Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that make the hyacinthine bell. {5}
By J. H. REYNOLDS.
Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,--the domain
Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,--
The tent of Hesperus and all his train,--
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters--ocean
And all its vassal streams: pools numberless
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside if not to dark-blue nativeness.
Blue! gentle cousin of the forest green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,
Forget-me-not,--the blue-bell,--and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
_Feb._ 1818.
In the _Athenaeum_ of the 3rd of June 1876 appeared a letter from Mr. A.
J. Horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of _The Garden
of Florence_ in which this sonnet was transcribed. Mr. Horwood, who was
unaware that the sonnet had been already published by Lord Houghton,
gives the transcript at length. His version reads _hue_ for _life_ in
the first line, and _bright_ for _wide_ in the second, and gives the
sixth line thus:
With all his tributary streams, pools numberless,
a foot too long: it also reads _to_ for _of_ in the ninth line. Mr.
Buxton Forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine,
but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in Lord
Houghton's edition. However, now that we have before us Keats's first
draft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line in
Mr. Horwood's version is really a genuine variation. Keats may have
written,
Ocean
His tributary streams, pools numberless,
and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line
right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second.
The _Athenaeum_ version inserts a comma after _art_ in the last line,
which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of
Keats's method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton Forman has adopted it.
As for the corrections that Lord Houghton's version shows Keats to have
made in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident that
they sprang from Keats's reluctance to repeat the same word in
consecutive lines, except in cases where a word's music or meaning was to
be emphasized. The substitution of 'its' for 'his' in the sixth line is
more difficult of explanation. It was due probably to a desire on
Keats's part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of Hesperus.
It may be noticed that Keats's own eyes were brown, and not blue, as
stated by Mrs. Proctor to Lord Houghton. Mrs. Speed showed me a note to
that effect written by Mrs. George Keats on the margin of the page in
Lord Houghton's _Life_ (p. 100, vol. i.), where Mrs. Proctor's
description is given. Cowden Clarke made a similar correction in his
_Recollections_, and in some of the later editions of Lord Houghton's
book the word 'blue' is struck out. In Severn's portraits of Keats also
the eyes are given as brown.
The exquisite sense of colour expressed in the ninth and tenth lines may
be paralleled by
The Ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
of the sonnet to George Keats.
DINNERS AND DISHES
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 7, 1885.)
A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one
day without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live without
pictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author of
_Dinners and Dishes_; and this latter view is, no doubt, the more
popular. Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between an
ode and an omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is not
entirely Philistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles the
subject of South Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy give
a banquet once a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt,
insist on feeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws of
cookery should be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badly
seasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution might
follow.
Under these circumstances we strongly recommend _Dinners and Dishes_ to
every one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence,
which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure
oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The
subject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty,
but still there is always something depressing about the coloured
lithograph of a leg of mutton.
As regards the author's particular views, we entirely agree with him on
the important question of macaroni. 'Never,' he says, 'ask me to back a
bill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding.' Macaroni is
essentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes but
never with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how to
cook risotto--a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellent
chapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefully
studied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyond
lettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sprouts
eatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece.
The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much the
science of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this little
handbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen is
shown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passion
for extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which is
anything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveterate
habit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants,--all these sins and
many others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly and
rightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turned
for her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to
use.
But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he has
eaten back-hendl at Vienna and kulibatsch at St. Petersburg; he has had
the courage to face the buffalo veal of Roumania and to dine with a
German family at one o'clock; he has serious views on the right method of
cooking those famous white truffles of Turin of which Alexandre Dumas was
so fond; and, in the face of the Oriental Club, declares that Bombay
curry is better than the curry of Bengal. In fact he seems to have had
experience of almost every kind of meal except the 'square meal' of the
Americans. This he should study at once; there is a great field for the
philosophic epicure in the United States. Boston beans may be dismissed
at once as delusions, but soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks,
blue fish and the pompono of New Orleans are all wonderful delicacies,
particularly when one gets them at Delmonico's. Indeed, the two most
remarkable bits of scenery in the States are undoubtedly Delmonico's and
the Yosemite Valley; and the former place has done more to promote a good
feeling between England and America than anything else has in this
century.
We hope the 'Wanderer' will go there soon and add a chapter to _Dinners
and Dishes_, and that his book will have in England the influence it
deserves. There are twenty ways of cooking a potato and three hundred
and sixty-five ways of cooking an egg, yet the British cook, up to the
present moment, knows only three methods of sending up either one or the
other.
_Dinners and Dishes_. By 'Wanderer.' (Simpkin and Marshall.)
SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY
(_Dramatic Review_, March 14, 1885.)
I have often heard people wonder what Shakespeare would say, could he see
Mr. Irving's production of his _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Mr. Wilson
Barrett's setting of his _Hamlet_. Would he take pleasure in the glory
of the scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested in
the Cathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would he
be indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?
Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present case
happen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see what
Shakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if one
reads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is written
about him.
Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre,
through the lips of the chorus in _Henry V._, he complains of the
smallness of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big
historical play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out
many of its most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number
of supers who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the
properties, and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring
on real horses.
