So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to thinkOf the first common kindred link?Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burnIt seems that all things take their turn;And who shall say but this fair treeMay need, in changes that may be,Your children's children's charity?Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'dTill in the end, the Day of Days,At Judgment, one of his own race,As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
Then he begins to think more deeply on the great wrongs of this world, the great misery caused by vice, the cruelty of lust in itself. The ruined life of this girl represents but one fact of innumerable facts of a like kind. Millions of beautiful and affectionate women have been, and are being, and will be through all time to come, sacrificed in this way to lust—selfish and foolish and cruel lust, that destroys mind and body together. The mystery of the dark side of life comes to him in a new way. He cannot explain it—who can explain the original meaning of pain in this world? But he begins to get at least a new gleam of truth—this great truth, that every one who seeks pleasure in the way that he at first intended to seek it that night, adds a little to the great sum of human misery. For vice exists only at the cost of misery. The question is not, "Is it right for me or wrong for me to take what is forbidden if I pay for it." The real question is,"Is it right for me or wrong for me to help in any way to support that condition of society which sacrifices lives, body, and soul, to cruelty and selfishness." We all of us in youth think chiefly about right and wrong in their immediate relations to ourselves and our friends. Only later in life, after we have seen a great deal of the red of human pain, do we begin to think of the consequences of an act in relation to the happiness or unhappiness of humanity.
Suddenly the morning comes as he is thinking thus. At once he ceases to be the philosopher, and becomes again the gentleman of the world. The girl's head is still upon his knees; he looks at the sleeping face, and wonders whether any painter could have painted a face more beautiful. But the beauty does not appeal to his senses in any passional way; it only fills him with unspeakable compassion. He does not awake her, but lifts her into a more comfortable position for sleeping, and leaves beside her pillow a present of gold coins, and then steals away without bidding her good-bye. The night has not given him pleasure, but pain only—yet a pain that has made his heart more kindly and his thoughts more wise than they had been before.
Our last lecture dealt with the shorter narrative poems of Rossetti, including the ballads. There remain to be considered two other narrative poems of a much more extended kind. They are quite unique in English literature; and both of them deal with mediæval subjects. One, again, is chiefly objective in its treatment; and the other chiefly subjective—that is to say, psychological.One is a fragment, but the most wonderful fragment of its kind in existence; more wonderful, I think, than even the fragments of Coleridge, both as to volume and finish. The other is complete, a story of magic and passion entitled "Rose Mary." We may first deal with "Rose Mary," giving the general plan of the poem, rather than extracts of any length; for this narration cannot very well be illustrated by examples. We shall make some quotations only in illustration of the finish and the beauty of the work.
The subject of "Rose Mary" was peculiarly adapted to Rossetti's genius. In the Middle Ages there was a great belief in the virtue of jewels and crystals of a precious kind. Belief in the magical power of rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and opals was not confined either to Europe or to modern civilisation; it had existed from great antiquity in the Orient, and had been accepted by the Greeks and Romans. This belief was perhaps forgotten after the destruction of the Roman Empire, for a time at least, in Europe; but the Crusades revived it. Talismanic stones were brought back from Palestine by many pilgrim-knights; and as some of these were marked with Arabic characters, then supposed by the ignorant to be characters of magic, supernatural legends were invented to account for the history of not a few. Also there was a certain magical use to which precious stones were put during the Middle Ages, and to which they are still sometimes put in Oriental countries. This is called crystallomancy. Crystallomancy is the art of seeing the future in crystals, or glass, or transparent substances of jewels. The same art can be practised even with ink—a drop of ink, held in thehand, offering to the eye the same reflecting surface that a black jewel would do. In Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India divination is still practised with ink. This is the same thing as crystallomancy. Usually in those countries a young boy or a young girl is used by the diviner. He mesmerises the boy or the girl, and bids him or her look into the crystal or the ink-drop, as the case may be, and say what he or she sees there. In this way, the future is supposed to be told. Modern investigation has taught us how the whole thing is done, though science has not been able yet to explain all that goes on in the mind of the "subject." But in the Middle Ages, when the whole process was absolutely mysterious, it was thought to be the work of spirits inside the stone, or crystal, or ink-drop. And this is the superstition to which Rossetti refers in his poem "Rose Mary."
Now there is one more fact which must be explained in connection with crystallomancy. It has always been thought that the "subject"—that is, the boy or girl who looks into the stone, crystal, or ink-drop—must be absolutely innocent. The "subject" must be virtuous. In the Catholic Middle Ages the same idea took form especially in relation to the chastity of the "subject." Chastity was, in those centuries, considered a magical virtue. A maiden, it was thought, could play with lions or tigers, and not be hurt by them. A maiden—and the word was then used for both sexes, as it is sometimes used by Tennyson in his Idylls—could see ghosts or spirits, and could be made use of for purposes of crystallomancy even by a very wicked person. But should the subject have been secretly guilty of anyfault, then the power to see would be impaired. The tragedy of Rossetti's poem turns upon this fact.
In the poem a precious stone, of the description called beryl, is the instrument of divination. This beryl is round, like a terrestrial globe, and is supposed to be of the shape of the world. It is half transparent, but there are cloudings inside of it. Hidden among these cloudings are a number of evil spirits, who were enclosed in the jewel by magic. These spirits make the future appear visible to any virtuous person who looks into the stone; but they have power to deceive and to injure any one coming to consult them who is not perfectly chaste. The stone came from the East, and it was obtained only at the sacrifice of the soul of the person who obtained it. Having been brought to England, it became the property of a knightly family. This family consists only of a widow and her daughter Rose Mary. The daughter is in a state of great anxiety. She was to be married to a certain knight, who has not kept his affectionate promises. The daughter and the mother both fear that the knight may have been killed by some of his enemies. So they resolve to consult the beryl-stone. The mother does not know that her daughter has been too intimate with the absent knight. Believing that Rose Mary is all purity, the mother makes her the subject of an experiment in crystallomancy; and she looks into the beryl.
First she sees an old man with a broom, sweeping away dust and cobwebs; that is always the first thing seen. Then the inside of the beryl becomes perfectly clear, and the girl can see the open country, and the road along which her lover is expected to travel. Andshe sees him too. But there are perhaps enemies waiting for him. The mother tells her to look for those enemies. She looks; she sees the points of lances, in a hiding place by a roadside, and there is the evidence of what the lover has to fear in that direction. "Now look in the other direction," says the mother. The girl does so, and sees the whole road clearly, except in one place, in a valley. There she says that there is a mist; and she cannot see under the mist. This surprises the mother, and she takes away the beryl. The presence of the mist indicates that Rose Mary has committed some sin.
