1 10 26 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/916b0db2b8afd4a7934ab45c172655ca.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ays1C8421conJFQNFn81f4AFfHHwB6QlEhmE9scqZl3Os3N08qrPEq%7EVVpAtCfFILZRSmu3mZQbBnujk4o3t%7EaDPKYQB3Jy--MA6G6TYpGmdMn59jDSqbgKJ3Qsx6mhgkc2bTWSfNc2lNpqKFToMr8DaquCfvar-llKMjMWE-dv-B65Bw1dKwr-E9-c-nudB2heA1otqXjhLoj5e8zMC1d%7E1Gr4VYe7K1UBdE6Aw4C-dV7-MG%7E%7EufCJR3eTg8SddMQL4%7EqTsWhxfIc423RoaTGUrUTXirC5xN7L-LSrD8UCAo0YuGtSYEbrciPPasgN0SwbzsZMpcUG-5B%7EKDXoZGg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a5e3b59fa24c2be7e96b3ebec36ed244 PDF Text Text ESSAYS ON CHAUCER, His Words and Works. PART II. III. Practica Chilindri : or, The Working of the Cylinder, by John Hoveden. Edited, with a Translation, by Edmund Brock. IV. The use of final -e in Early English, and especially in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By Professor Joseph Payne. V. Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Chaucer. “ English Poets,” ed. 1863. From her VI. Specimen of a critical edition of Chaucer’s Compleynte to Fite, with the Genealogy of its Manuscripts. By Prof. BernHARd Ten-Brink, PUBLISHED FOR THE CHAUCER SOCIETY BY N. TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL, �Smnir 9. JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. �III. PRACTICA CHILINDRI: OR THE WORKING OF THE CYLINDER, BY JOHN HOVEDEN. EDITED WITH A TRANSLATION BY Edmund Brock ��57 PREFACE. By the kindness of Mr Frederick Norgate, we are now able to lay before the reader another short treatise on the cylinder. How it was found, and what it contains, may be learnt from the following notice, which we reprint from Notes and Queries, 4th Series, III, June 12, 1869. “CHILENDBE: (‘ SCHIPMANNES TALE, 206.’) "We have to thank the Chaucer Society for the publica­ tion of a very early tract on the ‘ Chilindre,’ removing to a great extent the difficulty about the meaning of this word, which for ages has puzzled all the commentators on the Canterbury Tales. This little tract is devoted almost exclusively to information as to the construction of the in­ strument in question, with only a few brief rules at the end for its use. I have recently been so fortunate as to discover another MS. which may be a useful and interest­ ing supplement to that which Mr Brock has edited for the above-named society; and before describing its contents, let me mention the strange way in which I found it. Looking through the Index of Authors at the end of Ayscough’s Catalogue of the Sloane MSS. (not thinking at the time of Chaucer or anything relating to him), my attention was arrested by the name ‘ Chilander,’ and on turning to the page referred to, I found Chilander noted as the author of a work entitled Practica Astrologorum, fyc. Hereupon I determined on taking the first opportunity of examining the MS. itself, and having done so, to my surprise I found, instead of Practica Astrologorum, with Chilander for its author, a tract entitled Practica Cliilindri secundum magistrum Johannem Astrologum 1 The MS. is of the beginning of the fourteenth century, neatly written (on vellum), and differs from that which the Chaucer Society has brought to �58 PREFACE. light, inasmuch as it is devoted exclusively to instructions for using the instrument. “ The whole is comprised in six pages, closely written, and in a small but neat hand. The titles of the several chapters are as follows1:— 1. Primum capitulum est de horis diei artificialis inueniendis. 2. De gradu solis inueniendo. 3. De altitudine solis et lune, et vtrum fuerit ante meridiem uel post. 4. De linea meridiei inuenienda et oriente et occidente. 5. Quid sit vmbra versa, quid extensa. 6. De punctis vmbre verse et extense similiter. 7. De altitudine rerum per vmbram uersam. 8. De declinacione solis omni die, et gradu eius per declinacionem inueniendo, et altitudine eius omni hora anni. 9. De latitudine omnis regionis inuenienda. 10. De inuenienda quantitate circuitus tocius orbis et spissitudine eius. “ The colophon is as follows :— ‘ Explicit practica chilindri Magistri Iohannis de Houeden astrologi.’ Fred. Norgate. “ Henrietta Street, Covent Garden." This tract, with the former, will give a tolerably clear idea of the nature and uses of the instrument; but there is much more on the subject which we have no space to print, and we must therefore be content with giving the reader references, which will enable those who care to read more about the cylinder, to do so. 1. Compositio horologiorum, in piano, muro, truncis, anulo, con[uexo], concauo, cylindro & uarijs quadrantibus, cum signorum zodiaci & diuersarum horarum inscriptionibus : autore Sebast. Munstero. Basileae, 1531. Composi­ tio cylindri, hoc est, trunci columnaris. Caput xxxix. 2. Horologiographia, post priorem seditionem per Se­ bast. Munsterum recognita, & plurimum aucta atqwe locupletata, adiectis multis nouis descriptionibus & figuris, in piano, concauo, conuexo, erecta superficie &c. Basileae. 1533. Compositio cylindri, hoc est, trunci columnaris. Caput xliii. 1 The table is printed according to the MS, from which Mr Norgate’s copy deviates in one or two cases. �PREFACE. 59 3. Set / Dber Sonnen vpren / $imftft$e Sefdjvetfcung / wt'e btefelfcigen nad) mantyerley aprt an bte SDlauren / Sffienbte / (Bme / fie fepen Stgenbe / Sluffgertc^fet / @d;reg / audf auff S'lonbe I Slu^gepolte vnb fonft alter $anbt ^nftrument / Sluf^uretffen / 2)urc^ Sebafitanum STOunfter. 23afel, 1579. 2Ste man etnen timber @ircu* Iteren vnb jurtc^ten foil. ®ad rrrvj. daptlel 4. Dialogo della descrittione teorica et pratica de gli horologi solari. Di Gio: Batt. Vimercato Milanese. In Ferrara, per Valente Panizza Mantouano Stampator Ducale. 1565. In gual modo per pratica operatione si possono fabricare i Cilindri. Capitolo xi. 5. Gnomonice Andrese Schoneri Noribergensis, hoc est: de descriptionibils horologiorum sciotericorum omnis generis, proiectionibns circulorum Sphaericorum ad superficies, cum planas, turn conuexas concauasqwe, Sphsericas, Cylindricas, ac Conicas : Item delineationibus quadrantum, annulorum, &c. Libri tres. Noribergse, 1562. The second book treats of spherical, cylindrical, and conical dials. 6. Io. Baptistae Benedicti Patritij Veneti Philosophi de Gnomonum umbrarumqwe solarium usu liber. Augustae Taurinorum. 1574. De examinations pensilium horologio­ rum, § de nouo horologio circulari. Cap. lxxviii. 7. Horarii Cylindrini Canones, 1515. Eeprinted in Opera Mathematica Ioannis Schoneri, fol. Norinbergae, 1551. This, like Hoveden’s treatise, consists of rules for using the cylinder. 8. Histoire de l’Astronomie du Moyen Age par M. Delambre, Paris. 1819, 4to. The third book, entitled Gnomonique, gives an account of the cylindrical dial (padran cylindrique') of the Arabians as treated of by Aboul-Hhasan (pp. 517—520), and of Sebastian Munster’s (pp. 597, 598). There is a large cut of the cylinder on page 166 of Munster’s Compositio Horologiorum, page 269 of his Horologiographia, and page 125 of Der Horologien Beschreibung; a smaller one on the title-page and page 131 of Horologiographia. In Vimercato’s treatise, page 165, is a cut show­ ing the separate parts of the cylinder. In Cotton MS. Nero C ix, leaves 195—226, we find eight Latin poems by John Hoveden, chaplain of Queen Eleanor, mother of King Edward. There can be little doubt that this writer is the same as the author of the present treatise. We here give the beginnings and endings of these poems. �60 PREFACE. I. Incipit meditacio Iohan?iis de houedene, clerici regine anglie, matris regis Edwardi/ de natiuitate, passione, et resurreccione domini saluatoris edita, ut legentis affeccio in christi amore profici[a]t et celerius accendatur / hoc opus sic incipzt: Aue verbum ens in principi'o. & sic finitur. & uoluzt editor quod liber medffa&onis illius philomena uocaretur. Begins : Ave uerbum ens in principio, Caro factum pudoris gremio; Fac quod fragreif presens laudaczo. Ends : Melos tzfei sit et laudacio, Salus, honor, et iubilacio, Letus amor lotus in lilio, Qui es verbum ens in principio. Explicit libellus rigtmichus1 qui philomena uocatur, que meditacio est de natiuitate, passione, et resurrecti’one, ad honorem domini noshi iesu christi saluatoris edita, a Iohanne de houedene, clerico Alianore regine anglie, matris edwardi regis anglie. II. Incipiunt .xv. gaudia virgznis gloriose, edita a Magistro Iohanne houedene Clerico. Begins : Virgo vincens vernancia Carnis pudore lilia. Ends : Et nocteni lianc excuciens, Ducas ad portum pahie. Amen. Expliciunt .15. gaudia beate virgznis, edita ritmice2 ex dictamine Iohannis de Houedene. III. Hie scribitnr meditacio Iohannis de Honedene, edita ad honorem domini saluatoris, et ut legentes earn proficiant .in amore diuino: et vocatur hec meditacio cantica .50. quod in .50. canticis continetur. The first canticle begins : In laude nunc wpirituo omnis exultet, Et leta mens do?nini laude sustollat. The last one ends : Et ut nouella cantica cumulentur, In laude nunc spmYuc omnis exultet. Amen. Explicit meditacio dicta cantica 50*?, edita a Iohanne de Houedene ad honorem domini saluatoris. IV. In honore domini saluatoris incipit meditacio, edita a Iohanne de houedene, clerico Alianore regine anglie, matr/s regis Edwardi / faciens mencionem de saluatoris redolentissima passione; et amoris christi suaue??i inducit affecturn. Hec meditacio uocatur cythara eo quod verbzs amoriferis, 1 So in MS. 2 MS. ricunce. �PREFACE. 61 qnaszquibwsdam cordis musice, ad delectacionemspmTualem legentes inuitat. Begins : I mi vena du'lcedinis, Proles pudica numinis, Verbum ens in principio, Fructns intacte virginis. Ends : Verbum ens in principio, Et des ut gost has semitas Nos foueat et felicitas In celebri coliegio. Amen. Explicit laus de domino saluatore uel meditacio que cythara nominator, a Iohanne de Houedene, edita ut legent is affectus in amore diuino proficiat et celerius accendator. V. Incipiunt 50^ salutaczones beafe virgwiis, quibns inseritor memoria domznice passionis, edita. a lohanne de houedene ad honorem virginis matris, & laudem domzni saluatoris. Begins : Ave stella maris, Virgo singularis, Vernans lilio. Ends : Fer michi remedia, Vt in luce qua lustraris Michi dones gaudia. Amen. Expliciunt 50^ salutaciones beate marie, edite a Iohanne de Houedene. VI. Incipit laus de beata virgine,. que uiola uocatur, edita a Iohanne de Houedene. Begins : Maria stella maris, Fax sum mi luminaris, Kegina singularis. Ends : Penas mittigatura, Assis in die dura, Maria virgo pura. Explicit uiola beate virginis, a Iohanne de Houedene edita. VII. Incipit lira extollens virginem gloriosam. Begins : 0 qui fontem gracie Captiuis regeneras, Celos endelichie.1 Ends ; Quos expiat sic puniat, Vt vices quas variat, i Alternis sic uniat, ne lira deliret. Explicit lira NLagistri Iohannis houedene. So in MS. �62 PREFACE. VIII. Canticu?n amoris quod composuit Iohannes de Houedene. Begins : Princeps pacis, proles puerpere, Hijs te precor labris illabere, Vt sincere possim disserere Laudem tuam, et letus legere. End lost from : Eius claui punctura perea?n, Cum superstes magis inteream. There is a copy of the first of these poems in the Lambath MS. 410, and another in Harleian MS. 985 with the heading : Incipit tractates metricus N. de lion dene, de processu cliristi & redempcfonis nostre, qui aliter dicitur philomena. At the end are merely these words : Explicit liber q?zi uocatwr philomena. It appears from Nasmith’s Catalogue that there is a French version of the poem in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 471, intitled, Li rossignol, ou la pensee Iohan de Hovedene, clerc la roine d’Engleterre, mere le roi Edward de la neissance et de la mort et du relievement et de 1’ascension Iesu Crist et de l’assumpcion notre dame. It is perhaps worthy of mention that Hoveden’s Plulo''trte.na has long been confounded by the catalogue-writers with a wholly different composition, by another writer, and beginning: Philomena preuia temporis ameni, Que recessum nuncians i??zbris atgrne ceni, Dum demulces animos tuo cantu leni, Auis predulcissima, ad me queso veni. End : Quicquid tamen alij dicant, frafer care, Istam novam martirem libens imitare; Cumque talis fueris, deum deprecare Vt nos cantus martiris faciat cantare. Amen. Copies of this poem are contained in Cotton MS. Cleo­ patra A xii., Harleian MS. 3766, and Royal MS. 8 G vi., from the first of which the above lines are taken. A late hand has written the following mistaken heading over it in the Cotton MS.: philomela Canticum per Ioannem de Houedene Capellanum Alienorse Reginse matris Ed. primi. �PREFACE. 63 The Laud MS. 368 contains both these poems; the latter has the following heading: Incipit meditaczo frafris Iohawzis de peccham, qwondam cantuarze archiepz'scojh, de ordine frafrum minorww, que Nocatur philomena. The real author, however, appears to be Giovanni Fidanza, better known as Cardinal Bonaventura. The whole poem, with some additional lines at the end, is printed in his works, Mayence, 1609, vol. 6, p. 424, and Venice, 1751-56, vol. 13, p. 338. The English poem of The Nyghtyngale in Cotton MS. Caligula A ii., leaves 59-64, has no con­ nection with Hoveden’s Philomena, but is an imitation of Bonaventura’s poem. According to Bale’s account,1 which is followed by Pits2 and Tanner,3 John Hoveden was a native of London, doc­ tor of divinity, and chaplain of Queen Eleanor, but after­ wards parish priest at Hoveden, where he died in the year 1275. Besides the poems already mentioned, Bale, Pits, and Tanner ascribe to him the work called Speculum Laicorum ; 4 but this could not have been written till long after Hoveden’s death, since it contains mention of Henry the IVth’s reign.5 1 Bale, v. 79. 2 Pitseus, p. 356. 3 Tanner, under Hocedenus 4 See Royal MS. 7 C xv and Oxford Univ. MSS. 29 and 36. 5 In chapter 36. �64 PRACTICA CHILINDRI. [Sloane MS 1620, leaf 2.] PRACTICA CHILINDRI SEOHMD DM MAGISTRITM [iOHANNEm]1 [aJstrologum. 1. Primnm capz'bdwm ost de horis diei artificiab's inueniendis. 2. De gradu sob's inueniendo. 3. De altitudine sobs et lune, et vtrum fuerit anfe meridiem uel post 4. De linea meridiei inuenienda et oriente et, occide??te. 5. (6.)2 Qzdd sit vmbra versa, (5) qnid extensa. 6. (7.) De punctis vmbre verse, et extense similiter. 7. (8.) De altifojtb'ne rerzzm per vmbram uersam. 8. (9.) De declinaczone sob's omni die, et gradueiwsper decb’nocionem inueniendo, (10) et eMitudioo eius omni hora anni. 9. (11.) De latitudine omnis regionis inuenienda. 10. (12.) De inuefnjienda qnanti/ate circuitns tociws orbis et -spissitudine eius. DE HORIS INUENIENDIS. 1. Z^vm volueris scire horas diei, verte stilum superiorem super mensem aut signuzn in quo fueris, et super partem que preteriit de ipso; cumqne hoc feceris, 1 Nearly obliterated. 2 The numbers in parentheses correspond to those which head the sections. �65 THE WORKING OF THE CYLINDER. THE WORKING OF THE CYLINDER ACCORDING TO MASTER JOHN, THE ASTROLOGER. 1. The first chapter is on finding the hours of the artificial day. 2. On finding the sun’s degree. 3. On the altitude of the sun and of the moon; and whether it is before midday or after. 4. On finding the meridian line, and the east and the west. 6. What umbra versa is, (5) and what umbra extensa. 7. On the points of the umbra versa, and likewise of the umbra extensa. 8. On (finding) the height of objects by the umbra versa.. 9. On (finding) the sun’s declination on any day, and on finding his degree by the declination; (10) and on (finding) his altitude at any hour of the year. 11. On finding the latitude of any region. 12. On finding the extent of the circumference of the whole world, and its thickness. 1. ON FINDING THE HOURS. When you wish to know the hours of the day, turn the upper style1 over the month or sign in which you are, and over the part of it which is gone by; and when you have 1 Only one style is mentioned in the former treatise. �66 . PRACTICA CH1LJNDRI. vertes etiam inferiorezzz stiluzzz in opposituzzz stili szzperioris, et erit izzstrumezztum disposituzzz ad horas sumendas. Cumqzze volueris horas sumere, suspende chilindruzzz pez* filuzzz suuzzz ad solezzz, mouezzdo ipszzm chilindruzzz hue et illuc donee vrnbra superioris stili super chilizzdruzzz eqzzidistazzter longitudzzzi eius ceciderit; et ad qzzamczzzzzqzze horazzz peruenerit vmbra stili, ipsa est hora diei pertransita. Qzzod si ceciderit finis vmbre inter duas horas, tuzzc apparebit etiam pars hore in qua fueris, secundum quod plus uel minzzs occupauerit vmhra de ipso spacz'o qzzod est inter duas lineas horarzzzzz. Est eniro. hora spacium [cojntentuzzz inter duas lineas horarzzzzz; ipse autezzz linee szzzzt fines horarzzzzz, DE GRADU SOLIS. 2. /~^vm volueris scire in quo signo fuerit sol, et in’ quoto gradu eizze, eqzzabis solem ad meridiem diei in quo volueris hoc scire, siczz£ in lecczonibz/s tabzzlarzzzzz docetzzr, et addes ei motuzzz 8ue spere, et haftebis graduzzz solz's quesituzzz. Qzzod si volueris hoc ipszzm leuizzs scire, intra cum die mezzsis in quo fueris izz aliqzzam 4 tabzzlarzzzzz, seczzzzdzzm qzzod fuerit annzzs bissextilis uel distans ab eo ; que qzzidezzz tabzzle izztitulantzzr sic :—Tabzzle solis ad izzuezzienduzzzjlocuzzz eius in orbe decliui fixo. Et izz dirp.e.to diei cum quo intras statizzz inuenies graduzzz solzs equatum, et hoc est qzzod voluisti. Qzzod si nec has nec illas tabzzlas 1 That is, straight down the cylinder. 2 The following extract from Delamhre’s Astronomic du Moyen Age, Paris, 1819, pp. 73, 74, may serve to explain the motion of the eighth sphere :— “ Thebith ben Chorath.—Son malheureux systeme de la trepi­ dation infecta les tables astronomiques jusqu’a Tycho, qui, le premier, sut les en purger. Ce long succes n’a point empeche que son livre ne soit reste inedit; mais j’en ai trouve un exemplaire latin manuscrit, a la Bibliotheque du Boi, n° 7195. Ce traite a pour titre Thebith ben Chorath de motu octaves Spheres......... “ Il imagine une ecliptique fixe, qui coupe l’equateur fixe dana les deux points equinoxiaux, sous un angle de 23° 33', et une eclip­ tique mobile, attachee par deux points diametralement opposes a deux petits cercles, qui ont pour centres les deux points equinoxiaux �67 ON THE SUN’S DEGREE. done this, turn also the lower style into the place opposite the upper style, and the instrument will be set in order for taking the hours. And when you wish to take the hours, suspend the cylinder by its string against the sun, moving it to and fro, until the shadow of the upper style falls on the cylinder parallel to its length,1 and whatever hour the shadow of the style reaches, the same is the (last) past hour of the day. But if the end of the shadow falls be­ tween two hours, then will appear also the part of the hour in which you are, according as the shadow occupies more or less of that space which is between the two hour-lines. For the space contained between two hour-lines is an hour; but the lines themselves are the ends of the hours. 2. ON THE sun’s DEGREE. ' When you wish to know in what sign the sun is, and in what degree thereof, you must adjust (?) the sun to the noon of the day on which you wish to know this, as it is taught in the readings of the tables, and add to it the motion of the eighth sphere,2 and you will have the sun’s degree which you have sought. But if you wish to know the same more easily, enter with the day of the month in which you are into one of the four tables according as it is leap-year or distant from it. These tables are thus en­ titled :—Tables of the sun for finding his place in the fixed ecliptic, and in a line -with the day with which you enter de l’ecliptique fixe, et dont le rayon est de 4° 18' 43/z. Ces points de l’ecliptique tournent sur la circonference des deux petits cercles opposes; l’ecliptique mobile s’eleve done et s’abaisse alternativement sur l’ecliptique fixe ; les points equinoxiaux avancent ou retrogradent d’une quantite qui peut aller a 10° 45z. Ce mouve­ ment est commun a tous les astres ; ce mouvement est celui de la huitieme sphere, et il s’appelle mouvement d’acces ou de reces. Le lieu de la plus grande declinaison du Soleil change done continuellement, puisqu’il est toujours a 90° de l’une et l’autre intersections de l’ecliptique mobile avec l’equateur fixe. La plus grande decli­ naison est done tantot dans les Gemeaux et tantot dans le Cancer.” For Thebit’s treatise see Harleian MS 13, leaf 117. Incipiif thehit de motu octaue spere. Or Harleian MS 3647, leaf 88, col. 2, incipit libfr tebith bewcorat de motu octave spere. �68 PRACTICA CHILINDRI. habueris, et volueris [leaf 2, bk] aliter querere gradum solis [a]ut fere, scito qnod secwndnm compotistas xv. kalendas cuiuslibet mensis ingreditur sol nouu?n signum, sicn^ patet in kalendario. Considera ergo qnot dies transierint de mense i?z qwo fueris, et adde supe?’ eos qnindecim dies, et serua eos. Computabis ergo ab inicio signi, in qno fuerit sol, totidem gradus, et ubi finitzzs fuerit nu?nerns, ip.se est gradus solis quern queris. Qwod si nu??ze?7zs tuus excesserit xxx., tot gradus qwot excedit xxx. perambulauit sol de signo seq-"^ 0 si Deus voluerit. DE ALTIT UDINE SOLIS. 3. ZA vod si altitudinem sohs seu lune placuerit inuestiAv gare, verte stilum sn^eriorem super gradus chilindri, et stilum inferiore?n in oppositum ei-us semper; et hoc sit tz&i generale, ut uersus qwamcunqwe partem chilindri verteris stilum snperiorem, semper vertas stilum inferiorem in partem ei oppositam. Post hec opponas instrnmentmn. soli, et ad qwemcunqne gradum peruenerit vmbra, ipsa est altitudo solis, seu lune, si feceris de luna, in eadem bora. Qnod si volueris scire si fuerit ante meridiem uel post, aspice snper qnot gradns ceciderit vmbra, et expectans paulisper, iterato sumes altitudinem sobs; epuod si creuerit vmbi’a, tunc est ante meridiem. Simz'k/er qnog'we scies de luna. Et per hoc ipsnm quod dzc/nm est, scies vtrum ipsa fuerit orientals 9, meridie uel occidental^; qnia dum vmbra crescit, est in parte orientali a meridie, dum uero decrescit, est in parte occidentis. o �ON THE ALTITUDE OF THE SUN. 69 you will immediately find the sun’s degree rectified, and this is what you desired. If, however, you have neither of these tables, and wish to seek, in another way, the sun’s degree or thereabouts, know that, according to the calcu­ lators, the sun enters a new sign on the 15 th before the kalends of every month, as appears in the calendar. Con­ sider, therefore, how many days of the month in which you are have passed, and add to them fifteen days, and keep them. Reckon then the same number of degrees from the beginning of the sign in which the sun is*?&p4, when the number is completed, the same is the sun’ • gree which you seek. But if your number exceeds 30, the sun has passed through as many degrees of the next sign as it (the number) exceeds 30, if God will. 3. ON THE ALTITUDE OF THE SUN. Now if it is your pleasure to investigate the altitude of the sun or of the moon, turn the upper style over the de­ grees of the cylinder, and the lower style always into the opposite place. And let this be a general rule, that to whichever part of the cylinder you turn the upper style you always turn the lower style to the part opposite to it. After that .hold up the instrument against the sun, and to whatever degree the shadow reaches, the same is the altitude of the sun; or of the moon, if you are deal­ ing with the moon, at that hour. But if you wish to know whether it is before midday, or after, see over how many degrees the shadow falls, and having waited a little time, take the sun’s altitude again, and if the shadow has increased, then it is before midday. In like manner you will know also of the moon. And by what has been said you shall know whether she is on the east of the meridian or on the west; for while the shadow increases, she is on the eastern side of the meridian, but while it decreases, she is on the western side. CH. ESSAYS. F �70 RRACTICA CHXLINDRI. DE LINEA MERIDIEI. 4. Z~\ vod si volueris scire lineam meridiei per hoc instrwmentom, fiat circizlws in swperficie aliqwa preparata, eqizidistanter orizonti, cuiwscunqzie magnitudes volueris, non sit tamen nimis paruus; deinde sumes altitudinem soli's diligentissime, et serua earn; et suspended etiam in eaAem bora filum vnum cum aliqwo ponderoso in directo iam fetch circwli, ita u.t vmbra eins cadat omnino super centrum circuli, et attingat circumferenciam in parte opposita soli; notabisque contactum vmbre in circumferencia, et post hoc expectabis donee iterato post meridiem fiat sol in prius accepta altitudine, notabisque etiam [leafs; tunc vmbram fili super centrum ut prius transeuntem notabi's, dico, contactum eius in circumferencia in opposito soli's. Deinde diuide arcum qizi est inter duas notas vmbre per equedia, et notam iizprimes, coniungesque earn cum centro, perficiens diametrum circuli, et hoc diametrum erit linea meridiei. Quadrabis cpuoque circulum ipsum per diametra, et ha&ebis lineam orientis et occidentis, ut apparet in isto circulo. Sic etiam inuenies omnes partes orizontis, si Dews voluerit. Et nota quod hec consideracio verior et leuior est quam ilia que fit per erecci'onem stilj ortogonalis in circulo, quia vix uel nuncquam possi? ita ortogonaliter erigi, sicuZ perpendiculum dummorZo pendeat inmobiliter. SeeZ hec consideracz'o verissima erit, si sumatur in solsticialibus diebws, et hoc anZequam sol ascendat multum in ilia die. Nota quod a. et b. sunt note vmbre anta meridiem et posi ad eandern altitudinem sold ; et mediuzn inter a. et b. est meridies. Occident �ON THE MERIDIAN LINE. 4. 71 ON THE MERIDIAN LINE. And if you wish to know the meridian line oy means of this instrument, let a circle he made, of whatever size you will, only let it not he too small, on some plane pre­ pared (for the purpose) parallel with the horizon. Then take the sun’s altitude very accurately, and keep it; and also at the same hour hang, over the circle already made, a thread with something heavy (on it), so that its shadow falls exactly upon the centre of the circle and reaches the circumference on the side opposite to the sun; and mark the (point of) contact of the shadow with the circumference, and after this wait until the sun again arrives at the before-, taken altitude after midday; and mark then also the shadow of the thread passing as before across the centre, mark, I say, its point of contact with the circumference opposite to the sun. Then divide the arc which is between the two shadow-marks into equal parts, and impress a mark. Join it with the centre, and complete the diameter of the circle. This diameter will be the meridian line. ■Quarter the circle itself by diameters,1 and you will have the line of east and west, as appears in this circle. Thus also you will find all parts of the horizon, if God will. Note that this observation is truer and easier than that which is made by raising a rectangular style in the circle, because it can with difficulty or never be raised as rectangularly as a plumb-line, provided it (viz. the plumb-line) hangs motion­ less. But the observation will be truest, if it be made on the solstitial days, and that before the sun rises high on that day. West �72 PRACTICA CHILINDRI. DE VMBRA EXTENSA. 5. nVTvnc dicendus est quia! sit vmbra versa, et quid 11 sit vmbra extensa. Igitur intelligamus superfi­ cies quanda??! equidistautem orizonti, et super hanc super-' ficies intelligamus aliquid ortogonaliter erectus, verbi gratia, palus rectus; huius pali sic erecti cadens vmbrrf in dzcZam superficiem (iicitur vmbra extensa. Est igitur vmbra extensa rei erecte ad superficiem orizontis perpendiculariter vmbra cadens iu eades szzperficie. DE VMBRA VERSA. 6. TTem intelligamus eande?n superficies quam prius, ei JL in ipsa aliquid perpendiculariter erectus, et ab illo sic erecto iutelligasus stilus ortogonalt'Zer prominentes, sicut sunt stili qui prominent in parietibus eccZesiarus ad horas sumendas; vmbra huius stili cadens super rem orto­ gonaliter erectas, equidistanter s[cilicet] longitudzni eiusdes rei, dicitur vmbra versa; equidistanter, dico, cadens, quia alite?' esset vmbra irregularis. Et huiusmodi vmbra cadit in chilindro. Hec auZes vmbra versa sesper crescit vsque ad meridies, et tunc, i[d est] in meridie, est maxisa. Econuerso est de vmbra extensa, quia ilia decrescit vsque ad meridie??t, et tunc fit minima. DE PUN0T1S VMBRE. vm volue?is scire omni hora quot puncta ha&ue?'it vmbra versa, verte stilus super puncta vmb/'e, et super quot puncta ceciderit vmbra, ipsa sunt puncta vmbre quesite. Quod si volue?-is [scire] vmbra?n extensa??! ad eandes altitudinem, diuide 144 pe?' [leafs&j puncta que habueris, et exibunt puncta vmbre extense in eades hora. Et si volueris scire quot status sunt i?i vmb?‘a, diuZde puncta que 7. �ON THE UMBRA. EXTENSA AND. THE. UMBRA ' VERSA. 5. ' ON THE UMBRA EXTENSA. ' 73 - Now we must explain, -what is the umbra versa, and what the umbra extensa. Therefore let us conceive some plane parallel to the horizon, and on this plane let us con­ ceive something raised at right angles, for instance, a straight stake; the shadow of this stake so raised, falling on the said plane, is called umbra extensa. The umbra extensa is, therefore, the shadow of an object which is raised perpendicularly to the plane of the horizon, falling on the same plane. 6. ON THE UMBRA VERSA. Also let us conceive the same plane as before, and upon it something raised perpendicularly; and from the latter so raised let us conceive a style jutting out at a right angle, like the styles which jut out from the walls of churches for taking the hours; the shadow of this style falling upon the object raised at right angles, parallel, of course, to the length of the same object,1 is called umbra versa—falling parallel, I say, because otherwise the shadow would be irregular. And such a shadow falls on the cylinder. Now this umbra versa always increases until midday, and then, that is at midday, it is greatest; the contrary is the case with the umbra extensa, for that de­ creases until midday, and then becomes least. 7. ON THE POINTS OF THE SHADOW. 'When you wish to know how many points the umbra versa has at any hour, turn the style over the points of the shadow; and. as many points as the shadow falls over, the same are the required points of the shadow. But if you wish to know the umbra extensa at the same altitude, divide 144 by the points which you have, and the result will be the points of the umbra extensa at the same hour. 1 That is, straight down it.' �74 TRACTICA CHILINDRI. ha&ueris per 12, et exz'bunt states. Quod si non haZ>u[er]is 12 puzzcta, uide quota pars sint puncta de 12, et tota pars erunt puncta que haftuez’is ad vnuzn statuzn. Est autezn1 status tota longitudo cuzuslibe^ rei, et quia ozzzzzem rem quo ad vmbrazn eius sumendam diuz’dimzzs in 12 partes eqwales, propterea 12 puncta vmbre faciunt vnuzn statuzn; est eniin quodlihet punctuzn longitudznis oznnis eqwale duodecimo parti2 rei cuius est vmbra. DE ALTITUDINE RERIZM PER VMBRAAf. 8. Z~^vm volueris scire altitudinem turris per vmbrazzz V.7 versazzz que cadit in chilindro, aut altitudinem alicuz'us rei erecte, cum hoc, inquam, volueris, verte stiluzzz super puncta uznbre, et vide super quot puncta ceciderit vmbra. Deinde considera izz qua pz’oporczone se ha Sent puncta uzzzbre in chilindro ad stiluzzz, izz eadezzz proporczone se ha&et oznnis res erecta ad suazzz uzzzbrazn, hoc est, si puncta uznbre in chilindro fuerint sex, stilus duplus est ad vmbrazn, et tunc in eadezn hora erit oznnis uznbz-a extensa dupla ad suam rein ; et si uzzzbra in chilindro fuerit dupla ad stiluzn, hoc est, cum vmbra fuerit 24 punctoruzn, erzt oznnis res erecta dupla ad suazn uznbrazn ; et sic semper in qua proporczone se haZzet uznbra ‘chilindri ad stiluzzz, in eadezn proporczozze se ha Set econtrario omnis res erecta ad vmbrazzz suazzz extensazn, omnis res erecta, dico, que fecerit vmbrazn sub eadezzz solzs altiZuzfzne, in,ilia hora;.vel, si, nescieris proporczonem sumez-e, diuide 144 per puncta que ha&ueris, sicut dz’cbzm est, et exibit vmbra rei erecte que dzczYur extensa, vide ergo quot status .sint in ilia uznbra extensa, auZ quota fuerint puncta de 12, et haSebis quod voluisti. 1 Read, enim. The word vmbre is wrongly inserted after parti in the MS. �FINDING THE HEIGHT OF OBJECTS BY THE SHADOW. 75 And if you wish to know how many status are in the shadow, divide the points which you have by 12, and the status will be the result. And if you have not 12 points, see what part of 12 the points are, and the points which you have will be that part of one status. For a status is the whole length of any object; and because we divide every object into 12 equal parts whereby to take its shadow, therefore 12 points of the shadow make one status; for every point is equal to a twelfth part of the whole length of the object, whose the shadow is. 8. on (finding) the height of objects by the shadow. When you wish to know the height of a tower by the umbra versa which falls on the cylinder, or the height of any upright object—I say, when you wish this, turn the style over the points of the shadow, and see over how many points the shadow falls. Then consider : what­ ever proportion the points of the shadow on the cylinder hold to the style, every upright object holds the same proportion to its shadow; that is, if the points of the shadow on the cylinder be six, the style is double of the shadow, and then at the same hour every umbra extensa will be double of its object; and if the shadow on the cylinder be double of the style, that is, when the shadow is of 24 points, every upright object will be double of its shadow; and so always, whatever proportion the shadow on the cylinder holds to the style, conversely every upright object holds the same proportion to its umbra extensa., every upright object, I say, which throws a shadow under the same altitude of the sun at that hour. Or, if you do not know how to take the proportion, divide 144 by the points which you have, as was said, and the result will be the shadow which is called extensa of the upright object; see, then, how many status are in that umbra extensa, or what part of 12 the points are, and you will have what you desired. �76 PRACTICA CHIL1NDRI. DE DECLINACIONE SOLIS. vm volueris scire declinaci'onem sobs omni die anni, scias umbram uersam Arietis in regione in qua fueris, i[d est], scias ad quem, gradum chihndri proueniat vmbra stili eius in meridie, cum fuerit sol in primo gradu Arietis, et hec est mbra Arietis in gradibns chilindri in ilia regione. Qno scito, sume vmbram meridiei per chilindrum qnocunyne die volueris scire declinacionem soli's, et vide super quot gradus chilindri ceciderit umbra, et quantum plus uel minns fuerit umbra ilia qnam vmbra Arietis, tanta erit declinacio solzs in meridie illins diei. Sed si umbra tua fuerit maior quarn vmbra Arietis, erit declinacio solis [leaf 4] septemtrionalz's ; si uero minor fuerit, erzt declinacio meridiana. Qnod si volueris scire gradum solis in ilia die per eins declinacionem, intra1 in tabnlam declinacionis solzs, et quere similem declinaci'onem ei quam inuenisti per chilindrum, et aliqnis 4 graduum quem in directo eins inueneris erit gradus sob's uel fere; et scies qnis erit gradus ex ilb’s 4, vt aspicias vtrum declinaci'o fuerit meridiana uel septemtrionab's. Qnod si fuerit meridiana, erit vnns de gradibns meridionalibas, et si fuerit declinacio septemtrionalz's, erit vnns de gradibns septemtrionalibiis; ha&ent autem omnes 4 gradus eqnidistantes ab eqninoctiali eandem declinaci'onem. Cum ergo sciueris quod fuerit vnns de gradibns septemtrionis seu meridiei, scies qnis duornzn fuerit gradus soli's, ut aspicias seqnenti die declinacionem per chilindrum, et si umbra fuerit maior qnam die precedent^ fueritqne declinacio meridiana, erit gradus ille a Capricorno in Ariete?n; et si umbra tails declinaci'onis fuerit minor, erit gradus ille a Libra in Capricornum; si uero umbra creuerit, fueritqne declinacio septemtrionalis, erit gradus ille ab Ariete in Cancruzn; si uero decreuerit, a Cancro in Libram. 9. 1 MS ‘ iuxZn.’ �ON THE DECLINATION OF THE SUN. 9. 77 ON THE DECLINATION OF THE SUN. When- you wish, to know the declination of the sun on any day in the year, know the urn,bra versa of Aries in the region in which you are, that is, know to what degree of the cylinder the shadow of its style reaches at midday, when the sun is in the first degree of Aries, and this is the shadow of Aries in the degrees of the cylinder in that region. That being known, take the midday shadow by the cylinder on whatever day you wish to know the de­ clination of the sun, and see over how many degrees of the cylinder the shadow falls, and the declination of the sun at noon of that day, will be as great as that shadow is greater or less than the shadow of Aries. But if your shadow is greater than the shadow of Aries, the sun’s de­ clination will be northern, but if it is less, the declination will be southern. And if you wish to know the sun’s de­ gree on that day by his declination, enter into the table of the sun’s declination, and seek a similar declination to that which you have found by the cylinder, and some one of the 4 degrees, which you find on a line with it will be the sun’s degree or nearly (so); and you shall know which will be the degree out of those 4, as you look whether the declination is southern or northern ; for if it be southern, it will be one of the southern degrees, and if the declina­ tion be northern, it will be one of the northern degrees. But all the 4 parallel degrees have the same declination from the equinoctial. When, therefore, you know that it is one of the northern degrees orcofi the southern, you shall know which of the two is the degree of the sun, as you observe the declination on the following day by the cylinder, and if the shadow be greater than on the preced­ ing day and the'declination be southern, the degree will be that from Capricorn towards Aries ; and if the shadow of such declination be less, ther degree will be that from Libra towards Capricorn; but if the shadow has increased and the declination is northern, the degree will be that from Aries towards Cancer; but- if it has decreased, from Cancer towards Libra. . ' �78 - PRACTICA CHILINDRI. DE ALTITUDINE SOLIS OMNI HORA ANNI. 10. IjlT si volueris scire altiinch'nem sob's que poterit -Li esse omni bora anni, vide quantum capiet quelibei hora anni de gradibns chilindri, mensurando per circinum aut per festucam, et ipsa erit altitudo sob's ad quamlibei horam anni in regione tua, s[cilicet], snj?er qnam figurantnr hore chilindri, si Deus voluerit. DE LATIT UDLVE REGIONIS. 11. Oil volueris scire latitudinem regionis ignote ad quam veneris, tunc vertes stilum super gradus altitudz'nis, et vide ad qnot gradus peruenerit vmbra. Quod si hoc feceris in die eqninoctiali, niinue gradus qnos habueris de 90, et residuuzn er it latitudo regionis. Quod si no?z feceris hoc in eqninoctio, vide per tabnlam decb'nacionis que fuerit declinacio solis in ipsa die. Quam declinacionem, si fuerit australis, adde snper susceptam altitudinem, et hafrebis altitudinem eqninoctialis in eadem regione ; et si declinacio fuerit septemtrionalis, niinue earn de accepta altiinciine, haSebisqne altitudinem eqninoctiab's in eadem regione. Haftita autem alti/nciine eqninoctialis, minuas ipsam semper de 90, et residuum er it latitudo regionis, que est distencia cenith ab eqninoctiali. DE QUANTITATE ORBIS TERRE. 12. Oil autem volueris scire quantitatem Deaf4,bk] cirKJj cuitns terre per chilindrum, verte stilum super gradus chilindri, et scias optime gradum solis et &eelinacionem eins, et serua earn. Cumqne hoc sciueris, sumas altitudinem sob's meridianam, et serua eam; post hec autem procedas directe uersus septemtrionem uel meridiem, donee altera die, absqne augmenta[ta] uel minorata interim �ON THE LATITUDE OF A REGION. 10. ON (finding) 79 THE ALTITUDE OF THE SUN AT ANY HOUR OF THE YEAR. And if you wish to -know the sun’s altitude, which may be at any hour of the year, see how much of the degrees of the cylinder any hour of the year will take, measuring with the compasses or with a rod, and the same will he the sun’s altitude at any hour of the year in your region, that is to say, (the region) upon which the hours of the cylinder are figured, if God will. 11. on (finding) the latitude of a region. If you wish to know the latitude of an unknown region to which you have come, then turn the style over the de­ grees of altitude, and see to how many degrees the shadow reaches. And if you do this on the equinoctial day, sub­ tract the degrees which you have from 90, and the re­ mainder will be the latitude of the region. But if you do this not at the equinox, see by the table of declination :what is the sun’s declination on the same day; add the declination, if it be southern, to the altitude you have taken, and you will have the altitude of the equinoctial in the same region; and if the declination be northern, sub­ tract it from the taken altitude, and you will have the altitude of the equinoctial in the same region. Moreover, the altitude of the equinoctial being had, subtract it always from 90, and the remainder will be the region’s latitude, which is the distance of the zenith from the equinoctial. 12. ON THE SIZE OF THE WORLD. If, moreover, you wish to know the extent of the earth’s circumference by the cylinder, turn the style over the degrees of the cylinder, and know most accurately the degree of the sun and his declination, and keep it. And when you know this, take the meridian altitude of the sun, and keep it. Then after this travel directly northward or southward, until on another day, without increase or de- �80 PRACTICA CHILINDRI. declinaczone, ascendent sol in gradibus chilindri plus vno gradu quam prizzs ascendent, plus dico, si processeris versus meridiem, uel minus, si processeris uersus septemtrionem, et iam pertransisti spaciuzn in terra quod subiacet vni gradui celi. Metire ergo illud, et vide quot miliaria sint in eo. Deinde multiplica, sfcilicet], miliaria illius spacij quod haSueris per 360, qui sunt gradus circuli, et tot miliaria scias esse in circuitu mundi. Quod si volueris scire spissitudinem mundi, diuide circuitum eius per tria et septimam partem vnius, eritque hoc quod exierit diametrum terre, et medietas eius erit quantitas que est a superdcie ad centrum eius, si Deus voluerit. De inueniendis autem ascendente et ceteris domibus per vmbram satis dictum est in lecczonibus tabularum, et idea de illis nichil ad presens. Et hec de practica chilindri sufficiant. Ex­ plicit. ■ Explicit practica chilindri Mag is tri Houeden astrologi. Iohannis de �ON THE SIZE OF THE WORLD. 81 crease of declination in the mean time, the sun has risen one degree more in the degrees of the cylinder than he rose before; more, I say, if you have travelled south­ ward, or less, if you have travelled northward; and now you have traversed on the earth the space which lies under one degree of the heaven. Measure it therefore, and see how many miles are in it. Then multiply, of course, the miles in that space which you have by 360, which are the degrees of a circle, and know that there are so many mi les in the circumference of the world. But if you wish to know the thickness of the world, divide its circumfer­ ence by three and the seventh part of one, and the result will be the diameter of the earth, and half of it will be the distance from its surface to the centre, if God will. But on finding the ascendant and the other houses by the shadow enough has been said in the readings of the tables, and therefore nothing of them at present. And let this suffice upon the working of the cylinder. End. Here ends Master John Hoveden, the astrologer’s, Working of the Cylinder. �‘4* I 'I �83 IV. THE USE OF FINAL -e IN EAELY ENGLISH, AND ESPECIALLY IN CHAUCER’S CANTERBURY TALES. BY JOSEPH PAYNE, ESQ. �84 SYNOPSIS OF THE ARGUMENTS. The two main arguments are :— I. That in the ordinary English speech of the 13th and 14th centuries there was no recognition of the formative, and little of th6 inflexional, -e, which, chiefly for orthoepical reasons, was appended to many words employed in written composition. II. That the phonetic recognition of final -e was confined to verse composition, and only occasionally adopted by license, under rhythmical exigency, and consequently not adopted at the end of the verse where it was unnecessary. These arguments are maintained, (1.) by considerations inherent in the nature of the case, (2.) by reference to the practice of AngloNorman and Early English writers, and are supported by illus­ trations derived (a.) from the laws which governed the formation of words in early French, (5.) from the manner in which Norman words are introduced into ancient Cornish poems, and (c.) from the usage of old Low German dialects (especially that of Mecklenburg), in respect to words identical (except as regards final -e) with Early English words. �85 THE USE OF FINAL -e IN EARLY ENGLISH, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE FINAL -e AT THE END OF THE VERSE IN CHAUCER’S CANTERBURY TALES. 