upon the impracticable, the greatest blessing in the world should be
a will powerful enough to be an inflexible law for itself under all
pressure of circumstances. Even a will directed to evil purposes has a
kind of royal prerogative, and we may rightly do it homage. That seems
to be the seminal thought in 'Wuthering Heights,' that strange book to
which we can hardly find a parallel in our literature, unless in such
works as the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' and some other crude but startling
productions of the Elizabethan dramatists. But Emily Brontë's feeble
grasp of external facts makes her book a kind of baseless nightmare,
which we read with wonder and with distressing curiosity, but with
even more pain than pleasure or profit. Charlotte's mode of conceiving
the problem is given most fully in 'Villette,' the book of which one
can hardly say, with a recent critic, that it represents her 'ripest
wisdom,' but which seems to give her best solution of the great
problem of life. Wisdom, in fact, is not the word to apply to a state
of mind which seems to be radically inconsistent and tentative. The
spontaneous and intense affection of kindred and noble natures is
the one really precious thing in life, it seems to say; and, so far,
the thought is true, or a partial aspect of the truth; and the high
feeling undeniable. But then, the author seems to add, such happiness
is all but chimerical. It falls to the lot only of a few exceptional
people, upon whom fortune or Providence has delighted to shower its
gifts. To all others life is either a wretched grovelling business,
an affair of making money and gratifying sensuality, or else it is
a prolonged martyrdom. Yield to your feelings, and the chances are
enormously great that you are trampled upon by the selfish, or that
you come into collision with some of those conventions which must be
venerated, for they are the only barriers against moral degradation,
and which yet somehow seem to make in favour of the cruel and the
self-seeking. The only safe plan is that of the lady in the ballad,
to 'lock your heart in a case of gold, and pin it with a silver pin.'
Mortify your affections, scourge yourself with rods, and sit in
sackcloth and ashes; stamp vigorously upon the cruel thorns that strew
your pathway, and learn not to shrink, when they lacerate the most
tender flesh. Be an ascetic, in brief, and yet without the true aim
of the ascetic. For, unlike him, you must admit that these affections
are precisely the best part of you, and that the offers of the Church,
which proposes to wean you from the world and reward you by a loftier
prize, are a delusion and a snare. They are the lessons of a designing
priesthood, and imply a blasphemy against the most divine instincts of
human nature.
This is the unhappy discord which runs through Miss Brontë's
conceptions of life, and whilst it gives an indescribable pathos
to many pages, leaves us with a sense of something morbid and
unsatisfactory. She seems to be turning for relief alternately
to different teachers, to the promptings of her own heart, to
the precepts of those whom she has been taught to revere, and
occasionally, though timidly and tentatively, to alien schools of
thought. The attitude of mind is, indeed, best indicated by the
story (a true story, like most of her incidents) of her visit to the
confessional in Brussels. Had she been a Catholic, or a Positivist,
or a rebel against all the creeds, she might have reached some
consistency of doctrine, and therefore some harmony of design. As
it is, she seems to be under a desire which makes her restless and
unhappy, because her best impulses are continually warring against
each other. She is between the opposite poles of duty and happiness,
and cannot see how to reconcile their claims, or even—for perhaps
no one can solve that or any other great problem exhaustively—how
distinctly to state the question at issue She pursues one path
energetically, till she feels herself to be in danger, and then
shrinks with a kind of instinctive dread, and resolves not only that
life is a mystery, but that happiness must be sought by courting
misery. Undoubtedly such a position speaks of a mind diseased, and a
more powerful intellect would even under her conditions have worked
out some more comprehensible and harmonious solution.
For us, however, it is allowable to interpret her complaints in our
own fashion, whatever it may be. We may give our own answer to the
dark problem, or at least indicate the path by which an answer must
be reached. For a poor soul so grievously beset within and without by
troubles in which we all have a share, we can but feel the strongest
sympathy. We cannot sit at her feet as a great teacher, nor admit
that her view of life is satisfactory, or even intelligible. But we
feel for her as for a fellow-sufferer who has at least felt with
extraordinary keenness the sorrows and disappointments which torture
most cruelly the most noble virtues, and has clung throughout her
troubles to beliefs which must in some form or other be the guiding
lights of all worthy actions. She is not in the highest rank amongst
those who have fought their way to a clearer atmosphere, and can help
us to clearer conceptions; but she is among the first of those who
have felt the necessity of consolation, and therefore stimulated to
more successful efforts.
