It is to say little for the types of you_The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing

felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honourable to portray, that they

act and feel in a sphere where they are never for an instant liable to

any of the weaknesses which disturb the calm, or shake the resolution,

of chastity and courage in a modern novel. Scott lived in a country and

time, when, from highest to lowest, but chiefly in that dignified and

nobly severe[161] middle class to which he himself belonged, a habit of

serene and stainless thought was as natural to the people as their

mountain air. Women like Rose Bradwardine and Ailie Dinmont were the

grace and guard of almost every household (God be praised that the race

of them is not yet extinct, for all that Mall or Boulevard can do), and

it has perhaps escaped the notice of even attentive readers that the

comparatively uninteresting character of Sir Walter's heroes had always

been studied among a class of youths who were simply incapable of doing

anything seriously wrong; and could only be embarrassed by the

consequences of their levity or imprudence.

But there is another difference in the woof of a Waverley novel from the

cobweb of a modern one, which depends on Scott's larger view of human

life. Marriage is by no means, in his conception of man and woman, the

most important business of their existence;[162] nor love the only

reward to be proposed to their virtue or exertion. It is not in his

reading of the laws of Providence a necessity that virtue should, either

by love or any other external blessing, be rewarded at all;[163] and

marriage is in all cases thought of as a constituent of the happiness of

life, but not as its only interest, still less its only aim. And upon

analysing with some care the motives of his principal stories, we shall

often find that the love in them is merely a light by which the sterner

features of character are to be irradiated, and that the marriage of the

hero is as subordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the

Fifth's courtship of Katherine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the

fortunes of the person who is nominally the subject of the tale are

often little more than a background on which grander figures are to be

drawn, and deeper fates forth-shadowed. The judgments between the faith

and chivalry of Scotland at Drumclog and Bothwell bridge owe little of

their interest in the mind of a sensible reader to the fact that the

captain of the Popinjay is carried a prisoner to one battle, and returns

a prisoner from the other: and Scott himself, while he watches the white

sail that bears Queen Mary for the last time from her native land, very

nearly forgets to finish his novel, or to tell us--and with small sense

of any consolation to be had out of that minor circumstance,--that

'Roland and Catherine were united, spite of their differing faiths.'

Neither let it be thought for an instant that the slight, and sometimes

scornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes which a novelist of

our own day would have analysed with the airs of a philosopher, and

painted with the curiosity of a gossip, indicate any absence in his

heart of sympathy with the great and sacred elements of personal

happiness. An era like ours, which has with diligence and ostentation

swept its heart clear of all the passions once known as loyalty,

patriotism, and piety, necessarily magnifies the apparent force of the

one remaining sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers, or

clings inextricably round the chasms of ruin; nor can it but regard with

awe the unconquerable spirit which still tempts or betrays the

sagacities of selfishness into error or frenzy which is believed to be

love.

That Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as employed by

lovers of the Parisian school, 'ivre d'amour,' may be admitted without

prejudice to his sensibility,[164] and that he never knew 'l'amor che

move 'l sol e l'altre stelle,' was the chief, though unrecognised,

calamity of his deeply chequered life. But the reader of honour and

feeling will not therefore suppose that the love which Miss Vernon

sacrifices, stooping for an instant from her horse, is of less noble

stamp, or less enduring faith, than that which troubles and degrades

the whole existence of Consuelo; or that the affection of Jeanie Deans

for the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field of soft blue

heaven beyond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, is less fully in

possession of her soul than the hesitating and self-reproachful impulses

under which a modern heroine forgets herself in a boat, or compromises

herself in the cool of the evening.

I do not wish to return over the waste ground we have traversed,

comparing, point by point, Scott's manner with those of Bermondsey and

the Faubourgs; but it may be, perhaps, interesting at this moment to

examine, with illustration from those Waverley novels which have so

lately _re_tracted the attention of a fair and gentle public, the

universal conditions of 'style,' rightly so called, which are in all

ages, and above all local currents or wavering tides of temporary

manners, pillars of what is for ever strong, and models of what is for

ever fair.

But I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the works of

Scott, in which his perfect mind may be known, and his chosen ways

understood.

His great works of prose fiction, excepting only the first half-volume

of _Waverley_, were all written in twelve years, 1814-26 (of his own age

forty-three to fifty-five), the actual time employed in their

composition being not more than a couple of months out of each year; and

during that time only the morning hours and spare minutes during the

professional day. 'Though the first volume of _Waverley_ was begun long

ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and

finished between the 4th of June and the first of July, during all which

I attended my duty in court, and proceeded without loss of time or

hindrance of business.'[165]

Few of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in _Modern Painters_,

long ago, I got the general character of a lover of paradox, are more

singular, or more sure, than the statement, apparently so encouraging to

the idle, that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done

easily. But it is in that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after

long years of gathered strength, and all Scott's great writings were the

recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labour, and rich with organic

gathering of boundless resource.

Omitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished sketches of the

_Black Dwarf_ and _Legend of Montrose_, and, for a reason presently to

be noticed, the unhappy _St. Ronan's_, the memorable romances of Scott

are eighteen, falling into three distinct groups, containing six each.

The first group is distinguished from the other two by characters of

strength and felicity which never more appeared after Scott was struck

down by his terrific illness in 1819. It includes _Waverley_, _Guy

Mannering_, _The Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old Mortality_, and _The Heart

of Midlothian_.

The composition of these occupied the mornings of his happiest days,

between the ages of 43 and 48. On the 8th of April, 1819 (he was 48 on

the preceding 15th of August) he began for the first time to

dictate--being unable for the exertion of writing--_The Bride of

Lammermuir_, 'the affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating,

when his audible suffering filled every pause. "Nay, Willie," he

answered "only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the

cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as for giving over work,

that can only be when I am in woollen."'[166] From this time forward the

brightness of joy and sincerity of inevitable humour, which perfected

the imagery of the earlier novels, are wholly absent, except in the two

short intervals of health unaccountably restored, in which he wrote

_Redgauntlet_ and _Nigel_.

It is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of Scott's

genius, that these revivals of earlier power were unconscious, and that

the time of extreme weakness in which he wrote _St. Ronan's Well_, was

that in which he first asserted his own restoration.

It is also a deeply interesting characteristic of his noble nature that

he never gains anything by sickness; the whole man breathes or faints

as one creature; the ache that stiffens a limb chills his heart, and

every pang of the stomach paralyses the brain. It is not so with

inferior minds, in the workings of which it is often impossible to

distinguish native from narcotic fancy, and throbs of conscience from

those of indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colours of

mind are always morbid, which gleam on the sea for the 'Ancient

Mariner,' and through the casements on 'St. Agnes' Eve;' but Scott is at

once blinded and stultified by sickness; never has a fit of the cramp

without spoiling a chapter, and is perhaps the only author of vivid

imagination who never wrote a foolish word but when he was ill.

It remains only to be noticed on this point that any strong natural

excitement, affecting the deeper springs of his heart, would at once

restore his intellectual powers in all their fullness, and that, far

towards their sunset: but that the strong will on which he prided

himself, though it could trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel

industry, never could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his

darker hours.

I believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is common to

all great men: but what the special character of emotion was, that alone

could lift Scott above the power of death, I am about to ask the reader,

in a little while, to observe with joyful care.

The first series of romances then, above named, are all that exhibit the

emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in the

three years subsequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of them

more or less the seal of it.

They consist of the _Bride of Lammermuir_, _Ivanhoe_, the _Monastery_,

the _Abbot_, _Kenilworth_, and the _Pirate_.[167] The marks of broken

health on all these are essentially twofold--prevailing melancholy, and

fantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the

_Abbot_ scarcely less so in its main event, and _Ivanhoe_ deeply wounded

through all its bright panoply; while even in that most powerful of the

series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly

opportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and the

resuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly feverish. Caleb

in the _Bride_, Triptolemus and Halcro in the _Pirate_, are all

laborious, and the first incongruous; half a volume of the _Abbot_ is

spent in extremely dull detail of Roland's relations with his

fellow-servants and his mistress, which have nothing whatever to do with

the future story; and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the

first volume, 'like a snaw wreath when it's thaw, Jeanie.' The public

has for itself pronounced on the _Monastery_, though as much too harshly

as it has foolishly praised the horrors of _Ravenswood_ and the nonsense

of _Ivanhoe_; because the modern public finds in the torture and

adventure of these, the kind of excitement which it seeks at an opera,

while it has no sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of

Glendearg, or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give

historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady.

