A RELIGIOUS MEDIEVALIST

'At the evening service, after a few preliminary words, he told his people that the doctrines he had taught them, though true, were not those of the Church of England; that, as far as the Church of England had a voice, she had denounced them.'—Father Bowden'sLife of Faber.

FABER'S mental output is a reflex of his character. I assumed this by using his letters and poems as the matrix of the life I sought to present my readers with. Neither I nor they found them rocks of barren quartz. They contained much gold—'yea, much fine gold'—of conscientiousness, devotion, and self-abnegation; of poetic, oratorical fervour; of rare zeal for the Church of his adoption. But with the fine gold there is also much dross. There are, for instance, not a few passages in 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches' of a startling kind to Englishmen—a book, be it remembered, written while the author was an Anglican clergyman. To him Charles I. was more than 'Charles the Martyr.' He was a King, 'conformed to the image of his Master through suffering.' Most of us will ask whether, supposing Jesus of Nazareth had been King in Charles's stead, there would have been anyship-money, any Star-Chamber, or any Civil War? Surely no man bears the image of Christ any farther than he comports himself Christly in politics and general public as in private life. Christ is a poor Master to serve if Charles was an image of Him. The admitted tyranny and licentiousness of the French Bourbons seemed to him to be condoned because they were great at building churches and convents. National struggles for liberty, and their champions, are usually presented in their worst lights, and the freer the nation the bitterer his words about her. The American Republic is thus a 'proud invalid' for whom there is no cure except by 'a multiplication of bishops, and then a monarchy.' In this book occurs his famous passage in favour of burning heretics. His attempted palliation, or modification, of the passage when challenged by Crabbe Robinson, the Diarist, on their ramble together to Eskdale Tarn, is disingenuous. The objectionable sentiment is explicitly made by 'the stranger,' who is as distinctly alleged to be Faber himself by his biographer, and virtually admitted to Robinson to be so. Here is the excerpt: 'Persecution belongs not, strictly speaking, to the Church. Her weapon, and a most dire one, is excommunication, whereby she cuts off the offender from the fountains of life in this world, and makes him over from her own judgment to that of Heaven in the world to come. But surely it is the duty of a Christian State to deprive such an excommunicate person of every social right and privilege; to lay on him such pains and penalties as may seem good to the wisdom of the law, or even, if they so judge, to sweep him from the earth; in other words, to put him to death. The least that can be done ismake a civil death to follow an ecclesiastical death, and this must be done where the Church and State stand in right relation to each other.' To the ultramontane views promulgated in this book might be added others from his letters and published sermons, as, for instance, the phrase, 'the pernicious influence of Protestant ragged schools'; that in which he opposes the reading of the English Bible because its 'uncommon beauty and marvellous English' made it 'the stronghold of heresy'; those in which he elaborately argues for the 'adoration' of Mary ('surely it must be called so,' he says); the many in which he disparages the Reformation and applauds the blessings which the Church, and the Papacy in particular, had bestowed upon the nations; and those, once more, in which he declares a man has no rights as man conferred on him by the Bible, unless he be a Christian (by which he means a Churchman, for he says so), and dilating on the misery and unrest of that Protectionist period, proposes no remedies other than obedience to the Church, the keeping of saints' days and holy days, and the sweeping away of the 'indecent system of pews'! Incredible as it may seem, every one of these proposals is seriously propounded in 'A Churchman's Politics in Disturbed Times.'

One might make large quotations from the Oratory sermons full of descriptions, graphic even to gruesomeness, of the bodily agony of Jesus on the Cross, powerful enough to stir emotional women into hysterical weeping, and to bring them into a profound, if temporary and unreal, sentiment of fellowship with His sufferings, leaving Him still afar off as a risen and personal Friend, and leaving themunmoved by the bleeding figure on the crucifix in the silent recess till the next cerebral excitement. The whole of my articles might be taken up with extracts from his hymns that are simply astounding to the unprejudiced mind in their luscious sentimentality towards Mary and the saints. Of these it may be said the expressions do not necessarily mean all to a Catholic that they seem to a Protestant to imply. But is that so? Who that has watched and heard Italian or Irish worship, or studied the biographies and writings of the Romanist mystics of Italy or Spain, can possibly doubt their perfect sincerity? Is it not an entirely natural transfer of ardent love from the Redeemer to His mother happening concurrently with the priestly transfer of worship, of 'adoration,' from Him to her? Her images are bedecked with flowers and gorgeous attire, and her shrines are brilliantly lighted and are perfumed with incense. His image stands in a dark, neglected, railed-off side-chapel, in all the great cathedrals and rural churches of Romanist Europe.

Some of Faber's best prose is curiously reserved for lamentations over the decay of Paganism!—the 'beautiful births of Greek faith, most radiant legends, springing from every hard and barren spot, like unnumbered springs out of the Parnassian caverns, or the leafy sides of Citheron, or the bee-haunted slope of pale Hymettus.' 'The decline of Paganism was mournful and undignified. Faith after faith went out, like the extinguishing of lamps in a temple, or the paling of the marsh-fires before the rising sun.' Yet were the old creeds full of symbols, and the 'whole of external nature an assemblage of forms and vases capable of,and actually filled with, the Spirit,' and so Greek Paganism was the expression of a wish to 'write God's name on all things beautiful and true.' We can re-echo his dirge and acknowledge the saner, more cheerful side of the 'Paganism' that feels after God, 'if haply it may find Him'; but what a contrast between his attitude towards the non-Christian world and the fellow-Christians—not lacking in as holy teaching or living as his own—whom he had left, for an approachment towards image-worship!

Let us see, now, however, what he can do in description of places and scenery, in both prose and poetry. Here is his first impression of Venice: 'How is it to be described? What words can I use to express that vision, that thing of magic that lay before us?... Never was so wan a sunlight, never was there so pale a blue, as stood round about Venice that day. And there it was, a most visionary city, rising as if by enchantment out of the gentle-mannered Adriatic, the waveless Adriatic. One by one rose steeple, tower, and dome, street, and marble palace; they rose to our eyes slowly, as from the weedy deeps; and then they and their images wavered and floated, like a dream, upon the pale, sunny sea. As we glided onward from Fusina in our gondola, the beautiful buildings, with their strange Eastern architecture, seemed like fairy ships, to totter, to steady themselves, to come to anchor one by one, and where the shadow was, and where the palace was, you scarce could tell. And there was San Marco, and there the Ducal Palace, and there the Bridge of Sighs, and the very shades of the Balbi, Foscari, Pisani, Bembi, seemed to hover about the winged Lion of St. Mark. Andall this, all, to the right and left, all was Venice; and it needed the sharp grating of the gondola against the stairs to bid us be sure it was not all a dream.'

