O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance:
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a' the fields of France;
And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance:
_The Tyneside Widow_ and _A Reiver's Neck-verse_ are all poems of fine
imaginative power, and some of them are terrible in their fierce
intensity of passion. There is no danger of English poetry narrowing
itself to a form so limited as the romantic ballad in dialect. It is of
too vital a growth for that. So we may welcome Mr. Swinburne's masterly
experiments with the hope that things which are inimitable will not be
imitated. The collection is completed by a few poems on children, some
sonnets, a threnody on John William Inchbold, and a lovely lyric entitled
_The Interpreters_.
In human thought have all things habitation;
Our days
Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station
That stays.
But thought and faith are mightier things than time
Can wrong,
Made splendid once by speech, or made sublime
By song.
Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls
Wax hoary,
Gives earth and heaven, for song's sake and the soul's,
Their glory.
Certainly, 'for song's sake' we should love Mr. Swinburne's work, cannot,
indeed, help loving it, so marvellous a music-maker is he. But what of
the soul? For the soul we must go elsewhere.
_Poems and Ballads_. Third Series. By Algernon Charles Swinburne.
(Chatto and Windus.)
A CHINESE SAGE
(_Speaker_, February 8, 1890.)
An eminent Oxford theologian once remarked that his only objection to
modern progress was that it progressed forward instead of backward--a
view that so fascinated a certain artistic undergraduate that he promptly
wrote an essay upon some unnoticed analogies between the development of
ideas and the movements of the common sea-crab. I feel sure the
_Speaker_ will not be suspected even by its most enthusiastic friends of
holding this dangerous heresy of retrogression. But I must candidly
admit that I have come to the conclusion that the most caustic criticism
of modern life I have met with for some time is that contained in the
writings of the learned Chuang Tzu, recently translated into the vulgar
tongue by Mr. Herbert Giles, Her Majesty's Consul at Tamsui.
The spread of popular education has no doubt made the name of this great
thinker quite familiar to the general public, but, for the sake of the
few and the over-cultured, I feel it my duty to state definitely who he
was, and to give a brief outline of the character of his philosophy.
Chuang Tzu, whose name must carefully be pronounced as it is not written,
was born in the fourth century before Christ, by the banks of the Yellow
River, in the Flowery Land; and portraits of the wonderful sage seated on
the flying dragon of contemplation may still be found on the simple
tea-trays and pleasing screens of many of our most respectable suburban
households. The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt
often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed
over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If
they really knew who he was, they would tremble. Chuang Tzu spent his
life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the
uselessness of all useful things. 'Do nothing, and everything will be
done,' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzu.
To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, was his
wicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of early Greek
speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, he
was an idealist, and had all the idealist's contempt for utilitarian
systems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and Jacob
Bohme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was to
get rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of a
higher illumination. In fact, Chuang Tzu may be said to have summed up
in himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mystical
thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him of
the Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have
in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who,
like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the _purum nihil_ and the Abyss.
The great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, our
prosperity, if not our civilization, is entirely due, may shrug their
shoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what is
the identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of that
self-consciousness which is their chief characteristic. But Chuang Tzu
was something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist. He sought to
destroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and the
sad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseau
the scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer. There is nothing of the
sentimentalist in him. He pities the rich more than the poor, if he even
pities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing as
suffering. He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor does
he propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds to
those who come in last in the race. It is the race itself that he
objects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the profession
of so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to make
others good is as silly an occupation as 'beating a drum in a forest in
order to find a fugitive.' It is a mere waste of energy. That is all.
While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of Chuang
Tzu, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so misses
the only possible excuse for his own existence.
Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with a
sigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitive
examinations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no penny
dinners for the people, no Established Churches, no Humanitarian
Societies, no dull lectures about one's duty to one's neighbour, and no
tedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tells
us, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, or
writing to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet they
never published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge to
himself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kept
his virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people's business. They
lived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food and
raiment as they could get. Neighbouring districts were in sight, and
'the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in the other,' yet the people
grew old and died without ever interchanging visits. There was no
chattering about clever men, and no laudation of good men. The
intolerable sense of obligation was unknown. The deeds of humanity left
no trace, and their affairs were not made a burden for prosperity by
foolish historians.
In an evil moment the Philanthropist made his appearance, and brought
with him the mischievous idea of Government. 'There is such a thing,'
says Chuang Tzu, 'as leaving mankind alone: there has never been such a
thing as governing mankind.' All modes of government are wrong. They
are unscientific, because they seek to alter the natural environment of
man; they are immoral because, by interfering with the individual, they
produce the most aggressive forms of egotism; they are ignorant, because
they try to spread education; they are self-destructive, because they
engender anarchy. 'Of old,' he tells us, 'the Yellow Emperor first
caused charity and duty to one's neighbour to interfere with the natural
goodness of the heart of man. In consequence of this, Yao and Shun wore
the hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. They
disturbed their internal economy in order to find room for artificial
virtues. They exhausted their energies in framing laws, and they were
failures.' Man's heart, our philosopher goes on to say, may be 'forced
down or stirred up,' and in either case the issue is fatal. Yao made the
people too happy, so they were not satisfied. Chieh made them too
wretched, so they grew discontented. Then every one began to argue about
the best way of tinkering up society. 'It is quite clear that something
must be done,' they said to each other, and there was a general rush for
knowledge. The results were so dreadful that the Government of the day
had to bring in Coercion, and as a consequence of this 'virtuous men
sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of state sat trembling in
ancestral halls.' Then, when everything was in a state of perfect chaos,
the Social Reformers got up on platforms, and preached salvation from the
ills that they and their system had caused. The poor Social Reformers!
