That ready wit, which you so partially allow me, and so justly Sir Charles Williams, may create many admirers; but, take my word for it, it makes few friends. It shines and dazzles like the noonday sun, but, like that, too, is very apt to scorch, and therefore is always feared. The milder morning and evening light and heat of that planet soothe and calm our minds. Never seek for wit; if it presents itself, well and good; but even in that case, let your judgement interpose, and take care that it be not at the expense of anybody.

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MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

The Letters of Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 B.C. Educated under the best teachers in the Greek culture of the day, he won a speedy reputation at the Bar and developed a keen interest in the various schools of Greek philosophy. His able and intrepid exposure of Catiline's conspiracy brought him the highest popularity, but he was attacked, in turn, by the ignoble Clodius, who obtained his banishment in 58 B.C. In the ensuing conflict between Caesar and Pompey, Cicero was attached to the party of Pompey and the senate, as against Caesar and the people. He kept clear of the conspiracy against Caesar's life, but after the assassination he undertook an oratorical campaign against Antony, and was entrusted with the government of the city. But on the return of the triumvirate, Octavianus, Antony, and Lepidus, Cicero's name was included in the list of those who were to be done away, and he was murdered in the year 43 B.C., at 63 years of age. The correspondence of the great Roman advocate, statesman, and man of letters, preserved for us by the care of his freedman Tiro, is the richest and most interesting collection of its kind in the world's archives. The many-sided personality of their writer, his literary charm, the frankness with which he set down his opinions, hopes, and anxieties, the profound historical interest of this period of the fall of the republic, and the intimate glimpses which we get of Roman life and manners, combine to make Cicero's "Letters" perennially attractive. The series begins in B.C. 68, when Cicero was 38 years of age, and runs on to within a short time of his death in B.C. 43. The letters, of which there are 800, are addressed to several correspondents, of whom the most frequent and important is Titus Pomponius, surnamed Atticus, whose sister had married Cicero's brother Quintus. Atticus was a wealthy and cultivated man who had lived many years in Athens. He took no side in the perilous politics of the time, but Cicero relied always on his affectionate counsel, and on his ever-ready service in domestic matters.

To Atticus

There is nothing I need so much just now as someone with whom I may discuss all my anxieties, someone with whom I may speak quite frankly and without pretences. My brother, who is all candour and kindness, is away. Metellus is empty as the air, barren as the desert. And you, who have so often relieved my cares and sorrows by your conversation and counsel, and have always been my support in politics and my confidant in all private affairs, the partner of all my thoughts and plans—where are you?

I am so utterly deserted that I have no other comfort but in my wife and daughter and dear little Cicero. For those ambitious friendships with great people are all show and tinsel, and contain nothing that satisfies inwardly. Every morning my house swarms with visitors; I go down to the Forum attended by troops of friends; but in the whole crowd there is no one with whom I can freely jest, or whom I can trust with an intimate word. It is for you that I wait; I need your presence; I even implore you to come.

I have a load of anxieties and troubles, of which, if you could listen to them in one of our walks together, you would go far to relieve me. I have to keep to myself the stings and vexations of my domestic troubles; I dare not trust them to this letter and to an unknown courier. I don't want you to think them greater than they are, but they haunt and worry me, and there is no friendly counsel to alleviate them. As for the republic, though my courage and will toward it are not diminished, yet it has again and again itself evaded remedy. If I were to tell you all that has happened since you went away, you would certainly say that the Roman state must be nearing its fall. The Clodian scandal was, I think, the first episode after your departure. On that occasion, thinking that I had an opportunity of cutting down and restraining the licentiousness of the young men, I exerted myself with all my might, and brought into play every power of my mind, not in hostility to an individual, but in the hope of correcting and healing the state. But a venal and profligate verdict in the matter has brought upon the republic the gravest injury. And see what has taken place since.

A consul has been imposed upon us whom no one, unless a philosopher like ourselves, can look at without a sigh. What an injury that is! Again, although a decree of the senate with regard to bribery and corruption has been passed, no law has been carried through; and the senate has been harassed beyond endurance and the Roman knights have been alienated. So, in one year, two pillars of the republic, which had been established by me alone, have been overturned; the authority of the senate has been destroyed and the concord of the two orders has been violated.

To Lucius Lucceius, the Historian B.C. 56

I have often intended to speak to you about the subject of this letter, and have always been restrained by a certain awkward bashfulness. But a letter will not blush; I can make my request at a distance. It is this: I am incredibly eager, and, after all, there is nothing disgraceful in my eagerness, that the history which you are writing should give prominence to my name, and praise it frequently. You have often given me to understand that I should receive that honour, but you must pardon my impatience to see it actually conferred. I have always expected that your work would be of great excellence, but the part which I have lately seen exceeds all that I had imagined, and has inflamed me with the keenest desire that my career should at once be celebrated in your records. What I desire is not only that my name should go down to future ages, but also that even while I live I may see my reputation endorsed by your authority and illumined by your genius.

Of course, I know very well that you are sufficiently occupied with the period on which you are engaged. But, realising that your account of the Italian and Marian civil wars is almost completed, and that you are already entering upon our later annals, I cannot refrain from asking you to consider whether it would be better to weave my career into the general texture of your work, or to mould it into a distinct episode. Several Greek writers have given examples of the latter method; thus Callisthenes, Timaeus, and Polybius, treating respectively of the Trojan war, and of the wars of Pyrrhus and of Numantia, detached their narratives of these conflicts from their main treatises; and it is open to you, in a similar way, to treat of the Catiline conspiracy independently of the main current of your history.

In suggesting this course, I do not suppose that it will make much difference to my reputation; my point is rather that my desire to appear in your work will be satisfied so much the earlier if you proceed to deal with my affairs separately and by anticipation, instead of waiting until they arise as elements in the general course of affairs. Besides, by concentrating your mind on one episode and on one person, your matter will be much more detailed and your treatment of it far more elaborate.

I am conscious, of course, that my request is not exactly a modest one. It is to lay a task on you which your occupations may well justify you in refusing; and, again, it is to ask you to celebrate actions which you may not think altogether worthy of so much honour. But having already passed beyond the bounds of modesty, I may as well show myself boldly shameless. Well, then, I implore you repeatedly, not only to praise my conduct more warmly than may be justified by your feeling with regard to it, but even, if necessary, to transgress the laws of history. One of your prefaces indicates, most acceptably and plainly, your personal amity; but just as Hercules, according to Xenophon, was incorruptible by pleasure, so you have made a point of resisting the influence of private feeling. I ask you not to resist this partiality; to give to affection somewhat more than truth can afford.

If I can prevail upon you to fall in with my proposal, I am confident that you will find the subject not unworthy of your genius and of your eloquence. The period from the rise of Catiline's conspiracy to my return from banishment should furnish a memoir of moderate size, and the story of my fortunes would supply you with a variety of incident, such as might be made, in your hands, a work of great charm and interest. For these reasons you will best meet my wishes if you determine to make a separate book out of the drama of my life and fortunes.

