part one

dactyl and one trochee. The final trochee, a long and a short syllable, rhymes with the following or preceding line. There is also a rhyme, in each line, of the second dactyl with the fourth. This will be made plain to the ordinary reader by quoting the first two lines of the poem, divided into feet:--

Hora no | vissima | tempora | pessima | sunt, vigi | lemus; Ecce mi | naciter | imminet | arbiter | ille su | premus.

The adoption of such a metre would seem to be a clog on flexibility and force of expression. But in this poem it is not so. The author rejoices in absolute freedom of diction. The rhythm and rhyme alike lend themselves to the uses, now of bitter satire and revilings, now of overpowering hope and exultant joy.

The title scarcely gives an idea of the subject-matter of the poem. The old Benedictine, living for the time in his cell, had nevertheless known the world of his day, had lived in it and been of it. To him it seemed an evil world, full of crimes, of moils, of deceits, of abominations; the Church seemed corrupt, venal, shameless, and Rome the centre and the soul of this accursed world. Pondering on these conditions, the monk turned his weary gaze toward the celestial country, the country of purity and peace, and to the King on his throne, the centre and source of eternal beatitude. The contrast, on which he dwelt for a long time, filled him on the one hand with burning indignation, on the other with entrancing visions and longings.

At last he broke out into magnificent poetry. It is not possible to translate him into any other language than the Latin in which he wrote, and preserve any of the grandeur and beauty which result from the union of ardent thought with almost miraculous music of language. Dr. Neale aptly speaks of the majestic sweetness which invests Bernard's poem. The expression applies specially to those passages, abounding in all parts of the poem, in which he describes the glory and the peace of the better country. Many of these have been translated or closely imitated by Dr. Neale, with such excellent effect that several hymns which are very popular in churches of various denominations have been constructed from Dr. Neale's translations. Other portions of the poem, especially those in which the vices and crimes of the Rome of that time are denounced and lashed with unsparing severity, have never been translated, and are not likely ever to be, because of the impossibility of preserving in English the peculiar force of the metre; and translation without this would be of small value. The fire of the descriptions of heaven is increased by the contrast in which they stand with descriptions of Rome in the twelfth century. Here, for example, is a passage addressed to Rome:--

"Fas mihi dicere, fas mihi scribere 'Roma fuisti,' Obruta moenibus, obruta moribus, occubuisti. Urbs ruis inclita, tam modo subdita, quam prius alta: Quo prius altior, tam modo pressior, et labefacta. Fas mihi scribere, fas mihi dicere 'Roma, peristi.' Sunt tua moenia vociferantia 'Roma ruisti.'"

And here is one addressed to the City of God:--

"O sine luxibus, O sine luctibus, O sine lite, Splendida curia, florida patria, patria vitæ. Urbs Syon inclita, patria condita littore tuto, Te peto, te colo, te flagro, te volo, canto, saluto."

While no translation exists of this remarkable work, nor indeed can be made to reproduce the power and melody of the original, yet a very good idea of its spirit may be had from the work of Dr. J. Mason Neale, who made from selected portions this English poem, which is very much more than what he modestly called it, "a close imitation." Dr. Neale has made no attempt to reproduce the metre of the original.

[ILLUSTRATION: signature: W.T. Prince]

BRIEF LIFE IS HERE OUR PORTION

Brief life is here our portion, Brief sorrow, short-lived care: The Life that knows no ending, The tearless Life, is _there_: O happy retribution, Short toil, eternal rest! For mortals and for sinners A mansion with the Blest! That we should look, poor wanderers, To have our home on high! That worms should seek for dwellings Beyond the starry sky! And now we fight the battle, And then we wear the Crown Of full and everlasting And passionless renown: Then glory, yet unheard of, Shall shed abroad its ray; Resolving all enigmas, An endless Sabbath-day. Then, then, from his oppressors The Hebrew shall go free, And celebrate in triumph The year of Jubilee: And the sun-lit land that recks not Of tempest or of fight Shall fold within its bosom Each happy Israelite. 'Midst power that knows no limit, And wisdom free from bound, The Beatific Vision Shall glad the Saints around; And peace, for war is needless, And rest, for storm is past, And goal from finished labor, And anchorage at last. There God, my King and Portion, In fullness of His Grace, Shall we behold forever, And worship face to face; There Jacob into Israel, From earthlier self estranged, And Leah into Rachel Forever shall be changed; There all the halls of Syon For aye shall be complete: And in the land of Beauty All things of beauty meet. To thee, O dear, dear country! Mine eyes their vigils keep; For very love, beholding Thy happy name, they weep: The mention of Thy glory Is unction to the breast, And medicine in sickness, And love, and life, and rest. O one, O onely mansion! O Paradise of joy! Where tears are ever banished, And smiles have no alloy: Beside thy living waters All plants are, great and small; The cedar of the forest, The hyssop of the wall; With jaspers glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze; The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays; Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced; Thy saints build up its fabric, And the Corner-stone is CHRIST. Thou hast no shore, fair Ocean! Thou hast no time, bright Day! Dear fountain of refreshment To pilgrims far away! Upon the Rock of Ages They raise thy holy Tower. Thine is the Victor's laurel, And thine the golden dower. Thou feel'st in mystic rapture, O Bride that know'st no guile, The Prince's sweetest kisses, The Prince's loveliest smile. Unfading lilies, bracelets Of living pearl, thine own; The Lamb is ever near thee, The Bridegroom thine alone; And all thine endless leisure In sweetest accents sings The ills that were thy merit, The joys that are thy King's. Jerusalem the golden! With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest; I know not, oh, I know not What social joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare; And when I fain would sing them, My spirit fails and faints, And vainly would it image The assembly of the Saints. They stand, those halls of Syon, All jubilant with song, And bright with many an Angel, And many a Martyr throng; The Prince is ever in them, The light is aye serene; The Pastures of the Blessed Are decked in glorious sheen; There is the Throne of David, And there, from toil released, The shout of them that triumph, The song of them that feast; And they, beneath their Leader, Who conquered in the fight, For ever and for ever Are clad in robes of white. Jerusalem the glorious! The glory of the elect, O dear and future vision That eager hearts expect: Ev'n now by faith I see thee, Ev'n here thy walls discern; To thee my thoughts are kindled And strive and pant and yearn: Jerusalem the onely, That look'st from Heav'n below, In thee is all my glory, In me is all my woe: And though my body may not, My spirit seeks thee fain; Till flesh and earth return me To earth and flesh again. O Land that seest no sorrow! O State that fear'st no strife! O princely bowers! O Land of flowers! O realm and Home of Life!

JULIANA BERNERS

(Fifteenth Century)

About the year 1475 one William Caxton, a prosperous English wool merchant of good standing and repute, began printing books. The art which he introduced into his native country was quickly taken up by others; first, it seems, by certain monks at St. Albans, and shortly afterward by Wynkyn de Worde, who had been an apprentice to Caxton. In 1486 the press at St. Albans issued two books printed in English, of which one was entitled 'The Boke of St. Albans.' Of this volume only three perfect copies are known to exist. It is a compilation of treatises on hawking, on hunting, and on heraldry, and contained but little evidence as to their authorship. Ten years later Wynkyn de Worde reprinted the work with additions, under the following elaborate title, in the fashion of the time:--'Treatyse perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fysshynge with an Angle; also a right noble Treatyse on the Lynage of Coote Armeris; ending with a Treatyse which specyfyeth of Blasyng of Armys.'

[Illustration: JULIANA BERNERS]

The authorship of this volume, one of the earliest books printed in the English language, has generally been ascribed to a certain (or uncertain) Juliana Berners, Bernes, or Barnes, who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century, and who is reputed to have been prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell,--long since in ruins,--near St. Albans, and close to the little river Ver, which still conceals in its quiet pools the speckled trout. If this attribution be correct, Dame Berners was the first woman to write a book in English. Although the question of the authorship is by no means settled, yet it is clear that the printer believed the treatise on hunting to have been written by this lady, and the critics now generally assign a portion at least of the volume to her. In the sixteenth century the book became very popular, and was reprinted many times.

Of the several treatises it contains, that on fishing has the greatest interest, an interest increased by the fact that it probably suggested 'The Compleat Angler' of Izaak Walton, which appeared one hundred and sixty years later.

HERE BEGYNNYTH

THE TREATYSE OF FYSSHYNGE WYTH AN ANGLE

Salomon in his parablys sayth that a glad spyryte makyth a flourynge aege, that is a fayre aege and a longe. And syth it is soo: I aske this questyon, whiche ben the meanes and the causes that enduce a man in to a mery spyryte: Truly to my beste dyscrecon it seemeth good dysportes and honest gamys in whom a man Joyeth without any repentaunce after.

Thenne folowyth it yt gode dysportes and honest games ben cause of mannys fayr aege and longe life. And therefore now woll I chose of foure good disportes and honest gamys, that is to wyte: of huntynge: hawkynge: fysshynge: and foulynge. The best to my symple dyscrecon whyche is fysshynge: called Anglynge wyth a rodde: and a lyne and an hoke. And thereof to treate as my symple wytte may suffyce: both for the said reason of Salomon and also for the reason that phisyk makyth in this wyse. _Si tibi deficiant medici tibi fiant: hec tria mens leta labor et moderata dieta_. Ye shall vnderstonde that this is for to saye, Yf a man lacke leche or medicyne he shall make thre thynges his leche and medicyne: and he shall nede neuer no moo. The fyrste of theym is a mery thought. The seconde is labour not outrageo. The thyrd is dyete mesurable....

Here folowyth the order made to all those whiche shall haue the vnderstondynge of this forsayd treatyse & vse it for theyr pleasures.

Ye that can angle & take fysshe to your pleasures as this forsayd treatyse techyth & shewyth you: I charge & requyre you in the name of alle noble men that ye fysshe not in noo poore mannes seuerall water: as his ponde: stewe: or other necessary thynges to kepe fysshe in wythout his lycence & good wyll. Nor that ye vse not to breke noo mannys gynnys lyenge in theyr weares & in other places dve vuto theym. Ne to take the fysshe awaye that is taken in theym. For after a fysshe is taken in a mannys gynne yf the gynne be layed in the comyn waters: or elles in suche waters as he hireth, it is his owne propre goodes. And yf ye take it awaye ye robbe hym: whyche is a ryght shamfull dede to ony noble man to do yt that theuys & brybours done: whyche are punysshed for theyr evyll dedes by the necke & other wyse whan they maye be aspyed & taken. And also yf ye do in lyke manere as this treatise shewyth you: ye shal haue no nede to take of other menys: whiles ye shal haue ynough of your owne takyng yf ye lyste to labour therfore. Whyche shall be to you a very pleasure to se the fayr bryght shynynge scalyd fysshes dysceyved by your crafty meanes & drawen vpon londe. Also that ye breke noo mannys heggys in goynge abowte your dysportes: ne opyn noo mannes gates but that ye shytte theym agayn. Also ye shall not vse this forsayd crafty dysporte for no covety senes to thencreasynge & sparynge of your money oonly, but pryncypally for your solace & to cause the helthe of your body, and specyally of your soule. For whanne ye purpoos to goo on your disportes in fysshyng ye woll not desyre gretly many persones wyth you, whiche myghte lette you of your game. And thenne ye maye serue God deuowtly in sayenge affectuously youre custumable prayer. And thus doynge ye shall eschewe & voyde many vices, as ydylnes whyche is pryncypall cause to enduce man to many other vyces, as it is ryght well knowen.

Also ye shall not be to rauenous in takyng of your sayd game as to moche at one tyme: whyche ye maye lyghtly doo, yf ye doo in euery poynt as this present treatyse shewyth you in euery poynt, whyche lyghtly be occasyon to dystroye your owne dysportes & other mennys also. As whan ye haue a suffycyent mese ye sholde coveyte nomore as at that tyme. Also ye shall besye yourselfe to nouryssh the game in all that ye maye: & to dystroye all such thynges as ben devourers of it. And all those that done after this rule shall haue the blessynge of god & saynt Petyr, whyche be theym graunte that wyth his precyous blood vs boughte.

And for by cause that this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enpryntyd allone by itself & put in a lytyll plaunflet therfore I have compylyd it in a greter volume of dyverse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde have but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshyng sholde not by this meane utterly dystroye it.

EMPRYNTED AT WESTMESTRE BY WYNKYN THE WORDE THE YERE THYN-CARNACON OF OUR LORD M.CCCC.LXXXXVI.

Reprinted by Thomas White, Crane Court

MDCCCXXVII.

WALTER BESANT

(1838-)

Walter Besant, born in Portsmouth, England, in 1838, did not begin his career as a novelist till he was thirty years old. His preparation for the works that possess so certain a maturity of execution, with as certain an ideal of performance, was made at King's College, London, and afterwards at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took mathematical honors. Abandoning his idea of entering the Church, he taught for seven years in the Royal College of Mauritius. Ill health compelled his return to England, and he then took up literature as a profession. His first novel he had the courage to burn when the first publisher to whom he showed it refused it.

But the succeeding years brought forth 'Studies in Early French Poetry,' a delicate and scholarly series of essays; an edition of Rabelais, of whom he is the biographer and disciple, and, with Professor Palmer, a 'History of Jerusalem,' a work for which he had equipped himself when secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

[Illustration: WALTER BESANT]

Mr. Besant was also a student in another special field. He knew his Dickens as no other undergraduate in the University knew that branch of polite literature, and passed an examination on the 'Pickwick Papers' which the author declared that he himself would have failed in. By these processes Mr. Besant fitted himself mentally and socially for the task of story-telling. The relations of a man of letters to the rest of the world are comprehensively revealed in the long list of his novels.

From the beginning he was one who comes with a tale "which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner"; nor is the charm lessened by the sense of a living and kindly voice addressing the hearer. His novels are easy reading, and do not contain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine, one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.

It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance, made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week, and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-boy,' 'My Little Girl,' 'With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butterfly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet.' The latter story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardianship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a family whose features are familiar to the readers of 'Little Dorrit' and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these pages,--pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of virtues.

Mr. Rice died in 1882, and 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings, where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible story" has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.

'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and 'The World Went Very Well Then' (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale, the reader would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.

Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of modern charlatanism as shown in 'Herr Paulus,' of the "woman question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor.'

In the 'Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallucination; in the story of 'The Inner House' the plummet of suggestion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.

The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat conventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of 'The Master Craftsman' to the 'Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.

It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals, although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in 'All in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate.' In reading Besant we are constantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification in eccentricities.

In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the publishers.

OLD-TIME LONDON

From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': Harper and Brothers

The London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa. It had no cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms. This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the people to carry on their old life and their trade in their own way, the Roman and British architecture--no new thing, but a style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the climate--would certainly have remained. That, however, was not the case. The Englishman developed his house from the patriarchal idea.

First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived, fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings. It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths, which in great houses were embroidered and painted; _perches_ of various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons, the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc., were hung up. The lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burning under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at the door.

The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft, and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased, lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There, among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.

The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the "noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or supper, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the summer.

In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vegetables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also had (these were introduced probably at the time when they commenced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips, parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names, which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead. The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of drinking wine.

In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or upper chamber. This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall. The arrangement may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall, as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blankets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxurious as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours of night.

The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room or suite of rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their women. For the first time, as soon as this room was added, the women could follow their own vocations of embroidery, spinning, and needlework of all kinds, apart from the rough and noisy talk of the men.

The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century, were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and the ladies' bower.

There was also the garden. In all times the English have been fond of gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be. "It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory, lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let there be beds enriched with onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions. The garden is also enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffodil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to have anise, mustard, and wormwood.... A noble garden will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and figs." The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts their arriving at ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he hoped would be some day achieved.

The indoor amusements of the time were very much like our own. We have a little music in the evening; so did our forefathers. We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but the dancing was done for them. We go to the theatres to see the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs, he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as disreputable as when we find him later on with his _ribauderie_. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together; so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word, as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we remain the same.

Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated, wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments, baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races. They were also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness that London was always on the winning side.

The growth of the city government belongs to the history of London. Suffice it here to say that the people in all times enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of Europe. The history of municipal London is a history of continual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and to extend it and to make it impregnable. Already the people are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength. They refuse to own any other lord but the king himself; there is no Earl of London. They freely hold their free and open meetings, their folk-motes,--in the open space outside the northwest corner of St. Paul's Churchyard. That they lived roughly, enduring cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suffered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were always in danger of fevers, agues, "putrid" throats, plagues, fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,--three schools only for the whole of London,--all this may very well be understood. But these things do not make men and women wretched. They were not always suffering from preventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out of the flames; they were not always fighting. The first and most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that he should enjoy the produce of his own labor. All these things the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much as in these days they can be possessed. His city has always been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all men who worked lived in plenty.

The households, the way of living, the occupations of the women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments, carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special art. Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an overweening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair, and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their pretty cheeks. If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],--the owner or winner of the loaf,--the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its distributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters of it. When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in great numbers forsook the world for the cloister. And here they began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on correspondence--specimens of which still exist--in that language. Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue, embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of the later Saxon times.

This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daughters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery. Theirs were the lower walks--to spin the linen and to make the bread and carry on the housework.

THE SYNAGOGUE

From 'The Rebel Queen': Harper and Brothers

"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé, Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer."--LAMARTINE.

"Are you ready, Francesca?"

Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for Sabbath and Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all times in the matter of dress, but especially on a summer day, which affords opportunity for bright color and bright drapery and an ethereal appearance. This morning she was full of color and light. When, however, she found herself confronted with Francesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so faultless, and her black-lace hat with its single rose for color, Nelly's artistic sense caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for nothing that one learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another; she who knows music can feel for dress. "Oh!" she cried, clasping her hands. "That's what we can never do!"

"What?"

"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives me the new fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street copy me--poor things!--and the dressmaker comes to talk things over and to learn from me. I make everything for myself. And they call me clever! But I can't get near it; and if I can't nobody can."...

A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west, with a flat façade and round windows that bore out the truth of the date--1700--carved upon the front. A word or two in that square character--that tongue which presents so few attractions to most of us compared with other tongues--probably corroborated the internal evidence of the façade and the windows.

"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turning to the right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along the whole side of the building. On the other side was another gallery. In front of both was a tolerably wide grill, through which the congregation below could be seen perfectly.

"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell--there were not many women present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently they will sing. They sing beautifully. Now they're reading prayers and the Law. They've got to read the whole Law through once a week, you know." Francesca looked curiously through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place, the first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if for an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cupboard in the wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round the inclosure, although the morning was fine and bright. At the west end a high screen kept the congregation from the disturbance of those who entered or went out. Within the screen was a company of men and boys, all with their hats and caps on their heads; they looked like the choir. In front of the choir was a platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the back of the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment provided with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table stood the Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black hair and full black beard, about forty years of age. He wore a gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on his head he had a kind of biretta. Four tall wax candles were placed round the front of the platform. The chairs were occupied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk beside the Reader. The service was already begun--it was, in fact, half over.

Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and four feet broad. Bands of black or blue were worked in the ends, which were also provided with fringes. "It is the Talleth," Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a turban above it, not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the synagogue east and west. The place was not full, but there were a good many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca. Like many young persons brought up with no other religion than they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind. She knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds; never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir from side to side; nor was it a monotone with a drop at the end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in some Anglican services. This Reader, with a rich, strong voice, a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service--it must have been extremely fatiguing--upon himself, chanting it from beginning to end. No doubt, as he rendered the reading and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Carthaginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes. It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record--not a monotonous chant. Francesca knew nothing of the words; she grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on one side and English on the other. Besides, the man attracted her--by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She closed her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice and the emotions which it expressed.

There was no music to help him. From time to time the men in the congregation lifted up their voices--not seemingly in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out with one accord. This helped him a little, otherwise he was without any assistance.

A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of the Law, sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice went up and down and rolled along the roof and echoed along the benches of the women's gallery. Now the Voice sounded a note of rejoicing; now, but less often, a note of sadness; now it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then the people shouted with him--it was as if they clashed sword on shield and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when men go forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as of one who consoles and soothes and promises things to come; now it was a note of rapture, as if the Promised Land was already recovered.

Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting wrapped in their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice thundered and rolled? I know not. Such was the effect produced upon one who heard this Voice for the first time. At first it seemed loud, even barbaric; there was lacking something which the listener and stranger had learned to associate with worship. What was it? Reverence? But she presently found reverence In plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this ancient service she missed the note of humiliation. There was no Litany at a Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement; there was no appearance of penitence, sorrow, or the confession of sins. The Voice was as the Voice of a Captain exhorting his soldiers to fight. The service was warlike, the service of a people whose trust in their God is so great that they do not need to call perpetually upon Him for the help and forgiveness of which they are assured. Yes, yes--she thought--this is the service of a race of warriors; they are fighting men: the Lord is their God; He is leading them to battle: as for little sins, and backslidings, and penitences, they belong to the Day of Atonement--which comes once a year. For all the other days in the year, battle and victory occupy all the mind. The service of a great fighting people; a service full of joy, full of faith, full of assurance, full of hope and confidence--such assurance as few Christians can understand, and of faith to which few Christians can attain. Perhaps Francesca was wrong; but these were her first impressions, and these are mostly true.

In the body of the synagogue men came late. Under one gallery was a school of boys, in the charge of a graybeard, who, book in hand, followed the service with one eye, while he admonished perpetually the boys to keep still and to listen. The boys grew restless; it was tedious to them--the Voice which expressed so much to the stranger who knew no Hebrew at all was tedious to the children; they were allowed to get up and run into the court outside and then to come back again; nobody heeded their going in and out. One little boy of three, wrapped, like the rest, in a white Talleth, ran up and down the side aisle without being heeded--even by the splendid Beadle with the gold-laced hat, which looked so truly wonderful above the Oriental Talleth. The boys in the choir got up and went in and out just as they pleased. Nobody minded. The congregation, mostly well-to-do men with silk hats, sat in their places, book in hand, and paid no attention.

Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worshipers, who reminded Francesca of Browning's poem of St. John's Day at Rome. For they nudged and jostled each other; they whispered things; they even laughed over the things they whispered. But they were clad like those in the open part in the Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no reverence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were like the children, their neighbors,--just as restless, just as uninterested, just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer and the more ignorant part of the community. They came here and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do; because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of their People.

The women in the gallery sat or stood. They neither knelt nor sang aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood when it was proper to stand. They were like the women, the village women, in a Spanish or Italian church, for whom everything is done. Francesca, for the moment, felt humiliated that she should be compelled to sit apart from the congregation, railed off in the women's gallery, to have her religion done for her, without a voice of her own in it at all. So, I have heard, indignation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when they reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.

The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down. Then the Choir began. They sang a hymn--a Hebrew hymn--the rhythm and metre were not English; the music was like nothing that can be heard in a Christian Church. "It is the music," said Nelly, "to which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:" a bold statement, but--why not? If the music is not of Western origin and character, who can disprove such an assertion? After the hymn the prayers and reading went on again.

There came at last--it is a long service, such as we poor weak-kneed Anglicans could not endure--the end. There was a great bustle and ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the Roll of the Law; they wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they hung over it a silver breastplate set with twelve jewels for the Twelve Tribes--in memory of the Urim and Thummim. Francesca saw that the upper ends of the staves were adorned with silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang one of the Psalms of David--but not in the least like the same Psalm sung in an English Cathedral--bearing the Roll of the Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the railing and inclosure at the east end.

The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer--it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph--he ended his part of the service.

And then the choir sang the last hymn--a lovely hymn, not in the least like a Christian, or at least an English hymn--a psalm that breathed a tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One needed no words to understand the full meaning and beauty and depth of that hymn.

The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs and folded them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few minutes, gradually melting away. As for the men under the gallery, who had been whispering and laughing, they trooped out of the synagogue all together. Evidently, to them the service was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a form, to the baser sort?

The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the stairs. Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself--- all those wonderful things above enumerated--Francesca wondered what it meant to a girl who heard it every Sabbath morning. But she refrained from asking. Custom too often takes the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry out of the verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere--in other forms of faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not seen him in the congregation, probably because it is difficult to recognize a man merely by the top of his hat.

"Come," he said, "let us look around the place. Afterwards, perhaps, we will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on the site of the one erected by Manasseh and his friends when Oliver Cromwell permitted them to return to London after four hundred years of exile. They were forced to wear yellow hats at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse, like many other abominable laws. When you read about mediaeval laws, Francesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were seldom carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was weak. Who was there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat? The police? There were no police. The people? What did the people care about the yellow hat? When the Fire burned down London, sparing not even the great Cathedral, to say nothing of the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in splendor to the first. At that time all the Jews in London were Sephardim of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Spanish, just as there are Askenazim who speak nothing among themselves but Yiddish. Come with me; I will show you something that will please you."

He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the first. There were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved passages, a suggestion of a cloister, an open space or square, and buildings on all sides with windows opening upon the court.

"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have seen something like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and a few bright hangings and a black-haired woman at the open windows, and perhaps a coat of arms carved upon the wall, it would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a strange place to find in the heart of London."

"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we saying yesterday? Spain places her own seal upon everything that belongs to her--people, buildings, all. What you see here is the central Institute of our People, the Sephardim--the Spanish part of our People. Here is our synagogue, here are schools, alms-houses, residence of the Rabbi, and all sorts of things. You can come here sometimes and think of Spain, where your ancestors lived. Many generations in Spain have made you--as they have made me--a Spaniard."

They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they passed the synagogue, there came running across the court a girl of fifteen or so. She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair was curled round her shapely head; her figure was that of an English girl of twenty; her eyes showed black and large and bright as she glanced at the group standing in the court; her skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed in a grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind--a picture to be remembered.

"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might have worn to grace the triumph of David the King."

BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES

BY L. OSCAR KUHNS

One of the marked features of literary investigation during the present century is the interest which it has manifested in the Middle Ages. Not only have specialists devoted themselves to the detailed study of the Sagas of the North and the great cycles of Romance in France and England, but the stories of the Edda, of the Nibelungen, and of Charlemagne and King Arthur have become popularized, so that to-day they are familiar to the general reader. There is one class of literature, however, which was widespread and popular during the Middle Ages, but which is to-day known only to the student,--that is, the so-called Bestiaries and Lapidaries, or collections of stories and superstitions concerning the marvelous attributes of animals and of precious stones.

The basis of all Bestiaries is the Greek Physiologus, the origin of which can be traced back to the second century before Christ. It was undoubtedly largely influenced by the zoölogy of the Bible; and in the references to the Ibex, the Phoenix, and the tree Paradixion, traces of Oriental and old Greek superstitions can be seen. It was from the Latin versions of the Greek original that translations were made into nearly all European languages. There are extant to-day, whole or in fragments, Bestiaries in German, Old English, Old French, Provençal, Icelandic, Italian, Bohemian, and even Armenian, Ethiopic, and Syriac. These various versions differ more or less in the arrangement and number of the animals described, but all point back to the same ultimate source.

The main object of the Bestiaries was not so much to impart scientific knowledge, as by means of symbols and allegories to teach the doctrines and mysteries of the Church: At first this symbolical application was short and concise, but later became more and more expanded, until it often occupied more space than the description of the animal which served as a text.

Some of these animals are entirely fabulous, such as the siren, the phoenix, the unicorn; others are well known, but possess certain fabulous attributes. The descriptions of them are not the result of personal observation, but are derived from stories told by travelers or read in books, or are merely due to the imagination of the author; these stories, passing down from hand to hand, gradually became accepted facts.

These books were enormously popular during the Middle Ages, a fact which is proved by the large number of manuscripts still extant. Their influence on literature was likewise very great. To say nothing of the encyclopaedic works,--such as 'Li Tresors' of Brunetto Latini, the 'Image du Monde,' the 'Roman de la Rose,'--which contain extracts from the Bestiaries,--there are many references to them in the great writers, even down to the present day. There are certain passages in Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, that would be unintelligible without some knowledge of these mediaeval books of zoölogy.

Hence, besides the interest inherent in these quaint and childish stories, besides their value in revealing the scientific spirit and attainments of the times, some knowledge of the Bestiaries is of undoubted value and interest to the student of literature.

Closely allied to the Bestiaries (and indeed often contained in the same manuscript) are the Lapidaries, in which are discussed the various kinds of precious stones, with their physical characteristics,--shape, size, color, their use in medicine, and their marvelous talismanic properties. In spite of the fact that they contain the most absurd fables and superstitions, they were actually used as text-books in the schools, and published in medical treatises. The most famous of them was written in Latin by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes (died in 1123), and translated many times into Old French and other languages.

The following extracts from the Bestiaries are translated from 'Le Bestiaire' of Guillaume Le Clerc, composed in the year 1210 (edited by Dr. Robert Reinsch, Leipzig, 1890). While endeavoring to retain somewhat of the quaintness and naïveté of the original, I have omitted those repetitions and tautological expressions which are so characteristic of mediaeval literature. The religious application of the various animals is usually very long, and often is the mere repetition of the same idea. The symbolical meaning of the lion here given may be taken as a type of all the rest.

[Illustration: Signature: L. OSCAR KUHNS]

THE LION

It is proper that we should first speak of the nature of the lion, which is a fierce and proud beast and very bold. It has three especially peculiar characteristics. In the first place it always dwells upon a high mountain. From afar off it can scent the hunter who is pursuing it. And in order that the latter may not follow it to its lair it covers over its tracks by means of its tail. Another wonderful peculiarity of the lion is that when it sleeps its eyes are wide open, and clear and bright. The third characteristic is likewise very strange. For when the lioness brings forth her young, it falls to the ground, and gives no sign of life until the third day, when the lion breathes upon it and in this way brings it back to life again.

The meaning of all this is very clear. When God, our Sovereign father, who is the Spiritual lion, came for our salvation here upon earth, so skillfully did he cover his tracks that never did the hunter know that this was our Savior, and nature marveled how he came among us. By the hunter you must understand him who made man to go astray and seeks after him to devour him. This is the Devil, who desires only evil.

When this lion was laid upon the Cross by the Jews, his enemies, who judged him wrongfully, his human nature suffered death. When he gave up the spirit from his body, he fell asleep upon the holy cross. Then his divine nature awoke. This must you believe if you wish to live again.

When God was placed in the tomb, he was there only three days, and on the third day the Father breathed upon him and brought him to life again, just as the lion did to its young.

THE PELICAN

The pelican is a wonderful bird which dwells in the region about the river Nile. The written history[4] tells us that there are two kinds,--those which dwell in the river and eat nothing but fish, and those which dwell in the desert and eat only insects and worms. There is a wonderful thing about the pelican, for never did mother-sheep love her lamb as the pelican loves its young. When the young are born, the parent bird devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong and self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged at their wickedness, kills them all.

[Footnote 4: The reference here is probably to the 'Liber de Bestiis et Aliis Rebus' of Hugo de St. Victor.]

On the third day the father comes to them, deeply moved with pity and sorrow. With his beak he pierces his own side, until the blood flows forth. With the blood he brings back life into the body of his young[5].

[Footnote 5: There are many allusions in literature to this story. Cf. Shakespeare,--

"Like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood."--'Hamlet,' iv. 5.

"Those pelican daughters."--Lear, iii. 4. Cf. also the beautiful metaphor of Alfred de Musset, in his 'Nuit de Mai.']

THE EAGLE

The eagle is the king of birds. When it is old it becomes young again in a very strange manner. When its eyes are darkened and its wings are heavy with age, it seeks out a fountain clear and pure, where the water bubbles up and shines in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it rises high up into the air, and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun and gazes upon it until the heat thereof sets on fire its eyes and wings. Then it descends down into the fountain where the water is clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until it is fresh and renewed and healed of its old age[6].

[Footnote 6: "Bated like eagles having lately bathed."--'I Henry IV.,' iv. I.]

The eagle has such keen vision, that if it is high up among the clouds, soaring through the air, it sees the fish swimming beneath it, in river or sea; then down it shoots upon the fish and seizes and drags it to the shore. Again, if unknown to the eagle its eggs should be changed and others put into its nest,--when the young are grown, before they fly away, it carries them up into the air when the sun is shining its brightest. Those which can look at the rays of the sun, without blinking, it loves and holds dear; those which cannot stand to look at the light, it abandons, as base-born, nor troubles itself henceforth concerning them[7].

[Footnote 7: "Nay, if thou be that princely eagle's bird, Show thy descent by gazing 'gainst the sun."--'3 Henry VI.,' ii. I.]

THE PHOENIX

There is a bird named the phoenix, which dwells in India and is never found elsewhere. This bird is always alone and without companion, for its like cannot be found, and there is no other bird which resembles it in habits or appearance[8]. At the end of five hundred years it feels that it has grown old, and loads itself with many rare and precious spices, and flies from the desert away to the city of Leopolis. There, by some sign or other, the coming of the bird is announced to a priest of that city, who causes fagots to be gathered and placed upon a beautiful altar, erected for the bird. And so, as I have said, the bird, laden with spices, comes to the altar, and smiting upon the hard stone with its beak, it causes the flame to leap forth and set fire to the wood and the spices. When the fire is burning brightly, the phoenix lays itself upon the altar and is burned to dust and ashes.

[Footnote 8: "Were man as rare as phoenix."--'As You Like It,' iv. 3.]

Then comes the priest and finds the ashes piled up, and separating them softly he finds within a little worm, which gives forth an odor sweeter than that of roses or of any other flower. The next day and the next the priest comes again, and on the third day he finds that the worm has become a full-grown and full-fledged bird, which bows low before him and flies away, glad and joyous, nor returns again before five hundred years[9].

[Footnote 9: "But as when The Bird of Wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new create another heir."--'Henry VIII.,' v. 5.]

THE ANT

There is another kind of ant up in Ethiopia, which is of the shape and size of dogs. They have strange habits, for they scratch into the ground and extract therefrom great quantities of fine gold. If any one wishes to take this gold from them, he soon repents of his undertaking; for the ants run upon him, and if they catch him they devour him instantly. The people who live near them know that they are fierce and savage, and that they possess a great quantity of gold, and so they have invented a cunning trick. They take mares which have unweaned foals, and give them no food for three days. On the fourth the mares are saddled, and to the saddles are fastened boxes that shine like gold. Between these people and the ants flows a very swift river. The famished mares are driven across this river, while the foals are kept on the hither side. On the other side of the river the grass is rich and thick. Here the mares graze, and the ants seeing the shining boxes think they have found a good place to hide their gold, and so all day long they fill and load the boxes with their precious gold, till night comes on and the mares have eaten their fill. When they hear the neighing of their foals they hasten to return to the other side of the river. There their masters take the gold from the boxes and become rich and powerful, but the ants grieve over their loss.

THE SIREN

The siren is a monster of strange fashion, for from the waist up it is the most beautiful thing in the world, formed in the shape of a woman. The rest of the body is like a fish or a bird. So sweetly and beautifully does she sing that they who go sailing over the sea, as soon as they hear the song, cannot keep from going towards her. Entranced by the music, they fall asleep in their boat, and are killed by the siren before they can utter a cry[10].

[Footnote 10: References to the siren are innumerable; the most famous perhaps is Heine's 'Lorelei.' Cf. also Dante, 'Purgatorio,' xix. 19-20.]

THE WHALE

In the sea, which is mighty and vast, are many kinds of fish, such as the turbot, the sturgeon, and the porpoise. But there is one monster, very treacherous and dangerous. In Latin its name is Cetus. It is a bad neighbor for sailors. The upper part of its back looks like sand, and when it rises from the sea, the mariners think it is an island. Deceived by its size they sail toward it for refuge, when the storm comes upon them. They cast anchor, disembark upon the back of the whale, cook their food, build a fire, and in order to fasten their boat they drive great stakes into what seems to them to be sand. When the monster feels the heat of the fire which burns upon its back, it plunges down into the depths of the sea, and drags the ship and all the people after it.

When the fish is hungry it opens its mouth very wide, and breathes forth an exceedingly sweet odor. Then all the little fish stream thither, and, allured by the sweet smell, crowd into its throat. Then the whale closes its jaws and swallows them into its stomach, which is as wide as a valley[11].

[Footnote 11: "Who is a whale to virginity and devours up all the fry it finds."--'All's Well that Ends Well,' iv. 3.]

THE CROCODILE

The crocodile is a fierce beast that lives always beside the river Nile. In shape it is somewhat like an ox; it is full twenty ells long, and as big around as the trunk of a tree. It has four feet, large claws, and very sharp teeth; by means of these it is well armed. So hard and tough is its skin, that it minds not in the least hard blows made by sharp stones. Never was seen another such a beast, for it lives on land and in water. At night it is submerged in water, and during the day it reposes upon the land. If it meets and overcomes a man, it swallows him entire, so that nothing remains. But ever after it laments him as long as it lives[12]. The upper jaw of this beast is immovable when it eats, and the lower one alone moves. No other living creature has this peculiarity. The other beast of which I have told you (the water-serpent), which always lives in the water, hates the crocodile with a mortal hatred. When it sees the crocodile sleeping on the ground with its mouth wide open, it rolls itself in the slime and mud in order to become more slippery. Then it leaps into the throat of the crocodile and is swallowed down into its stomach. Here it bites and tears its way out again, but the crocodile dies on account of its wounds.

[Footnote 12: "Crocodile tears" are proverbial. Cf: "As the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers."--'2 Henry VI.,' iii. 1. "Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile."--'Othello' iv. 1.]

THE TURTLE-DOVE

Now I must tell you of another bird which is courteous and beautiful, and which loves much and is much loved. This is the turtle-dove. The male and the female are always together in mountain or in desert, and if perchance the female loses her companion never more will she cease to mourn for him, never more will she sit upon green branch or leaf. Nothing in the world can induce her to take another mate, but she ever remains loyal to her husband. When I consider the faithfulness of this bird, I wonder at the fickleness of man and woman. Many husbands and wives there are who do not love as the turtle-dove; but if the man bury his wife, before he has eaten two meals he desires to have another woman in his arms. The turtle-dove does not so, but remains patient and faithful to her companion, waiting if haply he might return[13].

[Footnote 13: "Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves, That could not live asunder day or night."--'I Henry VI.,' ii. 2.]

