TALBOYS.

Which Encampment?

BULLER.

On the hill-side--up yonder--at Cladich.

TALBOYS.

You should have said so at first. I thought you meant that other down--

BULLER.

When I speak to you, I mean the _bona fide_ flesh and blood Talboys,

sitting by the side of the _bona fide_ flesh and blood Christopher

North, in Gutta Percha, and not that somewhat absurd, and, I trust,

ideal personage, standing on his head in the water, or it may be the

air, some fathoms below her keel--like a pearl-diver.

TALBOYS.

Put up your hands--so--my dear Mr North, and frame the picture.

NORTH.

And Maculloch not here! Why the hills behind Cladich, that people call

tame, make a background that no art might meliorate. Cultivation climbs

the green slopes, and overlays the green hill-ridges, while higher up

all is rough, brown, heathery, rocky--and behind that undulating line,

for the first time in my life, I see the peaks of mountains. From afar

they are looking at the Tents. And far off as they are, the power of

that Sycamore Grove connects them with our Encampment.

TALBOYS.

Are you sure, sir, they are not clouds?

NORTH.

If clouds, so much the better. If mountains, they deserve to be clouds;

and if clouds, they deserve to be mountains.

SEWARD.

The long broad shadow of the Grove tames the white of the Tents--tones

it--reduces it into harmony with the surrounding colour--into keeping

with the brown huts of the villagers, clustering on bank and brae on

both sides of the hollow river.

NORTH.

The cozey Inn itself from its position is picturesque.

TALBOYS.

The Swiss Giantess looks imposing--

BULLER.

So does the Van. But Deeside is the Pandemonium--

TALBOYS.

Well translated by Paterson in his Notes on Milton, "All-Devil's-Hall."

NORTH.

Hush. And how lovely the foreground! Sloping upland--with single trees

standing one by one, at distances wide enough to allow to each its own

little grassy domain--with its circle of bracken or broom--or its own

golden gorse grove--divided by the sylvan course of the hidden river

itself, visible only when it glimpses into the Loch--Here, friends, we

seem to see the united occupations of pastoral, agricultural--and--

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, I have a proposition to make.

NORTH.

You might have waited a moment till--

BULLER.

Not a moment. We all Four see the background--and the middle-ground and

the foreground--and all the ground round and about--and all the islands

and their shadows--and all the mountains and theirs--and, towering high

above all, that Cruachan of yours, who, I firmly believe, is behind

us--though 'twould twist my neck now to get a vizzy of him. No use

then in describing all that lies within the visible horizon--there it

is--let us enjoy it and be thankful--and let us talk this evening of

whatever may happen to come into our respective heads--and I beg leave

to add, sir, with all reverence, let's have fair play--let no single

man--young or old--take more than his own lawful share--

NORTH.

Sir?

BULLER.

And let the subject of angling be tabooed--and all its endless

botheration about baskets and rods, and reels and tackle--salmon,

sea-trout, yellow-fin, perch, pike, and the Ferox--and no drivel about

Deer and Eagles--

NORTH.

Sir? What's the meaning of all this--Seward, say--tell, Talboys.

BULLER.

And let each man on opening his mouth be _timed_--and let it be

two-minute time--and let me be time-keeper--but, in consideration

of your years and habits, and presidency, let time to you, sir, be

extended to two minutes and thirty seconds--and let us all talk time

about--and let no man seek to nullify the law by talking at railway

rate--and let no man who waives his right of turn, however often, think

to make up for the loss by claiming quarter of an hour afterwards--and

that, too, perhaps at the smartest of the soiree--and let there be no

contradiction, either round, flat, or angular--and let no man speak

about what he understands--that is, has long studied and made himself

master of--for that would be giving him an unfair--I had almost

said--would be taking a mean advantage--and let no man--

NORTH.

Why, the mutiny at the Nore was nothing to this!

BULLER.

Lord High Admiral though you be, sir, you must obey the laws of the

service--

NORTH.

I see how it is.

BULLER.

How is it?

NORTH.

But it will soon wear off--that's the saving virtue of Champagne.

BULLER.

Champagne indeed! Small Beer, smaller than the smallest size. You have

not the heart, sir, to give Champagne.

NORTH.

We had better put about, gentlemen, and go ashore.

BULLER.

My ever-honoured, long-revered sir! I have got intoxicated on our

Teetotal debauchery. The fumes of the water have gone to my head--and I

need but a few drops of brandy to set me all right. Billy--the flask.

There--I am as sober as a Judge.

NORTH.

Ay, 'tis thus, Buller, you wise wag, that you would let the "old man

garrulous" into the secret of his own tendencies--too often unconscious

he of the powers that have set so many asleep. I accept the law--but

let it--do let it be three-minute time.

BULLER.

Five--ten--twenty--"with thee conversing I forget all time."

NORTH.

Strike medium--Ten.

BULLER.

My dear sir, for a moment let me have that Spy-glass.

NORTH.

I must lay it down--for a Bevy of Fair Women are on the Mount--and are

brought so near that I hear them laughing--especially the Prima Donna,

whose Glass is in dangerous proximity with my nose.

BULLER.

Fling her a kiss, sir.

NORTH.

There--and how prettily she returns it!

BULLER.

Happy old man! Go where you will--

TALBOYS.

Ulysses and the Syrens. Had he my air-girdle, he would swim ashore.

NORTH.

"Oh, mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos!"

TALBOYS.

The words are regretful--but there is no regret in the voice that

syllables them--it is clear as a bell, and as gladsome.

NORTH.

Talking of kissing, I hear one of the most melodious songs that ever

flowed from lady's lip--

"The current that with gentle motion glides,

Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;

But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with th' enamelled stones,

_Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge_

_He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;_

And so by many winding nooks he strays

With willing sport to the wild ocean."

Is it not perfect?

SEWARD.

It is. Music--Painting, and Poetry--

BULLER.

Sculpture and architecture.

NORTH.

Buller, you're a blockhead. Dear Mr Alison, in his charming _Essays

on Taste_, finds a little fault in what seems to me a great beauty in

this, one of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare.

BULLER.

Sweetest. That's a miss-mollyish word.

NORTH.

Ass. One of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare. He finds fault with

the Current kissing the Sedges. "The pleasing personification which

we attribute to a brook is founded upon the faint belief of voluntary

motion, and is immediately checked when the Poet _descends_ to any

minute or particular resemblance."

SEWARD.

Descends!

NORTH.

The word, to my ear, does sound strangely; and though his expression,

"faint belief," is a true and a fine one, yet here the doctrine does

not apply. Nay, here we have a true notion inconsiderately misapplied.

Without doubt Poets of more wit than sensibility do follow on a

similitude beyond the suggestion of the contemplated subject. But the

rippling of water against a sedge suggests a kiss--is, I believe, a

kiss--liquid, soft, loving, _lipped_.

BULLER.

Beautiful.

NORTH.

Buller, you are a fellow of fine taste. Compare the whole catalogue of

metaphorical kisses--admitted and claimable--and you will find this one

of the most natural of them all. Pilgrimage, in Shakspeare's day, had

dropt, in the speech of our Poets, from its early religious propriety,

of seeking a holy place under a vow, into a roving of the region.

See his "Passionate Pilgrim." If Shakspeare found the word so far

generalised, then "wanderer through the woods," or plains, or through

anything else, is the suggestion of the beholding. The river is more,

indeed; being, like the pilgrim, on his way to a term, and an obliged

way--"the wild ocean."

SEWARD.

The "faint belief of voluntary motion"--Mr Alison's fine

phrase--is one, and possibly the grounding incentive to

impersonating the "current" here; but other elements enter in;

liquidity--transparency--which suggest a spiritual nature, and Beauty

which moves Love.

NORTH.

Ay, and the Poets of that age, in the fresher alacrity of their fancy,

had a justification of comparisons, which do not occur as promptly to

us, nor, when presented to us, delight so much as they would, were our

fancy as alive as theirs. You might suspect _a priori_ Ovid, Cowley,

and Dryden, as likely to be led by indulgence of their ingenuity into

passionless similitudes--and you may misdoubt even that Shakspeare

was in danger of being so run away with. But let us have clear and

unequivocal instances. This one assuredly is not of the number. It is

exquisite.

TALBOYS.

Mr Alison, I presume to think, sir, should either have quoted the whole

speech, or kept the whole in view, when animadverting on those two

lines about the kissing Pilgrim. Julia, a Lady of Verona, beloved by

Proteus, is only half-done--and now she comes--to herself.

"Then let me go, and hinder not my course;

I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,

And make a pastime of each weary step,

Till the last step have brought me to my love;

And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,

A blessed soul doth in Elysium."

The language of Shakspeare's Ladies is not the language we hear in

real life. I wish it were. Real life would then be delightful indeed.

Julia is privileged to be poetical far beyond the usage of the very

best circles--far beyond that of any mortal creatures. For the God

Shakspeare has made her and all her kin poetical--and if you object to

any of the lines, you must object to them all. Eminently beautiful,

sir, they are; and their beauty lies in the passionate, imaginative

spirit that pervades the whole, and sustains the Similitude throughout,

without a moment's flagging of the fancy, without a moment's departure

from the truthfulness of the heart.

NORTH.

Talboys, I thank you--you are at the root.

SEWARD.

A wonderful thing--altogether--is Impersonation.

NORTH.

