XII.

"Which bends not with the remover to remove"Nor "alters when it alteration finds."

For example, Leontes, inWinter's Tale, who is cited as a chief instance of Shakspeare's repentances, quite clearly shows by word and act that his regret is mainly a sense of personal loss, not a change of character. He is sorrowful not so much because he has sinned as because he has hurt himself. In Act V. just before the catastrophe which restores him his wife and daughter, we find him exclaiming:

"Good PaulineO that ever IHad squared me to thy counsel! Then even nowI might have looked upon my queen's full eyesHave taken treasure from her lips—&c.,"

And again in the same scene, where Florizel and Perdita have been brought before him, he cries:

"What might I have been,Might I a son and daughter now have looked onSuch goodly things as you!"

In these it is clear that Leontes is speaking from personal regret; there is no thought here of that total expansion of an ego into a burning love of all other egos, implied in the term repentance, as I have used it. Similarly, King Lear, who has also been cited as an example of Shakspeare's repentances is simply an example of regret for the foulest of wrongs done in a moment of silly passion. After the poor old man, upon regaining his consciousness under Cordelia's tender ministrations, is captured together with Cordelia, in Scene III of Act V, Cordelia says, as if to comfort him:

"We are not the firstWho with best meaning have incurred the worst.For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down.Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?"Lear.—No, no, no, no! Come let's away to prison;We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage;When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel downAnd ask of thee forgiveness."

"We are not the firstWho with best meaning have incurred the worst.For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down.

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?"Lear.—No, no, no, no! Come let's away to prison;We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage;When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel downAnd ask of thee forgiveness."

Here, clearly enough, is regret for his injury to Cordelia, but quite as clearly, no general state of repentance; and in the very few other words uttered by the old king before the play ends surely nothing indicating such a state appears. Of all the instances suggested only one involves anything like the process of character-change which I have called a repentance, such as Gwendolen Harleth's for example; but this one, unfortunately, is not drawn by Shakspeare: it is only mentioned as having occurred. This is the repentance of Duke Frederick inAs you Like it. Just at the end of that play, when Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver, and Celia and all the rest have unraveled all their complications, and when everything that can be called plot in the play is finished, theson of old Sir Rowland appears before the company in the wood and calls out:

"Let me have audience for a word or two.

Duke Frederick hearing how that every dayMen of great worth resorted to this forestAddressed a mighty powerpurposely to takeHis brother here and put him to the sword,And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,Where meeting with an old religious man,After some questions with him was convertedBoth from his enterprise and from the world;His crown bequeathing to his banished brother,And all their lands restored to them againThat were with him exiled."

Here we have indeed a true repentance, but this is all we have of it; the passage I have read contains the whole picture.

If we now go on and ask ourselves why these fascinating phenomena of repentance, which George Eliot has treated with such success, never engaged Shakspeare's energy, we come at the very first step upon a limitation of the drama as opposed to the novel which, in the strongest way, confirms the view I was at such pains to set forth in my earlier lectures of that necessity for a freer form than the dramatic, which arises from the more complete relations between modern personalities and which has really developed the novel out of the drama.

How, for instance, could Shakspeare paint the yeas and nays, the twists, the turns, the intricacies of Gwendolen Harleth's thought during the long weeks while she was debating whether she should accept Grandcourt? The whole action of this drama, you observe, is confinedwithin the small round head of the girl herself. How could such action be brought before the audience of a play? The only hope would be in a prolonged soliloquy, for these are thoughts which no young woman would naturally communicate to any one; but what audience could stand so prolonged a soliloquy, even if any character could be found in whom it would be natural? And sometimes, too, the situation is so subtly complex that Gwendolen is soliloquizing in such a manner that we, the audience, hear her while Grandcourt, who is standing by, does not.

"I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt began. He spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of a distinguished personage with a distinguished cold in his chest."Are you converted to-day?" said Gwendolen.(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of opinion about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.)"Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one generally sees people missing and simpering.""And do you care about the turf? or is that among the things you have left off?"(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely calm cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than other men, and not likely to interfere with his wife's preferences.)"You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw some of that for a season or two in the East. Everything here is poor stuff after that.""You are fond of danger then?"(Pause, during which Gwendolen speculated on the probability that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous, and felt the strength of her own insight, supposing the question had to be decided.)"One must have something or other. But one gets used to it.""I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is new to me; it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am not used to anything except being dull, which I should like to leave off as you have left off shooting."(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a dull companion; but on the whole, the thought that most persons were dull, and that she had not observed husbands to be companions.)"Why are you dull?""This is a dreadful neighborhood, there is nothing to be done in it. That is why I practised my archery."(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an unmarried woman who could not go about and had no command of anything, must necessarily be dull through all the degrees of comparison as time went on.)"You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the first prize.""I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how well Miss Arrowpoint shot?"(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to choose some one else than the woman they most admired, and recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.)