THE MANDRAGORA

The mandragora is a wild plant, the like of which does not exist. Many kinds of medicine can be made of its root; this root, if you look at it closely, will be seen to have the form of a man. The bark is very useful; when well boiled in water it helps many diseases. The skillful physicians gather this plant when it is old, and they say that when it is plucked it weeps and cries, and if any one hears the cry he will die[14]. But those who gather it do this so carefully that they receive no evil from it. If a man has a pain in his head or in his body, or in his hand or foot, it can be cured by this herb. If you take this plant and beat it and let the man drink of it, he will fall asleep very softly, and no more will he feel pain[15]. There are two kinds of this plant,--male and female. The leaves of both are beautiful. The leaf of the female is thick like that of the wild lettuce.

[Footnote 14: "Would curses kill as doth the mandrake's groan."--'2 Henry VI.,' iii. 2. ]

[Footnote 15: "Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world."--'Othello,' iii. 3.]

SAPPHIRE

The following two extracts are translated from 'Les Lapidaires Français du Moyen Âge,' by Leopold Pannier, Paris, 1882.

The sapphire is beautiful, and worthy to shine on the fingers of a king. In color it resembles the sky when it is pure and free from clouds[16]. No precious stone has greater virtue or beauty. One kind of sapphire is found among the pebbles in the country of Libya; but that which comes from the land of the Turk is more precious. It is called the gem of gems, and is of great value to men and women. It gives comfort to the heart and renders the limbs strong and sound. It takes away envy and perfidy and can set the prisoner at liberty. He who carries it about him will never have fear. It pacifies those who are angry, and by means of it one can see into the unknown.

[Footnote 16: Cf. the exquisite line of Dante, 'Purgatorio,' i. 13:-- 'Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro.']

It is very valuable in medicine. It cools those who are feverish and who on account of pain are covered with perspiration. When powdered and dissolved in milk it is good for ulcers. It cures headache and diseases of the eyes and tongue. He who wears it must live chastely and honorably; so shall he never feel the distress of poverty.

CORAL

Coral grows like a tree in the sea, and at first its color is green. When it reaches the air it becomes hard and red. It is half a foot in length. He who carries it will never be afraid of lightning or tempest. The field in which it is placed will be very fertile, and rendered safe from hail or any other kind of storm. It drives away evil spirits, and gives a good beginning to all undertakings and brings them to a good end.

MARIE-HENRI BEYLE (STENDHAL)

(1783-1842)

BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER

Marie-Henri Beyle, French novelist and man of letters, who is better known under his bizarre pseudonym of Stendhal, is a somewhat unusual figure among French writers. He was curiously misappreciated by his own generation, whose literary movements he in turn confessedly ignored. He is recognized to-day as an important link in the development of modern fiction, and is even discussed concurrently with Balzac, in the same way that we speak of Dickens and Thackeray, Emerson and Lowell.

[Illustration: HENRI BEYLE]

There is nothing dramatic in Stendhal's life, which, viewed impartially, is a simple and somewhat pathetic record of failure and disillusion. He was six years older than Balzac, having been born January 23d, 1783, in the small town of Grenoble, in Dauphiné, which, with its narrow prejudices and petty formalism, seemed to him in after years "the souvenir of an abominable indigestion." He early developed an abnormal sensibility, which would have met with ready response had his mother lived, but which a keen dread of ridicule taught him to hide from an unsympathetic father and a still more unkind aunt,--later his step-mother, Séraphie Gagnon. He seemed predestined to be misunderstood--even his school companions finding him odd, and often amusing themselves at his expense. Thus he grew up with a sense of isolation in his own home, and when, in 1800, he had the opportunity of going to some distant relatives in Paris, the Daru family, he seized it eagerly. The following year he accompanied the younger Darus to Italy, and was present at the battle of Marengo. This was the turning-point of Stendhal's career. He was dazzled by Napoleon's successes, and fascinated with the beauty and gayety of Milan, where he found himself for the first time in a congenial atmosphere, and among companions animated by a common cause. His consequent sense of freedom and exaltation knew no bounds. Henceforth Napoleon was to be his hero, and Italy the land of his election; two lifelong passions which furnish the clew to much that is enigmatic in his character.

During the ensuing years, while he followed the fortunes of Napoleon throughout the Prussian campaign and until after the retreat from Moscow, Italy was always present in his thoughts, and when Waterloo ended his political and military aspirations he hastened back to Milan, declaring that he "had ceased to be a Frenchman," and settled down to a life of tranquil Bohemianism, too absorbed in the paintings of Correggio and in the operas of Rossini to be provident of the future. The following years, the happiest of his life, were also the period of Stendhal's chief intellectual growth,--due quite as much to the influence exerted on him by Italian art and music as by his contact with men like Manzoni, Monti, and Silvio Pellico. Unfortunately, his relations with certain Italian patriots aroused the suspicions of the Austrian police, and he was abruptly banished. He returned to Paris, where to his surprise life proved more than tolerable, and where he made many valuable acquaintances, such as Benjamin Constant, Destutt de Tracy, and Prosper Mérimée. The revolution of July brought him a change of fortune; for he was in sympathy with Louis Philippe, and did not scruple to accept the consulship offered him at Cività Vecchia. He soon found, however, that a small Mediterranean seaport was a poor substitute for his beloved Milan, while its trying climate undoubtedly shortened his life. In 1841 failing health forced him to abandon his duties and return to Paris, where he died of apoplexy on March 23d, 1842.

So much at least of Stendhal's life must be known in order to understand his writings; all of which, not excepting the novels, belong to what Ferdinand Brunetière stigmatizes as "personal literature." Indeed, the chief interest of many of his books lies in the side-lights they throw upon his curious personality. He was a man of violent contrasts, a puzzle to his best friends; one day making the retreat from Moscow with undaunted zeal, the next settling down contentedly in Milan, to the very _vie de café_ he affected to despise. He was a strange combination of restless energy and philosophic contemplation; hampered by a morbid sensibility which tended to increase, but which he flattered himself that he "had learned to hide under an irony imperceptible to the vulgar," yet continually giving offense to others by his caustic tongue. He seemed to need the tonic of strong emotions, and was happiest when devoting himself heart and soul to some person or cause, whether a Napoleon, a mistress, or a question of philosophy. His great preoccupation was the analysis of the human mind, an employment which in later years became a positive detriment. He was often led to attribute ulterior motives to his friends, a course which only served to render him morbid and unjust; while his equally pitiless dissection of his own sensations often robbed them of half their charm. Even love and war, his favorite emotions, left him disillusioned, asking "Is that all it amounts to?" He always had a profound respect for force of character, regarding even lawlessness as preferable to apathy; but he was implacable towards baseness or vulgarity. Herein lies, perhaps, the chief reason for Stendhal's ill success in life; he would never stoop to obsequiousness or flattery, and in avoiding even the semblance of self-interest, allowed his fairest chances to pass him by. "I have little regret for my lost opportunities," he wrote in 1835. "In place of ten thousand, I might be getting twenty; in place of Chevalier, I might be Officer of the Legion of Honor: but I should have had to think three or four hours a day of those platitudes of ambition which are dignified by the name of politics; I should have had to commit many base acts:" a brief but admirable epitome of Stendhal's whole life and character.

Aside from his works of fiction, Stendhal's works may be conveniently grouped under biographies,--'Vie de Haydn, de Mozart, et de Metastase,' 'Vie de Napoléon,' 'Vie de Rossini'; literary and artistic criticism,--'Histoire de la Peinture en Italie,' 'Racine et Shakespeare,' 'Mélanges d'Art et de Littérature'; travels,--'Rome, Naples, et Florence,' 'Promenades dans Rome,' 'Mémoires d'un Touriste'; and one volume of sentimental psychology, his 'Essai sur l'Amour,' to which Bourget owes the suggestion of his 'Physiologie de l'Amour Moderne.' Many of these works merit greater popularity, being written in an easy, fluent style, and relieved by his inexhaustible fund of anecdote and personal reminiscence. His books of travel, especially, are charming _causeries_, full of a sympathetic spontaneity which more than atones for their lack of method; his 'Walks in Rome' is more readable than two-thirds of the books since written on that subject.

Stendhal's present vogue, however, is due primarily to his novels, to which he owes the almost literal fulfillment of his prophecy that he would not be appreciated until 1880. Before that date they had been comparatively neglected, in spite of Balzac's spontaneous and enthusiastic tribute to the 'Chartreuse de Parme,' and the appreciative criticisms of Taine and Prosper Mérimée. The truth is that Stendhal was in some ways a generation behind his time, and often has an odd, old-fashioned flavor suggestive of Marivaux and Crébillon _fils_. On the other hand, his psychologic tendency is distinctly modern, and not at all to the taste of an age which found Chateaubriand or Madame de Staël eminently satisfactory. But he appeals strongly to the speculating, self-questioning spirit of the present day, and Zola and Bourget in turn have been glad to claim kinship with him.

Stendhal, however, cannot be summarily labeled and dismissed as a realist or psychologue in the modern acceptation of the term, although he was a pioneer in both fields. He had a sovereign contempt for literary style or method, and little dreamed that he would one day be regarded as the founder of a school. It must be remembered that he was a soldier before he was a man of letters, and his love of adventure occasionally got the better of his love of logic, making his novels a curious mixture of convincing truth and wild romanticism. His heroes are singularly like himself, a mixture of morbid introspection and restless energy: he seems to have taken special pleasure in making them succeed where he had failed in life, and when the spirit of the story-teller gets the better of the psychologist, he sends them on a career of adventure which puts to shame Dumas _père_ or Walter Scott. And yet Stendhal was a born analyst, a self-styled "observer of the human heart"; and the real merit of his novels lies in the marvelous fidelity with which he interprets the emotions, showing the inner workings of his hero's mind from day to day, and multiplying petty details with convincing logic. But in his preoccupation for mental conditions he is apt to lose sight of the material side of life, and the symmetry of his novels is marred by a meagreness of physical detail and a lack of atmosphere. Zola has laid his finger upon Stendhal's real weakness when he points out that "the landscape, the climate, the time of day, the weather,.--Nature herself, in other words,--never seems to intervene and exert an influence on his characters"; and he cites a passage which in point of fact admirably illustrates his meaning, the scene from the 'Rouge et Noir', where Julien endeavors to take the hand of Mme. de Rênal, which he characterizes as "a little mute drama of great power," adding in conclusion:--"Give that episode to an author for whom the _milieu_ exists, and he will make the night, with its odors, its voices, its soft voluptuousness, play a part in the defeat of the woman. And that author will be in the right; his picture will be more complete." It is this tendency to leave nature out of consideration which gives Stendhal's characters a flavor of abstraction, and caused Sainte-Beuve to declare in disgust that they were "not human beings, but ingeniously constructed automatons." Yet it is unfair to conclude with Zola, that Stendhal was a man for whom the outside world did not exist; he was not insensible to the beauties of nature, only he looked upon them as a secondary consideration. After a sympathetic description of the Rhone valley, he had to add, "But the interest of a landscape is insufficient; in the long run, some moral or historical interest is indispensable." Yet he recognized explicitly the influence of climate and environment upon character, and seems to have been sensible of his own shortcomings as an author. "I abhor material descriptions," he confesses in 'Souvenirs d'Égotisme': "the _ennui_ of making them deters me from writing novels."

Nevertheless, aside from his short 'Chroniques' and 'Nouvelles,' and the posthumous 'Lamiel' which he probably intended to destroy, Stendhal has left four stories which deserve detailed consideration: 'Armance,' 'Le Rouge et Le Noir,' 'La Chartreuse de Parme,' and the fragmentary novel 'Lucien Leuwen.'

As has been justly pointed out by Stendhal's sympathetic biographer, Edouard Rod, the heroes of the four books are essentially of one type, and all more or less faithful copies of himself; having in common a need of activity, a thirst for love, a keen sensibility, and an unbounded admiration for Napoleon--and differing only by reason of the several _milieus_ in which he has placed them. The first of these, 'Armance,' appeared in 1827. The hero, Octave, is an aristocrat, son of the Marquis de Malivert, who "was very rich before the Revolution, and when he returned to Paris in 1814, thought himself beggared on an income of twenty or thirty thousand." Octave is the most exaggerated of all Stendhal's heroes; a mysterious, sombre being, "a misanthrope before his time"; coupling with his pride of birth a consciousness of its vanity:--"Had heaven made me the son of a manufacturer of cloth, I should have worked at my desk from the age of sixteen, while now my sole occupation has been luxury. I should have had less pride and more happiness. Ah, how I despise myself!" Yet it is part of Octave's pretensions to regard himself as superior to love. When he discovers his passion for his cousin Armance, he is overwhelmed with despair: "I am in love," he said in a choked voice. "I, in love! Great God!" The object of this reluctant passion, Armance de Zohiloff, is a poor orphan, dependent upon a rich relative. Like Octave, she struggles against her affection, but for better reasons: "The world will look upon me as a lady's-maid who has entrapped the son of the family." The history of their long and secret struggle against this growing passion, complicated by outside incidents and intrigues, forms the bulk of the volume. At last Octave is wounded in a duel, and moved by the belief that he is dying, they mutually confess their affection. Octave unexpectedly recovers, and as Armance about this time receives an inheritance from a distant relative, the story promises to end happily; but at the last moment he is induced to credit a calumny against her, and commits suicide, when Armance retires to a convent. The book is distinctly inferior to his later efforts, and M. Rod is the first to find hidden beauties in it.

Very different was his next book, 'Le Rouge et Le Noir,' the Army and the Priesthood, which appeared in 1830, and is now recognized as Stendhal's masterpiece. As its singular name is intended to imply, it deals with the changed social conditions which confronted the young men of France after the downfall of Napoleon,--the reaction against war and military glory in favor of the Church; a topic which greatly occupied Stendhal, and which is well summed up in the words of his hero Julien:--"When Bonaparte made himself talked about, France was afraid of invasion; military merit was necessary and fashionable. Today one sees priests of forty with appointments of a hundred thousand francs, three times that of Napoleon's famous generals;" and he concludes, "The thing to do is to be a priest."

This Julien Sorel is the son of a shrewd but ignorant peasant, owner of a prosperous saw-mill in the small town of Verrières, in Franche-Comté. "He was a small young man, of feeble appearance, with irregular but delicate features, and an aquiline nose; ... who could have divined that that girlish face, so pale, and gentle, hid an indomitable resolution to expose himself to a thousand deaths sooner than not make his fortune?" His only schooling is gained from a cousin, an old army surgeon, who taught him Latin and inflamed his fancy with stories of Napoleon, and from the aged Abbé Chélan who grounds him in theology,--for Julien had proclaimed his intention of studying for the priesthood. By unexpected good luck, his Latin earned him an appointment as tutor to the children of M. de Rênal, the pompous and purse-proud Mayor of Verrières. Julien is haunted by his peculiar notions of duties which he owes it to himself to perform as steps towards his worldly advancement; for circumstances have made him a consummate hypocrite. One of these duties is to make love to Mme. de Rênal: "Why should he not be loved as Bonaparte, while still poor, had been loved by the brilliant Mme. de Beauharnais?" His pursuit of the Mayor's gentle and inexperienced wife proves only too successful, but at last reaches the ears of the Abbé Chélan, whose influence compels Julien to leave Verrières and go to the Seminary at Besançon, to finish his theological studies. His stay at the Seminary was full of disappointment, for "it was in vain that he made himself small and insignificant, he could not please: he was too different." At last he has a chance to go to Paris, as secretary to the influential Marquis de La Mole, who interests himself in Julien and endeavors to advance him socially. The Marquis has a daughter, Mathilde, a female counterpart of Stendhal's heroes; with exalted ideas of duty, and a profound reverence for Marguerite of Navarre, who dared to ask the executioner for the head of her lover, Boniface de La Mole, executed April 30th, 1574. Mathilde always assumed mourning on April 30th. "I know of nothing," she declared, "except condemnation to death, which distinguishes a man: it is the only thing which cannot be bought." Julien soon conceives it his duty to win Mathilde's affections, and the love passages which ensue between these two "ésprits supérieurs" are singular in the extreme: they arrive at love only through a complicated intellectual process, in which the question of duty, either to themselves or to each other, is always paramount. At last it becomes necessary to confess their affection to the Marquis, who is naturally furious. "For the first time in his life this nobleman forgot his manners: he overwhelmed him with atrocious insults, worthy of a cab-driver. Perhaps the novelty of these oaths was a distraction." What hurts him most is that Mathilde will be plain Mme. Sorel and not a duchess. But at this juncture the father receives a letter from Mme. de Rênal, telling of her relations with Julien, and accusing him of having deliberately won Mathilde in order to possess her wealth. Such baseness the Marquis cannot pardon, and at any cost he forbids the marriage. Julien returns immediately to Verrières, and finding Mme. de Rênal in church, deliberately shoots her. She ultimately recovers from her wound, but Julien is nevertheless condemned and guillotined. Mme. de Rênal dies of remorse, while Mathilde, emulating Marguerite de Navarre, buries Julien's head with her own hands.

The 'Chartreuse de Parme,' although written the same year as the 'Rouge et Noir', was not published until 1839, two years before his death, and was judged his best effort. "He has written 'The Modern Prince,'" declared Balzac, "the book which Macchiavelli would have written if he had been living exiled from Italy in the nineteenth century." The action takes place at Parma; and as a picture of court life in a small Italian principality, with all its jealousies and intrigues, the book is certainly a masterpiece. But it is marred by the extravagance of its plot. The hero, Fabrice, is the younger son of a proud and bigoted Milanese nobleman, the Marquis del Dongo, who "joined a sordid avarice to a host of other fine qualities," and in his devotion to the House of Austria was implacable towards Napoleon. Fabrice, however, was "a young man susceptible of enthusiasm," and on learning of Napoleon's return from Elba, hastened secretly to join him, and participated in the battle of Waterloo. This escapade is denounced by his father to the Austrian police, and on his return Fabrice is forced to take refuge in Swiss territory. About this time his aunt Gina, the beautiful Countess Pietranera, goes to live at Parma; and to conceal a love affair with the prime minister Mosca marries the old Duke of Sanseverina-Taxis, who obligingly leaves on his wedding-day for a distant embassy. Gina has always felt a strong interest for Fabrice, which later ripens into a passion. It is agreed that Fabrice shall study for the priesthood, and that Count Mosca will use his influence to have him made Archbishop of Parma, an office frequently held in the past by Del Dongos. Unfortunately Fabrice is drawn into a quarrel with a certain Giletti, a low comedy actor, whom he kills in self-defense. Ordinarily the killing of a fellow of Giletti's stamp by a Del Dongo would have been considered a trifling matter; but this offense assumes importance through the efforts of a certain political faction to discredit the minister through his protégé. The situation is further complicated by the Prince, Ernest IV., who has come under the spell of Gina's beauty, and furious at finding her obdurate, is glad of an opportunity to humiliate her. Fabrice is condemned to ten years' imprisonment in the Farnese tower, the Prince treacherously disregarding his promise of pardon. From this point the plot becomes fantastic. From his window in the tower, Fabrice overlooks that of Clélia, daughter of General Fabio Conti, governor of the prison. It is a case of mutual love at first sight, and for months the two hold communication by signs above the heads of the passing sentries. After his fabulous escape, effected by the help of his aunt, Fabrice is inconsolable, and at length returns voluntarily to the tower in order to be near Clélia. It is not until after the death of the Prince that the Duchess obtains Fabrice's pardon from his son and successor. At last Clélia dies, and Fabrice enters the neighboring monastery, the Chartreuse of Parma.