'They know not shame, nor what it is to blush,' is the verdict of Chuang
Tzu upon them.
The economic question, also, is discussed by this almond-eyed sage at
great length, and he writes about the curse of capital as eloquently as
Mr. Hyndman. The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil.
It makes the strong violent, and the weak dishonest. It creates the
petty thief, and puts him in a bamboo cage. It creates the big thief,
and sets him on a throne of white jade. It is the father of competition,
and competition is the waste, as well as the destruction, of energy. The
order of nature is rest, repetition, and peace. Weariness and war are
the results of an artificial society based upon capital; and the richer
this society gets, the more thoroughly bankrupt it really is, for it has
neither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments for
the wicked. There is also this to be remembered--that the prizes of the
world degrade a man as much as the world's punishments. The age is
rotten with its worship of success. As for education, true wisdom can
neither be learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state, to which he who
lives in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compare
it with the extent of the unknown, and only the unknowable is of value.
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than
another. That is the only result of School Boards. Besides, of what
possible philosophic importance can education be, when it serves simply
to make each man differ from his neighbour? We arrive ultimately at a
chaos of opinions, doubt everything, and fall into the vulgar habit of
arguing; and it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Look at
Hui Tzu. 'He was a man of many ideas. His work would fill five carts.
But his doctrines were paradoxical.' He said that there were feathers in
an egg, because there were feathers on a chicken; that a dog could be a
sheep, because all names were arbitrary; that there was a moment when a
swift-flying arrow was neither moving nor at rest; that if you took a
stick a foot long, and cut it in half every day, you would never come to
the end of it; and that a bay horse and a dun cow were three, because
taken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and one
and two made up three. 'He was like a man running a race with his own
shadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clever
gadfly, that was all. What was the use of him?'
Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, says
Chuang Tzu, when people began to moralize. Men ceased then to be
spontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish and
artificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life.
Then came Governments and Philanthropists, those two pests of the age.
The former tried to coerce people into being good, and so destroyed the
natural goodness of man. The latter were a set of aggressive busybodies
who caused confusion wherever they went. They were stupid enough to have
principles, and unfortunate enough to act up to them. They all came to
bad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results as
universal egotism. 'They tripped people up over charity, and fettered
them with duties to their neighbours.' They gushed over music, and
fussed over ceremonies. As a consequence of all this, the world lost its
equilibrium, and has been staggering ever since.
Who, then, according to Chuang Tzu, is the perfect man? And what is his
manner of life? The perfect man does nothing beyond gazing at the
universe. He adopts no absolute position. 'In motion, he is like water.
At rest, he is like a mirror. And, like Echo, he answers only when he is
called upon.' He lets externals take care of themselves. Nothing
material injures him; nothing spiritual punishes him. His mental
equilibrium gives him the empire of the world. He is never the slave of
objective existences. He knows that, 'just as the best language is that
which is never spoken, so the best action is that which is never done.'
He is passive, and accepts the laws of life. He rests in inactivity, and
sees the world become virtuous of itself. He does not try to 'bring
about his own good deeds.' He never wastes himself on effort. He is not
troubled about moral distinctions. He knows that things are what they
are, and that their consequences will be what they will be. His mind is
the 'speculum of creation,' and he is ever at peace.
All this is of course excessively dangerous, but we must remember that
Chuang Tzu lived more than two thousand years ago, and never had the
opportunity of seeing our unrivalled civilization. And yet it is
possible that, were he to come back to earth and visit us, he might have
something to say to Mr. Balfour about his coercion and active
misgovernment in Ireland; he might smile at some of our philanthropic
ardours, and shake his head over many of our organized charities; the
School Board might not impress him, nor our race for wealth stir his
admiration; he might wonder at our ideals, and grow sad over what we have
realized. Perhaps it is well that Chuang Tzu cannot return.
Meanwhile, thanks to Mr. Giles and Mr. Quaritch, we have his book to
console us, and certainly it is a most fascinating and delightful volume.
Chuang Tzu is one of the Darwinians before Darwin. He traces man from
the germ, and sees his unity with nature. As an anthropologist he is
excessively interesting, and he describes our primitive arboreal ancestor
living in trees through his terror of animals stronger than himself, and
knowing only one parent, the mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturer
at the Royal Society. Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode of
expression, 'putting words into other people's mouths,' he tells us, 'in
order to gain breadth of view.' As a story-teller he is charming. The
account of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Che
is most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over the
ultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moral
platitudes is ruthlessly exposed by the successful brigand. Even in his
metaphysics, Chuang Tzu is intensely humorous. He personifies his
abstractions, and makes them act plays before us. The Spirit of the
Clouds, when passing eastward through the expanse of air, happened to
fall in with the Vital Principle. The latter was slapping his ribs and
hopping about: whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, 'Who are you, old
man, and what are you doing?' 'Strolling!' replied the Vital Principle,
without stopping, for all activities are ceaseless. 'I want to _know_
something,' continued the Spirit of the Clouds. 'Ah!' cried the Vital
Principle, in a tone of disapprobation, and a marvellous conversation
follows, that is not unlike the dialogue between the Sphinx and the
Chimera in Flaubert's curious drama. Talking animals, also, have their
place in Chuang Tzu's parables and stories, and through myth and poetry
and fancy his strange philosophy finds musical utterance.