1. STATEMENT OE THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. H' The question whether the final -e, which is so obvious a feature of numerous English words in the 13th and 14th centuries, was or was not frequently recognized as a factor of the rhythm in verse, is not the question which it is here proposed to discuss. It needs, in fact, no discussion, since there can be no doubt whatever on the point. The real question is what it meant, that is, whether it was an organic and essential element of the words in which it occurred, to be accounted for by reference to original formation, inflexion, &c., or whether it was, for the most part, an inorganic orthoepic adjunct of the spelling, and only exceptionally performed any organic function. If the former hypothesis is true, the -e was recognized in the rhythm because it was recognized in ordinary parlance as a necessary part of the pronunciation of the word, and the instances in which it was silent were excep­ tional and irregular. If the latter is true, the instances in which it was silent represent the regular pronunciation of the words, and those in which it is sounded an excep­ tional pronunciation, allowed by the fashion of the times in verse composition. It is a consequence, moreover, of the former theory that the -e, being by assumption a neces­ sary organic part of the word, ought to be sounded even where, as in the case of the final syllable of the verse, it is CH. ESSAYS. G �86 THE USE OF FINAL -e not required by the rhythm. By the latter theory the -e of the final rhyme, being generally an inorganic element of the orthography, not recognized in the ordinary pro­ nunciation and not required by the rhythm, was (with rare exceptions, such as Rome—--to me, sothe—to the, &c., in the Canterbury Tales and elsewhere) silent. These theories are obviously inconsistent with each other, the exceptions of the one being the rule of the other, and vice versa. The former is that adopted by Tyrwhitt, Guest, Gesenius, Child, Craik, Ellis, Morris, and Skeat; the latter is that maintained by the present writer, supported to some extent by the authority of the late Mr Richard Price. In anticipation of the full discussion of the various points involved, it may be here briefly remarked, that the former theory requires us to assume that such words as schame, veyne, sake, space, rose, joie, vie, sonne, witte, presse, were in ordinary parlance pronounced as scha-me, vey-ne, ro-se, joi-e, son-ne, wit-te, presse; moreover, that corage, nature, were pronounced as cora-ge, natu-re, and curteisie, hethenesse, as cwrfezsz-e, hethenesse, and that the recognition of the -e in verse as a factor of the rhythm was required to represent the true pronunciation. The second theory, on the other hand, assumes that schame, veyne, seke, joie, witte, nature, curteisie, &c., conventionally represent scham, veyn, selc, joi, wit, natur, curteisi, as the ordinary pronunciation of the words, and that the recogni­ tion of the -e as significant, was a rhythmical license. By way of further illustration of the difference between the two theories, it may be noted that in such verses as these: Enbrouded was he, as it were a mede—C. T. v. 89. Ful wel sche sang the servise devyne—ib. v. 122; the first theory requires mede and devyne to be pro­ nounced me-de, devy-ne; the second, regarding mede (== A.S. med) and devyne (= Fr. devyn) as conventional �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 87 spellings, requires them to be pronounced med and devyn. Servise (Fr. servis, service), here servi-se, is regular by the first theory, exceptional by the second.1 The main principle of the theory here adopted is that very early (probably in the 12 th century) phonetic began to supersede dynamic considerations, and, as a con­ sequence, to change. the significance of the originally organic -e ; and that this change was especially due to the introduction of the Norman speech and the usages of the Norman scribes into England. The Norman dialect was the simplest and purest of all the dialects of the French language, and largely exhibited the influence of phonetic laws. This influence it began to propagate on its contact with English. The first effect was to simplify the for­ mative English terminations of nouns. Hence in the beginning of the 12th century -a, -o, -u (as in tima, hcelo, sceamu) became -e (as in time, sceame, or schame, hele). It next acted on the grammatical inflexions, as, for in­ stance, in nouns, either by suppressing the -e of the oblique or dative case altogether (cf. Orrmin’s “ be word,” “bi brsed,” “o boc,” “off stan,” &c.); or by converting it from an organic to an inorganic termination, reducing it, in short, to the same category as name, shame, hele. It next affected the orthography generally by introducing an expedient of the Norman scribes (before unknown in England), which consisted in the addition of an inorganic -e to denote the length of the radical vowel, an expedient which, when adopted in English, converted, after a time, A.S. tar, ben, bed, into tare, bene, bede, without disturbing the individuality of the words, and re-acted on name, 1 In support of the assumption that sonant -e is exceptional, not regular, it may be noted that in the first 100 lines of the Pro­ logue (Ellesmere text) out of 160 instances of final -e only 22 occur in which it is sounded before a consonant; of the remaining 138 25 are silent before a consonant, 49 before a vowel or It, and 64 in the final rhyme where its sound is superfluous—that is to say, in 138 instances the words in -e have, it is assumed, their natural pronunciation against 22 in which, by license, the -e is reckoned as an additional syllable. �88 THE USE OF FINAL -C schame, hele, &c., by treating them (whatever they may have been before) as monosyllables. It finally acted on the versification by introducing the license, well known in early and, by descent, in modern French, of recog­ nizing, under rhythmical exigency, the inorganic -e (silent in ordinary discourse) as a factor of the verse. It hence appears that certain principles introduced by the Normans, and exhibited in their own tongue, affected first the spoken and then the written English, gradually superseding the organic function of the -e, by treating it as inorganic, as an orthoepic sign to guide the pronunciation of the reader; and that this great change was fundamentally due to the law of phonetic economy, which, by its tendency to simplification, gradually overpowered the original dynamic laws of the language, and ended in converting the forma­ tive and inflexional -e into a conventional element of the spelling. 2. OBJECTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE VERSIFICATION CON­ SIDERED. I _ Two d priori objections may be taken, and indeed have been taken, against this conclusion as applied to Chaucer’s versification. The first is indicated in these words of Mr Ellis,1 “that Chaucer and Gdthe'used the final -e in precisely the same way,” and in these of Pro­ fessor Child,2 “that the unaccented, final -e of nouns of French origin is sounded in Chaucer as it is in French verse,” by which assertions it is affirmed that the laws of modern German and French versification are identical with those of Chaucer. The full answer to this objection will be found in the subsequent investigation, but for the present it may be urged, without pressing the argument already presumptively 1 “ Early English Pronunciation,” p. 339. 2 “ Observations on the Language of Chaucer,” by Professor Child of Harvard University, a paper contributed to the “ Memoirs of the American Academy,” vol. viii. p. 461. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 89 stated, that the use of -e in German and French versifica­ tion is (with very rare exceptions) regular and constant, while that in Chaucer is continually interfered with hy instances of silent -<?, which, indeed, outnumber those in which it is sounded (see note, p.' 87), even -without taking into consideration the -e of the final rhyme. Then with regard to the final rhyme, the objection as applied to French versification proves too much, inasmuch as the -e at the end of a French verse is not, and probably never was, a factor of the rhythm. This argument, then, as far as it is worth anything, is for, not against, the theory here maintained. The following instances, which are typical, show that the laws of French versification are continually violated by Chaucer: And he hadde ben somtyme in chivachie.— v. 85. In hope to stonden in his lady grace.—v. 88. He sleep nomore than doth a nightyngale.—w. 97, 98. Ful semely aftui' hire mete sche raught.—v. 13-6. By cause that it was old and somdel streyt.—v. 174. Kfrere ther was, a wantoun and a merye.—v. 208. In alle the ordres foure is noon that can.—v. 210, &c. If these verses are read by the French rule they become unmetrical; it is only by ignoring it that they can be read with metrical precision. The conclusion, then, is that the only exact identity between French and early English versification consists in the silence of the -e at the end of the verse. Nor would it be difficult to show from the above and from thousands of other instances, that the strict applica­ tion of the laws of German versification would render Chaucer unreadable. The second'd priori argument, first put forward by Tyrwhitt, against the theory here adopted, that the -e at the end of a verse was silent, is to the effect that Chaucer intended the verse of the Canterbury Tales to be an imita­ tion of the Italian endecasyllabic, that of Boccaccio, &c., and, therefore, that he required the -e at the close of the �90 THE USE OF FINAL -0 line to be pronounced to make the eleventh syllable. Against this assumption, however, it may be urged that he simply adopted the decasyllabic French verse, of which there were numerous examples before his time. The metre of the Chanson de Roland, Huon de Bordeaux, Guillaume d’Orange, &c., as well as of many of the “Ballades” of his contemporary Eustache Deschamps, appears to be pre­ cisely that of the Canterbury Tales. The following are typical examples :— Co sent Rollenz que la mort le tresprent, Devers la teste sur le quer li descent.— Chan, de Roland. Ma douce mere jamais ne me verra.—Huon de Bordeaux. Cis las dolans, vrais dex, que devenra.—ib. Forment me poise quant si estes navres Se tu recroiz, a ma fin sui alez.— Guillaume d? Orange. En bon Anglais le livre translatas.—Eustache Deschamps. Grant translateur, noble Geoffroy Chaucier.—ib. Ta noble plant, ta douce melodie.—ib. We see, then, that there was no occasion for Chaucer to go to the Italians for a model. It may, moreover, be plausibly urged that in none of Chaucer’s earlier works is there any trace of Italian influence, whether as regards subject, general treatment, or versification.3 3. THE SECTIONAL PAUSE. Before entering on the illustration by reference to the actual usage of early French and English poets of the theory which has been already stated, some notice may be taken of a characteristic feature of early French and English verse which has an important bearing on the point at issue.1 It is that of the sectional pause, a stop made in the reading of the verse, for the sake of the sound, and having no immediate connection with the sense. This pause in decasyllabic verse (to which, however, it is by no means confined) occurred at the end of the fourth or 1 It is remarkable that scarcely any of the writers on early English versification (except Dr Guest) have noticed the sectional pause, or explained the true use of the prosodial bars or full-points found in the MSS. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 91 sixth measure, and divided the verse into two parts, which were prosodially independent of each other; that is, it made each part a separate verse. Dr Guest (History of English Rhythms, i. 181) thus states the rule generally: “ When a verse is divided into two parts or sections by what is called the middle pause, the syllable which follows such pause is in the same situation as if it began the verse.” The bearing of this point, however, on the ques­ tion at issue is more fully seen in the usage of early French verse, in which the effect of the pause was to silence the -e which closed the section. This usage is altogether unknown in modern French verse; a fact which of itself forms an argument against the presumed identity of the laws of early English and modern French versifica­ tion. The rule is thus stated by Quicherat (“Versification frangaise,” p. 325) :• “ Une preuve de Timportance que nos anciens poetes donnaient au repos de la cesure ” (he means the sectional pause) “ c’est qu'ils la traitaient comme la rime, et lui permettaient de prendre une syllabe muette, qui n'etait pas comptee dans la mesure.” This principle, in its application to early Anglo-Nor­ man and English, may be thus formulated :— The -e that occurred at the sectional pause (and, pre­ sumptively, that at the final pause closing the verse) was silent, and not a factor of the rhythm. Instances in which the -e at the pause was silent abound in early French and Anglo-Norman poems, and this usage was borrowed or imitated by English poets, as may be seen in the instances which follow. Fors Sarraguce || ki est en une muntaigne.— Chanson de Roland, v. 6. De vasselage || fut asez chevaler.—ib. v. 25. Mais ami jeune || quiert amour et amie.—Eustache Des­ champs, i. 122. Car vieillesse || sans cause me decoipt.—ib. ii.' 20. Desous la loi de Rome || na nule region.—Rutebeuf, i. 236. Si li cors voloit fere || ce que lame desire.—ib. i. 399. Toz cis siecles est foire || mais lautre ert paiement.—ib. i. 400. / �92 THE USE OF FINAL -6 De medle se purpense || par ire par rancour.—Langtoft (ecl. Wright), i. 4. Lavine sa bele file || li done par amour.—i&. Norice le tient en garde || ke Brutus le appellait.— ib. I rede we chese a hede || fat us to werre kan dight.—De Drvnne (ed. Hearne, i. 2). pat ilk a kyng of reame || suld mak him alle redie.—ib. i. 4. Sorow and site he made || per was non oper rede.—ib. 5. That ben commune || to me and the.—Eandlyng Synne (ed. Furnivall, p. 1). In any spyce || pat we falle ynne.—ib. p. 2. For none \>arefore || shulde me blame.—ib. On Englyssh tunge || to make pys boke.—ib. In al godenesse || pat may to prow.—ib. p. 3. pe yeres of grace || fyl pan to be.—ib. Faire floures for to fecclie || pat he bi-fore him seye.— William of Palerne (ed. Skeat), v. 26. and comsed pan to crye || so ken[e]ly and schille.—ib. v. 37. panne of saw he ful sone || pat semliche child.—ib. n. 49. pat alle men vpon molde || no mqt telle his sorwe.—ib. v. 85. but carfuli gan sche crie || so kenely and lowde.—ib. v. 152. It will be seen that in all these instances the power of the pause overrides the grammatical considerations. Alle, commune (plurals), reame, spyce, tunge, grace, molde (datives), crie (infin.), to fecche, to crye (gerundial infini­ tives), have the -e silent. The following examples show that Chaucer adopted the same rule :— Schort was his goune || with sleeves long and wyde.—Earl. n. 93. He sleep no more || than doth a nightingale.—ib. v. 97. Hire gretest otliex || nas but by seint Eloi.—Tyrmhitt, v. 120. Hire grettest ooth || nas | but by | seint Loi.—-Earl. v. 120. That no drope || til | uppon | hire brest.—ib. v. 131. That no drope || ne fille upon hir brist.—Ellesmere, v. 131. I durste swere || they weyghede ten pound.—Earl. v. 454. And of the feste || that was at hire weddynge.—ib. v. 885. And maken alle || this lamentacioun.—ib. v. 935. For Goddes love || tak al in pacience.—iA v. 1086. Into my herte || that wol my bane be.—ib. v. 1097. No creature || that of hem maked is.—ib. v. 1247. And make a werre || so scharpe in this cite.—ib. v. 1287. Thou mayst hire wynne || to lady and to wyf.—ib. v. 1289. Ther as a beste || may al his lust fulfille.—ib. v. 1318. 1 Othe and ooth are the same word, the inorganic -e being merely an index to the sound. This exclamation occurs in “ Nenil, Sire, par Seint Eloi ” (Theatre Frangais du Moyen Age, p. 120). Loi itself appears to be simply a contraction of Eloi, �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 93 In. the following instances the independence of the second section of the verse is shown :— Whan that Aprille || with ] hise shore | wes swoote.—• Harl. v. 1. - And whiche they were || and | of what | degree.—Elies, v. 40. In al the parisshe || wyf | ne was | ther noon.—Harl. v. 451. Sche schulde slope || in | his arm | al night.—ib. v. 3406. That wyde where' || sent | her spy | eerie.—ib. v. 4556. Than schal your soule || up | to he|ven skippe.—ib. v. 9546. For Goddes sake || think | how I | the chees.—ib. v. 10039. And with a face || deed | as ai|sshen colde.—ib. v. 13623. In view of the numerous instances given above of the silence of the -e at the sectional pause, it would seem a fortiori improbable that it would be sounded at the greater pause, that formed by the end of the verse. This argu­ ment, though as yet only presumptive, is held to be strongly in favour of the theory adopted by the present writer, who would therefore read, In God|des love || tak al | in pa|cience as ten syllables and no more. Even if the illustrations adduced are not admitted as decisive of the silence of -e at the end of the verse, they undoubtedly account for its silence at the sectional pause as a characteristic of Anglo-Norman and Early English versification, and confirm the general argument, that in Chaucer’s time the law of phonetic economy prevailed over what have been assumed to be the demands of word­ formation and grammar. 4. THE USE OF FINAL -e AS A FORMATIVE CONVENTIONAL ELEMENT OF THE SPELLING. The position to be here maintained has been already stated (see p. 87), and amounts to this, that, as a con­ sequence of Norman influence, the -e, which, whether 1 If the -e of where is sounded, it is probably the single instance in which it is so used, either in Chaucer or any other Early English writer. Here and there, too, are always monosyllables, and there­ fore Mr Child’s marking of them as dissyllables when final, as in 1821, 3502, 5222, &c., is entirely gratuitous. They will be con­ sidered hereafter. �94 THE USE OF FINAL -e formative or inflexional, was once organic and significant, became, as in time = turn, dede = ded, &c., simply a mark or index of the radical long vowel sound, or as in witte = wit, presse = press, a mere conventional append­ age of the doubled consonant which denoted the radical short vowel sound. It- is further assumed that this phonetic influence, which probably acted first on the formative -e, as in the instances just given, gradually involved with varying degrees of velocity also the inflexional -e, and therefore that the so-called oblique cases as roote, brethe, ramme, &c., and the infinitives as take, arise, telle, putte, merely repre­ sent in their spelling the sounds rot, breth, ram, tali, arts, tel, put, the formative and the inflexional -e being reduced to the same category. The doctrine here laid down in its largest generality involves, it is easily seen, the whole question of the cor­ respondence between the sound of words uttered in ordin­ ary speech and their orthographic representation, as far as the final -e is concerned, and is to be considered independ­ ently of the exceptional use of -e as, by the usage of the times, an occasional factor of the verse. If, however, it can be proved it disposes entirely of the assumption that the -e was sounded at the end of the verse, and this is the main object in view. 5. CANONS OF ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY APPLICABLE TO EARLY ENGLISH. The main points, then, to be proved—by reference to the nature of the case and to actual usage—are, that in the time of Chaucer and long before, final -e had become either (1) an orthoepic or orthographic mark to indicate the sound of the long radical vowel or diphthong, or (2) a superfluous letter added for the eye, not for the ear, after a doubled consonant. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 95 These conventionalities may he reduced for convenience of reference to the following Canons of orthography and orthoepy. Canon I. (1) When final -e followed a consonant or consonants which were preceded by a long vowel or diphthong, it was not sounded. Thus mede = med, rose = rds, veyne = veyn. (2) When final -e followed a vowel or diphthong, tonic or atonic, it was not sounded. Thus curteisie = curteisi, glorie = glori, weye = wey, merie = meri. Canon II. When final -e followed a doubled consonant or two different consonants, preceded by a short vowel, it was not sounded. Thus witte = wit, blisse = blis, sette = set, ende = end, reste = rest. Once more admitting that the -e in each of these cases could be made, and was made, at the will of the poet, exceptionally significant, we proceed to consider these pro­ positions seriatim, merely observing, by the way, that these rules—framed and adopted five or six hundred years ago— are in substance the same as those now in common use. (1.) Final -e suffixed to a consonant or consonants which were preceded by a long vowel or diphthong, as in mede, penaunce, veyne. On this point we are bound to listen to the doctrine of Mr Richard Price, contained in the preface to his edition of Warton’s History of English Poetry. Referring first to the fact that in A.S. the long vowel of a monosyllabic word was commonly marked by an accent, which in the Early English stage of the language was entirely disused, he inquires what was done to supply its place, and maintains that in such cases an -e was generally suffixed to indicate the long quantity of the preceding �9G THE USE OF FINAL -e radical vowel. “The Norman scribes,” he says, “or at least the disciples of the Norman school, had recourse to the analogy which governed the French language;”1 and, he adds, “ elongated the word or attached, as it were, an accent instead of superscribing it.” “ From hence,” he proceeds to say, “ has emanated an extensive list of terms having final e’s and duplicate consonants, [as in witte, synne, &c.,J which were no more the representatives of additional syllables than the acute or grave accent in the Greek language, is a mark of metrical quantity.” He adds in a note, “ The converse of this can. only be maintained under an assumption that the Anglo-Saxon words of one syllable multiplied their numbers after the Conquest, and in some succeeding century subsided into their primitive simplicity.” Illustrating his main position in another place,2 he observes, “ The Anglo-Saxon a was pronounced like the Danish aa; the Swedish ci, or our modern o in more, fore, &c. The strong intonation given to the words in which it occurred would strike a Norman ear as indicat­ ing the same orthography that marked the long syllables of his native tongue, and he would accordingly write them with an e final. It is from this cause that we find liar, sar, lidt, bat, wd, an, ban, stan, &c., written hore (hoar), sore, hote (hot), bote (boat), woe, one, bone, stone, some of 1 Mr Price makes no attempt to prove this position, but a few remarks upon it may not be out of place here. The general principle in converting Latin words into French was to shorten them, and the general rule, to effect this by throwing off the termin­ ation of the accusative case. Thus calic-em would become calic, which appears in Old French both as callz and callee, evidently equivalent sounds. So we find vertiz, devis, servis, surplis, graas, and in phonetic spelling ros, clios. Conversely, as showing the real sound of such words, we find in Chaucer and other English poets, trespaas, solaas, caas, faas, gras (also grasse~), las, which interpret solace, case, face, grace, lace, as words in which -e was mute, and this because it was mute in French. French words ending in -nee, as sentence, paclence, experience, were presumpt­ ively sounded without -e, since we find Chaucer and other English writers expressing them as sentens, paciens, experiens. See Ap­ pendix I “ On the final -e of French nouns derived from Latin.” 2 End of note to the Saxon Ode on the Victory of Athelstan. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 97 which have heen retained. The same principle of elonga­ tion was extended to all the Anglo-Saxon vowels that were accentuated; such as rec, reke (reek), lif, life, god, gode (good), scur, shure (shower); and hence the majority of those e’s mute, upon which Mr Tyrwhitt has expended so much unfounded speculation.” 1 Mr Price means to assert—what is maintained by the present writer—that an original monosyllable, as lif, for instance, was never intended by those who sub­ sequently wrote it life to be considered or treated, when used independently, as a word of two syllables, though when introduced into verse it might be employed as such, under the stress of the rhythm. There seems an a priori absurdity in the conception of such an interference with the individuality of a word, as is involved in denying the essential identity of lif and life. The fact, too, that in Early English, as distinguished from Anglo-Saxon so called, nearly, if not quite all, the words in question appear as monosyllables, seems strikingly to confirm the hypothesis. Thus in the Orrmulum we find boc, blod, brad, braed, cwen, daed, daef, daefy, god, so], wa, an, stan, nearly all of which are the identical A.S. forms, and were most of them in later texts lengthened out by an inorganic -e. As the pronunciation of these words was no doubt well established, there seemed no need for the scribe to indicate in any way what was everywhere known, but soon the confusion that began to arise, in writing, between long and short syllables, suggested the more general use of the orthoepical expedient in question, and accordingly we find in early English texts both forms employed. Thus along with lif, str if, drem, bot, &c., we see bede (A.S. bed), bene, bone (A.S. ben), bode (A.S. b6d), &c. The “ Early English Poems” (written before 1300, 1 Mr Price promised to resume the subject “ in a supplementaryvolume, in an examination of that ingenious critic’s ‘ Essay upon the Language and Versification of Chaucer.’ ” This promise was, however, never fulfilled. �98 THE USE OF FINAL -e in a “pure Southern” dialect1) supply us with numerous examples. The following are from “ A Sarmun ” : pe dere (A.S. deor) is nauqte (A.S. naht, nawht) pat pou mighte sle v. 24 If pou ertpr.wtfe (A.S. prut) man, of pi fleisse v. 25 pe wiked wede (A.S. wed) pat was abute v. 49 Hit is mi rede (A.S. rad, red) while pou him hast v. 61 pen spene pe gode (A.S. god) pat god ham send v. 68 His hondes, \sfete (A.S. fet) sul ren of blode v. 117 Of sinful man pat sadde pi blode (A.S. blod) v. 124 flopefire (A.S. fyr) and wind lude sul crie v. 125 And forto hir pe bitter dome (A.S. dom) V. 134 Angles sul quake, so seip pe bohe (A.S. hoc) v. 135 To crie ihsu pin ore (A.S. ar) v. 142 While pou ert here (A.S. her) be wel iware (A.S. gewar) v. 143 Undo pin hert and live is lore (A.S. lar) v. 144 Hit is to late (A.S. last) whan pou ert pare (A.S. pa*r, par, per) v. 146 For be pe soule (A.S. sawl) enis oute (A.S. ut) v. 171 he nel nojt leue his eir al bare (A.S. bser) v. 174 and helpip pai pat habip nede (A.S. nead, neod, ned) v. 186 pe ioi of heven hab to mede (A.S. med) v. 188 heven is heij hope lange (A.S. lang) and wide (A.S. wid) v. 213 In this long list of passages It will be seen that not one instance occurs in which the formative -e is phonetic, so that bede, bone, blode, boke, ore, here, lore, nede, bare, ware, wide, late, &c., are all treated as words of one syllable in which the -e is merely an orthoepical index to the sound. These instances, alone, go far to show what the ordinary pronunciation of the words in question was, and to make it appear very improbable that, except by poetical license, the -e which closes them was ever pronounced. It appears, then, clear that the A.S. words above quoted are absolutely equivalent to the corresponding Early English words ending in -e. But the principle admits of some ex­ tension. We find that not only A.S. words ending in a consonant assumed -e in Early English, but that the A.S. terminations -a, -o, -u, were also represented by -e. This we see in time from tima, and hele from hselo, or hselu. When 1 “ Some notes on the leading grammatical characteristics of the principal Early English dialects.” By Wm. T. P. Sturzen-Becker, Ph.D. Copenhagen, 1868. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 99 these forms were generally adopted, the next step would he to consider them as in the same category as blode, dome, &c., and to apply the same rule of pronunciation to them. Hence, except by way of license, we find in the 13th and 14th centuries no practical difference in the use of the two classes of words—crede from creda, stede from steda, care from cearu, shame from sceamu, being treated precisely as blode from blod, dome from dom, &c.; and the same remark applies to such adjectives as blithe, dene, grene, &c., which in their simple indefinite use, at least, were probably mono­ syllables. The position now gained is, that the -e in such English words as dome, mede, fode, mone, name, &c., was orthoepic, not organic. It is highly probable—as Mr Price appears to have believed—that Latin words became French by a si-mil ar process, and that the orthoepic expedient in question is of French origin.1 The Norman words place, grace, face, space, as interpreted in English by plas, graas, faas, spas, are found in “ Early English Poems,” and later, in Chaucer, and we also find conversely trespace, case, for the French trespas, cas. Both in Early French and English we moreover find as equivalent forms, devis, devise, and device; servis, servise, service; pris, prise, price; surplis, surplice; assis, assise.2 It will now be shown by examples, both Anglo-Norman and English, that in words containing a long vowel followed by a consonant and final -e, the -e was simply an index to the quantity of the vowel, and therefore not generally pronounced in verse composition—though under stress of the rhythm it might be. The usage in Anglo-Norman verse will first be shown generally: 1 See Appendix I. 2 The phonetic identity of -s, -sse, -ce, in Anglo-Norman and English is shown by numerous illustrations in a paper by the pre­ sent writer, on Norman and English pronunciation, in the Philo­ logical Transactions for 1868-9, pp. 371, 418-19, 440. �100 TIIE USE OF FINAL -e Quy a la dame de parays.—Lyrical Poetry of reign of Edward I. (ed. Wright), p. 1. Quar ele porta le noble enfant.—ib. De tiele chose tenir grant pris.— ib. p. 3. Vous estes pleyne de grant docour,—ib. p. 65. The word dame is derived from domin-am — domin — domn — dom — dam — dame, just as anim-am becomes anim, anm, dm, ame. In both instances the -e is inorganic. Dame frequently occurs in Chaucer, and generally, as we might expect, with -e silent.1 Examples are :— Of themperoures doughter dame Custaunce.—Harl. v. 4571. Madame, quod he, ye may be glad & blithe.—ib. v. 5152. (See also v. 4604, 7786, &c.) We may presume, then, that at the end of a line, the -e in this word would be silent, and that the -e of any word rhyming with it would therefore be silent, as of blame in And elles certeyn hadde thei ben to blame : It is right fair for to be clept madarne.—Harl. v. 378-0. We may infer, then, that English words of the same termination—as scliame, name, &c., would follow the same rule—and accordingly we find— J?e more scliame Jsat he him dede.—Ear. Eng. Poems, p. 39. We stunt noj?er for schame ne drede.—ib. p. 123. In gode burwes and \mx-fram Ne funden he non f>at dede hem sham.—Haveloh (ed. Skeat), v. 55-6. Ful wel ye witte his nam, Ser Pers de Birmingham.—Harl. v. 913 (date 1308) ; and in Wiclif’s “ Apology for the Lollards ” (Camden Society), “ in pe nam of Crist ” (p. 6); “ in nam of the Kirke” (p. 13), &c., as also “in the name" on the same page. We may therefore conclude that shame = sham, and name = ndm. Following out the principle we should conclude that 1 Professor Child, in a communication to Mi- Furnivall, in­ tended for publication, decides that “ dame is an exception ” from the general rule, but quotes Chaucer’s usage of fame throughout the “House of Fame ” as a dissyllable. There is, of course, no disputing the fact, but we see nothing in it beyond a convenient license. Does Mr Child pretend that fame was formed on some special principle, and for this reason employed by Chaucer as a dissyllable? �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 101 what is true of -ame would also he true of -erne, in dreme, -ime in rime, -ome in dome, -ume in coustume; and by extending the analogy we should comprehend -ene in queue, -ine in pine, as well as -ede in bede, -ete in swete, -ote in note, -ute in prute, -ere in chere, &c., and expect that the -e in all these cases would be mute. This, with exceptions under stress, is found to be the case—the Northern MSS. (as seen above) very frequently even rejecting it in the spelling. For the purpose of this inquiry it is obvious that such terminations as -ume, -ine, -ete, -ere, -age, -ance, &c., are virtu­ ally equivalent to monosyllabic words of the same elements. As, however, it would be quite impossible without extend­ ing the investigation to an enormous length, to illustrate them all, the terminations -are, -ere, -ire, -ure, -age, -ance, will be taken as types of the class. -ere. We commence -with -ere because Professor Child asserts that “ there can be no doubt -e final was generally pronounced after r,” a conclusion inconsistent with the law of formation already considered, and, as it would appear, with general usage in early Anglo-Norman and English. He farther maintains that “ the final -e of deere (A.S. deor, deore) and of cheere (Fr. chere) was most distinctly pro­ nounced ” [in Chaucer]. The first of these propositions evidently includes the second, and means that words in -are, as bare, in -ere, as here, in -ire, as fire, in -ore, as lore, generally have sonant -e. Now it has been shown (p. 98) that bare, here, fire, lore, were monosyllables in the 13th century. It is, therefore, extremely improbable that these words would in the 14th century put on another syllable. And if not these words, why others of the same termination, as deere and cheere ? However frequently, then, such words may appear in Chaucer, with sonant -e, the cases are exceptional, and being themselves exceptions from a general rule, cannot form a separate rjile to override the general one. CH. ESSAYS. n �102 THE USE OE FINAL -e Although, then, it were proved that Chaucer more generally than not uses deere as a dissyllable, that fact being exceptional cannot prove that here,1 prayere, frere, manere,1 matere, have the -e sonant because they rhyme with deere. The argument, in fact, runs the other way, inas­ much as here, which is without exception a monosyllable —manere and matere, which are almost without exception dissyllables, being themselves representatives of the general law of analogy—have a right, which no exceptional case can have, to lay down the law. When therefore we find heere and deere rhyming together, it is here, not deere, that decides the question, and proves deere in that in­ stance to be a monosyllable. We are indeed, in deter­ mining such cases, always thrown back on the formative law, which, being general, overrides the exceptions. All the instances, then, in which deere rhymes with here, manere and matere, are instances of monosyllabic deere. As to chere, on which Mr Child also relies, he seems to have forgotten that this word is very frequently written cheer (there are eight such instances in the Clerk’s Tale alone), and wherever so written confirms, and indeed proves, the contention that it was-only exceptionally a dissyllable. Every instance, then, in which deere and cheere rhyme with here, there, where, matere, manere, frere, cleere, all repre­ sentatives of the formative rule, is an argument against Mr Child’s partial induction. A few instances will now be given, showing the use of -are, -ere, -ire, -ore, -ure, in Anglo-Norman and English writers: -are, -ere, -ire, -ore:— ’ No instance has yet been met with in Chaucer of here, there, or manere with sonant -e. Two from Gower of manere, as a tri­ syllable, have been found by Professor Child. Gower however, who affected Frenchisms everywhere, being, if possible, more French than the native authorities, and in his French ballads writes in the “ French of Paris,” not Anglo-Norman—is no authority on the question. �IN EARLY ENGLISH. 103 Si fut un sirex de Rome la citet.—Alexis, v. 13. . Quant vint al fare, dune le funt gentement.—ib. v. 47. En cele manere1 Dermot le reis.— Conquest of Ireland (ed. 2 Michel), p. 6. Vers Engletere la haute mer.—ib. p. 153. En Engleter sodeinement.—French Chronicle (Cam. Soc.), Appendix. Deus le tot puissant ke eeel e terre crea.—Langtoft (ed. Wright), v. 1. Ke homme de terre venuz en terre revertira.—ib. Uncore vus pri pur cel confort.—Lyrical Poetry, p. 55. Then, for English instances : Lyare wes mi latymer.— Lyrical Poetry, p. 49. Careful men y-cast in care.—ib. p. 50. Thareiena ne lette me nomon.—ib. p. 74. Ther is [mani] maner irate—Land of Cokaygne, v. 49. On fys manure handyl J>y dedes.—Handlyng Synne, p. 5. Four manere joyen hy hedde here.—Shoreham's Poems (Percy Soc.), p. 118. And alle ine nout maner . . . Ine stede of messager.—ib. p. 119. Sire quap pis holi maide our louerd himself tok.—Seinte, Margarete (ed. Cockayne), p. 27. Fyrst of my lvyre my lorde con wynne.—Allit. Poems, i. v. 582. Bifore3 J?at spot my honde I spennd.—ib. i. v. 49. pat were i-falle for prude an hove To fille har stides pat wer ilor.—Ear. Eng. Poems, p. 13. And never a day pe dore to pas.—ib. p. 137. More j?en me lyste my drede aros.—ib. v. 181. 1 In Anglo-Norman verse of the 13th century Sire is generally a monosyllable, and is even repeatedly written Sir. See in “ Polit­ ical Songs ” (Camd. Soc.), pp. 66, 67, “ Sir Symon de Montfort,” “Sir Rogier,” and also in “Le Privilege aux Bretons,” a song con­ taining, like that just quoted from, a good deal of phonetic spelling, “ Syr Hariot,” “ Syr Jac de Saint-Calons ” and “ Biaus Sir ” (Jubinal’s “Jongleurs et Trouveres,” pp. 52—62). Writings of this kind in which words are phonetically, not conventionally, spelt, are often very valuable as showing the true sound, and illustrate a pithy re­ mark of Professor Massafia’s, that “ pathological examples are fre­ quently more instructive than sound ones.” 2 In the “Assault of Massoura,” an Anglo-Norman poem (13th century, Cotton MS. Julian A. v.), we find mere,frere, banere, arere, almost always spelt without the -e. Manere (when not final) is a dissyllable, and, when final, rhymes with banere, which in its turn rhymes with/re?’. Mester and mestere both occur, and the latter rhymes with eschapere and governere, for eschaper and governer, showing that the added -e was inorganic and merely a matter of spelling. 3 A.S. biforan became in Early English biforen, which fell under the orthoepic rule which, as in many infinitives (see infra), elided the -e in the atonic syllable -en. Biforen thus became biforn, then lost the n and received an inorganic or index letter, e, becoming bifore or before. No instance has yet been found by the present writer, of bifore as a trisyllable. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Essays on Chaucer: his words and works. Part II Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: [3], 57-177, [2] p. ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by John Childs and Son. Published for The Chaucer Society. Publisher's series list inside and on the back over. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1874] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Trübner & Co. Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Essays on Chaucer: his words and works. Part II), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5555 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Chaucer Conway Tracts Poetry Poetry in English https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d2ad8b731145bc2996b3733d3d7a0aff.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=E7U8mOPIRzOUYwjXWOw2yHGqD3RvC%7EWFjlA0ajRSmQba8yOOl6nWhore48YEgRSy7Bp2fplUfxbZcreJiouMf1Y5h1-ZiAWBsszap7lFf8VnST1mhZ26FAFyT2hQyUqMLv5GG0ZzshcZxHRSxZTVzw9xPHU-qcQucBoWSOX3snUAtnO-XGSzEyj5wc-mYEVeh5FQxUFrb%7EYcyXVG5LA-pPwJ-JoF-kZcwnGNTywwB%7EgpginZv5T3OBjOZG2h7Yom-ehjUgbnIPDM93db4j4TI8gYhm3ShWkQ6N7T6GJLSWiHG5RI8UeLQfzDYQcj%7EcsWdZQmkqxmkgCDItu-fvOk1A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e0933e8608f8f50a6388e3e8d90658bf PDF Text Text 97 Art. IV.—Shelley. 1. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by­ Mrs. Shelley. 1853. 2. Essays; Letters from Abroad; Translations and Frag­ ments. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited bv Mrs. Shelley. 1854. 3. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847. 4. The Shelley Papers. By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1833. O write well on any theme requires not only a knowledge of the subject, but a deep sympathy with it. The first requisite is more commonly fulfilled than the second. Men can, after a fashion, master a subject—know its bearings and its details—and still have no real attachment for it: men, too, if they are at all suspected of this indifference, will lash themselves into a spurious love, which may be detected by its very absurdity. But true love springs from the heart, can admire the virtues of its friend without exaggeration, and yet not be hoodwinked to his faults ; has the sincerity to praise where praise is deserved, and the courage to reprove where reproof is wanted. Hence is it that true love is the same as thorough knowledge, for it sees both sides of the matter. Shelley’s critics, as well as his biographer, have been of all kinds except the last. Captain Medwin should remember that as it is the fault of a bad logician to prove too much, so it is of an indiscreet friend to praise too much. He has, however, in his “ Life of Shelley” contrived to fall into both mistakes. But he is also wanting in the higher qualifications of a biographer. It has now become, somehow or another, an esta­ blished axiom that nothing is so easy to write as a biography. Jot down a few facts, reckon them up like a schoolboy’s addition sum, and you have a Life ready-made. Nay, perhaps save your­ self even this trouble, and, in these days of mechanical aids, take a “ Ready Reckoner,” and you will find it done for you. An­ other popular receipt is, to sketch in a few lines here and there— never mind if they are a little blurred—paint them in watercolours, and you have a portrait at once : the critics will clean your picture for you gratis. Perhaps nothing is so difficult as a biography; but of all biographies, a poet’s most so. You have in his case not only to trace the mere liver of life, but all those back currents and cross eddies in which his stream of poesy has flowed. Every little action has to be examined to see what effect T [Vol. LXIX. No. CXXXV.J—New Series, Vol. XIII. No. I. II �98 Shelley. it has had upon his life and his poetry, for the two are inter­ woven as w7oof and warp : not only this, hut the biographer must bring a congenial and a poetic spirit to the task—must show in what new realms of poesy our poet has travelled, what new beauties he has discovered, what new Castalian springs he has drunk of; should show, too, what new views of life he has opened up, how these views originated, and what their ultimate aim is—for this is the important point—and what real value they have in their practical bearing upon this earth ; and how far they are likely to affect and improve it. But in Shelley’s case the dif­ ficulty is tenfold increased. His character, in one sense one of the most simple, is in reality one of the most complex. So shy and reserved in many matters, yet speaking forth so boldly and uncompromisingly; so inconsistent at times, yet ever the same in the cause of truth ; so impulsive in most matters, yet so firm in behalf of liberty; so feminine and so susceptible, yet so heroic and resolute, he presents a medley of contradictions. All this must be accounted for by his next biographer. Nevertheless, we are thankful to Captain Medwin for what he has accomplished; he has done it to the best of his endeavours, and with a certain species of enthusiasm which will atone for many defects. But a Life of Shelley is still wanted—so much remains that is still obscure about him. Any little facts, as long as they are genuine and upon undoubted authority, would be welcome; for it is these little facts and traits—little they are wrongly called—which help us to judge of a man’s character, and give us such an insight into his life and poems. “Truth is stranger than fiction,” said Byron; yet, we suspect, without knowing why. The one is Nature’s real infinite order of things; the other, only man’s worldly finite arrangement. We talk of sober truth and wild fiction; but it is truth in reality that is wild, and fiction sober. “ As easy as lying,” says Hamlet, but truth is hard to imitate. Hence to thinking men the romance of history is more exciting than any novel; a biography more inte­ resting than any fiction. Shelley’s life, with all its pathos, is an example. The imagination of no novelist would ever have dared to have drawn such a character. It would have been scouted at once as impossible in the highest degree. Let us endeavour to give some sort of a brief sketch of it, trying to fill in, with what cunning we have, the lights and shades. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, in Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792, related through his family to Algernon and Sir Philip Sydney, heir to a baronetcy and its rich acres. Novel readers would be delighted in such a promising hero; young ladies would have fallen in love with him at once, or with his ten thousand a year. He was brought up, it appears, with his sisters until he was �At Sion House, Brentford; and at Eton. 99 seven or eight years old, and then sent to an academy at Brent­ ford, and subsequently, at thirteen, to Eton. At neither schools did he mix with the other boys, but like Novalis and many other boy-men, took no part in the sports. This shyness and reserve he never threw off during life. It appears even in his poems; they seem to shun the light of the common world, its din, its noise ; they fly away to the realms of imagination for peace and quietness. We can fancy Shelley walking by himself with that delicate feminine face and quiet dreaming eye, glooming moodily over his supposed wrongs, which, by-the-bye, he might have easily cast away, had he but set to work and bowled round hand, or played at fives with the rest; they would have dropped off, as lightly as the bails, with the first wicket he took. But it was not so, and he ever afterwards looked back with pain upon those early days. Writing of them in the Dedication of the “Revolt of Islam”— “ I wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near schoolroom, voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes— The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.” At Sion House, Brentford, Shelley was a great reader of blue-books,” so called, says Captain Medwin, from their covers, and which, for the moderate sum of sixpence, contained an immense amount of murders, haunted castles, and so forth. When the “ blue-books” were all exhausted, Shelley had recourse to a circulating library at Brentford, where, no doubt, as at all circulating libraries, plenty more “ blue-books” were to be ob­ tained, and where he became enchanted with “ Zofloya, or the Moor,” whose hero appears to have been the Devil himself. No doubt, to this source may we trace Shelley’s love for the morbid and the horrible, which happily, under better influences, disap­ peared from his writings. Here at Sion House, too, was exhi­ bited Walker’s Orrery, which even surpassed “ Zofloya” in its attractions, and which first turned Shelley’s thoughts in a better direction than circulating libraries generally point to. At Eton, an old schoolfellow of Shelley’s gives the following account of him:—“ He was known as ‘ Mad Shelley,’ and many a cruel torture was practised upon him. The‘Shelley! Shelley! Shelley!’ which was thundered in the cloisters, was but too often accom­ panied by practical jokes—such as knocking his books from under his arm, seizing him as he stooped to recover them, pulling and tearing his clothes, or pointing with the finger, as one Nea­ politan maddens another.” We often look upon a school as an epitome of the world—a perfect microcosmos. And the above is as true a picture of the world’s treatment of Shelley, as of Eton. A few more years, and it was the world itself, with stronger lungs h 2 �100 Shelley. and with bitterer tones, crying out “ Mad Shelley;” it was the world, a few years after, that seized his books with Chancery decrees; it was the world, that is to say, these same boys, now “ children of a larger growth,” that pointed at him with its finger. Shelley felt all this in after-life as much as he did now at school; not the mere insults, but that these boys, now men, should never have outgrown their weaknesses. One more point in his Eton career. He was there condemned to that most distasteful of all tasks to true genius, to write Latin verses, that poetry of machinery. Shelley, condemned to the Procrustean bed of longs and shorts, wishing to enter the promised land of science—Shelley, who hereafter should be the true poet, scanning with his fingers dactyles and spondees, asking for a short and a long, that great desideratum to finish a pentameter with, and all the time thirsting to drink from springs that might refresh his mind, is a pitiful spectacle, well worth pondering over. How many promising minds this insane custom, still continued at our schools, has blunted and sickened, cannot well be computed, we should say. We wonder boys have not yet been practically taught the Pyrrhic dance or the evolutions of a Greek chorus; they would be quite as mechanical and far more amusing. In one person alone at Eton did Shelley at all find a congenial spirit, a Dr. Lind, of whom Mrs. Shelley writes, that he supported and befriended * Shelley, and Shelley never mentioned his name without love and reverence, and in after years drew his character as that of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower-prison, and tends on him in sickness. This is touchingly like Shelley’s nobleness, which never forgot a kindness. Most poets have ever looked back upon boyhood with joy; it is the storehouse of many an old affection, full of many dear memories. Shelley’s was blank enough of all such things ; this one old man, a green spot in its sandy wild. And now, since Eton would do nothing for Shelley, he betook himself to reading Pliny’s “Natural History,” puzzling his tutor with some questions on the chapters on astronomy. He next commenced German. The fires of such an ardent spirit could not easily be smothered out. Chemistry and Burgher’s “ Leonora” were now his two engrossing themes; and about this time he wrote, in conjunction with Captain Medwin, “ The Wandering Jew,” the little of which that we have seen is poor enough; but Shelley’s ideas are described by the gallant captain as “images wild, vast, and Titanic in which remark we suspect that Captain Medwin is like the Jew, rather “wandering.” And now we are approach­ ing a great event in Shelley's life. A Miss Grove, a cousin of his, of nearly the same age, who is described as very beautiful, * See Mrs. Shelley’s note on the “Revolt of Islam.” �At Oxford. 101 captivated him. We like to dwell upon these two child-lovers. The frost of the world must have thawed away for the first time to poor Shelley; a spring, full of fresh thoughts and hopes, were springing up in his heart. He had found some one in this wide, wild world to love him, and to love. Upon his dark night now came forth the evening star of love, trembling with beautv and light. Surely it was not the same old world, with its haggard nightmares and its feverish dreams ? The dew of love fell soft upon that wild brain of his. It was the first love—that first iove which comes but once in a man’s life. You may have it again ; but, like many another fever, it is slight and poor in comparison. Of her and himself did he write in after years— “ They were two cousins like to twins, Ancl so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime.” To her, too, did he dedicate his “ Queen Mab — “ Thou wast my purer mind, Thou wast the inspiration of my song ; Thine are these early wilding flowers, Though garlanded by me.” And now, in conjunction, these two child-lovers wrote the romance of ‘ Zastrozzi. We would fain linger here on these happy days. But there is already a third party in the number— it is a skeleton. Shelley, now not much more than sixteen, went up to Oxford, engrossed with his chemistry. But Oxford did not, any more than Eton, encourage his pursuits. Acids and Alma Mater did not agree. Galvanic batteries and portly dons were not likely to be on the best of terms. Why, a Head of a College might mistake one for some infernal machine. So Shelley betook himself to philosophy; Locke was his professed guide, but in reality the French exponents of Locke, which is a very different matter. Hume, too, became his text-book ; and the poet, now a convert to Materialism, rushed on to Atheism; and in a moment of enthusiasm conceived the project of con­ verting Alma Mater herself. We don’t well see what other course that venerable lady, with the means she possessed, could pursue but the one she adopted. So Shelley was expelled. It is worth considering, however, that there was no other weapon left against Atheism but the poor and feeble one of expulsion. On Alma Mater we need waste no reflections; but turn to Shelley in his utter desolateness, for unto him it must have been an hour of great darkness. The old traditional guide-posts were gone, and he had to walk the road of life alone. New world-theories he must construct; the old eternal problems he must now solve �102 * Shelley. for himself. Other griefs from -without pressed upon him. His cousin deserted him, or rather, we should suppose, was made to desert him. His treatise on Atheism had deeply offended his relations, though we are surprised at its preventing his marriage. An expected baronetcy in this world, like charity, can hide a multitude of sins. A baronet’s blood-red hand could easily, we should have thought, have covered up even Atheism, since it gene­ rally can conceal so many faults. So Shelley left Alma Mater, and matriculated at the university of the world, where he should some day take honours, though from thence some would have expelled him too. He appears to have gone up to London, living with Captain Medwin, speculating on metaphysics, and writing letters under feigned names to various people, including Mrs. Hernans. To show in what a state of mind he was at this time, we may give the following anecdote in Captain Medwin’s own words :—“Being in Leicester-square one morning at five o’clock, I was attracted by a group of boys standing round a welldressed person lying near the rails. On coming up to them I discovered Shelley, who had unconsciously spent a part of the night sub dio.” We read of him, too, sailing paper boats on the Serpentine, as he did years after on the Serchio, just as he describes Helen’s son— “ In all gentle sports took joy, Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, With a small feather for a sail, His fancy on that spring would float.” (“Rosalind and Helen.”) He returned home, where, however, he did not remain long, in consequence of his falling in love with a Miss M estbrook, a schoolfellow of his sister’s. This was productive of another breach with his family, more serious than that caused by his Atheism. Miss Westbrook, it appears, was the daughter of a retired innkeeper; and Shelley’s father, the baronet, with proper aristocratic notions on all points, had long been accustomed to tell his son that he would provide for any quantity of natural children, but a mesalliance he would never pardon. So when Shelley married the daughter of the retired innkeeper, his father very properly cut off his allowance. Anything in this world, we believe, will be forgiven, except this one thing. You may take a poor girl’s virtue, and it passes for a good joke with the world; but if you make her the only reparation you can, you shall be an out­ cast from society. Such doctrines are a premium upon vice, and do more harm to a nation than Holywell-street: and we are more in­ clined to place many of the griefs of Shelley’s first marriage, with its sad results, at the front door of fashionable society, -than to any other cause. The retired innkeeper and Shelley’s uncle, Captain �His and Schillers Love for the Storm. 103 Pilford, however, found the requisite funds, and Shelley and his young wife went off to live in the Lake District, where Mr. De Quincey gives us the following picture of them :—“ The Shelleys had been induced by some of their new friends (the Southeys) to take part of a house standing about half a mile out of Keswick, on the Penrith road. There was a pretty garden attached to it; and whilst walking in this, one of the Southey party asked Mrs. Shelley if the garden had been let with their part of the house. ‘ Oh, no,’ she replied; ‘the garden is not ours; but then, you know, the people let us run about in it, whenever Percy and I are tired of sitting in the house.’ The naivete of this expression, ‘run about/ contrasting so picturesquely with the intermitting efforts of the girlish wife at supporting a matron-like gravity, now that she was doing the honours of her house to married ladies, caused all the party to smile.”* Ah ! could it, indeed, have been always so; and we think of another poet who says of himself and his wife, “I was a child—she was a child;” and we sigh as we think over their tragic fates. Shelley did not stay here long. We find him flitting, spirit-like, about from place to place. We meet with him at one time at Dublin, which he was obliged to leave on account of a political pamphlet he had published. Soon afterwards we dis­ cover him in North Wales, helping to assist the people to rebuild the sea-wall which had been washed away. All this time, too, was he suffering bitterly in spirit—the struggle was still going on within. In addition to this, his wife was by no means a person suited for him, and after a three years’ union they were separated. In July, 1814, conceiving himself free, we find him travelling abroad with Mary, the future Mrs. Shelley, daughter of Alary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, well known for their antimatrimonial speculations. They crossed the Channel in an open boat, and were very nearly lost in a gale. Shelley’s chief enjoy­ ment seems to have been on the water; and in this expedition his greatest delight seems to have been in sailing down the rapids of the Rhine on a raft. He is in this particular very like Schiller; in fact, a portion of Schiller’s biography might be applied, word for word, to him :—“At times he might be seen floating on the river in a gondola, feasting himself with the loveliness of earth and sky. He delighted most to be there when tempests were abroad; his unquiet spirit found a solace in the expression of its own unrest on the face of nature; danger lent a charm to his situation; he felt in harmony with the scene, when that rack was sweeping stormfully across the heavens, and the forests were sounding in the breeze, and the river was rolling its chafed waters into wild eddying heaps.”t And we find this love for water and * “Sketches, Critical and Biographic,” p. 18. f "Life of Schiller.” �104 Shelley. the storm in Shelley’s poems. He now returned to London, where he suffered from poverty and absolute want. Nothing daunted him. He now betook himself to the study of medicine, and com­ menced walking the hospitals. Gleams and visions of liberty lighted him upon his path ; but they were all mere will-o’-the-wisps, and went quickly out, leaving him in blacker darkness than before. Doubts still surrounded him on all sides. It is a pic­ ture worth studying—that delicate, womanly face, thoughtful and sad, with its long curling hair, and its genius-lighted eyes, brood­ ing painfully in poverty over its woes. We look on him, and he seems as some flower that has bloomed by mistake in winter-time —too frail to cope with the blasts and the falling sleet, but yet blooms on, prophesying of sunshine and summer days. The year 1815, however, brought him relief. It was discovered that’the fee-simple of the Shelley estates was vested in Shelley, and that he could thus obtain money upon them. The old baronet was furious at the discovery, but was ultimately persuaded to make his son an allowance. Shelley, now freed from his pecuniary difficulties, again went abroad in May, 181G, this time to Secheron, near Geneva, where Byron was living; and here the two poets kept a crank boat on the lake, in which Shelley used “ to brave Bises, which none of the barques could face.” How much Byron profited by his intercourse with Shelley let the third canto of “ Childe Harold,” which was written at this period, testify; and let us at the same time remember Byron’s own words—“You were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew.” After an absence of more than a year, Shelley returned to England; and now per­ haps the bitterest trial of all awaited him. His wife had drowned herself. Woe seems to have shrouded him as with a garment. How bitterly he feels it, these and many other verses tell— “ That time is dead for ever, child, Browned, frozen, dead for ever; We look on the past And stare aghast, At the spectres, wailing, pale and ghast, Of hopes that thou and 1 beguiled To death on life’s dark river.” Nay, the strain on his mind was too much, and he became for a time insane, and so describes himself in “Julian and Maddalo.” And now, as if his bitterness were not enough, the Court of Chancery tore his children away from him. “ Misfortune, where goest thou, into the house of the artist ?” saith the Greek pro­ verb. And still the struggle was going on within, embittered by woes from without. Life’s battle-field is never single. We cannot stop to inquire whether trials and struggles may not be �His Friendship with Keats. 105 in some way essential to the education of genius, and whether there may not be some as yet unrecognised law to that end. The old fable is certainly a true one of the swan singing only in its death-agonies. But there must be an end; and now the scorching day was melting into a quiet eve : the stormy waves were subsiding. We have dwelt at some length on the previous details, but must now be more brief. We do not so much regret this. It is in the storm only that we care to see the straining ship brave out the danger—any day we can see plenty of painted toy-boats sailing on the millpond. Shelley now married his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and led a quiet life at Marlowe, writing “ Alastor” and the “Revolt of Islam,” and endearing himself to the villagers by his kindnesses. He here contracted severe ophthalmia, from visiting the poor people in the depth of an un­ usually cold winter. About this time, too, he became acquainted with Keats, and nothing can be finer than the friendship between the two poets—nothing nobler in literature than Shelley taking up the gauntlet for his oppressed brother poet against the re­ viewers, and writing afterwards to his memory the sweetest of all dirges, the “ Adonais.” So dear did he hold his friend, that when Shelley’s body was washed ashore, Keats’ poems were found in his bosom. In 1818, Shelley left England, never to return. Life now was becoming unto him as a summer afternoon with its golden sunshine. He had found a wife whom he could love: that passionate heart, ever seeking some haven, had at last found one—little voices now again called him father. The mists of youth wrere clearing away; gleams of light were breaking in upon him. He had betaken himself to the study of Plato ; and perhaps there was no book in the world that was likely to do him such good. In one of his letters he writes, “ The destiny of man can scarcely be so degraded, that he was born only to die.” But even now he had his troubles, as we all shall have, be the world made ever so perfect. He lost one of his children; was still troubled with a most painful disease; was still the mark for every reviewer’s shaft. And now, when everything promised so fair and bright, on one July afternoon the waves of the Mediter­ ranean closed over that fair form, still young, though his hair was already grey, “ seared with the autumn of strange suffering.” The battle of life was past and over. We have thus given a hurried sketch of Shelley’s life. Impul­ siveness was no doubt the prominent feature of his character. Love for his fellow-men, hatred against all tyranny, whether of government or mere creeds, combined with kis ardent and poetic spirit, hurried at times his as yet undisciplined mind away. No doubt he struck at many things without discretion. But it re­ �106 Shelley. quires older men than Shelley to discriminate what is to be hit. Strike at the immorality of a clergyman, and he screens himself behind the Church, and there is instantly a cry you are assailing Religion itself. Many stalking-horses, some of them with huge ears and broken knees, are there walking about on this earth, which we must worship, even as the ^Egyptians did cats, and the Hindoos cows. Animal worship is not yet extinct. Shelley, too, was one of those whose nature is their own law; who refuse to be cramped up by the arbitrary conventionalities of life which suit ordinary mortals so well, which fact is such a puzzle to commonplace minds that they solve it by setting down the unlucky individual as a madman; an easy solution, in which we cannot acquiesce. One of those few, too, was he “ Whose spirit kindles for a newer virtue, Which, proud and sure, and for itself sufficient, To no faith, goes a begging.” An isolation of spirit, too, he possessed, often peculiar to genius. He found no one to sympathize with him; hence his mind was turned in upon itself, seeking higher principles, newer resolutions than are yet current. He found himself, even when amidst the throng, quite alone; though jostled by the multitude, quite soli­ tary. Society to such a one is pain; the very noise of human voices, misery. Hence, in his despair, he is tempted to exclaim to his wife, “ My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you and our child to a soli­ tary island in the sea, would build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the floodgates of the world: I would read no reviews, and talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagination, it would tell me that there are one or two chosen companions beside myself whom I would desire. But to this I would not listen.” That Shelley should have been misappreciated is only natural. To a proverb, the world likes its own, and Shelley was not amongst that number. High-minded, he despised the inanities of life; sincere and earnest, he hated the hollowness of the day. Too sensitive, he turned away to bye-paths. The flock of sheep herd together; he was sick at heart and wandered by himself. Poetic and ideal, he felt more than most of us the heart-aches and brain-aches of life, and ever seeking, ever hoping, found no cure for them. Speculative and philosophical, he felt the burden of the world-mystery and the world-problem, which he was ever trying to solve, and which every time lay heavier on his soul. Weak and physically frail, he felt life’s pack more than others, and knew not how to carry it without its galling him. A loving, sympathizing soul, he found but little affection, little love in the world ; for the most part a cold response and hard hearts, and so he uttered his wail of misery and then died. �His Critics. 107 He was slain accidentally in the battle of life—a mere stripling fighting manfully in the van. Still the army of life, like a mighty billow, rushes on; still the battle rages, still the desperate charge of the forlorn hope—here it gains, there it wavers, then is swept away—and still fresh ones follow on: the individual fighting in the first place for himself and his own necessities; and then, if a noble soul, doing battle for his fellow-creatures, helping the weak, raising up the down-trodden. The years sweep on like immense caravans, each of them laden with its own multitude, brawling, striving, fighting. We look out from the windows, and see behind us the earth covered with the monuments of mighty men, with nameless mounds where sleep the dead. Let us linger round the grave of him who lies beneath the walls of Rome, near the pyra­ mid of Caius Cestius, “ in a place so sweet that it might make one in love to be buried thereand see what epitaphs have been written over him, and what, too, we have to say. In plainer words, we will proceed to look at Shelley as exhibited by others, glancing at his religion, his politics, and poetry, by all of which we may be enabled to learn something more, and to form a completer estimate of him; and we would here remark that whatever censure or praise we may bestow on him, the one should be laid on, the other doubled by, his youth. We have now passed away from the old reviewing times of Gifford, when difference of opinion was added to the sins usually recognised by the Decalogue, when it actually could taint the rhymes, and make the verses of too many or too few feet, accord­ ing to the critic's orthodox ear. This old leaven has long since died out of all respectable Reviews, and can only be seen in its original bitterness in a few religious publications, where vitupe­ ration so easily supplies the place of argument. The world luckily sees with different eyes to those it did thirty years ago. Most people can now give Shelley credit for his noble qualities of generosity and pureness of moral character; and even those who may differ widely from his opinions, are willing to admit the beauty of his poems. Most people, we said; all certainly except those connected with a few religious publications, and the author of “ Modern Painters.” Mr. Ruskin seems to be seized with some monomania when Shelley’s name is mentioned. In the Appendix to his “ Elements of Drawing,” he calls Shelley “ shallow and verbose.” In a note in the second volume of“ Modem Painters,” part iii. sec. ii. chap. iv. § 6, he speaks of Shelley, “ sickly dreaming over clouds and waves.” As these objections are mere matters of opinion, we shall pass them by; it is hopeless to try to make the wilfully blind see. But in the third volume, part iv. chap. xvi. § 38, he talks of Shelley’s “ troublesome selfishness.” Facts are said to be the best arguments, and we will �108 Shelley. give Mr. Ruskin, as an answer to his libel, the following pathetic story in Leigh Hunt’s own words :— “ Mr. Shelley, in coming to our house at night, had found a woman lying near the top of the hill, in fits. It was a fierce winter’s night, with snow upon the ground—and winter loses nothing of its severity at Hampstead. My friend, always the promptest as well as the most pitying on these occasions, knocked at the first houses he could reach, in order to have the woman taken in. The invariable answer was, they could not do it. He asked for an outhouse to put her in, while he went for the doctor. Impossible. In vain he assured them she was no impostor—an assurance he was able to give, having studied something of medicine, and even walked the hospital, that he might be Useful in this way. They would not dispute the point with him ; but doors were closed, and windows were shut down. Time flies; the poor woman is in convulsions; her son, a young man, lamenting over her. At last my friend sees a carriage driving up to a house at a little distance; the knock is given; the warm door opens; servants and lights put forth. Now, thought he, is the time; he puts on his best address—which anybody might recognise for that of the highest gentle­ man—and plants himself in the way of an elderly person who is step­ ping out of the carriage with his family. He tells him his story. They only press on the faster. ‘ Will you go and see her ?’ ‘ No, sir, there is no necessity for that sort of thing, depend on it—impostors swarm everywhere—the thing cannot be done. Sir, your conduct is extraordinary.’ ‘ Sir,’ cried Mr. Shelley, at last assuming a very diffe­ rent appearance, and forcing the flourishing householder to stop, out of astonishment, ‘ I am sorry to say that your conduct is not extra­ ordinary ; and if my own may seem to amaze you, I will tell you something that may amaze you a little more, and I hope will frighten you. It is such men as you who madden the spirits and the patience of the poor and wretched ; and if ever a convulsion comes in this coun­ try, which is very probable, recollect what I tell you—you will have your house, that you refuse to put this miserable woman into, burnt over your head.’ 4 God bless me, sir! Dear me, sir!’ exclaimed the frightened wretch, and fluttered into his mansion. The woman was then brought to our house, which was at some distance, and down a bleak path; and Mr. Shelley and her son were obliged to hold her till the doctor could arrive. It appeared that she had been attending this son in London, on a criminal charge made against him, the agitation of which had thrown her into fits on their return. The doctor said that she would have inevitably perished had she lain there only a short time longer. The next day my friend sent mother and son comfort­ ably home to Hendon, where they were well known, and whence they returned him thanks full of gratitude.” This was an action worthy of a descendant of Algernon and Sir Philip Sydney, and may perhaps remind Mr. Ruskin of a certain parable of the good Samaritan. Again, in the same volume and part of “Modern Painters,” ch. xvii. § 26, Mr. Ruskin calls Shelley “passionate and unprincipled;” and again, in §41, �Mr. Ruskin on Shelley. 109 lie speaks of his “ morbid temperament.” It is only charitable to suppose that Mr. Ruskin has never read Shelley’s Life ; and, again, in the same volume and part, ch. xvi. § 34, he writes, “ Shelley is sad because he is impious.” This sort of reasoning reminds us of a story told in Rogers’s “ Table Talk,” which, as it affords us some further insight into Shelley’s character, may be given:—“One day, during dinner, at Pisa, where Shelley and Trelawney were with us, Byron chose to run down Shakspeare, for whom he, like Sheridan, either had, or pretended to have, little admiration. I said nothing; but Shelley immediately took up the defence of the great poet, and conducted it with his usual meek yet resolute manner, unmoved with the rude things with which Byron interrupted him—‘ Oh, that’s very zvell for an Atheist,’ ” &c. Byron, however, did not approach Mr. Ruskin’s absurdity. Atheism here did not altogether spoil Shelley’s defence; it only made it pretty good. Orthodoxy, we must suppose, would have rendered it perfect. But Mr. Ruskin boldly asserts, “Shelley is sad because he is impious;” or, in other words, because Shelley happens to differ from Mr. Ruskin’s notions on religion. It is true that Shelley is sad—not, though, because he is “ impious,” but from mourning over the wrongs that he sees hourly committed —the day full of toil, the air thick with groans. A solemn tone of sorrow pervades his poetry, like the dirge of the autumn wind sighing through the woods for the leaves as they keep falling off. We are ashamed and mortified to find Mr. Ruskin using such a coarse and vulgar argument—he who is ever complaining of the unfairness of his critics. But perhaps Mr. Ruskin may find this out, that when he has learnt to respect others, his critics will be in­ clined to treat him more leniently; and, furthermore, whilst he deals so harshly and so uncharitably with Shelley, we would in all kindness remind him of the line, “ who is so blessed fair that fears no blot?” And now for our orthodox reviewers, and their treatment of Shelley. “Queen Mab” is generally selected by them as the piece de resistance. We are far from defending the poem as re­ gards its tone and spirit, nor do we uphold Shelley in any of his attacks upon the personal character of the Founder of Chris­ tianity ; he finds no sympathy with us when he calls Christ “ the Galilean Serpent.” Much more do we agree with the old dra­ matist, Decker, when he writes— “ The best of men That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil Spirit; The first true gentleman that ever breathed.” Shelley himself afterwards thoroughly disclaimed the opinions �110 Shelley. of this early and crude production. Upon an attempt being made to republish it, he thus wrote to the editor of the Examiner: —“ A poem, entitled ‘ Queen Mab,’ was written by me at the age of eighteen, I dare say in a sufficiently intemperate spirit—but even then was not intended for publication; and a few copies only were struck off, to be distributed among my personal friends. I have not seen this production for several years; I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and reli­ gious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature.” And he goes on to say that he has applied for an injunction to stop its * sale. Shelley, in after life, was the last man to speak slightingly of religion or religious matters—no true poet can ever do that; he, above all men, venerates religion. By him, as Shelley says in the Preface to the “ Revolt of Islam,” “ the erroneous and de­ grading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself.” But why “ Queen Mab” should ever be picked out as so peculiarly blas­ phemous by its assailants, we have ever been surprised. We are, we repeat, far from sympathizing in the least with Shelley’s ex­ pressions; but we equally abhor the tenets of his orthodox reviewers. They are far more open to the charge of blasphemy than Shelley. It is they who degrade God, and God’s creatures, by representing him as the God of vengeance, and all His works vile and filthy; this glorious world as the devil’s world, and all the men and women in it chosen vessels of wrath, unable to do one good deed of themselves. They call Shelley an Atheist, in­ deed ! Rather call all those Atheists who deny liberty and all rights to their poorer brethren; who would trample them still deeper in the mire of ignorance, who would desecrate God’s Sab­ baths with idleness, and who make God in their own images piti­ fully sowing damnation broadcast on his creatures. Call them, too, Atheists, yes, the worst of Atheists, who lead a life of idleness and aimless inactivity; for the denial of God (a personal God, in the common sense of the term) does not constitute Atheism; but spending a life as if there were no God, and no such things as those minor gods—Justice, or Love, or Gratitude. Shelley was, at all events, sincere in his creed, which is more than can be said for most of his opponents. He suffered for it, and suffered bitterly; not, indeed, the tortures of the rack, but those more painful ordeals which we in this nineteenth century are so skilful to inflict. All ages have very properly allotted special punishments to their greatest spirits. The Greeks gave * See also a letter to Mr. John Gisborne—“ Shelley’s Letters and Essays,” vol. ii. p. 239. �Religion at the Present Day. Ill hemlock to Socrates; the Jews rewarded Jesus with a cross. Galileo received a rack for his portion. But we English have found out the greater refinement of cruelty, which may be in­ flicted by hounding a poet down by Reviews and Chancery-suits. Contrast Shelley, and his fervid eloquence, and poetry, and zeal, with his opponents. Go into an English church, and there you shall too often see but an automaton, now in white now in black, grinding old church tunes of which our ears are weary. It—for we cannot call that machine a living human being—finds no re­ sponse in the hearts of its hearers. Notone pulse there is quickened, not one eye grows brighter. If it would but say something to all those men and women, they should be as dancers ready to dance at the sound of music. But no voice comes, unless you call a monotonous drawl a voice. The farce is all the more hitter, because that figure to our knowledge leads a life quite contrary to the words upon his lips. How few of these Automata in white or in black would, in days of darkness and of trouble, stand up for their Bible and their Gospel, and dare to pull off the surplice and gown, and wear the martyr’s fiery shirt! One of them comes into the Church for the family living, and makes God’s house a place for money-changers and traders in simony; the other, because he has not capacity enough for any other pro­ fession. And these are the men that are to lead us in days when science and knowledge are fast advancing in every direction! these the men to sing of God’s wondrous works ! Do they not rather dishonour God, and prostitute religion to the worst form of Atheism ? That Shelley, or any one else, should become wearied with our present religious condition, we are not surprised. Our wonder is, that there are not far more of the same class. We have for years been lying under a tree which is long past bearing—waiting, alas ! for fruits, and not finding even a green branch, or a shady place. The once pure water of baptism is now turbid, the very sacramental bread mouldy. We must sorrowfully say with Jean Paul—“The soul which by nature looks Heavenward, is without a temple in this age.” So the old religious roads of thought are being torn up; the old via sacra being levelled. As it has been said a thousand times, no one need fear that religion will ever die. While there is the blue unfathomable sky above us, in which swim golden sun and moon and stars, and the comets trail along like fiery ships, there will ever arise a sense of mystery and awe in the breast of man; and while the sweet seasons come round, there will spring from his heart, like a fresh gushing fountain, a psalm of thankfulness to the Author of them. The deep spiritual nature of man can never die. And it is no sign of the decay of religion, but quite the reverse, when men refuse to be fed on the �112 Shelley. dry husks and chaff of doctrines. Yes, we will hope that a new and a brighter Reformation is dawning; that fresh Luthers and Melancthons shall arise, and that we shall have a Church wherein Science shall not fear to unfold her New Testament—wherein poets and philosophers, and painters and sculptors, may be its priests, each preaching from his own pulpit—when every day shall be equally holy—when every cottage shall be a temple, and all the earth consecrated ground—consecrated with^ the prayers of love and labour. And now let us turn to Shelley’s politics. Most poets have ever been the supporters of Liberty. And the reason is, as Words­ worth says, “ A poet is a man endowed with more lively sensi­ bility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, and a more comprehen­ sive soul than are supposed to be common among mankind.” They feel “ the sweet sense of kindred” more than others, and cannot bear to see some of their brethren chained like galleyslaves to the oar of labour—earning their bread with tears of blood, without time for leisure, or meditation, or self-improve­ ment ; working like the beasts of the field, with this difference, that they are less cared for by their masters. As Milton says— “ True poets are the objects of my reverence and love, and the constant sources of my delight. I know that most of them, from the earliest times to those of Buchanan, have been the strenuous enemies of despotism.” The remark is true. Tyrtaeus singing war-strains, and the old Hebrew prophets rousing Israel from its sleep of bondage, are instances of what is meant. All poets have felt this love for Liberty. Even Mr. Tennyson can turn at times from his descriptive paintings, and give us such a lyric as “Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,” so full of noble hopes and sympathies. A little time ago we had a novel with a Chartist poet for its hero ; and by-and-bv a living poet, the son of a canal bargeman, risesup among us—no fiction this time—uttering strains of woe to that same often invoked Liberty. But the feeling is most vivid in early youth ; the cares of the world soon grow round us, and many of us find out it is to our apparent advantage to remain silent; and we become to our shame dumb, ignomi­ niously content to accept things as they are. Some even turn renegades, as Southey. But in Shelley the flame every day burnt brighter. Liberty with him was no mere toy to be broken and laid aside, but the end and aim of his life. He kept true to the dream of youth, and the inspiration of early days, when injustice has not yet clouded our vision. But, on the face of it, is there not something supremely ridiculous in the son of a wealthy baronet coming forward to delineate the woes of men about which he could really know nothing ? Why not have written �The Times in which Shelley lived. 113 odes of the Minerva-press stamp, which could have been read to aristocratic drawing-rooms ? The answer is, that this thing genius is strong and earnest, and, luckily, will not bend like a reed before any fashionable breeze from Belgravia or St. James’s. Society is a costly porcelain vase, wherein the poor plant genius is cramped and stunted, and artificially watered and heated, in­ stead of living in the free open air, enjoying the breeze and the showers of heaven; it must either break its prison or wither. Shelley adopted the former course. Let us rejoice it was so— that there was one man who, though brought up in luxury, had the heart and the courage to pity the misfortunes of the poor. Let us remember, too, the days Shelley had fallen upon, when the nation was suffering all the distresses a long war could entail; when a Parliament of landlords enacted the Corn-laws for the benefit of their own rents; when prosecutions were rife for the most trifling offences ; when Government actually employed spies to excite starving men to violence; when “ blood was on the grass like dew.” It was the dark night that preceded the dawn of a better day. Since then, schools have sprung up ; free-libraries and museums have grown here and there; parks have been opened; baths and wash-houses built; crowded districts drained and ventilated; cheap and good books diffused. Within the last few months “The National Association for the Advancement of Social Science” has held its first meeting, and there is a general wish, except perhaps amongst a few, to improve the condition of the working classes. A man who, in Shelley’s position, should now write as Shelley did, could simply be regarded as a misguided enthusiast; and we can only pardon Gerald Massey in some of his wild strains, by knowing how galling is the yoke, and how bitter the bread, of poverty. Still much, almost everything, yet remains to be done. The life of the labourer still, as Shelley would sing, “ Is to work, and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day.” Not even that, as the poorhouse in the winter’s night can testify. But, after all, what is this image of Liberty which Shelley has set up for us ? We can answer best in his own words :— “ For the labourer thou art bread, And a comely table spread, From his daily labour come, In a neat and happy home— Thou art clothes, and fire and food For the trampled multitude: No—in countries that are free Such starvation cannot be, As in England now we see.” [Vol. LXIX. No. CXXXV.J—New Series, Vol. XIII. No. I. I �114 Shelley. This surely is rather a material view; no one can well see treason in the loaf, or impiety in the well-filled cupboard; and yet an important one. The soul of man can never be fed, while his body is racked with hunger; his mind can never be warmed with any spark of the higher life, while his limbs shiver with the cold; his spiritual faculties can never be raised, while be is sunk in physical uncleanness. But rising to a higher strain, Shelley proceeds:— “ To the rich thou art a check; When his foot is on the neck Of his victim, thou dost make That he treads upon a snake. Thou art Justice—ne’er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold, As laws are in England:—thou Shieldest alike the high and low. Thou art Wisdom—freemen never Dream that God will doom for ever All who think those things untrue Of which priests make such ado. Thou art Peace—never by thee Would blood and treasure wasted be As tyrants wasted them, when all Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. ***** Science, and Poetry, and Thought, Are thy lamps ; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot Such, they curse their Maker not. Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless, Art thou; let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.” (“ The Masque of Anarchy.”) This, we must confess, is superior to most of his delineations of Liberty. In a great many places he doubtless runs very wild in the cause of Freedom. He had not yet attained that true calm­ ness which is requisite for any great movement. Youth has it not. The green sapling cracks and explodes in the fire, yet gives no heat; the seasoned log burns bright and quiet. It is not by fiery declamations, by mere impulse, that anything in this world is ever surely gained, but by calmness, clearness of vision, and deep insight. The still small voice makes more impression on us than the loudest shouts, for the latter are, through their very noise, quite inarticulate. Still the question remains to be answered, �Happiness, how obtained. 