To Marcus Marius B.C. 55

If it was ill-health that kept you from coming up to town for the games, I must set down your absence to fortune and not to your own wisdom. But if it was because you despise these shows which the world admires so much, then I congratulate you on your health and your good sense alike. You were left almost alone in your charming country, and I have no doubt that on mornings when the rest of us, half asleep, were sitting out stale farces, you were reading in your library.

The games were magnificent, but not what you would have cared for. At least, they were far from my taste. In honour of the occasion, certain veteran actors returned to the stage, which they had left long ago, as I imagined, in the interests of their own reputation. My old friend Aesop, in particular, had failed so much that no one could be sorry he had retired; his voice gave way altogether. AS for the rest of the festival, it was not even so attractive as far less ambitious shows generally are; the pageants were on such an enormous scale that light-hearted enjoyment was out of the question. You need not mind having missed them. There is no pleasure, for instance, in seeing six hundred mules at once in "Clytaemnestra," or a whole army of gaily-dressed horse and foot engaged in a theatrical battle. These spectacular effects delight the crowd, but not you. If you were listening to your reader Protogenes, you had greater pleasure than fell to any of us. The big-game hunts, continued through five days, were certainly magnificent. Yet, after all, how can a person of any refinement enjoy seeing a helpless man torn by a wild beast of enormous strength, or a noble animal dying under a spear thrust? If there is anything worth seeing in exhibitions of that kind, you have often seen it; there was nothing new to me in all I saw. On the last day the elephants were brought out, and though the populace were mightily astonished they were not by any means pleased. On the contrary, a wave of pity went through them, and there was a general impression that these great creatures have something in common with man.

To Atticus, in Rome Laodicea, B.C. 51

I reached Laodicea on July 31, so you may reckon the year of my government of the province from that day. Nothing could be more eagerly awaited or more warmly welcomed than my arrival. But you would hardly believe how the whole affair bores me. The wide scope of my mind has no sufficient field, and my well-known industry is wasted here. Imagine! I administer justice at Laodicea, while A. Plotius presides in the courts of Rome! And while our friend is at the head of so great an army, I have, in name only, two miserable legions! But all that is nothing; what I miss is the glamour of life, the Forum, the city, my own house, and—you. But I will bear it as best I can, so long as it is for one year only. If my term is extended, it is all over with me. But this may easily be prevented, if only you will stay in Rome.

You ask about my doings. Well, I am living at enormous expense, and am wonderfully pleased with my way of life. My strict abstinence from all extortion, based on your counsels, is such that I shall probably have to raise a loan to pay off what you lent me. My predecessor, Appius, has left open wounds in the province; I refrain from irritating them. I am writing on the eve of starting for the camp in Lycaonia, and thence I mean to proceed to Mount Taurus to fight Maeragenes. All this is no proper burden for me; but I will bear it. Only, as you love me, let it not exceed the year.

To Atticus, a Few Days Later Cilicia

The couriers of the tax-farmers are just going, and, though I am actually travelling on the road, I must steal a moment to assure you that I have not forgotten your injunctions. I am sitting by the roadside to jot down a few notes about matters which really need a long letter. I entered, on July 31, with a most enthusiastic reception, into a devastated and utterly ruined province. During the three days at Laodicea, three at Apamea, and three at Synnada, I heard of nothing but the actual inability of the people to pay the poll-tax; everywhere they have been sold up; the towns were filled with groans and lamentations. They have been ravaged rather by a wild beast than by a man. They are tired of life itself.

Well, these unfortunate towns are a good deal relieved when they find that neither I, nor my lieutenants, nor quaestor, nor any of my suite, is costing them a penny. I not only refuse to accept forage, which is allowed by the Julian law, but even firewood. We take from them not a single thing except beds and a roof to cover us; and rarely so much even as that, for we generally camp out in tents. The result is, we are welcomed by crowds coming out to meet us from the countryside, the villages, the houses, everywhere. By Hercules, the mere approach of your Cicero puts new life into them, such reports have spread of his justice and moderation and clemency! He has exceeded every expectation. I hear nothing of the Parthians. We are hastening to join the army, which is two days distant.

To Marcus Caelius Rufus Asia, B.C. 50

Nothing could have been more apt or judicious than your management of the application to the senate for a public thanksgiving to me. The arrangement of the matter has been just what I desired; not only has it been passed through quickly, but Hirrus, your rival and mine, associated himself with Cato's unbounded praise of my achievements. I have some hope that this may lead to a triumph; you should be prepared for that.

I am glad to hear that you think well of Dolabella and like him; and, as you say, my Tullia's good sense may moderate him. May they be fortunate together! I hope that he will prove a good son-in-law, and am sure that your friendship will help to that end.

About public affairs I am more anxious than I can say. I like Curio; I hope Caesar may prove himself an honourable man; for Pompey I would willingly give my life; yet, after all, I love no man so dearly as I love the republic. You do not seem to be taking any very prominent part in these difficulties; but you are somewhat tied by being at once a good patriot and a loyal friend.

To Atticus, in Rome Athens, B.C. 50

I arrived in Athens two days ago on my way home from my province, and received your letter. I have been appalled by what you tell me about Caesar's legions. I beg you, in the name of fortune, to apply all your love for me and all your incomparable wisdom to the consideration of my whole situation. I seem to see a dreadful contest coming, unless some divinity have pity on the republic—such a contest as has never been before. I do not ask you to think of this catastrophe; after all, it is a calamity for all the world as well as for me.

What I want is that you should go into my personal dilemma. It was you who advised me to secure the friendship of both parties; and much I wish that I had attended from the first to your counsels. You persuaded me to embrace the one, because he had done so much for me, and the other, because he was powerful; and so I succeeded in engaging the affection of both.

It seemed then quite clear that a friendship with Pompey need involve no wrong to the republic, and that an allegiance to Caesar implied no hostility to Pompey—such, at that time, was their union. But now, as you show and as I plainly see, there will be a duel to the death; and each, unless one of them is feigning, regards me as his. Pompey has no doubt of it, for he knows that I approve of his political principles. Moreover, I have a letter from each of them, arriving at the same time as yours, indicating that neither of them values anyone more than me. What am I to do?

If the worst comes to the worst, I know what to do. In the case of civil war I am clear that it is better to be conquered with the one than to conquer with the other. But I am in doubt how to meet the questions which will be in active discussion when I arrive—whether he may be a candidate in his absence from Rome, whether he must not dismiss his army, and so on. When the president calls my name in the senate—"Speak, Marcus Tullius!" am I to say, "Please wait until I have had a talk with Atticus"?

The time for hedging has passed. Shall it be against Caesar? What then becomes of our pledges to one another? Or shall I change my political opinions? I could not face Pompey, nor men and women—you yourself would be the first to reproach me. You may laugh at what I am going to say. How I wish I were even now back in my province! Though nothing could be more disagreeable. By the way, I ought to tell you that all those virtues which adorned the early days of my government, which your letters praised to the skies, were very superficial. How difficult a thing is virtue!