In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, again, he gives us a most amusing
picture of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were
reduced by the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read
him without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two
special limitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable
scenery, and the fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he
protests against other difficulties with which managers of theatres have
still to contend, such as actors who do not understand their words;
actors who miss their cues; actors who overact their parts; actors who
mouth; actors who gag; actors who play to the gallery, and amateur
actors.
And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt very
much hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of a
play in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that the
scene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of a
particular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that the
stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of
a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which
inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply
apologizes. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other
substitutes for scenery--the hanging out of a placard, and his
descriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passion
for picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did not
satisfy the dramatic critic of his day. But as regards the description,
to those of us who look on Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but as
a poet, and who enjoy reading him at home just as much as we enjoy seeing
him acted, it may be a matter of congratulation that he had not at his
command such skilled machinists as are in use now at the Princess's and
at the Lyceum. For had Cleopatra's barge, for instance, been a structure
of canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over or
broken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived to
our own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by this
time. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and the
purple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired of
keeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid's
flower-soft hands of touching its silken tackle; the mermaid still lies
at its helm, and still on its deck stand the boys with their coloured
fans. Yet lovely as all Shakespeare's descriptive passages are, a
description is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are far
more impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and the
modern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visibly
presented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage for
which Shakespeare often expresses his desire. It is true that
Shakespeare's descriptions are not what descriptions are in modern
plays--accounts of what the audience can observe for themselves; they are
the imaginative method by which he creates in the mind of the spectators
the image of that which he desires them to see. Still, the quality of
the drama is action. It is always dangerous to pause for
picturesqueness. And the introduction of self-explanatory scenery
enables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness of
form and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create an
artistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beauty
for beauty's sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can never
be understood, to which, and to which only, are they ever revealed.
To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and of
sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words.
A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eye
as well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitely
receptive of the influence of imaginative work. And as regards a bad
play, have we not all seen large audiences lured by the loveliness of
scenic effect into listening to rhetoric posing as poetry, and to
vulgarity doing duty for realism? Whether this be good or evil for the
public I will not here discuss, but it is evident that the playwright, at
any rate, never suffers.
Indeed, the artist who really has suffered through the modern mounting of
plays is not the dramatist at all, but the scene-painter proper. He is
rapidly being displaced by the stage-carpenter. Now and then, at Drury
Lane, I have seen beautiful old front cloths let down, as perfect as
pictures some of them, and pure painter's work, and there are many which
we all remember at other theatres, in front of which some dialogue was
reduced to graceful dumb-show through the hammer and tin-tacks behind.
But as a rule the stage is overcrowded with enormous properties, which
are not merely far more expensive and cumbersome than scene-paintings,
but far less beautiful, and far less true. Properties kill perspective.
A painted door is more like a real door than a real door is itself, for
the proper conditions of light and shade can be given to it; and the
excessive use of built-up structures always makes the stage too glaring,
for as they have to be lit from behind, as well as from the front, the
gas-jets become the absolute light of the scene instead of the means
merely by which we perceive the conditions of light and shadow which the
painter has desired to show us.
So, instead of bemoaning the position of the playwright, it were better
for the critics to exert whatever influence they may possess towards
restoring the scene-painter to his proper position as an artist, and not
allowing him to be built over by the property man, or hammered to death
by the carpenter. I have never seen any reason myself why such artists
as Mr. Beverley, Mr. Walter Hann, and Mr. Telbin should not be entitled
to become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have many
of those R.A.'s whose total inability to paint we can see every May for a
shilling.
And lastly, let those critics who hold up for our admiration the
simplicity of the Elizabethan stage remember that they are lauding a
condition of things against which Shakespeare himself, in the spirit of a
true artist, always strongly protested.
_HENRY THE FOURTH_ AT OXFORD
(_Dramatic Review_, May 23, 1885.)
I have been told that the ambition of every Dramatic Club is to act
_Henry IV_. I am not surprised. The spirit of comedy is as fervent in
this play as is the spirit of chivalry; it is an heroic pageant as well
as an heroic poem, and like most of Shakespeare's historical dramas it
contains an extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each of
which is absolutely individual in character, and each of which
contributes to the evolution of the plot.
To Oxford belongs the honour of having been the first to present on the
stage this noble play, and the production which I saw last week was in
every way worthy of that lovely town, that mother of sweetness and of
light. For, in spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and
the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisector, in spite of
Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still
remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life
and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in most
other towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reaction
against the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes to
us as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive of
life's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by the
Ilissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to her
as were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of the
house of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance to
Christ Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feet
have stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in the
river-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dullness of the
lecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not to
define virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on the
swift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in the
young Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedy
bank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurels to her poets, and rue to
those who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to all
who dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;
and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she has
welcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they have
sought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caught
with much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardour
and this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxford
performance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any fine
dramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation of
life the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what is
not conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all to
others.
I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for the
study than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree.
Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alter
the form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work.
Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed to
us only through the actor's art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford the
other night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me to
gain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and the
ideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators by
the chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and the fine passion of its
exponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Their
archaeological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain,
a perfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved across
the stage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel of
battle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land the
play's action was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignity
and grace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicate
harmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty which
added to the intellectual realism of archaeology the sensuous charm of
art.