It is indeed. If we would know the magnitude of the dominion which

the disposition constraining us to impersonate has exercised over the

human mind, we should have to go back unto those ages of the world when

it exerted itself, uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to

religious impulses--when Impersonations of Natural Objects and Powers,

of Moral Powers and of Notions entertained by the Understanding, filled

the Temples of the Nations with visible Deities, and were worshipped

with altars and incense, hymns and sacrifices.

BULLER.

Was ever before such disquisition begotten by--an imaginary kiss among

the Sedges!

NORTH.

Hold your tongue, Buller. But if you would see how hard this dominion

is to eradicate, look to the most civilised and enlightened times,

when severe Truth has to the utmost cleansed the Understanding of

illusion--and observe how tenaciously these imaginary Beings, endowed

with imaginary life, hold their place in our Sculpture, Painting, and

Poetry, and Eloquence--nay, in our common and quiet speech.

SEWARD.

It is all full of them. The most prosaic of prosers uses poetical

language without knowing it--and Poets without knowing to what extent

and degree.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, and were we to expatiate in the walks of the profounder

emotions, we should sometimes be startled by the sudden apparitions

of boldly impersonated Thoughts, upon occasions that did not seem

to promise them--where you might have thought that interests of

overwhelming moment would have effectually banished the play of

imagination.

TALBOYS.

Shakspeare is justified, then--and the Lady Julia spoke like a Lady in

Love with all nature--and with Proteus.

BULLER.

A most beautiful day is this indeed--but it is a Puzzler.

"The Swan on still St Mary's Lake

Floats double, Swan and Shadow;"

But here all the islands float double--and all the castles and

abbeys--and all the hills and mountains--and all the clouds and boats

and men,--double, did I say--triple--quadruple,--we are here, and

there, and everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same moment. Inishail,

I have you--no--Gutta Percha slides over you, and you have no material

existence. Very well.

SEWARD.

Is there no house on Inishail?

NORTH.

Not one--but the house appointed for all living. A Burial-place. I

see it--but not one of you--for it is little noticeable, and seldom

used--on an average, one funeral in the year. Forty years ago I stepped

into a small snuff-shop in the Saltmarket, Glasgow, to replenish my

shell--and found my friend was from Lochawe-side. I asked him if

he often revisited his native shore, and he answered--seldom, and

had not for a long time--but that though his lot did not allow him

to live there, he hoped to be buried in Inishail. We struck up a

friendship--his snuff was good, and so was his whisky, for it was

unexcised. A few years ago, trolling for Feroces, I met a boat with a

coffin, and in it the body of the old tobacconist.

SEWARD.

"The Churchyard among the Mountains," in Wordsworth's _Excursion_, is

alone sufficient for his immortality on earth.

NORTH.

It is. So for Gray's is his Elegy. But some hundred and forty lines

in all--no more--yet how comprehensive--how complete! "In a Country

Churchyard!" Every generation there buries the whole hamlet--which is

much the same as burying the whole world--or a whole world.

SEWARD.

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!"

All Peasants--diers and mourners! Utmost simplicity of all belonging

to life--utmost simplicity of all belonging to death. Therefore,

universally affecting.

NORTH.

Then the--Grayishness.

BULLER.

The what, sir?

NORTH.

The Grayishness. The exquisite scholarship, and the high artifice of

the words and music--yet all in perfect adaptation to the scene and its

essential character. Is there not in that union and communion of the

solemn-profound, and the delicate-exquisite, something Cathedral-like?

Which has the awe and infinitude of Deity and Eternity, and the

prostrations and aspirations of adoration for its basis--expressed in

the general structure and forms; and all this meeting and blent into

the minute and fine elaboration of the ornaments? Like the odours

that steal and creep on the soft, moist, evening air, whilst the dim

hush of the Universal Temple dilates and elates. The least and the

greatest in one. Why not? Is not that spiritual--angelical--divine! The

least is not too exiguous for apprehension--the amplest exceeds not

comprehension--and their united power is felt when not understood. I

speak, Seward, of that which might be suggested for a primary fault in

the Elegy--the contrast of the most artful, scholarly style, and the

simple, rude, lowly, homely matter. But you shall see that every fancy

seizes, and every memory holds especially those verses and wordings

which bring out this contrast--that richest line--

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn!"

is felt to be soon followed well by that simplest--

"No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"----

where--I take "lowly" to imply low in earth--humbly turfed or

flowered--and of the lowly.

SEWARD.

And so, sir, the pomp of a Cathedral is described, though a village

Church alone is in presence. So Milton, Cromwell, and other great

powers are set in array--that which these were not, against that which

those were.

NORTH.

Yet hear Dr Thomas Brown--an acute metaphysician--but an obtuse

critic--and no Poet at all. "The two images in this stanza ('Full many

a gem,' &c.,) certainly produce very different degrees of poetical

delight. That which is borrowed from the rose blooming in solitude

pleases in a very high degree, both as it contains a just and beautiful

similitude, and still more as the similitude is one of the most likely

to have arisen in such a situation. But the simile in the two first

lines of the stanza, though it may perhaps philosophically be as just,

has no other charm, and strikes us immediately as not the natural

suggestion of such a moment and such a scene. To a person moralising

amid a simple Churchyard, there is perhaps no object that would not

sooner have occurred than this piece of minute jewellery--'a gem of

purest ray serene, in the unfathomed caves of ocean.'"

SEWARD.

A person moralising! He forgot that person was Thomas Gray. And he

never knew what you have told us now.

NORTH.

Why, my dear Seward, the Gem is the recognised most intense

expression, from the natural world, of worth--inestimable priceless

price--dependent on rarity and beauty. The Flower is a like intense

expression, from the same world, of the power to call forth love. The

first image is _felt_ by every reader to be high, and _exalting_ its

object; the second to be tender, and openly _pathetic_. Of course it

moves more, and of course it comes last. The Poet has just before

spoken of Milton and Cromwell--of bards and kings--and history with all

her wealth. Is the transition violent from these objects to Gems? He is

moved by, but he is not bound to, the scene and time. His own thoughts

emancipate. Brown seems utterly to have forgotten that the Poet himself

is the Dramatic person of the Monologue. Shall he be restricted from

using the richness and splendour of his own thoughts? That one stanza

sums up the two or three preceding--and is perfectly attuned to the

reigning mood, temper, or pathos.

BULLER.

Thank you, gentlemen. The Doctor is done brown.

NORTH.

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave!"

Methinks I could read you a homily on that Text.

BULLER.

To-morrow, sir, if you please. To-morrow is Sunday--and you may read

it to us as we glide to Divine Service at Dalmally--two of us to the

Established, and two of us to the Free Kirk.

NORTH.

Be it so. But you will not be displeased with me for quoting now, from

heart-memory, a single sentence on the great line, from Beattie, and

from Adam Fergusson. "It presents to the imagination a wide plain,

where several roads appear, crowded with glittering multitudes, and

issuing from different quarters, but drawing nearer and nearer as they

advance, till they terminate in the dark and narrow house, where all

their glories enter in succession, and disappear for ever."

SEWARD.

Thank you, sir. That is Beattie?

NORTH.

It is. Fergusson's memorable words are--"If from this we are disposed

to collect any inference adverse to the pursuits of glory, it may be

asked whither do the paths of ignominy lead? If to the grave also, then

our choice of a life remains to be made on the grounds of its intrinsic

value, without regard to an end which is common to every station of

life we can lead, whether illustrious or obscure."

SEWARD.

Very fine. Who says it? Fergusson--who was he?

NORTH.

The best of you Englishers are intolerably ignorant about Scotland. Do

you know the Reverend John Mitford?

SEWARD.

I do--and have for him the greatest respect.

NORTH.

So have I. He is one of our best Editors--as Pickering is one of

our best Publishers of the Poets. But I am somewhat doubtful of the

truthfulness of his remarks on the opening of the Elegy, in the

Appendix to his excellent Life of Gray. "The Curfew 'toll' is not the

appropriate word--it was not a slow bell tolling for the dead."

SEWARD.

True enough, not for the dead--but Gray then felt as if it were for the

dying--and chose to say so--the parting day. Was it quick and "merry as

a marriage-bell?" I can't think it--nor did Milton, "swinging _slow_

with sullen roar." Gray was Il Penseroso. Prospero calls it the "solemn

curfew." Toll is right.

NORTH.

But, says my friend Mitford, "there is another error, a confusion of

time. The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the

ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and 'the

glimmering landscape' has 'long ceased to fade' before the curfew. The

'parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the

word Curfew is taken simply for 'the Evening Bell,' then also is the

time incorrect--and a _knell_ is not tolled for the parting, but for

the parted--'and leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades

the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incidents, instead

of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and

inharmonious; especially as it appears soon after that it was _not_

dark. For 'the moping owl does to the moon complain.'"

SEWARD.

Pardon me, sir, I cannot venture to answer all that--but if Mitford

be right, Gray must be very wrong indeed. Let me see--give us it over

again--sentence by sentence--

BULLER.

No--no--no. Once is enough--and enough is as good as a feast.

NORTH.

Talboys?

TALBOYS.

Since you have a great respect for Mr Mitford, sir, so have I. But

hitherto I have been a stranger to his merits.

SEWARD.

The best of you Scottishers are intolerably ignorant about England.

TALBOYS.