To L. Papirius Rome, B.C. 46

I am writing at dinner at the house of Volumnius; we lay down at three o'clock; your friends Atticus and Verrius are to my right and left. Are you surprised that we pass the time of our bondage so gaily? What else should I do? Tell me, student of philosophy! shall I make myself miserable? What good would it serve, or how long would it last? But you say, "Spend your days in reading." As a matter of fact, I do nothing else; it's my only way to keep alive. But one cannot read all day; and when I have put away my books I don't know any better way of spending the evening than at dinner.

I like dining out. I like to talk without restraint, saying just what comes to my tongue, and laughing care and sorrow from my heart. You are no more serious yourself. I heard how you mocked a grave philosopher when he invited questions: you said that the question that haunted your mornings was, "Where shall I dine to-day?" He thought, poor fool, that you were going to ask whether there was one heaven or many.

I give part of the day to reading or writing; then, not to shut myself up from my friends, I dine with them. You need not be afraid of my coming; you will receive a guest of more humour than appetite.

To L. Minucius Basilus Rome, March, B.C. 44

My congratulations! I rejoice with you! I love you! I have your interests at heart! I pray you love me, and let me know how you are, and what is happening. [Written to one of Caesar's assassins; apparently, immediately after the event.]

To Atticus May, B.C. 44

I see I have been a fool to take comfort in the Ides of March. We had indeed the courage of men, but no more wisdom than children have. The tree was cut down, but its roots remained, and it is springing up again. The tyrant was removed, but the tyranny is with us still. Let us therefore return to the "Tusculan Disputations" which you often quote, with their reasons why death is not to be feared.

* * * * *



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Biographia Literaria

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, on October 21, 1772. He was educated at Christ Hospital where Charles Lamb was among his friends. He read very widely but was without any particular ambition or practical bent, and had undertaken to apprentice himself to a shoemaker, when his head-master interfered. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791. During the second year of his residence at the University, he left Cambridge, on account of an unsuccessful love affair, and enlisted in the regiment of dragoons under an assumed name. He soon secured his discharge from the army and went to Bristol where he met Southey. In 1795 he married Miss Fricker, and removed to Nether Stowey, a village in Somersetshire, where he wrote the "Ancient Mariner" and the first part of "Christabel." While here he became a close friend of Wordsworth. Coleridge originally intended his "Biographia Literaria" to be a kind of apologia, in other words, to put forth his claims for public recognition; and although he began the book with this intention, it subsequently developed into a book containing some of his most admirable criticism. He gives voice to a crowd of miscellaneous reflections, suggested, as the work got under way, by popular events, embracing politics, religion, philosophy, poetry, and also finally settling the controversy that had arisen in respect of the "Lyrical Ballads." The autobiographical parts of the "Biographia" are confined solely to his intellectual experiences, and the influences to which his life was subjected. As a treatise on criticism, especially on Wordsworth, the book is of supreme importance. "Here," says Principal Shairp, "are canons of judgement, not mechanical, but living." Published in 1817, it was followed shortly after his death by a still more important edition with annotations and an introduction by the poet's daughter Sara.

I.—The Nature of Poetic Diction

Little of what I have here written concerns myself personally; the narrative is designed chiefly to introduce my principles of politics, religion, and poetry. But my special purpose is to decide what is the true nature of poetic diction, and to define the real poetic character of the works of Mr. Wordsworth, whose writings have been the subject of so much controversy.

At school I had the advantage of a very sensible though severe master. I learned from him that poetry, even that of the loftiest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that of science, and more difficult, because more subtle. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. In our English compositions he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. In fancy, I can almost hear him now exclaiming: "Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean!" Nay, certain introductions, similes, and examples were placed by name on a list of interdiction.

I had just entered my seventeenth year when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles were made known to me, and the genial influence of his poetry, so tender, yet so manly, so natural and real, yet so dignified and harmonious, recalled me from a premature bewilderment in metaphysics and theology. Well were it for me, perhaps, if I had never relapsed into the same mental disease.

The poetry of Pope and his followers, a school of French poetry invigorated by English understanding, which had predominated from the last century, consisted of prose thoughts translated into poetic language. I was led to the conjecture that this style had been kept up by, if it did not wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses. I began to defend the use of natural language, such as "I will remember thee," instead of "Thy image on her wing, Before my fancy's eye shall memory bring;" and adduced, as examples of simplicity, the diction of Greek poets, and of our elder English poets, from Chaucer to Milton. I arrived at two critical aphorisms, as the criteria of poetic style: first, that not the poem which we have read with the greatest pleasure but that to which we return with the greatest pleasure possesses the genuine power; and, second, that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance, are so far vicious in their diction.

One great distinction between even the characteristic faults of our elder poets and the false beauties of the moderns is this. In the former, from Donne to Cowley, we find the most fantastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but the most pure and genuine mother English; in the latter, the most obvious thoughts, in language the most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect and to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual yet broken and heterogeneous imagery. The one sacrificed the heart to the head, the other both heart and head to drapery.

II.—In Praise of Southey

Reflect on the variety and extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as a historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with as many just and original reflections, in a style so lively yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy.

Still more striking to those who are familiar with the general habits of genius will appear the poet's matchless industry and perseverance in his pursuits, the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits, his generous submission to tasks of transitory interest. But as Southey possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he the master even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which might be envied by the mere man of business, lose all semblance of formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and healthful cheerfulness of his spirit. Always employed, his friends find him always at leisure.

No less punctual in trifles than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains and discomforts which irregular men scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility. He bestows all the pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on those around him, which perfect consistency and absolute reliability cannot but bestow. I know few men who so well deserve the character which an ancient attributes to Marcus Cato—namely, that he was likest virtue, inasmuch as he seemed to act aright, not in obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature which could not act otherwise.

As a son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination.

When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey the poet only that will supply them with the scanty materials for the latter. They will not fail to record that as no man was ever a more constant friend, never had poet more friends and honourers among the good of all parties, and that quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism, were his only enemies.

III.—Wordsworth's Early Poems

During the last year of my residence at Cambridge I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled "Descriptive Sketches," and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the whole poem there is a harshness and acerbity, combined with words and images all aglow, which might recall gorgeous blossoms rising out of a hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity.

I was in my twenty-fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth personally, and by that time the occasional obscurities which had arisen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once arbitrary and fantastic, which alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius. There was only evident the union of deep feeling with profound thought; and the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world, around forms, incidents, and situations of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops.

To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all His works With feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar—this is the character and privilege of genius. And it is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence.