I have rarely seen a production better stage-managed. Indeed, I hope
that the University will take some official notice of this delightful
work of art. Why should not degrees be granted for good acting? Are
they not given to those who misunderstand Plato and who mistranslate
Aristotle? And should the artist be passed over? No. To Prince Hal,
Hotspur and Falstaff, D.C.L.'s should be gracefully offered. I feel sure
they would be gracefully accepted. To the rest of the company the
crimson or the sheepskin hood might be assigned _honoris causa_ to the
eternal confusion of the Philistine, and the rage of the industrious and
the dull. Thus would Oxford confer honour on herself, and the artist be
placed in his proper position. However, whether or not Convocation
recognizes the claims of culture, I hope that the Oxford Dramatic Society
will produce every summer for us some noble play like _Henry IV_. For,
in plays of this kind, plays which deal with bygone times, there is
always this peculiar charm, that they combine in one exquisite
presentation the passions that are living with the picturesqueness that
is dead. And when we have the modern spirit given to us in an antique
form, the very remoteness of that form can be made a method of increased
realism. This was Shakespeare's own attitude towards the ancient world,
this is the attitude we in this century should adopt towards his plays,
and with a feeling akin to this it seemed to me that these brilliant
young Oxonians were working. If it was so, their aim is the right one.
For while we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of
the actor to give realism to romance.
A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 18, 1885.)
In spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highly
recommended to every one. As for the authorities the author quotes, they
are almost numberless, and range from Socrates down to Artemus Ward. He
tells us of the wicked bachelor who spoke of marriage as 'a very harmless
amusement' and advised a young friend of his to 'marry early and marry
often'; of Dr. Johnson who proposed that marriage should be arranged by
the Lord Chancellor, without the parties concerned having any choice in
the matter; of the Sussex labourer who asked, 'Why should I give a woman
half my victuals for cooking the other half?' and of Lord Verulam who
thought that unmarried men did the best public work. And, indeed,
marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men
disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the
Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was
to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal
solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the
married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made
men, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, from the view recently
put forward by a lady or two on the Women's Rights platform that Solomon
owed all his wisdom to the number of his wives, still he appeals to
Bismarck, John Stuart Mill, Mahommed, and Lord Beaconsfield, as instances
of men whose success can be traced to the influence of the women they
married. Archbishop Whately once defined woman as 'a creature that does
not reason and pokes the fire from the top,' but since his day the higher
education of women has considerably altered their position. Women have
always had an emotional sympathy with those they love; Girton and Newnham
have rendered intellectual sympathy also possible. In our day it is best
for a man to be married, and men must give up the tyranny in married life
which was once so dear to them, and which, we are afraid, lingers still,
here and there.
'Do you wish to be my wife, Mabel?' said a little boy. 'Yes,'
incautiously answered Mabel. 'Then pull off my boots.'
On marriage vows our author has, too, very sensible views and very
amusing stories. He tells of a nervous bridegroom who, confusing the
baptismal and marriage ceremonies, replied when asked if he consented to
take the bride for his wife: 'I renounce them all'; of a Hampshire rustic
who, when giving the ring, said solemnly to the bride: 'With my body I
thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou'; of another
who when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife,
replied with shameful indecision: 'Yes, I'm willin'; but I'd a sight
rather have her sister'; and of a Scotch lady who, on the occasion of her
daughter's wedding, was asked by an old friend whether she might
congratulate her on the event, and answered: 'Yes, yes, upon the whole it
is very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then
there's always a something!' Indeed, the good stories contained in this
book are quite endless and make it very pleasant reading, while the good
advice is on all points admirable.
Most young married people nowadays start in life with a dreadful
collection of ormolu inkstands covered with sham onyxes, or with a
perfect museum of salt-cellars. We strongly recommend this book as one
of the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthly
Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and
the Baedeker of bliss.
_How to be Happy though Married_: _Being a Handbook to Marriage_. By a
Graduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin.)
TO READ OR NOT TO READ
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 8, 1886.)
Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:
1. Books to read, such as Cicero's _Letters_, Suetonius, Vasari's _Lives
of the Painters_, the _Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, Sir John
Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's _Memoirs_, Mommsen, and (till we get
a better one) Grote's _History of Greece_.
2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry,
the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not
the _savants_.
3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson's _Seasons_, Rogers's
_Italy_, Paley's _Evidences_, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all
John Stuart Mill except the essay on _Liberty_, all Voltaire's plays
without any exception, Butler's _Analogy_, Grant's _Aristotle_, Hume's
_England_, Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, all argumentative books and
all books that try to prove anything.
The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to
read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of
literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus
there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning.
But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I
venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.
Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an age
that reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much,
that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos of
our modern curricula 'The Worst Hundred Books,' and publish a list of
them, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit.
After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestions
at all with regard to 'The Best Hundred Books,' but I hope you will allow
me the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claim
for a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellent
judges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the _Greek
Anthology_. The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me
to hold the same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do
the delicate little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to
be quite as necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit.
I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over.
Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place? If,
in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some one
else, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might be
most advantageously substituted for Keble.
No doubt, both in the _Curse of Kehama_ and in the _Christian Year_ there
are poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste
is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire
all schools of art.
THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 6, 1886.)
