Since the days when Castrèn made his arduous journeys of linguistic exploration in Siberia, or when the brothers Grimm collected their rich treasures of folk-lore from the lips of German peasants, an active quest of vocables and myths has been conducted with much zeal and energy in nearly all parts of the world. We have tales, proverbs, fragments of verse, superstitious beliefs and usages, from Greenland, from the southern Pacific, from the mountaineers of Thibet and the freedmen upon Georgia plantations. We follow astute Reynard to the land of the Hottentots, and find the ubiquitous Jack planting his beanstalk among the Dog-Rib Indians. At the same time, the nooks and corners of Europe have been ransacked with bountiful results; so that whereas our grandfathers, in speculating about the opinions and mental habits of people in low stages of culture, were dealing with a subject about which they knew almost nothing, on the other hand, our chief difficulty to-dayis in shaping and managing the enormous mass of data which keen and patient inquirers have collected. It is well that this work has been carried so far in our time, for modern habits of thought are fast exterminating the Old World fancies. Railroad, newspaper, and telegraphic bulletin of prices are carrying everything before them. The peasant's quaint dialect and his fascinating myth tales are disappearing along with his picturesque dress; and savages, such of them as do not succumb to fire-water, are fast taking on the airs and manners of civilized folk. It is high time to be gathering in all the primitive lore we can find, before the men and women in whose minds it is still a living reality have all passed from the scene.
The collection of Irish myth stories lately published by Mr. Jeremiah Curtin[30]is the result of a myth-hunting visit which the author made in Ireland in 1887, and is one of the most interesting and valuable contributions to the study of folk-lore that have been made for many years. "All the tales in my collection," says Mr. Curtin, "of which those printed in this volume form but a part, were taken down from the mouths of men who, with one or two exceptions, spoke only Gaelic, or but littleEnglish, and that imperfectly. These men belong to a group of persons all of whom are well advanced in years, and some very old; with them will pass away the majority of the story-tellers of Ireland, unless new interest in the ancient language and lore of the country is roused.
"For years previous to my visit of 1887 I was not without hope of finding some myth tales in a good state of preservation. I was led to entertain this hope by indications in the few Irish stories already published, and by certain tales and beliefs that I had taken down myself from old Irish persons in the United States. Still, during the earlier part of my visit in Ireland, I was greatly afraid that the best myth materials had perished. Inquiries as to who might be in possession of these old stories seemed fruitless for a considerable time. The persons whom I met that were capable of reading the Gaelic language had never collected stories, and could refer only in a general way to the districts in which the ancient language was still living. All that was left was to seek out the old people for whom Gaelic is the every-day speech, and trust to fortune to find the story-tellers."
Thus Mr. Curtin was led to explore the counties of Kerry, Galway, and Donegal. "Comforting myself with the Russian proverb that 'game runsto meet the hunter,' I set out on my pilgrimage, giving more prominence to the study and investigation of Gaelic, which, though one of the two objects of my visit, was not the first. In this way I thought to come more surely upon men who had myth tales in their minds than if I went directly seeking for them. I was not disappointed, for in all my journeyings I did not meet a single person who knew a myth tale or an old story who was not fond of Gaelic, and specially expert in the use of it, while I found very few story-tellers from whom a myth tale could be obtained unless in the Gaelic language; and in no case have I found a story in the possession of a man or woman who knew only English."
There is something so interesting in this fact, and so pathetic in the explanation of it, that we are tempted to quote further: "Since all mental training in Ireland is directed by powers both foreign and hostile to everything Gaelic, the moment a man leaves the sphere of that class which uses Gaelic as an every-day language, and which clings to the ancient ideas of the people, everything which he left behind seems to him valueless, senseless, and vulgar; consequently he takes no care to retain it, either in whole or in part. Hence the clean sweep of myth tales in one part of the country,—thegreater part, occupied by a majority of the people; while they are still preserved in other and remoter districts, inhabited by men who, for the scholar and the student of mankind, are by far the most interesting in Ireland."
The fate of the Gaelic language has, indeed, been peculiarly sad. In various parts of Europe, and especially among the western Slavs, the native tongues have been to some extent displaced by the speech of conquering peoples; yet it is only in Erin that, within modern times, a "language of Aryan stock has been driven first from public use, and then dropped from the worship of God and the life of the fireside." Hence, while in many parts of Europe the ancient tales live on, often with their incidents more or less dislocated and their significance quite blurred, on the other hand, in English-speaking Ireland they have been cleared away "as a forest is felled by the axe."
Nevertheless, in the regions where Irish myths have been preserved, they have been remarkably well preserved, and bear unmistakable marks of their vast antiquity. One very noticeable feature in these myths is the definiteness and precision of detail with which the personages and their fields of action are brought before us. This is a characteristic of mythologies which are, comparatively speaking,intact; and, as Mr. Curtin observes, it is to be seen in the myths of the American Indians. As long as a mythology remains intact it "puts its imprint on the whole region to which it belongs." Every rock, every spring, is the scene of some definite incident; every hill has its mythical people, who are as real to the narrators as the flesh-and-blood population which one finds there. In this whole world of belief and sentiment there is the vigour of fresh life, and the country is literally enchanted ground. But when, through the invasion of alien peoples, there is a mingling and conflict of sacred stories, and new groups of ideas and associations have partly displaced the old ones, so that only the argument or general statement of the ancient myth is retained, and perhaps even that but partially, then "all precision and details with reference to persons and places vanish; they become indefinite; are in some kingdom, some place,—nowhere in particular." There is this vagueness in the folk-tales of eastern and central Europe as contrasted with those of Ireland. "Where there was or where there was not," says the Magyar, "there was in the world;" or, if the Russian hero goes anywhere, it is simply across forty-nine kingdoms, etc.; "but in the Irish tales he is always a person of known condition in a specified place"(for example, "There was a blacksmith in Dunkenealy, beyond Killybegs," etc., page 244).