This excellence, which constitutes the character of Mr. Wordsworth's mind, I no sooner felt than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me to suspect that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power. Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful, mind. The division between fancy and imagination is no less grounded in nature than that of delirium from mania; or of Otway's

Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships amber,

from Shakespeare's

What! Have his daughters brought him to this pass?

IV.—The Philosophical Critic

As materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity, so common among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions, and, vice versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is unimaginable. If God grant health and permission, this subject will be treated of systematically in a work which I have many years been preparing on the Productive Logos, human and divine, with, and as an introduction to, a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John.

To make myself intelligible, so far as my present subject, the imagination, requires, it will be sufficient briefly to observe: (1) That all association demands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated. (2) The hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications of our own being, which alone—according to this system—we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motion in our own brains. (3) That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation nor precludes the necessity of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which, at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without, creates anew for himself the correspondent object. The formation of a copy is not solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; the copyist of Raffael's "Transfiguration" must repeat more or less perfectly the process of Raffael.

The imagination, therefore, is essentially creative. I consider imagination either as primary or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.

The secondary I consider as an echo of the former; it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealise and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects are essentially fixed and dead.

Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and definites. The fancy is no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, and blended with, and modified by, choice. But, equally with the ordinary memory, it must receive its materials ready made, from the law of association.

V.—What is a Poem?

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, moonlight or sunset, diffuse over a familiar landscape appeared to represent the practicability of combining both.

The thought suggested itself that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents 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. 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 them.

In this idea originated the plan of the "Lyrical Ballads," in which my endeavours were to be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to attempt to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from 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, 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 "Christabel." But the number of Mr. Wordsworth's poems was so much greater that my compositions appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter.

With many parts of Mr. Wordsworth's preface to the "Lyrical Ballads," in which he defines his poetic creed, I have never concurred, and I think it expedient to declare in what points I coincide with his opinions, and in what points I differ.

A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the difference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. The mere addition of metre does not in itself entitle a work to the name of poem, for nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise. Our definition of a poem may be thus worded. "A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part."

For, in a legitimate poem, the parts must mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonising with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.

VI.—A Criticism of Wordsworth

Let me enumerate the prominent defects, and then the excellences, of Mr. Wordsworth's published poems. The first characteristic, though only an occasional defect, is the inconstancy of style; the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity to a style not only unimpassioned, but undistinguished. He sinks too often, too abruptly, into the language of prose. The second defect is a certain matter-of-factness in some of his poems, consisting in a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representations of objects, and in the insertion of accidental circumstances, such as are superfluous in poetry. Thirdly, there is in certain poems an undue predilection for the dramatic form; and in these cases either the thoughts and diction are different from those of the poet, so that there arises an incongruity of style, or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species of ventriloquism. The fourth class includes prolixity, repetition, and an eddying instead of progression of thought. His fifth defect is the employment of thoughts and images too great for the subject; an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal.

To these occasional defects I may oppose the following excellences. First, an austere purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Secondly, a correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won not from books, but from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. Third, the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curious felicity of his diction. Fourth, the perfect truth of Nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from Nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre.

Fifth, a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy of a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The superscription and the image of the Creator still remain legible to him under the dark lines with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or cross-barred it. In this mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer.

Lastly, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and is sometimes recondite. But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own. To employ his own words, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects

Add the gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream.

* * * * *



WILLIAM COWPER

Letters Written in the Years 1782-1790

William Cowper, son of a chaplain to George II., was born at Berkhampstead Parsonage on November 15, 1731. After being educated at Westminster School, he studied law for three years, and in 1752 took up his residence, for a further course, in the Middle Temple. Though called to the Bar in 1754, he never practised, for he profoundly hated law, while he passionately loved literary pursuits. His friends having provided him with sufficient funds for subsistence, in addition to a small patrimony left by his father, Cowper went to live at Huntingdon, where he formed a deep attachment with the Unwin family, which proved to be a lifelong friendship. The latter years of his life were spent at Olney. He achieved wide fame by the publication of "The Task," which was pronounced by many critics the greatest poem of the period. The main characteristics of his style are its simplicity, its sympathy with nature and with ordinary life, and its unaffected devotional accent. But Cowper is now appreciated more for his incomparably delightful epistles to his friends than for his poetry. Few letters in our language can compare with these for incisive but kindly and gentle irony; innocent but genuine fun; keen and striking acumen, and tender melancholy. Cowper died on April 25, 1800.

To the Rev. John Newton

Olney, January 13, 1782. I am rather pleased that you have adopted other sentiments respecting our intended present to Dr. Johnson. I allow him to be a man of gigantic talents and most profound learning, nor have I any doubts about the universality of his knowledge; but, by what I have seen of his animadversions on the poets, I feel myself much disposed to question, in many instances, either his candour or his taste.

He finds fault too often, like a man that, having sought it very industriously, is at last obliged to stick it on a pin's point, and look at it through a microscope; and I could easily convict him of having denied many beauties, and overlooked more. Whether his judgement be in itself defective, or whether it be warped by collateral considerations, a writer upon such subjects as I have chosen would probably find but little mercy at his hands.

To the Rev. William Unwin

I say amen, with all my heart, to your observations on religious characters. Men who profess themselves adepts in mathematical knowledge, in astronomy, or jurisprudence, are generally as well qualified as they would appear. The reason may be that they are always liable to detection should they attempt to impose upon mankind, and therefore take care to be what they pretend. In religion alone a profession is often taken up and slovenly carried on, because, forsooth, candour and charity require us to hope the best, and to judge favourably of our neighbour, and because it is easy to deceive the ignorant, who are a great majority, upon this subject.

Let a man attach himself to a particular party, contend furiously for what are properly called evangelical doctrines, and enlist himself under the banner of some popular preacher, and the business is done. Behold a Christian! a saint! a phoenix! In the meantime, perhaps, his heart and his temper, and even his conduct, are unsanctified; possibly less exemplary than those of some avowed infidels. No matter—he can talk—he has the shibboleth of the true Church—the Bible in his pocket, and a head well stored with notions.

But the quiet, humble, modest, and peaceable person, who is in his practice what the other is only in his profession, who hates a noise, and therefore makes none; who, knowing the snares that are in the world, keeps himself as much out of it as he can, is the Christian that will always stand highest in the estimation of those who bring all characters to the test of true wisdom, and judge of the tree by its fruit.

To the Same

Olney, August 3, 1782. It is a sort of paradox, but it is true; we are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger. Both sides of this apparent contradiction were lately verified in my experience. Passing from the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens—for we have so many in our retinue—looking with fixed attention on something which lay on the threshold of a door nailed up. I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—a viper! the largest that I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the aforesaid hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips. I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and, returning in a few minutes, missed him; he was gone, and I feared had escaped me. Still, however, the kitten sat, watching immovably, on the same spot. I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the door and the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into the yard.

I went round, and there found him in close conversation with the old cat, whose curiosity, being excited by so novel an appearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with her fore foot, with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophic inquiry and examination. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed on him an act of decapitation which, though not immediately mortal, proved so in the end.

Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he indeed, when in the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself in any of the out-houses, it is hardly possible but that some member of the family must have been bitten.

To the Same

Olney, November 4, 1782. You tell me that John Gilpin made you laugh to tears, and that the ladies at court are delighted with my poems. Much good may they do them! May they become as wise as the writer wished them, and they will be much happier than he. I know there is in the book that wisdom that cometh from above, because it was from above that I received it. May they receive it too! For whether they drink it out of the cistern, or whether it falls upon them immediately from the clouds—as it did on me—is all one. It is the water of life, which whosoever shall drink it shall thirst no more. As to the famous horseman above mentioned, he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of merriment. At least we find him so, and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them. You are at liberty to deal with them as you please.

To Mrs. Newton

Olney, November 23, 1782. Accept my thanks for the trouble you take in vending my poems, and still more for the interest you take in their success. To be approved by the great, as Horace observed many years ago, is fame indeed.

The winter sets in with great severity. The rigour of the season, and the advanced price of grain, are very threatening to the poor. It is well with those that can feed upon a promise, and wrap themselves up warm in the robe of salvation. A good fireside and a well-spread table are but very indifferent substitutes for those better accommodations; so very indifferent, that I would gladly exchange them both for the rags and the unsatisfied hunger of the poorest creature that looks forward with hope to a better world, and weeps tears of joy in the midst of penury and distress.

What a world is this! How mysteriously governed, and in appearance left to itself! One man, having squandered thousands at a gaming-table, finds it convenient to travel; gives his estate to somebody to manage for him; amuses himself a few years in France and Italy; returns, perhaps, wiser than he went, having acquired knowledge which, but for his follies, he would never have acquired; again makes a splendid figure at home, shines in the senate, governs his country as its minister, is admired for his abilities, and, if successful, adored at least by a party. When he dies, he is praised as a demi-god, and his monument records everything but his vices.

The exact contrary of such a picture is to be found in many cottages at Olney. I have no need to describe them; you know the characters I mean. They love God, they trust Him, they pray to Him in secret, and, though He means to reward them openly, the day of recompense is delayed. In the meantime, they suffer everything that infirmity and poverty can inflict upon them. Who would suspect, that has not a spiritual eye to discern it, that the fine gentleman was one whom his Maker had in abhorrence, and the wretch last mentioned dear to Him as the apple of His eye?

It is no wonder that the world, who are not in the secret, find themselves obliged, some of them, to doubt a Providence, and others absolutely to deny it, when almost all the real virtue there is in it is to be found living and dying in a state of neglected obscurity, and all the vices of others cannot exclude them from worship and honour. But behind the curtain the matter is explained, very little, however, to the satisfaction of the great.

To the Rev. John Newton

Olney, January 26, 1783. It is reported among persons of the best intelligence at Olney—the barber, the schoolmaster, and the drummer of a corps quartered at this place—that the belligerent powers are at last reconciled, the articles of the treaty adjusted, and that peace is at the door.

The powers of Europe have clashed with each other to a fine purpose. Your opinions and mine, I mean our political ones, are not exactly of a piece, yet I cannot think otherwise on this subject than I have always done. England, more perhaps through the fault of her generals than her councils, has in some instances acted with a spirit of cruel animosity she was never chargeable with till now. But this is the worst that can be said.

On the other hand, the Americans, who, if they had contented themselves with a struggle for lawful liberty, would have deserved applause, seem to me to have incurred the guilt of parricide, by renouncing their parent, by making her ruin their favourite object, and by associating themselves with her worst enemy for the accomplishment of their purpose. France, and, of course, Spain, have acted a treacherous, a thievish part. They have stolen America from England, and, whether they are able to possess themselves of that jewel or not hereafter, it was doubtless what they intended. Holland appears to me in a meaner light than any of them. They quarrelled with a friend for an enemy's sake. The French led them by the nose, and the English have thrashed them for suffering it.

My views of the contest being as they have always been, I have consequently brighter hopes for England than her situation some time since seemed to justify. She is the only injured party.

America may perhaps call her the aggressor; but, if she were so, America has not only repelled the injury, but done a greater. As to the rest, if perfidy, treachery, avarice, and ambition can prove their cause to have been a rotten one, those proofs are found on them. I think, therefore, that, whatever scourge may be prepared for England on some future day, her ruin is not yet to be expected.

To the Same

Olney, November 17, 1783. Swift observes, when he is giving his reasons why the preacher is elevated always above his hearers, that, let the crowd be as great as it will below, there is always room enough overhead.

If the French philosophers can carry their art of flying to the perfection they desire, the observation may be reversed, the crowd will be overhead, and they will have most room who stay below. I can assure you, however, upon my own experience, that this way of travelling is very delightful.

I dreamt a night or two since that I drove myself through the upper regions in a balloon and pair, with the greatest ease and security. Having finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, and with one flourish of my whip, descended; my horses prancing and curvetting with an infinite share of spirit, but without the least danger either to me or my vehicle. The time, we may suppose, is at hand, and seems to be prognosticated by my dream, when these airy excursions will be universal, when judges will fly the circuit and bishops their visitations, and when the tour of Europe will be performed with much greater speed and with equal advantage by all who travel merely for the sake of saying that they have made it.

To His Cousin, Lady Hesketh

Olney, November 9, 1785. I am happy that my poems have pleased you. My volume has afforded me no such pleasure at any time, either while I was writing it or since its publication, as I have derived from yours and my uncle's opinion of it. But, above all, I honour John Gilpin, since it was he who first encouraged you to write. I made him on purpose to laugh at, and he served his purpose well.

To the Same

Olney, February 9, 1786. Let me tell you that your kindness in promising to visit us has charmed us both. I shall see you again. I shall hear your voice. We shall take walks together. I will show you my prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the banks of the Ouse, everything I have described. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, or the beginning of June, because, before that time my greenhouse will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in.

I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance. Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall see on the right hand a box of my making. It is the box in which have been lodged all my hares, and in which lodges Puss at present. But he, poor fellow, is worn out with age, and promises to die before you can see him.

My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns, and have asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never be anything better than a cask to all eternity. So if the god is content with it, we must even wonder at his taste and be so too.

To the Same

Olney, March 6, 1786. Your opinion has more weight with me than that of all the critics in the world. To give you a proof of it, I make you a concession that I would hardly have made to them all united. I do not indeed absolutely covenant that I will discard all my elisions, but I hereby bind myself to discard as many of them as, without sacrificing energy to sound, I can. It is incumbent on me, in the meantime, to say something in justification of the few I shall retain, that I may not seem a poet mounted on a mule rather than on Parnassus. In the first place, "the" is a barbarism. We are indebted for it to the Celts, or the Goths, or the Saxons, or perhaps to them all. In the two best languages that ever were spoken, the Greek and the Latin, there is no similar encumbrance of expression to be found. Secondly, the perpetual use of it in our language is, to us miserable poets, attended with two great inconveniences.