Of course it is sad to be told that it is immoral to be consciously good,
and that doing anything is the worst form of idleness. Thousands of
excellent and really earnest philanthropists would be absolutely thrown
upon the rates if we adopted the view that nobody should be allowed to
meddle in what does not concern him. The doctrine of the uselessness of
all useful things would not merely endanger our commercial supremacy as a
nation, but might bring discredit upon many prosperous and serious-minded
members of the shop-keeping classes. What would become of our popular
preachers, our Exeter Hall orators, our drawing-room evangelists, if we
said to them, in the words of Chuang Tzu, 'Mosquitoes will keep a man
awake all night with their biting, and just in the same way this talk of
charity and duty to one's neighbour drives us nearly crazy. Sirs, strive
to keep the world to its own original simplicity, and, as the wind
bloweth where it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore this
undue energy?' And what would be the fate of governments and
professional politicians if we came to the conclusion that there is no
such thing as governing mankind at all? It is clear that Chuang Tzu is a
very dangerous writer, and the publication of his book in English, two
thousand years after his death, is obviously premature, and may cause a
great deal of pain to many thoroughly respectable and industrious
persons. It may be true that the ideal of self-culture and
self-development, which is the aim of his scheme of life, and the basis
of his scheme of philosophy, is an ideal somewhat needed by an age like
ours, in which most people are so anxious to educate their neighbours
that they have actually no time left in which to educate themselves. But
would it be wise to say so? It seems to me that if we once admitted the
force of any one of Chuang Tzu's destructive criticisms we should have to
put some check on our national habit of self-glorification; and the only
thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise
he always gives himself for doing them. There may, however, be a few who
have grown wearied of that strange modern tendency that sets enthusiasm
to do the work of the intellect. To these, and such as these, Chuang Tzu
will be welcome. But let them only read him. Let them not talk about
him. He would be disturbing at dinner-parties, and impossible at
afternoon teas, and his whole life was a protest against platform
speaking. 'The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action;
the true sage ignores reputation.' These are the principles of Chuang
Tzu.
_Chuang Tzu_: _Mystic_, _Moralist_, _and Social Reformer_. Translated
from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles, H.B.M.'s Consul at Tamsui.
(Bernard Quaritch.)
MR. PATER'S _APPRECIATIONS_
(_Speaker_, March 22, 1890.)
When I first had the privilege--and I count it a very high one--of
meeting Mr. Walter Pater, he said to me, smiling, 'Why do you always
write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more
difficult.'
It was during my undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardour and
of studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacy
and musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with its
linked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when one
solemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should
be written; delightful days, in which, I am glad to say, there was far
more rhyme than reason.
I may frankly confess now that at the time I did not quite comprehend
what Mr. Pater really meant; and it was not till I had carefully studied
his beautiful and suggestive essays on the Renaissance that I fully
realized what a wonderful self-conscious art the art of English
prose-writing really is, or may be made to be. Carlyle's stormy
rhetoric, Ruskin's winged and passionate eloquence, had seemed to me to
spring from enthusiasm rather than from art. I do not think I knew then
that even prophets correct their proofs. As for Jacobean prose, I
thought it too exuberant; and Queen Anne prose appeared to me terribly
bald, and irritatingly rational. But Mr. Pater's essays became to me
'the golden book of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty.' They are
still this to me. It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate about
them. I certainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggeration
there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.
It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a
really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an
unbiassed opinion is always valueless.
But I must not allow this brief notice of Mr. Pater's new volume to
degenerate into an autobiography. I remember being told in America that
whenever Margaret Fuller wrote an essay upon Emerson the printers had
always to send out to borrow some additional capital 'I's,' and I feel it
right to accept this transatlantic warning.
_Appreciations_, in the fine Latin sense of the word, is the title given
by Mr. Pater to his book, which is an exquisite collection of exquisite
essays, of delicately wrought works of art--some of them being almost
Greek in their purity of outline and perfection of form, others mediaeval
in their strangeness of colour and passionate suggestion, and all of them
absolutely modern, in the true meaning of the term modernity. For he to
whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the
age in which he lives. To realize the nineteenth century one must
realize every century that has preceded it, and that has contributed to
its making. To know anything about oneself, one must know all about
others. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathize, no dead
mode of life that one cannot make alive. The legacies of heredity may
make us alter our views of moral responsibility, but they cannot but
intensify our sense of the value of Criticism; for the true critic is he
who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad
generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional
impulse obscure.
Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the least successful, of the
essays contained in the present volume is that on _Style_. It is the
most interesting because it is the work of one who speaks with the high
authority that comes from the noble realization of things nobly
conceived. It is the least successful, because the subject is too
abstract. A true artist like Mr. Pater is most felicitous when he deals
with the concrete, whose very limitations give him finer freedom, while
they necessitate more intense vision. And yet what a high ideal is
contained in these few pages! How good it is for us, in these days of
popular education and facile journalism, to be reminded of the real
scholarship that is essential to the perfect writer, who, 'being a true
lover of words for their own sake, a minute and constant observer of
their physiognomy,' will avoid what is mere rhetoric, or ostentatious
ornament, or negligent misuse of terms, or ineffective surplusage, and
will be known by his tact of omission, by his skilful economy of means,
by his selection and self-restraint, and perhaps above all by that
conscious artistic structure which is the expression of mind in style. I
think I have been wrong in saying that the subject is too abstract. In
Mr. Pater's hands it becomes very real to us indeed, and he shows us how,
behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's
soul.