_CHARLES KINGSLEY_
The recently-published Memorials of the late Canon Kingsley do not
constitute a biography of the normal type. In other words, the book
does not profess to answer every question which the curiosity of
readers might suggest; and, on the whole, one may be very glad that
it does not. To many such questions the most appropriate answer is
silence, not unmixed with contempt. To others, which may be taken as
the expression of a legitimate interest in an eminent man, a reader of
moderate intelligence may be trusted to find a sufficient answer in
the ample materials placed before him. There is no great difficulty
in seizing the main outlines of so strongly marked a character; and,
on the whole, Kingsley well deserves the labour. Few writers of his
generation gave clearer indications of power. Had he died at the age
of five-and thirty (when 'Westward Ho!' was already completed), we
should have speculated upon the great things which we had lost. The
last twenty years of his life added little or nothing to his literary
reputation. Perhaps, indeed, some of his performances—the lectures
at Cambridge, and the unfortunate controversy with Newman—reflected
a certain discredit upon his previous achievements. The explanation
is not far to seek, when one has read the story of his life; but the
fact makes it rather difficult to recall the feelings with which the
rising generation of the years between 1848 and 1855 regarded the
most vigorous champion of a school then in its highest vigour. The
'Saint's Tragedy,' 'Yeast,' 'Alton Locke,' 'Hypatia,' and 'Westward
Ho!' did not exactly reveal one of the born leaders of mankind; but
their freshness, geniality, and vigour seemed to indicate powers
which might qualify their possessor to be an admirable interpreter
between the original prophets and the inferior disciples. There was
the buoyancy of spirit, the undoubting confidence that the riddle
of the universe had at last been satisfactorily solved, and the
power of seizing the picturesque and striking aspect of things and
embodying abstract theories in vivid symbols which marks the second
order of intellects—the men who spread but do not originate fruitful
and transforming ideas. Thinkers of the highest rank may be equally
self-confident: for it cannot be denied that unreasonable trust in
one's own infallibility is a great condition of success in even the
highest tasks; but the confidence of great minds is compatible with a
deeper estimate of the difficulties before them. They may hold that
evil will be extirpated, but they are aware that its roots strike
down into the very heart of things. Kingsley's exuberant faith in his
own message showed the high spirits of youth rather than a profound
insight into the conditions of the great problems which he solved so
fluently. At the time, however, this youthful zeal was contagious.
If not an authority to obey, he was a fellow-worker in whom to trust
heartily and rejoice unreservedly. Nobody, as Matthew Arnold says
in a letter published in the Life, was more willing to admire or
more free from petty jealousies. This quality gave a charm to his
writings. There was always something generous in their tone; a desire
to understand his antagonist's position, which was due to his own
temperament as much as to the teaching of his leader, Maurice; and,
in short, a warmth and heartiness which led one to overlook many
defects, and rightly attracted the enthusiasm of men young enough to
look up to him for guidance.
The earlier pages in Mrs. Kingsley's volumes give a vivid picture of
this period of his life, or at least of one side of it. Something is
said—as of course it is proper to say something—of the speculative
doubts and difficulties through which he won his way to a more settled
and happier frame of mind. But it is impossible to take this very
seriously. Kingsley, as his letters prove, started in life, like other
lads, with a ready-made theory of the universe. Like other lads, he
was perfectly confident that it rested upon an unassailable basis and
would solve all difficulties. He intended, it is true, to perfect
himself in a few branches of study which he had hitherto neglected;
he was to learn something about metaphysics, theology, ecclesiastical
history, and other branches of knowledge; but it is quite plain that
Kant and Augustine and other great teachers of mankind were to be
called in, not to consult upon the basis of his philosophy, but to
furnish him with a few tools for polishing certain corollaries and
increasing his dialectical skill. His is quite ready to provide his
correspondents immediately with a definitive philosophical system,
and shows his usual versatility in applying at least some of the
metaphysical phraseology caught from his intellectual idols. Many lads
learn to modify the speculative apparatus with which they started
in life. Absolute conversions, it is true, are almost unknown in
philosophy. No one ever deserts from the empirical to the _à priori_
school, or _vice versâ_; for a man's attitude in such matters depends
upon intellectual tendencies which assert themselves in early youth
as much as in riper years. But men of real power go through a process
of development, which, though it leaves a certain homogeneity between
their earlier and their later views, softens the crudeness and lessens
the superficiality of the first guesses. No such process is traceable
in Kingsley. His first theory is his last, except that in later years
his interest in abstract speculation had obviously declined, and his
declarations, if equally dogmatic in form, show less confidence than
desire to be confident. He is glad to turn from speculations to facts,
and thinks that his strength lies in the direction rather of the
natural sciences than of speculative thought.
