CHAPTER VII

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

In younger days Pater was refined and dignified in appearance; there is

an early photograph of him, shortly after he took his degree, with a

soft eye, a serious gentle look, with regular and rounded features.[2]

But this altered in later years; he became graver and heavier of

aspect, and his face took on a character that has been described as

“Japanese”; the pallor of his complexion, like old ivory, became more

marked; but his eyes were his most eloquent feature, of a light hazel

tint, almost grey-green, which lit up with an impressive light of

animation and kindness when he was moved.

[2] There is a portrait of him, a drawing by Simeon Solomon, made

in 1872, now in the possession of Mr. Herbert Horne. There is

also another drawing, a lithograph, by Mr. Rothenstein, included

in the Oxford Portraits. Neither of these is considered wholly

satisfactory by those who knew Pater best.

He was in later life slow of movement, bent, sad of aspect, except

when particularly stirred, and somewhat sedentary in appearance.

Yet he was broad-shouldered, strongly-built, sturdy, and gave an

impression of soundness, and even toughness of constitution. His great

pale face, with the strong lower jaw and carefully trimmed moustache,

gave him something of the air of a retired military man. There was an

impression sometimes of languor about him. He had to strangers, at

first sight, in later years, a fatigued, faded, lustreless air, as

of a caged creature. But this, I learn from those who knew him best,

was in reality a false impression. He was undoubtedly robust; he was a

patient, an unwearying traveller, often walking long distances without

fatigue, and bearing uncomplainingly the extreme of Italian heat.

But, like all impressionable, perceptive, artistic temperaments, his

physical strength was apt to ebb and flow with his inner mood; when

he was pleased, interested, delighted, he was also equable, animated,

alert. When he was aware that he was expected to fulfil anticipations,

conscious of social strain, uninterested, he became melancholy,

drooping, unstrung. To any one introduced to him for the first time he

at once gave the impression of great gentleness and sympathy. There was

nothing awe-inspiring about him but his reputation. His low deferential

voice, his shy smile, the delicate phrasing of his sentences, his

obvious interest in the temperament of his companion, gave the feeling

of great and sincere humility. He was, too, singularly easy and

accessible; he had no desire to keep a conversation in his own hands,

or to claim attention for his opinions. He had rather a delicate power

of encouraging confidence and frankness. One realised at once that one

was in the presence of a man of subtle sensibilities, anxious, not of

set purpose but from considerate instinct, to do the fullest justice to

the feelings of his companion, and to give him his undivided attention.

This came from a fine simplicity of nature, from a character that made

no egotistical demands; he seemed to expect and to require little from

life, but to be full of a quiet gratitude for such delight as came

naturally in his way.

He arrayed himself with scrupulous neatness, and always dressed for

Hall. He invariably wore a tall hat, and carried the neatest of

gold-topped umbrellas. His gait was peculiar: he had a slight stoop,

and dragged one foot slightly, advancing with a certain delicacy. He

disliked stopping to talk to people, and often was at some pains not

to appear to recognise them; he had a peculiar courteous gesture of

the hand, if recognition was inevitable, by which he paid a certain

tribute of courtesy, and yet contrived to indicate that he wished to

be unmolested. He was shy in large mixed assemblies, but his shyness

did not make him silent or abrupt. He was apt to talk, gently and

persistently, of trivial topics, using his conversation rather as a

shield against undue intimacy.

People on first meeting him were sometimes struck with the

extraordinary conventionality of his manners and conversation in

society; but this almost oppressive suavity melted into a gentle and

sympathetic kindness on further acquaintance. A friend, writing to Miss

Pater after her brother’s death, spoke of

“his kindness, his sweetness, his gentle and amiable wearing of all

his great gifts, his happy and gracious willingness to give all

around him the enjoyment of them.”

Another friend of his writes:—

“The only attitude I ever observed in Pater, the only mood I saw

him in, was a sort of weary courtesy with which he used to treat

me, with somehow a deep kindness shining through. It was as though

he would have liked to lavish sympathy and even affection, but

was frightened of the responsibility and unequal to the effort.

He seemed to me, if I may use an allegory, to point to a sack of

treasure, and say,—‘That is yours, if you like to take it; I am

only sorry that I am too tired myself to rise and place it in your

hands.’”

But, on the other hand, Dr. Bussell, the closest companion in the

later years, writes of the side of himself that Pater turned to the

nearer circle:—

“His ordinary talk ... was the happiest blending of seriousness and

mirth, of deep feeling and a sort of childlike glee in the varying

surfaces of things.”

This subdued air came to a certain extent from the circumstances of

his life, but still more from a deep-seated reclusiveness, rather

than humility of nature. Indeed, it may be said that, with all his

gentleness, he was not innately humble. What often appeared to

be humility was, in reality, an intense dislike of opposition. A

consciousness of antagonism irritated him so intensely, that he often

preferred to withdraw both what he had said and written, rather than

provoke contradiction and argument. It was not that he was diffident

about his intuitions; he was rather diffident about his power of

defending and recommending them. He was little inclined to dogmatise,

and realised most sympathetically the differences of temperament;

but the path which he had chosen was the only path for him; and

though he might seem to yield to argument and remonstrance, he was

never converted, except by reflection. He was probably never fully

appreciated at Oxford. Busy, effective, academical natures tended

to think of him as a secluded dreamer of dreams; his fame grew so

insensibly and secretly, and was, even so, confined so much to the

συνετοὶ, the connoisseurs, that there never came that revulsion of

feeling that has sometimes lifted a man suddenly on to a pinnacle of

unquestioned reputation. Moreover, it is fair to say that the air

of the Universities is not at the present moment favourable to the

pursuit of _belles lettres_ and artistic philosophies. The praise of

academical circles is reserved at the present time for people of

brisk bursarial and business qualifications, for men of high technical

accomplishment, for exact researchers, for effective teachers of

prescribed subjects, for men of acute and practical minds, rather than

for men of imaginative qualities. This is the natural price that must

be paid for the increased efficiency of our Universities, though it

may be regretted that they maintain so slight a hold upon the literary

influences of the day. The whole atmosphere is, in fact, sternly

critical, and the only work which is emphatically recognised and

approved is the work which makes definite and unquestionable additions

to the progress of exact sciences.

A genial epigrammatist once said that if a man desired to court

unpopularity in academical circles he had but to enjoy an outside

reputation, to write a good literary style, and to make it his business

to see something of undergraduates, to gain his end with entire

celerity.

There is some truth in the contention. The erudite world is apt to

think that a reputation acquired with the general public by literary

accomplishments is a second-rate sort of affair, and only to be

gained by those who are not sufficiently hard-headed and exact to win

academical repute. A man, too, who betrays an interest in the younger

members of the community is thought to be slightly abnormal, and either

to be actuated by a vague sentimentality, or else to be desirous of

receiving the admiration of immature minds, which he cannot win from

more mature intellects.

This atmosphere, these conditions, Pater accepted with the gentle

outward deference that was characteristic of him; he had no taste for

the warm luxuriance of coteries; he had no sort of desire to label with

contemptuous names those who must have appeared to him deaf and blind

to the subtle and beautiful effects that made the substance of his own

life.

It seemed a curious irony of fate which planted Pater in a college

which for years enjoyed a robust pre-eminence for athletic triumphs,

together with a reputation for wholesale turbulence. But it may be

said that such an atmosphere was not wholly uncongenial to Pater.

Though he had no sort of proficiency in athletics, and though he was

pre-eminently peaceable in disposition, he had, as I have said, a

genuine and deep admiration for strongly developed physical vigour,

while he had little of the sensitive disciplinary instinct that feels

the frank display of youthful ebullience a kind of slur upon the

privileges of constituted authority. No one was more anxious than

Pater, in a disciplinary crisis, to give a case a fair hearing, and to

condone as far as possible an outbreak that was thoughtless rather than

deliberate. In all cases where there was a question of the infliction

of punishment for some breach of discipline, Pater was always on the

side of mercy. And this was with no wish to preserve his own dignity

by temporising with the disorderly section. He was always a loyal

and faithful supporter of authority, while he was anxious that a

case should not be judged with the undue sternness that the sense of

outraged dignity tends to bring with it. As Dr. Bussell wrote:—

“Naturally inclined to a certain rigour in discipline, he was full

of excuse for individual cases; and regretted and thought over

stern measures more than most members of a governing body can

afford to do.”

Apocryphal stories are related of him, such as his excuse for the

rowdiness of undergraduates after Hall, that they reminded him of

playful young tigers that had just been fed; or his supposed remark

about bonfires in Brasenose quad, that he did not object to them

because they lighted up the spire of St. Mary’s so beautifully. These

were, of course, intended to represent the imperturbable search for

beautiful impressions in the most incongruous circumstances; but

they represent, too, a half-truth, namely, a real and vital charity

of nature, inclined to condone, and even to sympathise with, the

manifestations of natural feeling, however personally inconvenient.

Perhaps the playful irony, the light-handed humour, which was to Pater

a deliberate shield against the roughness of the world, tended to

obscure his deep seriousness of nature, his devotedly religious spirit.

He sympathised, it is true, with all humanity with a largeness which is

surprising in a man of such sensitive and secluded constitution. He had

a determination, remarkable in a man of delicate organisation, to see

the world as it really was, to admire what was vigorous and natural and

vital in it. He had no wish to create for himself an unreal paradise,

to suppose the world to be other than it appeared, or to drown the

insistent cries that reached him in a web of blurred impression or

uncertain sound. He admired what was joyful and brave and strong. Had

he been of a more alert physical constitution he would have thrown

himself, we may safely assert, into the pursuit of athletics ardently

and eagerly. As he could not, he contented himself with admiring

the youthful exuberance of activity, and, true to his nature, with

disentangling as far as he could the fibre of beauty which ran for him

through the universe. But in all this he was akin and not alien to the

insouciant and pleasure-loving spirit of youth.