As a consequence the daughter confesses to the mother all that has occurred. She is not severely blamed; she is only gently rebuked, and forgiven with great love and tenderness. But it is probable that the sin must be expiated. Both are afraid. Then the expiation comes. The lover is killed by his enemies, and killed exactly on that part of the road where the mist was in the image seen in the beryl-stone. The mother goes to the dead knight's home, and examines the body. Evidently the man had died fighting bravely. The woman at first is all pity for him, as well as for her daughter. Suddenly she notices something in the dead man's breast. She takes it out, and finds that it is a package containing a love-letter, and a lock of hair. The hair is bright gold—while the hair of Rose Mary is black. This makes the mother suspicious, and she reads the letter. Then she no longer pities but abhors the dead man; for the letter proves him to have had another sweetheart, and that he had intended to betray Rose Mary.
When the daughter learns of her lover's death, she suffers terribly; but she makes sincere repentance for her fault, and then in her mother's absence she determines to destroy the beryl-stone, as a devilish thing. This is another way of committing suicide, because whoever breaks the stone is certain to be killed by the enraged spirits cast out of it. By one blow of a sword the stone is broken, and Rose Mary atones for all her faults by death. This is the whole of the story.
The extraordinary charm of the story is in its vividness—a vividness perhaps without equal even in the best work of Tennyson (certainly much finer than similar work in Coleridge), and in the attractive characterisation of mother and daughter. There is this great difference between the mediæval poems of Coleridge or Scott, and those of Rossetti, that when you are reading "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" or the wonderful "Christabel," you feel that you are reading a fairy-tale, but when you read Rossetti you are looking at life and feeling human passion. It is a great puzzle to critics how any man could make the Middle Ages live as Rossetti did. One reason, I think, is that Rossetti was a great painter as well as a great poet, and he studied the life of the past in documents and in museums until it became to him as real as the present. But we must also suppose that he inherited a great deal of his peculiar power. This power never wearies. Although the romance of Rose Mary is not very short, you do not get tired of wondering at its beauty until you reach the end. It is divided into three parts, which is a good thing for the student, as he can see the structure of the composition at once. It is written in stanzas offive lines, thus arranged—a,a,b,b,b.You would think this measure monotonous, but it is not. I give two examples. The first is the description of the magic jewel.
The lady unbound her jewelled zoneAnd drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,—World of our world, the sun's compeer,That bears and buries the toiling year.With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewnLike the cloud-nest of the wading moon:Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,Rainbow-hued through a misty pall,Like the middle light of the waterfall.Shadows dwelt in its teeming girthOf the known and unknown things of earth;The cloud above and the wave around,—The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,Like doomsday prisoned underground.
I feel quite sure that even Tennyson could not have done this. Only a great painter, as well as a great observer, could have done it; and the choice of words is astonishing in its exquisiteness. Most of them have more than one meaning, and both meanings are equally implied by their use. Take, for example, the word "shadowy"; it means cloudy and it also means ghostly. Thus it is peculiarly appropriate to picture the magic stone as full of moving shadows, themselves of ghostly character. Or take the word "shuddering"; it means trembling with cold or fear, and it means also a quick trembling, never a slow motion. Just such a word might be usedto describe the strange vibration of air-bubbles enclosed in a volcanic crystal. But we have also the suggestion here of a ghostly motion, a motion that gives a shiver of fear to the person who sees it. Or take the word "freaked." "Freak" is commonly used to signify a mischievous bit of play, a wild fancy. "Fancifully marked" would be the exact meaning of "freaked" in the ordinary sense; but here it is likewise appropriate as a description of the streams and streaks of colour playing over the surface of a bubble without any apparent law, as if they were made by some whimsical spirit. Now every verse of the whole long poem is equally worthy of study for its astonishing finish. I shall give a few more verses merely to show the application of the same power to a description of pain. The girl has just been told of her lover's murder; and the whole immediate consequence is told in five lines.
Once she sprang as the heifer springsWith the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings:First 'twas fire in her breast and brain,And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain,As she gave one shriek and sank again.
The first two lines might give you an undignified image unless you understood the position of the girl when she received the news. She was kneeling at her mother's feet, with her mother's arms around her. On being told the terrible thing, she tries to spring up, because of the shock of the pain—just as a young heifer would leap when the wolf had seized it from underneath. A wolf snaps at the belly of the animal, close to the heart. Therefore the comparison is admirable. As for the restof the verse, any physician can confirm its accuracy. The up-rush of blood at the instant of a great shock of pain feels like a great sudden heat, burning up toward the head. And in such a time one realises that certain forms of pain, moral pain, are larger than oneself—too great to be borne. Psychologically, great moral pain depends upon nervous development; and this nervous susceptibility to pain is greater than would seem fitted to the compass of one life. Moral pain can kill. It is said that in such times we feel not only our own pain, but the pain of all those among our ancestors who suffered in like manner. Thus, by inheritance, individual pain is more than individual. At all events the fourth line of the stanza I have quoted will appear astonishingly true to anybody who knows the greater forms of mental suffering.
Leaving this poem, which could not be too highly praised, we may turn to "The Bride's Prelude," the greatest of the longer compositions, therefore the greatest thing that Rossetti did. Unfortunately, perhaps, it is unfinished. It is only a fragment; death overtook the writer before he was able to complete it. Like "Rose Mary," it leads us back to the Middle Ages. But here there is no magic, nothing ghostly, nothing impossible; there is only truth, atrocious, terrible truth—a tale of cruelty, treachery, and pain related by the victim. The victim is a bride. She is just going to be married. But before her marriage, she has a story to tell her sister—a story so sad and so frightful that it requires strong nerves to read the thing without pain.