Our verse consisting of only ten syllables, it not infrequently happens that the fifth part of a line is to be engrossed, and necessarily too, unless elision prevents it, by this abominable intruder; and, which is worse in my account, open vowels are continually the consequence—the element—the air, etc. Thirdly, the French, who are equally chargeable with the English with barbarism in this particular, dispose of their le and their la without ceremony, and always take care that they shall be absorbed, both in verse and in prose, in the vowel that immediately follows them. Fourthly, and I believe lastly, the practice of cutting short "the" is warranted by Milton, who of all English poets that ever lived, had certainly the finest ear.

Thou only critic of my verse that is to be found in all the earth, whom I love, what shall I say in answer to your own objection to that passage—

Softly he placed his hand On th' old man's hand, and pushed it gently away.

I can say neither more nor less than this, that when our dear friend the general sent me his opinion on the specimen, quoting those very words from it, he added, "With this part I was particularly pleased; there is nothing in poetry more descriptive."

Taste, my dear, is various; there is nothing so various, and even between persons of the best taste there are diversities of opinion on the same subject, for which it is by no means possible to account.

To John Johnson, Esq.

Weston, June 7, 1790. You never pleased me more than when you told me you had abandoned your mathematical pursuits. It grieved me to think that you were wasting your time merely to gain a little Cambridge fame, not worth having. I cannot be contented that your renown should thrive nowhere but on the banks of the Cam. Conceive a nobler ambition, and never let your honour be circumscribed by the paltry dimensions of a university! It is well that you have already, as you observe, acquired sufficient information in that science to enable you to pass creditably such examinations as, I suppose, you must hereafter undergo. Keep what you have gotten, and be content.

You could not apply to a worse than I am to advise you concerning your studies. I was never a regular student myself, but lost the most valuable years of my life in an attorney's office and in the Temple. It seems to me that your chief concern is with history, natural philosophy, logic, and divinity. As to metaphysics, I know little about them. Life is too short to afford time even for serious trifles. Pursue what you know to be attainable, make truth your object, and your studies will make you a wise man. Let your divinity, if I may advise, be the divinity of the glorious Reformation. I mean in contradiction to Arminianism, and all the isms that were ever broached in this world of ignorance and error.

Obiter Dicta

Men of lively imaginations are not often remarkable for solidity of judgement. They have strong passions to bias it, and are led far away from their proper road, in pursuit of petty phantoms of their own creating.

Excellence is providentially placed beyond the reach of indolence, that success may be the reward of industry, and that idleness may be punished with obscurity and disgrace.

I do not think that in these costermonger days, as I have a notion Falstaff calls them, an antediluvian age is at all a desirable thing, but to live comfortably while we do live is a great matter, and comprehends in it everything that can be wished for on this side the curtain that hangs between time and eternity.

Wherever there is war, there is misery and outrage; notwithstanding which, it is not only lawful to wish, but even a duty to pray for the success of one's country. And as to the neutralities, I really think the Russian virago an impertinent puss for meddling with us, and engaging half a score kittens of her acquaintance to scratch the poor old lion, who, if he has been insolent in his day, has probably acted no otherwise than they themselves would have acted in his circumstances and with his power to embolden them.

Though a Christian is not to be quarrelsome, he is not to be crushed. Though he is but a worm before God, he is not such a worm as every selfish and unprincipled wretch may tread on at his pleasure.

St. Paul seems to condemn the practice of going to law. "Why do ye not suffer wrong, etc." But if we look again we shall find that a litigious temper prevailed among the professors of that day. Surely he did not mean, any more than his Master, that the most harmless members of society should receive no advantage of its laws, or should be the only persons in the world who should derive no benefit from those institutions without which society cannot subsist.

Tobacco was not known in the Golden Age. So much the worse for the Golden Age. This age of iron and lead would be insupportable without it; and therefore we may reasonably suppose that the happiness of those better days would have been much improved by the use of it.

No man was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows angry if it be not treated with some management and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear perhaps to be stroked, though he will growl even under that operation, but, if you touch him roughly, he will bite.

Simplicity is become a very rare quality in a writer. In the decline of great kingdoms, and where refinement in all the arts is carried to an excess, I suppose it is always so. The later Roman writers are remarkable for false ornament; they were without doubt greatly admired by the readers of their own day; and with respect to authors of the present era, the popular among them appear to me to be equally censurable on the same account. Swift and Addison were simple.

* * * * *



THOMAS DE QUINCEY

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas de Quincey, scholar, essayist, critic, opium-eater, was born at Manchester on August 15, 1785. A singularly sensitive and imaginative boy, De Quincey rapidly became a brilliant scholar, and at fifteen years of age could speak Greek so fluently as to be able, as one of his masters said, "to harangue an Athenian mob." He wished to go early to Oxford, but his guardians objecting, he ran away at the age of seventeen, and, after wandering in Wales, found his way to London, where he suffered privations that injured his health. The first instalment of his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" appeared in the "London Magazine" for September 1821. It attracted universal attention both by its subject-matter and style. De Quincey settled in Edinburgh, where most of his literary work was done, and where he died, on December 8, 1859. His collected works, edited by Professor Masson, fill fourteen volumes. After he had passed his seventieth year, De Quincey revised and extended his "Confessions," but in their magazine form, from which this epitome is made, they have much greater freshness and power than in their later elaboration. Many popular editions are now published.

I.—The Descending Pathway

I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life, and I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive. That must be my apology for breaking through the delicate and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities.

If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet recorded of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man—have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me.

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintances, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet.

The calamities of my novitiate in London, when, as a runaway from school, I made acquaintance with starvation and horror, had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years.

It is so long since I first took opium that, if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date; but, from circumstances connected with it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way. One morning I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite.

On the twenty-first day, I think it was, and on a Sunday, I went out into the streets, rather to run away, if possible, from my torments than with any distinct purpose. By accident, I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. My road homewards lay through Oxford Street; and near "the stately Pantheon" I saw a druggist's shop, where I first became possessed of the celestial drug.

Arrived at my lodgings, I took it, and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an unheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed.

II.—Effects of the Seductive Drug

First one word with respect to its bodily effects. It is not so much affirmed as taken for granted that opium does, or can, produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself that no quantity of the drug ever did, or could, intoxicate. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours; the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow.

Another error is that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression. This I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my readers that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.

With respect to the torpor supposed to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. The primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. But, that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall mention the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between 1804 and 1812. I used to fix beforehand how often within a given time, and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks, and it was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which was this: in those days Grassini sang at the opera, and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. The choruses were divine to hear, and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of Hector, etc., I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had.

Another pleasure I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of; but the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. Now, Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest for the poor. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used often on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a Saturday night for laying out their wages.

Sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards by fixing my eye on the Pole star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and headlands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney coachmen. For all this I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep with the feeling of perplexities, moral and intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience.

