"A ray has pierced me from the highest heaven--
I have believed in worth; and do believe."
So runs Mr. Woolner's song, as it proceeds to show the issue of a noble
earthly love, one with the heavenly. Its issue is the life of high
endeavour, wherein
"They who would be something more
Than they who feast, and laugh and die, will hear
The voice of Duty, as the note of war,
Nerving their spirits to great enterprise,
And knitting every sinew for the charge."
This Library is based on a belief in worth, and on a knowledge of the
wide desire among men now to read books that are books, which "do," as
Milton says, "contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that
soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the
purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
When, therefore, as now happens for the second time, a man of genius who
has written with a hope to lift the hearts and minds of men by adding one
more true book to the treasures of the land, honours us by such
recognition of our aim, and fellow-feeling with it, that he gives up a
part of his exclusive right to his own work, and offers to make it freely
current with the other volumes of our series,--we take the gift, if we
may dare to say so, in the spirit of the giver, and are the happier for
such evidence that we are not working in vain.
Such evidence comes in other forms: as in letters from remote readers in
lonely settlements, from the far West, from sheep-farms in Australia,
from farthest India, from places to which these little volumes make their
way as pioneers; being almost the first real books that have there been
seen. To send a true voice over, for delight and support of earnest
workers who open their hearts wide to a good book in a way that we can
hardly understand,--we who live wastefully in the midst of plenty, and
are apt sometimes to leave to feed on the fair mountain and batten on the
moor,--is worth the while of any man of genius who puts his soul into his
work, as Mr. Woolner does.
Books in the "National Library" that come like those of Mr. Patmore and
Mr. Woolner are here as friends and companions. If they were not
esteemed highly they would not be here. Beyond that implied opinion
there is nothing to be said. He would be an ill-bred host who criticised
his guest, or spoke loud praise of him before his face. Nor does a well-
known man of our own day need personal introduction. It is only said, in
consideration that this book will be read by many who cannot know what is
known to those who have access to the works of artists, that Mr. Thomas
Woolner is a Royal Academician, and one of the foremost sculptors of our
day. For a couple of years, from 1877 to 1879, he was Professor of
Sculpture at the Royal Academy. A colossal statue by him in bronze of
Captain Cook was designed for a site overlooking Sydney Harbour. A
poet's mind has given life to his work on the marble, and when he was an
associate with Mr. Millais, Mr. Holman Hunt, and others, who, in 1850,
were endeavouring to bring truth and beauty of expression into art, by
the bold reaction against tame and insincere conventions for which Mr.
Ruskin pleaded and which the time required, Mr. Woolner joined in the
production by them of a magazine called "The Germ," to which some of the
verses in this volume were contributed.
There is no more to say; but through another page let Wordsworth speak
the praise of Books:
Yet is it just
That here, in memory of all books which lay
Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
Whether by native prose, or numerous verse.
That in the name of all inspired souls--
From Homer the great thunderer, from the voice
That roars along the bed of Jewish song,
And that more varied and elaborate,
Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake
Our shores in England--from those loftiest notes,
Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
For cottagers and spinners at the wheel
And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs
Stretched under wayside hedgerows, ballad tunes
Food for the hungry ears of little ones
And of old men who have survived their joys--
'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
And of the men that framed them, whether known
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
That I should here assert their rights, attest
Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
Their benediction; speak of them as Powers
For ever to be hallowed; only less,
For what we are and what we may become,
Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.
_Prelude, Book V_.
H. M.