Of the many collections of letters that have appeared in this century
few, if any, can rival for fascination of style and variety of incident
the letters of George Sand which have recently been translated into
English by M. Ledos de Beaufort. They extend over a space of more than
sixty years, from 1812 to 1876, in fact, and comprise the first letters
of Aurore Dupin, a child of eight years old, as well as the last letters
of George Sand, a woman of seventy-two. The very early letters, those of
the child and of the young married woman, possess, of course, merely a
psychological interest; but from 1831, the date of Madame Dudevant's
separation from her husband and her first entry into Paris life, the
interest becomes universal, and the literary and political history of
France is mirrored in every page.
For George Sand was an indefatigable correspondent; she longs in one of
her letters, it is true, for 'a planet where reading and writing are
absolutely unknown,' but still she had a real pleasure in letter-writing.
Her greatest delight was the communication of ideas, and she is always in
the heart of the battle. She discusses pauperism with Louis Napoleon in
his prison at Ham, and liberty with Armand Barbes in his dungeon at
Vincennes; she writes to Lamennais on philosophy, to Mazzini on
socialism, to Lamartine on democracy, and to Ledru-Rollin on justice.
Her letters reveal to us not merely the life of a great novelist but the
soul of a great woman, of a woman who was one with all the noblest
movements of her day and whose sympathy with humanity was boundless
absolutely. For the aristocracy of intellect she had always the deepest
veneration, but the democracy of suffering touched her more. She
preached the regeneration of mankind, not with the noisy ardour of the
paid advocate, but with the enthusiasm of the true evangelist. Of all
the artists of this century she was the most altruistic; she felt every
one's misfortunes except her own. Her faith never left her; to the end
of her life, as she tells us, she was able to believe without illusions.
But the people disappointed her a little. She saw that they followed
persons not principles, and for 'the great man theory' George Sand had no
respect. 'Proper names are the enemies of principles' is one of her
aphorisms.
So from 1850 her letters are more distinctly literary. She discusses
modern realism with Flaubert, and play-writing with Dumas _fils_; and
protests with passionate vehemence against the doctrine of _L'art pour
l'art_. 'Art for the sake of itself is an idle sentence,' she writes;
'art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good,
that is the creed I seek.' And in a delightful letter to M. Charles
Poncy she repeats the same idea very charmingly. 'People say that birds
sing for the sake of singing, but I doubt it. They sing their loves and
happiness, and in that they are in keeping with nature. But man must do
something more, and poets only sing in order to move people and to make
them think.' She wanted M. Poncy to be the poet of the people and, if
good advice were all that had been needed, he would certainly have been
the Burns of the workshop. She drew out a delightful scheme for a volume
to be called _Songs of all Trades_ and saw the possibilities of making
handicrafts poetic. Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a little
too much, and she hardly understood that art for art's sake is not meant
to express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation;
but, as she herself had scaled Parnassus, we must not quarrel at her
bringing Proletarianism with her. For George Sand must be ranked among
our poetic geniuses. She regarded the novel as still within the domain
of poetry. Her heroes are not dead photographs; they are great
possibilities. Modern novels are dissections; hers are dreams. 'I make
popular types,' she writes, 'such as I do no longer see, but such as they
should and might be.' For realism, in M. Zola's acceptation of the word,
she had no admiration. Art to her was a mirror that transfigured truths
but did not represent realities. Hence she could not understand art
without personality. 'I am aware,' she writes to Flaubert, 'that you are
opposed to the exposition of personal doctrine in literature. Are you
right? Does not your opposition proceed rather from a want of conviction
than from a principle of aesthetics? If we have any philosophy in our
brain it must needs break forth in our writings. But you, as soon as you
handle literature, you seem anxious, I know not why, to be another man,
the one who must disappear, who annihilates himself and is no more. What
a singular mania! What a deficient taste! The worth of our productions
depends entirely on our own. Besides, if we withhold our own opinions
respecting the personages we create, we naturally leave the reader in
uncertainty as to the opinion he should himself form of them. That
amounts to wishing not to be understood, and the result of this is that
the reader gets weary of us and leaves us.'
She herself, however, may be said to have suffered from too dominant a
personality, and this was the reason of the failure of most of her plays.
Of the drama in the sense of disinterested presentation she had no idea,
and what is the strength and life-blood of her novels is the weakness of
her dramatic works. But in the main she was right. Art without
personality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to reveal
personality, but to please. This she hardly recognized in her
aesthetics, though she realized it in her work. On literary style she
has some excellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the
romantic school and sees the beauty of simplicity. 'Simplicity,' she
writes, 'is the most difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the
last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.' She hated the
slang and _argot_ of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants
in the provinces. 'The provinces,' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition
of the original tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect
for the language of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the more
correct.'
She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, and
makes these excellent observations to him--perhaps her best piece of
literary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is but
the effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion and
emotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by that
which we ardently believe in.' Literary schools she distrusted.
Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. 'Do not
belong to any school: do not imitate any model,' is her advice. Yet she
never encouraged eccentricity. 'Be correct,' she writes to Eugene
Pelletan, 'that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It is
much more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross of
honour.'
On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She never
shrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. And
the whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house of
suggestions both on art and on politics.
_Letters of George Sand_. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos de
Beaufort. (Ward and Downey.)
BERANGER IN ENGLAND
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 21, 1886.)
A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form of
government is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads.