III.—A Fearful Nemesis

Courteous reader, let me request you to move onwards for about eight years, to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone—almost forgotten. Am I married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader. In fact, though, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I ought to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812. To moderation, and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least, I am unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity.

But now comes a different era. In 1813 I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, and I could resist no longer. Let me repeat, that at the time I began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. Still, I confess it as a besetting infirmity of mine that I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others. From 1813, the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater. Now, reader, from 1813 please walk forward about three years more, and you shall see me in a new character.

Now, farewell—a long farewell—to happiness, winter or summer! Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep. For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes.

It will occur to you to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? The reader may be sure that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. It might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors.

My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. This intellectual torpor applies more or less to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself even to write a letter. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realise what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.

IV.—The Horrors of Dreamland

I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history of what took place in my dreams, for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness all sorts of phantoms.

In the middle of 1817, I think it was, this faculty became positively distressing to me. At nights, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before Aedipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour.

All changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally, to descend into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I should ever re-ascend. Nor did I, even by waking, feel that I had re-ascended.

The sense of space, and, in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived far beyond the limits of any human experience.

The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind. A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are but waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.

In the early stage of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. To architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of water. The waters then changed their character—from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans.

And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens—faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed and surged with the ocean.

V.—The Monster-Haunted Dreamer

I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, etc. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive that, to me, the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed.

All this, and much more than I can say or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlight, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroqueats, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.

Over every form and threat and punishment brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and—as was almost always the case in my dreams—for centuries. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me—I hear everything when I am sleeping—and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside—come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the detestable crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.

VI.—The Agonies of Sleep

As a final specimen, I cite a dream of a different character, from 1820. The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams—a music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and possible issue.

I, as is usual in dreams—where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement—had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives—I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad—darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! And with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! And again and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more."

* * * * *

It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to a crisis. I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off. I triumphed. But, reader, think of me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered. During the whole period of diminishing the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration.

One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still—in Milton's tremendous line—"With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms."

* * * * *



ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Memoirs

Alexandre Dumas pere, the great French novelist and dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force, and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to remember that one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas' literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage, loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller excels every other. His plays and novels are both very numerous; the "OEuvres Completes," published between 1860 and 1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" are the most famous of his stories. He was an untiring and exceedingly rapid worker, a great collaborator employing many assistants, and was also a shameless plagiarist; but he succeeded in impressing his own quality on all that he published. Besides plays and novels there are several books of travel. His son, Alexandre, was born in 1824. The "Memoirs," published in 1852, which are here followed through their author's struggles to his triumph, may be the work of the novelist as well as of the chronicler, but they give a most convincing impression of his courageous and brilliant youth, fired equally by art and by ambition.

I.—Memories of Boyhood

I was born on July 24, 1802, at Villers-Cotterets, a little town of the Department of Aisne, on the road from Laon to Paris, so that, writing now in 1847, I am forty-five years old. My father was the republican general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, and I still use this patronymic in signing official documents. It came from my grandfather, marquis of that name, who sold his properties in France, and settled down in 1760 on vast estates in San Domingo. There, in 1762, my father was born; his mother, Louise-Cessette Dumas, died in 1772; and in 1780, when my father was eighteen, the West Indian estates were leased, and the marquis returned to his native country.

My father spent the next years among the youth of the great families of that period. His handsome features—all the more striking for the dark complexion of a mulatto—his prodigious physical strength, his elegant creole figure, with hands and feet as small as a woman's, his unrivalled skill in bodily exercises, and especially in fencing and horsemanship, all marked him out as one born for adventures. The spirit of adventure was there, too. Assuming the name of Dumas because his father objected to the family name being dragged through the ranks, he enlisted as a private in a regiment of dragoons in 1786, at the age of twenty-four. Quartered at Villers-Cotterets in 1790, he met my mother, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, whom he married two years later. Their children were one daughter, and then myself. The marquis had died in 1786.

My memory goes back to 1805, when I was three, and to the little country house, Les Fosses, we lived in. I remember a journey to Paris in the same year, and the death of my father in 1806. Then my mother, sister, and I, left in poverty, went to live with grandfather and grandmother Labouret. Here, in gardens full of shady trees and gorgeous blossoms, I spent those happy days when hope extends hardly further than to-morrow, and memory hardly further than yesterday; storing my mind with classical mythology and Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," the natural history of Buffon, and the geography of "Robinson Crusoe."

Then came my tenth year and the age for school. It was decided that I should go to the seminary and be educated for a priest; but I settled that matter by running away and living for three days in the hut of a friendly bird-catcher in the woods. So I passed instead into our little school of the Abbe Gregoire—a just and good man, of whom I learned little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of mine, a few miles away, I gained a passion for shooting the hares and partridges with which our country swarmed.

But while I was living in twelve-year-old joys and sorrows, the enemy was marching on French soil, and all confidence in Napoleon's star had vanished. God had forsaken him. A retreating wave of our army swept over the countryside, followed by alien forces. We lived in the midst of fighting and alarms, and my mother and her friends worked like sisters of charity. There followed Bonaparte's exile in Elba, and then the astonishing report that he had landed near Cannes, and was marching on Paris. He reached the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; in May, his troops were marching through our town on their way to Waterloo, glory, and the grave. I saw him passing in his carriage, his face, pale and sickly, leaning forward, chin on breast. He raised his head, and glanced around.

"Where are we?"

"At Villers-Cotterets, sire."

"Forward! Faster!" he cried, and fell back into his lethargy. Whips cracked, and the gigantic vision had passed. That was June 11—Waterloo was the 18th. On the 20th, three or four hours after the first doubtful rumour had reached us, a carriage drew up to change horses. There was the same inert figure, and the same question and answer. The team broke into a gallop, and the fallen Napoleon was gone. Soon all went on in the ordinary way, and in our little town, isolated in the midst of its forest, one might have thought no changes had taken place; people had had an evil dream—that was all.

My memories of this period are chiefly memories of the woods—shooting parties, now and then a wolf or boar hunt, often a poaching adventure with a friend. But at fifteen years of age I was placed in a notary's office; at sixteen I learned to love, and shortly afterwards I saw "Hamlet" played by a touring company. It made a profound impression on me, awakening vast, aimless desires, strange gleams of mystery. A friend of mine, Adolphe de Leuven, himself an ardent versifier, guided me to a first sense of my vocation, and together we set to work as playwrights.

Adolphe and his father went up to live in Paris, and our plays were submitted everywhere in vain. My ardour for the great city grew daily until it became irresistible; and at length, in the temporary absence of my notary, I made a three days' escape with a friend, saw Talma act, and was even introduced to him by Adolphe. His playing opened a new world to me, and the great man playfully foretold my destiny.