But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's heart in them.

The first was begun to refresh himself in the intervals of artificial

labour on _Ivanhoe_. 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the

scenery most familiar to me[168] with the strange world for which I had

to draw so much on imagination.'[169] Through all the closing scenes of

the second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the

queen. And within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal

for illustration of his essential powers, I accept the _Monastery_ and

_Abbot_, and reject from it the remaining four of this group.

The last series contains two quite noble ones, _Redgauntlet_ and

_Nigel_; two of very high value, _Durward_ and _Woodstock_; the slovenly

and diffuse _Peveril_, written for the trade; the sickly _Tales of the

Crusaders_, and the entirely broken and diseased _St. Ronan's Well_.

This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only

the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in

which I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces

itself to these following twelve (named in order of production):

_Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, the _Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old

Mortality_, the _Heart of Midlothian_, the _Monastery_, the _Abbot_, the

_Fortunes of Nigel_, _Quentin Durward_, and _Woodstock_.[170]

It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I

may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal

characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of the

questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be

most embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, between

character and disease.

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of

the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by

their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for

a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a

language, and its corruption.

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of

intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and

force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper,

which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms

of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their

character and disposition.

Thus 'burn' (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where

there are brightly running waters, 'lassie,' a word possible only where

girls are as free as the rivulets, and 'auld,' a form of the southern

'old,' adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the

ordinary sense of the phrase, 'broad' forms of utterance, are not

dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases

developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are

injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they

affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the

speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment

the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and

monotonous labour, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of

the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and

spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human

speech.

Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 'corrupted'

dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by

vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation,

especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the

meaning is understood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's 'aperiently

so'--and the 'undermined' with primal sense of undermine, of--I forget

which gossip, in the _Mill on the Floss_, are master- and

mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's 'allegories on the

banks of the Nile' are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Miss

Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarised by her selfishness, and

Winifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The 'wot' of Noah Claypole, and the

other degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in

nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can

purify even these); the 'trewth' of Mr. Chadband, and 'natur' of Mr.

Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the

use of the word 'bloody' in modern low English is a deeper corruption,

not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.

Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a

fragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the

most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as

low down as he ever allows Scotch to go--it is perhaps the only unfair

patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really

villainous slang, he gives it in English or Dutch--not Scotch.

I had intended in the close of this paper to analyse and compare the

characters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moniplies for examples, the

former of innate evil, unaffected by external influences, and

undiseased, but distinct from natural goodness as a nettle is distinct

from balm or lavender; and the latter of innate goodness, contracted and

pinched by circumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by

frost, not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must put off;

but the careful study of one sentence of Andrew's will give us a good

deal to think of.

I take his account of the rescue of Glasgow Cathedral at the time of the

Reformation.

Ah! it's a brave kirk--nane o' yere whigmaleeries and

curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it--a' solid,

weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the

warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a

douncome lang syne at the Reformation, when they pu'd doun

the kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa', to

cleanse them o' Papery, and idolatry, and image-worship, and

surplices, and sic-like rags o' the muckle hure that sitteth

on seven hills, as if ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld

hinder end. Sae the commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony,

and the Gorbals, and a' about, they behoved to come into

Glasgow ae fair morning, to try their hand on purging the

High Kirk o' Popish nicknackets. But the townsmen o'

Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the

girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sae they rang

the common bell, and assembled the train-bands wi' took o'

drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o' Guild

that year--(and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the

keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades

assembled, and offered downright battle to the commons,

rather than their kirk should coup the crans, as others had

done elsewhere. It wasna for luve o' Paperie--na, na!--nane

could ever say that o' the trades o' Glasgow--Sae they sune

came to an agreement to take a' the idolatrous statues of

sants (sorrow be on them!) out o' their neuks--And sae the

bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture

warrant, and flung into the Molendinar burn, and the auld

kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flaes are kaimed aff

her, and a'body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise folk

say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in

Scotland, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e'en

now, and we wad hae mair Christian-like kirks; for I hae

been sae lang in England, that naething will drived out o'

my head, that the dog-kennel at Osbaldistone-Hall is better

than mony a house o' God in Scotland.

Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish history of

quite inestimable and concentrated value. Andrew's temperament

is the type of a vast class of Scottish--shall we call it

'_sow_-thistlian'--mind, which necessarily takes the view of either Pope

or saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the cedar or lilies in

Lebanon; and the entire force of the passions which, in the Scottish

revolution, foretold and forearmed the French one, is told in this one

paragraph; the coarseness of it, observe, being admitted, not for the

sake of the laugh, any more than an onion in broth merely for its

flavour, but for the meat of it; the inherent constancy of that

coarseness being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of

the history to be told.

Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious passion of it, such

as there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a thief, a liar, a

coward, and, in the Fair service from which he takes his name, a

hypocrite; but in the form of prejudice, which is all that his mind is

capable of in the place of religion, he is entirely sincere. He does not

in the least pretend detestation of image worship to please his master,

or any one else; he honestly scorns the 'carnal morality[171] as dowd

and fusionless as rue-leaves at Yule' of the sermon in the upper

cathedral; and when wrapt in critical attention to the 'real savour o'

doctrine' in the crypt, so completely forgets the hypocrisy of his fair

service as to return his master's attempt to disturb him with hard

punches of the elbow.

Thirdly. He is a man of no mean sagacity, quite up to the average

standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable

of understanding any manner of lofty thought or passion, is a shrewd

measurer of weaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly

feeling. See first his sketch of his master's character to Mr.

Hammorgaw, beginning: 'He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither;'

and then the close of the dialogue: 'But the lad's no a bad lad after

a', and he needs some carefu' body to look after him.'

Fourthly. He is a good workman; knows his own business well, and can

judge of other craft, if sound, or otherwise.

All these four qualities of him must be known before we can understand

this single speech. Keeping them in mind, I take it up, word by word.

You observe, in the outset, Scott makes no attempt whatever to indicate

accents or modes of pronunciation by changed spelling, unless the word

becomes a quite definitely new and scarcely writeable one. The Scottish

way of pronouncing 'James,' for instance, is entirely peculiar, and

extremely pleasant to the ear. But it is so, just because it does _not_

change the word into Jeems, nor into Jims, nor into Jawms. A modern

writer of dialects would think it amusing to use one or other of these

ugly spellings. But Scott writes the name in pure English, knowing that

a Scots reader will speak it rightly, and an English one be wise in

letting it alone. On the other hand he writes 'weel' for 'well,' because

that word is complete in its change, and may be very closely expressed

by the double _e_. The ambiguous '_u_'s in 'gude' and 'sune' are

admitted, because far liker the sound than the double _o_ would be, and

that in 'hure,' for grace' sake, to soften the word;--so also 'flaes'

for 'fleas.' 'Mony' for 'many' is again positively right in sound, and

'neuk' differs from our 'nook' in sense, and is not the same word at

all, as we shall presently see.

Secondly, observe, not a word is corrupted in any indecent haste,

slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronunciation. There is no

lisping, drawling, slobbering, or snuffling: the speech is as clear as

a bell and as keen as an arrow: and its elisions and contractions are

either melodious, ('na,' for 'not,'--'pu'd,' for 'pulled,') or as normal

as in a Latin verse. The long words are delivered without the slightest

bungling; and 'bigging' finished to its last _g_.

I take the important words now in their places.

_Brave._ The old English sense of the word in 'to go brave' retained,

expressing Andrew's sincere and respectful admiration. Had he meant to

insinuate a hint of the church's being too fine, he would have said

'braw.'

_Kirk._ This is of course just as pure and unprovincial a word as

'Kirche,' or 'eglise.'

_Whigmaleerie._ I cannot get at the root of this word, but it is one

showing that the speaker is not bound by classic rules, but will use any

syllables that enrich his meaning. 'Nipperty-tipperty' (of his master's

'poetry-nonsense') is another word of the same class. 'Curlieurlie' is

of course just as pure as Shakespeare's 'Hurly-burly.' But see first

suggestion of the idea to Scott at Blair-Adam (L. vi. 264).