As to the antiquity and the primitive character of Mr. Curtin's stories an experienced observer can entertain no doubt. His book is certainly the most considerable achievement in the field of Gaelic mythology since the publication, thirty years ago, of Campbell's "Tales of the West Highlands;" and it does for the folk-lore of Ireland what Asbjörnsen and Moe's collection (the English translation of which is commonly, and with some injustice, known by the name of the translator as Dasent's "Norse Tales") did for the folk-lore of Norway. This is, of course, very high praise, but we do not believe it will be called extravagant by any competent scholar who reads Mr. Curtin's book. The stories have evidently been reduced to writing with most scrupulous and loving fidelity. In turning the Gaelic into English some of the characteristic Hibernian phrases and constructions of our language have been employed, and this has been done with such perfect good taste that the effect upon the ear is like that of a refined and delicate brogue.
The mythical material in the stories is largely that with which the student of Aryan folk-lore is familiar. We have variants of Cinderella, theswan maidens, the giant who had no heart in his body, the cloak of darkness, the sword of light, the magic steed which overtakes the wind before and outstrips the wind behind; the pot of plenty, from which one may eat forever, and the cup that is never drained; the hero who performs impossible tasks, and wooes maidens whose beauty hardly relieves their treacherous cruelty: "I must tell you now that three hundred king's sons, lacking one, have come to ask for my daughter, and in the garden behind my castle are three hundred iron spikes, and every spike of them but one is covered with the head of a king's son who couldn't do what my daughter wanted of him, and I'm greatly in dread that your own head will be put on the one spike that is left uncovered." The princess in this story—Shaking-Head—is such a wretch, not a bit better than Queen Labe in the "Arabian Nights," that one marvels at the hero for marrying her at last, instead of slicing off her head with his two-handed sword of darkness, and placing it on the three-hundredth spike. But moral as well as physical probabilities are often overstrained in this deliciously riotous realm of folk-lore.
Along with much material that is common to the Aryan world there is some that is peculiar to Ireland, while the Irish atmosphere is over everything.The stories of Fin MacCumhail (pronounced MacCool) and the Fenians of Erin are full of grotesque incident and inimitable drollery. Fin and his redoubtable dog Bran, the one-eyed Gruagach, the hero Diarmuid, the old hag with the life-giving ointment, the weird hand of Mal MacMulcan, and the cowherd that was son of the king of Alban make a charming series of pictures. Among Fin's followers there is a certain Conán Maol, "who never had a good word in his mouth for any man," and for whom no man had a good word. This counterpart of Thersites, as Mr. Curtin tells us, figures as conspicuously in North American as in Aryan myths. Conán was always at Fin's side, and advising him to mischief. Once it had like to have gone hard with Conán. The Fenians had been inveigled into an enchanted castle, and could not rise from their chairs till two of Fin's sons had gone and beheaded three kings in the north of Erin, and put their blood into three goblets, and come back and rubbed the blood on the chairs. Conán had no chair, but was sitting on the floor, with his back to the wall, and just before they came to him the last drop of blood gave out. The Fenians were hurrying past without minding the mischief-maker, when, upon his earnest appeal, Diarmuid "took him by one hand, andGoll MacMornee by the other, and, pulling with all their might, tore him from the wall and the floor. But if they did, he left all the skin of his back, from his head to his heels, on the floor and the wall behind him. But when they were going home through the hills of Tralee, they found a sheep on the way, killed it, and clapped the skin on Conán. The sheepskin grew to his body; and he was so well and strong that they sheared him every year, and got wool enough from his back to make flannel and frieze for the Fenians of Erin ever after." This is a favourite incident, and recurs in the story of the laughing Gruagach. In most of the Fenian stories the fighting is brisk and incessant. It is quite a Donnybrook fair. Everybody kills everybody else, and then some toothless old woman comes along and rubs a magic salve on them, when, all in a minute, up they pop, and go at it again.
One of the quaintest conceits, and a pretty one withal, is that of Tir na n-Og, the Land of Youth, the life-giving region just beneath the ground, whence mysteriously spring the sturdy trees, the soft green grass, and the bright flowers. The journey thither is not long; sometimes the hero just pulls up a root and dives down through the hole into the blessed Tir na n-Og,—as primitive abit of folk-lore as one could wish to find! A lovely country, of course, was that land of sprouting life, and some queer customs did they have there. The mode of "running for office" was especially worthy of mention. Once in seven years all the champions and best men "met at the front of the palace, and ran to the top of a hill two miles distant. On the top of that hill was a chair, and the man that sat first in the chair was king of Tir na n-Og for the next seven years." This method enabled them to dispense with nominating conventions and campaign lies, but not with intrigue and sorcery, as we find in the droll story of Oisin (or Ossian), which concludes the Fenian series.
The story of the Fisherman's Son and the Gruagach of Tricks is substantially the same with the famous story of Farmer Weathersky, in the Norse collection translated by Sir George Dasent. Gruagach (accented on the first syllable) means "the hairy one," and, as Mr. Curtin cautiously observes, "we are more likely to be justified in finding a solar agent concealed in the person of the laughing Gruagach or the Gruagach of Tricks than in many of the sun myths put forth by some modern writers." He reminds one of Hermes and of Proteus, and in the wonderful changes at the end of the story we have, as in Farmer Weathersky, a variantof the catastrophe in the story of the Second Royal Mendicant in the "Arabian Nights;" but the Irishman gives us a touch of humour that is quite his own. The Gruagach and his eleven artful sons are chasing the fisherman's son through water and air, and various forms of fish and bird are assumed, until at length the fisherman's son, in the shape of a swallow, hovers over the summerhouse where the daughter of the king of Erin is sitting. Weary with the chase, the swallow becomes a ring, and falls into the girl's lap; it takes her fancy, and she puts it on her finger. Then the twelve pursuers change from hawks into handsome men, and entertain the king in his castle with music and games, until he asks them what in the world he can give them. All they want, says the old Gruagach, is the ring which he once lost, and which is now on the princess's finger. Of course, says the king, if his daughter has got the ring, she must give it to its owner. But the ring, overhearing all this, speaks to the princess, and tells her what to do. She gets a gallon of wheat grains and three gallons of the strongestpotheenthat was ever brewed in Ireland, and she mixes them together in an open barrel before the fire. Then her father calls her and asks for the ring; and when she finds that her protests are of no avail, and she must give up,she throws it into the fire. "That moment the eleven brothers made eleven pairs of tongs of themselves; their father, the old Gruagach, was the twelfth pair. The twelve jumped into the fire to know in what spark of it would they find the old fisherman's son; and they were a long time working and searching through the fire, when out flew a spark, and into the barrel. The twelve made themselves men, turned over the barrel, and spilled the wheat on the floor. Then in a twinkling they were twelve cocks strutting around. They fell to, and picked away at the wheat, to know which one would find the fisherman's son. Soon one dropped on one side, and a second on the opposite side, until all twelve were lying drunk from the wheat."