We may suppose that the incident occurred in old France, or—though I doubt it—in Norman England.The scenery and the names remind us rather of Southern France. All the facts belong to the life of the feudal aristocracy. We are among princes and princesses; great lords of territory and great lords of battle are introduced to us, with their secret sorrows and shames. Great ladies, too, open their hearts to us, and prove so intensely human that it is very hard to believe the whole story is a dream. It rather seems as if we had known all these people, and that our lives had at some time been mingled with theirs. The eldest daughter of one great house, very beautiful, and very innocent, is taken advantage of by a retainer in the castle. She is foolish and unable to imagine that any gentleman could intend to do her a wrong. The retainer, on the other hand, is a very cunning villain. His real purpose is to bring shame upon the daughter of the house. Why? Because, as he is only a poor knight, he could not hope to marry into a princely family. But if he can seduce one of the girls, then perhaps the family will be only too glad to have him marry his victim, because that will hide their shame. Evidently he has plotted for this. But his plans, and everybody's plans, are affected by unexpected results of civil war. His masters, being defeated in a great battle, have to retreat to the mountains for a time; and then he deserts them in the basest manner. Meantime the unhappy girl is found to be with child. Death was the rule in those days for such a case—burning alive. Her brothers wish to kill her. But her father interferes and saves her. It is decided only that the child shall be taken from her—to be killed, probably. Everybody is forbidden to speak of the matter. Some retainers who did speakof it are hanged for an example. Presently, by another battle, the family return into their old possessions, and enormously increase their ancient power. When this happens the scoundrel that seduced the daughter of the house and then deserted the family returns. Why does he return? Now is the time to fulfil his purpose. He has become a great soldier and a nobleman in his own right. Now he can ask for that young lady in marriage, and they dare not refuse. If they refuse, he can revenge himself by telling the story of her disgrace. If they accept him as a son-in-law, they will also be obliged to make him very powerful; and he will know how to take every advantage. The girl is not consulted at all. Her business is to obey. She thinks that it would be better to die than to marry the wicked man that had wronged her; but she must obey and she is ordered to marry him. He cares nothing about her; she is only the tool by which he wishes to win his way into power. But, cunning as he is, the brothers of the girl are even more cunning. They wish for the marriage only for the purpose of getting the man into their hands, just for one moment. He shall marry her, but immediately afterwards he shall disappear forever from the sight of men. The bride does not know the purpose of her terrible brothers; she thinks they are cruel to her when she tells her story, but they only wish to avenge her, and they are much too prudent to tell her what they are going to do. The poem does not go any further than the moment before the marriage. The first part is quite finished; but the second part was never written.
The whole of this great composition is in verses offive lines, curiously arranged. Rossetti adopts a different form of verse for almost every one of his narrations. This is quite as unique a measure in its way—that is, in nineteenth century poetry—as was the measure of Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in elegiac poetry. Now we shall try to illustrate the style of the poem.
Against the haloed lattice-panesThe bridesmaid sunned her breast;Then to the glass turned tall and free,And braced and shifted daintilyHer loin-belt through her côte-hardie.The belt was silver, and the claspOf lozenged arm-bearings;A world of mirrored tints minuteThe rippling sunshine wrought into 't,That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.At least an hour had Aloyse,—Her jewels in her hair,—Her white gown, as became a bride,Quartered in silver at each side,—Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.Over her bosom, that lay still,The vest was rich in grain,With close pearls wholly overset:Around her throat the fastenings metOf chevesayle and mantelet.
Absolutely real as this seems, we know that the details must have been carefully studied in museums. Elsewhere, except perhaps in very old pictures, these things no longer exist. There are no more loin-belts of silver,no côte-hardies, no chevesayle or mantelet. I cannot explain to you what they are without pictures—further than to say that they were parts of the attire of a lady of rank about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Brides do not now have their white robes "quartered in silver"—that is, figured with the family crest or arms. Why silver instead of gold? Simply because of the rule that brides should be all in white; therefore even the crest was worked in white metal instead of gold. By the word vest, you must also understand an ancient garment for women; the modern word signifies a garment worn only by men. "Grain" is an old term for texture. The description of the light playing on the belt-clasp of the bridesmaid, in the second stanza, is a marvellous bit of work, the effect being given especially by three words—"lozenged," "rippling," for the sunshine, and "minute," for the separate flushes or sparklings thrown off from the surface. But all is wonderful; this is painting with words exactly as a painter paints with colours. Sounds are treated with the same wonderful vividness:
Although the lattice had dropped loose,There was no wind; the heatBeing so at rest that AmelotteHeard far beneath the plunge and floatOf a hound swimming in the moat.Some minutes since, two rooks had toiledHome to the nests that crownedAncestral ash-trees. Through the glareBeating again, they seemed to tearWith that thick caw the woof o' the air.
One must have been in the tower of a castle to feel the full force of the first stanza. The two girls are in a room perhaps one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet above the water of the moat, so that except in a time of extraordinary stillness they would not hear ordinary sounds from so far below. And notice that the poet does not tell us that this was because the air did not move; he says that the heat was at rest. Very expressive—in great summer heat, without wind, the air itself seems to our senses not air but fluid heat. And the same impression of summer is given by the description of the two crows flying to their nest and back again, and screaming as they fly. The poet does not say that they flew; he says they toiled home—because flying in that thick warm air is difficult for them. When they return he uses another word, still more impressive; he says they beat again through the glare. This makes you hear the heavy motion of the wings. And he describes the crow as seeming to tear the air, because that air is so heavy that it seems like a thing woven.
Here is a strangely powerful stanza describing the difficulty of speaking about a painful subject that for many years one has tried to forget:
Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,Gave her a sick recoil;As, dip thy fingers through the greenThat masks a pool,—where they have beenThe naked depth is black between.
Any of you who as boys have played about a castle moat, and stirred the green water weeds covering thestill water, must have remarked that the water looks black as ink underneath. Of course it is not black in itself; but the weeds keep out the sun, so that it seems black because of the shadow. The poet's comparison has a terrible exactness here. The mind is compared to stagnant water covered with water-weeds. Weeds grow upon water in this way only when there has been no wind for a long time, and no current. The condition of a mind that does not think, that dares not think, is like stagnant water in this way. Memory becomes covered up with other things, matters not relating to the past.
Now we can take four stanzas from the scene of the secret family meeting, after the shame has been confessed and is known. They are very powerful.
"Time crept. Upon a day at lengthMy kinsfolk sat with me:That which they asked was bare and plain:I answered: the whole bitter strainWas again said, and heard again."Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turnedThe point against my breast.I bared it, smiling: 'To the heartStrike home,' I said; 'another dartWreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.'"'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,And said, with shaken lips:'She from whom all of you receiveYour life, so smiled; and I forgive.'Thus for my mother's sake, I live."But I, a mother even as she,Turned shuddering to the wall:For I said: 'Great God! and what would I do,When to the sword, with the thing I knew,I offered not one life but two!'"