Without at all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regret
that the new democracy does not use poetry as a means for the expression
of political opinion. The Socialists, it is true, have been heard
singing the later poems of Mr. William Morris, but the street ballad is
really dead in England. The fact is that most modern poetry is so
artificial in its form, so individual in its essence and so literary in
its style, that the people as a body are little moved by it, and when
they have grievances against the capitalist or the aristocrat they prefer
strikes to sonnets and rioting to rondels.
Possibly, Mr. William Toynbee's pleasant little volume of translations
from Beranger may be the herald of a new school. Beranger had all the
qualifications for a popular poet. He wrote to be sung more than to be
read; he preferred the Pont Neuf to Parnassus; he was patriotic as well
as romantic, and humorous as well as humane. Translations of poetry as a
rule are merely misrepresentations, but the muse of Beranger is so simple
and naive that she can wear our English dress with ease and grace, and
Mr. Toynbee has kept much of the mirth and music of the original. Here
and there, undoubtedly, the translation could be improved upon; 'rapiers'
for instance is an abominable rhyme to 'forefathers'; 'the hated arms of
Albion' in the same poem is a very feeble rendering of 'le leopard de
l'Anglais,' and such a verse as
'Mid France's miracles of art,
Rare trophies won from art's own land,
I've lived to see with burning heart
The fog-bred poor triumphant stand,
reproduces very inadequately the charm of the original:
Dans nos palais, ou, pres de la victoire,
Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats,
J'ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire,
De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas.
On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee's work is good; _Les Champs_, for
example, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poems
_Rosette_ and _Ma Republique_; and there is a good deal of spirit in _Le
Marquis de Carabas_:
Whom have we here in conqueror's _role_?
Our grand old marquis, bless his soul!
Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!)
Has borne him back to claim his own.
Note, if you please, the grand old style
In which he nears his grand old pile;
With what an air of grand old state
He waves that blade immaculate!
Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass,
The grand old Marquis of Carabas!--
though 'that blade immaculate' has hardly got the sting of 'un sabre
innocent'; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, 'Marquise, you'll
have the bed-chamber' does not very clearly convey the sense of the line
'La Marquise a le tabouret.' Beranger is not nearly well enough known in
England, and though it is always better to read a poet in the original,
still translations have their value as echoes have their music.
_A Selection from the Songs of De Beranger in English Verse_. By William
Toynbee. (Kegan Paul.)
THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 13, 1886.)
The Countess Martinengo deserves well of all poets, peasants and
publishers. Folk-lore is so often treated nowadays merely from the point
of view of the comparative mythologist, that it is really delightful to
come across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. For
the Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the mother
of all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitive
people it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as the
drama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highest
expression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, however
poetical, of any nation, but in the great masterpieces of self-conscious
Art; yet it is pleasant sometimes to leave the summit of Parnassus to
look at the wildflowers in the valley, and to turn from the lyre of
Apollo to listen to the reed of Pan. We can still listen to it. To this
day, the vineyard dressers of Calabria will mock the passer-by with
satirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and the
peasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amoebaean
strains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, and
the children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villages
in spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead.
Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and
sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its
inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in
picturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that
there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of
art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by
too constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognize in
the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one
strong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it is
only in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find
any parallel to the Corsican _voceri_ with their shrill intensity of
passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as the
feeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in the
poems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism,
but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails.
Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and loveliness
of lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by which
mirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even where
there are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born of
fancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied that
wonderful love-song of Provence:
If thou wilt be the falling dew
And fall on me alway,
Then I will be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray.
If thou wilt be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray,
Then I will be the honey-bee
And kiss thee all the day.
If thou wilt be the honey-bee
And kiss me all the day,
Then I will be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray.
If thou wilt be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray,
Then I will be the dawn, and we
Shall meet at break of day.
How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings her
babe to sleep!
Gold and pearls my vessel lade,
Silk and cloth the cargo be,
All the sails are of brocade
Coming from beyond the sea;
And the helm of finest gold,
Made a wonder to behold.
Fast awhile in slumber lie;
Sleep, my child, and hushaby.
After you were born full soon,
You were christened all aright;
Godmother she was the moon,
Godfather the sun so bright.
All the stars in heaven told
Wore their necklaces of gold.
Fast awhile in slumber lie;
Sleep, my child, and hushaby.
Or this from Roumania:
Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour;
Mother's darling gilliflower.
Mother rocks thee, standing near,
She will wash thee in the clear
Waters that from fountains run,
To protect thee from the sun.
Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour,
Grow thou as the gilliflower.
As a tear-drop be thou white,
As a willow tall and slight;
Gentle as the ring-doves are,
And be lovely as a star!
We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope they
are as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them.
The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book.
In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor too
brief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examples
of modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging in
his armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North to
Sicily's orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listen
to the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession,
and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it has
the limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and is
one with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field.
_Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs_. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo
Cesaresco. (Redway.)
_THE CENCI_
(_Dramatic Review_, May 15, 1886.)
The production of _The Cenci_ last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington,
may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century,
and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of
all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the
conditions he himself desired for it. For _The Cenci_ was written
absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's own
wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime
at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal
parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully
the aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is
disinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merely
mouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terror
and for pity. 'I have endeavoured,' he says, 'as nearly as possible to
represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid
the error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong,
false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the
sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. . . .