He was by nature an extremely reticent man; he never seemed to think

that his ideas were likely to command attention or his personality to

cause interest. He wrote very few letters and never kept a diary. His

whole attitude to the world and its concerns was the attitude of a

spectator, and even his closest and nearest relationships with others

could not win him from his isolation; he could be kind, courteous,

considerate, and sincere; but he could not be intimate; he always

guarded his innermost heart.

He was very loath to express his own personal view of a matter,

especially if it involved taking any credit to himself. But a friend

remembers that he was once talking of the artistic perceptions of

Ruskin, and said suddenly with a show of impatience, “I cannot believe

that Ruskin saw more in the church of St. Mark than I do.”

His courteous deference, to both old and young alike, was very

remarkable. He would agree gently with the crudest expressions of

opinion, “No doubt! I had never thought of it in that light!” But he

could occasionally fire up when some deeply felt opinion of his own was

challenged. Mr. Ainslie remembers being in his company when some one

spoke disparagingly of Flaubert. He came suddenly out of his shell, and

spoke with great emotion and much wealth of illustration.

Though Pater was never unkind, he could give a pungent judgment on

occasions. The conversation, in his presence, had once turned upon H.

A. J. Munro, and a man was mentioned with whom Munro was intimate,

and with whom he often associated, who was distinguished rather for

a mundane interest in affairs and for a devotion to sociable and

convivial enjoyment than for any interest in literature or scholarship.

Surprise was expressed at this friendship. “I should not have thought

they had anything in common,” said one of those present. “Do you think

that is so?” said Pater. “I always felt that there was a good deal of

the _mahogany-table_ element in Munro.” This is a just judgment which,

though ironically expressed, exhibits a considerable penetration on the

part of Pater, in the case of a man of whom he knew but little.

He was extraordinarily loyal to his friends. He spoke once with great

gravity and seriousness of one whom he had known, whom he thought to be

drifting into dangerous courses, and expressed a deep desire to help

or warn him, or, at all events, to get a warning conveyed to him. His

confidant tells me that he never saw him so deeply moved and distressed

as on this occasion, as he tried to devise some way of bringing

conviction home to the unhappy object of his anxiety.

His tendency indeed was always to mitigate harsh judgments, to

appreciate the good points of those with whom he was brought into

contact. He had indeed a great eye for little individualities and

peculiarities, with a gentle enjoyment of the manifestation of foibles;

but it was always an indulgent and a tender attitude. And it may be

said that it is rare to find one so perceptive of the most delicate and

subtle shades of temperament, who was yet so uniformly charitable and

kind, so determined to see the best side of every one.

Pater kept himself severely aloof from the current thought of the day,

but with characteristic reticence never adopted the position of an

opponent. He took no interest in scientific movements or discoveries,

and merely left such questions alone.

In politics he was what may be called an old-fashioned Liberal. His

view of the scheme of Government, the movement of political forces

and economical problems, was dim. He took no real interest in such

matters, as lying outside of his circle. He rarely committed himself to

any statements on political matters; but he had a dislike to Napoleon

III., and once said with some animus, “I hope we shall soon arrive at

a time when no one will be so vulgar as to want to go and live at the

Tuileries.” His interest was all in detail and external values. “I am

quite tired,” he said once, “of hearing people for ever talking of the

causes which led to the French Revolution; I don’t want to know. I am

all for details. I want to know how people lived, what they wore, what

they looked like.”

He had no personal ambition, no desire for recognition. He never paid

visits, and took no trouble to make the acquaintance of literary men,

even at a time when his reputation would have secured him warm welcome

and distinguished respect. He stayed at Oxford because he thought

that the life there gave him the best opportunity of doing the quiet,

thorough work which he felt himself most capable of performing. He had

a deep sense of responsibility, though he did not willingly assume it,

and felt bound to exercise his special faculties to the uttermost, and

to give liberally of his sympathy.

It is clear that Pater changed very much as the years went on;

after his silent and reserved boyhood and youth, he had a period of

_épanouissement_, when the ideas that began to crowd thickly into

his mind produced a certain want of balance, a paradoxical daring

of speech, a certain recklessness of statement; this was no doubt

enhanced by the discovery that he could hold his own in a brilliant

society, that he had quick perceptions and conversational gifts;

and at this period he tasted the pleasures of effective talk, the

intellectual delight of the process which is best described by the old

homely proverb of saying Bo! to geese. In these days he desired to be

impressive rather than to be sympathetic; but as his character deepened

and widened, through perception and insight, through friendship and

misunderstanding alike, he reverted more to what was really the basis

of his character, the desire for simple and affectionate companionship.

He was condemned by temperament to a certain isolation; he was outside

the world and not of it. A happy marriage might have brought him more

into line with humanity; but his genius was for friendship rather than

for love, and his circumstances and environment were favourable to

celibacy; and thus he passed through life in a certain mystery, though

the secret is told for those who can read it in his writings. Art

demands certain sacrifices, and the price that an artist pays for the

sorrowful great gift is apt to be a heavy one. Pater paid it to the

full, and paid it ungrudgingly; he found, he followed his true life,

through dark and lonely windings; he emerged into the free air and the

sun, though he bore upon him the marks of the conflict; and his place

is with the sons of art who have used faithfully and joyfully the gift

committed to their keeping.

That the inner and deeper current of Pater’s thought was profoundly

serious is only too plain from his books; such humour as is here not

infrequently introduced is of a delicate kind, often almost mournfully

disguised; the same kind of humour that one may sometimes discern

in the glance of a sympathetic friend when some mirth-provoking

incident occurs at a solemn ceremony at which it is essential to

preserve a dignity of deportment. At such moments a look of silent

and rapturous appreciation may pass between two kindred spirits; such,

in its fineness and secrecy, is the humour of Pater’s writings, and

presupposes a sympathetic understanding between writer and reader.

Dr. Bussell, writing of the apparent contrast between the solemnity of

his writings and his demeanour to his closest friends, writes:—

“To a certain extent, but to a certain extent only, these

(writings) may be taken as an index to his character, as unveiling

the true man. But to those who knew him as he lived among us here,

they seemed a sort of disguise. There was the same tenderness, the

same tranquillising repose, about his conversation that we find

in his writings; the same carefulness in trifles, and exactness

of expression. But his written works betray little trace of that

childlike simplicity, that naïve joyousness, that never-wearying

pleasure in animals and their ways,—that grave yet half-amused

seriousness, also childlike, in which he met the events of the

daily routine.”

Those who did not know him personally have supposed him to be a man of

a strained and affected solemnity. The exact opposite was the truth.

Pater did not despise the day of small things. He loved easy talk and

simple laughter. He had a relish for small jokes. He loved plays that

made him laugh. Such performances as Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas were

his delight, and a friend who accompanied him to _Ruddigore_ said that

it was delightful to see the whole-hearted and childlike enjoyment to

which he surrendered himself. Mr. Gosse went with him to Mr. Pinero’s

_Magistrate_, and remembers him convulsed with overwhelming laughter.

In his own home he used to discourse with intense gravity, mingled

with great bursts of laughter, of the adventures of a set of entirely

fictitious relatives. Again, he took a delighted pleasure in the ways

and mannerisms of his acquaintances. Mr. Gosse remembers how admirably

he used to imitate Mark Pattison’s speech and peevish intonation.

This was best exemplified in the imaginary dialogue which Pater used

to render, supposed to take place between the Rector of Lincoln and a

burglar who had invaded his house: “I am a poor old man. Look at me,

you can see that I am a very poor man. Go across to Fowler—he is rich,

and all his plate is real. He is a very snug fellow, Fowler!” This

was a really admirably dramatic performance, so dramatic that Pater

appeared to be quite convinced of its truth.

Pater had an unceasing delight in watching the ways and habits of pet

animals. His own domestic cats, indeed, were kept and lovingly tended,

till from age and disease they had nearly lost all semblance to the

feline form. He was deeply conscious of the charm of seeing these

bright creatures so close at hand, with the extraordinary relation that

may exist, such perfect confidence, such unrestrained affection, while

yet there is no communication of thought, and so little comprehension

on either side of what is really passing in the mind. He was strangely

attracted by the mysterious tie, so close and, in a way, so intimate,

and yet with so little mutual understanding, and accompanied by such

isolation. He was particularly fond of cats, their dainty ways, their

graceful attitudes; and aware too of the refined selfishness, so

different from the eager desire to please of the dog; the cat, intent

on its own business, using human beings to minister to its needs,

making its own arrangements, giving or withholding its company, with

no idea of obedience or subservience or dependence; but just living

gracefully and indolently in the houses of men, because it suits its

convenience to do so. All this, together with its dramatic mystery,

its intent secretiveness, its whimsical mirth, its charming solemnity,

had an unfailing pleasure for Pater. He was always strangely drawn too,

with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, by the sight of those

collections of incongruous animals known as Happy Families that are to

be seen in gregarious resorts; he would linger about them, expressing

his indignation, yet always ending by contributing liberally to their

maintenance.

In conversation, especially in earlier days, Pater adopted a consistent

and deliberate irony of speech which was such as often to baffle

even his intimate friends. He delighted in paradox, and in a kind of

whimsical perversity. He would dwell upon the unessential attributes of

a scene, a personality, a book, when a serious judgment was desired.

And this, combined as it was with a serious, grave, and almost gloomy

manner, completed the mystification.

