"Never will I tell you," replied the merman, "unless you promise to take

me to the same place in the sea wherefrom you caught me, and there to

let me go free again." So the farmer made him the promise.

"Well," said the merman, "I laughed the first time because you struck

your dog, whose joy at meeting you was real and sincere. The second

time, because you cursed the mound over which you stumbled, which is

full of golden ducats. And the third time, because you received with

pleasure your wife's empty and flattering embrace, who is faithless to

you, and a hypocrite. And now be an honest man, and take me out to the

sea whence you brought me."

The farmer replied, "Two things that you have told me I have no means of

proving; namely, the faithfulness of my dog and the faithlessness of my

wife. But the third I will try the truth of; and if the hillock contain

gold, then I will believe the rest."

Accordingly he went to the hillock, and having dug it up, found therein

a great treasure of golden ducats, as the merman had told him. After

this the farmer took the merman down to the boat, and to that place in

the sea whence he had brought him. Before he put him in, the latter

said to him:

"Farmer, you have been an honest man, and I will reward you for

restoring me to my mother, if only you have skill enough to take

possession of property that I shall throw in your way. Be happy

and prosper."

Then the farmer put the merman into the sea, and he sank out of sight.

It happened that not long after seven sea-gray cows were seen on the

beach, close to the farmer's land. These cows appeared to be very

unruly, and ran away directly the farmer approached them. So he took a

stick and ran after them, possessed with the fancy that if he could

burst the bladder which he saw on the nose of each of them, they would

belong to him. He contrived to hit the bladder on the nose of one cow,

which then became so tame that he could easily catch it, while the

others leaped into the sea and disappeared.

The farmer was convinced that this was the gift of the merman. And a

very useful gift it was, for better cow was never seen nor milked in all

the land, and she was the mother of the race of gray cows so much

esteemed now.

And the farmer prospered exceedingly, but never caught any more mermen.

As for his wife, nothing further is told about her, so we can

repeat nothing.

THE FISHERMAN OF GÖTUR

It is told that long ago a peasant living at Götur in Myrdalur went out

fishing round the island of Dyrhólar. In returning from the sea, he had

to cross a morass. It happened once that on his way home after

nightfall, he came to a place where a man had lost his horse in the bog,

and was unable to recover it without help. The fisherman, to whom this

man was a stranger, aided him in freeing his horse from the peat.

When the animal stood again safe and sound upon the dry earth, the

stranger said to the fisherman, "I am your neighbor, for I live in

Hvammsgil, and am returning from the sea, like you. But I am so poor

that I cannot pay you for this service as you ought to be paid. I will

promise you, however, this much: that you shall never go to sea without

catching fish, nor ever, if you will take my advice, return with empty

hands. But you must never put to sea without having first seen me pass

your house, as if going toward the shore. Obey me in this matter, and I

promise you that you shall never launch your boat in vain."

The fisherman thanked him for this advice; and sure enough it was that

for three years afterward, never putting to sea till he had first seen

his neighbor pass his door, he always launched his boat safely, and

always came home full-handed.

But at the end of the three years it fell out that one day in the early

morning, the fisherman, looking out from his house, saw the wind and

weather favorable, and all other fishers hurrying down to the sea to

make the best of so good a time. But though he waited hour after hour

in the hope of seeing his neighbor pass, the man of Hvammsgil never

came. At last, losing his patience, he started out without having seen

him go by. When he came down to the shore, he found that all the boats

were launched and far away.

Before night the wind rose and became a storm, and every boat that had

that day put to sea was wrecked, and every fisher drowned; the peasant

of Götur alone escaping, for he had been unable to go out fishing. The

next night he had a strange dream, in which his neighbor from Hvammsgil

came to him and said, "Although you did not yesterday follow my advice,

I yet so far felt kindly toward you that I hindered you from going out

to sea, and saved you thus from drowning; but look no more forth to see

me pass, for we have met for the last time." And never again did the

peasant see his neighbor pass his door.

THE MAGIC SCYTHE

A certain day-laborer once started from his home in the south to earn

wages for hay-cutting in the north country. In the mountains he was

suddenly overtaken by a thick mist and sleet-storm, and lost his way.

Fearing to go on further, he pitched his tent in a convenient spot, and

taking out his provisions, began to eat.

While he was engaged upon his meal, a brown dog came into the tent, so

ill-favored, dirty, wet, and fierce-eyed, that the poor man felt quite

afraid of it, and gave it as much bread and meat as it could devour.

This the dog swallowed greedily, and ran off again into the mist. At

first the man wondered much to see a dog in such a wild place, where he

never expected to meet with a living creature; but after a while he

thought no more about the matter, and having finished his supper, fell

asleep, with his saddle for a pillow.

At midnight he dreamed that he saw a tall and aged woman enter his tent,

who spoke thus to him:--"I am beholden to you, good man, for your

kindness to my daughter, but am unable to reward you as you deserve.

Here is a scythe which I place beneath your pillow; it is the only gift

I can make you, but despise it not. It will surely prove useful to you,

as it can cut down all that lies before it. Only beware of putting it

into the fire to temper it. Sharpen it, however, as you will, but in

that way never." So saying, she was seen no more.

When the man awoke and looked forth, he found the mist all gone and the

sun high in heaven; so getting all his things together and striking his

tent, he laid them upon the pack-horses, saddling last of all his own

horse. But on lifting his saddle from the ground, he found beneath it a

small scythe blade, which seemed well worn and was rusty. On seeing

this, he at once recalled to mind his dream, and taking the scythe with

him, set out once more on his way. He soon found again the road which he

had lost, and made all speed to reach the well-peopled district to which

he was bound.

When he arrived at the north country, he went from house to house, but

did not find any employment, for every farmer had laborers enough, and

one week of hay-harvest was already past. He heard it said, however,

that one old woman in the district, generally thought by her neighbors

to be skilled in magic and very rich, always began her hay-cutting a

week later than anybody else, and though she seldom employed a laborer,

always contrived to finish it by the end of the season. When by any

chance--and it was a rare one--she did engage a workman, she was never

known to pay him for his work.

Now the peasant from the south was advised to ask this old woman for

employment, having been warned of her strange habits.

He accordingly went to her house, and offered himself to her as a day

laborer. She accepted his offer, and told him that he might, if he

chose, work a week for her, but must expect no payment.

"Except," she said, "you can cut more grass in the whole week than I can

rake in on the last day of it."

To these terms he gladly agreed, and began mowing. And a very good

scythe he found that to be which the woman had given him in his dream;

for it cut well, and never wanted sharpening, though he worked with it

for five days unceasingly. He was well content, too, with his place, for

the old woman was kind enough to him.

One day, entering the forge next to her house, he saw a vast number of

scythe-handles and rakes, and a big heap of blades, and wondered beyond

measure what the old lady could want with all these. It was the fifth

day--the Friday--and when he was asleep that night, the same elf-woman

whom he had seen upon the mountains came again to him and said:--

"Large as are the meadows you have mown, your employer will easily be

able to rake in all that hay to-morrow, and if she does so, will, as you

know, drive you away without paying you. When therefore you see yourself

worsted, go into the forge, take as many scythe-handles as you think

proper, fit their blades to them, and carry them out into that part of

the land where the hay is yet uncut. There you must lay them on the

ground, and you shall see how things go."

This said, she disappeared, and in the morning the laborer, getting up,

set to work as usual at his mowing.

At six o'clock the old witch came out, bringing five rakes with her, and

said to the man, "A goodly piece of ground you have mowed, indeed!"

And so saying, she spread the rakes upon the hay. Then the man saw, to

his astonishment, that though the one she held in her hand raked in

great quantities of hay, the other four raked in no less each, all of

their own accord, and with no hand to wield them.

At noon, seeing that the old woman would soon get the best of him, he

went into the forge and took out several scythe-handles, to which he

fixed their blades, and bringing them out into the field, laid them down

upon the grass which was yet standing. Then all the scythes set to work

of their own accord, and cut down the grass so quickly that the rakes

could not keep pace with them. And so they went on all the rest of the

day, and the old woman was unable to rake in all the hay which lay in

the fields. After dark she told him to gather up his scythes and take

them into the house again, while she collected her rakes, saying

to him:--

"You are wiser than I took you to be, and you know more than myself; so

much the better for you, for you may stay as long with me as you like."

He spent the whole summer in her employment, and they agreed very well

together, mowing with mighty little trouble a vast amount of hay. In the

autumn she sent him away, well laden with money, to his own home in the

south. The next summer, and more than one summer following, he spent in

her employ, always being paid as his heart could desire, at the end of

the season.

After some years he took a farm of his own in the south country, and

was always looked upon by all his neighbors as an honest man, a good

fisherman, and an able workman in whatever he might put his hand to. He

always cut his own hay, never using any scythe but that which the

elf-woman had given him upon the mountains; nor did any of his neighbors

ever finish their mowing before him.

One summer it chanced that while he was fishing, one of his neighbors

came to his house and asked his wife to lend him her husband's scythe,

as he had lost his own. The farmer's wife looked for one, but could only

find the one upon which her husband set such store. This, however, a

little loth, she lent to the man, begging him at the same time never to

temper it in the fire; for that, she said, her good man never did. So

the neighbor promised, and taking it with him, bound it to a handle and

began to work with it. But, sweep as he would, and strain as he would

(and sweep and strain he did right lustily), not a single blade of grass

fell. Wroth at this, the man tried to sharpen it, but with no avail.

Then he took it into his forge, intending to temper it, for, thought he,

what harm could that possibly do? but as soon as the flames touched it,

the steel melted like wax, and nothing was left but a little heap of

ashes. Seeing this, he went in haste to the farmer's house, where he had

borrowed it, and told the woman what had happened; she was at her wits'

end with fright and shame when she heard it, for she knew well enough

how her husband set store by this scythe, and how angry he would be

at its loss.

And angry indeed he was, when he came home, and he beat his wife well

for her folly in lending what was not hers to lend. But his wrath was

soon over, and he never again, as he never had before, laid the stick

about his wife's shoulders.

THE MAN-SERVANT AND THE WATER-ELVES

In a large house, where all the chief rooms were paneled, there lived

once upon a time a farmer, whose ill-fate it was that every servant of

his that was left alone to guard the house on Christmas Eve, while the

rest of the family went to church, was found dead when the family

returned home. As soon as the report of this was spread abroad, the

farmer had the greatest difficulty in procuring servants who would

consent to watch alone in the house on that night; until at last, one

day a man, a strong fellow, offered him his services, to sit up alone

and guard the house. The farmer told him what fate awaited him for his

rashness; but the man despised such a fear, and persisted in his

determination.

On Christmas Eve, when the farmer and all his family, except the new

man-servant, were preparing for church, the farmer said to him, "Come

with us to church; I cannot leave you here to die."

But the other replied, "I intend to stay here, for it would be unwise in

you to leave your house unprotected; and besides, the cattle and sheep

must have their food at the proper time."

"Never mind the beasts," answered the farmer. "Do not be so rash as to

remain in the house this night; for whenever we have returned from

church on this night, we have always found every living thing in the

house dead, with all its bones broken."

But the man was not to be persuaded, as he considered all these fears

beneath his notice; so the farmer and the rest of the servants went away

and left him behind, alone in the house.