As one passes to the rest of the volume, one finds essays on Wordsworth
and on Coleridge, on Charles Lamb and on Sir Thomas Browne, on some of
Shakespeare's plays and on the English kings that Shakespeare fashioned,
on Dante Rossetti, and on William Morris. As that on Wordsworth seems to
be Mr. Pater's last work, so that on the singer of the _Defence of
Guenevere_ is certainly his earliest, or almost his earliest, and it is
interesting to mark the change that has taken place in his style. This
change is, perhaps, at first sight not very apparent. In 1868 we find
Mr. Pater writing with the same exquisite care for words, with the same
studied music, with the same temper, and something of the same mode of
treatment. But, as he goes on, the architecture of the style becomes
richer and more complex, the epithet more precise and intellectual.
Occasionally one may be inclined to think that there is, here and there,
a sentence which is somewhat long, and possibly, if one may venture to
say so, a little heavy and cumbersome in movement. But if this be so, it
comes from those side-issues suddenly suggested by the idea in its
progress, and really revealing the idea more perfectly; or from those
felicitous after-thoughts that give a fuller completeness to the central
scheme, and yet convey something of the charm of chance; or from a desire
to suggest the secondary shades of meaning with all their accumulating
effect, and to avoid, it may be, the violence and harshness of too
definite and exclusive an opinion. For in matters of art, at any rate,
thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than
fixed, and, recognizing its dependence upon the moods and upon the
passion of fine moments, will not accept the rigidity of a scientific
formula or a theological dogma. The critical pleasure, too, that we
receive from tracing, through what may seem the intricacies of a
sentence, the working of the constructive intelligence, must not be
overlooked. As soon as we have realized the design, everything appears
clear and simple. After a time, these long sentences of Mr. Pater's come
to have the charm of an elaborate piece of music, and the unity of such
music also.
I have suggested that the essay on Wordsworth is probably the most recent
bit of work contained in this volume. If one might choose between so
much that is good, I should be inclined to say it is the finest also.
The essay on Lamb is curiously suggestive; suggestive, indeed, of a
somewhat more tragic, more sombre figure, than men have been wont to
think of in connection with the author of the _Essays of Elia_. It is an
interesting aspect under which to regard Lamb, but perhaps he himself
would have had some difficulty in recognizing the portrait given of him.
He had, undoubtedly, great sorrows, or motives for sorrow, but he could
console himself at a moment's notice for the real tragedies of life by
reading any one of the Elizabethan tragedies, provided it was in a folio
edition. The essay on Sir Thomas Browne is delightful, and has the
strange, personal, fanciful charm of the author of the _Religio Medici_,
Mr. Pater often catching the colour and accent and tone of whatever
artist, or work of art, he deals with. That on Coleridge, with its
insistence on the necessity of the cultivation of the relative, as
opposed to the absolute spirit in philosophy and in ethics, and its high
appreciation of the poet's true position in our literature, is in style
and substance a very blameless work. Grace of expression and delicate
subtlety of thought and phrase, characterize the essays on Shakespeare.
But the essay on Wordsworth has a spiritual beauty of its own. It
appeals, not to the ordinary Wordsworthian with his uncritical temper,
and his gross confusion of ethical and aesthetical problems, but rather
to those who desire to separate the gold from the dross, and to reach at
the true Wordsworth through the mass of tedious and prosaic work that
bears his name, and that serves often to conceal him from us. The
presence of an alien element in Wordsworth's art is, of course,
recognized by Mr. Pater, but he touches on it merely from the
psychological point of view, pointing out how this quality of higher and
lower moods gives the effect in his poetry 'of a power not altogether his
own, or under his control'; a power which comes and goes when it wills,
'so that the old fancy which made the poet's art an enthusiasm, a form of
divine possession, seems almost true of him.' Mr. Pater's earlier essays
had their _purpurei panni_, so eminently suitable for quotation, such as
the famous passage on _Mona Lisa_, and that other in which Botticelli's
strange conception of the Virgin is so strangely set forth. From the
present volume it is difficult to select any one passage in preference to
another as specially characteristic of Mr. Pater's treatment. This,
however, is worth quoting at length. It contains a truth eminently
suitable for our age:
That the end of life is not action but contemplation--_being_ as
distinct from _doing_--a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some
shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry,
in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this
principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of
beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit
of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are
identified: to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance
of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like
him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in
this art of impassioned contemplation. Their work is not to teach
lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but
to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life,
to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those
great facts in man's existence which no machinery affects, 'on the
great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting
of their occupations, and the entire world of nature'--on 'the
operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible
universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons,
on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and
resentments, on gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow.' To witness
this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture;
and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth's is a great nourisher
and stimulant. He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he
sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in
strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the
natural world:--images, in his own words, 'of men suffering; amid
awful forms and powers.'
Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed.
After having read and reread Mr. Pater's essay--for it requires
re-reading--one returns to the poet's work with a new sense of joy and
wonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation. And
perhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of the
finest criticism.
Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone to
fashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume. The
difference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often,
and with much over-emphasis, been discussed. But with what a light sure
touch does Mr. Pater write of it! How subtle and certain are his
distinctions! If imaginative prose be really the special art of this
century, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century's most characteristic
artists. In certain things he stands almost alone. The age has produced
wonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent with
excess of rhetoric. But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find the
union of personality with perfection. He has no rival in his own sphere,
and he has escaped disciples. And this, not because he has not been
imitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, in
its essence, is inimitable.
_Appreciations_, _with an Essay on Style_. By Walter Pater, Fellow of
Brasenose College. (Macmillan and Co.)
SENTENTIAE
(_Extracted from Reviews_)
Perhaps he will write poetry some day. If he does we would earnestly
appeal to him to give up calling a cock 'proud chanticleer.' Few
synonyms are so depressing.