In the first place, Mr North, when does the Curfew toll, or ring?--for

hang me if I remember--or rather ever knew. And in the second place,

when does the Evening Bell give tongue?--for hang me if I am much

better informed as to his motions. Yet I should know something of the

family of the Bells. Say--_eight_ o'clock. Well. It is summer-time,

I suppose; for you cannot believe that so dainty a person in health

and habits, as the Poet Gray, would write an Elegy in a Country

churchyard in winter, and well on towards night. True, that is a way of

speaking; he did not write it with his crow-quill, in his neat hand,

on his neat vellum, on the only horizontal tomb-stone. But in the

Churchyard he assumes to sit--probably under a Plane-tree, for sake of

the congenial Gloom. Season of the year ascertained--Summer--time of

Curfew--eight--then I can find no fault with the Ploughman. He comes

in well--either as an image or a man. He must have been an honest,

hard-working fellow, and worth the highest wages going between the

years 1745 and 1750. At what hour do ploughmen leave the stilts in

Cambridgeshire? We must not say at six. Different hours in different

counties, Buller.

BULLER.

Go on--all's right, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

It is not too much to believe that Hodge did not grudge, occasionally,

a half-hour over, to a good master. Then he had to stable his

horses--Star and Smiler--rub them down--bed them--fill rack and

manger--water them--make sure their noses were in the oats--lock the

stable before the nags were stolen--and then, and not till then,

"The Ploughman homewards plods his weary way."

For he does not sleep on the Farm--he has a wife and small family--that

is, a large family of smallish children--in the Hamlet, at least two

miles off--and he does not walk for a wager of a flitch of bacon and

barrel of beer--but for his accustomed rasher and a jug--and such

endearments as will restore his weariness up to the proper pitch for a

sound night's sleep. God bless him!

BULLER.

Shorn of your beams, Mr North, eclipsed.

TALBOYS.

The ploughman, then, does not return "two or three hours before the

curfew rings." Nor has "the glimmering landscape long ceased to fade

before the curfew." Nor is "the parting day incorrect." Nor "has the

day long finished." Nor, when it may have finished, or may finish, can

any man in the hamlet, during all that gradual subsiding of light and

sound, take upon him to give any opinion at all.

NORTH.

My boy, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

"And leave the world to darkness and to me." Ay--into his hut goes

the ploughman, and leaves the world and me to darkness--which is

coming--but not yet come--the Poet knows it is coming--near at hand its

coming glooms; and Darkness shows her divinity as she is preparing to

mount her throne.

NORTH.

Nothing can be better.

TALBOYS.

"'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incident,

instead of being progressive, falls back, and makes the picture

confused and inharmonious." Confused and inharmonious! By no manner

of means. Nothing of the sort. There is no retrogression--the day has

been unwilling to die--cannot believe she is dying--and cannot think

'tis for her the curfew is tolling; but the Poet feels it is even

so; the glimmering and the fading, beautiful as they are, are sure

symptoms--she is dying into Evening, and Evening will soon be the dying

into Night; but to the Poet's eye how beautiful the transmutations! Nor

knows he that the Moon has arisen, till, at the voice of the nightbird,

he looks up the ivied church-tower, and there she is, whether full,

waning, or crescent, there are not data for the Astronomer to declare.

NORTH.

My friend Mr Mitford says of the line, "No more shall rouse them from

their lowly bed"--That "here the epithet _lowly_, as applied to _bed_,

occasions an ambiguity, as to whether the Poet means the bed on which

they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid;" and he adds, "there

can be no greater fault in composition than a doubtful meaning."

TALBOYS.

There cannot be a more touching beauty. Lowly applies to both. From

their lowly bed in their lowly dwellings among the quick, those joyous

sounds used to awaken them; from their lowly bed in their lowly

dwellings among the dead, those joyous sounds will awaken them never

more: but a sound will awaken them when He comes to judge both the

quick and the dead; and for them there is Christian hope--from

"Many a holy text around them strewed

That teach the rustic moralist to die."

NORTH.

"Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe hath broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!"

This stanza--says Mr Mitford--"is made up of various pieces inlaid.

'Stubborn glebe' is from Gay; 'drive afield' from Milton; 'sturdy

stroke' from Spenser. Such is too much the system of Gray's

composition, and therefore such the cause of his imperfections. Purity

of language, accuracy of thought, and even similarity of rhyme, all

give way to the introduction of certain poetical expressions; in fact,

the beautiful jewel, when brought, does not fit into the new setting,

or socket. Such is the difference between the flower stuck into the

ground and those that grow from it." Talboys?

BULLER.

Why not--Buller?

TALBOYS.

I give way to the gentleman.

BULLER.

Not for worlds would I take the word out of any man's mouth.

TALBOYS.

Gray took "stubborn glebe" from Gay. Why from Gay? It has been familiar

in men's mouths from the introduction of agriculture into this Island.

May not a Saxon gentleman say "drive their teams afield" without charge

of theft from Milton, who said "drove afield." Who first said "Gee-ho,

Dobbin?" Was Spenser the first--the only man before Milton--who used

"sturdy stroke?" and has nobody used it since Gray?

BULLER.

You could give a "sturdy stroke" yourself, Talboys. What's your weight?

TALBOYS.

Gray's style is sometimes too composite--you yourself, sir, would

not deny it is so--but Mr Mitford's instances here are absurd, and

the charge founded on them false. Gray seldom, if ever--say never,

"_sacrifices_ purity of language, and accuracy of thought," for the

sake of introducing certain poetical expressions. "All give way" is a

gross exaggeration. The beautiful words of the brethren, with which

his loving memory was stored, came up in the hour of imagination, and

took their place among the words as beautiful of his own congenial

inspirations; the flowers he transplanted from poetry "languished not,

grew dim, nor died;" for he had taken them up gently by the roots,

and with some of the old mould adhering to their tendrils, and, true

florist as he was, had prepared for them a richest soil in his own

garden, which he held from nature, and which the sun and the dew of

nature nourished, and will nourish for ever.

BULLER.

That face is not pleasant, sir. Nothing so disfigures a face as envy.

Old Poets at last grow ugly all--but you, sir, are a Philosopher--and

on your benign countenance 'twas but a passing cloud. There--you are as

beautiful as ever--how comely in critical old age! Any farther fault to

find with our friend Mitford?

NORTH.

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires,

Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."

"'Pious drops' is from Ovid--piæ lachrymæ; 'closing eye' is from

Pope--'voice of nature' from the Anthologia, and the last line from

Chaucer--'Yet on our ashes cold is fire yreken.' _From so many quarries

are the stones brought to form this elaborate Mosaic pavement._" I

say, for "piæ lachrymæ" all honour to Ovid--for "pious drops" all

honour to Gray. "Closing eye" is _not_ from Pope's Elegy; "voice

of nature" is _not_ from the Anthologia, but from Nature herself;

Chaucer's line may have suggested Gray's, but the reader of Chaucer

knows that Gray's has a tender and profound meaning which is not in

Chaucer's at all--and he knows, too, that Mr Mitford is not a reader of

Chaucer--for were he, he could not have written "ashes" for "ashen."

There were _no_ quarries--there is _no_ Mosaic. Mosaic pavement! Worse,

if possible--more ostentatiously pedantic--even than stuck in flowers,

jewels, settings, and sockets.

TALBOYS.

The Stanza is sacred to sorrow.

NORTH.

"From this Stanza," quoth Mitford, "the style of the composition drops

into _a lower key_; the language is plainer, and is not in harmony with

the splendid and elaborate diction of the former part." This objection

is disposed of by what I said some minutes ago----

BULLER.

Half an hour ago--on _Grayishness_.

NORTH.

And I have only this farther to say, gentlemen, that though the

language is plainer--yet it is solemn; nor is it unpoetical--for

the hoary-headed swain was moved as he spake; the style, if it drop

into a lower key, is accordant with that higher key on which the

music was pitched that has not yet left our hearing. An Elegy is not

an Ode--the close should be mournful as the opening--with loftier

strain between--and it is so; and whatever we might have to say of

the Epitaph--its final lines are "awful"--as every man must have felt

them to be--whether thought on in our own lonely night-room--in the

Churchyard of Grantchester, where it is said Gray mused the Elegy--or

by that Burial-ground in Inishail--or here afloat in the joyous

sunshine for an hour privileged to be happy in a world of grief.

BULLER.

Let's change the subject, sir. May I ask what author you have in your

other hand?

NORTH.

Alison on Taste.

BULLER.

You don't say so! I thought you quoted from memory.

NORTH.

So I did; but I have dog-eared a page or two.

BULLER.

I see no books lying about in the Pavilion--only Newspapers--and

Magazines--and Reviews--and trash of that kind----

NORTH.

Without which, you, my good fellow, could not live a week.

BULLER.

The Spirit of the Age! The Age should be ashamed of herself for living

from hand to mouth on Periodical Literature. The old Lady should

indeed, sir. If the Pensive Public conceits herself to be the Thinking

World--

NORTH.

Let us help to make her so. I have a decent little Library of some

three hundred select volumes in the Van--my Plate-chest--and a few

dozens of choice wines for my friends--of Champagne, which you, Buller,

call small beer----

BULLER.

I retracted and apologised. Is that the key of the Van at your

watch-chain?

NORTH.

It is. So many hundred people about the Encampment--sometimes among

them suspicious strangers in paletots in search of the picturesque, and

perhaps the pecuniary--that it is well to intrust the key to my own

body-guard. It does not weigh an ounce. And _that_ lock is not to be

picked by the ghost of Huffey White.

SEWARD.

But of the volume in hand, sir?

NORTH.

"In that fine passage in the Second Book of the Georgics," says Mr

Alison, "in which Virgil celebrates the praises of his native country,

after these fine lines--

'Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus æstas;

Bis gravidæ pecudes, bis pomis utilis arbos.