_Opensteek hems._ More description, or better, of the later Gothic

cannot be put into four syllables. 'Steek,' melodious for stitch, has a

combined sense of closing or fastening. And note that the later Gothic,

being precisely what Scott knew best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is,

here as elsewhere, quite as much himself[172] as Frank, that he is

laughing at, when he laughs _with_ Andrew, whose 'opensteek hems' are

only a ruder metaphor for his own 'willow-wreaths changed to stone.'

_Gunpowther._ '-Ther' is a lingering vestige of the French '-dre.'

_Syne._ One of the melodious and mysterious Scottish words which have

partly the sound of wind and stream in them, and partly the range of

softened idea which is like a distance of blue hills over border land

('far in the distant Cheviot's blue'). Perhaps even the least

sympathetic 'Englisher' might recognise this, if he heard 'Old Long

Since' vocally substituted for the Scottish words to the air. I do not

know the root; but the word's proper meaning is not 'since,' but before

or after an interval of some duration, 'as weel sune as syne.' 'But

first on Sawnie gies a ca', Syne, bauldly in she enters.'

_Behoved_ (_to come_). A rich word, with peculiar idiom, always used

more or less ironically of anything done under a partly mistaken and

partly pretended notion of duty.

_Siccan._ Far prettier, and fuller in meaning than 'such.' It contains

an added sense of wonder; and means properly 'so great' or 'so unusual.'

_Took_ (_o' drum_). Classical 'tuck' from Italian 'toccata,' the

preluding 'touch' or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under

word 'tucket,' quoting _Othello_). The deeper Scottish vowels are used

here to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in more solemn

warning.

_Bigging._ The only word in all the sentence of which the Scottish form

is less melodious than the English, 'and what for no,' seeing that

Scottish architecture is mostly little beyond Bessie Bell's and Mary

Gray's? 'They biggit a bow're by yon burnside, and theekit it ow're wi

rashes.' But it is pure Anglo-Saxon in roots; see glossary to

Fairbairn's edition of the Douglas _Virgil_, 1710.

_Coup._ Another of the much-embracing words; short for 'upset,' but with

a sense of awkwardness as the inherent cause of fall; compare Richie

Moniplies (also for sense of 'behoved'): 'Ae auld hirplin deevil of a

potter behoved just to step in my way, and offer me a pig (earthern

pot--etym. dub.), as he said "just to put my Scotch ointment in;" and I

gave him a push, as but natural, and the tottering deevil coupit owre

amang his own pigs, and damaged a score of them.' So also Dandie Dinmont

in the postchaise: ''Od! I hope they'll no coup us.'

_The Crans._ Idiomatic; root unknown to me, but it means in this use,

full, total, and without recovery.

_Molendinar._ From 'molendinum,' the grinding-place. I do not know if

actually the local name,[173] or Scott's invention. Compare Sir

Piercie's 'Molinaras.' But at all events used here with bye-sense of

degradation of the formerly idle saints to grind at the mill.

_Crouse._ Courageous, softened with a sense of comfort.

_Ilka._ Again a word with azure distance, including the whole sense of

'each' and 'every.' The reader must carefully and reverently distinguish

these comprehensive words, which gather two or more perfectly understood

meanings into one _chord_ of meaning, and are harmonies more than words,

from the above-noted blunders between two half-hit meanings, struck as a

bad piano-player strikes the edge of another note. In English we have

fewer of these combined thoughts; so that Shakespeare rather plays with

the distinct lights of his words, than melts them into one. So again

Bishop Douglas spells, and doubtless spoke, the word 'rose,'

differently, according to his purpose; if as the chief or governing

ruler of flowers, 'rois,' but if only in her own beauty, rose.

_Christian-like._ The sense of the decency and order proper to

Christianity is stronger in Scotland than in any other country, and the

word 'Christian' more distinctly opposed to 'beast.' Hence the

back-handed cut at the English for their over-pious care of dogs.

I am a little surprised myself at the length to which this examination

of one small piece of Sir Walter's first-rate work has carried us, but

here I must end for this time, trusting, if the Editor of the

_Nineteenth Century_ permit me, yet to trespass, perhaps more than once,

on his readers' patience; but, at all events, to examine in a following

paper the technical characteristics of Scott's own style, both in prose

and verse, together with Byron's, as opposed to our fashionably recent

dialects and rhythms; the essential virtues of language, in both the

masters of the old school, hinging ultimately, little as it might be

thought, on certain unalterable views of theirs concerning the code

called 'of the Ten Commandments,' wholly at variance with the dogmas of

automatic morality which, summed again by the witches' line, 'Fair is

foul, and foul is fair,' hover through the fog and filthy air of our

prosperous England.

JOHN RUSKIN.

* * * * *

'_He hated greetings in the market-place_, and there were generally

loiterers in the streets to persecute him _either about the events of

the day_, or about some petty pieces of business.'

These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning of the

sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the _Antiquary_, contain two

indications of the old man's character, which, receiving the ideal of

him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of extreme interest to me. They

mean essentially that neither Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be

called of men, Rabbi, in mere hearing of the mob; and especially that

they hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or forward

out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of 'daily' news, whether

printed or gabbled. Of which two vital characteristics, deeper in both

the men, (for I must always speak of Scott's creations as if they were

as real as himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing

enthusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the passage

just now, because there was one piece of the daily news of the year 1815

which did extremely interest Scott, and materially direct the labour of

the latter part of his life; nor is there any piece of history in this

whole nineteenth century quite so pregnant with various instruction as

the study of the reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their

opposite views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo.

But I quote it for another reason also. The principal greeting which Mr.

Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the market-place, being compared

with the speech of Andrew Fairservice, examined in my first paper, will

furnish me with the text of what I have mainly to say in the present

one.

'"Mr. Oldbuck," said the town-clerk (a more important person, who came

in front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), "the provost,

understanding you were in town, begs on no account that you'll quit it

without seeing him; he wants to speak to ye about bringing the water

frae the Fairwell spring through a part o' your lands."

'"What the deuce!--have they nobody's land but mine to cut and carve

on?--I won't consent, tell them."

'"And the provost," said the clerk, going on, without noticing the

rebuff, "and the council, wad be agreeable that you should hae the auld

stanes at Donagild's Chapel, that ye was wussing to hae."

'"Eh?--what?--Oho! that's another story--Well, well, I'll call upon the

provost, and we'll talk about it."

'"But ye maun speak your mind on't forthwith, Monkbarns, if ye want the

stanes; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-stanes might be

put with advantage on the front of the new council-house--that is, the

twa cross-legged figures that the callants used to ca' Robbin and

Bobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek; and the other stane, that they ca'd

Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu', the Deacon says,

and just in the style of modern Gothic."

'"Good Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation!" exclaimed the

Antiquary,--"a monument of a knight-templar on each side of a Grecian

porch, and a Madonna on the top of it!--_O crimini!_--Well, tell the

provost I wish to have the stones, and we'll not differ about the

water-course.--It's lucky I happened to come this way to-day."

'They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily clerk had most reason to

exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole proposal of an

exchange between the monuments (which the council had determined to

remove as a nuisance, because they encroached three feet upon the public

road) and the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh, through the

estate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated with himself upon

the pressure of the moment.'

In this single page of Scott, will the reader please note the kind of

prophetic instinct with which the great men of every age mark and

forecast its destinies? The water from the Fairwell is the future

Thirlmere carried to Manchester; the 'auld stanes'[174] at Donagild's

Chapel, removed as a _nuisance_, foretell the necessary view taken by

modern cockneyism, Liberalism, and progress, of all things that remind

them of the noble dead, of their father's fame, or of their own duty;

and the public road becomes their idol, instead of the saint's shrine.

Finally, the roguery of the entire transaction--the mean man seeing the

weakness of the honourable, and 'besting' him--in modern slang, in the

manner and at the pace of modern trade--'on the pressure of the moment.'

But neither are these things what I have at present quoted the passage

for.