He says of Milan Cathedral that 'In the moonlight it disarms criticism. When the moon's full splendour streams on Milan roofs, and overflows upon its lofty buttresses; when the liquid radiance trickles down the glory-cinctured heads of the marble saints, like the oil from Aaron's beard, and every fretted pinnacle, and every sculptured spout ran with light as they might have run with rain in a thunder-shower, who would dare to say there was a fault in that affecting miracle of Christian Art?' Of Corfu, the most perfect earthly Elysium I myself have seen, though I first saw it when returning from the Far East, he writes: 'What traveller does not know the delight of getting among foliage whose shape and hues are not like those of his native land? The interior of the island of Corfu was to us a sweet foretaste of Oriental foliage. We rode among strange hedges of huge cactus, fields of a blue-flowering grain, occasional palms, clouds of blue and white gum cistus, myrtle-shoots smelling in the sun, little forests of the many-branched arbutus, marshy nooks of blossoming oleander, venerable dull olives and lemon groves jewelled with pale yellow fruit. It was a dream of childhood realized, and brought with it some dreary remembrances barbed with poignant sorrows. Dreams, alas! are never realized till the freshness of the heart is gone, and their beauty has lost all that wildness which made it in imagination so desirable.'

'Sir Lancelot,' his longest and most ambitious poem, though finished at Ambleside in 1847, wasissued from his Elton Vicarage two years later, and is under the guise of 'an attempt to embody and illustrate the social and ecclesiastical spirit of the thirteenth century,' avowedly an allegory of the soul seeking for that which it is represented as finding only when brought 'back to the foot of Peter's sovran chair.' To us its chief interest lies in his portraiture of our Westmorland surroundings. The hermitage to which the returned Crusader wends his way lies

'Within the Vale of Troutbeck, where towards the headThere is a single woody hill, enclosedWithin the mountains, yet apart and low.Amid the underwood around, it seemsLike a huge animal recumbent there,Not without grace; and sweetly apt it isTo catch all wandering sunbeams as they pass,Or volatile lights in transit o'er the vale.'

Who among us does not recognise it? Who does not know 'the bell-shaped mountain which the wild winds ring full mournfully'? And the beck, too, where the ouzel flits even in winter on the 'ice-rimmed stones,' and the banks, whereon Sir Lancelot might lie and watch 'the flowery troops in pageant movable'—the snowdrops 'like a flock of children purely white,' the 'deep Lent-lilies, like constellations girt with lesser orbs.' When he crosses to the western sea 'angry and purple, far and wide outspread in stormy grandeur,' we go with him, and as we wander thitherward see Scawfell 'palpitating in the haze,' feel 'the tingling of the woodlands' at night-time down the valley of the Duddon, and learn how Esk is 'suckled in sylvan places' by 'clusters of wild tarns.'

Among his minor local poems 'English Hedges'—the Saxon hedgerows—are apostrophized:

'The hedges still survive, shelters for flowers,An habitation for the singing birds,Cool banks of shadow, grateful to the herds,A charm scarce known in any land but ours.'

And in 'Mountain Tarns' he sings:

'There is a power to blessIn hillside loneliness—In tarns and dreary places—A virtue in the brook,A freshness in the lookOf mountains' joyless faces—And so when life is dull,Or when my heart is fullBecause my dreams have frowned,I wander up the rillsTo stones and tarns, and hills—I go there to be crowned.'

If we turn to Faber's purely devotional writings, such as 'All for Jesus,' and can forget, or slide over, the subtle insinuations of Romish doctrines, and the curious blending of saints and sacraments, popes and priests, confessions and penances, with earnest appeals on behalf of Jesus, at one time as though the soul's salvation depended solely on ceremonials and priestly absolutions, and at another time as if on 'Jesus only,' one may find much help and light in many beautiful passages—as, for example: 'Who can look into the world and not see how God's glory is lost upon the earth? It is the interests of Jesus that we should seek and find it. Apart from clear acts of great and grievous sin, how is God forgotten, clean forgotten, by the greatest part of mankind! They live as if therewere no God. It is not as if they openly rebelled against Him. They pass over and ignore Him. He is an inconvenience in His own world, an impertinence in His own creation. So He has been quietly set on one side, as if He were an idol out of fashion, and in the way. Men of science, and politicians, have agreed on this, and men of business and wealth think it altogether the most decent thing to be silent about God, for it is difficult to speak of Him, or have a view of Him, without allowing too much to Him.... Half a dozen men, going about God's world, seeking nothing but God's glory—they would remove mountains. This was promised to faith—why should not we be the men to do it?'

Similarly burning words, apart from his descriptions of Calvary, might be quoted from his sermons, but, alas! these would lack the passionate personality behind them, with the flashing eye, the expressive emphasizing hands, and, above all, the voice rising like the swelling of bells in the steeple, or tender as a silver chord trembling into silence. Without the spirit to make them live, let us not try to reproduce them.

This fly is an inhabitant of woods and coppices, and is very abundant in the neighbourhood of the English Lakes. The nest is often of enormous size, sometimes containing more than a cart-load of sticks and small twigs. The Vale of Duddon swarms with wood ants, and is the only place where I have seen the wryneck, which is said to feed principally on these insects. Like other ants, they have the enjoyment of wings for a few weeks in each year, and often, as the proverb says, "to their sorrow," as by them they are conveyed to places where they suffer greatly from birds, as well as from fishes. They generally make their appearance in August and September. Body, a strand of peacock's herl, and one of black ostrich's herl laid on together; silk, dark brown; wing, the lightest part of a starling's quill; hackle from a black cock.'—John Beever:Practical Fly-Fishing.

Yewdale

Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside.

YEWDALE.

The Favourite Valley of John Ruskin (seep. 64), and of the Sisters of the Thwaite.

Enlarge image

'Nature takes the hue of a man's own feeling, and he finds in it what he brings to it. In proportion as he becomes more intelligent and holy, so does it become more beautiful and significant to him.'—Hugh Macmillan.