Fabrice's experiences on the battle-field of Waterloo, where as a raw youth he first "smelled powder," are recounted with a good deal of realistic detail. They suggest a comparison with a book of more recent date devoted to a similar subject, Stephen Crane's 'Red Badge of Courage,' though of course the latter does not approach Stendhal in artistic self-restraint and mastery over form.

The remaining novel, 'Lucien Leuwen,' was left in an unfinished state, and thus published after the author's death, under the title of 'Le Chasseur Vert.' Recently they have been republished, under the name of 'Lucien Leuwen,' with additional material which the editor, M. Jean de Mitty, claims to have deciphered from almost illegible manuscripts found in the library at Grenoble. But even without these additions there is enough to show that 'Lucien Leuwen' would have been one of his best efforts, second only, perhaps, to the 'Rouge et Noir.' The hero, Lucien, is the son of a rich financier, who "was never out of temper and never took a serious tone with his son," but cheerfully paid his debts, saying "A son is a creditor provided by nature." Out of mere _ennui_ from lack of serious employment, Lucien enters as sub-lieutenant a regiment of Lancers in garrison at Nancy. He has no illusions about military life in times of peace:--"I shall wage war only upon cigars; I shall become the pillager of a military café in the gloomy garrison of an ill-paved little town.... What glory! My soul will be well caught when I present myself to Napoleon in the next world. 'No doubt,' he will say, 'you were dying of hunger when you took up this life?' 'No, General,' I shall reply, 'I thought I was imitating you.'" His early experiences at Nancy, his subsequent meeting with and love for Mme. de Chasteller, are admirable equally for their moderation and their fidelity.

Since Stendhalism has become a cult, so much has been written on the subject that a complete bibliography of Stendhaliana would occupy several pages. Aside from the well-known criticisms of Balzac, Taine, and Sainte-Beuve, the most important contributions to the subject are the article by Zola in 'Romanciers Naturalistes,' that by Bourget in 'Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,' and the biography by Edouard Rod in the 'Grands Écrivains Français' (Great French Writers) Series. Thanks to the zeal of M. Casimir Stryienski, a considerable amount of autobiographical material has lately been brought to light: 'Journal de Stendhal' 'Vie de Henri Broulard,' and 'Souvenirs d'Égotisme,' which, together with his 'Correspondence,' are indispensable for a true knowledge of the man.

[Illustration: Signature: FREDERIC TABER COOPER]

PRINCESS SANSEVERINA'S INTERVIEW

From 'La Chartreuse de Parme'

While Fabrice was gone a-hunting after love adventures in a small village close by Parma, the Fiscal General, Rassi, unaware that he was so near, continued to treat his case as though he had been a Liberal. The witnesses for the defense he pretended that he could not find, or rather that he had frightened them off; and finally, after nearly a year of such sharp practice, and about two months after Fabrice's last return to Bologna, on a certain Friday, the Marquise Raversi, intoxicated with joy, stated publicly in her salon that on the following day "the sentence which had just been passed upon that little Del Dongo would be presented to the Prince for signature, and would be approved by him." Shortly afterwards the Duchess learned these remarks of her enemy.

"The Count must be very poorly served by his agents," she said to herself: "only this morning he was sure that sentence could not be passed inside of a week: perhaps he would not be sorry to have my young Grand Vicar removed from Parma some day. But," she added, "we shall see him come back, and he shall be our Archbishop." The Duchess rang.

"Summon all the servants to the waiting-room," she said to her valet-de-chambre, "even the cooks; go and obtain from the officer in command the requisite permit for four post-horses; and see that in less than half an hour these horses are attached to my landau." All her women were soon busied in packing the trunks: the Duchess hastily donned a traveling dress, without once sending word to the Count; the idea of amusing herself at his expense filled her with joy.

"My friend," she said to the assembled servants, "is about to suffer condemnation by default for having had the audacity to defend his life against a madman; it was Giletti who meant to kill him. You have all been able to see how gentle and inoffensive Fabrice's character is. Justly incensed at this atrocious injury, I am starting for Florence. I shall leave ten years' wages for each of you; if you are unhappy, write to me; and so long as I have a sequin, there shall be something for you."

The Duchess felt exactly as she spoke, and at her last words the servants burst into tears; she herself had moist eyes. She added in a voice of emotion:--"Pray to God for me and for Monsigneur Fabrice del Dongo, first Grand Vicar of this Diocese, who will be condemned to-morrow morning to the galleys, or what would be less stupid, to the penalty of death."

The tears of the servants redoubled, and little by little changed into cries which were very nearly seditious. The Duchess entered her carriage and drove directly to the palace of the Prince. In spite of the untimely hour, she solicited an audience, through General Fontana, acting aide-de-camp. She was nowise in full court toilette, a fact which threw that aide-de-camp into a profound stupor.

The Prince, for his part, was by no means surprised, still less annoyed, at this request for an audience. "We are going to see tears shed by lovely eyes," said he, rubbing his hands; "she is coming to ask for grace; at last that proud beauty has to humble herself! Really she has been too insupportable with her little independent airs! Those eloquent eyes always seemed to be saying to me, at the least thing which annoyed her, 'Naples or Milan would be an abode offering very different attractions from those of your small town of Parma.' True enough, I do not reign over Naples or Milan; but all the same, this fine lady has come to ask me something which depends exclusively upon me, and which she is burning to obtain. I always thought the coming of that nephew would give me some hold upon her."

While the Prince was smiling over his thoughts, and giving himself up to all these agreeable anticipations, he was striding up and down his cabinet, at the door of which General Fontana still remained standing, erect and stiff as a soldier at carry-arms. Seeing the Prince's flashing eye and recalling the Duchess's traveling dress, he prepared for a dissolution of the monarchy. His confusion knew no bounds when he heard the Prince's order: "Beg Madame the Duchess to wait a small quarter of an hour." The general-aide-de-camp executed a right-about-face, like a soldier on parade; the Prince still smiled. "Fontana is not accustomed," he said to himself, "to see our proud Duchess kept waiting. The astonished face with which he has gone to tell her 'to wait that small quarter of an hour' will pave the way for those touching tears which this cabinet is about to witness." This small quarter of an hour was delicious to the Prince; he paced the floor with a firm and measured step, he _reigned_. "The important thing now is to say nothing which is not perfectly in keeping. It will not do to forget that she is one of the highest ladies of my court. How would Louis XIV. have spoken to the princesses his daughters when he had occasion to be displeased with them?" and his eyes sought the portrait of the great king.

The amusing part of the matter was that the Prince did not even think of asking himself whether he would show clemency to Fabrice, and how far such clemency would go. Finally, at the end of twenty minutes, the faithful Fontana presented himself anew at the door, but without uttering a word. "The Duchess Sanseverina may enter," cried the Prince with a theatrical air. "The tears are about to commence," he told himself, and as if to be prepared for such a spectacle, he drew out his handkerchief.

Never had the Duchess appeared so gay and charming; she did not look twenty-five. The poor aide-de-camp, seeing that her light and rapid footstep barely seemed to skim the carpet, was on the point of losing his reason once for all.

"I must crave many pardons of your Most Serene Highness," said the Duchess in her soft tones of careless gayety: "I have taken the liberty of presenting myself in a toilette which is not altogether appropriate; but your Highness has so accustomed me to his favors that I have ventured to hope that he would accord me this additional grace."

The Duchess spoke quite slowly, so as to give herself time to enjoy the expression of the Prince. It was delicious, on account of his profound astonishment, and that remnant of grand airs which the pose of his head and arms still betrayed. The Prince had remained as if struck by a thunderbolt; from time to time, he exclaimed, in his high-pitched voice, shrill and perturbed, as though articulating with difficulty: _"How is this? how is this?"_ After concluding her compliment, the Duchess, as though from respect, afforded him ample time to reply; then she added:--

"I venture to hope that your Most Serene Highness will deign to pardon the incongruity of my costume:" but as she spoke, her mocking eyes flashed with so bright a gleam that the Prince could not meet them. He looked at the ceiling, a sign with him of the most extreme embarrassment.

"How is this? how is this?" he said to himself again; then by good luck, he found a phrase: "Madame la Duchesse, pray be seated," and he himself pushed forward a chair, with fairly good grace. The Duchess was by no means insensible to this attention, and she moderated the petulance of her glance.

"How is this? how is this?" still repeated the Prince inwardly, shifting so uneasily in his chair that one would have said that he could not find a secure position.

"I am going to take advantage of the freshness of the night to travel post," resumed the Duchess, "and as my absence may be of some duration, I was unwilling to leave the territory of your Most Serene Highness without expressing my thanks for all the favors which for five years your Highness has deigned to show me." At these words the Prince at last understood; he turned pale. It was as man of the world that he felt it most keenly, on finding himself mistaken in his predictions. Then he assumed a grand air, in every way worthy of the portrait of Louis XIV., which was before his eyes. "Admirable," said the Duchess to herself, "there is a man."

"And what is the motive of this sudden departure?" asked the Prince, in a fairly firm tone.

"I have contemplated leaving, for some time," replied the Duchess, "and a slight insult which has been shown to _Monsignor_ del Dongo, who is to be condemned to-morrow to death or to the galleys makes me hasten my departure."

"And to what city are you going?"

"To Naples, I think." As she arose, she added, "It only remains for me to take leave of your Most Serene Highness, and to thank him very humbly for all his _earlier_ kindnesses." She, on her part, spoke with so firm an air that the Prince saw clearly that in a few seconds all would be finished. He knew that if a triumphant departure was once effected, all compromise would be impossible. She was not the woman to retrace her steps. He hastened after her.

"But you know very well, Madame la Duchesse," he said, taking her hand, "that I have always regarded you with a friendship to which it needed only a word from you to give another name. But a murder has been committed; there is no way of denying that. I have intrusted the conduct of the case to my best judges ..."

At these words the Duchess drew herself up to her full height: All semblance of respect, or even of urbanity, disappeared in a flash. The outraged woman was clearly revealed, the outraged woman addressing herself to the one whom she knows to be of bad faith. It was with an expression of keenest anger and even of contempt that she said to the Prince, dwelling upon every word:--

"I am leaving forever the States of your Most Serene Highness, in order that I shall never again hear mentioned the Fiscal Rassi, or the other infamous assassins who have condemned my nephew and so many others to death. If your Most Serene Highness does not wish to mingle a tinge of bitterness with the last moments which I am to pass with a prince who is both polite and entertaining when he is not misled, I beg him very humbly not to recall the thought of those infamous judges who sell themselves for a thousand crowns or a decoration."

The admirable accent, and above all the tone of sincerity, with which these words were uttered, made the Prince tremble; for an instant he feared to see his dignity compromised by a still more direct accusation. On the whole, however, his sensations quickly culminated in one of pleasure. He admired the Duchess, and at this moment her entire person attained a sublime beauty.

"Heavens! how beautiful she is," the Prince said to himself: "one may well overlook something in so unique a woman, one whose like perhaps is not to be found in all Italy.--Well, with a little diplomacy it might not be altogether impossible to make her mine.--There is a wide difference between such a being and that doll of a Marquise Balbi; besides, the latter steals at least three hundred thousand francs a year from my poor subjects.--But did I understand her aright?" he thought all of a sudden: "she said, 'condemned my nephew and so many others.'" His anger came to the surface, and it was with a haughtiness worthy of supreme rank that the Prince said, "And what must be done to keep Madame from leaving?"

"Something of which you are not capable," replied the Duchess, with an accent of the bitterest irony and the most thinly disguised contempt.

The Prince was beside himself, but thanks to his long practice of the profession of absolute sovereign, he found the strength to resist his first impulse. "That woman must be mine," he said to himself. "I owe myself at least that; then I must let her perish under my contempt. If she leaves this room, I shall never see her again." But, intoxicated as he was at this moment with wrath and hatred, how was he to find words which would at once satisfy what was due to himself and induce the Duchess not to desert his court on the instant? "A gesture," he thought, "is something which can neither be repeated nor turned into ridicule," and he went and placed himself between the Duchess and the door of his cabinet. Just then he heard a slight tapping at this door.

"Who is this jackanapes?" he cried, at the top of his lungs, "who is this jackanapes who comes here, thrusting his idiotic presence upon me?" Poor General Fontana showed his face, pale and in evident discomfiture, and with the air of a man at his last gasp, indistinctly pronounced these words:--"His Excellency Count Mosca solicits the honor of being admitted."

"Let him enter," said the Prince in a loud voice; and as Mosca made his salutation, greeted him with:--

"Well, sir, here is Madame the Duchess Sanseverina, who declares that she is on the point of leaving Parma to go and settle at Naples, and has made me saucy speeches into the bargain."

"How is this?" said Mosca, turning pale.

"What, then you knew nothing of this project of departure?"

"Not the first word. At six o'clock I left Madame joyous and contented."

This speech produced an incredible effect upon the Prince. First he glanced at Mosca, whose growing pallor proved that he spoke the truth and was in no way the accomplice of the Duchess's sudden freak. "In that case," he said to himself, "I am losing her forever. Pleasure and vengeance, everything is escaping me at once. At Naples she will make epigrams with her nephew Fabrice, about the great wrath of the little Prince of Parma." He looked at the Duchess; anger and the most violent contempt were struggling in her heart; her eyes were fixed at that moment upon Count Mosca, and the fine lines of that lovely mouth expressed the most bitter disdain. The entire expression of her face seemed to say, "Vile courtier!" "So," thought the Prince, after having examined her, "I have lost even this means of calling her back to our country. If she leaves the room at this moment, she is lost to me. And the Lord only knows what she will say in Naples of my judges, and with that wit and divine power of persuasion with which heaven has endowed her, she will make the whole world believe her. I shall owe her the reputation of being a ridiculous tyrant, who gets up in the middle of the night to look under his bed!"

Then, by an adroit movement, and as if striving to work off his agitation by striding up and down, the Prince placed himself anew before the door of his cabinet. The count was on his right, pale, unnerved, and trembling so that he had to lean for support upon the back of the chair which the Duchess had occupied at the beginning of the audience, and which the Prince, in a moment of wrath, had hurled to a distance. The Count was really in love. "If the Duchess goes away, I shall follow her," he told himself; "but will she tolerate my company? that is the question."

On the left of the Prince stood the Duchess, her arms crossed and pressed against her breast, looking at him with superb intolerance; a complete and profound pallor had succeeded the glowing colors which just before had animated those exquisite features.

The Prince, in contrast with both the others, had a high color and an uneasy air; his left hand played in a nervous fashion with the cross attached to the grand cordon of his order, which he wore beneath his coat; with his right hand he caressed his chin.

"What is to be done?" he said to the Count, not altogether realizing what he was doing himself, but yielding to his habit of consulting the latter about everything.

"Indeed, Most Serene Highness, I know nothing about it," answered the Count, with the air of a man who is rendering up his final sigh; he could hardly utter the words of his response. His tone of voice gave the Prince the first consolation which his wounded pride had found during the interview, and this slight satisfaction helped him to a phrase which was comforting to his self-esteem:--

"Well," said he, "I am the most reasonable of all three; I am quite ready to leave my position in the world entirely out of consideration. _I am going to speak as a friend_," and he added with a charming smile of condescension, a fine imitation of the happy times of Louis XIV, "_as a friend speaking to friends:_ Madame la Duchesse," he continued, "what are we to do to make you forget your untimely resolution?"

"Really, I am at a loss to say," replied the Duchess, with a deep sigh, "really, I am at a loss to say: I have such a horror of Parma!" There was no attempt at epigram in this speech; one could see that she spoke in all sincerity.

The Count turned sharply away from her; his courtier's soul was scandalized. Then he cast a supplicating glance at the Prince. With much dignity and self-possession the latter allowed a moment to pass; then, addressing himself to the Count, "I see," said he, "that your charming friend is altogether beside herself. It is perfectly simple, she _adores_ her nephew;" and turning towards the Duchess, he added with the most gallant glance, and at the same time with the air which one assumes in borrowing a phrase from a comedy: _"What must we do to find favor in these lovely eyes?"_

The Duchess had had time to reflect: She answered in a firm, slow tone, as if she were dictating her ultimatum:--

"His Highness might write me a gracious letter, such as he knows so well how to write: he might say to me, that being by no means convinced of the guilt of Fabrice del Dongo, First Grand Vicar of the Archbishop, he will refuse to sign the sentence when they come to present it to him, and that this unjust procedure shall have no consequence in the future."

"How is that? Unjust!" cried the Prince, coloring to the whites of his eyes, and with renewed anger.

"That is not all," replied the Duchess with truly Roman pride, "_this very evening_--and," she interposed, glancing at the clock, "it is already a quarter past eleven--this very evening, his Most Serene Highness will send word to the Marquise Raversi that he advises her to go into the country to recuperate from the fatigues which she must have suffered from a certain trial which she was discussing in her salon early in the evening." The Prince strode up and down his cabinet, like a madman. "Did one ever see such a woman?" he exclaimed. "She is lacking in respect for me."

The Duchess replied with perfect grace:--

"I have never in my life dreamed of lacking respect for his Most Serene Highness; His Highness has had the extreme condescension to say that he was speaking _as a friend to friends_. What is more, I have not the smallest desire to remain in Parma," she added, glancing at the Count with the last degree of contempt. This glance decided the Prince, who up to that moment had been quite uncertain, notwithstanding that his words had seemed to imply a promise; he had a fine contempt for words.

There were still a few more words exchanged; but at last Count Mosca received the order to write the gracious note solicited by the Duchess. He omitted the phrase "this unjust procedure shall have no consequence in the future." "It is sufficient," said the Count to himself, "if the Prince promises not to sign the sentence which is to be presented to him." The Prince thanked him by a glance, as he signed.

The Count made a great mistake; the Prince was wearied and would have signed the whole. He thought that he was getting out of the scene well, and the whole affair was dominated, in his eyes, by the thought--"If the Duchess leaves, I shall find my court a bore inside of a week." The Count observed that his master corrected the date, and substituted that of the next day. He looked at the clock; it indicated almost midnight. The minister saw, in this altered date, nothing more than a pedantic desire to afford proof of exactitude and good government. As to the exile of the Marquise Raversi, the Prince did not even frown; the Prince had a special weakness for exiling people.

"General Fontana!" he cried, half opening the door.

The General appeared, with such an astonished and curious a face that a glance of amusement passed between the Duchess and the Count, and this glance established peace.

"General Fontana," said the Prince, "you are to take my carriage, which is waiting under the colonnade; you will go to the house of Mme. Raversi, and have yourself announced: if she is in bed, you will add that you are my representative, and when admitted to her chamber, you will say precisely these words, and no others:--'Mme. la Marquise Raversi, his Most Serene Highness requires that you shall depart before eight o'clock to-morrow morning, for your chateau of Valleja. His Highness will notify you when you may return to Parma.'"

The Prince's eyes sought those of the Duchess, but the latter, omitting the thanks which he had expected, made him an extremely respectful reverence, and rapidly left the room.

"What a woman!" said the Prince, turning towards Count Mosca.

Copyrighted by George H. Richmond and Company.

