliver Cromwell.
--From Peter Bayne in the _Contemporary Review_.
V
CHARLES LAMB, THE CLERK OF THE INDIA HOUSE
The author of the _Essays of Elia_ and _Tales Founded on the Plays of
Shakspere_ worked for the greater part of his life in the employ of
the Honorable East India Company. He received his appointment in 1792,
the year of the birth of Shelley. He had been trained at Christ's
Hospital for a university career; this gave him a good classical
education but not especially good preparation for his new work. Had he
been obliged to pass a civil service examination he would hardly have
received the appointment. Of geography and arithmetic he knew little.
The schoolboy of to-day will be surprised to learn that a boy a
hundred and more years ago might reach the age of fifteen in a good
grammar school of that period and yet not be able to use the
multiplication table. As late as 1823 Lamb writes: "I think I lose a
hundred pounds a year owing solely to my want of neatness in making up
accounts: how I puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder!" There is no
evidence, however, to show that Lamb did not overcome his lack of
preparation. The contrary impression sometimes prevails, due, perhaps,
to his supposed apology for his late arrival by his representation
that he made up for it by a correspondingly early departure. His
industry must have been appreciated, for his salary rose from nothing
to a fair figure.
The modern young man, desirous of earning a good salary at once, will
be surprised at the statement that Lamb worked for nothing at first.
He will be still more surprised to learn that in those days a clerk in
the employ of the great India Company worked three years for nothing.
This period evidently was considered as the apprenticeship. It is true
a gratuity of 30 pounds was given, and by extra work one might earn
small sums. In April, 1795, three years having ended, he received a
salary of 40 pounds a year. The next year it rose to 70. By 1799 it
had advanced to 90, and from then on to 1814 he received an increment
of ten pounds every two years. He also received a gratuity each year.
The gratuity by 1814 had amounted to 80 pounds. After a reorganization
of the company in 1815 Lamb seems to have progressed in salary, for he
then received 480 pounds, and in 1821 it was 700; and at the time of
his retirement it was 730.
On the whole, one can say that Lamb's lot was not a hard one. No
doubt, many of his fellow-authors had reason to envy him his assured
income. His work was hard and not always pleasant, but he knew, with
all his half-pretended grumbling, that it would not be wise to rely on
his pen for a livelihood. He once remonstrated with the poetical
Quaker, Bernard Barton, who proposed to give up a bank-clerkship, in
this wise: "Trust not the public; I bless every star that Providence,
not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next good to
settle me down on the stable foundation of Leadenhall.... Henceforth
I retract all my fond complaints of mercantile employments; look upon
them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead
timber of a desk that makes me live! a little grumbling is a wholesome
medicine for the spleen; but in my inner heart do I improve and
embrace this our close but unharassing way of life."
That his work was no sinecure can be gathered from this letter of
about 1815: "On Friday I was at office from ten in the morning (two
hours dinner excepted) to eleven at night; last night till nine. My
business and office business in general have increased so; I don't
mean I am there every night, but I must expect a great deal of it. I
never leave till four, and do not keep a holiday now once in ten
times, where I used to keep all red-letter days and some five days
besides, which I used to dub nature's holidays.... I had formerly
little to do.... Hard work and thinking about it taints even the
leisure hours--stains Sunday with workday contemplations."
After thirty-three years of service he was granted by his company a
pension of 450 pounds. On the minutes of the Court of Directors can be
found the following resolution: "that the resignation of Mr. Charles
Lamb, of the accountant-general's office, on account of certified
ill-health be accepted, and it appearing that he has served the
company faithfully for thirty-three years ... he be allowed a pension
of 450 pounds annually."
When the resolution was communicated to him he went home to enjoy one
long holiday of leisure and literary study and authorship. "I am
Retired Leisure.... I have worked task work, and have the rest of the
day to myself." But his day did not last many years. "Lamb was but
fifty when he quitted the service of the company; yet less than ten
years of life were left to him. Not only so, but the happiness he had
expected to find proved more and more elusive. The increasing
frequency of his sister's aberration was a heavy burden for a back
which grew daily less able to bear the strain. The leisure to which he
had looked forward so eagerly was spent in listening to incoherent
babblings, that rambling chat which was to him 'better than the sense
and sanity of this world.' In her lucid intervals they played picquet
together, or talked gravely but firmly of the inevitable separation
looming nearer and nearer. In 1830 Hazlitt died. Four years later that
'great and dear spirit,' Coleridge, passed away after long suffering.
The blow to Lamb was stunning in its severity; and the loss of this
earliest and best-loved friend possibly accelerated his own decease.
Towards the close of the year a fall while walking caused a trifling
wound. No harm was expected to result; but the general feebleness of
his health brought on erysipelas, and upon Saturday, January 3, 1835,
he was borne to his rest in a quiet corner of Edmonton Church-yard,
there to await the coming, twelve years later, of the sister who had
been throughout his life at once his greatest joy and his chiefest
care."
VI
DR. JOHNSON AND CHARLES LAMB
Between Johnson and Lamb there would seem to be little in common. The
ponderous old philosopher, "tearing his meat like a tiger, and
swallowing his tea in oceans," presents a picture very dissimilar to
that of the stammering Lamb whom Coleridge has well called the
"gentle-hearted Lamb." And yet there are many points of similarity.