He was fond, as I have said, of insisting upon some altogether

unimportant detail on these occasions; he used to pretend that he shut

his eyes in crossing Switzerland, on his journeys to and from Italy, so

as not to see the “horrid pots of blue paint,” as he called the Swiss

lakes. He would profess himself unable to read the books of a person

whose name or personal appearance distressed him. The celebrated story,

which is widely current about him as to the examination in which he

took a part, is characteristic of the same mood. He was supposed to

have looked over a paper, but when the examiners met he seemed to have

kept no record of his impressions; to assist his recollection the names

of the candidates were read over, but he seemed to be unable to connect

any ideas with any of them until the name Sanctuary appeared, at which

he visibly brightened, and said that he was now sure he had looked

over the papers because he remembered that he liked the name.

Probably the habit arose from the fact that he was of a shy and

sensitive temperament, and that to give a real and serious opinion was

a trial to him. He disliked the possibility of dissent or disapproval,

and took refuge in this habit of irony, so as to baffle his hearers and

erect a sort of fence between them and his own personality.

But partly too he was undoubtedly aware, in his earlier days, that the

expectation of conversational _friandises_ amused and delighted his

hearers. He was rather the spoilt child of the intellectual circle in

which he lived, and it is held by some that he rather presumed on the

indulgence of his friends in this respect.

Mr. Basil Champneys, for instance, recollects how he was dining in

company with Pater at Professor Bywater’s, about the year 1875, with

a small party. The conversation turned on George Eliot, and Pater

announced that he did not think much of George Eliot as a writer. “It

is impossible,” he said, “to value a writer all of whose characters are

practically identical. What,” he said, “is Maggie Tulliver but Tito

in petticoats?” Such a criticism is of course purely perverse, and

contains no germ of critical seriousness.

The same tendency is reflected in the peevish monologue, attributed by

tradition to Mark Pattison, and often delightedly repeated by Pater

himself. The question of possible travelling-companions was being

discussed, when the Rector broke out with: “I would not travel with

Pater for anything! He would say the steamboat was not a steamboat, and

that Calais was not Calais!”

The example that he set was somewhat contagious. Those affected by it

became the most subjective of critics, and acquired the superficial

conversational method, which consisted in speaking of serious

things on social occasions as if they had no seriousness, and of

diligently searching for the ridiculous aspect that they could be

found to bear. There came a certain reaction at a later date against

this style of conversation, until the flippant treatment of topics,

however superficially amusing, came to be regarded with perhaps undue

impatience. But the fact remains that Pater was in ordinary talk,

through early years, _un vrai moqueur_, while the seriousness of his

demeanour lent a certain piquancy to his paradoxical talk which had a

distinct charm. In this respect, indeed, the caricature of Pater in the

pages of the _New Republic_ gives an entirely wrong impression. In the

_New Republic_ Mr. Rose is made to talk as though he were uttering his

secret thoughts, _dicenda tacenda locutus_, with entire indifference

to the tone of the audience that surrounded him. This is a hopeless

misconception of Pater’s ordinary ways.

There are two or three anecdotes which survive which aptly illustrate

the same tendency. I do not know to what extent these reminiscences are

coloured by the legendary element, but they are contemporary stories

which have survived, and are therefore worth repeating. He was asked,

for instance, whether he did not find his College work a great burden

to him. He replied with inimitable gravity, “Well, not so much as you

might think. The fact is that most of our men are fairly well-to-do,

and it is not necessary that they should learn very much. At some

Colleges I am told that certain of the young men have a genuine love

for learning; if that were so here, it would be quite too dreadful.”

He sighed, and looked sadly at his auditor.

On another occasion it is said that, when advising a man what to read

for Greats, Pater said: “I cannot advise you to read any special books;

the great thing is to read authors _whole_; read Plato _whole_; read

Kant _whole_; read Mill _whole_.”

Again, though the following is probably to be regarded as legendary,

it is said that he once, in a lecture, announced that in certain

aspects we might be justified in regarding religion as a beautiful

disease. This remark was quoted by an undergraduate to his parent with

the substitution of the word “loathsome” for “beautiful.” The parent

wrote indignantly to Pater to ask if it was right that such opinions

should be expressed by a tutor to undergraduates. Pater, according to

his own account, replied that he did not think he could have used the

word “loathsome.” He might, he said, have used the word “beautiful”—“a

beautiful disease.” “The parent,” he added, “expressed himself entirely

reassured and satisfied by the explanation.”[3]

[3] The origin of this story is no doubt to be found on page 217 of

the 1889 edition of the _Appreciations_, in the suppressed essay

on “Aesthetic Poetry.” “That monastic religion of the Middle Age

was, in fact, in many of its bearings, like a beautiful disease or

disorder of the senses.”

He went to see a rather elderly game of hockey played by middle-aged

performers, and, after a moment of silence, said softly to his

companion: “Come away; I think we ought to go on; it seems hardly fair

to look at them.”

But the habit of indulging in ironical or reckless paradox had its

dangerous side. There was at Oxford in the days of Pater’s early

residence a certain aesthetic movement, a species of renaissance,

in which the creed of beauty was strongly insisted upon. In some

members of the circle that was thus affected, this resulted in much

extravagance of thought; and in some it had even worse results in

loosening the principles of morality, and judging action by the canons

of what was held to be beautiful. It is a difficult subject to treat

discreetly, because the _epigoni_ of the school, in certain notorious

instances, ended in complete moral and social shipwreck. With the

extravagances and excesses of the school it is needless to say that

Pater, a man of scrupulous conscience and a high standard of moral

delicacy, had not the slightest sympathy; but his love of paradox,

his recklessness of irony, unquestionably led him to say things which

could be unhappily distorted and misapplied, and which, not in his own

case, but in the case of those who heard and exaggerated them, were

capable of being construed in a serious light, and the utterance of

which may be said to have justified both anxiety and distress. Here, as

elsewhere, the true Pater is to be seen in his writings, and not in his

ironical _dicta_. And any careful student of his deliberate thoughts

finds no difficulty in discerning the delicacy and the loftiness of

his view. He refused, it is true, to take a conventional view of the

principles of art; but though the essential purity of art can be

distorted into a wild appetite for beautiful impressions and sensual

experience, it can yet be safeguarded and kept in a high and austere

region, in which the lower impulse is entirely inconsistent with the

grave appreciation of beauty.

In the aesthetic movement, Pater concerned himself solely with

the doctrine; but at the same time it is undeniably true that the

leaders of a movement are always judged by the extravagances of their

followers; and the anxiety and even suspicion with which Pater’s

views were at one time regarded in Oxford, were due to the fact that

those with whom he was in a certain sense in sympathy on the higher

aesthetic grounds, applied the doctrine of beauty to a recklessness of

practice which Pater not only condemned, but the contemplation of which

both disgusted and appalled him. It is better to have no misconception

on this point. It is as unfair to think of Pater as in sympathy with

the decadent school, as it is to attribute to the original teachers

of Predestination the immoral distortion of the doctrines which

disgraced some of their fanatical sectaries. When the whole movement

has, so to speak, shaken down; when we can look dispassionately at the

part which the aesthetic school has played in the mental development

of the age, we shall be able, while we condemn whole-heartedly the

excesses of the advanced disciples, to discern the part that Pater and

the other leaders of the movement played in setting the deliberate

appreciation of beauty, the sedulous training of the perceptions in the

discrimination of the subtle effects of impassioned art, in its right

place among the forces which tend to the ennobling of human character

and temperament.

Having thus drawn out, as far as possible, what Pater’s ethical

creed was not, let us try to indicate the nature and movement of

his religious life. He began, it is plain, by feeling the strong

aesthetic attraction of the accessories of religion; probably he did

not disentangle the elements of religious faith from the effect which

great churches, solemn ceremonial, ecclesiastical music, and hieratic

pomp had upon his mind. As Jowett is once, in early days, reported to

have said to him somewhat irritably, at the close of a discussion,

“Mr. Pater, you seem to think that religion is all idolatry!” But as

soon as Pater plunged into the study of metaphysics, he found that

philosophy began to act as a solvent upon his creed; he still had a

bias towards the expression of religious truth; and his half-formed

idea of becoming a Unitarian minister, which, as I have said, was

suggested in all probability by the career of Coleridge, was the

outcome of this mood.

After this impulse, if it was ever so much as an impulse, died away, he

seems to have been content for some years to suspend his judgment. He

even, both in public and in private, used expressions which indicated

an attitude of definite hostility to the Christian position. He was

immersed in artistic conceptions, and in practical work; but as he

grew older the old associations began to reassert themselves; he

found, like so many people of speculative temperament, who set out on

a philosophical quest with an impatience of received traditions and

conventional opinion, that there was far more truth in the accumulated

treasures of human thought, simple and in many ways contradictory as

they appeared, than he had originally believed. As he wrote once, in

one of his reviews for the _Guardian_, “the religious, the Catholic,

ideal, ... the only mode of poetry realisable by the poor.”

He discovered afresh the tranquillising influence of a direct faith on

quiet people—of the type that he described in another review; speaking

of sacristans as “simple people coming and going there, devout, or

at least on devout business, with half-pitched voices, not without

touches of kindly humour, in what seems to express like a picture

the most genial side, midway between the altar and the home, of the

ecclesiastical life.” And thus the old quiet consecration of life by

faith, not very confident perhaps, hardly more than a sacred hope of

beautiful and tender possibilities, reasserted itself.