As soon as he was by himself he began to consider how to guard against

anything that might occur; for a dread had stolen over him, in spite of

his courage, that something strange was about to take place. At last he

thought that the best thing to do was, first of all to light up the

family room; and then to find some place in which to hide himself. As

soon as he had lighted all the candles, he moved two planks out of the

wainscot at the end of the room, and creeping into the space between it

and the wall, restored the planks to their places, so that he could see

plainly into the room and yet avoid being himself discovered.

He had scarcely finished concealing himself, when two fierce and

strange-looking men entered the room and began looking about.

One of them said, "I smell a human being."

"No," replied the other, "there is no human being here."

Then they took a candle and continued their search, until they found the

man's dog asleep under one of the beds. They took it up, and having

dashed it on the ground till every bone in its body was broken, hurled

it from them. When the man-servant saw this, he congratulated himself on

not having fallen into their hands.

Suddenly the room was filled with people, who were laden with tables

and all kinds of table furniture, silver, cloths, and all, which they

spread out, and having done so, sat down to a rich supper, which they

had also brought with them. They feasted noisily, and spent the

remainder of the night in drinking and dancing. Two of them were

appointed to keep guard, in order to give the company due warning of the

approach either of anybody or of the day. Three times they went out,

always returning with the news that they saw neither the approach of any

human being, nor yet of the break of day.

But when the man-servant suspected the night to be pretty far spent, he

jumped from his place of concealment into the room, and clashing the two

planks together with as much noise as he could make, shouted like a

madman, "The day! the day! the day!"

On these words the whole company rose scared from their seats, and

rushed headlong out, leaving behind them not only their tables, and all

the silver dishes, but even the very clothes they had taken off for ease

in dancing. In the hurry of flight many were wounded and trodden under

foot, while the rest ran into the darkness, the man-servant after them,

clapping the planks together and shrieking, "The day! the day! the day!"

until they came to a large lake, into which the whole party plunged

headlong and disappeared.

From this the man knew them to be water-elves.

Then he returned home, gathered the corpses of the elves who had been

killed in the flight, killed the wounded ones, and, making a great heap

of them all, burned them. When he had finished this task, he cleaned up

the house and took possession of all the treasures the elves had left

behind them.

On the farmer's return, his servant told him all that had occurred, and

showed him the spoils. The farmer praised him for a brave fellow, and

congratulated him on having escaped with his life. The man gave him half

the treasures of the elves, and ever afterward prospered exceedingly.

This was the last visit the water-elves ever paid to _that_ house.

THE CROSSWAYS

It is supposed that among the hills there are certain cross-roads, from

the centre of which you can see four churches, one at the end of

each road.

If you sit at the crossing of these roads on Christmas Eve (or as others

say, on New Year's Eve), elves come from every direction and cluster

round you, and ask you, with all sorts of blandishments and fair

promises, to go with them; but you must continue silent. Then they bring

to you rarities and delicacies of every description, gold, silver, and

precious stones, meats and wines, of which they beg you to accept; but

you must neither move a limb nor accept a single thing they offer you.

If you get so far as this without speaking, elf-women come to you in the

likeness of your mother, your sister, or any other relation, and beg you

to come with them, using every art and entreaty; but beware you neither

move nor speak. And if you can continue to keep silent and motionless

all the night, until you see the first streak of dawn, then start up and

cry aloud, "Praise be to God! His daylight filleth the heavens!"

As soon as you have said this, the elves will leave you, and with you

all the wealth they have used to entice you, which will now be yours.

But should you either answer, or accept of their offers, you will from

that moment become mad.

On the night of one Christmas Eve, a man named Fusi was out on the

cross-roads, and managed to resist all the entreaties and proffers of

the elves, until one of them offered him a large lump of mutton-suet,

and begged him to take a bite of it. Fusi, who had up to this time

gallantly resisted all such offers as gold and silver and diamonds and

such filthy lucre, could hold out no longer, and crying, "Seldom have I

refused a bite of mutton-suet," he went mad.

ERNST MORITZ ARNDT

(1769-1860)

Sprung from the sturdy peasant stock of the north, to which patriotism

is a chief virtue, Ernst Moritz Arndt first saw the light at Schoritz,

Island of Rügen (then a dependency of Sweden), December 29th, 1769. His

father, once a serf, had achieved a humble independence, and he destined

his clever son for the ministry, the one vocation open to him which

meant honor and advancement. The young man studied theology at

Greifswald and Jena, but later turned his attention exclusively to

history and literature. His early life is delightfully described in his

'Stories and Recollections of Childhood.' His youth was molded by the

influence of Goethe, Klopstock, Bürger, and Voss. After completing his

university studies he traveled extensively in Austria, Hungary, and

Northern Italy. His account of these journeys, published in 1802, shows

his keen observation of men and affairs.

[Illustration: ERNST ARNDT]

He began his long service to his country by his 'History of Serfdom in

Pomerania and Sweden,' which contributed largely to the general

abolition of the ancient abuse. He became professor of history in the

University of Greifswald in 1806, and about that time began to publish

the first series of the 'Spirit of the Times.' These were stirring

appeals to rouse the Germans against the oppressions of Napoleon. In

consequence he was obliged to flee to Sweden. After three years he

returned under an assumed name, and again took up his work at

Greifswald. In 1812, after the occupation of Pomerania by the French,

his fierce denunciations again forced him to flee, this time to Russia,

the only refuge open to him. There he joined Baron von Stein, who

eagerly made use of him in his schemes for the liberation of Germany. At

this time his finest poems were written: those kindling war songs that

appealed so strongly to German patriotism, when "songs were sermons and

sermons were songs." The most famous of these, 'What is the German's

Fatherland?' 'The Song of the Field-marshal,' and 'The God Who Made

Earth's Iron Hoard,' still live as national lyrics.

Arndt was also constantly occupied in writing pamphlets of the most

stirring nature, as their titles show:--'The Rhine, Germany's River,

but Never Germany's Boundary'; 'The Soldier's Catechism'; and 'The

Militia and the General Levy.' After the disasters of the French in

Russia, he returned to Germany, unceasingly devoted to his task of

rousing the people. Though by birth a Swede, he had become at heart a

Prussian, seeing in Prussia alone the possibility of German unity.

In 1817 he married Schleiermacher's sister, and the following year was

appointed professor of history in the newly established University of

Bonn. Shortly afterward suspended, on account of his liberal views, he

was forced to spend twenty years in retirement. His leisure gave

opportunity for literary work, however, and he availed himself of it by

producing several historical treatises and his interesting

'Reminiscences of My Public Life.' One of the first acts of Frederick

William IV., after his accession, was to restore Arndt to his

professorship at Bonn. He took a lively interest in the events of 1848,

and belonged to the deputation that offered the imperial crown to the

King of Prussia. He continued in the hope and the advocacy of German

unity, though he did not live to see it realized. The ninetieth birthday

of "Father Arndt," as he was fondly called by his countrymen, was

celebrated with general rejoicing throughout Germany. He died shortly

afterward, on January 29th, 1860.

Arndt's importance as a poet is due to the stirring scenes of his

earlier life and the political needs of Germany. He was no genius. He

was not even a deep scholar. His only great work is his war-songs and

patriotic ballads. Germany honors his manly character and patriotic zeal

in that stormy period of Liberation which led through many apparent

defeats to the united Empire of to-day.

The best German biographies are that of Schenkel (1869), W. Baur (1882),

and Langenberg (1869); the latter in 1878 edited 'Arndt's Letters to a

Friend.' J.R. Seeley's 'Life and Adventures of E.M. Arndt' (1879) is

founded on the latter's 'Reminiscences of My Public Life.

WHAT IS THE GERMAN'S FATHERLAND?

What is the German's fatherland?

Is it Prussia, or the Swabian's land?

Is it where the grape glows on the Rhine?

Where sea-gulls skim the Baltic's brine?

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Bavaria, or the Styrian's land?

Is it where the Master's cattle graze?

Is it the Mark where forges blaze?

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Westphalia? Pomerania's strand?

Where the sand drifts along the shore?

Or where the Danube's surges roar?

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Now name for me that mighty land!

Is it Switzerland? or Tyrols, tell;--

The land and people pleased me well!

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Now name for me that mighty land!

Ah! Austria surely it must be,

So rich in fame and victory.

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Tell me the name of that great land!

Is it the land which princely hate

Tore from the Emperor and the State?

Oh no! more grand

Must be the German's fatherland!

What is the German's fatherland?

Now name at last that mighty land!

"Where'er resounds the German tongue,

Where'er its hymns to God are sung!"

That is the land,

Brave German, that thy fatherland!

That is the German's fatherland!

Where binds like oak the clasped hand,

Where truth shines clearly from the eyes,

And in the heart affection lies.

Be this the land,

Brave German, this thy fatherland!

That is the German's fatherland!

Where scorn shall foreign triflers brand,

Where all are foes whose deeds offend,

Where every noble soul's a friend:

Be this the land,

All Germany shall be the land!

All Germany that land shall be:

Watch o'er it, God, and grant that we,

With German hearts, in deed and thought,

May love it truly as we ought.

Be this the land,

All Germany shall be the land!

THE SONG OF THE FIELD-MARSHAL

What's the blast from the trumpets? Hussars, to the fray!

The field-marshal[2] rides in the rolling mellay:

So gay on, his mettlesome war-horse he goes,

So fierce waves his glittering sword at his foes.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

[Footnote 2: Blücher]

Oh, see as he comes how his piercing eyes gleam!

Oh, see how behind him his snowy locks stream!

So fresh blooms his age, like a well-ripened wine,

He may well as the battle-field's autocrat shine.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

It was he, when his country in ruin was laid,

Who sternly to heaven uplifted his blade,

And swore on the brand, with a heart burning high,

To show Frenchmen the trade that the Prussians could ply.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

That oath he has kept. When the battle-cry rang,

Hey! how the gray youth to the saddle upsprang!

He made a sweep-dance for the French in the room,

And swept the land clean with a steel-ended broom.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

At Lützen, in the meadow, he kept up such a strife,

That many thousand Frenchmen there yielded up their life;

That thousands ran headlong for very life's sake,

And thousands are sleeping who never will wake.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

On the water, at Katzbach, his oath was in trim:

He taught in a moment the Frenchmen to swim.

Farewell, Frenchmen; fly to the Baltic to save!

You mob without breeches, catch whales for your grave.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

At Wartburg, on the Elbe, how he cleared him a path!

Neither fortress nor town barred the French from his wrath;

Like hares o'er the field they all scuttled away,

While behind them the hero rang out his Huzza!

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

At Leipzig--O glorious fight on the plain!--

French luck and French might strove against him in vain;

There beaten and stiff lay the foe in their blood,

And there dear old Blücher a field-marshal stood.

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful: they're shouting hurrah!

Then sound, blaring trumpets! Hussars, charge once more!

Ride, field-marshal, ride like the wind in the roar!

To the Rhine, over Rhine, in your triumph advance!

Brave sword of our country, right on into France!

And here are the Germans: juchheirassassa!

The Germans are joyful; they're shouting hurrah!

PATRIOTIC SONG

God, who gave iron, purposed ne'er

That man should be a slave:

Therefore the sabre, sword, and spear

In his right hand He gave.

Therefore He gave him fiery mood,

Fierce speech, and free-born breath,

That he might fearlessly the feud

Maintain through life and death.

Therefore will we what God did say,

With honest truth, maintain,

And ne'er a fellow-creature slay,

A tyrant's pay to gain!