Probably he was quite right. It would, at any rate, be a mistake to
regard any process of speculative development as determining his
career. He was no real philosopher, though capable of providing
philosophical dialogues quite good enough to figure in an historical
novel. He was primarily a poet, or, at least, a man swayed by the
imagination and emotions. He felt keenly, saw vividly, and accepted
such abstract teachings as were most congenial to his modes of seeing
and feeling. The true key to his mental development must therefore
be sought in his emotional history, and not in the intellectual
fermentation which determines the career of a true thinker. The story
of his life in this aspect, though indicated rather than directly
told, seems to be simple enough. Few people, it is probable, possess
greater faculties of enjoyment than Kingsley. His delight in a fine
landscape resembled the delight of an epicure in an exquisite vintage.
It had the intensity and absorbing power of a sensual appetite. He
enjoyed the sight of the Atlantic rollers relieved against a purple
stretch of heather as the conventional alderman enjoys turtle-soup.
He gave himself up to the pure emotion as a luxurious nature abandons
itself to physical gratification. His was not the contemplative mood
of the greater poets of nature, but an intense spasm of sympathy which
rather excluded all further reflection. Such a temperament implies
equal powers of appreciation for many other kinds of beauty, though
his love of fine scenery has perhaps left the strongest mark upon his
books. He was abnormally sensitive to those pleasures which are on the
border-line between the sensuous and the intellectual. He speaks in
an early letter of the 'dreamy days of boyhood,' when his 'enjoyment
was drawn from the semi-sensual delights of ear and eye, from sun
and stars, wood and wave, the beautiful inanimate in all its forms.'
'Present enjoyment,' he adds, 'present profit, brought always to me a
recklessness of moral consequences which has been my bane.' The last
expression must of course be taken for what it is worth—that is, for
next to nothing: but he is no doubt right in attributing to himself a
certain greediness of pleasures of the class described, which became
more intellectual and comprehensive but hardly less intense in later
years.
It is needless to point out what are the dangers to which a man is
exposed by such a temperament. He describes himself (at the age of
twenty-two) as saved from 'the darkling tempests of scepticism,'
and from 'sensuality and dissipation;' saved, too, 'from a hunter's
life on the prairies, from becoming a savage and perhaps worse.'
The phrase savours of his habitual exaggeration, but it has a real
meaning. Young men with a strong taste for pleasure are ruined often
enough, though they do not go so far as 'the prairies' to effect that
consummation. We can see with sufficient clearness that during his
college life Kingsley went through serious struggles and came out
victorious. Partly, no doubt, he owed that victory over himself to the
fact that his tastes, however keen, were not coarse. He had a genuine
vein of poetry; that is to say, of really noble feeling. His intense
delight in the higher forms of beauty was a force which resisted
any easy lapse into degradation. The æsthetic faculties may, as has
been too clearly proved, fall into bondage to the lowest impulses
of our nature. In the case of a man so open to generous and manly
impulses, so appreciative of the charms which outward scenery reveals
to healthy and tender minds and to them alone, the struggle against
such a bondage must have been in any case prolonged and vigorous.
But stronger men than Kingsley have yielded, and one may see in him
the type of character which, under other conditions, produces the
'diabolical' or rather the animalistic school of art and literature.
An external influence, we are left to infer, had a share in saving
him from so lamentable a descent. Kingsley, in short, was rescued, as
other men have been rescued, by the elevating influence of a noble
passion. It is inevitable that this fact, tolerably obvious as it is,
should be rather indicated than stated in the biography. But he was
not slow to proclaim in all his writings, and we need not scruple to
assume that his utterance was drawn from his own experience, that,
of all good things that can befall a man in this world, the best is
that he should fall in love with a good woman. It is not a new truth;
indeed, most truths of that importance have an uncomfortable habit of
revealing themselves to the intrusive persons who have insisted upon
saying all our best things before us. Still, true as it is, many young
men are apt to ignore it, or to consider it as repealed instead of
limited by obvious prudential maxims. Kingsley, led to recognise it,
and even to exaggerate its exclusive importance by his own history,
insists upon it with an emphasis which may not only be traced through
his writings, but which seems to have affected all his conceptions
of life. It may almost be regarded as the true central point of his
doctrine. The love of man for woman, when sanctified by religious
feeling, is, according to him, the greatest of all forces that work
for individual or social good. This belief, and the system of which
it forms a part, gives the most characteristic colouring to all his
work. It appears to be decided by general consent that a novel means
the same thing as a love-story. Some writers, indeed, have been bold
enough to maintain, and even to act upon the opinion, that this view
exaggerates the part played by the passion in actual life; and that
men have some interests in life which survive the pairing period.