This is now the most terrible part of the story; and it has a humanity about it that almost makes us doubt. Fancy the situation. The daughter of a prince unchaste with a common retainer. Now in princely families chastity was of as much importance as physical strength and will; it meant everything—honour, purity of race, the possibility of alliance. And a great house is thus disgraced. We can sympathise with the horrible mental suffering of the girl, but it is impossible not to sympathise also even with the terrible brother that wishes to kill her. He is right, she deserves death; but he is young, and cruel because young. The father sorrows, and seeing the girl smiling, thinks of the dead mother, and forgives. This is the only point at which we feel inclined to lay down the book and ask questions. Would a father in such a position have done this in those cruel ages? Would he have allowed himself to pity?—or rather, could he have allowed himself to pity? Tender-hearted men did not rule in those days. We have records of husbands burning their wives, of fathers killing their sons. All we can say is that an exception might have existed, just as Rossetti imagines. Human nature was of course not different then from what it is now, but it is quite certain that the gentle side of human nature seldom displayed itself in the families of the feudal princes; aman who was gentle could not rule. In Italy sons who did not show the ruling character were apt to be killed or poisoned. One must understand that feudal life was not much more moral than other life.
I think we can here turn to another department of Rossetti's verse. I only hope that the examples given from the "Bride's Prelude" will interest you sufficiently to make you at a later day turn to this wonderful poem for a careful study of its beauty and power.
When we come to the study of the lives of the Victorian poets, we shall find that Rossetti's whole existence was governed by his passion for one woman, whom he loved in a strange mystical way, with a love that was half art (art in the good sense) and half idolatry. To him she was much more than a woman; she was a divinity, an angel, a model for all things beautiful. You know that he was a great painter, and in a multitude of beautiful pictures he painted the face of this woman. He composed his poems also in order to please her. He lost her within a little more than a year after winning her, and this nearly killed him. I may say that throughout all his poems, speaking in a general way, there are references to this great love of his life; but there is one portion of his work that we must consider as especially illustrating it, and that is the "House of Life," a collection of more than one hundred sonnets upon the subject of love and its kindred emotions. But the love of which Rossetti sings is not the love of a young man for a girl—not the love of youth and maid. It is married love carried to the utmost degree ofworship. You will think this a strange subject; and I confess that it is. Very few men could be praised for touching such a subject. Coventry Patmore, you know, was an exception. He made the subject of his own courtship, wedding, and married life the subject of his poetry, and he did it so nicely and so tenderly that his book had a great success. But Rossetti did his work in an entirely different way, which I must try to explain.
Unlike Patmore, Rossetti did not openly declare that he took any personal experience for the subject of his study; we only perceive, through knowledge of his life, and through suggestions obtained from other parts of his work, that personal love and personal loss were his great inspiration. As a matter of fact, any man who sings about love must draw upon his own personal experience of the passion. Every lover thinks of love in his own way. But the value of a love poem is not the personal part of it; the value of a love poem is according to the degree in which it represents universal experience, or experience of a very large kind. It must represent to some degree a general philosophy of life. Even the commonest little love-song, such as a peasant might sing in the streets of Tokyo, as he comes in from the country walking beside his horse, will represent something of the philosophy of life if it is a good and true composition, no matter how vulgar may be the idiom of it. When we come to think about it, we shall find that all great poetry is in this sense also philosophical poetry.
Rossetti, as I have already shown you, was a true philosopher in certain directions; and he applied hisphilosophical powers, as well as his artistic powers, to his own experiences, so as to adapt them to the uses of great poetry. He is never narrowly personal. And his sonnets are really very wonderful compositions—not reflecting universal experience so as to be universally understood, but reflecting universal experience so as to be understood by cultivated minds only. These productions are altogether above the range of the common mind; they are extremely subtle and elaborate, both as to thought and as to form. But their subject is not at all special. Rossetti had the idea that every phase of happiness and sorrow belonging to married life, from the hour of the wedding night to the hour of death, was worthy of poetical treatment, because married life is related to the deepest human emotions. And in the space of one hundred sonnets he treats every phase. This series of sonnets is divided into two groups. The first contains poems relating to the early conditions of love in marriage; the second group treats especially of the more sorrowful aspects of a married life—the trials of death, the pains of memory, and the hopes and fears of reuniting after death. The second part does not, however, contain all the sad pieces; there are very sad ones in the first group of fifty-nine. We have already studied one of the first group, the piece called "The Birth-Bond." There is another piece in this group, the first of four sonnets, which is exquisite as a bit of fancy. It is entitled "Willow-wood."
I sat with Love upon a woodside well,Leaning across the water, I and he;Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,But touched his lute wherein was audibleThe certain secret thing he had to tell:Only our mirrored eyes met silentlyIn the low wave; and that sound came to beThe passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;And with his foot and with his wing-feathersHe swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,And as I stooped, her own lips rising thereBubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.
This is a dream of the dead woman loved. The lover finds himself seated with the god of love, the little naked boy with wings, as the ancients represented him, at the edge of a spring near the forest. He does not look at the god of love, neither does the god look at him; they were friends long ago, but now—what is the use? She is dead. By the reflection in the water only he knows that Love is looking down, and he does not wish to speak to him. But Love will not leave him alone. He hears the tone of a musical instrument, and that music makes him suddenly very sad, for it seems like the voice of the dead for whom he mourns. It makes his tears fall into the water; and immediately, magically, the reflection of the eyes of Love in the water become like the eyes of the woman he loved. Then while he looks in wonder, the little god stirs the surface of the water with wings and feet, and the ripples become like the hair of the dead woman, and as the lover bends down, her lips rise up through the water to kiss him. You may ask, what does all this mean? Well, it means as much as any dream means; it is all impossible, nodoubt, but the impossible in dreams often makes us very sad indeed—especially if the dead appear to come back in them.
Another example of regret, very beautiful, is the sonnet numbered ninety-one in this collection. It is called "Lost on Both Sides."