CLÉLIA AIDS FABRICE TO ESCAPE

From "La Chartreuse de Parme"

One day--Fabrice had been a captive nearly three months, had had absolutely no communication with the outside world, and yet was not unhappy--Grillo had remained hanging about the cell until a late hour of the morning. Fabrice could think of no way of getting rid of him, and was on pins and needles; half-past twelve had struck when at last he was enabled to open the little trap in the hateful shutter.

Clélia was standing at the window of the aviary in an expectant attitude, an expression of profound despair on her contracted features. As soon as she saw Fabrice she signaled to him that all was lost; then, hurrying to her piano, and adapting her words to the accompaniment of a recitative from a favorite opera, in accents tremulous with her emotion and the fear of being overheard by the sentry beneath, she sang:--

"Ah, do I see you still alive? Praise God for his infinite mercy! Barbone, the wretch whose insolence you chastised the day of your arrival here, disappeared some time ago and for a few days was not seen about the citadel. He returned day before yesterday, and since then I have reason to fear he has a design of poisoning you. He has been seen prowling about the kitchen of the palace where your meals are prepared. I can assert nothing positively, but it is my maid's belief that his skulking there bodes you no good. I was frightened this morning, not seeing you at the usual time; I thought you must be dead. Until you hear more from me, do not touch the food they give you; I will try to manage to convey a little chocolate to you. In any case, if you have a cord, or can make one from your linen, let it down from your window among the orange-trees this evening at nine o'clock. I will attach a stronger cord to it, and with its aid you can draw up the bread and chocolate I will have in readiness."

Fabrice had carefully preserved the bit of charcoal he had found in the stove; taking advantage of Clélia's more softened mood, he formed on the palm of his hand a number of letters in succession, which taken together made up these words:--

"I love you, and life is dear to me only when I can see you. Above all else, send me paper and a pencil."

As Fabrice had hoped and expected, the extreme terror visible in the young girl's face operated to prevent her from terminating the interview on receipt of this audacious message; she only testified her displeasure by her looks. Fabrice had the prudence to add:--"The wind blows so hard to-day that I couldn't catch quite all you said; and then, too, the sound of the piano drowns your voice. You were saying something about poison, weren't you--what was it?"

At these words the young girl's terror returned in all its violence; she hurriedly set to work to describe with ink a number of large capital letters on the leaves she tore from one of her books, and Fabrice was delighted to see her at last adopt the method of correspondence that he had been vainly advocating for the last three months. But this system, although an improvement on the signals, was less desirable than a regular exchange of letters, so Fabrice constantly feigned to be unable to decipher the words of which she exhibited the component letters.

A summons from her father obliged her to leave the aviary. She was in great alarm lest he might come to look for her there; his suspicious nature would have been likely to scent danger in the proximity of his daughter's window to the prisoner's. It had occurred to Clélia a short time before, while so anxiously awaiting Fabrice's appearance, that pebbles might be made factors in their correspondence, by wrapping the paper on which the message was written round them and throwing them up so they should fall within the open upper portion of the screen. The device would have worked well unless Fabrice's keeper chanced to be in the room at the time.

Our prisoner proceeded to tear one of his shirts into narrow strips, forming a sort of ribbon. Shortly after nine o'clock that evening he heard a tapping on the boxes of the orange-trees under his window; he cautiously lowered his ribbon, and on drawing it up again found attached to its free end a long cord by means of which he hauled up a supply of chocolate, and, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a package of note-paper and a pencil. He dropped the cord again, but to no purpose; perhaps the sentries on their rounds had approached the orange-trees. But his delight was sufficient for one evening. He sat down and wrote a long letter to Clélia; scarcely was it ended when he fastened it to the cord and let it down. For more than three hours he waited in vain for some one to come and take it; two or three times he drew it up and made alterations in it. "If Clélia does not get my letter to-night," he said to himself, "while those ideas of poison are troubling her brain, it is more than likely that to-morrow she will refuse to receive it."

The fact was that Clélia had been obliged to drive to the city with her father. Fabrice knew how matters stood when he heard the General's carriage enter the court about half-past twelve; he knew it was the General's carriage by the horses' step. What was his delight when, shortly after hearing the jingle of the General's spurs as he crossed the esplanade, and the rattle of muskets as the sentries presented arms, he felt a gentle tug at the cord, the end of which he had kept wrapped around his wrist! Something heavy was made fast to the cord; two little jerks notified him to haul up. He had some difficulty in landing the object over a cornice that projected under his window.

The article that he had secured at expense of so much trouble proved to be a carafe of water wrapped in a shawl. The poor young man, who had been living for so long a time in such complete solitude, covered the shawl with rapturous kisses. But words are inadequate to express his emotion when, after so many days of vain waiting, he discovered a scrap of paper pinned to the shawl.

"Drink no water but this; satisfy your hunger with chocolate," said this precious missive. "To-morrow I will try to get some bread to you; I will mark the crust at top and bottom with little crosses made with ink. It is a frightful thing to say, but you must know it:--I believe others are implicated in Barbone's design to poison you. Could you not have understood that the subject you spoke of in your letter in pencil is displeasing to me? I should not think of writing to you were it not for the great peril that is hanging over us. I have seen the Duchess; she is well, as is the Count, but she is very thin. Write no more on that subject which you know of: would you wish to make me angry?"

It cost Clélia an effort to write the last sentence but one of the above note. It was in everybody's mouth in court circles that Mme. Sanseverina was manifesting a great deal of friendly interest in Count Baldi, that extremely handsome man and quondam friend of the Marquise Raversi. The one thing certain was that he and the Marquise had separated, and he was alleged to have behaved most shamefully toward the lady who for six years had been to him a mother and given him his standing in society.

The next morning, long before the sun was up, Grillo entered Fabrice's cell, laid down what seemed to be a pretty heavy package, and vanished without saying a word. The package contained a good-sized loaf of bread, plentifully ornamented with, little crosses made with a pen. Fabrice covered them with kisses. Why? Because he was in love. Beside the loaf lay a rouleau incased in many thicknesses of paper; it contained six thousand francs in sequins. Finally, Fabrice discovered a handsome brand-new prayer-book: these words, in a writing he was beginning to be acquainted with, were written on the fly-leaf:--

"_Poison!_ Beware the water, the wine, everything; confine yourself to chocolate. Give the untasted dinner to the dog; it will not do to show distrust; the enemy would have recourse to other methods. For God's sake, be cautious! no rashness!"

Fabrice made haste to remove the telltale writing which might have compromised Clélia, and to tear out a number of leaves from the prayer-book, with which he made several alphabets; each letter was neatly formed with powdered charcoal moistened with wine. The alphabets were quite dry when at a quarter to twelve Clélia appeared at the window of the aviary. "The main thing now is to persuade her to use them," said Fabrice to himself. But as it happened, fortunately, she had much to say to the young prisoner in regard to the plan to poison him (a dog belonging to one of the kitchen-maids had died after eating a dish cooked for Fabrice), so that Clélia not only made no objection to the use of the alphabets, but had herself prepared one in the highest style of art with ink. Under this method, which did not work altogether smoothly at the beginning, the conversation lasted an hour and a half, which was as long as Clélia dared remain in the aviary. Two or three times, when Fabrice trespassed on forbidden ground and alluded to matters that were taboo, she made no answer and walked away to feed her birds.

Fabrice requested that when she sent him his supply of water at evening she would accompany it with one of her alphabets, which, being traced in ink, were legible at a greater distance. He did not fail to write her a good long letter, and was careful to put in it no soft nonsense--at least, of a nature to offend.

The next day, in their alphabetical conversation, Clélia had no reproach to make him. She informed him that there was less to be apprehended from the poisoners. Barbone had been waylaid and nearly murdered by the lovers of the Governor's scullery-maids; he would scarcely venture to show his face in the kitchens again. She owned up to stealing a counter-poison from her father; she sent it to him with directions how to use it, but the main thing was to reject at once all food that seemed to have an unnatural taste.

Clélia had subjected Don Cesare to a rigorous examination, without succeeding in discovering whence came the six thousand francs received by Fabrice. In any case, it was a good sign: it showed that the severity of his confinement was relaxing.

The poison episode had a very favorable effect on our hero's amatory enterprise: still, he could never extort anything at all resembling a confession of love; but he had the felicity of living on terms of intimacy with Clélia. Every morning, and often at evening also, there was a long conversation with the alphabets; every evening at nine o'clock Clélia received a lengthy letter, and sometimes accorded it a few brief words of answer; she sent him the daily paper and an occasional new book; finally, the rugged Grillo had been so far tamed as to keep Fabrice supplied with bread and wine, which were handed him daily by Clélia's maid. This led honest Grillo to conclude that the Governor was not of the same mind as those who had engaged Barbone to poison the young Monsignor; at which he rejoiced exceedingly, as did his comrades, for there was a saying current in the prison--"You have only to look Monsignor del Dongo in the face; he is certain to give you money."

Fabrice was very pale; lack of exercise was injuring his health: but for all that he had never been so happy. The tone of the conversation between Clélia and him was familiar and often gay. The only moments of the girl's life not beset with dark forebodings and remorse were those spent in conversing with him. She was so thoughtless as to remark one day:--

"I admire your delicacy: because I am the Governor's daughter you have nothing to say to me of the pleasures of freedom!"

"That's because I am not so absurd as to have aspirations in that direction," replied Fabrice. "How often could I hope to see you if I were living in Parma, a free man again? And life would not be worth living if I could not tell you all my thoughts--no, not that exactly: you take precious good care I don't tell you _all_ my thoughts! But in spite of your cruel tyranny, to live without seeing you daily would be a far worse punishment than captivity; in all my life I was never so happy! Isn't it strange to think happiness was awaiting me in a prison?"

"There is a good deal to be said on that point," rejoined Clélia, with an air that all at once became very serious, almost threatening.

"What!" exclaimed Fabrice, in alarm, "am I in danger of losing the small place I have won in your heart, my sole joy in this world?"

"Yes," she replied. "Although your reputation in society is that of a gentleman and gallant man, I have reason to believe you are not acting ingenuously toward me. But I don't wish to discuss this matter to-day."

This strange exordium cast an element of embarrassment into the conversation, and tears were often in the eyes of both.

Copyrighted by George H. Richmond and Company.

WILLEM BILDERDIJK

(1756-1831)

Willem Bilderdijk's personality, even more than his genius, exerted so powerful an influence over his time that it has been said that to think of a Dutchman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was to think of Bilderdijk. He stands as the representative of the great literary and intellectual awakening which took place in Holland immediately after that country became part of the French empire. The history of literature has many examples of how, under political disturbances, the agitated mind has sought refuge in literary and scientific pursuits, and it seemed at that time as if Dutch literature was entering a new Golden Age. The country had never known better poets; but it was the poetry of the eighteenth century, to quote Ten Brink, "ceremonious and stagy."

In 'Herinnering van mijne Kindheit' (Reminiscences of My Childhood), a book which is not altogether to be relied upon, Bilderdijk gives a charming picture of his father, a physician in Amsterdam, but speaks of his mother in less flattering terms. He was born in Amsterdam in 1756. At an early age he suffered an injury to his foot, a peasant boy having carelessly stepped on it; attempts were made to cure him by continued bleedings, and the result was that he was confined to his bed for twelve years. These years laid the foundation of a character lacking in power to love and to call forth love, and developing into an almost fierce hypochondria, full of complaints and fears of death. In these years, however, he acquired the information and the wonderful power of language which appear in his sinewy verse.

One of his poems, dated 1770, has been preserved, but is principally interesting as a first attempt. Others, written in his twentieth year, were prize poems, and are sufficiently characterized by their titles:--'Kunst wordt door Arbeid verkregen' (Art came through Toil), and 'Inloed der Dichthunst op het Staets bestuur' (Influence of Poetry on Statesmanship). When he went to Leyden in 1780 to study law, he was already famous. His examinations passed, he settled at the Hague to practice, and in 1785 married Katharina Rebekka Woesthoven. The following year he published his romance, 'Elius,' in seven songs. The romance ultimately became his favorite form of verse; but this was not the form now called romance. It was the rhymed narrative of the eighteenth century, written with endless care and reflection, and in his case with so superior a treatment of language that no Dutch poet since Huygens had approached it.

The year 1795 was the turning-point in Bilderdijk's life. He had been brought up in unswerving faith in the cause of the house of Orange, was a fanatic monarchist and Calvinist, "anti-revolutionary, anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinisch, anti-liberal" (thus Da Costa), a warm supporter of William the Fifth, and at the entrance of the French in 1795 he refused to give his oath of allegiance to the cause of the citizens and the sovereignty of the people. He was exiled, left the Hague, and went to London, and later to Brunswick. This was not altogether a misfortune for him, nor an unrelieved sorrow. He had been more successful as poet than as husband or financier, and by his compulsory banishment escaped his financial difficulties and what he considered the chains of his married life. In London Bilderdijk met his countryman the painter Schweikhardt; and with this meeting begins a period of his life over which his admirers would fain draw a veil. With Schweikhardt were his two daughters, of whom the younger, Katherina Wilhelmina, became Bilderdijk's first pupil, and, excepting his "intellectual son," Isaak da Costa, probably his only one. Besides her great poetic gifts she possessed beauty and charm. She fell in love with her teacher and followed him to Brunswick, where she lived in his house under the name of Frau van Heusden. In spite of this arrangement, the poet seems to have considered himself a most faithful husband; and he did his best to persuade his wife to join him with their children, but naturally without success. In 1802 the marriage was legally annulled, and Frau van Heusden took his name. She did her best to atone for the blot on her repute by a self-sacrificing lovableness, and was in close sympathy with Bilderdijk on the intellectual side. Like him she was familiar with all the resources of the art of poetry. Most famous of her poems are the long one 'Rodrigo de Goth,' and her touching, graceful 'Gedichten voor Kinderen' (Poems for Children). Bilderdijk's verses show what she was to him:--

In the shadow of my verdure, firmly on my trunk depending, Grew the tender branch of cedar, never longing once to leave me; Faithfully through rain and tempest, modest at my side it rested, Bearing to my honor solely the first twig it might its own call; Fair the wreath thy flowers made me for my knotted trunk fast withering, And my soul with pride was swelling at the crown of thy young blossoms; Straight and strong and firmly rooted, tall and green thy head arises, Bright the glory of its freshness; never yet by aught bedimmed. Lo! my crown to thine now bending, only thine the radiant freshness, And my soul finds rest and comfort in thy sheltering foliage.

Meanwhile he was no better off materially. The Duke of Brunswick, who had known him previously, received the famous Dutch exile with open arms, and granted him a pension; but it never sufficed. Many efforts were made to have his decree of exile annulled; but they failed through his own peevish insolence and his boundless ingratitude. King Louis (Bonaparte) of Holland extended his protection to the dissatisfied old poet; and all these royal gentlemen were most generous. When the house of Orange returned to Holland, William I. continued the favor already shown him, obtained a high pension for him, and when it proved insufficient, supplemented it with gifts. In this way Bilderdijk's income in the year 1816 amounted to twenty thousand gold pieces. That this should be sufficient to keep the wolf from the door in a city like Amsterdam, Bilderdijk thought too much to expect, and consequently left in great indignation and went to Leyden in 1817.

But these personal troubles in no way interfered with his talent. On the contrary, the history of literature has seldom known so great an

## activity and productiveness; all in all, his works amounted to almost a

hundred volumes. What he accomplished during his stay in Germany was almost incredible. He gave lessons to exiled Dutch in a great variety of branches, he saw volume upon volume through print; he wrote his famous 'Het Buitenleven' (Country Life) after Delille, he translated Fingal after Ossian, he wrote 'Vaderlandsche Orangezucht' (Patriotic Love for Orange). After his return to Holland he wrote 'De Ziekte der Geleerden' (The Disease of Genius: 1817), 'Leyden's Kamp' (Leyden's Battle: 1808), and the first five songs of 'De Ondergang der eerste Wereld' (Destruction of the First World: 1809), probably his masterpiece; moreover, the dramas 'Floris V.,' 'Willem van Holland,' and 'Kounak.' The volumes published between 1815 and 1819 bore the double signature Willem and Wilhelmina Katherina Bilderdijk.

But it was as though time had left him behind. The younger Holland shook its head over the old gentleman of the past century, with his antagonism for the poetry of the day and his rage against Shakespeare and the latter's "puerile" 'King Lear.' For to Bilderdijk even more than to Voltaire, Shakespeare was an abomination. Then in 1830 he received the severest blow of his life: Katherina Wilhelmina died. This happened in Haarlem, whither he had gone in 1827. With this calamity his strength was broken and his life at an end. He followed her in 1831.

He was in every way a son of the eighteenth century; he began as a didactic and patriotic poet, and might at first be considered a follower of Jakob Cats. He became principally a lyric poet, but his lyric knew no deep sentiment, no suppressed feeling; its greatness lay in its rhetorical power. His ode to Napoleon may therefore be one of the best to characterize his genius. When he returned to his native country after eleven years' exile, with heart and mind full of Holland, it was old Holland he sought and did not find. He did not understand young Holland. In spite of this, his fame and powerful personality had an attraction for the young; but it was the attraction of a past time, the fascination of the glorious ruin. Young Holland wanted freedom, individual independence, and this Bilderdijk considered a misfortune. "One should not let children, women, and nations know that they possess other rights than those naturally theirs. This matter must be a secret between the prince and his heart and reason,--to the masses it ought always to be kept as hidden as possible." The new age which had made its entry with the cry of Liberty would not tolerate such sentiments, and he stood alone, a powerful, demonic, but incomprehensible spirit.

Aside from his fame as a poet, he deserves to be mentioned as Jacob Grimm's correspondent, as philologist, philosopher, and theologian.

ODE TO BEAUTY

Child of the Unborn! dost thou bend From Him we in the day-beams see, Whose music with the breeze doth blend?-- To feel thy presence is to be. Thou, our soul's brightest effluence--thou Who in heaven's light to earth dost bow, A Spirit 'midst unspiritual clods-- Beauty! who bear'st the stamp profound Of Him with all perfection crowned, Thine image--thine alone--is God's....

How shall I catch a single ray Thy glowing hand from nature wakes-- Steal from the ether-waves of day One of the notes thy world-harp shakes-- Escape that miserable joy, Which dust and self with darkness cloy, Fleeting and false--and, like a bird, Cleave the air-path, and follow thee Through thine own vast infinity, Where rolls the Almighty's thunder-word?

Perfect thy brightness in heaven's sphere, Where thou dost vibrate in the bliss Of anthems ever echoing there! That, that is life--not this--not this: There in the holy, holy row-- And not on earth, so deep below-- Thy music unrepressed may speak; Stay, shrouded, in that holy place;-- Enough that we have seen thy face, And kissed the smiles upon thy cheek.

We stretch our eager hands to thee, And for thine influence pray in vain; The burden of mortality Hath bent us 'neath its heavy chain;-- And there are fetters forged by art, And science cold hath chilled the heart, And wrapped thy god-like crown in night; On waxen wings they soar on high, And when most distant deem, thee nigh-- They quench thy torch, and dream of light.

Child of the Unborn! joy! for thou Shinest in every heavenly flame, Breathest in all the winds that blow, While self-conviction speaks thy name: Oh, let one glance of thine illume The longing soul that bids thee come, And make me feel of heaven, like thee! Shake from thy torch one blazing drop, And to my soul all heaven shall ope, And I--dissolve in melody!

Translated in Westminster Review.

