{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_12896/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_12896","id":"gutenberg_12896","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12896","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Category: Art","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders\n\n\n\n\nESSAYS AESTHETICAL\n\nby\n\nGEORGE H. CALVERT\n\n\n1875\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS.\n\n     I. THE BEAUTIFUL\n\n    II. WHAT IS POETRY?\n\n   III. STYLE\n\n    IV. DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS\n\n     V. SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC\n\n    VI. THOMAS CARLYLE\n\n   VII. ERRATA\n\n  VIII. NATIONAL DRAMA\n\n    IX. USEFULNESS OF ART\n\n\n\n\nESSAYS AESTHETICAL.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nTHE BEAUTIFUL.\n\n\nThe Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it grows\nnot old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life\nruns parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a subject for\nexposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence\nof its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit\nmakes in the use of them.\n\nBeauty--what is it? To answer this question were to solve more than\none problem. Shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and\nnever fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. What though we\nreach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to\nhearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the\napproximation.\n\nTo him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with\nbeauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles,\nwherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty.\nIt expects us at the dawn; it is about us, \"an hourly neighbor,\"\nthrough the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled\nimmensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing\nthrough storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it\nis ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our\nthoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key\nis in the human heart.\n\nBut many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose\nthe precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoples are at this\nmoment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. As with them now, so\nin the remote primitive times of our own race, before history was,\nnature was almost speechless to man. The earth was a waste, or but a\nwide hunting ground or pasturage; and human life a round of petty\nanimal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses;\nuntil there gradually grew up the big-eyed Greek and the deep-souled\nHebrew. Then, through creative thought,--that is, thought quickened\nand exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,--one little corner\nof Europe became radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens\nof Parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their\neyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as\nmirrors, and gave back the light of nature:\n\n                              \"Auxiliar light\n  Came from their minds, which on the setting sun\n  Bestowed new splendor.\"[1]\n\n    [1] Wordsworth.\n\nAnd man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made gods after\nhis own image,--forms of such life and power and harmony that the\nfragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded as faultless\nmodels of manhood. And the vales and groves and streams were peopled\nwith beauteous shapes. And the high places were crowned with temples\nwhich, in their majestic purity, look as though they had been posited\nthere from above by heavenly hands. And by the teemful might of\nsculptors and painters and poets the dim past was made resurgent and\npresent in glorious transfiguration. And the moral law was grasped at\nby far-reaching philosophies. In this affluence of genial activity so\nmuch truth was embodied in so much beauty, that by the products of the\nGreek mind even the newer, the deeper, the wiser Christian spirit is\nstill instructed, still exalted.\n\nIn Asia, too, a chosen people early made a revelation of the\nbeautiful. The Hebrews were introspective. At once ardent and\nthoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were\ncharged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. Out of the secret\nchambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent forth cries\nof despair and of exultation, of expostulation and self-reproach, that\never find an echo in the conscience-smitten, sorrow-laden bosom of\nman. The power and wisdom of God they saw as no other ancient people\nhad seen them. In the grandeurs and wonders of creation they could\nbehold the being and the might and the goodness of the Creator. The\nstrong, rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life, in the\ndeep, true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to\nman only through reconcilement with God. And feeling their own\nunworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they\nuttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and\ndisappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that\nmake their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic\nwail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense,\ntheir utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful\nplays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests\ndo the billows of a black, tempestuous sea.\n\nSave these two, no other nations of antiquity, except the Hindoos,\nseem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to the\nbeautiful. The Romans learnt the arts from the Greeks, whom they\nimitated, at a wide distance, in poetry as well as in sculpture and\narchitecture. The remnants of art found in the valley of the Nile\nprove the Egyptians to have had the germ without the vitality to\nunfold it. In the literature of the Hindoos there are currents of pure\npoetry and of biblical depth. In passing down from ancient to modern\ntimes the Persians and the Arabians light the long way with\nscintillations from the beautiful.\n\nThe ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe was\nfirst broken by the light that shone from the spires of Gothic\ncathedrals in the eleventh century. About the twelfth century the\nGerman mind was further illuminated by that mysterious, visionary,\ntitanic, Teutonic epic, the Niebelungen Lied; and a little later\nappeared the troubadours in the south of Europe and the minnesingers\n(love-singers) in Germany. Next came Dante and Giotto in Italy, then\nChaucer in England; so that by the end of the fourteenth century,\npoetry and the arts, the offspring of the beautiful,--and who can have\nno other parentage,--had established themselves in the modern European\nmind, and have since, with varying vigor of life, upheld themselves\namong Christian nations. To these they are now confined. In the most\nadvanced of Mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is\nhardly awakened, and among savages it seems scarcely to exist, so\ndeeply is it dormant.\n\nThus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been recognized\nwill further us in the endeavor to learn wherein consists that which,\nenriching the world of man so widely and plenteously, is deeply\nenjoyed by so few.\n\nWere the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and nimbleness,\ncognizable by intellectual perception, even the Hottentot would get to\nknow something of it in the forest, along with the grosser qualities\nof trees and valleys. Were it liable to be seized by the discursive\nand ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or\ngeneral would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the\nRoman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have\nbeen so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is\n_felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its\npresence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous\nsentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding.\nWhen we exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and\ndelightful, expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious\ncleansing thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes,\never springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all\nthings have their being.\n\nThe beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot\ndemonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it.\nFurther to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward\neye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus\nis but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown\nthrough it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this\ndoes not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor,\ncarrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of\nthe brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not\nuntil then is its individuality and are its various physical\nqualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. And now the intellect\nitself becomes a conductor, transmitting still deeper inward to the\nseat of emotion the image of the object; and not until it reaches that\ndepth is its beauty recognized.\n\nIn all her structures and arrangements Nature is definite, precise,\nand economical. In subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute,\nproviding for every duty its special exclusive agent. In the mind\nthere is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body, and the\nintellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental\nsensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the office of the\nheart, or the liver that of the lungs. True, no ripe results in the\nhigher provinces of human life can be without intimate alliance\nbetween the mental sensibilities and the intellect; nevertheless they\nare in essence as distinct from one another as are the solar heat and\nthe moisture of the earth, without whose constant cooeperation no grain\nor fruit or flower can sprout or ripen.\n\nWe live not merely in a world of material facts, and of objects and\nthings cognizable through the senses, but also in a spiritual world.\nWe live not only in presence of visible creation, but in presence of\nthe invisible Creator. With the creation we are in contact through the\nintellect. Knowledge of all objects and the qualities of objects that\nare within reach of the senses; distance and other material relations;\nthe bonds of cause and effect and of analogy, that bind all created\nthings in countless multiplicity of subtle relations,--these the\nintellect gathers in its grasp. But with the Creator we are in\ncommunication only through feeling. The presence, the existence of God\ncannot by pure intellect be demonstrated: it must be felt in order to\nbe proved. The mass of objects and relations presented to us in nature\nthe intellect can learn, count, and arrange; but the life that\nincessantly permeates the whole and every part, the spirit that looks\nout from every object and every fact,--of the range and pitch of whose\npower we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake,--of\nthis divine essence we should not have even an intimation through the\nintellect alone. Not chemists, astronomers, mechanicians have uttered\nthe deepest thoughts about God, but prophets and poets: not Davys, but\nColeridges; not Herschels, but Wordsworths. It is a common belief,\nindeed, that men addicted to the exact sciences are rather wanting\nthan otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible, a belief\npungently embodied by Wordsworth in the lines,--\n\n  \"Physician art thou? one all eyes,\n  Philosopher! a fingering slave,\n  One that would peep and botanize\n  Upon his mother's grave?\"\n\n\nThis is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one,\n\"An undevout astronomer is mad.\" A man's being endowed with rare\nmathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout.\nHis gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and\nnature being seldom profuse upon one individual,--as she was upon\nPascal and Newton,--the presumption as to an astronomer, of whom we\nknow nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive\nappreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as\nhis intellectual. And no amount or quality of intellectual insight can\nsupply or compensate a want of sensibility. No matter how many\nhundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has still\nto do with the visible and calculable. But religion is the putting of\nthe human mind in relation with the invisible, the incalculable. A man\ngets no nearer to God through a telescope than through a microscope,\nand no nearer through either than through the naked eye. Who cannot\nrecognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of\nhis own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any\nmagnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses.\n\nThat we ever live not only in a material, but also in a spiritual\nworld, can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves\nin the web-work of metaphysics. The least of our acts or motions, is\nit not always preceded by a thought, a volition, a something\nintangible, invisible? All that we voluntarily do is, must be, an\noffspring of mind. The waving of the hand is never a simple, it is a\ncompound process: mind and body, spirit and matter, concur in it. The\nvisible, corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an\ninward, incorporeal movement. And so in all our acts and motions, from\nbirth till death; they issue out of the invisible within us; they are\nfeelings actualized, thoughts embodied. The embodiment is perishable,\nthe source of it imperishable. It is not a recondite, super-subtle,\nmetaphysical or psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be\nand ought to be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the\neternal and invisible within us.\n\nNow, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind, as\nbeing the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand towards\nDeity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and\nwill. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves\nare manifestations of God. Through all things shines the eternal soul.\nThe more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and\nwhen this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the\nfullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the\nmost intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine\nspirit.\n\nBehind and within every form of being is immanent the creative power;\nand thence, in proportion as this power discloses itself, is object,\nact, or emotion beautiful. Thus is beauty always spiritual, a\nrevelation more or less clear of the creative spirit. Hence our\nemotion in presence of the truly beautiful, which calms and exalts us.\nHence evil never is, cannot be, beautiful: the bad is, must be, ugly.\nEvil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative spirit, whose\nfullness gives, is, beauty. Evil is imperfection, unripeness,\nshapelessness, weakness in, or opposition to, the creative spirit.\nEvil is life that is unhealthy, short-coming. Wherever there is full,\nunperverted life, there is, there must be, beauty. The beautiful\nblossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power. The sap of sound life ever\nmolds itself into forms of beauty.\n\nBut however rich the exhibition of the divine soul, however glowing\nwith perfection the form, however noble the act and pure the feeling,\nthe richness, the perfection, the nobleness, the purity will be lost\non us, unless within us there be sympathy with the spirit whence they\nflow. Only by spirit can spirit be greeted.\n\nThus beauty only becomes visible--I might say only becomes actual--by\nthe fire kindled through the meeting of a perfection out of us and an\ninward appetite therefor. And it is the flaming of this fire, thus\nkindled, that lights up to us the whole world wherein we live, the\ninward and the outward. This fire unlighted, and on the face of nature\nthere is darkness, in our own minds there is darkness. For though all\nnature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the\nunkindled mind beauty is no more present then was Banquo's ghost to\nthe guests of Macbeth. Macbeth's individual conscience made him see\nthe ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty\ncreated there where, without what I may call the aesthetic conscience,\nit no more exists than do the glories of Titian and Claude to the\naffectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery. To\nthe quadruped, by the organic limitation of his nature, dead forever\nis this painted life. By the organic boundlessness of _his_ nature,\nman can grasp the life of creation in its highest, its finest, its\ngrandest manifestations; and from these beauty is indivisible.\nWherever the divine energy is most subtle and expressive, there glows\never, in its celestial freshness, the beautiful.\n\nBeauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the visible.\nIt may be termed the joyfullest look of God. Blessed is he who can\nwatch and reflect this radiant look. The faculties of such a one\nbecome fortified by creative influx. Through the exquisite shock of\nthe beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism. Thus through\nthe beautiful we commune the most directly with the divine; and, other\nthings being equal, to the degree that men respond to, are thrilled\nby, this vivacity of divine presence, as announced by the beautiful,\nto that degree are they elevated in the scale of being.\n\nNature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function, the law\nof severalty and independence--than which there is no law more\nimportant and instructive--pervades creation. Thence the intellectual,\nthe religious, the true, the good, cannot interchange functions. A man\nmay be sincerely religious and do little for others, as is seen in\nanchorites, and in many one-sided people, of Christian as well as of\nMahometan parentage, who are not anchorites. A man may be immensely\nintellectual and not value truth. But neither a man's intellect, nor\nhis preference for truth, nor his benevolent nor his religious\nsentiment, can yield its best fruit without the sunshine of the\nbeautiful. Sensibility to the beautiful--itself, like the others, an\nindependent inward power--stands to each one of them in a relation\ndifferent from that which they hold one to the other. The above and\nother faculties _indirectly_ aid one the other, and to the complete\nman their united action is needed; but feeling for the beautiful\n_directly_ aids each one, aids by stimulating it, by expanding, by\npurifying.\n\nTo the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness and\ngrace. It indues each with privilege of insight into the _soul_ of the\nobject which it is its special office to master. By help of\nsensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of the essence of\nthings, we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward\nform. Hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative,\nin whatever province of work they strive; and no man in any province\nis truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by\nthis sensibility, this competence to feel the invisible in the\nvisible.\n\nThe idea is the invisible; the embodiment thereof is the visible.\nHence the beautiful is always ideal; that is, it enfolds, embraces,\nrepresents, with more or less success, the idea out of which springs\nthe object it illuminates: it brilliantly enrobes a germinal\nessence. It is thus a sparkling emanation out of the Infinite, and it\nleads us thither whence it has come.\n\nSensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole mind,\nilluminating its labors. Without it we work in the dark, and therefore\nfeebly, defectively. Infer thence the immensity of its function.\nHereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man; and where its\nteaching has not been conspicuous, there no elevation has been\nreached. The Greeks and the Hebrews would not have been so deeply, so\ngreatly, so feelingly known to us, would not have been the pioneers\nand inspirers of European civilization, would not have lived on\nthrough thousands of years in the minds of the highest men, had they\nnot, along with their other rare endowments, possessed, in superior,\nin unique quality, this priceless gift of sensibility to the\nbeautiful. Through this gift Shakespeare is the foremost man of\nEngland, and through it has done more than any other man to educate\nand elevate England. Because the Italians of the fourteenth and\nfifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift, therefore it is that\nItaly is still a shrine to which the civilized world makes annual\npilgrimage.\n\nThe supreme function of this sensibility is to develop, to\neducate, to chasten the highest faculties, our vast discourse of\nreason, our unselfish aspiration, our deep instinct of truth, our\ncapacious love. To educate these is its cardinal duty, and lacking\nthis they remain uneducated. But its beneficent influence is felt\nlikewise in the less elevated of our efforts. The man who makes shoes,\nas well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of\nhouses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer,\nas well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator;\nand, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work\nthose rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force.\n\n              \"'T is the eternal law,\n  That first in beauty shall be first in might.\"[2]\n\n    [2] Keats.\n\nIn short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that gift its\nbest fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, enlightened,\ninspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring flame in his\nmind, and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand.\n\nAll good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the\neternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to\nthe intensity of this cooeperation. Why is it that we so prize a\nfragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by Raphael? Because the minds\nof those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy\nwith the Infinite mind. While at work their hands were more distinctly\nguided by the Almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit\nwhich makes, which is, life.\n\nHere is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a\nvocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with\nthe pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the\nvocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well and\ncreatively, if your work be in harmony with God's laws, if your screen\nbe light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling healthful and\ncommodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious\nand sound. But if on the canvas you have a Christ's head by Leonardo,\nout of the pile of stones a Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of\nmarble a Venus of Milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you\nhave works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the\nvivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the\nworks of nature. The men who wrought them were strong to do so through\nthe vigor of their sympathy with what Plato calls the formative\nprinciple of the universe, they thereby becoming themselves creators,\nthat is, poets. And we sacredly guard their creations among our best\ntreasures of human gift, because they are so spiritually alive that\nwhenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us, they\nspiritualize our thoughts; and this they do because the minds whence\nthey issued were radiant centers of ideal power, that is, power to\nconceive the beautiful.\n\nBut what is ideal power? the reader may ask. He might likewise ask,\nWhat is moral power? And unless he has in his own mind some faculty of\nmoral estimation, no answer will help him. That which comes to us\nthrough feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can only be\nappreciated through feeling. By describing its effects and\naccompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. By means of a\nfoot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the\nheight of the Apollo Belvedere, and the exact length of the statue's\nface; and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your\nstatement. But not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can\nyou get the crowd to go along with you as to the Apollo's beauty.\nAcknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and\na native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering.\nFull and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very\nbeautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty\npre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. But after all, the want of\nunanimity of assent to a moral or an aesthetic position, does it not\ncome from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained?\nAssent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose\nan ideal in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible\nmeasurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands\nwhat you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot\nis; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of\ninformation, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive\nfrom the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic\ncontents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea,\nan ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot.\n\nAttempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is, by\nenumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be\npresent in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty, or\nattempts to produce what shall be beautiful, by complying with these\nconditions, come no nearer to the aim than do compounded mineral\nwaters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from the\noriginal spring. In the analysis there may be no flaw; the ingredients\nare chemically identical in quality and proportion; but the nameless,\ninimitable, inscrutable life is wanting: the mixing has been done by a\nmechanical, not by a creative hand. Haydon says, \"The curve of the\ncircle is excess, the straight line is deficiency, the ellipsis is the\ndegree between, and that curve, added to or united with proportion,\nregulates the form and features of a perfect woman.\" Mr. D.R. Hay, in\na series of books, professes to have discovered the principles of\nbeauty in the law of harmonic ratio, without, however, \"pretending,\"\nas he modestly and wisely declares, \"to give rules for that kind of\nbeauty which genius alone can produce in high art.\" The discovery of\nMr. Hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the announcement of\nHaydon, may give practical hints to artists and others. But no\nintellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of\nemotional warmth and refined selection. \"Beauty, the foe of excess and\nvacuity, blooms, like genius, in the equilibrium of all the forces,\"\nsays Jean Paul. \"Beauty,\" says Hemsterhuis, \"is the product of the\ngreatest number of ideas in the shortest time,\" which is like the\nItalian definition, _il piu nel uno_, unity in multiplicity, believed\nby Coleridge to contain the principle of beauty. On another page of\nthe \"Table Talk\" Coleridge is made to say, \"You are wrong in resolving\nbeauty into expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it\nis opposite, although not contrary. Beauty is an immediate presence,\nbetween which and the beholder _nihil est_. It is always one and\ntranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed.\"\nHegel, in his \"AEsthetic,\" defines natural beauty to be \"the idea as\nimmediate unity, in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous\nreality.\" And a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct,\ncalling the beautiful \"the sensuous shining forth of the idea.\" And\nSchelling, in his profound treatise on \"The Relation of the Plastic\nArts to Nature,\" says, \"The beautiful is beyond form; it is substance,\nthe universal; it is the look and expression of the spirit of\nNature.\" Were it not better and more precise to say that it is to us\nthe look and expression of the spiritual when this is peering through\nchoicest embodiments? But we will stop with definitions. After\nendeavoring, by means of sentences and definitions to get a notion of\nthe beautiful, one is tempted to say, as Goethe did when \"the idea of\nthe Divinity\" was venturously mentioned to him by Eckermann, \"Dear\nchild, what know we of the idea of the Divinity? and what can our\nnarrow ideas tell of the Highest Being? Should I, like a Turk, name it\nwith a hundred names, I should still fall short, and, in comparison\nwith the infinite attributes, have said nothing.\"\n\nWe have called the beautiful the light of the mind; but there must be\nmind to be illuminated. If your torch be waved in a chamber set round\nwith bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone, you will get no\nluminous reverberation. But brandish it before rubies and emeralds and\ndiamonds! The qualities in the mind must be precious, in order that\nthe mind become radiant through beauty. To take a broad example.\n\nThe Hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the\nbeautiful, but they lack mental breadth and bottom; and hence their\nlife and literature are not strong and manifold, although in both\nthere are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of\nsensibility to the beautiful. The Chinese, on the other hand, are\nwanting in this sensibility; hence their prosaic, finite civilization.\nBut most noteworthy is the contrast between them in religious\ndevelopment. In that of the Hindoos there was expansion, vastness,\nself-merging in infinitude; the Chinese are religiously contracted,\npetty, idolatrous; a contrast which I venture to ascribe, in large\nmeasure, to the presence in the one case, and the absence in the\nother, of the inspiration of the beautiful.\n\nTo the same effect individual examples might be cited innumerable.\nLook at Wordsworth and Byron, both preeminent for sensibility to the\nbeautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts,\nthe one, through the light of this vivifying power, became a poet of\nthe propensities and the understanding, a poet of passion and wit; the\nother, a poet of the reason, a poet of nature and meditative emotion.\n\nTo do their best the moral feelings, too, need the light and inward\nstimulus of the beautiful; but if these feelings are by nature\nweak, no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will have power\nto get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or action. If\nthere be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall have a Byron;\nor, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack of this\naccomplishment, and we may get a Beckford, who builds Fonthill Abbeys,\nand with purity and richness of diction describes palaces, actual or\nfeigned, and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or,\nthe intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man\nof superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an\nintellectual sybarite, or a refined voluptuary. Like the sun, the\nbeautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth\nwill even make flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to\nmake them bear refreshing odors or nourishing fruit.\n\nAs men have body, intellect, and moral natures, so is there physical,\nintellectual, and spiritual beauty, and each distinct from the others.\nTake first a few examples from the domain of art. The body and limbs\nof the Gladiator in the Louvre may be cited as the exponent of\ncorporeal beauty; the face of the Apollo Belvedere as that of\nintellectual and physical; and the Santo Sisto Madonna of Raphael, and\nthe Christ of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, for spiritual.\nThrough these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of\ntheir artists with a chastened, exalting joy, not unmingled with pride\nin our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted co-workers with God.\n\nAmong the higher races, life is affluent in examples of the three\nkinds of beauty, two of them, and even all three, at times united in\none subject. Children and youth offer the most frequent instances of\nphysical beauty. Napoleon's face combined in high degree both physical\nand intellectual, without a trace of moral beauty. Discoveries in\nscience, and the higher scientific processes, as likewise broad and\nintense intellectual action, exemplify often intellectual beauty. Of\nmoral beauty history preserves examples which are the brightest\njewels, and the most precious, in the casket of mankind's memory;\namong the most brilliant of which are the trust of Alexander, when he\ndrank the draught from the hand of his physician, though warned that\nit was poisoned; the fidelity of the paroled Regulus, returning from\nRome to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death;\nSir Philip Sidney, wounded unto death, taking the cup of water\nuntasted from his parched lips, to give it to a dying soldier; Luther\nat the Diet of Worms; the public life of Washington; the life and\ndeath of Socrates, and especially that last act of washing his body to\nsave the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later, when it\nwould be a corpse; and, lastly, that most beautiful of lives and most\nsublime of deaths, which live in the heart of Christendom as its\nexemplar and ever fresh ideal.\n\nThere is no province of honorable human endeavor, no clean inlet\nopened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which from\nthat vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful does\nnot send its fructifying tides. There is no height in history but is\nilluminated by its gleam. Only through the beautiful can truth attain\nits full stature; only through the beautiful can the heart be\nperfectly purified; only with vision purged by the beautiful can\nanything be seen in its totality. All other faculties it makes\nprolific; it is the mental generator. It helps to unveil, and then\nwelds, the link between the visible and the invisible. It inspires\nfeeling (which is ever the source of deepest insight) to discover\nexcellence; it quickens the mind to creative activity; it is\nforever striving upward. Without the spiritual fervor of the\nbeautiful, your religion is narrow and superstitious, your science\ncramped and mortal, your life unripened. In the mind it kindles a\nflame that discloses the divinity there is in all things. Lightning\nbares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth; more vivid than\nlightning, the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the presence\nof God.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nWHAT IS POETRY?\n\n\nThe better to meet the question, _What_ is poetry? we begin by putting\nbefore it another, and ask, _Where_ is poetry? Poetry is in the mind.\nLandscapes, rainbows, sunsets, constellations, these exist not to the\nstag, the hare, the elephant. To them nature has no aspects, no\nappearances modified by feeling. Furnished with neither combining\nintellect nor transmuting sensibility, they have no vision for aught\nbut the proximate and immediate and the animally necessary. Corporeal\nlife is all their life. Within the life of mind poetry is born, and in\nthe best and deepest part of that life.\n\nThe whole world outside of man, and, added to this, the wider world of\nhis inward motions, whether these motions interact on one another or\nbe started and modified by what is without them, all this--that is,\nall human life, in its endless forms, varieties, degrees, all that can\ncome within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry; only, to\nenjoy, to behold, to move about in, even to enter this domain, the\nindividual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure\nwhatever it falls on, a light of such subtle quality, of such\nspiritual virtue, that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the\nvery mystery of being.\n\nIn many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished that\nit gives no illumination. To them the two vast worlds, the inner and\nthe outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, available, by the\nunderstanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. Things,\nconditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken lovingly into the\nmind, to be made there prolific through higher contacts. They are not\ndandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination. Imagination! Before\nproceeding a step further,--nay, in order that we be able to proceed\nsafely,--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word,\nimagination.\n\nThe simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. Having\nperceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a\nhigher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it.\n_Perception_ is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual\nprocess, _memory_ is the second. Higher than they, and rising\nout of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and\ntransmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered.\nA mother, just parted from her child, recalls his form and face,\nsummons before _her mind's eye_ an image of him; and this image is\nmodified by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in\nwhich she had never seen him before, cheerful or sad according to her\nmood. This she could not do by aid of memory alone; she could not vary\nthe impress of her boy left on the brain; she could not vividly\nreproduce it in shifting, rapidly successive conditions; she could not\nmodify and diversify that impress; in a word, she could not liberate\nit. Memory could only re-give her, with single, passive fidelity, what\nshe had seen, unmodified, motionless, unenlivened, like a picture of\nher boy on canvas. Urge intellectual activity to the phase above\nmemory, and the mental image steps out from its immobility, becomes a\nchangeful, elastic figure, brightened or darkened by the lights and\nshadows cast by the feelings; the intellect, quick now with plastic\npower, varying the image in position and expression, obedient\nto the demands of the feelings, of which it is ever the ready\ninstrument. This third process is _imagination_.\n\nThrough this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered in the\nmind are endlessly combined and modified. In all intellectual\nactivity, beyond bare perception and memory, imagination in some\ndegree is and must be present. It is in fact the mind handling its\nmaterials, and in no sphere, above the simplest, can the mind move\nwithout this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations,\nphenomena and interior promptings and suggestions. To the forensic\nreasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a\npower is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver\nof fictions. Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the\nmost intense action, of the intellect.