But he shall fall by stroke of brand

Who fights for sin and shame,

And not inherit German land

With men of German name.

O Germany, bright fatherland!

O German love, so true!

Thou sacred land, thou beauteous land,

We swear to thee anew!

Outlawed, each knave and coward shall

The crow and raven feed;

But we will to the battle all--

Revenge shall be our meed.

Flash forth, flash forth, whatever can,

To bright and flaming life!

Now all ye Germans, man for man,

Forth to the holy strife!

Your hands lift upward to the sky--

Your heart shall upward soar--

And man for man, let each one cry,

Our slavery is o'er!

Let sound, let sound, whatever can,

Trumpet and fife and drum,

This day our sabres, man for man,

To stain with blood we come;

With hangman's and with Frenchmen's blood,

O glorious day of ire,

That to all Germans soundeth good--

Day of our great desire!

Let wave, let wave, whatever can,

Standard and banner wave!

Here will we purpose, man for man,

To grace a hero's grave.

Advance, ye brave ranks, hardily--

Your banners wave on high;

We'll gain us freedom's victory,

Or freedom's death we'll die!

EDWIN ARNOLD

(1832-)

The favorite and now venerable English poet, Edwin Arnold, showed his

skill in smooth and lucid verse early in life. In 1852, when twenty

years of age, he won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for a poem, 'The

Feast of Belshazzar.' Two years later, after graduation with honors, he

was named second master of Edward the Sixth's School at Birmingham; and,

a few years subsequent, principal of the Government Sanskrit College at

Poona, in India. In 1856 he published 'Griselda, a Tragedy'; and after

his return to London in 1861, translations from the Greek of Herodotus

and the Sanskrit of the Indian classic 'Hitopadeça,' the latter under

the name of 'The Book of Good Counsels.' There followed from his pen

'Education in India'; 'A History of the Administration in India under

the Late Marquis of Dalhousie' (1862-64); and 'The Poets of Greece,' a

collection of fine passages (1869). In addition to his other labors he

has been one of the editors-in-chief of the London Daily Telegraph.

Saturated with the Orient, familiar with every aspect of its

civilization, moral and religious life, history and feeling, Sir Edwin's

literary work has attested his knowledge in a large number of smaller

poetical productions, and a group of religious epics of long and

impressive extent. Chiefest among them ranks that on the life and

teachings of Buddha, 'The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation'

(1879). It has passed through more than eighty editions in this country,

and almost as many in England. In recognition of this work Mr. Arnold

was decorated by the King of Siam with the Order of the White Elephant.

Two years after its appearance he published 'Mahâbhârata,' 'Indian

Idylls,' and in 1883, 'Pearls of the Faith; or, Islam's Rosary Being the

Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah, with Comments in Verse from

Various Oriental Sources.' In 1886 the Sultan conferred on him the

Imperial Order of Osmanli, and in 1888 he was created Knight Commander

of the Indian Empire by Queen Victoria. 'Sa'di in the Garden; or, The

Book of Love' (1888), a poem turning on a part of the 'Bôstâni' of the

Persian poet Sa'di, brought Sir Edwin the Order of the Lion and Sun from

the Shah of Persia. In 1888 he published also 'Poems National and

Non-Oriental.' Since then he has written 'The Light of the World';

'Potiphar's Wife, and Other Poems' (1892); 'The Iliad and Odyssey of

Asia,' and in prose, 'India Revisited' (1891); 'Seas and Lands';

'Japonica,' which treats of life and things Japanese; and 'Adzuma, the

Japanese Wife: a Play in Four Acts' (1893). During his travels in Japan

the Emperor decorated him with the Order of the Rising Sun. In 1893 Sir

Edwin was chosen President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute. His

latest volume, 'The Tenth Muse and Other Poems,' appeared in 1895.

'The Light of Asia,' the most successful of his works, attracted instant

attention on its appearance, as a novelty of rich Indian local color. In

substance it is a graceful and dramatic paraphrase of the mass of more

or less legendary tales of the life and spiritual career of the Buddha,

Prince Gautama, and a summary of the principles of the great religious

system originating with him. It is lavishly embellished with Indian

allusions, and expresses incidentally the very spirit of the East. In

numerous cantos, proceeding from episode to episode of its mystical

hero's career, its effect is that of a loftily ethical, picturesque, and

fascinating biography, in highly polished verse. The metre selected is a

graceful and dignified one, especially associated with 'Paradise Lost'

and other of the foremost classics of English verse. Sir Edwin says of

the poem in his preface, "I have sought, by the medium of an imaginary

Buddhist votary, to depict the life and character and indicate the

philosophy of that noble hero and reformer, Prince Gautama of India, the

founder of Buddhism;" and the poet has admirably, if most flatteringly,

succeeded. The poem has been printed in innumerable cheap editions as

well as those _de luxe_; and while it has been criticized as too

complaisant a study of even primitive Buddhism, it is beyond doubt a

lyrical tract of eminent utility as well as seductive charm.

THE YOUTH OF BUDDHA

From 'The Light of Asia'

This reverence

Lord Buddha kept to all his schoolmasters,

Albeit beyond their learning taught; in speech

Right gentle, yet so wise; princely of mien,

Yet softly mannered; modest, deferent,

And tender-hearted, though of fearless blood:

No bolder horseman in the youthful band

E'er rode in gay chase of the shy gazelles;

No keener driver of the chariot

In mimic contest scoured the palace courts:

Yet in mid-play the boy would oft-times pause,

Letting the deer pass free; would oft-times yield

His half-won race because the laboring steeds

Fetched painful breath; or if his princely mates

Saddened to lose, or if some wistful dream

Swept o'er his thoughts. And ever with the years

Waxed this compassionateness of our Lord,

Even as a great tree grows from two soft leaves

To spread its shade afar; but hardly yet

Knew the young child of sorrow, pain, or tears,

Save as strange names for things not felt by kings,

Nor ever to be felt. But it befell

In the royal garden on a day of spring,

A flock of wild swans passed, voyaging north

To their nest-places on Himála's breast.

Calling in love-notes down their snowy line

The bright birds flew, by fond love piloted;

And Devadatta, cousin of the Prince,

Pointed his bow, and loosed a willful shaft

Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan

Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road,

So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed,

Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining the pure plumes.

Which seeing, Prince Siddârtha took the bird

Tenderly up, rested it in his lap,--

Sitting with knees crossed, as Lord Buddha sits,--

And, soothing with a touch the wild thing's fright,

Composed its ruffled vans, calmed its quick heart,

Caressed it into peace with light kind palms

As soft as plantain leaves an hour unrolled;

And while the left hand held, the right hand drew

The cruel steel forth from the wound, and laid

Cool leaves and healing honey on the smart.

Yet all so little knew the boy of pain,

That curiously into his wrist he pressed

The arrow's barb, and winced to feel it sting,

And turned with tears to soothe his bird again.

Then some one came who said, "My Prince hath shot

A swan, which fell among the roses here;

He bids me pray you send it. Will you send?"

"Nay," quoth Siddârtha: "If the bird were dead,

To send it to the slayer might be well,

But the swan lives; my cousin hath but killed

The godlike speed which throbbed in this white wing."

And Devadatta answered, "The wild thing,

Living or dead, is his who fetched it down;

'Twas no man's in the clouds, but fallen 'tis mine.

Give me my prize, fair cousin." Then our Lord

Laid the swan's neck beside his own smooth cheek

And gravely spake:--"Say no! the bird is mine,

The first of myriad things which shall be mine

By right of mercy and love's lordliness.

For now I know, by what within me stirs.

That I shall teach compassion unto men

And be a speechless world's interpreter,

Abating this accursed flood of woe.

Not man's alone; but if the Prince disputes,

Let him submit this matter to the wise

And we will wait their word." So was it done;

In full divan the business had debate,

And many thought this thing and many that,

Till there arose an unknown priest who said,

"If life be aught, the savior of a life

Owns more the living thing than he can own

Who sought to slay; the slayer spoils and wastes,

The cherisher sustains: give him the bird."

Which judgment all found just; but when the King

Sought out the sage for honor, he was gone;

And some one saw a hooded snake glide forth.

The gods come oft-times thus! So our Lord Buddha

Began his works of mercy.

Yet not more

Knew he as yet of grief than that one bird's,

Which, being healed, went joyous to its kind.

But on another day the King said, "Come,

Sweet son! and see the pleasaunce of the spring,

And how the fruitful earth is wooed to yield

Its riches to the reaper; how my realm--

Which shall be thine when the pile flames for me--

Feeds all its mouths and keeps the King's chest filled.

Fair is the season with new leaves, bright blooms,

Green grass, and cries of plow-time." So they rode

Into a land of wells and gardens, where,

All up and down the rich red loam, the steers

Strained their strong shoulders in the creaking yoke,

Dragging the plows; the fat soil rose and rolled

In smooth dark waves back from the plow; who drove

Planted both feet upon the leaping share

To make the furrow deep; among the palms

The tinkle of the rippling water rang,

And where it ran the glad earth 'broidered it

With balsams and the spears of lemon-grass.

Elsewhere were sowers who went forth to sow;

And all the jungle laughed with nesting-songs,

And all the thickets rustled with small life

Of lizard, bee, beetle, and creeping things,

Pleased at the springtime. In the mango-sprays

The sunbirds flashed; alone at his green forge

Toiled the loud coppersmith; bee-eaters hawked,

Chasing the purple butterflies; beneath,

Striped squirrels raced, the mynas perked and picked,

The nine brown sisters chattered in the thorn,

The pied fish-tiger hung above the pool,

The egrets stalked among the buffaloes,

The kites sailed circles in the golden air;

About the painted temple peacocks flew,

The blue doves cooed from every well, far off

The village drums beat for some marriage feast;

All things spoke peace and plenty, and the Prince

Saw and rejoiced. But, looking deep, he saw

The thorns which grow upon this rose of life:

How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,

Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged

The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours,

Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too,

How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,

And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed

The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;

The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase

The jeweled butterflies; till everywhere

Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain,

Life living upon death. So the fair show

Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy

Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,

Who himself kills his fellow; seeing which--

The hungry plowman and his laboring kine,

Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke,

The rage to live which makes all living strife--

The Prince Siddârtha sighed. "Is this," he said,

"That happy earth they brought me forth to see?

How salt with sweat the peasant's bread! how hard

The oxen's service! in the brake how fierce

The war of weak and strong! i' th' air what plots!

No refuge e'en in water. Go aside

A space, and let me muse on what ye show."

So saying, the good Lord Buddha seated him

Under a jambu-tree, with ankles crossed,

As holy statues sit, and first began

To meditate this deep disease of life,

What its far source and whence its remedy.

So vast a pity filled him, such wide love

For living things, such passion to heal pain,

That by their stress his princely spirit passed

To ecstasy, and, purged from mortal taint

Of sense and self, the boy attained thereat

Dhyâna, first step of "the Path."

THE PURE SACRIFICE OF BUDDHA

From 'The Light of Asia'

Onward he passed,

Exceeding sorrowful, seeing how men

Fear so to die they are afraid to fear,

Lust so to live they dare not love their life,

But plague it with fierce penances, belike

To please the gods who grudge pleasure to man;

Belike to balk hell by self-kindled hells;

Belike in holy madness, hoping soul

May break the better through their wasted flesh.