FROM THE 'ODE TO NAPOLEON'

Poesy, nay! Too long art silent! Seize now the lute! Why dost thou tarry? Let sword the Universe inherit, Noblest as prize of war be glory. Let thousand mouths sing hero-actions: E'en so, the glory is not uttered. Earth-gods--an endless life, ambrosial, Find they alone in song enchanting.

Watch thou with care thy heedless fingers Striking upon the lyre so godlike; Hold thou in check thy lightning-flashes, That where they chance to fall are blighting. He who on eagle's wing soars skyward Must at the sun's bright barrier tremble. Frederic, though great in royal throning, Well may amaze the earth, and heaven, When clothed by thunder and the levin Swerves he before the hero's fanfare.

* * * * *

Pause then, Imagination! Portals Hiding the Future, ope your doorways! Earth, the blood-drenched, yields palms and olives. Sword that hath cleft on bone and muscle, Spear that hath drunk the hero's lifeblood, Furrow the soil, as spade and ploughshare. Blasts that alarm from blaring trumpets Laws of fair Peace anon shall herald: Heaven's shame, at last, its end attaining.

Earth, see, O see your sceptres bowing. Gone is the eagle once majestic; On us a cycle new is dawning; Look, from the skies it hath descended. O potent princes, ye the throne-born! See what Almighty will hath destined. Quit ye your seats, in low adoring, Set all the earth, with you, a-kneeling; Or--as the free-born men should perish-- Sink in grave with crown and kingdom.

Glorious in lucent rays, already Brighter than gold a sceptre shineth; No warring realm shall dim its lustre, No earth-storm veil its blaze to dimness. Can it be true that, centuries ended, God's endless realm, the Hebrew, quickens Lifting its horns--though not for always? Shines in the East the sun, like noonday? Shall Hagar's wandering sons be heartened After the Moslem's haughty baiting?

Speed toward us, speed, O days so joyous! Even if blood your cost be reckoned; Speed as in Heaven's gracious favor, Bringing again Heaven's earthly kingdom. Yea, though through waters deep we struggle, Joining in fight with seas of troubles. Suffer we, bear we--hope--be silent! On us shall dawn a coming daybreak-- With it, the world of men be happy!

Translated in the metre of the original, by E. Irenæus Stevenson, for the (World's Best Literature)

SLIGHTED LOVE

AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE

Splendid rose the star of evening, and the gray dusk was a-fading. O'er it with a hand of mildness, now the Night her veil was drawing: Abensaïd, valiant soldier, from Medina's ancient gateway, To the meadows, rich with blossoms, walked in darkest mood of musing-- Where the Guadalete's wild waves foaming wander through the flat lands, Where, within the harbor's safety, loves to wait the weary seaman. Neither hero's mood nor birth-pride eased his spirit of its suffering For his youth's betrothed, Zobeïde; she it was who caused him anguish. Faithless had she him forsaken, she sometime his best-beloved, Left him, though already parted by strange fate, from realm and heirship. Oh, that destiny he girds not--strength it gave him, hero-courage, Added to his lofty spirit, touches of nobler feeling-- 'Tis that she, ill-starred one, leaves him! takes the hand so wrinkled Of that old man, Seville's conqueror! Into the night, along the river, Abensaïd now forth rushes: Loudly to the rocky limits, Echo bears his lamentations. "Faithless maid, more faithless art thou than the sullen water! Harder thou than even the hardened bosom of yon rigid rockwall! Ah, bethinkest thou, Zobeïde, still upon our solemn love-oath? How thy heart, this hour so faithless, once belonged to me, me only? Canst thou yield thy heart, thy beauty, to that old man, dead to love-thoughts? Wilt thou try to love the tyrant lacking love despite his treasure? Dost thou deem the sands of desert higher than are virtue-- honor? Allah grant, then, that he hate thee! That thou lovest yet another! That thou soon thyself surrender to the scorned one's bitter feeling. Rest may night itself deny thee, and may day to thee be terror! Be thy face before thy husband as a thing of nameless loathing! May his eye avoid thee ever, flee the splendor of thy beauty! May he ne'er, in gladsome gathering, stretch his hand to thee for partner! Never gird himself with girdle which for him thy hand embroidered! Let his heart, thy love forsaking, in another love be fettered; The love-tokens of another may his scutcheon flame in battle, While behind thy grated windows year by year, away thou mournest! To thy rival may he offer prisoners that his hand has taken! May the trophies of his victory on his knees to _her_ be proffered! May he hate thee! and thy heart's faith to him be but thing accursed! These things, aye and more still! be thy cure for all my sting and sorrow!" Silent now goes Abensaïd, unto Xeres, in the midnight; Dazzling shone the palace, lighted, festal for the loathsome marriage, Richly-robed Moors were standing 'neath the shimmer of the tapers, On the jubilant procession of the marriage-part proceeded. In the path stands Abensaïd, frowning, as the bridegroom nears him; Strikes the lance into his bosom, with the rage of sharpest vengeance. 'Gainst the heaven rings a loud cry, those at hand their swords are baring-- But he rushes through the weapons, and in safety gains his own hearth.

Translation through the German, in the metre of the original, by E. Irenæus Stevenson.

THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER[17]

From "Country Life"

There he sits; his figure and his rigid bearing Let us know most clearly what is his ideal:-- Confidence in self, in his lofty standing; Thereto add conceit in his own great value. Certain, he can read--yes, and write and cipher; In the almanac no star-group's a stranger. In the church he, faithful, leads the pious chorus; Drums the catechism into young ones' noddles. Disputation to him's half the joy of living; Even though he's beaten, he will not give over. Watch him, when he talks, in how learned fashion! Drags on every word, spares no play of muscle. Ah, what pains he takes to forget no syllable-- Consonants and vowels rightly weighed and measured. Often is he, too, of this and that a poet! Every case declines with precisest conscience; Knows the history of Church and State, together-- Every Churchly light,--of pedant-deeds the record. All the village world speechless stands before him. Asking "How can _one_ brain be so ruled by Wisdom?" Sharply, too, he looks down on one's transgressions. 'Gainst his judgment stern, tears and prayers avail not. He appears--one glance (from a god that glance comes!) At a flash decides what the youngster's fate is. At his will a crowd runs, at his beck it parteth. Doth he smile? all frolic; doth he frown--all cower. By a tone he threatens, gives rewards, metes justice. Absent though he be, every pupil dreads him, For he sees, hears, knows, everything that's doing. On the urchin's forehead he can see it written. He divines who laughs, idles, yawns, or chatters, Who plays tricks on others, or in prayer-time's lazy. With its shoots, the birch-rod lying there beside him Knows how all misdeeds in a trice are settled. Surely by these traits you've our dorf-Dionysius!

[Footnote 17: Compare Goldsmith's famous portrait in "The Deserted Village".]

Translation through the German, in the meter of the original, by E. Irenætis Stevenson, for the "World's Best Literature".

BION

(275 B.C.)

Of Bion, the second of the Sicilian idyllists, of whom Theocritus was the first and Moschus the third and last, but little knowledge and few remains exist. He was born near Smyrna, says Suidas; and from the elegy on his death, attributed to his pupil Moschus, we infer that he lived in Sicily and died there of poison. "Say that Bion the herdsman is dead," says the threnody, appealing to the Sicilian muses, "and that song has died with Bion, and the Dorian minstrelsy hath perished.... Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth. What mortal so cruel as to mix poison for thee!" As Theocritus is also mentioned in the idyl, Bion is supposed to have been his contemporary, and to have flourished about 275 B. C.

Compared with Theocritus, his poetry is inferior in simplicity and naïveté, and declines from the type which Theocritus had established for the out-door, open-field idyl. With Bion, bucolics first took on the air of the study. Although at first this art and affectation were rarely discernible, they finally led to the mold of brass in which for centuries Italian and English pastorals were cast, and later to the complete devitalizing which marks English pastoral poetry in the eighteenth century, with the one exception of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd". Theocritus had sung with genuine feeling of trees and wandering winds, of flowers and the swift mountain stream. His poetry has atmosphere; it is vital with sunlight, color, and the beauty which is cool and calm and true. Although Bion's poems possess elegance and sweetness, and abound in pleasing imagery, they lack the naturalness of the idyls of Theocritus. Reflection has crept into them; they are in fact love-songs, with here and there a tinge of philosophy,

The most famous as well as the most powerful and original of Bion's poems remaining to us is the threnody upon Adonis. It was doubtless composed in honor of the rites with which Greek women celebrated certain Eastern festivals; for the worship of Adonis still lingered among them, mixed with certain Syrian customs.

"Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer's day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded."

Thammuz is identified with Adonis. "We came to a fair large river," writes an old English traveler, "doubtless the ancient river Adonis, which at certain seasons of the year, especially about the feast of Adonis, is of a bloody color, which the heathens looked upon as proceeding from a kind of sympathy in the river for the death of Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar in the mountains out of which the stream issues. Something like this we saw actually come to pass; for the water was stained to a surprising redness, and, as we observed in traveling, had discolored the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned doubtless by a sort of minium, or red earth, washed into the river by the violence of the rain."

The poem is colored by the Eastern nature of its subject, and its rapidity, vehemence, warmth, and unrestraint are greater than the strict canon of Greek art allows. It is noteworthy, aside from its varied beauties, because of its fine abandonment to grief and its appeal for recognition of the merits of the dead youth it celebrates. Bion's threnody has undoubtedly become a criterion and given the form to some of the more famous "songs of tears". The laudatory clegy of Moschus for his master--we say of Moschus, although Ahrens, in his recension, includes the lament under 'Incertorum Idyllia' at the end of 'Moschi Reliquiæ'--follows it faithfully. Milton in his great ode of 'Lycidas' does not depart from the Greek lines; and Shelley, lamenting Keats in his 'Adonaïs,' reverts still more closely to the first master, adding perhaps an element of artificiality one does not find in other threnodies. The broken and extended form of Tennyson's celebration of Arthur Hallam takes it out of a comparison with the Greek; but the monody of 'Thyrsis', Matthew Arnold's commemoration of Clough, approaches nearer the Greek. Yet no other lament has the energy and rapidity of Bion's; the refrain, the insistent repetition of the words "I wail for Adonis",--"Alas for Cypris!" full of pathos and unspoken irrepressible woe, is used only by his pupil Moschus, though hinted at by Milton.

The peculiar rhythm, the passion and delicate finish of the song, have attracted a number of translators, among whose versions Mrs. Browning's 'The Lament for Adonis' is considered the best. The subjoined version in the Spenserian stanza, by Anna C. Brackett, follows its model closely in its directness and fervor of expression, and has moreover in itself genuine poetic merit. The translation of a fragment of 'Hesperos' is that of J.A. Symonds. Bion's fluent and elegant versification invites study, and his few idyls and fragments have at various times been turned into English by Fawkes (to be found in Chalmers's 'Works of English Poets'), Polwhele, Banks, Chapman, and others.

THRENODY

I weep for Adonaïs--he is dead! Dead Adonaïs lies, and mourning all, The Loves wail round his fair, low-lying head. O Cypris, sleep no more! Let from thee fall Thy purple vestments--hear'st thou not the call? Let fall thy purple vestments! Lay them by! Ah, smite thy bosom, and in sable pall Send shivering through the air thy bitter cry For Adonaïs dead, while all the Loves reply.

I weep for Adonaïs--weep the Loves. Low on the mountains beauteous lies he there, And languid through his lips the faint breath moves, And black the blood creeps o'er his smooth thigh, where The boar's white tooth the whiter flesh must tear. Glazed grow his eyes beneath the eyelids wide; Fades from his lips the rose, and dies--Despair! The clinging kiss of Cypris at his side-- Alas, he knew not that she kissed him as he died!

I wail--responsive wail the Loves with me. Ah, cruel, cruel is that wound of thine, But Cypris' heart-wound aches more bitterly. The Oreads weep; thy faithful hounds low whine; But Cytherea's unbound tresses fine Float on the wind; where thorns her white feet wound, Along the oaken glades drops blood divine. She calls her lover; he, all crimsoned round His fair white breast with blood, hears not the piteous sound.

Alas! for Cytherea wail the Loves, With the beloved dies her beauty too. O fair was she, the goddess borne of doves, While Adonaïs lived; but now, so true Her love, no time her beauty can renew. Deep-voiced the mountains mourn; the oaks reply; And springs and rivers murmur sorrow through The passes where she goes, the cities high; And blossoms flush with grief as she goes desolate by.

Alas for Cytherea! he hath died-- The beauteous Adonaïs, he is dead! And Echo sadly back "_is dead_" replied. Alas for Cypris! Stooping low her head, And opening wide her arms, she piteous said, "O stay a little, Adonaïs mine! Of all the kisses ours since we were wed, But one last kiss, oh, give me now, and twine Thine arms close, till I drink the latest breath of thine!

"So will I keep the kiss thou givest me E'en as it were thyself, thou only best! Since thou, O Adonaïs, far dost flee-- Oh, stay a little--leave a little rest!-- And thou wilt leave me, and wilt be the guest Of proud Persephone, more strong than I? All beautiful obeys her dread behest-- And I a goddess am, and _cannot_ die! O thrice-beloved, listen!--mak'st thou no reply?

"Then dies to idle air my longing wild, As dies a dream along the paths of night; And Cytherea widowed is, exiled From love itself; and now--an idle sight-- The Loves sit in my halls, and all delight My charmèd girdle moves, is all undone! Why wouldst thou, rash one, seek the maddening fight? Why, beauteous, wouldst thou not the combat shun?"-- Thus Cytherea--and the Loves weep, all as one.

Alas for Cytherea!--he is dead. Her hopeless sorrow breaks in tears, that rain Down over all the fair, beloved head,-- Like summer showers, o'er wind-down-beaten grain; They flow as fast as flows the crimson stain From out the wound, deep in the stiffening thigh; And lo! in roses red the blood blooms fair, And where the tears divine have fallen close by, Spring up anemones, and stir all tremblingly.

I weep for Adonaïs--he is dead! No more, O Cypris, weep thy wooer here! Behold a bed of leaves! Lay down his head As if he slept--as still, as fair, as dear,-- In softest garments let his limbs appear, As when on golden couch his sweetest sleep He slept the livelong night, thy heart anear; Oh, beautiful in death though sad he keep, No more to wake when Morning o'er the hills doth creep.

And over him the freshest flowers fling-- Ah me! all flowers are withered quite away And drop their petals wan! yet, perfumes bring And sprinkle round, and sweetest balsams lay;-- Nay, perish perfumes since thine shall not stay! In purple mantle lies he, and around, The weeping Loves his weapons disarray, His sandals loose, with water bathe his wound, And fan him with soft wings that move without a sound.

The Loves for Cytherea raise the wail. Hymen from quenched torch no light can shake. His shredded wreath lies withered all and pale; His joyous song, alas, harsh discords break! And saddest wail of all, the Graces wake; "The beauteous Adonaïs! He is dead!" And sigh the Muses, "Stay but for our sake!" Yet would he come, Persephone is dead;-- Cease, Cypris! Sad the days repeat their faithful tread!

Paraphrase of Anna C. Brackett, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

HESPER

Hesper, thou golden light of happy love, Hesper, thou holy pride of purple eve, Moon among stars, but star beside the moon, Hail, friend! and since the young moon sets to-night Too soon below the mountains, lend thy lamp And guide me to the shepherd whom I love. No theft I purpose; no wayfaring man Belated would I watch and make my prey: Love is my goal; and Love how fair it is, When friend meets friend sole in the silent night, Thou knowest, Hesper!

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

(1850-)

Those to whom the discovery of a relishing new literary flavor means the permanent annexation of a new tract of enjoyment have not forgotten what happened in 1885. A slender 16mo volume entitled "Obiter Dicta", containing seven short literary and biographic essays, came out in that year, anonymous and unheralded, to make such way as it might among a book-whelmed generation. It had no novelty of subject to help it to a hearing; the themes were largely the most written-out, in all seeming, that could have been selected,--a few great orthodox names on which opinion was closed and analysis exhausted. Browning, Carlyle, Charles Lamb, and John Henry Newman are indeed very beacons to warn off the sated bookman. A paper on Benvenuto Cellini, one on Actors, and one on Falstaff (by another hand) closed the list. Yet a few weeks made it the literary event of the day. Among epicures of good reading the word swiftly passed along that here was a new sensation of unusually satisfying charm and freshness. It was a _tour de force_ like the "Innocents Abroad", a journey full of new sights over the most staled and beaten of tracks. The triumph was all the author's own.

[Illustration: AUGUSTINE BIRRELL]

Two years later came another volume as a "Second Series", of the same general character but superior to the first. Among the subjects of its eleven papers were Milton, Pope, Johnson, Burke, Lamb again, and Emerson; with some general essays, including that on "The Office of Literature", given below.

In 1892 appeared "Res Judicatæ", really a third volume of the same series, and perhaps even richer in matter and more acute and original in thought. Its first two articles, prepared as lectures on Samuel Richardson and Edward Gibbon, are indeed his high-water, mark in both substance and style. Cowper, George Borrow, Newman again, Lamb a third time (and fresh as ever), Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, and Sainte-Beuve are brought in, and some excellent literary miscellanea.

A companion volume called 'Men, Women, and Books' is disappointing because composed wholly of short newspaper articles: Mr. Birrell's special quality needs space to make itself felt. He needs a little time to get up steam, a little room to unpack his wares; he is no pastel writer, who can say his say in a paragraph and runs dry in two. Hence these snippy editorials do him no justice: he is obliged to stop every time just as he is getting ready to say something worth while. They are his, and therefore readable and judicious; but they give no idea of his best powers.

He has also written a life of Charlotte Brontë. But he holds his place in the front rank of recent essayists by the three 'Obiter Dicta' and 'Res Judicatæ' volumes of manly, luminous, penetrating essays, full of racy humor and sudden wit; of a generous appreciativeness that seeks always for the vital principle which gave the writer his hold on men; still more, of a warm humanity and a sure instinct for all the higher and finer things of the spirit which never fail to strike chords in the heart as well as the brain. No writer's work leaves a better taste in the mouth; he makes us think better of the world, of righteousness, of ourselves. Yet no writer is less of a Puritan or a Philistine; none writes with less of pragmatic purpose or a less obtrusive load of positive fact. He scorns such overladen pedantry, and never loses a chance to lash it. He tells us that he has "never been inside the reading-room of the British Museum," and "expounds no theory save the unworthy one that literature ought to please." He says the one question about a book which is to be part of _literature_ is, "Does it read?" that "no one is under any obligation to read any one else's book," and therefore it is a writer's business to make himself welcome to readers; that he does not care whether an author was happy or not, he wants the author to make him happy. He puts his theory in practice: he makes himself welcome as a companion at once stimulating and restful, of humane spirit and elevated ideals, of digested knowledge and original thought, of an insight which is rarely other than kindly and a deep humor which never lapses into cynicism.

Mr. Birrell helps to justify Walter Bagehot's dictum that the only man who can write books well is one who knows practical life well; but still there are congruities in all things, and one feels a certain shock of incongruity in finding that this man of books and purveyor of light genial book-talk, who can hardly write a line without giving it a quality of real literary savor, is a prominent lawyer and member of Parliament, and has written a law book which ranks among recognized legal authorities. This is a series of lectures delivered in 1896, and collected into a volume on 'The Duties and Liabilities of Trustees.' But some of the surprise vanishes on reading the book: even as 'Alice in Wonderland' shows on every page the work of a logician trained to use words precisely and criticize their misuse, so in exactly the opposite way this book is full of the shrewd judgment, the knowledge of life, and even the delightful humor which form so much of Birrell's best equipment for a man of letters.