JOHN RUSKIN'S later years were gladdened by the friendship of the Miss Beevers, especially that of Miss Susie, the younger of the two. To her, though so near a neighbour that a short boat-row to the water-head of Coniston Lake would take him across, he wrote no fewer than 2,000 letters. The best of these, or at any rate those most suitable for the public, form the book called 'Hortus Inclusus,' arranged by the professor's 'Master of Industries at Loughrigg,' Mr. Albert Fleming, and prefaced by Ruskin himself. The very title-page of the little collection shows the love he bore his friends: 'Messages from the Wood to the Garden, sent in happy days to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston, by their thankful friend, John Ruskin, LL.D., D.C.L.' The introductory words of this 'thankful friend' tell us much about the ladies: 'Sources they have beenof good, like one of the mountain springs of the English shepherd land, ever to be found at need. They did not travel; they did not go up to London in its season; they did not receive idle visitors to jar or waste their leisure in the waning year. The poor and the sick could find them always; or, rather, they watched for and prevented all poverty and pain that care or tenderness could relieve or heal. Loadstones they were, as steadily bringing the light of gentle and wise souls about them as the crest of the mountain gives pause to the moving clouds; in themselves they were types of perfect womanhood in its constant happiness, queens alike of their own hearts and of a Paradise in which they knew the names and sympathized with the spirits of every living creature that God had made to play therein, or to blossom in its sunshine or shade.' A beautiful description is this of the cultured English gentlewoman, fortunately for our peasantry by no means rare. But it is on their literary and intellectual sides, rather than their philanthropic, that we have to speak of them here. It might be sufficient guarantee of Miss Susie's high level, at any rate, that Ruskin wrote to her letters as carefully composed in full mastery of language, and on as great a variety of topics, as if he had been consciously inditing another volume of his 'Modern Painters' for publication. 'The Lost Church in the Campagna' is written to one whom he knows will understand and appreciate his historical and artistic allusions. She loved flowers, and studied them enthusiastically. She and her sister are named in more than one botanical work as authorities on our mountain plants, and discoverers of rare species and their localities.Therefore he continually sets down little bits of blossom-news for his friend—though it be no more than such as this from Perugia—'the chief flowers here are only broom and bindweed, and I begin to weary for my heather and for my Susie; but oh, dear! the ways are long and the days few'; or those scraps from Ingleton, where he playfully gives all his pretty flowers names of girls, changing the harsh botanical names into sweet-sounding ones, and consulting his correspondent as to how far he may venture to separate and rechristen certain pinks and pearlworts and saxifrages from their ordained family groups. From Brantwood he discourses to her on his blue and purple agates and groups of crystals, dwelling on the perfection of some stone—'its exquisite colour and superb weight, flawless clearness, and delicate cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of the lake.' The last letter written by him was to his 'Dearest Susie.' And her letters to him are treasures of poetic appreciation of Nature and of book-lore rare in women. 'Did you think of your own quotation from Homer,' she asks, 'when you told me that field of yours was full of violets? But where are the four fountains of white water? How delicious Calypso's fire of finely-chopped cedar!' 'When I was a girl (I was once) I used to delight in Pope's Homer.... When a schoolgirl going with my bag of books into Manchester, I used to like Don Quixote and Sir Charles Grandison with my milk porridge.' 'Coniston would go into your heart if you could see it now—so very lovely; the oak-trees so early, nearly in leaf already (May 1). Your beloved blue hyacinths will soon be out, and the cuckoo has come.... The breezes will bringfern seeds and plant them, or rather sow them in such fashion as no human being can do. When time and the showers brought by the west wind have mellowed it a little, the tiny beginnings of mosses will be there. The sooner this can be done the better.' She writes to him, too, about wrens and blackbirds, and her pet squirrel, and other of her pensioners. There is one extract, somewhat pathetic, yet sweetly patient, that must not be omitted: 'You are so candid about your age that I shall tell you mine! I am astonished to find myself sixty-eight—very near the Psalmist's three- score-and-ten. Much illness and much sorrow, and then I woke to find myself old, and as if I had lost a great part of my life. Let us hope it was not all lost.' It was she who made the charming series of extracts from 'Modern Painters,' published as 'Frondes Agrestes,' respecting which he writes that they are 'chosen at her pleasure, by the author's friend, the younger lady of the Thwaite, Coniston,' and adds his absolute submission to her judgment, and his appreciation of the grace she did him in writing out every word with her own hands. Over and above her natural history pursuits and her association with John Ruskin, she wrote, I am told, many short poems and leaflets on kindness to animals. She died in 1893, and her grave adjoins her friend's.

The Beevers were a Manchester family whose father, on his retirement from business, settled, in 1831, at the Thwaite House. After his death one of his sons, John, and three of his daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Susanna, lived on there, unmarried, and contented, it is said of them, with 'the harvest of a quiet eye.' Miss Margaret died before Ruskin knew the circle. John Beever, like his sisters, wasa naturalist. He was especially fond of fly-fishing, and on the art of it he wrote a book, of which a new edition has recently been issued, with a biographical sketch by W. G. Collingwood, and notes and an extra chapter on char-fishing by A. and A. R. Severn. Fishing has not directly added much of value to English literature. The notable exception is, of course, Isaac Walton's ever-living little book. Great statesmen and tired public men of all kinds have found rest and change in handling rod and line, and many pleasant little brochures exist of smaller men's experiences and enjoyment of the gentle craft. To this order belongs Mr. Beever's book. It is necessarily too technical for the general reader. There is nothing in it so good as Walton's well-known remark about the nightingale—a bird never heard, alas! in these northern regions, and therefore much missed by a southerner like myself—but which 'airy creature breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles had not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have often done, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!' Nor will you find anything so racy as the 'Compleat Angler's' picture of an otter-hunt, or as the other of the young milkmaid singing 'that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago.' He has, however, some excellent passages of a literary savour, as, for example, of the two gentlemen fishing the streams of thepastoral Yarrow, and convincing the local piscator that 'grouse' was the proper fly to catch with, and of Frank, the Matlock chaise-driver, who became to him the revealer of Nature's demand for obedience to her laws—in other words, he taught him the imitation and use of the actual living flies on which the trout fed each consecutive day. The list of possible flies to copy is a formidable one, but the way to make the copies is fully explained—say, with a feather from the top of a woodcock's wing, fur from a squirrel's cheek, and orange-silk, or perhaps a feather from a sea-swallow or a seagull, pale-blue rabbit's fur, and primrose-coloured silk, or some wool from beneath an old sheep. Then there follows the method of making rods, the suitable wood, the dimensions, and the art of securing temporary repairs. There are appendices on the antiquity of fly-fishing, and on a day's angling in France. To those of us for whom the mysteries of spring-backs, spring-duns, March-browns, green-tails, ruddy-flies, and black-headed reds, and iron-blues, have slight allurements, the more interesting portions of his life are those spent in making himself acquainted with the growth and habits of fish, and in constructing a pond behind his house that he could stock with finny people from the tarns and becks—a water colony wherein once each year he could handle and examine each member to see how it progressed. The pond was also a reservoir for a water-wheel that drove the machinery in his private workshop, where he turned wooden articles for carving, and made elaborate inlaid mosaics. There also he printed his sister's little books, and texts for the walls of Sunday-schools. Children he was fond of, and for their sakes he made himself—or was his talentinnate—a wonderful story-teller, of 'quaint imagination and humour.' He had seven years of illness, which laid him aside from his active pursuits, and died no fewer than thirty-four years before his youngest sister 'Susie.' He does not lie at Coniston, but in the churchyard at Hawkshead, hard by the old sun-dial on the north side. In the same graveyard lies another Lake celebrity, of whom something may be said shortly.