"O flowerets of the field!" Siddârtha said,

"Who turn your tender faces to the sun,--

Glad of the light, and grateful with sweet breath

Of fragrance and these robes of reverence donned,

Silver and gold and purple,--none of ye

Miss perfect living, none of ye despoil

Your happy beauty. O ye palms! which rise

Eager to pierce the sky and drink the wind

Blown from Malaya and the cool blue seas;

What secret know ye that ye grow content,

From time of tender shoot to time of fruit,

Murmuring such sun-songs from your feathered crowns?

Ye too, who dwell so merry in the trees,--

Quick-darting parrots, bee-birds, bulbuls, doves,--

None of ye hate your life, none of ye deem

To strain to better by foregoing needs!

But man, who slays ye--being lord--is wise,

And wisdom, nursed on blood, cometh thus forth

In self-tormentings!"

While the Master spake

Blew down the mount the dust of pattering feet,

White goats and black sheep winding slow their way

With many a lingering nibble at the tufts,

And wanderings from the path, where water gleamed

Or wild figs hung. But always as they strayed

The herdsman cried, or slung his sling, and kept

The silly crowd still moving to the plain.

A ewe with couplets in the flock there was:

Some hurt had lamed one lamb, which toiled behind

Bleeding, while in the front its fellow skipped,

And the vexed dam hither and thither ran,

Fearful to lose this little one or that;

Which when our Lord did mark, full tenderly

He took the limping lamb upon his neck,

Saying, "Poor wooly mother, be at peace!

Whither thou goest I will bear thy care;

'Twere all as good to ease one beast of grief

As sit and watch the sorrows of the world

In yonder caverns with the priests who pray."

"But," spake he of the herdsmen, "wherefore, friends!

Drive ye the flocks adown under high noon,

Since 'tis at evening that men fold their sheep?"

And answer gave the peasants:--"We are sent

To fetch a sacrifice of goats fivescore,

And fivescore sheep, the which our Lord the King

Slayeth this night in worship of his gods."

Then said the Master, "I will also go!"

So paced he patiently, bearing the lamb

Beside the herdsmen in the dust and sun,

The wistful ewe low bleating at his feet.

Whom, when they came unto the river-side,

A woman--dove-eyed, young, with tearful face

And lifted hands--saluted, bending low:--

"Lord! thou art he," she said, "who yesterday

Had pity on me in the fig grove here,

Where I live lone and reared my child; but he,

Straying amid the blossoms, found a snake,

Which twined about his wrist, while he did laugh

And teased the quick forked tongue and opened mouth

Of that cold playmate. But alas! ere long

He turned so pale and still, I could not think

Why he should cease to play, and let my breast

Fall from his lips. And one said, 'He is sick

Of poison;' and another, 'He will die.'

But I, who could not lose my precious boy,

Prayed of them physic, which might bring the light

Back to his eyes; it was so very small,

That kiss-mark of the serpent, and I think

It could not hate him, gracious as he was,

Nor hurt him in his sport. And some one said,

'There is a holy man upon the hill--

Lo! now he passeth in the yellow robe;

Ask of the Rishi if there be a cure

For that which ails thy son.' Whereon I came

Trembling to thee, whose brow is like a god's,

And wept and drew the face-cloth from my babe,

Praying thee tell what simples might be good.

And thou, great sir! didst spurn me not, but gaze

With gentle eyes and touch with patient hand;

Then draw the face-cloth back, saying to me,

'Yea! little sister, there is that might heal

Thee first, and him, if thou couldst fetch the thing;

For they who seek physicians bring to them

What is ordained. Therefore, I pray thee, find

Black mustard-seed, a tola; only mark

Thou take it not from any hand or house

Where father, mother, child, or slave hath died;

It shall be well if thou canst find such seed.'

Thus didst thou speak, my lord!"

The Master smiled

Exceeding tenderly. "Yea! I spake thus,

Dear Kisagôtami! But didst thou find

The seed?"

"I went, Lord, clasping to my breast

The babe, grown colder, asking at each hut,--

Here in the jungle and toward the town,--

'I pray you, give me mustard, of your grace,

A tola--black' and each who had it gave,

For all the poor are piteous to the poor:

But when I asked, 'In my friend's household here

Hath any peradventure ever died--

Husband or wife, or child, or slave?' they said:--

'O sister! what is this you ask? the dead

Are very many and the living few!'

So, with sad thanks, I gave the mustard back,

And prayed of others, but the others said,

'Here is the seed, but we have lost our slave!'

'Here is the seed, but our good man is dead!'

'Here is some seed, but he that sowed it died!

Between the rain-time and the harvesting!'

Ah, sir! I could not find a single house

Where there was mustard-seed and none had died!

Therefore I left my child--who would not suck

Nor smile--beneath the wild vines by the stream,

To seek thy face and kiss thy feet, and pray

Where I might find this seed and find no death,

If now, indeed, my baby be not dead,

As I do fear, and as they said to me."

"My sister! thou hast found," the Master said,

"Searching for what none finds, that bitter balm

I had to give thee. He thou lovedst slept

Dead on thy bosom yesterday; to-day

Thou know'st the whole wide world weeps with thy woe;

The grief which all hearts share grows less for one.

Lo! I would pour my blood if it could stay

Thy tears, and win the secret of that curse

Which makes sweet love our anguish, and which drives

O'er flowers and pastures to the sacrifice--

As these dumb beasts are driven--men their lords.

I seek that secret: bury thou thy child!"

So entered they the city side by side,

The herdsmen and the Prince, what time the sun

Gilded slow Sona's distant stream, and threw

Long shadows down the street and through the gate

Where the King's men kept watch. But when these saw

Our Lord bearing the lamb, the guards stood back,

The market-people drew their wains aside,

In the bazaar buyers and sellers stayed

The war of tongues to gaze on that mild face;

The smith, with lifted hammer in his hand,

Forgot to strike; the weaver left his web,

The scribe his scroll, the money-changer lost

His count of cowries; from the unwatched rice

Shiva's white bull fed free; the wasted milk

Ran o'er the lota while the milkers watched

The passage of our Lord moving so meek,

With yet so beautiful a majesty.

But most the women gathering in the doors

Asked, "Who is this that brings the sacrifice

So graceful and peace-giving as he goes?

What is his caste? whence hath he eyes so sweet?

Can he be Sâkra or the Devaraj?"

And others said, "It is the holy man

Who dwelleth with the Rishis on the hill."

But the Lord paced, in meditation lost,

Thinking, "Alas! for all my sheep which have

No shepherd; wandering in the night with none

To guide them; bleating blindly toward the knife

Of Death, as these dumb beasts which are their kin."

Then some one told the King, "There cometh here

A holy hermit, bringing down the flock

Which thou didst bid to crown the sacrifice."

The King stood in his hall of offering;

On either hand the white-robed Brahmans ranged

Muttered their mantras, feeding still the fire

Which roared upon the midmost altar. There

From scented woods flickered bright tongues of flame,

Hissing and curling as they licked the gifts

Of ghee and spices and the Soma juice,

The joy of Indra. Round about the pile

A slow, thick, scarlet streamlet smoked and ran,

Sucked by the sand, but ever rolling down,

The blood of bleating victims. One such lay,

A spotted goat, long-horned, its head bound back

With munja grass; at its stretched throat the knife

Pressed by a priest, who murmured, "This, dread gods.

Of many yajnas cometh as the crown

From Bimbasâra: take ye joy to see

The spirted blood, and pleasure in the scent

Of rich flesh roasting 'mid the fragrant flames;

Let the King's sins be laid upon this goat,

And let the fire consume them burning it,

For now I strike."

But Buddha softly said,

"Let him not strike, great King!" and therewith loosed

The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great

His presence was. Then, craving leave, he spake

Of life, which all can take, but none can give,

Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,

Wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,

Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all

Where pity is, for pity makes the world

Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.

Unto the dumb lips of his flock he lent

Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays

For mercy to the gods, is merciless,

Being as god to those; albeit all life

Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given

Meek tribute of the milk and wool, and set

Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.

Also he spake of what the holy books

Do surely teach, how that at death some sink

To bird and beast, and these rise up to man

In wanderings of the spark which grows purged flame.

So were the sacrifice new sin, if so

The fated passage of a soul be stayed.

Nor, spake he, shall one wash his spirit clean

By blood; nor gladden gods, being good, with blood;

Nor bribe them, being evil; nay, nor lay

Upon the brow of innocent bound beasts

One hair's weight of that answer all must give

For all things done amiss or wrongfully,

Alone, each for himself, reckoning with that

The fixed arithmetic of the universe,

Which meteth good for good and ill for ill,

Measure for measure, unto deeds, words, thoughts;

Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved;

Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.

Thus spake he, breathing words so piteous

With such high lordliness of ruth and right,

The priests drew back their garments o'er the hands

Crimsoned with slaughter, and the King came near,

Standing with clasped palms reverencing Buddha;

While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair

This earth were if all living things be linked

In friendliness of common use of foods,

Bloodless and pure; the golden grain, bright fruits,

Sweet herbs which grow for all, the waters wan,

Sufficient drinks and meats. Which, when these heard,

The might of gentleness so conquered them,

The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames

And flung away the steel of sacrifice;

And through the land next day passed a decree

Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved

On rock and column:--"Thus the King's will is:

There hath been slaughter for the sacrifice

And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none

Shall spill the blood of life nor taste of flesh,

Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,

And mercy cometh to the merciful."

So ran the edict, and from those days forth

Sweet peace hath spread between all living kind,

Man and the beasts which serve him, and the birds,

Of all those banks of Gunga where our Lord

Taught with his saintly pity and soft speech.

THE FAITHFULNESS OF YUDHISTHIRA

From 'The Great Journey,' in the Mahâbhârata

Thenceforth alone the long-armed monarch strode,

Not looking back,--nay, not for Bhima's sake,--But

walking with his face set for the mount;

And the hound followed him,--only the hound.

After the deathly sands, the Mount; and lo!

Sâkra shone forth, the God, filling the earth

And heavens with thunder of his chariot-wheels.

"Ascend," he said, "with me, Pritha's great son!"

But Yudhisthira answered, sore at heart

For those his kinsfolk, fallen on the way:

"O Thousand-eyed, O Lord of all the gods,

Give that my brothers come with me, who fell!

Not without them is Swarga sweet to me.

She, too, the dear and kind and queenly,--she

Whose perfect virtue Paradise must crown,--Grant

her to come with us! Dost thou grant this?"

The God replied:--"In heaven thou shalt see

Thy kinsman and the Queen--these will attain--And

Krishna. Grieve no longer for thy dead,

Thou chief of men! their mortal covering stripped,

These have their places; but to thee the gods

Allot an unknown grace; Thou shalt go up,

Living and in thy form, to the immortal homes."

But the King answered:--"O thou Wisest One,

Who know'st what was, and is, and is to be,

Still one more grace! This hound hath ate with me,

Followed me, loved me: must I leave him now?"

"Monarch," spake Indra, "thou art now as we,--

Deathless, divine; thou art become a god;

Glory and power and gifts celestial,

And all the joys of heaven are thine for aye;

What hath a beast with these? Leave here thy hound."

Yet Yudhisthira answered:--"O Most High,

O, Thousand-eyed and wisest! can it be

That one exalted should seem pitiless?

Nay, let me lose such glory; for its sake

I cannot leave one living thing I loved."