115 how is this and other visions of Liberty to be realized ? Was Shelley himself in the right way to bring about the desired reform ? Certainly, as far as his hand could reach, he did his utmost. He poured what oil he could on the raging waters round him. But these attempts, and all others like them, are, it is very obvious, only palliatives, not real remedies. Shelley’s views as to Reform and Liberty are very vague. He seems to have had some idea that with a hey presto, everything could be changed. Pantaloon had only to strike the floor three times, and the whole scene vanished; the old witches, who caused all the trouble, were to be changed at once into beautiful sprites; Columbine should come dancing on, and a general return to Fairyland, everybody paying for every one, and nobody taking anything. He himself was willing to make any sacrifice. In this respect he seems to have been like some innocent child, wandering into a garden, singing as he went, plucking with its tiny hands the flowers and fruits, willing to share them with any one—wishing, perhaps, that men could live upon them altogether, and not a. little vexed and surprised when told that they would not bloom in the winter time—wishing, too, that the beds might be kept trim, and the grass might be cut without human labour—and then sitting down, musing, melancholy, and sad, on the first falling leaf. To us it appears that liberty and happiness—if it be liberty and happiness we want—depend upon no legerdemain, no shuffling of cards. Once let us learn that our well-being depends not upon external circumstances, but upon the riches of moral goodness, and that our mind, like a prism, can colour all events, and we shall then be on the true road to a higher reform than our politicians have yet dreamt of. To teach men their duty, and what love and what justice mean, seems to us just now the one thing needful. Gold, perhaps, is the medicine least wanted to cure human ills—the worst salve for human bruises. The mere kind look and the kind action will be treasured up with its own interest, not to be counted at any poor per cent., whilst the money will have been foolishly squandered—how much more the word which shall kindle a new idea, a fresh truth, another life. The mechanic earning his few shillings a week, enough to support himself, may find pleasure, if he has but learnt to take an interest in the few green grass blades beneath his feet, and the few opening flowers in his garden, which no lord in his castle can surpass. Nothing is so cheap as true happiness: and Providence has well arranged that we may be surrounded by ever-flowing springs of it, if we will but choose, in all humility, to drink of them. Shelley, unfortunately, fancied that there was some one specific to be externally applied to the gangrene of wretchedness, i2 �116 Shelley. and cure it at once and for ever; but we must go far beyond the surface, and the application must be made, not to the diseased part only, but to the whole body of society. And as to the sorrows and contradictions of life, we take and accept them, believing that there is a spirit at work for good, which will bring them out to a successful issue. And we are proud to be instru­ ments in working out so grand a principle, believing that the pain and the loss to us will be gain to the human race; that these days of sorrow will be a gain to coming years; that this sadness of a part will be a gain to the whole. In this is our un­ faltering trust; and secure in it we can go joyfully along, enduring patiently whatever sorrow or whatever conflict we may encounter, striving to help our weaker brethren, giving them what aid we can. Painful as it may be to think of a number of fellow-creatures toiling early and late, yet labour has its own claims on our grati­ tude. Labour seems to be man’s appointed lot here, and it is foolish to quarrel with it; still more foolish to call it a curse; the thistles and the thorns have been, perhaps, of more benefit to the human race than all the flowers in the Garden of Eden. They have called forth man’s energies, and developed his resources. All those chimneys in our factory-towns—are they not as steeples, veritable church steeples and towers of the great temple of Labour, pointing, with no dumb stone fingers, up to heaven, saying, by us, by labour, is the road up there ? Does not the flame and the smoke-wreath look as if it came from some vast altar, the incense of sacrifices—yes, of noble human sacrifices, daily offered up; and do not the clank and clash of a thousand hammers and anvils sound sweet upon our ears, as the music of bells calling us to our duty—trumpets sounding us to the battle of life, that battle against evil and wrong ? So it must be: out of darkness cometh light, and from the cold frosts and bitter snows of winter, bloom all the beauteous flowers of spring; and from all this grime, and dirt, and sweat of labour, who shall prophesy the result ? Even now are there giants in the land; even now may we see cranks, and wheels, and iron arms, tethered to their work instead of men; even now do wre hear the music of the electric wires across the fields, telling us other things than the mere message they convey; even now may the hum of the engine, and the breath of its iron lungs, be heard in our old farm-yards, and the reaping-machine seen cutting down the golden wheat, and the steam-plough furrowing up the fields, taking away the heaviest burdens from the backs of men. Shelley would have hailed such a time with delight—when there should be some margin of the day given to the ploughman and the mechanic for rest and recreation—for re­ �The Power of Love and Justice. 117 member, a man is ever worthier than his hire. Had Shelley ever seen a railroad, he would, perhaps, have exclaimed with Dr. Arnott, “Good-night to Feudality.” It is curious to notice what an in­ terest he took in endeavouring to establish a steamer on the Gulf of Genoa. But all the leisure in the world, all the instruction that can be had, will avail us nothing, if we do not build on higher principles than we are at present accustomed to—if we do not rest our foundations upon Love and Justice. “Ah !” sighed Shelley to Leigh Hunt, as the organ was playing in the cathedral at Pisa, “ what a divine religion might be found out, if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.” This, then, is a part of Shelley’s creed—a creed which is beginning at length to be felt; the creed of Jesus and of Socrates ; of poets of to-day and of yesterday; the law of laws; the doctrine of charity—that charity which Paul preached as greater than faith. Let our poli­ tics and our religion be built upon love and justice for their foundations, and once more will man live in harmony with the rest of the creation—will smell sweet with “ his fellow-creatures the plants,” and his voice will be attuned with the love-songs of the birds. He will then understand how he was made in God’s image, for God is love; the world will then once more bloom a Garden of Eden, and Selfishness, that evil spirit—call it the devil if you will, for it is this world’s devil—be ousted from our planet. But it requires something more than a poet’s strains to break the spells that bind us—to exhume the people from their present sepulchre of ignorance. A Tyrtaeus is of no use, unless we will fight; his strains of no avail, unless we will work, man to man, shoulder to shoulder. The walls of prejudice and selfishness will not fall down by any mere trumpet-blast. If any one thinks us too ideal, let him know we are purposely so. The ideal is better than the real, and it is something to be ideal in these practical days of ours. “ Equality ” and “ love ” may per­ haps never be known, as they should be, amongst men. Riches have been well compared to snow, which if it fall level to-day, to-morrow will be heaped in drifts. But surely there is an equality apart from money, and a love which knows not bank-notes; we will hope for, and aid forward, too, the day when there may not be the present gulf betwixt the peer and the peasant, and when that simple commandment shall be better observed, “ Do unto others as you would be done by.” In a note to “ The Prometheus Unbound,” Mrs. Shelley thus writes:— “ The prominent feature of Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human species was, that evil is not inherent in the system of the crea­ �118 Shelley. tion, but an accident that might he expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity. God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall— ‘Brought death into the world, and all our woe.’ Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. That man could become so perfect as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, vras the cardinal point of his system.” There is much truth in this. Our misery arises from the in­ fringement of natural laws; and as long as those laws remain broken, our misery will still continue. But Hope is by our side, and she tells us, with the unmistakeable voice of truth, that men will some day grow wiser and less selfish than at present—when most of the present suffering shall pass away—when none need be long unhappy, except through their own fault—for the earth was created for a good and a happy purpose, though it take myriads of years to accomplish it. And now let us not be one-sided, but view Shelley as a whole —the unripe as well as the sunny side of the fruit—the dark shadow on his orb as well as the sunlight. His impulsive character prevented him from laying enough stress on the grand principle of duty. Its infinite worth we cannot over-estimate. Duty is a pillar firmly fixed in rock of adamant, round which we climb heavenward; round everything else we only twine horizon­ tally, crawling along the ground. How far a stronger sense of duty in Shelley would have saved him from the wretchedness which he suffered, and his first wife from the terrible catastrophe consequent on his leaving her, we shall not attempt to estimate; but certainly it would have impelled him, as it did Milton, to return from Italy when his country was in danger, and like him also, if need were, to support himself even by keeping a school. We have already noticed his want of a due appreciation of the im­ portance of Labour. He forgot also that the energies of man are tempered to an iron hardness by adversity; that our strength springs up fresher and stronger under the clouds of trials and sufferings; that our souls are braced by the keen, cold winds of poverty; our faculties purified by the fire of affliction. Hence was he ever planning Utopias, where the idle should batten upon the earnings of the industrious — cloud-cuckoo-towns, where idleness and the take-no-thought-for-to-morrow principles should become the laws of our being, which are all of them impossibili­ ties on this toiling planet. Again, too, Shelley erred in being too ready to pull down instead of to build up. Greater harm has "been done, both in religion and politics, by men whose capabili­ ties have been of the destructive order, without the constructive �Shelley, and the Arrangements of Society. 119 faculty, than by all tlie bigots that ever breathed. It is worse than cruelty to take away the bread of life and the waters of life, however adulterated they may be, from a man, and offer his hungry and thirsting soul nothing in their place. But the grand mistake of Shelley’s was the idea of revolutionizing the course of things by a simple change of institutions. The best form of government can do but little, unless the reform begins with the individuals themselves. Govern ourselves well, and we need not then talk so much about governing others. It is not the form of government, so much as the men and women, we must care for— not this or that institution, but the first principles of honesty and justice amongst ourselves, which we must regard. That men should be severe upon Shelley we can well under­ stand—good, easy people, whose skins are luckily so tough and insensible that the harness of life can make no raw on them— whose heads are but moulds for so many cast-iron opinions and creeds. That an over-sensitive poet should break away from all the rules of life, and betake himself to the wilderness of his own doubts and speculations, is to them a most incredible, not to say a most wicked thing. To leave a home fireside, with its six o’clock dinner and port wine, in exchange for a doubtful supper on bread and cheese, and a certain one on metaphysics—to form your own world-theory—to found a fresh morality—is to them the height of madness. They forget that the arrangements of society are made, and rightly too, for the mass—that is, for such people as themselves—and that a poet is something very different from themselves, and that these laws which operate so well for them, will in all likelihood work fatally on the poet. So the poor poet must be hooted and brayed at by all the chorus of human owls and quadrupeds. He plunges away madly into the darkness beyond, solitary and sad, endeavouring to steer by the compass of his own thoughts. The world looks on him in his struggles and his toils with the same quiet indifference, not to say pleasure, that a boy does at a cockchafer spinning in agony on a pin’s point. That Shelley’s views were often wild and crude, no one for a moment will deny. Enthusiastic and impulsive, he jumped to all sorts of conclusions on the most important points. The value of a young man’s experience—and Shelley died at nine-and-twenty—is not worth much, and it is only by expe­ rience we can test anything in this practical world. He himself found this out at last. Circumstances also had a great effect in his case, as they have upon all of us. We perhaps can never rightly weigh the balance of any man’s actions, because we never allow enough for the circumstances which should be placed in the other scale. Here was Shelley, the son of a man who was , �120 Shelley. entirely different in his whole nature, sent to school where he * was brutally treated and discouraged in his studies, marrying a peison who was in no respects fitted for him. On the other hand, suppose that he had had a father who could have judi­ ciously sympathized with him, been sent to a school where masters would have encouraged his studies, and have married a suitable wife, who shall say what Shelley might have been ? But we are dealing with things not as they might be, but as they were and are. One small pebble in the way of a stream shall make the river flow in another direction, and water quite other lands and countries to what it does now. Yet man, perhaps, should not be a stream, as weak as water. Be this as it may, it is certain that before Shelley s death the mists that had long obscured the rising of his dawui were already melting, and his day was just breaking, all calm and pure; the bitter juices were all being drawn up, and converted into sweetness and bloom; the fruit of his genius was fast becoming ripe and mellow. We have gone thus far into Shelley’s life and opinions, without touching upon his poetry; for we think that if a person cared nothing at all about poetry in the abstract, he must be struck with that still higher poetry of kindness and generosity which so inspired Shelley. His written poetry, in our mind, is quite a secondary affair to that. There is a poetry of real life which is grander than any yet sung by minstrel. The man is greater than his poems. The critics have plenty of stock objections to find with Shelley’s poetry. The most common complaint is, that he is too metaphy­ sical ; that the air is so rarified in his higher regions of Philoso­ phy, that ordinary beings can’t breathe it; that his verse is like hard granite peaks, brilliant with the lights and the shadows of the changeful clouds, robed with white wreaths of mists, and touched with the splendours of the setting and the rising sun, but not one flower blooms upon it, not one living creature is to be seen there, only ethereal forms flitting fitfully hither and thither; and we must, to a certain extent, admit the truth of the charge. Shelley exhibited to a remarkable degree the union of the metaphysical and the imaginative mind. Philosophy and poetry prevailed over him alternately. For a long time he was doubtful to which he should devote himself, f It is from an overbalance of philosophy that there is such a want of concrete­ ness in his poems. He was for ever looking at things in a meta­ * “As like his father, as I’m unlike mine.”—Letter to Mrs. Gisborne, f See Mrs. Shelley’s note on the “ Revolt of Islam.” �The Cause of Shelley s Poetry. 121 physical point of view, projecting himself into Time and Space; regarding this earth as a ball, with its blue robe of air, “ As she dances about the sun,” instead of parcelled out into rich farms and sprinkled with towns, and solid three and four-storied bouses, and walls fourteen inches thick, tenanted by Kit Slys, Shylocks, Iagos, Falstaffs, and the whole company of humanity, who play on alternate nights and days the tragedy or the comedy of life. That he should have taken this abstract view of life is not at all wonderful. All great minds are ever attracted by the problem of life. This world­ riddle is of all things the most fascinating to the ardent and inquiring spirit. The reason why Shelley sang of the things he did, was simply that they both interested and pained him more than others. Living in an age, which gave birth to the French Revolution, which was agonized with the throes of all sorts of speculative theories, his verse naturally echoed them. Every true artist—whether by poetry, or painting, or architecture, it matters not—gives us the great questions of the day, with his attempted solution of them. Hence is it that Shelley is really a poet, be­ cause in his verse he truly sympathized with the wants of the day. Before a man can write well, he must have felt. It is not fine phrases, or similes, or fine anything else that make a poet, any more than fine clothes make a man. Shelley found out that the old-established customs, the old morals, the old laws, did not suit him. The every-day maxims of low prudence sounded to him very much like baseness; the common religion to him was synonymous with uncommon irreligion, and public morality looked to him merely a mask for private immorality. He felt all this, and felt it bitterly, and sighed after nobler aspirations; hence his poetry. His great failing is a certain amount of queru­ lousness, instead of calmly reposing amidst all his conflicts in an eternal Justice, which, though it may be far from visible to com­ mon eyes, is still the foundation of the world. He had before his death passed through only one stage of the conflict which most great minds undergo. Before belief, there must be doubt; before the fire, the smoke. Shelley never attained that perfect repose which the greatest poets have possessed, and his poetry consequently does not rise to the highest order. Now, Shelley defines poetry as “ the expression of the imagination,”* and he has Shakspeare on his side— “ The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact.” * “ A Defence of Poetry.” �122 Shelley. Strangely does that word “ lunatic” sound now, as we think of that tale of “ Mad Shelley.” But this is exactly what Shelley’s poetry really is—“ the expression of the imagination,” unmodi­ fied by experience, and any knowledge of this world of men and women. Imagination, though doubtless the first requisite of a poet, is far from all. As Novalis would say, “ a poet is a Tnie.rocosmos.” The great poets are all of them many-sided. Their poetry is both /ztjtnjtTtc and 7to' ]<tiq. They illustrate both the u Aristotelian and Baconian theory of poetry, as well as much more. They are like lands which bear crops of all kinds. They possess, in fact, the united faculties of all other men, and these faculties serve to check and balance one another. Every part working in unison, nothing unduly developed at the expense of another, are the characteristics of all great poets, and, in fact, of all great men, who are only poets in another way. Shelley’s imagination, unluckily, galloped away with him, instead of his reining it in. Take some of the most imaginative pieces that have ever been written, and we shall find how they are all of them more or less ballasted. There is that most fairy-like of all things, “ The Birds” of Aristophanes, brilliant with imagination, yet still occupying our interest by its wit and humour. Again, “The Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “ The Tempest,” with all their scenes from Fairyland, and their spirits, are balanced by the human creations, and the interest and incidents that arise from the plots. Shelley seems never to have anchored his imagination to anything. There was no clog to it. Nothing to tie it down. Hence his weak, shadowy drawings, his want of substance, an absence of reality. Hence his characters are too often mere personified abstractions; thoughts which have been only half-clothed in human bodies. For we cannot agree with Lord Macaulay in thinking that they cease to be abstractions, and interest us as human beings; for common experience tells us that they do not. * Shelley had in him none of the elements which made Shakspeare essentially popular. He was a vegetarian, a water-drinker. In philosophical moods he doubted the existence of matter; but then he was always in philosophical moods. He is, in short, too spiritual, too subtle for ordinary men with good appetites, who are not troubled by the theories of Berkeley. We cannot fancy him at one of those “ wit-combats” at The Mermaid, drinking sherrissack, and joining in the chorus of a song. He wanted the faculty of humour, though Captain Medwin assures us he possessed it strongly. We have looked in vain; we cannot find * See some incidental remarks on Shelley, in the Essay upon “ The Pil­ grim’s Progress.” , �if q ja dt <1 His Poems as illustrated by his Life. 123 a spark of it in his letters, which, on the contrary, are marked hy his usual melancholy spirits. He was too metaphysical to he humorous. He had more of the Jaques and the Hamlet vein than Falstaff’s in him. Hence his bitter outbursts of sarcasm. We must, however, turn to his Life to account for the peculiarities of his poetry. We find there that it took him only a few weeks to write “ The Prometheus Unbound,” whilst he laboured at “ The Cenci” for months; that he forsook his drama of “ Charles I.” in disgust, for “ The Triumph of Life,” one of his most abstruse poems. A curious trait, which gives us no little clue in the matter, is mentioned by Captain Medwin, that Shelley was in the habit of noting down his dreams. “ The first day,” he said, “they made a page, the next two, the third several, till at last they constituted far the greater part of his existence, realizing what Calderon says, in his comedy of ‘ La Vida es Sueno’— ‘ Sueno es Sueno.’ ‘ Dreams are but the dreams of other dreams.’ ” What could be expected of a poet to whom dreams were the only realities of life ? And yet there is something peculiarly pathetic in the story; to many of us, as well as to Shelley, probably our sleeping and our waking dreams are the happiest parts of our ex­ istence. We build our air-castles, those dreams of the day, and take refuge in them from the toil and uproar of the world. There are times when all of us become disheartened, when the spirit within us faints, when we sigh in our hearts— “ 0 cease ! must hate and death return ? Cease! must men kill and die ?” Shelley was, notwithstanding his sanguine hopes, subject to such fits of despondency; no wonder that he should write down his dreams. After all, we live far more in our world of thoughts, and fancies, and dreams, and spend a happier existence, too, in them, than on the real material world. Shelley, too, seems to have known that the abstract nature of his poetry would be a bar to his popularity, and says, in a letter to a friend, that there are not five people who will understand his ‘‘Prometheus Unbound;” and in his prefatory lines to his “ Epipsychidion,” he writes:— “ My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who shall conceive thy reasoning.” And this might be said, with some limitation, of all his poetry. Again, when his wife complains of his want of human interest and story, he wishes to know if she, too, has become “criticbitten.” As he said of Keats, he himself can never become popular; his effect upon men will be, not to make them applaud, �124 Shelley. but to think. Popularity and fame were not the things Shelley cared for. It would be well if our young poets would remember this. No great thing ever did become popular at once. The fact of its becoming popular at once, shows it is not worth much. If you care for popularity, then write songs which can be played on street-organs, and by sentimental young ladies in drawing­ rooms, and which commonplace critics can understand. But if you respect yourself—and that’s the only respect worth anything —never mind if only five people understand you; these five are worth five millions of others, nay, are worth the whole of the rest of the world. As to Shelley being difficult to understand, we apprehend that this is far more the reader’s fault than the poet’s. Plato, instead of saying “ poets utter wise things which they do not themselves understand,” should have said, “ which their readers do not try to understand.” We are not amongst those who look upon poetry as a mere amusement, as a light recreation. The office of the poet is the highest in the world. As Shelley finely says, “ poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world;” and he himself was the Laureate of Freedom. The poet comes as spokesman between nature and the rest of his fellow-men: he is the true priest—the true prophet; extending the tent of our thoughts, enlarging the horizon of our ideas, teaching whatever is lovely, whatever is holy and pure, revealing the unseen things the common eye cannot see, and the melodies the common ear cannot hear, interpreting the mute symbols of [flower, and cloud, and hill, drawing his inspiration from the depths within his own soul. There is another point in connexion with this want of human interest in his poems—that though Shelley experienced at times all the hardships of poverty, yet he was not born poor. Unlike the Burns and the Shakspeares, he never mingled with the crowd, never learnt human life in that rough, coarse way, which tinges their poetry with common every-day experiences, and invests their characters with a flesh-and-blood reality. At school he was always reserved, and in after-life much the same. Hence it is that Sheliey never draws upon our feelings, like the great masters, in his longer pieces ; there is none of the pathos of life, except, per­ haps, in the “ Cenci.” He is too cold ; his characters are like statues of white marble ; no warm blood flows in their veins, no tears trickle down their cheeks. They might be inhabitants of another planet, for what we know, giving us the benefit of their views on various social problems. Again, as we are criticising, we must find fault with those dulcia vitia of overloaded imagery and similes. His verse too often flows not in a clear, deep, rolling stream, but more like a moun­ tain current, swollen and impetuous from rain, jostling together �The Past, Present, and Future. 125 ■ everything that floats upon it. His imagery is often so rich that, E- like the fruit on too luxuriant branches, it completely weighs k the verse down and requires propping up. A very curious ex|t ample of this may be seen in “ The Skylark,” where, after comk paring the bird to all beautiful things, having said that its song t is sweeter than the sound of showers, he closes by— L r r e “ All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.” He cannot, in fact, heap simile on simile fast enough, though the verses are even now overflowing with them, like flowers overpowering with their sweetness. Again, we must notice an opposite vice—a love for unpleasant situations and things— “ At whose name the verse feels loath ”— as in “ The Cenciand a disagreeable love for the details of madness and hospital-life, as in “ Julian and Maddaloand we have finished the catalogue of his principal offences. We dare say there are plenty more minor faults, but we wont deprive other critics of the pleasure of exposing them. Shelley’s imagination was both his stepping-stone and his stumbling-block. It unfortunately mars his poems by its over-excess, yet it gave him wings, with which he could soar aloft above the 8 grovelling views of our everyday life. The fault of the literature of E the day is that it is too retrospective ; thinks that the Golden Age « is in the Past, and not in the Future. It has its eyes fixed in the a back of its head, and if it ever attempts to look forward, squints s most abominably. This is the worst sign of the day, or of any fl day. Let us, if we will, praise the dead Past, and crown its grey a temples with a wreath of glory; but let us look forward to the A Future as a happv youth, holding a cornucopia of all good things 9 in his hand. Shelley, at times, when a film came across his w eyes, sank into this wild sea of despair, but his imagination soon m buoyed him up. There is a good Scottish proverb which it • would be well for us to remember—“We maun live with the « present, and no’ with the past.” Our duty lies with the present, m and it is simply by making it as good as possible that we can < mould the future. Shelley’s imagination, too, prevented him from js- sharing in our English insularity. There was nothing local in •H his mind. It was as catholic as the universe. Hence he was w ever looking forward with courageous hope. Golden gleams of -fl the future flashed before him. He could conjure up new Edens, ai and see Liberty again with Justice walking hand in hand upon a i® new earth. Shelley’s poems will not bear studying as a whole, nor will his ar characters bear analysing. They are, in fact, all representations ■ c ij k 8 w V �126 Shelley. of Shelley. The reason of this is that Shelley sought to give his own views to the world, and he had no medium to give it through hut himself. He had no resources from experience 'to draw upon, no character but his own that he really knew. His life was a poem, his poems his life. Alastor sailing in his boat, is Shelley ; Lionel in his dungeon-walls, Shelley; Laon, with his visions of Liberty, Shelley. So his female characters are only Shelley over again with long dresses and short sleeves. In one poem only, “ The Cenci,” does he make any effort to get behind the mask of his creations. But even here Count Cenci is only the reverse of former characters ; he is only their antithesis, as im­ pulsive towards evil as they were towards good. Shelley should have remembered an axiom of his favourite author, Plato—kcckoc JJ£V fytoV OV^UQ. Turning to Shelley’s poems, we perceive at once the instinctive feelings of the true poet. Thus he begins “Alastor” :— “ Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! If our great mother have imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred.” Mr. Leigh Hunt, in his “Recollections of Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries,” speaks thus of Shelley—“ He was pious towards nature, towards his friends, towards the whole human race, towards the meanest insect of the forest.” But he was more than this. He felt that we are all akin, not men alone, but the cloud above our heads, and the flower beneath our feet. He felt that man is related to the world as a Part to the Whole. He felt how all things mysteriously influence us, and how to these influences we are akin. Such natural stepping-stones as these lead us to Heaven, to which also we are allied. This rela­ tionship it is, above all things, the poet’s office to show. Dearly, too, does Shelley love Nature, who gives to us all alike her beau­ ties, trying to read us the lesson— “The simple life wantslittie, and true'taste Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste The scene it would adorn.”—(“ Epipsychidion.”) How long it will be before we shall find out that we can live without our present costly tastes, that our food will be as sweet from clean earthenware as from silver dishes (many of them, by the way though, only plated), that our sleep will be quite as re­ freshing from a plain bedstead as one that suffocates us with its unpaid-for hangings, we cannot undertake to say. The sooner, �His Love for Personification. 127 however, the better. Very fine is the old fable of Antaeus, who, when he touched his mother earth, received fresh strength. Nature is the true corrective of the false bias which our minds insensibly contract from the present sordid state of the world. A walk in the woods acts as a tonic. A landscape fills the senses not only with mere material visions of beauty, but these react again upon us with a precious moral spirit. We must not pass over Shelley’s love for personification of in­ animate objects, a result of his strong imagination. Take, for instance— “ Our boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream, Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream, The helm sways idly, hither and thither; Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast, And the oars and the sails, but 'tis sleeping fast, Like a beast unconscious of its tether.” (“The Boat on the Serchio.”) There is another well-known example in the “ Cenci,” of the rock hanging over the precipice, clinging for support, as a dying soul clings to life. This propensity it is that leads him to humanize the objects of nature. He cannot see a stream, but he forthwith converts it into a personage, as the old heathen poets would have into a god or a goddess. He gazes upon Arethusa ; it is no longer a stream, but a beautiful nymph with crystal feet leaping from rock to rock, her tresses floating on the wind, and wherever she steps, the turf grows greener and brighter. And then comes Alpheus, no longer a stream but a river-god, with his fierce beard and glaring eyes, chasing the nymph whom the earth tries to rescue from his embrace ; and so they rush along in .their mad pursuit. This is quite in the spirit of the old Greek my­ thology. In these prosaic days we are ever analysing the old Divinities; we put Venus into a crucible and melt her down, and look at Jupiter through a microscope like any other specimen of natural history. We will, however, continue our quotation, as it developes many of Shelley’s characteristics in a few lines :— “ The stars burnt out in the pale blue air, And the thin white moon lay withering there; To tower and cavern, rift and tree, The owl and the bat fled drowsily. Day had kindled the dewy woods, And the rocks above and the stream below, And the vapours in their multitudes, And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of airy gold The mists in their eastern caves uprolled,^ �128 Shelley. JShelley’s love for the mountains amounted to a passion. Long before Mr. Ruskin wrote—who seems to arrogate for himself the priority of seeing any real beauty or use in them—had Shelley sung their praises. So fond was he of them, that Captain Medwin tells us he was continually sketching them in his books. A claim, too, has been put in for Wordsworth, that he first gave us the scenery of the sky, and all the glorious cloud-scapes and air tones, which earlier poets had so strangely neglected. Shelley may at least share this glory with him; though the critics have forgotten that Aristophanes has a still prior claim. Shelley is continually alluding to them. His lyric on the “ Cloud” paints them as they move in their huge battalions across the sky, in all their colours, from red sunrise to crimson sunset; or as they come sailing along with their black wings, as if they were Titan ships waging war one with another; or in the night lying as if they were silver sands lippled by the waves of the wind, and lighted by the moon. In all Shelley’s pieces there is a strange melancholy feeling, which we have alluded to before; not the result, as Mr. Ruskin foolishly thinks, of any impiety, but from the poet’s affection for Humanity, and his sorrow at its ills. Take this picture of Summer and Winter”:— “It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon—and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like seternity. All things rejoiced beneath the sun—the weeds, The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds; The willow leaves that glanced in the bright breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick; and when, Among their children, comfortable men Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold; Alas! then, for the homeless beggar old.” Shelley, with all his love for Nature, could no longer dwell upon the last scene. The wind sowing the flakes of snow on the earth, the frozen grass lying on the bald fields like grey hair, and the icicles hanging like a beard from the rocks, had no charms for him. He was thinking of all the frost-bitten, homeless, breadless wanderers. So through all his poetry he is ever musing �His Melancholy Feelings, and their Causes. 129 on the wrongs and sufferings of poor humanity. This gives it a peculiar melancholy tone, not morbidness, but a true deep pathos. He writes more of the fall of the year, than of its birth. He sings the dirge over its bier, rather than the marriage-song of the Spring. The wild wind, “the world’s rejected guest,” moans among his verses, and there finds a home. Ever does he say, “ the sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” Another reason is there for this feeling with Shelley, his habit of looking at the world from a metaphysical point of view. The very grandeur and might of the Universe casts a shadow upon the heart of man. All great minds have ever known this profound gloom. Whether CEdipus interprets or not the world-riddle, he shall die. Mark how in “ Alastor” Shelley writes— “ The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams.” How much is conveyed in that word “ homeless.” The streams wandering along, seeking rest and finding none, until they reach the haven of the sea, and then are snatched away again into the air, seeming to say, “ we change, but we cannot die;” here we are condemned to be for ever, restless, shifting, changing. So with all things. And Shelley felt this strongly. The mountains which seem so firm, and “ all that must seternal be,” are after all but as changeful as the clouds which rest upon their brows. Many minor points are there which we might discuss, such as Shelley’s particular fondness for a certain class of images, and particular words. On one of these in particular, taken from the green fields, he seems to dwell with great affection. Thus he writes— “ Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms, or arts, Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame.” (“ Sonnet on Political Greatness.”) So he speaks of Arethusa "‘shepherding her bright fountains of Adonais, “ whose quick dreams were his flocks and of the West Wind— “ Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed on air.” So, again, in the “ Witch of Atlas,” he calls the wind “the shep­ herdess of ocean flocksand he speaks of the earth itself as “ the last of the flock of the starry fold.”* Even in his prose * It is curious to notice how the “ one miud common to all individual men,” as Mr. Emerson would say, repeats the same idea. Thus Edward Bolton, a poet but little known, writes thus:— “ Lo! how the firmament Within an azure fold Theflock of the stars hath pent.”—(“ Hymn for Christmas.”) [Vol. LXIX. No. CXXXV.]—New Series, Vol. XIII. No. I. K �130 Shelley. he returns to this metaphor, and calls Dante “the Lucifer of the starry flock.”* And even in his translation he uses it, thus expanding eXar^pa (3oG>v, i]yhTOp oveipwv Nvktog, (“ The Homeric Hymn to Mercury.”) into “ a Shepherd of thin dreams, a cow stealing.” Other favourite words, such as “winged,” “islanded,” will readily occur to every reader. Space fails us, and we must he brief. Much more is there that might be said about Shelley’s poems, showing how, in the first place, they were inspired by his early reading, how they next yielded to German influences, how these developed themselves into Materialism, and how this, too, was merging into a sort of Spiritualism at the time of his death; marking each era accu­ rately, and showing, too, what effects the French and Italian schools of poetry had upon him. Especially, too, should we like to dwell on some of his lyrics; nothing approaches them for sweetness and melody, except some of Shakspeare’s songs, or some of Goethe’s minor pieces. But we must turn to the man himself. Poetry he loved with a religious spirit. Noble was he in work­ ing at it as his profession. Noble, too, was he in his choice of life. On one hand lay ten thousand a-year and its game pre­ serves, and its bright smiles of courtly women, its soft-cushioned and soft-carpeted drawing-rooms, its dinners with endless courses, its revenue of salutations and bows, its faithful army of faithless toadies; on the other, poverty with its bleak sharp rocks, where yet a man may find a cave to live in; its rude angry sea, yet to which if a man shall listen he may hear the eternal melodies; with its black clouds overhead, which, though so dense, will sometimes open out spaces of the clear, blue, unfathomable sky in the day, and the bright keen stars in the night. Shelley made no hesi­ tation which he should choose; and nobly done, we say to him, and all such. Noble, too, was he that he wrote on fearlessly and boldly in spite of party-reviews and party-critics. Fame was not his mistress. He worshipped not at the shrine of that most fickle of goddesses. Ever higher, was his motto. He was ever quoting this sentiment from the second volume of St. Leon— “ There is nothing which the human mind can- conceive which it may not executeand again, “ Shakspeare was only a human being.”t His face was ever upward—up the steep hill of poesy, whose rarest flowers bloom on the highest peaks. What he might And every one will recollect how Bloomfield’s “ Farmer’s Boy ” so naturally speaks of the stars as— “The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.” * “Defence of Poetry,” p. 35. f See Mrs. Shelley’s note on “ The Cenci.” �His Personal Character. 131 have been, had he lived, we can never tell. Dying at twenty-nine, we are judging him only by his weaknesses. What could we have told of Shakspeare or Goethe, if the one had only lived to write his “ Pericles,” and the other his “ Werter” ? Let us not forget,- too, the pureness of Shelley s morals. His life in this respect was as pure as crystal without one flaw, one stain on it. Many scenes are there in his writings, one especially in the “ Revolt of Islam,” which could have been treated by no other man with the same pureness of thought. Above all things, too, do we prize his letters to his wife; they are so full of genuine affection and kindness. Well was it that he should die in the great ocean, pure as he himself was, that ocean which he so dearly loved. Above all men, too, is Shelley religious, strange as it will seem to many readers. Love for all that is good and beautiful and truthful, reverence for all that is great and noble, a spirit of humility, had their roots deep in the depths of his soul. What matters it about names and sects ? Let us hear no more about them; they are all but roads and lanes and paths, more or less straight, more or less wide, to the great Invisible Temple. We must place Shelley amongst the world’s Master-Spirits and Master-Singers; a younger brother of that grand blind old man, Cromwell’s secretary. Shelley, too, was one of the world’s Forlorn Hope; one of those generous martyrs who now and then appear at such rare intervals, and fill us with undying hope in the cause of Humanity; one of those who would willingly lay down his life in the trench, if his body would but bridge over the chasm for his comrades to pass. Such a man makes us prouder of our race; and his memory makes the earth itself a richer world. There is a light flung round Shelley’s life, though so marked with griefs and disasters, which has never shone on the most victorious king or Icaiser—a light that shall burn for ever as a beacon to all Humanity. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelley Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: p. 97-131 ; 22 cm. Notes: Includes bibliography (p.97) and bibliographical references. Reviews of four works about Shelley: The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1853 -- Essays; Letters from Abroad; Translations and Fragments. by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1854 -- The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847 -- The Shelley Papers by Captain Thomas Medwin. 1833. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 13 (January 1858). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wise, John Richard de Capel Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Shelley), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT44 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts English Poetry Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry Poetry in English Romantic Poetry https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4f578d38c599923b41168181b85a62df.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=lH4spBVX8e7Z9Tshe4iyL59DVvhhzV4ebpIC99vfZAE7Wyc4MahOcU-EmEF8qavNLJ02Wevd5f0YXLWDUy9cEdveRBDMXWGIwkGRQwXZK0F7JH5m6knUw1vX8npJfOVOkVUIO2Q%7ELZL2uSZBj9h5oOYKpT-GlmmODlnlkPdId6Q1dVJ%7EMOCZ9MZDYzJgnBHC2N4V6fQ0sGdZwYg9azWn2TqymPxv6-PxyjLGQa08kIHHiF3VWm4sFEd2s2BpnS8XvsZTzRbtcStN-ASSpz8Gp1IZ6ONZ36ql1JdthclcRP2yS20ab4hzFsIfNv%7E%7EUwnp1kF2yHTZ1sRs1z7hGSYxUA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d41cfd46ff5589371eff4a54e49e3bfa PDF Text Text yVlUMAL AND ‘ Read it again, and tell me, who was she ?’ ‘Well, wines are best to drink where they are grown. And tales to tell where they are old and known ; But Mumal was a fair false sorceress, Whose wiles brought half the East to nakedness, Whom Mendra and the king set out to see. Before hei’ house what seemed a river ran, And here they met a crazy beggar man Who said “ Ye soon shall be forlorn like me.” The king turned back, the river ran too high : Mendra went forward, and he found it dry. He passed the roaring lions, made of stone, The seven couches, where her shadows lie, Who stretched to clasp him as he hurried by, And found the couch where Mumal sat alone, Too idle to do anything but love. So he went back and made his boast thereof, Nor showed her to the envious king, save he Would serve them at their feast on bended knee : Who paid the scorn with bonds, yet nightly freed In the dear prison of her arms he slept Till once he found not whom her sister kept.’ ‘ And lost his faith, but not his love ; now read In the seven-gated hold Mendra sits, bound sevenfold With the meshes of fine gold; There they cast him to grow old. And the hold hath seven eyes, Where the king hath set his spies, Set to spin the captive’s sighs To a deadlier web of lies. There when night is at the noon Mendra wails beneath the moon. 1 Of. ‘Tuhfatu-1 Kiram’ in Sir H. Elliott’s History of India, voh i., pp. 345—341 and Captain Burton’s Sindh, pp. 114—125. �MUMAL AND MENDRA. ‘ Where did she go when I could not follow? Where is she gone whom. I held so dear ? She is false and fair, and her heart is hollow; I called her name and she did not hear. If she had loved me she would have heard, Though my voice were only the voice of a bird, Singing far away as the flight of a swallow, She would have heard me, called me to follow; If she had loved me she would have heard. Faster than any swallow can fly, I came to her under the cloudy sky, With neither moon nor stars above, And never a guiding light but Love, And the fleetest steed that would follow my track Panting after me under the spur, Should journey three days ere he turned back, But I journeyed in three hours to her ; And all my magic was only Love. She taught me Love’s magic, I know it yet, She taught me, and how could she forget ? She could have heard me, I know, far away, If she could not hear she had only to stay, To stay for her love where the roses blow, If she loved me, what ailed her to go ?’ In the garden at Mayapur, Where the magic lions of Mumal roar, Sitting alone on the magic bed, Mumal also made moan, and said : 4 Seven weeks, and day by day, I make the fountain of gladness play; Seven weeks, and night by night, I burn in my bower the lovers’ light; Seven weeks, and I always wear The lovers’ flower in my scented hair; Seven weeks, and I wmtch and pray, Saying, “Surely he comes to-day;” ' Seven weeks and he is away. Is Mendra dead that he comes no more To the garden of love at Mayapur ? If he lives, he can come if he will, Yet I know while he lives he loves me still.’ 301 �302 MUMAL AND MENDRA. Over against the prison tower, Mumal hath spoken the word of power. In heaven the Lord of lovers heard, Before she spake it the mighty word, And none of the seventy-seven spies Beheld her palace of love arise : But Mendra saw it with hungry eyes, And he marvelled what Mumal came to do, And he said, ‘ The false is seeking the true;’ And he waited a space while the palace grew ’Twixt the prison bars and the boundless blue. When the palace builders went away, Mumal stood at the window the livelong day. Mendra looks forth every morn To greet his love with a smile of scorn. Mendra looks forth every eve To see if his love still waits to grieve; From morning to eve his curtains fall, Lest his beloved, who loves him well, Should see but his shadow upon the wall, And all day the loveless laugh in hell, To think that one night’s fickleness Should have put hex' delight so far away, That she might not find it in many years; Though she never had loved her love the less For the night that her sister made hei' stay. But every morn and every even Tears are shed in the lovers’ heaven, And the tears of heaven are healing tears. Over against the tower again Mumal hath builded a palace of pain ; She watches there as she watched before To lure Mendra home unto Mayapur ; And Mendra also will never miss The exquisite pain, the shuddering bliss, To sit in his chains and to know that a queen Is pining to see him, and he unseen. About the seven-gated hold She builded her palaces seven fold ; Seven moons she watched in each To see her love and to hear his speech ; �DRAWN DY E. F. CLARKE. MUMA L AND MENDRA. ��MUMAL AND MENDRA. All her reward was, morn by morn, To know that he watched how she brooked his scorn ; All her rest was to know at eve He had known she was there to love and grieve ; While he did not forget, though he did not forgive, He loved her enough to help her to live. But when six times seven moons were past, And she entered the fairest palace and last; She panted greatly in hope and fear, Saying, ‘ I have done and the end is near; Will Love accept of me even yet ? I have been patient and sorely tried, There is only one night for Love to forget, Only one little stain for Love to hide, When he wraps me up into the light at his side. 0 Love, accept of me even yet, For the tears wherein I am purified.’ And the Lord of death who is Lord of love, Who is over and under the souls of all, Considered her voice when he heard her call: And he strengthened her out of his house above. And she walked to the window with steady pace, And she looked her last with a quiet face. She looked forth into the dewy dawn, And already the curtains of black were drawn ; She looked again through the noon-day skies, And the sable curtains did not rise; She watched till she saw the golden moon, And the curtains were drawn as at morn and noon,, ‘ 0 love, there is nothing to see,’ she said, ‘ 0 love, you will have me cover my head; If love hideth himself what is left to see, Though I hide myself love shall discover me, Love shall behold me, and only he, 0 love, there is nothing to do,’ she said, And she bowed to her love, and she was dead. And because of the love that had made them one,. Binding their souls in a band for ever, That either might tangle, but never sever, He understood that her watch was done, 303 �304 MUMAL AND MENDRA. That she had forgotten that love was pain, In the land of the Lord who makes all things plain, And he said, ‘ She is gone where I must follow, She will guide me now, for she holds me dear, To the land beyond the flight of the swallow, To the far-off land that is always near.’ Now the spies had said, ‘ 0 king, we see No sin in Mendra concerning thee;’ So the king commanded to set him free. But ere they came to his release, He also had entered into peace. Long ago, and long ago, Mumal and Mendra ceased from woe, In the land where seven rivers flow, Yet they, whose hearts are molten in one, By the fire that burns beyond the sun, Thank the Lord of lovers unto this day For Mumal’s and Mendra’s love, and pray To the Lord, who healed the pain and strife, They had while they sought to the Lord of-life, Crying out, with short ecstatic breath, To the Lord of love, who is Lord of death, Laughing at life which is hard and hollow, Till out of the prison of hope and fear The fluttering spirit is free to followr To the far-off land that is alwTays near. G. A. Simcox. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mumal and mendra: a legend of Scinde Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Simcox, George Augustus Clarke, E.F. (ill) Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 300-304 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873. Drawing by R.F. Clarke, engraved by C.M. Jenkin. Mumal and Mendra is a mythical love story in ancient Indian history. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1871] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5336 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Mumal and mendra: a legend of Scinde), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts English Poetry Poetry in English https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2085824327f5ff3105605c2b82805a18.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=bPkpiJrm5e1RoQ2EGMwEy-Or14an0ebhrUNfcoaB4GnIX8hp%7E17LhoGzEAjLPkNECqgUlhMjyAeNc7QXNkU7u7CAe-Z7oEkE79WSiOkqcjif34x2IR6ZTpwdYTeOf5fmdixheNJAUXbLLfUzdDhzGp6iSxGne9EpjHJpDFsKtz%7Ev7PP2sjeFz5cvjhokBd5PXV5YRpFR3-yWZnWD1yZNr2XIqJuUN97RYJZZ44bL-K0DvOXC8cchiZFLPUKo9XC3rINi8yexWenuzMsE0o33iIvYHywwpPIT7lVCyO5lZPsI33dW8T0qUoL03544BD3ZNMik8Yui-u0HwBIby02ZlA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3d5fad3dc37d2c701f1c732bb4934d08 PDF Text Text «rO \ J PSYCHE TO Mother Earth. BY FRANCES ROSE MACKINLEY. ARTH, my BELOVED MOTHER ! Prone upon you I prostrate myself; I imprint you with earnest kisses ; With awful wonder, I love, revere, adore you. How beholden am I to your spirit, That you enable me to apprehend your entity ; You, so near, so familiar to me ; That with my psychic vision clarified, Looking lucidly through my physical eyes, You empower me to recognize you ; Presential, breathing, palpitating, living ! You, the concrete, primogenial source of life. �PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. What delight to hear your mystic voice, To catch with clairaudient sense the latency Of your multisonous mobility, Your myriad and varied tones Reverberating musically in my ears ! What boundless satisfaction To cognize the subjective analogies Of your elemental language ! (I am one of your living ideographic words.) What spontaneous delight To be able to respond to you, In all your diversified forms of expression, To your repercussive intonations, Or your mellifluous whisperings— Mother, I understand ! flow beautiful you are, O mother ! Every day I gaze fascinated and enraptured On your athletic, brunonian body, Outstretched, nude and lethargic ; Your legs, massive, plump, symmetrical ; Your bosoms luxurious, redundant; Your wistful, luscious face, With pensive, languishing, hazel eyne. Ever serenely, quiescently you repose, Basking bewitchingly your bared charms In the searching and amative regards �3 PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. Of your transcendent lover, the Sun. How resplendently your flesh glistens, Bathed in the dazzling scintillations Of his sensuous, magnetic presence ! The beauty of your sons and daughters Is but a faint similitude Of your immaculate loveliness. How loving you are, O mother ! My present existence and daily continuance Manifest your provident love ; That you will take this wondrous body You have lent my spirit, to your warm embrace, To more intimately assimilate its particles, What evincement of love ! That you have oft incarnated my spirit, And with, love sent me forth from you, And, with as great love, recalled My material personality to your bosom, To be fondled and afterward resent, What supereminent proofs of love ! I have noted you, endeared mother ! In daily coition with your lover, the Sun. I have watched his gorgeous masculinity, K In lustful intermutation with you ; !........... ——--------------------- �//. PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. Embalming you in the luminous beams Of his effulgent thermodic halo. How much you seemed to glory, To exult and revel in his caress ! I glory with you in your delectation, And in the good he imparts to you. Without his embrace, you would perish, Even as I, your daughter, would expire Without the contactual suscitation of my lovers. I have seen you also, O wanton mother! Surfeited of your lover’s dalliance, Antagonistic, repellant of his desire. O I too have been satiated With the aphrodisaic carnality Of my Priapian paramours ! From gentle encounters with you, And tempered orgasms in your embrace, I have seen his passion rousing Into glowing and rampant salacity ; Till he impended over you exacerbated To the very ultimity of heat. I have seen you shrinkingly recoil, When his vehement afilation, Simoon-like, effumed upon you, And his rapacious arms, Ignifluous annulars, Compressed you impactly �PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. 5 To his lascivient and candescent body; Whilst into your womb he extruded .His ebullient, geyser-jet semen. You were feverous, chafed, wincing, aglow ; Torrified by his scortatory passion. I deemed that you must expire ; ' And should your vitality cease, O mother ! How could your children survive ! One day, in the sultry month of July, As I reclined on your hot breast, Murmuring words of condolence To you, poor suffering mother ! We were startled by thundering rumblings in the West. Looking thitherward, I descried Huge cumuli overtopping the horizon. Instantaneously you exclaimed : “ O rejoice with me, my children ! “ He comes, He, my redemptive lover, “ He, for whom I have been sighing, “ He, whom I now need for rescue, “ He, who only can relieve me ! ” Then, revealed to my wonderment, I beheld your lover, awe-compelling, Black, colossal, cyclopean, vast, �6 PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. Stalking majestically in the heavens, His terrific shadow overdarkening the skies, And tenebrously enveloping you; His frowning browns portentously lowering ; His gigantic bulk equipendent in the mid welkin. Inflated with generant vigor, Dissilient with desire for you, He fulmines thunderous lustful threats. With foretaste of delight, O mother ! You trembled at his lecherous menaces, And with upthrown arms, Enrounding your retroverted head, Anxious, impatient, eager, You slightly disparted your thighs, And gently upraised your abdomen, In longing preparedness to receive him. With thought exceeding instantaneity His phallic lightning strokes Reiteratedly penetrate your genetalia. Negative, receptive mother ! As his invigorating love lymph Emulged upon you in lavish profluence ; Your eyes closed as in serene ectasy. Your countenance exuberated with renewed life, Your quickened orbs ■ looked up lovingly, �PSYCIIE TO MOTHER EARTH. Every freshened pore responsively dilated, Your lips tremulously articulated, thanks. Love-sick, languishing, despairing, I, your daughter, with trepid sighs, Long for a reciprocal love mate, Whose electric influence and embrace .* Will be to me, as was your savior to you, Solace, reviviscence, ecstasy ! With wearied body, o’erspent and drooping, Sore, wounded feet, swollen with travel, From bootless chase of unattainableness, I seek refuge in your maternity. I clasp my arms around your neck. Let me nestle my weighted head Cosily ’twixt your lenitive mammoe ! In this delicious harborage, Let me uninterruptedly repose ! J Let me find there, long enduring rest ; Till, through your kindly assuagement, The perturbation within me is allayed ! Let me subside into sedative slumbers, Calming to my insatiate heart; To waken, comforted, composed, ductile, 7 �g PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. Prompt to obey your dehortations, Assured that to question your teachings, Or ignore your prescient admonitions, Must be to constantly return to you afflicted, To abide in embroilment and inquietude ! Make me Placid, compliant, resigned, passive, As you are, O Infinite Parent ! Animate me with your own essentiality ! Are you thus, Placid, compliant, resigned, passive, Thus beatifically accordant with events ; Since to you belongs the cognition Of the mysterious purpose of all that is ? O let me, thro’ your inspiration, Attain some definite discernment Of the subtle intent of existence ; Some positive hint of certitude, More than the discontinuous clairvoyance, Whereby I glimpse scintillas of truth, With ever intervenient periods Of dubiety, and its consequent despondence ! Your sensuous, voluptuous breath Respiring balmily over me, Convulses me with titillative tremors. The semblance of lascivious abandon, �PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. 9 Ascendant in your mien and bearing, Spells and ecstasizes my spirit. The aroma of your wantonness Materializes into living forms of beauty : Vital, substantive, efflorescent virtues ; Whence in turn exhales a quality Gossamery, subtile, insinuative ; An impalpable emication, Invisible, but sensate to your children, In irresistibly seductive allurements To languor, desire, love, worship, coition. O in this luscious magnetism— The life incitement of your children— Is there not revealed the aim of Being ? O from this mystic adumbration, Have I not apprehended the purport of ex­ istence ? Expand my soul, O mother ! To a lasciviousness akin to yours ; That I also may give exoteric form To the fullness of like voluptuousness, And by a consummate shapeliness Incite, as you do, love, worship, adoration ! Make me, as you are, bold, free, cosmopolite, Accessible, nonchalant, unbosoming ! You, ever love environing your children, �10 PSYCHE TO MOTHER EARTH. Coulcl they but clairvoyantlv see you 1 Make me, as you are, communicant, \ Outspoken, fluent, colloquial, eloquent ! Your voice, ever speaking to your children, Could they but clairaudiently hear you ! Make me just, intrusive, assertive as you ! We, children, your feel this fictile, plastic force ; This charactery, whereby you express yourself, Acting within ourselves and about us, To fashion the physical and metaphysical ; But how few divine in it, your immanent presence ! Make me negative, receptive as you ! Because of these feminine attributes, You are transcendently a divine mother. Promiscuous, all-embracing, all-loving, All-inclusive, universal mother ! Impress me with your catholicness, That I may reimpress all humanity, With such assimilative consciousness Of the opulence and divinity of those attributes, That your sons and daughters will all emulate The similitude of you in me, And with one ecumenic purpose, exclaim : Let us strive to resemble our mother ! ” � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Psyche to mother earth Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mackinley, Frances Rose Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 10 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A poem. Text bordered in red. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource {187-?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5310 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Spiritualism Women's rights Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Psyche to mother earth), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English American Conway Tracts Mother Goddess Poetry Poetry in English Spiritualism Women's Rights Women's Rights-United States https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/213bb1a841bfd64a75256c2f46810662.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=TFL8URhX7MOEEjfme%7E232ZWFmSVtoLknT7efnlGZNJoRqDYijlaPcy8iQY1CEIcI9-tUGEAlxdWHVL7fs0JFC1URoojaBmtjCBHNiV3CC39c9RYXt7ChhVZ5HJWWBmwjn9sjvxQJ38-4fk7P1N0QjcpJQsxtXjSlN399ESWY8pVOwPxiVzXCKQ%7EH-UFN7291%7EsaNh6oleJ200HZ81aMo12gagY8IMap5qqD5kI31IrvuFJuYPyDfv0ZE8qDeZ0Vg3T5N7L3jeLR75Oe-L5CQFmzuE7vJfwdtRxIQV5zP3OeIAlf9Qp9CdwFVFKrMHMb07OJhxhzQO8z51Up43mYQkw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 9a307b98a122034701c049472f4c152e PDF Text Text FIRST PAPER. 1 L’Art pour l’Art ’ is a motto that supplies us with a very satisfactory definition of the aim and purport of the poetry of those early times when men, not having lost their fresh childlike rejoicing in the present, sang—if they had the power to sing—aimlessly ‘ wie der Vogel singt,’ just only because Das Lied das aus der Kehle dringt 1st Lohn der reichli ch lohnet. , But every year is now carrying us farther away from a state of things in which it is possible that there should be produced poetry of the kind to which this definition is applicable. The great flood of subjectivity which has made its way into all modern thought has brought with it problems pressing for answer in such a crowd as to leave no room for thinking or feeling to be exercised unconsciously and without purpose. Of the poets now writing amongst us we cannot say that their work is 1 pour l’Art.’ In the generation immediately preceding theirs there was, indeed, one poet—Scott—who contrived to keep himself apart, as on an island, nntouched by the waves of restless subjective thought that had come over the intellectual life of his age, and who retained the power of purposeless poetical utterance. But has there been produced, since his, any poetry seeking no further office than to become a beauti­ ful or noble piece of art ? Does not all, or by far the greater part of that which is of recent origin, seem to be sent forth for the purpose of gaining satisfaction of one kind or another for the craving self-con­ sciousness of the writers, and of their contemporaries who are to share in the results of their quest? Poetry, like every other power which man has at command, has now been forced to take its part in supplying the two great wants, Pleasure and Truth—which, little felt in simple primitive times, become passionately urgent in a state of high civilisation and culture. We have not now—and probably the world will never have again—poets who are poets and nothing more. What we have now is truth-seekers and pleasure-seekers gifted with the power of �172 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. artistic perception and imagination, of rhythmical or melodious ex« pression, and using these gifts to seek what without them they would! have sought by other means. The school of thought which is content to regard pleasure as the satisfaction for which all desires are craving, uses its poetry to go forth, and bring in full richness of pleasures ; careless, if only there can be found in them beauty and delight, from whence they come and of what sort they are. Not the value of a man’s work as art, but the power it has to awaken in writer or readers a stranger susceptibility to pleasure of sense or imagination, is here the measure of his success. There is a great deal of poetry which seems on its surface to be alto­ gether the free playing of spontaneous instincts, but which we find, if we look a little deeper into it, to have at bottom the principle of utilitarianism, not of art. Nor can the men whose desires are towards the satisfaction of truth be poets more unconscious of a purpose. To find that satisfaction for themselves and for others is the aim towards which all their faculties are bent, and in proportion as their search is successful these men become teachers and preachers. The poet on whose characteristics the following pages will contain a few thoughts—Mr. Robert Browning— is one whose gifts as a poet, strong and true as they are, are perhaps oftener than any contemporary artist’s, merged in his character as preacher of what he has gained as a truth-seeker. I cannot but think that the full value of his work can only be estimated by recognising him first in his office of preacher rathei’ than of poet. Any reader who has had patience enough to force his way through the bristling hedge of complicated sentences that forms so much of the outer fence of Browning’s writings, and has gone in and got hold of intelligible meaning, must surely perceive that he has to do with some­ thing which cannot be judged of by aesthetic tests,. We feel that what is to be found there is the work of a man who is bound by all the impulses of his nature to preach what he believes and to persuade other men. He seems to have chosen the office of poet voluntarily, for the sake of this preaching ; partly because the rythmical form of words will carry his doctrine where it might not otherwise reach and partly because amongst the truths he would set forth, there are some which are of the kind that to men’s present faculties must be always only as sights half seen, as sounds half heard, and which become dimmer and fainter if the attempt is made to define them into the accurate form and articulate speech of ordinary prose. Browning’s place is amongst the teachers whose words come forth allowed by their own conscious will; not amongst the artists controlled by involuntarily instincts. His poetry is not a great artist utterance that has fulfilled its end— or at least the only end with which the artist is concerned—when once it has got outside the mind in which it originated into audible sound �BROWNING- AS A PREACHER. 173 or visible form, whether that sound be heard or that form be seen or not; but it is a message intended to travel (the sender hardly cares how, provided that the end be reached) from the heart and brain of one man to the hearts and brains of those who will hear him. The necessity that is laid upon him, through his instincts, is the ‘ When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren ; ’ and the setting himself to his work as a poet seems to be his choice of the way in which he will obey that impulse. Not for his own sake does poetry seem to be a necessity to him. As far as his own needs are concerned, such a man could afford to be silent. It is neither for the relief nor for the pleasure of self-utterance that he speaks. Nothing that he has written betokens the weakness and incapacity of_reticence that have opened the mouths of so many poets in a great strong bitter crying, which they tuned into beautiful music whose sweetness might ease them of their pain. Nor has he that irrepressible joy in beauty for its own sake which forced Wordsworth to tell of the loveliness of the visible world. And we cannot attribute his becoming a poet to the pressure of dramatic instincts. Though in power of imagining dramatic characters it is he and he only who at all fills the office’of modern Shakespeare, yet there is something in his manner of exercising that power which tells us that in him it is subordinate to some other motive. This difference there is between Browning and other poets who could create ‘ men and women,’ that w’hereas with others the production of life-like characters seems to be the aim and end, with him it is only the means to a further end—namely, the arguing out and setting forth of general truths. He cannot, as others have done, rest satisfied with contemplating the children of his imagination, and find the fulfilment of his aim in the fact of his having given them existence. It seems always as if his purpose in creating them was to make them serve as questioners and objectors and answerers in the great debate of conflicting thoughts of which nearly all his poetry forms part. His object in transferring (as he can do with such marvellous success) his own consciousness, as it were, into the consciousness of some imagined character, seems to be only to gain a new stand-point, from which to see another and a different aspect of the questions concerning which he could not wholly satisfy himself from his own point of view. He can create characters with as strongly marked individualities as had ever any that came out of the brain of dramatist or novelist, but he cannot be content to leave them, as Shakespere did the characters he created, to look, all of them, off in various directions according to whatever chanced to suit best with the temper and disposition he had imagined for them. Still less can he leave to any of his men and women the vraisemblable attribute of having no steady outlook at anything in particular. They are all placed by him with their eyes turned in very much in the same direction, gazing towards the same class �174 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. of questions. And, somehow, Browning himself seems to he in com­ pany with them all the time, hearing their different reports of the various aspects which those questions present to each of them ; and judging and choosing between all these different reports, in order to give credence to the true one. The study of no individual character would seem to him of much value, unless that character contained something which should help to throw light upon matters common to all humanity, upon the questions either as to what it is, or as to what are its relations to the things outside humanity. Desire to know the truth, and to make other men know it, seems to be the essential quality of his nature, and his poetry only its separable accident — a garment which it wears because if finds such best suited to it in the nineteenth century, but which it might very likely have gone without, if placed among the surroundings of some other age. If we can fancy him transferred back some five hundred years ago, he would be found surely not among the followers of the 1 gaye science/ as a trouvère or troubadour, exercising his art to give pleasure at the court or the knightly castle, but rather in the solitude of a monastic cell, gazing with fixed eyes into the things of the unseen world, until they became the real, and the shows of earth the unreal, things ; or, later on, would surely have been a worker, not in the cause of the great art revival of the sixteenth century but of its Reformation movement. One can fancy how grandly he would then have preached his gospel of the sanctity of things secular, in rough plain Luther-like prose, with the same singleness of purpose with which he now, as a poet, sets himself to preach a gospel—needed more than all others by his contemporaries— of the reality and presence of things immaterial and extra-human. Browning’s poetry has one characteristic which gives its teaching peculiar influence over contemporary minds. I mean the way in which, all the while being perfectly free from egoism, it brings its readers in some inexplicable way into a contact with the real self of the author, closer and more direct than that which we have with any other poets through their writings. Once you succeed in construing the compli­ cated thinking and feeling of this or that passage of his, you feel, not that youtare seeing something that a man has made, but that you are in the immediate presence of the man himself. I know of no other writings (except J. H. Newman’s) having this peculiarity to such a degree (it is in this that the secret of the fascination of those wonder­ ful sermons of Newman’s consists). These two men, so different, have yet this in common, that there is something in their written words which communicates to the men who read them the thrill of contact with the.pulsations of another human life. And the knowledge that there is the real living mind of another man speaking to your mind, gives a restful sense of reality that is the starting-point of all belief and of all motive to action. Surely anyone who has received this from Browning must feel as if there would be a miserable ingrati- �BROWNING AS A PREACHER. 175 tu.de in the sort of criticism which should carp at his poetry for its lack of polish in style or prettiness in ideas. Browning is greater than his art, and the best work which his poetry does is to bring you into his own presence: and once there you no longer care what brought you there, and feel as if it mattered very little whether the means of communication had been poetry or other form of words. Tennyson’s art is greater than Tennyson ; and it is with it, and not with the man himself, that you have to do. Of course, though Tennyson can have no direct influence as a teacher over anyone who feels thus about him and his work, yet his indirect influence over the minds of men is not to be lightly accounted of. His poetry is what it is, and may be accepted by us as we accept a beauti­ ful painting or piece of music, as an end in itself. Acting through our aesthetic perceptions, it affects the tone and colour of our moods. And most of us know by experience that the character of our thinking is in a great measure dependent upon moods and feelings open to impres­ sions of this sort. It is of course no slight gift that Mr. Tennyson has given to his contemporaries when he has shown them ideas so pure and calm and noble, by the contemplation of which their own lives may unconsciously become purer and higher. Acknowledging this influence that he has, and giving him due honour for it, all I would say is that there is another kind of influence which he cannot exercise, and that his poetry, though making nineteenth cen­ tury problems so constantly its theme, is not to be reckoned amongst the books that give any real availing help against the modern 1 spectres of the mind.’ To the needs of vital doubt it is no more than if it told us tales of fairy-land. And this because of its failing to give us that entire satisfaction as to its being truth subjective, which alone could be our guarantee for its being able to help in guiding us to truth objective. In the times when neither our hearts nor brains can get hold of the sense of reality in anything around us, we find that instead of aiding us ‘ aus diesem Meer des Irrthums aufzutauchen,’ all that Tennyson’s poetry seems to have done for us is to have made a beautiful word-phantom, having a semblance of wise human counsel, to add another to the number of the appearances that with aspects beautiful or horrible are floating over and under and around us, and perpetually eluding our grasp. Fai’ more is to be gained at such times from poetry even such as Clough’s, which, though it carries you to no farther resting-place, at least lets you take hold of one substantial thing—'the veritable mind of a human being, doubting with its. own doubts and having its certaintainties its own, each of those certainties, however few and imperfect, having a distinct place as independent testimony to truth.. . ? Browning brings from out of his own individuality something which he did not receive from his age, and which he offers to it as a gift, and which is of a spirit so foreign to the atmosphere into which it comes that he requires men to accept him as a. teacher before attaining to �176 BROWNING- AS A PREACHER. sympathy with. him. This that he has to give is some of the intense earnestness of Puritanism, and the strenuousness of effort which gave heroic grandeur to the old asceticism. He offers this to a state of society, which along with all its practical vigour and perseverance in the affairs of men’s outer lives, has so much of aimlessness and aban­ donment of self-direction in all that concerns the life of inner thought and feeling. Other men of present and recent times have had a like gift to bestow, but their manner of giving it was such as to make its acceptance for the most part impossible. J. H. Newman and the company of men who, with him, were the Puritans and ascetics of the nineteenth century, have gained no permanent influence as teachers of their age. Teachers of their age, indeed, they did not attempt to be, but only of whoever should be willing to betake himself out of it back into mediaeval modes cf thought; and with the thoughts and difficulties of the men who refused to do this, they either could not or would not sympathise nor have anything to do. Hence, the vigour and thoroughness of their own individual lives was able only very partially to affect the thinking and feeling of the world around them. But Browning undertakes the work which they would not attempt. The chief glory of his labour is that he has taken so much of what was good in the old Puritan spirit, and has brought it into harmony with the wider knowledge and larger life of later times. He devises for the fixedness of moral purpose and power of asceticism, which are the inherent characteristics of his own nature, another and a worthier use than the uses which in old times men had been wont to make them serve. He sees in moral fixedness a means that may be used not to check intellectual advance, but to help it forward by steadying its aim; and he finds that asceticism is capable of becoming, from having been the old monkish discipline of repression, the nobler acncriaic of the mental athlete, which is to prepare him for strenuous exertions whereby all parts of his human nature may develop themselves to the full. The idea of a struggle and a wrestling in which the wills of men are to be engaged—the central idea of early and mediaeval Christian thought—is recognised fully and distinctly by Browning in all that he has written. He holds that men’s business in this world’is labour and strife and conquest, and not merely free unconscious growth and harmonious development. He differs thoroughly from the modern thinking, which sees no moral evil distinct from and antagonistic to good; and again and again, directly or indirectly, his poems let us see how wide is his separation, both in belief and feeling, from the many poets of these present days, who have returned to the idea round which the old Greek poetry had all revolved, of the powerlessness of man’s will and the drifting of his life before an unalterable destiny. In a recent . criticism on Tennyson’s and Browning’s characteristics,1 1 Professor Dowden’s lecture on ‘ Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning,’ The Dublin Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art (1867-68). London: Bell & Daldy. �177 BROWNING- AS A PREACHER. Browning is distinguished as being pre-eminently the poet of impulse. This he doubtless is, but it seems to me that his chief point of difference from the majority of modern poets, is his being emphatically the poet of the will. That this is the characteristic feature of his poetry strikes one most forcibly if one chances to take up a volume of it immediately after reading his contemporary Matthew Arnold’s sufficiently to have let one’s mood take the impress of his. The transition from the one man’s conception of life to that of the other seems like the waking from one of those nightmare dreams in which we have the sense of being for ever passive (all the while struggling in vain not to be) under some Compelling that is horrible and yet mockingly sweet; to find Ourselves restored from this to the wide-awake state of things, in which we regain the consciousness of freedom of action. There is much in which he makes common cause with J. H. Newman and the men who were imbued with his spirit. They and Browning alike realise the individuality of each human life, and the struggle which is for each man a separate work to be entered into by his self-determined will, and feel the intense mysteriousness of human personality. And they may be classed together as protesters against nineteenth-centuryism— the habit of thought which makes so little account of these things. The question on which they part company is the question as to whether the impulses which men find within them are to be opposed by their wills as enemies, or to be accepted by them as allies in the struggle that has to be engaged in. While, on the one hand, by Newman and those like-minded with him, the only guide internal to man which is acknowledged as having the authority of a voice from the invisible world, is the conscience—the sense of a law binding to the doing of one sort of actions and the refraining from another sort (the law by making its presence thus felt being in itself evidence for its giver) ; by Browning, on the other hand, other mental phenomena to be found in human nature are accepted, as having first their intellectual signifi­ cance as evidences ‘ whence a world of spirit as of sense’ is made plain to us, and afterwards their moral uses in raising us from the world of sense into the world of spirit. Our human impulses towards knowledge, towards beauty, towards love—all these impulses, the feeling of which is common in various degrees to all men, and the expression of which by some few among them is Art—are reverenced by him as the signs and tokens of a world not included in that which meets our senses, as the Intuitions, grasps of guess, That pull the more into the less, Making the finite comprehend Infinity. j -“-not of course that Browning does not also recognise the evidential force of conscience as an internal witness, but still, I think, it is chiefly VOL. IL—NO. VIII. K �178 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. in the human impulses which in the world of sense are never satisfied, that he considers the subjective evidence for the spirit world to lie. And from this difference in the grounds of his and Newman’s beliefs there results a difference in their whole conception of man’s life and its aims. The part of human nature which alone Newman will acknow­ ledge as a divine guide is a part which in itself furnishes no principle of growth or progress (the conscience being only a power capable of restraining and directing), and the ideal life in this world is therefore, according to him, only a state of waiting, a walking warily in obedience, until some other state shall be reached in which man shall be in a condition to begin growth. According to him the business of the earthly life is only to get safely out of it as out of an enemy’s country. And as a natural result of his theory of the earthly life, we find that Newman, even with all his vivid perception of each human soul’s individual existence, becomes unable to sympathise with diversities of individuality: no scope for human diversities being allowed by the theory which sets all men to the same sort of work—the mere work of escaping (each with his unused individualities) to some future condition in’which life, in the sense of an active and growing state, may begin. But Browning, on the other hand, having taken all the higher human impulses and aspirations to be evidences whereby we discern an order of things extending beyond the world of which sense is cognizant, becomes able to conceive of the life that now is, as a condition, not of mere waiting and watching—not as a struggle only on the defensive against evil, in which safety is the only kind of success sought for—but as a state in which growth and progress are to be things of the present —in which the struggle is to be for acquisition and not alone for defence. His recognition of impulse as a guide to be accounted divine, makes him recognise human nature as being furnished with means of self-evolving growth and action, and not merely of obedience to laws given from without. Browning’s theory of human impulse removes him from a sort of asceticism which he would doubtless have been capable of exercising (if his judgment had decided in favour of it) as unflinchingly and as fiercely as mediaeval monk or modern ascetic, such as Newman or Baber. He, like them, could have preached and practised the restraining of human feelings and hopes, and the reducing of life to a toilsomelymaintained condition of high-wrought quiescence. He is too entirely filled with the sense of the resolute human will to have ever let himself be driven along, Swinburne-like, by mighty art impulses. He would have been able to separate his thinking wholly from their influences, had it not been that he had deliberately accepted them as guides which ought to be followed. The moral half of him is stronger than the eesthetic ; and the stronger could have crushed out the weaker if it had not chosen to yield it willing honour. A mind such as his is solitary and ascetic in its natural temperament; yet by his creed Browning �BROWNING AS A PREACHER. 179 gains catholicity of thought and of interests. Wide sympathy with ^dissimilar types of human character would be a thing not to be looked for in a thinker who realises so intensely the mysteries of his own indivi­ dual existence, if it had not been that he had taken those very things in which their dissimilarity lies—their multiform impulses—as the many witnesses for the same truths, each witness requiring to be understood by a reverent and appreciative sympathy. To a man whose whole soul could be absorbed by the vividly realised vision of an Easter Day, desires such as Abt Vogler’s towards ideal beauty of sound; as those of Paracelsus towards knowledge; of Aprile towards love; and the restless battle-ardour of Luria, would seem trivial, and not worthy of detaining the eyes to search into them and analyse their peculiarities, Were it not for his belief that in all such desires an infinite meaning’ could be discerned ; and that they were the varying pledges, given to various human beings, of the individual immortality of each. Prom this his belief there follows a wide development of human sympathy which has a peculiar value, because of its not being the expression of naturally gregarious tendencies, but of an originally self-concentrated nature, transferring, as it were, its own consciousness, with all its intensity, into the diverse human individualities that come under its notice. Very wide indeed is this sympathy. All human feelings and aspira­ tions become precious in Browning’s eyes, not for what they are, but for what they point to. He becomes capable of seeing a grandeur (poten­ tial though not actual) in human aims whose aspect would be, to Careless unsympathising eyes, ridiculous rather than sublime. For instance, the instinctive craving after perfection and accuracy, which had for its only visible result the expending of the energies of a lifetime on the task of determining the exact force and functions of Greek particles, is treated by Browning, in that very noble poem of his, ‘ The Grammarian’s Funeral,’ with no contemptuous pity, but is honoured as being a pledge of the limitless future, which, lying before all human workers, renders it unnecessary that a man should slur over the jjiinutiee of his work hastily, in the endeavour to compress into a life­ time all that he aims at accomplishing. The sort of asceticism which Browning’s theory of impulse makes impossible to him, is that which fears to let the senses enjoy ¡tile whole fulness of earthly beauty, and seeks to narrow and enfeeble ¡the affections, and to stifle men’s noble ambitions. Yet his poetry keeps for its characteristic spirit that other asceticism which implies the using of the world’s material beauty and human passion, not as ends in themselves, but as means whereby man’s spirit may reach to the heights above them, there to find new steps by which to ascend. He counsels no abstinence from beauty for the senses, but it is to be to men not as a banquet, but as a draught which will give them ¡strength for labour, the fuller the draught the greater the strength. k2 �180 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. He, more than any other poet, has ever present with him these two ideas : that the world—the material and the human—contains what is ‘very good;’ and also that ‘ the fashion of this world passeth away.’ His noble christianised Platonism takes ‘ all partial beauty as a pledge of beauty in its plenitude.’ His mood the pledge never wholly suffices. The earth is to him ‘ God’s ante-chamber ’—God’s, not a devil’s—yet still only an ante-chamber. Asceticism of this kind is the great glory of his doctrine as a preacher. It may be that, considering him solely as a poet, he loses somewhat by it. One sort of beauty there is of which it deprives his work, how­ ever great may be the compensating gains. This is the artistic beauty of pathos, of which Browning’s poetry is wholly, or almost wholly, devoid. There are two kinds of pathos lying on opposite sides of the position which Browning occupies as a thinker. One of these is the pathos of mediaeval art, and the other the pathos of pagan art. And with neither of these has he anything to do. The old ascetic conception of the earthly life gives a strange yearning tenderness, infinitely pathetic, to the manner in which the early and mediaeval hymn writers and the modern mediaevallists, Newman and Faber, look onward as if from out of a desert or an enemy’s country to the far-off unseen world—their ‘ Urbs Beata Jerusalem,’ their ‘ Paradise,’ their ‘ Calm land beyond the sea.’ But Browning has no need nor room for pathos of this sort: the tender ‘ Heimweh ’ of this has no place amongst his feelings. He does not image to himself the life after death as a home, in the sense of a state that shall be rested in and never ex­ changed for a higher. He conceives of it as differing from the life that now is, not in permanency, but in elevation and in increase of capacities. And the earth has its own especial glory, which he will not overlook, of being first of an infinite series of ascending stages, showing even now, in the beauty and love that is abroad in it, the tokens of the visitings of God’s free spirit. The feeling which we commonly callpathos seems, when one analyses it, to arise out of a perception of grand incongruities—filling a place in one class of our ideas corresponding to that in another in which the sense of the ludicrous is placed by Locke. And this pathos was attained by mediaeval asceticism through its habit of dwarfing into insignificance the earthly life and its belongings, and setting the mean­ ness and wretchedness which it attributed to it in contrast to the faroff vision of glory and greatness. But by Browning no such incon­ gruity is recognised between what is and what shall be. Another sort of pathos—the Pagan—is equally impossible to him. This is the sort which results from a full realising of the joy and th® beauty of the earth, and the nobleness of men’s lives on it; and from seeing a grand inexplicablenes in the incongruity between th© brightness of these and the darkness which lies at either end of them —the infinite contradiction between actual greatness and the apparent �BROWNING AS A PREACHER. 181 nothingness of its whence and whither—the mystery of strong and beautiful impulses finding no adequate outcome now, nor promise of ever finding it hereafter—human passion kindling into light and glow, only to burn itself out into ashes—the struggle kept up by the will of successive generations against Fate, ever beginning and ever ending in defeat, to recommence as vainly as before—the never-answered ‘ Why ? ’ uttered unceasingly in myriad tones from out all human life. The poetry of the Greeks gained from the contemplation of these things a pathos, which, however gladly a Christian poet may forego such gain for his art, was in its sadness inexpressibly beautiful. The Iliad had a deep under-current of it even in the midst of all its healthy childlike objectivity; and it was ever present amongst the great tragedians’ introspective analysings of humanity. High art of later times has for the most part retained this pagan beauty. Though there is no reason to think that there was any paganism in Shakespeare’s creed, yet we cannot help feeling that, whether the cause is to be sought in his individual genius or in Renaissance influences, the spirit of his art is in many respects pagan. In his great tragedies he traces the workings of noble or lovely human character on to the point—and no further—where they disappear into the darkness of death ; and ends with a look back, never on towards anything beyond. His sternly truthful realism will not, of course, allow him to attempt a shallow poetical justice, and mete out to each of his men and women the portion of earthly good which might seem their due : and his artistic instincts'—positive rather than speculative —prefer the majesty and infinite sadness of unexplainedness to any attempt to look on towards a future solution of hard riddles in human fates. ‘ King Lear,’ for instance, is pathetic because of its paganism ; and would, be spoiled, or at all events changed into something quite differ­ ent, by the introduction of any Christian hope. One of the chief artistic effects of the story is the incongruity between the wealth of devotion poured out by Cordelia’s impulses of love and the dreary nothingness in which those beautiful impulses end. If there was anything in it to leave with us the impression that this was not the end of all, and that this expenditure of love was not in vain, but had its results yet to come, the story could not call forth in us an emotion of such keen and tender pity. And in this tragedy, as in Shakespeare’s others, one of its greatest effects, as art, is produced by the idea which had acted so mightily on the minds of old Greek poets—the powerlessness of man’s moral agency against his destiny. Hamlet, for instance, ends in ac­ complishing nothing of what he has set before him as his aim. Some­ thing, over and above his own irresoluteness is hindering him. He becomes, through no fault of his, the murderer of a harmless old man, and breaks the innocent young heart of Ophelia, becoming to her another link in the chain of involuntary evil, and being the cause of her unconscious sin of self-destruction. (It is as sin that Shakespeare �182 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. regards Ophelia’s suicide ; and this parodox of his, of guilt without moral volition is thoroughly Greek—akin, e.g. to the tragic aspect of the crime of CEdipus.) So too, in Othello’s character, there is no lack of noble impulses • yet they are productive of no results. His fate, taking advantage of the one vulnerable part of his nature, impels him to the destruction of all his happiness by the murder of Desdemona. And the artist breaks off, taking the murdered and the murderer out of our sight, and leaving with us only the impression of the irreparableness of the deed, and of the mysteriousness and inevitableness of the innocent suffering and almost involuntary guilt that came upon two human creatures. The effect of the tragedies depends upon the total absence in them of anything which might suggest the possibility of a future answer to the great ‘ Wherefore ? ’ which their endings evoke from our hearts. Their pathos arises out of their tacit exclusion of hope.1 The contrast between the spirit (apart of course from any thought as to the relative poetical rank) of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and of Mr. Browning’s greatest tragic work, ‘ The Ring and the Book,’ is very striking. The impression which the latter leaves upon the reader’s mind is that of a great solemn looking forward, which absorbs into itself all emotions of pity that might have been awakened by Pompilia’s innocent suffering and Caponsacchi’s love ; and which mitigates the hatred which we must feel for Guido, by the thought that even for him a far-off possible good may be waiting. The spirit of Shakespeare’s tragic art (however much the form may differ from the classical) has much of the sort of completeness which was characteristic of Greek art. There is no suggestiveness in it of a state of things out of the reach of his art, and therefore he allows you to feel to the full (as far as you are able) any emotion which the character and circumstances of his dramatic creations should properly give rise to. When once he has shaped and fashioned his men and women, he leaves them with you—fixed as a sculptor might, leave his work—in attitudes which appeal perpetually to one or other of your human feelings, with no indication of such attitudes not being the only possible ones in which they might appear. But Browning never completes, or would have his readers complete, the emotions called forth by his dramatic art. He checks them, while as yet only half realised, by his perpetual suggestiveness that what his art represents is only a portion of a great 1 There is an analogy between the poetry of ancient and modern paganism, and some of 'the greatest poems in the modern art—music. The spirit which seems to pervade Beethoven’s is essentially pagan. He is the great musical poet of un­ answered seeking. There is joyousness enough in his music to contrast with its tones of mighty Faust-like despair; but I have never heard a passage of it that suggested emotions of hope or deep restful happiness. Outside the world in which Beethoven and his art move, there is for him only a ‘ dim gray lampless world.’ Outside the world of Mendelssohn, however, who is no pagan, there is an infinite encircling love, to which he sings his ‘Lobgesang.’ He seeks—and finds. �BROWNING AS A PREACHER. 183 unknown whole, without knowing, which neither he nor you can determine, what the feelings with which you regard the portion ought to b©. Considering, as he does, every human life as only a glimpse of a beginning, its minglings of greatness and imperfection have not for him the same aspect of pathetic mysterious paradox which they have for those poets who, either from their creed or from their v’/tioc, regard it as a rounaed whole. The absence of any pagan spirit in Browning’s writings deprives them also of a sort of beauty that belongs to so much of the modern poetry of external nature. Paganism is the source whence many poets have drawn their adoration of that loveliness of the earth— serene and terrible, outlasting and unmoved by human struggles. When these men behold the infinity of her beauty, they merge in their adoration of it all dissatisfactions with human life ; attaining to one kind of intellectual repose, by giving up hope to find satisfaction for thought or moral feeling, and by taking instead, for solace, the unmeasured pleasure of «esthetic perception. Shelley’s creed, taking the visible world for its all in all, has for its product the intense vividness with which he perceives the richness and glory of the sights of that world. He looks at, rests in, the beauty that he sees ; and it becomes more to him than it can be even to Wordsworth, who, with all his devotion to external nature, looked through rather than at her. And Shelley’s poetry derives its strange intangible pathos from its having all this aesthetic brightness to set in contrast over against the darkness that surrounds those ‘ obstinate questionings ’ from within, which again and again, in spite of his own desire, distract his mind from its joyous vision of what is without. And there is a sort of passionate grasping, clutching rather, at the light of the sun, and all the sights and sounds and fragrances of the earth, which belongs especially to pagan poetry, ancient or modern, and which tells of a prizing of these things not for their own mere beauty’s sake, but chiefly because in the perception of them life is implied, and the separation from them means extinction and dark nothingness. This idea, so all-pervading in the old Greek feeling for External nature, finds in our own days its chief exponent in Swinburne. I know of nothing in contemporary poetry that is so supremely pathetic as the perpetual alternations in those wonderful choruses in his ‘ Atalanta in Calydon,’ between a wild revelling in the freshness and exuberant gladness of the earth, in the rush of her joyance, when— ‘ in green underwood and cover, Blossom by blossom the spring begins ’— and a wailing lamentation over the life of man who has for his portion on the earth * light in his ways, And love and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night and sleep in the night.’ �184 BROWNING AS A PREACHER. Yet whose doom is only to abide there during a brief space, knowing neither content nor hope. ‘ His speech is a burning fire, With his lips he travaileth, In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes fore-knowledge of death. He weaves, and is clothed with derision, Sows, and he shall not reap ; His life is a watch or a vision, Between a sleep and a sleep.’ The poem of ‘ Atalanta ’ is of course a direct utterance of modern paganism, and not merely expressive of historical sympathy with ancient; and is a specimen, most perfect of its kind, of that eesthetic beauty of which Browning’s poetry is rendered incapable by the creed in which his strong, earnest mind, never able to rest without getting down into the realities that nnderlie the visible surface of things, finds the Sub­ stantial reality that it seeks. Yet it may indeed be that the feeling gained by Browning’s onward gaze of expectation is higher, even if considered purely as an artist's feeling, than that of the wistful pathos that comes to other poets through their sense of a seeking baffled alike behind and before. And, it may be that our inability instantly to recognise it as higher, is because of our having, although contemporaries with Browning, lagged behind him in thought and aspiration ; and not having as yet attained to tho conception towards which his poetry reaches in its beautiful imperfect grandeur, of a Christianity and Art—nowhere destructive of each other —two parts of one great Revelation. E. Dicktnson West. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Browning as a preacher. Part 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource West, Elizabeth Dickinson Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 171-184 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2: Attribution of journal title and date from Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1871] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5317 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Browning as a preacher. Part 1), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts English Poetry Poetry in English Robert Browning https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e38032e19525f648423b90f4b8cf8293.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=qGUCIGFV2WVVoXT2R4TfcssmRuKroYtO2LKIjjkqL1PHGRDRnxy09LHqa-n64dKD5bRPbQCHWXZG%7EjW4vhde2UNFLYNk2XMLJVWycPxpeugc6XVvzYEIrbaPqjTXyDTAOGDjabhon1dxf--h8gh5LYIsfM9%7ElXTLfgjkdrIcgV3kkudubpRG8-xeFgVnk0tYBXQnpAU8mXXbxibJaaWukzcWbFhW63CUn9FW2f8TEBArT4PWZtpJQV69-K6ReQB6htp0X01kkyB41R3v2NbLymiup6R7kMBrLe9x9cK-CyDGWTcbHVbw7XqkJadaxXm0xhhBJL5Je-9Y5KpjQgxwTg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM bf6900b59646ada696054801dd170c7d PDF Text Text 336 HITMAN, THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. By the Hon. Roden Noel. PART II. We will now consider briefly Walt Whitman’s position as prophet and teacher. From the very extraordinary and powerful poem called ‘ Walt Whitman’ (not reprinted by Mr. Rossetti, but a part of which is quoted by Mr. Buchanan, and is therefore accessible to the general reader) we may get a fair notion of its general character. Mr. Buchanan gives an excellent description of it : ‘ Whitman is here for the time being, and for poetical purposes, the cosmical man, an entity, a representation of the great forces. And here he expresses with immense power the infinite culminating worth of personality—how all natural influences have been and are ever working up to constitute and develop a man, a woman, a person. It is the broad dignity of a man, as a man, he preaches : very little the special privileges of dis­ tinguished men, or favoured classes of men. This is the very spirit and truth of democracy : Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me ; A far down I see the first huge nothing—I know I was even then ; I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me ; Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen ; For room to me, stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me; Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me ; My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it; �A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 337 For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetable gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care ; All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me ; Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. In a poem of extraordinary vigour, though, one of those where he puts down innumerable items—yet here for a great and distinct per­ vading purpose—‘ Salut au Monde,’ after passing in rapid review, and addressing with graphic characteristic epithet or two almost all con­ ceivable inhabitants of the globe—great, refined, small, vulgar, bad, good—he says : Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless, each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth ; I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands, , And, in ‘ Starting from Paumanok,’ he says : Creeds and schools in abeyance, I harbour for good or bad—I permit to speak at every hazard— Nature now without check, with primal energy . . . . . And sexual organs and acts ! do you concentrate in me.; For I am determined to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious ... This last determination he carries out in a series of poems (not re­ printed by Mr. Rossetti) called 1 Children of Adam.’ Again he re­ solves : I will sing the song of companionship, I will write the evangel poem of comrades and love, For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy,. And who but I should be the poet of comrades ? And this he does (as I think most nobly, and with real originality) in a series called ‘ Calamus.’ Some of these, under a different heading, Mr. Rossetti reproduces. Thus we have ‘ The Friend,’ ‘ Meeting Again,’ 4 Parting Friends,’ ‘ Envy,’ 1 The City of Friends,’ ‘ The Love of Com­ rades ’: Come, I will make the continent indissoluble ; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon! I will make divine magnetic lands With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. VOL II.—NO. IX. S �338 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies ; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. ‘ Fit Audience’ is another of these, and the charming £ Singing in Spring. ’ One is called ‘ Out of the Crowd’: Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, Whispering I love, you ; before, long I die ! I hare travelled a long way merely to look on you, to touch you, For I could not die till I once looked on you, For I feared I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe, Return in peace to the ocean, my love ; I too am part of the ocean, my love ; Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect! But it is, perhaps, too much to expect that this series of poems will ever.be liked here. With us, men friends must like each other from a very long distance, with many a formal grating between—may, indeed, without gross impropriety, touch the tips of each other’s fingers ; any warmer sentiment or demonstration of such—any love, for instance, into which a sense of beauty and grace should enter, would be greeted among us with a storm of most virtuous execration and horror. This, of course, is a matter of idiosyncrasy—a question of national temperament : moral axioms, indeed, are mostly founded on men’s temperaments; their reasons (or no reasons) being invented as an after-thought. But those who cannot quite go the whole length of the British Philistine in this respect will admire Whitman’s ideal of manly friendship—warm, faith­ ful, founded in mutual love as well as mutual esteem—and will believe with him, that if there were more of it, States and peoples would be nobler and stronger. Atomism; solitary, self-supporting, self-seeking, competing, contend­ ing isolation—each for himself—is our ideal; our ideal in private life, our ideal in political economy. It is not the ideal of Christianity, as understood by Christ and His disciples, and the early Church. But— John P. Robinson, he Sez they didn’t know everything down in Judee. And the most orthodox Christians now, though ready to roast any honest person who says it, seem practically very much to agree with him. One’s wife and children indeed, as part of one’s family, as belonging to oneself; and sometimes even a poor relation, as coming within the �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 339 «nchanted circle—these may be regarded (in a married man’s case) as one or two satellites revolving round that great centre of an English­ man’s solar system—himself. ‘ To Working Men’ is a very characteristic poem. The great catholic, all-yearning heart of the man who shrinks from no one, however de­ ceived and degraded ; who longs to take each and all into his brother­ man’s heart, solace and succour, and bring him nearer, not to his (the lover’s) individual standard, but to his, the beloved man’s, own ideal manhood—comes out finely here. Docs it not breathe the very spirit -of Christ 1— If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake ; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I 'Cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table. Then he continues to expound his central conviction of the supreme ■worth of manhood—personality : We consider Bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine ; I say that they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still; It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life. Heaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you. ... The sum of all known reverence I add up in,you, whoever you are, ■The President is there in the White House for you ; it is not you who are here for him. .All doctrines, all politics, and civilisations exsurge from you ; If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be ? The most renowned poems would be ashes, oration, and plays would be vacuums. All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. If we look for some one to lament over his age, how base, how lethargic, how vulgar and prosaic it is, and how no one can possibly get the mate­ rials of poetry out of it; evidently we must not go to Walt Whitman. ■If we have not great poetry, he would probably ascribe it, not to the fault of the age, but to that of the poets who despise and despair of it. There are low and grovelling and unbeautiful tendencies enough, God knows ; but we need men to see what is good and great in us, and to -.urge us on to nobler and richer life—hardly to stand by and curse us unhelpfully, as Shimci did David. And though it is quite true that Whitman is not an artist primarily—he is too indifferent in shaping­ beautiful works of ark out of his rich materials : he does not care for .art at all for art’s sake—yet he does abundantly prove the spirit in s 2 �340 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, -which a poet may look even at this present age, and lift it np into the regions of art, if he only will, faith, Hope, need not be extinct amongns ; there is a Future; let us help to shape it. Whitman intimates that he looks to a wider, fuller life for all men, for average men and average women; when love shall prevail, and individualities shall be allowed fuller play; when each shall be reverenced and respected for what he is> his place in the harmonious community admitted ; a richer community,, made up from many types of person; when the dignity of flesh and its impulses shall be acknowledged, under due restraint from those princi­ ples which are yet higher in our nature—as, for instance, the sympa­ thetic principle; when men shall reverence one another foi* what they are—-not on delusive artificial grounds that afford no true reason for Teverence, but serve only to confuse our truer instincts of veneration, to render us superstitious and idolatrous. Robert Buchanan among Englishmen has produced some noble poetry out of these same unpromising materials, though shabby gentility and’ dainty academics may shuddei- at it as vulgar. And since Pope pro­ duced poems unsurpassable of their kind out of the analytic critical tendencies of his time, more unpromising than any, who shall pro­ nounce, a priori, that Clough and Arnold must fail because they try to* draw music from the mingled forebodings, foreshadowings, hopes,, despairs, and speculations of oui- own? Surely this wondrous myste­ rious twilight over a world that has fissures opening into Hell and vistas that invite to Heaven, surely this twilight may have music of its own •—music that shall be no frigid imitation of one that is no more. Nothing, of course, can be easier, than to say, certain subjects are Tinpoetical, unfit for art. Railroads are, manufactures are, mysticism of any kind and philosophy—anxious questionings, wonderings, tremulous fears and hopes—these are. For they are not in Homer, or Pope, or some one else. I say it depends entirely on how they are touched, in what spirit they are taken up and treated, whether they are poetical or not; that we must judge honestly by poetical results, not judge the works given forth by preconceived theories, and utterly baseless, idiosyncrasies ; not even by the ipse dixits of a fraternity of critics : all that passes—good work remains, and another generation acknowledges it to be good. There is a mZei way of looking at every present epoch ; only the old poets and prophets had a way of their own. Men and women still live and love, and toil and suffer. Explorers and pioneers open up new continents, bring the people of to-day face to face with wonderful races of the past, isolated yet alive, or mummied in their tombs; vast human problems press for solution : science enlarges heikingdom, and opens out new worlds to the imagination: Nature is., eternal around us : and while we wait expectant, as yet uncertain by �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 341 what Word the eruptive forces we hear rumbling, as they gather anew deep down in the very depths of our humanity, shall become articulate in human language, we can turn to Her, ever undisturbed, ever young, ■ever calm, and read in her countenance inexhaustible meanings by the glimmers of light shed ever freshly upon her out of restless, ever-compli•cating labyrinths of our own human spirits. Enough if there be among us an undercurrent of sterling life—a thankfulness for victories acheived, .a looking for victories to come, a keen relish for life as it is, or a strong ■desire to make it nobler. Now look a moment at the poem ‘Whosoever.’ Perhaps none serves to bring out Whitman’s central doctrine of all personal worth so thoroughly as this : None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordi­ nate you ; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light. IBut I paint myriads of heads ; but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-coloured, light. _ . . The mockeries are not you. Underneath them and within them I see you lurk ; I pursue you where none else has pursued you. .. . . The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others they do not baulk me. , . .. There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you ; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. ... I sing the songs of the glory of none—not God—sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. Whoever you are, claim your own at any hazard ! All this is very striking, and is a vigorous proclamation of a great truth, of the greath truth which the time is beginning to see more and more clearly. Yet in this, as in the preceding passages quoted to illustrate Whitman’s teaching on this score, there is (as is wont to be the case in the proclamations of most prophets), a certain one-sidedness, exaggera­ tion, looseness of thought. When he says above that all doctrines, poli­ tics, civilisation, sculpture, poems, histories, 1 exsurge from you] (the ;average man, any man), the truth underlying this is that all these come -out of human nature—out of individuals, indeed, but out of individuals who could not have existed, as they were without the help of all pre­ vious human and other history, without the moulding of their age, and ■of the average men and women from whom they spring, and who take .their part in educating these more distinguished spirits. These last are the mouthpieces of their time, and help to mould the future man, even the present average man. But his nature, too, has a root identity with. �342 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, theirs, has germs and rudiments of the same faculties ; and the life of all great works derives continuous vitality from kindred spirits which comprehend them, and kindred creations are roused through the con­ templation of them. Now Whitman thus proclaims that men are ‘of one blood,’ are kindred amid all their differences ; so that a man, any man, may claim fellowship with the best and mightiest of his race, may therefore enfold within himself the principles of sublimest heroic and intellectual manhood; is anyhow and at worst a person, a self, in a higher sense than any other creatures are, and may claim from all hisfellows to be acknowledged and reverenced as such ! from his society, and all functionaries of his society (however powerful and dignified) may claim such possible facilities as shall enable him to make the best of himself and his special capabilities. Though, indeed, one would have fancied that something of this kind was precisely what our Lord Jesus Christ had proclaimed with some force more than one thousand eight hundred years ago. Only such truths take a good deal of proclaiming.. His followers did not quite like them, and thought it, on the whole, for' the advantage of the brute mass (and of themselves), if they could make out that He had in fact proclaimed precisely the opposite of such truths. They need, therefore, reasserting, and in a modern fashion. But the big. people and the good people will not like them any better. What a chorus of pious horror, when some one said that Christ was the first Socialist ! Yet for all that magna est veritas et y/rcevalelnt. Notwithstanding, I do think, when we are making a study of thesedoctrines, we ought to point out where they seem to need considerable­ guarding and qualification. Men are not individual only, but members of a community, of a body politic. And Whitman accordingly would supplement this bold uncom­ promising assertion of individual dignity by the inculcation of love, of the most ardent and self-sacrificing spirit of fraternity. ‘ Liberty, equality, fraternity.’ Here again he is Christian enough. But is equality a truth in the manner in which he asserts it 1 I believe not; and if not, it must be so far mischievous to assort it. That common manhood is a greater, more cardinal fact than any distinctions among men which raiseone above another I most firmly believe. Still these distinctions do* exist, and so palpable a fact cannot be ignored without very serious in­ jury. If great men could not have been without average men, and owemost to the grand aggregate soul of the ideal unit, humanity—which is-; a pregnant truth—yet, on the other hand, this grand aggregate soul could never have been what it is, could never have been enriched with the treasures it now enjoys, without those most personal of all personali­ ties—-prophets, heroes, men of genius. If these men need to be re­ minded, as they do, of the rock whence they are hewn, there is yet a. �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 343 danger of average men mistaking such a message as that of modern de­ mocracy through so powerful a spokesman as Whitman, and insisting upon paring down the ideal superiority of their great ones too much to the level of their own chaotic uniformity, rather than acknowledging and venerating what is verily superior in these; taking them for leaders in regions where they are appointed by nature to lead, and generally aim­ ing to raise themselves so far as possible to the standard of a higher ex­ cellence thus set before them. In order to satisfy this law of inequality among men, I do not believe that the mere proclamation of friendly love as between comrades (any more than of sexual love and equal union between man and woman) is at all sufficient. Veneration, reverence, also must be proclaimed, as equally necessary; and the great point we ought to aim at, in helping to solve the momentous question of the social future, seems in that respect to be this—that mankind be taught, and gradually accustomed, to place their reverence where reverence is indeed due, and not upon mere idols of popular superstition. It is said (and, alas! with some truth) that if you tear people from before one false shrine, they may only grovel before a baser one. Bnt I say this should be the end kept steadily in view—to stir up that which is noblest in ourselves, in order that we may be able to venerate that which is most venerable in others, and may ourselves be raised more near to their standard. That every man, whatever he now, is to be supremely satisfied with himself as he is now, is of course not in the least what Whitman means; but there is a danger of his sometimes vague and unguarded language being so .understood by the natural average man, who is already well disposed to be satisfied with his lower habitual self, and make himself the measure of the standard to which the Universe on the whole will do well to conform. This may too readily result in the tyranny of a blind and prejudiced and ignorant majority; by no means selecting men in any department of the State or of private occupations for their special fitness to guide and manage in such particular positions, and to introduce a higher ideal of life or of work, but rather jealous, hostile, or indifferent to these, and basely sus­ picious of their higher manly worth, their larger knowledge, and their vaster power. We must worship something; and what we most tend to worship is any larger and more successful incarnation of our meaner, less noble selves. The average Briton, for instance, has a sort of complacent air about him as if he was quite sure, not only that the.Deity is like an average Briton, but even that the Deity ought to be very thankful for being so. Utter individual freedom and self-assertion, unbalanced by any counterbalancing principle of deference, humility, and reverence, has far too much tendency to resolve itself into this, which just makes real progress impossible, and might throw humanity far back awhile, even in �344 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, the very midst of democracy and perfect political freedom. But what Whitman does see so clearly is that, even when men have themselves elected a ruler, or been concerned in the choice of a form of government, there is a sort of glamour of the imagination which immediately invests any actual depositary of power, and bows them in a kind of unreasonable stupor before it. He therefore reminds them—you, the people, are the source of such power, and government exists for you, not you for govern­ ment. Obey it intelligently; modify it when reason requires. Wealth, honour, and rank have the same way of casting a glamour over the imagination, so that men do not concern themselves with en­ quiring what the source of such wealth may be, or how far wealth and rank may involve personal qualities which are indeed worthy of some reverence. But these are accomplished facts on the surface, vague powers; and we are apt to be enslaved by them, because we have not been educated to enshrine a true God in the place of these usurpers— usurpers, that is, if they assume the highest place, as they so gene­ rally do. It behoves, therefore, to look a little closer at such broad statements as those we have quoted from Whitman. Architecture, sculpture, religions, &c., are a great deal more than what the average man does to them when he thinks about them. They were much more in the creative genius of those who invented them, or at least gave the final and complete form they took. And as to their being ashes and vacuums now but for the average man, this is far more than anyone may presume to say. There may be some persons who do comprehend them nearly as they were—one or two even may cause them to take on now a pro­ founder and more general significance than they wore of old, though they are never again precisely the living foremost products of the moving world-spirit which they were then. But, at any rate, their significance must be quite infinite, and in proportion, moreover, to the place that they then filled in the history of the world. The pulsations that they caused may no longer be visible in the shape of circling waves, but their effect can never cease. That is a law in physics, and shall it be less a law in the higher spiritual sphere ? Assuredly not. It is well to remind men that they may enter into all these things if they will claim their privileges ; still it will be well to remember that every man does not, will not, and this verily because he cannot, enter into them. It is after all, and ever will be, the privilege of some. Each has hisfunction, each is excellent, viewed from a higher standpoint; even the cruel and the base are. But certainly we must not suppose that we can all have the same place, and fill equally well the functions . of everybody else. Such a principle can only lead to endless confusion and mistake. Rather does the true principle of human dignity consist �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 345 in learning and acknowledging the worth and necessity of every func­ tion, so that no one shall henceforth be ashamed of his post, however humble, and that no one shall foolishly look down upon him for filling it—look down on him only if he refuse to fill it, or fill it unworthily and carelessly. Society must see to it, indeed, that each man at his post be regarded as man, his other human claims not being disregarded. But his position as worker in any capacity is to be esteemed honourable; nor need everybody be in such a desperate hurry to become something which he is not, and which all assuredly cannot be, to the detriment and ill-being of those who do not succeed in this general scramble for pelf and consideration, but remain, as they must, a vast majority of condemned pariahs on the lower rungs of the social ladder. To wear a black coat, and win the estimable privilege of making one’s workmen fight as fiercely with oneself for bread as one fought with one’s own master before !—-that is what political economy says we must all make haste and do. In this light, this unguarded proclamation of the abso­ lute equality of man appears to be somewhat confounding and dangerous. An ideal social scheme would rather consist in every man claiming his own, and acknowledging the special aptitudes of his neighbour. And as to religions, poems, architecture, and civilisations, even supposing they did not live in their infinite proportional effects, they have lived, they have been, whether the average man knows to-day anything about them or not. But it is fair to admit that Whitman does now and then distinctly acknowledge the claims of greatness to lead mankind, and insists on the supreme worth of ideal manhood—strong mastering personality; and these passages are to be set against the others. In the ‘Song of the Broad Axe ’ he does this finely. And nothing can be nobler and more complete than his description of an ideal great city or state. In it he goes dead against the too prevalent worship of material resources and material power. It is where the most virtuous, most loving, most independent citizens are; where the fullest life of intellect, heart and .soul is; where the happiness and good of each one stands sacred and .■secure, so far as the community can secure it. That each person to himself is a centre of the whole as no other creature can be, that to that person the whole universe centres in himself, and that all really has worked up to me, and for me, with my marvellous consciousness, which creates not only a Me, but at the same .moment creates over again in me the whole world so far as I know it— this most strikingly our author asserts. Only there is peril of our not .remembering that there are other selves, and some selves much greater dhan ourselves, especially when we are assured that there is 1 no better, no master, no god over us beyond what exists intrinsically in ourselves.’ �346 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, From a poem called ‘Greatnesses,’ however, we may set the following against that : Great is Justice ! Jiistice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the soul; It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, gravity; It is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or What not come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal. So that we see the truth to he, Whitman believes the ideal manhood to be whole in each man, only waiting, hidden in some; and he calls meh up to this, out of their basei- everyday selves. In this again, he does not surely differ much from the teaching of the most illustrious Christian teachers. This is precisely what William Law and Mr. Maurice pro­ claim; only it is true their doctrine is otherwise put. Whitman says ’ that the ideal man is in every man. Christian teachers more platonically assert that every man rather is in the ideal Man. Readers may think that makes not so very much difference. Still, there is a radical difference in the way of looking at the question; for it makes a great difference whether we are to look into ourselves, and ourselves only, for spiritual elevation above our ordinary selves, or whether we are to look out of ourselves to a possible source of higher self-hood, which yet at present is by no means present in ourselves. But to understand Whitman better when he says that he ‘sets no god over anyone,’ let us look for a moment at the most metaphysical or quasi-theological piece he has written, called ‘The Square Deific.’ If I rightly apprehend him, though the piece is none of the plainest, he makes the Divine All to« consist, as it were, of a square, a four-sided figure. The first mani­ festation, which he calls ‘ God] appears to be in the character of natural laws as they incessantly, inexorably manifest themselves in time, in all phenomena. ‘Relentless I forgive no man; whosoever sins, dies. I will have that man’s life. Have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days;. mercy? No more have I.’ Secondly comes 1 the Saviour] of whom Christ is the most prominent embodiment. It is the spirit of love and self-sacrifice and mercy, as it exists among men. Thirdly comes Satan,. ‘Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt. Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorantr with sullen face and worn brow;’ in short, the principle of ignorance, suffering, hatred, selfishness, baseness, as it appears among men. Finally comes the Spirit, ‘including Life, God, Saviour, Satan, Essence of Forms, Life of the Real Identities, Life of the Sun and Stars, the general soul.’ Well, here all appears to me to be what we call phenomenal, with nothing positively transcendental in it. I mean that this simply enumerates as divine and constituting God—(1) The natural external laws of nature (whether of spirit or matter), (2) Love as it is in men, (3) Hate, and suffering, and ignorance, as they are in men, (4) The one essence. �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 347 inclusive of all these, founding and giving them existence. Now I think with Whitman this latter principle is merely an abstraction; it is simply all the others, with the special characteristics of each left out. I doubt from the language if Whitman means here to assert a iranscmdented ground, cause, principle of cdl that is in time, itself away from time, not to be prisoned in the forms of intelligence, but by the very structureof intelligence demanding to be believed in and worshipped; worshipped as source of all life and power, as well as worshipped in phenomenal effects, personalities, and things. It may be otherwise; but he seems to me not distinctly to conceive and believe in such a divine principle; simply to deify men and nature as we see them—now regarding them as separate entities, now viewing them as partakers of one identical yet divinely manifested life. That is true, but to me it is not all—only half. And if he held the other half truth, why should he distinctly say that he places no god over any of us ? Whereas the fact is, that the development of any personality (as of any other thing that begins to be and changes, while retaining a certain mysterious identity from moment to moment) were absolutely inconceivable, without admitting a principle of such successive existence entirely out of the sphere of antecedent or present phenomena. For when anything begins to be seen for the first time, it is evident that nothing whatsoever which was before (being by the very conditions of the case different and other) can possibly be accepted as its efficient, but only as its condition, or occasional cause. Yet the common sense of mankind and the consciousness of every man insist that there must be an efficient cause for all that begins. Invaria­ ble succession and order of phenomena have nothing whatever to dowith this, though the common fallacy is to suppose that the antecedents are in an efficient sense causative of the consequents. Since, however, all phenomena in their actual order are necessary to any special effect,, the special causes of all these must be co-operative with its special causeto produce it : but these causes are alike transcendental. While, on theother hand, if intelligence and will in a divine person were taken as the­ cause of phenomena, they would explain nothing, and fulfil the condi­ tions of the problem no better, because phenomena as they are in time, are not identical with them, as they would be in the divine ideas ; for else they would have existed before, whereas they now begin to exist; but it is this very beginning to exist which demands explanation, demands an adequate cause. It remains, therefore, only to admit that such ulti­ mate cause cannot be prisoned in forms of understanding; yet since it is, it is the very source and essence of our, as of every other, life and power ; and before this principle of special life and power comes forth to constitute ourselves (as it does every successive moment we exist, chang­ ing and modifying us) our special life and personality are to be regarded,. �•348 A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. ■as folded up in God ; yet this is to be viewed only as a flexible adaptation to our varying intelligence. One more word. Whitman, I think, not obscurely intimates more than once that he believes in personal immortality, but I do not think the doctrine plays any important part in his system. And what he says of death seems to me often very fine, quite independently of any such doctrine of immortality. His notion of what the future life of a person is to be, liow that person can strictly be said to live again beyond death, is evidently of the vaguest; and so vague is it that nearly all he says on this subject can be adopted thankfully and admiringly oven by those who do not see their way to holding a strictly personal immortality. Thus, in 1 Nearing Departure,’ he says : A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. . 0 book and chant ! must all then amount to but this ? And yet it is enough, 0 Soul ? 0 soul! we have positively' appeared—that is enough. In 1 Wherefore,’ too, he says, yielding for awhile to sadness, doubt, ■despondency, about the poor results achieved through incessant .apparently useless struggle :— What good amid these, 0 me, 0 life ? 'Then he ansivers: That you are here, that life exists and identity, That the poicerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse. Such, indeed, is that of which at least we are certain. The least may know that the eternities centre in him. Now, he is—they could not possibly be without him, even as he is—and they diverge from him •again; a seed he is of all Divine futurity. Surely, if we cease personally to exist after this—this is something to know ; and we may make our lives a conscious contribution, after our measure, to the sacred cause of humanity, we may live out of the bounds of our own little selves, and so inherit the ages. But in truth no one can cease to be ; for the essence of each is eternal in God. Again, in a wonderful little bit, ‘ To one shortly to Die,’ he says :—■ The suu bursts through in unlooked-for directions ; -Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence—you smile ! You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick ; You do not see the medicines—you do not mind the weeping friends—I am with you, I exclude others from you—there is nothing to be commiserated ; I do not commiserate—I congratulate you. Again, elsewhere, he says : You are henceforth secure whatever comes and goes. And why ? Surely any one may say it. �THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 349 We are, we have been, what can change that? And, moreover, theefforts of us must continue, infinite, immense, in precise proportion to what we are and have been. We cannot, even to-day, identify our­ selves with the human creature that is popularly called ourselves in the cradle. No self-consciousness now can unite the selves we are conscious of with that life. Scarcely can we identify ourselves with the intelligent children that we dimly remember ourselves to have been; we may com­ pletely have shifted personality; and we may regard what others call ourselves as more strange to us now than those persons of a bygone age, who are dead indeed, but in whose souls and spirits we find to-day more communion, more sympathy, than in any with whom, though living, wo are in contact of mere proximity. There shall be a continuous con­ sciousness not unlike ours; and other persons in the future may obscurely,, yet rejoicingly, identify themselves with us. In Mr. Lincoln’s Funeral Hymn, Whitman sings : Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning—thus would I chant a song for you, 0 SANE AND SACRED DEATH. I suppose what will shock the majority most is Whitman’s admitting evil and misfortune as part of the necessary order, entering as integral elements into the Square Deific. Wherein he follows the small shoe­ maker, and great philosopher, Jacob Behmen. Yet, after all that has been said about it, thus it is. It affords, as imperfection, the necessary stepping-stone to spiritual and moral progress; it affords the opposition necessary to call out goodness, and kindness, love, virtuous strife, and victory. All goes in this universe by a play of contraries, or where would be the life, the advance, the infinite and harmonious variety ? Without Satan, where would be the Saviour ? � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A study of Walt Whitman, the poet of modern democracy. Part 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Noel, Roden Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 336-349 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1871] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5339 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A study of Walt Whitman, the poet of modern democracy. Part 2), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English American Poetry Conway Tracts Poetry in English Walt Whitman https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d24aa7b84cd60c734116cf90cbf0450e.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=jjrc53fhMaYPXfKYc7w5vos6hiYPi16F8nXhuLWbW0%7EhAueRd6sEUhStPIqOATHCk31865xt%7EvH3-vxhAi2j1QFRkD2ufvhXf70qE3C6o4T23pMy8IQ6pzU0Hge%7E3PBpX16k8fwWsKaeQY1CZQ202JZko80Jcpn0ptVuYZA4sPRznheKSCRF-qg2-N7OwBdXBDQMYPn3E-yGoVwfCJqLhEcEC7GFKmqR-FwJkIj%7EQyKeHKY0k4JoRJV7xRFmoIZKT3MbuWOjp8iB8dM0mdeN-Z8QMagx8utsNtqjgm9p%7ENn%7E-1c86oHXAioBKE5r%7Eb%7EviVghitXd9OcmN6dB5iKEfA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f5a3d3ae247ddd963b9b1378a1186dd4 PDF Text Text �“ They stood beside the coffin’s foot and head. Both gazed in silence, with bowed faces—Grey With bony chin pressed into bony throat.” �/ 449 BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI. “ Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart ; one of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to the character of man. —Edgar Poe. Rain-washed for hours, the streets at last were dried. Profuse and pulpy sea-weed on the beach, Pushed by the latest heavy tide some way Across the jostled shingle, was too far For washing back, now that the sea at ebb Left an each time retreating track of foam. There were the wonted tetchy and sidelong crabs, With fishes silvery in distended death. No want of blue now in the upper sky:— But also many piled-up flab grey clouds, Threatening a stormy night-time; and the sun Sank, a red glare, between two lengthened streaks, Hot dun, that stretched to southward; and at whiles The wind over the water swept and swept. The townspeople, and, more, the visitors, Were passing to the sea-beach through the streets, To take advantage of the lull of rain. The English “ Rainy weather” went from mouth To mouth, with “Very” answered, or a shrug Of shoulders, and a growl, and “Sure to bo! Began the very day that we arrived.” “ Yes,” answered one who met a travelling friend; “ I had forgotten that in England you Must carry your umbrella every day. An Englishman’s a centaur of his sort, Man cross-bred with umbrella. All the same, I say good-bye to France and Italy, Now that I’m here again. Excuse me now, As I was going up into the town To feast my eyes on British tiles and slates.” So on he walked, looking about him. Rows Of houses were passed by, irregular ; Many compacted of the shingle-stones, Round, grey or white—with each its gar­ den patch VI. Now as the outskirts neared; and down the streets Which crossed them he was catching glimpses still Of waves which whitening shattered out at sea. The road grew steep here, climbing up a slope Strewn with October leaves, which followed him, Or drifted edgeways on. The grey ad­ vanced, Half colour and half dusk, along the sky. A dead leaf from a beech-tree loosed itself, And touched across his forehead. As ho raised His eyes, they caught a window, and he stopped— An opened upper window of a house With close-drawn blinds. A man was settled there, Eager in looking out, yet covertly. He watched, nor moved his eyes from that he watched. The passenger drew close beside the rails, Looking attentively. “ Why, Grey,” he cried; “ Can that be you, Grey ? I had thought you’d been----- ” The face turned sharply on him, and the eyes Glanced down, and both hands pulled the window shut. Pushing a wicket-gate, the other went On to the door, expecting it to unclose. The garden was but scantly stocked with flowers, And these were fading mostly, thinly leaved, The earth-plots littered with the fall of them. Stately some dahlia-clusters yet delayed, Crimson, alternating with flame-colour. He stretched his fingers to the velvet bloom Of one, and drew a petal ’twixt them. Then 29 �450 The plaited flower fell separate all to earth By ring and ring; only the calyx stood Upon its stalk. The autumn time was come. Out of the bordering box stiff plantain grew. Scarce would the loose trees have afforded shade, So lessened was the bulk between their boughs, Had there been sun to cast it. In the grass Bested the moisture of the recent rain. No one seemed coming; so he walked some steps Backward, and peered: no sign of any one. He knocked, and at the touch the door unclosed. “Don’t you remember, years ago, your friend, And correspondent since, John Harling ?” “ Oh, I know you, sir, of course—I did at once.” “ Sir ! Why, how now ? Between old friends like us ? How many letters that begin ‘Dear John' In your handwriting, I have asked after, These eight years, in some scores of postesrestantes ! Too many, I should hope, for us to Sir Each other now. But only tell me, Grey------” Grey said, “ Come up, come up.” There was a haste About his words and manner, and he seemed To half forget what first he meant to do. He paused at the stairs’ foot; then, with a glance Thrown backward at his friend, who stayed for him, He mounted hurriedly, two steps at once. They had not shaken hands yet. Harling his Had proffered with the words he uttered first, But Grey had not appeared to notice it. Harling had caught the look of the other’s face Where twilight in the doorway glimmered fresh, And he had fancied it was pale and worn, And anxious as with watchings through the night. But in the room the light no longer served Eor one to see the other, how the weeks Had changed him, and the months and years. The room Was dim between the window-blinds and dusk. Now seated—“As you see, John,” Grev began, “This is a bed-room. I have not had time To trouble myself yet about the house.” “ You are but just arrived, then ?” “Yes, but just.” He was about to say some more, but stopped. “ And now,” said Harling, “ you shall tell me all About yourself. And how and where’s your wife ? What is it brought you down here ? Have you left Oxford, in which your practice was so good? Or are you here on holidays ? I come Upon you by an unexpected chance. There must be something to be learned, I know; Chances are not all chance-work. Tell me all.” His friend rose up at this; and Harling saw His knuckles on his forehead, at his hair, And thought his eyes grew larger through the dark. Grey touched him on the shoulder, draw­ ing breath To speak with, but he then again sat down. “Why, first I ought to hear your news, I think,” At last he answered, swallowing the gasps Which came into his mouth, and clipped his words. “ Though travellers have a vested right to lie, I’ll take it all on trust.” He forged a laugh. Harling grew certain there was something now His friend had got to tell, and must, but feared. He knew how such a fear, by yielding grows, And would have had him speak it out at once. Nevertheless he answered, “ As you will. And yeti have but little left to say Since my last letter. But the whole is this. But let us first have light before we talk, That we may know each other once again. I shall not flatter you if grizzled hairs �ÎHrg; Wolmeg Æhqu Prove to outnumber your original brown, But tell you truth. Pou tell the truth of me. X am more than half a Frenchman, I be­ lieve, By this time. That’s no compliment, say I, For a John Bull at heart, and I am one ; Thank God, a Tory, and hang the Marseillaisel” “No lights, no lights,” Grey answered, moodily. “ Can we not talk again as once we used, Through twilight and through evening into night, Knowing, without a light, it was we two ?— I little thought then it would come to this,” He added, and his voice was only sad. “ And it is well, too, that the light should come, jfor then perhaps you will hare made a guess, By seeing me, before I tell it you. My dear old friend, it’s needless now to attempt To hide it. I am wretched—that’s the word. I am a fool not to have got the thing Over already, for it has to come At last. But there’s a minute’s respite still, Ifor first you were to tell me of yourself; So. Harling, you speak now. But first the light.” The other, leaning forward, took his hand, And tried to speak some comfort; but the words Faltered between his lips. For he was sure That, if he had already heard this grief, He would not talk of comfort, but sit dumb. The lights were come now, and each looked on each. The traveller’s face was bronzed, and his hah’ crisp And close, and his eyes steady—all himself Compact and prompt to any chance. And yet He was essentially the same who went, To find his level, forth eight years ago, Unformed, florid - complexioncd, easytongued : Travel and time had only mellowed him. Grey was the same in feature, not in fact. His face was paler that was always pale ; The forehead something wrinkled, and the lips Aria and meagre, faded, marked with lines ; The eyes had sunken further in the head, 451 With a dark ridge to each, and grizzled brows ; His hair, though as of old, was brown and soft. The difference was less, but more the change. Each looked on each some minutes : neither spoke. His friend was clothed in black, as Har­ ling saw, Who now resumed the thread of his dis­ course. “ As for my own adventures, they are few : For, after I left Rome—the storm will burst, Be sure, at Rome, before the year is done— I went straight back to Paris. Politics, You know, I’ve stood aloof from all the year ; But even with me, ( oo, they have done their work. My poor Louise was dead—shot down, I learned, Upon the people’s barricades in June : She turned up quite a Red Republican After their twenty-fourth of February ; And my successor in her graces fell With her—both fighting and yelling side by side. I could not but curse at them through my teeth With her own sacré-Dieu's—the whole of them Who get up revolutions and revolts. And then they swore I was an Orleanist, An English spy, or something ; and indeed I found myself, the scanty days I stopped, A centre-piece for all the blackest looks. At least I thought so. Many of my friends, Besides, were gone, waiting for better times When next they come to Paris. So I left Disgusted, and crossed over. Why should I Quit England and dear brother Tories? still, Although I do now think of settling here, Perhaps, before another twelvemonth goes, The South will tempt me back—sooner, perhaps. I must, I think, die travelling in the South.” He made an end of speaking. Grey looked up. “ Is there no more ?” he asked. He said, “ No more.” Grey’s face turned whiter, and his fingers twitched. �452 Mrs* Wohnes “ It is my turn to speak, then” :—and he I Upon a prayer-book, open at the rite rose, I Of solemnizing holy matrimony. Taking a candle: “ come this way v ith me.” Her marriage-ring was stitched into the page. They stepped aside into a neighbouring room. Grey stood a long while gazing. Then he Grey walked with quiet footsteps, and he set turned The candle on the ground, and on his knce3 So noiselessly the handle of the door Close to her unringed shrouded hand, he That Harling fancied some one lay asleep prayed, Inside. The hand recovered steadiness. Silent. With eyes still dry, he rose un­ changed. The room was quite unfurnished, striking chill. They left the room again with heeded.steps. A rent in the drawn window-blind betrayed On friendly Harling lay the awe of death A sky unvaried, moonless, cloudless, black. And pity: he took his seat without a Only two chairs were set against the wall, sound. And, not yet closed, a coffin placed on Some of the hackneyed phrases almost them. passed Harling’s raised eyes inquired why he was His lips, but shamed him, and ho held his peace. brought Hither, and should he still advance and “ Harling,” said Grey, after a pause, “ you look. think “ It is my wife,” said Grey; “ look in her No doubt that this is all—her death is all. face.” Harling, when first I saw you in the street, This in a whisper, holding Harling’s arm, I feared you meant to come and speak And tightened fingers clenched the whis­ to me; pering. So hid myself and waited till you knocked ; Darling could feel his forehead growing Waited behind the door until you knocked, Longing that you, perhaps, would go. moist, When I And sought in vain his friend's averted Had opened it, I think I called you Sir— eyes. Did you not chide me ? Do you know, it Their steps, suppressed, creaked on the un­ seemed covered boards: So strange to me that any one I knew They stood beside the coffin’s foot and Before this happened should be here the head. same, Both gazed in silence, with bowed faces— And know me for the same that once I was, Grey I could not quite imagine we were friends. With bony chin pressed into bony throat. It is not merely death would make one feel The woman’s limbs were straight inside her Like this—no, there is something more shroud. behind The death which brooded glazed upon her Harder than death, more cruel. Let me eyes wait Was hidden underneath the shapely lids ; Some moments ; then no help but I must But the mouth kept its anguish. Combed tell.” and rich The hair, which caught the light within its lie gathered up his face into his hands strings, Brom chin to temples, only just to think Golden about the temples, and as fine And not be seen. He had not seated him, And soft as any silk-web ; and the brows But leaned against the chair. Nor Harling A perfect arch, the forehead undisturbed ; spoke. B ut the mouth kept its anguish, and the “ Two months are gone now,” Grey pur­ lips, sued. “We two Closed after death, seemed half in act to Lived lovingly. I had to come down here, speak. And here I met a surgeon of the town. Covered the hands and feet; the head was Hell only knows—I cannot tell you—why, laid �fHrs, Wolrnes 453 I asked him to return with me, and spend I So that would make her sad. I thought it strange A fortnight at our house. Perhaps I wrote Th® whole of this to you when it occurred. She had not so informed me from the first. Her cousin, when I named the point, ap­ His name is Luton.” peared Here he chose to pause. Surprised ; but then to recollect herself, “Perhaps: I am not certain.” Harling And answered—I could see, a little piqued— said. She should not cry again because of her. “ I think you might be certain,” answered “ These fits of tears continued. We were Grey, now “If you’re my friend.” But then he Alone together, for the cousin went checked himself, Away soon after. Then I could not help Adding : “ Forgive me. I am not, you see, Seeing her health and strength were giving Myself to-night—this night, nor many way : nights, Her mind, too, seemed oppressed. She’d Nor many nights to come. Well, he agreed. hardly leave Of course, he must agree; else I should At nights the chair she sat in, for she said not ‘ This is the only place where I can sleep.’ Have been like this, disgraced, made al­ Yet her affection for me seemed to grow most mad.” A kind of pity for its tenderness. Oh ! what is now become of her, that I, At this he found his passion would be near After to-morrow, shall not see her more, To drive him to talk wildly : so he kept Silence again some moments—then re­ But have to hide her always from my sight ?” sumed. He took some steps, meaning to go again “ How should I recollect the days we passed Together ? There must surely have been And see her corpse; but, meeting Harling’s eye, enough Turned and sat down. To see, and yet I never saw it once. Besides, my patients kept me out all day “ Is it not,” he pursued, Sometimes. It was in August, John, was With fioorward gaze, “ hard on me I mustthis— tell The end of AuguBt, reaping just begun. This business word by word, the whole of it, We’ve had a splendid harvest, you’ll have While I can see it all before me there, heard.” And it is clear one word could tell it all ? Can you not guess the rest, and spare inc “ Indeed!” the other said, shifting the while now ?” His posture—and he knew not what to say. “ I will not guess; but you,” said Harling, “ Yes, you detect me,” Grey cried bitterly ; “keep “ You know I am afraid of what’s to come— All that remains unspoken ; for it wrings A coward. Now I do hope I shall speak, My heart, dear Grey, dear friend, to see And tell you all of it without a stop. you thus.” There was a lady staying with us then, “ No, it is better I should speak it out, A cousin of my wife’s—but older, much; For you would fancy something; and at So that you understand how I could ask least This Luton down. Before his time was up, You will not need to fancy w’hen you know. He seemed to grow uneasy, and he left,-—■ She came to me one morning—(this was Merely explaining, business called him like home. A fortnight after he had gone away,. _ I said I had not noticed anything This Luton)—saying that she found it vain Unusual; and yet I sometimes found Attempting to compose her mind at home ; Mary in tears, and could not gather why. One day she told me when I questioned her That every place made her remember what The baby had done or looked there, and It was for thinking of our girl that died ilie felt Months back—for that her cousin would Too weak for that, and meant to see -ier begin friends Often to talk to her about her own; �454 Mrs. Woltw (That is, two sisters some few miles from here). She spoke more firmly than I had heard her talk A long time past—because I thought it long— And I believed she had determined right, And so consented. But she only said ‘ I have made up my mind ’—thus waiving all Consent on my part—mere sick wilfulness I took it for. She left the house. I might Have told you she’d a lilac dress, and hair Worn plain. And so I saw her the last time— The last time, God in heaven!” He seized his fists Together, and he clutched them toward his throat. “Many days passed. She had begged me, feeling sure It would excite her, not to write a line, And said she would not write, nor let her friends. I think I did not tell you, though, how pale Her cheeks were ; and, in saying this, she sobbed, For such a lengthened silence looked like death. “ Three weeks, or nearly that, had passed away: A letter on black-bordered paper came. It was from Luton. Then I did not know The hand, but shall now, if it comes again. He wrote that I must go immediately, That I was ‘to prepare myself’—some trash : He ‘ dared not trust his pen to tell me more.’ “ On Thursday I arrived here. I cannot Attempt to tell you all about it. When You’ve read this, only call me, and I’ll come; But I will not be by you while you road. On the first day I heard it all from him, And loathe him for it. I am left alone, And all through him.” He took a newspaper From underneath his pillow, and he showed The place to read at. Then he left the room ; And Harling caught his footfall toward the corpse, And touching of his knees upon the boards. And this is what ho feverishly perused:— “ Coroner's Inquest—A Distressing Case. An inquest was held yesterday, before The County Coroner, into the cause Of the decease of Mrs. Mary Grey, A married lady. Public interest Was widely excited. “ When the Jury came From viewing the corpse, in which are seen remains Of no small beauty, witnesses were called. “ Mr. Holmes Grey, surgeon, deposed : ‘ I live In Oxford, where I practise, and deceased Had been my wife for upwards of three years. About the middle of September, she Was suffering much from weakness, and a weight Seemed on her mind. The symptoms had begun Nearly a month before, and still increased, Until at last they gave me great alarm, Of which we often spoke. On the eighteenth She told me she would like to stay awhile With two of her sisters, living on the coast, At Barksedge House, not far from here. She went Next day. I cannot speak to any more.’ “ The Coroner: ‘ How were you first ap­ prised Of this most melancholy event ?’—‘ By note Addressed to me by Mr. Luton here.’ “A Juror : ‘ Could your scientific skill Assign some cause for this debility ?’ ‘No. I believed it was occasioned (so She intimated) by a domestic grief Quite unconnected with the present case.’ “The Coroner: ‘You’ll know how to ex­ cuse The question which I feel compelled to put: I have a public duty to perform. Had you, before the period you described, Any suspicions ever?’—‘ Never once : There was no cause for any, I swear to God.’ “ The witness had, throughout his testi­ mony, Preserved his calm—though clearly not without An effort, which augmented towards the close. �Wolmeg 455 “Jane Langley: ‘I keep lodgings in the The same thing happened ; but she spoke town. of love On the nineteenth September the deceased Now, and the very word half passed her lips. Engaged a bed-room and a sitting-room. Our talk ended abruptly. Mrs. Gwyllt The name I knew her by was Mrs. Grange; Came in, and by her face I saw she had I saw but very little of her; she kept, heard. As much as that ■well could be, to herself, “ ‘ This instance was the last we talked And she would frequently leave home for alone. hours. And I began to hear from -Mr. Grey I cannot say I made any remark His wife was far from well, and had the Especially. I found a letter once— tears Just a few words, torn up. ‘ Holmes,’ it Now often in her eyes. This made me feel began. Hampered and restless : so I took my leave { This letter is the last you ever will. . .’ After my first eleven days’ stay was gone, No more, I think. I threw the bits away. Saying I had affairs that could not wait. That was, perhaps, four days before her death. “ £ Between the seventh of September, when On that day, I suppose, as usual, We parted, and the twenty-third, I saw She left the house : I did not see her, though. No more of the deceased. Towards seven She was brought home quite dead.’ o’clock That evening, I was told a lady wished “ Upon the name To speak with me. She entered : it was Of the next witness being called, some stir she— Arose through persons pressing on to look. Deceased. I can’t describe how pained I After it had been silenced, and the oath was Duly administered, the evidence At finding she had left her home like this. Proceeded. She said she loved me, and conjured me “Mr. Edward Luton, surgeon : much ‘ I lately here began for the first time Not to desert her; that she loved me In my profession. I was introduced young; To Mr. Grey in August. When he left That, after we had ceased to meet, she The seaside, he invited me to pass knew A fortnight at his house, and I agreed. And married Mr. Grey. Also, that when On seeing Mrs. Grey, I recognized He wrote to her in August I should come, In her a lady I had known before Guessing who I must be, she thought it Her marriage, a Miss Cbalsted. We had well met To treat me as a stranger—dreading lest In company, and, in particular, Her love (so she assured me) should revive. At some so-called “mesmeric evenings,” All this through sobs and blushes. I could held not At her remote connection’s house, the late Make up my mind what conduct to pursue : Dr. Duplatt. But now, as Mrs. Grey I begged her to be calm, and wait awhile. Allowed my presentation to pass off And I would write. Sae left unnerved Without a hint of knowing me, I left and weak. This point to her, and seemed a stranger : till “ ‘ I took five days, bewildered how to act. We chanced, the sixth day, to be left alone. But on the evening of the fifth, I saw, I talked on just the same, but she was silent. While looking out of window—(it was At last she answered, and began to speak dusk, Familiarly of when she knew me first; And almost nightfall)—Mrs. Grey, who Without explaining—merely as one might paced, talk Muffled in clothes, before my door. I knew Changing the subject. But I let it pass. By this how dangerous it must be to wait And yet, when we were next in company, For a day longer; so I wrote at once Once more she acted new acquaintanceship. She absolutely must return to her home. Then, two days after, I believe—one time Nothing was known as yet—all might be Her cousin, Mrs. Gwyllt, was out by well; chance— In time she would forget me ; and besides �456 ÍBrsí. Colmes I was engaged to marry, and must regard Our intercourse as ended. “ ‘ She returned Next day, the twenty-ninth; and, falling down Upon her knees, she cried, with hardly a word, Some while, and kept her face between her hands; But at the last she swore she would not go, But rather die here. It continued thus Six days. For she would come and seat herself, When I was present, in my room, and sit, An hour or near, quite silent; or break out Into a flood of words—and then, perhaps Between two syllables, stop short, and turn Round in her chair, and sob, and hide her tears. “ * The sixth day, after she had left the house, I had an intimation we were watched, And certain persons bad begun to talk. I thought it indispensable to write Once more, and tell her she could not re­ main— I owed it to myself not to allow This state of things to last; that I had given The servant orders to deny me, should She still persist in calling. “‘Towards mid-day Of the sixth instant, the deceased once more Was at my house, however;—darted through The door, which happened to be left ajar, And flung herself right down before my feet. This day she did not shed a single tear, Nor talk at all at random, but was firm : I mean, unalterably resolute In purpose, and her passion more uncurbed Than ever: swore it was impossible She should return to live with Mr. Grey Again ; that, were she at her latest hour, She still would say so, and die saying so : ‘Because’ (I recollect her words) ‘this flame All eats me up while I am here with you; I hate it, but it eats me—eats me up, Till I have now no will to wish it quenched.’ I hope to be excused repeating ail That I remember to have heard her say. She bitterly upbraided me for what I last had written to her, and declared She hated me and loved me all at once With perfect hate as well as burning love. This must have lasted fully half an hour. However fearful as to the results, I told her simply I could not retract, And she must go, or I immediately Would write to Mr. Grey. I rose at this To leave the room. “ ‘ She staggered up as well. And screamed, and caught about her with her hands : I think she could not see. I dreaded lest She might be falling, and I held her arm, Trying to guide her out. As I did so, She, in a hurry, faced on me, and screamed Aloud once more, and wanted, as I thought, To speak, but, in a second, fell. “ ‘ I raised Her body in my arms, and found her dead. I had her carried home without delay, And a physician called, whose view con­ curred With mine—that instant death must have ensued Upon the rupture of a blood-vessel.’ “ This deposition had been listened to Tn the most perfect silence. At its close We understand a lady was removed Fainting. “ The Coroner: ‘You said just now That, in your former letter to deceased, You told her nothing yet was known. Was not Her absence traced, then, and suspicion roused ? Did she inform you ?’ ‘ She informed me that Would not be, for that Mr. Grey and she Had mutually consented not to write. I have forgotten why.’ “ The Coroner: ‘ Is Mr. Grey still present ?’ Mr. Grey ; ‘Yes, I am here.’ ‘You heard the last reply; Was such the case?’ ‘It was; we had agreed To exchange no letters, that her mind might have The benefit of more complete repose.’ “A J uror to the witness : ‘ Did no acts Of familiarity occur between Deceased and you ?’ “ Here Mr. Grey addressed The Coroner, demurring to a reply. “ The Coroner : ‘ It grieves me very much �dMrs. Pointes To pain your feelings; but I feel com­ pelled To say the question is a proper one. It is the Jury’s duty to gain light On this exceedingly distressing case ; The public mind has to be satisfied; I owe a duty to the public. Let The witness answer.’ “ Witness: ‘ She would clasp Her arms around me in speaking tenderly, And kiss me. She has often kissed my hands. Not beyond that.’ “ The Juror: ‘ And did you Respond----- ’ The Coroner; ‘The wit­ ness should, I think, be pressed no further. He has given His painful evidence most creditably.’ “The Juror: ‘Did deceased, in all these days, Not write to you at all ?’ ‘ She sent me this : It is the only letter I received.’ “A letter here was handed in and read. It ran as follows, and it bore the date Of twenty-sixth September. “ ‘ Dearest Friend,— Where is your promise you would write me »©on My sentence, death or life ? This is the third Of three long days since last I saw you. Oh! To press your hand again, and talk to you, And see the moving of your lips and eyes ! lidward, I’m certain that you cannot know How much I love you; you must not decide Until convinced of it----- But words are dead. That, Edward, is a love in very truth Which can avail to overcome such shame As kept me four whole days from seeing you— Four days after my coming quite resolved To strive no more, but tell you all my heart. As daylight passed, and night devoured the dusk, The first time, and the second, and the third, I doubted whether I could ever wait Till dawn—yet waited all the fourth day too, Staring upon myhands,andlooking strange; Yes, and the fifth day’s twilight hastened oa. But love began then driving me about 457 Between my house and your house, to and fro. At last I could no more delay, but wept, And prayed of Christ (for He discerns it all), That, if this thing were sinful unto death, He would Himself be first to throw the stone. So then I came and saw you, and I spoke. Did I not make you understand how I Had loved you in the budding of my youth ; And how, when we divided, all my hope Went out from me for all the future days, And how I married, just indifferent To whom I took ? Perhaps I did not clear This up enough, or cried and troubled you. Why did I ever see your face again ? I had forgotten you; I lived content, At peace. Forgotten you! that now ap­ pears Impossible, yet I believe I had. Then see what now my life must be—con­ sumed With inner very fire, merely to think Of you, and having lost my heartless peace. How shall I dare to live except with you ?’ “ TheCoroner to Witness: ‘ Had you known When you were first acquainted with deceased, Before her marriage, that she entertained These feelings for you?’—‘Friends of mine would talk In a light way about it—nothing more— And in especial as to mesmerism. I knew that such a match could never be; Her friends would have been sure to break it off— Our prospects were so very different. I did not think about it seriously.’ ‘“The letter says that you divided : how Did that occur?’—‘I left the neighbour­ hood On account solely of my own affairs.’ “ ‘ You have deposed that you received a hint Your meetings with deceased had been observed. How did you learn this ?’—‘ Through the brother-in-law Of a young lady that’s engaged to me.’ “ The witness here retired. He looks about The age of twenty-seven,—in person, tall And elegant. His tone at times betrayed Much feeling. �458 holmes “Mrs. Celia Frances Gwyllt: ‘ Deceased and I were cousins. In the month Of August last I spent a little time With her and Mr. Grey. In the first week Of last month, I remember hearing her Speak in a manner I considered wrong To Mr. Luton, and she seemed confused When she perceived me. Shortly after­ wards, I took occasion to inform her so. This she at first made light of, and alleged It was a mere flirtation. I replied, I deemed it was my duty to acquaint Her husband; when she begged that I would not, So that at length I yielded. Then came on Some crying fits, which Mr. Grey was led To ascribe to things I chanced to talk about. This and my pledge of silence vexed me much, And so, soon after that, I took my leave.’ “ Anne Gorman: ‘ I am Mr. Luton’s servant. On Tuesday wa3 the sixth I had to go Out on an errand, with the door ajar, When I remembered something I had left Behind. On coming back, I saw deceased Race through the lobby, and whisk into the room. I had been ordered not to let her in.’ “ The evidence of Dr. Wallinger Ended the case. ‘ I was called in to see The body of deceased upon the sixth : Life then was quite extinct; the cause of death, Congestion and effusion of the ventricle. Death would be instantaneous. Any strong Emotion might have led to that result-.’ “ The Coroner, in course of summing up, Commented on the evidence, and spoke Of deceased’s conduct in appropriate terms; Observing that the Jury would decide Upon their verdict from the testimony Of the professional witness—which was clear, And seemed to him conclusive. He could do No less than note the awful suddenness With which the loss of life had followed such A glaring sacrifice of duty’s claims. “ The Jury gave their verdict in at once: ‘Died by the visitation of God.’ “ We learn On good authority that the deceased Belonged to a distinguished family. Her husband’s scientific eminence Is fully and most widely recognized.” As Hurling finished reading this, he rose To call his friend; but, shrinking at the thought, He read it all again and lingeringly. But, after that, he called in undertone; And he received the answer, “ Come in here.” He entered therefore. Grey was huddled o’er The coffin, looking hard iuto her face. “ You know it now,” he said, but did not move. “ We long have been old friends,” Harling replied. “ Words are of no avail, and worse than none. I need not try to tell you what I feel.” Grey now stood straight. “I am to bury her The day after to-morrow : I alone Shall see her covered in beneath the earth. Maj' God be near her in the stead of men, And let her rest. Yet there is with her that Which she shall carry down into the grave; Still in the dark her broken marriage-vow Under her head: they shall remain together. How can I talk like this ?” And he broke off. “ This is a crushing grief indeed, I know,” Said Harling; “yet be brave against it. When This few days’ work is over, Grey, go home, And mind to be so occupied as must Prevent your dwelling on it. If you choose, I will accompany and stay with you.” But he replied: “ My home will now be here;” And all the angles of his visage thinned. “He is here I mean to ruin. Shall he still Be free to laugh me in his sleeve to scorn, And show me pity—pity '.—when we meet ? I have no means of harming him, you think ? There’s such a thing, though, as profes­ sional fame,— I have it. Where’s the name of Luton known? is is my home : I mean to ruin him.” “Why, he,” objected Harling, “never did �Wtfltw ©reg. One hair’s-breadth wrong to you: his hands are clean Of all offence to you and yours-. For shame! It was blind anguish spoke there—not yourself.” “ Ah! you can talk like that! But it is I Who have to feel—I who can see his house From here, and sometimes watch him out and in, And think she used to be with him inside. And he could bear her coming day by day, And see the sobs collecting in her throat, And tresses out of order, as she fell Before his feet, and made her prayers, and wept! He bore this! What a heart he must have had! Must I be grateful for it ? Bid he not Admit inopportune eyes were watching him? He was engaged to marry—yes, and one For whom he’s bound to keep himself in check, And crouch beneath her whims and jealousy:— Not that I ever saw her, but I’m sure. Besides, he told me she would not be his Unless he gains the standing deemed her due,— And I’ll take care of that.” His friend was loath, 459 Seeing the burden of his agony, To harass him with argument and blame ; Yet would he not be by to hear him rave, And said he now must go. “ One moment more,” Said Grey, and oped the window. Overhead The sky was a black veil drawn close as death; The lamps gave all the light, prolonged in rows: And chill it blew upon them as they gazed, Mixed with thin drops of rain, which might not fall Straight downward, but kept veering in the wind. There was a sounding of the sea from far. Grey pointed. “ That beyond there is the house, Turning the street—that where a candle burns In the left casement of the upper three. That is, no doubt, his shadow on the blind. Often I get a glimpse of it from here, As when you saw me first this afternoon. Shall he not one day pay me down in full ? John, I can wait ; but when the moment comes . . .!” He shut the sash. Harling had seen ths. night, Equal, unknown, and desolate of stars. 1849* * The reader will observe the already remote date at which this poem was written. Those were the days when the prge-Raphaelite movement in painting was first started. I, who was as much mixed up and interested in it as any person not practically an artist could well be, entertained the idea that the like principles might be carried out in poetry; and that it would be possible, without losing the poetical, dramatic, or even tragic tone and impression, to approach nearer to the actualities of dialogue and narration tnan had ever yet been done. With an unpractised hand I tried the experiment; and the. result is this blank-verse tale, which is now published, not indeed without some revision, but without the least alteration in its general character and point of view.— vv at t? ° r � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mrs. Holmes Greg Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rossetti, William Michael Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 452, 449-459 p. : ill. (engraving) ; 23 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Broadway 1 (1868). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. A poem in blank verse. The illustration, page number 452, is at the front of the poem. The first page of the verse is numbered 449. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1868] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5343 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Mrs. Holmes Greg), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts English Poetry Poetry in English https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/73142321080d7adaf2a5e0d1303225f5.