A young writer can gain more from the study of a literary poet than from
the study of a lyrist.
I have seen many audiences more interesting than the actors, and have
often heard better dialogue in the _foyer_ than I have on the stage.
The Dramatic College might take up the education of spectators as well as
that of players, and teach people that there is a proper moment for the
throwing of flowers as well as a proper method.
Life remains eternally unchanged; it is art which, by presenting it to us
under various forms, enables us to realize its many-sided mysteries, and
to catch the quality of its most fiery-coloured moments. The
originality, I mean, which we ask from the artist, is originality of
treatment, not of subject. It is only the unimaginative who ever
invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he
annexes, and he annexes everything.
If I ventured on a bit of advice, which I feel most reluctant to do, it
would be to the effect that while one should always study the method of a
great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an
artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely
universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the
second is perfection, which all should aim at.
A critic who posed as an authority on field sports assured me that no one
ever went out hunting when roses were in full bloom. Personally, that is
exactly the season I would select for the chase, but then I know more
about flowers than I do about foxes, and like them much better.
The nineteenth century may be a prosaic age, but we fear that, if we are
to judge by the general run of novels, it is not an age of prose.
Perhaps in this century we are too altruistic to be really artistic.
I am led to hope that the University will some day have a theatre of its
own, and that proficiency in scene-painting will be regarded as a
necessary qualification for the Slade Professorship. On the stage,
literature returns to life and archaeology becomes art. A fine theatre
is a temple where all the muses may meet, a second Parnassus.
It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that are every year
published in London found no readers but the authors themselves and the
authors' relations; and the real philanthropist should recognize it as
part of his duties to buy every new book of verse that appears.
A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad a monstrosity as a sonnet in dialogue.
Antiquarian books, as a rule, are extremely dull reading. They give us
facts without form, science without style, and learning without life.
The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poet alive, and we fancy that
many of our modern bards rather regret the old system. Better, surely,
the humiliation of the _sportula_ than the indignity of a bill for
printing! Better to accept a country-house as a gift than to be in debt
to one's landlady! On the whole, the patron was an excellent
institution, if not for poetry at least for the poets; . . . every poet
longs for a Maecenas.
The two things the Greeks valued most in actors were grace of gesture and
music of voice. Indeed, to gain these virtues their actors used to
subject themselves to a regular course of gymnastics and a particular
regime of diet, health being to the Greeks not merely a quality of art,
but a condition of its production.
One should not be too severe on English novels: they are the only
relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.
Most modern novels are more remarkable for their crime than for their
culture.
Not that a tramp's mode of life is at all unsuited to the development of
the poetic faculty. Far from it! He, if any one, should possess that
freedom of mood which is so essential to the artist, for he has no taxes
to pay and no relations to worry him. The man who possesses a permanent
address, and whose name is to be found in the Directory, is necessarily
limited and localized. Only the tramp has absolute liberty of living.
Was not Homer himself a vagrant, and did not Thespis go about in a
caravan?
In art as in life the law of heredity holds good. _On est toujours fils
de quelqu'un_.
He has succeeded in studying a fine poet without stealing from him--a
very difficult thing to do.
Morocco is a sort of paradox among countries, for though it lies westward
of Piccadilly, yet it is purely Oriental in character, and though it is
but three hours' sail from Europe, yet it makes you feel (to use the
forcible expression of an American writer) as if you had been taken up by
the scruff of the neck and set down in the Old Testament.
As children themselves are the perfect flowers of life, so a collection
of the best poems written on children should be the most perfect of all
anthologies.
No English poet has written of children with more love and grace and
delicacy [than Herrick]. His _Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour_, his poem
_To His Saviour_, _A Child_: _A Present by a Child_, his _Graces for
Children_, and his many lovely epitaphs on children are all of them
exquisite works of art, simple, sweet and sincere.
As the cross-benches form a refuge for those who have no minds to make
up, so those who cannot make up their minds always take to Homeric
studies. Many of our leaders have sulked in their tents with Achilles
after some violent political crisis and, enraged at the fickleness of
fortune, more than one has given up to poetry what was obviously meant
for party.
There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand
it and the other to praise it for qualities it does not possess.
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding
us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly
uninteresting event. It is true that such aphorisms as
Graves are a _mother's dimples_
When we complain,
or
The primrose wears a constant smile,
And captive takes the heart,
can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still,
they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More's birth, or
of the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the Great
Exhibition; and though it would be dangerous to make calendars the basis
of Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with a
fine passage of English poetry.
Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive bad editing.
Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note . . . displaying that
intimate acquaintance with Sappho's lost poems which is the privilege
only of those who are not acquainted with Greek literature.
Mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it is in their
reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief.
All premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves.
No one survives being over-estimated.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true men of letters
America produced, and as such deserves a high place in any history of
American civilization. To a land out of breath in its greed for gain he
showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of literature;
his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still productive of
much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrote
some pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind that call for
intellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for any
serious discussion at all.
Though the _Psalm of Life_ be shouted from Maine to California, that
would not make it true poetry.
Longfellow has no imitators, for of echoes themselves there are no echoes
and it is only style that makes a school.
Poe's marvellous lines _To Helen_, a poem as beautiful as a Greek gem and
as musical as Apollo's lute.
Good novelists are much rarer than good sons, and none of us would part
readily with Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby. Still, the fact remains that a
man who was affectionate and loving to his children, generous and
warm-hearted to his friends, and whose books are the very bacchanalia of
benevolence, pilloried his parents to make the groundlings laugh, and
this fact every biographer of Dickens should face and, if possible,
explain.
No age ever borrows the slang of its predecessor.
What we do not know about Shakespeare is a most fascinating subject, and
one that would fill a volume, but what we do know about him is so meagre
and inadequate that when it is collected together the result is rather
depressing.
They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.
Rossetti's was a great personality, and personalities such as his do not
easily survive shilling primers.
We are sorry to find an English dramatic critic misquoting Shakespeare,
as we had always been of opinion that this was a privilege reserved
specially for our English actors.
Biographies of this kind rob life of much of its dignity and its wonder,
add to death itself a new terror, and make one wish that all art were
anonymous.
A pillar of fire to the few who knew him, and of cloud to the many who
knew him not, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip and
tittle-tattle of a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchants
for his soul, nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle to
gape at. Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in his
nature something of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hated
notoriety, and would have shuddered at the idea that within a few years
after his death he was to make his appearance in a series of popular
biographies, sandwiched between the author of _Pickwick_ and the Great
Lexicographer.
We sincerely hope that a few more novels like these will be published, as
the public will then find out that a bad book is very dear at a shilling.
The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of
place is history. In novels they are detestable.
Shilling literature is always making demands on our credulity without
ever appealing to our imagination.
Pathology is rapidly becoming the basis of sensational literature, and in
art, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters.
It is only mediocrities and old maids who consider it a grievance to be
misunderstood.
As truly religious people are resigned to everything, even to mediocre
poetry, there is no reason at all why Madame Guyon's verses should not be
popular with a large section of the community.
A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
Such novels as _Scamp_ are possibly more easy to write than they are to
read.
We have no doubt that when Bailey wrote to Lord Houghton that
common-sense and gentleness were Keats's two special characteristics the
worthy Archdeacon meant extremely well, but we prefer the real Keats,
with his passionate wilfulness, his fantastic moods and his fine
inconsistence. Part of Keats's charm as a man is his fascinating
incompleteness.
The Apostolic dictum, that women should not be suffered to teach, is no
longer applicable to a society such as ours, with its solidarity of
interests, its recognition of natural rights, and its universal
education, however suitable it may have been to the Greek cities under
Roman rule. Nothing in the United States struck me more than the fact
that the remarkable intellectual progress of that country is very largely
due to the efforts of American women, who edit many of the most powerful
magazines and newspapers, take part in the discussion of every question
of public interest, and exercise an important influence upon the growth
and tendencies of literature and art. Indeed, the women of America are
the one class in the community that enjoys that leisure which is so
necessary for culture. The men are, as a rule, so absorbed in business,
that the task of bringing some element of form into the chaos of daily
life is left almost entirely to the opposite sex, and an eminent
Bostonian once assured me that in the twentieth century the whole culture
of his country would be in petticoats. By that time, however, it is
probable that the dress of the two sexes will be assimilated, as
similarity of costume always follows similarity of pursuits.
The aim of social comedy, in Menander no less than in Sheridan, is to
mirror the manners, not to reform the morals, of its day, and the censure
of the Puritan, whether real or affected, is always out of place in
literary criticism, and shows a want of recognition of the essential
distinction between art and life. After all, it is only the Philistine
who thinks of blaming Jack Absolute for his deception, Bob Acres for his
cowardice, and Charles Surface for his extravagance, and there is very
little use in airing one's moral sense at the expense of one's artistic
appreciation.
The _AEneid_ bears almost the same relation to the _Iliad_ that the
_Idylls of the King_ do to the old Celtic romances of Arthur. Like them
it is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoes and of
delicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves England so did
Virgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empire are
equally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grand simplicity
or the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero, AEneas is no
less a failure than Arthur.
There is always a certain amount of danger in any attempt to cultivate
impossible virtues.
As far as the serious presentation of life is concerned, what we require
is more imaginative treatment, greater freedom from theatric language and
theatric convention. It may be questioned, also, whether the consistent
reward of virtue and punishment of wickedness be really the healthiest
ideal for an art that claims to mirror nature.
True originality is to be found rather in the use made of a model than in
the rejection of all models and masters. _Dans l'art comme dans la
nature on est toujours fils de quelqu'un_, and we should not quarrel with
the reed if it whispers to us the music of the lyre. A little child once
asked me if it was the nightingale who taught the linnets how to sing.
In France they have had one great genius, Balzac, who invented the modern
method of looking at life; and one great artist, Flaubert, who is the
impeccable master of style; and to the influence of these two men we may
trace almost all contemporary French fiction. But in England we have had
no schools worth speaking of. The fiery torch lit by the Brontes has not
been passed on to other hands; Dickens has influenced only journalism;
Thackeray's delightful superficial philosophy, superb narrative power,
and clever social satire have found no echoes; nor has Trollope left any
direct successors behind him--a fact which is not much to be regretted,
however, as, admirable though Trollope undoubtedly is for rainy
afternoons and tedious railway journeys, from the point of view of
literature he is merely the perpetual curate of Pudlington Parva.
George Meredith's style is chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of
lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as a
novelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he is
everything, except articulate. Too strange to be popular, too individual
to have imitators, the author of _Richard Feverel_ stands absolutely
alone. It is easy to disarm criticism, but he has disarmed the disciple.
He gives us his philosophy through the medium of wit, and is never so
pathetic as when he is humorous. To turn truth into a paradox is not
difficult, but George Meredith makes all his paradoxes truths, and no
Theseus can thread his labyrinth, no OEdipus solve his secret.
The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets once
remarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that no
one can live for three days without poetry. This, however, can hardly be
said to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiously
uncommon quality which is called common-sense. I fancy that most people,
if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like their
culture to repose on a basis of good cookery.
A cynical critic once remarked that no great poet is intelligible and no
little poet worth understanding, but that otherwise poetry is an
admirable thing. This, however, seems to us a somewhat harsh view of the
subject. Little poets are an extremely interesting study. The best of
them have often some new beauty to show us, and though the worst of them
may bore yet they rarely brutalize.
It is a curious thing that when minor poets write choruses to a play they
should always consider it necessary to adopt the style and language of a
bad translator. We fear that Mr. Bohn has much to answer for.
In one sonnet he makes a distinct attempt to be original and the result
is extremely depressing.
Earth wears her grandest robe, by autumn spun,
_Like some stout matron who of youth has run_
_The course_, . . .
is the most dreadful simile we have ever come across even in poetry. Mr.
Griffiths should beware of originality. Like beauty, it is a fatal gift.
There is a wide difference between the beautiful Tuscan city and the
sea-city of the Adriatic. Florence is a city full of memories of the
great figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass along her streets
without treading in the very traces of Dante, without stepping on soil
made memorable by footprints never to be effaced. The greatness of the
surroundings, the palaces, churches, and frowning mediaeval castles in
the midst of the city, are all thrown into the background by the
greatness, the individuality, the living power and vigour of the men who
are their originators, and at the same time their inspiring soul. But
when we turn to Venice the effect is very different. We do not think of
the makers of that marvellous city, but rather of what they made. The
idealized image of Venice herself meets us everywhere. The mother is not
overshadowed by the too great glory of any of her sons. In her records
the city is everything--the republic, the worshipped ideal of a community
in which every man for the common glory seems to have been willing to
sink his own. We know that Dante stood within the red walls of the
arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch flaming up
to heaven; Petrarch came to visit the great Mistress of the Sea, taking
refuge there, 'in this city, true home of the human race,' from trouble,
war and pestilence outside; and Byron, with his facile enthusiasms and
fervent eloquence, made his home for a time in one of the stately,
decaying palaces; but with these exceptions no great poet has ever
associated himself with the life of Venice. She had architects,
sculptors and painters, but no singer of her own.
To realize the popularity of the great poets one should turn to the minor
poets and see whom they follow, what master they select, whose music they
echo.
Ordinary theology has long since converted its gold into lead, and words
and phrases that once touched the heart of the world have become
wearisome and meaningless through repetition. If Theology desires to
move us, she must re-write her formulas.
It takes a great artist to be thoroughly modern. Nature is always a
little behind the age.
Mr. Nash, who styles himself 'a humble soldier in the army of Faith,'
expresses a hope that his book may 'invigorate devotional feeling,
especially among the young, to whom verse is perhaps more attractive than
to their elders,' but we should be sorry to think that people of any age
could admire such a paraphrase as the following:
Foxes have holes in which to slink for rest,
The birds of air find shelter in the nest;
But He, the Son of Man and Lord of all,
Has no abiding place His own to call.
It is a curious fact that the worst work is always done with the best
intentions, and that people are never so trivial as when they take
themselves very seriously.
Mr. Foster is an American poet who has read Hawthorne, which is wise of
him, and imitated Longfellow, which is not quite so commendable.
_Andiatorocte_ is the title of a volume of poems by the Rev. Clarence
Walworth, of Albany, N.Y. It is a word borrowed from the Indians, and
should, we think, be returned to them as soon as possible. The most
curious poem of the book is called _Scenes at the Holy Home_:
Jesus and Joseph at work! Hurra!
Sight never to see again,
A prentice Deity plies the saw,
While the Master ploughs with the plane.
Poems of this kind were popular in the Middle Ages when the cathedrals of
every Christian country served as its theatres. They are anachronisms
now, and it is odd that they should come to us from the United States.
In matters of this kind we should have some protection.
As for the triolets, and the rondels, and the careful study of metrical
subtleties, these things are merely the signs of a desire for perfection
in small things and of the recognition of poetry as an art. They have
had certainly one good result--they have made our minor poets readable,
and have not left us entirely at the mercy of geniuses.
Poetry has many modes of music; she does not blow through one pipe alone.
Directness of utterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting of
thought into a new and delightful form. Simplicity is good, but
complexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these have
their value. Indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as Style;
there are merely styles, that is all.
Writers of poetical prose are rarely good poets.
Poetry may be said to need far more self-restraint than prose. Its
conditions are more exquisite. It produces its effects by more subtle
means. It must not be allowed to degenerate into mere rhetoric or mere
eloquence. It is, in one sense, the most self-conscious of all the arts,
as it is never a means to an end but always an end in itself.
It may be difficult for a poet to find English synonyms for Asiatic
expressions, but even if it were impossible it is none the less a poet's
duty to find them. As it is, Sir Edwin Arnold has translated Sa'di and
some one must translate Sir Edwin Arnold.
Lounging in the open air is not a bad school for poets, but it largely
depends on the lounger.
People are so fond of giving away what they do not want themselves, that
charity is largely on the increase. But with this kind of charity I have
not much sympathy. If one gives away a book, it should be a charming
book--so charming, that one regrets having given it.
Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, always adopted the phraseology of
the minor prophets. Possibly it was in order to emphasize his well-known
claims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps he thought with Voltaire that
_Habakkuk etait capable de tout_, and wished to shelter himself under the
shield of a definitely irresponsible writer none of whose prophecies,
according to the French philosopher, has ever been fulfilled. The idea
was clever enough at the beginning, but ultimately the manner became
monotonous. The spirit of the Hebrews is excellent but their mode of
writing is not to be imitated, and no amount of American jokes will give
it that modernity which is essential to a good literary style. Admirable
as are Mr. Whistler's fireworks on canvas, his fireworks in prose are
abrupt, violent and exaggerated.