\n\nWhen I run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, the\nfirst seven presidents of the United States, Washington, Adams,\nJefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, I exert only memory. The\nmoment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the\ncharacter of any of them, I put into play the higher, the imaginative\naction; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by\nmemory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details\ngathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a\nmere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do\nthe work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that\nhandle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy.\n\nThe degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be\ncalled upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that\nthe word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest\nexercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those\nfew who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with\nsensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape\ninto fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the\nmaterial originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness.\nIn strictness, this exaltation of intellectual action should be called\n_poetic_ imagination.\n\nTo imagine is, etymologically speaking, _with_ the mind to form _in_\nthe mind an image; that is, by inward power to produce an interior\nform, a something substantial made out of what we term the\nunsubstantial. To imagine is thus always, in a certain sense, to\ncreate; and even men of dullest mentality have this power in\n_kind_. The _degree_ in which men have it makes one of the chief\ndifferences among them. The power is inherent, is implied in the very\nexistence of the human mind. When it is most lively the mind creates\nout of all it feels and hears and sees, taking a simple sight or hint\nor impression or incident, and working out images, making much out of\nlittle, a world out of an atom. Akin herein to the supreme creative\nmight, the man of highest imagination, the poet, unrolls out of his\nbrain, through vivid energy, new worlds, peopled with thought,\nthrobbing with humanity.\n\nWhen we imagine, therefore, we hold an image in the mind, grasping it\nwith spiritual fingers, just as by our corporeal fingers a physical\nsubstance is grasped. Now the poetic mind in handling the image tosses\nit with what might be called a sportive earnest delight, and through\nthis power and freedom of _play_ elicits by sympathetic fervor, from\nits very core, electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the\nsculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus\nvouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision,--insights gained never but\nthrough sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations\nafter, and gleaming glimpses of, the absolute and ideal, the intellect\nbeing used as an obedient cheerful servant.\n\nThe sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these glimpses,\nrevels in them as its fullest happiness, and with its whole might\nseeks and courts them. Hence the mind thus privileged to live nearer\nthan others to the absolutely true, the spiritual ideal, is ever\nplying its privilege: conceiving, heightening, spiritualizing,\naccording to the vision vouchsafed it; through this vision beholding\neverywhere a better and fairer than outwardly appears; painting nature\nand humanity, not in colors fictitious or fanciful, but in those\nricher, more lucent ones which such minds, through the penetrating\ninsight of the higher imagination, see more truly as they are than\nminds less creatively endowed.\n\nThus is imagination a power inherent in, essential to, all\nintellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory; a\npower without which the daily business of life even could not go on,\nbeing that power whereby the mind manipulates, so to speak, its\nmaterials. In its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect\nstimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of feeling;\nand in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged by\nemotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of creation.\n\nImagination, then, being intellect in keenest chase, and the\nintellectual part of the mind being, when moved in concert with the\neffective part, but a tool of this, what are the feelings or\nconditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in the\nproduction of poetry?\n\nCast your look on a page filled with the titles of Shakespeare's\nplays. What worlds of throbbing life lie behind that roll! Then run\nover the persons of a single drama: that one bounded inclosure, how\nrich in variety and intensity, and truth of feeling! And when you\nshall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all, tragic,\ncomic, historic, lyric, you will have traversed in thought,\naccompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters, wide\nprovinces of human sorrow and joy. Why are these pictures of passion\nso uniquely prized, passed on from generation to generation, the most\nprecious heir-loom of the English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the\nmorning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were\nfirst written? Because they have in them more fullness and fineness\nand fidelity than any others. The poet has more life in him\nthan other men, and Shakespeare has in him more life than any other\npoet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union\nwith power of sympathy, the embodiments whereof are rounded, enlarged,\nrefined, made translucent by that gift of _sensibility to the fair and\nperfect_[3] whereby, according to its degree, we are put in more\nloving relation to the work of God, and gain the clearest insights\ninto his doings and purposes; a gift without which in richest measure\nShakespeare might have been a notable historian or novelist or\nphilosopher, but never the supreme poet he is.\n\n    [3] See preceding Essay.\n\nWhen Coriolanus, having led the Volscians to Rome, encamps under its\nwalls, and the Romans, in their peril and terror, send to him a\ndeputation to move him from his vengeful purpose, the deputies,--the\nforemost citizens of Rome and the relations and former friends of\nCoriolanus,--having \"declared their business in a very modest and\nhumble manner,\" he is described by Plutarch as stern and austere,\nanswering them with \"much bitterness and high resentment of the\ninjuries done him.\" What was the temper as well as the power of\nCoriolanus, we learn distinctly enough from these few words of\nPlutarch. But the task of the poet is more than this. To our\nimagination, that is, to the abstracting intellect roused by sympathy\nto a semi-creative state, he must present the haughty Roman so as to\nfill us with an image of him that shall in itself embody that\nmomentous hour in the being of the young republic. He must dilate us\nto the dimensions of the man and the moment; he must so enlarge and\nwarm our feeling that it shall take in, and delight in, the grandeur\nof the time and the actors. The life of Rome, of Rome yet to be so\nmighty, is threatened by one of her own sons. This vast history, to be\nfor future centuries that of the world, a Roman seemed about to\nquench, about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial\nmetropolis of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of what gigantic dimensions\nmust he be, this Roman! Now hear Menenius, a former friend and admirer\nof Coriolanus, depict him. Having described, in those compressed\nsinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the change in his\nnature, he adds, \"When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the\nground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a\ncorselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a\nbattery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he\nbids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god\nbut eternity and a heaven to throne in.\"\n\nHear how a mother's heart, about to break, from the loss of her son,\nutters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering\nwith poetic fervor. The French king bids Lady Constance be comforted:\nshe answers,--\n\n  \"No, I defy all counsel, all redress,\n  But that which ends all counsel, true redress,\n  Death, death. O amiable lovely death!\n  Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!\n  Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,\n  Thou hate and terror to prosperity,\n  And I will kiss thy detestable bones;\n  And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;\n  And ring these fingers with thy household worms;\n  And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,\n  And be a carrion monster like thyself:\n  Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st:\n  And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,\n  O, come to me!\"\n\nIn these two passages from \"Coriolanus\" and \"King John\" what\nmagnificence of hyperbole! The imagination of the reader, swept on\nfrom image to image, is strained to follow that of the poet.\nAnd yet, to the capable, how the pile of amplification lifts out the\nnaked truth. Read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors,\ntaken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the\nbenches of a popular lecture-room. To the expanded mold wherein the\npassages are wrought, a few--five or six, perhaps, of the\ntwenty--would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the\npoet's climax. To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive\nextravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by,\nthe poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly\nunintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to\nthem unnatural or affected.\n\nNow, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? By\nthese passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are\npitched to a high key. A very comprehensive word is feelings. What is\nthe nature of those feelings thus wrought upon?\n\nThe elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful function, are\ncapable of emitting spiritual light; and, when exalted to their purest\naction, do and must emit such, the inward fire sending forth clear\nflame unmixed with smoke. To perceive this light, and, still\nmore, to have your path illuminated thereby, implies the present\nactivity of some of the higher human sensibilities; and to be so\norganized as to be able to embody in words, after having imagined,\npersonages, conditions, and conjunctions whence this light shall flash\non and ignite the sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid\nsympathies and delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the\nmanifestations of moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by\nhim in whom the nobler elements of being are present in such\nintensity, proportions, and quality, and are so commingled, that he\ncan reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness, he becoming,\nthrough this exalting susceptibility, poet or maker.\n\nWhat constitutes the wealth of human life? Is it not fullness and\nrichness of feeling? To refine this fullness, to purify this richness,\nto distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the feelings by\nrevealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to light the\ndivinity there is within and behind them, this is the poet's part; and\nthis, his great part, he can only do by being blest with more than\ncommon sympathy with the spirit of the Almighty Creator, and thence\nclearer insight into his work and will. Merely to embody in\nverse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, scenes of human life, is not the\npoet's office; but to exhibit these as having attained, or as capable\nof attaining, the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each.\nThe glorifier of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is\nthe historian's function. The poet's business is not with facts as\nsuch, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and the very\nspirit of truth. His function is ideal; that is, from the prosaic, the\nindividual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the universal, the\ngeneric, the boundless. In compassing this noble end he may, if such\nbe his bent, use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily\nlife; and, by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his\nhuman insight, as well as his poetic gift.\n\nThe generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only be\nreached and recognized through the higher feelings, through those\nwhose activity causes emotion. The simple impulses, the elementary\nloves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but\ngrowing round the very fountain of life, having their roots\nin the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their\nindividual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway\nthe whole being is roused and expanded. When by their movement the\nbetter nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story\nof Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the\natmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its\nacme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the\ncontemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are upraised to the\ndisinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever\nimaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not\nextravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful,\nit resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of\nsweetest music. Thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the\nsphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation\nfrom the emotional nature. Reverberation implies space, an ample vault\nof roof or of heaven. In a tight, small chamber there can be none. If\nfeeling is shut within itself, there is no reecho. Its explosion must\nrebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become\nmusical.\n\nThe moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which\nyou can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled\nthrough livelier recognition of the divine spirit,--the moment you\ndraw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, spiritualized,\nbuoyed above the self. No matter how surrounded, or implicated, or\nenthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few moments, you are\nliberated.\n\n  \"No more--no more--oh! never more on me\n  The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,\n  Which out of all the lovely things we see\n  Extracts emotions beautiful and new,\n  Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee.\n  Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew?\n  Alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power\n  To double even the sweetness of a flower.\"\n\n                \"All who joy would win\n  Must share it; happiness was born a twin.\"\n\n  \"He entered in the house,--his home no more,\n  For without hearts there is no home--and felt\n  The solitude of passing his own door\n  Without a welcome; _there_ he long had dwelt,\n  There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er,\n  There his worn, bosom and keen eye would melt\n  Over the innocence of that sweet child,\n  His only shrine of feelings undefiled.\"\n\nThese three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit than\npoetry, and more cynicism than either; a poem in spirit unsanctified,\nMephistophelian, written by a man of the world, a terrible\negotist, _blase_ already in early manhood, in whose life, through\norganization, inherited temperament, and miseducation, humanity was so\ncramped, distorted, envenomed, that the best of it was in the fiery\nsway of the more urgent passions, his inmost life being, as it must\nalways be with poets, inwoven into his verse. From the expiring\nvolcano in his bosom his genius, in this poem, casts upon the world a\nlurid flame, making life look pale or fever-flushed. With unslumbering\nvivacity, human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by\nthe bursting of half-truths that relate to its lower side, a light the\nmore deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit.\n\nAbove the pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the\nspecious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping\npersonalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute\nthe successive cantos of \"Don Juan,\" the passages just quoted and\nsimilar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the\ndiscontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings of a\nheated, noisy city rises a Gothic spire, aspiring, beautiful, drawing\nmost of its beauty from its aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly\nglistening in the upper air, plays the coming and the parting day,\nwhile shadows fill the streets below, and whose beauty throws over the\ntown a halo that beckons men from afar. The spire, in its steadfast\ntranquillity and its beauty, so unlike the restless wrangling\ndissonance below it, grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that\nmake the dissonance, and, typifying what is spiritual and eternal in\nthem, tends by its ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose\neyes it is sought. These upshootings in \"Don Juan\" irradiate the\ncantos, giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that\notherwise would not have known them; and if too pure in their light\nand too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that dazzle\nwithout illuminating, silently they shine and steadily, an unconscious\nheavenly influence, above these coruscations of earthly\nthoughts,--thoughts telling from their lively numerousness, but\nneither grand nor deep.\n\nFrom the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make lines\nand stanzas glisten, and but for which this poem, lacking their\nperfusive light, would soon pass into oblivion; for from the\nbeautiful it is that the satire, the wit, the voluptuousness get their\nsparkle and their sheen. If passages morally censurable are hereby\nmade more captivating, we are not content with saying that God's sun\nfructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock; but we affirm that\nthe beautiful, being by its nature necessarily pure, communicates of\nits quality to whoever becomes aware of it, and thus in some measure\ncounterweighs the lowering tendency. Moreover, the morally bad,\nderiving its character of evil from incompleteness, from the arresting\nor the perversion of good, like fruit plucked unripe, and being\ntherefore outside the pale of the beautiful (the nature of which is\ncompleteness, fullness, perfection of life) cannot by itself be made\ncaptivating through the beautiful. Iago and Edmund are poetical as\nparts of a whole; and when in speech they approach the upper region of\nthought, it is because the details allotted to them have to be highly\nwrought for the sake of the general plot and effect, and further,\nbecause humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs.\nBesides, the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness\nof evil, and thence Iago and Edmund, as ideal villains, through the\nvery darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them, help\nus by indirection to see and value the lights that surround the noble\nand the good.\n\nIn healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral, those whose\naction is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at\ntheir highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass\nreaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A burglar or a murderer\nmay exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and\nbrutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and\nbounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry.\nBut courage, when it is the servant of principle for large, unselfish\nends, becomes poetical, exhibiting the moral beautiful, as in the\nfable of Curtius and the fact (or fable) of Winkelried. In the\npoetical there is always enlargement, exaltation, purification; animal\nfeeling, self-seeking propensity, becoming so combined with the higher\nnature as to rise above themselves, above the self.\n\nThe lioness, pursuing the robber of her cub, if in her rage she\nscarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in her\npath, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a\nwilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an\nexhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most\nunpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the\nrobber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine\ntenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her.\nThrough the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white\nlight, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful fury is\nsuddenly subdued by love. A moment before she was possessed with\nsavage fierceness, her blood boiling with hate and revenge; now it\nglows with a mother's joy. Her nature rises to the highest whereof it\nis capable. It is the poetry of animalism.\n\nIn the poetical, thought is amplified and ripened, while purified, in\nthe calm warmth of emotion. From being emotive, poetry draws in more\nof the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. The poetical has,\nmust have, rotundity. No poet ever had a square head. Prose, in its\nnaked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving,\nflesh-and-spirit-endowed body. From the skeleton you can learn\nosteology, but neither aesthetics nor human nature. Imaginative prose\npartakes of the spiritual character of poetry. When a page is\nchanged from poetry into prose it is flattened, deadened; when from\nprose into poetry it is uplifted, enlivened. You get a something else\nand a something more. Reduced to plain prose, the famous passage from\nthe mouth of Viola in \"Twelfth Night\" would read somewhat thus: \"My\nfather had a daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her\nlove, but concealed it, until her cheek grew pale with grief,\npatiently bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold\nattachment.\" Now hear the poet:--\n\n                        \"She never told her love,\n  But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,\n  Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought:\n  And with a green and yellow melancholy\n  She sat like patience on a monument,\n  Smiling at grief.\"\n\nWhat has been done with the prose statement? Instead of a bare fact we\nhave a picture, a twofold picture; and this, in its compact, fresh,\nrose-tinted vividness, carries the whole into our hearts with a\ntenfold success. Through emotional joy we apprehend, as by the light\nof an instantaneous ignition, the state of the sufferer. The\nprose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth, through whose sleepy\nsmoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in\nfull fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart,\ndelighting the intellect. The imagination of the reader, quickened by\nillustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its\nmost melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality\nhis mind is dilated. He has become mentally a richer man, enriched\nthrough the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and\nthe activity imparted to his intellect.\n\nTo say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an\nidiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward\ninstruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without\nby perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. To say of\na poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no\npoet. What is poetic imagination? This, for our theme, is a vital\nquestion. Can there be given to it an approximate answer?\n\nFigure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a\nSeptember sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and a\nvariegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny\nAmerican aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals\nwhose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or\nluxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture;\nbut, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons\nwhose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the\nwonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled\nsufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may\nbe thrown upon it; in short, a score of cultivated adults. The\nimpression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a\nrare atmospheric calm. The heart of each gazer fills with emotion, at\nfirst unutterable except by indefinite exclamation; when one of the\ncompany says,--\n\n  \"A fairer face of evening cannot be.\"\n\nThese words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, and\ntherefore some relief, to the feeling of all. Then another adds,--\n\n  \"The holy time is quiet as a nun\n  Breathless with adoration.\"\n\nInstantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is\nflooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light.\nThe scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens\nhad opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial\nsubtilizing aura. How has this been accomplished? The first line has\nlittle of the quality of poetic imagination.\n\n  \"A fairer face of evening cannot be.\"\n\nis simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no\nmysterious throb. Above the level of this line rise suddenly the first\nthree words of the second, \"the holy time.\" The presence of a scene\nwhere sky, earth, and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders\nputs them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo.\nThat the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity\nappreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds--\"is quiet as\na nun breathless with adoration.\" By this master-stroke of poetic\npower the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into,\nsuper-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is\nset aesthetically aglow, as by the beams of the setting sun the\nlandscape is physically. By an exceptionally empowered hand the soul\nis strung to a high key. Fullness and range of sensibility open to the\npoet[4] a wide field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals\nthe one that carries his thought into the depths of the\nreader's mind, bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen\nintellectual power in the service of pure emotion.\n\n    [4] Wordsworth.\n\nTake now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry. Here is\none from Coleridge:--\n\n      \"And winter, slumbering in the open air,\n  Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.\"\n\nHere again the intellect is urged to its highest action, the abstract\nor imaginative action, to do the hests of a sensibility so finely\nwrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most exquisite that\nnature can furnish, that it yields similitudes most delicate, most\napt, most expressive.\n\nMilton thus opens the fifth book of \"Paradise Lost:\"--\n\n  \"Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime\n  Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl.\"\n\nShakespeare makes Romeo describe daybreak:--\n\n                        \"And jocund day\n  Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.\"\n\nKeats begins \"Hyperion\" with these lines:\n\n  \"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,\n  Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn.\"\n\nIn the Monody on Keats, Shelley, describing the lamentation of\nnature at his death, concludes a stanza as follows:--\n\n                      \"Morning sought\n    Her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound,\n    Wet with the tears that should adorn the ground,\n    Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;\n    Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,\n    Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,\n  And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay.\"\n\nSuch passages are the very flower of poetry, thought exquisitely dyed\nin sentiment, laying suddenly bare a picture with so much light in it\nthat each passage irradiates its page and the reader's mind. By their\nhappiness the similitudes emphasize and enforce the thought; and they\ndo a higher service than this; for, being a breath from the inner life\nof genius, they blow power into the reader. To translate these\npassages into prose were like trying to translate a lily into the mold\nout of which it springs, or a bar of Beethoven into the sounds of the\nforum, or the sparkle of stars into the warmth of a coal fire.\n\nThe best poetry has a far background; it comes out of deeps within the\npoet, unfathomed by himself, unfathomable. He feels more than he can\nexpress. Hence the imaginative poet always suggests, revealing enough\nto inspirit the reader's higher faculties to strive for more;\nnot because, with artistic design, he leaves much untold, which he\noften does, but because through imaginative susceptibility he at times\ngrasps at and partly apprehends much that cannot be embodied. He feels\nhis subject more largely and deeply than he can see or represent it.\nTo you his work is suggestive because to him the subject suggested\nmore than he could give utterance to. Every subject, especially every\nsubject of poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most\napprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend\nit--can do or say what will open it to you or me; and the degree of\nhis genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose\nit. The unimaginative gives surface-work, and, suggesting nothing, is\nat once exhausted.\n\nThe poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at\nhis command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of\nan object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps\nfeeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we\nlook. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the\nunimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of\nderiving it. To be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by\nthe imagination out of its object. The inspired poet finds a word so\nsympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it.\n\nDepth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic\nimagination. The love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect,\nneeds furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the poet's\nindividual resources can this be drawn. To make a high artist, you\nmust have very much of a man. Behind \"Paradise Lost\" and \"Samson\nAgonistes\" is a big Miltonic man. The poet has to put a great deal of\nhimself, and the best of him, into his work; thence, for high poetry,\nthere must be a great deal of high self to put in. He must coin his\nsoul, and have a large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out\nof materials gathered by memory and fancy. His stream of thought must\nflow from springs, not from reservoirs. Hence the universal\nbiographical interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich\npersonality.\n\nThe passages I have cited are all pictures of outward nature, natural\nscenes mirrored on the mind, or rather refracted through it, and in\nthe act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, having\nthe fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced with joyful\nrevelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are through a crystal\nprism. Exhibiting material nature spiritualized, well do these\npassages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination. But this\ndisplays a higher, and its highest power when, striking like a\nthunderbolt into the core of things, it lays bare mysteries of God and\nof the heart which mere prosaic reason cannot solve or approach,\ncannot indeed alone even dimly apprehend.\n\nI will now quote passages, brief ones, wherein through the poet are\nopened vast vistas into the shining universe, or is concentrated in\nsingle or few lines the life of man's finer nature, as in the diamond\nare condensed the warmth and splendor that lie latent in acres of\nfossil carbon.\n\nWhen, in the sixth book of \"Paradise Lost,\" Milton narrates the\narrival on the battle-field of the Son,--\n\n  \"Attended by ten thousand thousand saints,\"\n\nand then adds:--\n\n  \"Far off his coming shone,\"\n\nin these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that dilates\nthe capable mind with light, and, as the sublime always does, with\nawe.\n\nWhen Ferdinand, in \"The Tempest,\" leaps \"with hair up-staring\"\ninto the sea, crying,--\n\n              \"Hell is empty,\n  And all the devils are here,\"\n\nthe mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and flaming\nrage of a thunder-storm at sea, such as words have never elsewhere\ncarried. What a reach in the imaginative stroke! In the first scene of\n\"Faust,\" the earth-spirit, whom Faust has evoked, concludes the\nwhirling, dazzling, brief, but gigantic sketch of his function with\nthese words, the majesty of which translation cannot entirely\nsubdue:--\n\n  \"I ply the resounding great loom of old Time,\n  And work at the Godhead's live vesture sublime.\"\n\nHow ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity, after taking\nin these lines from Wordsworth's \"Ode on Intimations of\nImmortality:\"--\n\n  \"But trailing clouds of glory do we come\n  From God, who is our home.\"\n\nWith a single epithet, coined for the occasion, Keats flashes upon our\nimagination the dethroned Saturn and the immensity of his fall:\n\n                  \"Upon the sodden ground\n  His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,\n  Unsceptered; and his _realmless_ eyes were closed.\"\n\nThe \"Hyperion\" of this transcendent genius, written in his\ntwenty-fourth year, the year before he died, is as great poetry as has\never been treasured in words. In it he lavishes poetic wealth as\nthough gold were with him as plenty as silver; and so on the next page\nhe exceeds, if possible, the sublimity of the above lines, making Thea\nwrite in the catalogue of Saturn's colossal deprivations,--\n\n                  \"And all the air\n  Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.\"\n\nThese passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is the\nillumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light thrown\ninto it from the glow kindled in the poet's mind with richest\nsensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an exacting, subtle\ninward demand for the best they can render. A single flash of new\nthrilling light irradiates a continent of thought. This is the work of\ngenius, and genius is ever marked by a deeper sympathy with and\nrecognition of the creative spirit and the divine action, a sympathy\nand recognition so sensitive that the spirit and action of the writer\nare permeated by the divine effluence, he becoming thereby the\ninterpreter of divine law, the exhibitor of divine beauty.\n\nIn these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through\nthe overlaying crust of the common, by a warming, expanding, inward\nmotion, which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible that,\nto make passage for the new thought, lightly is lifted a load which,\nbut for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just as heavy\nstones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert this power the\npoet is always moved at the instance of feeling. Poetry having its\nbirth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling.\nBut what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing\nsentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the\nsentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or\nentertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to\nthe top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes.\n\nThe poetic imagination is the Ariel of the poet,--his spiritual\nmessenger and Mercury. A clear look into the above passages would show\nthat the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite\nrange the imagination opens to us, often by a word. For further\nillustration I will take a few other examples, scrutinizing them more\nminutely. Had Lorenzo opened the famous passage in \"The\nMerchant of Venice\" thus,--\n\n  \"How _calm_ the moonlight _lies_ upon this bank,\"\n\nand continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, saying,--\n\n  \"There's not the _tiniest star_ that _can be seen_\n  But in its _revolution_ it doth _hum_,\n  Aye _chanting_ to the _heavenly_ cherubins,\"\n\nhis words would not have become celebrated and quotable. But Lorenzo\nhas the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of Shakespeare, and\nso he begins,--\n\n  \"How _sweet_ the moonlight _sleeps_ upon this bank.\"\n\nTwo words, _sweet_ and _sleep_, put in the place of _calm_ and _lies_,\nlift the line out of prose into poetry. A log _lies_ on a bank; so\ndoes a dead dog, and the more dead a thing is the more it lies; but\nonly what is alive _sleeps_, and thus the word, besides an image of\nextreme stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea\nof change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now\nsleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake is\nthe mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of the\nimage. The substitution of _sweet_ for _calm_ is, in a less degree,\nsimilarly enlivening; for, used in such conjunction, _sweet_ is more\nindividual and subtle, and imports more life, and thus helps the\ndistinctness and vividness of the picture. How does the poetic Lorenzo\nword the other three lines?\n\n  \"There's not the _smallest orb_ which _thou behold'st_,\n  But in _his motion like an angel sings_,\n  Still _quiring_ to the _young-eyed_ cherubins.\"\n\nThe words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer\nmeaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. To\n_behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. The\nfigure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart\npoetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and\neffective. _Quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding\n_sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges,\nwhile making more specific, the thought. And what an image of the\nfreshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the\nepithet _young-eyed_! At every step the thought is expanded and\nbeautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the\npoetically excited mind is left poised in delight.\n\nBut the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still\npoetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening\nof the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining\npoetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less\nfigurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result\nof a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these\nbeing moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an\natmosphere exhaled from sensibility. As Joubert says,--herein uttering\na cardinal aesthetic principle,--\"It is, above all, in the spirituality\nof ideas that poetry consists.