"I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt began. He spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of a distinguished personage with a distinguished cold in his chest.

"Are you converted to-day?" said Gwendolen.

(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of opinion about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.)

"Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one generally sees people missing and simpering."

"And do you care about the turf? or is that among the things you have left off?"

(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely calm cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than other men, and not likely to interfere with his wife's preferences.)

"You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw some of that for a season or two in the East. Everything here is poor stuff after that."

"You are fond of danger then?"

(Pause, during which Gwendolen speculated on the probability that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous, and felt the strength of her own insight, supposing the question had to be decided.)

"One must have something or other. But one gets used to it."

"I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is new to me; it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am not used to anything except being dull, which I should like to leave off as you have left off shooting."

(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a dull companion; but on the whole, the thought that most persons were dull, and that she had not observed husbands to be companions.)

"Why are you dull?"

"This is a dreadful neighborhood, there is nothing to be done in it. That is why I practised my archery."

(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an unmarried woman who could not go about and had no command of anything, must necessarily be dull through all the degrees of comparison as time went on.)

"You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the first prize."

"I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how well Miss Arrowpoint shot?"

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to choose some one else than the woman they most admired, and recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.)

At this point we come upon an element of difference between the novel and the drama which has not hitherto been fairly appreciated, so far as I know. Consider for a moment the wholly supernatural power which is necessarily involved in the project of thus showing the most secret workings of the mind and heart of this young girl Gwendolen Harleth! In real life what power less than God's can make me see the deepest thought and feeling of a fellow-creature? But since the novel is always a transcript of real, or at any rate of possible, life, you observe that wherever these workings of heart and brain are thus laid bare, the tacit supposition is, in plain terms, that God is the writer, or that the writer is a god. In the drama no supposition is necessary because here we become acquainted with only such matters as are shown us in the ordinary way, by scenery or by the speech or gesture of the actor. This consideration seems to me to lift the novel to the very highest and holiestplane of creative effort; he who takes up the pen of the novelist assumes, as to that novel, to take up along with it the omniscience of God. He proposes, in effect, to bring about the revelations of Judgment Day long before the trumpet has sounded. George Eliot shows us the play of Gwendolen Harleth's soul with the same uncompromising fulness with which the most literal believer expects to give account of the deeds done in the body at the last day.

In contemplating this vast ascent from the attitude of the dramatist to that of the novelist—the dramatist is a man; the novelist—as to that novel, is a god—we are contemplating simply another phase of the growth of man from Shakspeare to George Eliot.

And we reach still another view of that growth when we reflect that even if Shakspeare could have overcome the merely mechanical difficulty of presenting a repentance without overmuch soliloquy, he would probably have found but poorly-paying houses at the Globe Theatre to witness any drama so purely spiritual as that which George Eliot has shown us going on upon the little ill-lighted stage of a young girl's consciousness. Just as we found that the prodigious advance in the nearness of man to his fellow from the time of Æschylus to that of George Eliot was implied in the fact that the latter could gather an interested audience about a couple of commonplace children (as inThe Mill on the Floss), whilst the former required the larger stimulus of Titanic quarrel and angry Jove; so here we have reached an evidence of still more subtle advance as between the times of Shakspeare and of George Eliot when we find the latter gathering a great audience about this little inward, actionless, complex drama of Gwendolen Harleth, while we reflect that Shakspeare must have his stimulant passion,his crime, his patriotism, and the like, as the only attracting motives. In truth I find what seems to be a cunning indication that George Eliot herself did not feel quite sure of her audience for this same little play. At the end of Chapter XI., she breaks off from a description of one of Gwendolen's capricious turns, and as if in apologetic defense says:

"Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of themselves and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely; ... a time when the soul of man was waking to pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unheard.... What, in the midst of that mighty drama, are girls and their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring or fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections."

Thus it appears that for Shakspeare to draw such repentances as Gwendolen Harleth's was not only difficult from the playwright's point of view, but premature from the point of view of the world's growth. In truth, I suspect, if we had time to pursue this matter, that we should find it leading us into some very instructive views of certain rugged breaking-off places in Shakspeare. I suppose we must consider the limitations of his time; though it is just possible there may be limitations of his genius, also. We should presently find ourselves asking further how it is that Shakspeare not only never drew a great reformation, but never painted a great reformer? It seems a natural question: How is it, that it is Milton, and not Shakspeare, who has treated the subject of Paradise Lost and Regained; how is it, thatthe first-class subject was left for the second-class genius? We all know how Milton has failed in what he intended with his poem, and how astonished he would be at finding that the only one of his characters which has taken any real hold upon the world is his Satan. It seems irresistible to ask ourselves why might not our most eloquent tongue have treated our most lofty theme? Or, if we should find special reasons in the temper of his time why Shakspeare could not or should not have treated this theme, we may still ask, why did he never paint for us one of those men who seem too large to be bounded in their affections merely by limits of country, but who loved and worked for the whole world, Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Socrates, Luther; nay, why may not the master have given us a master's picture of Christopher Columbus, or even of John Vanini, the scientific martyr; even of the fantastic Giordano Bruno, who against all warnings boldly wandered from town to town defending his doctrines until he was burned, in 1600? And if any of the academicians now in my audience should incline to pursue this strange psychologic literary problem, I make no doubt that useful light would be cast upon the search if you should consider along with these questions the further inquiries why Shakspeare never mentions either of the two topics which must have been foremost in the talk of his time: namely, America and tobacco. Among all the allusions to contemporary matter in his plays the nearest he ever comes to America is the single instance inThe Tempest, where Ariel is mentioned as "fetching dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes" (Bermudas). As for tobacco; although pretty much all London must have been smoking vigorously about the time Shakspeare was writingMuch Ado About NothingandThe Merry Wives of Windsor; althoughcertainly to a countryman not a great while out of the woods of Warwickshire it must have been the oddest of sights to see people sucking at hollow tubes and puffing smoke from their mouths and nostrils; although, too, the comedies of his contemporaries are often cloudy with tobacco smoke: nevertheless there is not, so far as my recollection goes, the faintest allusion to the drinking of tobacco (as it was then called), in the whole body of his writings. Now all these omissions are significant because conspicuous; always, in studying genius, we learn as much from what it has not done, as from what it has done; and if research should succeed in arranging these neglects from any common point of view, it is possible that something new might still be said about Shakspeare.

But, to return toDaniel Deronda. A day or two after George Eliot's death theSaturday Reviewcontained an elaborate editorial summary of her work. For some special ends, permit me to read so much of it as relates to the book now under consideration. "Daniel Derondais devoted to the whimsical object of glorifying real or imaginary Jewish aspirations. It cannot be doubted that so fantastic a form of enthusiasm was suggested by some personal predilection or association. A devotion to the Jewish cause unaccompanied by any kind of interest in the Jewish religion is not likely to command general sympathy; but even if the purpose of the story had been as useful as it is chimerical and absurd, the inherent fault of didactic fiction would scarcely have been diminished.... It is significant that when George Eliot deliberately preferred the function of teaching to her proper office of amusing she sacrificed her power of instruction as well as her creative faculty."

Of course, in general, no man in his senses thinks of taking in serious earnest every proposition in theSaturdayReview. It is an odd character which long ago assumed the role of teasing English society by gravely advancing any monstrous assertions at random and laughing in its sleeve at the elaborate replies with which these assertions would be honored by weak and unsuspecting people. But its position upon this particular point ofDaniel Derondahappens to be supported by similar views among her professed admirers.

EvenThe Spectatorin its obituary notice completely mistakes the main purpose ofDaniel Deronda; in declaring that "she takes religious patriotism for the subject," though as I have just indicated, surely the final aim of the book is to furnish to two young modern people a motive sufficient to make life not only worth living but fascinating; and of the two distinct plots in the book one—and the one to which most attention is paid—hinges upon Gwendolen Harleth's repentance, while it is only the other and slighter which is concerned with what these papers call religious patriotism, and here the phrase "religious patriotism" if we examine it is not only meaningless—what is religious patriotism?—but has the effect of dwarfing the two grand motives which are given toDaniel Deronda; namely religion and patriotism.

Upon bringing together, however, all the objections which have been urged againstDaniel Deronda, I think they may be classified and discussed under two main heads. First it is urged that Daniel Deronda and Mirah—and even Gwendolen Harleth, after her change of spirit—are all prigs; secondly, it is urged that the moral purpose of the book has overweighted the art of it, that what should have been pure nature and beauty have been obscured by didacticism, thus raising the whole question of Art for Art's sake which has so mournfully divided the modern artistic world. This last objection, opening,as it does, the whole question of how far fervent moral purpose injures the work of the true artist, is a matter of such living importance in the present state of our art,—particularly of our literary art; it so completely sums up all these contributory items of thought which have been gradually emerging in these lectures regarding the growth of human personality together with the correlative development of the novel: and the discussions concerning it are conducted upon such small planes and from such low and confusing points of view that I will ask to devote my next lecture to a faithful endeavor to get all the light possible upon the vexed matter of Art for Art's sake, and to showing how triumphantly George Eliot'sDaniel Derondaseems to settle that entire debate with the most practical of answers.

Meantime in discussing the other class of objections which we managed to generalize, to wit that the three main characters inDaniel Derondaare prigs, a serious difficulty lies in the impossibility of learning from these objectors exactly whatisa prig. And I confess I should be warned off from any attempt at discussion by this initial difficulty if I did not find great light thrown on the subject by discovering that the two objections of prig-ism and that of didacticism already formulated are really founded upon the same cunning weakness in our current culture. The truth is George Eliot's bookDaniel Deronda, is so sharp a sermon that it has made the whole English contemporary society uncomfortable. It is curious and instructive to see how unable all the objectors have been to put their fingers upon the exact source of this discomfort; so that in their bewilderment one lays it to prig-ism, another to didacticism, and so on. That a state of society should exist in which such a piece of corruption as Grandcourt should be not only theleader but the crazing fascination and ideal of the most delicate and fastidious young women in that society; that a state of society should exist in which those pure young girls whom George Eliot describes as "the delicate vessels in which man's affections are hoarded through the ages," should be found manœuvring for this Grandcourt infamy, plotting to be Grandcourt's wife instead of flying from him in horror; that a state of society should exist in which such a thing was possible as a marriage between a Gwendolen Harleth and a Grandcourt; this was enough to irritate even the thickest-skinned Philistine, and this George Eliot's book showed with a terrible conclusiveness. Yet the showing was made so daintily and with so light a hand that, as I have said, current society did not know, and has not yet recognized where or how the wound was. We have all read of the miraculous sword in the German fable whose blade was so keen that when, upon a certain occasion, its owner smote a warrior with it from crown to saddle, the warrior nevertheless rode home and was scarcely aware he had been wounded until, upon his wife opening the door, he attempted to embrace her and fell into two pieces. Now, as I said, just asDaniel Derondamade people feel uncomfortable by even vaguely revealing a sharp truth—so, a prig, so far as I can make out, is a person whose goodness is so genuine, essential and ever-present that all ungenuine people have a certain sense of discomfort when brought in contact with it. If the prig-hater be questioned he will not deny the real goodness of theDaniel Derondapeople; he dare not—no one in this age dare—to wish explicitly that Mirah and Daniel Deronda might be less good; but as nearly as anything definite can be obtained what he desires is that the prig should be good in some oily and lubricative way so asnot to jar the nerves of those who are less good. Conform, conform! seems to be the essential cry of the prig-haters; if you go to an evening party you wear your dress coat and look like every other man; but if your goodness amounts to a hump, a deformity, we do not ask you to cut it off, but at least pad it; if every one grows as big as you we shall have to enlarge all our drawing-rooms and society will be disorganized. In short, the cry against the prig turns out to be nothing more than the old claim for conformity and the conventional. For one, I never hear these admonitions to conformity without recalling a comical passage of Tom Hood's in which the fellows of a Zoological society propose to remedy the natural defects of animal morphology, such as the humps of dromedaries and the overgrowth of hair upon lions so as to bring all the grotesqueness of the animal creation into more conformity with conventional ideas of proportion. The passage occurs in a pretended report from the keeper of the animals to the President of the society. After describing the condition of the various beasts the keeper proceeds:

Honnerd Sur,—Their is an aggitating skeem of witch I humbly approve very hiley. The plan is owen to sum of the Femail Fellers,— ... For instances the Buffloo and Fallo dears and cetra to have their horns Gilded and Sheaps is to hav Pink ribbings round there nex. The Ostreaches is to have their plums stuck in their heds, and the Pecox tales will be always spred out on fraime wurks like the hispaliers. All the Bares is to be tort to Dance to Wippert's Quadrils and the Lions manes is to be subjective to pappers and the curling tongues. The gould and silver Fesants is to be Polisht every day with Plait Powder and the Cammils and Drumdearis and other defourmed anymills is to be paddid to hide their Crukidnes. Mr. Howard is to file down the tusks of the wild Bores, and the Spoons of the Spoonbills is to maid as like the King's Patten as possible. The elifunt will be himbelisht with a Sugger candid Castlemaid by Gunter and the Flaminggoes will be touched up with Frentch ruge. The Sloath is proposed to have an illegant Stait Bed—and the Bever is to ware one of Perren's lite Warter Proof Hats—and the Balld Vulters baldness will be hided by a small Whig from Trewfits. The Crains will be put into trousirs and the Hippotamus tite laced for a waste. Experience will dictait menny more imbellishing modes, with witch I conclud that I amYour Honners,Very obleeged and humbel former servant,Stephen Humphreys.

Your Honners,

Very obleeged and humbel former servant,

Stephen Humphreys.

Such is the ideal to which the prig is asked to conform, but after the first six lectures of this course we are specially in position to see in all this cry nothing but the old clamor against personality. Upon us who have traced the growth of personality from Æschylus to George Eliot and who have found that growth to be the one direction for the advance of our species this cry comes with little impressiveness.

In the last lecture we obtained a view of George Eliot'sDaniel Derondaas containing two distinct stories, one of which might have been calledThe Repentance of Gwendolen Harleth, and the other,The Mission of Daniel Deronda; and we generalized the principal objections against the work into two: namely, that the main characters were prigs, and that the artistic value of the book was spoiled by its moral purpose. In discussing the first of these objections we found that probably both of them might be referred to a common origin; for examination of precisely what is meant by a prig revealed that he is a person whose goodness is so downright, so unconforming and so reduced that it makes the mass of us uncomfortable. Now there can be no question that so far as the charge of being overloaded with moral purposes is brought againstDaniel Deronda, as distinguished from George Eliot's other works, it is so palpably contrary to all facts in the case that we may clearly refer it to some fact outside the case: and I readily find this outside fact in that peculiar home-thrust of the moral ofDaniel Derondawhich has rendered it more tangible than that of any preceding work which concerned time past. You will remember we found that it was only inDaniel Deronda, written in 1876, after thirty years of study and of production, that George Eliot allowed herself to treat current English society; you will remember too, how we found that this first treatment revealed among other things a picture of an unspeakable brute, Grandcourt, throned like an Indian lama above the multitude, and receiving witha blasé stare, the special adoration of the most refined young English girls; a picture which made the worship of the golden calf or the savage dance around a merely impotent wooden idol, fade into tame blasphemy. No man could deny the truth of the picture; the galled jade was obliged to wince; this time it wasmywithers that were wrung. Thus the moral purpose ofDaniel Derondawhich is certainly beyond all comparison less obtrusive than that of any other book written by George Eliot, grew by its very nearness, out of all perspective. Though a mere gnat, it sat on the very eyelash of society and seemed a monster.

In speaking of George Eliot's earlier stories I was at pains to show how explicitly she avowed their moral purpose; inAmos Barton, inJanet's Repentance, inAdam Bede, everywhere there is the fullest avowal of didacticism; on almost every other page one meets those direct appeals from the author in her own person to the reader, in which George Eliot indulged more freely than any novelist I know, enforcing this or that moral view in plain terms of preaching. But it curiously happens that even these moral 'asides' are conspicuously absent inDaniel Deronda: the most cursory comparison of it in this particular withAdam Bede, for example, reveals an enormous disproportion in favor ofDerondaas to the weight of this criticism. Yet people who had enthusiastically accepted and extolledAdam Bede, with all its explicitly moralizing passages and its professedly preaching characters, suddenly found thatDaniel Derondawas intolerably priggish and didactic. But resting then on the facts in the case—easily possible by comparingDaniel Derondawith any previous work—as to show how this censure of didacticism loses all momentum as against this particular book; let us advance to the more interesting,because more general, fact that many people—some in great sincerity—have preferred this censure against all of George Eliot's work and against all didactic novels in general. The objection involved many shades of opinion, and is urged with the most diverse motives and manner. At one extreme we have theSaturday Reviewgrowling that the office of the novelist is to amuse, never to instruct, that George Eliot, in seeking the latter has even forfeited the former, and thatDaniel Derondaneither amuses nor instructs; whereupon George Eliot is derisively bid, in substance, to put on the cap and bells again, and leave teaching to her betters; with a voice, by the way, wondrously like that with which theEdinburgh Reviewsome years ago cried out to our adorable John Keats, "Back to your gallipots, young man." From this extreme we have all shades of opinion to that vague and moderate apprehension much current among young persons influenced by a certain smart sound in the modern French phrasel'Art pour l'Art, or by the German nickname of "tendency-books," that a moral intention on the part of an artist is apt to interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration must always be artistic beauty; and that artistic beauty is not only distinct from, but often opposed to moral beauty. Now, to discuss this questiona priori: to go forward and establish an æsthetic basis for beauty, involving an examination which must range from Aristotle to Kant and Burke and Mr. Grant Allen's physiological theories, would require another course of lectures quite as long as that which is now ending; so that all I can hope to do is but to throw, if I can, some light upon this question. And, so to proceed immediately to that work with some system: permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement hasbeen from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor—unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose—may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty—that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him;—he is not yet the great artist. Here it is most instructive to note how fine and beautiful souls of time appear after awhile to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom, Goodness, and the like. Hear some testimony upon this point: this is a case for witnesses. Let us call first Keats. Keats does not hesitate to draw a moral even from his Grecian Urn, and even in the very climacteric of his most "high sorrowful" song; and that moral effaces the distinction between truth and beauty. "Cold pastoral" he cries, at the end of the Ode on a Grecian Urn.

"When old age shall this generation waste,Thou shalt remain in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man to whom thou say'stBeauty is truth, truth, beauty,—that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Again, bearing in mind this identity of truth and beauty in Keats' view, observe how Emerson, by strange turns of thought, subtly refers both truth and beauty to a common principle of the essential relation of each thing to all things in the universe. Here are the beginning and end of Emerson's poem calledEach and All:

"Little thinks in the field yon red-cloaked clownOf thee from the hill-top looking down;The sexton tolling his bell at noonDeems not that great NapoleonStops his horse and lists with delightWhile his files sweep 'round Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone."

Nothing is fair or good alone: that is to say fairness or beauty, and goodness depend upon relations between creatures; and so, in the end of the poem, after telling us how he learned this lesson by finding that the bird-song was not beautiful when away from its proper relation to the sky and the river and so on, we have this:—

"Then I said 'I covet truth;Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;I leave it behind with the games of youth,'As I spoke, beneath my feetThe ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,Running over the club-moss burs;I inhaled the violet's breath;Around me stood the oaks and firs;Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;Over me soared the eternal sky,Full of light and of deity;Again I saw, again I heardThe rolling river, the morning bird;Beauty through my senses stole,I yielded myself to the perfect whole."

But again, here Mrs. Browning, speaking by the mouth of Adam inThe Drama of Exile, so far identifiesbeautyandloveas to make the former depend on the latter; insomuch that Satan, created the most beautiful of all angels, becomes the most repulsive of all angels from lack oflove, though retaining all his original outfit of beauty. InThe Drama of Exile, after Adam and Eve have become wise with the great lessons of grief, love and forgiveness, to them comes Satan, with such talk as if he would mock them back into their misery; but it is fine to see how the father of men now instructs the prince of the angels upon this matter of love and beauty.

Eve.—Speak no more with him,Beloved! it is not good to speak with him.Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more!We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn,Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting,Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft,We would be alone. Go.Luc.—Ah! ye talk the same,All of you—spirits and clay—go, and depart!In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,—And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair!None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?Eve.—Thou hast a glorious darkness.Luc.—Nothing more?Eve.—I think, no more.Luc.—False Heart—thou thinkest more!Thou canst not choose but think it, that I standMost absolute in beauty. As yourselvesWere fashioned very good at best, so weSprang very beauteous from the creant WordWhich thrilled behind us, God Himself being movedWhen that august mark of a perfect shape,—His dignities of sovran angel-hood,—Swept out into the universe,—divineWith thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,And silver-solemn clash of cymbal-wings!Whereof was I, in motion, and in form,A part not poorest. And yet,—yet, perhaps,This beauty which I speak of is not here,As God's voice is not here, nor even my crownI do not know. What is this thought or thingWhich I call beauty? is it thought or thing?Is it a thought accepted for a thing?Or both? or neither?—a pretext—a word?Its meaning flutters in me like a flameUnder my own breath: my perceptions reelFor evermore around it, and fall off,As if, it, too, were holy.Eve.—Which it is.Adam.—The essence of all beauty, I call love.The attribute, the evidence, the end,The consummation to the inward sense,Of beauty apprehended from without,I still call love. As form, when colorless,Is nothing to the eye,—that pine-tree there,Without its black and green, being all a blank,—So, without love, is beauty undiscerned,In man or angel. Angel! rather askWhat love is in thee, what love moves to thee,And what collateral love moves on with thee;Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.Luc.—Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and loveI darken to the image. Beauty—love!

Luc.—Ah! ye talk the same,All of you—spirits and clay—go, and depart!In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,—And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair!None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?

Eve.—Thou hast a glorious darkness.

Luc.—Nothing more?

Eve.—I think, no more.

Luc.—False Heart—thou thinkest more!Thou canst not choose but think it, that I standMost absolute in beauty. As yourselvesWere fashioned very good at best, so weSprang very beauteous from the creant WordWhich thrilled behind us, God Himself being movedWhen that august mark of a perfect shape,—His dignities of sovran angel-hood,—Swept out into the universe,—divineWith thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,And silver-solemn clash of cymbal-wings!Whereof was I, in motion, and in form,A part not poorest. And yet,—yet, perhaps,This beauty which I speak of is not here,As God's voice is not here, nor even my crownI do not know. What is this thought or thingWhich I call beauty? is it thought or thing?Is it a thought accepted for a thing?Or both? or neither?—a pretext—a word?Its meaning flutters in me like a flameUnder my own breath: my perceptions reelFor evermore around it, and fall off,As if, it, too, were holy.

Eve.—Which it is.

Adam.—The essence of all beauty, I call love.The attribute, the evidence, the end,The consummation to the inward sense,Of beauty apprehended from without,I still call love. As form, when colorless,Is nothing to the eye,—that pine-tree there,Without its black and green, being all a blank,—So, without love, is beauty undiscerned,In man or angel. Angel! rather askWhat love is in thee, what love moves to thee,And what collateral love moves on with thee;Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

Luc.—Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and loveI darken to the image. Beauty—love!

Let us now carry forward this connection between love and beauty in listening to a further testimony of Emerson's in a poem calledThe Celestial Love, where, instead of identifyingbeautyandtruthwith Keats, we find him makingloveandtruthto be one.

"Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,Bound for the just but not beyond;Not glad, as the low-loving herd,Of self in other still preferredBut they have heartily designedThe benefit of broad mankindAnd they serve men austerely,After their own genius, clearly.Without a false humility;For this is love's nobility,—Not to scatter bread and gold,Goods and raiment bought and sold;But to hold fast his simple sense,And speak the speech of innocence,And with hand, and body, and blood,To make his bosom-counsel good.For he that feeds men serveth few;He serves all that dares be true."

And in connection with these lines:—

"Not glad, as the low-loving herd,Of self in other still preferred,"

I must here beg you to observe the quite incalculable advance in the ideal of love here presented by Emerson, and the ideal which was thought to be the crown and boast of the classic novel a hundred years ago, and which is still pointed to with exultation by thoughtless people. This ideal, by universal voice was held to have been consummated by Fielding in his character of SquireAllworthy, in the famous novel,Tom Jones. And here it is: we have a dramatic presentation of Squire Allworthy early on a May morning, pacing the terrace before his mansion which commanded a noble stretch of country, and then Fielding glows thus: "In the full blaze of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented—a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures." Here Mr. Allworthy's benevolence has for its object to render himself most acceptable to his Creator; his love, in other words, is only another term for increasing his account in the Bank of Heaven; a perfect example, in short, of that love of the low-loving herd which is self in other still preferred.

But now let me once more turn the tube and gain another radiant arrangement of these kaleidoscopic elements, beauty and love and the like. In Emerson's poem called "Beauty," which must be distinguished from the "Ode to Beauty," the relation between love and beauty takes this turn: "Seyd," he says, "chased beauty

"Everywhere,In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.He smote the lake to feed his eyeWith the beryl beam of the broken wave;He flung in pebbles well to hearThe moment's music which they gave.Oft pealed for him a lofty toneFrom nodding pole and belting zone.He heard a voice none else could hearFrom centred and from errant sphere.The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime,In dens of passion, pits of woe,He saw strong Eros struggling through,To sum the doubt and solve the curseAnd beam to the bounds of the universe.While thus to love he gave his daysIn loyal worship, scorning praise,"

He heard a voice none else could hearFrom centred and from errant sphere.The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime,In dens of passion, pits of woe,He saw strong Eros struggling through,To sum the doubt and solve the curseAnd beam to the bounds of the universe.While thus to love he gave his daysIn loyal worship, scorning praise,"

(where, you observe, love is substituted for beauty, as that to which he gave his days, in the most naiveassumptionthat the one involved the other.)

"While thus to love he gave his daysIn loyal worship, scorning praise,How spread their lures for him in vainThieving ambition and paltering gain!He thought it happier to be dead,To die for Beauty,—than live for bread."

George Eliot has somewhere called this word love a word-of-all-work. If with another turn I add to these testimonies one from Swedenborg, in which this same love—which we have just seen to be beauty—which beauty we just before saw to be truth—is now identified withwisdom: we prove the justice of George Eliot's phrase. In Section X of his work on the Divine Providence Swedenborg says: "The good of love is not good any further than it is united to the truth of wisdom; and the truth of wisdom is not truth any further than it is united to the good of love;" and he continues in section XIII: "Now because truth is from good, as wisdom is from love, therefore both taken together are called love or good; for love in its form is wisdom, and good in its form is truth."

And finally does not David practically confirm this view where, in Psalm CXIX. he involves the love of thelaw of God with wisdom in the verse: "I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts?"

But I grieve that there is no time to call more witnesses; for I love to assemble these lofty spirits and hear them speak upon one topic. Is it not clear that in the minds of these serious thinkers truth, beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, appear as if they were but orators of one and the same essential God?

And if this be true cannot one say with authority to the young artist,—whether working in stone, in color, in tones or in character-forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused—soul and body, one might say—with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love—that is, the love of all things in their proper relation—unless you are suffused with this love do not dare to meddle with beauty, unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with love, unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness,—in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodnessandlove, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist.

Of course I leave out of view here all that field of artistic activity which is merely neutral, which is—not immoral but—merelyunmoral. The situations in Scott's novels for instance do not in general put us upon any moral question as between man and man. Or when our own Mr. Way paints his luminous bunches of grapes, one of which will feed the palates of a thousand souls though it is never eaten, and thus shows us how Art repeats the miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding the multitude and leaving more of the original provision than was at first; we have most delightful unmoral art. Thisis not only legitimate, but I think among the most beneficent energies of art; it rests our hearts, it gives us holiday from the Eternal Debate, it re-creates us for all work.

But now secondly, as to the influence of moral purpose in art: we have been in the habit, as you will remember, of passing at the earliest possible moment from abstract discussion to the concrete instance; and if we now follow that course and inquire,—not whether moral purposemayinterfere with artistic creation,—but whether moral purposehasinterfered with artistic creation, as matter of fact, in the works of those whom the ages have set in the highest heaven of art, we get a verdict which seems to leave little room for question. At the beginning we are met with the fact that the greatest work has always gone hand in hand with the most fervent moral purpose. For example, the most poetical poetry of which we know anything is that of the author of Job, and of David and his fellow psalm-writers. I have used the expression "most poetical" here with design; for regarded as pure literature these poems in this particular of poeticalness, of pure spirituality, lift themselves into a plane not reached by any others. A single fact in proof of this exceeding poeticalness will suffice: it is the fact that these poems alone, of all ever written, bear translation from one language into another without hurt. Surely this can be said of no other poetic work. If we strike away all allowances of amateurishness and good fellowship and judge with the uncompromising truth of the pious artist; how pitiful is Homer as he appears in even Pope's English; or how subtly does the simplicity of Dante sink into childishness even with Mr. Longfellow interpreting; or how tedious and flat fall the cultured sentences of Goethe even in Taylor's version, which has bymany been declared the most successful translation ever made, not only ofFaustbut of any foreign poem; nay, how completely the charm of Chaucer exhales away even when redacted merely from an older dialect into a later one, by hands so skillful as those of Dryden and Wordsworth.

Now, it is words and their associations which are untranslatable, not ideas; there is noidea, whether originating in a Hebrew, Greek or other mind, which cannot be adequately produced as idea in English words; the reason why Shakspeare and Dante are practically untranslatable is that recognizing how every word means more than itself to its native users,—how every word is like the bright head of a comet drawing behind it a less luminous train of vague associations which are associations only to those who have used such words from infancy,—Shakspeare and Dante, I say, have used this fact, and have constructed poems which necessarily mean more to native hearers than they can possibly mean to any foreign ear.

But this Hebrew poetry which I have mentioned is so purely composed of ideas which are universal, essential, fundamental to the personality of man, instantly recognizable by every soul of every race,—that they remain absolutely great, absolutely artistic, in whatever language they are couched.

For example: if one climbs up for a moment out of that vagueness with which Biblical expressions, for various reasons, are apt to fall upon many ears, so that one may consider the clean and virgin quality of ideas clarified from all factitious charm of word and of association,—what could be more nearly perfect as pure literature than this:

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