One seems to see the gleam in the corner of the eye and the pucker in the Gaelic visage of the old narrator. To be sure, it was the wheat. It couldn't have been the mountain dew; it never is. Well, when things had come to this pass, the spark that was the fisherman's son just turned into a fox, and with one smart bite he took the head off the old Gruagach, and the eleven other boozy cocks he finished with eleven other bites. Then he made himself the handsomest man in Erin, and married the princess and succeeded to the crown.
There is a breezy freshness about these tales,which will make the book a welcome addition to young people's libraries. It is safe to predict for it an enviable success. In the next edition there ought to be an index, and we wish the author need not feel it necessary to be so sparing with his own notes and comments. His brief Introduction is so charming, from its weight of sense and beauty of expression, that one would gladly hear more from the author himself. It is to be hoped that the book lately published is the forerunner of many.
August, 1890.
"The small philosopher is a great character in New England. His fundamental rule of logical procedure is to guess at the half and multiply by two. [Applause.]"[31]It is [in 1880] only two or three years since the philosopher from whom this text is quoted was himself a great character in New England, inasmuch as he could give a lecture once every week, in one of the largest halls of New England's principal city, and could entertain his audience of two or three thousand people with discussions of the most vast and abstruse themes of science and metaphysics. The success with which he entertained his audience is carefully chronicled for us in the volumes made up from the reports of his lectures, in which parenthetical notesof "laughter," "applause," or "sensation" occur as frequently as in ordinary newspaper reports of stump speeches or humorous convivial harangues. As a social phenomenon this career of the Rev. Joseph Cook possesses considerable interest,—enough, at any rate, to justify a brief inquiry as to his "fundamental rule of procedure."
Among the wise and witty sayings of the ancients with which our children are puzzled and edified in the first dozen pages of the Greek Reader, there is a caustic remark attributed to Phokion, on the occasion of being very loudly applauded by the populace. "Dear me," said the old statesman, "can it be that I have been making a fool of myself?" So, when three thousand people are made to laugh and clap their hands over statements about the origin of species or the anatomy of the nervous system, the first impulse of any scientific inquirer of ordinary sagacity and experience is to ask in what meretricious fashion these sober topics can have been treated, in order to have produced such a result. The inference may be cynical, but is none the less likely to be sound. In the present case, one does not need to read far in the published reports of these lectures to see that the fundamental rule of procedure is something very different from any of the rules by which truth is wooed and wonby scientific inquirers. Among Mill's comprehensive canons of logical method one might search in vain for a specimen of the method employed by Mr. Cook. Of the temper of mind, indeed, in which scientific inquiries are conducted, he has no more conception than Laura Bridgman could have of Pompeian red or a chord of the minor ninth. The process of holding one's judgment in suspense over a complicated problem, of patiently gathering and weighing the evidence on either side, of subjecting one's own first-formed hypotheses to repeated verification, of clearly comprehending and fairly stating opposing views, of setting forth one's conclusions at last, guardedly and with a distinct consciousness of the conditions under which they are tenable,—all this sort of thing is quite foreign to Mr. Cook's nature.
To him a scientific thesis is simply a statement over which it is possible to get up a fight. The gamecock is his totem; to him the bones of the vertebrate subkingdom are only so many bones of contention, and the sponge is interesting chiefly as an emblem which is never, on any account, to be thrown up. He talks accordingly of scientific men lying in wait for Mr. Darwin, ready to pounce on him like a tiger on its prey; he is very fond of exhibiting what he calls the "strategic point" of ascientific book or theory; and altogether his attitude is bellicose to a degree that is as unbecoming in a preacher of the gospel as it is out of place in a discussion of scientific questions. His favourite method of dealing with a scientific writer is to quote from him all sorts of detached statements and inferences, and, without the slightest regard to the writer's general system of opinions or habits of thought, to praise or vituperate the detached statements according to some principle which it is not always easy for the reader to discover, but which has always doubtless some reference to their supposed bearings upon the peculiar kind of orthodoxy of which Mr. Cook appears as the champion. There are some writers whom he thinks it necessary always to scold or vilify, no matter what they say. If they happen to say something which ought to be quite satisfactory to any reasonable person of "orthodox" opinions, Mr. Cook either accuses them of insincerity or represents them as making "concessions."
This last device, I am sorry to be obliged to add, is not an uncommon one with theological controversialists, when their zeal runs away with them. When a man makes a statement which expresses his deepest convictions, there is no easier way of seeming to knock away the platform on which hestands than to quote his statement, and describe it as something which he has reluctantly "conceded." In dealing with the principal writers on evolution, Mr. Cook is continually found resorting to this cheap device. For example, when Professor Tyndall declares that "if a right-hand spiral movement of the particles of the brain could be shown to occur in love, and a left-hand spiral movement in hate, we should be as far off as ever from understanding the connection of this physical motion with the spiritual manifestations,"—when Professor Tyndall declares this, he simply asserts what is a cardinal proposition with the group of English philosophers to which he belongs. With Professor Huxley, as well as with Mr. Spencer, it is a fundamental proposition that psychical phenomena cannot possibly be interpreted in terms of matter and motion, and this proposition they have at various times set forth and defended. In the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in my work on "Cosmic Philosophy," I have fully expounded this point, and have further illustrated it in "The Unseen World." With the conclusions there set forth the remark of Professor Tyndall thoroughly agrees, and it does so because all these expressions of opinion and all these arguments are part and parcel of a coherent system of anti-materialisticthought adopted[32]by the English school of evolutionists. Yet when Mr. Cook quotes Professor Tyndall's remark, he does it in this wise: "It is notorious that even Tyndallconcedes," etc., etc.