At rabidæ tigres absunt, et sæva leonum

Semina: nec miseros fallunt aconita legentes:

Nec rapit immensos orbes per humum, neque tanto

Squameus in spiram tractu se colligit anguis.'

There is no reader whose enthusiasm is not checked by the cold and

prosaic line which follows,--

'Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem.'

The tameness and vulgarity of the transition dissipates at once the

emotion we had shared with the Poet, and reduces him, in our opinion,

to the level of a mere describer."

SEWARD.

Cold and prosaic line! Tameness and vulgarity! I am struck mute.

NORTH.

I have no doubt that Mr Alison distressed himself with "_Adde_." It is

a word from a merchant's counting-house, reckoning up his gains. And so

much the better. Virgil is making out the balance-sheet of Italy--he

is inventorying her wealth. Mr Alison would have every word away from

reality. Not so _the_ Poet. Every now and then, they--the Poets--amuse

themselves with dipping their pencils into the real, the common, the

everyday, the homely. By so doing they arrest belief, which above

everything they desire to hold fast. I should not wonder if you might

catch Spenser at it, even. Shakspeare is full of it. There is nothing

else prosaic in the passage; and if Virgil had had the bad taste to say

"Ecce" instead of "Adde," I suppose no fault would have been found.

SEWARD.

But what can Mr Alison mean by the charge of tameness and _vulgarity_?

NORTH.

I have told you, sir.

SEWARD.

You have not, sir.

NORTH.

I have, sir.

SEWARD.

Yes--yes--yes. "Adde" is vulgar! I cannot think so.

NORTH.

The Cities of Italy, and the "operum labor," always have been and

are an admiration. The words "Egregias urbes" suggest the general

stateliness and wealth--"operumque laborem," the particular

buildings--Temples, Basilicas, Theatres, and Great Works of the lower

Utility. A summary and most vivid expression of a land possessed

by intelligent, civilised, active, spirited, vigorous, tasteful

inhabitants--also an eminent adorning of the land.

SEWARD.

Lucretius says, that in spring the Cities are in flower--or on

flower--or a flower--with children. And Lucan, at the beginning of the

_Pharsalia_, describes the Ancient or Greek Cities desolate. They were

fond and proud of their "tot egregiæ urbes" as the Modern Italians

are--and with good reason.

NORTH.

How judiciously the Critics stop short of the lines that would

overthrow their criterion always! The present case is an extraordinary

example. Had Mr Alison looked to the lines immediately following, he

would not have objected to that One. For

"Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis,

Fluminaque antiquos subter labentia muros"

is very beautiful--brings the whole under the domain of Poetry, by

singular Picturesqueness, and by gathering the whole past history of

Italy up--fetching it in with a word--_antiquos_.

SEWARD.

I can form no conjecture as to the meaning of Mr Alison's objections.

He quotes a few fine lines from the "Praise of Italy," and then

one line which he calls prosaic, and would have us to hold up our

hands in wonder at the lame and impotent conclusion--at the sudden

transformation of Virgil the poet into Virgil the most prosaic of

Prosers. You have said enough already, sir, to prove that he is in

error even on his own showing;--but how can this fragmentary--this

piecemeal mode of quotation--so common among critics of the lower

school, and so unworthy of those of the higher--have found favour with

Mr Alison, one of the most candid and most enlightened of men? Some

accidental prejudice from mere carelessness--but, once formed, retained

in spite of the fine and true Taste which, unfettered, would have felt

the fallacy, and vindicated his admired Virgil.

NORTH.

The "Laudes"--to which the Poet is brought by the preceding bold,

sweeping, winged, and poetical strain about the indigenous vines

of Italy--have two-fold root--TREES and the glory of LANDS. Virgil

kindles on the double suggestion--the trees of Italy compared to the

trees of other regions. They are the trees of primary human service

and gladness--Oil and Wine. For see at once the deep, sound natural

ground in human wants--the bounty of Nature--of Mother Earth--"whatever

Earth, all-bearing Mother, yields"--to her human children. That is the

gate of entrance; but not prosaically--but two gate-posts of a most

poetical mythus-fed husbandman. For we have Jason's fire-mouthed Bulls

_ploughing_, and Cadmus-sown teeth of the dragon springing up in armed

men. Then comes, instead, mild, benign, Man-loving Italy--"gravidæ

fruges"--the heavy-eared corn--or rather big-teeming--the juice

of Bacchus--the Olives, and the "broad herds of Cattle." Note--ye

Virgilians--the Corn of Book First--the Oil and Wine of Book

Second--and the Cattle of Book Third--for the sustaining Thought--the

organic life of his Work moves in his heart.

BULLER.

And the Fourth--Bees--honey--and honey-makers are like Milkers--in a

way small Milch-cows.

NORTH.

They are. Once a-foot--or a-wing--he hurries and rushes along, all

through the "Laudes." The majestic victim-Bull of the Clitumnus--the

incipient Spring--the double Summer--_the absence_ of all envenomed

and deadly broods--tigers--lions--aconite--serpents. This is NATURE'S

FAVOUR. Then _Man's Works_--cities and forts--(rock-fortresses)--the

great lakes of Northern Italy--showing Man again in their vast

edifications. Then Nature in veins of metals precious or useful--then

Nature in her production of Man--the Marsi--the Sabellian youth--the

Ligurian inured to labour--and the Volscian darters--then single mighty

shapes and powers of Man--ROMANS--the Decii, the Marii, the Camilli,

"Scipiadas duros bello, et te, maxime Cæsar."

The King of Men--the Lord of the Earth--the pacificator of the

distracted Empire--which, to a Roman, is as much as to say the World.

Then--hail Saturnian Land! Mother of Corn! Saturnian, because golden

Saturn had reigned there--Mother, I suppose the rather because in

_his_ time corn sprung unsown--_sine semine_--She gave it from out

of her own loving and cherishing bosom. _To Thee_, Italy, sing I my

Ascræan or Hesiodic song. The Works and Days--the Greek Georgics are

his avowed prototype--rude prototype to magnificence--like the Arab of

the Desert transplanted to rear his empire of dazzling and picturesque

civilisation in the Pyrenean Peninsula.

BULLER.

Take breath, sir. Virgil said well--

"Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem."

SEWARD.

Allow me one other word. Virgil--in the vivid lines quoted with

admiration by Mr Alison--lauds his beloved Italy for _the absence_ of

wild beasts and serpents--and he magnifies the whole race of serpents

by his picture of One--the Serpent King--yet with subjects all equal in

size to himself in our imagination. The Serpent is _in_ the Poetry, but

he is _not in_ Italy. Is this a false artifice of composition--a vain

ornament? Oh, no! He describes the Saturnian Land--the mother of corn

and of men--bounteous, benign, golden, maternal Italy. The negation has

the plenitude of life, which the fabulous absence of noxious reptiles

has for the sacred Island of Ierne.

BULLER.

Erin-go-bragh!

SEWARD.

Suddenly he sees another vision--not of what is absent but present;

and then comes the line arraigned and condemned--followed by lines as

great--

"Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem,

Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis,

Fluminaque antiquos subter labentia muros."

The first line grasps in one handful all the mighty, fair, wealthy

CITIES of Italy--the second all the rock-cresting _Forts_ of

Italy--from the Alpine head to the sea-washed foot of the Peninsula.

The collective One Thought of the Human Might and Glory of Italy--as

it appears on the countenance of the Land--or visible in its utmost

concentration in the girdled Towns and Cities of Men.

BULLER.

"Adde" then is right, Seward. On that North and you are at one.

NORTH.

Yes, it is right, and any other word would be wrong. ADDE! Note the

sharpness, Buller, of the significance--the vivacity of the short

open sound. Fling it out--ring it out--sing it out. Look at the

very repetition of the powerful "TOT"--"_tot_ egregias"--"_tot_

congesta"--witnessing by one of the first and commonest rules in the

grammar of rhetoric--whether Virgil speaks in prose or in fire.

BULLER.

In fire.

NORTH.

Mr Alison then goes on to say, "that the effect of the following

nervous and beautiful lines, in the conclusion of the same Book, is

_nearly destroyed_ by a similar defect. After these lines,

"Hanc olim veteres vitam coluêre Sabini,

Hanc Remus et Frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit,

Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma;"

We little expect the following _spiritless_ conclusion:--

"_Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces._"

SEWARD.

Oh! why does Mr Alison call that line _spiritless_?

NORTH.

He gives no reason--assured by his own dissatisfaction, that he has but

to quote it, and leave it in its own naked impotence.

SEWARD.

I hope you do not think it spiritless, sir.

NORTH.

I think it contains the concentrated essence of spirit and of power.

Let any one think of Rome, piled up in greatness, and grandeur,

and glory--and a Wall round about--and in a moment his imagination

is filled. What sort of a Wall? A garden wall to keep out orchard

thieves--or a modern wall of a French or Italian town to keep out wine

and meat, that they may come in at the gate and pay toll? I trow not.

But a Wall against the World armed and assailing! Remember that Virgil

saw Rome--and that his hearers did--and that in his eyes and theirs

she was Empress of the inhabited Earth. She held and called herself

such--it was written in her face and on her forehead. The visible,

tangible splendour and magnificence meant this, or they meant nothing.

The stone and lime said this--and Virgil's line says it, sedately and

in plain, simple phrase, which yet is a Climax.

SEWARD.

As the dreaded Semiramis was flesh and blood--corporeal--made of the

four elements--yet her soul and her empiry spake out of her--so spake

they from the Face of Rome.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward--put these two things together--the Aspect that speaks

Domination of the World, and the Wall that girds her with strength

impregnable--and what more could you possibly demand from her Great

Poet?