\" Thought that is poetic will glisten\nthrough the plainest words; whereas, if the thought be prosaic or\ntrite, all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the\npoetic sheen. Perdita wishes for\n\n                            \"Daffodils\n  That come before the swallow dares, and take\n  The winds of March with beauty.\"\n\nNote the poetic potency in the simple word _dares_; how much it\ncarries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront; a\nmental action, I might almost call it, in the swallow, who, after\nmaking a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash\nto venture so far north: all this is in the single word. For _dares_\nwrite _does_, and the effect would be like that of cutting a\ngash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down,\nbecause you take the life out of the thought.\n\n                    \"And take\n  The winds of March with beauty.\"\n\nEvery one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or\nthing, and the thought is common; but that the winds of March be taken\nwith the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate secret which those\nwinds would confide only to one so sympathetic as Shakespeare. This is\npoetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility\nwhich is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the\npromptings and the exactions of the beautiful.\n\nIn the opening of \"Il Penseroso\" Milton describes the shapes that in\nsprightly moods possess the fancy,\n\n                \"As thick and numberless\n  As the gay motes that _people_ the sunbeams.\"\n\nPut _shine in_ the sunbeams, for _people_, and, notwithstanding the\nluminousness of the word substituted, you take the sparkle out of the\nline, which sparkle is imparted by mental activity, and the poetic\ndash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies.\n\nThe poetical is the flush on the face of things in the\nunconscious triumph of their purest life, cognizable by being beheld\nat the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest flood,\nbuoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy. The most and the\nhighest of this joy is possessed by him whose imagination is most\ncapable of being poetically agitated; for by such agitation light is\nengendered within him, whereby objects and sensations that before were\ndim and opaque grow luminous and pellucid, like great statuary in\ntwilight or moonlight, standing vague and unvalued until a torch is\nwaved over it.\n\nWhen we begin to speak of poetry, the higher qualities of the mind\ncome up for judgment. No genuine poet is without one or more of these,\nand a great poet must have most of them. Thence the thought of the\npoet is pitched on a high key, and even in poets of power the poetry\nof a page is sometimes shown merely by the sustained tone of the\nsentiment, giving out no jets of fire, having no passages salient with\ngolden embossings. Through sympathy and sense of beauty, the poet gets\nnearer to the absolute nature of things; and thence, with little of\nimagery, or coloring, or passion, through this holy influence\nhe becomes poetic, depicting by re-creating the object or feeling or\ncondition, and rising naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences, the\nbest substance asking for, and readily obtaining, the most suitable\nform of words. Yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page\nwithout there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer\nmelody.\n\nBut men wanting this inward wealth, that is, wanting depth and breadth\nof emotional capacity, have not, whatever their other gifts, the soil\nneeded for highly imaginative poetry. With broad emphasis this\naesthetic law is exemplified in the verse of Voltaire, especially in\nhis dramas, and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he\nas thinker and critic, of Lessing. Skillful versifiers, by help of\nfancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture, are\nenabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a\ntemporary reputation. But of such uninspired workmanship the gilding\nafter a while wears off, the externally imparted perfume surely\nevaporates.\n\nOften the most suitable form of words is made of plainest, commonest\nparts of speech, and the fewest of them. The more intense and deep\nthe feeling, the greater is the need of briefest, simplest\nutterance. When in one of those pauses of frantic wrath,--like the\nsudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a whirling\ncanopy of storm,--Lear utters imploringly that appeal to Heaven, the\nwords are the familiar words of hourly use; but what divine tenderness\nand what sweep of power in three lines!\n\n                                \"O heavens,\n  If you do love old men, if your sweet sway\n  Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,\n  Make it your cause; send down and take my part!\"\n\nThe thirty-third canto of the \"Inferno\" supremely exemplifies the\nsustaining energy of poetic imagination, that by its sublimating light\nit can forever hold before the mind, in tearful, irresistible beauty,\none of the most woful forms of human suffering, death by starvation.\nIn that terrific picture, in front of which all the generations of men\nthat come after Dante are to weep purifying tears, the most exquisite\nstroke is given in five monosyllables; but in those five little words\nwhat depth of pathos, what concentration of meaning! On the fourth day\none of Ugolino's dying sons throws himself at his father's feet,\ncrying,--\n\n  \"Father, why dost not help me?\"\n\nHere let me remark that it is not by witnessing, through\npoetically imaginative representation, scenes of suffering and agony,\nas in this case and the tragic drama, that the sensibilities are\n\"purged,\" according to the famous saying of Aristotle; but it is\nbecause such scenes are witnessed by the light of the beautiful. The\nbeautiful always purifies and exalts.\n\nIn either of these two passages any piling up of words, any hyperbole\nof phrase, or boldness or even grandeur of figurative speech, would\nhave proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the feeling,\nsmothering and not facilitating expression. But when, turned out of\ndoors in \"a wild night,\" by those \"unnatural hags,\" his daughters,\nLear, baring his brow to the storm, invokes the thunder to\n\n  \"Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world,\"\n\nthere is no tenderness, no folding of the sore heart upon itself;\nthere is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty wrath of an\noutraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so we have a gush\nof the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous rhythm, the storm in\nLear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the\nelements, the sublime tumult above echoed in the crashing splendor of\nthe verse:--\n\n  \"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!\n  You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout\n  Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!\n  You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,\n  Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts,\n  Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,\n  Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!\n  Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once,\n  That make ingrateful man!\"\n\nI know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the\ncolossal dimensions of Shakespeare. Here is attained, with almost\nunique effect, what according to Schiller is the aim of poetry, \"no\nother than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression, its\nmost complete utterance.\"\n\nThe best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper light.\nThe genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of\nemotion. The thought moves free and strong because there is a deep,\nbubbling head of feeling behind it. Feeling, at its best, has an\nascending movement, reaching up towards that high sphere where,\nthrough their conjunction, the earthly and the spiritual play in\nfreedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. The surest test of the\npresence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the\nunion, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. However\nweighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats,\nthus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible.\n\nBut as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength\nand breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, the firmest\nset in reality, in truth. The higher a poet is, the closer hold he has\nof the roots of his subject. He looks at it with a peering, deeply\nsympathetic insight. The roots, in fact, are in himself; they are in\nthe depths of his soul. Hence a cardinal question about a poem is, How\nmuch of it does the poet draw out of himself? Is it his by projection\nfrom his inward resources, by injection with his own juices; or is it\nhis only by adoption and adaptation, by dress and adjustment?\n\nFlight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have\nbeen feathered in the heart. Loftiness or grandeur of imagination\nthere cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of\nfeeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is\never, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a\nmere tool. Height implies inward depth. The gift to touch the vitals\nof a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the\nsoul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. Compare Wordsworth\nwith Southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts.\n\nPoetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within him\nwill find little in nature or in the world or in Shakespeare. The man\nwho has no music in his soul will hear none at the Conservatoire in\nParis. Wordsworth sees with the inward eye, Southey too exclusively\nwith the outward. The true poet projects visions and rhythms out from\nhis brain, and gazes at and hearkens to them. The degree of the\ntruthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the\nmeasure of his poetic genius and capacity. Only through this intense\ninwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures, and\nmake you see and hear them. What illimitable inward sight must Keats\nhave dwelt in ere, to depict the effect on him of looking into\nChapman's Homer, he could write,--\n\n  \"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,\n    When a new planet swims into his ken;\n  Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes\n    He stared at the Pacific, and all his men\n  Looked at each other with a wild surmise,\n    Silent, upon a peak in Darien.\"\n\nHere is a brilliant example of poetic imagination, the\nintellect urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which\ndelights in the grand, the select, the beautiful.\n\n  \"Silent, upon a peak in Darien.\"\n\nWhat an outlook! What a solemn, mysterious, elevating inward moment it\ncreates in us! To ascend to that peak, to carry the reader thither\nwith him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one who has been--as\nin that choice poem, \"The Prelude,\" Wordsworth, with an electric\nstroke of poetic imagination, says of Newton--\n\n  \"Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.\"\n\nThis vigor of flight in the poet, bearing on his wing the reader, whom\nhe ushers to new, sudden vistas, is a test of poetic genius. Some\npoets never carry you to heights, but rather make you feel while\nreading them as if you were moving through shut-in valleys: their\nverse wants sky. They are not poetically imaginative, are not strung\nfor those leaps which the great poet at times finds it impossible not\nto make. They have more poetic fancy than poetic imagination. Poetic\nfancy is a thin flame kindled deliberately with gathered materials;\npoetic imagination is an intense flash born unexpectedly of\ninternal collisions. Fancy is superficial and comparatively\nshort-sighted; imagination is penetrative and far-sighted, bringing\ntogether things widely sundered, apparently diverse and opposite.\nFancy divides, individualizes; imagination compounds, builds, globes.\nFancy is not so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as\nimagination; is comparatively tame and cold and quiet. Imagination is\nsynthetical. Large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in\nthe greatest poets. At its best it strikes deep into the nature of\nthings, has a celestial quality which invests it with awe. Spenser\nshows great resources of fancy, but little imagination. The arc of\nimagination is in him too near its center. Hence there is no reach in\nhis thoughts. He has no exhaustless depths within. He is not,\nas Coleridge says Shakespeare is, an example of \"endless\nself-reproduction.\" Cowley, says the same great critic, \"is a fanciful\nwriter, Milton an imaginative poet.\"\n\nAs I have already said, the power of imagining, of forming in the mind\nimages, conceptions, is a purely intellectual power, and imagination\nbecomes poetical only when this intellectual power is an agent\nobeying that emotional power which ardently seeks, intensely longs\nfor, the better, the more perfect, the purer, in one word, the\nbeautiful in each province of multiform life. The willing agent,\nintellect, is sent out on excursions of discovery, and unexpectedly\nfalls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling booty.\n\nWriters weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those beaming\nthoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible, like new stars\nwhich, out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky, dart suddenly upon\nthe vision of the heaven-watcher. Such writers deal with the known,\nwith the best commonplace, not the common merely; and under the glance\nof genius the common grows strange and profound.\n\nSome poets, not weak in poetic imagination, yet use it chiefly for\nsecondary purposes, that is, for beautifying the dress, the externals\nof poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth are not\nthoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies itself\nnecessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and\ntheir readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more\nthan thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse,\nchiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth\nsensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a poet so celebrated, in some\nrespects so admirable, as Tennyson. Tennyson's verse is apt to be too\nrichly dressed, too perfumed. The clothing is costlier than the\nthoughts can pay for. Hence at every re-reading of him he parts with\nsome of his strength, so that after three or four repetitions he has\nlittle left for you. From a similar cause this is the case too with\nByron, through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is\nimparted by the animal heat of the man, heightened by poetic tints\nfrom a keen sense of the beautiful. But this is not the case with\nKeats or Shelley or Coleridge or Wordsworth, and of course therefore\nnot with Milton or Shakespeare. All these keep fresh, at every contact\ngiving you strength and losing none. As freely and freshly as the\nsun's beams through a transparent, upspringing Gothic spire, intellect\nand feeling play, ever undimmed, through Shelley's \"Sky-Lark.\" Not so\nthrough Tennyson's \"Dream of Fair Women.\" After a time these\nmellifluous stanzas droop, and cling to the paper: they have not\nenough flame-like motion. The nicest word-choosing will not\nsupply the place of choice in thought, a choice prompted by fresh\nfeeling; nor, where there is no new impulse from the heart, will the\nmost gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation. There can\nbe no freshness of expression without freshness of thought; the\nsparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the heart.\n\nTennyson's poetry has often too much leaf and spray for the branches,\nand too much branch for the trunk, and too much trunk for the roots.\nThere is not living stock enough of thought deeply set in emotion to\nkeep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant. Wordsworth's poetry has for\nthe most part roots deeply hidden.\n\nPoetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to a\nbody. This is the method with even some writers of good gifts and\ndeserved name. Compared with Goethe, who, sensuous as he is, but\nhealthily sensuous, writes always from within outward, Schiller is\nchargeable with this kind of externality. To try to make the fancy do\nthe work of feeling is a vain effort. And so much verse is of the\nmemory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination. Inward\nimpulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched with\ncoldness. Under the inward dominance (supposing always that the\nintellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet mounts\nspringily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends; and\nthus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, a forward and\nupward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject\nthat has a poem in it. In a genuine poem, a work of inspiration and\nnot mainly of art, there is brisk evolution, phase of feeling climbing\nover phase, thought kindled by thought seizing unexpected links of\nassociation. This gives sure note of the presence of the matrix out of\nwhich poetry molds itself, that is, sensibility warm and deep,\npenetrating sympathy. Where evolution and upward movement are not, it\nis a sign that the spring lacks depth and is too much fed by surface\nstreams from without.\n\nThrough a poem should run a thread of emotional thought, strong enough\nto bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention close to\nthe substance. Many a so-called poem is but a string of elaborate\nstanzas, mostly of four lines each, too slightly connected to\ncooperate as members of an organic whole. There is not heat enough in\nthe originating impulse to fuse the parts into unity. There is\ntoo much manufacture and not enough growth. Coleridge says, \"The\ndifference between manufactured poems and works of genius is not less\nthan between an egg and an egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look\nalike.\"\n\nMen without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature, but with enough\nsense of beauty to modulate their thoughts, using with skill the\nfloating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds of\nverse, for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than they\nhave, their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry, rather\nthan poems. In much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed in the\nscoured garments of an ambitious fancy. The remark being made to\nGoethe in his latter days, that scarce one of the younger German poets\nhad given an example of good prose, he rejoined, \"That is very\nnatural; he who would write prose must have something to say; but he\nwho has nothing to say can make verses and rhymes; for one word gives\nthe other, till at last you have before you what in fact is nothing,\nyet looks as though it were something.\" There is much good-looking\nverse which does not fulfill any one of Milton's primary conditions\nfor poetry, being artificial instead of \"simple,\" and having\nneither soul enough to be \"passionate,\" nor body enough to be\n\"sensuous.\" By passionate Milton means imbued with feeling.\n\nThe poetical mood is always a visionary mood; so much so, that even\nwhen the poet is depicting an actual person or scene, he must see it\nwith the imaginative eye, the inward eye, as well as with the outward.\nUnless he does, there is no poetry in the result. A poem is twofold,\npresenting an actuality, and at the same time a tender lucent image\nthereof, like the reflection of a castle, standing on the edge of a\nlake, in the calm deep mirror before it: at one view we see the castle\nand its glistening counterpart. In the best poetry there is vivid\npicture-making: reality is made more visible by being presented as a\nbeautiful show. It is the power to present the beautiful show which\nconstitutes the poet. To conceive a scene or person with such\nliveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to\npaper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader\nbehold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a\nsubtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic\nfaculty. To stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and\nsensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his\nconception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic\nmind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a\nsubject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light;\nthe prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there\nis no room for play of light or motion.\n\nContemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, and\nat the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine poet\nhas in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to;\nand in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch, he\nenkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is current a\ndetestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge allows himself\nto countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure.\nPleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of\nthe Atlantic or from the top of Mount Washington, or the pleasure of\nstanding beside Niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of\nRegulus or Winkelried? Pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to\nthe lighter feelings. \"Let me have the pleasure of taking wine\nwith you.\" A good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets.\nEven enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to\npoetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the\nfeelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and\nthere are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an\nexecution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight\nwhich follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or\nscene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range\nof that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. In the poetical there\nalways is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a subtle,\nblooming spirituality. The end of poetry is not pleasure,--this were\nto speak too grossly,--but refined enjoyment through emotion.\n\nTo him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence,\nthe poetical is everywhere. The beautiful is a kiss which man gives to\nNature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he must first give\nit. Wordsworth says, \"Poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all\nknowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the\ncountenance of all science.\" It might be called the aromatic\nessence of all life.\n\nA poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it into\nform. A drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should be oval,\nwithout angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, graceful\nfrom inward quality and fullness. It may be of a few lines, or of\nhundreds or thousands; but there must be no superfluous line or word.\nA poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation. A poem must be\na spiritual whole; that is, not only with the parts organized into\nproportioned unity, but with the whole and the parts springing out of\nthe idea, the sentiment, form obedient to substance, body to soul, the\nsensuous life to the inward. For enduring, ruddy incarnation, the\nsubject, whether it be incident, scene, sentiment, or action, must\nhave within its core this essential aroma. The poet (and the test of\nhis poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a\ncore) keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him. The\nconception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the\npillar of fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly.\nOtherwise he lags and flags and stumbles. The spring into poetry is on\na flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, but\nrenews, recreates it.\n\nA man's chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep\nbettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is\nthe great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view\nthe noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry\nelevates and refines the feelings. It reveals and strengthens the\nspirituality of our nature. Poetry tunes the mind. Faculty of\nadmiration is one of our super-animal privileges. Poetry purges and\nguides admiration; and the sounder and higher our admirations, the\nmore admirable ourselves become.\n\nThe best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens its\nimaginations. Our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, plans,\nshaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us;\nfor out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their\ncolor. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood.\nThe timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the\nhopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious\npossession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts\nof perfections, be ever yearning for a better and higher, be ever\nbuilding beautiful air-castles, earthy or moral, material or ethereal,\naccording as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature.\nBeckford, of a sensuously poetic nature, having command of vast\nwealth, brought his castle in the air down to the ground, and dazzled\nhis contemporaries with Fonthill Abbey. Not only are Fonthill Abbeys\nand all beautiful buildings achieved through the warm action of the\npoetic faculty, but all improvements are brought about by its virtue.\nOut of this deep, inward, creative power issue all theories and\npractice for the bettering of human conditions. All original founders\nand discoverers are poets: the most poetic French mind I know is that\nof Fourier.\n\nWhen a mind, having the texture and expansibility to become surcharged\nwith magnetic effluence, has moreover that aesthetic gift of rhythmic\nexpression which involves a sense of the beautiful, that is, of the\nhigh and exquisite possibilities of created things,--when such a mind,\nunder the pressure of inward needs, betakes it to embodying in verse\nits imaginations and conceptions, the result is poetry. _Poetry is\nthought so inly warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in\nmusical cadence._ And when we consider that thought is the gathering\nof loose intellectual activity into a fast focus; that creative\nsensibility is human feeling refined of its dross, stilled of its\ntumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful; that musical cadence is\nheard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some\nsound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine\npoem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind,\nand involves in its production a beatific visionariness.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nSTYLE.\n\n\nThought, act, and speech are of one substance. Where the best things\nhave been done, the best things have been said. The history of Attica\nis richer and more significant than that of her sister-states of old\nGreece, and among them her literature is supreme. So of England in\nmodern Europe. And where good thoughts have been uttered the form of\nthose will be finest which carry the choicest life. The tree gets its\ntexture from the quality of its sap. Were I asked what author is the\nmost profitable to the student of English on account of style, I\nshould answer, study Shakespeare.\n\nHave something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words, were a\ngood recipe for style. In this brief precept there are more\ningredients than at first view appear. To have something to say\nimplies that a man must write out of himself, and not chiefly out of\nhis memory; and so to write involves much more than many people\nare aware of; in order that his style have freshness, which is a\nprimary need of a good style, the writer's thought must be fresh.\nThen, to say his thought in the best and fewest words implies faculty\nof choice in words, and faculty of getting rid of all verbal\nsuperfluity; and these two faculties betoken proficiencies and some of\nthe finer aesthetic forces.\n\nStyle itself is a gift (or more properly an issue of several gifts),\nnot an acquisition; it cannot be taught. As to teaching style to one\nwith inharmonious or defective natural powers, you might as well\nattempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the nightingale. To be\nsure, like the poetical, or the scientific, or any mental gift, it\nrequires culture. But style is little helped from without. The most,\nas to the form of his utterance, that a writer can get from\nothers--whether through study of the best masters or through direct\nrhetorical instruction--is in the mechanical portion of the art; that\nis, how to put sentences together according to relation of clauses,\nhow by position of words and phrases to avoid obscurity and\nawkwardness, and thus make most presentable and accessible what he has\nto give out. Even in these superficial lessons success imports\nsomething more than a superficial capacity. These lessons learnt, and\nyou have still to go behind them for style, whose cradle is within\nyou. _Le style c'est l'homme meme_ (a man's style is his very self),\nis the oft-quoted profound sentence of Buffon. Style comes out of the\ninterior: beneath a genuinely good style are secret springs which give\nto the surface its movement and sparkle. Mostly when people talk of\nstyle 't is of the surface; they think not of the depths beneath. In\npopularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs\nbeneath; in Tom Moore's, for example, or Southey's.\n\nNevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than others\nin presenting agreeably what they have to say, in gracefully shaping\ntheir utterances; they are better endowed with some of the plastic\nfaculties; they have what Sainte-Beuve calls the genius of style. Tact\nand craft enable them to make themselves more readable than some other\nwriters of more substance; still, they are only capable of so doing by\nmeans of qualities which, however secondary, are interior and fervent,\nand the skill imparted by which cannot be acquired except through the\npresence of these qualities. This superiority of skill in form\nis illustrated by the literature of France in comparison with the\nliterature of Germany, and even with that of England. The French\nfollow a precept thus embodied by Beranger: \"Perfection of style\nshould be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse\nuseful thoughts. Style, which is only the form appropriated to a\nsubject by art and reflection, is the passport of which every thought\nhas need in order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people's\nbrains. To neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas\none wishes to make others adopt.\" And so effective is the following of\nsuch a precept that, through careful devices and manipulating\ncleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is achieved by some\nwriters who range lightly over surfaces, their thoughts dipping no\ndeeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water, which it\nkeeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact,\nuntil, its force being soon spent, it disappears and is seen no more.\n\nThe possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for\nwriting, gifts which, with reference to the great primary powers of\nthe mind, are secondary. Sainte-Beuve says of the Abbe Gerbet\nthat he \"had naturally the flowers of speech, movement and rhythm of\nphrase, measure and choice of expression, even figurative language,\nwhat, in short, makes a talent for writing.\" The possessor of these\nqualifications may, nevertheless, rise only a little above mediocrity.\nOf the styles of many, even clever, accomplished writers, one gets a\nclear notion from the remark made of a certain polished actress, that\nshe always played well, never better.\n\nWhen Sainte-Beuve says _Rien ne vit que par le style_, he asserts in\nfact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give permanence to\nliterary work; for nothing but an interior source can give life to\nexpression. The inward flow will shape itself adequately and\nharmoniously in proportion as it has at full command the auxiliary,\nwhat I have called the plastic literary qualities; but shape itself it\nwill, effectively and with living force, without the fullest command,\nwhile the readiest mastery over these qualities can never give\nvitality to style when are wanting primary resources. Literary\nsubstance which does not shape itself successfully (it may not be with\nthe fullest success) is internally defective, is insufficient;\nfor if it throb with life, it will mold a form for its embodiment,\nalbeit that form, from lack of complete command of the secondary\nagents, will not be so graceful or rich as with such command it would\nhave been. Wordsworth has made to English literature a permanent\naddition which is of the highest worth, in spite of notable plastic\ndeficiencies. A conception that has a soul in it will find itself a\nbody, and if not a literary body, one furnished by some other of the\nfine arts; or, wanting that, in practical enterprise or invention. And\nthe body or form will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the\nman. Style issues from within, and if it does not, it is not style,\nbut manner. Words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings\nbehind them. They are necessary media, created, molded, and combined\nby mental wants. Picking and polishing words and phrases is\nineffectual without the picking and polishing of the thoughts: below\nthe surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style. And\nthen between the substance, the mental material, and the executive\nfaculties there must be lively harmony. The executive power is a\npurely intellectual composite instrument; the force that\nwields it is feeling. For the best style the wielding force must be\nfine as well as rich and strong, and the shaping, harmonizing\ninstrument of superfine temper and smiling willingness.\n\nStyle, in writing, is the art of putting into words what you think or\nfeel, in such a way as to make the best of it--presupposed, that what\nyou think or feel is worth putting into printed words. There are men\nwho, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong\nunderstanding and culture, much to say that will profit their\ncontemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity,\nwill, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in\nmost cases of audacity, and who by discipline and labor attain to a\nstyle which for their purposes is effective. Of this class Jeffrey,\nBrougham, Macaulay are conspicuous examples. Theirs are not winged\nminds. They keep to the plane of commonplace; they are never rapt into\nan upper sphere of thought, where sentences grow transparent,\nilluminated by soulful revelations. All three lack subtlety, the finer\ninsight, a penetrating perception. The style of such men, even when\nmost vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by\nimaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not by\nfreshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius,\ncreativeness. It is related that after several of Carlyle's papers had\nappeared in the \"Edinburgh Review,\" Brougham, one of its founders and\ncontrollers, protested that if that man were permitted to write any\nmore he should cease to be a contributor. And so the pages of the\nReview were closed against the best writer it ever had. This arbitrary\nproceeding of Brougham is to be mainly accounted for as betraying the\ninstinct of creeping talent in the presence of soaring genius.\n\nNot less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate style;\nnay, from the copiousness and variousness of their material, and from\nits very inwardness, the molds into which it is to be thrown need the\nfinest care. Coleridge, rich and incomparable as he is, would have\nmade many of his prose pages still more effective by a studious\nsupervision; and De Quincey tells us what labor his periods sometimes\ncost him. The following advice, given in a letter from Maurice de\nGuerin to his sister, may be addressed to all literary aspirants:\n\"Form for yourself a style which shall be the expression of\nyourself. Study our French language by attentive reading, making it\nyour care to mark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of\nstyle, but without ever adopting the manner of any master. In the\nworks of these masters we must learn our language, but we must use it\neach in our own fashion.\"\n\nOne of the first constituents of a good style is what Coleridge calls\n\"progressive transition,\" which implies a dynamic force, a propulsive\nmovement, behind the pen. Hazlitt, for example, somewhat lacked this\nforce, and hence De Quincey is justified to speak of his solitary\nflashes of thought, his \"brilliancy, seen chiefly in separate\nsplinterings of phrase or image, which throw upon the eye a vitreous\nscintillation for a moment.\" One of the charms, in a high sense, of\nColeridge's page is that in him this dynamic force was present in\nliveliest action. His intellect, ever enkindled by his emotions,\nexacted logical sequence, and thus a rapid forward movement is\noverspread by a glow of generous feeling, which, being refined by his\npoetic sensibility made his style luminous and flowing.\n\nDe Quincey, treating of aphoristic writing, says, \"Any man [he of\ncourse means any man with good things in him] as he walks\nthrough the streets may contrive to jot down an independent thought, a\nshort-hand memorandum of a great truth; but the labor of composition\nbegins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a\nloom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to connect, to introduce\nthem; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close.\"\nBuffon attached the greatest importance to sequence, to close\ndependence, to continuous enchainment. He detested a chopped, jerky\nstyle, that into which the French are prone to fall. Certain it is,\nand from obvious causes, that much of the secret of style lies in\naptness of sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible\nimpulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place\npromptly, because naturally and necessarily. Through fusion and close\ncoherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. The\ngrace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends\nmuch, nay primarily, on the joints. So with the body of a good\nwriter's thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. To the linking of\nsentences and paragraphs (the links being self-wrought out of inward\nsap) is due much of the buoyancy and force of style. The\nspringiness of the joints depends, in the body, on the quality of its\nnervous life; in style, much on the marrow and validity of the\nthoughts. By a sprightly stream of thought, fed from a full spring of\nfeeling, the current of words is kept lively and graceful. Words,\nsentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, symmetrically,\nattractively together, without the unction invisibly distilled from\nbrisk mental movement, movement starting from sentiment fresh and\ntrue. Soul is the source of style. Not sensibility alone is a\nprerequisite for style: the sensibility must be _active_, made active\nby the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best. A good style\nwill have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within, not the\ngloss of outward rubbing.\n\nThat style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated\nought to be self-evident. In every page of \"The Merry Wives of\nWindsor\" we recognize Shakespeare not less palpably than in \"King\nLear.\" In his \"Recollections of Charles Lamb\" De Quincey writes, \"Far\nbe it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow\na sensibility--who imagine that a simple (that is, according to many\ntastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for\ninstance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian style--is _unconditionally_\ngood. Not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style,\ntranscending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite\ndegrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the\nrhythmical, the continuous--what in French is called the\n_soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ\nto a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its\nsubject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a\ncorresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare.\"\n\nI quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as\nwell as more copiously, on style than any writer I know. To this\npoint,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down\nwith clearness and truth the law which should here govern. In a paper\non Schlosser's \"Literary History of the Eighteenth Century\" he\nreaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the\ncommon opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of\nexcellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on\nwhich Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage:\n\"That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the\npleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for\nsaying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz.,\npoetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably\nregarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper\nsubject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter\nwhat the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had\nbeen required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal\napostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's\n'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural\nsections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have\nhappened? Are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor\nbald Jonathan would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a\nforlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if\nsuddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of\nBelshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords.\"\n\nThat no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high\nexcellence ought to be a truism. Through a certain equilibrium among\nhis faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may\nexcel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is all.\nFrom the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings lying just\nbelow the surface, there can be no strong lights and shadows, no\nsplendid play in the exposition, styles range, with the men who make\nthem, through all degrees of liveliness and significance and power, up\nto that simple grandeur which conceals a vast volume of thought, and\nimplies a divine ruling of multiplicity.\n\nIn a good style, on whatever degree it stands, there must be a full\nmarriage between word and thought, so clean an adjustment of\nexpression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes. The words\nmust not be too big or too shiny for the thought; they must not stand\nout from the texture, embossing, as it were, the matter. A style can\nhardly be too nervous; it can be too muscular, as, for example, was\nsometimes that of Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting.\n\nA primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the writer be\none; that is, that the man have a personal feeling for, a free\nsympathy with, the theme the writer has taken in hand; his\nsubject must be fitted to him, and he to his subject. That he be\nsincere is not enough; he must be cordial; then he will be magnetic,\nattractive. You must love your work to do it well.\n\nA good style is a stream, and a lively stream: it flows ever onward\nactively. The worst vice a style can have is languor. With some\nwriters a full stop is a double full stop: the reader does not get\nforward. Much writing consists of little more than sluggish eddies. In\nmany minds there is not leap enough for a style. Excellence in style\ndemands three vivacities, and rather exacting ones, for they involve a\nsomewhat rare mental apportionment; the vivacities of healthy and\npoetic feeling, of intellectual nimbleness, and of inviolable\nsequence.\n\nWriters there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine\nof phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened\nby its molds. Thence mechanical turns and forms, which cause numbness,\neven when there is a current of intellectual activity. Writers most\nliable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to\nset opinions and systems, who therefore cease to grow,--a sad\ncondition for man or writer.\n\nHypocrites in writing, as in talking and doing, end badly. A\nwriter who through his style aims to seem better or other than himself\nis soon found out. The desire so to seem argues a literary incapacity;\nit looks as though the very self--which will shine through the\nstyle--lacked confidence in its own substance. And after all, in\nwriting as in doing and talking, a man must be himself, will be\nhimself in spite of himself. One cannot put on his neighbor's style\nany more than he can put on his neighbor's limbs.\n\nNot only has prose its melody as well as verse, but there is no\n_style_ unless sentences are pervaded, I might say animated, by\nrhythm; lacking appropriate movement, they are inelastic, inert,\ndrowsy. Rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it. The best style will\nhave a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of thought\nin the deep ocean of sentiment. Without some music in them sentences\nwere torpid, impracticable. To put thoughts and words so together that\nthere shall be a charm in the presentation of them, there needs a\nlively harmony among certain faculties, a rhythm in the mind. Hence\nCicero said that to write prose well, one must be able to write verse.\nThe utterance of music in song or tune, in artful melody or choral\nharmony, is but the consummation of a power which is ever a sweetener\nin life's healthily active exhibitions, the power of sound. Nature is\nalive with music. In the fields, in the air, sound is a token of life.\nOn high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes\nin great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a\nbroad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray\nclad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of\nbees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from\nunseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing,\nunseen, and ever rhythmical.\n\nThe heartier and deeper the thought, the more melody will there be in\nits fit expression, and thence the higher range of style is only\nreached by poets, or by men who, though poetically minded, yet lack\n\"the accomplishment of verse.\" The sudden electric injection of light\ninto a thought or object or sentiment--in this consists the gift\npoetical, a gift which implies a sensibility so keen and select as to\nkindle the light, and an intellect fine and firm enough to hold and\ntransmit it. A writer in whom there is no poetic feeling can hardly\nrise to a style. Whoever has tried to read a play of Scribe will\nunderstand from this why Sainte-Beuve affirms of him that he is\nutterly devoid of the faculty of style (_denue de la faculte du\nstyle_). Contrast with Scribe his fellow-countryman, the great\nMoliere. Thence, Joubert says, \"Many of our poets having written in\nprose, ordinary style has received from them a brilliancy and\naudacities which it would not have had without them. Perhaps, too,\nsome prose writers, who were born poets without being born versifiers,\nhave contributed to adorn our language, even in its familiarities,\nwith those riches and that pomp which until then had been the\nexclusive property of the poetic idiom.\"\n\nA man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to the\nbetter, an ear that craves the musical, a soul that is uneasy in\npresence of the defective or the incomplete. This endowment implies a\nmind not only susceptible of the higher and finer movements of\nthought, but which eagerly demands them, and which thus makes the\nwriter exacting towards himself. Hence only he attains to a genuine\ncorrectness; he was correct by instinct before he was so by\ndiscipline. In the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and\nproportion. Within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought\nand its worded envelope to warm convexity. Only he has the fine tact\nand discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. The\nbest style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it\nshows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and\nplastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor. Goethe says that\nonly poets and artists have method, because they require to see a\nthing before them in a completed, rounded form. Writing is a fine art,\nand one of the finest; and he who would be a master in this art must\nunite genial gifts with conscientious culture.\n\nOf style the highest examples, therefore, are to be found in the verse\nof the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure, agile\nintellect their willing Ariel; and no prose writer gets to be a master\nin style but through kindred endowment. The compact, symmetrical\ncombination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with talent, demanded\nfor the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, this he need not\nhave; but his perceptions must be brightened by the light\nwhose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more perfect in form,\ndeed, and sentiment, and his best thoughts suffused with that\nfragrance whose only source is the ravishment of the beautiful.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nDANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS.[5]\n\n    [5] Putnam's Magazine, 1868.\n\n\n\"Ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern epic.\" So said\nCharles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class.\nFox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as\nevidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the\nepopee. The term \"machinery\" implies ignorance of the import of the\nsuper-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism\nand a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could write\nan epic, with or without the \"machinery.\" Such acceptance would\nbetoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want\nof faith in the invisible supervisive energies.\n\nA genuine epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth\nand height and breadth, narrating long-prepared ruin or foundation of\na race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the\nmethod of the divine intervention in the momentous work. The epic\npoet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together\nwith such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to interpret\nand incarnate the celestial cooperation. There are people, and some of\nthem even poets, whose consciousness is so smothered behind the\nsenses, that they come short of belief in spiritual potency. They are\nwhat, with felicity of phrase, Mr. Matthew Arnold calls--\n\n  \"Light half-believers in our casual creeds.\"\n\nHomer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible, active\npresence on the earth of the god Mars, and the archangel Raphael. Had\nthey not, there would have been no \"Iliad,\" no \"Paradise Lost.\"\n\nDante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and\nan imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine\njudgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired vision\nthrough hell, and purgatory, and heaven. In his large, hot heart, he\nlodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought\nthem into immortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of\nChristendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of\nItaly, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology and philosophy of\nhis time, fantastic, unfashioned--all this was his material. But all\nthis, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame.\nThe true material of a poem is the poet's own nature and thoughts, his\nsentiment and his; judgment, his opinions, aspirations, imaginations,\nhis veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him.\n\nThan imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which\nwere so much the vogue with the religious writers of the day,--and\nliterature then was chiefly, almost exclusively, religious,--no more\nbroad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all\npoets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and possessed,\nmoreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong, glowing themes for\nits play. The present teeming world to be transfigured into the world\nto come, and the solicitation and temptation to do this brought to a\nmanly, powerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a\nstirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian\nscene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of\nItalian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict;\nand that breast throbbing with the fiery passions of republican Italy,\nwhile behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to\ntune the wide, variegated cacophony. Proud, passionate, and baffled,\nthe man Dante deeply swayed the poet. Much of his verse is directly\nwoven out of his indignations and burning personal griefs. At times,\ncontemporaneous history tyrannized over him.\n\nDante's high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, the noble\ncharacter and warm individuality of the man, with the pathos of his\npersonal story, the full, lively transcript he hands down of the\ntheology and philosophy of his age, his native literary force as\nmolder of the Italian language, his being the bold, adventurous\ninitiator, the august father of modern poetry--all this has combined\nto keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six\ncenturies. But even all this would not have made him one of the three\nor four world-poets, would not have won for him the wreath of\nuniversal European translation. What gave his rare qualities their\nmost advantageous field, not merely for the display of their peculiar\nsuperiorities, but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet, was that\nhe is the historian of hell, purgatory, and heaven--of the world to\ncome such as it was pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured\nmore or less ever since--the word-painter of that visionary, awful\nhereafter, the thought of which has ever been a spell.\n\nThose imaginations as to future being--to the Middle Ages so vivid as\nto become soul-realities--Dante, with his transcendent pictorial\nmastership, clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of\npopular speech, stamping them with his glittering imperial\nsuperscription. Imaginations! there are imaginations of the future,\nthe reverse of poetical. Hunger will give you tormenting imaginations\nof breakfasts and dinners; avarice enlivens some minds with pictures\nof gains that are to be. But imaginations of the life beyond the\ngrave, these we cannot entertain without spirituality. The having them\nwith any urgency and persistence implies strong spiritual\nprepossessions: men must be self-possessed with their higher self,\nwith their spirit. The very attempt to figure your disembodied state\nis an attempt poetical. To succeed with any distinctness denotes some\npower of creative projection: without wings, this domain cannot be\nentered. In Dante's time these attempts were common. Through his\npreeminent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, the\nfaculty of sympathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a great, a\nunique success.\n\nTo accompany Dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial world,\nwould seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of imagination.\nBut Dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal in his pictures,\nputs such a pulse into his figures, that the artistic illusion\nwherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather overborne by, an\nillusion of the reality of what is represented. Yet from the opening\nof the first canto he is ever in the super-earthly world, and every\nline of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a super-earthly, that\nis, a poetic atmosphere, which lightens it, transfigures it, floats\nit. One reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every\nscene is trans-terrestrial; and, at the same time, every scene is\npresented with a physical realism, a visual and audible vividness,\nwhich captivates and holds the perceptive faculty; so that the reader\nfinds himself grasped, as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is\nmortised on one side in the senses, and on the other in the spiritual\nimagination.\n\nDante had it in him,--this hell, purgatory, and heaven--so full and\nwarm and large was his nature. Within his own breast he had felt, with\nthe keen intensity of the poetic temperament, the loves and hates, the\ngriefs and delights of life. Through his wealth of heart he had a\nfellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and,\nadded to this, an artist's will and want to reproduce them, and _to_\nreproduce them a clear, outwelling, intellectual vivacity. He need\nscarcely have told us that his poem, though treating of spirits,\nrelates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. He chose a\ntheme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to\nhimself a boundless scope. His field was all past history, around the\naltitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of\nfamous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty criminals; and,\nalong with this, contemporaneous Florentine and Italian history, with\nits tumults and vicissitudes, its biographies and personalities, its\nwraths and triumphs.\n\nDante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions; but,\nbesides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of\ninventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty. It is the\nnecessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. In this facility and\nabundance Goldsmith could not have coped with James and Bulwer; and\nyet the \"Vicar of Wakefield\" (not to go so high as \"Tristram Shandy\"\nand \"Don Quixote\") is worth all their hundred volumes of tales put\ntogether. What insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement,\nand breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception,\ndoes the framework of incident support and display? That is the\naesthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this material\ninventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of event and\nsensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build.\nThe invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions\nof the \"Inferno\" and \"Purgatorio\" and \"Paradiso,\" is not admirable for\ntheir mere exuberance and diversity,--for that might have come from a\ncomparatively prosaic mind, especially when fed, as all minds then\nwere, with the passionate mediaeval beliefs,--but for the heart there\nis in them, throbbing deeply in some, and for the human sympathy, and\nthence, in part, the photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift\npoetically to portray. A consequence of the choice of subject, and, as\nregards the epic quality of Dante's poem, an important consequence, is\nthat there is in it no unity of interest. The sympathies of the reader\nare not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting and\nreacting on one another through the whole sweep of the invention.\nInstead of this, we have a long series of unconnected pictures, each\none awakening a new interest. Hereby the mind is distracted, the\nattention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure\nor group. We pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits,\nclassed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and\nseparated by the projection of as many different frames. We are on a\nweird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however\nattractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. We go from person to\nperson, from scene to scene; so that at the end of the journey,\nalthough the perception has been richly crowded, one impression has\neffaced the other. Not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every\nlimb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architecturally\nreared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great\nunity, the \"Divina Commedia,\" as an organic, artistic whole, is\ninferior to the \"Iliad\" and \"Paradise Lost,\" and to the Grecian and\nShakespearean tragedies.\n\nThe exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages, and,\nwith this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep Dante close to his\npage--fastened to it, we might say, by a twofold fascination. Among\nthe many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task, most\nactive is that of form. Goethe says of him, \"The great intellectual\nand moral qualities of Dante being universally acknowledged, we shall\nbe furthered in a right estimate of his works, if we keep in view that\njust in his life-time--Giotto being his contemporary--was the re-birth\nof plastic art in all its natural strength. By this sensuous,\nform-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and deeply, Dante,\ntoo, was largely swayed. With the eye of his imagination he seized\nobjects so distinctly that he could reproduce them in sharp outline.\nThence we see before us the most abstruse and unusual, drawn, as it\nwere, after nature.\" In recognition of the same characteristic,\nColeridge says, \"In picturesqueness Dante is beyond all other poets,\nancient or modern, and more in the stern style of Pindar than of any\nother. Michael Angelo is said to have made a design for every page of\nthe 'Divina Commedia.'\"\n\nDante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his\nstrongest side: he is preeminently a poet of form. In his mind and in\nhis work there is a southern, an Italian, sensuousness. He is a poet\nof thought, but more a poet of molds; he is a poet of sentiment, but\nmore a poet of pictures. Rising readily to generalization, still his\nintellect is more specific than generic. His subject--chosen by the\nconcurrence of his aesthetic, moral, and intellectual needs--admits\nof, nay, demands portraits, isolated sketches, unconnected\ndelineations. The personages of his poem are independent one of the\nother, and are thence the more easily drawn. Nor does Dante abound in\ntransferable passages, sentences of universal application, from being\nsaturated with the perfumed essence of humanity. We say it with\ndiffidence, but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance,\nmore idealized fidelity, in Milton; more significance and wisdom and\nprofound hint in Goethe. In Milton the mental reverberation is wider:\nhe rivets us through distant grand association, by great suggestion.\nThus, describing the darkened head of Satan, Milton says,--\n\n          \"As when the sun new risen\n  Looks through the horizontal misty air,\n  Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon,\n  In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds\n  On half the nations,\"\n\nSetting aside the epithets \"horizontal\" and \"disastrous,\" which are\npoetically imaginative, the likening of Satan to the sun seen through\na mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us\nto see Satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediate,--not\ninvolving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely\nbetween physical, not between subtle, relations,--that Dante chiefly\ndeals, showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet,\nbut different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination.\nThe mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the\nintellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with\naspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the\nutmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or\nimage which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the\nreader a new delight. Of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, there\nis a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton concludes the\npassage--\n\n      \"and with fear of change\n  Perplexes monarchs.\"\n\nThis fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to inspire;\nthis gives its greatness to the passage.\n\nDante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to\nthe reader's senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher\nimaginative capacity. In the whole \"Inferno,\" is there a sentence so\naglow as this line and a half of \"Paradise Lost\"?\n\n      \"And the torrid clime\n  Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.\"\n\nOr is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of\nMilton's demon-host--\n\n      \"That tore Hell's concave, and beyond\n  Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night\"?\n\nHere the unity of his theme stands Milton in stead for grandeur and\nbreadth.\n\nDante is copious in similes. Such copiousness by no means proves\npoetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes\nthan one inferior to him. Wordsworth has much less of this command\nthan Moore. But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often\nto put of his best into them, for they are captivating instruments and\nfacilities for poetic expansion. When a poet is in warm sympathy with\nthe divine doings, there will be at times a flashing fitness in his\nsimilitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition.\nIn citing some of the most prominent in the \"Divina Commedia,\" we at\nonce give brief samples of Dante and of the craft of his three latest\ntranslators, using the version of Dr. Parsons for extracts from the\n\"Inferno,\" that of Mr. Dayman for those from the \"Purgatorio,\" and\nthat of Mr. Longfellow for those from the \"Paradiso.\"\n\n  \"As well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell,\n    Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent;\n  So to the earth that cruel monster fell,\n    And straightway down to Hell's Fourth Pit he went.\"\n                        _Inferno_: Canto VII.\n\n  \"Swept now amain those turbid waters o'er\n    A tumult of a dread portentous kind,\n  Which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore,\n    Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind;\n  As when, made furious by opposing heats,\n    Wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours,\n  Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats,\n    And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers;\n  Then fly the herds,--the swains to shelter scud.\n    Freeing mine eyes, 'Thy sight,' he said, 'direct\n  O'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood,\n    Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.'\"\n                        _Inferno_: Canto IX.\n\n  \"When, lo! there met us, close beside our track,\n    A troop of spirits. Each amid the band\n  Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by\n    'Neath a new moon; as closely us they scanned,\n  As an old tailor doth a needle's eye.\"\n                        _Inferno_: Canto XV.\n\n  \"And just as frogs that stand, with noses out\n    On a pool's margin, but beneath it hide\n  Their feet and all their bodies but the snout,\n    So stood the sinners there on every side.\"\n                        _Inferno_: Canto XXII.\n\n  \"A cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been\n    Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft,\n  Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin\n    I noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft.\"\n                        _Inferno_: Canto XXVIII.\n\n  \"We tarried yet the ocean's brink upon,\n    Like unto people musing of their way,\n  Whose body lingers when the heart hath gone;\n    And lo! as near the dawning of the day,\n  Down in the west, upon the watery floor,\n    The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array,\n  Even such appeared to me a light that o'er\n    The sea so quickly came, no wing could match\n  Its moving. Be that vision mine once more.\"\n                       _Purgatorio_: Canto II.\n\n  \"And thou, remembering well, with eye that sees\n    The light, wilt know thee like the sickly one\n  That on her bed of down can find no ease,\n    But turns and turns again her ache to shun,\"\n                       _Purgatorio_: Canto VI.\n\n  \"'T was now the hour the longing heart that bends\n     In voyagers, and meltingly doth sway,\n   Who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends;\n     And wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way\n   With poignant love, to hear some distant bell\n     That seems to mourn the dying of the day;\n   When I began to slight the sounds that fell\n     Upon my ear, one risen soul to view,\n   Whose beckoning hand our audience would compel.\"\n                        _Purgatorio_: Canto VIII.\n\n  \"There I the shades see hurrying up to kiss\n     Each with his mate from every part, nor stay,\n   Contenting them with momentary bliss.\n     So one with other, all their swart array\n   Along, do ants encounter snout with snout,\n     So haply probe their fortune and their way.\"\n                        _Purgatorio_: Canto XXVI.\n\n  \"Between two viands, equally removed\n     And tempting, a free man would die of hunger\n   Ere either he could bring unto his teeth.\n     So would a lamb between the ravenings\n   Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike;\n     And so would stand a dog between two does.\n   Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not,\n     Impelled in equal measure by my doubts,\n   Since it must be so, nor do I commend.\"\n                          _Paradiso_: Canto IV.\n\n  \"And as a lute and harp, accordant strung\n     With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make\n   To him by whom the notes are not distinguished,\n     So from the lights that there to me appeared\n  Upgathered through the cross a melody,\n    Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn.\"\n                          _Paradiso_: Canto XIV.\n\n  \"As through the pure and tranquil evening air\n    There shoots from time to time a sudden fire,\n  Moving the eyes that steadfast were before,\n    And seems to be a star that changeth place,\n  Except that in the part where it is kindled\n    Nothing is missed, and this endureth little;\n  So from the horn that to the right extends\n    Unto that cross's foot there ran a star\n  Out of the constellation shining there.\"\n                          _Paradiso_: Canto XV.\n\n  \"Even as remaineth splendid and serene\n    The hemisphere of air, when Boreas\n  Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,\n    Because is purified and resolved the rack\n  That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs\n    With all the beauties of its pageantry;\n  Thus did I likewise, after that my lady\n    Had me provided with a clear response,\n  And like a star in Heaven the truth was seen.\"\n                          _Paradiso_: Canto XXVIII.\n\nThe first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is, Is\nit poetical? Is there, as effect of its introduction, any heightening\nof the reader's mood, any cleansing of his vision, any clarification\nof the medium through which he is looking? Is there a sudden play of\nlight that warms, and, through this warmth, illuminates the\nobject before him? Few of those just quoted, put to such test, could\nbe called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a\nsolecism. To illustrate one sensuous object by another does not\nanimate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions.\nSuch similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is\nthrough them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. They\nmay help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not\nmake the feeling a party to the movement. When this is done,--as in\nthe examples from Canto XV. of the \"Inferno,\" and Canto VIII. of the\n\"Purgatorio,\"--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture!\n\nBut in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright\nas in the best of Shakespeare's. As one instance out of many: towards\nthe end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after enumerating the\nemblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king continues,--\n\n  \"No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,\n  Not all these, laid in bed majestical,\n  Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave;\n  Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,\n  Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;\n  Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;\n  But, like a lackey, from the rise to set,\n  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night\n  Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,\n  Doth rise _and help Hyperion to his horse_\"\n\nWhat a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so\nfresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its suggestion of beauty\nand healthfulness! Then the far-reaching, transfiguring imagination,\nthat, in a twinkle, transmutes into the squire of Hyperion a stolid\nrustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is\nby this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with\nbrilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures,\ndenoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel\nafter Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying\nmore and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming\nfullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws a\nfarther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dante's\npage glisten, as Shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or\ncompressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual\nsphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the\nweb of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the\nsurface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a\ncircuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up\nfrom the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a\nsign of life, power, and abundance.\n\nLike his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want\nof humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault\n(liberally to interpret Can's conduct) that Dante's host, Can Grande\nof Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets\n(unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were\npredominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their\ntimes, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which\nis the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration\nof Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat,\nonly possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest\nmanifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws\nsuch rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom,\nand, with the fool in \"Lear,\" forces you, like a child, to smile\nthrough warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy\nto tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and\nfollies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough\nto sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful\ndelight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter.\n\nOf pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the\nstory of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and\nawe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to\ntenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single\nfire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is\nto a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a\nhundred flashes.\n\nAll the personages of Dante's poem (unless we regard himself as one)\nare spirits. Shakespeare, throughout his many works, gives only a few\nglimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few\nis the imagination expanded. Clarence's dream, \"lengthened after\nlife,\" in which he passes \"the melancholy flood,\" is almost\nsuper-Dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful\nforetaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the\ngreat ghost in \"Hamlet,\" when you read of him, how shadowy real!\nDante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too\npalpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe.\n\nProfound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding\nthoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, large sensibilities,\nand by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be\nwrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,--of\nthese, which are the test of poetic greatness, Dante, if we may\nventure to say so, has not more or brighter examples than Milton, and\nnot so many as Goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as\nthey do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a\nsingle one of the greater tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the\nthree books of the \"Divina Commedia.\"\n\nJuxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the\nsuperiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any\nother great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so\nhigh as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; what\nthough the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and\nthe taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied\ndomains. The traveler, even if he come directly from wondering\nat Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest\ndelight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher.\n\nBut it is time to speak of Dante in English.\n\n\"It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might\ndiscover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to\ntransfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet.\"\nThus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful \"Defense of\nPoetry.\" But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and\nof Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet?\nAnd can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by\ndeprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer\nthough so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture\nof thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and\nAchilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through\nwhich they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would\nincidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby's Iliad has gone\nthrough many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we\nhave done without them in English? Translations are the\ntelegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in\nother lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from\ntheir words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth\nand wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first launched\nhas lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the\nmessage we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is\nfreighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges,\nbecause on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost\nsomewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we wish to have\nas much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the\npoetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation\nof facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological\nexposition,--a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in verse,\nthat has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made\nto lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth\nevery poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that.\nA prose translation of a poem is an aesthetic impertinence,\nShakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent\nin prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him\nin verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much\ntelling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such\ntouching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even\nin prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic\nsound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were\nthe word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the\ndeflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward\ntranslated the \"Faust\" of Goethe into prose; but let any one compare\nthe Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought\npassages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in\nverse,--with that of Mr. Brooks for example,--to perceive at once the\ninsufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally\nfaithful a prose version. The effect on \"Faust,\" or on any high\npassionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what\nwould be the effect on an exquisite _bas-relief_ of reducing its\nprojection one half by a persevering application of pumice. In all\ngenuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so\ninwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely\ndisregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the\nverse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by\nthe transplanting of it into another soil.\n\nThe translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just\nto take the words and through them attempt passively to render the\npage into his own language. He must brace himself into an active\nstate, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then\ntransport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he\nwould translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. To get\ninto the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the\nwords, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from\nwithout. Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the\noriginal, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. Such\nsurpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original,\nand any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his\nverse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and\nto see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled\nby himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which\nhe had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that\nof his own first inspirations.\n\nA poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity.\n\"Paradise Lost,\" conceived in Milton's brain, could not utter itself\nin any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our\nlanguage a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian\nstanza. What would the \"Fairy Queen\" be in blank verse? For his theme\nand mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which\nenlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new\nelement in verse, a modern aesthetic creation; and it is a help and an\nadded beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it\nbe not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to\nfreedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are\noffensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in\nleaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover\nof words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible\nstrokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse.\n\nThe _terza rima_--already in use--Dante adopted as suitable to\ncontinuous narrative. With his feeling and aesthetic want\nrhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition offering no obstacle,\nItalian being copious in endings of like sound. His measure is iambic,\nfree iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of\neleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. And\nthis weakness is so inherent in Italian speech, that every line even\nof the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of Alfieri ends\nfemininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. In all\nItalian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable,\nmoreover, invariably ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much\nrhyme and too much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect,\nthe eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable.\n\nIn these two prominent features English verse is different from\nItalian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are\nmasculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second characteristic,\nthe comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of\nstrength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first\naspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying\nvariety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and\nendings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants\nfor condensation, vigor, and emphasis.\n\nPrimarily the translator has to consider the resources and\nindividualities of his own tongue. In the case of Dante the rhythmical\nbasis is the same in both languages; for the iambic measure is our\nchief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by Shakespeare and Milton.\nThere only remains, then, rhyme and the division into stanzas. Can the\n_terza rima_, as used by Dante, be called a stanza? The lines are not\nseparated into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly\nto the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the\necho still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our\nSpenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. Whether\nstanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly\nabout the _terza rima_? To us it seems not deserving of admiration\n_for its own sake_; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by\nDante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original\npoems. We are not aware that Dante's example has been followed by any\npoet of note in Italy. _Terza rima_ keeps the attention suspended too\nlong, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to\ncome, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the\nlast rhyme. The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and\nrunning ahead. It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the\nfirst rhymers of an uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great\nsong; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the \"Divina\nCommedia.\"\n\nNow, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,--in\norder to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,--to\npreserve the triple rhyme? Not having in English a corresponding\nnumber of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to\ntranspositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to\ncompass the meaning and the poetry? Place the passages already cited\nfrom Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised\nto see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the Italian\nthought and to English idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His\nharness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so\nskillfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited\nversion in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited\nfrom the \"Inferno,\" or with those from the \"Paradiso,\" in Mr.\nLongfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility\nof Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again\nmanifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the\noriginal and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the\nthree versions, of the latter part of the Francesca story, from Canto\nV. of the \"Inferno:\"--\n\n  \"Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io,\n    E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri\n  A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio.\n    Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri,\n  A che, e come concedette Amore\n    Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?\n  Ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore,\n    Che ricordarsi del tempo felice\n  Nella miseria, e cio sa 'l tuo dottore.\n    Ma se a conoscer la prima radice\n  Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,\n    Faro come colui che piange, e dice.\n  Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto\n    Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse.\n  Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.\n    Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse\n  Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso:\n    Ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse.\n  Qando leggemmo il disiato riso\n    Esser baciato da cotanto amante,\n  Questi, che mai da me non sia diviso,\n    La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante.\n  Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse:\n    Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.\n  Mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse,\n    L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade\n  Io venni meno come s'io morisse,\n    E caddi, come corpo morto cade.\"\n\n\nMr. Dayman:--\n\n  \"Then toward them turned again: 'Thy racking woe,'\n    I said, 'Francesca, wrings from out mine eyes\n  The pious drops that sadden as they flow.\n    But tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs,\n  By whom and how love pitying broke the spell,\n    And in your doubtful longings made too wise.'\n  And she to me: 'No keener pang hath hell,\n    Than to recall, amid some deep distress,\n  Our happier time: thy teacher knows it well.\n    Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess\n  To trace the root from whence our love was bred,\n    His part be mine, who tells and weeps no less.\n  'T was on a day when we for pastime read\n    Of Lancillot, how love snared him to ruin:\n  We were alone, nor knew suspicious dread.\n    Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing\n  Their glance; and from our cheeks the color started;\n    But one sole moment wrought for our undoing:\n  When that we read of lover so kind-hearted\n    Kissing the smile so coveted before,\n  He that from me shall never more be parted\n    Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all o'er.\n  The broker of our vows, it was the lay,\n    And he who wrote--that day we read no more.'\n  The other spirit, while the first did say\n    These words, so moaned, that with soft remorse\n  As death had stricken me, I swooned away,\n    And down I fell, heavily as falls a corse.\"\n\n\nMr. Longfellow:--\n\n  \"Then unto them I turned me, and I spake,\n  And I began: 'Thine agonies, Francesca,\n  Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.\n  But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,\n  By what and in what manner Love conceded\n  That you should know your dubious desires?'\n  And she to me: 'There is no greater sorrow\n  Than to be mindful of the happy time\n  In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.\n  But if to recognize the earliest root\n  Of love in us thou hast so great desire,\n  I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.\n  One day we reading were for our delight\n  Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthrall.\n  Alone we were, and without any fear.\n  Full many a time our eyes together drew\n  That reading, and drove the color from our faces;\n  But one point was it that o'ercame us.\n  Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile\n  Being by such a noble lover kissed,\n  This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided,\n  Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.\n  Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.\n  That day no farther did we read therein.'\n  And all the while one spirit uttered this,\n  The other one did weep so, that, for pity,\n  I swooned away as if I had been dying,\n  And fell even as a dead body falls.\"\n\n\nDr. Parsons:--\n\n  \"Then, turning round to them, I thus began:\n    'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes:\n  My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman;\n    But tell me,--in the time of happy sighs,\n  Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?\"\n    And she to me: \"The mightiest of all woes\n  Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed\n    With bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows.\n  Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head,\n    As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim,\n  So will I speak. Together once we read\n    The tale of Lancelot,--how Love bound him.\n  Alone we were without suspecting aught:\n    Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue,\n  And oft our eyes each other's glances caught;\n    But one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew.\n  At reading of the longed-for smile,--to be\n    By such a lover's kissing so much blest,\n  This dearest--never shalt thou part from me!\n    His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed.\n  The writer was our Galeot with his book:--\n    That day we read no further on.\" She stopped:\n  Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took\n    My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.\n\nObserve that Dr. Parsons has put Dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven\nsyllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without\nlosing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. But why\ndoes he make Francesca address her companion personally, instead of\nsaying, \"who shall never part from me?\" And why does Mr. Dayman say,\n\"pious drops,\" instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill\nup the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there\nany strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them\nLord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage,--\n\n  \"Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse\n    Quella lettura.\"\n\nAll these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read,\ntheir eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over\nmore than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or\npassage drew to it their eyes. To restore the meaning of the original\nadds to the refinement of the scene.\n\nWhy does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as _compassionate_ instead\nof _pitiful_ or _piteous_, _recognize_ for _know_, _palpitating_ for\n_trembling_, _conceded that you should know_ for _gave you to know_?\nBy the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his\npoetic hands. The first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him\nto use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words,\nthat is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to\npoetic expression. Mr. Dayman, not translating line for line, is free\nfrom this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself\nthat every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its\noriginal, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow,\nto throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons,\nwho, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in\nseveral instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than\nthe Italian, and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might with advantage\nhave curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines.\n\nDo what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from without\nthan from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a\nlack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good\noriginal work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so\nfar as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the\ntranslator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full\nswing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr.\nLongfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent on the\nwords; he sacrifices the spirit to the letter; he overlays the poetry\nwith a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a\nbillowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice\npassages. The rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity,\nthis lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in\nthe endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some\npages, have--contrary to all good usage--the superfluous eleventh\nsyllable. Milton never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson\nin epic verse so little pretentious as \"Idyls of the King.\" Nor do\ngood blank-verse translators give in to it. Cowper does not in his\nIliad, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Bryant in his version of the fifth book\nof the Odyssey, nor Mr. Carey in his Dante. Permissible at times in\ndramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a\nweakness. Can it be that Mr. Longfellow hereby aims to be more close\nto the form of Dante? Whatever the cause of its use, the effect is\nstill farther to weaken his translation. These loose poetic\nendings--and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven\nsyllables and on some pages more than a third--do a part in causing\nMr. Longfellow's Dante to lack the clean outline, the tonic ring, the\nchiseled edge of the original, and in making his cantos read as would\nsound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are\nrelaxed.\n\nLooking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a volume\nwhere opposite each English page is the corresponding page of\nthe original, as in Mr. Dayman's, one cannot fail to be struck with\nthe comparative narrowness of the Italian column. This comes of the\ncomparative shortness of Italian syllables. For instance, as the\nstrongest exemplification, the ever-recurring _and_, and the\noften-repeated _is_, are both expressed in Italian by a single letter,\n_e_. And this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines\nof thirty letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to\nfourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have\nabout twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this\ncomparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English can,\nbind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like _friends_\nand _straight_, nor even words of six letters, like _chimed_,\n_shoots_, _thwart_, _spring_; nor does Italian abound as English does\nin monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three\nletters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters,\nas in _fronte_ and _braccia_. As a consequence hereof, Dante's lines,\nalthough always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine\nletters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three.\nHence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the\noriginal; its soul is more cumbered with body.\n\nIn order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving the best\ntranscript, possible in English, of his thought and feeling, should\nnot regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic\nconstitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical\nbasis of the two mediums of utterance? Here is the Francesca story,\ntranslated in the spirit of this suggestion:--\n\n  I turned to them, and then I spake:\n    \"Francesca! tears o'erfill mine eyes,\n  Such pity thy keen pangs awake.\n    But say: in th' hour of sweetest sighs,\n  By what and how found Love relief\n    And broke thy doubtful longing's spell?\"\n  And she: \"There is no greater grief\n    Than joy in sorrow to retell.\n  But if so urgently one seeks\n    To know our Love's first root, I will\n  Do as he does who weeps and speaks.\n    One day of Lancelot we still\n  Read o'er, how love held him enchained.\n    Without mistrust we were alone.\n  Our cheeks oft were of color drained:\n    One passage vanquished us, but one.\n  When we read of lips longed for pressed\n    By such a lover with a kiss,\n  This one whom naught from me shall wrest,\n    All trembling kissed my mouth. To this\n  That book and writer brought us. We\n    No farther read that day.\" While she\n  Thus spake, the other spirit wept\n    So bitterly, with pity I\n  Fell motionless, my senses swept\n    By swoon, as one about to die.\n\nIn the very first line two Italian trisyllables, _rivolsi_ and\n_parlai_, are given in English with literal fidelity by two\nmonosyllables, _turned_ and _spake_. In the fourth observe how, in a\nword-for-word rendering, the eleven Italian syllables become, without\nany forcing, eight English:\n\n  \"Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri:\"\n  \"But tell me: in th' hour of sweet sighs.\"\n\nFor the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly\nmodified. Again, in the line,--\n\n  \"Than joy in sorrow to retell,\"\n\n_joy_ represents, and represents faithfully, three words containing\nsix syllables, _del tempo felice_: _retell_ stands for _ricordarsi_,\nand _in sorrow_ for _nella miseria_, or, three syllables for six; so\nthat, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and complete\ntranslation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English the most\nsimple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of\nDante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the\nfirst fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. Owing to\nthe fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of\nthe two languages, we are enabled to put into English lines of eight\nsyllables the whole meaning of Dante's lines of eleven. In the above\nexperiment even more has been done. The twenty-eight lines of Dante\nare given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each, and this\nwithout any sacrifice of the thought or feeling; for the \"this thy\nteacher knows,\" which is omitted, besides that the commentators cannot\nagree on its meaning, is parenthetical in sense, and with reverence be\nit said, in so far a defect in such a relation. As to the form of\nDante, what is essential in that has been preserved, namely, the\niambic measure and the rhyme.\n\nLet us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful when\napplied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over the\ngate of Hell, at the beginning of the third canto of the \"Inferno\":--\n\n  Through me the path to place of wail:\n    Through me the path to endless sigh:\n  Through me the path to souls in bale.\n    'Twas Justice moved my Maker high:\n  Wisdom supreme, and Might divine,\n    And primal Love established me.\n  Created birth was none ere mine,\n    And I endure eternally:\n  Ye who pass in, all hope resign.\n\n\nHas anything been lost in the transit from Italian words to English?\nEnglish speech being organically more concentrated than Italian, does\nnot the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve\nwhat ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation, namely,\nalong with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original,\nfidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the translator's own\ntongue?\n\nHere is another short passage in a different key,--the opening of the\nlast canto of the \"Paradiso\":--\n\n  Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son,\n    Meek, yet above all things create,\n  Fair aim of the Eternal one,\n    'Tis thou who so our human state\n  Ennobledst, that its Maker deigned\n    Himself his creature's son to be.\n  This flower, in th' endless peace, was gained\n    Through kindling of God's love in thee.\n\nIn this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are converted\ninto eight lines of eight syllables each. We submit it to the candid\nreader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been\nsacrificed to brevity.\n\nThe rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to\nwhich the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for\nthe partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic\nverse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does\nnot feel the want.\n\nOne more short passage of four lines,--the famous figure of the lark\nin the twentieth Canto of the \"Paradiso\":--\n\n  Like lark that through the air careers,\n    First singing, then, silent his heart,\n  Feeds on the sweetness in his ears,\n    Such joy to th' image did impart\n  Th' eternal will.\n\nThis paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but,\nnevertheless, we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer,\nwhile we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty\nlines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that\nterrible tale can dispense, in English, with soft echoes at the end of\nlines.\n\n  When locked I heard the nether door\n  Of the dread tower, I without speech\n  Into my children's faces looked:\n  Nor wept, so inly turned to stone.\n  They wept: and my dear Anselm said,\n  \"Thou look'st so, father, what hast thou?\"\n  Still I nor wept nor answer made\n  That whole day through, nor the next night,\n  Till a new sun rose on the world.\n  As in our doleful prison came\n  A little glimmer, and I saw\n  On faces four my own pale stare,\n  Both of my hands for grief I bit;\n  And they, thinking it was from wish\n  To eat, rose suddenly and said:\n  \"Father, less shall we feel of pain\n  If them wilt eat of us: from thee\n  Came this poor flesh: take it again.\"\n  I calmed me then, not to grieve them.\n  The next two days we spake no word.\n  Oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope?\n  When we had come to the fourth day\n  Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet,\n  Saying, \"Father, why dost not help me?\"\n  There died he; and, as thou seest me,\n  I saw the three fall one by one\n  The fifth and sixth day; then I groped,\n  Now blind, o'er each; and two whole days\n  I called them after they were dead:\n  Then hunger did what grief could not.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nSAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC.\n\n\nA literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal\nof opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, integrity with\nindulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with delicacy, largeness with\nsubtlety, knowledge with geniality, inflexibility with sinuousness,\nseverity with suavity; and, that all these counter qualities be\neffective, he will need constant culture and vigilance, besides the\nunion of reason with warmth, of enthusiasm with self-control, of wit\nwith philosophy,--but hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the\ncritic, human nature will have to set apart its highest and best. Dr.\nJohnson declared, the poet ought to know everything and to have seen\neverything, and the ancients required the like of an orator. Truly,\nthe supreme poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as\ngenerously and completely as is the bust of Homer, ideally shaped by\nthe light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the\nGreeks. The poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the\ncritic is the child of culture. But as the poet, to perfect his\nbirthright, has need of culture, so the man whom culture can shape and\nsharpen to the good critic, must be born with many gifts, to be\nsusceptible of such shaping. And when we reflect that the task of the\ncritic is to see clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind, to\nmeasure its hollows and its elevations, to weigh all its individual\nand its composite powers, and, that from every one of the throbbing\naggregates, whom it is his office to analyze and portray, issue lines\nthat run on all sides into the infinite, we must conclude that he who\nis to be the accomplished interpreter, the trusted judge, should be\nable swiftly to follow these lines.\n\nLong and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a\nveritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications,\nwhich by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal\nallotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M.\nSainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a\nmellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper\naccount, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue--for so it deserves\nto be called--born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those\nin whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the\nprofound, the beautiful and the true. He who is not well endowed with\nthese higher senses is not a bad critic; he is no critic at all. Not\nonly can he not discern the good there is in a man or a work, he can\nas little discover and expose the bad; for, deficiencies implying\nfailures to reach a certain fullness, implying a falling short of the\ncomplete, to say where and what are deficiencies, involves the having\nin the mind an idea of the full and complete. The man so meagrely\nfurnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper, not a critic. To\nknow the bad denotes knowledge of the good; in criticism as in morals,\na righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure feelings.\n\nIn a notice of M. Thiers' chapter on St. Helena, M. Sainte-Beuve,\nafter expressing his admiration of the commentaries of Napoleon on the\ncampaigns of Turenne, Frederic, and Caesar, adds: \"A man of letters\nsmiles at first involuntarily to see Napoleon apply to each of these\nfamous campaigns a methodical criticism, just as we would proceed with\na work of the mind, with an epic or tragic poem. But is not a\ncampaign of a great captain equally a work of genius? Napoleon is here\nthe high sovereign critic, the Goethe in this department, as the\nFeuquieres, the Jominis, the St. Cyrs are the La Harpes or the\nFontanes, the Lessings or the Schlegels, all good and expert critics;\nbut he is the first of all, nor, if you reflect on it, could it have\nbeen otherwise. And who then would say better things of Homer than\nMilton?\"--Goethe supreme in literary criticism, Milton on Homer; this\ntouches the root of the matter; sympathy with the writer and his work\nthe critic must have,--sympathy as one of the sources of good\njudgment, and even of knowledge. You cannot know, and therefore not\njudge of a man or book or thing, unless you have some fellow-feeling\nwith him or it; and to judge well you must have much fellow-feeling.\nThe critic must, moreover, be a thinker; reason is the critic's sun.\nScott and Byron could say just and fresh things about poets and\npoetry; but neither could command the whole field, nor dig deep into\nthe soil. Witness Byron's deliberate exaltation of Pope. Whereas\nWordsworth and Coleridge were among the soundest of critics, because,\nbesides being poets, they were both profound thinkers.\n\nFor the perfecting of the literary critic the especial\nsympathy needed is that with excellence; for high literature is the\noutcome of the best there is in humanity, the finished expression of\nhealthiest aspirations, of choicest thoughts, the ripened fruit of\nnoble, of refined growths, the perfected fruit, with all the perfume\nand beauty of the flower upon it. Of this sympathy M. Sainte-Beuve,\nthroughout his many volumes, gives overflowing evidence, in addition\nto that primary proof of having himself written good poems. Besides\nthe love, he has the instinct, of literature, and this instinct draws\nhim to what is its bloom and fullest manifestation, and his love is\nthe more warm and constant for being discriminative and refined.\nThrough variety of knowledge, with intellectual keenness, he enjoys\nexcellence in the diversified forms that literature assumes. His pages\nabound in illustrations of his versatility, which is nowhere more\nstrikingly exhibited than in the contrast between two successive\npapers (both equally admirable) in the very first volume of the\n\"Causeries du Lundi,\" the one on Madame Recamier, the other on\nNapoleon. Read especially the series of paragraphs beginning, \"Some\nnatures are born pure, and have received _quand meme_ the gift\nof innocence,\" to see how gracefully, subtly, delicately, with what a\nfeminine tenderness, he draws the portrait of this most fascinating of\nwomen, this beautiful creature, for whom grace and sweetness did even\nstill more than beauty, this fairy-queen of France, this refined\ncoquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, this kindly magician,\nwho turned all her lovers into friends. Then pass directly to the next\npaper, on the terrible Corsican, \"who weakened his greatness by the\ngigantic--who loved to astonish--who delighted too much in what was\nhis forte, war,--who was too much a bold adventurer.\" And further on,\nthe account of Napoleon's conversation with Goethe at Weimar, in which\naccount M. Sainte-Beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and\ntruthfulness and penetration of the great German. The impression thus\nmade on the reader as to the variousness of M. Sainte-Beuve's power is\ndeepened by another paper in the same volume, that on M. Guizot and\nhis historic school, a masterly paper, which reasons convincingly\nagainst those historians \"who strain humanity, who make the lesson that\nhistory teaches too direct and stiff, who put themselves in the place\nof Providence,\" which, as is said in another place (vol. v. p.\n150), \"is often but a deification of our own thought.\"\n\nIn a paper published in 1862, M. Sainte-Beuve--who had then, for more\nthan thirty years, been plying zealously and continuously the function\nof critic--describes what is a fundamental feature of his method in\narriving at a judgment on books and authors. \"Literature, literary\nproduction, is in my eyes not distinct, or at least not separable,\nfrom the rest of the man and his organization. I can enjoy a work, but\nit is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the\nman himself; and I readily say, _as is the tree so is the fruit_.\nLiterary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study.\" This, of\ncourse, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but with the\nmoderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the\nman who did it, to get at his primary organization, his interior\nbeginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the best means\nis, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his family, his\npredecessors. \"You are sure to recognize the superior man, in part at\nleast, in his parents, especially in his mother, the most direct and\ncertain of his parents; also in his sisters and his brothers,\neven in his children. In these one discovers important features which,\nfrom being too condensed, too closely joined in the eminent\nindividual, are masked; but whereof the basis, the _fond_, is found in\nothers of his blood in a more naked, a more simple state.\"\n\nHereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional\nconscientiousness M. Sainte-Beuve sets himself to his work of critic.\nPartially applying to himself his method, we discover in part the\ncause of his sympathy for feminine nature, and of his tact in\ndelineating it. His father died before he was born; and thence all\nliving parental influence on him was maternal. None of his volumes is\nmore captivating than his \"Portraits de Femmes,\" a translation of\nwhich we are glad to see announced.\n\nOf Sainte-Beuve's love for excellence there is, in the third volume of\nthe \"Nouveaux Lundis,\" an illustration, eloquently disclosing how deep\nis his sympathy with the most excellent that human kind has known. For\nthe London Exposition of 1862 a magnificent folio of the New Testament\nwas prepared at the Imperial Press of Paris. The critic takes the\noccasion to write a paper on \"Les saints Evangiles,\" especially the\nSermon on the Mount. After quoting and commenting on the Beatitudes,\nhe continues: \"Had there ever before been heard in the world such\naccents, such a love of poverty, of self-divestment, such a hunger and\nthirst for justice, such eagerness to suffer for it, to be cursed of\nmen in behalf of it, such an intrepid confidence in celestial\nrecompense, such a forgiveness of injuries, and not simply forgiveness\nbut a livelier feeling of charity for those who have injured you, who\npersecute and calumniate you, such a form of prayer and of familiar\naddress to the Father who is in heaven? Was there ever before anything\nlike to that, so encouraging, so consoling, in the teaching and the\nprecepts of the sages? Was that not truly a revelation in the midst of\nhuman morals; and if there be joined to it, what cannot be separated\nfrom it, the totality of such a life, spent in doing good, and that\npredication of about three years, crowned by the crucifixion, have we\nnot a right to say that here was a 'new ideal of a soul perfectly\nheroic,' which, under this half Jewish, Galilean form was set before\nall coming generations?\n\n\"Who talks to us of _myth_, of the realization, more or less\ninstinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience reflecting\nitself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly\nexisted. What! do you not feel the reality, the living, vibrating,\nbleeding, compassionate personality, which, independently of\nwhat belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists and throbs behind\nsuch words? What more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth\nof the entirely historic personage, Jesus, than the Sermon on the\nMount?\"\n\nAlluding, then, to the denial of originality in the moral doctrines of\nChristianity, M. Sainte-Beuve, after citing from Socrates, Marcus\nAurelius, and others, passages wherein is recommended \"charity toward\nthe human race,\" declares that all these examples and precepts, all\nthat makes a fine body of social and philosophical morality, is not\nChristianity itself as beheld at its source and in its spirit. \"What\ncharacterizes,\" he proceeds, \"the discourse on the mount and the other\nsayings and parables of Jesus, is not the charity that relates to\nequity and strict justice, to which, with a sound heart and upright\nspirit, one attains; it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to\nsimple reason, it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation, freed\nfrom rule and superior to law, holily improvident, a stranger\nto all calculation, to all positive prevision, unreservedly reliant on\nHim who sees and knows all things, and as a last reward counting on\nthe coming of that kingdom of God, the promise of which cannot fail:--\n\n    But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever\n    shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other\n    also.\n\n    And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy\n    coat, let him have thy cloak also....\n\n    Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow\n    of thee turn not thou away....\n\n    No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one,\n    and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and\n    despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.\n\n    Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what\n    ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body,\n    what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the\n    body than raiment?...\n\n\n\"Nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists,\nnot in Hesiod, nor in the maxims of Greece any more than in Confucius.\nIt is not in Cicero, nor in Aristotle, nor even in Socrates any more\nthan in the modern Franklin. The principle of inspiration is\ndifferent, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths may come together\nfor a moment, but they cross one another. And it is this delicate\nideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of continual renouncement\nand self-sacrifice, breathing in the words and embodied in the person\nand life of Christ, which constitutes the entire novelty as well as\nthe sublimity of Christianity taken at its source.\"\n\nOf M. Sainte-Beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of\nliterature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, ranging over\nthe whole field of French poetry, from its birth to its latest page.\n\"Poetry,\" says he, \"is the essence of things, and we should be careful\nnot to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of\ncolor. The task of poetry is not to say everything, but to make us\ndream everything.\" And he cites a similar judgment of Fenelon: \"The\npoet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but\nwhat can be beautified.\" In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks\nof the youthful poems of Milton: \"'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of\nmeditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio\nin which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no\ncomparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that\nis beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit\nof the upper regions, and continuity in power.\" In a paper on\nthe letters of Ducis, he proves that he apprehends the proportions of\nShakespeare. He asks: \"Have we then got him at last? Is our stomach up\nto him? Are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion (_cette\nmoelle de lion_)?\" And again, in an article on the men of the\neighteenth century, he writes: \"One may be born a sailor, but there is\nnothing for it like seeing a storm, nor for a soldier like seeing a\nbattle. A Shakespeare, you will say, very nearly did without all that,\nand yet he knew it all. But Nature never but once made a Shakespeare.\"\n\nLike most writers, of whatever country, M. Sainte-Beuve has formed\nhimself on native models, and the French having no poet of the highest\nclass, no Dante, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, it is a further proof of\nhis breadth and insight that he should so highly value the treasures\nin the deeper mines opened by these foreigners. Seeing, too, how\ncatholic he is, and liberal toward all other greatness, one even takes\npleasure in his occasional exuberance of national complacency.\nWhenever he speaks of Montaigne or La Fontaine or Moliere, his words\nflame with a tempered enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in\nhis own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the\nfeelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native\nfavorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not\noverrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls \"the\nFrenchman par excellence,\" and of whom he is proud as the literary\nsovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted\nto Joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his judgments, he\nlauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the best of critics.\nAnd yet of Voltaire, Joubert says the hardest things: \"Voltaire is\nsometimes sad; he is excited; but he is never serious. His graces even\nare impudent.--There are defects difficult to perceive, that have not\nbeen classed or defined, and have no names. Voltaire is full of them.\"\n\nIn a paper on Louise Labe, a poetess of the sixteenth century, he\nreproduces some of her poems and several passages of prose, and then\nadds: \"These passages prove, once more, the marked superiority that,\nat almost all times, French prose has over French poetry.\" No German\nor English or Italian critic could say this of his native literature,\nand the saying of it by the foremost of French critics is not an\nexaltation of French prose, it is a depression of French\npoetry. In this judgment there is a reach and severity of which\npossibly the eminent critic was not fully conscious; for it amounts to\nan acknowledgment that the nature and language of the French are not\ncapable of producing and embodying the highest poetry.\n\nGoethe, M. Sainte-Beuve always mentions with deference. On Eckerman's\n\"Conversations with Goethe\" he has a series of three papers, wherein\nhe deals chiefly with the critic and sage, exhibiting with honest\npride Goethe's admiration of some of the chief French writers, and his\nacknowledgment of what he owed them. To a passage relating to the\nFrench translation of Eckerman, M. Sainte-Beuve has the following\nnote, which we, on this side the Atlantic, may cherish as a high\ntribute to our distinguished countrywoman: \"The English translation is\nby Miss Fuller, afterwards Marchioness Ossoli, who perished so\nunhappily by shipwreck. An excellent preface precedes this\ntranslation, and I must say that for elevated comprehension of the\nsubject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far\nbehind it. Miss Fuller, an American lady of Boston, was a\nperson of true merit and of great intellectual vigor.\" A sympathetic\nstudent of Goethe, Margaret Fuller purposed to write a life of him;\nand seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature of\nGoethe she has shown in this preface, we may be confident that she\nwould have made a genuine contribution to the Goethe \"literature,\" had\nshe lived to do that and other high literary work. Her many friends\nhad nearer and warmer motives for deploring the early loss of this\ngifted, generous, noble-hearted woman.\n\nOne of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the\nmultifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature, he must have a\nhand that can shake hard,--and hit hard, too, at times. For fifteen\nyears M. Sainte-Beuve furnished once a week, under the title of\n\"Causeries du Lundi,\" a critical paper, to a Paris daily journal; not\nshort, rapid notices, but articles that would cover seven or eight\npages of one of our double-columned monthly magazines. He was thus\never in the thick of the literary _melee_. Attractions and repulsions,\nsympathies and antipathies, there will be wherever men do congregate;\nthe aesthetic plane is as open as any other to personal preferences\nand friendships. A literary circle as large as that of Paris,\nif too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous\nmutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray\nsome of its vices. In this voluminous series of papers the critical\npen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is\nwielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality\nis seldom transpicuous. The Parisian reader will no doubt often\nperceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a\nsubduing of color not visible to the foreigner, who cannot so well\ntrace the marks of political, religious, or personal influences. His\nperfected praise M. Sainte-Beuve reserves for those of the illustrious\ndead who are embalmed in their own excellence. Besides devoting many\npapers (among the most valuable of the series) to these magnates of\nliterature, he delights in frequent illustrative reference to them,--a\nsign this of ripe culture in a critic, and of trustworthiness.\n\nOut of the severe things occasionally said, the sting is mostly taken\nby the temper in which they are said, or by the frank recognition of\nvirtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes. In the general tone\nthere is a clear humanity, a seemly gentlemanliness. Of the\nhumane spirit wherewith M. Sainte-Beuve tempers condemnation, take the\nfollowing as one of many instances. In the correspondence of Lamennais\nthere is laid bare such contradictions between his earlier and his\nlater sentiments on religious questions, that the reader is thus\nfeelingly guarded against being too harsh in his censure: \"Let us cast\na look on ourselves, and ask if in our lives, in our hearts, from\nyouth to our latter years, there are none of these boundless\ndistances, these secret abysses, these moral ruins, perhaps, which,\nfor being hidden, are none the less real and profound.\"\n\nWriting weekly for the _feuilleton_ of a Paris daily journal, M.\nSainte-Beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his diffuseness is\nalways animated, never languid. Fluent, conversational, ever polished,\nhe is full of happy turns and of Gallic sprightliness. When the\noccasion offers, he is concise, condensed even in the utterance of a\nprinciple or of a comprehensive thought. \"Admiration is a much finer\ntest of literary talent, a sign much more sure and delicate, than all\nthe art of satire.\" By the side of this may be placed a sentence he\ncites from Grimm: \"People who so easily admire bad things are\nnot in a state to enjoy good.\" How true and cheering is this: \"There\nis in each of us a primitive ideal being, whom Nature has wrought with\nher finest and most maternal hand, but whom man too often covers up,\nsmothers, or corrupts.\" Speaking of the sixteenth century, he says:\n\"What it wanted was taste, if by taste we understand choice clean and\nperfect, the disengagement of the elements of the beautiful.\" When, to\ngive a paragraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic\npoint, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to\nborrow just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical\ndiction, he quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was\ndiscussed in his presence: \"It is not enough to have fine sentences:\nyou must have something to put into them.\" Commenting on the\nhyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he says: \"M. Laprade starts from the\n_absolute notion of being_. For him the following is the principle of\nArt,--'to manifest what we feel of the Absolute Being, of the\nInfinite, of God, to make him known and felt by other men, such in its\ngenerality is the end of Art.' Is this true, is it false? I know not:\nat this elevation one always gets into the clouds. Like the most of\nthose who pride themselves on metaphysics, he contents himself\nwith words (_il se paye de mots_).\" Here is a grand thought, that\nflashes out of the upper air of poetry: \"Humanity, that eternal child\nthat has never done growing.\"\n\nM. Sainte-Beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of\ntruth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet:\n\"Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost\nentirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical highway, well laid,\nsolid, and continuous; the method adopted is absolute points of view;\nyou run with him on summits, peaks, on needles of granite, which he\nselects at his pleasure to gets views from. The reader leaps from\nsteeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems to have proposed to himself an\nimpossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a\nseries of flashes.\" Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying\nof a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M.\nGuizot: \"The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural\nprinciple of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities\nof self-love.\" M. Sainte-Beuve is not an admirer of Louis Philippe,\nand among other sly hits gives him the following: \"Louis\nPhilippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected\nby the _bourgeoisie_. Just as in former times the King of France was\nonly the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first\n_bourgeois_ of the country.\" What witty satire on Lamartine he\nintroduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes\nso much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is enough to take the\npoison out of the sting: \"Those who knew his verses by heart (and the\nnumber who do is large among the men of our age) meet, not without\nregret, with whole strips of them spread out, drowned, as it were, in\nhis prose. This prose is, in 'Les Confidences,' too often but the\nparaphrase of his verses, which were themselves become, toward the\nlast, paraphrases of his feelings.\" Amends are made to Lamartine on\nanother occasion, when, citing some recent French sonnets, he says:\n\"Neither Lamartine nor Hugo nor Vigny wrote sonnets. The swans and the\neagles, in trying to enter this cage, would have broken their wings.\nThat was for us, birds of a less lofty flight and less amplitude of\nwing.\" This is better as modesty than as criticism. Shakespeare,\nMilton, Wordsworth, had wings of vaster sweep as well as of\nmore gorgeous plumage than these French soarers, and they enjoyed\ngetting into the cage of the sonnet, and sang therein some of their\nstrongest as well as sweetest notes.\n\nA thorough Frenchman, M. Sainte-Beuve delights in French minds, just\nas a beauty delights in her mirror, which throws back an image of\nherself. His excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this joy in\nthings French. Through means of it he knows them through and through:\nthey are become transparent; and while his feelings are aglow, his\nintellect looks calmly right through them, and sees on the other side\nthe shadows cast by the spots and opacities which frustrate more or\nless the fullest illumination. Freely he exhibits these shadows.\nNeither Bossuet nor Louis XIV., neither Voltaire nor Beranger, is\nspared, nor the French character, with its proneness to frivolity and\nbroad jest, its thirst for superficial excitement. Whatever his\nindividual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy,\nthat he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M.\nMichelet, to Madame de Stael and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe,\nto Fenelon and M. Renan, to Marie Antoinette and Mirabeau.\n\nHave you then for M. Sainte-Beuve, some reader will be\nimpatient to ask, nothing but praise? Not much else. Commencing his\nliterary career in 1827, when only in his twenty-third year, from that\ndate to 1849 his writings, chiefly in the shape of literary portraits,\nfill several thousand pages. Between his forty-fifth to his sixtieth\nyear he wrote twenty-three volumes, containing about eleven thousand\npages, on four or five hundred different authors and subjects. This is\nthe period of his critical maturity, the period of the \"Causeries du\nLundi,\" followed by the \"Nouveaux Lundis.\" Many men write\nvoluminously, but most of these only write _about_ a subject, not\n_into_ it. Only the few who can write into their subject add something\nto literature. One of these few is M. Sainte-Beuve. In his mind there\nis vitality to animate his large acquirement, to make his many\nchapters buoyant and stimulant. All through his writings is the\nsparkle of original life.\n\nBut let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise, and\nat the same time perform the negative part of our task.\n\nWell, then, to be bold, as befits a critic of the critic, we beard the\nlion in his very den. We challenge a definition he gives of the\ncritic. In the seventh volume of the \"Causeries,\" article\n\"Grimm,\" he says: \"When Nature has endowed some one with this vivacity\nof feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the\ncreative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, that\nis to say, a lover and judge of the creations of others.\" Why did M.\nSainte-Beuve make Goethe sovereign in criticism? Why did he think\nMilton peculiarly qualified to interpret Homer? From the deep\nprinciple of like unto like; only spirit can know spirit. What were\nthe worth of a comment of John Locke on \"Paradise Lost,\" except to\nreveal the mental composition of John Locke? The critic should be what\nLocke was, a thinker, but to be a judge of the highest form of\nliterature, poetry, he must moreover carry within him, inborn, some\nshare of that whereby poetry is fledged, \"creative imagination.\" He\nmay \"want the accomplishment of verse,\" or the constructive faculty,\nbut more than the common allowance of sensibility to the beautiful he\nmust have. But do not the presence of \"vivacity of feeling with\nsusceptibility to impression\" imply the imaginative temperament? If\nnot, then we confidently assure M. Sainte-Beuve that had his\ndefinition fitted himself, his \"Causeries du Lundi\" would never have\nbeen rescued from the quick oblivion of the _feuilleton._\n\nNow and then there are betrayals of that predominant French weakness,\nwhich the French will persist in cherishing as a virtue,--the love of\nglory. M. Sainte-Beuve thinks Buffon's passion for glory saved him in\nhis latter years from ennui, from \"that languor of the soul which\nfollows the age of the passions.\" Where are to be found men more the\nvictims of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more\ndistinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than\nfor insatiable greed of glory,--Byron and Chateaubriand? No form of\nself-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless craving,\nwhich makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is utterly beyond\nits sway, on praise and admiration. These stimulants--withdrawn more\nor less even from the most successful in latter years--leave a void\nwhich becomes the very nursery of ennui, or even of self-disgust.\nInstead of glory being \"the potent motive-power in all great souls,\"\nas M. Sainte-Beuve approvingly quotes, it is, with a surer moral\ninstinct, called by Milton,--\n\n  \"That last infirmity of noble mind.\"\n\nIn some of the noblest and greatest, so subordinate is it as\nhardly to be traceable in their careers. Love of glory was not the\nspring that set and kept in motion Kepler and Newton, any more than\nShakespeare and Pascal or William of Orange and Washington.\n\nThe military glory wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the French\nnation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal\nvigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even M. Sainte-Beuve, so that he\ndoes not perceive the gaping chasms in Napoleon's moral nature, and\nthe consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the\nunmanning effects of his despotism. The words used to describe the\nmoral side of the Imperial career are as insufficient as would be the\nstrokes of a gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset. In the\npaper from which has already been quoted he speaks of the \"rare good\nsense\" of Napoleon, of \"his instinct of justice.\" But was it not a\ncompact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of\njustice, backed by a Titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that\nenabled Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot\nand the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that\nhe possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive\ninsight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive\ndiscernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose, a\nsoundness of judgment, resulting from the soundness of, and\nequilibrium among, the upper powers of reason and sensibility. The\nmoral side is at least the half of it: Napoleon's moral endowment was\nbut fractional. Good sense, it may be added, lies solidly at the basis\nof all good work, except such as is purely professional or technical,\nor in its action one-sided; and even in such its presence must be\nfelt. In whatever reaches general human interests, whether as\npractical act or imaginative creation, good sense must be, for their\nprosperity, a primary ingredient. \"The Tempest\" and \"Don Quixote\"\nshoot up into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw\ntheir first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum.\nAnd let us say, that in M. Sainte-Beuve himself good sense is the\nfoundation of his eminent critical ability. He has been led, we\nconceive, to attribute more of it to Napoleon than is his due by the\nblinding splendor of Napoleon's military genius, through which, with\nsuch swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means to ends on the\npurely material plane.\n\nWhen Murray applied to Lord Byron to write a book about the\nlife and manners of the upper class in Italy, Byron declined the\nproposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to write\nsuch a book it would be misjudged in England; for, said he, \"their\nmoral is not your moral.\" Such international misinterpretations and\nexaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. A nation from its being\na nation, has a certain one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who\ncarries a stiletto) the English practice of boxing is a sheer\nbrutality; while to an Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the\n_cavaliere servente_ is looked upon with reprobation tempered by\nscorn. To this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation\non the domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more\nabstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral\nstandard can with less difficulty be applied. Applying it to Gil Blas,\nis not M. Sainte-Beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this\nand the other writings of Le Sage as being \"the mirror of the world?\"\nMoliere, too, is a satirist, and from his breadth a great one; and\nsurely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than\nthat of Le Sage; and what of the Shakespearean world? The world of Le\nSage is a nether world. \"Of Gil Blas it has been well said that the\nbook is moral like experience.\" The experience one may get in brothels\nand \"hells,\" in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of\nvirtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for\nthese few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot\nread so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the\nexperience is demoralizing and deadening. But toward the end of the\npaper the critic lets it appear that he does not place Le Sage so high\nas some of his phrases prompt us to infer; and he quotes this judgment\nof Joubert: \"Of the novels of Le Sage it may be said that they seem to\nhave been written in a _cafe_, by a player of dominoes, on coming out\nof the comic theatre.\"\n\nWithout being over-diffident, we may feel our footing not perfectly\nsecure on French ground when we differ from a Frenchman; we are\ntherefore not sorry to catch M. Sainte-Beuve tripping on English\nground. In a review of the translation of the celebrated Letters of\nLord Chesterfield--whom he calls the La Rochefoucauld of England--he\nrefers to, and in part quotes, the passages in which Chesterfield\ngives his son advice as to his _liaisons_; and he adds: \"All\nChesterfield's morality, on this head, is resumed in a line of\nVoltaire,--\n\n  \"Il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie.\"\n\nIt is these passages that make the grave Dr. Johnson blush: we only\nsmile at them.\" For ourselves, we blush with Johnson, not that the man\nof the world should give to his youthful son, living at a corrupt\nContinental court, counsel as to relations which were regarded as\ninevitable in such a circle; but that the heart of the father should\nnot have poured (were it but parenthetically) through the pen of the\nworldling some single sentence like this: \"Writing to you, my son, as\nan experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, I recommend the\ngood taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman;\nbut to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if possible, such\n_liaisons_; preserve your purity; nothing will give you such a return\nthroughout the whole of the future.\" But, a single sentence like this\nwould _vitiate_ the entire Chesterfieldian correspondence.\n\nHow fully and warmly M. Sainte-Beuve prizes moral worth may be learnt\nfrom many passages. Not the least animated and cordial of his\npapers is one on the Abbe Gerbet, in the sixth volume, a paper which\nshows, as Gustave Planche said of him, that \"he studies with his\nheart, as women do;\" and one in the second volume on Malesherbes, whom\nhe describes as being \"separated, on the moral side, from the\nMirabeaus and the Condorcets not by a shade, but by an abyss,\" and\nwhom he sums up as \"great magistrate, minister too sensitive and too\neasily discouraged, heroic advocate, and sublime victim.\" Of this\nnoble, deeply dutiful, self-sacrificing Frenchman, this exemplar of\nmoral greatness, Lord Lansdowne wrote many years before the French\nRevolution: \"I have seen for the first time in my life what I did not\nbelieve could exist, that is, a man _who is exempt from fear and from\nhope_, and who nevertheless is full of life and warmth. Nothing can\ndisturb his peace; nothing is necessary to him, and he takes a lively\ninterest in all that is good.\"\n\nIn a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by M. Laprade, M.\nSainte-Beuve has this sentence: \"What strikes me above all and\neverywhere is, that the author, whether he reasons or whether he\naddresses himself to literary history, only understands his own mode\nof being and his own individuality. Hereby he reveals to us\nthat he is not a critic.\" The first paragraph of a keen critique on M.\nde Pontmartin ends thus: \"To say of even those writers who are opposed\nto us nothing which their judicious friends do not already think and\nare obliged to admit, this is my highest ambition.\" Discussing the\nproper method of dealing with the past, he writes: \"For myself I\nrespect tradition and I like novelty: I am never happier than when I\ncan succeed in reconciling them together.\" Of Hoffman he says, in a\npaper on literary criticism: \"He has many of the qualities of a true\ncritic, conscientiousness, independence, ideas, an opinion of his\nown.\" These sentences, with others of like import, are keys to the\ncharacter of the volumes from which they are taken. The office of the\ncritic M. Sainte-Beuve administers, not for temporary or personal\nends, but with a disinterested sense of its elevation and its\nresponsibilities. Through healthy sympathies and knowledge ample and\nripe, through firm sense with artistic flexibility, through largeness\nof view and subtlety of insight, he enters upon it more than\nordinarily empowered for its due discharge. He is at once what the\nFrench call _fin_ and what the English call \"sound.\" In\nliterary work, in biographical work, in work aesthetical and critical,\nhe delights, and he has a wide capacity of appropriation. The spirit\nof a book, a man, an age, he seizes quickly. With a nice perception of\nshades he catches the individual color of a mind or a production; and\nby the same faculty he grasps the determining principles in a\ncharacter. Delicately, strongly, variously endowed, there is a steady\nequilibrium among his fine powers. Considering the bulk and vast\nvariety and general excellence of his critical work, is it too much to\nsay of him, that he is not only, as he has been called, the foremost\nof living critics, but that he deserves to hold the first place among\nall critics? No other has done so much so well. Goethe and Coleridge\nare something more; they are critics incidentally; but M.\nSainte-Beuve, with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift him\nto a high vantage-ground, has made criticism his life-work, and\nthrough conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has done\nhis work well. Besides much else in his many and many-sided volumes,\nthere is to be read in them a full, spirited history of French\nliterature.\n\nOur attempt to make M. Sainte-Beuve better known on this side\nthe Atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of\nhim--a literary sketch--by himself. This we find in the fifth volume\nof the \"Nouveaux Lundis,\" in a paper on Moliere, published in July,\n1863. A man who, in the autumnal ripeness of his powers, thus frankly\ntells us his likes and dislikes, tells us what he is. While by\nreflected action the passage becomes a self-portraiture, it is a\nsample of finest criticism.\n\n\"To make Moliere loved by more people is in my judgment to do a public\nservice.\n\n\"Indeed, to love Moliere--I mean to love him sincerely and with all\none's heart--it is, do you know? to have within one's self a guarantee\nagainst many defects, much wrong-headedness. It is, in the first\nplace, to dislike what is incompatible with Moliere, all that was\ncounter to him in his day, and that would have been insupportable to\nhim in ours.\n\n\"To love Moliere is to be forever cured--do not say of base and\ninfamous hypocrisy, but of fanaticism, of intolerance, and of that\nkind of hardness which makes one anathematize and curse; it is to\ncarry a corrective to admiration even of Bossuet, and for all who,\nafter his example, exult, were it only in words, over their\nenemy dead or dying; who usurp I know not what holy speech, and\ninvoluntarily believe themselves to be, with the thunderbolt in their\nhand, in the region and place of the Most High. Men eloquent and\nsublime, you are far too much so for me!\n\n\"To love Moliere, is to be sheltered against, and a thousand leagues\naway from, that other fanaticism, the political, which is cold, dry,\ncruel, which never laughs, which smells of the sectary, which, under\npretext of Puritanism, finds means to mix and knead all that is\nbitter, and to combine in one sour doctrine the hates, the spites, and\nthe Jacobinism of all times. It is to be not less removed, on the\nother hand, from those tame, dull souls who, in the very presence of\nevil, cannot be roused to either indignation or hatred.\n\n\"To love Moliere, is to be secured against giving in to that pious and\nboundless admiration for a humanity which worships itself, and which\nforgets of what stuff it is made, and that, do what it will, it is\nalways poor human nature. It is, not to despise it too much, however,\nthis common humanity, at which one laughs, of which one is, and into\nwhich we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity whenever we are\nwith Moliere.\n\n\"To love and cherish Moliere, is to detest all mannerism in\nlanguage and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be\narrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish,\nexcessive refinement of any kind, a tricky or artificial style.\n\n\"To love Moliere, it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor\npedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our\n_Trissotins_[6] and our _Vadius_ even under their rejuvenated jaunty\nairs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more\nthan formerly by the everlasting _Philaminte_, that affected pretender\nof all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly\nrenewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of mind in others as\nwell as in ourselves. I only give the first movement and the pitch; on\nthis key one may continue, with variations.\n\n    [6] Trissotin, Vadius, and Philaminte, are personages in Moliere's\n        comedy of _Les Femmes Savantes_ (The Blue-Stockings).\n\n\n\"To love and openly to prefer Corneille, as certain minds do, is no\ndoubt a fine thing, and, in one sense, a very legitimate thing; it is,\nto dwell in, and to mark one's rank in, the world of great souls: but\nis it not to run the risk of loving together with the grand\nand sublime, false glory a little, to go so far as not to detest\ninflation and magniloquence, an air of heroism on all occasions? He\nwho passionately loves Corneille cannot be an enemy to a little\nboasting.\n\n\"On the other hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that is, no doubt,\nto love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true\n(at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but\nat the same time is it not also, to allow your taste and your mind to\nbe too much taken with certain conventional and over-smooth beauties,\na certain tameness and petted languidness, with certain excessive and\nexclusive refinements? In a word, to love Racine so much, it is to run\nthe risk of having too much of what in France is called taste, and\nwhich brings so much distaste.\n\n\"To love Boileau--but no, one does not love Boileau, one esteems him,\none respects him; we admire his uprightness, his understanding, at\ntimes his animation, and if we are tempted to love him, it is solely\nfor that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to\nthe great poets his contemporaries, and especially to him whom he\nproclaims the first of all, Moliere.\n\n\"To love La Fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love\nMoliere; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, humanity\ningenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy \"of a\nhundred different acts,\" unrolling itself, cutting itself up before\nour eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms\nthat are so becoming, with weaknesses also, and liberties which are\nnever found in the simple, manly genius of the master of masters. But\nwhy separate them? La Fontaine and Moliere--we must not part them, we\nlove them united.\"\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe number of \"Putnam's Magazine,\" containing this paper, was sent to\nM. Sainte-Beuve accompanied by a note. In due time I received an\nanswer to the note, saying that the Magazine had not reached him.\nHereupon I sent the article by itself. On receiving it he wrote the\nfollowing acknowledgment.\n\nIn my note I referred to a rumor of his illness. His disease was, by\n_post-mortem_ examination, discovered to be as the newspapers had\nreported, the stone. But a consultation of physicians declared that it\nwas what he states it to be in his letter. Had they not made so gross\na mistake, his life might have been prolonged.\n\n\n\"PARIS, 6 _Decembre_, 1868, No. 11 Rue Mont Parnasse.\n\n\"CHER MONSIEUR:--\n\n\"Oh! Cette fois je recois bien decidement le tres aimable et si bien\netudie portrait du _critique_. Comment exprimer comme je le\nsens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d'attention penetrante, de desir\nd'etre agreable tout en restant juste? Il y avait certes moyen\nd'insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et les\ndefaillances momentanees de la pensee et du jugement a travers cette\nsuite de volumes. C'est toujours un sujet d'etonnement pour moi, et\ncette fois autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un\njuge de gout parvient a tirer une figure une et consistante de ce qui\nne me parait a moi meme dans mon souvenir que le cours d'un long\nfleuve qui va s'epandant un pen au hazard des pentes et desertant\ncontinuellement ses rives. De tels portraits comme celui que vous\nvoulez bien m'offrir me rendent un point d'appui et me feraient\nveritablement croire a moi-meme. Et quand je songe a l'immense\nquantite d'esprits auxquels vous me presentez sous un aspect si\nfavorable et si magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et\nd'avenir, je me prends d'une sorte de fierte et de courageuse\nconfiance comme en presence deja de la posterite.\n\n\"Le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous interesser est tout simplement\nune hypertrophie de la prostate. Les souffrances ne sont pas vives,\nmais l'incommodite est grande, ne pouvant supporter a aucun degre le\nmouvement de la voiture, ce qui restreint ma vie sociale a un bien\ncourt rayon.\n\n\"Veuillez agreeer, cher Monsieur, l'assurance de ma cordiale\ngratitude, et de mes sentiments les plus distingues.\n\nSAINTE-BEUVE.\"\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE.\n\n\nA brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire--a cerebral battery\nbristling with magnetic life--such is Thomas Carlyle. Exceptional\nfervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, manful\nearnestness--these are the primary qualifications of the man. He has\nan uncommon soul-power. Hence his attractiveness, hence his influence.\nEvery page, every paragraph, every sentence, throbs with his own\nbeing. Themselves all authors put, of course, more or less, into what\nthey write: few, very few, can make their sentences quiver with\nthemselves. This Mr. Carlyle does by the intenseness of a warm\nindividuality, by the nimble vigor of his mental life, and, be it\nadded, by the rapture of his spirituality. The self, in his case, is a\nlarge, deep self, and it sends an audible pulse through his pen into\nhis page.\n\nTo all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties,\nof capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which\nthese are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the\ndifference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital\npressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental\ncurrents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on\nindividual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a\nDante, in another, a Newton, in another, a Mirabeau. And Nature, with\nall her generosity, being jealous of her rights, allows no interchange\nof gifts. Even the many-sided Goethe could not, by whatever force of\nwill and practice, have written a bar in a symphony of Beethoven. In\nhis dominant aptitudes, Mr. Carlyle is not more one-sided than many\nother intellectual potentates; but, like some others, his activity and\nambition have at times led him into paths where great deficiencies\ndisclose themselves by the side of great superiorities. His mind is\nbiographical, not historical; stronger in details than in\ngeneralization; more intuitive than scientific; critical, not\nconstructive; literary, not philosophical. Mr. Carlyle is great at a\npicture, very great; he can fail in a survey or an induction. Wealth\nof thought, strokes of tenderness, clean insight into life, satire,\nirony, humor, make his least successful volumes to teem with\npassages noteworthy, beautiful, wise, as do his \"Cromwell\" and his\n\"Frederick.\" Such giants carrying nations on their broad fronts, Mr.\nCarlyle, in writing their lives with duteous particularity, has\nembraced the full story of the epoch in which each was the leader. To\nhim they are more than leaders. Herein he and Mr. Buckle stand at\nopposite poles; Mr. Buckle underrating the protagonists of history,\nthem and their share of agency; Mr. Carlyle overrating them,--a\nprejudicial one-sidedness in both cases. Leader and led are the\ncomplements the one of the other.\n\nHistory is a growth, and a slow growth. Evils in one age painfully sow\nthe seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still\nmore the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient,\ncalm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful,\nnay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One\nhealthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking\nhim to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly\nthrow into the face of contemporaries an Abbot Sampson of the twelfth\ncentury as a model. A judicial expounder would not cite one\nsingle example as a characteristic of that age in contrast with this.\nA patient, impartial elucidator, would not deride \"ballot-boxes,\nreform bills, winnowing machines:\" he would make the best of these and\nother tools within reach; or, if his part be to write and not to act,\nwould animate, not dishearten, those who are earnestly doing, and who,\nby boldly striking at abuses, by steadily striving for more justice,\nby aiming to lift up the down-trodden, prepare, through such means as\nare at hand, a better ground for the next generation. If to such\nworkers, instead of God-speed, a writer of force and influence gives\njeers and gibes, and ever-repeated shrieks about \"semblance and\nquackery, and cant and speciosity, and dilettantism,\" and deems\nhimself profound and original, as well as hopeful, when he exclaims:\n\"Dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and awful meaning of\nhuman worth and truth, we shall never by all the machinery in\nBirmingham discover the true and worthy:\" in that case, does he not\nexpose him to the taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack,\nand his words, which should be cordial, brotherly, do they not partake\nof the hollow quality of what Mr. Carlyle holds in such abhorrence,\nnamely, of cant? The sick lion crouches growling in his lair;\nhe cannot eat, and he will not let others eat.\n\nMany grateful and admiring readers Mr. Carlyle wearies with his\never-recurrent fallacy that might is right. In Heaven's name, what are\nall the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans,--worldly\nbishops, phantasm-aristocracies, presumptuous upstarts, shallow\nsway-wielding dukes,--what are all these, and much else, but so many\nexemplications of might that is not right? When might shall cease to\nbully, to trample on right, we shall be nearing Utopia. Utopia may be\nat infinite distance, not attainable by finite men; but as surely as\nour hearts beat, we are gradually getting further from its opposite,\nthe coarse rule of force and brutality, such rule as in the twelfth\ncentury was rife all around \"Abbot Sampson.\"\n\nLike unto this moral fallacy is an aesthetic fallacy which, through\nbright pages of criticism, strikes up at times to vitiate a judgment.\n\"I confess,\" says Mr. Carlyle, \"I have no notion of a truly great man\nthat could not be all sorts of men.\" Could Newton have written the\n\"Fairy Queen?\" Could Spenser have discovered the law of gravitation?\nCould Columbus have given birth to \"Don Quixote?\" One of Mr.\nCarlyle's military heroes tried hard to be a poet. Over Frederick's\nverses, how his friend Voltaire must have grinned. \"I cannot\nunderstand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the\nfire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could\nnot have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in\nthat way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward.\"\nThus Mr. Carlyle writes in \"Heroes and Hero-Worship.\" If Mirabeau, why\nnot Savonarola, or Marcus Aurelius. In that case a \"Twelfth Night,\" or\nan \"Othello,\" might have come from Luther. Nature does not work so\nloosely. Rich is she, unspeakably rich, and as artful as she is\nprofuse in the use of her riches. She delights in variety, thence her\nineffable radiance, and much of her immeasurable efficiency.\nDiverseness in unity is a source of her power as well as of her\nbeauty. Her wealth of material being infinite, her specifications are\nendless, countless, superfinely minute. Even no two of the commonest\nmen does she make alike; her men of genius she diversifies at once\ngrandly and delicately, broadly and subtly. \"Petrarch and Boccaccio\ndid diplomatic messages,\" says Mr. Carlyle. We hope they did,\nor could have done, in the prosaic field, much better than that. We\nAmericans know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be\ndone.\n\nOn poetry and poets Mr. Carlyle has written many of his best pages,\npages penetrating, discriminative, because so sympathetic, and\nexecuted with the scholar's care and the critic's culture. His early\npapers on Goethe and Burns, published more than forty years ago, made\nsomething like an epoch in English criticism. Seizing the value and\nsignificance of genuine poetry, he exclaims in \"Past and\nPresent,\"--\"Genius, Poet! do we know what these words mean? An\ninspired soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great\nfire-heart, to see the truth, and speak it and do it.\" On the same\npage he thus taunts his countrymen: \"We English find a poet, as brave\na man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the\nsun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking\ndue counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of\nDumfries, and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'\" \"George\nthe Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in\nthose years. George the Third is head charioteer of the destinies of\nEngland, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolutions,\nAmerican Independences; and Robert Burns is gauger of ale in\nDumfries.\" Poor George the Third! One needs not be a craniologist to\nknow that the eyes which looked out from beneath that retreating\npyramidal forehead could see but part even of the commonest men and\nthings before them. How could they see a Robert Burns? To be sure, had\nDundas, or whoever got Burns the place of gauger, given him one of the\nmany sinecures of two or three hundred pounds a year that were wasted\non idle scions of titled families, an aureole of glory would now shine\nthrough the darkness that environs the memory of George III. So much\nfor George Guelf. Now for Thomas Carlyle.\n\nIf, for not recognizing Burns, _poor_ George is to be blamed,\nwhat terms of stricture will be too harsh for _rich_ Thomas, that\nby him were not recognized poets greater than Burns, at a time when\nfor England's good, full, sympathetic recognition of them was just\nwhat was literarily most wanted? Here was a man, for the fine function\nof poetic criticism how rarely gifted is visible in those\nthorough papers on Burns and Goethe, written so early as 1828,\nwherein, besides a masterly setting forth of their great subjects, are\nnotable passages on other poets. On Byron is passed the following\nsentence, which will, we think, be ever confirmed by sound criticism.\n\"Generally speaking, we should say that Byron's poetry is not true. He\nrefreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar\nstrong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in\ndislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask,\nreal men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not\nthese characters, does not the character of their author, which more\nor less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the\noccasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended\nto look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies,\nthis volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation,\nwith so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor,\nis more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is\nto last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of\nlife, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds,\nthere is a taint of this sort, something which we should call\ntheatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so\npowerful pieces.\"\n\nIn the same paper, that on Burns, Mr. Carlyle thus opened the ears of\nthat generation,--partially opened, for the general aesthetic ear is\nnot fully opened yet,--to a hollowness which was musical to the many:\n\"Our Grays and Glovers seemed to write almost as if _in vacuo_;\nthe thing written bears no mark of place; it is not written so much\nfor Englishmen as for men; or rather, which is the inevitable result\nof this, for certain generalizations which philosophy termed men.\" And\nin the paper on Goethe, he calls Gray's poetry, \"a laborious mosaic,\nthrough the hard, stiff lineaments of which, little life or true grace\ncould be expected to look.\" Thus choicely endowed was Mr. Carlyle to\nbe, what is the critic's noblest office, an interpreter between new\npoets and the public. Such an interpreter England grievously needed,\nto help and teach her educated and scholarly classes to prize the\ntreasures just lavished upon them by Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and\nShelley, and Keats. The interpreter was there, but he spoke not.\nBetter than any man in England Mr. Carlyle could, if he would,\nhave taught the generation that was growing up with him, whose ear he\nhad already gained, what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity\nthere was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative\nsingers. Of such teaching, that generation stood in especial need, to\ndisabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for\nharmony; to refresh, with clear streams from \"the divine fountain,\"\nhearts that were fevered by the stimulus of Byronic \"strong waters;\"\nto wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to\nthat higher plane where breathe great poets, whose incomparable\nfunction it is, to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement\nand the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult\nthrough the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific\nsentiment. The gifted interpreter was dumb. Nay, he made diversions\ninto Scotland and Germany, to bring Burns and Scott more distinctly\nbefore Englishmen, and to make Schiller and Goethe and Richter better\nknown to them. And it pleased him to write about \"Corn-law rhymes.\"\nThat he did these tasks so well, proves how well he could have done,\nby the side of them, the then more urgent task. In 1828, Mr.\nCarlyle wrote for one of the quarterly reviews an exposition of\n\"Goethe's Helena,\" which is a kind of episode in the second part of\n\"Faust,\" and was first published as a fragment. This takes up more\nthan sixty pages in the first volume of the \"Miscellanies,\" about the\nhalf being translations from \"Helena,\" which by no means stands in the\nfront rank of Goethe's poetic creations, which is indeed rather a high\nartistic composition than a creation. At that time there lay, almost\nuncalled for, on the publisher's shelf, where it had lain for five\nyears, ever since its issue, a poem of fifty-five Spenserian stanzas,\nflushed with a subtler beauty, more divinely dyed in pathos, than any\nin English literature of its rare kind, or of any kind out of\nShakespeare,--a poem in which all the inward harvests of a tender,\ndeep, capacious, loving, and religious life, all the heaped hoards of\nfeeling and imagination in a life most visionary and most real, are\ngathered into one sheaf of poetic affluence, to dazzle and subdue with\nexcess of light,--or gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves, stanza\nrising on stanza, each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed\nof Nature's most precious perfumes, each shedding a new and\na richer fragrance; I mean the \"Adonais\" of Shelley. For this\nglittering masterpiece,--a congenial commentary on which would have\nilluminated the literary atmosphere of England,--Mr. Carlyle had no\nword; no word for Shelley, no word for Coleridge, no word for\nWordsworth. For Keats he had a word in the paper on Burns, and here it\nis: \"Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole\nconsists in a weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility and a certain vague,\nrandom timefulness of nature, is no separate faculty.\" A parenthesis,\nshort and contemptuous, is all he gives to one of whom it has been\ntruly said, that of no poet who has lived, not of Shakespeare, is the\npoetry written before the twenty-fifth year so good as his; and of\nwhom it may as truly be said, that his best poems need no apology in\nthe youthfulness of their author; but that for originality, power,\nvariety, feeling, thoughtfulness, melody, they take rank in the first\nclass of the poetry of the world. Is not Thomas Carlyle justly\nchargeable with having committed a high literary misdemeanor? Nay,\nconsidering his gift of poetic insight, and with it his persistent\nignoring of the great English poets of his age, considering the warm\nsolicitation on the one side, and the duty on the other, his\noffense may be termed a literary crime. He knew better.\n\nMr. Carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of Elizabeth, after\nthis fashion; \"For Raleighs and Shakespeares we have Beau Brummell and\nSheridan Knowles.\" Only on the surmise that Mr. Carlyle owed poor\nKnowles some desperate grudge, can such an outburst be accounted for.\nOtherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an impotent explosion of literary\nspite. For the breadth and brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it,\nno period in the history of any nation, not that of Pericles or of\nElizabeth, is more resplendent than that which had not yet faded for\nEngland when Mr. Carlyle began his career; nor in the field of public\naction can the most prolific era of Greece or of England hold up, for\nthe admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen, two\nagents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than Nelson\nand Wellington. Here are two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare\npersonal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast\nbreadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness,\nwere, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most palpably\nsaving England, saving Europe, from the grasp of an inexorable despot.\nSurely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost\nthe reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper. On the ten\nthousand luminous pages of Mr. Carlyle they find no place. Not only\nare their doings not celebrated, that they lived is scarce\nacknowledged.\n\nEven when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored, jealousy\nis not a noble form of\n\n  \"The last infirmity of noble mind.\"\n\nDoes Mr. Carlyle feel that Nelson and Wellington, Coleridge, Shelley,\nKeats, and Wordsworth, stand already so broad and high that they chill\nhim with their shadow, and that therefore he will not, by eulogy, or\neven notice, add to their altitude? Is he repeating the littleness of\nByron, who was jealous not only of his contemporaries, Napoleon, and\nWellington, and Wordsworth, but was jealous of Shakespeare? That a pen\nwhich, with zestful animation, embraces all contemporaneous things,\nshould be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of\ngenius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is\ndriven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it\nis impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an\nimaginative man will not rise.\n\nWriting of Thomas Carlyle, the last words must not be censorious\ncomments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is too\nlarge a benefactor. Despite over-fondness for Frederick and the like,\nand what may be termed a pathological drift towards political\ndespotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the\n\"gospel of freedom\"? Flushed are his volumes with generous pulses,\nwith delicate sympathies. From many a page what cordialities step\nforth to console and to fortify us; what divine depths we come upon;\nwhat sudden vistas of sunshine through tempest-shaken shadows; what\nbursts of splendor through nebulous mutterings. Much has he helped the\nenfranchisement of the spirit. Well do I remember the thirst\nwherewith, more than thirty years ago, I seized the monthly \"Frazer,\"\nto drink of the spiritual waters of \"Sartor Resartus.\" Here was a new\nspring; with what stimulating, exhilarating, purifying draughts, did\nit bubble and sparkle! That picture, in the beginning, of the \"doing\nand driving (_Thun und Treiben_)\" of a city as beheld by\nProfessor Teufelsdroeckh from his attic--would one have been surprised\nto read that on a page of Shakespeare?\n\nA marvelous faculty of speech has Mr. Carlyle; a gift of saying what\nhe has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle\nthrough your ears. His diction surrounds itself with a magnetic\n_aura_, which seems to float it, to part it from the paper, it\nstands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. Common phrases he\nrefreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, and in the\nordering of words he has command of a magical logic. The marrowy vigor\nin his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, such nimbleness,\nsuch accent to his sentences, to his style.\n\nMr. Carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities. Through them\nhe is poetical; through them there is so much light in his pages. More\noften from his than from any others, except those of the major poets,\nbreaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames around a thought when it\nknows itself embraced by a feeling. Of humor and of wit, what an added\nfund does our language now possess through his pen. The body of\ncriticism, inclosed in the five volumes of Miscellanies, were\nenough to give their author a lasting name. When one of these papers\nappeared in the Edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the\ncontributions of the Jeffreys and Broughams, like a guinea in a\nhandful of shillings.\n\nThe masterpiece of Mr. Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English prose\nliterature, is his \"French Revolution,\" a rhythmic Epic without verse.\nTo write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing\nheart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a\nmomentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he\nmust have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and\ndiverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of\nmillions of contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely\nartistic, creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast\ntumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly in\nclear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. Outside of\nthe choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth\nand difficulty that has been done so well? A theme of unusual grandeur\nand significance is here greatly treated.\n\nThe foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try\nwhether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer\nto impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested,\nor rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with\na fire from the writer's soul. Of this, the most perfect exhibition is\nin poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of\npassion, is born a something new, which, through the strong\ncreativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own.\nWith this power Mr. Carlyle is highly endowed. Not only, as already\nsaid, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and\nhealthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes\neach scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the French\nRevolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly\nthat this life has been lighted up by his. Where in history is there a\npicture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few\nstrokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid\nchiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then\nhis full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the\nqueen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille\nDesmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his\nthrobbing page do these personages live and move and have their true\nbeing. The giant Mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too\ngigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that\nhave come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and\nswell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him.\n\nFor a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself. Making\nallowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so\neccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he\ndoes consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of \"Sartor\nResartus,\" wherein, under the head of \"Characteristics,\" he comments\non the professor's Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself. From\nthis chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences. It opens\nthus:--\n\n\"It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes\nentirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like\nthe very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of\ngenius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid\nits effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness'\ndouble-vision, and even utter blindness.\n\n\"Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and\nprophesyings of the \"Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger,\" we admitted that the\nbook had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the\nbest effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way\nof thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of\na new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of _Speculation_ might\nhenceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be\ndeclared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of\nresearch, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made\nindisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and\ntortuosity and manifold inaptitude....\n\n\"Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast\ninto mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of man.\nWonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs\nasunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the\ntrue center of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the\nhead, but with crushing force smites it home and buries it....\n\n\"Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a\ntrue inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning\nwords, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and\nsplendor from Jove's head; a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque\nallusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy twins; all the\ngraces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest\nintellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer\nsleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches\neven of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... A wild tone pervades\nthe whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now\nscrewing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill\nmockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious\nheartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch,\nwhen we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true\ncharacter is extremely difficult to fix....\n\n\"Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse,\ndo we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. Gleams\nof an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite\npity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and\nkeep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a\nvery seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably\nsaturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that\nmen strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter,\nsardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you\nlook on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate\nMephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round,\nafter all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and\nbeggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were\nchaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest.\"\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nERRATA.[7]\n\n    [7] From Lippincott's Magazine, 1870.\n\n\nWords are the counters of thought; speech is the vocalization of the\nsoul; style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion. Thence\nit behooves scholars, the wardens of language, to keep over words a\nwatch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps over his\npupils. A prime office of this guardianship is to take care lest\nlanguage fall into loose ways; for words being the final elements into\nwhich all speech resolves itself, if they grow weak by negligence or\nabuse, speech loses its firmness, veracity, and expressiveness. Style\nmay be likened to a close Tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers\nout of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind;\nand the strength and fineness of the tissue, together with its\nbeauties of color, depend on the purity and precision, the\ntransparency and directness of its threads, which are words.\n\nA humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his\nprivilege to call attention to some abuses in words and\nphrases,--abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and\nwritten speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the\npages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead\nto general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is\nmany centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show\nsigns of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral\nand intellectual energies of a people, soon spots its speech.\n\nNevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, vulgarisms--transgressions\nmore or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness, from\nthe efficacy, from the force as well as the grace, of written or\nspoken speech.\n\nThe high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by our\nEnglish tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by\nstrenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. Offenses against the\nlaws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our\nlapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to\nrelax its tone. None save the most resolute and rigorous but have\ntheir moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. Moreover, men are\nprone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions.\nDiscrimination requires close attention and sustained effort; and\nwithout habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision\nor excellence. In this, as in other provinces, people like to take\nthings easily. Now, every capable man of business knows that to take\nthings easily is an easy way to ruin. Language is in a certain sense\nevery one's business; but it is especially the business, as their\nappellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their\nhigh vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling\nwith, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools\nwherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are\never a-building. Culture, demanding and creating diversity and\nsubtlety of mental processes, is at once a cause and an effect of\ninfinite multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of\nestablishing between itself and the objects of its action, and between\nits own processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture,\nhas to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands,\nAny fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of\nits modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness,\nany slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex\ntissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought by\nthe exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, debilitating\ninfluence on thought itself. To use the clear, wise words of Mr.\nWhewell; \"Language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is\nalso the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it is the atmosphere on\nwhich thought lives--a medium essential to the activity of our\nspeculative powers, although invisible and imperceptible in its\noperation; and an element modifying, by its changes and qualities, the\ngrowth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds.\"\n\nOur enumeration of _errata_ being made alphabetically, the first to be\ncited is one of the chief of sinners--the particle.\n\nAs. The misuse of _as_ for _so_ is, in certain cases, almost\nuniversal. If authority could justify error and convert the faulty\ninto the faultless, it were idle to expose a misuse in justification\nof which can be cited most of the best names in recent English\nliterature.\n\n  \"_As_ far as doth concern my single self,\"\n\nis a line in Wordsworth (\"Prelude,\" p. 70) which, by a change\nof the first _as_ into _so_, would gain not only in sound (which is\nnot our affair at present), but, likewise in grammar. The seventh line\nof the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most\nbeautiful of poems, Shelley's \"Adonais,\" begins, \"_As_ long as skies\nare blue,\" where also there would be a double gain by writing \"_So_\nlong as skies are blue.\" On page 242 of the first volume of De\nQuincey's \"Literary Remains\" occurs this sentence; \"Even by _as_\nphilosophic a politician _as_ Edmund Burke,\" in which the critical\nblunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse\nfor the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, like all good rules,\nfrom principle) which determines the use of this small particle is, I\nconceive, that the double _as_ should only be employed when there is\ndirect comparison. In the first part of the following sentence there\nis no direct comparative relation--in the second, the negative\ndestroys it; \"_So_ far as geographical measurement goes, Philadelphia\nis not _so_ far from New York as from Baltimore.\" Five writers out of\nsix would commit the error of using _as_ in both members of the\nsentence. The most prevalent misuse of _as_ is in connection with\n_soon_; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of\ngood writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to\nunravel it. But principle is higher than the authority derived from\ncustom. Judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute;\nand if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial,\nviolate the laws of language, their decisions ought to be, and will\nbe, reversed, or language will be undermined, and, slipping into\nshallow, illogical habits, into anarchical conditions, will forfeit\nmuch of its manliness, of its subtlety, of its truthfulness. Language\nis a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage,\nfor its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices\nthat result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it\nto become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism.\nWorcester quotes from the Psalms the phrase, \"They go astray _as_ soon\nas they be born.\" We ask, Were not the translators of the Bible as\nliable to err in grammar as De Quincey, or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A\nwriter in the English \"National Review\" for January, 1862, in an\nadmirable paper on the \"Italian Clergy and the Pope,\" begins a\nsentence with the same phrase: \"_As_ soon as the law was passed.\" And\nwe ourselves, sure though we be that the use of _as_ in this and every\nsimilar position is an error, need to brace both pen and tongue\nagainst running into it, so strong to overcome principle and\nconviction is the habit of the senses, accustomed daily to see and to\nhear the wrong.\n\nAT THAT. We should not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had not the\npen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into\nbound volumes. The speech and page of every one, who would not be\nitalicized for lingual looseness, should be forever closed against a\nphrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we are sorry to say, of\nAmerican mintage, coined in one of those frolicksome exuberant moods,\nwhen a young people, like a loosed horse full of youth and oats, kicks\nup and scatters mud with the unharnessed license of his heels.\n\nANOTHER. Before passing to the letter B on our alphabetical docket, we\nwill call up a minor criminal in A, viz. _another_, often incorrectly\nused for _other_; as in \"on one ground or another,\" \"from one\ncause or another.\" Now, _another_, the prefix _an_ making it\nsingular,--embraces but one ground or cause, and therefore, contrary\nto the purpose of the writer, the words mean that there are\nbut two grounds or causes. Write \"on one ground or other,\" and the\nwords are in harmony with the meaning of the writer, the word _other_\nimplying several or many grounds.\n\nBOQUET. The sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a present\nsparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities that made it\nmaterially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so\nprecious as a word; and when we receive one from another people,\ngratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself,\nshould make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of\nignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest\nagainst a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the\nword _bouquet_, being maimed into _boquet_, a corruption as dissonant\nto the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated\nnosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. _Boquet_ is heard at times\nin well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print.\nOffensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when restored\nto its native orthography.\n\nBY NO MANNER OF MEANS. The most vigorous writers are liable, in\nunguarded moments, to lapse into verbal weakness, and so you\nmeet with this vulgar pleonasm in Ruskin.\n\nBY REASON OF. An ill-assorted, ugly phrase, used by accomplished\nreviewers and others, who ought to set a purer example.\n\nCOME OFF. Were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or\nthe throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the aesthetic\nsense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from\nfeminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words,\n\"The concert will _come off_ on Wednesday.\" This vulgarism should\nnever be heard beyond the \"ring\" and the cock-pit, and should be\nbanished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar.\n\nCONSIDER. Neither weight of authority nor universality of use can\npurify or justify a linguistic corruption, and make the intrinsically\nwrong in language right; and therefore such phrases as, \"I consider\nhim an honest man,\" \"Do you consider the dispute settled?\" will ever\nbe bad English, however generally sanctioned. In his dedication of the\n\"Diversions of Purley\" to the University of Cambridge, Horne Tooke\nuses it wrongly when he says, \"who always _considers_ acts of\nvoluntary justice toward himself as favors.\" The original\nsignification and only proper use of _consider_ are in phrases like\nthese: \"If you consider the matter carefully;\" \"Consider the lilies of\nthe field.\"\n\nCONDUCT. It seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a man, \"He\ncarries well,\" as \"He conducts well.\" We say of a gun that it carries\nwell, and we might say of a pipe that it conducts well. The gun and\npipe are passive instruments, not living organisms, and thence the\nverbs are used properly in the neuter form. Perhaps, strictly\nspeaking, even here _its charge_ and _water_ are understood.\n\nCONTEMPLATE. \"Do you contemplate going to Washington to-morrow?\" \"No:\nI contemplate moving into the country.\" This is more than exaggeration\nand inflation: it is desecration of a noble word, born of man's higher\nbeing; for contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties,\na calm collecting of them for silent meditation--an act, or rather a\nmood, which implies even more than concentrated reflection, and\ninvolves themes dependent on large, pure sentiment. An able lawyer has\nto reflect much upon a broad, difficult case in order to master it;\nbut when in the solitude of his study he is drawn, by the conflicts\nand wrongs he has witnessed during the day, to think on the\npurposes and destiny of human life, he more than reflects--he is\nlifted into a contemplative mood. Archbishop Trench, in his valuable\nvolume on the \"Study of Words,\" opens a paragraph with this sentence:\n\"Let us now proceed to _contemplate_ some of the attestations for\nGod's truth, and some of the playings into the hands of the devil's\nfalsehood, which may be found to lurk in words.\" Here we suggest that\nthe proper word were _consider_; for there is activity, and a\nprogressive activity, in the mental operation on which he enters,\nwhich disqualifies the verb _contemplate_.\n\nHabitual showiness in language, as in dress and manners, denotes lack\nof discipline or lack of refinement. Our American magniloquence--the\ntendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from\nnational youthfulness, partly from license, that bastard of liberty,\nand partly from the geographical and the present, and still more the\nprospective, political grandeur of the country, which Coleridge\nsomewhere says is to be \"England in glorious magnification.\"\n\nI AM FREE TO CONFESS. An irredeemable vulgarism.\n\nIN THIS CONNECTION. Another.\n\nINDEBTEDNESS. \"The amount of my _engagedness_\" sounds as well\nand is as proper as \"the amount of my _indebtedness_.\" We have already\n_hard-heartedness_, _wickedness_, _composedness_, and others.\nNevertheless, this making of nouns out of adjectives with the\nparticipial form is an irruption over the boundaries of the parts of\nspeech which should not be encouraged.\n\nArchbishop Whately, in a passage of his shortcoming comments on\nBacon's \"Essays,\" uses _preparedness_. Albeit that brevity is a\ncardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be\nbetter than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. In\nfavor of _indebtedness_ over others of like coinage, this is to be\nsaid--that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to\nthe bosom of all humanity.\n\nINTELLECTS. That man's intellectual power is not one and indivisible,\nbut consists of many separate, independent faculties, is a momentous\ntruth, revealed by the insight of Gall. One of the results of this\ngreat discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important\nword _intellect_ when applied to one individual. If so, it were still\nindefensible. It has, we suspect, a much less philosophic origin, and\nproceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal\ngun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener. The plural\nis correctly used when we speak of two or more different men.\n\nLEFT. \"I left at ten o'clock.\" This use of _leave_ as a neuter verb,\nhowever attractive from its brevity, is not defensible. _To leave off_\nis the only proper neuter form. \"We left off at six, and left (the\nhall) at a quarter past six.\" The place should be inserted after the\nsecond _left_. Even the first is essentially active, some form of\naction being understood after _off_: we left off _work_ or _play_.\n\nMIDST. \"In our midst\" is a common but incorrect phrase.\n\nOUR AUTHOR. A vulgarism, which, by its seeming convenience, gets the\ncountenance of critical writers. We say _seeming_ convenience; for in\nthis seeming lies the vulgarity, the writer expressing, unconsciously\noften, by the _our_, a feeling of patronage. With his _our_ he pats\nthe author on the back.\n\nPERIODICAL is an adjective, and its use as a substantive is an\nunwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar.\n\nPROPOSE. Hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently\nmisused, and by so many good writers, as _propose_, when the meaning\nis to design, to intend to propose. It should always be followed by a\npersonal accusative--I propose to you, to him, to myself. In the\npreface to Hawthorne's \"Marble Faun\" occurs the following sentence;\n\"The author _proposed_ to himself merely to write a fanciful story,\nevolving a thoughtful moral, and did not _purpose_ attempting a\nportraiture of Italian manners and character\"--a sentence than which a\nfitter could not be written to illustrate the proper use of _propose_\nand _purpose_.\n\nPREDICATED UPON. This abomination is paraded by persons who lose no\nchance of uttering \"dictionary words,\" hit or miss; and is sometimes\nheard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for\nmore correctness.\n\nRELIABLE. A counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or\nuniversality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the\nfamily circle of honest English as a substitute for the robust Saxon\nword whose place it would usurp--_trustworthy_. _Reliable_ is,\nhowever, good English when used to signify that one is liable again.\nWhen you have lost a receipt, and cannot otherwise prove that\na bill rendered has been paid, you are _re-liable_ for the amount.\n\nRELIGION. Even by scholars this word is often used with looseness. In\nstrictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the Infinite, the\n_bond_ between man and God. You will sometimes read that he is the\ntruly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of\nneighbor, father, son, husband, citizen. However much a religious man\nmay find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the\nperformance of all his duties, this strength is an indirect, and not a\nuniform or necessary, effect of religious convictions. Some men who\nare sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously;\nwhile, on the other hand, they are performed, at times, with more than\ncommon fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively\nreligious belief or impressions. \"And now abideth faith, hope, and\ncharity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.\" Nor can\nthe greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of\nhope or charity. Each one of \"these three\" is different from and\nindependent of the other, however each one be aided by cooperation\nfrom the others. The deep, unique feeling which lifts up and\nbinds the creature to the Creator is elementarily one in the human\nmind, and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this\nhigh office, and not weakened or perverted by other uses. Worcester\nquotes from Dr. Watts the following sound definition: \"In a proper\nsense, _virtue_ signifies duty toward men, and _religion_ duty to\nGod.\"\n\nSALOON. That eminent pioneer of American sculpture, brilliant talker,\nand accomplished gentleman, the lamented Horatio Greenough, was\nindignantly eloquent against the American abuse of this graceful\nimportation from France, applied as it is in the United States to\npublic billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops.\n\nSUBJECT-MATTER. A tautological humpback.\n\nTO VENTILATE, applied to a subject or person. The scholar who should\nuse this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken\noff.\n\nWe have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written and\nspoken speech--some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced\neven by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and\ndisfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright\nvulgarisms--that is, phrases that come from below, and are\nthrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These\nlast are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such\nabuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of\nsome of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be\nreadily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for\ngenerations to tongues and pens. Of this tenacity there is a notable\nexemplification in a passage of Boswell, written nearly a hundred\nyears ago. Dr. Johnson found fault with Boswell for using the phrase\nto _make_ money: \"Don't you see the impropriety of it? To _make_ money\nis to _coin_ it: you should say _get_ money.\" Johnson, adds Boswell,\n\"was jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and\nprompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as _pledging_ myself,\nfor _undertaking_; _line_ for _department_ or _branch_, as the _civil\nline_, the _banking line_. He was particularly indignant against the\nalmost universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or\n_opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of\nwhich an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an _idea_ or\n_image_ of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have\nan idea or image of an _argument_ or _proposition_. Yet we\nhear the sages of the law 'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question\nunder consideration;' and the first speakers of Parliament 'entirely\ncoinciding in the _idea_ which has been ably stated by an honorable\nmember.'\"\n\nWhether or not the word _idea_ may be properly used in a deeper or\ngrander sense than that stated by Dr. Johnson, there is no doubt that\nhe justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him, and in similar\nones. All the four phrases _make money_, _pledge_, _line_, and _idea_,\nwhereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer,\nare still at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large\nto-day than in the last century, since the area of their currency has\nbeen extended to America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nA NATIONAL DRAMA.[8]\n\n    [8] From _Putnam's Monthly_, 1857.\n\n\nWe are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows,\nprocessions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative\nthan our British cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the\nmimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a Simian descent\nfor man might find support in the features of our general life. To\ncomplete the large compound of qualities that are required, in order\nthat an emulous people give birth to a drama, one is yet wanting; but\nthat one is not merely the most important of all, but is the one which\nlifts the others into dramatic importance. Are we poetical? Ask any\nnumber of continental Europeans, whether the English are a poetical\npeople. A loud, unanimous, derisive _no_ would be the answer. And\nyet, there is Shakespeare! and around him, back to Chaucer and forward\nto Tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the\nrichest poetic literature in Christendom. Especially in this matter\nare appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be illogical.\nFrom the prosers that one hears in pulpits, legislatures,\nlecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in\nAnglo-America, let no man infer against our poetic endowment.\nShakespeare, and Milton, and Burns, and Wordsworth, are of our stock;\nand what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts, while\nyet, as a nation, hardly out of swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a\ncreative future. We are to have a national literature and a national\ndrama. What is a national drama? Premising that as little in their\ndepth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the\ndimensions of this great theme, we would say a few words.\n\nA literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the\nheart of a people. Good books are the crystallization of thoughts and\nfeelings. To have a literature--that is, a body of enduring\nbooks--implies vigor and depth. Such books are the measure of the\nmental vitality in a people. Those peoples that have the best books\nwill be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity; those that\nhave none, at the bottom. Good books, once brought forth,\nexhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. They educate while\nthey delight many generations.\n\nGood books are the best thoughts of the best men. They issue out of\ndeep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts and\nstrong heads such books are sure to come to life. The mind, like the\nbody, will reproduce itself: the mind, too, is procreative,\ntransmitting itself to a remote posterity.\n\nThe best books are the highest products of human effort. Themselves\nthe evidence of creative power, they kindle and nourish power.\nConsider what a spring of life to European people have been the books\nof the Hebrews. What so precious treasure has England as Shakespeare?\n\nTo be good, books must be generic. They may be, in subject, in tone,\nand in color, national; but in substance they must be so universally\nhuman, that other cognate nations can imbibe and be nourished by them.\nNot that, in their fashioning, this fitness for foreign minds is to be\na conscious aim; but to be thus attractive and assimilative, is a\nproof of their breadth and depth--of their high humanity.\n\nThe peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is\nneeded to bring forth books, each standing by itself, each necessarily\nsang and wrote merely of itself. Thus did the Hebrews and the Greeks.\nBut already the Romans went out of themselves, and Virgil takes a\nTrojan for his hero. This appropriation of foreign material shows that\nthe aim of high books is, to ascend to the sphere of ideas and\nfeelings that are independent of time and place. Thence, when, by\nmultiplication of Christian nations our mental world had become vastly\nenlarged, embracing in one bond of culture, not only all modern\ncivilized peoples, but also the three great ancient ones, the\npoets--especially the dramatic, for reasons that will be presently\nstated--looked abroad and afar for the frame-work and corporeal stuff\nof their writings.\n\nThe most universal of all writers, ancient or modern, he who is most\ngeneric in his thought, Shakespeare, embodied his transcendent\nconceptions for the most part in foreign personages. Of Shakespeare's\nfourteen comedies, the scene of only one is laid in England; and that\none, \"The Merry Wives of Windsor\"--the only one not written chiefly or\nlargely in verse--is a Shakespearean farce. Of the tragedies\n(except the series of the ten historical ones) only two, \"Lear\" and\n\"Macbeth,\" stand on British ground. Is \"Hamlet\" on that score less\nEnglish than \"Lear,\" or \"Othello\" than \"Macbeth\"? Does Italy count\nJuliet among her trophies, or Desdemona?\n\nOf Milton's two dramas---to confine myself here to the dramatic\ndomain--the tragedy (\"Samson Agonistes,\") like his epics, is Biblical;\nthe comedy (\"Comus\") has its home in a sphere\n\n  \"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot\n  Which men call earth.\"\n\nOf the numerous athletic corps of dramatists, contemporary with\nShakespeare and Milton, few have left works pithy enough and so\npoetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh to\neach successive generation. But if you inspect the long list from\nwhich Charles Lamb took his \"Specimens,\" you will find few British\nnames.\n\nCasting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent English poetic\ncelebrities, we perceive that Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, all\nabandoned, in every instance, native ground. The only dramatic work of\na great modern, the scene of which is laid within the British limits,\nis \"The Borderers,\" of Wordsworth, which, though having the\npoetic advantage of remoteness in time--being thrown back to the reign\nof Henry III.--is, in strictness, neither a drama nor a poem,\nWordsworth's deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause,\nby the impotent struggle in an uncongenial element, a partial\nparalysis even of his high poetic genius.\n\nGlance now across the Channel. French poetic tragedy is in its\nsubjects almost exclusively ancient--Greek, Roman, and Biblical. In\nthe works of the great comic genius of France, Moliere, we have a\nsalient exception to the practice of all other eminent dramatists. The\nscene of his plays is Paris; the time is the year in which each was\nwritten.\n\nLet us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation.\n\nMoliere was the manager of a theatrical company in the reign of Louis\nXIV., and he wrote, as he himself declares, to please the king and\namuse the Parisians. But deeper than this; Moliere was by nature a\ngreat satirist. I call him a _great_ satirist, because of the\naffluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite--namely, a\nclear, moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the\nfalse, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense,\nshrewd insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the\ncomic and absurd. For a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was\nthe best field, and for Moliere especially, gifted as he was with\nhistrionic genius. The vices and abuses, the follies and absurdities,\nthe hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized life, these were the\ngame for his faculties. The interior of Paris households he\ntransferred to the stage with biting wit, doubling the attractiveness\nof his pictures by comic hyperbole. His portraits are caricatures, not\nbecause they exaggerate vices or foibles, but because they so bloat\nout a single personage with one vice or one folly as to make him a\nlop-sided deformity. Characters he did not seek to draw, but he made a\npersonage the medium of incarnating a quality. Harpagon is not a\nmiser; he is Avarice speaking and doing. Alceste is not a person; he\nis Misanthropy personified.\n\nThis fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of\nrelations and juxtapositions. With laughable unscrupulousness Moliere\nmultiplies improbable blunders and conjunctions. All verisimilitude is\nsacrificed to scenic vivacity. Hence, the very highest of his comedies\nare farce-like; even \"Tartuffe\" is so.\n\nIn Moliere little dramatic growth goes on before the\nspectator's eye. His personages are not gradually built up by\nsuccessive touches, broad or fine; they do not evolve themselves\nchiefly by collision with others; in the first act they come on the\nstage unfolded. The action and plot advance rapidly, but not through\nthe unrolling of the persons represented. Hence, his most important\npersonages are prosaic and finite. They interest you more as agents\nfor the purpose in hand than as men and women. They are subordinate\nrather to the action than creative of action.\n\nMoliere is a most thorough realist, and herein is his strength. In him\nthe comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and\nbody to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet.\nSuch being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was\na present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic comedy\nought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter of very high life.\nMoliere's comedies, dealing unctuously with vice and folly, are,\nphilosophically speaking, low life. His are comedies not of character\nand sentiment, but of manners and morals, and therefore cannot be\nhighly poetical; and thence he felt no want of a remote\nground, clean of all local coloring and association, such as is\nessential to the dramatist whose inspiration is poetical, and who\ntherefore must reconcile the ideal with the real, by which\nreconciliation only can be produced the purest truth. That,\nnotwithstanding they belong not to the highest poetic sphere, his\ncomedies continue to live and to be enjoyed, this testifies of the\nbreadth and truthfulness of his humanity, the piercing insight of his\nrich mind, and his superlative comic genius.\n\nOf Alfieri's twenty-two tragedies, three only are modern, and of these\nthree the scene of one is in Spain.\n\nOf the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost German dramatic poet,\nSchiller, three are German, \"The Robbers,\" \"Intrigue and Love,\" and\n\"Wallenstein.\"\n\nGoethe's highest dramas, \"Iphigenia,\" \"Egmont,\" \"Torquato Tasso,\" are\nall foreign in clothing. \"The Natural Daughter\" has no local\nhabitation, no dependence on time or place. \"Goetz von Berlichingen,\"\nwritten in Goethe's earliest days of authorship, is German and in\nprose, \"Faust\"--the greatest poem of these latter times, and rivaling\nthe greatest poems of all time--\"Faust\" is not strictly a drama: its\nwonderful successive scenes are not bound together by dramatic\nnecessity.\n\nThe drama of Spain, like the comedies of Moliere, is an exception to\nthe rule we deduce from the practice of other dramatists; but it is an\nexception which, like that of Moliere, confirms the rule. Unlike the\nancient Greek and the French tragic poets, unlike Schiller,\nShakespeare, Goethe, Alfieri, the Spanish dramatists do not aim at\nideal humanity. The best of them, Calderon, is so intensely Spanish\nand Romish, as to be, in comparison with the breadth and universality\nof his eminent compeers above named, almost provincial. His personages\nare not large and deep enough to be representative. The manifold\nrecesses of great minds he does not unveil; he gets no deeper than the\nsemi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish, passionate love; of revenge,\nhonor, and jealousy. His characterization is weak. His highest\ncharacters lack intellectual calibre, and are exhibited in lyrical\none-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness. He is mostly\ncontent with Spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century, ruled by\nthe conventionalisms in manners, morals, and superstition, which have\nalready passed away even in Spain. He is a marvelously fertile,\nskillful, poetic playwright.\n\nThus we perceive that, with poetic dramatists, the prevailing\npractice is, to look abroad for fables. Moreover, in the cases where\nthese were drawn from the bosom of the poet's own people, he shuns the\npresent, and hies as far back as he can into the dark abysms of time,\nas Shakespeare does in Macbeth and Lear. The Greek tragic poets,\nhaving no outward resource, took possession of the fabulous era of\nGreece. The poetic dramatist seeks mostly a double remoteness, that of\nplace as well as that of time; and he must have one or the other.\n\nThe law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent. The higher poetry\nis, the more generic it is. Its universality is a chief constituent of\nits excellence. The drama is the most generically human, and,\ntherefore, the highest of the great forms of poetry. The epic deals\nwith the material, the outward--humanity concreted into events; the\nlyric with the inward, when that is so individual and intense as to\ngush out in ode or song. The dramatic is the union of the epic and\nlyric--the inward moulding the outward, predominant over the outward\nwhile co-working with it. In the dramatic, the action is more made by\nthe personality; in the epic, the personality is more merged in the\nstrong, full stream of events. The lyric is the utterance of\none-sided, partial (however deep and earnest) feeling, the which must\nbe linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his\nactions. The dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic. Out of\nhumanity and human action it extracts the essence. It presents men in\ntheir completest form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest\nfeelings. Hence, it must be condensed and compact, and must, for its\nhighest display, get rid of local coloring, personal associations, and\nall prosaic circumscriptions. The poetic dramatist needs the highest\npoetic freedom, and only through this can he attain to that breadth\nand largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits, and which\nare such in Shakespeare, that in his greatest plays the whole world\nseems to be present as spectators and listeners.\n\nObserve that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two freest\npeoples--the Greeks and the English. A people, possessing already a\nlarge political freedom, must be capable of, and must be in the act\nof, vigorous, rich development, through deep inward passion and\nfaculty, in order that its spirit shall issue in the perennial flowers\nof the poetic drama. The dramatic especially implies and\ndemands variety and fullness and elevation of _personality_; and\nthis is only possible through freedom, the attainment of which freedom\nimplies on its side the innate fertility of nature which results in\nfullness and elevation.\n\nNow in the subjective elevation of the individual, and therewith the\nunprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated, herein do\nwe exceed all other peoples. By subjective elevation I mean,\nliberation from the outward, downward pressure of dogmatic\nprescription, of imperious custom, of blindfolded tradition, of\nirresponsible authority. The despotic objectivity of Asia--where\nreligion is submissiveness, and manhood is crushed by obedience--has\nbeen partially withstood in Europe. The emancipation therefrom of the\nIndo-Germanic race is completed in Anglo-America. Through this\nmanifold emancipation we are to be, in all the high departments of\nhuman achievement, preeminently creative, because, while equipped with\nthe best of the past, we are at the same time preeminently subjective;\nand, therefore, high literature will, with us, necessarily take the\nlyrical, and especially the dramatic, form.\n\nMore than our European ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our\nown destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and\nelevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand the\nassaults of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the true\nChristian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's\nredemption; that the favor and help of God are only to be obtained\nthrough resolute self-help, and honest, earnest struggle. In\nChristendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity\nof politics nor that of the church. The light of the past we have,\nwithout its darkness. We carry little weight from the exacting past.\nHence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which, wanting the\nold conventional ballast, to Europeans seems lawless and reckless.\nEven among ourselves, many tremble for our future, because they have\nlittle faith in humanity, and because they cannot grasp the new, grand\nhistoric phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles,\npractices, and trophies of civilization without its paralyzing\nincumbrances.\n\nBut think not, because we are less passive to destiny, we are\nrebellious against Deity; because we are boldly self-reliant, we are,\ntherefore, irreligiously defiant. The freer a people is, the\nnearer it is to God. The more subjective it is, through acquired\nself-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of\nabsolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious\nsecondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under\nthe steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the force of\nhuman, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge\nthe supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having rejected the tyranny\nof man's willfulness, we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent\npower of principle.\n\nOur birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep\nprinciples--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason,\nand generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated\nby principle, and thence our literature must embrace the widest and\nmost human wants and aspirations of man. And thus, it will be our\nprivilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when\nwe are the most universal.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nUSEFULNESS OF ART.\n\nADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE RHODE ISLAND ART\nASSOCIATION IN PROVIDENCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1854.\n\n\n_Gentlemen of the Rhode Island Art Association:_--\n\nWe are met to inaugurate an Association whose aim and end shall be the\nencouragement and culture of Art. A most high end--among the highest\nthat men can attempt; an end that never can be entertained except by\nmen of the best breed. There is no art among savages, none among\nbarbarians. Barbarism and art are adversary terms. When men capable of\ncivilization ascend into it, art manifests itself an inevitable\naccompaniment, an indispensable aid to human development. I will say\nfurther, that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the\ncapacity, nay, the necessity of art. And still further, that those\nnations that have been or are preeminent on the earth, are preeminent\nin art. Nay, more, that a nation cannot attain to and maintain\neminence without being proficient in art; and that to abstract from a\npeople its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its\nbranches; it were to cut off its-deep roots.\n\nWho is the artist?\n\nHe who embodies, in whatever mode,--so that they be visible or\naudible, and thus find entrance to the mind,--conceptions of the\nbeautiful, is an artist. The test and characteristic of the artistic\nnature are superior sensibility to the beautiful. Unite to this the\nfaculties and the will to give form to the impressions and emotions\nthat are the fruit of this susceptibility, and you have the artist.\nWhether he shall embody his conception in written verse, in marble, in\nstone, in sound, on the canvas, that will depend on each one's\nindividual aptitudes. Generic, common, indispensable to all is the\nsuperior sensibility to the beautiful. In this lies the essence of the\nartist.\n\nThe beautiful and the perfect being, if not identical, in closest\nconsanguinity, the artist's is an important, a great function. The\nartist must receive into his mind, or engender in his mind's native\nrichness, conceptions of what is most high, most perfect, most\nbeautiful in shape or sound, in thought or feeling; and producing it\nbefore his fellow-men, appeal to their sensibility to the beautiful,\nto their deepest sympathies, to their capacity of being moved by the\ngrandest and the noblest there is in man and nature. Truly, a mighty\npart is that of the artist.\n\nArtists are the educators of humanity. Tutors and professors instruct\nprinces and kings, but poets (and all genuine artists are poets)\neducate nations. Take from Greece Homer and Phidias, and Sophocles and\nScopas, and the planner of the Parthenon, and you efface Greece from\nhistory. Wanting them, she would not have been the great Greece that\nwe know; she would not have had the vigor of sap, the nervous\nvitality, to have continued to live in a remote posterity, immortal in\nthe culture, the memories, and the gratitude of men.\n\nSo great, so far-stretching, so undying is the power of this exalted\nclass of men, that it were hardly too much to say that had Homer and\nPhidias never lived, we should not be here today. If this be deemed\nextravagant, with confidence I affirm that but for the existence of\nthe greatest artist the world has ever known,--of him who may\nbe called the chief educator of England,--but for Shakespeare, we\nassuredly should not be here to-day doing the good work we are doing.\n\nThere are probably some of this company who, like myself, having had\nthe good fortune to be in London at the time of the world's fair,\nstood under that magnificent, transparent roof, trod that immense area\nwhereon fifty thousand people moved at ease. It was a privilege,--the\nmemory of which will last a life-time, to have been admitted into that\ngigantic temple of industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion\nand variety the product of man's labor, intellect, and genius,\ngathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous\npile,--a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from\nits moral significance absolutely sublime.\n\nOn entering by the chief portal into the transept,--covering in the\nhuge oaks of Hyde Park,--the American, after wondering for a moment in\nthe glare of the first aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps\nthe vanity of his nation,--have hastened through the compartments of\nFrance, Belgium, Germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold.\nHe will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a\nshow, in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace\nwhere a broad area had been allotted to the United States,--Jonathan,\nas is his wont, having helped himself largely. Great was the\nAmerican's disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his vanity; his\ncountry made no _show_ at all. The samples of her industry were\nnot outwardly brilliant. Their excellence lay in their inward power,\nin their wide usefulness. They were not ornaments and luxuries for the\ndwellings of the few, they were inventions that diffuse comforts and\nblessings among the many,--labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers.\nBy the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it\nwas acknowledged in the final awards of the judges. And even in this\nhigh department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and\nmisunderstandings, we were not adequately represented. But even if we\nhad been, the European would have said, \"This has a high value and\ninterest; but still I find not here enough to justify the expectations\nentertained by this people, and by many in Europe, of the future\ngreatness of the American Republic. These things, significant as they\nare, are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to\nwrite the richest page of man's history. In this present display I\nfind not prefigured that splendid future the Americans are fond of\npredicting for themselves.\" And the American, acknowledging the force\nof the comment, would have turned away mortified, humbled. But he was\nsaved any such humiliation. In the midst of that area, under that\nbeautiful flag, day after day, week after week, month after month,\nfrom morn till night, go when he would, he beheld there a circle ever\nfull, its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made, a circle\nsilent with admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of\nAmerican art, the Greek Slave of Powers. And from that contemplation\nhundreds of thousands of Europeans carried away an impression of\nAmerican capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be\nwritten by the young republic in the book of history,--a sense of\nAmerican power which they could have gotten from no other source.\n\nOur Association, gentlemen, owes its origin to the wants of industry.\nThe moving power which has been strongest in bringing so many of us\ntogether to found an institution for the encouragement of art in Rhode\nIsland, is the desire hereby more thoroughly to inweave the\nbeautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics, into calicoes and delaines;\nto melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and copper, as well as into\nsilver and gold; so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their\nown against the competition of England and France and Germany, whereof\nin the two latter countries especially, schools of design have long\nexisted, and high artists find their account in furnishing the\nbeautiful to manufacturers.\n\n\"A low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without\nflavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered,\" will say some travelled\ndilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders\nof the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches\na different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely,\nbut the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded\ncanopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has He made\nbeautiful. He surrounds us with beauty; He envelops us in beauty.\nBeauty is spread out on the familiar grass, glows in the daily flower,\nglistens in the dew, waves in the commonest leafy branch. All about\nus, in infinite variety, beauty is lavished by God in sights\nand sounds, and odors. Now, in using the countless and multifarious\nsubstances that are put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and\ncontrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and\npleasure, it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we\nshall--follow the divine example, so that in all our handiwork, as in\nhis, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature of each product is\nsusceptible of. That it is the final purpose of Providence that our\nwhole life, inward and outward, shall be beautiful, and be steeped in\nbeauty, we have evidence, in the yearnings of the best natures for the\nperfect, in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art\nand nature, in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful\ndeed.\n\nBy culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our\nsurroundings shall be beautiful.\n\nCan you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly larger, the\nstructure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the\ncontrol of the best architectural ideas, being of various stones and\nmarbles, and various in style and color, so that each and every one\nshall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or ornate, or solid,\nor grand, according to its purpose, and the conception of the\nbuilder; and in the midst and on the borders of the city, squares, and\nparks, planted with trees and flowers and freshened by streams and\nfountains. And when you recall the agreeable, the elevating sensation\nyou have experienced in front of a perfect piece of architecture\n(still so rare), will you not readily concede that where every edifice\nshould be beautiful, and you never walked or drove out but through\nstreets of palaces and artistic parks, the effect on the whole\npopulation of this ever-present beauty and grandeur, would be to\nrefine, to expand, to elevate. When we look at the architectural\nimprovements made within a generation, in London, in Paris, in New\nYork, we may, without being Utopians, hope for this transformation.\nBut the full consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in\nunison with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life,\nand the diffusion of such improvements among the masses.\n\nIt is to further-such diffusion that this Association has been\nfounded. Our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in all\nthings; to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the artist;\nto make universally visible and active the harmony,--I almost might\nsay the identity,--there is between the useful and the beautiful.\n\nGentlemen, ever in the heart of the practical, in the very core of the\nuseful, there is enclosed a seed of beauty; and upon the\nfructification, growth, and expansion of that seed depends,--aye,\nabsolutely depends,--the development of the practical. But for the\nexpansion of that seed, we should have neither the plough nor the\nprinting-press, neither shoes nor the steam engine. To that we owe\nsilver forks as well as the electric telegraph. In no province of work\nor human endeavor is improvement made, is improvement possible, but by\nthe action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when\nstanding before a masterpiece of Raphael. This ceaseless seeking for a\nbetter, this unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the\nEnglish race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from\nthe narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this\nwide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of\nlife; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our\npresent as that is to the times of Alfred.\n\nIn the works of the Almighty this principle is so alive that they are\nradiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of each is often\nthe measure of its usefulness. How beautiful is a field of\ngolden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the\ncloser it stands and the fuller are its heads. The oak and the pine\nowe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their\nusefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. The proportions which\ngive the horse his highest symmetry of form, give him his fleetness\nand endurance and strength. And thus, too, with man,--his works, when\nbest, sparkle most with this fire of the beautiful. We profit by\nhistory in proportion as it registers beautiful sayings and beautiful\ndoings. We profit one another in everyday life in proportion as our\nacts, the minor as well as the greater, are vitalized by this divine\nessence of beauty. To the speeches of Webster, even to the most\ntechnical, this essence gives their completeness and their grandeur of\nproportion; while it is this which illuminates with undying splendor\nthe creations of Allston. Thus, gentlemen, the aim of our Association\nis most noble and useful, drawing its nobleness from its high\nusefulness. May it so prosper, that a generation hence, thousands and\ntens of thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration\nwith praise and thankfulness.","title":"Essays \u00c6sthetical","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":51865}