of Christ. Arthur believed in men, supposing them to be transcripts of himself; and in so doing in details, he erred. His philosophy of goodness was erroneous; for he held to the theory of goodness by environment, fencing knights and ladies about with his own fine honor and chastity, supposing pure environment would make them pure, forgetting how God's kingdom is always within. Environment is not gifted to make men good. Arthur believed men pure, nor was he wholly wrong. The men about him gave the lie to his expectation; but these moral ragamuffins did not invalidate the king's faith. The road taken was not the world. Lancelot and Guinevere and Gawain and Modred, false? False! Pelleas, seeing Ettarre lustful and untrue, digging rowels into his steed and crying, "False! false!" was not wise as Arthur. The optimist is right. Some were false, 't is true; but others were true as crystal streams, that all night long give back the heavens star for star. There were and are true men and women. Our neighborhood, if so be it is foul, is not the earth. Enid, and Elaine, and Sir Galahad, and Sir Percivale, and Gareth, and others not designated, were pure. Snows on city streets are stained with soot and earth; snows on the mountains are as white as woven of the beams of noon. King Arthur, expecting the better of the world, in so doing followed the example of his Savior, Christ, who was most surely optimist. King Arthur, in his midnight hour, when knight and wife and Lancelot deserted him, when his "vast pity almost made him die," still kept the lamp of hope aflame and sheltered from the wind, lest it flame, flare, and die. His fool still loved him and clasped his feet; and bold Sir Bedivere staid with him through the thunder shock of that last battle in the west. Not all were false. Some friends abide. Though his application was not always wise, his attitude was justified. Having done his part, he had not been betrayed; for he was still victor. Lancelot and Guinevere were defeated, ruined, as were Gawain and Ettarre, who, as they wake, find across their naked throats the bare sword of Pelleas; then Ettarre knew what knight was knightly. Goodness wins in the long battle, though supposed defeated in the petty frays, Tennyson makes his ideal man an optimist. "Maud" is a study in pessimism. The lover's blood is tainted with insanity. He raves, is suspicious, is at war with all things and all men; rails at the social system, not from any broad sympathy with better things, but from a strident selfishness, rasping and self-proclamatory, lacking elevation, save as his love puts wings beneath him for a moment and lifts him, as eagles billow up their young; is weak, and tries to cover weakness up by ranting. We pity, then despise him, then pity him once more, and in sheer charity think him raving mad. Stand Maud's lover alongside King Arthur, and how splendid does King Arthur look! The lover was pessimist and wrong; Arthur was optimist and, in his temper, right. Though hacked at by the careless or vicious swords of cumulating hatreds, underestimations, selfishness, and lewdness of lesser and cruder souls, knowing, as he did, how God is on goodness' side, knew, therefore, who is on God's side keeps hope in good, believing better things. Those who, thinking themselves shrewd, and are perennially suspicious, do really lack in shrewdness, lacking depth. The far view is the serene view. Pelleas, too, is a study in lost faith. He was near-sighted in his moral life, and so, in losing faith in Ettarre, lost faith in womanhood, a conclusion not justified from the premises; and you hear him in the wild night, crying as beasts of the desert cry, and what he hisses as you pass is, "I have no sword." Arthur kept his sword till time came to give it back to the "arm clothed in white samite." He threw not his sword away until his hand could hold it no longer. Hands and swords must keep company while life and strength remain, and who breaks or throws sword away from sheer despair has lost sight of duty, in so far that our business is to do battle valiantly and constantly for righteousness, and keep the sword at play in spite of dubious circumstances. Battles are often on the point of being won when they look on the point of being lost, as was the case with Pelleas, whose hope died just at the hour when hope ought to have begun shouts befitting triumph; for that night when he lay his naked sword across Ettarre's naked neck, she, waking and finding whose sword was lying, like a mad menace, on her breast, recovered her womanhood, loved the knight, who came and went, and slew her not, as his right was, and loved him to her death; while he, the cause of her reformation, swung through the gloomy night with faith and courage lost. He should have held his faith, however his trust in one had been shamed and sunk. Faith in one snuffed out is not in logic to lose faith; for all are more than one. Trust Arthur; he was right. Pessimism is no sane mood. All history conspires to justify his attitude. Himself inspires optimism in us, and the three queens wait for him, and the black funeral barge that bears him, not to his funeral, but to some fair city where there seems one voice, and that a voice of welcome to this king; and besides all this, his name lights our nights till now, as if he were some sun, pre-empting night as well as day. Has not his optimism been justified a hundred-fold? Do those who view the present only, think to see all the landscape where deeds reap victories? Time is so essential in the propagandism of good. Time is the foe of evil, but sworn ally of good. God owns the future.

King Arthur considered life a chance for service. Life is no abstraction, no theoretical science; rather concrete, experimental. Magician Merlin's motto, too. We may think or act, though this of conduct. We may think or act, though this disjunctive is wrong, wholly wrong. [Transcriber's note: Something seems to have gone wrong with the typesetting of the previous three sentences. The first sentence makes no sense, and the second two both start with the same seven words.] There is no separation between act and thought in a wise estimate. They are not enemies, but friends. We are to think and act. We are, in a word, not to dream or do, but dream and do, the dreaming being prelude to the doing. Who dreams not is metallic. Dreams redeem deeds from being stereotyped, and make motions sinuous and graceful as a bird's flight across the sky; and when they impregnate conduct, deed becomes instinct with a melody thrilling and sweet as a wood-thrush note. Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough with the unseen.

"Always there stood before him, night and day, The imperishable presences serene, One mighty countenance of perfect calm,"

And

"Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones."

So much in him is needed to a soul hungry to be fortified for danger, duty, manliness. Despise not a mystic's brooding, but recall that brooding is not terminal; that he who broods alone has left life wearying around him as he found it, while his need was to change the circumambient air of thought and action into something better than it was; and for such change he must associate him with the lives he fain would help. Arthur brooded and dreamed, and saw the Christ, and then conceived his worthiest service to be to interpret the What he heard and Whom he saw to men; and in pursuance of such purpose he lived with knights, ladies, soldiers, and countrymen. Him they saw and knew. "St. Simeon Stylites" is an application of another side of the same thought. Heroism is in this pillar saint, but a mistaken heroism. He stands,

"A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud."

But to what purpose? Hear him call,

"I smote them with the cross,"

and feel assured from such a word that he who spoke, had he been where the battle raged, had left his stroke on many a shield; for his words have the crash of a Crusader's ax. What a loss it was to men that St. Simeon came not down from his pillar, clothed himself, made himself clean and wholesome, instead of filthy and revolting, and dwelt with people for whom Christ died. A religious recluse is a religious ignoramus, since he does not know that the one-syllable word in the vocabulary of Christ is, "Be of use." The problem of living, as Arthur saw vividly, was not how to get yourself through the world unhurt, but how to do the most for some one besides yourself while you are in the world; and this attitude is otherness, altruism. Nurture strength to use. Pass your might on. Knighthood was to serve everybody else first, after the fashion of the Founder of knighthood, even Christ, "who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister." King Arthur served. Play battles stung him not to prowess, but, as Lancelot saw, in the actual battle, the hero was not Lancelot, but Arthur. May be a too deep seriousness was in him. I think it probable. He had been more masterful in wielding men had he been colored more by laughter and jest. We must not take ourselves, nor yet the world, with too continuous seriousness. There are intervals between battles when warriors may rest, and intervals in the stress of deeds and sorrow where room is given for the caress and wholesome jest. That arch-jester, Jack Falstaff, had much reason with him. We like him, despite himself, and despite ourselves, because there was in him such comradery. Though he was boisterous, yet was he jovial. All characters, save Christ, have limitations. Arthur had his. Lack of sprightliness was his mistake and lack. But the work to be done fills him with might unapproachable, so that,

"Like fire, he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee."

He is no play soldier, and foemen mark his sword as a thing to fear. A mutilated herdsman, rushing into Caerlaen, and shaking bloody story from his hideous wounds, which, Arthur hearing, though a tourneyment would blow its bugles on the plain erelong, forgets the coming joust, remembering only a wrong to be avenged, and evil-doers to be punished or destroyed, so they may no longer be a noxious presence in the land, and goes, and at tourney's close comes back, through the dark night, wet with rain; but he has cleansed the hostile land of villains on that day. In human nature is a bias to escape the world, to get out of the turmoil, to seek cloisters of quiet, which bias "The Holy Grail" attacks. Arthur was no friend to the pursuit of the grail; not that he loves not, with a passion white as sun's flame, the good and pure, but that he has sagacity to see such quest will scatter the round table and its fellowship, and would dispeople his forces, whose presence makes for peace and sovereignty in all his realm and compels the sovereignty of law. Him, their king, these errant knights heeded not, so enticing and noble seemed the warfare they espoused, and thought their sovereign cold and calculating, while, in fact, he knew them for visionaries. He was right. Without them he was bankrupt in strength to compel social betterment. The visionary, in so far as he is simply visionary, is foe to progress; for progress comes by battle and by association in affairs, and he who would be helper to the better life of man must mix with the currents of his time. Snowdrifts in the mountains and on the northern slopes that hold snows in their shadows for the summer's use; and dark mountain meadows, where fogs and rains soak every particle of sod, and waters percolate through the spongy root and soil to form bubbling streams; and the pines, whose shadows make a cool retreat where streams may not be drained dry by the sun; the silver threads of tributary brooks; the sponge of mountain mosses, which squeezes its cup of water into a larger laver,—all these seem remote from the broad river on whose flood merchants' fleets are slumbering, nor seem participants with these floodgates to the sea; yet are they adjuncts, though so far removed, and pay their tribute to the flood.

Their service was as pronounced and valuable as if they had been huge as Orontes. There is an absence which is presence, and there is a presence which is absence; and what is asked of all men, near or far, is that they be helpers to the general good. They must not, by intent or mistake, escape their share of the public burden.

A poet seems apart, and is not, but is to be esteemed a portion of this world's most turbulent life. To intend to have a share in this world's business is important. To shun the taking up your load when need is, is to be coward when your honor bids you be courageous. This means, be a citizen, neglect no office in that worthy relation; be not wandering knights, pursuing fire-flies, supposing them to be stars; but be as Arthur, who found the Holy Grail, and drained its sacramental wine in truest fashion, in "staying by the stuff;" in being statesman, soldier, defender of the weak, reformer, liver of a clean life in public place, builder of a State, negotiator of schemes which make for the diminution of earth's ills and increase of earth's fairer provinces. Edward the Confessor was a monk, wearing a king's crown and refusing to discharge a king's offices, and thought himself a saint by such omission, when what God and the realm wanted and needed was a man to rule and suffer for the common weal. Arthur was not a thing "enskied and sainted;" rather a wholesome man, whose duty lay in working for men. Sir Percivale became a monk; other knights returned no mote, thus spilling the best blood of the table round. Meantime the king's enemies multiplied, and these visionaries decimated the ranks of opposition to the wrong; but come what would, King Arthur served. An appeal to him for help found answer, though treasons plotted at his back. As to his last battle, though his heart was breaking, he marched nor paused, perceiving, so long as he was king, he must uphold the order of the State. He was no dilettante. Great service called him, and he thought he heard the voice of God. Duty is a ponderous word in Arthur's lexicon. In "Lucretius," Tennyson shows the moral apathy of materialism by letting us look on at a suicidal death, and hear the cry, half-rage and half-despair, "What is duty?" and in that fated cry, atheism has run its course. Here it empties into its dead sea, and materialism finds its only possible outcome. This materialist of long ago is the mouthpiece for his fraters in these last days. There is one speech, and that a speech of dull despair, for those who say there is no God; and for them who have no God, there is no duty, for duty is born of hold on God. King Arthur, sure of God, therefore never asking, "What is duty?" but in its stead urges the nobler query, "Where is duty?" and so infused himself into the blood of empire; aye, and more, into the spiritual blood of uncalendared centuries.

And King Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy, hate, debauchery,—which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa," it is revolting. Drunkenness, bestiality, spleen,—what roseate views shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice, standing in its naked vileness and vulgarity. Man, meant for manhood, self-reduced to brutehood,—that is drunkenness. In an era when Dumas by fascinating fictions was making vice ingratiating, Tennyson was rendering virtue magnificent. Can any person of just judgment rise from reading "Idyls of the King" without feeling a repugnance toward vice, like a nausea, and a magnetism in virtue? An admiration for Arthur becomes intense. The poet draws no moral from his parable: doing what is better, he puts morals into one's blood. While never railing at Guinivere, he makes us ashamed of her and for her, and does the same with Lancelot. He makes virtue eloquent. King Arthur is neither drunkard nor libertine, therein contradicting the pet theories of many people's heroes. He loves cleanness and is clean. He demands in man a purity equal to woman's; setting up one standard of mortals and not two. The George Fourth style of king, happily, Arthur is not; for George was a shame to England and to men at large, while Arthur is a glory, burning on above the cliffs of Wales, like some brave sunrise whose colors never fade. To men and women, he is one law of virtue and one law of love. When the years have spent their strength, then vice shows itself hideous vice. The glamour vanished, no one can love or plead for wickedness. Virtue is wholly different; for to it the ages burn incense each year, rendering its loveliness more apparent and bountiful. Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love. Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find them noble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is virile and he is noble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help.

Besides, King Arthur was a religious man. This is the transparent explanation of his career. He is an attempted incarnation of the precepts and love of Christ. This long-vanished prince knew that if a king might but repeat the miracle of Jesus' life in his own history, he would have achieved kingship indeed. "Mea vita vota" was Dempster's motto,—a sentiment Arthur knew by heart. His life was owed to God, and right manfully he paid his debt. Arthur exalted God in his heart and court and on hard-fought field. So intense and vivid his sense of God, he reminds us of the Puritan; but the Puritan touched to beatific beauty by the interpretation of love God's Christ came to give. Tennyson always made much of God, saw Him immanent in every hope of human betterment, saying, as we remember and can not forget:

"Our little systems have their day— They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee; And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch Arden:"

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."

And

"He was not all unhappy. His resolve Upbore him, and firm faith and evermore Prayer from a living source within the will, And beating up through all the bitter world, Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, Kept him a living soul."

And Arthur, dying, whispers:

"More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise, like a fountain, for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, Both for themselves and those that call them friend? For so the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

No wonder is there if King Arthur was upheld: such faith makes impotence giant-strengthed. He does not tremble. The earth may know perturbations, but not he. To tournament or battle, or to death, he goes with smiling face. His trust upholds him. So good is faith. "In Memoriam" is the biography of doubt and faith at war. The battle waxes sore, but the day is God's. The battle ebbs to quiet. Calm after tempest. Tennyson could not stay in doubt. 'T is not a goodly land. If trepidation has white lip and cheek, 't is not forever. Living through an age of doubt, Tennyson, so sensitive to every current of thought as that he felt them all, and in that feeling and interpretation and strife for mastery over the doubt that kills, made his book, as Milton has it, "The precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and ends with:

"Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me.

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face, When I have cross'd the bar."

"In Memoriam" is thought, King Arthur is action; and action is antidote for doubt. Charles Kingsley's advice,

"Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long,"

is always pertinent and reasonable. This is explanation of that profound saying of Jesus, "If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine." Life is exegesis of Scripture. Who do God's will catch sight of God's face, and their hearts are helped. Lowell's "Sir Launfal" urges this same truth. He who, for weary and painful years, had haunted the world, seeking the Holy Grail and finding not the thing he sought, comes home discouraged to find in winter his castle had forgotten him, and he was left a wreck of what he had been in his better days; yet finds, in giving alms to a leprous beggar at his castle gate to whom he had denied alms in the spirit of alms when he set out to hunt the Holy Grail, that in so giving he found the Christ. Action helps God into the heart. Doubts are, many of them, brain-born and academical; and such, service helps to dispel. To Arthur, God was vital fact. To Him he held as tenaciously as to his sword; and he was comforted. All good things are included in religion, and all great things. If men become martyrs, they become at the same time functionaries in the palace of every worthy spirit. I suppose the hunger for discovery and knowledge are nothing other than the soul's hunger after God. He is the secret of great discontent. The soul wants God, and on the way to Him are astronomies, and literatures, and new-found hemispheres. Aspiration finds voice in Christianity. "Columbus," a poem of resonant music, speaks aspiration. Him—

"Who pushed his prows into the setting sun, And made West East, and sailed the dragon's mouth, And came upon the mountain of the world, And saw the rivers roll from paradise,"—

him, God-inspired as himself holds, saying:

"And more than once, in days Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning hope Sank all but out of sight, I heard His voice: Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand; Fear not,—and I shall hear his voice again— I know that He has led me all my life, And I am not yet too old to work His will— His voice again."

And King Arthur finds God helps him into all things worth while. Bravery, determination, kindness, purity, magnanimity, safe faith in God's supremacy,—all spring about him as he walks as flowers about a path in summer-time. Nothing good was foreign to him.

Christianity is the one philosophy of manhood in whose harness are no vulnerable parts. "The Palace of Art" presents the poet's perception of the failure of culture. Ethics, not aesthetics, compel manhood; and behind ethics, theology. God must live in life, if life shall put on goodness as a royal robe.

And such a man as Arthur has passed into the enduring substance of this world's best thought and purpose. We see him—not saw him. He is never past, but ever present. We see him dying, and with Sir Bedivere, who loved him, cry,

"Thy name and glory cling To all high places, like a golden cloud, Forever!"



X

The Story of the Pictures

A man and a woman were dreaming. Both were young; and one was strong and one was fair. They were lovers, and the world was very beautiful, and life as rhythmic as a poet's verse. Things which to some seem remote as heaven, to youth and love seem near enough to touch, if one do but stretch out the hand. This youth and maid were dreaming, and their hands were clasped, and sometimes they looked in each other's eyes—sometimes out across the fields, sloping toward sunset. The world seemed young as they, and the sky was fairly singing, with voices sweet as kisses from dear lips long absent,—those voices saying, saying always, "Life is fair—is fair;" and receding, as blown by on a gentle wind, drifted "Life is fair;" and the lovers looked at each other and were glad.

He was an artist, and his idle hand wrought pictures unconsciously. He did not think things, but saw things. His lips were not given to frequent speech, even with the woman he loved. He saw her, whether he sat thus beside her or whether he sat apart from her with seas between—he saw her always; for his was the gift of sight. He saw visions as rapt prophets do. Life was a pageant, and he saw it all.

His brush is part of his hand, and his palette is as his hand's palm. Painting is to him monologue. He is telling what he sees; talking to himself, as children and poets do. Now, he talks to the woman he loves and to himself in pictures, she saying nothing, save as her hand speaks in a caress, and that her eyes are dreamy sweet; and the artist's hand dreams over the paper with glancing touch, and this picture grows before their eyes: A man and a woman, young and fair, are on a hilltop alone, looking across a meadowland, lovely with spring and blossoms and love-making of the birds; and ponds where lily-pads shine in the sun, like metal patines, floating on the pool; and a flock lying in a quiet place; and a lad plowing in a field, the blackbirds following his furrow; and a blue sky, with dainty clouds of white faint against it, like breathing against a window-pane in winter; and a farmhouse, where early roses cluster, and little children are at play,—this, and his brush loiters, and the woman knows her artist has painted a picture of youth; and both look away as in a happy dream.

The artist paints again: and the landscape is in nothing changed. It might have been a reprint rather than a repainting. A morning land, where beauty and bounty courted like man and maid. No tints were lost. The sunlight was unfailing, and roses clustered with their spendthrift grace and loveliness; and the woman, looking at her lover, wondered why he painted the same landscape twice, but, waiting, saw the artist paint two figures, a man and woman at life's prime. She sees they are the youth and maid of the first picture, only older—and what besides? Then they were a promise, a possibility, now they are—what are they? They are the same; they are not the same. She is disappointed in them; not because their beauty has faded, but that their look has changed. Their faces are not haggard, nor cut with strange arabesques of pain and care, nor are they craven or vicious; but the artist speeds his hand as if at play, while every touch is bringing the faces out until they obliterate the former beauty utterly. The landscape is still dewy fresh and fair—the faces have no hint of morning in them. Faces, not bad, but lacking tenderness; expression, self-sufficient; eyes, frosty cold; and the woman's eyes light on the children, playing beside the white farmhouse, and in them is no inexpressible tenderness of mother-love, mute, like a caress; prosperous faces the world has gone quite well with, that is plain, but faces having no beckoning in them, no tender invitation, like a sweet voice, saying, "Enter and welcome." And she who looked at the pictures sobbed, scarcely knowing why, only the man and woman sorely disappointed her when they had grown to maturity; poetry and welcome and promise had faded from them as tints fade from a withered flower. So much was promised—so little was fulfilled.

Meantime, while these lovers sit on the hillside, and the artist has been talking in pictures as the clouds do, the sun has sloped far toward setting. The west is aflame, like a burning palace; the crows are flapping tired wings toward their nests; the swallows are sporting in the air, as children do in surf of the blue seas; smoke from the farm chimneys visible begins to lie level across the sky, and stays like a cloud at anchor. But the artist's hand is busy with another picture.

And the landscape is the same. Mayhap he is not versatile; and, think again, mayhap he has purpose in his reduplication. Like wise men, let us wait and see. A springtime-land as of old, and two figures; and the woman he loves watches, while her breathing is strangely like a sob. Now the figures are a man and a woman, stooped and gray. "Age," she says, "you paint age now, and age—is not beautiful;" and he, answering with neither lips nor eyes, paints swiftly on. The man is aged and leaning on a staff. His strength is gone. His staff is not for ornament, but need. The woman is wrinkled, and her hair is snowy white; and the girl at the artist's side tries vainly to suppress a sob. She, too, will soon be gray, and she loves not age and decrepitude; and the face in the picture is faded, no rose-tints in the cheeks. So old and weak—old age is very pitiful. But the picture is not finished yet. Wait! Wait a little, and give the artist time. It is not evening yet. Sunset lingers a little for him. His hand runs now like a hurrying tide. He is painting faces. Why linger over the face of age? If it were youth—but age? But he touches these aged faces lovingly, as a son might caress his aged father and mother with hand and with kiss; and beneath his touch the aged faces grow warm and tender, passing sweet. To look at them was rest. Their eyes were tender and brave. You remember they were old and feeble folk—young once, but long ago; but how noble the old man's face, scarred though it is with saber cut! To see him makes you valiant; and to see him longer, makes you valiant for goodness, which is best of all.

And the woman's face is lit with God's calm and God's comfort. A smile is in her eyes, and a smile lies, like sunlight, across her lips. Her hair is the silver frame that hems some precious picture in. She is a benediction, blessed as the restful night to weary toilers on a burning day. And the artist, with a touch quick as a happy thought, outlined a shadow, clad in tatters, and a child clad in tatters at her side; and the girl, leaning over the painting, thought the chief shadow was Death. But the artist hasted; and on a sudden, wings sprung from the shoulders of tattered mother and child, and they two lifted up their hands; the woman, lifting her hands above the dear forms of old age, spread them out in blessing, and the little child lifted her hands, clasped as in prayer; and these angels were Poverty, praying for and blessing the man and woman who had been their help.

And the artist lover, under the first picture, in quaint letters, such as monks in remote ages used, wrote this legend, "To-morrow;" and the woman, taking the pencil, wrote in her sweet girlish hand, "Youth is Very Beautiful." The artist took back his pencil, and under the second picture scrolled, "These Loved Themselves Better Than They Loved Others;" and the woman wrote, "Their To-morrow was Failure." Under the third picture the artist wrote, "These Loved God Best and Their Neighbors as Themselves;" and the woman took the pencil from his hand and wrote, "Old Age is Very Beautiful—More Beautiful Than Youth," and a tear fell and blotted some of the words, as a drop of rain makes a blurred spot on a dusty pane. And the lover said, "Serving others is better than serving ourselves;" and the girl's sweet voice answering, like an echo, "Serving others is better than serving ourselves."

And the sun had set. The glow from the sky was fading, as embers on a hearth, pale to gray ashes; and an owl called from an elm-tree on the hillside, while these two arose, with faces like the morning, and, taking the pictures, walked slowly as lovers will; and so, fading into the deepening twilight, I heard her saying, "Serving others is life at its best," and him replying, "Jesus said, 'The poor ye have always with you;'" and their footsteps and voices died away together in the gloaming; and a whip-poor-will called often and plaintively from the woodland across the field.



XI

The Gentleman in Literature

Humor is half pathos and more. This sword has two edges. On the one, shining like burnished silver, you may see smiles reflected as from a mirror; on the other, tears stand thick, like dews on flowers at early morning of the later spring. Humor is a dual faculty, as much misconceived by those who listen as by those who speak. We do not always have wit to know the scope of what we do. Thoughts of childhood, says the poet, are long, long thoughts; but who supposes childhood knows they are? Nor is this altogether a fault. To feel the sublime sequence of all we did would burden us as Atlas was burdened by holding up the sky. Life might easily come to be sober to somberness, which is a thing unwholesome and undesirable. Sunlight must have its way. Darkness must not trespass too far; and every morning says to every night, "Thus far, but no farther."

To many readers, Don Quixote seems fantastic, and Cervantes a laughter-monger. Cervantes had suffered much. His life reads like a novelist's tale. He belonged to the era of Spenser and Shakespeare; of Philip II and William the Silent; of Leicester and Don John of Austria; of The Great Armada and the Spanish Inquisition; of Lope de Vega and Cervantes—for he was, in the Hispanian peninsula, his own greatest contemporary—and to this hour this battle-scarred soldier of fortune stands the tallest figure of Spanish literature. His was a lettered rearing, and a young manhood spent as a common soldier. At Lepanto he lost hand and arm. In five long, weary, and bitter years of slavery among Algerine pirates, he held up his head, being a man; plotted escape in dreams and waking; fought for freedom as a pinioned eagle might; was at last rescued by the Society for the Redemption of Slaves; sailed home from slavery to penury; came perilously near the age of threescore, poverty-stricken and unknown, when, like a sun which leaps from sunrise to noon at a single bound, this maimed soldier sprang mid-sky, impossible to be ignored or forgotten, and disclosed himself, the marked Spaniard of his era; and on the same day of 1616, Cervantes and Shakespeare stopped their life in an unfinished line, and not a man since then has been able to fill out the broken meaning. This man had not wine, but tears to drink. Yet he jests, and the world laughs with him; though we feel sure that while his age and after ages laugh and applaud, Miguel Cervantes sits with laughter all faded from his face, and the white look of pain settled about his lips, while tears "rise in the heart and gather to the eyes." Tears sometimes make laughter and jest the wilder. Men and women laugh to keep their hearts from breaking.

Cervantes has ostensibly drawn a picture of a madman, and in fact has painted a gentleman. What his intent was, who can be so bold as to say? What part of his purpose was, we know. He would excoriate a false and flippant chivalry. Contemporaneous chivalry he knew well; for he had been a common soldier, wounded and distressed. He had seen what a poor triviality that once noble thing had grown to be. Institutions become effete. Age is apt to sap the strength of movements as of men. Feudalism and the Crusades had commissioned the knight-errant; and now, when law began to hold sword for itself, the self-constituted legal force—knight-errantry—was no longer needed. But to know when an institution has served its purpose is little less than genius. Some things can be laughed down which can not be argued down. A jest is not infrequently more potent than any syllogism. Some things must be laughed away, other things must be wept away; so that humor and pathos are to be ranked among the mighty agents for reform. And one purpose Cervantes had was to laugh a tawdry knight-errantry off the stage. In long years of soldiery, I doubt not he had grown to hate this empty boast, and his nursed wrath now breaks out like a volcano. This was his apparent purpose—but who can say this was all his purpose? "King Lear" has a double action. Mayhap, Don Quixote has a double meaning. We are always attaching meanings to works of genius. But you can not tie any writer's utterance down to some poor altitude. Great utterances have at least a half-infinite application. Tennyson felt this, saying—as we read in his son's biography of him—regarding explanations of his "Idyls of the King:" "I hate to be tied down to 'this means that,' because the thought within the image is much more than any one interpretation;" and, "Poetry is like shot-silk, with many glancing colors. Every reader will find his own interpretation according to his ability, and according to his sympathy, with the poet." What is true of poetry is true of all imaginative literature. An author may not have analyzed his own motive in its entirety. In any case, we may hold to this, Don Quixote was a gentleman, and is the first gentleman whose portrait is given us in literature. We have laughed at Don Quixote, but we have learned to love him. The "knight of the rueful countenance," as we see him now, is not himself a jest, but one of literature's most noble figures; and we love him because we must. Was it mere chance that in drawing this don, Cervantes clothed him with all nobilities, and shows him—living and dying—good, courageous, pure; in short, a man? This scarcely seems a happening. Seas have subtle undercurrents. I venture, Don Quixote has the same, and marks the appearance of a gentleman in literature, since which day that person has been a recurring, ennobling presence on the pages of fiction and poetry.

A gentleman is a comparatively recent creation in life, as in letters. Christ was the foremost and first gentleman. After him all gentility patterns. With the law of the imagination we are familiar, which is this: Imagination deals only with materials supplied by the senses. Imagination, in other words, is not strictly originative, but, rather, appropriative, giving a varied placing to images on hand, just as the kaleidoscope makes all its multiform combinations with a given number of pieces. Imagination does not make materials, is no magician, but is an architect. Admitting this law, we can readily see how the creation of a gentleman does not lie in the province of imagination. Homer's heroes are the men Homer knew, with a poetic emphasis on strength, stature, prowess. His era grew warriors and nothing else, and so Homer paints nothing else. Human genius has limits. Man is originative in character; and poets—"of imagination all compact"—catch this new form of life, and we call the picture poetry. All civilization, to the days of Jesus, produced but one character, so far as we may read, worthy to be thought entire gentleman, and this was Joseph, the Jew, premier of Egypt. He is the most manly man of pre-Christian civilizations. Or probably Moses must be listed here. Classic scholarship can show no gentleman Greece produced. Greek soil grew no such flowers beneath its radiant sky. Plato was a philosopher—not gentleman. Socrates was an iconoclast, but not a manly man and helpful spirit. Greek heroes were guilty of atrocious and unthinkable sins. Test them by this canon of Alfred Tennyson: "I would pluck my hand from a man, even if he were my greatest hero or dearest friend, if he wronged a woman or told her a lie;" and, so tested, where must Greek heroes be classified? Greece and Rome produced heroes, but not gentlemen. Julius Caesar was the flower of the Latin race. Nothing approximates him. Great qualities cluster in him like stars in the deep sky. But his ambition was like to that of Milton's Satan, and his lust was a bottomless pit. As a national heroic figure, Julius Caesar is dazzling as a sun at summer noon; but as a gentleman he cuts poorer figure than Lancelot or Sir Tristram. The gentleman is not an evolution, but a creation. Christ created the gentleman as certainly as he created the world.

Now, literature is what Emerson says genius is, a superlative borrower. The state of a civilization at a given time will gauge the poet's concept. He can not pass beyond the world's noblest notions to his hour. If Greece and Rome produced no man, settle to it that Greek and Roman literatures will produce no man. Sculptor, as Phidias; statesman, as Pericles; dramatist, as Aeschylus; general, as Themistocles; stern justice, as Aristides,—Greece can show; and such characters the historians, dramatists, and epic poets will delineate and celebrate. Horace is a looking-glass, and holds his genius so as to catch the shadows of men passing by. This poets do, and can do no more. They are not strictly creative. We mistake their mission. God has somehow kept the creative power in his own possession. Men can appropriate; God can create. So what we find is, that ancient literature never attempted depicting a gentleman. Those days had no such persons. But Christ came and set men a-dreaming. He filled men's souls to the brim with expectation and wonder akin to fear and anticipation of impossibilities; and what he was, men fondly and greatly dreamed they might aspire to be. And thus the gentleman became a prospective fact in life and after life, in literature; for we think it has been fairly shown how literature produces no type till life has produced it first. Literature is not properly productive, but reproductive; not creative, but appropriative. As men climb a mountain on a dark, still night, to watch a sunrise, so the race began to climb toward manhood. The night was long, and this mountain taller than Himalayas; and man slept not, but climbed. His groping toward this sunrise of soul is the epic of history. Dante knew not a gentleman, and could not dream him therefore. Mediaevalism learned to paint the Madonna's face, but not manhood's look. Character is the last test of genius. Man saw gray streaks of dawn, rimming far, ragged peaks, and still he climbed; and, on a morning, beheld the sunrise! And if you will note, 't is Don Quixote standing on the mountain's crest.

Some things can be adequately represented in marble. For "the Laocoon" marble is probably the best method of expression. Fear, superhuman effort, anguish, brute strength mastering human strength,—these are the thoughts to be expressed, and are brought out in marble with singular clearness and fidelity. For some things color is a necessity; and marble would be totally inadequate. "The Greek Slave" may be put in stone; the bewildering face of a world's Christ can never be seriously attempted in marble, the futility of such attempt being so apparent. Color, lights and shadows are essential to give hints of deep things of deep soul. Hoffman must have canvas and colors. You must paint the Christ. And some facts can not be painted. They are abstract, and can not be intimated by anything short of words. You can paint a man—Saul of Tarsus, or Charlemagne—but can not paint a gentleman; for he represents no single majesty, but an essential and intricate balance of all useful, great, and noble qualities. He can be painted only by words; so that literature is the solitary means of making apparent the shadow of that divine thing, a gentleman.

Don Quixote becomes intensely interesting, then, as a new attempt in creative genius. But dare we think a gentleman could be ludicrous and fantastic? for this the don was. We revolt against the notion that so gracious a thing could be grotesque. Yet is this our mature thought? Do not the facts certify that from this world's unregenerate standpoint manliness is grotesque? Was not Christ looked upon as mad? Did not his ideas of manliness appear as nothing other than fantastic, when he would substitute love for might, meekness for braggadocio, and purity of heart for an omnipresent sensuality? What were his ideals of manhood but battling with windmills or being enamored of a myth? Tested by standards of this world's make, his notions and conduct were sheerly fantastic. As recorded on one occasion, "They laughed him to scorn;" and this they did many another time, covertly or openly. Indeed, grasping the state of civilization as then existing, and comprehending Christ's non-earthly idea of what a gentleman was, we can not be slow to perceive how ludicrous this conception would be to the Roman world. Tall dreams seem madness. Hamlet's feigned madness puzzles us even yet. Many an auditor heard Columbus with a smile ill-concealed behind his beard. All high ideality sounds a madman's babble. To see a true life live truly will strike many as a jest, and others as pathos too deep for sobs.

Don Quixote conceived a man ought to live for virtue. To be self-dedicated to the help of others; to be courageous as an army which had never met defeat; to be self-forgetful, so that hunger, pain, thirst, fatigue, become trifles; to have love become absorbing; to fill the mind's unfathomed sky with dreams outshining dawns; to count honor to be so much more than life, as that honor is all and life is naught; to interpret all men and women at their best, and so to expect good and not suspicion evil; to meet all men on the high level of manhood; and to love God with such persistency and eagerness as that the soul's solitudes are peopled with him as by a host,—if this be not a gentleman, we have misconceived the species. Read this history of his early and later battles for right, and you will not find an impurity of word, suggestion, thought. God's lilies are not cleaner. I confess that the knight's love for Dulcinea del Tobosa moves me to tears. I never can smile or jest at him when his heart and lips hold with fealty to an ideal love. His love created her. He found her a clod, but flung her into the sky and made her a star. Is not this love's uniform history? Blinded, not of lust or ambition, but of ideality. Saul met Christ at noon, and was blinded by his vision; and would not all brave men covet blindness thus incurred? And better to be blinded, as Don Quixote, by a ravishing ideal, than to see, besotted in soul and shut out from God. That humorous figure astride lean Rosinante, esquired by pudgy, sensible Sancho; eager for chances to be of use; faithful to his love as dawn to sun; strong in his desire of being all eyes to see distress, all ears to hear a call for succor; sitting a dark night through in vigil, tireless, courageous, waiting for day to charge on what proved to be fulling hammers, making tumult with their own stamping; or, again, asleep in the inn bed, fighting with wine-skins and dreaming himself battling with giants,—this does not touch me as being humorous so much as it does as being pathetic, unspeakably pathetic, and manfully courageous. I see, but do not feel, the humor. I have followed Don Quixote as faithfully as Sancho Panza on his "Dapple;" have seen him fight, conquer, suffer defeat, ride through his land of dreams; have seen his pasteboard helmet; have noted melancholy settle round him as shadows on the landscape of an autumn day; have seen him grow sick, weaken, die; but have known in him only high dreams, attempted high achievings; have found him honor's soul, and holding high regard for women; have been spectator of goodness as unimpeachable as heaven, and purity deep, like that which whitens round the throne—a human soul given over to goodness, and named, for cause, "Quixada the Good." And his goodness seems a contagion.

For two and a half centuries since Cervantes painted this picture of a gentleman, literature has given less or more of heed to similar attempts; though as result, as I suppose, there are but two life-size pictures which unhesitatingly we name gentlemen as soon as our eyes light on them. Profile or silhouette of him there has been, but of the full-length, full-face figure, only two. Shakespeare did not attempt this task. Aside from Hamlet—who was not meant to sit for this picture, though he had been no ill character for such sitting—there is not among Shakespeare's men an intimation of such undertaking. Would this princely genius had put his hand to this attempt, though, as seems clear to me, Shakespeare did not conceive a gentleman. His ideas were not quite whitened with Christ's morning light enough to have perceived other than the natural man. Shakespeare's men are always "a little lower than the angels;" whereas a gentleman might fittingly stand among angels as a brother. This one star never swung across the optic-glass of our great Shakespeare. That spiritual-mindedness which is life he scarcely possessed. This was his limitation. Spenser stood higher on this mount of vision. He conceived and executed a picture of pure womanhood, and, had he attempted, might have sketched a wondrous face and figure of a gentleman. Even as it was, he gave intimations of this coming king. He seems one who gathers fuel for a fire, but never sets the flame. His figures shift, and present no central character of manhood who grows and furnishes standard of comparison. Milton's genius was cast in a cyclopean mold, and needed distances remote as heaven and hell to give right perspective to his figures, and his supreme art concerns itself with Satan, and archangels, and God.

Of this ideal gentleman we have had growing hints. Literature, more and more, concerns itself with spiritual quantities. The air of our century is aromatic with these beautiful conceptions, as witness Jean Valjean, Dr. MacLure, Deacon Phoebe, Sidney Carton, Daniel Deronda, Donal Grant, Bayard, Red Jason, Pete, Captain Moray, John Halifax, and Caponsacchi. Some of these pictures seem more than side views. But a gentleman should be, must be, nobly normal. He is a balance of virtue. Symmetry impresses us in him, as when we look at the Parthenon. All his powers are in such delicate balance as that they seem capable of easy perturbation, yet are, in fact, imperturbable as stars. The gentleman in life is becoming a common figure. We have known such—so strong, quiet, heroic, calm, sure of the future, knit to God, big with fidelity and faith, that they translated into literal speech the holy precepts of the Book of God. So tested, this world grows surely better. Man has lost in romantic glitter of costume and bearing, but has gained immeasurably in manhood. The gospel is peopling the world with men. To suppose God meant to change men to saints was a misconception. St. Simeon Stylites was that old misconception realized. We can but honor him, so vast his hunger, so noble his strife, so courageous his attitude, when he shouts, "I smote them with the cross;" but St. Simeon did not realize God's notion. Goodness is fraternal, accessible, genial. John Storm, in Hall Caine's "The Christian," is susceptible to the same criticism. He is not balanced. He means well, but is erratic, fitful, lacking center. He is like a bird lost in storms, flying in circles. He thought to be a saint, whereas Christ did not come to make saints, but to make men; and the sooner we realize that a "saint" or a "Christian" is not the end of the gospel, the better will it be for Christianity. Christianity is God's method of making men; and Christianity is not an end, but a means. When God gets his way, he wants to have this world populated with men and women. Whether Caine meant John Storm for an ideal Christian we can not say. There is strength here, as in all he has written; but Storm's lacks are many and great. He is enthusiast, but flighty. He means well, but is spasmodic in its display. Storm might have grown into a hero had he lived longer, and, as a flame, leaped high at some point in his career. Both as man and Christian, he disappoints us. Red Jason, in "The Bondman," is a worthier contribution to the natural history of the gentleman. View him how you will, he is great. His moral stature lifts itself like the mass of a mountain. His nature seems a fertile field seeded down to heroisms, and every seed germinating and growing to maturity. Jason has virtues vast of girth as huge forest-trees, but he is scarcely companionable. Glooms gather round him as night about a hamlet in a valley. He is moral, imposing, heroic, yet is there something lacking—is it voice, self-poise, what?—lacking of being quite a gentleman. Nor was he shaped for such a role by his creator, but was meant to sit for the portrait of a hero. And such he is to the point of moving the spirit, as by the lightning's touch, Goethe was not capable of conceiving a gentleman. His "Wilhelm Meister" and himself fall so low in the scale of worth as to preclude his seeing so serene a face. Goethe's sky was clouded, and fine lines of finest character are only brought out under unhindered sunlight. Manhood is a serene thing. Though storm-bolts rain about it thick as hail, the quiet of deep seas reigns in it. And Dumas's men are each a bon vivant, save the son of Porthos. These dusty and bloody guardsmen had not enough moral fiber to fill a thimble. They think the world of men and women a field for forage. This physical dash and courage, this galloping of steeds, and sabers pummeling steeds' sides, stands instead of character. In "Marius the Epicurean," Walter Pater has given, as I think, a true picture of one who in the Roman era aspired to be a man. He is cold, and in consequence barren; but such is an accurate reading of Roman attempts at manhood; for ordinary Epicureanism was fervid to sensuality, and the Stoic was frigid. To heathen conception there was no middle ground. The warm color on cheek, the morning in the eyes, the geniality in the hand, the fervor at the heart, the alert thought, the winged imagination, the sturdy will, the virile moral sense, the responsive conscience, the courage which laughed to die for duty,—these could not be amalgamated. Heroic qualities have always been native to the soul as warmth to the south wind. All history is rich with tapestries of tragic and colossal heroisms, so as to make us proud that we are men. Heroisms are harsh, but manliness is tender. And in this seeming irreconcilability lies the difficulty of constructing a gentleman.

But attempts thicken. In our century they group together like violets on a stream's bank fronting the sun in spring. Literary artists, knowing how difficulties hedge this attempt, hesitate. There are many hints of the gentleman. Let us be glad for that, seeing we are enriched thereby. "Rab and His Friends" gives so strong a picture of stolid strength in love's fidelity, which knows to serve and suffer and die without a moan or being well aware of aught save love. And Dr. MacLure is a dear addition to our company of manhood, shouldering his way through Scotland's winter's storm and cold because need calls him; serving as his Master had taught him so long ago; forgetting himself in absorbing thought for others; lonely as a fireless hearth; longing for friendship which would not fail; reaching for Drumsheugh's hand, and holding it when death was claiming the good physician's hand. We could easily conceive we had been seated at the deathbed of a gentleman. Deacon Phoebe stands as a character in Annie Trumbull Slosson's "Seven Dreamers," a book which, outside Cable's "Old Creole Days," is to me the most perfect series of brief character-sketches drawn by an American author, and entirely worthy to stand by "A Window in Thrums," and "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush," and "In Ole Virginia." Deacon Phoebe has forgotten himself. Unselfishness does not often rise to such heights. This "dreamer" of "Francony Way" is full brother to Sidney Carton, born across the seas. Self-forgetfulness, so beautiful as that even name and sex become a memory dim as a distant sail upon an evening sea,—this must be a sight fitted to bring laughter to the heart of God. Deacon Phoebe is one trait in a gentleman. Sidney Carton is of the same sort, save that the hero element stands more apparent. His is a larger field, a more attractive background, thus throwing his figure into clearer relief. Deacon Phoebe was the self-abasement of humility, Sidney Carton is the supreme surrender of love; but the end of both is service. There ought to be a gallery in our earth from which men and women might lean and look on nobilities like Sidney Carton. That beatified face; that hand holding a woman's trembling hand, what time he whispered for her comfort, "I am the resurrection and the life," as the crowded tumbrel rattled on to the guillotine, and he faced death with smile as sweet as love upon his face, and love making a man thus divine,—this is Sidney Carton, who stirs our soul as storms stir the seas. Bonaventure, as drawn by Cable, is of similar design. He is unconscious as a flower; but had learned, as his schoolmaster-priest had taught him, to write "self" with a small "s;" so an untutored soul, lacerated with grief, pierced by suffering, gave himself over to goodness and help, becoming absorbed therein. Such is Bonaventure. He was what Tennyson has said of "the gardener's daughter," "A sight to make an old man young."

Love has learned to work miracles in character. Rains do not wash air so clean as love washes character, whiting "as no fuller on earth can white" it. And how constantly manhood neighbors with love is a beautiful and noteworthy circumstance. Here place Pete, in "The Manxman." You can not over-praise him. Some esteem him a fabulous character; but knowing his island and people well, I feel sure he is flesh and blood, though flesh and blood so uncommon and superior stagger our faith for a moment. It is the glory of our race that at rare springtime it bursts into such bloom that painter and poet are both bankrupt in attempting to copy this loveliness. Pete is such an effort of nature. His letters to himself, written as from his wife, to cover her shame and desertion, present a spectacle so magnanimous and pathetic as to upbraid us that we had never learned nobilities so sublime. Love made him great. And Macdonald, in Donal Grant, has shown us a strong, pure soul of moral strength, religious appetencies, determined goodness, of elevation of character, of strength and wisdom, so that in his accustomed walk he might have met Sir Percivale or Sir Launfal. Good, and given over to God, he was found out by love; and love did with him as with us all—love glorified him. In his clean life is something sturdy you might lean on, as on a staff, and have no fear. So is Enoch Arden made hero by love. In love, remembrance, and absence of self, he is manhood. We have all wept with Arden, finding our faces wet with tears, though not knowing we wept. His story never grows trite. Each time we read, new light breaks from this character as if it were a sun. The sight of him when he, like a poor thief, looking in at the window,

"Because things seen are mightier than things heard, Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch, and feared To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry Which in one moment, like the blast of doom, Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth.

And feeling all along the garden wall, Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found, Crept to the gate, and open'd it and closed As lightly as a sick man's chamber door Behind him, and came out upon the waste;"

and when,

"Falling prone, he dug His fingers into the wet earth, and pray'd,—"

the sight of him is as unforgettable as a man's first look upon the woman he loves. The poet was right. Arden was a "strong, heroic soul," and when he woke, arose, and cried, "A sail! a sail!" it was God's nobleman who sighted it.

"Daniel Deronda" and "John Halifax, Gentleman," may wisely be classed together as attempts of competent artists to sketch a gentleman. Whether they have failed in the attempt I would not make bold to say, but for some reason the characters impress me as being scarcely adequate. Both faces are open, and lit as by a lamp of truth; their lives are sweet as meadows scented with new-mown hay; we become sworn friends to both without our willing it; they have nothing to take back, because words and deeds are faithful to their best manhood; they are strong, and women lean on them, which, aside from God's confidence, is the highest compliment ever paid a man. Deronda is a man among aristocrats, Halifax a man among plebeians and commercial relations; but manhood is the same quality wherever found; for God has made all soils salubrious for such growth. But these do not compel, though they do charm us. Bayard, in "A Singular Life," may fall in with Deronda and Halifax. Tragedy darkens at "the far end of the avenue." Bayard is a social reformer in attempt, though of the safe and right type, meaning to change men, that there may be wrought a change in institutions. He runs a tilt with Calvinian orthodoxy as Methodism does, and loves God and his fellow-men and a good woman, and finds no toil burdensome if he may be of spiritual help and healing. "A singular life" he lives; but singular because it is the gospel life, and he merits the name the slums gave him, "The Christ-man." He is helpful, few more so, and knows power to stir us, which in the event is the superb quality in character. Captain Moray, in "The Seats of the Mighty," and Henry Esmond, in "Henry Esmond," are gentlemen of military mold, and we love them both because they make for lordly inspiration in the soul. Esmond must always keep his hold on men as a hero. These two soldiers need no one to remind us they know how to die; and know that other, larger thing—how to live. Esmond, over a long stretch of life lying in our sight, walked ever as a prince. Any national literature might be glad for one such as he. Our imagination takes wings when we think of him. Such cleanness, such lack of self, such self-poise and firmness, such singleness of love and devotion, such inaptitude for anything not noble, such tense heroic purposes, such stalwart intention to make himself a man! He is greatness, and his story to be read as a tonic. He recruits heroisms in the heart, and rests us when we grow weary. Thackeray is reported by Anthony Trollope to have called his creation, Esmond, "a prig." He might better have called him a gentleman; for such he is, or narrowly lacks of being. Indeed, did not Thackeray present another who is altogether gentleman, Esmond would be catalogued as this ideal character; for he misses it so little, if at all, and is by odds most magnetic of Thackeray's creations. And Browning's "Caponsacchi" and Hugo's "Valjean" have the true instincts of gentlemen. Valjean redeemed himself from worse than galley slavery—from debauched manhood to spiritual nobility, bewildering in holy audacity and achievement. Were there a pantheon for souls who have struggled up from the verge of hell to stand in the clear light of heaven, be sure Valjean would be there. Volumes are requisite for his portrait, and we have only room for words! Of Caponsacchi, take the pope's estimate as accurate, "Thou sprang'st forth hero." And Pompilia conceived him rightly, for he minded her of God. What farther need be said? Is not that panegyric enough for any man? Because he was so strong, so fearless, so pure, so gifted with great might to love, so keen to see Pompilia was pure as a babe's dreams, and the light on his forehead falls from the lattices overhead—the lattices of heaven—we love him. Had his figure been fully drawn we should have had a gentleman. Nor are we sure he ought not to be so catalogued; as he is, we find no fault in him. He minds us of the morning star.

Two characters in literature since Don Quixote are life-size gentlemen, and these are Colonel Newcome and King Arthur, as drawn by Thackeray and Tennyson, men of one era and pure souls. In these characters is evident deliberation of intent to create gentlemen. This article has given no heed to biography or history, because these concern themselves with truth as observed, and are therefore not imaginative. What we are considering is an ideal person, fashioned after the pattern discovered in good lives, which happily grow more and more plentiful as years multiply. Besides, biography can never get at the real man; for biography is a story of doing, while what we need is a story of soul. In Boswell's "Johnson" or in Anthony Trollope's "Autobiography" there is approach to what we care to know; but in the life of Jowett or Tennyson, though both are admirable specimens of biography, what man among us but closed those books with a sense of, not dissatisfaction, but unsatisfaction? What we were really hungry for was not there. What Jowett was, which made him a part of the life-blood of English thought and Englishmen—who found that out? Some things never can be told, unless the poets or prose dramatists tell them. Poetry and fiction do what history and biography fail to do—make us interior to a soul's true life.

Colonel Newcome is all gentleman. He hangs a curtain of silence over one room in his life. To his wife, mother of his beloved Clive, he will make no reference. Not bad, but frivolous and weak and querulous, she was; but Colonel Newcome never whispers it. What had made many misanthropes, made him a better man. No bitterness tainted his spirit. Pure women put him in a mood of worship, as they ought to put us all. He could, in conduct, if not in memory, forget hurts and wrongs, which is one mark of a large spirit. His was, his biographer affirms, "a tender and a faithful heart." In him paternity and maternity met, which is a conjunction we have not given heed to as we ought in thinking on the heart. Motherhood is in the best fatherhood. Not long since I met a minister who, on my mentioning a black and scrawny village, said, with lovelit face and ringing, jubilant voice, "O yes, that is where my boy was born!" How true hearts do remember! And Colonel Newcome loved his son with such sweet and wide fidelity as makes the heart covet him for father. All those days of separation from his son, he thought of him "with such a constant longing affection." And his joy on seeing his son once more is the joy of one getting home to heaven. "To ask a blessing on his boy was as natural to him as to wake with the sunrise, or to go to rest when the day is over. His first and last thought was always the child." He expects good of people, will say no ill of any, can not understand Sir Brian Newcome's frigid reception, and is hurt by it as by a poisoned arrow shot by the hill tribes in far India; he can not tolerate foul thought or speech, burns hot with righteous wrath against Captain Costigan when he sings a vile song, thundering, "Silence!" "'We ought to be ashamed of doing wrong. We must forgive other people's trespasses if we hope forgiveness of our own.' His voice sunk low as he spoke, and he bowed his honest head reverently." How unostentatious his bravery, and riches puffed him up not a trifle! How alert to love, how open to enjoyment, how young his heart and how pure! What simplicity and what grave courtesy, particularly to women! How wide those windows of his soul open toward heaven! How magnanimous, how sad his face and heart, how sensitive his nature, to any lack of love on dear Clive's part! Though to his own heart he will not admit such lack exists, sitting above in his cheerless room, listening to his son's merry-making, that son glad to be left free of his father's presence,—how bravely he bore poverty when financial ruin came, not missing wealth for himself, but for him he loved, and how he grieved for those who had lost through him! He was not faultless. Men are not often that; but his anger rose from his heart. His indignation was for those he loved. We can see him now, as if he lived among us yet. His honest, melancholy face; his loose clothes hanging on his loose limbs; sitting silent, with his sad eyes; a bankrupt, giving over his pension for reimbursing those who had lost by him; and his eagerness for wealth for love's sake, always thinking of somebody else,—such is this gentleman who trusts in God. And thus simple, noble, unhumiliated:

"I chanced to look up from my book toward the swarm of blackcoated pensioners, and among them—among them—sat Thomas Newcome. His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book; there was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. His Order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood among the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. . . . His own wan face flushed up when he saw me, and his hand shook in mine. 'I have found a home, Arthur,' said he; for save this he was homeless. As death came toward him his mind wandered, driven as a leaf is driven by wandering winds. He headed columns in Hindustan; he called the name of the one woman he had loved. In death, as in life, his thought was for others, for Clive, dear, dear Clive. He said, 'Take care of him when I 'm in India;' and then, with a heartrending voice, he called out, 'Leonore, Leonore!' She was kneeling by his side now. The patient voice sank into faint murmurs; only a moan now and then announced that he was not asleep. At the usual hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands, outside the bed, feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, 'Adsum!' and fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called; and lo! he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of his Master."

Small wonder if, in India, they called Thomas Newcome "Don Quixote."

And King Arthur is Alfred Tennyson's dream of a gentleman. Arthur is manhood at its prime. He was strong, a warrior, a self-made man, since the foolish questioned, "Is he Uther's son?" Mystery and miracle mix with his history, as is accurate, seeing no life grows tall without the advent of miracle. He is rescuer of a realm from anarchy, founder of the Round Table—an order of knighthood, purposed to include only pure knights—was not spectacular; for we read that others were greater in tournament than he, but he greater than all in battle, from which we see how great occasions called out his greatness. He measured up to needs. Though often deceived, he was optimist, hoping the best from men. He counted life to be a chance for service. There was a hidden quality in him, as when he, unknown to all, went out from Camelot to tilt with Balin and overthrew him. His life was pure as the heart of "the lily maid of Astolat," and demanded in man a purity as great as that of woman. His love was mighty, unsuspicious, tender. He was himself a king, born to rule, fitted to inspire. No littleness sapped his greatness. He rejoiced in others' strength, prowess, victory. His was an eye quick to discover merit in woman or man, as in Lynette. His heart was tender, and a cry for help awoke him from deep sleep. He hated foulness as he hated hell. He was like a sky, so high, pure, open. Himself makes an era, for his age clusters about him as if he were a sun to sway a system. Like Cordelia, in "Lear," he is a figure in the background; yet, despite his actual slight participancy in the "Idyls of the King," he always seems the one person of the poem. What is Lancelot matched with him, or pure Sir Galahad? If knighthood misconceived King Arthur then, men do not misconceive him now. A great spirit must not murmur if misconceived. The world will cluster to him hereafter, himself being God's hand to lift them to his Alp of nobleness. Arthur's life upbraids men for their sin. His very purity alienated Guinevere. Goodness has tempests in its sky, and storms make morning murk as night; and one true knight. King Arthur, goes sick at heart to battle with rebels in the West. Lancelot and Guinevere are fled; Modred has raised standard of rebellion; some knights are dead, slain in battle or searching for the Holy Grail; some have left off knighthood,—and King Arthur is defeated! Nay, this can not be. He rides into the battle, having forgiven Guinevere "as Eternal God forgives"—the battle where

"Host to host Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn, Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash Of battle-axes on shatter's [shatter'd?] helms, and shrieks After the Christ, of those who falling down Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist."

And, the battle ended, Arthur moans, "My house hath seen my doom;" but he has not forgotten God, nor hath God forgotten him. God is his destination, and he trusts him now as in the golden yesterdays:

"I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure!"

And Arthur found, not sorrow nor defeat, but victory; for

"Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world, Like the last echo born of a great cry, Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars."

And one of earth's gentlemen was welcomed home to heaven.



XII

The Drama of Job

The sun monopolizes the sky. Stars do not shine by day, not because they have lost their luster, but because the sun owns the heavens, and erases them as the tide erases footprints from the sands. In similar fashion a main truth monopolizes attention to the exclusion of subordinate truths. The Bible's main truth is its spiritual significancy, containing those ethical teachings which have revolutionized this world, and which are to be redemptive in all ages yet to come. The Bible, as God's Book for man's reading and redemption, has proven so amazing as a moral force, illuminating the mind; purifying the heart; freeing and firing the imagination; attuning life itself to melody; peopling history with new ideas; seeding continents with Magna Chartas of personal and political liberties; making for religious toleration; creating a new ideal of manhood and womanhood; presenting, in brief biographical sketches, perfect pictures of such men as the world has seen too few of; and portraying Christ, whose face once seen can never be forgotten, but casts all other faces and figures into shadow, leaving Him solitary, significant, sublime,—this is the Bible. So men have conceived the Scriptures as a magazine of moral might; and the conception has not been amiss. This is the Bible's chief merit and superior function, and this glory has blinded us to lesser glories, which, had they existed in any other literature, would have stung men to surprise, admiration, and delight. "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a pleasure simply as an expression of sensuous delight set to music. The poem is a bit of careless laughter, ringing glad and free as if it were a child's, and passing suddenly to a child's tears and sobbing. This solitary virtue has breathed into the Rubaiyat life. The Bible is a series of books bound in a single volume, because all relate to a single theme: history, biography, letters, proverbial philosophy, pure idyls, lofty eloquence, elegiac poetry, ethics, legal codes, memorabilia, commentaries on campaigns more influential on the world's destiny than Caesar's, epic poetry, lyrics, and a sublime drama. The Bible is not a book, but a library; not a literary effort, but a literature. It sums up the literature of the Hebrew race, aside from which that race produced nothing literary worthy of perpetuation. One lofty theme stung them to genius, their mission and literature converging in Christ and there ending. The Bible as literature marks the book as unique as a literary fact as it is as a religious fact; in either, standing solitary. That lovers of literature have passed these surprising literary merits by with comparative inattention is attributable, doubtless, to the over-shadowing moral majesty of the volume. The larger obscured the lesser glory. But, after all, can we feel other than shame in recalling how our college curricula contain the masterpieces of Greek, Latin, English, and German literature, and find no niche for the Bible, superior to all in moral elevation and literary charm and inspiration? "Ruth" is easily the superior of "Paul and Virginia" or "Vicar of Wakefield." "Lamentations" is as noble an elegy as sorrow has set to words; the Gospels are not surpassed by Boswell's "Johnson" in power of recreating the subject of the biography; the Psalms sing themselves without aid of harp or organ; "The Acts" is a history taking rank with Thucydides; and Job is the sublimest drama ever penned. If these encomiums are high, they must not be deemed extravagant, rather the necessary eulogy of truth.

What are the sublimest poems of universal literature? Let this stand as a tentative reply: Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Milton's "Paradise Lost," and Job, author unknown. To rank as a sublime production, theme and treatment must both be sublime, and the poem must be of dignified length. Prometheus has a Titan for subject; has magnanimity for occasion; has suffering, on account of his philanthropy, as tragic element; and the barren crags of Caucasus as theater; and the style is the loftiest of Aeschylus, sublimest of Greek dramatists. Perhaps "Oedipus Coloneus" is nearest approach among Greek tragedies to the elevation of "Prometheus Bound," and Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" has much of the Greek sublimity and more than the Greek frigidity. Dante is nearest neighbor to Aeschylus, though fifteen hundred years removed, and the "Divine Comedy" has all elements of sublimity. The time is eternal. The havoc of sin, the might of Christ, the freedom of the human spirit, the righteousness of God, the fate of souls, are materials out of which sublimer cathedral should be built than ever Gothic Christians wrought in poetry of stone. "Hamlet" is the sublimity of a soul fighting, single-handed, with innumerable foes, and dying—slain, but undefeated. "Paradise Lost" might easily be mistaken for the deep organ music of a stormy ocean, so matchless and sublime the melody. In theme, epic; in treatment, epic; in termination, tragic,—which melts into holy hope and radiant promise as a night of storm and fearful darkness melts into the light and glory of the dawn and sunrise when the sky is fair. I can hear and see this blind old Puritan, chanting the drama of a lost cause as a David lamenting for his Absalom dead. Milton is sublime in history, misfortune, range of ideas, warrior strength, and prowess to fight and die undaunted. Not even his darkness makes him sob more than a moment. A rebellion in heaven, a war in consequence; the flaming legions of the skies led by Christ, God's Son; a conflict, whose clangor fills the vaulted skies in heaven with reverberating thunders, ending in defeat for evil which makes all Waterloos insignificant; the fall of Satanic legions from the thrones which once were theirs, when, with dolorous cry, they stumbled into hell; the counterplot of Lucifer; the voyage across the wastes "of chaos and old night;" the horrid birth of Sin; the apocalypse of Sin and Death in Eden; and the Promise, whose pierced hand, held out, saved from utter ruin those who,

"Hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way."

Musician, instrument, and oratorio,—all sublime. "Last named, though first written, is the drama of Job, in which all things conspire to lift the argument into sublimity. Are seas in tempests sublime? What are they, matched with Job's stormy soul? Are thunders reverberating among mountains sublime? What are they when God's voice makes interrogatory? But above all, God walks into the drama as his right is to walk into human life; and God's appearance, whether at Sinai or Calvary, or in the weary watches of some heart's night of pain, makes mountain and hour and heart sublime.

Thomas Carlyle once, reading at prayers in a friend's house from the Book of Job, became oblivious to surroundings, and read on and on, till one by one the listeners arose and slipped out in silence, leaving the rapt reader alone, he holding on his solitary way until the last strophe fell from the reader's lips; nor can we wonder at him, for such must be the disposition of every thoughtful peruser of Job. As we will not care to lay Hamlet down till Fortinbras is taking Hamlet, with regal honors, from the scene, so we cling to Job till we see light break through the clouds, and the storm vanish, and the thunder cease.

Job is a prince, old, rich, fortunate, benevolent, and good. Life has dealt kindly with him, and looking at his face you would not, from his wrinkles, guess his years. The great honor him; the good trust him; the poor, in his bounty find plenty; no blessing has failed him, so that his name is a synonym of good fortune,—such a man is chief person of this drama, written by some unknown genius. Singular, is it not, that this voice, from an antiquity remoter than literature can duplicate, should be anonymous? Not all commodities have the firm's name upon them. Some of the world's noblest thoughts are entailed on the generations, they not knowing whence they sprang. He who speaks a great word is not always conscious it is great. We are often hidden from ourselves. But our joy is, some nameless poet has made Job chief actor in the drama of a good man's life. "The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord," the Scriptures say, and such a man was Job; and the theme of this drama is, how shall a good man behave under circumstances ruinously perverse, and what shall be his fate? The theme has rare attraction, and appeals to us as a home message, dear to our heart as a fond word left us by a departing friend.

The drama has prologue, dialogue, and epilogue. The actors are Job's friends, Job's self, Satan, and God.

Temporarily, as an object lesson to children in the moral kindergarten, God gave prosperity under the Mosaic code as proof of piety. This regime was a brief temporality, God not dealing in giving visible rewards to goodness, else righteousness would become a matter of merchandise, being quotable in Dun's. When we reason of righteousness, that the good are blest seems a necessary truth; yet they do not appear so. They are afflicted as others, "the rain falls on the just and the unjust;" nay, more, the wicked even seem favored; "he is not in trouble as other men;" prosperity smiles on him, like a woman on her favored lover; and the spirit cries out involuntarily, as if thrust through by an angry sword, "How can these things be?" And this bitter cry, wrung from the suffering good man, is theme for the drama of Job; and in this stands solitary as it stands sublime.

A first quality of greatness in a literary production is, that it deals with some universal truth. "How can good men suffer if God be good?" How pressingly important and importunate this question is! "Does goodness pay?" is the commercial putting of the question. Such being the meaning of Job, how the poem thrusts home, and how modern and personal is it become! When conceived as the drama of a good man's life, every phase of the discussion becomes apparently just. Nothing is omitted and nothing is out of place.

Job sits in the sunshine of prosperity. Not a cloud drifts across his sky, when, without word of warning, a night of storm crushes along his world, destroys herds and servants, reduces his habitations to ruins, slays his children, leaves himself in poverty, a mourner at the funeral of all he loved. Then his world begins to wonder at him; then distrust him, as if he were evil; his glory is eclipsed, as it would seem, forever; and, as if not content at the havoc of the man's hopes and prosperity and joy, misfortune follows him with disease; grievous plagues seize him, making days and nights one sleepless pain; and his wife, who should have been his stay and help, as most women are, became, instead of a solace and blessing, querulous, crying, like a virago, shrilly, "Curse God, and die!" Job opens with tragedy; Lear, and Julius Caesar, and Othello, and Macbeth, and Hamlet, close with tragedy. Job's ruin is swift and immediate. He has had no time to prepare him for the shock. He was listening for laughter, and he hears a sob. You can fairly hear the ruin, crashing like falling towers about this Prince of Uz; and you must hear, it you are not stone-deaf, the pant of the bleeding runner, who half runs, half falls into his master's presence, gasping, "Job, Prince Job, my master—ruin! ruin! ruin! Thy—herds—and thy servants—ruin—alas! Thy herds are taken—and thy servants slain—and—I—only—I—am—left;" and ere his story is panted forth, another comes, weary with the race, and gasps, "Thy flocks—are slain—with fire—from heaven—and thy servants—with them—and I—alone—am—am—" when another breathless runner breaks that story off, crying, "Thy sons—and daughters—" and Job turns his pale face, and fairly shrieks, "My sons and daughters—what? Say on!" "Thy sons and daughters were feasting—and—the storm swept through—the—sky, and crushed the house—and slew—thy daughters—and—thy—sons—and I, a servant, I only, am escaped—alone—to tell thee;" and Job wept aloud, and his grief possesses him, as a storm the sea—and was very pitiful—and he fell on his face, and worshiped! The apocalypse of this catastrophe is genius of the most splendid order. Tragedy has come! But Job rises above tragedy, for he worshiped.

In his "Talks on the Study of Literature," Arlo Bates, in discussing Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg oration, instancing this sentence, "We here highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain," says, "The phrase is one of the most superb in American literature, and what makes it so is the word 'highly,' the adverb being the last of which an ordinary mind would have thought in this connection, and yet, once spoken, it is the inevitable and superb word." To all this I agree with eagerness; but submit that, in this phrase from Job, "I only am escaped alone to tell thee," the word "alone" is as magical and wonderful; and I think the author of this drama may well be claimed as poet laureate of that far-off, dateless time.

And the good man's goodness availed him nothing? What are we to think of Job now? Either a good man is afflicted, and perhaps of God, or Job has been a cunning fraud, his life one long hypocrisy, his age a gray deception. Which? Here lies the strategic quality in the drama. The three friends are firmly persuaded that Job is unrighteous and his sin has found him out. His dissimulation, though it has deceived man, has not deceived God. Such their pitiless reasoning; and the more blind they are, the more they argue, as is usual; for in argument, men convince themselves, though they make no other converts. In Job's calamity, all winds blow against him, as with one rowing shoreward on the sea, when tides draw out toward the deep and winds blow a gale off shore out to the night; and they blow against Job, because he is not what he once was. His life, once comedy, glad or wild with laughter according to the day, is now tragedy, with white face and bleeding wounds, and voice a moan, like autumn winds. Alas! great prince, thy tragedy is come! Tragedy; but God did not commission it. This drama does not misrepresent God, as many a poem and many a sufferer do. Satan—this drama says—Satan sent this ruin. God has not seared this man's flesh with the white heats of lightning, nor brought him into penury nor suspicion, nor made his heart widowed. God is dispenser of good, not evil; for while an argument is not to be enforced against punitive justice, seeing justice is a necessity of goodness, yet we are to affirm that the notion of God slaying Job's children (or anybody's children, so far as that runs), or blotting out his prosperity, is obnoxious to reason and to heart. This drama perpetrates no such blunder. Satan sent these disasters; for with him is evil purpose. The very nobility of Job stings him to enmity and madness; for iniquity is his delight, and ruin his vocation and pleasure. A power without man working evil is consonant with history and experience, and to suppose this power a person rather than an influence is as rational as to suppose God not a barren principle, but a Person, fertile in love and might and righteousness. In the drama of Job, God is not smirched. He is not Hurter, but Helper. In "Prometheus Bound," Zeus is tyrant; in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," Zeus is tyrant run mad. In Job, God is majesty enthroned; thoughtful, interested, loving; permitting, not administering evil; hearing and heeding a bewildered man's cry, and coming to his rescue, like as some gracious emancipator comes, to break down prison doors and set wronged prisoners free. In Job, God is not aspersed, a thing so easy to do in literature and so often done. Here is no dubious biography, where God is raining disaster instead of mercies. To misrepresent God seems to me a high crime and misdemeanor—nay, the high crime and misdemeanor; because on the righteousness of God hangs the righteousness of the moral system embracing all souls everywhere, and to misconceive or misinterpret God, sins against the highest interests of the world, since life never rises higher than the divinity it conceives and worships. The permissive element in Divine administration is here clearly distinguished. Complex the system is, and not sum-totally intelligible as yet, though we may, and do, get hints of vision, as one catches through the thick ranks of forest-trees occasional glimpses of sky-line, where room is made by a gash in the ranks of woods, and the open looks in like some one standing outside a window with face toward us.