If fishermen deign to read these articles, let me inform them they can get Mr. Beever's 'Practical Fly-fishing' through any local bookseller, from Methuen, of London; and that another book for their perusal is Mr. John Watson's 'Lake District Fisheries.' I cannot praise or dispraise either, but competent and knowing men tell me both are the practical experiences of practical fishermen, and are therefore of real value.

Some readers may think that Miss Mary Beever has been slighted in favour of her brother and her younger sister. 'She was,' says Ruskin, 'chiefly interested in the course of immediate English business, policy, and progressive science; while Susie lived an aerial and enchanted life, possessing all the highest joys of imagination.' They were the Martha and the Mary of the Coniston Bethany, its 'House of Dates,'—its place of rest and refreshment, not for the incarnate Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, but for a wearied reformer of human life and lover of all good things that God has made in the perfection of beauty. They each contributed their share to his comfort and renovation, and if he was more attached to the one who could enter into his life-thoughts the most thoroughly, there is nothing to wonder at in its being so.

'I will call on Jehovah from my prison,And He will hear me;From the womb of the grave I cry.Thou hearest my voice.Thou hast cast me into wide waters in the depths of the sea;And the floods surround me;All Thy dashing and Thy rolling wavesPass over me.'

'Though the fig-tree did not blossom,And there be no fruit on the vine;Though the produce of the olive fail,Though the parched field yield no food,Though the flock be cut off from the fold,And there be no cattle in the stalls;Yet will I rejoice in Jehovah,I will exult in God my Saviour.Jehovah my Lord is my strength.He will set my feet as the deer's,He will make me walk in high places.'Elizabeth Smith:Hebrew Translations.

'What the vast multitudes of women are doing in the world's activities, and what share their mothers and grandmothers, to the remotest generations backward, have had in originating culture, is a question which concerns the whole race.'—Professor Mason'sWoman's Share in Primitive Culture.

NOT a very distinctive name, you will say! Who was she? 'The blooming Elizabeth Smith, whom to know was to revere,' writes the author of an ancient book called 'Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.' But this does not carry us a long way further. Well, then, she was a young lady, born so long ago as 1776, near the city of Durham, who lived for several years at Coniston with her parents and died there when but twenty-nine years of age. What made her remarkable was not so much her beauty or her goodness—and she possessed both these physical and spiritual qualities,—but also, and for our present purpose especially, her poetic talent and her great linguistic powers and attainments. 'With scarcely any assistance,' writes one who was intimate with her, 'she was well acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrewlanguages. She had no inconsiderable knowledge of Arabic and Persian. She made also considerable philological collections of Welsh, Chinese, African, and Icelandic words. She was well acquainted with geometry, algebra, and other branches of the mathematics. She was a very fine musician. She drew landscapes from nature extremely well, and was mistress of perspective.' She was more retiring, and even timid, than she was learned. Let it be remembered that she was born in the days previous to any thought of the 'emancipation' of woman, or her 'equality' with man, and when the only sphere it was considered proper for her to fill was that of wife and mother. She might—nay must—bake and sew, and undertake all the domestic duties of the household, with one or two 'accomplishments' allowed her, qualifying her to be agreeable to her husband or father in his leisure moments, and to his guests. It will be satisfactory to those, if any are left, who still hold the old theories about the highest feminine virtues, that this talented young lady, who could calculate the distances and periods of planets, write verses in rhyme, or in imitation of Ossian, and translate the Book of Job from the Hebrew, could also make a currant tart, or 'a gown, or a cap, or any other article of dress, with as much skill' as she displayed in the region of languages and mathematics.

Her father was a banker whose business was in the West of England. He was a wealthy man, and removed, while his daughter was young, from Durham to one of the loveliest estates in Monmouthshire—Piercefield—on the cliffs of the river Wye, close to Chepstow's ruined castle, and within sight of the British Channel.

'There, twice a day, the Severn fills,The salt sea-water passes by,And hushes half the babbling Wye,And makes a silence in the hills.'

Through the length of the park a pathway traverses the winding summits of the gray limestone rocks, which—clothed with wood, or rising in naked spires from the water far into the sky—afforded resting-places for occasional nightingales, and for all the commoner singing birds of the land, as well as for ravens and innumerable daws. Here she could find romantic spots at every turn that called forth all her poetical aspirations and faculties, and filled her imagination with dreams of the heroes of old Wales, and the stormy warfare of the Marches in the middle ages. She had quietude enough, too, in the library of the mansion to pursue her unusual studies successfully, and without interruption from casual visitors. 'Miss Smith's power of memory,' says the 'National Dictionary of Biography,' 'and of divination, must have been alike remarkable, for she rarely consulted a dictionary.'

At the beginning of William Pitt's great European wars, as well as some quarter of a century later, after its close, the commercial world was widely and deeply shaken—as it always is under circumstances that enrich the few at the cost of the many—Smith's Bank was involved in many losses, and failed to meet its own liabilities. The ruin of the firm involved the sale of Piercefield, and the family's departure therefrom, Mr. Smith purchasing a commission in the army. They went first to London, and then followed the regiment to Ireland, where everything was in ferment about the expected French invasion, and insurrection of the Irish. Itwas at this period that another and more famous literary lady was passing through her experiences, which are recorded in some of the episodes in 'Castle Rackrent' and other famous novels that delighted our parents. The Smiths were at first entertained by Lord Kingston, but had shortly to take up their abode in barracks. Elizabeth's calm cheerfulness and practical support to her mother were edifying, and brought forth the reserve forces of her unassuming character very satisfactorily. Her mother's description of their journey on horseback in those wild regions, as they were in ante-locomotive days, is worth transcribing from one of her letters to a lady friend. After a twenty-mile ride they arrived dripping wet. 'Our baggage was not come, and, owing to the negligence of the quarter-master, there was not even a bed to rest on. The whole furniture of our apartments consisted of a piece of a cart-wheel for a fender, a bit of iron, probably from the same vehicle, for a poker, a dirty deal table, and three wooden-bottomed chairs. It was the first time we had joined the regiment, and I was standing by the fire, and perhaps dwelling too much on the comforts I had lost, when I was roused from my reverie by Elizabeth's exclaiming, "Oh, what a blessing!" "Blessing!" I replied, "there seems none left!" "Indeed there is, my dear mother, for see here is a little cupboard!" I dried my eyes, and endeavoured to learn fortitude from my daughter.'