I quote it, that we may consider how much wonderful and various history

is gathered in the fact, recorded for us in this piece of entirely fair

fiction, that in the Scottish borough of Fairport, (Montrose, really,)

in the year 17-- of Christ, the knowledge given by the pastors and

teachers provided for its children by enlightened Scottish

Protestantism, of their fathers' history, and the origin of their

religion, had resulted in this substance and sum;--that the statues of

two crusading knights had become, to their children, Robin and Bobbin;

and the statue of the Madonna, Ailie Dailie.

A marvellous piece of history, truly: and far too comprehensive for

general comment here. Only one small piece of it I must carry forward

the readers' thoughts upon.

The pastors and teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in another

part of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl) are not, whatever else

they may have to answer for, answerable for these names. The names are

of the children's own choosing and bestowing, but not of the children's

own inventing. 'Robin' is a classically endearing cognomen, recording

the _errant_ heroism of old days--the name of the Bruce and of Rob Roy.

'Bobbin' is a poetical and symmetrical fulfilment and adornment of the

original phrase. 'Ailie' is the last echo of 'Ave,' changed into the

softest Scottish Christian name familiar to the children, itself the

beautiful feminine form of royal 'Louis;' the 'Dailie' again

symmetrically added for kinder and more musical endearment. The last

vestiges, you see, of honour for the heroism and religion of their

ancestors, lingering on the lips of babes and sucklings.

But what is the meaning of this necessity the children find themselves

under of completing the nomenclature rhythmically and rhymingly? Note

first the difference carefully, and the attainment of both qualities by

the couplets in question. Rhythm is the syllabic and quantitative

measure of the words, in which Robin, both in weight and time, balances

Bobbin; and Dailie holds level scale with Ailie. But rhyme is the added

correspondence of sound; unknown and undesired, so far as we can learn,

by the Greek Orpheus, but absolutely essential to, and, as special

virtue, becoming titular of, the Scottish Thomas.

The 'Ryme,'[175] you may at first fancy, is the especially childish part

of the work. Not so. It is the especially chivalric and Christian part

of it. It characterises the Christian chant or canticle, as a higher

thing than a Greek ode, melos, or hymnos, or than a Latin carmen.

Think of it, for this again is wonderful! That these children of

Montrose should have an element of music in their souls which Homer had

not,--which a melos of David the Prophet and King had not,--which

Orpheus and Amphion had not,--which Apollo's unrymed oracles became mute

at the sound of.

A strange new equity this,--melodious justice and judgment as it

were,--in all words spoken solemnly and ritualistically by Christian

human creatures;--Robin and Bobbin--by the Crusader's tomb, up to 'Dies

irae, dies illa,' at judgment of the crusading soul.

You have to understand this most deeply of all Christian minstrels, from

first to last; that they are more musical, because more joyful, than any

others on earth: ethereal minstrels, pilgrims of the sky, true to the

kindred points of heaven and home; their joy essentially the sky-lark's,

in light, in purity; but, with their human eyes, looking for the

glorious appearing of something in the sky, which the bird cannot.

This it is that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima--Horatian Latin

into Provencal troubadour's melody; not, because less artful, less wise.

Here is a little bit, for instance, of French ryming just before

Chaucer's time--near enough to our own French to be intelligible to us

yet.

'O quant tres-glorieuse vie,

Quant cil quit out peut et maistrie,

Veult esprouver pour necessaire,

Ne pour quant il ne blasma mie

La vie de Marthe sa mie:

Mais il lui donna exemplaire

D'autrement vivre, et de bien plaire

A Dieu; et plut de bien a faire:

Pour se conclut-il que Marie

Qui estoit a ses piedz sans braire,

Et pensait d'entendre et de taire,

Estleut la plus saine partie.

La meilleur partie esleut-elle

Et la plus saine et la plus belle,

Qui ja ne luy sera ostee

Car par verite se fut celle

Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle,

D'aymer Dieu et d'en estre aymee;

Car jusqu'au cueur fut entamee,

Et si ardamment enflammee.

Que tous-jours ardoit l'estincelle;

Par quoi elle fut visitee

Et de Dieu premier comfortee;

Car charite est trop ysnelle.'

The only law of _metre_, observed in this song, is that each line shall

be octosyllabic:

Qui fut | tousjours | fresche et | nouvelle,

D'autre | ment vi | vret de | bien (ben) plaire,

Et pen | soit den | tendret | de taire

But the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled in Latin

mostly remain yet so in the French.

La _vi_ | -_e_ de | Marthe | sa mie,

although _mie_, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of _amica_

through _amie_, remains monosyllabic. But _vie_ elides its _e_ before a

vowel:

Car Mar- | the me | nait vie | active

Et Ma- | ri-e | contemp | lative;

and custom endures many exceptions. Thus _Marie_ may be three-syllabled

as above, or answer to _mie_ as a dissyllable; but _vierge_ is always, I

think, dissyllabic, _vier-ge_, with even stronger accent on the -_ge_,

for the Latin -_go_.

Then, secondly, of quantity, there is scarcely any fixed law. The metres

may be timed as the minstrel chooses--fast or slow--and the iambic

current checked in reverted eddy, as the words chance to come.

But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no matter how

simply got, so only that the words jingle and tingle together with due

art of interlacing and answering in different parts of the stanza,

correspondent to the involutions of tracery and illumination. The whole

twelve-line stanza is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each,

thus arranged:

AAB | AAB | BBA | BBA |

dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent and

descent, or _descant_ more properly; and doubtless with correspondent

phases in the voice-given, and duly accompanying, or following, music;

Thomas the Rymer's own precept, that 'tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,'

being always kept faithfully in mind.[176]

Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant of the

Christian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself into

the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of Love, and

Song of Battle; praise, however, being the keynote of passion through

all the four forms; according to the first law which I have already

given in the laws of Fesole; 'all great Art is Praise,' of which the

contrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, [Greek:

diabole]: 'She gave me of the tree and I did eat' being an entirely

museless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential contrary of

Love-song.

With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which we may take

for pure examples the 'Te Deum,' the 'Te Lucis Ante,' the 'Amor che

nella mente,'[177] and the 'Chant de Roland,' are mingled songs of

mourning, of Pagan origin (whether Greek or Danish), holding grasp still

of the races that have once learned them, in times of suffering and

sorrow; and songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly

the sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin: while

through the entire system of these musical complaints are interwoven

moralities, instructions, and related histories, in illustration of

both, passing into Epic and Romantic verse, which gradually, as the

forms and learnings of society increase, becomes less joyful, and more

didactic, or satiric, until the last echoes of Christian joy and melody

vanish in the 'Vanity of human wishes.'

And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the different

branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. For one thing, the

reader must please put for the present out of his head all thought of

the progress of 'civilisation'--that is to say, broadly, of the

substitution of wigs for hair, gas for candles, and steam for legs. This

is an entirely distinct matter from the phases of policy and religion.

It has nothing to do with the British Constitution, or the French

Revolution, or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain

subtle relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice,

which makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that which makes her

prefer a gazetteer to a duke; but these relations are not at all to be

dealt with until we solemnly understand that whether men shall be

Christians and poets, or infidels and dunces, does not depend on the way

they cut their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr.

Johnson might have worn his wig in fulness conforming to his dignity,

without therefore coming to the conclusion that human wishes were vain;

nor is Queen Antoinette's civilised hair-powder, as opposed to Queen

Bertha's savagely loose hair, the cause of Antoinette's laying her head

at last in scaffold dust, but Bertha in a pilgrim-haunted tomb.

Again, I have just now used the words 'poet' and 'dunce,' meaning the

degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are

eternally divided into the two classes of poet (believer, maker, and

praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in

process of ages they have the power of making faithful and formative

creatures of themselves, or unfaithful and _de_formative. And this

distinction between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and

evermore _benedicti_, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and

evermore _maledicti_, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian in

Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the question for the public

of any given period is not whether they are a constitutional or

unconstitutional vulgus, but whether they are a benignant or malignant

vulgus. So also, whether it is indeed the gods who have given any

gentleman the grace to despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it

is indeed the rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons.