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=e9A61vUh4NWlT31o0kQ0yzRTnrT7bfaj-ZKRRRzTZnDICLgpZNixEIpSjw5egnYPvhgkH2aCImOXy6WABbBAw2sSJnBKKFJdbzC0Kvwp7wKt7ZUt0IHfo933-Zdc5X1EXWAqQ5JDG4EnyGy4MBlUBQMwJfQ5L2V77dBnB7VdDZa43Jr3fWJEZP6KzQEcKVKuI18961UFITlS9cl-vhVBxVCUkGlqCcOCciBzEm2kna8iPybDf7A438Lz%7EhfZz70BLV3fsFF8pb9oefRQ4IwIoDrEj6PAKfDIGaw1sa75neHWAVq1fKBEJ5xJp-%7EaXfJKHPlOMtyIdIhJoz93PtbwRQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7289b000145eb681bdce1d88b58af2c6 PDF Text Text �or/6 9 - Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred C? eight �LIBRARY South Place Ethical Society Rec’d...... .19.0.3............... Ack’d................................. ..... Source R...QPN..tr.folf; 1970,.. in detail Class Cat. �KEYNOTE S.” BY ARBOR LEIGH. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1876. Price Sixpence. �LONDON : PRINTED BY C. "W. REYNELL, LITTLE RUMENS Y STREET, H4SXARKET. �“KEY NOTES.” UPWARD. What is the tireless key Of the unheard chorus of things ? Of the ceaseless autumns and springs ? Of the ebbing and flowing sea ? Answer : that we may join in thy chorus, Eternity! What shall we do to-day To lessen the total strife ? To forward the total life ? To help the worlds on their way ? To live by the last-learnt law is more than to praise or to pray. Why is the fit thing best ? Why is the best thing fit ? We work, and we cease from it; Do we work for work or for rest ? Daily the light comes up in the East to hide in the West. Never, never in sight, The Perfect we long to see: The Perfect we long to be : The final, immutable Bight. Nay : for the Perfect grottos, with growth that is infinite. Over the verges fair Of the best we can feel and think, Ever just over the brink Of the best we can do and dare, Till we ask—“ Are there ends at all, to Purposes everywhere ? ” �4 “ Key Notes. ” From stars in the solemn sky, From the tender flower at our feet, Certain, and clear, and sweet, Comes the same eternal reply : “ Upward 1 upward, 0 man! for Progress can never die I ” UNTO THIS PRESENT. i. Free and yet fast: fast, and for ever free : Led in the line of law to liberty : Sweeping the spirals of invariant space: On flees the little earth around her sun. For ever tending to his fiery breast; For ever tending to the outer cold; So held, unfettered, ’twixt her two desires, From either doom ; and of her impotence, Driven, where hindrances are least, along The curves of gentler possibility. 0 little planet! fated to be free, And have thy leisure for an seon’s space To bud, and bloom, and grow a teeming thing: Cooling, yet lifewards ;—darkening unto sight That wakes in many eyes of many lives; And lights the living into wider light;— 0 little planet! Chariot of mankind, Force-drifted from impalpability Into thy rounded being, and the form Thy children know thee by,—how sternly kind Is Force, new-differenced as Life, as Love, As Fitness for a freedom yet to be. Free, and yet fast; fast, and for ever free! Thy history is writ in parable : Man’s tale is one with thine, 0 little world of Man ! �“Key Notes.” 5 n. I looked into the green sea yesterday, And dreamt in outline of that sum of Cause Which brought it there, and me to watch it curl Its never-sleeping mystery to my feet. Although so far agone as now appears Like Never, yet I think there was an hour, Down the dim reaches of a cosmic Past, Ere the beginnings of the growth of things, When Fact stayed, poised, and centred everywhere ; And for one pregnant moment of suspense The awful Infinite had nought to do :— When universal forces nowhere clash’d, And all thro’ Space hung equal formlessness : When, wreck’d, some all-dissolved, older Past Yielded its untired atoms for new work— Or play—at System-churning; till there went Slow, doubtful whirlings through Immensity, And sameness grew new-focuss’d, here or there, With glimmering, gassy nuclei. So, anon, These, settling into fluid balls of fire, Flung forth, all wildly spinning into space, Planets; and these, all spinning, flung their moons, Until, among an unguessed myriad more, This little thing we live to call our world Grew individual, and puny shone Among the millions : thence, self-centred, roll’d, An isle of gleaming chaos, thro’ the cycled years. in. The young world’s radiance ebb’d away to night, And a slow-settling darkness veiled her curves, As she, a vaporous mantle for awhile Drew round her broodingly. And in that gloom The mystery, Motion, learned a strange new art In subtle particles. Change after change Smaller and stiller grew, and more complex— As Life began in darkness. For ’twas then, �6 “Key Notes.” Under a heaven all murky with the breath Of young creation rising hot and thick, Sprung that, which, lighted, had been loveliness. Fem-forests, haply, at the steaming poles Spread to the darkness beauty unbeheld; And forms most gracious in the eye of Day Were born unheralded, and died in night. Nor so were wasted! What, though living eyes That turn ethereal quiverings into light, And use the light to find out loveliness— Not yet were focuss’d from a vaguer Force :•— Men, retrospective, in this later age, Learn, by the trace of what they never saw, A lesson worth the learning. Let it pass. Dawn conquered e’en the long primeval night, The blackness thinn’d, and wept itself away, And let the light through from the parent sun, And life began to know itself as life In sentient things that joyed in some degree. New inter-adaptation everywhere, Among material bent on issuing At last, in that supremest noblest thing, Achieved by all that has been—Consciousness— The being, who not only lived a life, Loved, joyed, and suffered, slept and woke again, But noted it, and recognised himself, And found some words and said, “I am a man.” rv. In yon far distance, where the sea and sky Make of two meeting edges one thin line, A boundary seems where yet no boundary is. Being persists : and, grandly gradual, All aspects melt in one-ness as we move, And, spite of all our severing, ill fit names— Cause, as effect, retains its force unspent. One fact grows smoothly on, through changing lights, �“ Key Notes.” 7 Stable alone in instability, Unchangeable in constant changefulness. In thine own piteous, piteous ignorance, Break not the calm continuous tale of growth, Told by the tacit truthfulness of things, With theory of breach—0 petty man ! Pause with thy rounded story in mistrust Of its full-blown completeness ! In the face— The awful face—of deep, unfinished Life, Cast they neat sketch of things aside awhile : Forget thy need of headings to thy page, Or final flourish hinting all is said. Learn of thy planet home, man-dazzled man I The life of man is mot the end of things. For, not till earth hid all her fires away, And gave but borrowed splendour to the night, Knew she of greater glory than her own, And, in her children’s vision, learnt to see the stars. ? v. Strong, sanely conscious, sweet Philosophy I I see her dealing with the fevered screams Of angry over-certain ignorance ; She measures men by what they tend to be, Endures all honest lies right patiently, Knows them for lies, but knows she knows them so, By knowledge that would make the liar true Could he lay hold of it. A day shall dawn, When error, proved, shall be no longer held, And battled for, as somehow, somewhat good And beneficial, error though it be. Grand, unrebellious, sane Philosophy ! Crowned and calm I see her sit aloft, Upon the apex of things knowable ; Her heart the stiller that it is so vast; Her deed emergent from her gravest thought, As it illumes and tempers to the Fact �“ Key Notes” The deepest of her feeling. And around— Above her, spreads the measureless abyss : Time both ways endless :—all ways endless, Space. 0 strongly patient, fair Philosophy ! She reads the midmost truth betwixt extremes, Dreams of the far point whither truths converge, And with a question in her thoughtful smile Ponders the poetry of paradox— How highest knowledge waxes negative, How he who soars the farthest in his thought, Basks in a beatific ignorance, Knows by his knowledge he can never know, Sees by the light of sight that he is blind, And loves the largeness of the total sum, That lured him to be ignorant and wise. 0 just, harmonious Philosophy I She links, and interlinks the sciences, Finds the coherence of a Universe, And one-ness in the varied wide-lived All; Reads in a lump of dirt the very law, That rules the being of Society, Kinship between the atoms and the suns, And reason for a Virtue foreshadowed in a clod. VI. There is a sense in which the Universe Is pivoted upon a molecule ; There is a sense in which Eternity Hangs on each moment. Read that truth reversed, The softest dimple on a baby’s smile, Springs from the whole of past Eternity : Tasked' all the sum of things to bring it there, And so was only barely possible. Yet ’twas so one and equal with its cause ’Twould need that whole of past Eternity, Cancell’d and changed, and every motor force And every atom through Infinitude, �1 <f Key Notes.” 9 Set otherwise a-going to hinder it. The Future lies potential in the Now : The Necessary is the Possible, The two are differing names for one stiff Fact, That Fact—the Being of whatever is. Is this dogmatic ? ’Tis the normal voice Of soughing breezes, and of singing birds ; It comes to me thwart distant silences Of inter-stellar vacancy at night, It comes to me from human influence Drifted through centuries, half-unperceived ; And in it is an all-embracing Code,— And in it is an all-inspiring Creed,— In what has been man learns the law of life, And finds his Revelation writ as Genesis. VII. But now what says Philosophy of Self ? What thinks her follower of the man he is ? Can he, in presence of the symphony That rolls around him, played by viewless Cause On suns for instruments, with Life for Key And the For Ever we can only name As metronome to beat out rhythmic bars, Great eeons long, in number infinite— Can he revert to his small destiny, As wjth a moment’s stopping of his ears, While that sweet thundering of the huge “Not Self,” Challenges him to listen while he may ? Aye, for his egotism is not killed, But only stunn’d, by vastness : now forgot In the strong consciousness of larger things, But yet, anon, assertive ; full of rights ; Measuring worth by “What is that to me ? ” And so we look about us for a god, Whom we may bind in trust to work our welfare out. fl �IO “ Key Notes.” VIII. The tacit flux of unexplaining fact That deals one recompense to one offence Whether we call the doer, “ fool,” or “ knave ; ” The steady tendency that draws the child, Playing too near a precipice, to death, And holds in safety every wretched life That fails of chancing on the way to die— This tacit fact, this steady tendency Breeds our experience, and makes us wise ; Breathes on our wisdom then, and makes us good. 0 man! thou mad ! thou blind ! thou self­ engross’d ! Let thy poor blindness be chastised to sight, Grow acquiescent in the utmost ward Of Nature’s fine impartiality : Learn that what is must measure what thou dost, That on thy knowledge hangs thy highest fate And all thy virtue grows of the outer Cosmic growth. IX. Daily we die, eternally to live, Each in the measure of his deathlessness In the undying life of that strong Thing, That once was Chaos and that shall be God, But now is Man, and needs the lives of men To learn its Being,—weave its Future by. Freedom is born of fetters. Joy of pain. For he who feels the gain of greater things In his own loss, makes of his loss a gain; And masters so the stern Necessity That so apportion’d. When thy will is one With what must be, with or without thy will, Thy will grows helpful, and thy will is free. For mastery is service perfected, And, being won, yields back obedience To laws of larger life. ’Tis thus we grow �“Key Notes.” ii And feel a world-pulse thrill our hopeful soul, And feel our bark of life lift on the wave, With progress, joyous, sure and palpable. Free, and yet fast; fast, and for ever free ! Lured by a love-like law in lines of Liberty. x. Now'shall we worship ? Aye : but name no name. A thousand G-ods, outgrown of growing man, Strew with their martyr’d prophets, all the past. Man’s spirit is the father of his God, When, seeking in his misty ignorance For sign of meaning in the drift of things— For trace of purpose in his little life, His hope,—his trust sends forth blind, yearning cries, Which echo back from the mysterious face Of outer things, transfigured as Reply. Is this so piteous ? Nay : but it is well! Such dreams have brought man up the slippery steep Of half-learnt rectitude, and made him man. But now we worship with our faces hid, And name no name, since All we cannot name : Our homage to the awfulness of Law Lies in the meekness of the earnest act, Which, with sweet constancy in its reward, Deals with us well, and turns our awe to love. The end lies hid in future victory, Won by the faithfulness of man to man. We know not of that end, and yet we wait, And worship, acquiescent, for we feel it must be great. Amen. �12 “ Key Notes.” •SUMMER SONG. i. 0 sun, that makes haste to be early to look on thy self-kindled morn, And to see the most beautiful brightness of dewdrop­ fill’d daisies at dawn ; 0 tears of the gladness of greeting when earth shakes her short sleep away, And turns her to meet the long future of one more intense summer day; 0 fullness of life in the flowers, of joy in the fledgling’s new flight, There is left no work for the heart at home, when the earth is so full of delight. ii. I will hark to the innocent secret, in whisp’rings of tall, flowr’d grass, I will read the white lesson of daylight, in breezewreathed clouds as they pass, And with fullest surrender of spirit to the free efflorescence of things, I will think not a thought that is duller than glint of the dragon-fly’s wings. My heart shall be tender and trustful, and hold not a heavier care Than a butterfly, flutt’ring ’mid roses at noon, might carry, nor know it was there. in. There are harebells that, nodding and swaying, defy the full sunshine to fade; There are oaks, in their gnarled firmness, dividing the noon from the shade ; There are beetles that shimmer and vanish among little stones by the bank ; �“ Key Notes” 13 There are hummings of flight that is seeking, and perfume of blossoms that thank. Things seem all youthful and faithful, and life all earnest and glad: Who can believe ’tis the same old earth men say is so sinful and sad ? IV. So busy the flowers are blowing, so busy and so untired ; So certain the bee is of finding the sweetness her life has desired; So steady the sky stands over, to bless all the kindling and birth Of a thousand new things in a minute, on the teeming summer-day earth. 0 breezes, aglow with the sunbeams ! ye’d utter it all if ye could— The tending of things to be conscious of life: the tending of life to be Good. MORNING. What’s the text to-day for reading, Nature and its being by ? There is effort all the morning Through the windy sea and sky. All, intent in earnest grapple, That the All may let it be : Force, in unity, at variance With its own diversity. Force, prevailing unto action : Force, persistent to restrain: In a two-fold, one-soul’d wrestle, Forging Being’s freedom-chain. �14 “ Key Notes." Frolic! say you—when the billow Tosses back a mane of spray ? No; but haste of earnest effort; Nature works in guise of play. Till the balance shall be even Swings the to and fro of strife ; Till an awful equilibrium Stills it, beats the Heart of Life. What’s the text to-day for reading, Nature and its being by ? Effort, effort all the morning, Through the sea and windy sky. AFTERNOON. Purple headland over yonder, Fleecy, sun-extinguish’d moon, I am here alone, and ponder On the theme of Afternoon. Past has made a groove for Present, And what fits it is: no more. Waves before the wind are weighty; Strongest sea-beats shape the shore. Just what is, is just what can be, And the Possible is free : ’Tis by being, not by effort, That the firm cliff juts to sea. With an uncontentious calmness Drifts the Fact before the “ Law,” So we name the order’d sequence We, remembering, foresaw. �“ Key Notes.” And a law is mere procession Of the forcible and fit; Calm of uncontested Being, And our thought that comes of it. In the mellow shining daylight, Lies the Afternoon at ease, Little willing ripples answer To a drift of casual breeze. Purple headland to the westward ! Ebbing tide and fleecy moon ! In the “line of least resistance,” Flows the life of Afternoon. TWILIGHT. Grey the sky, and growing dimmer, And the twilight lulls the sea. Half in vagueness, half in glimmer, Nature shrouds her mystery, What have all the hours been spent for ? Why the on and on of things ? Why, eternity’s procession Of the days and evenings ? Hours of sunshine, hours of gloaming, Wing their unexplaining flight, With a measured punctuation Of unconsciousness, at night. Just at sunset was translucence When the west was all aflame; So I asked the sea a question, And a kind of answer came. *5 �16 fCKey Notes” Is there nothing but Occurrence ? Tho’ each detail seem an Act, Is that whole we deem so pregnant, But unemphasised Fact ? Or, when dusk is in the hollows Of the hillside and the wave, Are things just so much in earnest That they cannot but be grave ? Nay, the lesson of the twilight Is as simple as ’tis deep ; Aquiescenceacquiescence: And the coming on of sleep. MIDNIGHT. There are sea and sky about me, And yet nothing sense can mark ; For a mist fills all the midnight, Adding blindness to its dark. There is not the faintest echo From the life of yesterday : Not the vaguest stir foretelling Of a morrow on the way. ’Tis negation’s hour of triumph, In the absence of the sun, ’Tis the hour of endings, finished; Of beginnings, unbegun. Yet the voice of awful Silence, Bids my waiting spirit hark ; There is action in the stillness. There is progress in the dark. �“ Key Notes” In the drift of things and forces, Comes the better from the worse, Swings the whole of nature upward, Wakes, and thinks—a Universe. There will be more life to-morrow, And of life, more life that knows ; Though the sum of Force be constant, Yet the Living ever grows. So we sing of Evolution, And step strongly on our ways, And we live thro’ nights in patience, And we learn the worth of days. In the silence of murk midnight Is revealed to me this thing: Nothing hihders, all ennobles Nature’s vast awakening. OCTOBER. 0 still, sweet mornings, silvery with frost! 0 holy early sunsets full of calm I When the spent year has seen her utmost fruit, And beautifully leans towards her doom. I think if I could choose my hour to go Into the unknown infinite, ’twould be While earth is lying patiently bereft During this yearning month—while summer holds A failing hand across the narrowing days, To meet the stern cold grip of winter : smiles The last sweet effort of her life away, And bids October mourn in gold and grey. ’Tis not quite hopefulness I gather there, And yet methinks it is not quite despair, But a resigning with a painless will, Of what was lovely once, is lovely still, 17 �18 “ Key Notes” And yet must go. 0 mystery of Death ! The formless blank that margins liveliest life! We turn the weary face towards the wall, We wish less vehemently hour by hour, We let the thought-worn spirit ebb away Into unconsciousness, and as we fail, No more have energy to question God, Or men, or things, but dimly think it strange, That ever it had seemed to matter so. Are there degrees of dying ? Or, when breath Has ceased for ever are men all the same ? Do varying intensities of Death Mark of past lives which most deserved the name ? When noble purpose, unfulfilled, subsides With the out-ebbing of a human life, With the slow-slacking beat of noble heart That erewhile did conceive it, is no sign Vouchsafed, to mark the lapse from death of such As all his life long kept his soul asleep ? Each did his nothing. One from lack of days, Or lack of God’s-help—opportunity. The other from the lack of purpose, or Of force to wield it: now it seemsall one : Each dies his death: the nothing that is done Has less of satire for the self-wrapt fool, Than for his loftier brother. Earth’s fair things Perish so unresistingly ; the while They meet the autumn as they met the spring, Lovely, and acquiescent: for the year Seems never surer,—less indifferent Than when the woods are withering and aglow, And oaks in calmness let their acorns go, To fare as they are able, in the dark. Let the true aspirant endure to leave His precious noblest thought. Aye ! bear to die, Not seeing it prevail. Thou feeble man ! Meet the inevitable with strong trust �“ Key Notes.” ’9 That waste is not, but fitness everywhere; And though thy thought had seemed so very good, Its worth might well have won thy fame for thee, Mistrust that love of it as thine own thing, In measure of its fitness, not as thine, ’Twill rule the life-blood of posterity, And make of man meet master of his ways. Good is too strong to need thy consciousness; But, having blest thy vision, lets thee die. 0 prophet I live the flowering future through In present days, however chill and few ; Catch the vast measure of the march of man, And read a cycle in an hour ; for he, And only he, may live immortally, Who lives, the while he lives, in tune with life That lives for ever. Prophet! having lived And quickened with thy word some further soul, And sent a-ringing through eternity The chord thy hand was formed to strike, and leave, Thou shalt October-wise, resign thy breath, Glad with faint echoings from a future life, Grown beautiful and great beyond thine hour of death. DECEMBER. Winter; and loveliness of frosty hours : Winter, and frost; and sorrow of the poor : More than one-half of all the men alive, Forced, by the struggle ’twixt the hurling power Of orbit motion, and the strong, stiff pull Of yon white sun,—to be immersed in cold. Snow crystals! tiny, perfect, everywhere : Man’s work and nature’s crisply fringed with hoar That sends a gem-hued sparkle through the eye Into the gladdened consciousness behind, �20 “Key Notes.” A.1X& helps the poet to sufficient theme For kindling song where prose was yesterday. What ? will he glibly, gaily dare extol The levelling force of whiteness ; and the robe Of Beauty, thrown alike o’er hut and hall, And miss the lesson of it ?—Let him pause! A ledge exists where snowflakes can be lodged; There they are lodged, and there their beauty is, And, being snow, their coldness, tho’ the shelf Be shoulder of a baby, scarcely clad, And dying of it, or the cosy eaves That hold the flakes away from ruder lives, Fitter to weather winter circumstance— Admiring and not dying of the snow. I do not trust the unreflective praise That would appropriate the fair “ must be ” As man’s especial, heaven-sent heritage. For he who calls the glory of this world His own, his right, his message from a God Intent on beautifying life for man, Will find his logic sadly overset, And all his music stricken out of tune, When he, perchance, shall find his own delight Hangs on that fact that strikes a brother dead. We skim the surface of the Actual, Daub it with moral, wall it round with names, Fit puny, arbitrary adjectives, Where Fact is subtle, mergent, and itself, Until we see no more the real drift Of Being, nor coherence in the tale Perpetually uttered everywhere. Meanings are made and fastened by our moods: Things only mean themselves : each fact proclaims, By its existence, but that it exists : What is, not what it stands for, is the theme Of Nature’s teaching. Let us learn that first. Grave lessons learnt of cosmic constancy Work in us, patience. Thence more safely true �li Key Notes y 21 Live we our lives, law-tempered, soberly, But ever law-rewarded. And, unchill’d By doubt of irony in sun or sky, We learn to smile up in the face of Fact, And praise its Fitness, fitly. Let us learn : For, certainty attained, we acquiesce ; And acquiescence wins the way to Happiness. SONNET. A little brook doth babble, and doth dance; And in its eddies traps a sunny ray, And toys with it, and splits it every way, Till thousand seeming gems dazzle and glance, The summer earth lies in a lovely trance; • While a blithe song-bird on th’ o’erhanging spray, Trills forth his mirth all thro’ the livelong day. And some have said this world is ruled by Chance! 0 broad, blue lift I wherein the sun is set— Whence the stars peep and sparkle all the night. Why do things seem, so love-ruled, purpose-set, If blind Chance gave them birth, and holds them right ? Most happy Chance ! such beauties chance to be : I, too ; with ears thathear and eyes that see ! MARCH. Wild winds of March I ruthless, and stern, and cold : Wild flowers of March ! that tenderly unfold : Wind—as a voice of sovereign fury wild, Flower, only so, as is a peasant’s child. Why come ye thus together, wind and flower, Linked hand in hand, a weakness, and a power ? One speaks in both; and doth the storm-wind hold That it hurt not His primrose, and His smile, �io. “ Key Notes.” ’Mid blustering bleakness, helps the flower mean­ while With courage to be lovely in the cold. For God is everywhere if anywhere, Ruling the strong and weak with equal care : In the wild days when Nature’s voice is harsh, Weaving the rudest breath of bitter March ; Yet guarding, that its fragrance may not fail, The weakest bud that opens in the gale. One law demands the twain. We are so blind 1 Spite of the legend God is in the wind, As in the still small voice with which meanwhile The meek, pale primrose wakes into a smile. 0 little flower ! teach me to be bold, And Eke thyself keep courage in life’s bitter cold 1 APRIL. 0 sights, and scents, and sounds of this fair earth, When Nature has her way unmarred by man I From the arched beauty of the rainbow span That sheds its lustre thro’ an April hour, To yonder lark’s intensity of mirth, Or the mysterious fragrance of a flower, There is no.imperfection. It is strange That man alone has power to disarrange, And, when he will, can mar. Who would suspect This creature, called a “ crowning work,” with handsDoing the meddling will of intellect. The more can do the more he understands To dim the face of Nature’s loveliness, And make the sum of all her beauties less! Sweet April morning ! by what wide mischance, Is it that things more lovely are, in fact, Where men are few and steeped in ignorance Than where a crowd of thinkers plan and act? Yet for all this is Beauty’s self a lie, �11 Key Notes." 23 Because she shrinks away and seems to die, When rude man in the hurry of his need Tortures her into usefulness : when greed, By twisting fair and good things into gold, Makes “ progress ” one with wealth, and young men old? ’Tis well there are some feats beyond our reach, ’Tis well we cannot climb the rainbow’s arc With earthy tread, to make its glory dark ; ’Tis well no art of ours can ever teach The wind and song-bird trammell’d, thought-bound speech. Or build sick cities on the mighty sea, Or make one billow’s curve less wildly free. And though on earth we crowd achievement so, That little flowers have hardly room to grow, Price-labell’d prose may reach not very high, We cannot “civilise ” and spoil the sky 1 Yet stay 1 we weep this beauty that we soil, And shrink from turning all our play to toil; But this fair thought may shine athwart our tears, And hope gleam, April-wise, on gloomy fears. The reign of fitness is not over yet; We never wholly lose what we regret. If he be man who blots the sunny sky With.breath of avarice and smoke of gain, Yet man he is who feels relenting pain For Beauty’s sickness : hates to see her die. The poet in the bosom of the best Shall never starve; because the law is just By which it lives,—in which we put this trust, That all fair things from final loss Love’s Strength may wrest. PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PHLTBNEY STREET, HAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Key notes" Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leigh, Arbor Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Arbor Leigh is the pseudonym of Louisa Sarah Bevington, English anarchist, essayist and poet. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT168 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work ("Key notes"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts English Poetry Poetry in English https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/30a9e22e17ee5bc6bf812b5f48d26e6d.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=pEWmO2nZD8452iAsCfQ5iB5LENBmuJ6mzoUbEc2aCPQ3pP7uwTzMRqPdcl2ls4wyD8nBjrgd2u%7ENGtWkjU1psQ1k5H3JLgF-NOqiqGL6k-DMB3IExwdEejmJBhmv5Yc8BMkX24cerBb-v3d1Xmdw66RiLkBY3NwTzH6hjDzYYyB8Ds6yisfjJzBRgUnGbdyxPw4o0HWVeYT4TJ9UaWjDIM%7EWrEAVagvOFXRDg7xTIGo1XS%7ER3I9XasQIa%7Erl7Iydj67x9eeABjQhg2GiINlWG79s03LtaAO807Wu8f6Q3R54Mdk9pbbElI4-2mhrk3ybwErRpluv3maY08JM3WnQeg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b666984b70eefc59bb8d8f09e7d924b1 PDF Text Text The Massacre of the Piegans. THE MASSACRE OF THE PIEGANS* BY SHENANDOAH, AUTHOR OF “ SHERIDAN’S LAST RIDE,” AND “ MOKE-TA- VA-TA, THE MARTYRED CHIEFTAIN.” Stern winter flashed its frozen bars Across the fiery belt of Mars ; The mountain brow was crowned with light, The valley robed in spotless white ; Calm justice, bending from the sky, Looked o’er the battlements on high, Her shining balance downward hung, All solemnly and still it swung To weigh the deeds of shame and worth, At that hour passing on the earth ; On one side was a nation’s ban, The other held the poor Piegan. Great was the power, wealth, and pride Piled mountain high upon one side, The prowess and the strength of years, The triumphs over doubts and fears ; The conquests, sometimes gained o’er wrong, With Freedom’s name to make them strong; The other side held want, distress, The children of the wilderness, Feeble and faint, with garments few, The wintry winds could pierce them through; A nation’s army—Sheridan, Against the outlawed, poor Piegan. On one side glittering steel and fire, To do thejwork of death so dire; Steeds prancing, banners waving high, Strong men to conquest drawing nigh, Such victory as might could gain, With none their weapons to restrain; The other but a few souls brave, Who fought their helpless ones to save, Women and babes, shrieking awoke To perish ’mid the battle smoke, * As rendered at the close of a lecture upon the subject of “ Moke-ta-va-ta ; or, The Nation and its Wards,” in Masonic Temple, Washington, D. C., March 30th, by Cora L. V. Tappan. �The Massacre of the Piegans. Murdered, or turned out there to die Beneath the stern, gray, wintry sky; Here, a great Christian warrior’s plan, There, Pity, and the poor Piegan. Far o’er the seas, Columbia’s hands Uplift the fallen of all lands ; To Ireland’s stricken sons, her voice Speaks, bidding them awake, rejoice ; From England’s pride and wealth of state, She bids the paupered millions wait; Wakes from her dismal, dreary trance The sleeping liberty of France ; Salutes across the golden sea, Brave Garibaldi’s Italy; Pleads everywhere for rights of man, Why not for her own poor Piegan ? The summer fields of flowery Spain Give promise of bright Freedom’s grain ; Far to the distant Orient A flash of fiery thought is sent, The dark Mongolian is stirred With every potent, piercing word ; To all the races 'neath the sun She welcome gives ; even the one So lately bound to shame and toil, , Enslaved, enfranchised on her soil; For whom her‘own fair sons were slain, To wash away foul slavery’s stain; Oh 1 in this splendid, perfect plan, There is a place for the poor Piegan. Justice still bends above the earth, To mark the deeds of shame or worth • Each in the balance shall be tried ; Oh ! not upon the nation’s side Of shame, let us our tribute lay, But on the side of truth, alway; Remember, “Whatsoe’er is done Unto the feeblest little one,” The loving Master once hath said, KThat do ye unto me instead I look, behold the Son of Man Bears in his arms the poor Piegan. 9i �93 Friends among the Indians. “FRIENDS” AMONG THE INDIANS. From a report made by Samuel M. Janney, Superintendent of In­ dian Affairs, for the Northern Super­ intendency, in the State of Nebraska, to a convention of Friends held re­ cently in Philadelphia, we extract the following : At the Santee Agency, the survey of the allotments of land in severalty is well advanced, and the Indians are eager to occupy their farms as soon as houses can be built. A new steam saw-mill has been put in ope­ ration, a large number of saw-logs are in readiness, and lumber is being rapidly prepared for building pur­ poses. The agent expects the In­ dians to do most of the work in erecting their own houses. He has contracted for machinery to build a flouring-mill on Bazille Creek—which affords a sufficiency of water-power. He has seeded about a hundred acres with spring wheat, and intends to put in a corn crop on the agency farm. The schools are flourishing, and the In­ dians manifest a disposition to help themselves by honest labor. The condition of the tribe is very encour­ aging. At the Winnebago Agency, about three hundred acres of prairie land were broken by Indian labor last summer, to prepare for a crop this year. The agent writes : “ We are getting along very nicely with our work, having finished sowing about four hundred acres of wheat several days ago ; it is now coming up and looking well. We are at this time plowing for corn, and preparing to build fence.” The allotment of land in severalty is well advanced toward completion. The schools, according to the last information I received, were in a sa­ tisfactory condition. From the Omaha Agency, the agent writes : “ Industry and thrift are now taking the place of idleness and im­ providence. The men work well, and even the old chiefs now shoulder their axes and go into the timber to work with the rest.” The timber they have been cutting is for their own use, to be sawed into lumber for the building of their houses. The past winter was the first in which they have had the care of their own cattle. Though steadily work­ ed, these are now in good condition, and not one has died, so far as the agent has learned. Only one dayschool for children has yet been es­ tablished, though many that can not be accommodated express a desire to go to school. Funds are much needed for the support of more schools. At the Pawnee Agency, a disposi­ tion has been manifested recently by many of the men to engage in agri­ cultural labor, which has hitherto been performed almost exclusively by the squaws. The sum of $4000 deducted from their annuity last falL by direction of the chiefs, has, in ac­ cordance with their wishes, been ap­ plied this spring to the purchase of wagons, harness, and plows. They have a very large number of ponies which were of little use except they went on the hunt; some of these have been broken to work, and are �Friends among the Indians. now used for agricultural purposes. .Considerable area of land has been prepared for a wheat crop, and is probably sown by this time. These Indians generally raise a large supply of corn. The Manual Labor School is flou­ rishing, and now numbers seventyfive Indian boys and girls, who are boarded and clothed, and taught the most useful branches of an English education. The boys are taught to work on the farm, and the girls in­ structed in household work. The Agency farm is cultivated by the labor of the boys and young men who have been educated in the school. The agent of the Otoes and Mis­ souri Indians writes : “ The condi­ tion of the tribe is very promising, and I think its prospects are gradu­ ally growing better. A day-school, under the care of an experienced teacher, is progressing satisfactorily, but its existence does not do away with the necessity of an industrial school.” There has been' much sickness in the tribe, and about thirty children have died, mostly from measles. 93 The practice of bleeding for the cure of most diseases is very common with the Indians, and often very in­ jurious. The fund sent by friends for the supply of suitable food for the sick, has been of great service, and in some instances medical aid has been supplied from this same source. All the children of the tribe have been clothed by the Society of Friends, and now present a very creditable appearance. They attend school with cheerfulness. From the Great Nemaha Agency I returned yesterday. There has recently been much sickness among the Indians, chiefly from measles; but a skillful physician, living within six miles of the reservation, has at­ tended them, and the deaths have been few. The Iowa tribe is evidently much improved since I first saw it, and many of the men who were formerly intemperate and idle, have reformed, and are now sober and orderly in their habits. The school taught by Mary B. Lightfoot is well attend­ ed, and the progress of her pupils is encouraging. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Massacre of the Piegans Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Shenandoah Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [Chicago] Collation: 90-91 p. ; 24 cm. Please note that this pamphlet contains language that may be upsetting to readers. This reflects the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1870] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5445 Subject The topic of the resource Indigenous peoples Human rights Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Massacre of the Piegans), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English American Poetry Conway Tracts Marias Massacre of Montana Native Americans Piegan Peoples Poetry in English https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/3c56fc70fd8ac14b59855418a176ba0d.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=c3VBOQ9GhrMur-0zY9d9QrC27HC-RuLU57-2zo62LcRi1RXhX%7EkUhP0jUsXAhi-pK9Nuztp-OocZO3-ZDQUJN10bn5sqdC1owYe6FUBy7T0EpERk1a9V-MXwMj5HzkaG9VgbiLcr4msBvqDgX7maTGvh04P-qampGaDQY338RXBkY4sTwDWwQnrPrUoLjVy5AQHD3GuAEBtK9e48mWPcaOOwUksxSuTRwrV1wwsA7ApN9xjbq-C6WQ3-%7EIQyEUO%7EOJ1cNbMEsNtcHNY6huyXzow3E0Me1%7EsXJPXulLk6PM22QH41gZ3jO8oTNzqh2XhpgrRETLZcHD01M15hndbiEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM be492c371e2fa2bc39236dc4a1a14006 PDF Text Text PSYCHE TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. A CHANT OF LOVE AND FREEDOM. BY FRANCES ROSE MACKINLEY. Arise ! my soul, thou breath of God ! Awake, to a full sense of thine all-coinprising consciousness To hymn the praise of Love-Creative— And Freedom-Regenerative of Humanity. Disrupt the tyrannic bonds ; That have held captive thy sex for ages ! Recklessly speak thy thought; Mindful only of allegiance to Truth ! O for a voice ! That could resound throughout the universe. A voice ! Not pitifully plaintive, like wailing Philomel’s ; “'Tor calling aloud for relief, Ake Israel in bondage; Nor yet a voice, shrill and sharp, Jenetrating the spheres Like that of the soaring skylark— 3ut a voice, new made, Louder, clearer, sweeter, fuller, than any voice yet heard— An archangelic breath ! a voice divine ! Wherewith I could arouse Humanity from its lethargy, And make lovers and freed of all women and men. A voice to chant a Pean of Freedom, boundless as space ; And love infinite and all embracing. A voice, to stir in woman Some inspiration of her coming destiny, �2 That she may know that, in the future, She is to lead the van of the Army of Progress, Now advancing with victorious strides. This age asks for new women— Women, untrammeled by the temporary and stationary, .Not stunted or warped by prejudgment or bias : No more bigotries! no more prejudices' For the woman who is to come— The true woman, the pure woman. I would sing the glory of the sexual act; The most ecstatic bliss of the body ! I would sing the praise of creative copulation ! The act generative of an immortal soul; Wherein, God as man, and Nature as woman, Blend their essences. 1 would sing, of the coming woman— Moulder of a new race; Made perfect by her recognition Of the goodness and purity of nature’s laws; Of the woman who prides herself On every particle of her delicious and sublime body, The habitation and sanctuary of the Eternal Spirit. The woman—slave of the Time Being— Who is ashamed of herself—ashamed of Nature— Will be ashamed of me. Let the good and perfect woman Have compassion on the woman Who is ashamed of herself! Who invented this trick electric, of nature—this Eroto mania— Whereby immortal consciousness is forced into entity ? Was it invented ? No ! it is coeval with existence ! Invention and conception are forms of the same process; And this material feat of concentrated sensuousness Symbolizes the creation of intuitive and inventive thought. �3 Eternal Coition is, then, the will automatic of the universe; O ¡Nature's cunning method of causation; Tnat.inct working itself up, forever, into reason; By the principle of ceaseless and inexorable evolution. The idea of one supreme is but a thought-limit; Or the swell of presumptuous vanity, in the mere male mind. The Elohim, that spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, Proclaimed his Godhood bi-sexual: So, God and Nature—male and female—are perpetually be­ getting ; And the lustful Jove is but Jehovah in another character. Into this instantial moment of transcendent felicity, Nature concentrates every possibility of pleasure. Science has exhausted the study Of the outward, unconscious universe. In this causal deed of the energy of nature, Science must find the true origin of all things. To study, know and apply its highest laws, Will be to people the planet with gods, And bring about the Millennium. In the antique time, * They consecrated temples to the Gods of Love: To Venus, lascivious and free— To Eros, hot and ardent— To Lamps icus of the garden, fierce and lusty— To the goatish Pan, chasing wood nymphs. These deities are spiritual symbols Of qualities of the soul. Build anew to-day These Fanes embalmed in poesy! Science now knows these ancient'cults To have been the worship of truth, not myths. Build them! Tokens of our return to the ecstacies of nature; From the cold mathematics of Mammon, Into which we have fallen. �4 Crown with a wreath of lilies, emblems of purity, The men and women—angels of love and freedom— Who will offer, at the shrine of these attributes of Divinity, Incense of honor and adoration ! Confess the sanctity of your natures ! Declare How sweet, to man'or woman, Is the tremulous and tingling titillation of nature’s battery. Evolving a conscious soul-spark out of chaos ! Earth holds, for me, no more beautiful picture, Tuan the nude bodies of a man and woman, Clean, fresh and white (or be it brown or black), United in amorous fondness, As before they were severed by Jupiter. The quivering lips, red cheek, bright eyes and palpitating form, Aie but the shadows of the convulsive throes of nature. O for Venus-loving women ! for Sapphic souls ! And Lesbian natures ! I had a dream, Aphrodite, the Celestial Goddess, appeared to me, More radiant, more glowing, more interfused with love, Than when first she sprang from the foamy sea.' “ Daughter,” she said, “ Repair to Cyprus ! Thence to all corners of the globe, send bidding, Announcing that my worship is to be renewed. Grecians loved me in lascivious wiles; And in licentious rites. This was a true tribute to my power. Too much of love, too much of freedom, Too much of delight, thou canst not have. But I am to be worshiped, in the future, As I have never been in the history of the earth : With all the voluptuous imagination of the past, And all the light of the science of to-day. �5 In Olympus, The fulfillment of an olden prophecy is expected : Astrea returns to earth Whence she fled, ages agone, from the cruelty of men, The Goddesses sit in council and co-operate, Hoping that the gentle and feminine virtues Are about to replace the cruel reign of male force. Minerva, Psyche and myself clasp hands in heaven, As knowledge, soul, and love, must conjoin on earth. And thus am I Venus ! To be venerated in reason and principle, As well as adored in love. Because my name has been mentioned with blushes ; Because the arts I taught humanity Have been practiced in secret and in shame, Men have been converted into monsters of absurdity, Instead of monuments of grace; And penury and misery reign Where art and plenty should.” So spake the Goddess. Join with me, O women, In this song of love and freedom ! And, by the truth and beauty of your lives, Inaugurate the reign of Psyche, Minerva and Venus '. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Psyche to the nineteenth century: a chant of love and freedom Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macinley, Frances Rose Description An account of the resource Place of publication: {s.l.] Collation: 5 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A poem. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [187-?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5309 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Women's rights Sexuality Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Psyche to the nineteenth century: a chant of love and freedom), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Free Love Poetry Poetry in English Sexual Relationships Women's Rights Women's Rights-United States