After long wanderings, varied by residences at Bath and in North Wales, the Smiths stayed for some months at Patterdale. While here the Captain purchased a little farm, and hired a house at Coniston. The house, according to the report of avisitor, was not very comfortable. 'The situation is indeed enchanting, and during the summer months inconveniences within doors are little felt, but it grieves me to be convinced of what they must amount to in December.' Here Elizabeth continued her studies and translations, especially from the German and Hebrew, and probably at this time read Locke's philosophy, discovering and criticising some of his inaccuracies. After a five years' most thorough enjoyment of Coniston—walking, boating, reading—she, staying out too long one evening beneath a favourite tree with a favourite book, felt a sharp pain strike suddenly through her chest. She had very considerably overtaxed her physical powers, and drawn too seriously on her reserve of nervous energy. It was the beginning of the end. Within a little more than twelve months she passed to her everlasting rest. Bath, Matlock, and other places had been tried without avail. At length she said: 'If I cannot recover here I shall not anywhere,' and refused to be removed again. In her last letter she says: 'I have learned to look on life and death with an equal eye, knowing where my hope is fixed.' Her friend's reply was 'as to a Christian on the verge of eternity.' 'Her whole life,' her mother adds, 'had been a preparation for death.' The house called Tent Lodge—where Tennyson afterwards stayed—now stands on the site where she lived in a tent pitched for her in her father's grounds. The name is given to the house because of an exclamation of hers that this would be such a magnificent situation for one. Whenever we see it we remember the delight of the 'Angel-Spirit' (her mother's words for her) at the prospect it commands. In the graveyard at Hawkshead, inwhich Mr. Beever lies, was buried Elizabeth Smith in August, 1806, and within the church is a small white marble tablet to her memory, telling how 'she possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and humble piety.' The situation of Hawkshead Church and graveyard are thus described by a contemporary writer: 'On the north is a most awful scene of mountains heaped upon mountains, in every variety of horrid shape. Among them sweeps to the north a deep winding chasm, darkened by overhanging rocks, that the eye cannot pierce, nor the imagination fathom.... The church is situated on the front of an eminence that commands the vale, which is floated with Esthwaite Water.'

Miss Smith's poems were written on the models then in vogue, and would hardly meet the taste of a generation that has since her days known a Scott, a Byron, a Wordsworth, a Shelley, a Keats, a Tennyson, and her stanzas are often long. This extract, descriptive of a calm at Patterdale, after a mountain hurricane, may furnish some idea of her style:

'The storm is past; the raging wind no more,Between the mountains rushing, sweeps the vale,Dashing the billows of the troubled lakeHigh into the air; the snowy fleece lies thick;From every bough, from every jutting rockThe crystals hang; the torrents roar has ceased—As if that Voice that called creation forthHad said "Be still." All nature stands aghast,Suspended by the viewless power of cold.'

Her translations from Hebrew were her favourite Sunday pursuits, and those of Jonah's Prayer, and Habakkuk's 'Song in Parts' are, to my mind, more poetical and more coherent than even our fineauthorized version. In this judgment I find myself confirmed by reading that Archbishop Magee considered her rendering of 'Job' the best he knew.

There is no space for lengthy quotations from her prose writings and her letters, but some short sentences will have to serve as samples of her manner and her thoughts:

'To be good and disagreeable is high treason against virtue.''A great genius can render clear and intelligible any subject within the compass of human knowledge; therefore, what is called a deep book (too deep to be understood) we may generally conclude is the produce of a shallow understanding.''Happiness is a very common plant, a native of every soil, yet is some skill required in gathering it; for many noxious weeds look like it, and deceive the unwary to their ruin.''Wouldst thou know the true worth of time, employ one hour.''Pleasure is a rose near which there ever grows the thorn of evil. It is wisdom's work so carefully to cull the rose, as to avoid the thorn.''Why do so many men return coxcombs from their travels? Because they set out fools!''As the sun breaking forth in winter, so is joy in the season of affliction. As a shower in the midst of summer, so are the salutary drops of sorrow mingled in our cup of pleasure.''A happy day is worth enjoying; it exercises the soul for heaven. The heart that never tastes of pleasure, shuts up, grows stiff, and incapable of enjoyment. How, then, shall it enter the realms of bliss? A cold heart can receive no pleasure even there.'

'To be good and disagreeable is high treason against virtue.'

'A great genius can render clear and intelligible any subject within the compass of human knowledge; therefore, what is called a deep book (too deep to be understood) we may generally conclude is the produce of a shallow understanding.'

'Happiness is a very common plant, a native of every soil, yet is some skill required in gathering it; for many noxious weeds look like it, and deceive the unwary to their ruin.'

'Wouldst thou know the true worth of time, employ one hour.'

'Pleasure is a rose near which there ever grows the thorn of evil. It is wisdom's work so carefully to cull the rose, as to avoid the thorn.'

'Why do so many men return coxcombs from their travels? Because they set out fools!'

'As the sun breaking forth in winter, so is joy in the season of affliction. As a shower in the midst of summer, so are the salutary drops of sorrow mingled in our cup of pleasure.'

'A happy day is worth enjoying; it exercises the soul for heaven. The heart that never tastes of pleasure, shuts up, grows stiff, and incapable of enjoyment. How, then, shall it enter the realms of bliss? A cold heart can receive no pleasure even there.'

'The ascent becomes dismally laborious here, so much so, that you are fain to lie down upon the soft, dry mountain grass, to recover breath, and while doing so, what objection can you have to a little conversation with the Old Man himself? Listen, then!

'Old Man! Old Man! your sides are brant,And fearfully hard to climb;My limbs are weak, and my breath is scant,So I'll rest me here and rhyme.''Yes, my sides are steep, and my dells are deep,And my broad bald brow is high,And you'll ne'er, should you rhyme till the limit of time,Find worthier theme than I.'My summit I shroud in the weltering cloud,And I laugh at the tempest's din;I am girdled about with stout rock without,And I've countless wealth within.'My silence is broke by the raven's croak,And the bark of the mountain fox;And mine echoes awake to the brown glead's shriek,As he floats by my hoary rocks.'Dr. A. C. Gibson:Ravings and Ramblings Round Coniston.

Hawkeshead

Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside.

HAWKESHEAD, FROM ESTHWAITE WATER.

The Residence of Dr. Gibson, and Burial-place of Miss Elizabeth Smith.

Enlarge image

'If you areillat this season, there is no occasion to send for the doctor—onlystop eating. Indeed, upon general principles, it seems to me to be a mistake for people, every time there is a little thing the matter with them, to be running in such haste for the "doctor," because, if you are going to die, a doctor can't help you, and if you are not, there is no occasion for him.'—Hone'sTable Book.