By proceeding in this way, Mr. Cook finds it easy to make out a formidable array of what he calls "the concessions of evolutionists." He first gives the audience a crude impression of some sort of theory of evolution, such as no scientific thinker ever dreamed of; or, to speak more accurately, he plays upon the crude impression already half formed in the average mind of his audience, and which he evidently shares himself. Theaveragenotion of the doctrine of evolution, possessed in common by an audience big enough to fill Tremont Temple, would no doubt seem to Darwin or to Spencer something quite fearful and wonderful. Playing with this sort of crude material, Mr. Cook puts together a series of numbered propositions, which remind one of those interminable auction catalogues of Walt Whitman, which some of our British cousins, more ardent than discriminating, mistake for a truly American species of inspired verse. In this long catena of statements, almosteverything is easily seen to disagree with the crude general impression to which the speaker appeals, and almost everything is accordingly set down as a "concession." And as the audience go out after the lecture, they doubtless ask one another, in amazed whispers, how it is that sensible men who make so many "concessions" can find it in their hearts to maintain the doctrine of evolution at all!
Sometimes Mr. Cook goes even farther than this, and, in the very act of quoting an author's declared opinions, expressly refuses to give him credit for them. Thus he has the hardihood to say: "Even Herbert Spencer,who would be very glad to prove the opposite,[33]says, in his Biology, 'The proximate chemical principles or chemical units—albumen, fibrine, gelatine, or the hypothetical proteine substance—cannot possess the property of forming the endlessly varied structures of animal forms.'" Mr. Cook here lays claim to a knowledge of his author's innermost thoughts and wishes which is quite remarkable. For a fit parallel one would have to cite the instance of the German who flogged his son for profanity, though the boy had not opened his mouth. "You dinks tamn," exclaimed the irate father, "and I vips you for dat!"
As there are some writers whom Mr. Cookthinks it always necessary to vituperate, no matter what they say, so there are others whom he finds it convenient to quote, as foils to the former, and to mention with praise on all occasions, though it is difficult to assign the reasons for this preference, except on the hypothesis that the lecturer has an implicit faith in the simple and confiding nature of his audience. Before giving these lectures Mr. Cook had studied awhile in Germany, and his citations of German writers show how far he deems it safe to presume on New England's ignorance of what the Fatherland thinks. It is nice to have such a learned country as Germany at one's disposal to hurl at the heads of people whose "outlook in philosophy does not reach beyond the Straits of Dover;" it saves a great deal of troublesome argument, and still more painful examination of facts. This English opinion is all very well, you know, but it comes from a philosopher "whose star is just touching the western pines," and a German professor whom I am about to quote, whose book I "hold in my hand," and "whose star is in the ascendant," does not agree with it. All this is extremely neat and convincing, apparently, to the crowd in Tremont Temple. With all Germany at his disposal, however, it must be acknowledged that our lecturer makes a very sparinguse of his resources. He quotes Helmholtz and Wundt every now and then with warm approval, though wherein they should be found any more acceptable to the orthodox world than Tyndall and Spencer it is not easy to see, save that the ill repute of German free thinkers takes somewhat longer to get diffused in New England than the ill repute of English free thinkers.
Then, among these Germans who are to set the English-speaking world aright we have Delitzsch! To speak of Wundt and Delitzsch is as if one were to bracket together John Stuart Mill and Frederick Denison Maurice. And then comes the admirable Lotze, whom Mr. Cook is continually setting off as a foil to Herbert Spencer. On page 179 of the lectures on "Heredity" he enumerates, with emphasis, those opinions of Lotze which he deems of especial importance with regard to the relations between matter and mind, and then proceeds to deprecate the "thunder" which he presumes he has evoked "from all quarters of the Spencerian sky." But, considering that the propositions he quotes from Lotze express the very views of Herbert Spencer, only somewhat inadequately worded, it would seem that the lecturer's alarm cannot be very real, and the thunder in question is only a kind of comic-opera thunder manufactured behindthe curtain for the benefit of the acquiescent audience. For example, the fourth proposition quoted with approval from Lotze reads thus: "Physical phenomena point to an underlying being to which they belong, but do not determine whether that being is material or immaterial." Now this is Spencerism, pure and simple, and it is a crucial proposition, too, pointing out the drift of the whole philosophy before which it is set up. The fact that Mr. Cook adopts such an opinion when stated by Lotze, but vituperates the same opinion when stated by Spencer, reveals to us, with a pungent though not wholly delicious flavour, the "true inwardness" of his fundamental method of procedure.
That method, it must be acknowledged with due regard to thebon motof the old Greek statesman, is a method well adapted to conciliate the favour of an immense audience,—even in Boston. We are all descended from fighting ancestors, and many of us, who care little for the disinterested discussion of scientific theories, still like to see a man knocked down or impaled, provided the knocking down be done with a syllogistic club, or the impaling be restricted to such a hard substance as is afforded by the horns of a dilemma. It satisfies our combative instincts, without shocking ourphysical sympathies or making any great demand on our keener thinking powers, which most people do most of all dislike to be called upon to exercise. To this kind of feeling Mr. Cook's lectures appeal, and the peculiar character of his success seems to show that he knows well how to deal with it. In a moment of winning frankness he exclaims: "Do you suppose that I think that this audience can becheated? I do not know where in America there is another weekly audience with as many brains in it; at least, I do not know where in New England I should be so likely to be tripped up, if I were to make an incorrect statement, as here."[34]After this coaxing little dose, Mr. Cook proceeds to show his respect for the learning of his audience in some remarks onbathybius, which, as he condescendingly explains, is a name derived from two Greek words, meaningdeepandsea!! The profound knowledge of Greek thus exhibited is quite equalled by his account of bathybius from the zoölogical point of view. He begins by telling his hearers that, in a paper published in the "Microscopical Journal" in 1868, Professor Huxley "announced his belief that the gelatinous substance found in the ooze of the beds of the deep seas is a sheet of living matter extending around the globe."Furthermore, of "this amazingly strategic [!!] and haughtily trumpeted substance ... Huxley assumed that it was in the past, and would be in the future, the progenitor of all the life on the planet." Now it is not true that, in the paper referred to, Huxley announces any such belief or makes any such assumption as is here ascribed to him; but we shall see, in a moment, that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar in enabling him to extract from the text of an author any meaning whatever that may happen to suit his purposes. This ingenious garbling enables the lecturer to come in with telling effect at the close of his third lecture, and earn an ignoble round of applause by holding up the current number of the "American Journal of Science and Arts" (which he would appear to have picked up at a bookstall on his way to the lecture room) and citing from it, as the fifty-first and closing "concession" of evolutionists, "that bathybius has been discovered in 1875, by the ship Challenger, to be—hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth!—sulphate of lime; and that when dissolved it crystallizes as gypsum. [Applause.]" This is what Mr. Cook calls striking, with the "latest scientific intelligence," at the "bottom stem" of the great tree of evolution. The "latest scientific intelligence," with him, means the last book or articlewhich he has glanced over without comprehending its import, but from which he has contrived to glean some statement calculated to edify his audience and scatter the hosts of Midian. In point of fact, the identification of bathybius with sulphate of lime was set down by Sir Wyville Thomson only as a suspicion, to which Huxley, like a true man of science, at once accorded all possible weight, while leaving the question open for further discussion. Only a mountebank, dealing with an audience upon whose ignorance of the subject he might safely rely, could pretend to suppose that the fate of the doctrine of evolution was in any way involved in the question as to the organic nature of bathybius. The amazing strategy was all Mr. Cook's own, and the haughty trumpeting appears to have been chiefly done with his own very brazen instrument.
I said a moment ago that Mr. Cook's system of quotation is peculiar. The following instance is so good that it will bear citing at some length. According to Mr. Cook, Professor Huxley says, in his article on Biology in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica:" "Throughout almost the whole series of living beings, we find agamogenesis, or not-sexual generation." After a pause, Mr. Cook proceeded in a lower voice: "When the topic of the origin of the life of ourLord on the earth is approached from the point of view of the microscope, some men, who know not what the holy of holies in physical and religious science is, say that we have no example of the origin of life without two parents." He went on to cite the familiar instances of parthenogenesis in bees and silk moths, and then proceeded as follows: "Take up your Mivart, your Lyell, your Owen, and you will read [where?] this same important fact which Huxley here asserts, when he says that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally born extends to the higher forms of life. I am in the presence of Almighty God; and yet, when a great soul like that tender spirit of our sainted Lincoln, in his early days, with little knowledge but with great thoughtfulness, was troubled by his difficulty, and almost thrown into infidelity by not knowing that the law that there must be two parents is not universal, I am willing to allude, even in such a presence as this, to the latest science concerning miraculous conception. [Sensation.]"
The vulgarity of this rhetoric is as glaring as its absurdity. All that concerns me now, however, is to point out the Brobdignagian dimensions of the misstatement of facts. Let us look back for a moment at the italicized quotation from Huxley, upon which Mr. Cook builds up the wondrous assertion"that the law that perfect individuals may be virginally born extends to the higher forms of life." Then let us turn to Huxley's article and see what he really does say.
Treating of the whole subject of agamogenesis in the widest possible way by including it under the more general process of cell-multiplication, Huxley says: "Common as the process is in plants and in the lower animals, it becomes rare among the higher animals. In these, the reproduction of the whole organism from a part, in the way indicated above, ceases. At most we find that the cells at the end of an amputated portion of the organism are capable of reproducing the lost part, and in the very highest animals even this power vanishes in the adult....Throughout almost the whole series of living beings, however, we find concurrently with the process of agamogenesis, or asexual generation, another method of generation, in which the development of the germ into an organism resembling the parent depends on an influence exerted by living matter different from the germ. This isgamogenesis, or sexual generation."[35]
Comparing the italicized passage here with Mr. Cook's italicized quotation, we see vividly illustrated the fundamental method of procedureby which the "Monday Lectureship" jumps from a statement about the reproduction of a lobster's claw to the inference that a man may be born without a father. It reminds one of that worthy clergyman who introduced a scathing sermon on a new-fangled variety of ladies' headdress by the appropriate text, "Top-knot come down!" On being reminded by one of his deacons that the full verse seemed to read, "Let him that is upon the housetop not come down," the pastor boldly justified his abridgment on the ground that any particular collocation of words in Scripture is as authoritative as any other, since all parts of the Bible are equally inspired. Perhaps there are some who would justify Mr. Cook's peculiar principle of abridgment on the familiar ground that the end sanctifies the means, and that if a statement seems helpful to "the truth" in general, it is no matter whether the statement itself is true or not.
Enough of this. If we were to go through with these volumes in detail, we should find little else but misrepresentations of facts, misconceptions of principles, and floods of tawdry rhetoric, of which the specimens here quoted are quite sufficient to illustrate the lecturer's "fundamental method of procedure." If I have treated him somewhat lightly, it is because there is nothing in his matteror in his manner that would justify, or even excuse, a more serious style of treatment. The only aspect of his career which affords matter for grave reflection is the ease with which he succeeded for a moment in imposing on the credulity and in appealing to the prejudices of his public. The eagerness with which the orthodox world hailed the appearance of this new champion could not but remind one, with sad emphasis, of Oxenstjern's famous remark: "Quam parva sapientia mundus regitur!" It is comforting to remember that one of the world's greatest naturalists, Asa Gray,—whose orthodoxy is as unimpeachable as his science,—very promptly declared in print that such championship is something of which orthodoxy has no reason to feel proud.
December, 1880.
Some time ago, while I happened to be looking over a wheelbarrow-load of rubbish written to prove that such plays as "King Lear" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" emanated from one of the least poetical and least humorous minds of modern times, I was reminded of a story which I heard when a boy. I forget whether it was some whimsical man of letters like Charles Lamb, or some such professional wag as Theodore Hook, who took it into his head one day to stand still on a London street, with face turned upward, gazing into the sky. Thereupon the next person who came that way forthwith stopped and did likewise, and then the next, and the next, until the road was blocked by a dense crowd of men and women, all standing as if rooted in the ground, and with solemn sky-ward stare. The enchantment was at last brokenwhen some one asked what they were looking at, and nobody could tell. It was simply an instance of a certain remnant of primitive gregariousness of action on the part of human beings, which exhibits itself from time to time in sundry queer fashions and fads.
So when Miss Delia Bacon, in the year which saw the beginning of "The Atlantic Monthly," published a book purporting to unfold the "philosophy" of Shakespeare's dramas, it was not long before other persons began staring intently into the silliest mare's nest ever devised by human dulness; and the fruits of so much staring have appeared in divers eccentric volumes, of which more specific mention will presently be made. Neither in number nor in quality are they such as to indicate that the Bacon-Shakespeare folly has yet become fashionable, and we shall presently observe in it marked suicidal tendencies which are likely to prevent its ever becoming so; but there are enough of such volumes to illustrate the point of my anecdote.
Another fad, once really fashionable, and in defence of which some plausible arguments could be urged, was the Wolfian theory of the Homeric poems, which dazzled so many of our grandparents. It is worth our while to mention it here by way ofprelude. The theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are mere aggregations of popular ballads, collected and arranged in the time of Pisistratus, was perhaps originally suggested by the philosopher Vico, but first attracted general attention in 1795, when set forth by Friedrich August Wolf, one of the most learned and brilliant of modern scholars. Thus eminently respectable in its parentage and quite reasonable on the surface, this ballad theory came to be widely fashionable; forty years ago it was accepted by many able scholars, though usually with large modifications.
The Wolfians urged that we know absolutely nothing about the man Homer, not even when or where he lived. His existence is merely matter of tradition, or of inference from the existence of the poems. But as the poems know nothing of Dorians in Peloponnesus, their date can hardly be so late as 1100b. c.What happened, then, when "an edition of Homer" was made at Athens, about 530b. c., by Pisistratus, or under his orders? Did the editor simply edit two great poems already six centuries old, or did he make up two poems by piecing together a miscellaneous lot of ancient ballads? Wolf maintained the latter alternative, chiefly because of the alleged impossibility of composing and preserving such long poems in thealleged absence of the art of writing. Having thus made a plausible start, the Wolfians proceeded to pick the poems to pieces, and to prove by "internal evidence" that there was nothing like "unity of design" in them, etc.; and so it went on, till poor old Homer was relegated to the world of myth. As a schoolboy I used to hear the belief in the existence of such a poet derided as "uncritical" and "unscholarly."
In spite of these terrifying epithets, the ballad theory never made any impression upon me; for it seemed to ignore the most conspicuous and vital fact about the poems, namely, thestyle, the noble, rapid, simple, vivid, supremely poetical style,—a style as individual and unapproachable as that of Dante or Keats. For an excellent characterization of it, read Matthew Arnold's charming essays "On Translating Homer." The style is the man, and to suppose that this Homeric style ever came from a democratic multitude of minds, or from anything save one of those supremely endowed individual natures such as get born once or twice in a millennium, is simply to suppose a psychological impossibility. I remember once talking about this with George Eliot, who had lately been reading Frederick Paley's ingenious restatement of the ballad theory, and was captivated by its ingenuity.I told her I did not wonder that old dry-as-dust philologists should hold such views, but I was indeed surprised to find such a literary artist as herself ignoring the impassable gulf between Homer's language and that which any ballad theory necessarily implies. She had no answer for this except to say that she should have supposed an evolutionist like me would prefer to regard the Homeric poems as gradually evolved rather than suddenly created! A retort so clever and amiable most surely entitled her to the woman's privilege of the last word.
The Wolfian theory may now be regarded as a thing of the past; it has had its day and been flung aside. If Wolf himself were living, he would be the first to laugh at it. Its original prop has been knocked away, since it has become pretty clear that the art of writing was practised about the shores of the Ægean Sea long before 1100b. c.Even Wolf would now admit that it might have been a real letter that Bellerophon carried to the father of Anteia.[37]All attempts to show a lack of unity in the design of the Iliad and the Odyssey have failed irretrievably, and the discussion has served only to make more and more unmistakable the work of the mighty master. Theballad theory is dead and buried, and he who would read its obituary may find keen pleasure, as well as many a wholesome lesson in sound criticism, in the sensible and brilliant book by Andrew Lang on "Homer and the Epic."
The Bacon-Shakespeare folly has never been set forth by scholars of commanding authority, like Wolf and Lachmann, or Niese and Wilamowitz Moellendorff. Among Delia Bacon's followers not one can by any permissible laxity of speech be termed a scholar, and their theory has found acceptance with very few persons. Nevertheless, it illustrates as well as the Wolfian theory the way in which such notions grow. It starts from a false premise, hazily conceived, and it subsists upon arguments in which trivial facts are assigned higher value than facts of vital importance. Mr. Lang's remark upon certain learned Homeric commentators, "that they pore over the hyssop on the wall, but are blind to the cedar of Lebanon," applies with tenfold force to the Bacon-Shakespeare sciolists. In them we always miss the just sense of proportion which is one of the abiding marks of sanity. The unfortunate lady who first brought their theory into public notoriety in 1857 was then sinking under the cerebral disease of which she died two years later, andher imitators have been chiefly weak minds of the sort that thrive upon paradox, closely akin to the circle-squarers and inventors of perpetual motion. Underlying all the absurdities, however, there is something that deserves attention. Like many other morbid phenomena, the Bacon-Shakespeare folly has its natural history which is instructive. The vagaries of Delia Bacon and her followers originated in a group of conditions which admit of being specified and described, and which the historian of nineteenth-century literature will need to notice. In order to understand the natural history of the affair, it is necessary to examine the Delia Bacon theory at greater length than it would otherwise deserve. Let us see how it is constructed.