Then sternly Indra spake:--"He is unclean,

And into Swarga such shall enter not.

The Krodhavasha's wrath destroys the fruits

Of sacrifice, if dogs defile the fire.

Bethink thee, Dharmaraj; quit now this beast!

That which is seemly is not hard of heart."

Still he replied:--"Tis written that to spurn

A suppliant equals in offense to slay

A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss

Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog,--

So without any hope or friend save me,

So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness;

So agonized to die, unless I help

Who among men was called steadfast and just."

Quoth Indra:--"Nay, the altar-flame is foul

Where a dog passeth; angry angels sweep

The ascending smoke aside, and all the fruits

Of offering, and the merit of the prayer

Of him whom a hound toucheth. Leave it here!

He that will enter heaven must enter pure.

Why didst thou quit thy brethren on the way,

And Krishna, and the dear-loved Draupadí,

Attaining, firm and glorious, to this Mount

Through perfect deeds, to linger for a brute?

Hath Yudhisthira vanquished self, to melt

With one poor passion at the door of bliss?

Stay'st thou for this, who didst not stay for them,--

Draupadí, Bhima?"

But the King yet spake:--

"'Tis known that none can hurt or help the dead.

They, the delightful ones, who sank and died,

Following my footsteps, could not live again

Though I had turned,--therefore I did not turn;

But could help profit, I had stayed to help.

There be four sins, O Sâkra, grievous sins:

The first is making suppliants despair,

The second is to slay a nursing wife,

The third is spoiling Brahmans' goods by force,

The fourth is injuring an ancient friend.

These four I deem not direr than the crime,

If one, in coming forth from woe to weal,

Abandon any meanest comrade then."

Straight as he spake, brightly great Indra smiled;

Vanished the hound, and in its stead stood there

The Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma's self!

Sweet were the words which fell from those dread lips,

Precious the lovely praise:--"O thou true King,

Thou that dost bring to harvest the good seed

Of Pandu's righteousness; thou that hast ruth

As he before, on all which lives!--O son!

I tried thee in the Dwaita wood, what time

They smote thy brothers, bringing water; then

Thou prayedst for Nakula's life--tender and just--

Nor Bhima's nor Arjuna's, true to both,

To Madri as to Kunti, to both queens.

Hear thou my word! Because thou didst not mount

This car divine, lest the poor hound be shent

Who looked to thee, lo! there is none in heaven

Shall sit above thee, King!--Bhârata's son!

Enter thou now to the eternal joys,

Living and in thy form. Justice and Love

Welcome thee, Monarch! thou shalt throne with us."

HE AND SHE

"She is dead!" they said to him: "come away;

Kiss her and leave her,--thy love is clay!"

They smoothed her tresses of dark-brown hair;

On her forehead of stone they laid it fair;

Over her eyes that gazed too much

They drew the lids with a gentle touch;

With a tender touch they closed up well

The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;

About her brows and beautiful face

They tied her veil and her marriage lace,

And drew on her white feet her white-silk shoes,--

Which were the whitest no eye could choose,--

And over her bosom they crossed her hands,

"Come away!" they said, "God understands."

And there was silence, and nothing there

But silence, and scents of eglantere,

And jasmine, and roses and rosemary;

And they said, "As a lady should lie, lies she."

And they held their breath till they left the room,

With a shudder, to glance at its stillness and gloom.

But he who loved her too well to dread

The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,

He lit his lamp, and took the key

And turned it--alone again, he and she.

He and she; but she would not speak,

Though he kissed, in the old place, the quiet cheek.

He and she; yet she would not smile,

Though he called her the name she loved erewhile.

He and she; still she did not move

To any passionate whisper of love.

Then he said, "Cold lips and breasts without breath,

Is there no voice, no language of death,

"Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,

But to heart and to soul distinct, intense?

"See, now; I will listen with soul, not ear:

What was the secret of dying, dear?

"Was it the infinite wonder of all

That you ever could let life's flower fall?

"Or was it a greater marvel to feel

The perfect calm o'er the agony steal?

"Was the miracle greater to find how deep

Beyond all dreams sank downward that sleep?

"Did life roll back its record dear,

And show, as they say it does, past things clear?

"And was it the innermost heart of the bliss

To find out so, what a wisdom love is?

"O perfect dead! O dead most dear!

I hold the breath of my soul to hear.

"I listen as deep as to horrible hell,

As high as to heaven, and you do not tell.

"There must be pleasure in dying, sweet,

To make you so placid from head to feet!

"I would tell you, darling, if I were dead,

And 'twere your hot tears upon my brow shed,--

"I would say, though the Angel of Death had laid

His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid,--

"You should not ask vainly, with streaming eyes,

Which of all deaths was the chiefest surprise.

"The very strangest and suddenest thing

Of all the surprises that dying must bring."

Ah, foolish world! O most kind dead!

Though he told me, who will believe it was said?

Who will believe that he heard her say,

With the sweet, soft voice, in the dear old way,

"The utmost wonder is this,--I hear

And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear;

"And am your angel, who was your bride,

And know that though dead, I have never died."

AFTER DEATH

From 'Pearls of the Faith'

_He made life--and He takes it--but instead

Gives more: praise the Restorer, Al-Mu'hid!_

He who died at Azan sends

This to comfort faithful friends:--

Faithful friends! it lies, I know,

Pale and white and cold as snow;

And ye say, "Abdullah's dead!"

Weeping at my feet and head.

I can see your falling tears,

I can hear your cries and prayers,

Yet I smile and whisper this:--

"I am not that thing you kiss;

Cease your tears and let it lie:

It _was_ mine, it is not I."

Sweet friends! what the women lave

For its last bed in the grave

Is a tent which I am quitting,

Is a garment no more fitting,

Is a cage from which at last

Like a hawk my soul hath passed.

Love the inmate, not the room;

The wearer, not the garb; the plume

Of the falcon, not the bars

Which kept him from the splendid stars.

Loving friends! be wise, and dry

Straightway every weeping eye:

What ye lift upon the bier

Is not worth a wistful tear.

'Tis an empty sea-shell, one

Out of which the pearl is gone.

The shell is broken, it lies there;

The pearl, the all, the soul, is here.

'Tis an earthen jar whose lid

Allah sealed, the while it hid

That treasure of His treasury,

A mind which loved Him: let it lie!

Let the shard be earth's once more,

Since the gold shines in His store!

Allah Mu'hid, Allah most good!

Now Thy grace is understood:

Now my heart no longer wonders

What Al-Barsakh is, which sunders

Life from death, and death from Heaven:

Nor the "Paradises Seven"

Which the happy dead inherit;

Nor those "birds" which bear each spirit

Toward the Throne, "green birds and white"

Radiant, glorious, swift their flight!

Now the long, long darkness ends.

Yet ye wail, my foolish friends,

While the man whom ye call "dead"

In unbroken bliss instead

Lives, and loves you: lost, 'tis true

By any light which shines for you;

But in light ye cannot see

Of unfulfilled felicity,

And enlarging Paradise;

Lives the life that never dies.

Farewell, friends! Yet not farewell;

Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell.

I am gone before your face

A heart-beat's time, a gray ant's pace.

When ye come where I have stepped,

Ye will marvel why ye wept;

Ye will know, by true love taught,

That here is all, and there is naught.

Weep awhile, if ye are fain,--

Sunshine still must follow rain!

Only not at death, for death--

Now I see--is that first breath

Which our souls draw when we enter

Life, that is of all life centre.

Know ye Allah's law is love,

Viewed from Allah's Throne above;

Be ye firm of trust, and come

Faithful onward to your home!

_"La Allah illa Allah!_ Yea,

Mu'hid! Restorer! Sovereign!" say!

_He who died at Azan gave_

_This to those that made his grave_.

SOLOMON AND THE ANT

From 'Pearls of the Faith'

_Say Ar-Raheen! call Him "Compassionate,"_

_For He is pitiful to small and great_.

'Tis written that the serving angels stand

Beside God's throne, ten myriads on each hand,

Waiting, with wings outstretched and watchful eyes,

To do their Master's heavenly embassies.

Quicker than thought His high commands they read,

Swifter than light to execute them speed;

Bearing the word of power from star to star,

Some hither and some thither, near and far.

And unto these naught is too high or low,

Too mean or mighty, if He wills it so;

Neither is any creature, great or small,

Beyond His pity, which embraceth all,

Because His eye beholdeth all which are;

Sees without search, and counteth without care.

Nor lies the babe nearer the nursing-place

Than Allah's smallest child to Allah's grace;

Nor any ocean rolls so vast that He

Forgets one wave of all that restless sea.

Thus it is written; and moreover told

How Gabriel, watching by the Gates of Gold,

Heard from the Voice Ineffable this word

Of twofold mandate uttered by the Lord:--

"Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made

His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed,

Goodly and splendid--whom I crowned the king.

For at this hour my servant doth a thing

Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came

A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame

And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight;

Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight,

Before the palace, where he gazeth now

Filling his heart with pride at that brave show;

So taken with the snorting and the tramp

Of his war-horses, that Our silver lamp

Of eve is swung in vain, Our warning Sun

Will sink before his sunset-prayer's begun;

So shall the people say, 'This king, our lord,

Loves more the long-maned trophies of his sword

Than the remembrance of his God!' Go in!

Save thou My faithful servant from such sin.

"Also, upon the slope of Arafat,

Beneath a lote-tree which is fallen flat,

Toileth a yellow ant who carrieth home

Food for her nest, but so far hath she come

Her worn feet fail, and she will perish, caught

In the falling rain; but thou, make the way naught-And

help her to her people in the cleft

Of the black rock."

Silently Gabriel left

The Presence, and prevented the king's sin,

And holp the little ant at entering in.

_O Thou whose love is wide and great,

We praise Thee, "The Compassionate_"

THE AFTERNOON

From 'Pearls of the Faith'

_He is sufficient, and He makes suffice;

Praise thus again thy Lord, mighty and wise_.

God is enough! thou, who in hope and fear

Toilest through desert-sands of life, sore tried,

Climb trustful over death's black ridge, for near

The bright wells shine: thou wilt be satisfied.

God doth suffice! O thou, the patient one,

Who puttest faith in Him, and none beside,

Bear yet thy load; under the setting sun

The glad tents gleam: thou wilt be satisfied.

By God's gold Afternoon! peace ye shall have:

Man is in loss except he live aright,

And help his fellow to be firm and brave,

Faithful and patient: then the restful night!

_Al Mughni! best Rewarder! we

Endure; putting our trust in Thee_.

THE TRUMPET

From 'Pearls of the Faith'

_Magnify Him, Al-Kaiyum; and so call

The "Self-subsisting" God who judgeth all_.

When the trumpet shall sound,

On that day,

The wicked, slow-gathering,

Shall say,

"Is it long we have lain in our graves?

For it seems as an hour!"

Then will Israfil call them to judgment:

And none shall have power

To turn aside, this way or that;

And their voices will sink

To silence, except for the sounding

Of a noise, like the noise on the brink

Of the sea when its stones

Are dragged with a clatter and hiss

Down the shore, in the wild breakers' roar!

The sound of their woe shall be this:--

Then they who denied

That He liveth Eternal, "Self-made,"

Shall call to the mountains to crush them;

Amazed and affrayed.

_Thou Self-subsistent, Living Lord!

Thy grace against that day afford_.