As one enchanted, I returned to the office, accepted my employers' rebuke as a dismissal, and went home. I was without a penny, but was immediately visited by a wonderful run of fortune. Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free passages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly abbe, and found myself early on a May morning at Adolphe's door. I had come to try my fortune with my father's brothers-at-arms.

Of course, there were bitter disappointments, and when I called on General Foy he was my last hope. Alas! did I know this subject, or that, or that? My answer was always "No." But the general would at least keep my address; and no sooner had I written it down than he cried aloud that we were saved! It appeared that I had a good writing, and the Duke of Orleans needed another copyist in his office. The next morning I was engaged at a salary of twelve hundred francs. I came home for three days with my mother, and on the advice of the bird-catcher took a ticket at the lottery, which brought me 146 francs. And so, with a few bits of furniture from home, I took up my lodging in a Parisian garret.

II.—Launched in Paris

Now began a life of daily work at the office, with agreeable companions, and of evenings spent at the theatre or in study. On the first night I went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, where a melodrama, "The Vampire," was presented, and fell into conversation with my neighbour, a man of about forty, of fascinating discourse, who was inordinately impatient with the piece, and was at last turned out of the theatre for his expressions of disapproval. His talk, far more interesting than the play, turned on rare editions of old books, on the sylphs, gnomes, Undines of the invisible world, on microscopic creatures he had himself discovered, and on vampires he had seen in Illyria. I learned next day that this was the celebrated author and bibliophile, Charles Nodier, himself one of the anonymous authors of the play he so vilified.

Lassagne, a genial colleague in the office, not only put me in the way of doing my work, which I quickly picked up, but was good enough also to guide my reading, for I was deplorably ignorant. In those days Scribe was the great dramatist, producing innumerable clever plots of intrigue, modelled on no natural society, but on a society all his own, composed almost exclusively of colonels, young widows, old soldiers, and faithful servants. No one had ever seen such widows and colonels, never soldiers spoke as these did, never were servants so devoted; yet this society of Scribe's was all the fashion.

The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne, Baour-Lormian, Beranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Theaulon, Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Desaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny. After them came names half literary, half political, such as MM. Cousin, Salvandy, Yillemain, Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cave, Merimee, and Guizot. Others, who were not yet known, but were coming forward, were Balzac, Soulie, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr, Theophile Gautier. Madame Sand was not known until her "Indiana," in 1828. I knew all this constellation, some of them as friends and supporters, others as enemies.

In December, 1823, Talma made perhaps the greatest success of his life in Delavigne's "L'Ecole des Vieillards," in which his power of modulating his voice to the various emotions of old age was superbly shown. But Talma was never content with his triumphs; he awaited eagerly the rise of a new drama; and when I confided to him my ambitions, he would urge me to be quick and succeed within his day. Art was all that he lived for. How wonderful a thing is art, more faithful than a friend or lover!

On the first day of 1824 I rose to be a regular clerk at 1,500 francs, and determined to bring up my mother from the country. It was now nine months since I had seen her. So she sold her tobacco shop and came up to Paris with a little furniture and a hundred louis. We were both very glad to be united, though she was anxious about my future.

I had by this time learned my ignorance of much that was necessary to my success as a dramatist, and began to devote every hour of my leisure to study, attending the theatre as often as I could get a pass. A young medical man named Thibaut helped me much in my education; he took me to the hospital, where I picked up a knowledge of medicine and surgery which has repeatedly done service in my novels, and I learned from him the actions of poisons, such as I have used in "Monte Cristo."

I read also under the guidance of Lassagne, beginning with "Ivanhoe," in which the pictures of mediaeval life cleared the clouds from my vision and gave me a far wider horizon. Next the vast forests, prairies, and oceans of Cooper held me; and then I came to Byron, who died in Greece at the very time when I was entering on my apprenticeship to poetry. The romantic movement in France was beginning to invade literature and the drama, but its expression was still most evident in the younger painters.

My mother's little capital only lasted eighteen months, and I found myself forced to supplement my salary by other work. I had until now collaborated with Adolphe, but all in vain, and we now determined to associate Ph. Rousseau with our efforts. The three of us together quickly produced a vaudeville in twenty-one scenes, "La Chasse et l'Amour," of which I wrote the first seven scenes, Adolphe the second seven, and Rousseau the conclusion. The piece was rejected at the Gymnase, but accepted at the Ambigu; and my share of the profits came to six francs a night.

A.M. Porcher, who always had a pleasant welcome and an open purse for a literary man, lent me 300 francs on the security of my receipts, and with that money I printed a volume of three stories under the title of "Nouvelles Contemporaines," of which, however, only four copies were sold. But the next adventure was more profitable. A play, by Lassagne and myself, "La Noce et l'Enterrement," was presented at the Porte-Sainte-Martin in November 1826, and brought me eight francs a night for forty nights.

III.—Under Shakespeare's Spell

As recently as 1822 an English theatrical company, which had opened at the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, had been hissed and pelted off the stage for offering the dramas of the barbaric Shakespeare. But when, in September 1827, another English company brought Shakespeare's plays to the Odeon, this contempt for English literature had changed to ardent admiration—so quickly had the mind of Paris broadened. Shakespeare had been translated by Guizot, and everyone had read Scott, Cooper, and Byron.

The English season was opened by Sheridan's "Rivals," followed by Allingham's "Fortune's Freak." Then came "Hamlet," which infinitely surpassed all my expectations. Kemble's Hamlet was amazing, and Miss Smithson's Ophelia adorable. From that very night, but not before, I knew what the theatre was. I had seen for the first time real men and women, of flesh and blood, moved by real passions. I understood Talma's continual lament, his incessant desire for plays which should show him, not as a hero only, but also as a man. "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," and all the other masterpieces followed. Then, in their turn, Macready and Kean appeared in Paris.

I knew now that everything in the world of drama derives from Shakespeare, as everything in the natural world depends on the sun; I knew that, after God, Shakespeare was the great creator. And from the night when I had first seen, in these English players, men on the stage forgetful of the stage, and revealing themselves, by natural eloquence and manner, as God's creatures, with all their good and evil, their passions and weaknesses, from that night my vocation was irrevocable. A new confidence was given me, and I boldly adventured on the future. Besides observing mankind, I entered with redoubled zest upon the dissection and study of the words of the great dramatists.

My attention had been turned to the story of Christine and the murder of Monaldeschi by an exquisite little bas-relief in the Salon; and reading up the history in the biographical dictionary, I saw that it held the possibility of a tremendous drama. The subject haunted my mind continually, and soon my "Christine" came into life and was written. But Talma was dead; I had now no friend at the theatre; and I cast about me in vain for the means of getting my play produced.

Baron Taylor was at this time the official charged with the acceptance or rejection of plays, and Charles Nodier, so Lassagne informed me, was on intimate terms with him. Lassagne suggested that I should write to Nodier, reminding him of our chat on the night of "The Vampire," and asking for an introduction to the Baron. I did so, and the reply came from Baron Taylor himself, offering me an interview at seven in the morning.