As Lady Dilke wrote of a talk with him in the later years:—

“Pater came and sate with me till dinner-time. We had been talking

before that on the exclusive cultivation of the memory in modern

teaching as tending to destroy the power of thought, by sacrificing

the attitude of meditation to that of perpetual apprehension. When

the others left we went on talking of the same matter, but on

different lines. Thence we came to how it might be possible, under

present conditions of belief, to bring people up not as beasts but

as men by the endeavour to train feeling and impart sentiments as

well as information. He looks for an accession of strength to the

Roman Church, and thinks that if it would abandon its folly in

political and social intrigue, and take up the attitude of a purely

spiritual power, it would be, if not the best thing that could

happen, at any rate better than the selfish vulgarity of the finite

aims and ends which stand in the place of an ideal in most lives

now. He has changed a great deal, as I should think for the better,

and is a stronger man.”

Pater spoke, indeed, as I conceive, very plainly in one place—the

review of _Robert Elsmere_—of what was the inner attitude of his

mind:—

“_Robert Elsmere_ was a type of a large class of minds which

cannot be sure that the sacred story is true. It is philosophical,

doubtless, and a duty to the intellect to recognise our doubts,

to locate them, perhaps to give them practical effect. It may be

also a moral duty to do this. But then there is also a large class

of minds which cannot be sure it is false—minds of very various

degrees of conscientiousness and intellectual power, up to the

highest. They will think those who are quite sure it is false,

unphilosophical through lack of doubt. For their part, they make

allowance in their scheme of life for a great possibility, and

with some of them that bare concession of possibility (the subject

of it being what it is) becomes the most important fact in the

world. The recognition of it straightway opens wide the door to

hope and love; and such persons are, as we fancy they always will

be, the nucleus of a Church. Their particular phase of doubt, of

philosophic uncertainty, has been the secret of millions of good

Christians, multitudes of worthy priests. They knit themselves to

believers, in various degrees, of all ages.”

And thus he came both to feel and to express a deep and sincere

sympathy with the Christian point of view; _Marius_ reveals most subtly

the closeness of this approximation; but it may be seen, in scattered

hints and touches, through all his later writings. Speaking, for

instance, of the death of Socrates he wrote that the “details, as one

cannot but observe in passing, which leave those famous hours, even for

purely human, or say! pagan dignity and tenderness, wholly incomparable

to one sacred scene to which they have sometimes been compared.” A

friend of Pater’s tells me that the present Bishop of Birmingham,

Dr. Gore, went to the Brasenose Church Society to read a paper on

the Blessed Trinity, and was rather taken aback to find Pater in the

chair. “However, he proved to be an admirable chairman, directing

the discussion after the paper, and checking anything approaching

irreverence.”

He wrote Mrs. Humphry Ward a very interesting letter on December 23,

1885, on receiving from her as a Christmas gift her newly published

translation of _Amiel’s Journal_. After congratulating her on the

admirable literary grace of the translation, he continued:—

“I find a store of general interest in _Amiel_, (take at random,

_e.g._, the shrewd criticism of Quinet,) which must attract all

those who care for literature; while for the moralist and the

student of religion he presents the additional attraction of yet

another thoroughly original and individual witness to experiences

on the subject they care most for. For myself, I gather from your

well-meditated introduction, that I shall think, on finishing the

book, that there was still something _Amiel_ might have added to

those elements of natural religion, (so to call it, for want of

a better expression,) which he was able to accept, at times with

full belief, and always with the sort of hope which is a great

factor in life. To my mind, the beliefs, and the function in the

world, of the historic church, form just one of those obscure but

all-important possibilities, which the human mind is powerless

effectively to dismiss from itself; and might wisely accept, in the

first place, as a workable hypothesis. The supposed facts on which

Christianity rests, utterly incapable as they have become of any

ordinary test, seem to me matters of very much the same sort of

assent we give to any assumption, in the strict and ultimate sense,

moral. The question whether those facts were real will, I think,

always continue to be what I should call one of the _natural_

questions of the human mind.”

In connection with this frame of mind we may quote an interesting

passage which occurs in the _Greek Studies_ (“The Bacchanals of

Euripides”). He is speaking of Euripides, at the end of a long life of

varied emotion and experience; he says:—

“Writing in old age, he is in that subdued mood, a mood not

necessarily sordid, in which (the shudder at the nearer approach

of the unknown world coming over him more frequently than of old)

accustomed ideas, conformable to a sort of common sense regarding

the unseen, oftentimes regain what they may have lost, in a man’s

allegiance. It is a sort of madness, he begins to think, to differ

from the received opinions thereon. Not that he is insincere or

ironical, but that he tends, in the sum of probabilities, to dwell

on their more peaceful side; to sit quiet, for the short remaining

time, in the reflexion of the more cheerfully lighted side of

things; and what is accustomed—what holds of familiar usage—comes

to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects; and the

well-known delineation of the vague country, in Homer or Hesiod,

one’s best attainable mental outfit, for the journey thither.”

This is no doubt a true picture of the writer’s own inner mood, a

forecast of the later years in which the excitement of the quest for

new ideas, new experiences, dies down; and a man begins to rediscover

for himself the humanity, the reality, of the old and constant stock

of mortal tradition; the thoughts that have tortured, comforted,

attracted, satisfied, the great company of mankind.

When he lived in London he was fond of attending St. Paul’s Cathedral,

St. Albans, Holborn, and other high Anglican Churches; and he was

sometimes seen at the Carmelites’ Church in Kensington; but there is

no sort of evidence that he had any thought of Anglican orders, or

that he was tending towards Roman Catholicism. He found in religion a

deep and tranquillising force, and recognised the religious instinct,

the intuitions of faith, as a Divine influence even more direct and

unquestionable than the artistic or the intellectual influence. And

thus we may think of him as one who, though his intellectual subtlety

prevented his aiming at any very precise definition of his creed,

was yet deeply penetrated by the perfect beauty and holiness of the

Christian ideal, and reposed in trembling faith on ‘the bosom of his

Father and his God.’

Much that is beside the mark has been written and said about Pater’s

precise habits of composition. The truth is that they were in no way

unusual. The common tradition is that he wrote words and sentences upon

cards, and then when he had accumulated a sufficient store, he dealt

them out as though he were playing a game of patience, and made them

into a species of mosaic. The real truth is much simpler. When he was

studying a subject he took abundance of notes, but instead of making

them in a note-book, he preferred slips of paper, for the greater

convenience of sorting them, and arranged them in order so that they

might illustrate the divisions of his subject.

Mr. Gosse, to whom was entrusted the task of deciphering the

fragmentary manuscript of the “Pascal,” gives one or two interesting

instances of these notes, most of which are of the nature of passing

thoughts, captured for future reference. One runs:—

“Something about the gloomy Byzantine archit., belfries, solemn

night come in about the birds attracted by the Towers.”

And again:—

“? did he suppose predestination to have taken place, only _after_

the Fall?”

When he had arranged his notes he began to write on ruled paper,

leaving the alternate lines blank; and in these spaces he would insert

new clauses and descriptive epithets. Then the whole was re-copied,

again on alternate lines, which would again be filled; moreover, he

often had an essay at this stage set up at his own expense in print,

that he might better be able to judge of the effect; the same device

that Tennyson so often used.

The work of writing grew easier to him as time went on. “Ah! it is much

easier now,” he said to Mr. Gosse, near the end of his life. “If I live

long enough, no doubt I shall learn quite to like writing.”

He was a regular rather than a hard worker. It was his habit for many

years to devote two or three hours of the morning to writing, and he

often wrote again for another hour in the afternoon. But he never

worked late at night; writing was to him an absorbing and at the same

time a fatiguing process, to be pursued temperately and quietly. Some

writers work for a time as though possessed, fall into a profound

exhaustion when a book is finished, and then lie fallow for a time.

Such was never Pater’s way. His writing was his central concern; he

loved it with an ever-growing love; it formed the staple employment of

his days; but his friends say that there never was a man who seemed to

be always so free from preoccupation, so ready to put his work aside,

and enter into conversation of the most trivial kind; there were no

furtive glances at the clock, none of the air of jealous if patient

resignation, no hunted sense of the desire to escape from interruption.

Again, too much emphasis has been laid upon the conscious fatigue

and exhaustion arising from his work. He was not, like Flaubert, the

racked and tortured medium of his thought. He was a man of low physical

vitality, and he would sometimes half-humorously lament the labour

that his work cost him. But the toil and the delight were inextricably

intermingled; such writing as Pater’s with its subtle distinctions,

its fine metaphors, its delicate effects, its haunted richness, its

remote images, its liquid cadences, could never have been produced

except by one who tasted to the full the artistic pleasure of elaborate

workmanship. And it is beyond all doubt that his work became to him in

increasing measure the mainspring of his life, a spring of the purest

joy.

One source of his concentrated strength was that he never wasted time

in experimental researches; he knew his own mind; he knew exactly what

interested him and the limitations of his taste; thus he confined his

ideals to a restricted circle, and though perhaps losing somewhat in

catholicity of thought, he gained astonishing depth and insight in

certain specified directions. But he made no parade of omniscience.

He used to say smilingly that it was such a relief to work hard at a

subject and then forget all about it.

One of Pater’s happiest accomplishments was his power of bringing up

in a few words a figure or a scene, beautiful in itself and charged

moreover with a further and remote significance, revealing as by

a sudden glimpse or hint some solemn thought enshrined within the

outer form. Thus he said once that churches where the Sacrament was

reserved gave one the sense of a house where a dead friend lies; and

again in a subtle allegory he touched the difference between Roman

Catholicism with all its rich fabric of association and tradition,

and Puritanism with its naked insistence on bare rectitude and rigid

conduct. Roman Catholicism, he said, was like a table draped in fair

linen, covered with lights and flowers and vessels of crystal and

silver; while Puritanism was like the same table, after it had been

cleared, serviceable enough, but without charm or grace. The essential

form present in both; but the one furnished with rich and dainty

accessories, the other unadorned and plain.

It may be said generally that richness under a severe restraint is the

principal characteristic of Pater’s style; but there are two or three

special small characteristics, almost amounting to mannerisms, which

may be noted in his writing. One is the natural result of his habit of

composition; it is of overloading his sentences, of introducing long

parentheses, of heaping fine detail together, which sometimes gives an

impression of over-luxuriousness. Here is a typical sentence, out of

one of the _Guardian Essays_, the review of Wordsworth:—

“An emanation, a particular spirit, belonged not to the moving

leaves or water only, but to the distant peak arising suddenly, by

some change of perspective, above the nearer horizon of the hills,

to the passing space of light across the plain, to the lichened

Druidic stone even, for a certain weird fellowship in it with the

moods of men.”

This sentence has every charm except the charm of perfect lucidity. But

any one who enjoys the characteristic quality of Pater, will be able to

give its due value to the slight blurring of outline on which the charm

to a certain extent depends.

Again, he was fond of beginning a sentence with the emphatic phrase,

and thus inverting the clause. Where another writer would say, “That

tale of hours, the long chanted English service, develops patience,”

Pater wrote: “It develops patience—that tale of hours, the long

chanted English service.” And again: “Horace!—he was, had been always,

the idol of their school.” And again: “Submissiveness!—It had the

force of genius with Emerald Uthwart.” Such sentences, occurring as

a rule at the opening of a paragraph, are of constant occurrence. He

had a fondness for points of exclamation: “How wretched! how fine! how

inconceivably great and difficult!—not for him!” and his frequent

introduction of the word “say!” with its stop breaking the continuity

of the clause where an ordinary writer would use “for instance,” is a

favourite usage.

It is clear that he did not aim primarily at simplicity or lucidity.

His style was deliberately adopted and practised, and he was careful

to allow no influence whatever to interfere with it. He told Mr. Gosse

that he had read scarcely a chapter of Stevenson, and not a line of Mr.

Kipling.

“I feel, from what I hear about them,” he said, “that they are

strong; they might lead me out of my path. I want to go on writing

in my own way, good or bad. I should be afraid to read Kipling,

lest he should come between me and my page next time I sat down to

write.”

His view was that slipshod impressionism, rough, sketchy emphasis, was

the literary fault of the time which needed to be sternly resisted.

Writing of a serious kind, he felt, ought to be a strenuous, almost a

learned process. He wrote in one of the reviews he contributed to the

_Guardian_:—

“Well, the good quality of an age, the defect of which lies in

the direction of intellectual anarchy and confusion, may well be

eclecticism.... A busy age will hardly educate its writers in

correctness. Let its writers make time to write English more as a

learned language.”

This thought had its effect upon his writing, even when he was dealing

with the apprehension of the ordinary objects of sense and perception.

Great as was Pater’s appreciation of nature, and fine as was his

perception of the quality and beauty of landscape, it is almost

always through a medium of art that he beheld it. Nature is to him

always a setting, a background, subordinated to the human interest.

The thought that men had laboured, painfully or joyfully, over a

building, or a picture, or a book, invested the result with a certain

sacredness in his eyes. The nearer that outward things approached to

humanity, the more they appealed to Pater. The home, the house, the

room, its furniture and decoration, the garden, the pleasaunce, all

these were nearer to his heart than nature in her wilder and sterner

aspects, because the thought and hand of humanity had passed over

them, writing its care and its dreams legibly on cornice and lintel,

on panel and beam, on chest and press, on alley and bower, on border

and fountain. When, as in “Duke Carl of Rosenmold,” or in “Sebastian

van Storck,” he describes the sunny vine-clad country, or the lonely

clump on the long hill that seems to summon the vagrant foot thither,

or the frozen lake with the fur-clad skaters moving to and fro, it is

always with a sense of how such scenes might have been painted. It was

always nature seen through the eye of the artist rather than in the

mind of the poet. There is little sense of expanse or largeness about

these natural touches; they are rather caught at salient points, in

glimpses and vignettes, grouped and isolated. It may be observed how

rarely he alludes to natural sounds; these visions seem to be seen

in a reflective silence, recorded and represented by the mind that

has stored itself full of minute pictorial impressions. Pater went

to nature, not in the spirit of Wordsworth, to exult in the freedom,

the width, the tenderness, the energy, the vastness of it all; but

rather as a great quarry of impressions, through which he walked with

a perceptive gaze, selecting and detaching striking and charming

effects, which could afterwards be renewed and meditated over in the

home-keeping mind. None of his direct nature-touches, beautiful as

they are, are penetrated with quite the same zest and emotion as his

descriptions of nature when represented by some master-hand. It was the

penetration of nature by human personality that gave it its value for

Pater, its significance; and thus it comes about that his descriptions

of scenes always seem, so to speak, to have a frame about them. He did

not, like a poet, desire to escape from man to nature; but rather to

suffuse nature at every point with humanity, to judge of it, to feel

its beauty, not as the direct expression of the mind of God, but as it

affected and appealed to man.

It might have been imagined that so deliberate and precise a craftsman,

with so definite a theory of his art, would perhaps have held on his

way producing his careful masterpieces, content to put it on record

that he had thought thus, and expressed it just so, content that the

beautiful thing should be formed and fashioned, and made available for

the use or delight of any that followed the same or a like path among

the things of the soul. One could have supposed Pater indifferent to

criticism and censure, deeming it enough not to be unfaithful to the

heavenly vision. For to him, doubtless, the first and chiefest pleasure

lay in the thrilling thought, that thought which sets the writer’s

spirit all aglow, leaping into the mind, as it does, with an almost

physical shock, and opening up a sudden vista of possibilities; as

when a man, walking in a wood, comes suddenly across a ride, and sees

the green space run to left and right, with its carpet of flowers, its

leafy walls. And next to that first and sacred joy came the delight of

the slow and careful conception, tracing the development, restricting

the ramification, foreseeing the proportion. Then followed the later

joy, the gradual embroidery of the austere outline, the laying of

thread by thread, of colour by colour; and then the final pleasure of

strict revision, of enriching the close texture, of strengthening the

languid cadence, of refining the refined epithet, the eagerness to

reach that impossible perfection that seemed to recede even as he drew

near.

Yet even to a craftsman thus wholeheartedly intent upon his work,

there is a satisfaction in publication which is like the framing of

a picture. The book with its white margins, its delicate sprinkling

of ornament, its headings and mottoes, all this is the symbol of

completion, of an end attained. There is a further delight still

in the possibility of becoming thus the companion of the imagined

reader; to be held in unknown hands and scanned by gentle eyes; to

appeal to kindred natures, kindly and generous persons; the thought

of this to one like Pater, who had found so many in the world whom

he could love, and to whom human relations had always so deep and

sacred a significance, was full of a potent attraction. But one

is perhaps surprised to learn that he was also deeply sensitive

to adverse criticism; that he felt about the harsh and summary

treatment of his books, especially when they were misrepresented or

misunderstood, something of what the old Psalmist felt, when he prayed

that his darling might be delivered from the power of the dog. There

were times when he suffered acutely from the attacks of critics,

as when the exquisite and elaborate Essay on “Style” was treated

as incomprehensible and affected; when he declared with desolate

conviction that his pleasure in writing was gone, and that he could

never resume his work. Only those nearest to him knew of these dark

moods of discouragement, because he was not one who took the world

into his confidence; indeed, to those who were without, his gentle and

equable manner seemed to bear witness to a tranquillity of mind, which

indeed he sedulously practised, although he never attained the deep

serenity of which he was in search.

It is a curious fact that Pater showed no precocious signs, in

boyhood and youth, of a desire to write. Those in whose blood stirs

the creative impulse, the literary energy, feel the thrill as a rule

very early, and cover paper diligently from their first years. But

Pater’s family cannot remember that he ever showed any particular

tendency to write. He never wrote poetry in childhood, except a few

humorous verses, long lost and forgotten; later on he made some

verse-translations from Goethe, Alfred de Musset, and the Greek

Anthology; and this abstention from the composition of verse is a

remarkable fact in the case of one whose prose is so essentially

poetical. It is common to differentiate the prose of poets, as in

the case of Dryden, Keats, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and others, from

the prose of those who have never attempted to write in verse; it is

thought that it has a greater precision, a sonorous richness, a more

vivid colouring. If Pater had ever practised the art of poetry, it

would be easy to point to his prose as a supreme instance of these

qualities, because, quite apart from its luxurious prodigality,

both of epithet and image, it has a strong, rhythmical, almost

metrical movement in places. But, as a matter of fact, his chief

characteristics, as a prose-writer, came to him late. As a rule, the

makers of gorgeous and exquisite prose have begun by erring on the

side of diffuseness and ornament, and have chastened their style into

due proportion and lucidity. But Pater’s earliest writings, which seem

to have been essays for Societies, have none of the later charm; they

tend to be austere, hard, and even dry. Neither did he arrive at his

plentiful and magnificent vocabulary, as some writers have done, by

the production of large masses of writing that never see the light, in

which their hand has learned firmness of outline, and their teeming

brain the power of summoning the supremely appropriate word from a

suspended cloud of more or less suitable language. His method was

far otherwise. At one time he applied himself daily for some months

to translating a page of Sainte-Beuve or Flaubert, and this seems to

have been his only exercise. His prose steadily grew in volume and

depth; and the one serious fault of his writing, the tendency that

his sentences have to become long and involved, did not diminish.

What he did gain as years went on was a refined and surprising power

over words, a power of condensing an elaborate effect into a single

haunting sentence which suggests rather than reveals. His work was

always the result of much patient and unseen labour; but though he

revised carefully and jealously enough in many cases, his richness

was not derived in reality so much from these stippled effects, as

from the fulness of mind out of which he wrote. Any one who has ever

gone over the same ground as Pater, and studied the same authorities,

will be amazed to find how conscientiously and diligently the material

has all been employed; not by elaborately amplifying detail, but by

condensing an abundance of scattered points into a single illuminating

hint, a poignant image, an apt illustration. He was entirely remote

from those easy superficial writers who generalise from insufficient

premises, and bridge the gaps in their knowledge by graceful fabrics of

words. All Pater’s work was strongly focussed; he drew the wandering

and scattered rays, as through a crystal lens, into a burning and

convergent point of light. Not to travel far for instances, the essay

on Leonardo is a perfect example of this. The writing is so delicate,

so apparently fanciful, that it is only through a careful study of

the available tradition that one comes to realise how minute is the

knowledge that furnishes out these gemmed and luminous sentences. It is

true that his knowledge is not pedantically applied, that he concerns

himself little with minute and technical questions of art-criticism;

but I conceive that Pater’s attempt was always to discern the inner

beauty, the essence of the thing; to disentangle the personality, the

humanity of the artist, rather than to classify or analyse the work.

And so it comes about that his art-criticism is essentially a creative

thing, that adds little to the historical aspect of the development

of art, and falls indeed at times into positive error; the training,

the severe observation, the cultivated instinct, is there, but it is

relegated, so to speak, to an ante-room, while the spirit is led to

apprehend something of the mysterious issues of art, initiated into the

secret appreciation of beauty, and drawn to worship in the darkened

innermost shrine. There is always something holy, even priestly, about

Pater’s attitude to art. It insists upon the initial critical training,

the necessity of ordered knowledge; but it leaves this far behind; it

passes beyond the nice apprehension of eye, the cultivated sense of

line and colour, the exact discrimination of style and medium, into a

remote and poetical region. Such secrets cannot be explained or even

analysed; they cannot be communicated to those that are without; they

must be emotionally and mystically apprehended, by the soul rather than

by the mind.

It was this secret vision, this inner enlightening, on which Pater

had set his heart, and which he sought for urgently and diligently.

He loved the symbol, not for itself alone, but for the majesty which

it contained, the hidden light which it guarded. It is in this region

alone that he seems to wear an absorbed and pontifical air, not

with the false sacerdotal desire to enhance personal impressiveness

and private dignity, through the ministry of divine powers and holy

secrets, but with the unconscious emotion of one whose eyes behold

great wonders enacting themselves upon the bodiless air, which the dull

and the contemptuous may not discern.

It remains to attempt to indicate Pater’s position in later English

literature, and his philosophy, or rather his point of view, by

summarising what has already, it is to be hoped, been made clear by

analysis.

In literature he practically struck out a new line. The tendency of

the best prose-writers of the century had been, as a rule, to employ

prose in a prosaic manner. Landor had aimed at a Greek austerity of

style. Macaulay had brought to perfection a bright hard-balanced

method of statement, like the blowing of sharp trumpets. This was

indeed the prose that had recommended itself to the taste of the early

Victorians; it was full of a certain sound and splendour; it rolled

along in a kind of impassioned magnificence; but the object of it was

to emphasise superficial points in an oratorical manner, to produce

a glittering panorama rich in detail; it made no appeal to the heart

or the spirit, awaking at best a kind of patriotic optimism, a serene

self-glorification.

Carlyle had written from the precisely opposite point of view; he was

overburdened with passionate metaphysics which he involved in a texture

of rugged Euphuism, intensely mannerised. But he had no catholicity of

grasp, and his picturesqueness had little subtlety or delicacy, because

his intense admiration for certain qualities and types blinded him to

finer shades of character. There was no restraint about his style,

and thus his enthusiasm turned to rant, his statement of preferences

degenerated into a species of frantic bombast.

With these Pater had nothing in common; the writers with whom he

is more nearly connected are Charles Lamb, De Quincey, Newman, and

Ruskin. He was akin to Charles Lamb in the delicacy of touch, the

subtle flavour of language; and still more in virtue of his tender

observation, his love of interior domestic life. He has a certain

nearness to De Quincey in the impassioned autobiographical tendency,

the fondness for retrospect, which Pater considered the characteristic

of the poetical temperament. He is akin to Newman in respect of the

restraint, the economy of effect, the perfect suavity of his work; but

none of these probably exerted any very direct influence upon him.

Ruskin perhaps alone of the later prose-writers had a permanent effect

on the style of Pater. He learnt from Ruskin to realise intensely the

suggestiveness of art, to pursue the subjective effect upon the mind of

the recipient; but though the rich and glowing style of Ruskin enlarged

the vocabulary of Pater, yet we can trace the time when he parted

company with him, and turned aside in the direction of repression

rather than volubility, of severity rather than prodigality.

It may be said, then, that Pater really struck out a new line in

English prose, working on the principles enunciated by Flaubert in a

widely different region. The essence of his attempt was to produce

prose that had never before been contemplated in English, full of

colour and melody, serious, exquisite, ornate. He devoted equal pains

both to construction and ornamentation. Whether he is simple and

stately, whether he is involved and intricate, he has the contrast

always in view. His object was that every sentence should be weighted,

charged with music, haunted with echoes; that it should charm and

suggest, rather than convince or state. The danger of the perfection to

which he attained is the danger of over-influence, seductive sweetness;

the value is to suggest the unexplored possibilities of English as a

vehicle for a kind of prose that is wholly and essentially poetical.

The triumph of his art is to be metrical without metre, rhythmical

without monotony. There will, of course, always be those whom this

honeyed, laboured cadence will affect painfully with a sense of

something stifling and over-perfumed; and, indeed, the merits of a work

of art can never be established by explanation or defended by argument;

but to such as can apprehend, feel, enjoy, there is the pleasure of

perfected art, of language that obeys and enriches the thought, of

calculated effect, of realisation, with a supreme felicity of the

intention of the writer.

One does not praise his works as the perfection of style; there is a

limpidity and lucidity of prose style—prose as used by Newman, by

Matthew Arnold, by Ruskin, in chastened moods,—to which no style that

depends upon elaborateness and artifice can attain; but it may fairly

be claimed for Pater that he realised his own conception of perfection.

The style is heavy with ornament, supple with artifice. It is not

so much a picture as an illumination. For sunlight there is stiff

burnished gold; it is full of gorgeous conceits, jewelled phrases; it

has no ease or simplicity; it is all calculated, wrought up, stippled;

but it must be considered from that point of view; it must be appraised

rather than criticised, accepted rather than judged.

To feel the charm it is necessary to be, to some extent, in sympathy

with the philosophy of Pater. We see in him a naturally sceptical

spirit, desiring to plunge beneath established systems and complacent

explanations; and this, in common with an intense sensibility to every

hint and intimation of beauty, apprehended in a serious and sober

spirit; not the spirit that desires to possess itself of the external

elements, but to penetrate the essential charm. Yet it is not the

patient and untroubled beauty of nature, of simple effects of sun

and shade, of great mountains, of wide plains, but of a remote and

symbolical beauty, seen by glimpses and in corners, of which he was in

search—beauty with which is mixed a certain strangeness and mystery,

that suggests an inner and a deeper principle behind, intermingled with

a sadness, a melancholy, that is itself akin to beauty.

There is always an interfusion of casuistical and metaphysical thought

with Pater’s apprehension of beauty; he seems to be ever desirous to

draw near to the frankness, the unashamed happiness, of the Greek

spirit, but to be for ever held back by a certain fence of scepticism,

a malady of thought.

Yet the beauty of which he takes account is essentially of a religious

kind; it draws the mind to the further issue, the inner spirit. All the

charm of ritual and ceremonial in worship has for Pater an indefinable

and constant attraction. He is for ever recurring to it, because it

seems to him to interpret and express an emotion, a need of the human

spirit, whose concern is to comprehend if it can what is the shadowy

figure, the mysterious will, that moves behind the world of sight and

sense.

We can trace the progress of thought in the case of Pater as clearly

as it is possible to trace the thought of any recent writer; though

reticent and even suavely ironical in talk, he was in his writings

at once self-centred and _intime_. His own emotions, his own

preoccupations, were absorbingly important to him; yet while he shrank

from giving them facile utterance, he was irresistibly impelled to

take the world into his confidence. He had none of the frank egotism

of Wordsworth, none of the complacent belief in the interest of his

revelations of himself; and yet there is no writer that speaks more

persistently and self-consciously of his own point of view. He made

little attempt to pass outside of it, and hardly disguised what he

would fain have concealed. The instinct, indeed, for expression

triumphs at every point over the instinct for reticence.

We see the silent, self-contained boyhood, the intellectual awakening,

the absorption in metaphysics, and their abandonment, the eager pursuit

of recondite beauty, that from the days of his maturity never left

him; we see in the candour, the urbanity, the delicate and gentle

outlook, the intellectual strenuousness, of his heroes a reflection

of his own personal ideal. We see how he was led to trust personal

intuitions rather than intellectual processes; to listen rather for

the simpler, sweeter message which comes from life, from experience,

from sympathy, than to obey the logical conclusions of reason, which

indeed arrives so soon at the consciousness of its own limitations; we

see that he determined that the function of reason was rather to keep

judgment suspended; that it should be applied as a solvent alike to

philosophical and religious systems; but that the spirit should not

thus be bound; that reason should indeed erect the framework of the

house, its walls and doorways—and that then its work was done; while

the spirit should dwell within, drawing its strength from the tender

observation of humanity, from humble service, from quiet companionship,

while it should all the time keep its eyes open to any faintest message

flashed from afar, whether it came through glance or word, through book

or picture, through charm of form or colour, from tower or tree, from

the clear freshness of the solitary dawn, or from the orange sunset

dying softly over wide, glimmering fields.

* * * * *

“Behold, this dreamer cometh!” So, with an envious contempt, the

petty-minded scheming brethren of the inspired child beloved of God

greeted him, as he came in unsuspecting innocence to join them in the

field. He was to learn, even in the tender days of boyhood, how heavy a

burden that secret knowledge was to be, that inheritance of the inner

and deeper sight which could pierce behind the veil of mortality. If

he could have foreseen the weary way he was to travel to the calm

and prosperous eminence of later years, would he not have hidden the

visions which he revealed so guilelessly? Not even the certainty of

the honour and comfort of the future would have made amends for the

loneliness, the malignity, of the labyrinth which he was so gently and

faithfully to thread. This power of inner sight, this perception of the

essence of things, must always, it seems, bring its possessor a certain

sadness, a certain isolation. The prosperous worldly spirits, that swim

so vigorously on the surface of things, have always a suspicion, a

jealousy, a contempt, for one who dives deeper and brings back tidings

of the strange secrets that the depth holds. But if such clear-sighted

spirits go tranquilly upon their way, and utter fearlessly the truth

they discern, though the way be difficult and arduous, the honour

comes at last, unsought, unprized. And it is well perhaps that the

conquest is so hard, because if the victory came at once, with it

would doubtless come the relish for the easy, the obvious triumph; but

by the time that it arrives, the pure spirit, chastened and refined,

has reached a region where the only pleasure that fame brings is the

knowledge that the truth has somewhat prevailed. There is no taint of

personal complacency, no luxurious yielding to lower satisfactions,

nothing but the unstained delight that the mystery, discerned and

interpreted, is bearing in other hearts its rich and reviving fruits.

Such is the life that I have attempted to depict. It is the life of

one who, through a dreamful and unpraised boyhood, through a silent

and undistinguished youth, gradually discerned a principle in things;

learned to see, with an impassioned zest, the truth that, in art

and life alike, the victory is with those who attain to a certain

patient and appreciative attitude of soul; who learn through careful

toil, through much sorting of accumulated thought and expression, to

discriminate between what is facile, impressive, specious, and what is

deep, permanent, sincere. No taste can of course be wholly catholic;

it is swayed by instinct, prepossession, and preference. But the point

is, in however limited a sphere, to be able to detect with unfailing

certainty the true quality of things.

He of whom we speak achieved this art of subtle discrimination, a

gift which is shared by dumb and learned connoisseurs; but above this

rise a few, who can not only by a trained instinct recognise what is

perfect, but who can express their methods and powers so that canons

and standards can be formed. Then to but one or two in a generation is

given a further gift: the creative, the poetical power to express in

language of high and haunting beauty the deepest mysteries of art; who

can not only praise in noble and inspiring terms the beautiful thing,

the exquisite work, the flashing thought, but can disentangle the very

essence of the secret, establish remote and subtle connections, and

open, if only for one glorious instant, a door into the inner shrine,

showing a vision of awful angels, bent on high service, interpreting

the loud crying of mysterious voices, echoing the rising strain that

fills the golden-roofed palace, and giving perhaps an awe-struck

glimpse of the presence that sits enthroned there.

But not always on these august heights does the haunted spirit dwell.

There is a spell unknown to those who live the eager life of affairs,

who dwell in crowded cities, or who carry the busy, scheming mind

abroad with them into lonelier places; the spell that broods over

the wooded valley with its hazel-hidden stream, where the bird sings

among the thickets; the spell that lies behind the dark tree-trunks of

the grove that bar the smouldering sunset with shafts of shade; that

trembles in the green twilight when the stars begin to glimmer, and the

winds are hushed. This too, and its appeal to the heart of man, the

tinge that it lends to his dreams, the passionate desire to record, to

represent, to give permanence of form, to the hurrying moment—all this

needs to be interpreted as well.

But here, to the true prophet of these mysteries, the thought that

must be caught and touched and given shape, is not so much the mystery

itself—for that is dark and not to be apprehended—but the thrill

which such visions have communicated to the hearts of other pilgrims,

who have fared eagerly and sadly through the world before us, and have

passed into the darkness, just leaving, in written signs and pictured

symbols, the traces of the passion, the desire, the yearning, that such

things have brought them. Such a task as this—this piecing together

of personality, this testing of recorded impressions, this imbuing of

ancient, half-faded dreams with the sanguine vitality, the eager hope,

of to-day, needs one who is not less a poet than a critic. The dreamer

that comes thus must not be absorbed in his own fruitful visions, but

must be able, by an energy of sympathy, a lucid purity of soul, to

enter no less eagerly into the dim and far-reaching visions of other

inspired spirits.

INDEX

A

Ainslie, Mr. Douglas, 21, 136, 185.

America, one of Olney Paters emigrate to, 1.

_Amiel’s Journal_ (trans. Mrs. H. Ward), 199–200.

Appleton, Dr. (editor of _Academy_), 21.

_Appreciations_, 12; 1st ed. (1889), 2nd ed. (1890), 33; 119, 122,

147—

“Aesthetic Poetry” (1868), 32, 33;

reappeared (1889 ed.), omitted (1890 ed.), 153.

“Charles Lamb,” 62–4, 78.

Coleridge, S. T., considered as a philosopher, 12–13.

“Feuillet’s _La Morte_,” 122.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost” (1898), 78, 153.

“Measure for Measure” (1874), 153, 154.

“Romanticism” (1876), 64–6, reappeared as postscript to (1889), 153.

“Shakespeare’s English Kings” (1889), 153,

superficial analysis of, 155–6.

“Sir Thomas Browne” (1886), 119–22.

“Style” (1888), 147–53, 209.

_Apuleius, Golden Book of_, 92.

Arnold, Miss Mary (Mrs. Humphry Ward), 21.

_Art, History of Ancient_ (Winckelmann), 29.

_Athenaeum_, 118.

Azay-le-Rideau, 32.

B

Brasenose College, description of, 15–17.

—— ancient ceremonies preserved at, 85.

“Bruno, Giordano” (_Gaston de Latour_), 140, 153.

Bussell, Dr. F. W., devoted companion to Pater, 21;

memorial sermon on, 24; 180–1, 183, 189.

Bywater, Prof. Ingram, 20, 192.

C

Caird, Dr. Edward, 20.

Canterbury, King’s School at, 2, 6, 134.

Capes, Mr. W. W., 20.

Carlyle, Thomas, 213.

Champneys, Mr. Basil, 21, 192.

_Child in the House, The._ See _Miscellaneous Studies_.

“Concert, The” (picture), 50.

Cowper, William, 1.

Creighton, Bishop, 21.

D

Daniel, Dr., 21.

—— Mrs., 21.

Dante (Prefatory Essay to Dr. C. L. Shadwell’s translation of), 159.

_Deffense et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse, La_ (Du Bellay), 45.

_Dialogues_ (Jowett), 56.

_Dictionary of National Biography_, 19.

Dilke, Lady, 37, 198.

E

_Earthly Paradise, The_ (Morris), 35.

Education (English system compared with Spartan theory of), 167–8.

Eliot, George, 192.

_English Poets_ (Ward’s), 12.

F

_Fortnightly Review_, publication of essays in, 32–3; 67, 119, 140,

147, 153.

“France, Some Great Churches in,” 168–9.

G

Goethe, 11, 14, 29, 131.

Gore, Dr., 199.

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 21;

letter to, 32; 54, 189, 190, 202, 205.

_Greek Studies_ (1895)—

“Aegina, The Marbles of,” 76.

“Athletic Prizemen, The Age of,” 77, 168.

“Demeter and Persephone, The Myth of,” 71–2.

“Dionysus” (1876), 67–70.

“Euripides, The Bacchanals of,” 70–1, 200.

“Greek Sculpture, Beginnings of,” 74–6.

“Hippolytus Veiled” (1889), 73–4, 122, 153.

_Guardian_, 48, 57, 118, 119, 204, 206.

_Guenevere, Defence of_ (W. Morris), 33.

H

Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, 176.

Hursley, 4.

I

_Imaginary Portraits_, 73—

“Court Painters, A Prince of” (1885), 122.

Composition of, 124–5, 126.

“Denys l’Auxerrois” (1886), 122, 123, 126–8, 131.

“Duke Carl of Rosenmold” (1887), 122, 130–1, 207.

“Sebastian van Storck” (1886), 122, 128–30, 131, 207.

Italy, 9–10, 32.

J

_Jason_ (William Morris), 35.

Johnson, Mr. Lionel, 21.

Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, 9;

his opinion of Pater’s ability, 54–5, 56, 57, 196–7;

_Life_ of, 54, 56.

K

Keble, John, 4.

_King’s Tragedy, The_ (Rossetti), 87.

Kipling, Rudyard, 205–6.

L

Lamb, Charles, 213.

_Latour, Gaston de_, 92, 140–7.

_Letters_ (Pascal), 173.

_Lettres à une Inconnue_ (Prosper Mérimée), 158.

M

_Macmillan’s Magazine_, 140, 153.

Mallock, Mr., 52.

_Marius the Epicurean_, 46, 82–3, 85–9;

autobiographical impression of, 91–115;

reception of, 118, 162, 199;

quoted, 93–9, 101–2, 104, 107, 108, 112, 114.