SEWARD.

Arx is a Citadel--we may say an Acropolis. Athens had one Arx--so had

Corinth. One Arx is enough to one Queenly City. But this Queen, within

her one Wall, has enclosed Seven Arces--as if she were Seven Queens.

NORTH.

Well said, Seward. The Seven Hills appeared--and to this day do--to

characterise the Supremacy of Rome. The Seven-Hilled City! You seem

to have said everything--the Seven Hills are as a seven-pillared

Throne--and all that is in one line--given by Virgil. Delete it--no not

for a thousand gold crowns.

BULLER.

Not for the Pigot Diamond--not for the Sea of Light.

NORTH.

Imagine Romulus tracing the circuit on which the walls were to rise of

his little Rome--the walls ominously lustrated with a brother's blood.

War after war humbles neighbouring town after town, till the seas that

bathe, and the mountains that guard Italy, enclose the confederated

Republic. It is a step--a beginning. East and West, North and South,

flies the Eagle, dipping its beak in the blood of battle-fields. Where

it swoops, there fanning away the pride, and fame, and freedom of

nations, with the wafture of its wings. Kingdoms and Empires that were,

are no more than Provinces; till the haughty Roman, stretching out the

fact to the limits of his ambitious desires, can with some plausibility

deceive himself, and call the edges of the Earth the boundaries of his

unmeasured Dominion.

SEWARD.

"O Italy! Italy! would Thou wert stronger or less beautiful!"--was the

mournful apostrophe of an Italian Poet, who saw, in the latter ages,

his refined but enervated countrymen trampled under the foot of a more

martial people from far beyond the Alps.

NORTH.

Good Manners giving a vital energy and efficacy to good Laws--in these

few words, gentlemen, may be comprised the needful constituents of

National Happiness and Prosperity--the foremost conditions.

TALBOYS.

Ay--ay--sir. For good Laws without good Manners are an empty

breath--whilst good Manners ask the protecting and preserving succour

of good Laws. But the good Manners are of the first necessity, for they

naturally produce the good Laws.

NORTH.

What does history show, Talboys, but nations risen up to flourish in

wealth, power, and greatness, that with corrupted and luxurious manners

have again sunk from their pre-eminence; whilst another purer and

simpler people has in turn grown mighty, and taken their room in the

world's eye--some hardy, simple, frugal race, perhaps, whom the seeming

disfavour of nature constrains to assiduous labour, and who maintain in

the lap of their mountains their independence and their pure and happy

homes.

TALBOYS.

The Luxury--the invading Goth and Hun--the dismembering--and new States

uprisen upon the ruins of the World's fallen Empire. There is one line

in Collins' _Ode to Freedom_--Mr North--which I doubt if I understand.

NORTH.

Which?

TALBOYS.

"No, Freedom, no--I will not tell

How Rome before thy weeping face

Pushed by a wild and artless race

From off its wide, ambitious base,

With heaviest sound a giant-statue fell--

What time the northern Sons of Spoil awoke,

And all the blended work of strength and grace,

With many a rude repeated stroke,

And many a barbarous yell, to thousand fragments broke."

NORTH.

Which?

TALBOYS.

"How Rome before thy _weeping face_."

NORTH.

Freedom wept at Rome's overthrow--though she had long been Freedom's

enemy--and though her destroyers were Freedom's children--and "Spoil's

Sons"--for how could Freedom look unmoved at the wreck "of all that

blended work of strength and grace"--though raised by slaves at the

beck of Tyrants? It was not always so.

BULLER.

Let me, Apollo-like, my dear sir, pinch your ear, and admonish you to

return to the point from which, in discursive gyrations, you and Seward

have been----

NORTH.

Like an Eagle giving an Eaglet lessons how to fly----

BULLER.

You promised solemnly, sir, not to mention Eagles this evening.

NORTH.

I did not, sir.

BULLER.

But, then, Seward is no Eaglet--he is, and long has been, a

full-fledged bird, and can fly as well's yourself, sir.

NORTH.

There you're right. But then, making a discursive gyration round a

point is not leaving it--and there you're wrong. Silly folk--not you,

Buller, for you are a strong-minded, strong-bodied man--say "keep to

the point"--knowing that if you quit it one inch, you will from their

range of vision disappear--and then they comfort themselves by charging

you with having melted among the clouds.

BULLER.

I was afraid, my dear sir, that having got your Eaglet on your back--or

your Eaglet having got old Aquila on his--you would sail away with

him--or he with you--"to prey in distant isles."

NORTH.

You promised solemnly, sir, not to mention Eagles this evening.

BULLER.

I did not, sir. But don't let us quarrel.

SEWARD.

What does Virgil mean, sir, by "Rerum," in the line which Mr Alison

thinks should have concluded the strain--

"Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma."

NORTH.

"Rerum"--what does he mean by "Rerum?" Let me perpend. Why, Seward, the

legitimate meaning of Res here is a State--a Commonwealth. "The fairest

of Powers--then--of Polities--of States."

SEWARD.

Is that all the word means here?

NORTH.

Why, methinks we must explain. Observe, then, Seward, that Rome is the

Town, as England the Island. Thus "England has become the fairest among

the Kingdoms of the Earth." This is equivalent, good English; and the

only satisfactory and literal translation of the Latin verse. But here,

the Physical and the Political are identified,--that is, England.

England is the name at once of the Island--of so much earth limited

out on the surface of the terraqueous globe--and of what besides? Of

the Inhabitants? Yes; but of the Inhabitants (as the King never dies)

perpetuated from generation to generation. Moreover, of this immortal

inhabitation, further made one by blood and speech, laws, manners, and

everything that makes a people. In short, England, properly the name of

the land, is intended to be, at the same time, the name of the Nation.

"England, with all thy faults, I love Thee still."

There Cowper speaks to both at once--the faults are of the men

only--moral--for he does not mean fogs, and March east winds, and

fever and agues. I love thee--is to the green fields and the white

cliffs, as well as to all that still survives of the English heart and

thought and character. And this absorption, sir, and compenetration of

the two ideas--land into people, people into land--the exposition of

which might, in good hands, be made beautiful--is a fruitful germ of

Patriotism--an infinite blending of the spiritual and the corporeal. To

Virgil, Rome the City was also Rome the Romans; and, therefore, sir,

those Houses and Palaces, and that Wall, were to him, as those green

fields, and hills, and streams, and towns, and those cliffs are to Us.

The girdled-in compendium of the Heaven's Favour and the Earth's Glory

and Power.

"Scilicet et RERUM facta est pulcherrima ROMA,

Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces."

Do you all comprehend and adopt my explanation, gentlemen?

TALBOYS.

I do.

BULLER.

I----do.

SEWARD.

I ask myself whether Virgil's "Rerum Pulcherrima" may not mean "Fairest

of Things"--of Creatures--of earthly existences? To a young English

reader, probably that is the first impression. It was, I think, mine.

But fairest of earthly States and Seats of State is so much more

idiomatic and to the purpose, that I conceive it--indubitable.

NORTH.

You all remember what Horatio sayeth to the soldiers in Hamlet, on the

coming and going of the Ghost.

'In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;

Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell;

Disasters veiled the sun, and the moist star

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,

Was sick almost to Doomsday with eclipse.'

What does Horatio mean by high and palmy state? That Rome was in a

flourishing condition?

BULLER.

That, I believe, sir, is the common impression. Hitherto it has been

mine.

NORTH.

Let it be erased henceforth and for ever.

BULLER.

It is erased--I erase it.

NORTH.

Read henceforth and for ever high and palmy State. Write henceforth

and for ever State with a towering Capital. RES! "Most high and palmy

State" is precisely and literally "_Rerum Pulcherrima_."

SEWARD.

At your bidding--you cannot err.

NORTH.

I err not unfrequently--but not now, nor I believe this evening.

Horatio, the Scholar, speaks to the two Danish Soldiers. They have

brought him to be of their watch because he is a Scholar--and they are

none. This relation of distinction is indeed the ground and life of the

Scene.

"Therefore I have entreated him, along

With us to watch the minutes of the night;

That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes, and speak to it."

TALBOYS.

"Thou art a Scholar--speak to it, Horatio."

NORTH.

You know, Talboys, that Scholars were actual Conjurors, in the mediæval

belief, which has tales enow about Scholars in that capacity. Horatio

comes, then, possessed with an especial Power; he knows how to deal

with Ghosts--he could lay one, if need were. He is not merely a man of

superior and cultivated intellect, whom intellectual inferiors engage

to assist them in an emergency above their grasp--but he is the _very_

man for the work.

TALBOYS.

Have not the Commentators said as much, sir?

NORTH.

Perhaps--probably--who? If they have in plenitude, I say it

again--because I once did not know it--or think of it--and I suppose

that a great many persons die believing that the Two resort in the way

of general dependence merely on Horatio.

TALBOYS.

I believed, but I shall not die believing so.

NORTH.

Therefore, the scholarship of Horatio, and the non-scholarship of

Bernardo and Marcellus, strikes into the life, soul, essence, ground,

foundation, fabric, and organisation of this First Ghost Scene--sustain

and build the whole Play.

TALBOYS.

Eh?

NORTH.