But yet again. This difference between the persons to whom Heaven,

according to Orpheus, has granted 'the hour of delight,'[178] and those

whom it has condemned to the hour of detestableness, being, as I have

just said, of all times and nations,--it is an interior and more

delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of _Christian_,

as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are

indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but

between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another

division, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which

has hope of the Resurrection.

_This_ is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian harmony,

whether of word or instrument; and so literally, that in precise manner

as this hope disappears, the power of song is taken away, and taken away

utterly. When the Christian falls back out of the bright hope of the

Resurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known

the hope is blameless: one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or

Philomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to declare that

the human wishes, which are summed in that one--'Thy kingdom come'--are

vain! The Fates ordain there shall be no singing after that denial.

For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim hope

of yet once more Eurydice,--the Philomela song--granted after the cruel

silence,--the Halcyon song--with its fifteen days of peace, were all

sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the

Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to

Johnson--accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope--triumphantly and

with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-whistles, proclaimed

for the glorious discovery of the civilised ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss

Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not

invented gunpowder?--who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[179]

There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not

paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the

Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the

flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only

gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting

hail, and melted together in everlasting mud, and great was the day in

which our worships were born. And there is no Gospel, but only, whatever

we've got, to get more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. And

are not these discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed of, and fiddled

of, and generally made melodiously indubitable in the eighteenth century

song of praise?

The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, in that

century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious

pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long enough

without dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough without piping,

suddenly Astraea returns to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort,

and there bursts out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious

triplet of Amphisbaenic ryme. '_Ca ira._'

Amphisbaenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying Ercildoune's

precept, 'Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye,' to the syllable.--Don

Giovanni's hitherto fondly chanted 'Andiam, andiam,' become suddenly

impersonal and prophetic: IT shall go, and you also. A cry--before it is

a song, then song and accompaniment together--perfectly done; and the

march 'towards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty

thousand--they to the sound of stringed music--preceded by young girls

with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldier-wise their shovels

and picks, and with one throat are singing _Ca ira_.'[180]

Through all the springtime of 1790, 'from Brittany to Burgundy, on most

plains of France, under most city walls, there march and

constitutionally wheel to the Ca-iraing mood of fife and drum--our clear

glancing phalanxes;--the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand,

virgin led, is in the long light of July.' Nevertheless, another song is

yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers

having gone--amphisbaenic,--on the 28th of August 1792, 'Dumouriez rode

from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_.'[181]

And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will

beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over

the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night

Dumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians

here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and

little hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and there--what to

advise? The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be

sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses

_them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful,

yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a

rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious

ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows--the

cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris _this_ time, the

autumnal hours of fate pass on--_ca ira_--and on the 6th of November,

Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. 'Dumouriez wide-winged, they

wide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned

with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back

on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in

person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe,

uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes

joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at

the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance,

they rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of

Austrians from the scene of action.' Thus, through the lips of

Dumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle,[182] 'Aux armes--marchons!'

Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning--in

what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in

Sedan!

While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung, and

danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less

giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of

idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.

Different also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord,

and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this

main point--that while the _Ca ira_ and Marseillaise were essentially

songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always

songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the

contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the

priests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists,

of their day;--not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with

the most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and

monk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not

but appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and

specifically the praisers--Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and

Byron of the devil.

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having long

ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific, and

finding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and twangle from their

native trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than

religious, verses of the school recognised as that of the English

Lakes; very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined; observing

the errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a pitying and tender

indignation, and arriving in lacustrine seclusion at many valuable

principles of philosophy, as pure as the tarns of their mountains, and

of corresponding depth.[183]

I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew Arnold's

arrangement of Wordsworth's poems; and read with sincere interest his

high estimate of them. But a great poet's work never needs arrangement

by other hands; and though it is very proper that Silver How should

clearly understand and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we

must not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.

Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a

single exclamation:--

'What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,

Mount Skiddaw?'

Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the

great masters of the Muse's teaching, and the pleasant fingerer of his

pastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.

Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably less

shrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit; and no sense

of humour: but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural

beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far

as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life

around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do

not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much

doubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards;

but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were

inferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear themselves

talk.

With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a wholesome

contentment in modest circumstances, and such sufficient ease, in that

accepted state, as permitted the passing of a good deal of time in

wishing that daisies could see the beauty of their own shadows, and

other such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series

of studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country,

which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and precious; but

they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality in many ways more

beautiful than its picture.

But the other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one

of our country people of old statesman class; cottage lying nearly

midway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill

walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea

for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. 'Why do not

you go to the nearer church?' I asked. 'Don't you like the clergyman?'

'Oh no, sir,' she answered, 'it isn't that; but you know I couldn't

leave my mother.' 'Your mother! she is buried at H---- then?' 'Yes, sir;

and you know I couldn't go to church anywhere else.'

That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not of

Cumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives forth her fruit

for the living, and receives her dead to peace, might perhaps have been,

to our great and endless comfort, discovered before now, if Wordsworth

had been content to tell us what he knew of his own villages and people,

not as the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but simply

as a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of primroses, kind to

the parish children, and reverent of the spade with which Wilkinson had

tilled his lands: and I am by no means sure that his influence on the

stronger minds of his time was anywise hastened or extended by the

spirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven

rhymed to seven, and Foy to boy.

Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and

frankly acknowledge him; and our English literature enriched with a new

and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of

his quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its

privacy of light.

A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless

creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at

least, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as

may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children,--incurious to see

in the hands the print of the Nails.

A gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills,

fragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and

distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel

wilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of

Dodona.

* * * * *

[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next

month,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion;

as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader

will perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints, p. 29, l. 20, of

'scarcely' to 'securely,' and p. 31, l. 34, 'full,' with comma, to

'fall,' without one; noticing besides that _Redgauntlet_ has been

omitted in the italicised list, p. 25, l. 16; and that the reference to

note 2 should not be at the word 'imagination,' p. 24, but at the word

'trade,' p. 25, l. 7. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from

Jamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one of my

difficulties:--'Coup the crans.' The language is borrowed from the

'cran,' or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is

sometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus

it signifies to be _completely_ upset.]

JOHN RUSKIN.

[BYRON.]

'Parching summer hath no warrant

To consume this crystal well;

Rains, that make each brook a torrent,

Neither sully it, nor swell.'

So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and

child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and

opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.

But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing

dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale,

Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and

their father's house.

Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high

on Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks

with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is

wise and innocent.

Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth constituent, air

current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner

research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing

the depth, or drought,--the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?

For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the source

of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself then,

in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between

Cockermouth and Shap?

Not altogether so; but indeed the _Vocal_ piety seemed conclusively to

have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little

Langdale. The _Un_vocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man,

may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history

disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous

religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon,

east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or

by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets,

stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary

addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise,

over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of

Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats

discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and

Buerger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death--while even Puritan

Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels

of doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the 'unco guid,' put

but limited faith in gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching

frankness the _Morgante Maggiore_.[184]

Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it,

might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the

period--dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that

the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were,

from the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of

angels,--again I say--hesitatingly--_is_ it possible that the goodness

of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr.

Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift

of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken

efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves

despised,[185] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed

words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days

on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those

other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by

the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the

desert found them, and slew.

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all

her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair,

and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been

able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of

these, her despised.

I take one at mere chance:

'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]

Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with

truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his

experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our

eyes _have_ kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it

difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be;

and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau.

But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's

_Im_mortality instead of dulled by his death,--and, gazing on the sky,

look for the day when every eye must gaze also--for behold, He cometh

with the clouds--this it is no more possible for Christian England to

apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.

'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'--He, the reprobate! how

should such as he think of Christ?

Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another

line or two, to try:

'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]

If _he_ speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and

Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'

Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The

first line I gave you was easy Byron--almost shallow Byron--these are of

the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,--nor in

a hurry.

'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How _did_ Carnage behave in the

Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether

the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you

in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect

what he was bid stand still _for_? or if not--will you please look--and

what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw,

rejoicing?