Mr. Birrell's work is not merely good reading, but is a mental clarifier and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers through his criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading of 'Obiter Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the face of his lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake of vital qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he so objects to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of his way to berate his idol Matthew Arnold for setting Emerson aloft. But what he says of George Borrow is vastly more true of himself: he is one of the writers we cannot afford to be angry with.

DR. JOHNSON

"Criticism," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, "is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by mere labor be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured: but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critick."

To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to pursue a course open to grave objection; yet it is forced upon us when we find, as we lately did, a writer in the Times newspaper, in the course of a not very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's recent volumes, casually remarking, as if it admitted of no more doubt than the day's price of consols, that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson. It is a good thing to be positive. To be positive in your opinions and selfish in your habits is the best recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that far more attainable commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted. "A noisy man," sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything louder than the hissing of a tea-urn, "a noisy man is always in the right," and a positive man can seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independence, and we therefore make bold to ask whether it is as plain as the "old hill of Howth" that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for, here or from me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any striking virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task of dwelling on them has such attraction for us that we are content to leave the elucidation of his faults to his personal friends, and to stern, unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates and the World newspaper. To love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship, a task of much heroism, almost meriting a pension; still it is quite possible for the candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater than Johnson he most certainly was not.

There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who, whilst asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in a lucky moment for her pocket, as "an old struggler." Johnson, his biographer tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck to his memory, and was frequently applied to himself. "I too," so he would say, "am an old struggler." So too, in all conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are interested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman. Both men had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight their way. What they took they took by storm. But--and here is a difference indeed--Johnson came off victorious, Carlyle did not.

Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we read, we see his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his place with those--

"Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule Our spirits from their urns."

Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will never cease to shed tender but regretful tears.

We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are wanting? Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries; endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched," indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over all these things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of "this intellectual being," which had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should.

Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, "The more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;" but then if the devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting one's way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude's (Carlyle,)--in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks crow,--with what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:--

"On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He would spate my understanding.... Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it. In order to rouse the vocal organs I took two drams.... I then went to bed, and strange as it may seem I think slept. When I saw light it was time I should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, He left me my hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands.... How this will be received by you I know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but perhaps

"'My mistress, gracious, mild, and good, Cries--Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.'

"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to my throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, and those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it sticks to our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his salve according to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now two on my own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn, which I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter, but now it is written let it go."

This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.

If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been thrust upon us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds it hard to avoid disliking Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst the elder man of letters was full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was full to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst Johnson was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that ever exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.

Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with nobler appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us to Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth."

The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private conversation.

Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one--"He is the most sensible man I ever met."

As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a great deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of Lander's immorality, that it was--

"Mere imaginary classicality Wholly devoid of criminal reality."

It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell of,--apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table, that I would sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up by a man without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better for a man's reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up by Mr. Froude.

Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great talker--no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All that is given us is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone.

An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never made than that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant Samuel, "You will make your way the more easily in the world as you are content to dispute no man's claim to conversation excellence, and they will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occasion; whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.

Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to "smell a fault" is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o' nights; sometimes preferring to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarreled with Tetty, who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do not exist; even Croker could not find them. Neither was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked to see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to die, he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of £10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests to that great man that he should release him from it, as, of course, the most amiable of painters did. The other two requests, it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave the desired promises with a full heart, for these two great men loved one another; but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction not a little irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his temper with the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when he discussed with him the question of "strong drinks."

Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smoldering grudge, which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune of fourpence--"current coin o' the realm." Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing for pictures--how should he? he could not see them; but he did care a great deal about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a "most observant thumb." But Garrick had no real cause for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language:--"I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."

Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel with this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its falsehood? Garrick's death, urge these dullards, could not possibly have eclipsed the gayety of nations, since he had retired from the stage months previous to his demise. When will mankind learn that literature is one thing, and sworn testimony another? ...

Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are convenient things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to inquire into their truth as it is to read the letterpress on bank-notes. We are content to count bank-notes and to repeat phrases. One of these phrases is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell, nobody reads Johnson. The facts are otherwise. Everybody does not read Boswell, and a great many people do read Johnson. If it be asked, What do the general public know of Johnson's nine volumes octavo? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What in the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts. On Saturdays these carts, laden with "recent works in circulation," traverse the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up Highgate Hill, and if we may believe the reports of travelers, are occasionally seen rushing through the wilds of Camberwell and bumping over Blackheath. It is not a question of the general public, but of the lover of letters. Do Mr. Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Morley, know their Johnson? "To doubt would be disloyalty." And what these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little men know in their little way. We have no writer with a more genuine literary flavor about him than the great Cham of literature. No man of letters loved letters better than he. He knew literature in all its branches--he had read books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had bought books, and he had borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other directions, he pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he delighted in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes, at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He cared intensely about the future of literature and the fate of literary men. "I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has raised the price of literature." Now Millar was a Scotchman. Even Horne Tooke was not to stand in the pillory: "No, no, the dog has too much literature for that." The only time the author of 'Rasselas' met the author of the 'Wealth of Nations' witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the English one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king. "Did Adam say that?" he shouted: "I love him for it. I could hug him!" Johnson no doubt honestly believed he held George III. in reverence, but really he did not care a pin's fee for all the crowned heads of Europe. All his reverence was reserved for "poor scholars." When a small boy in a wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his biographer across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or got Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, the love and respect of all "lettered hearts."

THE OFFICE OF LITERATURE

Dr. John Brown's pleasant story has become well known, of the countryman who, being asked to account for the gravity of his dog, replied, "Oh, sir! life is full of sairiousness to him--he can just never get eneugh o' fechtin'." Something of the spirit of this saddened dog seems lately to have entered into the very people who ought to be freest from it,--our men of letters. They are all very serious and very quarrelsome. To some of them it is dangerous even to allude. Many are wedded to a theory or period, and are the most uxorious of husbands--ever ready to resent an affront to their lady. This devotion makes them very grave, and possibly very happy after a pedantic fashion. One remembers what Hazlitt, who was neither happy nor pedantic, has said about pedantry:--

"The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy, the miser deliberately starves himself to death, the mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm, and the lawyer sheds tears of delight over 'Coke upon Lyttleton.' He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man."

Possibly not; but then we are surely not content that our authors should be pedants in order that they may be happy and devoted. As one of the great class for whose sole use and behalf literature exists,--the class of readers,--I protest that it is to me a matter of indifference whether an author is happy or not. I want him to make me happy. That is his office. Let him discharge it.

I recognize in this connection the corresponding truth of what Sydney Smith makes his Peter Plymley say about the private virtues of Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister:--

"You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present Prime Minister. Grant all that you write--I say, I fear that he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interests of his country; and then you tell me that he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval and kind to the Master Percevals. I should prefer that he whipped his boys and saved his country."

We should never confuse functions or apply wrong tests. What can books do for us? Dr. Johnson, the least pedantic of men, put the whole matter into a nut-shell (a cocoa-nut shell, if you will--Heaven forbid that I should seek to compress the great Doctor within any narrower limits than my metaphor requires) when he wrote that a book should teach us either to enjoy life or endure it. "Give us enjoyment!" "Teach us endurance!" Hearken to the ceaseless demand and the perpetual prayer of an ever unsatisfied and always suffering humanity!

How is a book to answer the ceaseless demand?

Self-forgetfulness is the essence of enjoyment, and the author who would confer pleasure must possess the art, or know the trick, of destroying for the time the reader's own personality. Undoubtedly the easiest way of doing this is by the creation of a host of rival personalities--hence the number and the popularity of novels. Whenever a novelist fails, his

## book is said to flag; that is, the reader suddenly (as in skating) comes

bump down upon his own personality, and curses the unskillful author. No lack of characters, and continual motion, is the easiest recipe for a novel, which like a beggar should always be kept "moving on." Nobody knew this better than Fielding, whose novels, like most good ones, are full of inns.

When those who are addicted to what is called "improving reading" inquire of you petulantly why you cannot find change of company and

## scene in books of travel, you should answer cautiously that when books

of travel are full of inns, atmosphere, and motion, they are as good as any novel; nor is there any reason in the nature of things why they should not always be so, though experience proves the contrary.

The truth or falsehood of a book is immaterial. George Borrow's 'Bible in Spain' is, I suppose, true; though now that I come to think of it in what is to me a new light, one remembers that it contains some odd things. But was not Borrow the accredited agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Señor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with Gurth and Wamba.

Borrow is provoking and has his full share of faults, and though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use of the odious word "individual" as a noun-substantive (seven times in three pages of 'The Romany Rye') elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of calling fish the "finny tribe." He believed himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and disfigures many of his pages by Lawrence-Boythorn-like tirades against that institution; but no Catholic of sense need on this account deny himself the pleasure of reading Borrow, whose one dominating passion was _camaraderie_, and who hob-a-nobbed in the friendliest spirit with priest and gipsy in a fashion as far beyond praise as it is beyond description by any pen other than his own. Hail to thee, George Borrow! Cervantes himself, 'Gil Bias,' do not more effectually carry their readers into the land of the Cid than does this miraculous agent of the Bible Society, by favor of whose pleasantness we can, any hour of the week, enter Villafranca by night, or ride into Galicia on an Andalusian stallion (which proved to be a foolish thing to do), without costing anybody a _peseta_, and at no risk whatever to our necks--be they long or short.

Cooks, warriors, and authors must be judged by the effects they produce: toothsome dishes, glorious victories, pleasant books--these are our demands. We have nothing to do with ingredients, tactics, or methods. We have no desire to be admitted into the kitchen, the council, or the study. The cook may clean her saucepans how she pleases--the warrior place his men as he likes--the author handle his material or weave his plot as best he can--when the dish is served we only ask, Is it good? when the battle has been fought, Who won? when the book comes out, Does it read?

Authors ought not to be above being reminded that it is their first duty to write agreeably; some very disagreeable ones have succeeded in doing so, and there is therefore no need for any one to despair. Every author, be he grave or gay, should try to make his book as ingratiating as possible. Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. Nobody is under any obligation to read any other man's book.

Literature exists to please,--to lighten the burden of men's lives; to make them for a short while forget their sorrows and their sins, their silenced hearths, their disappointed hopes, their grim futures--and those men of letters are the best loved who have best performed literature's truest office. Their name is happily legion, and I will conclude these disjointed remarks by quoting from one of them, as honest a parson as ever took tithe or voted for the Tory candidate, the Rev. George Crabbe. Hear him in 'The Frank Courtship':--

"I must be loved," said Sybil; "I must see The man in terrors, who aspires to me: At my forbidding frown his heart must ache, His tongue must falter, and his frame must shake; And if I grant him at my feet to kneel, What trembling fearful pleasure must he feel! Nay, such the rapture that my smiles inspire That reason's self must for a time retire." "Alas! for good Josiah," said the dame, "These wicked thoughts would fill his soul with shame; He kneel and tremble at a thing of dust! He cannot, child:"--the child replied, "He must."

Were an office to be opened for the insurance of literary reputations, no critic at all likely to be in the society's service would refuse the life of a poet who could write like Crabbe. Cardinal Newman, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. Swinburne, are not always of the same way of thinking, but all three hold the one true faith about Crabbe.

But even were Crabbe now left unread, which is very far from being the case, his would be an enviable fame--for was he not one of the favored poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the closing scene of the great magician's life is read in the pages of Lockhart, must not Crabbe's name be brought upon the reader's quivering lip?

To soothe the sorrow of the soothers of sorrow, to bring tears to the eyes and smiles to the cheeks of the lords of human smiles and tears, is no mean ministry, and it is Crabbe's.

TRUTH-HUNTING

Is truth-hunting one of those active mental habits which, as Bishop Butler tells us, intensify their effects by constant use; and are weak convictions, paralyzed intellects, and laxity of opinions amongst the effects of Truth-hunting on the majority of minds? These are not unimportant questions.

Let us consider briefly the probable effects of speculative habits on conduct.

The discussion of a question of conduct has the great charm of justifying, if indeed not requiring, personal illustration; and this

## particular question is well illustrated by instituting a comparison

between the life and character of Charles Lamb and those of some of his distinguished friends.

Personal illustration, especially when it proceeds by way of comparison, is always dangerous, and the dangers are doubled when the subjects illustrated and compared are favorite authors. It behoves us to proceed warily in this matter. A dispute as to the respective merits of Gray and Collins has been known to result in a visit to an attorney and the revocation of a will. An avowed inability to see anything in Miss Austen's novels is reported to have proved destructive of an otherwise good chance of an Indian judgeship. I believe, however, I run no great risk in asserting that, of all English authors, Charles Lamb is the one loved most warmly and emotionally by his admirers, amongst whom I reckon only those who are as familiar with the four volumes of his 'Life and Letters' as with 'Elia.'

But how does he illustrate the particular question now engaging our attention?

Speaking of his sister Mary, who, as every one knows, throughout 'Elia' is called his cousin Bridget, he says:--

"It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine free-thinkers, leaders and disciples of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with nor accepts their opinions."

Nor did her brother. He lived his life cracking his little jokes and reading his great folios, neither wrangling with nor accepting the opinions of the friends he loved to see around him. To a contemporary stranger it might well have appeared as if his life were a frivolous and useless one as compared with those of these philosophers and thinkers. _They_ discussed their great schemes and affected to prove deep mysteries, and were constantly asking, "What is truth?" _He_ sipped his glass, shuffled his cards, and was content with the humbler inquiry, "What are trumps?" But to us, looking back upon that little group, and knowing what we now do about each member of it, no such mistake is possible. To us it is plain beyond all question that, judged by whatever standard of excellence it is possible for any reasonable human being to take, Lamb stands head and shoulders a better man than any of them. No need to stop to compare him with Godwin, or Hazlitt, or Lloyd; let us boldly put him in the scales with one whose fame is in all the churches--with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician, bard."

There are some men whom to abuse is pleasant. Coleridge is not one of them. How gladly we would love the author of 'Christabel' if we could! But the thing is flatly impossible. His was an unlovely character. The sentence passed upon him by Mr. Matthew Arnold (parenthetically, in one of the 'Essays in Criticism')--"Coleridge had no morals"--is no less just than pitiless. As we gather information about him from numerous quarters, we find it impossible to resist the conclusion that he was a man neglectful of restraint, irresponsive to the claims of those who had every claim upon him, willing to receive, slow to give.

In early manhood Coleridge planned a Pantisocracy where all the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something far more difficult: he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man into practicing and justifying neglect.

That Lamb, with all his admiration for Coleridge, was well aware of dangerous tendencies in his character, is made apparent by many letters, notably by one written in 1796, in which he says:--

"O my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think himself released from the kind charities of relationship: these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear that you are reconciled with all your relations."

This surely is as valuable an "aid to reflection" as any supplied by the Highgate seer.

Lamb gave but little thought to the wonderful difference between the "reason" and the "understanding." He preferred old plays--an odd diet, some may think, on which to feed the virtues; but however that may be, the noble fact remains, that he, poor, frail boy! (for he was no more, when trouble first assailed him) stooped down, and without sigh or sign took upon his own shoulders the whole burden of a lifelong sorrow.

Coleridge married. Lamb, at the bidding of duty, remained single, wedding himself to the sad fortunes of his father and sister. Shall we pity him? No; he had his reward--the surpassing reward that is only within the power of literature to bestow. It was Lamb, and not Coleridge, who wrote 'Dream-Children: a Reverie':--

"Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W---- n; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens--when, suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment that I became in doubt which of them stood before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech. 'We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only _what might have been_.'"

Godwin! Hazlitt! Coleridge! Where now are their "novel philosophies and systems"? Bottled moonshine, which does _not_ improve by keeping.

"Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

Were we disposed to admit that Lamb would in all probability have been as good a man as every one agrees he was--as kind to his father, as full of self-sacrifice for the sake of his sister, as loving and ready a friend--even though he had paid more heed to current speculations, it is yet not without use in a time like this, when so much stress is laid upon anxious inquiry into the mysteries of soul and body, to point out how this man attained to a moral excellence denied to his speculative contemporaries; performed duties from which they, good men as they were, would one and all have shrunk: how, in short, he contrived to achieve what no one of his friends, not even the immaculate Wordsworth or the precise Southey, achieved--the living of a life the records of which are inspiriting to read, and are indeed "the presence of a good diffused"; and managed to do it all without either "wrangling with or accepting" the opinions that "hurtled in the air" about him.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

From 'Obiter Dicta'

What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini!--who can believe a word he says? To hang a dog on his oath would be a judicial murder. Yet when we lay down his Memoirs and let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days he tells us of, there we see him standing, in bold relief, against the black sky of the past, the very man he was. Not more surely did he, with that rare skill of his, stamp the image of Clement VII. on the papal currency, than he did the impress of his own singular personality upon every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote.

We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer he has written himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of being. Were any one in the nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be doubted whether Rhadamanthus would award him the damages for which we may be certain he would loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:--

"Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry, the noblemen affirming that I promised too much. But one of them, who was a great philosopher, said in my favor, 'From the admirable symmetry of shape and happy physiognomy of this young man, I venture to engage that he will perform all he promises, and more.' The Pope replied, 'I am of the same opinion;' then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber, he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats."

And so it always ended: suspicions, aroused most reasonably, allayed most unreasonably, and then--ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died in his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to have brought posthumous justice upon him, and made them a literary gibbet, on which he should swing, a creaking horror, for all time; but nothing of the sort has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that we cannot withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a shower of abuse.

This only proves the profundity of an observation made by Mr. Bagehot--a man who carried away into the next world more originality of thought than is now to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late Francis Horner and the trifling cost he was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said that it proved the advantage of "keeping an atmosphere."

The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor Horner, but for that kept atmosphere of his always surrounding him, would have been bluntly asked "what he had done since he was breeched," and in reply he could only have muttered something about the currency. As for our special rogue Cellini, the question would probably have assumed this shape: "Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and account for the omission."

But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people who keep their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can get at them, have to step out of the every-day air, where only achievements count and the Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept atmosphere, which they have no sooner breathed than they begin to see things differently, and to measure the object thus surrounded with a tape of its own manufacture. Horner--poor, ugly, a man neither of words nor deeds--becomes one of our great men; a nation mourns his loss and erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. Bagehot gives several instances of the same kind, but he does not mention Cellini, who is however in his own way an admirable example.

You open his book--a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying, indeed! Why, you hate prevarication. As for murder, your friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment. You are of course willing to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place--the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy! "Yes," you remark, "Cellini shall have strict justice at my hands." So you say as you settle yourself in your chair and begin to read. We seem to hear the rascal laughing in his grave. His spirit breathes upon you from his book--peeps at you roguishly as you turn the pages. His atmosphere surrounds you; you smile when you ought to frown, chuckle when you should groan, and--oh, final triumph!--laugh aloud when, if you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and patiently awaits the conclusion of the second volume.