ENVOI TO 'THE LIGHT OF ASIA'

Ah, Blessed Lord! Oh, High Deliverer!

Forgive this feeble script which doth Thee wrong

Measuring with little wit Thy lofty Love.

Ah, Lover! Brother! Guide! Lamp of the Law!

I take my refuge in Thy name and Thee!

I take my refuge in Thy Law of God!

I take my refuge in Thy Order! _Om!_

The Dew is on the lotus--rise, great Sun!

And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave.

_Om mani padme hum_, the Sunrise comes!

The Dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea!

From Harper's Monthly, copyright 1886, by Harper & Brothers

GRISHMA; OR THE SEASON OF HEAT

Translated from Kalidasa's 'Ritu Sanhâra'

With fierce noons beaming, moons of glory gleaming,

Full conduits streaming, where fair bathers lie,

With sunsets splendid, when the strong day, ended,

Melts into peace, like a tired lover's sigh--

So cometh summer nigh.

And nights of ebon blackness, laced with lustres

From starry clusters; courts of calm retreat,

Where wan rills warble over glistening marble;

Cold jewels, and the sandal, moist and sweet--

These for the time are meet

Of "Suchi," dear one of the bright days, bringing

Love songs for singing which all hearts enthrall,

Wine cups that sparkle at the lips of lovers,

Odors and pleasures in the palace hall:

In "Suchi" these befall.

For then, with wide hips richly girt, and bosoms

Fragrant with blossoms, and with pearl strings gay,

Their new-laved hair unbound, and spreading round

Faint scents, the palace maids in tender play

The ardent heats allay

Of princely playmates. Through the gates their feet,

With lac-dye rosy and neat, and anklets ringing,

In music trip along, echoing the song

Of wild swans, all men's hearts by subtle singing

To Kama's service bringing;

For who, their sandal-scented breasts perceiving,

Their white pearls--weaving with the saffron stars

Girdles and diadems--their gold and gems

Linked upon waist and thigh, in Love's soft snares

Is not caught unawares?

Then lay they by their robes--no longer light

For the warm midnight--and their beauty cover

With woven veil too airy to conceal

Its dew-pearled softness; so, with youth clad over,

Each seeks her eager lover.

And sweet airs winnowed from the sandal fans,

Faint balm that nests between those gem-bound breasts,

Voices of stream and bird, and clear notes heard

From vina strings amid the songs' unrests,

Wake passion. With light jests,

And sidelong glances, and coy smiles and dances,

Each maid enhances newly sprung delight;

Quick leaps the fire of Love's divine desire,

So kindled in the season when the Night

With broadest moons is bright;

Till on the silvered terraces, sleep-sunken,

With Love's draughts drunken, those close lovers lie;

And--all for sorrow there shall come To-morrow--

The Moon, who watched them, pales in the gray sky,

While the still Night doth die.

* * * * *

Then breaks fierce Day! The whirling dust is driven

O'er earth and heaven, until the sun-scorched plain

Its road scarce shows for dazzling heat to those

Who, far from home and love, journey in pain,

Longing to rest again.

Panting and parched, with muzzles dry and burning,

For cool streams yearning, herds of antelope

Haste where the brassy sky, banked black and high,

Hath clouded promise. "There will be"--they hope--

"Water beyond the tope!"

Sick with the glare, his hooded terrors failing,

His slow coils trailing o'er the fiery dust,

The cobra glides to nighest shade, and hides

His head beneath the peacock's train: he must

His ancient foeman trust!

The purple peafowl, wholly overmastered

By the red morning, droop with weary cries;

No stroke they make to slay that gliding snake

Who creeps for shelter underneath the eyes

Of their spread jewelries!

The jungle lord, the kingly tiger, prowling,

For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red,

Sees without heed the elephants pass by him,

Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head,

His mighty forces fled.

Nor heed the elephants that tiger, plucking

Green leaves, and sucking with a dry trunk dew;

Tormented by the blazing day, they wander,

And, nowhere finding water, still renew

Their search--a woful crew!

With restless snout rooting the dark morasses,

Where reeds and grasses on the soft slime grow,

The wild-boars, grunting ill-content and anger,

Dig lairs to shield them from the torturing glow,

Deep, deep as they can go.

The frog, for misery of his pool departing--

'Neath that flame-darting ball--and waters drained

Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower

Under the black-snake's coils, where there is gained

A little shade; and, strained

To patience by such heat, scorching the jewel

Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head,

That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along,

Licks it for coolness--all discomfited--

Strikes not his strange friend dead!

The pool, with tender-growing cups of lotus

Once brightly blowing, hath no blossoms more!

Its fish are dead, its fearful cranes are fled,

And crowding elephants its flowery shore

Tramp to a miry floor.

With foam-strings roping from his jowls, and dropping

From dried drawn lips, horns laid aback, and eyes

Mad with the drouth, and thirst-tormented mouth,

Down-thundering from his mountain cavern flies

The bison in wild wise,

Questing a water channel. Bare and scrannel

The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row

With beaks agape. The hot baboon and ape

Climb chattering to the bush. The buffalo

Bellows. And locusts go

Choking the wells. Far o'er the hills and dells

Wanders th' affrighted eye, beholding blasted

The pleasant grass: the forest's leafy mass

Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted;

Its creatures wasted.

Then leaps to view--blood-red and bright of hue--

As blooms sprung new on the Kusumbha-Tree--

The wild-fire's tongue, fanned by the wind, and flung

Furiously forth; the palms, canes, brakes, you see

Wrapped in one agony

Of lurid death! The conflagration, driven

In fiery levin, roars from jungle caves;

Hisses and blusters through the bamboo clusters,

Crackles across the curling grass, and drives

Into the river waves

The forest folk! Dreadful that flame to see

Coil from the cotton-tree--a snake of gold--

Violently break from root and trunk, to take

The bending boughs and leaves in deadly hold

Then passing--to enfold

New spoils! In herds, elephants, jackals, pards,

For anguish of such fate their enmity

Laying aside, burst for the river wide

Which flows between fair isles: in company

As friends they madly flee!

* * * * *

But Thee, my Best Beloved! may "Suchi" visit fair

With songs of secret waters cooling the quiet air,

Under blue buds of lotus beds, and pâtalas which shed

Fragrance and balm, while Moonlight weaves over thy happy head

Its silvery veil! So Nights and Days of Summer pass for thee

Amid the pleasure-palaces, with love and melody!

MATTHEW ARNOLD

(1822-1888)

BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic, was born December 24th,

1822, at Laleham, in the Thames valley. He was the son of Dr. Thomas

Arnold, best remembered as the master of Rugby in later years, and

distinguished also as a historian of Rome. His mother was, by her maiden

name, Mary Penrose, and long survived her husband. Arnold passed his

school days at Winchester and Rugby, and went to Oxford in October,

1841. There, as also at school, he won scholarship and prize, and showed

poetical talent. He was elected a fellow of Oriel in March, 1845. He

taught for a short time at Rugby, but in 1847 became private secretary

to Lord Lansdowne, who in 1851 appointed him school inspector. From that

time he was engaged mainly in educational labors, as inspector and

commissioner, and traveled frequently on the Continent examining foreign

methods. He was also interested controversially in political and

religious questions of the day, and altogether had a sufficient public

life outside of literature. In 1851 he married Frances Lucy, daughter of

Sir William Wightman, a judge of the Court of Queen's Bench, and by her

had five children, three sons and two daughters.

His first volume of verse, 'The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems,' bears

the date 1849; the second, 'Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,' 1852;

the third, 'Poems,' made up mainly from the two former, was published in

1853, and thereafter he added little to his poetic work. His first

volume of similar significance in prose was 'Essays in Criticism,'

issued in 1865. Throughout his mature life he was a constant writer, and

his collected works of all kinds now fill eleven volumes, exclusive of

his letters. In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and

there began his career as a lecturer; and this method of public

expression he employed often. His life was thus one with many diverse

activities, and filled with practical or literary affairs; and on no

side was it deficient in human relations. He won respect and reputation

while he lived; and his works continue to attract men's minds, although

with much unevenness. He died at Liverpool, on April 15th, 1888.

[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD]

That considerable portion of Arnold's writings which was concerned with

education and politics, or with phases of theological thought and

religious tendency, however valuable in contemporary discussion, and

to men and movements of the third quarter of the century, must be set on

one side. It is not because of anything there contained that he has

become a permanent figure of his time, or is of interest in literature.

He achieved distinction as a critic and as a poet; but although he was

earlier in the field as a poet, he was recognized by the public at large

first as a critic. The union of the two functions is not unusual in the

history of literature; but where success has been attained in both, the

critic has commonly sprung from the poet in the man, and his range and

quality have been limited thereby. It was so with Dryden and Wordsworth,

and, less obviously, with Landor and Lowell. In Arnold's case there is

no such growth: the two modes of writing, prose and verse, were

disconnected. One could read his essays without suspecting a poet, and

his poems without discerning a critic, except so far as one finds the

moralist there. In fact, Arnold's critical faculty belonged rather to

the practical side of his life, and was a part of his talents as a

public man.

This appears by the very definitions that he gave, and by the turn of

his phrase, which always keeps an audience rather than a meditative

reader in view. "What is the function of criticism at the present time?"

he asks, and answers--"A disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate

the best that is known and thought in the world." That is a wide

warrant. The writer who exercises his critical function under it,

however, is plainly a reformer at heart, and labors for the social

welfare. He is not an analyst of the form of art for its own sake, or a

contemplator of its substance of wisdom or beauty merely. He is not

limited to literature or the other arts of expression, but the

world--the intellectual world--is all before him where to choose; and

having learned the best that is known and thought, his second and

manifestly not inferior duty is to go into all nations, a messenger of

the propaganda of intelligence. It is a great mission, and nobly

characterized; but if criticism be so defined, it is criticism of a

large mold.

The scope of the word conspicuously appears also in the phrase, which

became proverbial, declaring that literature is "a criticism of life."

In such an employment of terms, ordinary meanings evaporate: and it

becomes necessary to know the thought of the author rather than the

usage of men. Without granting the dictum, therefore, which would be far

from the purpose, is it not clear that by "critic" and "criticism"

Arnold intended to designate, or at least to convey, something peculiar

to his own conception,--not strictly related to literature at all, it

may be, but more closely tied to society in its general mental activity?

In other words, Arnold was a critic of civilization more than of books,

and aimed at illumination by means of ideas. With this goes his

manner,--that habitual air of telling you something which you did not

know before, and doing it for your good,--which stamps him as a preacher

born. Under the mask of the critic is the long English face of the

gospeler; that type whose persistent physiognomy was never absent from

the conventicle of English thought.

This evangelizing prepossession of Arnold's mind must be recognized in

order to understand alike his attitude of superiority, his stiffly

didactic method, and his success in attracting converts in whom the seed

proved barren. The first impression that his entire work makes is one of

limitation; so strict is this limitation, and it profits him so much,

that it seems the element in which he had his being. On a close survey,

the fewness of his ideas is most surprising, though the fact is somewhat

cloaked by the lucidity of his thought, its logical vigor, and the

manner of its presentation. He takes a text, either some formula of his

own or some adopted phrase that he has made his own, and from that he

starts out only to return to it again and again with ceaseless

iteration. In his illustrations, for example, when he has pilloried some

poor gentleman, otherwise unknown, for the astounded and amused

contemplation of the Anglican monocle, he cannot let him alone. So too

when, with the journalist's nack for nicknames, he divides all England

into three parts, he cannot forget the rhetorical exploit. He never lets

the points he has made fall into oblivion; and hence his work in

general, as a critic, is skeletonized to the memory in watchwords,

formulas, and nicknames, which, taken altogether, make up only a small

number of ideas.