'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah--and fought against

Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of

Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls

that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to

Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote

all the country of the hills and of the south--and of the vale and of

the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly

destroyed all that breathed--as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'

Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear _these_

texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the

world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it

has always preferred parting first with its Life--and God has taken it

at its word. But Death is not _His_ Begotten Son, for all that; nor is

the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working

out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for

working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology

perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;--neither is the

Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer'

utter thunders of God--which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to

learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been

better at this day for _you_, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine

shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines

that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own

character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of

war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George

Fox--its folly shown practically by Penn. But the _compassion_ of the

pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its

stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither

Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of

men that

'The drying up a single tear has more

Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.'[188]

Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the

Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle

song too, when it is _his_ cue to fight. If you look at the introduction

to the _Isles of Greece_, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd

canto of _Don Juan_,--you will find--what will you _not_ find, if only

you understand them! 'He' in the first line, remember, means the typical

modern poet.

'Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,

He gave the different nations something national.

'Twas all the same to him--"God save the King"

Or "Ca ira" according to the fashion all;

His muse made increment of anything

From the high lyric down to the low rational:

If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinder

Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?

'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;

In England a six-canto quarto tale;

In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on

The last war--much the same in Portugal;

In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on

Would be old Goethe's--(see what says de Stael)

In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;'

In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.

Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling

power. The 'God Save the Queen' in England, fallen hollow now, as the

'Ca ira' in France--not a man in France knowing where either France or

'that' (whatever 'that' may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England

daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing

he doesn't like;--nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any

more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society:

then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an

instant, 'high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's

height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of

France--resumed in a word--Beranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely

deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in

these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on--the

_last_ war, (_present_ war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then,

Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the

Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that

also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in

Rossetti's 'blessed damozels' or Burne Jones's 'days of creation.'

Lastly comes the mock at himself--the modern English Greek--(followed up

by the 'degenerate into hands like mine' in the song itself); and

then--to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We have had

one line of him in his clearness--five of him in his depth--sixteen of

him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:--

'What,--silent yet? and silent _all_?

Ah no, the voices of the dead

Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let _one_ living head,

But one, arise--we come--we come:"

--'Tis but the living who are dumb.'

Resurrection, this, you see like Buerger's; but not of death unto death.

'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the _whole_ heart of Byron

was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the

third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world

in which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to

each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland

more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock

Hills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron,

Loch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee

and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--

'And silence aids--though the steep hills

Send to the lake a thousand rills;

In summer tide, so soft they weep,

The sound but lulls the ear asleep;

Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,

So stilly is the solitude.

Naught living meets the eye or ear,

But well I ween the dead are near;

For though, in feudal strife, a foe

Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low,

Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,

The peasant rests him from his toil,

And, dying, bids his bones be laid

Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'

And last take the same note of sorrow--with Burns's finger on the fall

of it:

'Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,

Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,

Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens

Wi' toddlin' din,

Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens

Frae lin to lin.'

As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great

masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their

passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that

of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you--or

more tender--nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?

For instance, when we are told that

'Wharfe, as he moved along,

To matins joined a mournful voice,'

is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite

logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means

rhythmically dulcet,) that

'The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,

And strangled by a merciless force'?

Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,

'How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more

Then 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,

From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!'

--is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at

leisure, and in a reclining attitude--as compared with the meditations

of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of

us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and

Humanity,--poetical extraction, and moral position?

On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words

more of the school of Belial?

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some

very wicked people--mutineers, in fact--have retired, misanthropically,

into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves

safe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to

drink:

'A little stream came tumbling from the height

And straggling into ocean as it might.

Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray

And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,

Close on the wild wide ocean,--yet as pure

And fresh as Innocence; and more secure.

Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep

As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,

While, far below, the vast and sullen swell

Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.'[189]

Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning

his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not

unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here _is_ entirely

first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the

thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassably good, the

closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by

the race of the sea-kings.

But Lucifer himself _could_ not have written it; neither any servant of

Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my

saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in

any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so

all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so

ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching

her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so

ridiculous a thing to guide,--or check,--his poetical passion, may alike

seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the

existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who

writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, _know_ good 'style' when

you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out

of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or

bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or

bad?

I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation,

yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains,

I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of

pages.

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, _i.

e._ kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger,

the second of love.

(1) 'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,

His present, and your pains, we thank you for.

When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,

We will in France, by God's grace, play a set,

Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'

(2) 'My gracious Silence, hail!

Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home

That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,

Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,

And mothers that lack sons.'

Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both

these passages, so opposite in temper.

A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the

first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, 'We

are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto _whose grace_ our passion is

as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons'); and with this

self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to

be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact

place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a

word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the 'style'

in an instant.

B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the

compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words

being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way;

allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without

obscurity; thus, 'his present, and your pains, we thank you for' is

better than 'we thank you for his present and your pains,' because the

Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but

'when to these balls our rackets we have matched' would have spoiled the

style in a moment, because--I was going to have said, ball and racket

are of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also

here the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have

precedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 'in France' comes

first, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the 'by

God's grace' next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible;

the detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word.

The King does not say 'danger,' far less 'dishonour,' but 'hazard' only;

of _that_ he is, humanly speaking, sure.

C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words; slowly

in the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word

not absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of

final dissyllable. Thus, 'play a set shall strike' is better than 'play

a set _that_ shall strike,' and 'match'd' is kingly short--no necessity

could have excused 'matched' instead. On the contrary, the three first

words, 'We are glad,' would have been spoken by the king more slowly and

fully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing

the kingly 'we' at its proudest, and then the 'are' as a continuous

state, and then the 'glad,' as the exact contrary of what the

ambassadors expected him to be.[190]

D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the

heart beats. The king _cannot_ speak otherwise than he does--nor the

hero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even

lisping numbers 'come,' but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.

E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion fitted to it

exactly and the utmost of which the language is capable--the melody in

prose being Eolian and variable--in verse, nobler by submitting itself

to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.

F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only

its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker

meaning according to the passion--nearly always indicated by metaphor:

'play a set'--sometimes by abstraction--(thus in the second passage

'silence' for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct

epithet ('coffined' for dead) but always indicative of there being more

in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though

his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fulness depends the

majesty of style; that is to say, virtually, on the quantity of

contained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving

and true: and this the sum of all--that nothing can be well said, but

with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.

These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse

alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed

verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music,

that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or

architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time

and harmony.

When Byron says 'rhyme is of the rude,'[191] he means that Burns needs

it,--while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah--yet in this

need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus

the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme--the best of

Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.

I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship;

(nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its

waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore

refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the

confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's

_Anglo-Saxons_. I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of

work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments

known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing;

but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in

King Canute's impromptu

'Gaily (or is it sweetly?--I forget which, and it's no matter)

sang the monks of Ely,

As Knut the king came sailing by;'

much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their

Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does

not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss,

chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain;

while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into

the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven.

So, Gibbon can write in _his_ manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in

_his_ manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in _his_ manner,

bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as

befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.

'Master of Masters--sweet source, and springing well,

Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;

* * * *

Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,

With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,

With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue

Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,

Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?

Na, na--not so; but kneel when I them hear.

But farther more--and lower to descend

Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend

Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme

Since _thou_ wast but ane mortal man sometime.'

'Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come for you on that

law after reading these nobly pious words? And note you _whose_

humility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively

into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of--Archibald

Bell-the-Cat!

And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in _Marmion_

between his father and King James.

'His hand the monarch sudden took--

Now, by the Bruce's soul,

Angus, my hasty speech forgive,

For sure as doth his spirit live

As he said of the Douglas old

I well may say of you,--

That never king did subject hold,

In speech more free, in war more bold,

More tender and more true:

And while the king his hand did strain

The old man's tears fell down like rain.'

I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but

perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of

expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they

express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars,

will recognise further in them that the simplicity of the educated is

lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's

teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its

mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.

'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,

Hye you there apace;

Let none come there but that virgins been

To adorn her grace:

And when you come, whereas she in place,

See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;

Bind your fillets fast,

And gird in your waste,

For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'

'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine

With gylliflowers;

Bring coronations, and sops in wine,

Worn of paramours;

Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies

And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;

The pretty paunce

And the chevisaunce

Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]

Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test

all by.

(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,

Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,

No more, at yearly festivals,

We cowslip balls

Or chains of columbines shall make,

For this or that occasion's sake.