Eh? Yes. But to the point in hand. The Ghost has come and gone; and

the Scholar addresses his Mates the two Non-Scholars. And show me the

living Scholar who could speak as Horatio spake. Touching the matter

that is in all their minds oppressively, _he_ will transport _their_

minds a flight suddenly off a thousand years, and a thousand miles or

leagues--their untutored minds into the Region of History. He will

take them to Rome--"_a little ere_"--and, therefore, before naming

Rome, he lifts and he directs their imagination--"In the most high

and palmy STATE." There had been Four Great Empires of the World--and

he will by these few words evoke in their minds the Image of the last

and greatest. And now observe with what decision, as well as with what

majesty, the nomination ensues--OF ROME.

TALBOYS.

I feel it, sir.

NORTH.

Try, Talboys, to render "State" by any other word, and you will

be put to it. You may analogise. It is for the Republic and City,

what Realm or Kingdom is to us--at once Place and indwelling Power.

"State"--properly Republic--here specifically and pointedly means

Reigning City. The Ghosts walked in the City--not in the Republic.

TALBOYS.

I think I have you, sir--am not sure.

NORTH.

You have me--you are sure. Now suppose that, instead of the solemn,

ceremonious, and stately robes in which Horatio attires the Glorious

Rome, he had said simply, "in Rome," or "at Rome," where then

his @psychagôgia@--his leading of their spirits? Where his own

scholar-enthusiasm, and love, and joy, and wonder? All gone! And

where, Talboys, are they who, by here understanding "state" for

"condition"--which every man alive does--

TALBOYS.

Every man alive?

NORTH.

Yes, you did--confess you did. Where are they, I ask, who thus oblige

Horatio to introduce his nomination of Rome--thus nakedly--and

prosaically? Every hackneyer of this phrase--_state_--as every man

alive hackneys it--is a nine-fold Murderer. He murders the Phrase--he

murders the Speech--he murders Horatio--he murders the Ghost--he

murders the Scene--he murders the Play--he murders Rome--he murders

Shakspeare--and he murders Me.

TALBOYS.

I am innocent.

NORTH.

Why, suppose Horatio to mean--"in the most glorious and victorious

_condition_ of Rome, on the Eve of Cæsar's death, the graves stood

tenantless"--You ask--WHERE? See where you have got. A story told with

two determinations of Time, and none of Place! Is that the way that

Shakspeare, the intelligent and intelligible, recites a fact? No. But

my explanation shows the Congruity or Parallelism. "In the _most high

and palmy_ State,"--that is, City of Rome--ceremonious determination

of Place--"a little ere the _mightiest_ Julius fell,"--ceremonious

determination of Time.

TALBOYS.

But is not the use of State, sir, for City, bold and singular?

NORTH.

It is. For Verse has her own Speech--though Wordsworth denies it in

his Preface--and proves it by his Poetry, like his brethren Shakspeare

and Milton. The language of Verse is rapid--abrept and abrupt. Horatio

wants the notion of Republic; because properly the Republic is high

and palmy, and not the wood, stone, and marble. So he manages an

expeditious word that shall include both, and strike you at once. The

word of a Poet strikes like a flash of lightning--it penetrates--it

does not stay to be scanned--"probed, vexed, and criticised,"--it

illuminates and is gone. But you must have eyes--and suffer nobody to

shut them. I ask, then--Can any lawful, well-behaved Citizen, having

weighed all this, and reviewed all these things, again violate the

Poesy of the Avonian Swan, and his own muse-enlightened intelligence,

by lending hand or tongue to the convicted and condemned VULGARISM?

TALBOYS.

Now, then, and not till now, we Three know the full power of the lines--

"Scilicet et Rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,

Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces."

NORTH.

Another word anent Virgil. Mr Alison says--"There is a still more

surprising instance of this fault in one of the most pathetic passages

of the whole Poem, in the description of the disease among the cattle,

which concludes the Third Georgic. The passage is as follows:--

"Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere Taurus

Concidit, et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem

Extremosque ciet gemitus; it tristis arator,

Moerentem abjungens fraternâ morte juvencum,

Atque opere in medio defixa relinquit aratra."

_The unhappy image_ in the second line is less calculated to excite

compassion than disgust, and is singularly ill-suited to the tone

of tenderness and delicacy which the Poet has everywhere else so

successfully maintained, in describing the progress of the loathsome

disease." The line here objected to is the life of the description--and

instead of offence, it is the clenching of the pathos. First of

all, it is that which the Poet always will have and the Critics

wont--the _Necessitated_--the Thing itself--the Matter in hand. It

shapes--features--characterises that particular Murrain. Leave it

out--'the one Ox drops dead in the furrow, and the Ploughman detaches

the other.' It's a great pity, and very surprising--but that is NO

PLAGUE. Suddenly he falls, and blood and foam gush mixed with his

expiring breath. _That is a plague._ It has terror--affright--sensible

horror--life vitiated, poisoned in its fountains. _Vomit_--a settled

word, and one of the foremost, of the reversed, unnatural vital

function. Besides, it is the true and proper word. Besides, it is

vivid and picturesque, being the word of the Mouth. _Effundit_ (which

they would prefer)--(I do not mean it would stand in the verse) is

general--might be from the ears. _Vomit_ in itself says mouth. The

poor mouth! whose function is to breathe, and to eat grass, and

to caress--the visible organ of life--of vivification--and now of

mortification. Taken from the dominion of the holy powers, and given up

to the dark and nameless destroyer. "_Vomit ore cruorem!_" The verse

moans and groans for him--it may have in it a death-rattle. How much

more helpless and hopeless the real picture makes Arator's distress!

Now, "_it tristis_" comes with effect.

SEWARD.

Yes, Virgil, as in duty bound to do, faced the Cattle Plague in all its

horrors. Had he not, he would have been false to Pales, the Goddess

of Shepherds--to Apollo, who fed the herds of Admetus. So did his

Master, Lucretius--whom he emulated--equalled, but not surpassed, in

execution of the dismal but inevitable work. The whole land groaned

under the visitation--nor was it confined to Cattle--it seemed as if

the brute creation were about to perish. But his tender heart, near

the close, singled out, from the thousands, one yoke of Steers--in two

lines and a half told the death of one--in two lines and a half told

the sadness of its owner--and in as many lines more told, too, of the

survivor sinking, because his brother "was not"--and in as many more a

lament for the cruel sufferings of the harmless creature--lines which,

Scaliger says, he would rather have written than have been honoured by

the Lydian or the Persian king.

BULLER.

Perhaps you have said enough, Seward. It might have been better,

perhaps, to have recited the whole passage.

NORTH.

Here is a sentence or two about Homer.

BULLER.

Then you are off. Oh! sir--why not for an hour imitate that Moon

and those Stars? How silently they shine! But what care you for the

heavenly luminaries? In the majestic beauty of the nocturnal heavens

vain man will not hold his peace.

SEWARD.

Is that the murmur of the far-off sea?

NORTH.

It is--the tide, may be, is on its return--is at "Connal's raging

Ferry"--from Loch Etive--yet this is not its hour--'tis but the

mysterious voice of Night.

BULLER.

Hush!

NORTH.

By moonlight and starlight, and to the voice of Night, I read these

words from Mr Alison--"In the speech of Agamemnon to Idomeneus, in

the Fourth Book of the Iliad, a circumstance is introduced altogether

inconsistent both with the _dignity of the speech, and the Majesty of

Epic Poetry_:--

'Divine Idomeneus! what thanks we owe

To worth like thine, what praise shall we bestow!

To Thee the foremost honours are decreed,

First in the fight, and every graceful deed.

For this, in banquets, when the generous bowls

Restore our blood, and raise the warriors' souls,

Though all the rest with stated rules be bound,

Unmixed, unmeasured, are thy goblets crowned.'"

SEWARD.

That is Pope. Do you remember Homer himself, sir?

NORTH.

I do.

@Idomenehy, pheri mhen se thiô Danahôn tachyphôlôn,

hêmhen henhi ptolhemô hêd' hallohiô hephi hergô,

êd' hen dahith', hote pher te gerohysion ahithopa ohinon

'Argehiôn ohi haristoi henhi krêthêrsi kherôntai.

ehiper ghar t' halloi ge karêkomhoôntes 'Achaiohi

daitrhon phinôsin, shon dhe plehion dhepas ahiehi

hestêch', hôsper hemohi, piheein, hote thymhos hanhôgoi.

hall' horseu pholemhond', ohios pharos ehycheo ehinai.@

I believe you will find that in general men praise more truly, that is

justly, deservedly, than they condemn. They praise from an impulse of

love--that is, from a capacity. Nature protects love more than hate.

Their condemnation is often mere incapacity--want of insight. Mr Alison

had elegance of apprehension--truth of taste--a fine sense of the

beautiful--a sense of the sublime. His instances for praise are always

well--often newly chosen, from an attraction felt in his own genial

and noble breast. The true chord struck then. But he was somewhat too

dainty-schooled--school-nursed, and school-born. A judge and critic of

Poetry should have been caught wild, and tamed; he should carry about

him to the last some relish of the wood and the wilderness, as if he

were ever in some danger of breaking away, and relapsing to them. He

should know Poetry as a great power of the Universe--a sun--of which

the Song--whosesoever--only catches and fixes a few rays. How different

in thought was Epos to him and to Homer! Homer paints Manners--archaic,

simple manners. Everybody feels--everybody says this--Mr Alison must

have known it--and could have said it as well as the best--

SEWARD.

But the best often forget it. They seem to hold to this knowledge

better now, Mr North; and they do not make Homer answerable as a Poet,

for the facts of which he is the Historian--Why not rather accept than

criticise?

NORTH.

I am sorry, Seward, for the Achæan Chiefs who had to drink

@daitron@--that is all. I had hoped that they helped themselves.

SEWARD.