His scale, likewise, is meagre. His essay is apt to be a book review or

a plea merely; it is without that free illusiveness and undeveloped

suggestion which indicate a full mind and give to such brief pieces of

writing the sense of overflow. He takes no large subject as a whole, but

either a small one or else some phases of the larger one; and he

exhausts all that he touches. He seems to have no more to say. It is

probable that his acquaintance with literature was incommensurate with

his reputation or apparent scope as a writer. As he has fewer ideas than

any other author of his time of the same rank, so he discloses less

knowledge of his own or foreign literatures. His occupations forbade

wide acquisition; he husbanded his time, and economized also by giving

the best direction to his private studies, and he accomplished much; but

he could not master the field as any man whose profession was literature

might easily do. Consequently, in comparison with Coleridge or Lowell,

his critical work seems dry and bare, with neither the fluency nor the

richness of a master.

In yet another point this paucity of matter appears. What Mr. Richard

Holt Hutton says in his essay on the poetry of Arnold is so apposite

here that it will be best to quote the passage. He is speaking, in an

aside, of Arnold's criticisms:--

"They are fine, they are keen, they are often true; but they

are always too much limited to the thin superficial layer of

the moral nature of their subjects, and seem to take little

comparative interest in the deeper individuality beneath.

Read his essay on Heine, and you will see the critic

engrossed with the relation of Heine to the political and

social ideas of his day, and passing over with comparative

indifference the true soul of Heine, the fountain of both his

poetry and his cynicism. Read his five lectures on

translating Homer, and observe how exclusively the critic's

mind is occupied with the form as distinguished from the

substance of the Homeric poetry. Even when he concerns

himself with the greatest modern poets,--with Shakespeare as

in the preface to the earlier edition of his poems, or with

Goethe in reiterated poetical criticisms, or when he again

and again in his poems treats of Wordsworth,--it is always

the style and superficial doctrine of their poetry, not the

individual character and unique genius, which occupy him. He

will tell you whether a poet is 'sane and clear,' or stormy

and fervent; whether he is rapid and noble, or loquacious and

quaint; whether a thinker penetrates the husks of

conventional thought which mislead the crowd; whether there

is sweetness as well as lucidity in his aims; whether a

descriptive writer has 'distinction' of style, or is

admirable only for his vivacity: but he rarely goes to the

individual heart of any of the subjects of his criticism; he

finds their style and class, but not their personality in

that class; he _ranks_ his men, but does not portray them;

hardly even seems to find much interest in the _individual_

roots of their character."

In brief, this is to say that Arnold took little interest in human

nature; nor is there anything in his later essays on Byron, Keats,

Wordsworth, Milton, or Gray, to cause us to revise the judgment on this

point. In fact, so far as he touched on the personality of Keats or

Gray, to take the capital instances, he was most unsatisfactory.

Arnold was not, then, one of those critics who are interested in life

itself, and through the literary work seize on the soul of the author in

its original brightness, or set forth the life-stains in the successive

incarnations of his heart and mind. Nor was he of those who consider the

work itself final, and endeavor simply to understand it,--form and

matter,--and so to mediate between genius and our slower intelligence.

He followed neither the psychological nor the aesthetic method. It need

hardly be said that he was born too early to be able ever to conceive of

literature as a phenomenon of society, and its great men as only terms

in an evolutionary series. He had only a moderate knowledge of

literature, and his stock of ideas was small; his manner of speech was

hard and dry, there was a trick in his style, and his self-repetition

is tiresome.

What gave him vogue, then, and what still keeps his more literary work

alive? Is it anything more than the temper in which he worked, and the

spirit which he evoked in the reader? He stood for the very spirit of

intelligence in his time. He made his readers respect ideas, and want to

have as many as possible. He enveloped them in an atmosphere of mental

curiosity and alertness, and put them in contact with novel and

attractive themes. In particular, he took their minds to the Continent

and made them feel that they were becoming cosmopolitan by knowing

Joubert; or at home, he rallied them in opposition to the dullness of

the period, to "barbarism" or other objectionable traits in the social

classes: and he volleyed contempt upon the common multitudinous foe in

general, and from time to time cheered them with some delectable

examples of single combat. It cannot be concealed that there was much

malicious pleasure in it all. He was not indisposed to high-bred

cruelty. Like Lamb, he "loved a fool," but it was in a mortar; and

pleasant it was to see the spectacle when he really took a man in hand

for the chastisement of irony. It is thus that "the _seraphim

illuminati_ sneer." And in all his controversial writing there was a

brilliancy and unsparingness that will appeal to the deepest instincts

of a fighting race, willy-nilly; and as one had only to read the words

to feel himself among the children of light, so that our withers were

unwrung, there was high enjoyment.

This liveliness of intellectual conflict, together with the sense of

ideas, was a boon to youth especially; and the academic air in which the

thought and style always moved, with scholarly self-possession and

assurance, with the dogmatism of "enlightenment" in all ages and among

all sects, with serenity and security unassailable, from within at

least--this academic "clearness and purity without shadow or stain" had

an overpowering charm to the college-bred and cultivated, who found the

rare combination of information, taste, and aggressiveness in one of

their own ilk. Above all, there was the play of intelligence on every

page; there was an application of ideas to life in many regions of the

world's interests; there was contact with a mind keen, clear, and firm,

armed for controversy or persuasion equally, and filled with eager

belief in itself, its ways, and its will.

To meet such personality in a book was a bracing experience; and for

many these essays were an awakening of the mind itself. We may go to

others for the greater part of what criticism can give,--for definite

and fundamental principles, for adequate characterization, for the

intuition and the revelation, the penetrant flash of thought and phrase:

but Arnold generates and supports a temper of mind in which the work of

these writers best thrives even in its own sphere; and through him this

temper becomes less individual than social, encompassing the whole of

life. Few critics have been really less "disinterested," few have kept

their eyes less steadily "upon the object": but that fact does not

lessen the value of his precepts of disinterestedness and objectivity;

nor is it necessary, in becoming "a child of light," to join in spirit

the unhappy "remnant" of the academy, or to drink too deep of that

honeyed satisfaction, with which he fills his readers, of being on his

side. As a critic, Arnold succeeds if his main purpose does not fail,

and that was to reinforce the party of ideas, of culture, of the

children of light; to impart, not moral vigor, but openness and

reasonableness of mind; and to arouse and arm the intellectual in

contradistinction to the other energies of civilization.

The poetry of Arnold, to pass to the second portion of his work, was

less widely welcomed than his prose, and made its way very slowly; but

it now seems the most important and permanent part. It is not small in

quantity, though his unproductiveness in later years has made it appear

that he was less fluent and abundant in verse than he really was. The

remarkable thing, as one turns to his poems, is the contrast in spirit

that they afford to the essays: there is here an atmosphere of entire

calm. We seem to be in a different world. This fact, with the singular

silence of his familiar letters in regard to his verse, indicates that

his poetic life was truly a thing apart.

In one respect only is there something in common between his prose and

verse: just as interest in human nature was absent in the latter, it is

absent also in the former. There is no action in the poems; neither is

there character for its own sake. Arnold was a man of the mind, and he

betrays no interest in personality except for its intellectual traits;

in Clough as in Obermann, it is the life of thought, not the human

being, that he portrays. As a poet, he expresses the moods of the

meditative spirit in view of nature and our mortal existence; and he

represents life, not lyrically by its changeful moments, nor tragically

by its conflict in great characters, but philosophically by a

self-contained and unvarying monologue, deeper or less deep in feeling

and with cadences of tone, but always with the same grave and serious

effect. He is constantly thinking, whatever his subject or his mood; his

attitude is intellectual, his sentiments are maxims, his conclusions are

advisory. His world is the sphere of thought, and his poems have the

distance and repose and also the coldness that befit that sphere; and

the character of his imagination, which lays hold of form and reason,

makes natural to him the classical style.

It is obvious that the sources of his poetical culture are Greek. It is

not merely, however, that he takes for his early subjects Merope and

Empedocles, or that he strives in 'Balder Dead' for Homeric narrative,

or that in the recitative to which he was addicted he evoked an

immelodious phantom of Greek choruses; nor is it the "marmoreal air"

that chills while it ennobles much of his finest work. One feels the

Greek quality not as a source but as a presence. In Tennyson, Keats, and

Shelley, there was Greek influence, but in them the result was modern.

In Arnold the antiquity remains; remains in mood, just as in Landor it

remains in form. The Greek twilight broods over all his poetry. It is

pagan in philosophic spirit; not Attic, but of a later and stoical time,

with the very virtues of patience, endurance, suffering, not in their

Christian types, but as they now seem to a post-Christian imagination

looking back to the imperial past. There is a difference, it is true, in

Arnold's expression of the mood: he is as little Sophoclean as he is

Homeric, as little Lucretian as he is Vergilian. The temperament is not

the same, not a survival or a revival of the antique, but original and

living. And yet the mood of the verse is felt at once to be a

reincarnation of the deathless spirit of Hellas, that in other ages also

has made beautiful and solemn for a time the shadowed places of the

Christian world. If one does not realize this, he must miss the secret

of the tranquillity, the chill, the grave austerity, as well as the

philosophical resignation, which are essential to the verse. Even in

those parts of the poems which use romantic motives, one reason of their

original charm is that they suggest how the Greek imagination would have

dealt with the forsaken merman, the church of Brou, and Tristram and

Iseult. The presence of such motives, such mythology, and such Christian

and chivalric color in the work of Arnold does not disturb the simple

unity of its feeling, which finds no solvent for life, whatever its

accident of time and place and faith, except in that Greek spirit which

ruled in thoughtful men before the triumph of Christianity, and is still

native in men who accept the intellect as the sole guide of life.

It was with reference to these modern men and the movement they took

part in, that he made his serious claim to greatness; to rank, that is,

with Tennyson and Browning, as he said, in the literature of his time.

"My poems," he wrote, "represent on the whole the main movement of mind

of the last quarter of a century; and thus they will probably have their

day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of

mind is, and interested in the literary productions that reflect it. It

might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson,

and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning; yet because I

have, perhaps, more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have

more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern

development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had

theirs." If the main movement had been such as he thought of it, or if

it had been of importance in the long run, there might be a sounder

basis for this hope than now appears to be the case; but there can be no

doubt, let the contemporary movement have been what it may, that

Arnold's mood is one that will not pass out of men's hearts to-day nor

to-morrow.