May, Mrs. Walter, 2.

_Miscellaneous Studies_, 10—

“Apollo in Picardy” (1893), 123, 132–4.

“Art Notes in North Italy,” 159.

_Child in the House, The_ (1898), 4, 5, 79–82, 89, 122.

_Diaphaneitè_ (1864), 10–11.

_Emerald Uthwart_ (1892), 4, 6, 123, 131, 134–9, 159.

“Notre-Dame d’Amiens,” 168–9.

“Pascal,” 169, 202.

“Prosper Mérimée” (1890), 156–9.

“Raphael,” 159–62.

“Vézelay” (1894), 169.

N

_New Republic_ (Mallock), 52–4; 55; 193.

_New Review_, 159.

_Nineteenth Century_, 168.

O

Olney, 1.

Oxford, 8, 17–19, 23, 138.

P

Paget, Miss (Vernon Lee), 89–90.

_Pall Mall Gazette_, 118.

Pater, Dr. Richard Glode (father), 1;

death of, 2.

—— Miss (sister), 180.

—— Mrs. (mother), 2;

death of, 9.

—— Walter Horatio, forefathers, 1–2;

father, 1;

birth, 2;

mother, 2, 9;

brothers and sisters, 2;

family removes to Enfield, 2;

visits to Fish Hall, 2;

goes to school at Canterbury, 2;

religion, 2, 4, 13;

religious doubts, 173–4,

life, 196–201;

love of symbolism, 3, 36, 85, 196;

reticence, 3, 185;

instinct for expression triumphs over instinct for reticence, 217;

desires to take Holy Orders, 3;

intellectual awakening, 3;

meets Keble, 4;

sensitive apprehension of beauty, 4, 6, 12, 14, 215–6;

seriousness, 164;

Ruskin’s influence, 7;

enters Queen’s College, Oxford, 8;

course of study, 8–9;

takes second-class in Final Classical Schools, 9;

vacations spent in Germany, 9;

tours in Italy, 9, 32;

elected to Fellowship at Brasenose, 9;

goes into residence, 9;

friends, 9–10, 20–1, 123,

their appreciation of, 180–1;

his loyalty to, 186, 192;

early work destroyed, 10;

member of ‘Old Mortality’ Society, 10;

ideal of intellectual and moral sincerity, 10–11;

interest in philosophy, 11, 14;

Influence of Goethe, 11, 14;

first published writing, 12;

beginning of work, 13;

description of college rooms, 17–9;

simplicity of tastes, 18, 19, 117, 179;

habits, 19–20;

as a friend, 19–22, 26;

dislike of responsibility, 23;

deep sense of, 187;

as lecturer, 20, 84;

as Tutor and Dean, 20, 23, 25, 59, 84;

takes house in Norham Gardens, 21;

attitude towards young men, 24–6;

compared to Telemachus, 26;

self-revelation in writings, 27, 170;

essays published in _Fortnightly Review_, 32;

first book produced, 32;

criticism of Morris’s “Defence of Guenevere,” 33–5;

consistency and individuality, 36;

revolt against synthetic school of art-criticism, 37;

perception of music, 44;

definition of success, 47;

art-criticism, 48–9;

a great critic, 158;

writes for _Guardian_, 48;

criticism of da Vinci, 49;

of Botticelli, 50;

style parodied, 52–4;

misunderstanding with Jowett, 54–5;

his view of Jowett, 55–8;

reputation as a talker, 59, 188, 193;

lectures on _Greek Studies_, 67,

publication of, 67–78;

work becomes creative rather than critical, 78;

appearance of “The Child in the House,” 79;

absorbed in _Marius_, 82;

resigns tutorship, 83;

physical appearance, 85, 178, 180;

method of criticism, 87–8,

of working, 89, 123–4;

_Marius_ published, 89,

letters to Miss Paget concerning, 89;

removes to London, 117;

resides at Brasenose during term, 117;

appreciation of France, 117–18;

most fruitful years, 118;

contributes to current journals, 118–19;

essay on Sir T. Browne, 119–22;

at work on _Imaginary Portraits_, 122,

intends to bring out new volume of, 123;

fantastic writing, 126–8,

lack of restraint in style of “Denys l’Auxerrois,” 128;

melancholy introspectiveness, 138–9;

engaged on _Gaston de Latour_, 140;

composition of essay on “Style,” 147;

summary of artistic creed, 151;

ethical base of temperament, 153,

view of end of art, 153,

of value of the play, 154;

skill in dealing with Shakespeare’s works, 154–5;

at work on _Plato and Platonism_, 156,

places this work at the head of his own writings, 162,

aim in, 163;

lectures on Mérimée, 159;

writes introduction to _Dante_, 159;

not a philosopher, 163–5,

epigram on, 164;

development contrasted with Henry Sidgwick’s, 165;

last utterance, 169;

deep significance of essay on “Pascal,” 169–72,

admiration for, 173;

summary of _Pensées_, 173;

settles at St. Giles’, Oxford, 174;

later days, 174–5;

receives Hon. Degree of LL.D., Glasgow, 175;

visits Northern cathedrals, 175;

first serious illness, 175;

recovery, subsequent relapse, death, 176;

buried at Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, 176;

portraits of, 178;

physical strength varies with inner mood, 179;

sensibility, 179;

dress, 179–80;

shyness, 180;

dislike to opposition, 181;

lack of appreciation at Oxford, 181–2,

personal characteristics at, 183–4;

attitude towards the world, 185;

uniform kindness, 186;

aloofness from current thought, 186;

political views, 187;

reason for residence at Oxford, 187;

sacrifice to art, 188;

quality of humour, 188–91;

attracted by cats, 190–1;

as an examiner, 191–2;

anecdotes about, 193–4;

irony, 195;

views on principles of art, 195–6;

admiration for _Amiel’s Journal_, 199;

habits of composition, 201–6;

significant writing, 204;

principal characteristics of style, 204, 215;

typical sentence, 204–5;

did not read Stevenson or Kipling, 205–6;

always regards nature as a background, 206–7;

sensitiveness to adverse criticism, 209;

no precocious desire to write, 209–10;

abstains from verse composition, 210;

late development of style, 210–1;

attitude towards art, 212;

position in later English literature, 212–15;

writing contrasted with Carlyle’s, 213;

as a writer akin to Charles Lamb, 213;

a dreamer, 217–20.

Pater’s friends, 20, 21.

Pater, William Thompson (brother), 2.

Pattison, Mark (Rector of Lincoln), 21, 37, 190, 192.

_Pensées_ (Pascal), 173.

“Philosophers, The Three” (“The Chaldean Sages”), (picture), 50.

Plato, 165, 167.

_Plato and Platonism_, 20, 54, 58,

Jowett’s admiration of, 58;

began to appear (1892), 156; 159;

eventually published (1893), 162; 163–8.

Poe, E. A., criticism of, 23.

_Purgatory_ (C. L. Shadwell’s trans. of), 159.

Q

Queen’s College (Oxford), description of, 8.

R

_Renaissance, Studies in the History of the_ (with “Preface” and

“Conclusion”), 1st ed. (1873), 2nd and 3rd (1877), 32–3; 35,

36—

“Conclusion,” 45,

reason for exclusion from 2nd ed. of _Studies_, etc., 46, 47–8;

principle of selection explained, 37;

Lady Dilke’s criticism of, 37–8; 49–51, 52, 59, 162.

“Aucassin and Nicolette” (“Two Early French Stories”) (1873), 32–3,

38.

“Joachim du Bellay,” 33, 44–5.

“_Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on_” (1869), 32, 41, 42–3, 49, 177.

“Luca della Robbia,” 33, 39.

“Michelangelo, Poetry of,” 32, 39–40.

“Pico della Mirandola” (1871), 32, 38–9.

“Sandro Botticelli, A Fragment on,” 32, 39.

“School of Giorgione, The” (1877), 43–4, 50–1, 66.

“Winckelmann” (1866), 27–31, 45.

_Robert Elsmere_ (Mrs. H. Ward), 57,

review on, 119, 198–9.

“Rossetti, Dante Gabriel” (Ward’s _English Poets_), essay on, 86–7.

Ruskin, John, 7, 51, 163, 185, 214–15.

S

“Shadows of Events” (_Gaston de Latour_), 140.

Shadwell, 2.

Shadwell, Dr. Charles Lancelot (Pater’s lifelong friend), 9, 10 _n._;

as literary executor, 21.

“Solomon, The Judgment of” (picture), 51.

Stevenson, R. L., 205–6.

“Stormy Landscape, The” (“Adrastus and Hypsipyle”) (picture), 50, 51.

“Style,” see _Appreciations_.

Swinburne, Mr. A., 21.

Symons, Mr. Arthur, 21, 123.

T

_Tailor, The_ (Moroni’s), 123.

Telemachus, 26.

U

_Uthwart, Emerald_, see _Miscellaneous Studies_.

V

Verrocchio, 49.

W

Ward, Mr. Humphry, 18,

anecdote touching Pater’s lectures, 20;

Fellow of Brasenose, 21;

description of Pater, 22;

as tutor, 25;

spends summer vacation with, 26;

on Pater as a Fellow, 84, 199.

Warren, Mr. T. H., 21, 159, 174–5.

Watteau, Anthony, 124–5;

Pater’s most ambitious creation, 125, 131.

_Westminster Review_, first published writings in, 12.

_Winckelmann, Life of_ (Otto Jahn), 14.

“Winckelmann,” Pater’s study on, see _Renaissance_.

“Wordsworth,” Study of, 60–2;

review of, 119.