No, no! our maiden pleasures be

Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193]

(3) 'Death is now the phoenix rest,

And the turtle's loyal breast

To eternity doth rest.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;

Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:

Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]

If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to

Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means

of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following

kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him--as for instance

Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin--'his manners have not that repose that marks

the caste,' &c. _This_ defect in his Lordship's style, being myself

scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative

language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is

yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint;

and indefinable--evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;--not to

say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims

itself--London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll,

things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come

to town--modern town--like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice)

are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.

Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest

sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full

of hope, and all pain of balsam.

Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line,

prophetic of all things since and now. 'Where _he_ gazed, a gloom

pervaded space.'[196]

So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being

an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge,

remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the

morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment

which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from

the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious

rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame

demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance,

and sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still

lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,

'The sordor of civilisation, mixed

With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.'[197]

Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a

sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower

animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and

morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,--with

other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be

analysed by extreme care,--is found, to the full, only in five men that

I know of in modern times; namely Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and

myself,--differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from

the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and

separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer,

Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for 'Rokkes blak'

and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans,

which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and

Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to

climb, or cross;--all this love of impending mountains, coiled

thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky,

almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of

Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close

brushwood at Coniston.

And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct of

Astraean justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which will

not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene 'whatever is, is

right;' but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that about

ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong: conviction

making four of us, according to our several manners, leaders of

revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous

to the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less sanguine,

into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope and the

implacableness of Fate.

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the

death: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its

feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally,

no conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental

public, offering up daily the pure emotion of divine tranquillity,

shrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.

Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with more precise

illustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this present one has

been hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, to gentle readers, not a

little discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of light biographic

study, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this

place as afterwards;--namely, the account of the manner in which

Scott--whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and

palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of

the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,--spent his Sunday.

As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first thing we

want to know,--whether Scott worked after his week-day custom, on the

Sunday morning. But, I gather, not; at all events his household and his

cattle rested (L. iii. 108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or

read quietly in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in

the house, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at eleven, when I

expect you all to attend' (vii. 306). Question of college and other

externally unanimous prayers settled for us very briefly: 'if you have

no faith, have at least manners.' He read the Church of England service,

lessons and all, the latter, if interesting, eloquently (_ibid._). After

the service, one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After the sermon,

if the weather was fine, walk with his family, dogs included and guests,

to _cold_ picnic (iii. 109), followed by short extempore biblical

novelettes; for he had his Bible, the Old Testament especially, by

heart, it having been his mother's last gift to him (vi. 174). These

lessons to his children in Bible history were always given, whether

there was picnic or not. For the rest of the afternoon he took his

pleasure in the woods with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his

master's elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life to

the laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh of whiskey

or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 195). Whatever might

happen on the other evenings of the week, Scott always dined at home on

Sunday; and with old friends: never, unless inevitably, receiving any

person with whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room

rubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his

Peppers and Mustards gambolling about him, 'and even the stately Maida

grinning and wagging his tail with sympathy.' For the usquebaugh of the

less honoured week-days, at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne

briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair

share afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scottish

worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite author, for the

amusement or edification of his little circle. Shakespeare it might be,

or Dryden,--Johnson, or Joanna Baillie,--Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in

those days 'Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a

new piece from _his_ hand had appeared, it was _sure to be read by Scott

the Sunday evening afterwards_; and that with such delighted emphasis as

showed how completely the elder bard had kept up his enthusiasm for

poetry at pitch of youth, and all his admiration of genius, free, pure,

and unstained by the least drop of literary jealousy' (v. 341).

With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as chanced in having

Dandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel

Mannering, Counsellor Pleydell, and Dr. Robertson in Castle Street, such

was Scott's habitual Sabbath: a day, we perceive, of eating the fat,

(_dinner_, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and

mercy--thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull, hast thine!) and

drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of Mr. Southey's cataract of

Lodore,--'Here it comes, sparkling.' A day bestrewn with coronations and

sops in wine; deep in libations to good hope and fond memory; a day of

rest to beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that can

be merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of delight,

signifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, there or far

away;--always excepting the French, and Boney.

'Yes, and see what it all came to in the end.'

Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath; the end came of quite other

things: of _these_, came such length of days and peace as Scott had in

his Fatherland, and such immortality as he has in all lands.

Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his sometimes

overmuch light-mindedness, was administered to him by the more grave and

thoughtful Byron. For the Lord Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart

as well as Scott, though it had never been given him by his mother as

her dearest possession. Knew it, and, what was more, had thought of it,

and sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, nor been fain to

seek.

And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible pleasure in

the way he sees to be most agreeable to him--as, for instance,

remembering with precision, and writing down the very next morning,

every blessed word that the Prince Regent had been pleased to say of him

before courtly audience,--he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his

own _Bride of Abydos_, for instance, which he had written from beginning

to end in four days, or even the travelling reflections of Harold and

Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's

reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work

of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his

best,--the drama of _Cain_. Of which dedication the virtual significance

to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border

soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, and of White

Maidens, also of Grey Friars, and Green Fairies; also of sacred hollies

by the well, and haunted crooks in the glen. But of the bushes that the

black dogs rend in the woods of Phlegethon; and of the crooks in the

glen, and the bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest

of us; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a dwarfed

one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than Hobbie Elliot may

tremblingly ask 'Gude guide us, what's yon?' hast thou yet known, seeing

that thou hast yet told, _nothing_.

Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time hear.

JOHN RUSKIN

FOOTNOTES:

[154] Nell, in the _Old Curiosity Shop_, was simply killed for the

market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster's _Life_), and Paul was

written under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott--a

part of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both in

_Dombey_ and _Little Dorrit_.

[155] Chourineur' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with

knife-edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with

the two others; they are put together only as parts in the same

phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the

'Louvecienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau--she, province-born and bred; and

opposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress

friend. 'De ce Paris, ou elle etait nee, elle savait tout--elle

connaissait tout. Rien ne l'etonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science

des details materiels de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de

la duper!--Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si econome n'avait meme

pas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme.

Je n'avais pas idee d'une si complete absence de sens moral; d'une si

inconsciente depravation, d'une impudence si effrontement

naive.'--_L'Argent des autres_, vol. i. p. 358.

[156] The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence

of the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing

especially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated

with grossness. Horace, in the _Epodes_, scoffs at it, but not without

horror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply

struck by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost

beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and

suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it

takes entire possession of Balzac in the _Contes Drolatiques_; it struck

Scott in the earliest days of his childish 'visions' intensified by the

axe-stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this

note. It chose for him the subject of the _Heart of Midlothian_, and

produced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting

_Nigel_, almost spoiling _Quentin Durward_--utterly the _Fair Maid of

Perth_: and culminating in _Bizarro_, L. x. 149. It suggested all the

deaths by falling, or sinking, as in delirious sleep--Kennedy, Eveline

Neville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of

Ravenswood in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here--compare

the dream of Gride, in _Nicholas Nickleby_, and Dickens's own last

words, _on the ground_, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain,

two years ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on

the other side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all

the figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy,

Geoffrey Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus; in Dickens it in like manner

gives Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and

wax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild in _Barnaby Rudge_,

where, with a _corps de drame_ composed of one idiot, two madmen, a

gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a

blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in

ribands--carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the

hangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the

gentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the

shop-boy fool into shapelessness, he cannot yet be content without

shooting the spare lover's leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a

wooden one; the shapeless shop-boy being finally also married in _two_

wooden ones. It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign

manual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love

of thorniness--(in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless

serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. Compare _Modern Painters_,

vol. iv., 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' s. 19); and in _all_ forms of

it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence the

last Darwinian process of the witches' charm--'cool it with a baboon's

_blood_, _then_ the charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the

colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London

(the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation)

are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence;

and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April

3, 1880, of _Young Folks_--'A magazine of instructive and entertaining

literature for boys and girls of all ages,' containing 'A Sequel to

Desdichado' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quite

monumental example of the kind of art in question will be found as a

leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, "See, good

Cerberus," said Sir Rupert, "_my hand has been struck off. You must make

me a hand of iron, one with springs in it, so that I can make it grasp a

dagger._" The text is also, as it professes to be, instructive; being

the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 'folly' of

_Ivanhoe_; for folly begets folly down, and down; and whatever Scott and

Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators--their wisdom none will so

much as hear, how much less follow!