As when two men have loved a woman well,Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;Since not for either this stark marriage-sheetAnd the long pauses of this wedding-bell;Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispelAt last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;Nor other than dear friends to death may fleetThe two lives left that most of her can tell:—So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooedThe one same Peace, strove with each other long,And Peace before their faces perished since:So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,They roam together now, and wind amongIts bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
The comparison is of the hopes and aims of the artist to a couple of men in love with the same woman—bitter enemies while she lives, because of their natural rivalry, but loving each other after her death, simply because each can understand better than anybody else in the world the pain of the other. Afterward the men, once rivals, passed all their time together, wandering about at night in search of some quiet place, where they can sit down and drink and talk together. In Rossetti's time such quiet places were not to be found in the main streets, but in the little side streets calledbye-streets. After this explanation, the comparison should not be obscure. The artist who loves does all his work with the thought of the woman that he loves before him; his hope to win fame is that he may make her proud of him; his aims are in all cases to please her. After he has lost her, these hopes and aims, which might have been antagonists to each other in former days, are now reconciled within him; her memory alone is now the inspiration and the theme. I hope you will notice the curious and exquisite value of certain words here: "Stark," meaning stiff, nearly always refers to the rigidness of death; it is especially used of the appearance and attitude of corpses, and its application in this poem to the cover of the marriage bed is quite enough to convey the sense of death without any more definite observation. Again the expression "long pauses," referring to the sound of the church bells, makes us understand that the bells are really ringing a funeral knell; for the ringing of wedding bells ought to be quick and joyous. It might seem a strange contradiction, this simile, but the poet has in his mind an old expression about the death of a maiden: "She became the bride of Death." Thus the effect is greatly intensified by the sombre irony of the simile itself.
We might extract a great many beauties from this wonderful collection of sonnets; but time is precious, and we shall have room for only another quotation or two. The following is one to which I should like especially to invite your attention—not only because of its strange charm, but also because of the curious legend which it recalls—a legend which we have already studied:
BODY'S BEAUTYOf Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,And her enchanted hair was the first gold.And still she sits, young while the earth is old,And subtly of herself contemplative,Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,Till heart and body and life are in its hold.The rose and poppy are her flowers; for whereIs he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scentAnd soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so wentThy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
The reference to the rose and the poppy may need some explanation. The rose has been for many centuries in Western countries a symbol of love; and the poppy has been a symbol of death and sleep from the time of the Greeks. It is from the seeds of the poppy that opium is extracted. The Greeks did not know the use of opium; but they knew that the seeds of the flower produced sleep, and might, in certain quantities, produce death. We have the expression "poppied sleep" to express the sleep of death.
A final word must be said about Rossetti's genius as a translator. He has given us, in one large volume, the most precious anthology of the Italian poets of the Middle Ages that ever has been made—the poets of the time of Dante, under the title of "Dante and hisCircle." This magnificent work would alone be sufficient to establish his supreme excellence as a translator of poetry; but the material is mostly of a sort that can appeal to scholars only. Rossetti is better known as a translator through a very few short pieces translated from French poets, chiefly. Such is the wonderful rendering of Villon's "Ballad of Dead Ladies," beginning
Tell me now in what hidden way isLady Flora, the lovely Roman?Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,Neither of them the fairer woman?Where is Echo, beheld of no man,Only heard on river and mere,—She whose beauty was more than human?—But where are the snows of yester-year?
Even Swinburne, when making his splendid translations from Villon, refrained from attempting to translate this ballad, saying that no man could surpass, even if he could equal, Rossetti's version. The burthen is said to be especially successful as a rendering of the difficult French refrain:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
You will find this matchless translation almost anywhere, so we need not occupy the time further with it; but I doubt whether you have noticed as yet other wonderful translations made by this master from the French. Such is the song from Victor Hugo's drama "Les Burgraves"; you will not forget Rossetti's translation after having once read it.
Through the long winter the rough wind tears;With their white garments the hills look wan.Love on: who cares?Who cares? Love on!My mother is dead; God's patience wears;It seems my chaplain will not have done!Love on: who cares?Who cares? Love on!The Devil, hobbling up the stairs,Comes for me with his ugly throng.Love on: who cares?Who cares? Love on.
Another remarkable translation from the same drama is that of the song beginning:
In the time of the civil broilsOur swords are stubborn things.A fig for all the cities!A fig for all the kings!
and ending:
Right well we hold our ownWith the brand and the iron rod.A fig for Satan, Burgraves;Burgraves, a fig for God!
But even more wonderful Rossetti seems when we go back to the old French, as in the translation which has been called "My Father's Close."
Inside my father's close(Fly away O my heart away!)Sweet apple-blossom blowsSo sweet.Three kings' daughters fair,(Fly away O my heart away!)They lie below it thereSo sweet!
Now the Old French of the first stanza will show you the astonishing faithfulness of the rendering:
Au jardin de mon père,(Vole, mon cœur, vole!)Il y a un pommier doux,Tout doux.
Besides the small exquisite things, there are long translations from mediæval writers, French and Italian, of wonderful beauty. Compare, for example, the celebrated episode of Francesca da Rimini in Dante (which Carlyle so beautifully called "a lily in the mouth of Hell"), as translated by Byron, and as translated by Rossetti, and observe the immeasurable superiority of the latter. It would be very pleasant, if we had time, to examine Rossetti's translations more in detail; but the year advances and we must turn to an even greater master of verse—Swinburne.
As we are now studying Rossetti's poetry in other hours, you may be interested in some discussion of the merits of his prose—for this is still, so far as the great public are concerned, almost an unknown topic. The best of the painters of his own school, and the most delicate poet of the Victorian period, Rossetti might also have become one of the greatest prose writers of the century if he had seriously turned to prose. But ill-health and other circumstances prevented him from doing much in this direction. What he did do, however, is so remarkable that it deserves to be very carefully studied. I do not refer to his critical essays. These are not very remarkable. I refer only to his stories; and his stories are great because they happen to have exactly the same kind of merit that distinguishes his poetry. They might be compared with the stories of Poe; and yet they are entirely different, with the difference distinguishing all Latin prose fiction from English fiction. But there is certainly no other story writer, except Poe, with whose work that of Rossetti can be at all classed. They are ghostly stories—one of them a fragment, the other complete. Only two—and the outline of the third. The fragment is not less worthy of attention because it happens to be afragment—like the poet's own "Bride's Prelude," or Coleridge's "Christabel," or Poe's "Silence." The trouble with all great fragments, and the proof of their greatness, is that we cannot imagine what the real ending would have been; and this puzzle only lends additional charm to the imaginative effect. Of the two consecutive stories, it is the fragment which has the greater merit.