THERE are three paragraphs about him—appreciative ones—in Mr. Bradley's 'Highways and Byways in the Lake District,' and the first of the three shall furnish me with my own introductory one. 'And who may Craig Gibson be? Ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will most assuredly demand to be told. His portrait figures in no shop windows, nor can his biography in concentrated form be purchased for a penny at the local stationer's, nor is the house he occupied an item in the round of the enterprising char-a-banc. Poor Gibson, in short, is not reckoned among the immortals of the Lake Country, by outsiders at any rate; but, unlike any of these except Wordsworth, he was a native of it and a product of the soil. Gibson was, in fact, a country doctor, whose practice carried himfar and wide through hill and dale, among all classes of people. He had a wonderful knowledge of the country folk, among whom he laboured until he was forty, and a vast fund of sympathy and humour, which endeared him to all. With this he combined a passion for dialect studies, and some genius for writing poems, both of a humorous and pathetic nature. No man who ever lived had such a mastery of the varying dialects of Cumberland and Westmorland, or better knew the inner character and the humour of their rugged people.'

The only sketch of his life I have been able to find is Mr. Nicholson's in the 'National Dictionary of Biography,' and that gives no clue to anything fuller. From this it appears he was born in 1813 at Harrington, Cumberland, now a town of some 3,000 inhabitants on the London and North-Western Railway, and on the seashore between Whitehaven and Workington. An old coloured engraving of it about contemporary with Gibson's youth shows it as a harbour nearly land-locked by hilly promontories, and possessing a small stone-built pier. The village, more ancient than the harbour, was half a mile inland. Gibson's father was named James, and his mother was Mary Stuart Craig, a member of a Moffat family. His early education was probably quite local, at any rate we find that he got his first knowledge of medicine by serving his time with a practitioner at Whitehaven, and from thence he went to Edinburgh University to study and to take his diploma, commencing on his own account at Branthwaite and Ullock, near Cockermouth, when twenty-eight years of age. He did not remain there long, but in 1843 removed to Coniston, and married Miss Sarah Bowman of Lamplough the followingyear. He remained at Coniston for six years, and then removed to Hawkshead, where he dwelt for another eight, and then, finding the country practice, with long rides and exposure to all kinds of mountain weather, becoming too hard and too heavy for him, he removed to Bebington in Cheshire, where he remained for fifteen years more, and when failing health and three score years of life compelled it, lived there retired until his death in 1874. He is interred in the churchyard of that village in the neighbourhood of Birkenhead. This is practically all that is known, and, indeed, is all that need concern us of his outward biography. His inner is indicated by his books. From them we gather that he was a pleasant and genial man, who readily found his way to the hearts of the 'statesmen' and peasantry among whom his professional calling carried him every day of his life, and with whom he would hold colloquies in the vernacular, and from whose fireside talks he would gather the stories and legends he afterwards put together in prose or verse, to illustrate both the Scandinavian dialects and the folklore of the north-western shires, as William Barnes has in later times done for the Saxon speech and thought-modes of the Dorsetshire people. We are sure, too, that wherever he rode he was a keen observer and investigator of natural objects among the rocks, and birds, and flowers, as well as of castles, churches, mansions, schools, and ancient earthworks. He was a learned geologist, and if you want to be assured of this you have but to procure a copy of Harriet Martineau's 'Guide to the Lakes,' and you will find the chapters on geology and mineralogy were his compilation, though there is no further acknowledgment of the fact than the presence ofhis initials, A. C. G., at the end. It is not the hand of a mere scientific smatterer that can condense with ability into some dozen or thirteen pages the earth treasures and stratification of such a mountain-land as ours, respecting which he says, 'As no district of similar extent displays such a variety of natural beauties in its external aspect, so does no district present within equally limited bounds such diversity of geological formation and arrangement, or a like variety of mineral productions.' He was an excellent botanist, writing upon the flora of Cumberland, though possibly his knowledge of ornithology would be little more than that of any intelligent, nature-loving country doctor almost always in the open. An antiquarian he certainly was of no mean standing, being a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries—a society that asks, unlike many other 'learned' associations, 'what has he done?' before receiving a member—and he was a frequent contributor to the 'Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.' A good example of the quality of his contributions is that on 'Hawkshead Town, Church, and School.' It is interesting, and in a small space very enlightening. He tells us that this is one of the smallest market towns in the kingdom, and he describes it in a couplet of his own, a 'pattering' rhyme:

'A quaint old town is Hawkshead, and an ancient look it bears,Its church, its school, its dwellings, its streets, its lands, its squares,Are all irregularities—all angles, twists, and crooks,With penthouses and gables over archways, wents, and nooks.'

It really has two small 'squares' and one street 'of varying contour, and width frequently and awkwardly encroached upon by gabled shops standing at right angles to the roadway and houses by aggressive corners and low upper stories projected far beyond the foundation-line of the buildings.' Altogether an eccentric town. Then, after speaking of its lake, he points out to us the old glacier moraines, and its green water-meadows, and next branches off into the story of the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' in 1537, and the tale of the Plague in 1577, and of the opening of the Quaker cemetery on the picturesque hillside in 1658, and the founding and upkeep of the parish church with its peal of six bells, each with its inscription, from which we can transcribe only the first:

'Awake, arise, the day's restored,Awake, arise, to praise the Lord,Regard, look to, the peal I lead.1765.'

He has, too, many sage remarks to make about 'Drunken Barnaby's' visit, of which, perhaps, I shall say more in another article.

But the two books the worthy doctor has specially made his mark with as regards the general public are 'Folk-Speech Tales and Rhymes of Cumberland and Districts Adjacent,' and 'The Old Man, or Ravings and Ramblings around Coniston.' The first has passed through several editions, and is to be had quite cheaply through second-hand booksellers; the second is scarcer and dearer. Of the first theSaturday Reviewwrote: 'Few people will dare to attack this odd-looking book, with its unusual accents and its rude phonetic spelling, and if they do they will not understand it if they havenot had some previous education. But to those who can read it it is full of racy jokes and rich humour, and will afford infinite amusement when intelligently undertaken.' This seems to be a tolerably correct estimate, for, as he tells us in his preface, the tales relating to Cumberland and Dumfriesshire are in pure Cumbrian—unadulterated, old Norse-rooted Cumbrian vernacular—and pure Scotch folk-speech. The High Furness dialect, he says, is rendered impure by the influx of emigrants from across Morecambe Sands. How can I find specimens short enough? 'Joe and the Geologist' is in the Cumberland mode. It tells of a lad hired by a Savant to carry the stones and fossils collected in a two days' excursion, and how the lad, thinking one stone as good as another, emptied the leather bag on the sly, filled it again from a stone-breaker's heap, earned his meals and half a sovereign for his 'hard work,' and managed to send his employer off by coach none the wiser till he should reach home.

'When I com nar to Skeal-hill, I fund oald Aberram Achisson sittin' on a steul breckan steans to mend rwoads wid, an' I axt him if I med full my ledder pwokes frae his heap. Aberram was varra kaim't an' tell't ma to tak them as wasn't brocken if I want'd steans, sooa I tell't hoo it was an' oa' aboot it. T' oald maizlin was like to toytle of his steul wid' laughin', and said me mudder sud tak gud care on ma, for I was ower sharp a chap to leeve varra lang i' this warld; but I'd better full ma pwokes as I liked an' mak on wid' them.' 'The Skulls of Calgarth,' a North Country Naboth vineyard story with additions, is the only tale in Westmorland talk.

'A house ligs la' an' leansome theear, doon in that oomer dark,Wi' wide, heigh-risin' chimla-heads, la' roof, an' crumlin' wo',O' wedder-gra'n an' weed-be grown—for time hes setten t' markO' scooers an' scooers o' wearin' years on hantit Co'garth Ho'.'

To the reader uninstructed in the vernacular his little work, entitled 'The Old Man; or, Ravings and Ramblings Round Coniston,' is more interesting than 'Folk-Speech.' It contains capital descriptive passages, some in pointed prose, and some in rhyme. Example of the latter may be found in 'The Sunken Graves.'

'Near Esthwaite Head, remote and lone,Where crag-born Dudden chafes and raves—Unblest by priest—unmarked by stone—Were lengthened rows of dateless graves.'

Of the prose, take these words about Coniston: 'Nowhere else have you seen wood and water, hill and valley, green-sward and purple heather, rugged crag and velvet lawn, gray rock and bright-blossoming shrub, waving forest and spreading coppice brought under the eye at once in such magnificent proportion and in such bewildering contrast.' He narrates some exciting fox-hunting experiences of the fell-side farmers and their hounds; he has some pithy tales of the native peasantry and their folklore and their customs, as well as of their parsons, poor as Goldsmith's 'Christian Hero'—passing rich at £40 a year, yet learned and of cultured minds, though dressed in homespun, and toiling on the land to eke out a living. His own adventures as a medical man in mists and storms sweepingacross the mountains are sometimes graphic. This paragraph must suffice us: 'There had been a heavy snow, which for a day or two, under the influence of soft weather and showers, had been melting; the whole country was saturated with wet—every road was a syke, every syke a beck, and every beck a river. The high lands were covered with a thick, cold, driving, suffocating mist, which every now and then thinned a little to make way for one of those thorough-bred mountain showers, of which none can have any conception who have not faced them on the fells in winter—wetting to the skin and chilling to the marrow in three seconds, and piercing exposed parts like legions of pins and needles. The hollows in the roads, which are neither few nor far between, were filled with snow in a state of semi-fluidity, cold as if it had been melted with salt, through which I splashed and struggled, dragging my floundering jaded pony after me with the greatest difficulty.'

'He is dead, and the fruit-bearing dayOf his race is past on the earth;And darkness returns to our eyes.For, oh! is it you, is it you,Moonlight and shadow, and lake,And mountains, that fill us with joy,Or the poet who sings you so well?Is it you, O beauty, O grace,Or the voice that reveals what you are?Are ye, like daylight and sun,Shared and rejoiced in by all?Or are you immersed in the massOf matter, and hard to extract,Or sunk at the core of the worldToo deep for the most to discern?Like stars in the deep of the sky,Which arise on the glass of the sage,But are lost when their watcher is gone.'Matthew Arnold:The Youth of Nature

Fox How

Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside.

FOX HOW, AMBLESIDE.

The Home of the Arnolds.

Enlarge image

'Speaking of the Arnolds, he (Hartley Coleridge) said they are a most gifted family. I asked what specially in their education distinguished them. He rose from the dinner-table, as his manner is, and answered, "Why, they were suckled on Latin and weaned upon Greek!"'—Caroline Fox'sJournal.

DO not the Ambleside and Grasmere char-a-bancs proclaim on their back-boards in letters large and ugly that they will 'return by Fox How, the residence of Dr. Arnold'? And is not the advertised route a pretty one, despite the disadvantage of its being frequented by thousands of 'trippers' to whom the Arnolds are not even names, and who can hardly be much illuminated by the drivers?

When Arnold of Rugby bought the property and built the house for a holiday home, with the hope of some day retiring permanently to it, he wrote of its being 'a mountain nest of sweetness.' Even his son Matthew, more of an introversive than a descriptive poet, more inclined to utter a thought of Goethe's or quote a song of Beranger's than to dwell on the inwardness of natural scenery, must perforce write of 'Rotha's living wave'—thestream that 'sparkles through fields vested for ever with green,' and of

'Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,And mountains that fill us with joy.'

The father died in harness, and was buried in Rugby Chapel, and not in Grasmere, by the Wordsworth graves, as he had hoped. The son spent his boyhood at Fox How, and returned to it often in later life, for Mrs. Dr. Arnold remained there—a widow—for many years.

Thomas Arnold, born in 1795, at Cowes, Isle of Wight, was the son of the Collector of Customs in that little port. He was educated first at Westminster, and then for four years at Winchester. As a child he was stiff, shy, and formal, says Dean Stanley, and after entering Oxford, indeed until mature life, was a 'lie-a-bed.' Still, he was forward at school, strong in history and geography, took early to his pen, and had a good memory for poetry. At the University, a scholar at Corpus Christi, Fellow of Oriel, he took a first-class in Classics, and two Chancellor's Prizes in 1815 and 1817. Corpus Christi was a small, intellectual community, and this fact helped to form his character. He was, and remained, a Liberal in a society of convinced Tories. Outside his companionship and his necessary studies the formative influences of that period of his life were Aristotle, Thucydides, and Wordsworth. He took 'orders,' and settled at Laleham, near Staines, where he remained nine years, taking youths as pupils to prepare them for the Universities. Here six of his children were born, including Matthew, and here he developed his theories of education, to become so important a factor in English lifeby-and-by. Here, too, he pursued diligently his own deeper studies in the Bible, in theology, and in Roman history. Some of the sermons preached at this village are incorporated with those, afterwards so celebrated, delivered to the Rugby School. He became Head-master of Rugby in 1827. At that time most of the great public schools with clerical headmasters were in low condition, and upper-class education was poor. The rich Churchmen held possession of the national Universities, and social rather than intellectual status was the chief thing aimed at. Of course there were many noble exceptions among the undergraduates to this general truth, and Arnold was one of them, and his compeers at Corpus Christi were others. Rugby as a school was in a very poor state when he took hold of it. He raised it into one of the first schools of its kind in the kingdom, and provoked the others into a healthy competition. It is impossible here to give more than the barest outline of his magnificent scholastic career. The ordinary reader may judge for himself of its character by reading Thomas Hughes' 'Tom Browne's School Days,' and the more studious Stanley's 'Life' of the Doctor. It has been my own privilege to know several clergymen who were Arnold's pupils. They reverenced his memory, they spoke of their intellectual and spiritual obligations to their master in the warmest terms, and in every case were among the most liberal-minded and cultured men I have known. They were but examples of hundreds, cleric and lay, of his excellent modelling. The key to his influence and reforms is found in his own high Christian character, and, as one biographer says, in the fact that 'the most strongly-marked feature of hisintellect was the strength and clearness of his conceptions. It seemed the possession of an inward light so intense that it penetrated on the instant every subject laid before him, and enabled him to grasp it with the vividness of sense and the force of reality.' His administrative methods revolutionized the discipline and the punishments. He relied on the honour of the boys, and their Christian and gentlemanly characters, and especially on the right leadership of the older ones, whom he trusted implicitly, unless found untrustworthy. He had also, and this, doubtless, was part of his secret, an unusual faculty of right discernment in the selection of his masters. Character was the basis of his system—upon that he could build scholarship, without it he would not try to. 'It is not necessary,' he once said to his pupils, 'that this school should be a school of 300, or 100, or 50 boys; but it is necessary it should be a school of Christian gentlemen.' Through good and evil report, opposition and scoffing, he went on his way, and conquered. He took his part, too, in liberalizing the Anglican Church. For defending Bishop Hampden of Hereford, to whose appointment a violent outcry was raised for alleged unorthodoxy, Arnold nearly lost his own post. Earl Howe, one of the champions of the narrow-minded heresy hunters, moved a condemnatory resolution at the Board of Governors—there being four for, and four against, and none possessing a casting vote, the headmaster was not suspended, and did not resign. In 1841 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History, and his lectures remain in their published form as evidences of his accuracy and lucidity. The next year, however, he was seized with angina pectoris, andhe died just about the time he was intending to retire from his fourteen years' successful pioneering of the modern methods of secondary and higher education. His character was well estimated by a writer in theEdinburgh Review, albeit the comparison of Arnold with Milton is not altogether felicitous in other respects. He says: 'They both so lived in their great Task-master's eye as to verify Bacon's observation, in his 'Essay on Atheism,' making themselves akin to God in spirit, and raising their natures by means of a higher nature than their own.' Matthew alludes to his father in his poem on Rugby Chapel. This poem is in awkward metre, and the query might have been answered more positively than he has ventured to do, if there is any truth whatsoever in the Christian doctrine of immortality and a 'labour-house vast' seems a poor substitute for scriptural imagery of the unseen spirit world.