Perhaps, sir, the Stint was a custom of only the @oinon gerousion@--a

ceremonious Bowl--and if so, undoubtedly with religious institution.

The Feast is not honorary--only the Bowl: for anything that appears,

Agamemnon, feasting his Princes, might say, "Now, for the Bowl of

Honour"--and Idomeneus alone drinks. Or let the whole Feast be

honorific, and the Bowl the sealing, and crowning, and characterising

solemnity. Now, the distinction of the Stint, and the Full Bowl,

selected for a signal of different honouring, has to me no longer

anything irksome. It is no longer a grudged and scanted cheer--but

lawful Assignment of Place.

TALBOYS.

The moment you take it for Ceremonial, sir, you don't know what

profound meaning may, or may not be in it. The phrase is very

remarkable.

NORTH.

When the "Best of the Argives" mix in the Bowl "the honorific

dark-glowing wine," or the dark-glowing wine of honour--when

@hote@--quite a specific and peculiar occasion, and confined to the

wine--you would almost think that the Chiefs themselves are the

wine-mixers, and not the usual ministrants--which would perhaps express

the descent of an antique use from a time and manners of still greater

simplicity than those which Homer describes. Or take it merely, that

in great solemnities, high persons do the functions proper to Servants.

This we do know, that usually a servant, the @Tamieus@, or the

@oinochoos@, does mix the Bowl. By the way, Talboys, I think you will

be not a little amused with old Chapman's translation of the passage.

TALBOYS.

A fiery old Chap was George.

NORTH.

It runs thus--

"O Idomen, I ever loved thyself past all the Greeks,

In war, or any work of peace, at table, everywhere;

For when the best of Greeks, besides, mix ever at our cheer

My good old ardent wine with small, and our inferior mates

Drink ever that mixt wine measured too, thou drink'st without those

rates

Our old wine _neat_; and ever more thy bowl stands like to mine;

To drink still when and what thou wilt; then rouse that heart of

thine;

And whatsoever heretofore thou hast assumed to be,

This day be greater."

TALBOYS.

Well done, Old Buck! This fervour and particularity are admirable.

But, methinks, if I caught the words rightly, that George mistakes the

meaning of @gerousôn@--honorary; he has @gerôn gerontos@, an _old man_,

singing in his ears; but old for wine would be quite a different word.

NORTH.

And he makes Agamemnon commend Idomeneus for drinking generously and

honestly, whilst the others are afraid of their cups--as Claudius,

King of Denmark, might praise one of his strong-headed courtiers,

and laugh at Polonius. Agamemnon does not say that Idomeneus' goblet

was _not_ mixed--was _neat_--rather we use to think that wine was

always mixed--but whether "with small," as old Chapman says, or with

water, I don't know--but I fancied water! But perhaps, Seward, the

investigation of a Grecian Feast in heroic time, and in Attic, becomes

an exigency. Chapman is at least determined--and wisely--to show that

he is not afraid of the matter--that he saw nothing in it "altogether

inconsistent with the dignity of the speech and the majesty of Epic

Poetry."

SEWARD.

Dignity! Majesty! They stand, sir, in the whole together--in the

Manners taken collectively by themselves throughout the entire

Iliad--and then taken as a part of the total delineation. Apply our

modern notions of dignity and majesty to the Homeric Poetry, and we

shall get a shock in every other page.

NORTH.

The Homeric, heroic manners! Heyne has a Treatise or Excursus--as

you know--on the @hautarkeia@--I think he calls it--of the Homeric

Heroes--their waiting on themselves, or their self-sufficiency--where I

think that he collects the picture.

SEWARD.

I am ashamed to say I do not know it.

NORTH.

No matter. You see how this connects with the scheme of the Poem--in

which, prevalent or conspicuous by the amplitude of the space which it

occupies, is the individual prowess of heroes in field--conspicuous,

too, by its moment in action. This is another and loftier mode of the

@hautarkeia@. The human bosom is a seat or fountain of power. Power

goes forth, emanates in all directions, high and low, right and left.

The Man is a terrestrial God. He takes counsel with his own heart,

and he acts. "He conversed with his own magnanimous spirit"--or as

Milton says of Abdiel meeting Satan--"And thus his own undaunted heart

explored."

SEWARD.

Yes, Mr North, the Man is as a terrestrial God; but--with continual

recognition by the Poet and his heroes--as under the celestial Gods.

And I apprehend, sir, that this two-fold way of representing man, in

himself and towards them, is that which first separates the Homeric

from and above all other Poetry, is its proper element of grandeur, in

which we never bathe without coming out aggrandised.

NORTH.

Seward, you instruct me by----

SEWARD.

Oh, no, sir! You instruct me----

NORTH.

We instruct each other. For this the heroes are all Demigods--that is,

the son of a God, or Goddess, or the Descendant at a few Generations.

Sarpedon is the Son of Jupiter, and his death by Patroclus is perhaps

the passage of the whole Iliad that most specially and energetically,

and most profoundly and pathetically, makes the Gods intimate to the

life and being of men--presents the conduct of divinity and humanity

with condescension there, and for elevation here. I do not mean that

there is not more pomp of glorification about Achilles, for whom

Jupiter comes from Olympus to Ida, and Vulcan forges arms--whose

Mother-Goddess is Messenger to and from Jupiter, and into whose lips,

when he is faint with toil and want of nourishment--abstaining in

his passion of sorrow and vengeance--Minerva, descending, instils

Nectar. But I doubt if there be anything so touching--_under this

relation_--and so intimately aggrandising as that other whole

place--the hesitation of Jupiter whether he shall VIOLATE FATE, in

order to save his own flesh and blood from its decreed stroke--the

consolatory device of Juno (in remonstrating and dissuading) that

he shall send Apollo to call Death and Sleep--a God-Messenger to

God-Ministers--to bear the dead body from the battle-field to his own

land and kin for due obsequies. And, lastly, those _drops of blood_

which fall from the sky to the earth, as if the heart-tears of the Sire

of all the worlds and their inhabitants.

BULLER.

You are always great, sir, on Homer. But, pray, have you any intention

of returning to the @hautarkeia@?

NORTH.

Ha! Buller--do you speak? I have not wandered from it. But since you

seem to think I have, think of Patroclus lighting a fire under a tripod

with his own hands, to boil meat for Achilles' guests--of Achilles

himself helping to lay the ransomed body of Hector on the car that was

to take it away. This last is honorific and pathetic. Ministrations of

all degrees for themselves, in their own affairs, characterise them

all. From the least of these to Achilles fighting the River-God--which

is an excess--all holds together--is of one meaning--and here, as

everywhere, the least, and the familiar, and most homely, attests,

vouches, makes evident, probable, and facile to credence, the highest,

most uncouth, remote, and difficult otherwise of acceptation. Pitching

the speculation lower, plenitude of the most robust, ardent, vigorous

life overflows the Iliad--up from the animal to the divine--from the

beautiful tall poplar by the river-side, which the wheelwright or

wainwright fells. Eating, drinking, sleeping, thrusting through with

spears, and hacking the live flesh off the bone--all go together and

help one another--and make the "Majesty and Dignity"--or what not--of

the Homeric Epos. But I see, Buller, that you are _timing me_--and I am

ashamed to confess that I have exceeded the assigned limit. Gentlemen,

I ask all your pardons.

BULLER.

Timing you--my dear sir! Look--'tis only my snuff-box--your own

gift--with your own haunted Head on the lid--inspired work of Laurence

Macdonald.

NORTH.

Give it me--why there--there--by your own unhappy awkwardness--it has

gone--gone--to the bottom of the deepest part of the Loch!

BULLER.

I don't care. It _was_ my chronometer! The Box is safe.

NORTH.

And so is the Chronometer. Here it is--I was laughing at you--in my

sleeve.

BULLER.

Another Herman Boaz!--Bless my eyes, there is Kilchurn! It must

be--there is no other such huge Castle, surely, at the head of the

Loch--and no other such mountains--

NORTH.

You promised solemnly, sir, not to say a single word about Loch Awe

or its appurtenance, this Evening--so did every mother's son of us at

your order--and t'was well--for we have seen them and felt them all--at

times not the less profoundly--as the visionary pomp keeps all the

while gliding slowly by--perpetual accompaniment of our discourse, not

uninspired, perhaps, by the beauty or the grandeur, as our imagination

was among the ideal creations of genius--with the far-off in place and

in time--with generations and empires

"When dark oblivion swallows cities up,

And mighty States, characterless, are grated

To dusty nothing!"

SEWARD.

In the declining light I wonder your eyes can see to read print.

NORTH.

My eyes are at a loss with Small Pica--but veritable Pica I can master,

yet, after sunset. Indeed, I am sharpest-sighted by twilight, like a

cat or an owl.

BULLER.

Have you any more annotations on Alison?

NORTH.

Many. The flaws are few. I verily believe these are all. To elucidate

his Truths--in Taste and in Morals--would require from us Four a far

longer Dialogue. Alison's Essays should be reprinted in one Pocket

Volume--wisdom and Goodness are in that family hereditary--the editing

would be a Work of Love--and in Bohn's Standard Library they would

confer benefit on thousands who now know but their name.

SEWARD.

My dear sir, last time we voyaged the Loch, you said

a few words--perhaps you may remember it--about those

philosophers--Alison--the "Man of Taste," as Thomas Campbell loved

to call him--assuredly is not of the number--who have insisted on

the natural Beauty of Virtue, and natural Deformity of Vice, and

have appeared to place our capacity of distinguishing Right from

Wrong chiefly, if not solely, on the sense of this Beauty and of this

Deformity--

NORTH.