In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and

good are alike conditions of literal _vision_: and therefore also,

inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first

elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive

nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19--and was without

doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i.

20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him

read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and

her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own

murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at

Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself

scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at

the sight of statuary, 31--especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of

Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel

at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67--solaced, while he

was being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by

that history of the Knights of Malta--fondly dwelt on and realised by

actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the

theme of its last effort in passing away.

[157] 'Se dit par denigrement, d'un chretien qui ne croit pas les dogmes

de sa religion.'--Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.

[158] 'A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez's,

in _Prosper Randoce_, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old

nurse's 'ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va a

vepres, p. 93; and compare Prosper's treasures, 'la petite Venus, et le

petit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121; also Madame Brehanne's request for the

divertissement of 'quelque belle batterie a coups de couteau' with

Didier's answer. 'Helas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la

Drome, l'on se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33.

[159] Edgeworth's _Tales_ (Hunter, 1827), 'Harrington and Ormond,' vol.

iii. p. 260.

[160] Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.

[161] Scott's father was habitually ascetic. 'I have heard his son tell

that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good,

to taste it again, and say, "Yes--it is too good, bairns," and dash a

tumbler of cold water into his plate.'--Lockhart's _Life_ (Black,

Edinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book

in the simple form of 'L.'

[162] A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for

press, a Miss Somebody's 'great song,' 'Live, and Love, and Die.' Had it

been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have

added--Spin.

[163] See passage of introduction to _Ivanhoe_, wisely quoted in L. vi.

106.

[164] See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion of _Woodstock_.

[165] L. iv. 177.

[166] L. vi. 67.

[167] 'One other such novel, and there's an end; but who can last for

ever? who ever lasted so long?'--Sydney Smith (of the _Pirate_) to

Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (_Letters_, vol. ii. p. 223.)

[168] L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192.

[169] All, alas! were now in a great measure so written. _Ivanhoe_, _The

Monastery_, _The Abbot_ and _Kenilworth_ were all published between

December 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand

guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand

before the bargain was completed; and before the _Fortunes of Nigel_

issued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and received his

bookseller's bills for no less than four 'works of fiction,' not one of

them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in

unbroken succession, _each of them to fill up at least three volumes,

but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any

of them should run to four_; and within two years all this anticipation

had been wiped off by _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St.

Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_.

[170] _Woodstock_ was finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his

ruin; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages

are the most beautiful of the book. But a month afterwards Lady Scott

died; and he never wrote glad word more.

[171] Compare Mr. Spurgeon's not unfrequent orations on the same

subject.

[172] There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in

the novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank

Osbaldistone, and Alan Fairford.

[173] Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his conceit;

but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was called

'Molyndona' even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 1446. See

also account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable volume, _Old

Glasgow_, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since throwing

that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it with other

pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook, once famed

for the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching), 'has for nearly

a hundred years been a crawling stream of loathsomeness. It is now

bricked over, and a carriage way made on the top of it; underneath the

foul mess still passes through the heart of the city, till it falls into

the Clyde close to the harbour.'

[174] The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession,

written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations

of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately

Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns.

'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.

'Dear Sir,--Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old

stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had

just been erected.] 'Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is

to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of

accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on

the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as acceptable)

have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.'

'Abbotsford: July 30.

'I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon

descend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the

niche above the door; and though many a man has got a niche _in_ the

Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out

of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and

to remain very much your obliged humble servant,

'WALTER SCOTT.'

'August 16.

'My dear Sir,--I trouble you with this [_sic_] few lines to thank you

for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door,

and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of

Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our

scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is

something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such

things are well in character.' [Alas--Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] 'I intend

the old lion to predominate over a well which the children have

christened the Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however,

continues to be the hall at Castle Street.'

'September 5.

'Dear Sir,--I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not

sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like

to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up,

and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me

know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the

stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself'

[he means, the wooden one] 'will be kept for the new jail; if not, and

not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it. Certainly

I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door

when in my possession as heretofore.'

* * * * *

'September 8.

'I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though

I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of

Porteous-mob.

'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of

the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended

possessor.'

[175] Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better

convenience, I shall continue to spell 'Ryme' without our wrongly added

_h_.

[176] L. ii. 278.

[177] 'Che nella mente mia _ragiona_.' Love--you observe, the highest

_Reasonableness_, instead of French _ivresse_, or even Shakespearian

'mere folly'; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song

of the _Convito_, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of

Reason; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line:--

'Costei penso chi che mosso l'universo.'

(See Lyell's _Canzoniere_, p. 104.)

[178] [Greek: horan tes terpsios]--Plato, _Laws_, ii., Steph. 669.

'Hour' having here nearly the power of 'Fate' with added sense of being

a daughter of Themis.

[179] 'Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, _and

what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous_'!

(_Evenings at Home_--fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to

Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth; and I only wish that in the substance

of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Nevertheless,

the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufacture and

industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in '_Evenings

at Home_' and '_Harry and Lucy_'--being all the while themselves works

of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and

fulfilled. See for instance the paper, 'Things by their Right Names,'

following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), and closing

the first volume of the old edition of the _Evenings_.

[180] Carlyle, _French Revolution_ (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70;

conf. p. 25, and the _Ca ira_ at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276.

[181] _Ibid._ iii. 26.

[182] Carlyle, _French Revolution_, iii. 106, the last sentence altered

in a word or two.

[183] I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most

majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the

unfathomable.

[184] 'It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for

verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a

bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion--and so tell those

buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.

'I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I

must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with

the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead,

and the new one not appointed yet--but the masquing goes on the same.'

(Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) 'A

dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except

your neighbour's.'

[185] See quoted _infra_ the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other

modern poets, _Juan_, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv.

stanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand

always for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for

line.

[186] _Island_, ii. 16, where see context.

[187] _Juan_, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth

says 'instrument'--not 'daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said

'Infant' and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant

would not have rymed.

[188] _Juan_, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context

61--68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the

Devil's speech, beginning, 'Yes, Sir, you forget' in scene 2 of _The

Deformed Transformed_: then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning

'he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally, the

_Vision of Judgment_, stanzas 3 to 5.

[189] _Island_, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high

flakes, shivered into sleet' of stanza 7.

[190] A modern editor--of whom I will not use the expressions which

occur to me--finding the 'we' a redundant syllable in the iambic line,

prints 'we're.' It is a little thing--but I do not recollect, in the

forty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch

quite so base. But I don't read the new editions much; that must be

allowed for.

[191] _Island_, ii. 5. I was going to say, 'Look to the context.' but am

fain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our

school-introduction to the literature of the world.

'Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,

Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys

In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign

Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;

Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,

But yields young history all to harmony;

A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre

In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.

For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave

Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,

Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,

Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,

Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,

Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;

Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme

For sages' labours or the student's dream;

Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil--

The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.

Such was this rude rhyme--rhyme is of the rude,

But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,

Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise

Lands which no foes destroy or civilise,

Exist; and what can our accomplish'd art

Of verse do more than reach the a waken'd heart?'

[192] _Shepherd's Calendar._ 'Coronation,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation;

'sops in wine,' jolly-pastoral for double pink; 'paunce,' thoughtless

pastoral for pansy; 'chevisaunce' I don't know, (not in Gerarde);

'flowre-delice'--pronounce dellice--half made up of 'delicate' and

'delicious.'

[193] Herrick, _Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter_.

[194] _Passionate Pilgrim._

[195] In this point, compare the _Curse of Minerva_ with the _Tears of

the Muses_.

[196] 'He,'--Lucifer; (_Vision of Judgment_, 24). It is precisely

because Byron was _not_ his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the

Devil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness

and prosperity;--with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue;

and of the 'progress' of things in general:--in smooth sea and fair

weather,--and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when

once one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.

[197] _Island_, ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no

denial of the fall,--nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay,

nearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with

deeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in

its civilisation.

THE

ELEMENTS OF DRAWING

THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE.

It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a Manual of Drawing, I

ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but

those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly

state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is

too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance

of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear

questionable in the method of its treatment.

The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing · 第 13 / 16 章

It is to say little for the types of youth and maid which alone Scott