The first story, called "Hand and Soul," has another interest besides the interest of narrative. It contains the whole æsthetic creed of Rossetti's school of painting,—a little philosophy of art that is well worth studying. That is especially why I want to talk about it. The so-called Pre-Raphaelite school of English painting, whereof Rossetti was the recognized chief, were not altogether disciples of Ruskin. They did not believe that art must have a religious impulse in order to be great art; and they did not exactly support the antagonistic doctrine of "Art for Art's Sake." They considered that absolute sincerity in one's own conception of the beautiful, and wide toleration of all æsthetic ideas, were axiomatic truths which it was necessary to accept without reserve. They had no detestation for any school of art; they practically banished prejudice from their little circle. I may add that they were not indifferent to Japanese art, even at a time when it found many enemies in London, and when the great Ruskin himself endeavoured to help the prejudice against it. In that very time Rossetti was making Japanese collections, and Burne-Jones and others were discovering new methods by the help of this Eastern art.
Now the story of "Hand and Soul" is, in a small way, a history of man's experience with Painting. It is supposed to be the story of a real picture. The picture is only the figure of a woman in a grey and green dress, very beautiful. But whoever looks at that picture for a minute or two, suddenly becomes afraid—afraid in exactly the same way that he would be on seeing a ghost. The picture could not have been painted from imagination; that figure must have been seen by somebody; and yet it could not have been a living woman! Then what could have been the real story of that picture? Did the artist see a ghost; or did he see something supernatural?
The answer to these questions is the following story. The artist who painted that picture, four hundred years ago, was a young Italian of immense genius, so passionately devoted to his art that he lived for nothing else. At first he wished only to be the greatest painter of his time; and that he became without much difficulty. He painted only what he thought beautiful; and he painted beautiful faces that he saw passing by in the street, and beautiful sunsets that he saw from his window, and beautiful fancies that came into his mind. Everybody loved his pictures; and princes made him great gifts of money.
Then a sudden remorse came to this painter, who was at heart a religious man. He said to himself: "Here, God has given me the power to paint beautiful things; and I have been painting only those beautiful things which please the senses of men. Therefore I have been doing wrong. Henceforward I will paint only things which represent eternal truth, the things of Heaven."
After that he began to paint only religious and mystical pictures, and pictures which common people could not understand at all. The people no longer came to admire his work; the princes no longer paid him honour or brought him gifts; and he became as one forgotten in the world.
Moreover, he found himself losing his power as an artist. And then, to crown all his misfortunes, some of his most famous pictures were ruined one day by the extraordinary incident of a church fight; for two great Italian clans between whom a feud existed, happened to meet in the church porch, and a blow was struck and swords were drawn—and there was such killing that the blood of the fighters was splashed upon the paintings on the wall.
When all these things had happened, the artist despaired. He became weary of life, and thought of destroying himself. And while he was thus thinking, there suddenly entered his room, without any sound, the figure of a woman robed in green and grey; and she stood before him and looked into his eyes. And as she looked into his eyes, an awe came upon him such as he had never before known; and a great feeling of sadness also came with the awe. But he could not speak, any more than a person in a dream, who wants to cry out, and cannot make a sound. But the woman spoke and said to him, "I am your own soul—that soul to whom you have done so much wrong. And I have been allowed to come to you in this form, only because you have never been of those men who make art merely to win money. To win fame, however, you did not scruple; and that was not altogether good, although it was notaltogether bad. What was much worse was the pride which turned you away from me—religious pride. You wanted to do what God did not ask you to do—to work against your own soul, and to cast away your love of beauty. Into me God placed the desire of loveliness and the bliss of the charm of the world. Wherefore then should you strive against His work? And what pride impelled you to imagine that heaven needed the help of your art to teach men what is good? When did God say to you, Friend, let me lean upon you, or I shall fall down? No; it is by teaching men to seek and to love the beautiful things in this beautiful world that you make their hearts better within them—never by preaching to them with allegories that they cannot understand; and because you have done this, you have been punished. Be true to me, your own very soul; then you will do marvellous things. Now paint a picture of me, just as I am, so that you may know that your power of art is given back to you."
So the artist painted a picture of his own soul in the likeness of a woman clad in green and grey; and all who see that picture even to-day feel at once a great fear and a great charm, and find it hard to understand how mortal man could have painted it.
That is the story of "Hand and Soul"; and it teaches a great deal of everlasting truth. Assuredly the road to all artistic greatness is the road of sincerity—truth to one's own emotional sense of what is beautiful. And just to that degree in which the artist or poet allows himself to be made insincere, either by desire of wealth and fame, or by religious scruples, just to that extent he must fail. I have only given a very slight outlineof the tale; to give more might be to spoil your pleasure of reading it.
The second story will not seem to you quite so original as the first, though, to English minds, it probably seems stranger. It is a story of pre-existence. Now, a very curious fact is that this idea of pre-existence, expressed by Rossetti in many passages of his verse, as well as in his prose story, did not come to him from Eastern sources at all. He never cared for, and perhaps never read, any Oriental literature. His idea regarding re-birth and the memory of past lives belongs rather to certain strangely imaginative works of mediæval literature, than to anything else. Even to himself they appeared novel—something dangerous to talk about. Unless you understand this, you will not be able to account for the curious thrill of terror that runs through "St. Agnes of Intercession." The writer writes as if he were afraid of his own thought.
The story begins with a little bit of autobiography, Rossetti telling about his thoughts as a child, when he played at his father's knee on winter evenings. Of course these memories did not appear as his own; but as those of the painter supposed to tell the story. As a child this painter was very fond of picture books. In the house there was one picture book containing a picture of a saint—St. Agnes—which pleased him in such a way that he could spend hours in contemplating it with delight. But he did not know why. He grew up, was educated, became a man and became a painter; and still he could not forget the charm of the picture that had pleased him when a child. One day a young English girl, a friend of his sister's, comes to the houseon a visit. He is greatly startled on seeing her, because her face is exactly like the face of the saint in the picture book. He falls in love with her, and they are engaged to be married. But before that time he paints her portrait, and as her portrait happens to be the best work of the kind that he ever did, he sends it to the Royal Academy to be put on exhibition. Critics greatly praise the picture, but one of them remarks that at Bologna in Italy there is a painting of St. Agnes that very much resembles it. Upon this he goes to Italy to find the picture, and does find it after a great deal of trouble. It is said to be the work of a certain Angiolieri, who lived some four hundred years ago. Every detail of the face proves to be exactly like that of the living face which he painted in London. Being greatly startled by this discovery, he examines the catalogue of paintings, which he bought at the door, in order to find out whether there is anything else said in it about the model from whom Angiolieri painted that St. Agnes. He cannot find any information about the model; but he finds out that in another part of the building there is a portrait of Angiolieri, painted by himself. I think you know that many famous artists have painted portraits of themselves. Greatly interested, he hurries to where the picture is hanging, and finds, to his amazement, that the portrait of Angiolieri is exactly like himself—the very image of him. Was it then possible that, four hundred years before, he himself might have been Angiolieri, and had painted that picture of St. Agnes?
