FOOTNOTES:

'Parching summer hath no warrantTo consume this crystal well;Rains, that make each brook a torrent,Neither sully it, nor swell.'

So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughedfrom ledge to pool, and opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.

But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and their father's house.

Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high on Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is wise and innocent.

Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth constituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing the depth, or drought,—the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?

For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself then, in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between Cockermouth and Shap?

Not altogether so; but indeed theVocalpiety seemed conclusively to have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little Langdale. TheUnvocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon, east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and Bürger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death—while even Puritan Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the 'unco guid,' put but limited faith in giftedGilfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness theMorgante Maggiore.[184]

Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it, might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the period—dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were, from the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of angels,—again I say—hesitatingly—isit possible that the goodness of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr. Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves despised,[185]and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the desert found them, and slew.

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair, and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of these, her despised.

I take one at mere chance:

'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]

Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our eyeshavekept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be; and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man'sImmortality instead of dulled by his death,—and, gazing on the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also—for behold, He cometh with the clouds—this it is no more possible for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.

'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'—He, the reprobate! how should such as he think of Christ?

Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another line or two, to try:

'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]Ifhespeak truth, she is Christ's sister, andJust now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'

Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron—almost shallow Byron—these are of the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,—nor in a hurry.

'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' HowdidCarnage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what hewas bid stand stillfor? or if not—will you please look—and what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing?

'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah—and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote all the country of the hills and of the south—and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed—as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'

Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hearthesetexts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its Life—and God has taken it at its word. But Death is notHisBegotten Son, for all that; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;—neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer' utter thunders of God—which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this day foryou, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George Fox—its folly shown practically by Penn. But thecompassionof the pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byroncame, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that

'The drying up a single tear has moreOf honest fame than shedding seas of gore.'[188]

Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle song too, when it ishiscue to fight. If you look at the introduction to theIsles of Greece, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd canto ofDon Juan,—you will find—what will younotfind, if only you understand them! 'He' in the first line, remember, means the typical modern poet.

'Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,He gave the different nations something national.'Twas all the same to him—"God save the King"Or "Ça ira" according to the fashion all;His muse made increment of anythingFrom the high lyric down to the low rational:If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinderHimself from being as pliable as Pindar?'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;In England a six-canto quarto tale;In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance onThe last war—much the same in Portugal;In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance onWould be old Goethe's—(see what says de Staël)In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;'In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.

'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;In England a six-canto quarto tale;In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance onThe last war—much the same in Portugal;In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance onWould be old Goethe's—(see what says de Staël)In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;'In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.

Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling power. The 'God Save the Queen' in England, fallen hollow now, as the 'Ça ira' in France—not a man inFrance knowing where either France or 'that' (whatever 'that' may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing he doesn't like;—nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, 'high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France—resumed in a word—Béranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on—thelastwar, (presentwar not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in Rossetti's 'blessed damozels' or Burne Jones's 'days of creation.' Lastly comes the mock at himself—the modern English Greek—(followed up by the 'degenerate into hands like mine' in the song itself); and then—to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We have had one line of him in his clearness—five of him in his depth—sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:—

'What,—silent yet? and silentall?Ah no, the voices of the deadSound like a distant torrent's fall,And answer, "Letoneliving head,But one, arise—we come—we come:"—'Tis but the living who are dumb.'

Resurrection, this, you see like Bürger's; but not of death unto death.

'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said thewholeheart of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world in which the three—unholy—children,of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock Hills,—for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Garwith Ida, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:—

'And silence aids—though the steep hillsSend to the lake a thousand rills;In summer tide, so soft they weep,The sound but lulls the ear asleep;Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,So stilly is the solitude.Naught living meets the eye or ear,But well I ween the dead are near;For though, in feudal strife, a foeHath laid our Lady's Chapel low,Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,The peasant rests him from his toil,And, dying, bids his bones be laidWhere erst his simple fathers prayed.'

Naught living meets the eye or ear,But well I ween the dead are near;For though, in feudal strife, a foeHath laid our Lady's Chapel low,Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,The peasant rests him from his toil,And, dying, bids his bones be laidWhere erst his simple fathers prayed.'

And last take the same note of sorrow—with Burns's finger on the fall of it:

'Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glensWi' toddlin' din,Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stensFrae lin to lin.'