It starts with a syllogism, of which the major premise is that the dramas ascribed to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and ever since believed to be his, abound in evidences of extraordinary book-learning. The minor premise is that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon could not have acquired or possessed so much book-learning. The conclusion is that he could not have written those plays.
The question then arises, Which of Shakespeare's contemporaries had enough book-lore to have written them? No doubt Francis Bacon hadenough. The conclusion does not follow, however, that he wrote the plays; for there were other contemporaries with learning enough and to spare, as for example George Chapman and Ben Jonson. These two men, to judge from their acknowledged works, were great poets, whereas in Bacon's fifteen volumes there is not a paragraph which betrays poetical genius. Why not, then, ascribe the Shakespeare dramas to Chapman or Jonson? Here the Baconizers endeavour to support their assumption by calling attention to similarities in thought and phrase between Francis Bacon and the writer of the dramas. Up to this point their argument consists of deductions from assumed premises; here they adduce inductive evidence, such as it is. We shall see specimens of it by and by. At present we are concerned with the initial syllogism.
And first, as to the major premise, it must be met with a flat denial. The Shakespeare plays do not abound with evidences of scholarship or learning of the sort that is gathered from profound and accurate study of books. It is precisely in this respect that they are conspicuously different from many of the plays contemporary with them, and from other masterpieces of English literature. Such plays as Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline" are the work of a scholar deeply indoctrinated withthe views and mental habits of classic antiquity; he has soaked himself in the style of Lucan and Seneca, until their mental peculiarities have become like a second nature to him, and are unconsciously betrayed alike in the general handling of his story and in little turns of expression. Or take Milton's "Lycidas:" no one but a man saturated in every fibre with Theocritus and Virgil could have written such a poem. An extremely foreign and artificial literary form has been so completely mastered and assimilated by Milton that he uses it with as much ease as Theocritus himself, and has produced a work that even the master of idyls had scarcely equalled. After the terrific invective against the clergy and the beautiful invocation to the flowers, followed by the triumphant hallelujah of Christian faith, observe the sudden reversion to pagan sentiment where Lycidas is addressed as the genius of the shore. Only profound scholarship could have written this wonderful poem,—could have brought forth the Christian thought as if spontaneously through the medium of the pagan form. Now there is nothing of this sort in Shakespeare. He uses classical materials, or anything else under the sun that suits his purpose. He takes a chronicle from Holinshed, a biography from North's translation of Plutarch, a legend fromSaxo Grammaticus through Belleforest's French version, a novel of Boccaccio, a miracle play,—whatever strikes his fancy; he chops up his materials and weaves them into a story without much regard to classical models; defying rules of order and unity, and not always heeding probability, but never forgetful of his abiding purpose, to create live men and women. These people may have Greek or Latin names, and their scene of action may be Rome or Mitylene, decorated with scraps of classical knowledge such as a bright man might pick up in miscellaneous reading; but all this is the superficial setting, the mere frame to the picture. The living canvas is human nature as Shakespeare saw it in London and depicted with supreme poetic faculty. Among the new books within his reach was Chapman's magnificent translation of the Iliad, which at a later day inspired Keats to such a noble outburst of encomium; and in "Troilus and Cressida" we have the Greek and Trojan heroes set before us with an incisive reality not surpassed by Homer himself. This play shows how keenly Shakespeare appreciated Homer, how delicately and exquisitely he could supplement the picture; but there is nothing in its five acts that shows him clothed in the garment of ancient thought as Milton wore it. Shakespeare's freedom from such lore is a greatadvantage to him; in "Troilus and Cressida" there is a freedom of treatment hardly possible to a professional scholar. It is because of this freedom that Shakespeare reaches a far wider public of readers and listeners than Milton or Dante, whose vast learning makes them in many places "caviare to the general." Book-lore is a great source of power, but one may easily be hampered by it. What we forever love in Homer is the freshness that comes with lack of it, and in this sort of freshness Shakespeare agrees with Homer far more than with the learned poets.
It is not for a moment to be denied that Shakespeare's plays exhibit a remarkable wealth of varied knowledge. The writer was one of the keenest observers that ever lived. In the woodland or on the farm, in the printing shop or the alehouse, or up and down the street, not the smallest detail escaped him. Microscopic accuracy, curious interest in all things, unlimited power of assimilating knowledge, are everywhere shown in the plays. These are some of the marks of what we callgenius,—something that we are far from comprehending, but which experience has shown that books and universities cannot impart. All the colleges on earth could not by combined effort make the kind of man we call a genius, but such a man may atany moment be born into the world, and it is as likely to be in a peasant's cottage as anywhere.
There is nothing in which men differ more widely than in the capacity for imbibing and assimilating knowledge. The capacity is often exercised unconsciously. When my eldest son, at the age of six, was taught to read in the course of a few weeks of daily instruction, it was suddenly discovered that his four-year-old brother also could read. Nobody could tell how it happened. Of course the younger boy must have taken keen notice of what the elder one was doing, but the process went on without attracting attention until the result appeared.