I remember saying, my dear Seward, that they have drawn their views

too much from the consideration of the state of these feelings in men

who had been long exercised in the pure speculative contemplation of

moral Goodness and Truth, as well as in the calmness and purity of a

tranquil, virtuous life. Was it so?

SEWARD.

It was.

NORTH.

In such minds, when all the calm faculties of the soul are wedded in

happy union to the image of Virtue, there is, I have no doubt, that

habitual feeling for which the term Beauty furnishes a natural and just

expression. But I apprehend that this is not the true expression of

that serious and solemn feeling which accompanies the understanding of

the qualities of Moral Action in the minds of the generality of men.

They who in the midst of their own unhappy perversions, are visited

with knowledge of those immutable distinctions, and they who in the

ordinary struggles and trials incident to our condition, maintain their

conduct in unison with their strongly grounded principles and better

aspirations, would seldom, I apprehend, employ this language for the

description of feelings which can hardly be separated, from the ideas

of an awful responsibility involving the happiness and misery of the

accountable subjects of a moral order of Government.

SEWARD.

You think, sir, that to assign this perception of Beauty and Deformity,

as the groundwork of our Moral Nature, is to rest on too slight a

foundation that part of man's constitution which is first in importance

to his welfare?

NORTH.

Assuredly, my dear friend, I do. Nay, I do not fear to say that the

Emotion, which may properly be termed a Feeling of Beauty in Virtue,

takes place at those times when the deepest affection of our souls

towards Good and Evil acts less strongly, and when the Emotion we feel

is derived more from Imagination--and--

SEWARD.

And may I venture to suggest, sir, that as Imagination, which is

so strong a principle in our minds, will take its temper from any

prevalent feelings, and even from any fixed and permanent habits of

mind, so our Feeling of Beauty and Deformity shall be different to

different men, either according to the predominant strength of natural

principles, or according to their course of life?

NORTH.

Even so. And therefore this general disposition of Imagination to

receive its character will apply, no doubt, where the prevailing

feelings and habits are of a Moral cast; and hence in minds engaged

in calm intellectual speculation, and maintaining their own moral

nature rather in innocence and simplicity of life than in the midst

of difficult and trying situations and in conflict with passions,

there can be no doubt that the Imagination will give itself up to this

general Moral Cast of Mind, and feel Beauty and Deformity vividly and

uniformly in the contemplation of the moral quality of actions and

moral states of character.

SEWARD.

But your words imply--do they not, sir? that such is the temper of

their calmer minds, and not the emotion which is known when, from any

great act of Virtue or Crime, which comes suddenly upon them, their

Moral Spirit rises up in its native strength, to declare its own

Affection and its own Judgment?

NORTH.

Just so. Besides, my excellent friend, if you consider well the feeling

which takes possession of us, on contemplating some splendid act

of heroic and self-devoting Virtue, we shall find that the sort of

enthusiastic transport which may kindle towards him who has performed

it, is not properly a moral transport at all; but it is a burst of

love and admiration. Take out, then, from any such emotion, what

Imagination, and Love, and Sympathy have supplied, and leave only what

the Moral Spirit recognises of Moral Will in the act, and you will

find that much of that dazzling and splendid Beauty which produced the

transport of loving admiration is removed.

SEWARD.

And if so, sir, then must it be very important that we should not

deceive ourselves, and rely upon the warmth of emotion we may feel

towards generous and heroic actions as evidence of the force of the

Moral Principle in our own breasts, which requires to be ascertained by

a very different test--

NORTH.

Ay, Seward; and it is important also, that we should learn to

acknowledge and to respect, in those who, without the capacity of such

vivid feelings, are yet conscientiously faithful to the known Moral

Law, the merit and dignity of their Moral Obedience. We must allow

to Virtue, my dearest Seward, all that is her due--her countenance

beautiful in its sweet serenity--her voice gentle and mild--her

demeanour graceful--and a simple majesty in the flowing folds of her

stainless raiment. So may we picture her to our imagination, and to

our hearts. But we must beware of making such abstractions fantastic

and visionary, lest we come at last to think of emotions of Virtue

and Taste as one and the same--a fatal error indeed--and that would

rob human life of much of its melancholy grandeur. The beauty of

Virtue is but the smile on her celestial countenance--and may be

admired--loved--by those who hold but little communion with her inner

heart--and it may be overlooked by those who pay to her the most devout

worship.

TALBOYS.

Methinks, sir, that the moral emotion with which we regard actions

greatly right or greatly wrong, is no transport; it is an earnest,

solemn feeling of a mind knowing there is no peace for living souls,

except in their Moral Obedience, and therefore receiving a deep and

grateful assurance of the peace of one soul more, in witnessing its

adherence to its virtue; and the pain which is suffered from crime

is much more allied to sorrow, in contemplating the wilful departure

of a spirit from its only possible Good, than to those feelings of

repugnance and hate which characterise the temper of our common human

emotion towards crimes offering violence and outrage to humanity.

NORTH.

I believe that, though darkness lies round and about us seeking to

solve such questions, a feeling of deep satisfaction in witnessing

the adherence to Moral Rectitude, and of deep pain in witnessing the

departure from it, are the necessary results of a moral sensibility;

but taken in their elementary simplicity, they have, I think,

a character distinct from those many other emotions which will

necessarily blend with them, in the heart of one human being looking

upon the actions of another--"because that we have all one human heart."

TALBOYS.

Who can doubt that Religion infuses power and exaltation into the Arts?

The bare History teaches this. In Greece Poetry sang of Gods, and of

Heroes, in whose transactions Gods moved. Sculpture moulded Forms

which were attempted expressions of Divine Attributes. Architecture

constructed Temples. _De facto_ the Grecian Arts rose out of Religion.

And were not the same Arts, of revived Italy, religious?

BULLER.

They all require for their foundation and support a great pervading

sympathy--some Feeling that holds a whole national breast. This

is needed to munificently defraying the Costlier Arts--no base

consideration at bottom. For it is _a_ life-bond of this life, that is

freely dropped, when men freely and generously contribute their means

to the honour of Religion. There is a sentiment in opening your purse.

SEWARD.

Yes, Buller--without that sentiment, no man can love noble Art. The

true, deep, grand support of Genius is the confidence of universal

sympathy. Homer sings because Greece listens. Phidias pours out his

soul over marble, gold, and ivory, because he knows that at Olympia

united Greece will wonder and will worship. Think how Poet is dumb and

Sculptor lame, who foreknows that what he _would_ sing, what he _would_

carve, will neither be felt nor understood.

BULLER.

The Religion of a people furnishes the sympathy which both _pays and

applauds_.

TALBOYS.

And Religion affords to the Artist in Words or Forms the highest

Norms of Thought--sublime, beautiful, solemn--withal the sense of

Aspiration--possibly of Inspiration.

NORTH.

And it guards Philosophy--and preserves it, by spiritual influence,

from degradation worse than death. The mind is first excited

into activity through the impressions made by external objects

on the senses. The French metaphysicians--pretending to follow

Locke--proceeded to discover in the mind a mere compound of Sensations,

and of Ideas drawn from Sensations. Sensations, and Ideas that were the

Relics of Sensations--nothing more.

TALBOYS.

And thus, sir, by degrees, the Mind appeared to them to be nothing else

than a product of the Body--say rather a state of the Body.

NORTH.

A self-degradation, my friend, which to the utmost removes the mind

from God. And this Creed was welcome to those to whom the belief in Him

was irksome. That which we see and touch became to such Philosophers

the whole of Reality. Deity--the Relation of the Creation to the

Creator--the hope of a Futurity beyond the grave--vanished from the

Belief of Materialists living in, and by, and to--Sensation.

SEWARD.

And with what a horrid sympathy was the creed welcomed!

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, I who lived nearer the time--perhaps better than you

can--know the evil. Not in the schools alone, or in the solitude

of philosophical thought, the doctrine of an arid speculation

circulated, like a thin and unwholesome blood, through the veins of

polite literature; not in the schools alone, but in the gorgeous and

gay saloons, where the highly-born, the courtly, and the wealthy,

winged the lazy hours with light or dissolute pleasures--there the

Philosophy which fettered the soul in the pleasing bands of the

Senses, which plucked it back from a feared immortality, which opened

a gulf of infinite separation between it and its Maker, was cordially

entertained--there it pointed the jest and the jibe. Scepticism a

study--the zeal of Unbelief! Principles of false thought appeared

suddenly and widely as principles of false passion and of false action.

Doubts, difficulties, guesses, fine spinnings of the perverse brain,

seized upon the temper of the times--became the springs of public and

popular movements--engines of political change. The Venerations of Time

were changed into Abominations. A Will strong to overthrow--hostile

to Order--anarchical--"intended siege and defiance to Heaven." The

irreligious Philosophy of the calmer time now bore its fruits. The

Century had prepared the explosion that signalised its close--Impiety

was the name of the Giant whom these throes of the convulsed earth had

borne into the day, and down together went Throne and Altar--But where

are we?

BULLER.

At the river mouth.

NORTH.

What! at home.

BULLER.

See the Tent-Lights--hear the Tent-Music.

NORTH.

Your arm, Talboys--till I disembark. Up to the Mount I shall then

climb, unassisted but by the Crutch.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant

preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.

Italics markup is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold markup is denoted by =equals=.

Greek text has been transliterated and is denoted by @at signs@.

Provided anchor for unanchored footnote on pp. 133 and 172.