A fever seizes upon him, one of those fevers only too common in Italy. While he is still under its influence,he dreams a dream. He is in a picture gallery; and on the wall he sees Angiolieri's painting hanging up; and there is a great crowd looking at it. In that crowd he sees his betrothed, leaning upon the arm of another man. Then he feels angrily jealous, and says to the strange man, tapping him on the shoulder, "Sir, I am engaged to that lady!" Then the man turns round; and as he turns round, his face proves to be the face of Angiolieri, and his dress is the costume of four hundred years ago, and he says, "She is not mine, good friend—but neither is she thine." As he speaks his face falls in, like the face of a dead man, and becomes the face of a skull. From this dream we can guess the conclusion which the author intended.
On returning to England, when the painter attempted to speak of what he had seen and learned, his family believed him insane, and forbade him to speak on the subject any more. Also he was warned that should he speak of it to his betrothed, the marriage would be broken off. Accordingly, though he obeys, he is placed in a very unhappy position. All about him there is the oppression of a mystery involving two lives; and he cannot even try to solve it—cannot speak about it to the person whom it most directly concerns.... And here the fragment breaks.
If this admirable story had been finished, the result could not have been more impressive than is this sudden interruption. We know that Rossetti intended to make the betrothed girl also the victim of a mysterious destiny; but he did not intend, it appears, to elucidate the reason of the thing in detail. That would have indeed destroyed the shadowy charm of the recital.While the causes of things remain vague and mysterious, the pleasurable fear of the unknown remains with the reader. But if you try to account for everything, at once the illusion vanishes, and the art becomes dead. It seems to me that Rossetti has given in this unfinished tale a very fine suggestion of what use the old romances still are. It was by careful study of them, combined with his great knowledge of art, that he was able to produce, both in his poetry and in his prose, the exquisite charm of reality in unreality. Reading either, you have the sensation of actually seeing, touching, feeling, and yet you know that the whole thing is practically impossible. No art of romance can rise higher than this. And speaking of that soul-woman, whose portrait was painted in the former story, reminds me of an incident in Taine's wonderful book "De l'Intelligence," which isà propos.It is actually on record that a French artist had the following curious hallucination:
He was ill, from overwork perhaps, and opening his eyes after a feverish sleep, he saw a beautiful lady seated at his bedside, with one hand upon the bed cover, and he said to himself, "This is certainly an illusion caused by my nervous condition. But how beautiful an illusion it is! And how wonderfully luminous and delicate is that hand! If I dared only put my hand where it is, I wonder what would happen. Probably the whole thing would vanish at once, and I should lose the pleasure of looking at it."
Suddenly, as if answering his thought, a voice as clear as the voice of a bird said to him, "I am not a shadow; and you can take my hand and kiss it if youlike." He did lift the lady's hand to his lips and felt it, and then he entered into conversation with her. The conversation continued until interrupted by the entrance of the doctor attending the patient. This is the record of an extraordinary case of double consciousness—the illusion and the reason working together in such harmony that neither in the slightest degree disturbed the other. Rossetti's figures, whether of the Middle Ages or of modern times, seem also like the results of a double consciousness. We can touch them and feel them, although they are ghosts.
As I said before, he might have been one of the greatest of romantic story tellers had he turned his attention in that direction and kept his health. No better proof of this could be asked for than the printed plans of several stories which he never had time to develop. He collected the material from the study of Old French and Old Italian poets chiefly; but that material, when thrown into the crucible of his imagination, assumed totally novel and strange forms. I may tell you the outline of one story by way of conclusion. It was a beautiful idea; and it is a great regret that it could not have been executed in the author's lifetime:
One day a king and his favourite knight, while hunting in a forest, visited the house of a woodcutter, or something of that kind, to ask for water—both being very thirsty. The water was served to them by a young girl of such extraordinary beauty that both the king and the knight were greatly startled. The knight falls in love with the maid, and afterwards asks the king's leave to woo her. But when he comes to woo, he finds out that the maid has become enamoured of the king,whom she does not know to be the king. She says that, unless she can marry him she will never become a wife. The king therefore himself goes to her to plead for his friend. "I cannot marry you," he says, "because I am married already. But my friend, who loves you very much, is not married; and if you will wed him I shall make him a baron and confer upon him the gift of many castles."
The young girl to please the king accepts the knight; a grand wedding takes place at the king's castle; and the knight is made a great noble, and is gifted with many rich estates. Then the king makes this arrangement with the bride: "I will never visit you or allow you to visit me, because we love each other too much. But, once every year, when I go to hunt in the forest with your husband, you shall bring me a cup of water, just as on the first day, when we saw you."
After this the king saw her three times;—that is to say, in three successive years she greeted him with the cup of water when he went hunting. In the fourth year she died, leaving behind her a little daughter.
The sorrowing husband carefully brought up the little girl—or, at least caused her to be carefully brought up; but he never presented her to the king, or spoke of her, because the death of the mother was a subject too painful for either of them to talk about.
But when the girl was sixteen years old, she looked so exactly like her mother, that the father was startled by the resemblance. And he thought, "To-morrow I shall present her to the king." And to his daughter he said, "To-morrow I am going to hunt with the king. When we are on our way home, we shall stop at a littlecottage in the wood—the little cottage in which your mother used to live. Do you then wait in the cottage, and when the king comes, bring him a cup of water, just as your mother did."
So next day the king and his baron approached the cottage after their hunt; and the king was greatly astonished and moved by the apparition of a young girl offering him a cup of water—so strangely did she resemble the girl whom he had seen in the same place nearly twenty years before. And as he took the cup from her hand, his heart went out toward her, and he asked his companion, "Is this indeed the ghost of her?—or another dear vision?" But before the companion could make any answer—lo! another shadow stood between the king and the girl; and none could have said which was which, so exactly each beautiful face resembled the other—only the second apparition wore peasant clothes. And she that wore the clothes of a peasant girl kissed the king as he sat upon his horse, and disappeared. And the king immediately, on receiving that kiss and returning it, fell forward and died.
This is a vague, charming romance indeed, for some one to take up and develop. Of course the figure in the peasant clothes is the spirit of the mother of the girl. There are many pretty stories somewhat resembling this in the old Japanese story books, but none quite the same; and I venture to recommend anybody who understands the literary value of such things to attempt a modified version of Rossetti's outline in Japanese. Some things would, of course, have to be changed; but no small changes would in the least affect the charm of the story as a whole.
In conclusion, I may observe that the object of this little lecture has not been merely to interest you in the prose of Rossetti, but also to quicken your interest in the subject of romance in general. Remember that no matter how learned or how scientific the world may become, romance can never die. No greater mistake could be made by the Japanese student than that of despising the romantic element in the literature of his own country. Recently I have been thinking very often that a great deal might be done toward the development of later literature by remodelling and reanimating the romance of the older centuries. I believe that many young writers think chiefly about the possibility of writing something entirely new. This is a great literary misfortune; for the writing of something entirely new is scarcely possible for any human being. The greatest Western writers have not become great by trying to write what is new, but by writing over again in a much better way, that which is old. Rossetti and Tennyson and scores of others made the world richer simply by going back to the literature of a thousand years ago, and giving it re-birth. Like everything else, even a good story must die and be re-born hundreds of times before it shows the highest possibilities of beauty. All literary history is a story of re-birth—periods of death and restful forgetfulness alternating with periods of resurrection and activity. In the domain of pure literature nobody need ever be troubled for want of a subject. He has only to look for something which has been dead for a very long time, and to give that body a new soul. In romance it would be absurd to think about despising a subject, because it isunscientific. Science has nothing to do with pure romance or poetry, though it may enrich both. These are emotional flowers; and what we can do for them is only to transplant and cultivate them, much as roses or chrysanthemums are cultivated. The original wild flower is very simple; but the clever gardener can develop the simple blossom into a marvellous compound apparition, displaying ten petals where the original could show but one. Now the same horticultural process can be carried out with any good story or poem or drama in Japan, just as readily as in any other country. The romantic has nothing to gain from the new learning except in the direction of pure art; the new learning, by enriching the language and enlarging the imagination, makes it possible to express the ancient beauty in a new and much more beautiful way. Tennyson might be quoted in illustration. What is the difference between his two or three hundred lines of wondrous poetry entitled "The Passing of Arthur," and the earliest thirteenth or fourteenth century idea of the same mythical event? The facts in either case are the same. But the language and the imagery are a thousand times more forcible and more vivid in the Victorian poet. Indeed, progress in belles-lettres is almost altogether brought about by making old things conform to the imagination of succeeding generations; and poesy, like the human race, of which it represents the emotional spirit, must change its dress and the colour of its dress as the world also changes.
A good modern critic has said that the resemblance between Shelley and Algernon Charles Swinburne is of so astonishing a kind that it tempts one to believe that Swinburne is Shelley in a new body, that the soul of the drowned poet really came back to life again, and returned to finish at Oxford University the studies interrupted by his expulsion at the beginning of the century. The fancy is pretty; and it is supported by a number of queer analogies. Swinburne, like Shelley, is well born; like Shelley, he has been from his early days at Eton a furious radical; like Shelley, he has always been an enemy of Christianity; and like Shelley, he has also been an enemy of conventions and prejudices of every description. At the beginning of the century Swinburne would certainly have been treated just as Byron and Shelley were treated, but times are changed to-day; the public has become more generous and more sensible, and critics generally recognise Swinburne as the greatest verse writer English literature produced. He will certainly have justice done him after his death, if not during his life.
If Swinburne were Shelley reborn, we should have to recognise that he gained a good deal of wisdom from the experiences of his former life. He is altogether an incomparably stronger character than Shelley. Hekept his radicalism for his poetry, and never in any manner outraged the conventions of society in such matters as might relate to his private life. He is also a far greater poet than Shelley—greater than Tennyson, greater than Rossetti, greater than Browning, greater than any other Englishman, not excepting Milton, in the mastery of verse. He is also probably one of the greatest of scholars among the poets of any country, writing poetry in English or French, in Greek and Latin. For learning, there are certainly few among the poets of England who would not have been obliged to bow before him. He is also the greatest living English dramatist—I might as well say the greatest English dramatist of the nineteenth century. Except the "Cenci" of Shelley, there is no other great drama since 1800 to be placed beside the dramas of Swinburne; and the "Prometheus Unbound" by Shelley is far surpassed by Swinburne's Greek tragedy of "Atalanta in Calydon." Another feature of Swinburne's genius is his critical capacity. He is a great critic; so great that he has been able to make his enemies afraid of him, as well as to help to distinction struggling young men of talent whose work he admires. You will perceive what force there must be in the man. Born in 1837, he has never ceased to produce poetry from the time of his University days, and he still writes, with the result that the bulk of his work probably exceeds the work of any other great poet of the century. If he be indeed the reborn Shelley, it is certain that Shelley has become a giant.
I may have surprised you by saying that Swinburne is the greatest of all our poets. But understand that Iam speaking of poetry as distinguished from prose, of poetry as rhythm and rhyme, as melody and measure. By greatest of poets I mean the greatest master of verse. If you were to ask me whether Swinburne has as great a quality as Tennyson or as Rossetti or as Browning, either in the moral or philosophical sense, I should say no. Greatest of all in the knowledge and use of words, he is perhaps less than any of the three in the higher emotional, moral, sympathetic, and philosophical qualities that give poetry its charm for even those who know nothing about the art of words. And of all the Victorian poets, Swinburne will be the least useful to students of these literary classes. The extraordinary powers that distinguish him are powers requiring not only a perfect knowledge of English, but a perfect knowledge of those higher forms of literary expression which are especially the outcome of classical study. Swinburne's scholarship is one of the great obstacles to his being understood by any who are not scholars themselves in the very same direction; in this sense he would be, I think, quite as useless to you as Milton in the matter of form. In value to you he would be far below Milton in the matter of thought and sentiment.
There are several ways of studying poetry. The greater number of people who buy the books of poets, and who find pleasure in them, do not know anything about the rules of verse. Out of one hundred thousand Englishmen who read Tennyson, I doubt very much if one thousand know the worth of his art. English University students, who have taken a literary course, probably do understand very well; but a poet's reputation and fortune are not made by scholars, but by the greatmass of half-educated people. They read for sentiment, for emotion, for imagination; and they are quite satisfied with the pleasure given them by the poet in this way. They are improving and educating themselves when they read him, and for this it is not necessary that they should know the methods, of his work, but only that they should know its results. The educators of the great mass of any people in Europe are, in this sense, the poets.