As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you—or more tender—nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?

For instance, when we are told that

'Wharfe, as he moved along,To matins joined a mournful voice,'

is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means rhythmically dulcet,) that

'The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,And strangled by a merciless force'?

Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,

'How sweet were leisure, could it yield no moreThen 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!'

—is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at leisure, and in a reclining attitude—as compared with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity,—poetical extraction, and moral position?

On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words more of the school of Belial?

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some very wicked people—mutineers, in fact—have retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves safe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink:

'A little stream came tumbling from the heightAnd straggling into ocean as it might.Its bounding crystal frolicked in the rayAnd gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,Close on the wild wide ocean,—yet as pureAnd fresh as Innocence; and more secure.Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deepAs the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,While, far below, the vast and sullen swellOf ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.'[189]

Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that hereisentirely first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassably good, the closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race of the sea-kings.

But Lucifer himselfcouldnot have written it; neither any servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader,knowgood 'style' when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad?

I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of pages.

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest,i. e.kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger, the second of love.

(1) 'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,His present, and your pains, we thank you for.When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,We will in France, by God's grace, play a set,Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'(2) 'My gracious Silence, hail!Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd homeThat weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,And mothers that lack sons.'

(2) 'My gracious Silence, hail!Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd homeThat weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,And mothers that lack sons.'

Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both these passages, so opposite in temper.

A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, 'We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Untowhose graceour passion is as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons'); and with this self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the 'style' in an instant.

B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without obscurity; thus, 'his present, and your pains, we thank you for' is better than 'we thank you for his present and your pains,' because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but 'when to these balls our rackets we have matched' would have spoiled the style in a moment, because—I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also here the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have precedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 'in France' comes first, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the 'by God's grace' next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible; the detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King does not say 'danger,' far less 'dishonour,' but 'hazard' only; ofthathe is, humanly speaking, sure.

C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosenwords; slowly in the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word not absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of final dissyllable. Thus, 'play a set shall strike' is better than 'play a setthatshall strike,' and 'match'd' is kingly short—no necessity could have excused 'matched' instead. On the contrary, the three first words, 'We are glad,' would have been spoken by the king more slowly and fully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly 'we' at its proudest, and then the 'are' as a continuous state, and then the 'glad,' as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors expected him to be.[190]

D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the heart beats. The kingcannotspeak otherwise than he does—nor the hero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even lisping numbers 'come,' but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.

E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion fitted to it exactly and the utmost of which the language is capable—the melody in prose being Eolian and variable—in verse, nobler by submitting itself to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.

F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker meaning according to the passion—nearly always indicated by metaphor: 'play a set'—sometimes by abstraction—(thus in the second passage 'silence' for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct epithet ('coffined' for dead) but always indicative of there being more in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fulness depends the majesty of style; that is tosay, virtually, on the quantity of contained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving and true: and this the sum of all—that nothing can be well said, but with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.

These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music, that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time and harmony.

When Byron says 'rhyme is of the rude,'[191]he means that Burns needs it,—while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah—yet in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme—the best of Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.

I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, thefirst edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner'sAnglo-Saxons. I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in King Canute's impromptu

'Gaily (or is it sweetly?—I forget which, and it's no matter)sang the monks of Ely,As Knut the king came sailing by;'

much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss, chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain; while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. So, Gibbon can write inhismanner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, inhismanner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, inhismanner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.

'Master of Masters—sweet source, and springing well,Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;* * * *Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tonguePresume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?Na, na—not so; but kneel when I them hear.But farther more—and lower to descendForgive me, Virgil, if I thee offendPardon thy scolar, suffer him to rymeSincethouwast but ane mortal man sometime.'

'Master of Masters—sweet source, and springing well,Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;

* * * *

Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tonguePresume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?Na, na—not so; but kneel when I them hear.But farther more—and lower to descendForgive me, Virgil, if I thee offendPardon thy scolar, suffer him to rymeSincethouwast but ane mortal man sometime.'

'Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words? And note youwhosehumility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of—Archibald Bell-the-Cat!

And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene inMarmionbetween his father and King James.