'Oh, strong soul, by what shoreTarriest thou now? For that force,Surely, has not been left vain!Somewhere, surely, afar,In the sounding labour-house vastOf being is practised that strength,Zealous, beneficent, firm.'

Another appreciation of the father by the son is interesting. 'He was the first English clergyman who could speak as freely on religious subjects as if he had been a layman.'

Of Matthew himself there needs little to be said. From whom did he inherit his strange temperament? His poetry lacks the warmth of feeling his father would have put into it. His muse is cold, classical, joyless. His criticisms are keen, incisive,often just, more often marred by foolish prejudices, almost brutally expressed. To Dissenters he was intolerant, and never lost a chance of sneering at them, especially for their want of that culture, or rather that special form of culture, which he personally affected, and which his own Church had debarred them from obtaining at the Universities. He laid himself open to the retort of a leading Nonconformist, who spoke of Mr. Arnold's belief in the well-known preference of the Almighty for University men. Mr. Herbert Paul is not wide of the mark when he writes of his re-translations of the Bible 'making one feel as if one had suddenly swallowed a fish-bone.' Certainly the perusal of most of his books, such as 'Essays in Criticism,' 'Culture and Anarchy,' 'Paul and Protestantism,' 'Literature and Dogma,' 'God and the Bible,' gives to the thoughtful reader a sensation of being drawn by a swift, high-mettled, blood horse, trying to get his head, and to run away with you over a stony road—the pace is exhilarating, but the jolting is terrible. His best contributions to the commonwealth are some of his educational theories and suggestions, and most of his reports on foreign education, and on his experience as an Inspector of Schools. In the latter capacity he laboured for thirty-five years, and the impress of his genius abides.

Some of his forecasts of the future have come true, others are certain yet to be fulfilled. He was the real founder of University Extension, and he urged that the University of London should be made a teaching institution only. Mr. Paul's estimate of him we may cordially assent to: 'Of all education reformers in the last century, notexcepting his father, Mr. Arnold was the most enlightened, the most far-sighted, and the most fair-minded.' 'Fair-minded' he assuredly was when dealing with the practical side of his profession. 'Fair-minded' he always believed he was. 'Fair-minded' he seldom was on purely political or academic matters, for then his extraordinary prejudices asserted their sovereignty over him, and he was helpless beneath their sway. Mr. Gladstone he disliked so intensely that we should hardly be wrong in saying he hated him and all his works.

He exhibited a supercilious contempt for what he chose to brand as the provincialism of the 'Low Church' and the Free Church; for the aristocracy, who to him were 'barbarians' for preferring field sports to the improvement of their minds; for the masses of the community, whom he dismissed with the epithet 'the populace,' while the middle-classes were 'Philistines' (a word he borrowed from the Germans), because they were 'respectable' and kept gigs! Really all this shows too small a mind, too circumscribed an outlook on humanity, to qualify Matthew Arnold for a place among philosophers or national reformers. It is satisfactory to turn from him as politician and critic of the Bible, of literature, and of society, to his status as a poet, which, though really secondary to that as an educationist, he will naturally be most widely remembered by. His letters, too, recently published, show the pleasant side of his private life. 'He was a poet of the closet,' is Mr. Stedman's summary of him. Arthur Clough preferred Alexander Smith (practically a forgotten minor poet) to the author of 'Empedocles,' and complained of the obscurityand 'pseudo-Greek inflation' of 'Tristram and Iseult.' 'The Scholar-Gipsy' is his best elegiac poem; 'The Forsaken Merman' his best narrative piece; 'Bacchanalia, or the New Age,' his best lyric. This is from 'The Merman':

'Children dear, was it yesterdayWe heard the sweet bells over the bay?In the caverns where we lay,Through the surf, and through the swell,The far-off sound of a silver bell?Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,Where the winds are all asleep;Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,Where the salt weed sways in the stream,Where the sea-breeze, ranged all round,Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground;Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,Dry their mail, and bask in the brine;Where great whales come sailing by,Sail, and sail, with unshut eye,Round the world for ever and aye?When did music come this way?Children dear, was it yesterday?'

Herein are lines more melodious, and ideas more English, than in other verses, just because he 'let himself go' more than usual. He was generally too self-conscious to do this at all.

His schools were Winchester and Rugby. His college was Balliol. For a short time he was master under his father. For four years he acted as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, and in 1857 was made Inspector of Schools. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He died suddenly of inherited heart disease while running to catch a tram at Liverpool in 1888, at sixty-six years of age. All this may be read in any Dictionary of Biography, and really there is little more to noteof events in his life outside the daily routine of his official career. He was buried at Laleham, where he was born. Something better might be his epitaph than his own pessimistic lines:

'Creep into this narrow bed,Creep, and let no more be said.'

Back to Index Next