On the modern side the example of Wordsworth was most formative, and in

fact it is common to describe Arnold as a Wordsworthian: and so, in his

contemplative attitude to nature, and in his habitual recourse to her,

he was; but both nature herself as she appeared to him, and his mood in

her presence, were very different from Wordsworth's conception and

emotion. Arnold finds in nature a refuge from life, an anodyne, an

escape; but Wordsworth, in going into the hills for poetical communion,

passed from a less to a fuller and deeper life, and obtained an

inspiration, and was seeking the goal of all his being. In the method of

approach, too, as well as in the character of the experience, there was

a profound difference between the two poets. Arnold sees with the

outward rather than the inward eye. He is pictorial in a way that

Wordsworth seldom is; he uses detail much more, and gives a group or a

scene with the externality of a painter. The method resembles that of

Tennyson rather than that of Wordsworth, and has more direct analogy

with the Greek manner than with the modern and emotional schools; it is

objective, often minute, and always carefully composed, in the artistic

sense of that term. The description of the river Oxus, for example,

though faintly charged with suggested and allegoric meaning, is a noble

close to the poem which ends in it. The scale is large, and Arnold was

fond of a broad landscape, of mountains, and prospects over the land;

but one cannot fancy Wordsworth writing it. So too, on a small scale,

the charming scene of the English garden in 'Thyrsis' is far from

Wordsworth's manner:--

"When garden walks and all the grassy floor

With blossoms red and white of fallen May

And chestnut-flowers are strewn--

So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,

From the wet field, through the vext garden trees,

Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze."

This is a picture that could be framed: how different from Wordsworth's

"wandering voice"! Or to take another notable example, which, like the

Oxus passage, is a fine close in the 'Tristram and Iseult,'--the hunter

on the arras above the dead lovers:--

"A stately huntsman, clad in green,

And round him a fresh forest scene.

On that clear forest-knoll he stays,

With his pack round him, and delays.

* * * * *

The wild boar rustles in his lair,

The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air,

But lord and hounds keep rooted there.

Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,

O hunter! and without a fear

Thy golden tasseled bugle blow"

But no one is deceived, and the hunter does not move from the arras, but

is still "rooted there," with his green suit and his golden tassel. The

piece is pictorial, and highly wrought for pictorial effects only,

obviously decorative and used as stage scenery precisely in the manner

of our later theatrical art, with that accent of forethought which turns

the beautiful into the aesthetic. This is a method which Wordsworth

never used. Take one of his pictures, the 'Reaper' for example, and see

the difference. The one is out-of-doors, the other is of the studio. The

purpose of these illustrations is to show that Arnold's nature-pictures

are not only consciously artistic, with an arrangement that approaches

artifice, but that he is interested through his eye primarily and not

through his emotions. It is characteristic of his temperament also that

he reminds one most often of the painter in water-colors.

If there is this difference between Arnold and Wordsworth in method, a

greater difference in spirit is to be anticipated. It is a fixed gulf.

In nature Wordsworth found the one spirit's "plastic stress," and a near

and intimate revelation to the soul of truths that were his greatest joy

and support in existence. Arnold finds there no inhabitancy of God, no

such streaming forth of wisdom and beauty from the fountain heads of

being; but the secret frame of nature is filled only with the darkness,

the melancholy, the waiting endurance that is projected from himself:--

"Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,

The solemn hills about us spread,

The stream that falls incessantly,

The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,

If I might lend their life a voice,

Seem to bear rather than rejoice."

Compare this with Wordsworth's 'Stanzas on Peele Castle,' and the

important reservations that must be borne in mind in describing Arnold

as a Wordsworthian will become clearer. It is as a relief from thought,

as a beautiful and half-physical diversion, as a scale of being so vast

and mysterious as to reduce the pettiness of human life to

nothingness,--it is in these ways that nature has value in Arnold's

verse. Such a poet may describe natural scenes well, and obtain by means

of them contrast to human conditions, and decorative beauty; but he does

not penetrate nature or interpret what her significance is in the human

spirit, as the more emotional poets have done. He ends in an antithesis,

not in a synthesis, and both nature and man lose by the divorce. One

looks in vain for anything deeper than landscapes in Arnold's treatment

of nature; she is emptied of her own infinite, and has become

spiritually void: and in the simple great line in which he gave

the sea--

"The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea--"

he is thinking of man, not of the ocean: and the mood seems ancient

rather than modern, the feeling of a Greek, just as the sound of the

waves to him is always Aegean.

In treating of man's life, which must be the main thing in any poet's

work, Arnold is either very austere or very pessimistic. If the feeling

is moral, the predominant impression is of austerity; if it is

intellectual, the predominant impression is of sadness. He was not

insensible to the charm of life, but he feels it in his senses only to

deny it in his mind. The illustrative passage is from 'Dover Beach':--

"Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."

This is the contradiction of sense and thought, the voice of a regret

grounded in the intellect (for if it were vital and grounded in the

emotions it would become despair); the creed of illusion and futility in

life, which is the characteristic note of Arnold, and the reason of his

acceptance by many minds. The one thing about life which he most insists

on is its isolation, its individuality. In the series called

'Switzerland,' this is the substance of the whole; and the doctrine is

stated with an intensity and power, with an amplitude and prolongation,

that set these poems apart as the most remarkable of all his lyrics.

From a poet so deeply impressed with this aspect of existence, and

unable to find its remedy or its counterpart in the harmony of life, no

joyful or hopeful word can be expected, and none is found. The second

thing about life which he dwells on is its futility; though he bids one

strive and work, and points to the example of the strong whom he has

known, yet one feels that his voice rings more true when he writes of

Obermann than in any other of the elegiac poems. In such verse as the

'Summer Night,' again, the genuineness of the mood is indubitable. In

'The Sick King of Bokhara,' the one dramatic expression of his genius,

futility is the very centre of the action. The fact that so much of his

poetry seems to take its motive from the subsidence of Christian faith

has set him among the skeptic or agnostic poets, and the "main movement"

which he believed he had expressed was doubtless that in which

agnosticism was a leading element. The unbelief of the third quarter of

the century was certainly a controlling influence over him, and in a man

mainly intellectual by nature it could not well have been otherwise.

Hence, as one looks at his more philosophical and lyrical poems--the

profounder part of his work--and endeavors to determine their character

and sources alike, it is plain to see that in the old phrase, "the pride

of the intellect" lifts its lonely column over the desolation of every

page. The man of the academy is here, as in the prose, after all. He

reveals himself in the literary motive, the bookish atmosphere of the

verse, in its vocabulary, its elegance of structure, its precise phrase

and its curious allusions (involving footnotes), and in fact, throughout

all its form and structure. So self-conscious is it that it becomes

frankly prosaic at inconvenient times, and is more often on the level of

eloquent and graceful rhetoric than of poetry. It is frequently liquid

and melodious, but there is no burst of native song in it anywhere. It

is the work of a true poet, nevertheless; but there are many voices for

the Muse. It is sincere, it is touched with reality; it is the mirror of

a phase of life in our times, and not in our times only, but whenever

the intellect seeks expression for its sense of the limitation of its

own career, and its sadness in a world which it cannot solve.

A word should be added concerning the personality of Arnold

which is revealed in his familiar letters,--a collection that has

dignified the records of literature with a singularly noble memory of

private life. Few who did not know Arnold could have been prepared

for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful.

In every relation of private life he is shown to have been a man of

exceptional constancy and plainness. The letters are mainly home

letters; but a few friendships also yielded up their hoard, and thus

the circle of private life is made complete. Every one must take

delight in the mental association with Arnold in the scenes of his

existence, thus daily exposed, and in his family affections. A nature

warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of sport and fun, and

always fed from pure fountains, and with it a character so founded

upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so continuing in power and

grace, must wake in all the responses of happy appreciation, and

leave the charm of memory.

He did his duty as naturally as if it required neither resolve, nor

effort, nor thought of any kind for the morrow, and he never failed,

seemingly, in act or word of sympathy, in little or great things; and

when, to this, one adds the clear ether of the intellectual life where

he habitually moved in his own life apart, and the humanity of his

home, the gift that these letters bring may be appreciated. That gift

is the man himself; but set in the atmosphere of home, with son-ship

and fatherhood, sisters and brothers, with the bereavements of

years fully accomplished, and those of babyhood and boyhood,--a

sweet and wholesome English home, with all the cloud and sunshine

of the English world drifting over its roof-tree, and the soil of England

beneath its stones, and English duties for the breath of its being.

To add such a home to the household-rights of English literature is

perhaps something from which Arnold would have shrunk, but it

endears his memory.

[Illustration: Signature: Geroge E. Woodberry]

INTELLIGENCE AND GENIUS

From 'Essays in Criticism'

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation? Not,

certainly, an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible

intelligence. Our greatest admirers would not claim for us that we have

these in a pre-eminent degree; they might say that we had more of them

than our detractors gave us credit for, but they would not assert them

to be our essential characteristics. They would rather allege, as our

chief spiritual characteristics, energy and honesty; and if we are

judged favorably and positively, not invidiously and negatively, our

chief characteristics are no doubt these: energy and honesty, not an

open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence. Openness of

mind and flexibility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of

the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness

of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics

of the French people in modern times,--at any rate, they strikingly

characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost

everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or

the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them

may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out is that

they have this, and that we have it in a much lesser degree.

Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral sphere, but also in

the intellectual and spiritual sphere, energy and honesty are most

important and fruitful qualities; that for instance, of what we call

genius, energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a nation

energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics,--by refusing

to it, as at all eminent characteristics, openness of mind and

flexibility of intelligence,--we do not by any means, as some people

might at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power of

manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to the moral

sphere. We only indicate its probable special line of successful

activity in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain

imperfections and failings to which in this sphere it will always be

subject. Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an

affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by

energy may well be eminent in poetry;--and we have Shakespeare. Again,

the highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a

faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry;

therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be

eminent in science;--and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton: in the

intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy,

which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon,

is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription, and

routine,--the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore a nation

whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy will not be very apt to

set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard, an authority, like an

academy. By this it certainly escapes certain real inconveniences and

dangers; and it can at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably

splendid heights in poetry and science.

On the other hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work are

specially the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of

intelligence. The form, the method of evolution, the precision, the

proportions, the relations of the parts to the whole, in an intellectual

work, depend mainly upon them. And these are the elements of an

intellectual work which are really most communicable from it, which can

most be learned and adopted from it, which have therefore the greatest

effect upon the intellectual performance of others. Even in poetry these

requisites are very important; and the poetry of a nation not eminent

for the gifts on which they depend, will more or less suffer by this

shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are after all secondary, and

energy is the first thing; but in prose they are of first-rate

importance. In its prose literature, therefore, and in the routine of

intellectual work generally, a nation with no particular gifts for these

will not be so successful. These are what, as I have said, can to a

certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the free activity of

genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain them, and therefore a

nation with an eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. So

far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy and inventive

genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to energy and inventive

genius, and to this extent to the human spirit's general advance. But

then this evil is so much compensated by the propagation, on a large

scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a

flexible intelligence naturally engender, genius itself in the long run

so greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the

French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the general

advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole, rather furthered

than impeded by their existence.

How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how much better, in

general, do the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of

genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One may constantly remark

this in the work of individuals: how much more striking, in general,

does any Englishman--of some vigor of mind, but by no means a poet--seem

in his verse than in his prose! His verse partly suffers from his not

being really a poet, partly no doubt from the very same defects which

impair his prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in

it, but how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it, by dint

of feeling and of originality and movement of ideas, than when he is

writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is just the reverse:

set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set

him to write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power of

French literature is in its prose writers, the power of English

literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French poets

depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of intelligence which

they exhibit,--qualities which are the distinctive support of prose;

many of the celebrated English prose writers depend wholly for their

fame upon the qualities of genius and imagination which they

exhibit,--qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry.