SEPTEMBER, 1798. "THE LYRICAL BALLADS."



The year 1798 was a year of great excitement: England was alone in the struggle against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had only just been quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were occupied with accounts of bloody captures of French ships; Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible murders were committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected and that it was to be assisted by "incendiaries" at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven bishops passed a resolution declaring that if the French should land, or a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of the clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester described as "instigated by that desperate malignity against the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages has marked the horrible character of the vile apostate."

In the midst of this raving political excitement three human beings were to be found who although they were certainly not unmoved by it, were able to detach themselves from it when they pleased, and to seclude themselves in a privacy impenetrable even to an echo of the tumult around them.

In April or May, 1798, the Nightingale was written, and these are the sights and sounds which were then in young Coleridge's eyes and ears:-

"No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But hear no murmuring: it flows silently, O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and tho' the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars."

We happen also to have Dorothy Wordsworth's journal for April and May. Here are a few extracts from it:-

April 6th.—"Went a part of the way home with Coleridge. . . . The spring still advancing very slowly. The horse-chestnuts budding, and the hedgerows beginning to look green, but nothing fully expanded."

April 9th.—"Walked to Stowey . . . The sloe in blossom, the hawthorns green, the larches in the park changed from black to green in two or three days. Met Coleridge in returning."

April 12th.—" . . . The spring advances rapidly, multitudes of primroses, dog-violets, periwinkles, stitchwort."

April 27th.—"Coleridge breakfasted and drank tea, strolled in the wood in the morning, went with him in the evening through the wood, afterwards walked on the hills: the moon; a many-coloured sea and sky."

May 6th, Sunday.—"Expected the painter {101} and Coleridge. A rainy morning—very pleasant in the evening. Met Coleridge as we were walking out. Went with him to Stowey; heard the nightingale; saw a glow-worm."

What was it which these three young people (for Dorothy certainly must be included as one of its authors) proposed to achieve by their book? Coleridge, in the Biographia Literaria, says (vol. ii. c. 1): "During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself—(to which of us I do not recollect)—that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the agents and incidents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

"In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday and to excite a feeling ANALOGOUS TO THE SUPERNATURAL, {103} by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

"With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing, among other poems, THE DARK LADIE and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have more nearly have realised my ideal, than I had done in my first attempt."

Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering him the Lyrical Ballads, affirms that "the volumes offered to you are, to a certain degree, ONE WORK IN KIND" {104a} (Reminiscences, p. 179); and Wordsworth declares, "I should not, however, have requested this assistance, had I not believed that the poems of my Friend would in a great measure HAVE THE SAME TENDENCY AS MY OWN, {104b} and that though there would be found a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800).

It is a point carefully to be borne in mind that we have the explicit and contemporary authority of both poets that their aim was the same.

There are difficulties in the way of believing that The Ancient Mariner was written for the Lyrical Ballads. It was planned in 1797 and was originally intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be asserted that the purpose of The Ancient Mariner and of Christabel (which was originally intended for the Ballads) was, as their author said, TRUTH, living truth. He was the last man in the world to care for a story simply as a chain of events with no significance, and in these poems the supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, comes closer to us than an event of daily life. In return the emotions themselves, by means of the supernatural expression, gain intensity. The texture is so subtly interwoven that it is difficult to illustrate the point by example, but take the following lines:-

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

* * * *

The self-same moment I could pray: And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.

* * * *

And the hay was white with silent light Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were: I turned my eyes upon the deck - Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood."

Coleridge's marginal gloss to these last stanzas is "The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, and appear in their own forms of light."

Once more from Christabel:-

"The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees—no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And passively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate."

What Wordsworth intended we have already heard from Coleridge, and Wordsworth confirms him. It was, says the Preface of 1802, "to present ordinary things to the mind in an unusual way." In Wordsworth the miraculous inherent in the commonplace, but obscured by "the film of familiarity," is restored to it. This translation is effected by the imagination, which is not fancy nor dreaming, as Wordsworth is careful to warn us, but that power by which we see things as they are. The authors of The Ancient Mariner and Simon Lee are justified in claiming a common object. It is to prove that the metaphysical in Shakespeare's sense of the word interpenetrates the physical, and serves to make us see and feel it.

Poetry, if it is to be good for anything, must help us to live. It is to this we come at last in our criticism, and if it does not help us to live it may as well disappear, no matter what its fine qualities may be. The help to live, however, that is most wanted is not remedies against great sorrows. The chief obstacle to the enjoyment of life is its dulness and the weariness which invades us because there is nothing to be seen or done of any particular value. If the supernatural becomes natural and the natural becomes supernatural, the world regains its splendour and charm. Lines may be drawn from their predecessors to Coleridge and the Wordsworths, but the work they did was distinctly original, and renewed proof was given of the folly of despair even when fertility seems to be exhausted. There is always a hidden conduit open into an unknown region whence at any moment streams may rush and renew the desert with foliage and flowers.

The reviews which followed the publication of the Lyrical Ballads were nearly all unfavourable. Even Southey discovered nothing in The Ancient Mariner but "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity." A certain learned pig thought it "the strangest story of a cock and bull that he ever saw on paper," and not a single critic, not even the one or two who had any praise to offer, discerned the secret of the book. The publisher was so alarmed that he hastily sold his stock. Nevertheless Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister quietly went off to Germany without the least disturbance of their faith, and the Ballads are alive to this day.



SOME NOTES ON MILTON



Much of the criticism on Milton, if not hostile, is apologetic, and it is considered quite correct to say we "do not care" for him. Partly this indifference is due to his Nonconformity. The "superior" Englishman who makes a jest of the doctrines and ministers of the Established Church always pays homage to it because it is RESPECTABLE, and sneers at Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper place is that his theme is a theology which for most people is no longer vital. A religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must embody a living faith. The great poems of antiquity are precious to us in proportion to our acceptance, now, as fact, of what they tell us about heaven and earth. There are only a few persons at present who perceive that in substance the account which was given in the seventeenth century of the relation between man and God is immortal and worthy of epic treatment. A thousand years hence a much better estimate of Milton will be possible than that which can be formed to-day. We attribute to him mechanic construction in dead material because it is dead to ourselves. Even Mr. Ruskin who was far too great not to recognise in part at least Milton's claims, says that "Milton's account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith" (Sesame and Lilies, section iii.).

Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with justice, "on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and Samson, Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure ground of fact and reality" (English Men of Letters—Milton, p. 186, ed. 1879).

St. Jude for ages had been sufficient authority for the angelic revolt, and in a sense it was a reasonable dogma, for although it did not explain the mystery of the origin of evil it pushed it a step further backwards, and without such a revolt the Christian scheme does not well hold together. So also with the entrance of the devil into the serpent. It is not expressly taught in any passage of the canonical Scriptures, but to the Church and to Milton it was as indisputable as the presence of sin in the world. Milton, I repeat, BELIEVED in the framework of his poem, and unless we can concede this to him we ought not to attempt to criticise him. He was impelled to turn his religion into poetry in order to bring it closer to him. The religion of every Christian if it is real is a poem. He pictures a background of Holy Land scenery, and he creates a Jesus who continually converses with him and reveals to him much more than is found in the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When Milton goes beyond his documents he does not imagine for the purpose of filling up: the additions are expression.

Milton belonged to that order of poets whom the finite does not satisfy. Like Wordsworth, but more eminently, he was "powerfully affected" only by that "which is conversant with or turns upon infinity," and man is to him a being with such a relationship to infinity that Heaven and Hell contend over him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal glory of Heaven and the scarcely subordinate power of Hell magnifies him. Johnson, whose judgment on Milton is unsatisfactory because he will not deliver himself sufficiently to beauty which he must have recognised, nevertheless says of the Paradise Lost, that "its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares," and this is true. The other great epic poems worthy to be compared with Milton's, the Iliad, Odyssey, AEneid, and Divine Comedy, all agree in representing man as an object of the deepest solicitude to the gods or God. Milton's conception of God is higher than Homer's, Virgil's, or Dante's, but the care of the Miltonic God for his offspring is greater, and the profound truth unaffected by Copernican discoveries and common to all these poets is therefore more impressive in Milton than in the others.

There is nothing which the most gifted of men can create that is not mixed up with earth, and Milton, too, works it up with his gold. The weakness of the Paradise Lost is not, as Johnson affirms, its lack of human interest, for the Prometheus Bound has just as little, nor is Johnson's objection worth anything that the angels are sometimes corporeal and at other times independent of material laws. Spirits could not be represented to a human mind unless they were in a measure subject to the conditions of time and space. The principal defect in Paradise Lost is the justification which the Almighty gives of the creation of man with a liability to fall. It would have been better if Milton had contented himself with telling the story of the Satanic insurrection, of its suppression, of its author's revenge, of the expulsion from Paradise, and the promise of a Redeemer. But he wanted to "justify the ways of God to man," and in order to do this he thought it was necessary to show that man must be endowed with freedom of will, and consequently could not be directly preserved from yielding to the assaults of Satan.

Paradise Regained comes, perhaps, closer to us than Paradise Lost because its temptations are more nearly our own, and every amplification which Milton introduces is designed to make them more completely ours than they seem to be in the New Testament. It has often been urged against Paradise Regained that Jesus recovered Paradise for man by the Atonement and not merely by resistance to the devil's wiles, but inasmuch as Paradise was lost by the devil's triumph through human weakness it is natural that Paradise Regained should present the triumph of the Redeemer's strength. It is this victory which proves Jesus to be the Son of God and consequently able to save us.

He who has now become incarnated for our redemption is that same Messiah who, when He rode forth against the angelic rebels,

"into terror chang'd His count'nance too severe to be beheld, And full of wrath bent on his enemies."

It is He who

"on his impious foes right onward drove, Gloomy as night:"

whose right hand grasped

"ten thousand thunders, which he sent Before him, such as in their souls infix'd Plagues." (P. L. vi. 824-38.)

Now as Son of Man he is confronted with that same Archangel, and he conquers by "strong sufferance." He comes with no fourfold visage of a charioteer flashing thick flames, no eye which glares lightning, no victory eagle-winged and quiver near her with three-bolted thunder stored, but in "weakness," and with this he is to "overcome satanic strength."

Milton sees in the temptation to turn the stones into bread a devilish incitement to use miraculous powers and not to trust the Heavenly Father.

"Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust, Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art?" (P. R. i. 355-6.)

Finding his enemy steadfast, Satan disappears,

"bowing low His gray dissimulation," (P. R. i. 497-8.)

and calls to council his peers. He disregards the proposal of Belial to attempt the seduction of Jesus with women. If he is vulnerable it will be to objects

"such as have more shew Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise, Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd; Or that which only seems to satisfy Lawful desires of Nature, not beyond." (P. R. ii. 226-30.)

The former appeal is first of all renewed. "Tell me," says Satan,

"'if food were now before thee set Would'st thou not eat?' 'Thereafter as I like The giver,' answered Jesus." (P. R. ii. 320-22.)

A banquet is laid, and Satan invites Jesus to partake of it.

"What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat? These are not fruits forbidd'n." (P. R. ii. 368-9.)

But Jesus refuses to touch the devil's meat -

"Thy pompous delicacies I contemn, And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles." (P. R. ii. 390-1.)

So they were, for at a word

"Both table and provision vanish'd quite, With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard." (P. R. ii. 402-3.)

If but one grain of that enchanted food had been eaten, or one drop of that enchanted liquor had been drunk, there would have been no Cross, no Resurrection, no salvation for humanity.

The temptation on the mountain is expanded by Milton through the close of the second book, the whole of the third and part of the fourth. It is a temptation of peculiar strength because it is addressed to an aspiration which Jesus has acknowledged.

"Yet this not all To which my spirit aspir'd: victorious deeds Flam'd in my heart, heroic acts." (P. R. i. 214-16.)

But he denies that the glory of mob-applause is worth anything.

"What is glory but the blaze of fame, The people's praise, if always praise unmixt? And what the people but a herd confus'd, A miscellaneous rabble, who extol Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise?" (P. R. iii. 47-51.)

To the Jesus of the New Testament this answer is, in a measure, inappropriate. He would not have called the people "a herd confus'd, a miscellaneous rabble." But although inappropriate it is Miltonic. The devil then tries the Saviour with a more subtle lure, an appeal to duty.

"If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal And duty; zeal and duty are not slow; But on occasion's forelock watchful wait. They themselves rather are occasion best, Zeal of thy father's house, duty to free Thy country from her heathen servitude." (P. R. iii. 171-6.)

But zeal and duty, the endeavour to hurry that which cannot and must not be hurried may be a suggestion from hell.

"If of my reign prophetic writ hath told That it shall never end, so when begin The Father in His purpose hath decreed." (P. R. iii. 184-6.)

Acquiescence, a conviction of the uselessness of individual or organised effort to anticipate what only slow evolution can bring, is characteristic of increasing years, and was likely enough to be the temper of Milton when he had seen the failure of the effort to make actual on earth the kingdom of Heaven. The temptation is developed in such a way that every point supposed to be weak is attacked. "You may be what you claim to be," insinuates the devil, "but are rustic."

"Thy life hath yet been private, most part spent At home, scarce view'd the Galilean towns, And once a year Jerusalem." (P. R. iii. 232-4.)

Experience and alliances are plausibly urged as indispensable for success. But Jesus knew that the sum total of a man's power for good is precisely what of good there is in him and that if it be expressed even in the simplest form, all its strength is put forth and its office is fulfilled. To suppose that it can be augmented by machinery is a foolish delusion. The

"projects deep Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues, Plausible to the world" (P. R. iii. 395-3.)

are to the Founder of the kingdom not of this world "worth naught." Another side of the mountain is tried. Rome is presented with Tiberius at Capreae. Could it possibly be anything but a noble deed to

"expel this monster from his throne Now made a sty, and in his place ascending, A victor people free from servile yoke!" (P. R. iv. 100-102.)

"AND WITH MY HELP THOU MAY'ST." With the devil's help and not without can this glorious revolution be achieved! "For him," is the Divine reply, "I was not sent." The attack is then directly pressed.

"The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give; For, giv'n to me, I give to whom I please, No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else, On this condition, if thou wilt fall down And worship me as thy superior lord." (P. R. iv. 163-7.)

This, then, is the drift and meaning of it all. The answer is taken verbally from the gospel.

"'Thou shalt worship The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.'" (P. R. iv. 176-7.)

That is to say, Thou shalt submit thyself to God's commands and God's methods and thou shalt submit thyself to NO OTHER.

Omitting the Athenian and philosophic episode, which is unnecessary and a little unworthy even of the Christian poet, we encounter not an amplification of the Gospel story but an interpolation which is entirely Milton's own. Night gathers and a new assault is delivered in darkness. Jesus wakes in the storm which rages round Him. The diabolic hostility is open and avowed and He hears the howls and shrieks of the infernals. He cannot banish them though He is so far master of Himself that He is able to sit "unappall'd in calm and sinless peace." He has to endure the hellish threats and tumult through the long black hours

"till morning fair Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray, Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds, And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais'd To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire. But now the sun with more effectual beams Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dri'd the wet From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds, Who all things now beheld more fresh and green, After a night of storm so ruinous, Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray To gratulate the sweet return of morn." (P. R. iv. 426-38.)

There is nothing perhaps in Paradise Lost which possesses the peculiar quality of this passage, nothing which like these verses brings into the eyes the tears which cannot be repressed when a profound experience is set to music.

The temptation on the pinnacle occupies but a few lines only of the poem. Hitherto Satan admits that Jesus had conquered, but he had done no more than any wise and good man could do.

"Now show thy progeny; if not to stand, Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God; For it is written, 'He will give command Concerning thee to His angels; in their hands They shall uplift thee, lest at any time Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.'" (P. R. iv. 554-9.)

The promise of Divine aid is made in mockery.

"To whom thus Jesus: 'Also it is written, Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood: But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell." (P. R. iv. 560-2.)

It is not meant, "thou shalt not tempt ME," but rather, "it is not permitted me to tempt God." In this extreme case Jesus depends on God's protection. This is the devil's final defeat and the seraphic company for which our great Example had refused to ask instantly surrounds and receives him. Angelic quires

"the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and from heavenly feast refresh't, Brought on His way with joy; He unobserv'd, Home to His mother's house private return'd." (P. R. iv. 636-9.)

Warton wished to expunge this passage, considering it an unworthy conclusion. It is to be hoped that there are many readers of Milton who are able to see what is the value of these four lines, particularly of the last.

It is hardly necessary to say more in order to show how peculiarly Milton is endowed with that quality which is possessed by all great poets—the power to keep in contact with the soul of man.



THE MORALITY OF BYRON'S POETRY. "THE CORSAIR."



[This is an abstract of an essay four times as long written many years ago. Although so much has been struck out, the substance is unaltered, and the conclusion is valid for the author now as then.]

Byron above almost all other poets, at least in our day, has been set down as immoral. In reality he is moral, using the word in its proper sense, and he is so, not only in detached passages, but in the general drift of most of his poetry. We will take as an example "The Corsair."

Conrad is not a debauched buccaneer. He was not -

"by Nature sent To lead the guilty—guilt's worst instrument."

He had been betrayed by misplaced confidence.

"Doom'd by his very virtues for a dupe, He cursed those virtues as the cause of ill, And not the traitors who betray'd him still; Nor deem'd that gifts bestow'd on better men Had left him joy, and means to give again, Fear'd—shunn'd—belied—ere youth had lost her force, He hated man too much to feel remorse, And thought the voice of wrath a sacred call, To pay the injuries of some on all."

Conrad was not, and could not be, mean and selfish. A selfish Conrad would be an absurdity. His motives are not gross -

"he shuns the grosser joys of sense, "His mind seems nourished by that abstinence."

He is protected by a charm against undistinguishing lust -

"Though fairest captives daily met his eye, He shunn'd, nor sought, but coldly pass'd them by;"

and even Gulnare, his deliverer, fails to seduce him.

Mr. Ruskin observes that Byron makes much of courage. It is Conrad, the leader, who undertakes the dangerous errand of surprising Seyd; it is he who determines to save the harem. His courage is not the mere excitement of battle. When he is captured -

"A conqueror's more than captive's air is seen,"

and he is not insensible to all fear.

"Each has some fear, and he who least betrays, The only hypocrite deserving praise.

* * * * *

One thought alone he could not—dared not meet— 'Oh, how these tidings will Medora greet?'"

Gulnare announces his doom to him, hut he is calm. He cannot stoop even to pray. He has deserted his Maker, and it would be baseness now to prostrate himself before Him.

"I have no thought to mock his throne with prayer Wrung from the coward crouching of despair; It is enough—I breathe—and I can bear."

He has no martyr-hope with which to console himself; his endurance is of the finest order—simple, sheer resolution, a resolve that with no reward, he will never disgrace himself. He knows what it is

"To count the hours that struggle to thine end, With not a friend to animate, and tell To other ears that death became thee well,"

but he does not break down.

Gulnare tries to persuade him that the only way by which he can save himself from tortures and impalement is by the assassination of Seyd, but he refuses to accept the terms -

"Who spares a woman's seeks not slumber's life" -

and dismisses her. When she has done the deed and he sees the single spot of blood upon her, he, the Corsair, is unmanned as he had never been in battle, prison, or by consciousness of guilt.

"But ne'er from strife—captivity—remorse— From all his feelings in their inmost force— So thrill'd—so shudder'd every creeping vein, As now they froze before that purple stain. That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banish'd all the beauty from her cheek!"

The Corsair's misanthropy had not destroyed him. Small creatures alone are wholly converted into spite and scepticism by disappointment and repulse. Those who are larger avenge themselves by devotion. Conrad's love for Medora was intensified and exalted by his hatred of the world.

"Yes, it was Love—unchangeable—unchanged, Felt but for one from whom he never ranged;"

and she was worthy of him, the woman who could sing -

"Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells, Lonely and lost to light for evermore, Save when to thine my heart responsive swells, Then trembles into silence as before.

There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen; Which not the darkness of despair can damp, Though vain its ray as it had never been."

He finds Medora dead, and -

"his mother's softness crept To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept."

If his crimes and love could be weighed in a celestial balance, weight being apportioned to the rarity and value of the love, which would descend?

The points indicated in Conrad's character are not many, but they are sufficient for its delineation, and it is a moral character. We must, of course, get rid of the notion that the relative magnitude of the virtues and vices according to the priest or society is authentic. A reversion to the natural or divine scale has been almost the sole duty preached to us by every prophet. If we could incorporate Conrad with ourselves we should find that the greater part of what is worst in us would be neutralised. The sins of which we are ashamed, the dirty, despicable sins, Conrad could not have committed; and in these latter days they are perhaps the most injurious.

We do not understand how moral it is to yield unreservedly to enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron's poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that which is beyond the commonplace self.

It is not true that "The Corsair" is insincere. He who hears a note of insincerity in Conrad and Medora may have ears, but they must be those of the translated Bottom who was proud of having "a reasonable good ear in music." Byron's romance has been such a power exactly because men felt that it was not fiction and that his was one of the strongest minds of his day. He was incapable of toying with the creatures of the fancy which had no relationship with himself and through himself with humanity.

A word as to Byron's hold upon the people. He was able to obtain a hearing from ordinary men and women, who knew nothing even of Shakespeare, save what they had seen at the theatre. Modern poetry is the luxury of a small cultivated class. We may say what we like of popularity, and if it be purchased by condescension to popular silliness it is nothing. But Byron secured access to thousands of readers in England and on the Continent by strength and loveliness, a feat seldom equalled and never perhaps surpassed. The present writer's father, a compositor in a dingy printing office, repeated verses from "Childe Harold" at the case. Still more remarkable, Byron reached one of this writer's friends, an officer in the Navy, of the ancient stamp; and the attraction, both to printer and lieutenant, lay in nothing lower than that which was best in him. It is surely a service sufficient to compensate for many more faults than can be charged against him that wherever there was any latent poetic dissatisfaction with the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life he gave it expression, and that he has awakened in the PEOPLE lofty emotions which, without him, would have slept. The cultivated critics, and the refined persons who have schrecklich viel gelesen, are not competent to estimate the debt we owe to Byron.



BYRON, GOETHE, AND MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD



(Reprinted, with corrections, by permission from the "Contemporary Review," August, 1881.)

Mr. Matthew Arnold has lately published a remarkable essay {133} upon Lord Byron. Mr. Arnold's theory about Byron is, that he is neither artist nor thinker—that "he has no light, cannot lead us from the past to the future;" "the moment he reflects, he is a child;" "as a poet he has no fine and exact sense for word and structure and rhythm; he has not the artist's nature and gifts." The excellence of Byron mainly consists in his "sincerity and strength;" in his rhetorical power; in his "irreconcilable revolt and battle" against the political and social order of things in which he lived. "Byron threw himself upon poetry as his organ; and in poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, and the Witch of the Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant, they were the upholders of the old order, George the Third and Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and Southey, and they were the canters and tramplers of the great world, and they were his enemies and himself."

Mr. Arnold appeals to Goethe as an authority in his favour. In order, therefore, that English people may know what Goethe thought about Byron I have collected some of the principal criticisms upon him which I can find in Goethe's works. The text upon which Mr. Arnold enlarges is the remark just quoted which Goethe made about Byron to Eckermann: "so bald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind"—AS SOON AS HE REFLECTS HE IS A CHILD.

Goethe, it is true, did say this; but the interpretation of the saying depends upon the context, which Mr. Arnold omits. I give the whole passage, quoting from Oxenford's translation of the Eckermann Conversations, vol. i. p. 198 (edition 1850):-

"'Lord Byron,' said Eckermann, 'is no wiser when he takes 'Faust' to pieces and thinks you found one thing here, the other there.' 'The greater part of those fine things cited by Lord Byron,' Goethe replied, 'I have never even read; much less did I think of them when I was writing "Faust." But Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child. He knows not how to help himself against the stupid attacks of the same kind made upon him by his own countrymen. He ought to have expressed himself more strongly against them. 'What is there is mine,' he should have said, 'and whether I got it from a book or from life is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have made a right use of it.' Walter Scott used a scene from my 'Egmont,' and he had a right to do so; and because he did it well, he deserves praise.'"

Goethe certainly does not mean that Byron was unable to reflect in the sense in which Mr. Arnold interprets the word. What was really meant we shall see in a moment.

We will, however, continue the quotations from the Eckermann:-

"We see how the inadequate dogmas of the Church work upon a free mind like Byron's and how by such a piece ('Cain') he struggles to get rid of a doctrine which has been forced upon him" (vol. i. p. 129).

"The world to him was transparent, and he could paint by way of anticipation" (vol. i. p. 140).

"That which I call invention I never saw in any one in the world to a greater degree than in him" (vol. i. p. 205).

"Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, as an Englishman, and as a great talent. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommensurable. All Englishmen are, as such, without reflection properly so-called; distractions and party-spirit will not permit them to perfect themselves in quiet. But they are great as practical men. Thus, Lord Byron could never attain reflection on himself, and on this account his maxims in general are not successful. . . . But where he will create, he always succeeds; and we may truly say that, with him, inspiration supplies the place of reflection. He was always obliged to go on poetizing, and then everything that came from the man, especially from his heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, as women do pretty children, without thinking about it, or knowing how it was done. He is a great talent, a born talent, and I never saw the true poetical power greater in any man than in him. In the apprehension of external objects, and a clear penetration into past situations, he is quite as great as Shakespeare. But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare is his superior" (vol. i. p. 209).

We see now what Goethe means by "reflection." It is the faculty of self-separation, or conscious CONSIDERATION, a faculty which would have enabled Byron, as it enabled Goethe, to reply successfully to a charge of plagiarism. It is not thought in its widest sense, nor creation, and it has not much to do with the production of poems of the highest order- -the poems that is to say, which are written by the impersonal thought.

But again—

"The English may think of Byron as they please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be compared to him. He is different from all the others, and for the most part, greater" (vol. i. p. 290).

This passage is one which Mr. Arnold quotes, and he strives to diminish its importance by translating der ihm zu vergleichen ware, by "who is his parallel," and maintains that Goethe "was not so much thinking of the strict rank, as poetry, of Byron's production; he was thinking of that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry." It is just possible; but if Goethe did think this, he used words which are misleading, and if the phrase der ihm zu vergleichen ware simply indicates parallelism, it has no point, for in that sense it might have been applied to Scott or to Southey.

"I have read once more Byron's 'Deformed Transformed,' and must say that to me his talent appears greater than ever. His devil was suggested by my Mephistopheles; but it is no imitation—it is thoroughly new and original; close, genuine, and spirited. There are no weak passages—not a place where you could put the head of a pin, where you do not find INVENTION AND THOUGHT [italics mine]. Were it not for his hypochondriacal negative turn, he would be as great as Shakespeare and the ancients" (vol. i. p. 294).

Eckermann expressed his surprise. "Yes," said Goethe, "you may believe me, I have studied him anew and am confirmed in this opinion." The position which Byron occupies in the Second Part of "Faust" is well known. Eckermann talked to Goethe about it, and Goethe said, "I could not make use of any man as the representative of the modern poetical era except him, who undoubtedly is to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century" (vol. i. p. 425). Mr. Arnold translates this word "genius" by "talent." The word in the original is TALENT, and I will not dispute with so accomplished a German scholar as Mr. Arnold as to what is the precise meaning of TALENT. In both the English translations of Eckermann the word is rendered "genius," and after the comparison between Byron, Shakespeare, and the ancients just quoted, we can hardly admit that Goethe meant to distinguish scientifically between the two orders of intellect and to assign the lower to Byron.

But, last of all, I will translate Goethe's criticism upon "Cain." So far as I know, it has not yet appeared in English. It is to be found in the Stuttgart and Tubingen edition of Goethe, 1840, vol. xxxiii. p. 157. Some portions which are immaterial I have omitted:-

"After I had listened to the strangest things about this work for almost a year, I at last took it myself in hand, and it excited in me astonishment and admiration; an effect which will produce in the mind which is simply susceptible, everything good, beautiful, and great. . . . The poet who, surpassing the limit of all our conceptions, has penetrated with burning spiritual vision the past and present, and consequently the future, has now subdued new regions under his limitless talent, but what he will accomplish therein can be predicted by no human being. His procedure, however, we can nevertheless in a measure more closely determine. He adheres to the letter of the Biblical tradition, for he allows the first pair of human beings to exchange their original purity and innocence for a guilt mysterious in its origin; the punishment which is its consequence descending upon all posterity. The monstrous burden of such an event he lays upon the shoulders of Cain as the representative of a wretched humanity, plunged for no fault of its own into the depths of misery.

"To this primitive son of man, bowed down and heavily burdened, death, which as yet he has not seen, is an especial trouble; and although he may desire the end of his present distress, it seems still more hateful to exchange it for a condition altogether unknown. Hence we already see that the full weight of a dogmatic system, explaining, mediating, yet always in conflict with itself, just as it still for ever occupies us, was imposed on the first miserable son of man. These contradictions, which are not strange to human nature, possessed his mind, and could not be brought to rest, either through the divinely-given gentleness of his father and brother, or the loving and alleviating co-operation of his sister-wife. In order to sharpen them to the point of impossibility of endurance, Satan comes upon the scene, a mighty and misleading spirit, who begins by unsettling him morally, and then conducts him miraculously through all worlds, causing him to see the past as overwhelmingly vast, the present as small and of no account, and the future as full of foreboding and void of consolation.

"So he turns back to his own family, more excited, but not worse than before; and finding in the family circle everything as he has left it, the urgency of Abel, who wishes to make him offer a sacrifice, becomes altogether insupportable. More say we not, excepting that the motivation of the scene in which Abel perishes is of the rarest excellence, and what follows is equally great and priceless. There now lies Abel! That now is Death—there was so much talk about it, and man knows about it as little as he did before.

"We must not forget, that through the whole piece there runs a kind of presentiment of a Saviour, so that the poet at this point, as well as in all others, has known how to bring himself near to the ideas by which we explain things, and to our modes of faith.

"Of the scene with the parents, in which Eve at last curses the speechless Cain, which our western neighbour lifts into such striking prominence, there remains nothing more for us to say: we have to approach the conclusion with astonishment and reverence.

"With regard to this conclusion, an intelligent and fair friend, related to us through esteem for Byron, has asserted that everything religious and moral in the world was put into the last three words of the piece." {143}

We have now heard enough from Goethe to prove that Mr. Arnold's interpretation of "so bald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind" is not Goethe's interpretation of Byron. It is to be remembered that Goethe was not a youth overcome by Mr. Arnold's "vogue" when he read Byron. He was a singularly self-possessed old man.

Many persons will be inclined to think that Goethe, so far from putting Byron on a lower level than that usually assigned to him, has over- praised him, and will question the "burning spiritual vision" which the great German believed the great Englishman to possess. But if we consider what Goethe calls the "motivation" of Cain; if we reflect on what the poet has put into the legend; on the exploration of the universe with Lucifer as a guide; on its result, on the mode in which the death of Abel is reached; on the doom of the murderer—the limitless wilderness henceforth and no rest; on the fidelity of Adah, who, with the true instinct of love, separates between the man and the crime; on the majesty of the principal character, who stands before us as the representative of the insurgence of the human intellect, so that, if we know him, we know a whole literature; if we meditate hereon, we shall say that Goethe has not exaggerated. It is the same with the rest of Byron's dramas. Over and above the beauty of detached passages, there is in each one of them a large and universal meaning, or rather meaning within meaning, precisely the same for no reader, but none the less certain, and as inexhaustible as the meanings of Nature. This is one reason why the wisdom of a selection from Byron is so doubtful. The worth of "Cain," of "Sardanapalus," of "Manfred," of "Marino Faliero," is the worth of an outlook over the sea; and we cannot take a sample of the scene from a cliff by putting a pint of water into a bottle. But Byron's critics and the compilers tell us of failures, which ought not to survive, and that we are doing a kindness to him if we suppress these and exhibit him at his best. No man who seriously cares for Byron will assent to this doctrine. We want to know the whole of him, his weakness as well as his strength; for the one is not intelligible without the other. A human being is an indivisible unity, and his weakness IS his strength, and his strength IS his weakness.

It is not my object now, however, to justify what Mr. Arnold calls the Byronic "superstition." I hope I could justify a good part of it, but this is not the opportunity. I cannot resist, however, saying a word by way of conclusion on the manner in which Byron has fulfilled what seems to me one of the chief offices of the poet. Mr. Arnold, although he is so dissatisfied with Byron because he "cannot reflect," would probably in another mood admit that "reflections" are not what we demand of a poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book of proverbs. He should rather be the articulation of what in Nature is great but inarticulate. In him the thunder, the sea, the peace of morning, the joy of youth, the rush of passion, the calm of old age, should find words, and men should through him become aware of the unrecognised wealth of existence. Byron had the power above most poets of acting as a kind of tongue to Nature. His descriptions are on everybody's lips, and it is superfluous to quote them. He represented things not as if they were aloof from him, but as if they were the concrete embodiment of his soul. The woods, the wilds, the waters of Nature are to him -

"the intense Reply of HERS to our intelligence."

His success is equally marked when he portrays men or women whose character attracts him. Take, for example, the girl in "The Island":-

"The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and threw O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. Such was this daughter of the southern seas, HERSELF A BILLOW IN HER ENERGIES.

* * * * *

Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass, WHOSE DEPTHS UNSEARCH'D, AND FOUNTAINS FROM THE HILL, RESTORE THEIR SURFACE, IN ITSELF SO STILL."

Passages like these might be quoted without end from Byron, and they explain why he is and must be amongst the immortals. He may have been careless in expression; he may have been a barbarian and not a e?f???, as Mr. Matthew Arnold affirms, but he was GREAT. This is the word which describes him. He was a mass of living energy, and therefore he is sanative. Energy, power, is the one thing after which we pine in this sickly age. We do not want carefully and consciously constructed poems of mosaic. Strength is what we need and what will heal us. Strength is true morality, and true beauty. It is the strength in Byron that falsifies the accusation of affectation and posing, which is brought against him. All that is meant by affectation and posing was a mere surface trick. The real man, Byron, and his poems are perfectly unconscious, as unconscious as the wind. The books which have lived and always will live have this unconsciousness in them, and what is manufactured, self-centred, and self-contemplative will perish. The world's literature is the work of men, who, to use Byron's own words -

"Strip off this fond and false identity;"

who are lost in their object, who write because they cannot help it, imperfectly or perfectly, as the case may be, and who do not sit down to fit in this thing and that thing from a commonplace book. Many novelists there are who know their art better than Charlotte Bronte, but she, like Byron—and there are more points of resemblance between them than might at first be supposed—is imperishable because she speaks under overwhelming pressure, self-annihilated, we may say, while the spirit breathes through her. The Byron "vogue" will never pass so long as men and women are men and women. Mr. Arnold and the critics may remind us of his imperfections of form, but Goethe is right after all, for not since Shakespeare have we had any one der ihm zu vergleichen ware.



A SACRIFICE



A fatal plague devastated the city. The god had said that it would continue to rage until atonement for a crime had been offered by the sacrifice of a man. He was to be perfect in body; he must not desire to die because he no longer loved life, or because he wished for fame. A statue must not be erected to his memory; no poem must be composed for him; his name must not appear in the city's records.

A few volunteers presented themselves, but none of them satisfied all the conditions. At last a young man came who had served as the model for the image of the god in his temple. There was no question, therefore, of soundness of limb, and when he underwent the form of examination no spot nor blemish was found on him. The priest asked him whether he was in trouble, and especially whether he was disappointed in love. He said he was in no trouble; that he was betrothed to a girl to whom he was devoted, and that they had intended to be married that month. "I am," he declared, "the happiest man in the city." The priest doubted and watched him that evening, but he saw him walking side by side with this girl, and the two were joyous as a youth and a maiden ought to be in the height of their passion. She sat down and sang to him he played to her, and they embraced one another tenderly at parting.

The next morning was the day on which he was to be slain. There was an altar in front of the temple, and a great crowd assembled, ranked round the open space. At the appointed hour the priest appeared, and with him was the youth, holding his beloved by the hand, but she was blindfolded. He let go her hand, knelt down, and in a moment the sacrificial knife was drawn across his throat. His body was placed upon the wood, and the priest was about to kindle it when a flash from heaven struck it into a blaze with such heat that when the fire dropped no trace of the victim remained. The girl, too, had disappeared, and was never seen again.

In accordance with the god's decree, no statue was erected, no poem was composed, and no entry was made in the city records. But tradition did not forget that the saviour of the city was he who survived in the great image on which the name of the god was inscribed.



THE AGED TREE



An aged tree, whose companions had gone, having still a little sap in its bark and a few leaves which grew therefrom, prayed it might see yet another spring. Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but the old tree had no leaves save one or two near the ground, and a great fungus fixed itself on its trunk. It had a dull life in its roots, but not enough to know that its moss and fungus were not foliage. It stood there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the young trees were all bursting. "That rotten thing," said the master, "ought to have been cut down long ago."



CONSCIENCE



"Conscience," said I, "her conscience would have told her."

"Yes," said my father. "The strongest amongst the many objections to the Roman Catholic doctrine of confession is that it weakens our dependence on the conscience. If we seek for an external command to do what ought to be done in obedience to that inward monitor, whose voice is always clear if we will but listen, its authority will gradually be lost, and in the end it will cease to speak."

"Conscience," said my grandmother musingly (turning to my father). "You will remember Phyllis Eyre? She was one of my best friends, and it is now two years since she died, unmarried. She was once governess to the children of Sir Robert Walsh, but remained in the house as companion to Lady Walsh long after her pupils had grown up. She was, in fact, more than a companion, for Lady Walsh trusted her and loved her. She was by birth a lady; she had been well educated, and, like her mistress, she was devoutly and evangelically pious. She was also very handsome, and this you may well believe, for, as you know, she was handsome as an old woman, stately and erect, with beautiful, undimmed eyes. When Evelina Walsh, the eldest daughter, was about one and twenty, Charles Fysshe, the young heir to the Fysshe property, came to stay with her brother, and Phyllis soon discovered, or thought she discovered, that he was in love with Evelina. He seemed to court her society, and paid her attentions which could be explained on one hypothesis only. Phyllis was delighted, for the match in every way was most suitable, and must gladden the hearts of Evelina's parents. The young man would one day be the possessor of twenty thousand acres; he had already taken a position in the county, and his soul was believed to be touched with Divine grace. Evelina certainly was in love with him, and Phyllis was not backward in urging his claims. She congratulated herself, and with justice, that if the marriage should ever take place, it would be acknowledged that she had had a hand in it. It might even be doubted whether Evelina, without Phyllis's approval, would have permitted herself to indulge her passion, for she was by nature diffident, and so beset with reasons for and against when she had to make up her mind on any important matter, that a decision was always most difficult to her.

"Charles stayed for about six weeks, and was then called home. He promised that he would pay another visit of a week in the autumn, when Sir Robert was to entertain the Lord Lieutenant and there were to be grand doings at the Hall. Conversation naturally turned upon him during his absence, and Phyllis, as usual, was warm in his praise. One evening, after she had reached her own room and had lain down to sleep, a strange apparition surprised her. It was something more than a suspicion that she herself loved Charles. She strove to rid herself of this intrusion: she called to mind the difference in their rank; that she was five years his senior, and that if she yielded she would be guilty of treachery to Evelina. It was all in vain; the more she resisted the more vividly did his image present itself, and she was greatly distressed. What was the meaning of this outbreak of emotion, not altogether spiritual, of this loss of self-possession, such as she had never known before? Her usual remedies against evil thoughts failed her, and, worst of all, there was the constant suggestion that these particular thoughts were not evil. Hitherto, when temptation had attacked her, she was sure whence it came, but she was not sure now. It might be an interposition of Providence, but how would it appear to Evelina? I myself, my dears, have generally found that to resist the devil is not difficult if I am quite certain that the creature before me is the devil, but it does tax my wits sometimes to find out if he is really the enemy or not. When Apollyon met Christian he was not in doubt for an instant, for the monster was hideous to behold: he had scales like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, out of his belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a lion. After some parleying he cast his dreadful dart, but Christian, without more ado, put up his shield, drew his sword, and presently triumphed. If Satan had turned himself, from his head to his ankles, into a man, and had walked by Christian's side, and had talked with him, and had agreed with him in everything he had to say, the bear's claws might have peeped out, but Christian, instead of fighting, would have begun to argue with himself whether the evidence of the face or the foot was the stronger. He would have been just as likely to trust the face, and in a few moments he would have been snapped up and carried off to hell. To go on with my story: the night wore on in sophistry and struggle, and no inner light dawned with the sun. Phyllis was much agitated, for in the afternoon Charles was to return, and although amidst the crowd of visitors she might be overlooked, she could not help seeing him. She did see him, but did not speak to him. He sat next to Evelina at dinner, who was happy and expectant. The next day there was a grand meet of the hounds, and almost all the party disappeared. Phyllis pleaded a headache, and obtained permission to stay at home. It was a lovely morning in November, without a movement in the air, calm and cloudless, one of those mornings not uncommon when the year begins to die. She went into the woods at the outer edge of the park, and had scarcely entered them, when lo! to her astonishment, there was Charles. She could not avoid him, and he came up to her.

"'Why, Miss Eyre, what are you doing here?'

"'I had a headache; I could not go with the others, and came out for a stroll.'

"'I, too, was not very well, and have been left behind.'

"They walked together side by side.

"'I wanted to speak to you, Miss Eyre. I wonder if you have suspected anything lately.'

"'Suspected? I do not quite comprehend: you are very vague.'

"'Well, must I be more explicit? Have you fancied that I care more for somebody you know than I care for all the world besides? I suppose you have not, for I thought it better to hide as much as possible what I felt.'

"'I should be telling an untruth if I were to say I do not understand you, and I trust you will pardon me if I tell you that a girl more worthy of you than Evelina, and one more likely to make you happy, I have never seen.'

"'Gracious God! what have I done? what a mistake! Miss Eyre, it is you I mean; it is you I love.'

"There was not an instant's hesitation.

"'Sir, I thank you, but I can answer at once. NEVER can I be yours. That decision is irrevocable. I admire you, but cannot love you.'

"She parted from him abruptly, but no sooner had she left him than she was confounded, and wondered who or what it was which gave that answer. She wavered, and thought of going back, but she did not. Later on in the day she heard that Charles had gone home, summoned by sudden business. Two years afterwards his engagement with Evelina was announced, and in three years they were married. It was not what I should call a happy marriage, although they never quarrelled and had five children. To the day of her death Phyllis was not sure whether she had done right or wrong, nor am I."



THE GOVERNESS'S STORY



In the year 1850 I was living as governess in the small watering-place S., on the south coast of England. Amongst my friends was a young doctor, B., who had recently come to the town. He had not bought a practice, but his family was known to one or two of the principal inhabitants, and he had begun to do well. He deserved his success, for he was skilful, frank, and gentle, and he did not affect that mystery which in his elder colleagues was already suspected to be nothing but ignorance. He was one of the early graduates of the University of London, and representative of the new school of medical science, relying not so much upon drugs as upon diet and regimen. I was one of his first patients. I had a severe illness lasting for nearly three months; he watched over me carefully and cured me. As I grew better he began to talk on other matters than my health when he visited me. We found that we were both interested in the same books: he lent me his and I lent him mine. It is almost impossible, I should think, for a young man and a young woman to be friends and nothing more, and I confess that my sympathy with him in his admiration of the Elizabethan poets, and my gratitude to him for my recovery passed into affection. I am sure also that he felt affection for me. He became confidential, and told me all his history and troubles. There was one peculiarity in his conversation which was new to me: he never talked down to me, and he was not afraid at times to discuss subjects that in the society to which I had been accustomed were prohibited. Not a word that was improper ever escaped his lips, but he treated me in a measure as if I were a man, and I was flattered that he should put me on a level with himself. It is true that sometimes I fancied he was so unreserved with me because he was sure he was quite safe, for I was poor. and although I was not ugly I was not handsome. However, on the whole, I was very happy in his society, and there was more than a chance that I should become his wife.

After six months of our acquaintanceship had passed, M., an old schoolfellow of mine, took lodgings near me for the summer. She was a remarkable girl. If she was not beautiful, she was better-looking than I was, and she possessed a something, I know not what, more powerful than beauty to fascinate men. Perhaps it was her unconstrained naturalness. In walking, sitting, standing—whatever she did—her movements and attitudes were not impeded or unduly masked by artificial restrictions. I should not have called her profound, but what she said upon the commonest subjects was interesting, because it was so entirely her own. If she disliked a neighbour, she almost always disliked her for a reason which we saw, directly it was pointed out to us, to be just, but it was generally one which had not been given before. Her talk upon matters externally trivial was thus much more to me than many discourses upon the most important topics. On moral questions she expressed herself without any regard to prejudices. She did not controvert the authenticity of the ordinary standards, but nevertheless behaved as if she herself were her only law. The people in R., her little native borough, considered her to be dangerous, and I myself was once or twice weak enough to wonder that she held on a straight course with so little help from authority, forgetting that its support, in so far as it possesses any vital strength, is derived from the same internal source which supplied strength to her.

When she came to S. she was unwell, and consulted my friend B. He did not at first quite like attending her, and she reported to me with great laughter how she had been told that he had made some inquiries about her from one of her neighbours at home with whom he happened to be acquainted, and how he had manoeuvred in his visits to get the servants or the landlady into the room. I met him soon afterwards, and he informed me that he had a new patient. When he heard that I knew her—I did not say how much I knew—he became inquisitive, and at last, after much beating about the bush, knitting his eyebrows and lowering his voice, he asked me whether I was aware that she was not quite—quite ABOVE SUSPICION! My goodness, how I flamed up! I defended her with vehemence: I exaggerated her prudence and her modesty; I declared, what was the simple truth, that she was the last person in the world against whom such a scandalous insinuation should be directed, and that she was singularly inaccessible to vulgar temptation. I added that notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only remarkably sensitive to any accusation of bad manners, but that upon certain matters she could not endure even a joke. The only quarrel I remember to have had with her was when I lapsed into some commonplace jest about her intimacy with a music-master who gave her lessons. The way in which she took that jest I shall never forget. If I had made it to any other woman, I should have passed on, unconscious of anything inconsistent with myself, but she in an instant made me aware with hardly half a dozen words that I had disgraced myself. I was ashamed, not so much because I had done what was in the abstract wrong, but because it was something which was not in keeping with my real character. I hope it will not be thought that I am prosing if I take this opportunity of saying that the laws peculiar to each of us are those which we are at the least pains to discover and those which we are most prone to neglect. We think we have done our duty when we have kept the commandments common to all of us, but we may perhaps have disgracefully neglected it.

Oh, how that afternoon with B. burnt itself into my memory for ever! I was sitting on my little sofa with books piled round me. He removed a few of the books, and I removed the others. He sat down beside me, and, taking my hand, said he hoped I had forgiven him, and that I would remember that in such a little place he was obliged to be very careful, and to be quite sure of his patients, if they were women. He trusted I should believe that there was no other person IN THE WORLD (the emphasis on that word!) to whom he would have ventured to impart such a secret. I was appeased, especially when, after a few minutes' silence, he took my hand and kissed it, the first and last kiss. He said nothing further, and departed. The next time I saw him he was more than usually deferential, more than ever desirous to come closer to me, and I thought the final word must soon be spoken.

M. remained in S. till far into the autumn, but I did not see much of her. My work had begun again. B. continued to call on me as my health was not quite re-established. We had agreed to read the same author at the same time, in order that we might discuss him together whilst our impressions were still fresh. Somehow his interest in these readings began to flag; he informed me presently that I had now almost, entirely recovered, and weeks often passed without meeting him. One afternoon I was surprised to find M. in my room when I returned from a walk with my pupils. She had been waiting for me nearly half an hour, and I could not at first conjecture the reason. Gradually she drew the conversation towards B. and at last asked me what I thought of him. Instantly I saw what had happened. What I imagined was once mine had been stolen, stolen perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless stolen, my sole treasure. She was rich, she had a father and mother, she had many friends and would certainly have been married had she never seen B. I, as I have said, was almost penniless; I was an orphan, with few friends; he was my first love, and I knew he would be my last.

I was condemned, I foresaw, henceforth to solitude, and that most terrible of all calamities, heart-starvation. What B. had said about M. came into my mind and rose to my lips. I knew, or thought I knew, that if I revealed it to her she would be so angry that she would cast him off. Probably I was mistaken, but in my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost irresistible. I struggled against it, however, and when she pressed me, I praised him and strove in my praise to be sincere. Whether it was something in my tone, quite unintentional, I know not, but she stopped me almost in the middle of a sentence and said she believed I had kept something back which I did not wish her to hear; that she was certain he had talked to me about her, and that she wished to know what he had said. I protested he had never uttered a word which could be interpreted as disparaging her, and she seemed to be content. She kissed me a little more vehemently than usual, and went away. We ought always, I suppose, to be glad when other people are happy, but God knows that sometimes it is very difficult to be so, and that their happiness is hard to bear.

The Elizabethan studies had now altogether come to an end. In about a couple of months I heard that M. and B. were engaged. M. went home, and B. moved into a larger town. In a twelvemonth the marriage took place, and M. wrote to me after her wedding trip. I replied, but she never wrote again. I heard that she had said that I had laid myself out to catch B. and that she was afraid that in so doing I had hinted there was something against her. I heard also that B. had discouraged his wife's correspondence with me, no other reason being given than that he would rather the acquaintanceship should be dropped. The interpretation of this reason by those to whom it was given can be guessed. Did he fear lest I should boast of what I had been to him or should repeat his calumny? Ah, he little knew me if he dreamed that such treachery was possible to me!

I remained at the vicarage for three years. The children grew up and I was obliged to leave, but I continued to teach in different families till I was about five-and-forty. After five-and-forty I could not obtain another situation, and I had to support myself by letting apartments at Brighton. My strength is now failing; I cannot look after my servant properly, nor wait upon my lodgers myself. Those who have to get their living by a lodging-house know what this means and what the end will be. I have occasionally again wished I could have seen my way partially to explain myself to M., and have thought it hard to die misrepresented, but I am glad I have not spoken. I should have disturbed her peace, and I care nothing about justification or misrepresentation now. With eternity so near, what does it matter?

INSCRIPTION ON THE ENVELOPE.

"TO MY NIECE JUDITH,—You have been so kind to your aunt, the only human being, at last, who was left to love her, that she could not refrain from telling you the one passage in her history which is of any importance or interest."



JAMES FORBES



"It is all a lie, and it is hard to believe that people who preach it do not know it to be a lie."

So said James Forbes to Elizabeth Castleton, the young woman to whom he was engaged. She was the daughter of a clergyman, and James, who had been brought up at Rugby and Oxford, was now in his last year at a London hospital, and was going to be a doctor.

"I am sure my father does not know it to be a lie, and I do not myself know it to be a lie."

"I was not thinking of your father, but of the clergy generally, and you DO know it to be a lie."

"It is not true of my brother, and, excepting my father and brother, you have not been in company with parsons, as you call them, for half an hour in your life."

"Do you mean to tell me you have any doubts about this discredited rubbish?"

"If I have I would rather not speak about them now. Jim, dear Jim, let us drop the subject and talk of something else."

He was walking by her side, with his hands in his coat pockets. She drew out one of his hands; he did not return the pressure, and presently released himself.

"I thought you were to be my intellectual companion. I have heard you say yourself that a marriage which is not a marriage of mind is no marriage."

"But, Jim, is there nothing in the world to think about but this?"

"There is nothing so important. Are we to be dumb all our lives about what you say is religion?"

They separated and soon afterwards the engagement was broken off. Jim had really loved Elizabeth, but at that time he was furious against what he called "creeds." He waited for three or four years till he had secured a fair practice, and then married a clever and handsome young woman who wrote poems, and had captivated him by telling him a witty story from Heine. Elizabeth never married.

Thirty years passed, and Jim, now a famous physician, had to go a long distance down the Great Western Railway to attend a consultation. At Bath an elderly lady entered the carriage carrying a handbag with the initials "E. C." upon it. She sat in the seat farthest away from him on the opposite side, and looked at him steadfastly. He also looked at her, but no word was spoken for a minute. He then crossed over, fell on his knees, and buried his head with passionate sobbing on her knees. She put her hands on him and her tears fell.

"Five years," at last he said; "I may live five years with care. She has left me. I will give up everything and go abroad with you. Five years; it is not much, but it will be something, everything. I shall die with your face over me."

The train was slackening speed for Bristol; she bent down and kissed him.

"Dearest Jim," she whispered, "I have waited a long time, but I was sure we should come together again at last. It is enough."

"You will go with me, then?"

Again she kissed him. "It must not be."

Before he could reply the train was stopping at the platform, and a gentleman with a lady appeared at the door. Miss Castleton stepped out and was at once driven away in a carriage with her companions.

He lived three years and then died almost suddenly of the disease which he had foreseen would kill him. He had no children, but few relatives, and his attendant was a hospital nurse. But the day before his death a lady appeared who announced herself as a family friend, and the nurse was superseded. It was Elizabeth: she came to his bedside, and he recognised her.

"Not till this morning," she said, "did I hear you were ill."

"Happy," he cried, "though I die to-night."

Soon afterwards—it was about sundown—he became unconscious; she sat there alone with him till the morning broke, and then he passed away, and she closed his eyes.



ATONEMENT



"You ask me how I lost my foot? You I see that dog?"—an unattractive beast lying before the fire—"well, when I tell you how I came by him you will know how I lost it;" and he then related the following story:-

I was in Westmoreland with my wife and children for a holiday and we had brought our dog with us, for we knew he would be unhappy with the strangers to whom we had let our house. The weather was very wet and our lodgings were not comfortable; we were kept indoors for days together, and my temper, always irritable, became worse. My wife never resisted me when I was in these moods and the absence of opposition provoked me all the more. Had she stood up against me and told me I ought to be ashamed of myself it would have been better for me. One afternoon everything seemed to go wrong. A score of petty vexations, not one of which was of any moment, worked me up to desperation. I threw my book across the room, to the astonishment of my children, and determined to go out, although it was raining hard. My dog, a brown retriever, was lying on the mat just outside the door, and I nearly fell over him. "God damn you!" said I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am not squeamish, but I was frightened directly the oath had escaped my lips. I felt as if I had created something horrible which I could not annihilate, and that it would wait for me and do me some mischief. The dog kept closely to my heels for about a mile and I could not make him go on in front. Usually the least word of encouragement or even the mere mention of his name would send him scampering with delight in advance. I began to think of something else, but in about a quarter of an hour I looked round and found he was not behind me. I whistled and called, but he did not come. In a renewed rage, which increased with every step I took, I turned back to seek him. Suddenly I came upon him lying dead by the roadside. Never shall I forget that shock—the reproach, the appeal of that poor lifeless animal! I stroked him, I kissed him, I whispered his name in his ear, but it was all in vain. I lifted up his beautiful broad paw which he was wont to lay on my knee, I held it between my hands, and when I let it go it fell heavily to the ground. I could not carry him home, and with bitter tears and a kind of dread I drew him aside a little way up the hill behind a rock. I went to my lodgings, returned towards dusk with a spade, dug his grave in a lonely spot near the bottom of a waterfall where he would never be disturbed, and there I buried him, reverently smoothing the turf over him. What a night that was for me! I was haunted incessantly by the vivid image of the dead body and by the terror which accompanies a great crime. I had repaid all his devotion with horrible cruelty. I had repented, but he would never know it. It was not the dog only which I had slain; I had slain Divine faithfulness and love. That GOD DAMN YOU sounded perpetually in my ears. The Almighty had registered and executed the curse, but it had fallen upon the murderer and not on the victim. When I rose in the morning I distinctly felt the blow of the kick in my foot, and the sensation lasted all day. For weeks I was in a miserable condition. A separate consciousness seemed to establish itself in this foot; there was nothing to be seen and no pain, but there was a dull sort of pressure of which I could not rid myself. If I slept I dreamed of the dog, and generally dreamed I was caressing him, waking up to the dreadful truth of the corpse on the path in the rain. I got it into my head—for I was half- crazy—that only by some expiation I should be restored to health and peace; but how to make any expiation I could not tell. Unhappy is the wretch who longs to atone for a sin and no atonement is prescribed to him!

One night I was coming home late and heard the cry of "Fire!" I ran down the street and found a house in flames. The fire-escape was at the window, and had rescued a man, his wife and child. Every living creature was safe, I was told, save a dog in the front room on the ground-floor. I pushed the people aside, rushed in, half-blinded with smoke, and found him. I could not escape by the passage, and dropped out of the window into the area with him in my arms. I fell heavily on THAT foot, and when I was helped up the steps I could not put it to the ground. "You may have him for your pains," said his owner to me; "he is a useless cur. I wouldn't have ventured the singeing of a hair for him." "May I?" I replied, with an eagerness which must have seemed very strange. He was indeed not worth half a crown, but I drew him closely to me and took him into the cab. I was in great agony, and when the surgeon came it was discovered that my ankle was badly fractured. An attempt was made to set it, but in the end it was decided that the foot must be amputated. I rejoiced when I heard the news, and on the day on which the operation was performed I was calm and even cheerful. Our own doctor who came with the surgeon told him I had "a highly nervous temperament," and both of them were amazed at my fortitude. The dog is a mongrel, as you see, but he loves me, and if you were to offer me ten thousand golden guineas I would not part with him.



LETTERS FROM MY AUNT ELEANOR {180} TO HER DAUGHTER SOPHIA, AND A FRAGMENT FROM MY AUNT'S DIARY.



January 31, 1837.

My Dearest Child,—It is now a month since your father died. It was a sore trial to me that you should have broken down, and that you could not be here when he was laid in his grave, but I would not for worlds have allowed you to make the journey. I am glad I forced you away. The doctor said he would not answer for the consequences unless you were removed. But I must not talk, not even to you. I will write again soon.

Your most affectionate mother,

ELEANOR CHARTERIS.

February 5, 1837.

I have been alone in the library from morning to night every day. How foolish all the books look! There is nothing in them which can do me any good. He is NOT: what is there which can alter that fact? Had he died later I could have borne it better. I am only fifty years old, and may have long to wait. I always knew I loved him devotedly; now I see how much I depended on him. I had become so knit up with him that I imagined his strength to be mine. His support was so continuous and so soft that I was unconscious of it. How clear-headed and resolute he was in difficulty and danger! You do not remember the great fire? We were waked up out of our sleep; the flames spread rapidly; a mob filled the street, shouting and breaking open doors. The man in charge of the engines lost his head, but your father was perfectly cool. He got on horseback, directed two or three friends to do the same; they galloped into the town and drove the crowd away. He controlled all the operations and saved many lives and many thousands of pounds. Is there any happiness in the world like that of the woman who hangs on such a husband?

February 10, 1837.

I feel as if my heart would break if I do not see you, but I cannot come to your Aunt's house just now. She is very kind, but she would be unbearable to me. Have patience: the sea air is doing you good; you will soon be able to walk, and then you can return. O, to feel your head upon my neck! I have many friends, but I have always needed a human being to whom I was everything. To your father I believe I was everything, and that thought was perpetual heaven to me. My love for him did not make me neglect other people. On the contrary, it gave them their proper value. Without it I should have put them by. When a man is dying for want of water he cares for nothing around him. Satisfy his thirst, and he can then enjoy other pleasures. I was his first love, he was my first, and we were lovers to the end. I know the world would be dark to you also were I to leave it. Perhaps it is wicked of me to rejoice that you would suffer so keenly. I cannot tell how much of me is pure love and how much of me is selfishness. I remember my uncle's death. For ten days or so afterwards everybody in the house looked solemn, and occasionally there was a tear, but at the end of a fortnight there was smiling and at the end of a month there was laughter. I was but a child then, but I thought much about the ease and speed with which the gap left by death was closed.

February 20, 1837.

In a fortnight you will be here? The doctor really believes you will be able to travel? I am glad you can get out and taste the sea air. I count the hours which must pass till I see you. A short week, and then- -"the day after to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow of that day," and so I shall be able to reach forward to the Monday. It is strange that the nearer Monday comes the more impatient I am.

March 3, 1837.

With what sickening fear I opened your letter! I was sure it contained some dreadful news. You have decided not to come till Wednesday, because your cousin Tom can accompany you on that day. I KNOW you are quite right. It is so much better, as you are not strong, that Tom should look after you, and it would be absurd that you should make the journey two days before him. I should have reproved you seriously if you had done anything so foolish. But those two days are hard to bear. I shall not meet you at the coach, nor shall I be downstairs. Go straight to the library; I shall be there by myself.

DIARY.

January 1, 1838.—Three days ago she died. Henceforth there is no living creature to whom my existence is of any real importance. Crippled as she was, she could never have married. I might have held her as long as she lived. She could have expected no love but mine. God forgive me! Perhaps I did unconsciously rejoice in that disabled limb because it kept her closer to me. Now He has taken her from me. I may have been wicked, but has He no mercy? "I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God." An answer in anger could better be borne than this impregnable silence.

January 3rd.—A day of snow and bitter wind. There were very few at the grave, and I should have been better pleased if there had been none. What claim had they to be there? I have come home alone, and they no doubt are comforting themselves with the reflection that it is all over except the half-mourning. Her death makes me hate them. Mr. Maxwell, our rector, told me when my child was ill to remember that I had no right to her. "Right!" what did he mean by that stupid word? How trouble tries words! All I can say is that from her birth I had owned her, and that now, when I want her most, I am dispossessed. "Self, self"—I know the reply, but it is unjust, for I would have stood up cheerfully to be shot if I could have saved her pain. Doubly unjust, for my passion for her was a blessing to her as well as to me.

January 6th.—Henceforth I suppose I shall have to play with people, to pretend to take an interest in their clothes and their parties, or, with the superior sort, to discuss politics or books. I care nothing for their rags or their gossip, for Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. James Montgomery. I must learn how to take the tip of a finger instead of a hand, and to accept with gratitude comfits when I hunger for bread- -I, who have known—but I dare say nothing even to myself of my hours with him—I, who have heard Sophy cry out in the night for me; I, who have held her hand and have prayed by her bedside.

January 10th.—I must be still. I have learned this lesson before—that speech even to myself does harm. If I admit no conversation nor debate with myself, I certainly will not admit the chatter of outsiders. Mr. Maxwell called again to-day. "Not a syllable on that subject," said I when he began in the usual strain. He then suggested that as this house was too large for me, and must have what he called "melancholy associations," I should move. He had suggested this before, when my husband died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other people despise. To me they are realities and a law. I shall stay where I am. "A villa," forsooth, on the outskirts of the town! My existence would be fractured: it will at least preserve its continuity here. Across the square I can see the house in which I was born, and I can watch the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and down it just as they did forty years ago—not the same persons, but in a sense the same people. My brother will call me extravagant if I remain here. He buys a horse and does not consider it extravagant, and my money is not wasted if I spend it in the only way in which it is of any value to me.

January 12th.—I had thought I could be dumb, but I cannot. My sorrow comes in rushes. I lift up my head above the waves for an instant, and immediately I am overwhelmed—"all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me." My nights are a terror to me, and I fear for my reason. That last grip of Sophy's hand is distinctly on mine now, palpable as the pressure of a fleshly hand could be. It is strange that without any external circumstances to account for it, she and I often thought the same things at the same moment. She seemed to know instinctively what was passing in my mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any unworthy thought, feeling sure that she would detect it. Blood of my blood was she. She said "goodbye" to me with perfect clearness, and in a quarter of an hour she had gone. In that quarter of an hour there could not be the extinction of so much. Such a creature as Sophy could not instantaneously NOT BE. I cannot believe it, but still the volume of my life here is closed, the story is at an end; what remains will be nothing but a few notes on what has gone before.