'I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonly
called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached
simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of
the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of
that nature.'
He recognized that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom of
expression than what is conceded to a poet. 'In a dramatic composition,'
to use his own words, 'the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate
one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development
and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which
should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus
that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for
dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling,
which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is
lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other
respects I have written more carelessly, that is, without an
over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely
agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to
true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men.'
He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example,
not by precept.
'The highest moral purpose,' he remarks, 'aimed at in the highest species
of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and
antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of
which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and
kind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place for
the enforcement of them.' He fully realizes that it is by a conflict
between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest
dramatic effects are produced. 'It is in the restless and anatomizing
casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel
that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious
horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge,
that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.'
In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of
the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.
BALZAC IN ENGLISH
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 13, 1886.)
Many years ago, in a number of _All the Year Round_, Charles Dickens
complained that Balzac was very little read in England, and although
since then the public has become more familiar with the great
masterpieces of French fiction, still it may be doubted whether the
_Comedie Humaine_ is at all appreciated or understood by the general run
of novel readers. It is really the greatest monument that literature has
produced in our century, and M. Taine hardly exaggerates when he says
that, after Shakespeare, Balzac is our most important magazine of
documents on human nature. Balzac's aim, in fact, was to do for humanity
what Buffon had done for the animal creation. As the naturalist studied
lions and tigers, so the novelist studied men and women. Yet he was no
mere reporter. Photography and _proces-verbal_ were not the essentials
of his method. Observation gave him the facts of life, but his genius
converted facts into truths, and truths into truth. He was, in a word, a
marvellous combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific
spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples; the former was
entirely his own. The distinction between such a book as M. Zola's
_L'Assommoir_ and such a book as Balzac's _Illusions Perdues_ is the
distinction between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. 'All
Balzac's characters,' said Baudelaire, 'are gifted with the same ardour
of life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply coloured
as dreams. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. The
very scullions have genius.' He was, of course, accused of being
immoral. Few writers who deal directly with life escape that charge.
His answer to the accusation was characteristic and conclusive. 'Whoever
contributes his stone to the edifice of ideas,' he wrote, 'whoever
proclaims an abuse, whoever sets his mark upon an evil to be abolished,
always passes for immoral. If you are true in your portraits, if, by
dint of daily and nightly toil, you succeed in writing the most difficult
language in the world, the word immoral is thrown in your face.' The
morals of the personages of the _Comedie Humaine_ are simply the morals
of the world around us. They are part of the artist's subject-matter;
they are not part of his method. If there be any need of censure it is
to life, not to literature, that it should be given. Balzac, besides, is
essentially universal. He sees life from every point of view. He has no
preferences and no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. He
feels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret. 'Il cree un
monde et se tait.'
And what a world it is! What a panorama of passions! What a pell-mell
of men and women! It was said of Trollope that he increased the number
of our acquaintances without adding to our visiting list; but after the
_Comedie Humaine_ one begins to believe that the only real people are the
people who never existed. Lucien de Rubempre, le Pere Goriot, Ursule
Mirouet, Marguerite Claes, the Baron Hulot, Madame Marneffe, le Cousin
Pons, De Marsay--all bring with them a kind of contagious illusion of
life. They have a fierce vitality about them: their existence is fervent
and fiery-coloured; we not merely feel for them but we see them--they
dominate our fancy and defy scepticism. A steady course of Balzac
reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the
shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to meet
Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home with
Lucien de Rubempre? It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac's
society than to receive cards from all the duchesses in Mayfair.
In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the _Comedie
Humaine_ to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what about
truffles? Balzac's publisher refused to be disturbed by any such
criticism as that. 'Indigestible, is it?' he exclaimed with what, for a
publisher, was rare good sense. 'Well, I should hope so; who ever thinks
of a dinner that isn't?'
Balzac's Novels in English. _The Duchesse de Langeais and Other
Stories_; _Cesar Birotteau_. (Routledge and Sons.)
BEN JONSON
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 20, 1886.)
As for Mr. Symonds' estimate of Jonson's genius, it is in many points
quite excellent. He ranks him with the giants rather than with the gods,
with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and huge
strength of intellectual muscle, not with those 'who share the divine
gifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct.' Here he is
right. Pelion more than Parnassus was Jonson's home. His art has too
much effort about it, too much definite intention. His style lacks the
charm of chance. Mr. Symonds is right also in the stress he lays on the
extraordinary combination in Jonson's work of the most concentrated
realism with encyclopaedic erudition. In Jonson's comedies London slang
and learned scholarship go hand in hand. Literature was as living a
thing to him as life itself. He used his classical lore not merely to
give form to his verse, but to give flesh and blood to the persons of his
plays. He could build up a breathing creature out of quotations. He
made the poets of Greece and Rome terribly modern, and introduced them to
the oddest company. His very culture is an element in his coarseness.
There are moments when one is tempted to liken him to a beast that has
fed off books.