'The decisive events of the world,' as has been well said, 'take place in
the intellect,' and as for Board-schools, academic ceremonies, hospital
wards and the like, they may be well left to the artists of the
illustrated papers, who do them admirably and quite as well as they need
be done. Indeed, the pictures of contemporary events, Royal marriages,
naval reviews and things of this kind that appear in the Academy every
year, are always extremely bad; while the very same subjects treated in
black and white in the _Graphic_ or the _London News_ are excellent.
Besides, if we want to understand the history of a nation through the
medium of art, it is to the imaginative and ideal arts that we have to go
and not to the arts that are definitely imitative. The visible aspect of
life no longer contains for us the secret of life's spirit.
The difficulty under which the novelists of our day labour seems to me to
be this: if they do not go into society, their books are unreadable; and
if they do go into society, they have no time left for writing.
I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a
method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can
understand. Allegory, parable, and vision have their high artistic uses,
but their philosophical and scientific uses are very small.
The object of most modern fiction is not to give pleasure to the artistic
instinct, but rather to portray life vividly for us, to draw attention to
social anomalies, and social forms of injustice. Many of our novelists
are really pamphleteers, reformers masquerading as story-tellers, earnest
sociologists seeking to mend as well as to mirror life.
The book is certainly characteristic of an age so practical and so
literary as ours, an age in which all social reforms have been preceded
and have been largely influenced by fiction.
Mr. Stopford Brooke said some time ago that Socialism and the socialistic
spirit would give our poets nobler and loftier themes for song, would
widen their sympathies and enlarge the horizon of their vision, and would
touch, with the fire and fervour of a new faith, lips that had else been
silent, hearts that but for this fresh gospel had been cold. What Art
gains from contemporary events is always a fascinating problem and a
problem that is not easy to solve. It is, however, certain that
Socialism starts well equipped. She has her poets and her painters, her
art lecturers and her cunning designers, her powerful orators and her
clever writers. If she fails it will not be for lack of expression. If
she succeeds her triumph will not be a triumph of mere brute force.
Socialism is not going to allow herself to be trammelled by any hard and
fast creed or to be stereotyped into an iron formula. She welcomes many
and multiform natures. She rejects none and has room for all. She has
the attraction of a wonderful personality and touches the heart of one
and the brain of another, and draws this man by his hatred and injustice,
and his neighbour by his faith in the future, and a third, it may be, by
his love of art or by his wild worship of a lost and buried past. And
all of this is well. For, to make men Socialists is nothing, but to make
Socialism human is a great thing.
The Reformation gained much from the use of popular hymn-tunes, and the
Socialists seem determined to gain by similar means a similar hold upon
the people. However, they must not be too sanguine about the result.
The walls of Thebes rose up to the sound of music, and Thebes was a very
dull city indeed.
We really must protest against Mr. Matthews' efforts to confuse the
poetry of Piccadilly with the poetry of Parnassus. To tell us, for
instance, that Mr. Austin Dobson's verse 'has not the condensed clearness
nor the incisive vigor of Mr. Locker's' is really too bad even for
Transatlantic criticism. Nobody who lays claim to the slightest
knowledge of literature and the forms of literature should ever bring the
two names into conjunction.
Mr. Dobson has produced work that is absolutely classical in its
exquisite beauty of form. Nothing more artistically perfect in its way
than the _Lines to a Greek Girl_ has been written in our time. This
little poem will be remembered in literature as long as _Thyrsis_ is
remembered, and _Thyrsis_ will never be forgotten. Both have that note
of distinction that is so rare in these days of violence, exaggeration
and rhetoric. Of course, to suggest, as Mr. Matthews does, that Mr.
Dobson's poems belong to 'the literature of power' is ridiculous. Power
is not their aim, nor is it their effect. They have other qualities, and
in their own delicately limited sphere they have no contemporary rivals;
they have none even second to them.
The heroine is a sort of well-worn Becky Sharp, only much more beautiful
than Becky, or at least than Thackeray's portraits of her, which,
however, have always seemed to me rather ill-natured. I feel sure that
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was extremely pretty, and I have never understood how
it was that Thackeray could caricature with his pencil so fascinating a
creation of his pen.
A critic recently remarked of Adam Lindsay Gordon that through him
Australia had found her first fine utterance in song. This, however, is
an amiable error. There is very little of Australia in Gordon's poetry.
His heart and mind and fancy were always preoccupied with memories and
dreams of England and such culture as England gave him. He owed nothing
to the land of his adoption. Had he stayed at home he would have done
much better work.
That Australia, however, will some day make amends by producing a poet of
her own we cannot doubt, and for him there will be new notes to sound and
new wonders to tell of.
The best that we can say of him is that he wrote imperfectly in Australia
those poems that in England he might have made perfect.
Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments.
There seems to be some curious connection between piety and poor rhymes.
The South African poets, as a class, are rather behind the age. They
seem to think that 'Aurora' is a very novel and delightful epithet for
the dawn. On the whole they depress us.
The only original thing in the volume is the description of Mr. Robert
Buchanan's 'grandeur of mind.' This is decidedly new.
Dr. Cockle tells us that Mullner's _Guilt_ and _The Ancestress_ of
Grillparzer are the masterpieces of German fate-tragedy. His translation
of the first of these two masterpieces does not make us long for any
further acquaintance with the school. Here is a specimen from the fourth
act of the fate-tragedy.