This capacity for unconscious learning is not at all uncommon. It is possessed to some extent by everybody; but a very high degree of it is one of the marks of genius. I remember one evening, many years ago, hearing Herbert Spencer in a friendly discussion regarding certain functions of the cerebellum. Abstruse points of comparative anatomy and questions of pathology were involved. Spencer's three antagonists were not violently opposed to him, but were in various degrees unready to adopt his views. The three were: Huxley, one of the greatest of comparative anatomists; Hughlings Jackson, a very eminent authority on the pathology of the nervous system; and GeorgeHenry Lewes, who, although more of an amateur in such matters, had nevertheless devoted years of study to neural physiology, and was thoroughly familiar with the history of the subject. Spencer more than held his ground against the others. He met fact with fact, brought up points in anatomy the significance of which Huxley confessed that he had overlooked, and had more experiments and clinical cases at his tongue's end than Jackson could muster. It was quite evident that he knew all they knew on the subject, and more besides. Yet Spencer had never been through a course of "regular training" in the studies concerned; nor had he ever studied at a university, or even at a high school. Where did he learn the wonderful mass of facts which he poured forth that evening? Whence came his tremendous grasp upon the principles involved? Probably he could not have told you. A few days afterward I happened to be talking with Spencer about history, a subject of which he modestly said he knew but little. I told him I had often been struck with the aptness of the historic illustrations cited in many chapters of his "Social Statics," written when he was twenty-nine years old. The references were not only always accurate, but they showed an intelligence and soundness of judgment unattainable, one wouldthink, save by close familiarity with history. Spencer assured me that he had never read extensively in history. Whence, then, this wealth of knowledge,—not smattering, not sciolism, but solid, well-digested knowledge? Really, he did not know, except that when his interest was aroused in any subject he was keenly alive to all facts bearing upon it, and seemed to find them whichever way he turned. When I mentioned this to Lewes, while recalling the discussion on the cerebellum, he exclaimed: "Oh, you can't account for it! It's his genius. Spencer has greater instinctive power of observation and assimilation than any man since Shakespeare, and he is like Shakespeare for hitting the bull's-eye every time he fires. As for Darwin and Huxley, we can follow their intellectual processes, but Spencer is above and beyond all; he is inspired!"
Those were Lewes's exact words, and they made a deep impression upon me. The comparison with Shakespeare struck me as a happy one, and I can understand both Spencer and Shakespeare the better for it. Concerning Spencer one circumstance may be observed. Since his early manhood he has lived in London, and has had for his daily associates men of vast attainments in every department of science. He has thus had rare opportunities forabsorbing an immense fund of knowledge unconsciously.
It is evident that the author of Shakespeare's plays possessed an extraordinary "instinctive power of observation and assimilation." There was nothing strange in such a genius growing up in a small Warwickshire town. The difficulty is one which the Delia-Baconians have created for themselves. As it is their chief stock in trade, they magnify it in every way they can think of. Shakespeare's parents, they say, were illiterate, and he did not know how to spell his own name. It appears as Shagspere, Shaxpur, Shaxberd, Chacsper, and so on through some thirty forms, several of which William Shakespeare himself used indifferently. The implication is that such a man must have been shockingly ignorant. The real ignorance, however, is on the part of those who use such an argument. Apparently, they do not know that in Shakespeare's time such laxity in spelling was common in all ranks of society and in all grades of culture. The name of Elizabeth's great Lord Treasurer, Cecil, and his title, Burghley, were both spelled in half a dozen ways. The name of Raleigh occurs in more than forty different forms, and Sir Walter, one of the most accomplished men of his time, wrote it Rauley, Rawleyghe,Ralegh, and in yet other ways. The talk of the Baconizers on this point is simply ludicrous.
Equally silly is their talk about the dirty streets of Stratford. They seem to have just discovered that Elizabeth's England was a badly drained country, with heaps of garbage in the streets. Shakespeare's father, they tell us, was a butcher, and evidently from a butcher's son, living in an ill-swept town, and careless about the spelling of his name, not much in the way of intellectual achievement was to be expected! In point of fact, Shakespeare's parents belonged to the middle class. His father owned several houses in Stratford and two or three farms in the neighbourhood. As a farmer in those days, he would naturally have cattle slaughtered on his premises and would sell wool off the backs of his own flocks, whence the later tradition of his having been butcher and wool dealer. That his social position was good is shown by the facts that he was chief alderman and high bailiff of Stratford, and justice of the peace, and was styled "Master John Shakespeare," or (as we should say) "Mr.;" whereas, had he been one of the common folk, his style had been "Goodman Shakespeare." A visit to his home in Henley Street, and to Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery,shows that the two families were in eminently respectable circumstances. The son of the high bailiff would see the best people in the neighbourhood. There was in the town a remarkably good free grammar school, where he might have learned the "small Latin and less Greek" which his friend Ben Jonson assures us he possessed. This expression, by the way, is usually misunderstood, because people do not pause to consider it. Coming from Ben Jonson, I should say that "small Latin and less Greek" might fairly describe the amount of those languages ordinarily possessed by a member of the graduating class at Harvard in good standing. It can hardly imply less than the ability to read Terence at sight, and perhaps Euripides less fluently. The author of the plays, with his unerring accuracy of observation, knows Latin enough at least to use the Latin part of English most skilfully; at the same time, when he has occasion to use Greek authors, such as Homer or Plutarch, he usually prefers an English translation. At all events, Jonson's remark informs us that the man whom he addresses as "sweet swan of Avon" knewsomeLatin andsomeGreek,—a conclusion which is so distasteful to one of our Baconizers, Mr. Edwin Reed, that he will not admit it. Rather than do so, he has the assurance to ask us to believethat by the epithet "sweet swan of Avon" Jonson really meant Francis Bacon! Dear me, Mr. Reed, do you really mean it? And how about the editor of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1647, when, in his dedication to Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Pembroke, he speaks of "Sweet Swan of Avon Shakespear"? Was he too a participator in the little scheme for fooling posterity? Or was he one of those who were fooled?
Whether Shakespeare had other chances for book-lore than those which the grammar school afforded, whether there was any interesting parson at hand, as often in small towns, to guide and stimulate his unfolding thoughts,—upon such points we have no information. But there were things to be learned in the country town quite outside of books and pedagogues. There, while the poet listened to the "strain of strutting chanticleer," and watched the "sun-burn'd sicklemen, of August weary," putting on their rye-straw hats and making holiday with rustic nymphs, he could rejoice in