We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Symonds when he says that Jonson
'rarely touched more than the outside of character,' that his men and
women are 'the incarnations of abstract properties rather than living
human beings,' that they are in fact mere 'masqueraders and mechanical
puppets.' Eloquence is a beautiful thing but rhetoric ruins many a
critic, and Mr. Symonds is essentially rhetorical. When, for instance,
he tells us that 'Jonson made masks,' while 'Dekker and Heywood created
souls,' we feel that he is asking us to accept a crude judgment for the
sake of a smart antithesis. It is, of course, true that we do not find
in Jonson the same growth of character that we find in Shakespeare, and
we may admit that most of the characters in Jonson's plays are, so to
speak, ready-made. But a ready-made character is not necessarily either
mechanical or wooden, two epithets Mr. Symonds uses constantly in his
criticism.
We cannot tell, and Shakespeare himself does not tell us, why Iago is
evil, why Regan and Goneril have hard hearts, or why Sir Andrew Aguecheek
is a fool. It is sufficient that they are what they are, and that nature
gives warrant for their existence. If a character in a play is lifelike,
if we recognize it as true to nature, we have no right to insist on the
author explaining its genesis to us. We must accept it as it is: and in
the hands of a good dramatist mere presentation can take the place of
analysis, and indeed is often a more dramatic method, because a more
direct one. And Jonson's characters are true to nature. They are in no
sense abstractions; they are types. Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca,
Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La Foole, Volpone and Mosca, Subtle and Sir
Epicure Mammon, Mrs. Purecraft and the Rabbi Busy are all creatures of
flesh and blood, none the less lifelike because they are labelled. In
this point Mr. Symonds seems to us unjust towards Jonson.
We think, also, that a special chapter might have been devoted to Jonson
as a literary critic. The creative activity of the English Renaissance
is so great that its achievements in the sphere of criticism are often
overlooked by the student. Then, for the first time, was language
treated as an art. The laws of expression and composition were
investigated and formularized. The importance of words was recognized.
Romanticism, Realism and Classicism fought their first battles. The
dramatists are full of literary and art criticisms, and amused the public
with slashing articles on one another in the form of plays.
'English Worthies.' Edited by Andrew Lang. _Ben Jonson_. By John
Addington Symonds. (Longmans, Green and Co.)
MR. SYMONDS' HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 10, 1886.)
Mr. Symonds has at last finished his history of the Italian Renaissance.
The two volumes just published deal with the intellectual and moral
conditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth century
which followed the coronation of Charles the Fifth at Bologna, an era to
which Mr. Symonds gives the name of the Catholic Reaction, and they
contain a most interesting and valuable account of the position of Spain
in the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, the
specific organization of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, and
the state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear. In
his previous volumes Mr. Symonds had regarded the past rather as a
picture to be painted than as a problem to be solved. In these two last
volumes, however, he shows a clearer appreciation of the office of
history. The art of the picturesque chronicler is completed by something
like the science of the true historian, the critical spirit begins to
manifest itself, and life is not treated as a mere spectacle, but the
laws of its evolution and progress are investigated also. We admit that
the desire to represent life at all costs under dramatic conditions still
accompanies Mr. Symonds, and that he hardly realizes that what seems
romance to us was harsh reality to those who were engaged in it. Like
most dramatists, also, he is more interested in the psychological
exceptions than in the general rule. He has something of Shakespeare's
sovereign contempt of the masses. The people stir him very little, but
he is fascinated by great personalities. Yet it is only fair to remember
that the age itself was one of exaggerated individualism, and that
literature had not yet become a mouthpiece for the utterances of
humanity. Men appreciated the aristocracy of intellect, but with the
democracy of suffering they had no sympathy. The cry from the
brickfields had still to be heard. Mr. Symonds' style, too, has much
improved. Here and there, it is true, we come across traces of the old
manner, as in the apocalyptic vision of the seven devils that entered
Italy with the Spaniard, and the description of the Inquisition as a
Belial-Moloch, a 'hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot from
burning human flesh.' Such a sentence, also, as 'over the Dead Sea of
social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy,'
reminds us that rhetoric has not yet lost its charms for Mr. Symonds.
Still, on the whole, the style shows far more reserve, balance and
sobriety, than can be found in the earlier volumes where violent
antithesis forms the predominant characteristic, and accuracy is often
sacrificed to an adjective.
Amongst the most interesting chapters of the book are those on the
Inquisition, on Sarpi, the great champion of the severance of Church from
State, and on Giordano Bruno. Indeed, the story of Bruno's life, from
his visit to London and Oxford, his sojourn in Paris and wanderings
through Germany, down to his betrayal at Venice and martyrdom at Rome, is
most powerfully told, and the estimate of the value of his philosophy and
the relation he holds to modern science, is at once just and
appreciative. The account also of Ignatius Loyola and the rise of the
Society of Jesus is extremely interesting, though we cannot think that
Mr. Symonds is very happy in his comparison of the Jesuits to 'fanatics
laying stones upon a railway' or 'dynamiters blowing up an emperor or a
corner of Westminster Hall.' Such a judgment is harsh and crude in
expression and more suitable to the clamour of the Protestant Union than
to the dignity of the true historian. Mr. Symonds, however, is rarely
deliberately unfair, and there is no doubt but that his work on the
Catholic Reaction is a most valuable contribution to modern history--so
valuable, indeed, that in the account he gives of the Inquisition in
Venice it would be well worth his while to bring the picturesque fiction
of the text into some harmony with the plain facts of the footnote.