'His hand the monarch sudden took—Now, by the Bruce's soul,Angus, my hasty speech forgive,For sure as doth his spirit liveAs he said of the Douglas oldI well may say of you,—That never king did subject hold,In speech more free, in war more bold,More tender and more true:And while the king his hand did strainThe old man's tears fell down like rain.'

I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognise further in them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.

'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,Hye you there apace;Let none come there but that virgins beenTo adorn her grace:And when you come, whereas she in place,See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;Bind your fillets fast,And gird in your waste,For more fineness, with a taudry lace.''Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbineWith gylliflowers;Bring coronatiöns, and sops in wine,Worn of paramours;Strow me the ground with daffadowndilliesAnd cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;The pretty paunceAnd the chevisaunceShall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]

'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbineWith gylliflowers;Bring coronatiöns, and sops in wine,Worn of paramours;Strow me the ground with daffadowndilliesAnd cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;The pretty paunceAnd the chevisaunceShall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]

Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test all by.

(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,No more, at yearly festivals,We cowslip ballsOr chains of columbines shall make,For this or that occasion's sake.No, no! our maiden pleasures beWrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193](3) 'Death is now the phœnix rest,And the turtle's loyal breastTo eternity doth rest.Truth may seem, but cannot be;Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]

(3) 'Death is now the phœnix rest,And the turtle's loyal breastTo eternity doth rest.Truth may seem, but cannot be;Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]

If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him—as for instance Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin—'his manners have not that repose that marks the caste,' &c.Thisdefect in his Lordship's style, being myselfscrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint; and indefinable—evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;—not to say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself—London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll, things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to town—modern town—like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.

Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full of hope, and all pain of balsam.

Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line, prophetic of all things since and now. 'Wherehegazed, a gloom pervaded space.'[196]

So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what themighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,

'The sordor of civilisation, mixedWith all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.'[197]

Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,—with other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be analysed by extreme care,—is found, to the full, only in five men that I know of in modern times; namely Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and myself,—differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for 'Rokkes blak' and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to climb, or cross;—all this love of impending mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston.

And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct of Astræan justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene 'whatever is, is right;' but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that about ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong: conviction making four of us,according to our several manners, leaders of revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous to the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less sanguine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope and the implacableness of Fate.

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the death: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally, no conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental public, offering up daily the pure emotion of divine tranquillity, shrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.

Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with more precise illustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this present one has been hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, to gentle readers, not a little discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of light biographic study, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this place as afterwards;—namely, the account of the manner in which Scott—whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,—spent his Sunday.

As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first thing we want to know,—whether Scott worked after his week-day custom, on the Sunday morning. But, I gather, not; at all events his household and his cattle rested (L. iii. 108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or read quietly in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in the house, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at eleven, when I expect you all to attend' (vii. 306). Question of college and other externally unanimous prayers settled for us very briefly: 'if you have no faith, have at least manners.' He read the Church of England service, lessons and all, the latter, if interesting, eloquently (ibid.). After the service, one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After the sermon, if the weather was fine, walk with his family, dogs included and guests, tocoldpicnic (iii. 109), followed by short extemporebiblical novelettes; for he had his Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart, it having been his mother's last gift to him (vi. 174). These lessons to his children in Bible history were always given, whether there was picnic or not. For the rest of the afternoon he took his pleasure in the woods with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his master's elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life to the laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh of whiskey or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 195). Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the week, Scott always dined at home on Sunday; and with old friends: never, unless inevitably, receiving any person with whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room rubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about him, 'and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail with sympathy.' For the usquebaugh of the less honoured week-days, at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair share afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scottish worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite author, for the amusement or edification of his little circle. Shakespeare it might be, or Dryden,—Johnson, or Joanna Baillie,—Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in those days 'Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a new piece fromhishand had appeared, it wassure to be read by Scott the Sunday evening afterwards; and that with such delighted emphasis as showed how completely the elder bard had kept up his enthusiasm for poetry at pitch of youth, and all his admiration of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop of literary jealousy' (v. 341).

With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as chanced in having Dandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel Mannering, Counsellor Pleydell, and Dr. Robertson in Castle Street, such was Scott's habitual Sabbath: a day, we perceive, of eating the fat, (dinner, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and mercy—thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull, hastthine!) and drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of Mr. Southey's cataract of Lodore,—'Here it comes, sparkling.' A day bestrewn with coronatiöns and sops in wine; deep in libations to good hope and fond memory; a day of rest to beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that can be merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of delight, signifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, there or far away;—always excepting the French, and Boney.

'Yes, and see what it all came to in the end.'

Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath; the end came of quite other things: ofthese, came such length of days and peace as Scott had in his Fatherland, and such immortality as he has in all lands.

Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his sometimes overmuch light-mindedness, was administered to him by the more grave and thoughtful Byron. For the Lord Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart as well as Scott, though it had never been given him by his mother as her dearest possession. Knew it, and, what was more, had thought of it, and sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, nor been fain to seek.

And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible pleasure in the way he sees to be most agreeable to him—as, for instance, remembering with precision, and writing down the very next morning, every blessed word that the Prince Regent had been pleased to say of him before courtly audience,—he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his ownBride of Abydos, for instance, which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the travelling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the drama ofCain. Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, and of White Maidens, also of Grey Friars, and Green Fairies; also of sacred hollies by the well, and haunted crooks in theglen. But of the bushes that the black dogs rend in the woods of Phlegethon; and of the crooks in the glen, and the bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest of us; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a dwarfed one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than Hobbie Elliot may tremblingly ask 'Gude guide us, what's yon?' hast thou yet known, seeing that thou hast yet told,nothing.

Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time hear.

John Ruskin

FOOTNOTES:[154]Nell, in theOld Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for the market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster'sLife), and Paul was written under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott—a part of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both inDombeyandLittle Dorrit.[155]Chourineur' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife-edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with the two others; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the 'Louvécienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and opposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 'De ce Paris, où elle était née, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'étonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des détails matériels de l'existence était inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si économe n'avait même pas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme. Je n'avais pas idée d'une si complète absence de sens moral; d'une si inconsciente dépravation, d'une impudence si effrontément naïve.'—L'Argent des autres, vol. i. p. 358.[156]The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing especially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated with grossness. Horace, in theEpodes, scoffs at it, but not without horror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply struck by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it takes entire possession of Balzac in theContes Drolatiques; it struck Scott in the earliest days of his childish 'visions' intensified by the axe-stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. It chose for him the subject of theHeart of Midlothian, and produced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, taintingNigel, almost spoilingQuentin Durward—utterly theFair Maid of Perth: and culminating inBizarro, L. x. 149. It suggested all the deaths by falling, or sinking, as in delirious sleep—Kennedy, Eveline Neville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of Ravenswood in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here—compare the dream of Gride, inNicholas Nickleby, and Dickens's own last words,on the ground, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain, two years ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on the other side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all the figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus; in Dickens it in like manner gives Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and wax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild inBarnaby Rudge, where, with acorps de dramecomposed of one idiot, two madmen, a gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands—carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool into shapelessness, he cannot yet be content without shooting the spare lover's leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a wooden one; the shapeless shop-boy being finally also married intwowooden ones. It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness—(in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. CompareModern Painters, vol. iv., 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' s. 19); and inallforms of it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence the last Darwinian process of the witches' charm—'cool it with a baboon'sblood,thenthe charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, ofYoung Folks—'A magazine of instructive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages,' containing 'A Sequel to Desdichado' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quite monumental example of the kind of art in question will be found as a leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, "See, good Cerberus," said Sir Rupert, "my hand has been struck off. You must make me a hand of iron, one with springs in it, so that I can make it grasp a dagger." The text is also, as it professes to be, instructive; being the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 'folly' ofIvanhoe; for folly begets folly down, and down; and whatever Scott and Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators—their wisdom none will so much as hear, how much less follow!In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and good are alike conditions of literalvision: and therefore also, inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19—and was without doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at the sight of statuary, 31—especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67—solaced, while he was being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by that history of the Knights of Malta—fondly dwelt on and realised by actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme of its last effort in passing away.[157]'Se dit par dénigrement, d'un chrétien qui ne croit pas les dogmes de sa religion.'—Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.[158]'A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez's, inProsper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old nurse's 'ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va à vêpres, p. 93; and compare Prosper's treasures, 'la petite Vénus, et le petit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121; also Madame Brehanne's request for the divertissement of 'quelque belle batterie à coups de couteau' with Didier's answer. 'Hélas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la Drôme, l'on se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33.[159]Edgeworth'sTales(Hunter, 1827), 'Harrington and Ormond,' vol. iii. p. 260.[160]Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.[161]Scott's father was habitually ascetic. 'I have heard his son tell that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say, "Yes—it is too good, bairns," and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate.'—Lockhart'sLife(Black, Edinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the simple form of 'L.'[162]A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for press, a Miss Somebody's 'great song,' 'Live, and Love, and Die.' Had it been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have added—Spin.[163]See passage of introduction toIvanhoe, wisely quoted in L. vi. 106.[164]See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion ofWoodstock.[165]L. iv. 177.[166]L. vi. 67.[167]'One other such novel, and there's an end; but who can last for ever? who ever lasted so long?'—Sydney Smith (of thePirate) to Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (Letters, vol. ii. p. 223.)[168]L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192.[169]All, alas! were now in a great measure so written.Ivanhoe,The Monastery,The AbbotandKenilworthwere all published between December 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand before the bargain was completed; and before theFortunes of Nigelissued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and received his bookseller's bills for no less than four 'works of fiction,' not one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in unbroken succession,each of them to fill up at least three volumes, but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any of them should run to four; and within two years all this anticipation had been wiped off byPeveril of the Peak,Quentin Durward,St. Ronan's Well, andRedgauntlet.[170]Woodstockwas finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his ruin; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages are the most beautiful of the book. But a month afterwards Lady Scott died; and he never wrote glad word more.[171]Compare Mr. Spurgeon's not unfrequent orations on the same subject.[172]There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in the novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank Osbaldistone, and Alan Fairford.[173]Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his conceit; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was called 'Molyndona' even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 1446. See also account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable volume,Old Glasgow, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since throwing that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it with other pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook, once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching), 'has for nearly a hundred years been a crawling stream of loathsomeness. It is now bricked over, and a carriage way made on the top of it; underneath the foul mess still passes through the heart of the city, till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbour.'[174]The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession, written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns.'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.'Dear Sir,—Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had just been erected.] 'Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as acceptable) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.''Abbotsford: July 30.'I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche above the door; and though many a man has got a nicheinthe Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and to remain very much your obliged humble servant,'Walter Scott.''August 16.'My dear Sir,—I trouble you with this [sic] few lines to thank you for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well in character.' [Alas—Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] 'I intend the old lion to predominate over a well which the children have christened the Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the hall at Castle Street.''September 5.'Dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself' [he means, the wooden one] 'will be kept for the new jail; if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it. Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore.''September 8.'I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended possessor.'[175]Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better convenience, I shall continue to spell 'Ryme' without our wrongly addedh.[176]L. ii. 278.[177]'Che nella mente miaragiona.' Love—you observe, the highestReasonableness, instead of Frenchivresse, or even Shakespearian 'mere folly'; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of theConvito, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of Reason; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line:—'Costei penso chi che mosso l'universo.'(See Lyell'sCanzoniere, p. 104.)[178]ὡραν της τερψιος—Plato,Laws, ii., Steph. 669. 'Hour' having here nearly the power of 'Fate' with added sense of being a daughter of Themis.[179]'Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times,and what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous'! (Evenings at Home—fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth; and I only wish that in the substance of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Nevertheless, the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufacture and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in 'Evenings at Home' and 'Harry and Lucy'—being all the while themselves works of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and fulfilled. See for instance the paper, 'Things by their Right Names,' following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), and closing the first volume of the old edition of theEvenings.[180]Carlyle,French Revolution(Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70; conf. p. 25, and theÇa iraat Arras, vol. iii. p. 276.[181]Ibid.iii. 26.[182]Carlyle,French Revolution, iii. 106, the last sentence altered in a word or two.[183]I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the unfathomable.[184]'It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion—and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.'I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet—but the masquing goes on the same.' (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) 'A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except your neighbour's.'[185]See quotedinfrathe mock, by Byron, of himself and all other modern poets,Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for line.[186]Island, ii. 16, where see context.[187]Juan, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth says 'instrument'—not 'daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said 'Infant' and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant would not have rymed.[188]Juan, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context 61—68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the Devil's speech, beginning, 'Yes, Sir, you forget' in scene 2 ofThe Deformed Transformed: then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning 'he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally, theVision of Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5.[189]Island, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high flakes, shivered into sleet' of stanza 7.[190]A modern editor—of whom I will not use the expressions which occur to me—finding the 'we' a redundant syllable in the iambic line, prints 'we're.' It is a little thing—but I do not recollect, in the forty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch quite so base. But I don't read the new editions much; that must be allowed for.[191]Island, ii. 5. I was going to say, 'Look to the context.' but am fain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school-introduction to the literature of the world.'Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,Which to the dead a lingering fame conveysIn song, where fame as yet hath left no signBeyond the sound whose charm is half divine;Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,But yields young history all to harmony;A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyreIn hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple staveRung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;Invites, when hieroglyphics are a themeFor sages' labours or the student's dream;Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil—The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.Such was this rude rhyme—rhyme is of the rude,But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever riseLands which no foes destroy or civilise,Exist; and what can our accomplish'd artOf verse do more than reach the a waken'd heart?'[192]Shepherd's Calendar.'Coronatiön,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation; 'sops in wine,' jolly-pastoral for double pink; 'paunce,' thoughtless pastoral for pansy; 'chevisaunce' I don't know, (not in Gerarde); 'flowre-delice'—pronounce dellice—half made up of 'delicate' and 'delicious.'[193]Herrick,Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter.[194]Passionate Pilgrim.[195]In this point, compare theCurse of Minervawith theTears of the Muses.[196]'He,'—Lucifer; (Vision of Judgment, 24). It is precisely because Byron wasnothis servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and prosperity;—with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue; and of the 'progress' of things in general:—in smooth sea and fair weather,—and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when once one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.[197]Island, ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial of the fall,—nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with deeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its civilisation.

[154]Nell, in theOld Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for the market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster'sLife), and Paul was written under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott—a part of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both inDombeyandLittle Dorrit.

[155]Chourineur' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife-edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with the two others; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the 'Louvécienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and opposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 'De ce Paris, où elle était née, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'étonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des détails matériels de l'existence était inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si économe n'avait même pas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme. Je n'avais pas idée d'une si complète absence de sens moral; d'une si inconsciente dépravation, d'une impudence si effrontément naïve.'—L'Argent des autres, vol. i. p. 358.

[156]The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing especially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated with grossness. Horace, in theEpodes, scoffs at it, but not without horror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply struck by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it takes entire possession of Balzac in theContes Drolatiques; it struck Scott in the earliest days of his childish 'visions' intensified by the axe-stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. It chose for him the subject of theHeart of Midlothian, and produced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, taintingNigel, almost spoilingQuentin Durward—utterly theFair Maid of Perth: and culminating inBizarro, L. x. 149. It suggested all the deaths by falling, or sinking, as in delirious sleep—Kennedy, Eveline Neville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of Ravenswood in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here—compare the dream of Gride, inNicholas Nickleby, and Dickens's own last words,on the ground, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain, two years ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on the other side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all the figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus; in Dickens it in like manner gives Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and wax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild inBarnaby Rudge, where, with acorps de dramecomposed of one idiot, two madmen, a gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands—carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool into shapelessness, he cannot yet be content without shooting the spare lover's leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a wooden one; the shapeless shop-boy being finally also married intwowooden ones. It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness—(in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. CompareModern Painters, vol. iv., 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' s. 19); and inallforms of it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence the last Darwinian process of the witches' charm—'cool it with a baboon'sblood,thenthe charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, ofYoung Folks—'A magazine of instructive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages,' containing 'A Sequel to Desdichado' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quite monumental example of the kind of art in question will be found as a leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, "See, good Cerberus," said Sir Rupert, "my hand has been struck off. You must make me a hand of iron, one with springs in it, so that I can make it grasp a dagger." The text is also, as it professes to be, instructive; being the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 'folly' ofIvanhoe; for folly begets folly down, and down; and whatever Scott and Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators—their wisdom none will so much as hear, how much less follow!In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and good are alike conditions of literalvision: and therefore also, inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19—and was without doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at the sight of statuary, 31—especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67—solaced, while he was being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by that history of the Knights of Malta—fondly dwelt on and realised by actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme of its last effort in passing away.

In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and good are alike conditions of literalvision: and therefore also, inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19—and was without doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at the sight of statuary, 31—especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67—solaced, while he was being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by that history of the Knights of Malta—fondly dwelt on and realised by actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme of its last effort in passing away.

[157]'Se dit par dénigrement, d'un chrétien qui ne croit pas les dogmes de sa religion.'—Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.

[158]'A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez's, inProsper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old nurse's 'ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va à vêpres, p. 93; and compare Prosper's treasures, 'la petite Vénus, et le petit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121; also Madame Brehanne's request for the divertissement of 'quelque belle batterie à coups de couteau' with Didier's answer. 'Hélas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la Drôme, l'on se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33.

[159]Edgeworth'sTales(Hunter, 1827), 'Harrington and Ormond,' vol. iii. p. 260.

[160]Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.

[161]Scott's father was habitually ascetic. 'I have heard his son tell that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say, "Yes—it is too good, bairns," and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate.'—Lockhart'sLife(Black, Edinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the simple form of 'L.'

[162]A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for press, a Miss Somebody's 'great song,' 'Live, and Love, and Die.' Had it been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have added—Spin.

[163]See passage of introduction toIvanhoe, wisely quoted in L. vi. 106.

[164]See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion ofWoodstock.

[165]L. iv. 177.

[166]L. vi. 67.

[167]'One other such novel, and there's an end; but who can last for ever? who ever lasted so long?'—Sydney Smith (of thePirate) to Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (Letters, vol. ii. p. 223.)

[168]L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192.

[169]All, alas! were now in a great measure so written.Ivanhoe,The Monastery,The AbbotandKenilworthwere all published between December 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thousand before the bargain was completed; and before theFortunes of Nigelissued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and received his bookseller's bills for no less than four 'works of fiction,' not one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be produced in unbroken succession,each of them to fill up at least three volumes, but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any of them should run to four; and within two years all this anticipation had been wiped off byPeveril of the Peak,Quentin Durward,St. Ronan's Well, andRedgauntlet.

[170]Woodstockwas finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his ruin; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages are the most beautiful of the book. But a month afterwards Lady Scott died; and he never wrote glad word more.

[171]Compare Mr. Spurgeon's not unfrequent orations on the same subject.

[172]There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in the novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank Osbaldistone, and Alan Fairford.

[173]Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his conceit; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was called 'Molyndona' even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 1446. See also account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable volume,Old Glasgow, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, since throwing that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has presented it with other pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that the brook, once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleaching), 'has for nearly a hundred years been a crawling stream of loathsomeness. It is now bricked over, and a carriage way made on the top of it; underneath the foul mess still passes through the heart of the city, till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbour.'

[174]The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession, written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns.'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.'Dear Sir,—Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had just been erected.] 'Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as acceptable) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.''Abbotsford: July 30.'I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche above the door; and though many a man has got a nicheinthe Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and to remain very much your obliged humble servant,'Walter Scott.''August 16.'My dear Sir,—I trouble you with this [sic] few lines to thank you for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well in character.' [Alas—Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] 'I intend the old lion to predominate over a well which the children have christened the Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the hall at Castle Street.''September 5.'Dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself' [he means, the wooden one] 'will be kept for the new jail; if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it. Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore.''September 8.'I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended possessor.'

'Abbotsford: April 21, 1817.

'Dear Sir,—Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.' [The sundial had just been erected.] 'Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as acceptable) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect.'

'Abbotsford: July 30.

'I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche above the door; and though many a man has got a nicheinthe Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and to remain very much your obliged humble servant,

'Walter Scott.'

'August 16.

'My dear Sir,—I trouble you with this [sic] few lines to thank you for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well in character.' [Alas—Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] 'I intend the old lion to predominate over a well which the children have christened the Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the hall at Castle Street.'

'September 5.

'Dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself' [he means, the wooden one] 'will be kept for the new jail; if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it. Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore.'

'September 8.

'I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.

'I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these remains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended possessor.'

[175]Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better convenience, I shall continue to spell 'Ryme' without our wrongly addedh.

[176]L. ii. 278.

[177]'Che nella mente miaragiona.' Love—you observe, the highestReasonableness, instead of Frenchivresse, or even Shakespearian 'mere folly'; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of theConvito, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of Reason; remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line:—'Costei penso chi che mosso l'universo.'(See Lyell'sCanzoniere, p. 104.)

'Costei penso chi che mosso l'universo.'

(See Lyell'sCanzoniere, p. 104.)

[178]ὡραν της τερψιος—Plato,Laws, ii., Steph. 669. 'Hour' having here nearly the power of 'Fate' with added sense of being a daughter of Themis.

[179]'Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times,and what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous'! (Evenings at Home—fifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth; and I only wish that in the substance of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Nevertheless, the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufacture and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in 'Evenings at Home' and 'Harry and Lucy'—being all the while themselves works of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be learned and fulfilled. See for instance the paper, 'Things by their Right Names,' following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), and closing the first volume of the old edition of theEvenings.

[180]Carlyle,French Revolution(Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70; conf. p. 25, and theÇa iraat Arras, vol. iii. p. 276.

[181]Ibid.iii. 26.

[182]Carlyle,French Revolution, iii. 106, the last sentence altered in a word or two.

[183]I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the unfathomable.

[184]'It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion—and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.'I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet—but the masquing goes on the same.' (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) 'A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except your neighbour's.'

'I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet—but the masquing goes on the same.' (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1828.) 'A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except your neighbour's.'

[185]See quotedinfrathe mock, by Byron, of himself and all other modern poets,Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for line.

[186]Island, ii. 16, where see context.

[187]Juan, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth says 'instrument'—not 'daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said 'Infant' and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant would not have rymed.

[188]Juan, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context 61—68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the Devil's speech, beginning, 'Yes, Sir, you forget' in scene 2 ofThe Deformed Transformed: then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning 'he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally, theVision of Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5.

[189]Island, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high flakes, shivered into sleet' of stanza 7.

[190]A modern editor—of whom I will not use the expressions which occur to me—finding the 'we' a redundant syllable in the iambic line, prints 'we're.' It is a little thing—but I do not recollect, in the forty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch quite so base. But I don't read the new editions much; that must be allowed for.

[191]Island, ii. 5. I was going to say, 'Look to the context.' but am fain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school-introduction to the literature of the world.'Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,Which to the dead a lingering fame conveysIn song, where fame as yet hath left no signBeyond the sound whose charm is half divine;Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,But yields young history all to harmony;A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyreIn hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple staveRung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;Invites, when hieroglyphics are a themeFor sages' labours or the student's dream;Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil—The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.Such was this rude rhyme—rhyme is of the rude,But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever riseLands which no foes destroy or civilise,Exist; and what can our accomplish'd artOf verse do more than reach the a waken'd heart?'

[191]Island, ii. 5. I was going to say, 'Look to the context.' but am fain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school-introduction to the literature of the world.

'Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,Which to the dead a lingering fame conveysIn song, where fame as yet hath left no signBeyond the sound whose charm is half divine;Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,But yields young history all to harmony;A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyreIn hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple staveRung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;Invites, when hieroglyphics are a themeFor sages' labours or the student's dream;Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil—The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.Such was this rude rhyme—rhyme is of the rude,But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever riseLands which no foes destroy or civilise,Exist; and what can our accomplish'd artOf verse do more than reach the a waken'd heart?'

[192]Shepherd's Calendar.'Coronatiön,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation; 'sops in wine,' jolly-pastoral for double pink; 'paunce,' thoughtless pastoral for pansy; 'chevisaunce' I don't know, (not in Gerarde); 'flowre-delice'—pronounce dellice—half made up of 'delicate' and 'delicious.'

[193]Herrick,Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter.

[194]Passionate Pilgrim.

[195]In this point, compare theCurse of Minervawith theTears of the Muses.

[196]'He,'—Lucifer; (Vision of Judgment, 24). It is precisely because Byron wasnothis servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and prosperity;—with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue; and of the 'progress' of things in general:—in smooth sea and fair weather,—and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when once one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.

[197]Island, ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial of the fall,—nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with deeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its civilisation.

Back to Index Next