Kingsley's doctrine differs from that of the ordinary novelist in
another way. Love may not be the ultimate end of a man's life; but it
is, as Shakespeare puts it—
The ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
It is the guide to a noble life; and not only affords the discipline
by which men obtain the mastery over themselves, but reveals to them
the true theory of their relations to the universe. This doctrine,
treated in a rather vacillating manner, supplies the theme for his
earliest book, the 'Saint's Tragedy.' Lancelot in 'Yeast,' and
even the poor tailor, Alton Locke, owe their best stimulus towards
obtaining a satisfactory solution of the perplexed social problems
of the time to their love for good women. Hypatia, the type of the
feminine influence whose lofty instincts are misdirected by a decaying
philosophy, and poor Pelagia, with no philosophy at all, excite the
passions by which monks, pagans, and Goths are elevated or corrupted;
and the excellent Victoria—a lady who comes too distinctly from a
modern tract—shows the philosopher Raphael how to escape from a
despairing cynicism. The Elizabethan heroes of 'Westward Ho!' take the
side of good or evil according to their mode of understanding love
for the heroines. In 'Two Years Ago,' the delicate curate, and the
dandified American, and the sturdy Tom Thurnall, all manage to save
their souls by the worship of a lofty feminine character, whilst poor
Tom Briggs _alias_ Vavasour is ruined by his failure to appreciate
the rare excellence of his wife. The same thought inspires some of
his most remarkable poems, as the truly beautiful 'Andromeda,' and
the 'Martyrdom of Saint Maura,' considered by himself to be his best,
though I fancy that few readers will share this judgment. Lancelot
in 'Yeast' designs a great allegorical drawing called the 'Triumph
of Woman,' which sets forth the hallowing influence of feminine
charms upon every variety of human being. The picture is one of those
which could hardly be put upon canvas; but it would be the proper
frontispiece to Kingsley's works.
Such a doctrine, it may be said, is too specific and narrow to be
considered as the animating principle of the various books in which
it appears. This is doubtless true, and it must be taken rather as
the most characteristic application of the teaching of which it is
in a logical sense the corollary, though ostensible corollaries are
often in fact first principles. When generalised or associated with
congenial theories of wider application, it explains Kingsley's
leading doctrines. Thus the love of good women is the great practical
guide in life; and, in a broader sense, our affections are to guide
our intellects. The love of nature, the rapture produced in a
sensitive mind by the glorious beauties of the external world, is to
teach us the true theory of the universe. The ultimate argument which
convinces men like Tom Thurnall and Raphael Aben Ezra is that the
love of which they have come to know the mysterious charm must reveal
the true archetype of the world, previously hidden by the veil of
sense. It wants no more to explain a problem which seems[1] to have
puzzled Kingsley himself—why, namely, the mystics should supply the
only religious teaching which had 'any real meaning for his heart.'
A man who systematically sees the world through his affections is so
far a mystic; though Kingsley's love of the concrete and incapacity
for abstract metaphysics prevented him from using the true mystical
language. Still simpler is the solution of another problem stated
by his biographer. It is said to be 'strange' that Kingsley should
have acknowledged the intellectual leadership at once of Coleridge
and Maurice and of Carlyle. The superficial difference between the
two first and the last of those writers is indeed obvious. But it
requires no profound reasoner to detect the fundamental similarity.
They all agree in seeing facts through the medium of the imagination,
and substituting poetic intuition for the slow and chilling processes
of scientific reasoning. They agree in rejecting the rigid framework
of dogma and desiring to exalt the spirit above the dead letter. To
Kingsley, as to his teachers, and to most imaginative minds, science
seemed at one time to mean materialism in philosophy and cynicism in
morals. Men of science subordinate the satisfaction of the emotions
to the satisfaction of the intellect; they seek to analyse into their
elements the concrete realities which alone interest the poet, and see
mechanical laws where their opponents would recognise a living force.
To Kingsley they appeared to be drying up the source of his most
rapturous emotions, and reducing the beautiful world to a colourless
museum of dead specimens. Instead of regulating they were suppressing
the emotions. It is less remarkable that he should have opposed a
doctrine thus interpreted, than that he should have gradually become
less hostile to the scientific aspect of things. He accepted, instead
of reviling, Darwin's teaching; and seems to have been convincing
himself that, after all, science was not an enemy to the loftier
sentiments. His keen eye for nature, his love of beast and bird and
insect, made him sympathise with the observers, if not with the
reasoners, and led him to recognise a poetic and a religious side in
rightly interpreted science.