How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he win your ear by his seductive piety! I quote from Mr. Roscoe's translation:--

"It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this honorable task before they have passed their fortieth year. Such at least is my opinion now that I have completed my fifty-eighth year, and am settled in Florence, where, considering the numerous ills that constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have never before been so free from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me wonder how I have reached this age in vigor and prosperity, through God's goodness I have resolved to publish an account of my life; and ... I must, in commencing my narrative, satisfy the public on some few points to which its curiosity is usually directed; the first of which is to ascertain whether a man is descended from a virtuous and ancient family.... I shall therefore now proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God that I should come into the world."

So you read on page i; what you read on page 191 is this:--

"Just after sunset, about eight o'clock, as this musqueteer stood at his door with his sword in his hand, when he had done supper, I with great address came close up to him with a long dagger, and gave him a violent back-handed stroke, which I aimed at his neck. He instantly turned round, and the blow, falling directly upon his left shoulder, broke the whole bone of it; upon which he dropped his sword, quite overcome by the pain, and took to his heels. I pursued, and in four steps came up with him, when, raising the dagger over his head, which he lowered down, I hit him exactly upon the nape of the neck. The weapon penetrated so deep that, though I made a great effort to recover it again, I found it impossible."

So much for murder. Now for manslaughter, or rather Cellini's notion of manslaughter.

"Pompeo entered an apothecary's shop at the corner of the Chiavica, about some business, and stayed there for some time. I was told he had boasted of having bullied me, but it turned out a fatal adventure to him. Just as I arrived at that quarter he was coming out of the shop, and his bravoes, having made an opening, formed a circle round him. I thereupon clapped my hand to a sharp dagger, and having forced my way through the file of ruffians, laid hold of him by the throat, so quickly and with such presence of mind that there was not one of his friends could defend him. I pulled him towards me to give him a blow in front, but he turned his face about through excess of terror, so that I wounded him exactly under the ear; and upon repeating my blow, he fell down dead. It had never been my intention to kill him, but blows are not always under command."

We must all feel that it would never have done to have begun with these passages; but long before the 191st page has been reached, Cellini has retreated into his own atmosphere, and the scales of justice have been hopelessly tampered with.

That such a man as this encountered suffering in the course of his life should be matter for satisfaction to every well-regulated mind; but somehow or other, you find yourself pitying the fellow as he narrates the hardships he endured in the Castle of St. Angelo. He is so symmetrical a rascal! Just hear him! listen to what he says well on in the second volume, after the little incidents already quoted:--

"Having at length recovered my strength and vigor, after I had composed myself and resumed my cheerfulness of mind, I continued to read my Bible, and so accustomed my eyes to that darkness, that though I was at first able to read only an hour and a half, I could at length read three hours. I then reflected on the wonderful power of the Almighty upon the hearts of simple men, who had carried their enthusiasm so far as to believe firmly that God would indulge them in all they wished for; and I promised myself the assistance of the Most High, as well through His mercy as on account of my innocence. Thus turning constantly to the Supreme Being, sometimes in prayer, sometimes in silent meditation on the divine goodness, I was totally engrossed by these heavenly reflections, and came to take such delight in pious meditations that I no longer thought of past misfortunes. On the contrary, I was all day long singing psalms and many other compositions of mine, in which I celebrated and praised the Deity."

Thus torn from their context, these passages may seem to supply the best possible falsification of the previous statement that Cellini told the truth about himself. Judged by these passages alone, he may appear a hypocrite of an unusually odious description. But it is only necessary to read his book to dispel that notion. He tells lies about other people; he repeats long conversations, sounding his own praises, during which, as his own narrative shows, he was not present; he exaggerates his own exploits, his sufferings--even, it may be, his crimes: but when we lay down his book, we feel we are saying good-by to a man whom we know.

He has introduced himself to us, and though doubtless we prefer saints to sinners, we may be forgiven for liking the company of a live rogue better than that of the lay-figures and empty clock-cases labeled with distinguished names, who are to be found doing duty for men in the works of our standard historians. What would we not give to know Julius Cæsar one-half as well as we know this outrageous rascal? The saints of the earth, too, how shadowy they are! Which of them do we really know? Excepting one or two ancient and modern Quietists, there is hardly one amongst the whole number who being dead yet speaketh. Their memoirs far too often only reveal to us a hazy something, certainly not recognizable as a man. This is generally the fault of their editors, who, though men themselves, confine their editorial duties to going up and down the diaries and papers of the departed saint, and obliterating all human touches. This they do for the "better prevention of scandals"; and one cannot deny that they attain their end, though they pay dearly for it.

I shall never forget the start I gave when, on reading some old book about India, I came across an after-dinner jest of Henry Martyn's. The thought of Henry Martyn laughing over the walnuts and the wine was almost, as Robert Browning's unknown painter says, "too wildly dear;" and to this day I cannot help thinking that there must be a mistake somewhere.

To return to Cellini, and to conclude. On laying down his Memoirs, let us be careful to recall our banished moral sense, and make peace with her, by passing a final judgment on this desperate sinner; which perhaps after all, we cannot do better than by employing language of his own concerning a monk, a fellow-prisoner of his, who never, so far as appears, murdered anybody, but of whom Cellini none the less felt himself entitled to say:--

"I admired his shining qualities, but his odious vices I freely censured and held in abhorrence."

ON THE ALLEGED OBSCURITY OF MR. BROWNING'S POETRY

From 'Obiter Dicta'

In considering whether a poet is intelligible and lucid, we ought not to grope and grub about his work in search of obscurities and oddities, but should, in the first instance at all events, attempt to regard his whole scope and range; to form some estimate, if we can, of his general purport and effect, asking ourselves for this purpose such questions as these:--How are we the better for him? Has he quickened any passion, lightened any burden, purified any taste? Does he play any real part in our lives? When we are in love, do we whisper him in our lady's ear? When we sorrow, does he ease our pain? Can he calm the strife of mental conflict? Has he had anything to say which wasn't twaddle on those subjects which, elude analysis as they may, and defy demonstration as they do, are yet alone of perennial interest--

"On man, on nature, and on human life,"

on the pathos of our situation, looking back on to the irrevocable and forward to the unknown? If a poet has said, or done, or been any of these things to an appreciable extent, to charge him with obscurity is both folly and ingratitude.

But the subject may be pursued further, and one may be called upon to investigate this charge with reference to particular books or poems. In Browning's case this fairly may be done; and then another crop of questions arises, such as: What is the book about, i.e., with what subject does it deal, and what method of dealing does it employ? Is it didactical, analytical, or purely narrative? Is it content to describe, or does it aspire to explain? In common fairness these questions must be asked and answered, before we heave our critical half-bricks at strange poets. One task is of necessity more difficult than another. Students of geometry who have pushed their researches into that fascinating science so far as the fifth proposition of the first book, commonly called the 'Pons Asinorum' (though now that so many ladies read Euclid, it ought, in common justice to them, to be at least sometimes called the 'Pons Asinarum'), will agree that though it may be more difficult to prove that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced, the angles on the other side of the base shall be equal, than it was to describe an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line; yet no one but an ass would say that the fifth proposition was one whit less intelligible than the first. When we consider Mr. Browning in his later writings, it will be useful to bear this distinction in mind.

Looking then at the first period, we find in its front eight plays:--

1. 'Strafford,' written in 1836, when its author was twenty-four years old, and put upon the boards of Covent Garden Theatre on the 1st of May, 1837; Macready playing Strafford, and Miss Helen Faucit Lady Carlisle. It was received with much enthusiasm, but the company was rebellious and the manager bankrupt; and after running five nights, the man who played Pym threw up his part, and the theatre was closed.

2. 'Pippa Passes.'

3. 'King Victor and King Charles.'

4. 'The Return of the Druses.'

5. 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.'

This beautiful and pathetic play was put on the stage of Drury Lane on the 11th of February, 1843, with Phelps as Lord Tresham, Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred Tresham, and Mrs. Stirling, still known to us all, as Guendolen. It was a brilliant success. Mr. Browning was in the stage-box; and if it is any satisfaction for a poet to hear a crowded house cry "Author, author!" that satisfaction has belonged to Mr. Browning. The play ran several nights; and was only stopped because one of Mr. Macready's bankruptcies happened just then to intervene. It was afterwards revived by Mr. Phelps, during his "memorable management" of Sadlers' Wells.

6. 'Colombe's Birthday.' Miss Helen Faucit put this upon the stage in 1852, when it was reckoned a success.

7. 'Luria.'

8. 'A Soul's Tragedy.'

To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous; and nobody who has ever read them ever did, and why people who have not read them should abuse them is hard to see. Were society put upon its oath, we should be surprised to find how many people in high places have not read 'All's Well that Ends Well,' or 'Timon of Athens'; but they don't go about saying these plays are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they pretend to have read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they are spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A Soul's Tragedy'; and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for any one to assert that one of the plainest, most pointed and piquant bits of writing in the language is unintelligible. But surely something more may be truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible. First of all, they are _plays_, and not _works_--like the dropsical dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood the ordeal of actual representation; and though it would be absurd to pretend that they met with that overwhelming measure of success our critical age has reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the author of 'Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of 'The Overland Route,' the late Mr. Robertson, the author of 'Caste,' Mr. H. Byron, the author of 'Our Boys,' Mr. Wills, the author of 'Charles I.,' Mr. Burnand, the author of 'The Colonel,' and Mr. Gilbert, the author of so much that is great and glorious in our national drama; at all events they proved themselves able to arrest and retain the attention of very ordinary audiences. But who can deny dignity and even grandeur to 'Luria,' or withhold the meed of a melodious tear from 'Mildred Tresham'? What

## action of what play is more happily conceived or better rendered than

that of 'Pippa Passes'?--where innocence and its reverse, tender love and violent passion, are presented with emphasis, and yet blended into a dramatic unity and a poetic perfection, entitling the author to the very first place amongst those dramatists of the century who have labored under the enormous disadvantage of being poets to start with.

Passing from the plays, we are next attracted by a number of splendid poems, on whose base the structure of Mr. Browning's fame perhaps rests most surely,--his dramatic pieces; poems which give utterance to the thoughts and feelings of persons other than himself, or as he puts it when dedicating a number of them to his wife:--

"Love, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead, or fashioned by my fancy, Enter each and all, and use their service, Speak from every mouth the speech--a poem;"

or again in 'Sordello':--

"By making speak, myself kept out of view, The very man as he was wont to do."

At a rough calculation, there must be at least sixty of these pieces. Let me run over the names of a very few of them. 'Saul,' a poem beloved by all true women; 'Caliban,' which the men, not unnaturally perhaps, often prefer. The 'Two Bishops': the sixteenth-century one ordering his tomb of jasper and basalt in St. Praxed's Church, and his nineteenth-century successor rolling out his post-prandial _Apologia_. 'My Last Duchess,' the 'Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,' 'Andrea del Sarto,' 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' 'Cleon,' 'A Death in the Desert,' 'The Italian in England,' and 'The Englishman in Italy.'

It is plain truth to say that no other English poet, living or dead, Shakespeare excepted, has so heaped up human interest for his readers as has Robert Browning....

Against these dramatic pieces the charge of unintelligibility fails as completely as it does against the plays. They are all perfectly intelligible; but--and here is the rub--they are not easy reading, like the estimable writings of the late Mrs. Hemans. They require the same honest attention as it is the fashion to give to a lecture of Professor Huxley's or a sermon of Canon Liddon's; and this is just what too many persons will not give to poetry. They

"Love to hear A soft pulsation in their easy ear; To turn the page, and let their senses drink A lay that shall not trouble them to think."

* * * * *

Next to these dramatic pieces come what we may be content to call simply poems: some lyrical, some narrative. The latter are straightforward enough, and as a rule full of spirit and humor; but this is more than can always be said of the lyrical pieces. Now, for the first time in dealing with this first period, excluding 'Sordello,' we strike difficulty. The Chinese puzzle comes in. We wonder whether it all turns on the punctuation. And the awkward thing for Mr. Browning's reputation is this, that these bewildering poems are for the most part very short. We say awkward, for it is not more certain that Sarah Gamp liked her beer drawn mild than it is that your Englishman likes his poetry cut short; and so, accordingly, it often happens that some estimable paterfamilias takes up an odd volume of Browning his volatile son or moonstruck daughter has left lying about, pishes and pshaws! and then, with an air of much condescension and amazing candor, remarks that he will give the fellow another chance, and not condemn him unread. So saying, he opens the book, and carefully selects the very shortest poem he can find; and in a moment, without sign or signal, note or warning, the unhappy man is floundering up to his neck in lines like these, which are the third and final stanza of a poem called 'Another Way of Love':--

"And after, for pastime, If June be refulgent With flowers in completeness, All petals, no prickles, Delicious as trickles Of wine poured at mass-time, And choose One indulgent To redness and sweetness; Or if with experience of man and of spider, She use my June lightning, the strong insect-ridder To stop the fresh spinning,--why June will consider."

He comes up gasping, and more than ever persuaded that Browning's poetry is a mass of inconglomerate nonsense, which nobody understands--least of all members of the Browning Society.

We need be at no pains to find a meaning for everything Mr. Browning has written. But when all is said and done--when these few freaks of a crowded brain are thrown overboard to the sharks of verbal criticism who feed on such things--Mr. Browning and his great poetical achievement remain behind to be dealt with and accounted for. We do not get rid of the Laureate by quoting:--

"O darling room, my heart's delight, Dear room, the apple of my sight, With thy two couches soft and white There is no room so exquisite-- No little room so warm and bright Wherein to read, wherein to write;"

or of Wordsworth by quoting:--

"At this, my boy hung down his head: He blushed with shame, nor made reply, And five times to the child I said, "'Why, Edward? tell me why?'"

or of Keats by remembering that he once addressed a young lady as follows:--

"O come, Georgiana! the rose is full blown, The riches of Flora are lavishly strown: The air is all softness and crystal the streams, The west is resplendently clothèd in beams."

The strength of a rope may be but the strength of its weakest part; but poets are to be judged in their happiest hours, and in their greatest works.

The second period of Mr. Browning's poetry demands a different line of argument; for it is, in my judgment, folly to deny that he has of late years written a great deal which makes very difficult reading indeed. No doubt you may meet people who tell you that they read 'The Ring and the Book' for the first time without much mental effort; but you will do well not to believe them. These poems are difficult--they cannot help being so. What is 'The Ring and the Book'? A huge novel in twenty thousand lines--told after the method not of Scott but of Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail of every kind and description: you are let off nothing. As with a schoolboy's life at a large school, if he is to enjoy it at all, he must fling himself into it, and care intensely about everything--so the reader of 'The Ring and the Book' must be interested in everybody and everything, down to the fact that the eldest daughter of the counsel for the prosecution of Guido is eight years old on the very day he is writing his speech, and that he is going to have fried liver and parsley for his supper.

If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for the _style_, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times superb; and as for the _matter_, if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional--if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink from dissection--you will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great contribution to comparative anatomy or pathology.

But this sort of work tells upon style. Browning has, I think, fared better than some writers. To me, at all events, the step from 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' to 'The Ring and the Book' is not so marked as is the _mauvais pas_ that lies between 'Amos Barton' and 'Daniel Deronda.' But difficulty is not obscurity. One task is more difficult than another. The angles at the base of the isosceles triangles are apt to get mixed, and to confuse us all--man and woman alike. 'Prince Hohenstiel' something or another is a very difficult poem, not only to pronounce but to read; but if a poet chooses as his subject Napoleon III.--in whom the cad, the coward, the idealist, and the sensualist were inextricably mixed--and purports to make him unbosom himself over a bottle of Gladstone claret in a tavern at Leicester Square, you cannot expect that the product should belong to the same class of poetry as Mr. Coventry Patmore's admirable 'Angel in the House.'

It is the method that is difficult. Take the husband in 'The Ring and the Book.' Mr. Browning remorselessly hunts him down, tracks him to the last recesses of his mind, and there bids him stand and deliver. He describes love, not only broken but breaking; hate in its germ; doubt at its birth. These are difficult things to do either in poetry or prose, and people with easy, flowing Addisonian or Tennysonian styles cannot do them.

I seem to overhear a still, small voice asking, But are they worth doing? or at all events, is it the province of art to do them? The question ought not to be asked. It is heretical, being contrary to the whole direction of the latter half of this century. The chains binding us to the rocks of realism are faster riveted every day; and the Perseus who is destined to cut them is, I expect, some mischievous little boy at a Board-school. But as the question has been asked, I will own that sometimes, even when deepest in works of this, the now orthodox school, I have been harassed by distressing doubts whether after all this enormous labor is not in vain; and wearied by the effort, overloaded by the detail, bewildered by the argument, and sickened by the pitiless dissection of character and motive, have been tempted to cry aloud, quoting--or rather, in the agony of the moment, misquoting--Coleridge:--

"Simplicity--thou better name Than all the family of Fame."

But this ebullition of feeling is childish and even sinful. We must take our poets as we do our meals--as they are served up to us. Indeed, you may, if full of courage, give a cook notice, but not the time-spirit who makes our poets. We may be sure--to appropriate an idea of the late Sir James Stephen--that if Robert Browning had lived in the sixteenth century, he would not have written a poem like 'The Ring and the Book'; and if Edmund Spenser had lived in the nineteenth century he would not have written a poem like the 'Faerie Queene.'

It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. Browning's later method and style for possessing difficulties and intricacies which are inherent to it. The method at all events has an interest of its own, a strength of its own, a grandeur of its own. If you do not like it you must leave it alone. You are fond, you say, of romantic poetry; well, then, take down your Spenser and qualify yourself to join "the small transfigured band" of those who are able to take their Bible-oaths they have read their 'Faerie Queene' all through. The company, though small, is delightful, and you will have plenty to talk about without abusing Browning, who probably knows his Spenser better than you do. Realism will not for ever dominate the world of letters and art--the fashion of all things passeth away--but it has already earned a great place: it has written books, composed poems, painted pictures, all stamped with that "greatness" which, despite fluctuations, nay, even reversals of taste and opinion, means immortality.

But against Mr. Browning's later poems it is sometimes alleged that their meaning is obscure because their grammar is bad. A cynic was once heard to observe with reference to that noble poem 'The Grammarian's Funeral,' that it was a pity the talented author had ever since allowed himself to remain under the delusion that he had not only buried the grammarian, but his grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning has some provoking ways, and is something too much of a verbal acrobat. Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six generations of Cambridge undergraduates, reminds us:--

He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech, As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur."

It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his _i_'s and _o_'s, but we believe we cannot be corrected when we say that Browning is a poet whose grammar will bear scholastic investigation better than that of most of Apollo's children.

A word about 'Sordello.' One half of 'Sordello,' and that, with Mr. Browning's usual ill-luck, the first half, is undoubtedly obscure. It is as difficult to read as 'Endymion' or the 'Revolt of Islam,' and for the same reason--the author's lack of experience in the art of composition. We have all heard of the young architect who forgot to put a staircase in his house, which contained fine rooms, but no way of getting into them. 'Sordello' is a poem without a staircase. The author, still in his twenties, essayed a high thing. For his subject--

"He singled out Sordello compassed murkily about With ravage of six long sad hundred years.'"

He partially failed; and the British public, with its accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has never ceased girding at him because forty-two years ago he published at his own charges a little book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them as were then able to read could not understand.

End of Volume IV.