On the poetry of the sixteenth century Mr. Symonds has, of course, a
great deal to say, and on such subjects he always writes with ease,
grace, and delicacy of perception. We admit that we weary sometimes of
the continual application to literature of epithets appropriate to
plastic and pictorial art. The conception of the unity of the arts is
certainly of great value, but in the present condition of criticism it
seems to us that it would be more useful to emphasize the fact that each
art has its separate method of expression. The essay on Tasso, however,
is delightful reading, and the position the poet holds towards modern
music and modern sentiment is analysed with much subtlety. The essay on
Marino also is full of interest. We have often wondered whether those
who talk so glibly of Euphuism and Marinism in literature have ever read
either _Euphues_ or the _Adone_. To the latter they can have no better
guide than Mr. Symonds, whose description of the poem is most
fascinating. Marino, like many greater men, has suffered much from his
disciples, but he himself was a master of graceful fancy and of exquisite
felicity of phrase; not, of course, a great poet but certainly an artist
in poetry and one to whom language is indebted. Even those conceits that
Mr. Symonds feels bound to censure have something charming about them.
The continual use of periphrases is undoubtedly a grave fault in style,
yet who but a pedant would really quarrel with such periphrases as
_sirena de' boschi_ for the nightingale, or _il novello Edimione_ for
Galileo?
From the poets Mr. Symonds passes to the painters: not those great
artists of Florence and Venice of whom he has already written, but the
Eclectics of Bologna, the Naturalists of Naples and Rome. This chapter
is too polemical to be pleasant. The one on music is much better, and
Mr. Symonds gives us a most interesting description of the gradual steps
by which the Italian genius passed from poetry and painting to melody and
song, till the whole of Europe thrilled with the marvel and mystery of
this new language of the soul. Some small details should perhaps be
noticed. It is hardly accurate, for instance, to say that Monteverde's
_Orfeo_ was the first form of the recitative-Opera, as Peri's _Dafne_ and
_Euridice_ and Cavaliere's _Rappresentazione_ preceded it by some years,
and it is somewhat exaggerated to say that 'under the regime of the
Commonwealth the national growth of English music received a check from
which it never afterwards recovered,' as it was with Cromwell's auspices
that the first English Opera was produced, thirteen years before any
Opera was regularly established in Paris. The fact that England did not
make such development in music as Italy and Germany did, must be ascribed
to other causes than 'the prevalence of Puritan opinion.'
These, however, are minor points. Mr. Symonds is to be warmly
congratulated on the completion of his history of the Renaissance in
Italy. It is a most wonderful monument of literary labour, and its value
to the student of Humanism cannot be doubted. We have often had occasion
to differ from Mr. Symonds on questions of detail, and we have more than
once felt it our duty to protest against the rhetoric and over-emphasis
of his style, but we fully recognize the importance of his work and the
impetus he has given to the study of one of the vital periods of the
world's history. Mr. Symonds' learning has not made him a pedant; his
culture has widened not narrowed his sympathies, and though he can hardly
be called a great historian, yet he will always occupy a place in English
literature as one of the remarkable men of letters in the nineteenth
century.
_Renaissance in Italy_: _The Catholic Reaction_. In Two Parts. By John
Addington Symonds. (Smith, Elder and Co.)
MR. MORRIS'S _ODYSSEY_
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 26, 1887.)
Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified by
nature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of the
wanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer since
Chaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was a
time when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods and
men, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is of
decorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in the
visible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate and
delightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and
exquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have a
keener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and the
craftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
embroiderers in purple and gold, to the weaver sitting by the loom and
the dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carver
of wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of high
romance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, the
subtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life.
It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked
forward to Mr. Morris's version of the Odyssean epic, and now that the
first volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all our
English translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying.
In spite of Coleridge's well-known views on the subject, we have always
held that Chapman's _Odyssey_ is immeasurably inferior to his _Iliad_,
the mere difference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former in
a secondary place; Pope's _Odyssey_, with its glittering rhetoric and
smart antithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowper
is dull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserian
prettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang's version
undoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merely
the facts of the _Odyssey_ without providing anything of its artistic
effect. Avia's translation even, though better than almost all its
predecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr.
Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of
language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new
spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek,
and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a
vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that
stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that,
producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses no
less than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here and
there, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of the
Homeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, he
has occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made stateliness
give place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse as
Milton's that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and in
all other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium for
reproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter. One merit,
at any rate, Mr. Morris's version entirely and absolutely possesses. It
is, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately with
life itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form and
colour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something of
the 'large utterance of the early gods.'
As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than the
wonderful description of the house of the Phoeacian king, or the whole
telling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageant
of the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps the
huge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realized, but
there is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating
story into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should not
complain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting and
parting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told. How
good, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book:
But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake:
'Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take,
And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around.
Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found.
But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed,
Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed.'
So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may,
But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away
The brine from his back and shoulders wrought broad and mightily,
And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea;
But when he had thoroughly washed him, and the oil about him had
shed,
He did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed.
But Athene, Zeus-begotten, dealt with him in such wise
That bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes,
With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil.
And as when the silver with gold is o'erlaid by a man of skill,
Yea, a craftsman whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athene have taught
To be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought;
So she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly.