{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32884/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32884","id":"gutenberg_32884","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32884","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays","Nobel Prizes in Literature"],"text":"Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIdeas of Good and Evil\n\n\n\n\n  _BY THE SAME WRITER--_\n      THE SECRET ROSE\n      THE CELTIC TWILIGHT\n      POEMS\n      THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS\n      THE SHADOWY WATERS\n      PLAYS FOR AN IRISH THEATRE\n          VOL. I.  WHERE THERE IS NOTHING\n          VOL. II. SHORTER PLAYS\n\n\n\n\nIdeas of Good and Evil\n\n\nSecond Edition\n\n\n\n\nIdeas of Good and Evil.\n\nBy W. B. Yeats\n\n\nA. H. BULLEN, 47 Great Russell\n\nStreet, London, W.C. MCMIII\n\n\n\n\nContents.\n\n\n  WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?                                        1\n\n  SPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY                                        16\n\n  MAGIC                                                           29\n\n  THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS                                       70\n\n  THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY                              90\n\n  AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON                                           142\n\n  WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION                              168\n\n  WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO _THE DIVINE COMEDY_     176\n\n  SYMBOLISM IN PAINTING                                          226\n\n  THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY                                        237\n\n  THE THEATRE                                                    257\n\n  THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE                               270\n\n  THE AUTUMN OF THE BODY                                         296\n\n  THE MOODS                                                      306\n\n  THE BODY OF THE FATHER CHRISTIAN ROSENCRUX                     308\n\n  _THE RETURN OF ULYSSES_                                        312\n\n  IRELAND AND THE ARTS                                           320\n\n  THE GALWAY PLAINS                                              333\n\n  EMOTION OF MULTITUDE                                           339\n\n\n\n\n_Note._--The Essay on _Symbolism in Painting_ originally formed part of an\nIntroduction to _A Book of Images drawn by W. T. Horton_ (Unicorn Press),\n1898.\n\n\n\n\nWHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?\n\n\nI think it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on\n'popular poetry.' We used to discuss everything that was known to us about\nIreland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We had no\nGaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in English, and\nquoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that time the dates\nof the birth and death, and quoted the chief poems, of men whose names you\nhave not heard, and perhaps of some whose names I have forgotten. I knew\nin my heart that the most of them wrote badly, and yet such romance clung\nabout them, such a desire for Irish poetry was in all our minds, that I\nkept on saying, not only to others but to myself, that most of them wrote\nwell, or all but well. I had read Shelley and Spenser and had tried to mix\ntheir styles together in a pastoral play which I have not come to dislike\nmuch, and yet I do not think Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did\nthese poets. I thought one day--I can remember the very day when I thought\nit--'If somebody could make a style which would not be an English style\nand yet would be musical and full of colour, many others would catch fire\nfrom him, and we would have a really great school of ballad poetry in\nIreland. If these poets, who have never ceased to fill the newspapers and\nthe ballad-books with their verses, had a good tradition they would write\nbeautifully and move everybody as they move me.' Then a little later on I\nthought, 'If they had something else to write about besides political\nopinions, if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people like\nAllingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find it easier\nto get a style.' Then, with a deliberateness that still surprises me, for\nin my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain that one should be\nmore than an artist, that even patriotism is more than an impure desire\nin an artist, I set to work to find a style and things to write about that\nthe ballad writers might be the better.\n\nThey are no better, I think, and my desire to make them so was, it may be,\none of the illusions Nature holds before one, because she knows that the\ngifts she has to give are not worth troubling about. It is for her sake\nthat we must stir ourselves, but we would not trouble to get out of bed in\nthe morning, or to leave our chairs once we are in them, if she had not\nher conjuring bag. She wanted a few verses from me, and because it would\nnot have seemed worth while taking so much trouble to see my books lie on\na few drawing-room tables, she filled my head with thoughts of making a\nwhole literature, and plucked me out of the Dublin art schools where I\nshould have stayed drawing from the round, and sent me into a library to\nread bad translations from the Irish, and at last down into Connaught to\nsit by turf fires. I wanted to write 'popular poetry' like those Irish\npoets, for I believed that all good literatures were popular, and even\ncherished the fancy that the Adelphi melodrama, which I had never seen,\nmight be good literature, and I hated what I called the coteries. I\nthought that one must write without care, for that was of the coteries,\nbut with a gusty energy that would put all straight if it came out of the\nright heart. I had a conviction, which indeed I have still, that one's\nverses should hold, as in a mirror, the colours of one's own climate and\nscenery in their right proportion; and, when I found my verses too full of\nthe reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of\nsetting things right, not as I should now by making my rhythms faint and\nnervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a certain wintry\nwildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a board. I felt indignant\nwith Matthew Arnold because he complained that somebody, who had\ntranslated Homer into a ballad measure, had tried to write epic to the\ntune of Yankee Doodle. It seemed to me that it did not matter what tune\none wrote to, so long as that gusty energy came often enough and strongly\nenough. And I delighted in Victor Hugo's book upon Shakespeare, because he\nabused critics and coteries and thought that Shakespeare wrote without\ncare or premeditation and to please everybody. I would indeed have had\nevery illusion had I believed in that straightforward logic, as of\nnewspaper articles, which so tickles the ears of the shopkeepers; but I\nalways knew that the line of Nature is crooked, that, though we dig the\ncanal beds as straight as we can, the rivers run hither and thither in\ntheir wildness.\n\nFrom that day to this I have been busy among the verses and stories that\nthe people make for themselves, but I had been busy a very little while\nbefore I knew that what we call popular poetry never came from the people\nat all. Longfellow, and Campbell, and Mrs. Hemans, and Macaulay in his\n_Lays_, and Scott in his longer poems are the poets of the middle class,\nof people who have unlearned the unwritten tradition which binds the\nunlettered, so long as they are masters of themselves, to the beginning of\ntime and to the foundation of the world, and who have not learned the\nwritten tradition which has been established upon the unwritten. I became\ncertain that Burns, whose greatness has been used to justify the\nlittleness of others, was in part a poet of the middle class, because\nthough the farmers he sprang from and lived among had been able to create\na little tradition of their own, less a tradition of ideas than of speech,\nthey had been divided by religious and political changes from the images\nand emotions which had once carried their memories backward thousands of\nyears. Despite his expressive speech which sets him above all other\npopular poets, he has the triviality of emotion, the poverty of ideas, the\nimperfect sense of beauty of a poetry whose most typical expression is in\nLongfellow. Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells\nhis story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to\nunderstand it. No words of his borrow their beauty from those that used\nthem before, and one can get all that there is in story and idea without\nseeing them, as if moving before a half-faded curtain embroidered with\nkings and queens, their loves and battles and their days out hunting, or\nelse with holy letters and images of so great antiquity that nobody can\ntell the god or goddess they would commend to an unfading memory. Poetry\nthat is not popular poetry presupposes, indeed, more than it says, though\nwe, who cannot know what it is to be disinherited, only understand how\nmuch more, when we read it in its most typical expressions, in the\n_Epipsychidion_ of Shelley, or in Spenser's description of the gardens of\nAdonis, or when we meet the misunderstandings of others. Go down into the\nstreet and read to your baker or your candlestick-maker any poem which is\nnot popular poetry. I have heard a baker, who was clever enough with his\noven, deny that Tennyson could have known what he was writing when he\nwrote 'Warming his five wits, the white owl in the belfry sits,' and once\nwhen I read out Omar Khayyam to one of the best of candlestick-makers, he\nsaid, 'What is the meaning of \"we come like water and like wind we go\"?'\nOr go down into the street with some thought whose bare meaning must be\nplain to everybody; take with you Ben Jonson's 'Beauty like sorrow\ndwelleth everywhere,' and find out how utterly its enchantment depends on\nan association of beauty with sorrow which written tradition has from the\nunwritten, which had it in its turn from ancient religion; or take with\nyou these lines in whose bare meaning also there is nothing to stumble\nover, and find out what men lose who are not in love with Helen.\n\n  'Brightness falls from the air,\n  Queens have died young and fair,\n  Dust hath closed Helen's eye.'\n\nI pick my examples at random, for I am writing where I have no books to\nturn the pages of, but one need not go east of the sun or west of the moon\nin so simple a matter.\n\nOn the other hand, when Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of\ntradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the\nbaker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his\nwork by chance. Nature, which cannot endure emptiness, has made them\ngather conventions which cannot disguise their low birth though they copy,\nas from far off, the dress and manners of the well-bred and the well-born.\nThe gatherers mock all expression that is wholly unlike their own, just as\nlittle boys in the street mock at strangely-dressed people and at old men\nwho talk to themselves.\n\nThere is only one kind of good poetry, for the poetry of the coteries,\nwhich presupposes the written tradition, does not differ in kind from the\ntrue poetry of the people, which presupposes the unwritten tradition. Both\nare alike strange and obscure, and unreal to all who have not\nunderstanding, and both, instead of that manifest logic, that clear\nrhetoric of the 'popular poetry,' glimmer with thoughts and images whose\n'ancestors were stout and wise,' 'anigh to Paradise' 'ere yet men knew the\ngift of corn.' It may be that we know as little of their descent as men\nknew of 'the man born to be a king' when they found him in that cradle\nmarked with the red lion crest, and yet we know somewhere in the heart\nthat they have been sung in temples, in ladies' chambers, and our nerves\nquiver with a recognition they were shaped to by a thousand emotions. If\nmen did not remember or half remember impossible things, and, it may be,\nif the worship of sun and moon had not left a faint reverence behind it,\nwhat Aran fisher-girl would sing--\n\n'It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking\nof you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird throughout the\nwoods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.\n\n'You promised me and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me\nwhere the sheep are flocked. I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to\nyou; and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.\n\n'You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a\nsilver mast; twelve towns and a market in all of them, and a fine white\ncourt by the side of the sea.\n\n'You promised me a thing that is not possible; that you would give me\ngloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of the skin of\na bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.\n\n'My mother said to me not to be talking with you, to-day or to-morrow or\non Sunday. It was a bad time she took for telling me that, it was shutting\nthe door after the house was robbed....\n\n'You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me, you\nhave taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the\nmoon, you have taken the sun from me, and my fear is great you have taken\nGod from me.'\n\nThe Gael of the Scottish islands could not sing his beautiful song over a\nbride, had he not a memory of the belief that Christ was the only man who\nmeasured six feet and not a little more or less, and was perfectly shaped\nin all other ways, and if he did not remember old symbolical observances--\n\n  I bathe thy palms\n  In showers of wine,\n  In the cleansing fire,\n  In the juice of raspberries,\n  In the milk of honey.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Thou art the joy of all joyous things,\n  Thou art the light of the beam of the sun,\n  Thou art the door of the chief of hospitality,\n  Thou art the surpassing pilot star,\n  Thou art the step of the deer of the hill,\n  Thou art the step of the horse of the plain,\n  Thou art the grace of the sun rising,\n  Thou art the loveliness of all lovely desires.\n\n  The lovely likeness of the Lord\n  Is in thy pure face,\n  The loveliest likeness that was upon earth.\n\nI soon learned to cast away one other illusion of 'popular poetry.' I\nlearned from the people themselves, before I learned it from any book,\nthat they cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea of a\ncult with ancient technicalities and mysteries. They can hardly separate\nmere learning from witchcraft, and are fond of words and verses that keep\nhalf their secret to themselves. Indeed, it is certain that before the\ncounting-house had created a new class and a new art without breeding and\nwithout ancestry, and set this art and this class between the hut and the\ncastle, and between the hut and the cloister, the art of the people was as\nclosely mingled with the art of the coteries as was the speech of the\npeople that delighted in rhythmical animation, in idiom, in images, in\nwords full of far-off suggestion, with the unchanging speech of the poets.\n\nNow I see a new generation in Ireland which discusses Irish literature and\nhistory in Young Ireland societies, and societies with newer names, and\nthere are far more than when I was a boy who would make verses for the\npeople. They have the help, too, of a vigorous journalism, and this\njournalism sometimes urges them to desire the direct logic, the clear\nrhetoric, of 'popular poetry.' It sees that Ireland has no cultivated\nminority, and it does not see, though it would cast out all English\nthings, that its literary ideal belongs more to England than to other\ncountries. I have hope that the new writers will not fall into its\nillusion, for they write in Irish, and for a people the counting-house has\nnot made forgetful. Among the seven or eight hundred thousand who have\nhad Irish from the cradle, there is, perhaps, nobody who has not enough of\nthe unwritten tradition to know good verses from bad ones, if he have\nenough mother-wit. Among all that speak English in Australia, in America,\nin Great Britain, are there many more than the ten thousand the prophet\nsaw, who have enough of the written tradition education has set in room of\nthe unwritten to know good verses from bad ones, even though their\nmother-wit has made them Ministers of the Crown or what you will? Nor can\nthings be better till that ten thousand have gone hither and thither to\npreach their faith that 'the imagination is the man himself,' and that the\nworld as imagination sees it is the durable world, and have won men as did\nthe disciples of Him who--\n\n  His seventy disciples sent\n  Against religion and government.\n\n1901.\n\n\n\n\nSPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY\n\n\nI\n\nI have always known that there was something I disliked about singing, and\nI naturally dislike print and paper, but now at last I understand why, for\nI have found something better. I have just heard a poem spoken with so\ndelicate a sense of its rhythm, with so perfect a respect for its meaning,\nthat if I were a wise man and could persuade a few people to learn the art\nI would never open a book of verses again. A friend, who was here a few\nminutes ago, has sat with a beautiful stringed instrument upon her knee,\nher fingers passing over the strings, and has spoken to me some verses\nfrom Shelley's _Skylark_ and Sir Ector's lamentation over the dead\nLauncelot out of the _Morte d'Arthur_ and some of my own poems. Wherever\nthe rhythm was most delicate, wherever the emotion was most ecstatic, her\nart was the most beautiful, and yet, although she sometimes spoke to a\nlittle tune, it was never singing, as we sing to-day, never anything but\nspeech. A singing note, a word chanted as they chant in churches, would\nhave spoiled everything; nor was it reciting, for she spoke to a notation\nas definite as that of song, using the instrument, which murmured sweetly\nand faintly, under the spoken sounds, to give her the changing notes.\nAnother speaker could have repeated all her effects, except those which\ncame from her own beautiful voice that would have given her fame if the\nonly art that gives the speaking voice its perfect opportunity were as\nwell known among us as it was known in the ancient world.\n\n\nII\n\nSince I was a boy I have always longed to hear poems spoken to a harp, as\nI imagined Homer to have spoken his, for it is not natural to enjoy an art\nonly when one is by oneself. Whenever one finds a fine verse one wants to\nread it to somebody, and it would be much less trouble and much\npleasanter if we could all listen, friend by friend, lover by beloved.\nImages used to rise up before me, as I am sure they have arisen before\nnearly everybody else who cares for poetry, of wild-eyed men speaking\nharmoniously to murmuring wires while audiences in many-coloured robes\nlistened, hushed and excited. Whenever I spoke of my desire to anybody\nthey said I should write for music, but when I heard anything sung I did\nnot hear the words, or if I did their natural pronunciation was altered\nand their natural music was altered, or it was drowned in another music\nwhich I did not understand. What was the good of writing a love-song if\nthe singer pronounced love, 'lo-o-o-o-o-ve,' or even if he said 'love,'\nbut did not give it its exact place and weight in the rhythm? Like every\nother poet, I spoke verses in a kind of chant when I was making them, and\nsometimes, when I was alone on a country road, I would speak them in a\nloud chanting voice, and feel that if I dared I would speak them in that\nway to other people. One day I was walking through a Dublin street with\nthe Visionary I have written about in _The Celtic Twilight_, and he began\nspeaking his verses out aloud with the confidence of those who have the\ninner light. He did not mind that people stopped and looked after him even\non the far side of the road, but went on through poem after poem. Like\nmyself, he knew nothing of music, but was certain that he had written them\nto a manner of music, and he had once asked somebody who played on a wind\ninstrument of some kind, and then a violinist, to write out the music and\nplay it. The violinist had played it, or something like it, but had not\nwritten it down; but the man with the wind instrument said it could not be\nplayed because it contained quarter-tones and would be out of tune. We\nwere not at all convinced by this, and one day, when we were staying with\na Galway friend who is a learned musician, I asked him to listen to our\nverses, and to the way we spoke them. The Visionary found to his surprise\nthat he did not make every poem to a different tune, and to the surprise\nof the musician that he did make them all to two quite definite tunes,\nwhich are, it seems, like very simple Arabic music. It was, perhaps, to\nsome such music, I thought, that Blake sang his _Songs of Innocence_ in\nMrs. Williams' drawing-room, and perhaps he, too, spoke rather than sang.\nI, on the other hand, did not often compose to a tune, though I sometimes\ndid, yet always to notes that could be written down and played on my\nfriend's organ, or turned into something like a Gregorian hymn if one sang\nthem in the ordinary way. I varied more than the Visionary, who never\nforgot his two tunes, one for long and one for short lines, and could not\nalways speak a poem in the same way, but always felt that certain ways\nwere right, and that I would know one of them if I remembered the way I\nfirst spoke the poem. When I got to London I gave the notation, as it had\nbeen played on the organ, to the friend who has just gone out, and she\nspoke it to me, giving my words a new quality by the beauty of her voice.\n\n\nIII\n\nThen we began to wander through the wood of error; we tried speaking\nthrough music in the ordinary way under I know not whose evil influence,\nuntil we got to hate the two competing tunes and rhythms that were so\noften at discord with one another, the tune and rhythm of the verse and\nthe tune and rhythm of the music. Then we tried, persuaded by somebody who\nthought quarter-tones and less intervals the especial mark of speech as\ndistinct from singing, to write out what we did in wavy lines. On finding\nsomething like these lines in Tibetan music, we became so confident that\nwe covered a large piece of pasteboard, which now blows up my fire in the\nmorning, with a notation in wavy lines as a demonstration for a lecture;\nbut at last Mr. Dolmetsch put us back to our first thought. He made us a\nbeautiful instrument half psaltery half lyre which contains, I understand,\nall the chromatic intervals within the range of the speaking voice; and he\ntaught us to regulate our speech by the ordinary musical notes.\n\nSome of the notations he taught us--those in which there is no lilt, no\nrecurring pattern of sounds--are like this notation for a song out of the\nfirst Act of _The Countess Cathleen_.\n\nIt is written in the old C clef, which is, I am told, the most reasonable\nway to write it, for it would be below the stave on the treble clef or\nabove it on the bass clef. The central line of the stave corresponds to\nthe middle C of the piano; the first note of the poem is therefore D. The\nmarks of long and short over the syllables are not marks of scansion, but\nshow the syllables one makes the voice hurry or linger over.\n\n\n[Illustration: Song and music.]\n\n\nOne needs, of course, a far less complicated notation than a singer, and\none is even permitted slight modifications of the fixed note when dramatic\nexpression demands it and the instrument is not sounding. The notation\nwhich regulates the general form of the sound leaves it free to add a\ncomplexity of dramatic expression from its own incommunicable genius which\ncompensates the lover of speech for the lack of complex musical\nexpression. Ordinary speech is formless, and its variety is like the\nvariety which separates bad prose from the regulated speech of Milton, or\nanything that is formless and void from anything that has form and beauty.\nThe orator, the speaker who has some little of the great tradition of his\ncraft, differs from the debater very largely because he understands how to\nassume that subtle monotony of voice which runs through the nerves like\nfire.\n\nEven when one is speaking to a single note sounded faintly on the\nPsaltery, if one is sufficiently practised to speak on it without\nthinking about it one can get an endless variety of expression. All art\nis, indeed, a monotony in external things for the sake of an interior\nvariety, a sacrifice of gross effects to subtle effects, an asceticism of\nthe imagination. But this new art, new in modern life I mean, will have to\ntrain its hearers as well as its speakers, for it takes time to surrender\ngladly the gross efforts one is accustomed to, and one may well find mere\nmonotony at first where one soon learns to find a variety as incalculable\nas in the outline of faces or in the expression of eyes. Modern acting and\nrecitation have taught us to fix our attention on the gross effects till\nwe have come to think gesture and the intonation that copies the\naccidental surface of life more important than the rhythm; and yet we\nunderstand theoretically that it is precisely this rhythm that separates\ngood writing from bad, that is the glimmer, the fragrance, the spirit of\nall intense literature. I do not say that we should speak our plays to\nmusical notes, for dramatic verse will need its own method, and I have\nhitherto experimented with short lyric poems alone; but I am certain that,\nif people would listen for a while to lyrical verse spoken to notes, they\nwould soon find it impossible to listen without indignation to verse as it\nis spoken in our leading theatres. They would get a subtlety of hearing\nthat would demand new effects from actors and even from public speakers,\nand they might, it may be, begin even to notice one another's voices till\npoetry and rhythm had come nearer to common life.\n\nI cannot tell what changes this new art is to go through, or to what\ngreatness or littleness of fortune; but I can imagine little stories in\nprose with their dialogues in metre going pleasantly to the strings. I am\nnot certain that I shall not see some Order naming itself from the Golden\nViolet of the Troubadours or the like, and having among its members none\nbut well-taught and well-mannered speakers who will keep the new art from\ndisrepute. They will know how to keep from singing notes and from prosaic\nlifeless intonations, and they will always understand, however far they\npush their experiments, that poetry and not music is their object; and\nthey will have by heart, like the Irish _File_, so many poems and\nnotations that they will never have to bend their heads over the book to\nthe ruin of dramatic expression and of that wild air the bard had always\nabout him in my boyish imagination. They will go here and there speaking\ntheir verses and their little stories wherever they can find a score or\ntwo of poetical-minded people in a big room, or a couple of\npoetical-minded friends sitting by the hearth, and poets will write them\npoems and little stories to the confounding of print and paper. I, at any\nrate, from this out mean to write all my longer poems for the stage, and\nall my shorter ones for the Psaltery, if only some strong angel keep me to\nmy good resolutions.\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nMAGIC\n\n\nI\n\nI believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call\nmagic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know\nwhat they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions\nof truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe\nin three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early\ntimes, and been the foundations of nearly all magical practices. These\ndoctrines are--\n\n(1) That the borders of our minds are ever shifting, and that many minds\ncan flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind,\na single energy.\n\n(2) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our\nmemories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.\n\n(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.\n\nI often think I would put this belief in magic from me if I could, for I\nhave come to see or to imagine, in men and women, in houses, in\nhandicrafts, in nearly all sights and sounds, a certain evil, a certain\nugliness, that comes from the slow perishing through the centuries of a\nquality of mind that made this belief and its evidences common over the\nworld.\n\n\nII\n\nSome ten or twelve years ago, a man with whom I have since quarrelled for\nsound reasons, a very singular man who had given his life to studies other\nmen despised, asked me and an acquaintance, who is now dead, to witness a\nmagical work. He lived a little way from London, and on the way my\nacquaintance told me that he did not believe in magic, but that a novel of\nBulwer Lytton's had taken such a hold upon his imagination that he was\ngoing to give much of his time and all his thought to magic. He longed to\nbelieve in it, and had studied, though not learnedly, geomancy, astrology,\nchiromancy, and much cabalistic symbolism, and yet doubted if the soul\noutlived the body. He awaited the magical work full of scepticism. He\nexpected nothing more than an air of romance, an illusion as of the stage,\nthat might capture the consenting imagination for an hour. The evoker of\nspirits and his beautiful wife received us in a little house, on the edge\nof some kind of garden or park belonging to an eccentric rich man, whose\ncuriosities he arranged and dusted, and he made his evocation in a long\nroom that had a raised place on the floor at one end, a kind of dais, but\nwas furnished meagrely and cheaply. I sat with my acquaintance in the\nmiddle of the room, and the evoker of spirits on the dais, and his wife\nbetween us and him. He held a wooden mace in his hand, and turning to a\ntablet of many-coloured squares, with a number on each of the squares,\nthat stood near him on a chair, he repeated a form of words. Almost at\nonce my imagination began to move of itself and to bring before me vivid\nimages that, though never too vivid to be imagination, as I had always\nunderstood it, had yet a motion of their own, a life I could not change or\nshape. I remember seeing a number of white figures, and wondering whether\ntheir mitred heads had been suggested by the mitred head of the mace, and\nthen, of a sudden, the image of my acquaintance in the midst of them. I\ntold what I had seen, and the evoker of spirits cried in a deep voice,\n'Let him be blotted out,' and as he said it the image of my acquaintance\nvanished, and the evoker of spirits or his wife saw a man dressed in black\nwith a curious square cap standing among the white figures. It was my\nacquaintance, the seeress said, as he had been in a past life, the life\nthat had moulded his present, and that life would now unfold before us. I\ntoo seemed to see the man with a strange vividness. The story unfolded\nitself chiefly before the mind's eye of the seeress, but sometimes I saw\nwhat she described before I heard her description. She thought the man in\nblack was perhaps a Fleming of the sixteenth century, and I could see him\npass along narrow streets till he came to a narrow door with some rusty\nironwork above it. He went in, and wishing to find out how far we had one\nvision among us, I kept silent when I saw a dead body lying upon the table\nwithin the door. The seeress described him going down a long hall and up\ninto what she called a pulpit, and beginning to speak. She said, 'He is a\nclergyman, I can hear his words. They sound like Low Dutch.' Then after a\nlittle silence, 'No, I am wrong. I can see the listeners; he is a doctor\nlecturing among his pupils.' I said, 'Do you see anything near the door?'\nand she said, 'Yes, I see a subject for dissection.' Then we saw him go\nout again into the narrow streets, I following the story of the seeress,\nsometimes merely following her words, but sometimes seeing for myself. My\nacquaintance saw nothing; I think he was forbidden to see, it being his\nown life, and I think could not in any case. His imagination had no will\nof its own. Presently the man in black went into a house with two gables\nfacing the road, and up some stairs into a room where a hump-backed woman\ngave him a key; and then along a corridor, and down some stairs into a\nlarge cellar full of retorts and strange vessels of all kinds. Here he\nseemed to stay a long while, and one saw him eating bread that he took\ndown from a shelf. The evoker of spirits and the seeress began to\nspeculate about the man's character and habits, and decided, from a\nvisionary impression, that his mind was absorbed in naturalism, but that\nhis imagination had been excited by stories of the marvels wrought by\nmagic in past times, and that he was trying to copy them by naturalistic\nmeans. Presently one of them saw him go to a vessel that stood over a slow\nfire, and take out of the vessel a thing wrapped up in numberless cloths,\nwhich he partly unwrapped, showing at length what looked like the image of\na man made by somebody who could not model. The evoker of spirits said\nthat the man in black was trying to make flesh by chemical means, and\nthough he had not succeeded, his brooding had drawn so many evil spirits\nabout him, that the image was partly alive. He could see it moving a\nlittle where it lay upon a table. At that moment I heard something like\nlittle squeals, but kept silent, as when I saw the dead body. In a moment\nmore the seeress said, 'I hear little squeals.' Then the evoker of spirits\nheard them, but said, 'They are not squeals; he is pouring a red liquid\nout of a retort through a slit in the cloth; the slit is over the mouth of\nthe image and the liquid is gurgling in rather a curious way.' Weeks\nseemed to pass by hurriedly, and somebody saw the man still busy in his\ncellar. Then more weeks seemed to pass, and now we saw him lying sick in a\nroom up-stairs, and a man in a conical cap standing beside him. We could\nsee the image too. It was in the cellar, but now it could move feebly\nabout the floor. I saw fainter images of the image passing continually\nfrom where it crawled to the man in his bed, and I asked the evoker of\nspirits what they were. He said, 'They are the images of his terror.'\nPresently the man in the conical cap began to speak, but who heard him I\ncannot remember. He made the sick man get out of bed and walk, leaning\nupon him, and in much terror till they came to the cellar. There the man\nin the conical cap made some symbol over the image, which fell back as if\nasleep, and putting a knife into the other's hand he said, 'I have taken\nfrom it the magical life, but you must take from it the life you gave.'\nSomebody saw the sick man stoop and sever the head of the image from its\nbody, and then fall as if he had given himself a mortal wound, for he had\nfilled it with his own life. And then the vision changed and fluttered,\nand he was lying sick again in the room up-stairs. He seemed to lie there\na long time with the man in the conical cap watching beside him, and then,\nI cannot remember how, the evoker of spirits discovered that though he\nwould in part recover, he would never be well, and that the story had got\nabroad in the town and shattered his good name. His pupils had left him\nand men avoided him. He was accursed. He was a magician.\n\nThe story was finished, and I looked at my acquaintance. He was white and\nawestruck. He said, as nearly as I can remember, 'All my life I have seen\nmyself in dreams making a man by some means like that. When I was a child\nI was always thinking out contrivances for galvanizing a corpse into\nlife.' Presently he said, 'Perhaps my bad health in this life comes from\nthat experiment.' I asked if he had read _Frankenstein_, and he answered\nthat he had. He was the only one of us who had, and he had taken no part\nin the vision.\n\n\nIII\n\nThen I asked to have some past life of mine revealed, and a new evocation\nwas made before the tablet full of little squares. I cannot remember so\nwell who saw this or that detail, for now I was interested in little but\nthe vision itself. I had come to a conclusion about the method. I knew\nthat the vision may be in part common to several people.\n\nA man in chain armour passed through a castle door, and the seeress\nnoticed with surprise the bareness and rudeness of castle rooms. There was\nnothing of the magnificence or the pageantry she had expected. The man\ncame to a large hall and to a little chapel opening out of it, where a\nceremony was taking place. There were six girls dressed in white, who took\nfrom the altar some yellow object--I thought it was gold, for though, like\nmy acquaintance, I was told not to see, I could not help seeing. Somebody\nelse thought that it was yellow flowers, and I think the girls, though I\ncannot remember clearly, laid it between the man's hands. He went out\nafter a time, and as he passed through the great hall one of us, I forget\nwhom, noticed that he passed over two gravestones. Then the vision became\nbroken, but presently he stood in a monk's habit among men-at-arms in the\nmiddle of a village reading from a parchment. He was calling villagers\nabout him, and presently he and they and the men-at-arms took ship for\nsome long voyage. The vision became broken again, and when we could see\nclearly they had come to what seemed the Holy Land. They had begun some\nkind of sacred labour among palm-trees. The common men among them stood\nidle, but the gentlemen carried large stones, bringing them from certain\ndirections, from the cardinal points I think, with a ceremonious\nformality. The evoker of spirits said they must be making some kind of\nmasonic house. His mind, like the minds of so many students of these\nhidden things, was always running on masonry and discovering it in strange\nplaces.\n\nWe broke the vision that we might have supper, breaking it with some form\nof words which I forget. When supper had ended the seeress cried out that\nwhile we had been eating they had been building, and they had built not a\nmasonic house but a great stone cross. And now they had all gone away but\nthe man who had been in chain armour and two monks we had not noticed\nbefore. He was standing against the cross, his feet upon two stone rests\na little above the ground, and his arms spread out. He seemed to stand\nthere all day, but when night came he went to a little cell, that was\nbeside two other cells. I think they were like the cells I have seen in\nthe Aran Islands, but I cannot be certain. Many days seemed to pass, and\nall day every day he stood upon the cross, and we never saw anybody there\nbut him and the two monks. Many years seemed to pass, making the vision\nflutter like a drift of leaves before our eyes, and he grew old and\nwhite-haired, and we saw the two monks, old and white-haired, holding him\nupon the cross. I asked the evoker of spirits why the man stood there, and\nbefore he had time to answer I saw two people, a man and a woman, rising\nlike a dream within a dream, before the eyes of the man upon the cross.\nThe evoker of spirits saw them too, and said that one of them held up his\narms and they were without hands. I thought of the two gravestones the man\nin chain mail had passed over in the great hall when he came out of the\nchapel, and asked the evoker of spirits if the knight was undergoing a\npenance for violence, and while I was asking him, and he was saying that\nit might be so but he did not know, the vision, having completed its\ncircle, vanished.\n\nIt had not, so far as I could see, the personal significance of the other\nvision, but it was certainly strange and beautiful, though I alone seemed\nto see its beauty. Who was it that made the story, if it were but a story?\nI did not, and the seeress did not, and the evoker of spirits did not and\ncould not. It arose in three minds, for I cannot remember my acquaintance\ntaking any part, and it rose without confusion, and without labour, except\nthe labour of keeping the mind's eye awake, and more swiftly than any pen\ncould have written it out. It may be, as Blake said of one of his poems,\nthat the author was in eternity. In coming years I was to see and hear of\nmany such visions, and though I was not to be convinced, though half\nconvinced once or twice, that they were old lives, in an ordinary sense of\nthe word life, I was to learn that they have almost always some quite\ndefinite relation to dominant moods and moulding events in this life. They\nare, perhaps, in most cases, though the vision I have but just described\nwas not, it seems, among the cases, symbolical histories of these moods\nand events, or rather symbolical shadows of the impulses that have made\nthem, messages as it were out of the ancestral being of the questioner.\n\nAt the time these two visions meant little more to me, if I can remember\nmy feeling at the time, than a proof of the supremacy of imagination, of\nthe power of many minds to become one, overpowering one another by spoken\nwords and by unspoken thought till they have become a single intense,\nunhesitating energy. One mind was doubtless the master, I thought, but all\nthe minds gave a little, creating or revealing for a moment what I must\ncall a supernatural artist.\n\n\nIV\n\nSome years afterwards I was staying with some friends in Paris. I had got\nup before breakfast and gone out to buy a newspaper. I had noticed the\nservant, a girl who had come from the country some years before, laying\nthe table for breakfast. As I had passed her I had been telling myself one\nof those long foolish tales which one tells only to oneself. If something\nhad happened that had not happened, I would have hurt my arm, I thought. I\nsaw myself with my arm in a sling in the middle of some childish\nadventures. I returned with the newspaper and met my host and hostess in\nthe door. The moment they saw me they cried out, 'Why, the _bonne_ has\njust told us you had your arm in a sling. We thought something must have\nhappened to you last night, that you had been run over maybe'--or some\nsuch words. I had been dining out at the other end of Paris, and had come\nin after everybody had gone to bed. I had cast my imagination so strongly\nupon the servant that she had seen it, and with what had appeared to be\nmore than the mind's eye.\n\nOne afternoon, about the same time, I was thinking very intently of a\ncertain fellow-student for whom I had a message, which I hesitated about\nwriting. In a couple of days I got a letter from a place some hundreds of\nmiles away where that student was. On the afternoon when I had been\nthinking so intently I had suddenly appeared there amid a crowd of people\nin a hotel and as seeming solid as if in the flesh. My fellow-student had\nseen me, but no one else, and had asked me to come again when the people\nhad gone. I had vanished, but had come again in the middle of the night\nand given the message. I myself had no knowledge of casting an\nimagination upon one so far away.\n\nI could tell of stranger images, of stranger enchantments, of stranger\nimaginations, cast consciously or unconsciously over as great distances by\nfriends or by myself, were it not that the greater energies of the mind\nseldom break forth but when the deeps are loosened. They break forth amid\nevents too private or too sacred for public speech, or seem themselves, I\nknow not why, to belong to hidden things. I have written of these\nbreakings forth, these loosenings of the deep, with some care and some\ndetail, but I shall keep my record shut. After all, one can but bear\nwitness less to convince him who won't believe than to protect him who\ndoes, as Blake puts it, enduring unbelief and misbelief and ridicule as\nbest one may. I shall be content to show that past times have believed as\nI do, by quoting Joseph Glanvil's description of the Scholar Gipsy. Joseph\nGlanvil is dead, and will not mind unbelief and misbelief and ridicule.\n\nThe Scholar Gipsy, too, is dead, unless indeed perfectly wise magicians\ncan live till it please them to die, and he is wandering somewhere, even\nif one cannot see him, as Arnold imagined, 'at some lone ale-house in the\nBerkshire moors, on the warm ingle-bench,' or 'crossing the stripling\nThames at Bablock Hithe,' 'trailing his fingers in the cool stream,' or\n'giving store of flowers--the frail-leaf'd white anemone, dark hare-bells\ndrenched with dew of summer eves,' to the girls 'who from the distant\nhamlets come to dance around the Fyfield elm in May,' or 'sitting upon the\nriver bank o'ergrown,' living on through time 'with a free onward\nimpulse.' This is Joseph Glanvil's story--\n\n     There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford who, being of\n     very pregnant and ready parts and yet wanting the encouragement of\n     preferment, was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there, and\n     to cast himself upon the wide world for a livelihood. Now his\n     necessities growing daily on him, and wanting the help of friends to\n     relieve him, he was at last forced to join himself to a company of\n     vagabond gipsies, whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their\n     trade for a maintenance.... After he had been a pretty while well\n     exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of\n     scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. The scholar had\n     quickly spied out these old friends among the gipsies, and their\n     amazement to see him among such society had well-nigh discovered him;\n     but by a sign he prevented them owning him before that crew, and\n     taking one of them aside privately, desired him with his friend to go\n     to an inn, not far distant, promising there to come to them. They\n     accordingly went thither and he follows: after their first salutation\n     his friends inquire how he came to lead so odd a life as that was,\n     and so joined himself into such a beggarly company. The scholar gipsy\n     having given them an account of the necessity which drove him to that\n     kind of life, told them that the people he went with were not such\n     impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional\n     kind of learning among them and could do wonders by the power of\n     imagination, and that himself had learned much of their art and\n     improved it further than themselves could. And to evince the truth of\n     what he told them, he said he'd remove into another room, leaving\n     them to discourse together; and upon his return tell them the sense\n     of what they had talked of; which accordingly he performed, giving\n     them a full account of what had passed between them in his absence.\n     The scholars being amazed at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly\n     desired him to unriddle the mystery. In which he gave them\n     satisfaction, by telling them that what he did was by the power of\n     imagination, his phantasy leading theirs; and that himself had\n     dictated to them the discourse they had held together while he was\n     from them; that there were warrantable ways of heightening the\n     imagination to that pitch as to bend another's, and that when he had\n     compassed the whole secret, some parts of which he was yet ignorant\n     of, he intended to leave their company and give the world an account\n     of what he had learned.\n\nIf all who have described events like this have not dreamed, we should\nrewrite our histories, for all men, certainly all imaginative men, must be\nfor ever casting forth enchantments, glamours, illusions; and all men,\nespecially tranquil men who have no powerful egotistic life, must be\ncontinually passing under their power. Our most elaborate thoughts,\nelaborate purposes, precise emotions, are often, as I think, not really\nours, but have on a sudden come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of\nheaven. The historian should remember, should he not? angels and devils\nnot less than kings and soldiers, and plotters and thinkers. What matter\nif the angel or devil, as indeed certain old writers believed, first\nwrapped itself with an organized shape in some man's imagination? what\nmatter 'if God himself only acts or is in existing beings or men,' as\nBlake believed? we must none the less admit that invisible beings, far\nwandering influences, shapes that may have floated from a hermit of the\nwilderness, brood over council-chambers and studies and battle-fields. We\nshould never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the\nwine-press who began that subtle change in men's minds, that powerful\nmovement of thought and imagination about which so many Germans have\nwritten; or that the passion, because of which so many countries were\ngiven to the sword, did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy,\nlighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way.\n\n\nV\n\nWe cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly\nand obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for\nour life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life,\nand our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made\nour souls less sensitive. Our souls that were once naked to the winds of\nheaven are now thickly clad, and have learned to build a house and light a\nfire upon its hearth, and shut to the doors and windows. The winds can,\nindeed, make us draw near to the fire, or can even lift the carpet and\nwhistle under the door, but they could do worse out on the plains long\nago. A certain learned man, quoted by Mr. Lang in his _Making of\nReligion_, contends that the memories of primitive man and his thoughts of\ndistant places must have had the intensity of hallucination, because there\nwas nothing in his mind to draw his attention away from them--an\nexplanation that does not seem to me complete--and Mr. Lang goes on to\nquote certain travellers to prove that savages live always on the edges of\nvision. One Laplander who wished to become a Christian, and thought\nvisions but heathenish, confessed to a traveller, to whom he had given a\nminute account of many distant events, read doubtless in that traveller's\nmind, 'that he knew not how to make use of his eyes, since things\naltogether distant were present to them.' I myself could find in one\ndistrict in Galway but one man who had not seen what I can but call\nspirits, and he was in his dotage. 'There is no man mowing a meadow but\nsees them at one time or another,' said a man in a different district.\n\nIf I can unintentionally cast a glamour, an enchantment, over persons of\nour own time who have lived for years in great cities, there is no reason\nto doubt that men could cast intentionally a far stronger enchantment, a\nfar stronger glamour, over the more sensitive people of ancient times, or\nthat men can still do so where the old order of life remains unbroken. Why\nshould not the Scholar Gipsy cast his spell over his friends? Why should\nnot St. Patrick, or he of whom the story was first told, pass his enemies,\nhe and all his clerics, as a herd of deer? Why should not enchanters like\nhim in the _Morte d'Arthur_ make troops of horse seem but grey stones? Why\nshould not the Roman soldiers, though they came of a civilization which\nwas ceasing to be sensitive to these things, have trembled for a moment\nbefore the enchantments of the Druids of Mona? Why should not the Jesuit\nfather, or the Count Saint Germain, or whoever the tale was first told of,\nhave really seemed to leave the city in a coach and four by all the Twelve\nGates at once? Why should not Moses and the enchanters of Pharaoh have\nmade their staffs as the medicine men of many primitive peoples make their\npieces of old rope seem like devouring serpents? Why should not that\nmedi\u00e6val enchanter have made summer and all its blossoms seem to break\nforth in middle winter?\n\nMay we not learn some day to rewrite our histories, when they touch upon\nthese things too?\n\nMen who are imaginative writers to-day may well have preferred to\ninfluence the imagination of others more directly in past times. Instead\nof learning their craft with paper and a pen they may have sat for hours\nimagining themselves to be stocks and stones and beasts of the wood, till\nthe images were so vivid that the passers-by became but a part of the\nimagination of the dreamer, and wept or laughed or ran away as he would\nhave them. Have not poetry and music arisen, as it seems, out of the\nsounds the enchanters made to help their imagination to enchant, to charm,\nto bind with a spell themselves and the passers-by? These very words, a\nchief part of all praises of music or poetry, still cry to us their\norigin. And just as the musician or the poet enchants and charms and binds\nwith a spell his own mind when he would enchant the mind of others, so did\nthe enchanter create or reveal for himself as well as for others the\nsupernatural artist or genius, the seeming transitory mind made out of\nmany minds, whose work I saw, or thought I saw, in that suburban house. He\nkept the doors too, as it seems, of those less transitory minds, the\ngenius of the family, the genius of the tribe, or it may be, when he was\nmighty-souled enough, the genius of the world. Our history speaks of\nopinions and discoveries, but in ancient times when, as I think, men had\ntheir eyes ever upon those doors, history spoke of commandments and\nrevelations. They looked as carefully and as patiently towards Sinai and\nits thunders as we look towards parliaments and laboratories. We are\nalways praising men in whom the individual life has come to perfection,\nbut they were always praising the one mind, their foundation of all\nperfection.\n\n\nVI\n\nI once saw a young Irish woman, fresh from a convent school, cast into a\nprofound trance, though not by a method known to any hypnotist. In her\nwaking state she thought the apple of Eve was the kind of apple you can\nbuy at the greengrocer's, but in her trance she saw the Tree of Life with\never-sighing souls moving in its branches instead of sap, and among its\nleaves all the fowl of the air, and on its highest bough one white fowl\nbearing a crown. When I went home I took from the shelf a translation of\n_The Book of Concealed Mystery_, an old Jewish book, and cutting the pages\ncame upon this passage, which I cannot think I had ever read: 'The Tree,\n... is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and of Evil ... in its branches\nthe birds lodge and build their nests, the souls and the angels have\ntheir place.'\n\nI once saw a young Church of Ireland man, a bank clerk in the west of\nIreland, thrown in a like trance. I have no doubt that he, too, was quite\ncertain that the apple of Eve was a greengrocer's apple, and yet he saw\nthe tree and heard the souls sighing through its branches, and saw apples\nwith human faces, and laying his ear to an apple heard a sound as of\nfighting hosts within. Presently he strayed from the tree and came to the\nedge of Eden, and there he found himself not by the wilderness he had\nlearned of at the Sunday-school, but upon the summit of a great mountain,\nof a mountain 'two miles high.' The whole summit, in contradiction to all\nthat would have seemed probable to his waking mind, was a great walled\ngarden. Some years afterwards I found a medi\u00e6val diagram, which pictured\nEden as a walled garden upon a high mountain.\n\nWhere did these intricate symbols come from? Neither I nor the one or two\npeople present or the seers had ever seen, I am convinced, the description\nin _The Book of Concealed Mystery_, or the medi\u00e6val diagram. Remember that\nthe images appeared in a moment perfect in all their complexity. If one\ncan imagine that the seers or that I myself or another had indeed read of\nthese images and forgotten it, that the supernatural artist's knowledge of\nwhat was in our buried memories accounted for these visions, there are\nnumberless other visions to account for. One cannot go on believing in\nimprobable knowledge for ever. For instance, I find in my diary that on\nDecember 27, 1897, a seer, to whom I had given a certain old Irish symbol,\nsaw Brigit, the goddess, holding out 'a glittering and wriggling serpent,'\nand yet I feel certain that neither I nor he knew anything of her\nassociation with the serpent until _Carmina Gadelica_ was published a few\nmonths ago. And an old Irish woman who can neither read nor write has\ndescribed to me a woman dressed like Dian, with helmet, and short skirt\nand sandals, and what seemed to be buskins. Why, too, among all the\ncountless stories of visions that I have gathered in Ireland, or that a\nfriend has gathered for me, are there none that mix the dress of different\nperiods? The seers when they are but speaking from tradition will mix\neverything together, and speak of Finn mac Cool going to the Assizes at\nCork. Almost every one who has ever busied himself with such matters has\ncome, in trance or dream, upon some new and strange symbol or event, which\nhe has afterwards found in some work he had never read or heard of.\nExamples like this are as yet too little classified, too little analyzed,\nto convince the stranger, but some of them are proof enough for those they\nhave happened to, proof that there is a memory of nature that reveals\nevents and symbols of distant centuries. Mystics of many countries and\nmany centuries have spoken of this memory; and the honest men and\ncharlatans, who keep the magical traditions which will some day be studied\nas a part of folk-lore, base most that is of importance in their claims\nupon this memory. I have read of it in 'Paracelsus' and in some Indian\nbook that describes the people of past days as still living within it,\n'Thinking the thought and doing the deed.' And I have found it in the\nprophetic books of William Blake, who calls its images 'the bright\nsculptures of Los's Halls'; and says that all events, 'all love stories,'\nrenew themselves from those images. It is perhaps well that so few believe\nin it, for if many did many would go out of parliaments and universities\nand libraries and run into the wilderness to so waste the body, and to so\nhush the unquiet mind that, still living, they might pass the doors the\ndead pass daily; for who among the wise would trouble himself with making\nlaws or in writing history or in weighing the earth if the things of\neternity seemed ready to hand?\n\n\nVII\n\nI find in my diary of magical events for 1899 that I awoke at 3 A.M. out\nof a nightmare, and imagined one symbol to prevent its recurrence, and\nimagined another, a simple geometrical form, which calls up dreams of\nluxuriant vegetable life, that I might have pleasant dreams. I imagined it\nfaintly, being very sleepy, and went to sleep. I had confused dreams which\nseemed to have no relation with the symbol. I awoke about eight, having\nfor the time forgotten both nightmare and symbol. Presently I dozed off\nagain and began half to dream and half to see, as one does between sleep\nand waking, enormous flowers and grapes. I awoke and recognized that what\nI had dreamed or seen was the kind of thing appropriate to the symbol\nbefore I remembered having used it. I find another record, though made\nsome time after the event, of having imagined over the head of a person,\nwho was a little of a seer, a combined symbol of elemental air and\nelemental water. This person, who did not know what symbol I was using,\nsaw a pigeon flying with a lobster in his bill. I find that on December\n13, 1898, I used a certain star-shaped symbol with a seeress, getting her\nto look at it intently before she began seeing. She saw a rough stone\nhouse, and in the middle of the house the skull of a horse. I find that I\nhad used the same symbol a few days before with a seer, and that he had\nseen a rough stone house, and in the middle of the house something under a\ncloth marked with the Hammer of Thor. He had lifted the cloth and\ndiscovered a skeleton of gold with teeth of diamonds, and eyes of some\nunknown dim precious stones. I had made a note to this last vision,\npointing out that we had been using a Solar symbol a little earlier. Solar\nsymbols often call up visions of gold and precious stones. I do not give\nthese examples to prove my arguments, but to illustrate them. I know that\nmy examples will awaken in all who have not met the like, or who are not\non other grounds inclined towards my arguments, a most natural\nincredulity. It was long before I myself would admit an inherent power in\nsymbols, for it long seemed to me that one could account for everything by\nthe power of one imagination over another, telepathy as it is called with\nthat separation of knowledge and life, of word and emotion, which is the\nsterility of scientific speech. The symbol seemed powerful, I thought,\nmerely because we thought it powerful, and we would do just as well\nwithout it. In those days I used symbols made with some ingenuity instead\nof merely imagining them. I used to give them to the person I was\nexperimenting with, and tell him to hold them to his forehead without\nlooking at them; and sometimes I made a mistake. I learned from these\nmistakes that if I did not myself imagine the symbol, in which case he\nwould have a mixed vision, it was the symbol I gave by mistake that\nproduced the vision. Then I met with a seer who could say to me, 'I have a\nvision of a square pond, but I can see your thought, and you expect me to\nsee an oblong pond,' or, 'The symbol you are imagining has made me see a\nwoman holding a crystal, but it was a moonlight sea I should have seen.' I\ndiscovered that the symbol hardly ever failed to call up its typical\nscene, its typical event, its typical person, but that I could practically\nnever call up, no matter how vividly I imagined it, the particular scene,\nthe particular event, the particular person I had in my own mind, and that\nwhen I could, the two visions rose side by side.\n\nI cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers whether\nthey are used consciously by the masters of magic, or half unconsciously\nby their successors, the poet, the musician and the artist. At first I\ntried to distinguish between symbols and symbols, between what I called\ninherent symbols and arbitrary symbols, but the distinction has come to\nmean little or nothing. Whether their power has arisen out of themselves,\nor whether it has an arbitrary origin, matters little, for they act, as I\nbelieve, because the great memory associates them with certain events and\nmoods and persons. Whatever the passions of man have gathered about,\nbecomes a symbol in the great memory, and in the hands of him who has the\nsecret, it is a worker of wonders, a caller-up of angels or of devils. The\nsymbols are of all kinds, for everything in heaven or earth has its\nassociation, momentous or trivial, in the great memory, and one never\nknows what forgotten events may have plunged it, like the toadstool and\nthe ragweed, into the great passions. Knowledgeable men and women in\nIreland sometimes distinguish between the simples that work cures by some\nmedical property in the herb, and those that do their work by magic. Such\nmagical simples as the husk of the flax, water out of the fork of an\nelm-tree, do their work, as I think, by awaking in the depths of the mind\nwhere it mingles with the great mind, and is enlarged by the great memory,\nsome curative energy, some hypnotic command. They are not what we call\nfaith cures, for they have been much used and successfully, the traditions\nof all lands affirm, over children and over animals, and to me they seem\nthe only medicine that could have been committed safely to ancient hands.\nTo pluck the wrong leaf would have been to go uncured, but, if one had\neaten it, one might have been poisoned.\n\n\nVIII\n\nI have now described that belief in magic which has set me all but\nunwilling among those lean and fierce minds who are at war with their\ntime, who cannot accept the days as they pass, simply and gladly; and I\nlook at what I have written with some alarm, for I have told more of the\nancient secret than many among my fellow-students think it right to tell.\nI have come to believe so many strange things because of experience, that\nI see little reason to doubt the truth of many things that are beyond my\nexperience; and it may be that there are beings who watch over that\nancient secret, as all tradition affirms, and resent, and perhaps avenge,\ntoo fluent speech. They say in the Aran Islands that if you speak overmuch\nof the things of Faery your tongue becomes like a stone, and it seems to\nme, though doubtless naturalistic reason would call it Auto-suggestion or\nthe like, that I have often felt my tongue become just so heavy and\nclumsy. More than once, too, as I wrote this very essay I have become\nuneasy, and have torn up some paragraph, not for any literary reason, but\nbecause some incident or some symbol that would perhaps have meant nothing\nto the reader, seemed, I know not why, to belong to hidden things. Yet I\nmust write or be of no account to any cause, good or evil; I must commit\nwhat merchandise of wisdom I have to this ship of written speech, and\nafter all, I have many a time watched it put out to sea with not less\nalarm when all the speech was rhyme. We who write, we who bear witness,\nmust often hear our hearts cry out against us, complaining because of\ntheir hidden things, and I know not but he who speaks of wisdom may not\nsometimes in the change that is coming upon the world, have to fear the\nanger of the people of Faery, whose country is the heart of the\nworld--'The Land of the Living Heart.' Who can keep always to the little\npathway between speech and silence, where one meets none but discreet\nrevelations? And surely, at whatever risk, we must cry out that\nimagination is always seeking to remake the world according to the\nimpulses and the patterns in that great Mind, and that great Memory? Can\nthere be anything so important as to cry out that what we call romance,\npoetry, intellectual beauty, is the only signal that the supreme\nEnchanter, or some one in His councils, is speaking of what has been, and\nshall be again, in the consummation of time?\n\n1901.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS\n\n\nI\n\nRossetti in one of his letters numbers his favourite colours in the order\nof his favour, and throughout his work one feels that he loved form and\ncolour for themselves and apart from what they represent. One feels\nsometimes that he desired a world of essences, of unmixed powers, of\nimpossible purities. It is as though the last judgment had already begun\nin his mind and that the essences and powers, which the divine hand had\nmixed into one another to make the loam of life, fell asunder at his\ntouch. If he painted a flame or a blue distance, he painted as though he\nhad seen the flame out of whose heart all flames had been taken, or the\nblue of the abyss that was before all life; and if he painted a woman's\nface he painted it in some moment of intensity when the ecstasy of the\nlover and of the saint are alike, and desire becomes wisdom without\nceasing to be desire. He listens to the cry of the flesh till it becomes\nproud and passes beyond the world where some immense desire that the\nintellect cannot understand mixes with the desire of a body's warmth and\nsoftness. His genius like Shelley's can hardly stir but to the rejection\nof nature, whose delight is profusion, but never intensity, and like\nShelley's it follows the Star of the Magi, the Morning and Evening Star,\nthe mother of impossible hope, although it follows through deep woods,\nwhere the Star glimmers among dew-drenched boughs and not through 'a\nwind-swept valley of the Apennine.' Men like him cannot be happy as we\nunderstand happiness, for to be happy one must delight like nature in mere\nprofusion, in mere abundance, in making and doing things, and if one sets\nan image of the perfect before one it must be the image that draws her\nperpetually, the image of a perfect fulness of natural life, of an Earthly\nParadise. One's emotion must never break the bonds of life, one's hands\nmust never labour to loosen the silver cord, one's ears must never strain\nto catch the sound of Michael's trumpet. That is to say, one must not be\namong those that would have prayed in old times in some chapel of the\nStar, but among those who would have prayed under the shadow of the Green\nTree, and on the wet stones of the Well, among the worshippers of natural\nabundance.\n\n\nII\n\nI do not think it was accident, so subtle are the threads that lead the\nsoul, that made William Morris, who seems to me the one perfectly happy\nand fortunate poet of modern times, celebrate the Green Tree and the\ngoddess Habundia, and wells and enchanted waters in so many books. In _The\nWell at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are shown to us,\nas they were understood by old writers, who thought that the generation of\nall things was through water; for when the water that gives a long and a\nfortunate life and that can be found by none but such a one as all women\nlove is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of the ruined land, becomes\ngreen. To him indeed as to older writers Well and Tree are all but images\nof the one thing, of an 'energy' that is not the less 'eternal delight'\nbecause it is half of the body. He never wrote, and could not have\nwritten, of a man or woman who was not of the kin of Well or Tree. Long\nbefore he had named either he had made his 'Wanderers' follow a dream\nindeed, but a dream of natural happiness, and all the people of all his\npoems and stories from the confused beginning of his art in _The Hollow\nLand_ to its end in _The Sundering Flood_, are full of the heavy sweetness\nof this dream. He wrote indeed of nothing but of the quest of the Grail,\nbut it was the Heathen Grail that gave every man his chosen food, and not\nthe Grail of Malory or Wagner; and he came at last to praise, as other\nmen have praised the martyrs of religion or of passion, men with lucky\neyes and men whom all women love.\n\nWe know so little of man and of the world that we cannot be certain that\nthe same invisible hands, that gave him an imagination preoccupied with\ngood fortune, gave him also health and wealth, and the power to create\nbeautiful things without labour, that he might honour the Green Tree. It\npleases me to imagine the copper mine which brought, as Mr. Mackail has\ntold, so much unforeseen wealth and in so astonishing a way, as no less\nmiraculous than the three arrows in _The Sundering Flood_. No mighty poet\nin his misery dead could have delighted enough to make us delight in men\n'who knew no vain desire of foolish fame,' but who thought the dance upon\n'the stubble field' and 'the battle with the earth' better than 'the\nbitter war' 'where right and wrong are mixed together.' 'Oh the trees, the\ntrees!' he wrote in one of his early letters, and it was his work to make\nus, who had been taught to sympathize with the unhappy till we had grown\nmorbid, to sympathize with men and women who turned everything into\nhappiness because they had in them something of the abundance of the\nbeechen boughs or of the bursting wheat-ear. He alone, I think, has told\nthe story of Alcestis with perfect sympathy for Admetus, with so perfect a\nsympathy that he cannot persuade himself that one so happy died at all;\nand he, unlike all other poets, has delighted to tell us that the men\nafter his own heart, the men of his _News from Nowhere_, sorrowed but a\nlittle while over unhappy love. He cannot even think of nobility and\nhappiness apart, for all his people are like his men of Burg Dale who\nlived 'in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately or desiring\nthings out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied\nthemselves; and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry;\nto-morrow was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they\nwould fain forget; life shamed them not nor did death make them afraid. As\nfor the Dale wherein they dwelt, it was indeed most fair and lovely and\nthey deemed it the Blessing of the earth, and they trod the flowery grass\nbeside its rippled stream amidst the green tree-boughs proudly and\njoyfully with goodly bodies and merry hearts.'\n\n\nIII\n\nI think of his men as with broad brows and golden beards and mild eyes and\ntranquil speech, and of his good women as like 'The Bride' in whose face\nRossetti saw and painted for once the abundance of earth and not the\nhalf-hidden light of his star. They are not in love with love for its own\nsake, with a love that is apart from the world or at enmity with it, as\nSwinburne imagines Mary Stuart and as all men have imagined Helen. They\ndo not seek in love that ecstasy, which Shelley's nightingale called\ndeath, that extremity of life in which life seems to pass away like the\nPhoenix in flame of its own lighting, but rather a gentle self-surrender\nthat would lose more than half its sweetness if it lost the savour of\ncoming days. They are good house-wives; they sit often at the embroidery\nframe, and they have wisdom in flocks and herds and they are before all\nfruitful mothers. It seems at times as if their love was less a passion\nfor one man out of the world than submission to the hazard of destiny, and\nthe hope of motherhood and the innocent desire of the body. They accept\nchanges and chances of life as gladly as they accept spring and summer and\nautumn and winter, and because they have sat under the shadow of the Green\nTree and drunk the Waters of Abundance out of their hollow hands, the\nbarren blossoms do not seem to them the most beautiful. When Habundia\ntakes the shape of Birdalone she comes first as a young naked girl\nstanding among great trees, and then as an old carline, Birdalone in\nstately old age. And when she praises Birdalone's naked body, and speaks\nof the desire it shall awaken, praise and desire are innocent because they\nwould not break the links that chain the days to one another. The desire\nseems not other than the desire of the bird for its mate in the heart of\nthe wood, and we listen to that joyous praise as though a bird watching\nits plumage in still water had begun to sing in its joy, or as if we heard\nhawk praising hawk in the middle air, and because it is the praise of one\nmade for all noble life and not for pleasure only, it seems, though it is\nthe praise of the body, that it is the noblest praise.\n\nBirdalone has never seen her image but in 'a broad latten-dish,' so the\nwood woman must tell her of her body and praise it.\n\n'Thus it is with thee; thou standest before me a tall and slim maiden,\nsomewhat thin as befitteth thy seventeen summers; where thy flesh is bare\nof wont, as thy throat and thine arms and thy legs from the middle down,\nit is tanned a beauteous colour, but otherwhere it is even as fair a\nwhite, wholesome and clean as if the golden sunlight which fulfilleth the\npromise of the earth were playing therein.... Delicate and clean-made is\nthe little trench that goeth from thy mouth to thy lips, and sweet it is,\nand there is more might in it than in sweet words spoken. Thy lips they\nare of the finest fashion, yet rather thin than full; and some would not\nhave it so; but I would, whereas I see therein a sign of thy valiancy and\nfriendliness. Surely he who did thy carven chin had a mind to a master\nwork and did no less. Great was the deftness of thine imaginer, and he\nwould have all folk who see thee wonder at thy deep thinking and thy\ncarefulness and thy kindness. Ah, maiden! is it so that thy thoughts are\never deep and solemn? Yet at least I know it of thee that they be hale\nand true and sweet.\n\n'My friend, when thou hast a mirror, some of all this shalt thou see, but\nnot all; and when thou hast a lover some deal wilt thou hear, but not all.\nBut now thy she-friend may tell it thee all, if she have eyes to see it,\nas have I; whereas no man could say so much of thee before the mere love\nshould overtake him, and turn his speech into the folly of love and the\nmadness of desire.'\n\nAll his good women, whether it is Dana\u00eb in her tower, or that woman in\n_The Wood beyond the World_ who can make the withered flowers in her\ngirdle grow young again by the touch of her hand, are of the kin of the\nwood woman. All his bad women too and his half-bad women are of her kin.\nThe evils their enchantments make are a disordered abundance like that of\nweedy places and they are cruel as wild creatures are cruel and they have\nunbridled desires. One finds these evils in their typical shape in that\nisle of the Wondrous Isles, where the wicked witch has her pleasure-house\nand her prison, and in that 'isle of the old and the young,' where until\nher enchantment is broken second childhood watches over children who never\ngrow old and who seem to the bystander who knows their story 'like images'\nor like 'the rabbits on the grass.' It is as though Nature spoke through\nhim at all times in the mood that is upon her when she is opening the\napple-blossom or reddening the apple or thickening the shadow of the\nboughs, and that the men and women of his verse and of his stories are all\nthe ministers of her mood.\n\n\nIV\n\nWhen I was a child I often heard my elders talking of an old turreted\nhouse where an old great-uncle of mine lived, and of its gardens and its\nlong pond where there was an island with tame eagles; and one day\nsomebody read me some verses and said they made him think of that old\nhouse where he had been very happy. The verses ran in my head for years\nand became to me the best description of happiness in the world, and I am\nnot certain that I know a better even now. They were those first dozen\nverses of _Golden Wings_ that begin--\n\n  'Midways of a walled garden\n     In the happy poplar land\n     Did an ancient castle stand,\n  With an old knight for a warden.\n\n  Many scarlet bricks there were\n     In its walls, and old grey stone;\n     Over which red apples shone\n  At the right time of the year.\n\n  On the bricks the green moss grew,\n     Yellow lichen on the stone,\n     Over which red apples shone;\n  Little war that castle knew.'\n\nWhen William Morris describes a house of any kind, and makes his\ndescription poetical, it is always, I think, some house that he would\nhave liked to have lived in, and I remember him saying about the time when\nhe was writing of that great house of the Wolfings, 'I decorate modern\nhouses for people, but the house that would please me would be some great\nroom where one talked to one's friends in one corner and eat in another\nand slept in another and worked in another.' Indeed all he writes seems to\nme like the make-believe of a child who is remaking the world, not always\nin the same way, but always after its own heart; and so unlike all other\nmodern writers he makes his poetry out of unending pictures of a happiness\nthat is often what a child might imagine, and always a happiness that sets\nmind and body at ease. Now it is a picture of some great room full of\nmerriment, now of the wine-press, now of the golden threshing-floor, now\nof an old mill among apple-trees, now of cool water after the heat of the\nsun, now of some well-sheltered, well-tilled place among woods or\nmountains, where men and women live happily, knowing of nothing that is\ntoo far off or too great for the affections. He has but one story to tell\nus, how some man or woman lost and found again the happiness that is\nalways half of the body; and even when they are wandering from it, leaves\nmust fall over them, and flowers make fragrances about them, and warm\nwinds fan them, and birds sing to them, for being of Habundia's kin they\nmust not forget the shadow of her Green Tree even for a moment, and the\nwaters of her Well must be always wet upon their sandals. His poetry often\nwearies us as the unbroken green of July wearies us, for there is\nsomething in us, some bitterness because of the Fall it may be, that takes\na little from the sweetness of Eve's apple after the first mouthful; but\nhe who did all things gladly and easily, who never knew the curse of\nlabour, found it always as sweet as it was in Eve's mouth. All kinds of\nassociations have gathered about the pleasant things of the world and half\ntaken the pleasure out of them for the greater number of men, but he saw\nthem as when they came from the Divine Hand. I often see him in my mind as\nI saw him once at Hammersmith holding up a glass of claret towards the\nlight and saying, 'Why do people say it is prosaic to get inspiration out\nof wine? Is it not the sunlight and the sap in the leaves? Are not grapes\nmade by the sunlight and the sap?'\n\n\nV\n\nIn one of his little socialist pamphlets he tells how he sat under an\nelm-tree and watched the starlings and thought of an old horse and an old\nlabourer that had passed him by, and of the men and women he had seen in\ntowns; and he wondered how all these had come to be as they were. He saw\nthat the starlings were beautiful and merry and that men and the old\nhorse they had subdued to their service were ugly and miserable, and yet\nthe starlings, he thought, were of one kind whether there or in the south\nof England, and the ugly men and women were of one kind with those whose\nnobility and beauty had moved the ancient sculptors and poets to imagine\nthe gods and the heroes after the images of men. Then he began, he tells\nus, to meditate how this great difference might be ended and a new life,\nwhich would permit men to have beauty in common among them as the\nstarlings have, be built on the wrecks of the old life. In other words,\nhis mind was illuminated from within and lifted into prophecy in the full\nright sense of the word, and he saw the natural things he was alone gifted\nto see in their perfect form; and having that faith which is alone worth\nhaving, for it includes all others, a sure knowledge established in the\nconstitution of his mind that perfect things are final things, he\nannounced that all he had seen would come to pass. I do not think he\ntroubled to understand books of economics, and Mr. Mackail says, I think,\nthat they vexed him and wearied him. He found it enough to hold up, as it\nwere, life as it is to-day beside his visions, and to show how faded its\ncolours were and how sapless it was. And if we had not enough artistic\nfeeling, enough feeling for the perfect that is, to admit the authority of\nthe vision; or enough faith to understand that all that is imperfect\npasses away, he would not, as I think, have argued with us in a serious\nspirit. Though I think that he never used the kinds of words I use in\nwriting of him, though I think he would even have disliked a word like\nfaith with its theological associations, I am certain that he understood\nthoroughly, as all artists understand a little, that the important things,\nthe things we must believe in or perish, are beyond argument. We can no\nmore reason about them than can the pigeon, come but lately from the egg,\nabout the hawk whose shadow makes it cower among the grass. His vision is\ntrue because it is poetical, because we are a little happier when we are\nlooking at it; and he knew as Shelley knew by an act of faith that the\neconomists should take their measurements not from life as it is, but from\nthe vision of men like him, from the vision of the world made perfect that\nis buried under all minds. The early Christians were of the kin of the\nWilderness and of the Dry Tree, and they saw an unearthly Paradise, but he\nwas of the kin of the Well and of the Green Tree and he saw an Earthly\nParadise.\n\nHe obeyed his vision when he tried to make first his own house, for he was\nin this matter also like a child playing with the world, and then houses\nof other people, places where one could live happily; and he obeyed it\nwhen he wrote essays about the nature of happy work, and when he spoke at\nstreet corners about the coming changes.\n\nHe knew clearly what he was doing towards the end, for he lived at a time\nwhen poets and artists have begun again to carry the burdens that priests\nand theologians took from them angrily some few hundred years ago. His art\nwas not more essentially religious than Rossetti's art, but it was\ndifferent, for Rossetti, drunken with natural beauty, saw the supernatural\nbeauty, the impossible beauty, in his frenzy, while he being less intense\nand more tranquil would show us a beauty that would wither if it did not\nset us at peace with natural things, and if we did not believe that it\nexisted always a little, and would some day exist in its fulness. He may\nnot have been, indeed he was not, among the very greatest of the poets,\nbut he was among the greatest of those who prepare the last reconciliation\nwhen the Cross shall blossom with roses.\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY\n\n\nI. HIS RULING IDEAS\n\nWhen I was a boy in Dublin I was one of a group who rented a room in a\nmean street to discuss philosophy. My fellow-students got more and more\ninterested in certain modern schools of mystical belief, and I never found\nanybody to share my one unshakable belief. I thought that whatever of\nphilosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent, and that one should\nbegin to arrange it in some regular order, rejecting nothing as the\nmake-believe of the poets. I thought, so far as I can recollect my\nthoughts after so many years, that if a powerful and benevolent spirit has\nshaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from\nthe words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from\nhistorical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers. Since\nthen I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now\ncertain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that\nthe reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is\nstill and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know. I have\nre-read _Prometheus Unbound_, which I had hoped my fellow-students would\nhave studied as a sacred book, and it seems to me to have an even more\ncertain place than I had thought, among the sacred books of the world. I\nremember going to a learned scholar to ask about its deep meanings, which\nI felt more than understood, and his telling me that it was Godwin's\n_Political Justice_ put into rhyme, and that Shelley was a crude\nrevolutionist, and believed that the overturning of kings and priests\nwould regenerate mankind. I quoted the lines which tell how the halcyons\nceased to prey on fish, and how poisonous leaves became good for food, to\nshow that he foresaw more than any political regeneration, but was too\ntimid to push the argument. I still believe that one cannot help\nbelieving him, as this scholar I know believes him, a vague thinker, who\nmixed occasional great poetry with a phantastic rhetoric, unless one\ncompares such passages, and above all such passages as describe the\nliberty he praised, till one has discovered the system of belief that lay\nbehind them. It should seem natural to find his thought full of subtlety,\nfor Mrs. Shelley has told how he hesitated whether he should be a\nmetaphysician or a poet, and has spoken of his 'huntings after the\nobscure' with regret, and said of that _Prometheus Unbound_, which so many\nfor three generations have thought _Political Justice_ put into rhyme, 'It\nrequires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the\nmystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary\nreader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far\nfrom vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the\nNature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure\nin his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observation and remarks alone\nremain. He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to be\ninstinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.' From these scattered\nfragments and observations, and from many passages read in their light,\none soon comes to understand that his liberty was so much more than the\nliberty of _Political Justice_ that it was one with Intellectual Beauty,\nand that the regeneration he foresaw was so much more than the\nregeneration many political dreamers have foreseen, that it could not come\nin its perfection till the hours bore 'Time to his grave in eternity.' In\n_A Defence of Poetry_, the profoundest essay on the foundation of poetry\nin English, he shows that the poet and the lawgiver hold their station by\nthe right of the same faculty, the one uttering in words and the other in\nthe forms of society, his vision of the divine order, the Intellectual\nBeauty. 'Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in\nwhich they appeared, were called in the earliest epoch of the world\nlegislators or prophets, and a poet essentially comprises and unites both\nthese characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is,\nand discovers those laws according to which present things are to be\nordained, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are\nthe germs of the flowers and the fruit of latest time.' 'Language, colour,\nform, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments\nand materials of poetry.' Poetry is 'the creation of actions according to\nthe unchangeable process of human nature as existing in the mind of the\ncreator, which is itself the image of all other minds.' 'Poets have been\nchallenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and merchants.... It is\nadmitted that the exercise of the imagination is the most delightful, but\nit is alleged that that of reason is the more useful.... Whilst the\nmechanist abridges and the political economist combines labour, let them\nbe sure that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those\nfirst principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they\nhave in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and\nwant.... The rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer,...\nsuch are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of\nthe calculating faculty.' The speaker of these things might almost be\nBlake, who held that the Reason not only created Ugliness, but all other\nevils. The books of all wisdom are hidden in the cave of the Witch of\nAtlas, who is one of his personifications of beauty, and when she moves\nover the enchanted river that is an image of all life, the priests cast\naside their deceits, and the king crowns an ape to mock his own\nsovereignty, and the soldiers gather about the anvils to beat their swords\nto ploughshares, and lovers cast away their timidity, and friends are\nunited; while the power, which in _Laon and Cythna_, awakens the mind of\nthe reformer to contend, and itself contends, against the tyrannies of the\nworld, is first seen, as the star of love or beauty. And at the end of\n_The Ode to Naples_, he cries out to 'the spirit of beauty' to overturn\nthe tyrannies of the world, or to fill them with its 'harmonizing\nardours.' He calls the spirit of beauty liberty, because despotism, and\nperhaps, as 'the man of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys,' all\nauthority, pluck virtue from her path towards beauty, and because it leads\nus by that love whose service is perfect freedom. It leads all things by\nlove, for he cries again and again that love is the perception of beauty\nin thought and things, and it orders all things by love, for it is love\nthat impels the soul to its expressions in thought and in action, by\nmaking us 'seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we\nexperience within ourselves.' 'We are born into the world, and there is\nsomething within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more\nthirsts after its likeness.' We have 'a soul within our soul that\ndescribes a circle around its proper paradise which pain and sorrow and\nevil dare not overleap,' and we labour to see this soul in many mirrors,\nthat we may possess it the more abundantly. He would hardly seek the\nprogress of the world by any less gentle labour, and would hardly have us\nresist evil itself. He bids the reformers in _The Philosophical Review of\nReform_ receive 'the onset of the cavalry,' if it be sent to disperse\ntheir meetings, 'with folded arms,' and 'not because active resistance is\nnot justifiable, but because temperance and courage would produce greater\nadvantages than the most decisive victory;' and he gives them like advice\nin _The Masque of Anarchy_, for liberty, the poem cries, 'is love,' and\ncan make the rich man kiss its feet, and, like those who followed Christ,\ngive away his goods and follow it throughout the world.\n\nHe does not believe that the reformation of society can bring this beauty,\nthis divine order, among men without the regeneration of the hearts of\nmen. Even in _Queen Mab_, which was written before he had found his\ndeepest thought, or rather perhaps before he had found words to utter it,\nfor I do not think men change much in their deepest thought, he is less\nanxious to change men's beliefs, as I think, than to cry out against that\nserpent more subtle than any beast of the field, 'the cause and the effect\nof tyranny.' He affirms again and again that the virtuous, those who have\n'pure desire and universal love,' are happy in the midst of tyranny, and\nhe foresees a day when 'the spirit of nature,' the spirit of beauty of his\nlater poems, who has her 'throne of power unappealable in every human\nheart,' shall have made men so virtuous that 'kingly glare will lose its\npower to dazzle and silently pass by,' and as it seems even commerce, 'the\nvenal interchange of all that human art or nature yields, which wealth\nshould purchase not,' come as silently to an end.\n\nHe was always, indeed in chief, a witness for that 'power unappealable.'\nMaddalo, in _Julian and Maddalo_, says that the soul is powerless, and can\nonly, like a 'dreary bell hung in a heaven-illumined tower, toll our\nthoughts and our desires to meet round the rent heart and pray'; but\nJulian, who is Shelley himself, replies, as the makers of all religions\nhave replied--\n\n  'Where is the beauty, love and truth we seek\n  But in our minds? And if we were not weak,\n  Should we be less in deed than in desire?'\n\nwhile _Mont Blanc_ is an intricate analogy to affirm that the soul has its\nsources in 'the secret strength of things,' 'which governs thought and to\nthe infinite heavens is a law.' He even thought that men might be immortal\nwere they sinless, and his Cythna bids the sailors be without remorse, for\nall that live are stained as they are. It is thus, she says, that time\nmarks men and their thoughts for the tomb. And the 'Red Comet,' the image\nof evil in _Laon and Cythna_, when it began its war with the star of\nbeauty, brought not only 'Fear, Hatred, Fraud, and Tyranny,' but 'Death,\nDecay, Earthquake, and Blight and Madness pale.'\n\nWhen the Red Comet is conquered, when Jupiter is overthrown by Demogorgon,\nwhen the prophecy of Queen Mab is fulfilled, visible nature will put on\nperfection again. He declares, in one of the notes to _Queen Mab_, that\n'there is no great extravagance in presuming ... that there should be a\nperfect identity between the moral and physical improvement of the human\nspecies,' and thinks it 'certain that wisdom is not compatible with\ndisease, and that, in the present state of the climates of the earth,\nhealth in the true and comprehensive sense of the word is out of the reach\nof civilized man.' In _Prometheus Unbound_ he sees, as in the ecstasy of a\nsaint, the ships moving among the seas of the world without fear of\ndanger\n\n                                'by the light\n  Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,\n  And music soft,'\n\nand poison dying out of the green things, and cruelty out of all living\nthings, and even the toads and efts becoming beautiful, and at last Time\nbeing borne 'to his tomb in eternity.'\n\nThis beauty, this divine order, whereof all things shall become a part in\na kind of resurrection of the body, is already visible to the dead and to\nsouls in ecstasy, for ecstasy is a kind of death. The dying Lionel hears\nthe song of the nightingale, and cries--\n\n  'Heardst thou not sweet words among\n  That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?\n  Heardst thou not that those who die\n  Awake in a world of ecstasy?\n  How love, when limbs are interwoven,\n  And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,\n  And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging,\n  And music when one beloved is singing,\n  Is death? Let us drain right joyously\n  The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.'\n\nAnd in the most famous passage in all his poetry he sings of Death as of a\nmistress. 'Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white\nradiance of eternity.' 'Die, if thou wouldst be with that which thou\nwouldst seek;' and he sees his own soon-coming death in a rapture of\nprophecy, for 'the fire for which all thirst' beams upon him, 'consuming\nthe last clouds of cold mortality.' When he is dead he will still\ninfluence the living, for though Adonais has fled 'to the burning\nfountains whence he came,' and 'is a portion of the eternal which must\nglow through time and change unquenchably the same,' and has 'awaked from\nthe dream of life,' he has not gone from 'the young dawn,' or the 'caverns\nin the forests,' or 'the faint flowers and the fountains.' He has been\n'made one with nature,' and his voice is 'heard in all her music,' and his\npresence is felt wherever 'that power may move which has withdrawn his\nbeing to its own,' and he bears 'his part' when it is compelling mortal\nthings to their appointed forms, and he overshadows men's minds at their\nsupreme moments, for\n\n                  'when lofty thought\n  Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,\n  And love and life contend in it for what\n  Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,\n  And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.'\n\n'Of his speculations as to what will befall this inestimable spirit when\nwe appear to die,' Mrs. Shelley has written, 'a mystic ideality tinged\nthese speculations in Shelley's mind; certain stanzas in the poem of _The\nSensitive Plant_ express, in some degree, the almost inexpressible idea,\nnot that we die into another state, when this state is no longer, from\nsome reason, unapparent as well as apparent, accordant with our being--but\nthat those who rise above the ordinary nature of man, fade from before our\nimperfect organs; they remain in their \"love, beauty, and delight,\" in a\nworld congenial to them, and we, clogged by \"error, ignorance, and\nstrife,\" see them not till we are fitted by purification and improvement\nto their higher state.' Not merely happy souls, but all beautiful places\nand movements and gestures and events, when we think they have ceased to\nbe, have become portions of the eternal.\n\n                  'In this life\n  Of error, ignorance, and strife,\n  Where nothing is, but all things seem,\n  And we the shadows of the dream,\n\n  It is a modest creed, and yet\n  Pleasant, if one considers it,\n  To own that death itself must be,\n  Like all the rest, a mockery.\n\n  This garden sweet, that lady fair,\n  And all sweet shapes and odours there,\n  In truth have never passed away;\n  'Tis we, 'tis ours are changed, not they.\n\n  For love and beauty and delight\n  There is no death, nor change; their might\n  Exceeds our organs, which endure\n  No light, being themselves obscure.'\n\nHe seems in his speculations to have lit on that memory of nature the\nvisionaries claim for the foundation of their knowledge; but I do not know\nwhether he thought, as they do, that all things good and evil remain for\never, 'thinking the thought and doing the deed,' though not, it may be,\nself-conscious; or only thought that 'love and beauty and delight' remain\nfor ever. The passage where Queen Mab awakes 'all knowledge of the past,'\nand the good and evil 'events of old and wondrous times,' was no more\ndoubtless than a part of the machinery of the poem, but all the\nmachineries of poetry are parts of the convictions of antiquity, and\nreadily become again convictions in minds that dwell upon them in a spirit\nof intense idealism.\n\nIntellectual Beauty has not only the happy dead to do her will, but\nministering spirits who correspond to the Devas of the East, and the\nElemental Spirits of medi\u00e6val Europe, and the Sidhe of ancient Ireland,\nand whose too constant presence, and perhaps Shelley's ignorance of their\nmore traditional forms, give some of his poetry an air of rootless\nphantasy. They change continually in his poetry, as they do in the visions\nof the mystics everywhere and of the common people in Ireland, and the\nforms of these changes display, in an especial sense, the glowing forms of\nhis mind when freed from all impulse not out of itself or out of\nsupersensual power. These are 'gleams of a remoter world which visit us in\nsleep,' spiritual essences whose shadows are the delights of all the\nsenses, sounds 'folded in cells of crystal silence,' 'visions swift and\nsweet and quaint,' which lie waiting their moment 'each in his thin sheath\nlike a chrysalis,' 'odours' among 'ever-blooming eden trees', 'liquors'\nthat can give 'happy sleep,' or can make tears 'all wonder and delight';\n'The golden genii who spoke to the poets of Greece in dreams'; 'the\nphantoms' which become the forms of the arts when 'the mind, arising\nbright from the embrace of beauty,' 'casts on them the gathered rays which\nare reality'; the 'guardians' who move in 'the atmosphere of human\nthought' as 'the birds within the wind, or the fish within the wave,' or\nman's thought itself through all things; and who join the throng of the\nhappy hours when Time is passing away--\n\n      'As the flying fish leap\n      From the Indian deep,\n  And mix with the seabirds half asleep.'\n\nIt is these powers which lead Asia and Panthea, as they would lead all the\naffections of humanity, by words written upon leaves, by faint songs, by\neddies of echoes that draw 'all spirits on that secret way,' by the 'dying\nodours' of flowers and by 'the sunlight of the sphered dew,' beyond the\ngates of birth and death to awake Demogorgon, eternity, that 'the painted\nveil' 'called life' may be 'torn aside.'\n\nThere are also ministers of ugliness and all evil, like those that came\nto Prometheus--\n\n  'As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels\n  To gather for her festal crown of flowers,\n  The a\u00ebrial crimson falls, flushing her cheek,\n  So from our victim's destined agony\n  The shade which is our form invests us round;\n  Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.'\n\nOr like those whose shapes the poet sees in _The Triumph of Life_, coming\nfrom the procession that follows the car of life, as 'hope' changes to\n'desire,' shadows 'numerous as the dead leaves blown in autumn evening\nfrom a poplar tree'; and resembling those they come from, until, if I\nunderstand an obscure phrase aright, they are 'wrapt' round 'all the busy\nphantoms that live there as the sun shapes the clouds.' Some to sit\n'chattering like apes,' and some like 'old anatomies' 'hatching their bare\nbroods under the shade of d\u00e6mons' wings,' laughing 'to reassume the\ndelegated powers' they had given to the tyrants of the earth, and some\n'like small gnats and flies' to throng 'about the brow of lawyers,\nstatesmen, priest and theorist,' and some 'like discoloured shapes of\nsnow' to fall 'on fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,' to be 'melted by\nthe youthful glow which they extinguish,' and many to 'fling shadows of\nshadows yet unlike themselves,' shadows that are shaped into new forms by\nthat 'creative ray' in which all move like motes.\n\nThese ministers of beauty and ugliness were certainly more than metaphors\nor picturesque phrases to one who believed the 'thoughts which are called\nreal or external objects' differed but in regularity of recurrence from\n'hallucinations, dreams, and the ideas of madness,' and lessened this\ndifference by telling how he had dreamed 'three several times, between\nintervals of two or more years, the same precise dream,' and who had seen\nimages with the mind's eye that left his nerves shaken for days together.\nShadows that were as when there\n\n                          'hovers\n  A flock of vampire bats before the glare\n  Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening,\n  Strange night upon some Indian vale,'\n\ncould not but have had more than a metaphorical and picturesque being to\none who had spoken in terror with an image of himself, and who had fainted\nat the apparition of a woman with eyes in her breasts, and who had tried\nto burn down a wood, if we can trust Mrs. Williams' account, because he\nbelieved a devil, who had first tried to kill him, had sought refuge\nthere.\n\nIt seems to me, indeed, that Shelley had reawakened in himself the age of\nfaith, though there were times when he would doubt, as even the saints\nhave doubted, and that he was a revolutionist, because he had heard the\ncommandment, 'If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.' I have\nre-read his _Prometheus Unbound_ for the first time for many years, in the\nwoods of Drim-da-rod, among the Echte hills, and sometimes I have looked\ntowards Slieve-nan-Orr, where the country people say the last battle of\nthe world shall be fought till the third day, when a priest shall lift a\nchalice, and the thousand years of peace begin. And I think this\nmysterious song utters a faith as simple and as ancient as the faith of\nthose country people, in a form suited to a new age, that will understand,\nwith Blake, that the holy spirit is 'an intellectual fountain,' and that\nthe kinds and degrees of beauty are the images of its authority.\n\n\nII. HIS RULING SYMBOLS\n\nAt a comparatively early time Shelley made his imprisoned Cythna become\nwise in all human wisdom through the contemplation of her own mind, and\nwrite out this wisdom upon the sand in 'signs' that were 'clear elemental\nshapes whose smallest change' made 'a subtler language within language'\nand were 'the key of truths, which once were dimly taught in old\nCrotona.' His early romances and much throughout his poetry show how\nstrong a fascination the traditions of magic and of the magical philosophy\nhad cast over his mind, and one can hardly suppose that he had not brooded\nover their doctrine of symbols or signatures, though I do not find\nanything to show that he gave it any deep study. One finds in his poetry,\nbesides innumerable images that have not the definiteness of symbols, many\nimages that are certainly symbols, and as the years went by he began to\nuse these with a more and more deliberately symbolic purpose. I imagine\nthat, when he wrote his earlier poems, he allowed the subconscious life to\nlay its hands so firmly upon the rudder of his imagination, that he was\nlittle conscious of the abstract meaning of the images that rose in what\nseemed the idleness of his mind. Any one who has any experience of any\nmystical state of the soul knows how there float up in the mind profound\nsymbols,[1] whose meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream\nthat they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years. Nor\nI think has any one, who has known that experience with any constancy,\nfailed to find some day in some old book or on some old monument, a\nstrange or intricate image, that had floated up before him, and grow\nperhaps dizzy with the sudden conviction that our little memories are but\na part of some great memory that renews the world and men's thoughts age\nafter age, and that our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but a\nlittle foam upon the deep. Shelley understood this, as is proved by what\nhe says of the eternity of beautiful things and of the influence of the\ndead, but whether he understood that the great memory is also a\ndwelling-house of symbols, of images that are living souls, I cannot\ntell. He had certainly experience of all but the most profound of the\nmystical states, of that union with created things which assuredly must\nprecede the soul's union with the uncreated spirit. He says in his\nfragment of an essay upon life, mistaking a unique experience for the\ncommon experience of all: 'Let us recollect our sensations as children ...\nwe less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt from ourselves.\nThey seemed as it were to constitute one mass. There are some persons who\nin this respect are always children. Those who are subject to the state\ncalled reverie, feel as if their nature were resolved into the surrounding\nuniverse, or as if the surrounding universe were resolved into their\nbeing,' and he must have expected to receive thoughts and images from\nbeyond his own mind, just in so far as that mind transcended its\npreoccupation with particular time and place, for he believed inspiration\na kind of death; and he could hardly have helped perceiving that an image\nthat has transcended particular time and place becomes a symbol, passes\nbeyond death, as it were, and becomes a living soul.\n\nWhen Shelley went to the Continent with Godwin's daughter in 1812 they\nsailed down certain great rivers in an open boat, and when he summed up in\nhis preface to _Laon and Cythna_ the things that helped to make him a\npoet, he spoke of these voyages: 'I have sailed down mighty rivers and\nseen the sun rise and set and the stars come forth whilst I sailed night\nand day down a rapid stream among mountains.'\n\nHe may have seen some cave that was the bed of a rivulet by some river\nside, or have followed some mountain stream to its source in a cave, for\nfrom his return to England rivers and streams and wells, flowing through\ncaves or rising in them, came into every poem of his that was of any\nlength, and always with the precision of symbols. Alastor passed in his\nboat along a river in a cave; and when for the last time he felt the\npresence of the spirit he loved and followed, it was when he watched his\nimage in a silent well; and when he died it was where a river fell into\n'an abysmal chasm'; and the Witch of Atlas in her gladness, as he in his\nsadness, passed in her boat along a river in a cave, and it was where it\nbubbled out of a cave that she was born; and when Rousseau, the typical\npoet of _The Triumph of Life_, awoke to the vision that was life, it was\nwhere a rivulet bubbled out of a cave; and the poet of _Epipsychidion_ met\nthe evil beauty 'by a well under blue nightshade bowers'; and Cythna bore\nher child imprisoned in a great cave beside 'a fountain round and vast and\nin which the wave imprisoned leaped and boiled perpetually'; and her lover\nLaon was brought to his prison in a high column through a cave where there\nwas 'a putrid pool,' and when he went to see the conquered city he\ndismounted beside a polluted fountain in the market-place, foreshadowing\nthereby that spirit who at the end of _Prometheus Unbound_ gazes at a\nregenerated city from 'within a fountain in the public square'; and when\nLaon and Cythna are dead they awake beside a fountain and drift into\nParadise along a river; and at the end of things Prometheus and Asia are\nto live amid a happy world in a cave where a fountain 'leaps with an\nawakening sound'; and it was by a fountain, the meeting-place of certain\nunhappy lovers, that Rosalind and Helen told their unhappiness to one\nanother; and it was under a willow by a fountain that the enchantress and\nher lover began their unhappy love; while his lesser poems and his prose\nfragments use caves and rivers and wells and fountains continually as\nmetaphors. It may be that his subconscious life seized upon some passing\nscene, and moulded it into an ancient symbol without help from anything\nbut that great memory; but so good a Platonist as Shelley could hardly\nhave thought of any cave as a symbol, without thinking of Plato's cave\nthat was the world; and so good a scholar may well have had Porphyry on\n'the Cave of the Nymphs' in his mind. When I compare Porphyry's\ndescription of the cave where the Ph\u00e6acian boat left Odysseus, with\nShelley's description of the cave of the Witch of Atlas, to name but one\nof many, I find it hard to think otherwise. I quote Taylor's translation,\nonly putting Mr. Lang's prose for Taylor's bad verse. 'What does Homer\nobscurely signify by the cave in Ithaca which he describes in the\nfollowing verses? \"Now at the harbour's head is a long-leaved olive tree,\nand hard by is a pleasant cave and shadowy, sacred to the nymphs, that are\ncalled Naiads. And therein are mixing bowls and jars of stone, and there\nmoreover do bees hive. And there are great looms of stone, whereon the\nnymphs weave raiment of purple stain, a marvel to behold; and there are\nwaters welling ever more. Two gates there are to the cave, the one set\ntowards the North wind, whereby men may go down, but the portals toward\nthe South pertain rather to the gods, whereby men may not enter: it is the\nway of the immortals.\"' He goes on to argue that the cave was a temple\nbefore Homer wrote, and that 'the ancients did not establish temples\nwithout fabulous symbols,' and then begins to interpret Homer's\ndescription in all its detail. The ancients, he says, 'consecrated a cave\nto the world' and held 'the flowing waters' and the 'obscurity of the\ncavern' 'apt symbols of what the world contains,' and he calls to witness\nZoroaster's cave with fountains; and often caves are, he says, symbols of\n'all invisible power; because as caves are obscure and dark, so the\nessence of all these powers is occult,' and quotes a lost hymn to Apollo\nto prove that nymphs living in caves fed men 'from intellectual\nfountains'; and he contends that fountains and rivers symbolize\ngeneration, and that the word nymph 'is commonly applied to all souls\ndescending into generation,' and that the two gates of Homer's cave are\nthe gate of generation and the gate of ascent through death to the gods,\nthe gate of cold and moisture, and the gate of heat and fire. Cold, he\nsays, causes life in the world, and heat causes life among the gods, and\nthe constellation of the cup is set in the heavens near the sign Cancer,\nbecause it is there that the souls descending from the Milky Way receive\ntheir draught of the intoxicating cold drink of generation. 'The mixing\nbowls and jars of stone' are consecrated to the Naiads, and are also, as\nit seems, symbolical of Bacchus, and are of stone because of the rocky\nbeds of the rivers. And 'the looms of stone' are the symbols of the 'souls\nthat descend into generation.' 'For the formation of the flesh is on or\nabout the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble stones,' and also\nbecause 'the body is a garment' not only about the soul, but about all\nessences that become visible, for 'the heavens are called by the ancients\na veil, in consequence of being as it were the vestments of the celestial\ngods.' The bees hive in the mixing bowls and jars of stone, for so\nPorphyry understands the passage, because honey was the symbol adopted by\nthe ancients for 'pleasure arising from generation.' The ancients, he\nsays, called souls not only Naiads but bees, 'as the efficient cause of\nsweetness'; but not all souls 'proceeding into generation' are called\nbees, 'but those who will live in it justly and who after having performed\nsuch things as are acceptable to the gods will again return (to their\nkindred stars). For this insect loves to return to the place from whence\nit came and is eminently just and sober.' I find all these details in the\ncave of the Witch of Atlas, the most elaborately described of Shelley's\ncaves, except the two gates, and these have a far-off echo in her summer\njourneys on her cavern river and in her winter sleep in 'an\ninextinguishable well of crimson fire.' We have for the mixing bowls, and\njars of stone full of honey, those delights of the senses, 'sounds of air'\n'folded in cells of crystal silences,' 'liquors clear and sweet' 'in\ncrystal vials,' and for the bees, visions 'each in his thin sheath like a\nchrysalis,' and for 'the looms of stone' and 'raiment of purple stain' the\nWitch's spinning and embroidering; and the Witch herself is a Naiad, and\nwas born from one of the Atlantides, who lay in 'a chamber of grey rock'\nuntil she was changed by the sun's embrace into a cloud.\n\nWhen one turns to Shelley for an explanation of the cave and fountain one\nfinds how close his thought was to Porphyry's. He looked upon thought as a\ncondition of life in generation and believed that the reality beyond was\nsomething other than thought. He wrote in his fragment 'On Life,' 'That\nthe basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges,\nmind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of\nits properties, and beyond that experience how vain is argument, cannot\ncreate, it can only perceive;' and in another passage he defines mind as\nexistence. Water is his great symbol of existence, and he continually\nmeditates over its mysterious source. In his prose he tells how 'thought\ncan with difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers which it\ninhabits. It is like a river, whose rapid and perpetual stream flows\noutward.... The caverns of the mind are obscure and shadowy; or pervaded\nwith a lustre, beautiful and bright indeed, but shining not beyond their\nportals.' When the Witch has passed in her boat from the caverned river,\nthat is doubtless her own destiny, she passes along the Nile 'by Moeris\nand the Mareotid lakes,' and sees all human life shadowed upon its waters\nin shadows that 'never are erased but tremble ever'; and in many a dark\nand subterranean street under the Nile--new caverns--and along the bank of\nthe Nile; and as she bends over the unhappy, she compares unhappiness to\n'the strife that stirs the liquid surface of man's life'; and because she\ncan see the reality of things she is described as journeying 'in the calm\ndepths' of 'the wide lake' we journey over unpiloted. Alastor calls the\nriver that he follows an image of his mind, and thinks that it will be as\nhard to say where his thought will be when he is dead as where its waters\nwill be in ocean or cloud in a little while. In _Mont Blanc_, a poem so\noverladen with descriptions in parentheses that one loses sight of its\nlogic, Shelley compares the flowing through our mind of 'the universe of\nthings,' which are, he has explained elsewhere, but thoughts, to the\nflowing of the Arne through the ravine, and compares the unknown sources\nof our thoughts in some 'remoter world' whose 'gleams' 'visit the soul in\nsleep,' to Arne's sources among the glaciers on the mountain heights.\nCythna in the passage where she speaks of making signs 'a subtle language\nwithin language' on the sand by the 'fountain' of sea water in the cave\nwhere she is imprisoned, speaks of the 'cave' of her mind which gave its\nsecrets to her, and of 'one mind the type of all' which is a 'moveless\nwave' reflecting 'all moveless things that are'; and then passing more\ncompletely under the power of the symbol, she speaks of growing wise\nthrough contemplation of the images that rise out of the fountain at the\ncall of her will. Again and again one finds some passing allusion to the\ncave of man's mind, or to the caves of his youth, or to the cave of\nmysteries we enter at death, for to Shelley as to Porphyry it is more than\nan image of life in the world. It may mean any enclosed life, as when it\nis the dwelling-place of Asia and Prometheus, or when it is 'the still\ncave of poetry,' and it may have all meanings at once, or it may have as\nlittle meaning as some ancient religious symbol enwoven from the habit of\ncenturies with the patterns of a carpet or a tapestry.\n\nAs Shelley sailed along those great rivers and saw or imagined the cave\nthat associated itself with rivers in his mind, he saw half-ruined towers\nupon the hilltops, and once at any rate a tower is used to symbolize a\nmeaning that is the contrary to the meaning symbolized by caves. Cythna's\nlover is brought through the cave where there is a polluted fountain to a\nhigh tower, for being man's far-seeing mind, when the world has cast him\nout he must to the 'towers of thought's crowned powers'; nor is it\npossible for Shelley to have forgotten this first imprisonment when he\nmade men imprison Lionel in a tower for a like offence; and because I know\nhow hard it is to forget a symbolical meaning, once one has found it, I\nbelieve Shelley had more than a romantic scene in his mind when he made\nPrince Athanase follow his mysterious studies in a lighted tower above the\nsea, and when he made the old hermit watch over Laon in his sickness in a\nhalf-ruined tower, wherein the sea, here doubtless as to Cythna, 'the one\nmind,' threw 'spangled sands' and 'rarest sea shells.' The tower,\nimportant in Maeterlinck, as in Shelley, is, like the sea, and rivers, and\ncaves with fountains, a very ancient symbol, and would perhaps, as years\nwent by, have grown more important in his poetry. The contrast between it\nand the cave in _Laon and Cythna_ suggests a contrast between the mind\nlooking outward upon men and things and the mind looking inward upon\nitself, which may or may not have been in Shelley's mind, but certainly\nhelps, with one knows not how many other dim meanings, to give the poem\nmystery and shadow. It is only by ancient symbols, by symbols that have\nnumberless meanings beside the one or two the writer lays an emphasis\nupon, or the half-score he knows of, that any highly subjective art can\nescape from the barrenness and shallowness of a too conscious\narrangement, into the abundance and depth of nature. The poet of essences\nand pure ideas must seek in the half-lights that glimmer from symbol to\nsymbol as if to the ends of the earth, all that the epic and dramatic poet\nfinds of mystery and shadow in the accidental circumstance of life.\n\nThe most important, the most precise of all Shelley's symbols, the one he\nuses with the fullest knowledge of its meaning, is the Morning and Evening\nStar. It rises and sets for ever over the towers and rivers, and is the\nthrone of his genius. Personified as a woman it leads Rousseau, the\ntypical poet of _The Triumph of Life_, under the power of the destroying\nhunger of life, under the power of the sun that we shall find presently as\na symbol of life, and it is the Morning Star that wars against the\nprinciple of evil in _Laon and Cythna_, at first as a star with a red\ncomet, here a symbol of all evil as it is of disorder in _Epipsychidion_,\nand then as a serpent with an eagle--symbols in Blake too and in the\nAlchemists; and it is the Morning Star that appears as a winged youth to a\nwoman, who typifies humanity amid its sorrows, in the first canto of _Laon\nand Cythna_; and it is evoked by the wailing women of _Hellas_, who call\nit 'lamp of the free' and 'beacon of love' and would go where it hides\nflying from the deepening night among those 'kingless continents sinless\nas Eden,' and 'mountains and islands' 'prankt on the sapphire sea' that\nare but the opposing hemispheres to the senses but, as I think, the ideal\nworld, the world of the dead, to the imagination; and in the _Ode to\nLiberty_, Liberty is bid lead wisdom out of the inmost cave of man's mind\nas the Morning Star leads the sun out of the waves. We know too that had\n_Prince Athanase_ been finished it would have described the finding of\nPandemus, the stars' lower genius, and the growing weary of her, and the\ncoming to its true genius Urania at the coming of death, as the day finds\nthe Star at evening. There is hardly indeed a poem of any length in which\none does not find it as a symbol of love, or liberty, or wisdom, or\nbeauty, or of some other expression of that Intellectual Beauty, which was\nto Shelley's mind the central power of the world; and to its faint and\nfleeting light he offers up all desires, that are as\n\n  'The desire of the Moth for the star,\n  The desire for something afar\n  From the sphere of our sorrow.'\n\nWhen its genius comes to Rousseau, shedding dew with one hand, and\ntreading out the stars with her feet, for she is also the genius of the\ndawn, she brings him a cup full of oblivion and love. He drinks and his\nmind becomes like sand 'on desert Labrador' marked by the feet of deer and\na wolf. And then the new vision, life, the cold light of day moves before\nhim, and the first vision becomes an invisible presence. The same image\nwas in his mind too when he wrote\n\n  'Hesperus flies from awakening night\n  And pants in its beauty with speed and light,\n  Fast fleeting, soft and bright.'\n\nThough I do not think that Shelley needed to go to Porphyry's account of\nthe cold intoxicating cup, given to the souls in the constellation of the\nCup near the constellation Cancer, for so obvious a symbol as the cup, or\nthat he could not have found the wolf and the deer and the continual\nflight of his Star in his own mind, his poetry becomes the richer, the\nmore emotional, and loses something of its appearance of idle phantasy\nwhen I remember that these are ancient symbols, and still come to\nvisionaries in their dreams. Because the wolf is but a more violent symbol\nof longing and desire than the hound, his wolf and deer remind me of the\nhound and deer that Usheen saw in the Gaelic poem chasing one another on\nthe water before he saw the young man following the woman with the golden\napple; and of a Galway tale that tells how Niam, whose name means\nbrightness or beauty, came to Usheen as a deer; and of a vision that a\nfriend of mine saw when gazing at a dark-blue curtain. I was with a number\nof Hermetists, and one of them said to another, 'Do you see something in\nthe curtain?' The other gazed at the curtain for a while and saw presently\na man led through a wood by a black hound, and then the hound lay dead at\na place the seer knew was called, without knowing why, 'the Meeting of the\nSuns,' and the man followed a red hound, and then the red hound was\npierced by a spear. A white fawn watched the man out of the wood, but he\ndid not look at it, for a white hound came and he followed it trembling,\nbut the seer knew that he would follow the fawn at last, and that it would\nlead him among the gods. The most learned of the Hermetists said, 'I\ncannot tell the meaning of the hounds or where the Meeting of the Suns is,\nbut I think the fawn is the Morning and Evening Star.' I have little\ndoubt that when the man saw the white fawn he was coming out of the\ndarkness and passion of the world into some day of partial regeneration,\nand that it was the Morning Star and would be the Evening Star at its\nsecond coming. I have little doubt that it was but the story of Prince\nAthanase and what may have been the story of Rousseau in _The Triumph of\nLife_, thrown outward once again from that great memory, which is still\nthe mother of the Muses, though men no longer believe in it.\n\nIt may have been this memory, or it may have been some impulse of his\nnature too subtle for his mind to follow, that made Keats, with his love\nof embodied things, of precision of form and colouring, of emotions made\nsleepy by the flesh, see Intellectual Beauty in the Moon; and Blake, who\nlived in that energy he called eternal delight, see it in the Sun, where\nhis personification of poetic genius labours at a furnace. I think there\nwas certainly some reason why these men took so deep a pleasure in lights,\nthat Shelley thought of with weariness and trouble. The Moon is the most\nchangeable of symbols, and not merely because it is the symbol of change.\nAs mistress of the waters she governs the life of instinct and the\ngeneration of things, for as Porphyry says, even 'the apparition of\nimages' in the 'imagination' is through 'an excess of moisture'; and, as a\ncold and changeable fire set in the bare heavens, she governs alike\nchastity and the joyless idle drifting hither and thither of generated\nthings. She may give God a body and have Gabriel to bear her messages, or\nshe may come to men in their happy moments as she came to Endymion, or she\nmay deny life and shoot her arrows; but because she only becomes beautiful\nin giving herself, and is no flying ideal, she is not loved by the\nchildren of desire.\n\nShelley could not help but see her with unfriendly eyes. He is believed to\nhave described Mary Shelley at a time when she had come to seem cold in\nhis eyes, in that passage of _Epipsychidion_ which tells how a woman like\nthe Moon led him to her cave and made 'frost' creep over the sea of his\nmind, and so bewitched life and death with 'her silver voice' that they\nran from him crying, 'Away, he is not of our crew.' When he describes the\nMoon as part of some beautiful scene he can call her beautiful, but when\nhe personifies, when his words come under the influence of that great\nmemory or of some mysterious tide in the depth of our being, he grows\nunfriendly or not truly friendly or at the most pitiful. The Moon's lips\n'are pale and waning,' it is 'the cold Moon,' or 'the frozen and\ninconstant Moon,' or it is 'forgotten' and 'waning,' or it 'wanders' and\nis 'weary,' or it is 'pale and grey,' or it is 'pale for weariness,' and\n'wandering companionless' and 'ever changing,' and finding 'no object\nworth' its 'constancy,' or it is like a 'dying lady' who 'totters' 'out of\nher chamber led by the insane and feeble wanderings of her fading brain,'\nand even when it is no more than a star, it casts an evil influence that\nmakes the lips of lovers 'lurid' or pale. It only becomes a thing of\ndelight when Time is being borne to his tomb in eternity, for then the\nspirit of the Earth, man's procreant mind, fills it with his own\njoyousness. He describes the spirit of the Earth and of the Moon, moving\nabove the rivulet of their lives in a passage which reads like a\nhalf-understood vision. Man has become 'one harmonious soul of many a\nsoul' and 'all things flow to all' and 'familiar acts are beautiful\nthrough love,' and an 'animation of delight' at this change flows from\nspirit to spirit till the snow 'is loosened from the Moon's lifeless\nmountains.'\n\nSome old magical writer, I forget who, says if you wish to be melancholy\nhold in your left hand an image of the Moon made out of silver, and if you\nwish to be happy hold in your right hand an image of the Sun made out of\ngold. The Sun is the symbol of sensitive life, and of belief and joy and\npride and energy, of indeed the whole life of the will, and of that beauty\nwhich neither lures from far off, nor becomes beautiful in giving itself,\nbut makes all glad because it is beauty. Taylor quotes Proclus as calling\nit 'the Demiurgos of everything sensible.' It was therefore natural that\nBlake, who was always praising energy, and all exalted overflowing of\noneself, and who thought art an impassioned labour to keep men from doubt\nand despondency, and woman's love an evil, when it would trammel the man's\nwill, should see the poetic genius not in a woman star but in the Sun,\nand should rejoice throughout his poetry in 'the Sun in his strength.'\nShelley, however, except when he uses it to describe the peculiar beauty\nof Emilia Viviani, who was 'like an incarnation of the Sun when light is\nchanged to love,' saw it with less friendly eyes. He seems to have seen it\nwith perfect happiness only when veiled in mist, or glimmering upon water,\nor when faint enough to do no more than veil the brightness of his own\nStar; and in _The Triumph of Life_, the one poem in which it is part of\nthe avowed symbolism, its power is the being and the source of all\ntyrannies. When the woman personifying the Morning Star has faded from\nbefore his eyes, Rousseau sees a 'new vision' in 'a cold bright car' with\na rainbow hovering over her, and as she comes the shadow passes from 'leaf\nand stone,' and the souls she has enslaved seem in 'that light like\natomies to dance within a sunbeam,' or they dance among the flowers that\ngrow up newly 'in the grassy verdure of the desert,' unmindful of the\nmisery that is to come upon them. 'These are the great, the unforgotten,'\nall who have worn 'mitres and helms and crowns or wreaths of light,' and\nyet have not known themselves. Even 'great Plato' is there because he knew\njoy and sorrow, because life that could not subdue him by gold or pain, by\n'age or sloth or slavery,' subdued him by love. All who have ever lived\nare there except Christ and Socrates and 'the sacred few' who put away all\nlife could give, being doubtless followers throughout their lives of the\nforms borne by the flying ideal, or who, 'as soon as they had touched the\nworld with living flame, flew back like eagles to their native noon.'\n\nIn ancient times, it seems to me that Blake, who for all his protest was\nglad to be alive, and ever spoke of his gladness, would have worshipped\nin some chapel of the Sun, and that Keats, who accepted life gladly though\n'with a delicious diligent indolence,' would have worshipped in some\nchapel of the Moon, but that Shelley, who hated life because he sought\n'more in life than any understood,' would have wandered, lost in a\nceaseless reverie, in some chapel of the Star of infinite desire.\n\nI think too that as he knelt before an altar, where a thin flame burnt in\na lamp made of green agate, a single vision would have come to him again\nand again, a vision of a boat drifting down a broad river between high\nhills where there were caves and towers, and following the light of one\nStar; and that voices would have told him how there is for every man some\none scene, some one adventure, some one picture that is the image of his\nsecret life, for wisdom first speaks in images, and that this one image,\nif he would but brood over it his life long, would lead his soul,\ndisentangled from unmeaning circumstance and the ebb and flow of the\nworld, into that far household, where the undying gods await all whose\nsouls have become simple as flame, whose bodies have become quiet as an\nagate lamp.\n\nBut he was born in a day when the old wisdom had vanished and was content\nmerely to write verses, and often with little thought of more than verses.\n\n1900.\n\n\n\n\nAT STRATFORD-ON-AVON\n\n\nI\n\nI have been hearing Shakespeare, as the traveller in _News from Nowhere_\nmight have heard him, had he not been hurried back into our noisy time.\nOne passes through quiet streets, where gabled and red-tiled houses\nremember the Middle Age, to a theatre that has been made not to make\nmoney, but for the pleasure of making it, like the market houses that set\nthe traveller chuckling; nor does one find it among hurrying cabs and\nringing pavements, but in a green garden by a river side. Inside I have to\nbe content for a while with a chair, for I am unexpected, and there is not\nan empty seat but this; and yet there is no one who has come merely\nbecause one must go somewhere after dinner. All day, too, one does not\nhear or see an incongruous or noisy thing, but spends the hours reading\nthe plays, and the wise and foolish things men have said of them, in the\nlibrary of the theatre, with its oak-panelled walls and leaded windows of\ntinted glass; or one rows by reedy banks and by old farmhouses, and by old\nchurches among great trees. It is certainly one's fault if one opens a\nnewspaper, for Mr. Benson gives one a new play every night, and one need\ntalk of nothing but the play in the inn-parlour, under the oak beams\nblackened by time and showing the mark of the adze that shaped them. I\nhave seen this week _King John_, _Richard II._, the second part of _Henry\nIV._, _Henry V._, the second part of _Henry VI._, and _Richard III._\nplayed in their right order, with all the links that bind play to play\nunbroken; and partly because of a spirit in the place, and partly because\nof the way play supports play, the theatre has moved me as it has never\ndone before. That strange procession of kings and queens, of warring\nnobles, of insurgent crowds, of courtiers, and of people of the gutter has\nbeen to me almost too visible, too audible, too full of an unearthly\nenergy. I have felt as I have sometimes felt on grey days on the Galway\nshore, when a faint mist has hung over the grey sea and the grey stones,\nas if the world might suddenly vanish and leave nothing behind, not even a\nlittle dust under one's feet. The people my mind's eye has seen have too\nmuch of the extravagance of dreams, like all the inventions of art before\nour crowded life had brought moderation and compromise, to seem more than\na dream, and yet all else has grown dim before them.\n\nIn London the first man one meets puts any high dream out of one's head,\nfor he will talk to one of something at once vapid and exciting, some one\nof those many subjects of thought that build up our social unity. But here\nhe gives back one's dream like a mirror. If we do not talk of the plays,\nwe talk of the theatre, and how more people may be got to come, and our\nisolation from common things makes the future become grandiose and\nimportant. One man tells how the theatre and the library were at their\nfoundation but part of a scheme the future is to fulfil. To them will be\nadded a school where speech, and gesture, and fencing, and all else that\nan actor needs will be taught, and the council, which will have enlarged\nits Festivals to some six weeks, will engage all the chief players of\nShakespeare, and perhaps of other great dramatists in this and other\ncountries. These chief players will need to bring but few of their\nsupporters, for the school will be able to fill all the lesser parts with\nplayers who are slowly recovering the lost tradition of musical speech.\nAnother man is certain that the Festival, even without the school, which\nwould require a new endowment, will grow in importance year by year, and\nthat it may become with favouring chance the supreme dramatic event of the\nworld; and when I suggest that it may help to break the evil prestige of\nLondon he becomes enthusiastic.\n\nSurely a bitter hatred of London is becoming a mark of those that love the\narts, and all that have this hatred should help anything that looks like a\nbeginning of a centre of art elsewhere. The easiness of travel, which is\nalways growing, began by emptying the country, but it may end by filling\nit; for adventures like this of Stratford-on-Avon show that people are\nready to journey from all parts of England and Scotland and Ireland, and\neven from America, to live with their favourite art as shut away from the\nworld as though they were 'in retreat,' as Catholics say. Nobody but an\nimpressionist painter, who hides it in light and mist, even pretends to\nlove a street for its own sake; and could we meet our friends and hear\nmusic and poetry in the country, none of us that are not captive would\never leave the thrushes. In London, we hear something that we like some\ntwice or thrice in a winter, and among people who are thinking the while\nof a music-hall singer or of a member of parliament, but there we would\nhear it and see it among people who liked it well enough to have travelled\nsome few hours to find it; and because those who care for the arts have\nfew near friendships among those that do not, we would hear and see it\namong near friends. We would escape, too, from those artificial tastes and\ninterests we cultivate, that we may have something to talk about among\npeople we meet for a few minutes and not again, and the arts would grow\nserious as the Ten Commandments.\n\n\nII\n\nI do not think there is anything I disliked in Stratford, beside certain\nnew houses, but the shape of the theatre; and as a larger theatre must be\nbuilt sooner or later, that would be no great matter if one could put a\nwiser shape into somebody's head. I cannot think there is any excuse for\na half-round theatre, where land is not expensive, or no very great\naudience to be seated within earshot of the stage; or that it was adopted\nfor a better reason than because it has come down to us, though from a\ntime when the art of the stage was a different art. The Elizabethan\ntheatre was a half-round, because the players were content to speak their\nlines on a platform, as if they were speakers at a public meeting, and we\ngo on building in the same shape, although our art of the stage is the art\nof making a succession of pictures. Were our theatres of the shape of a\nhalf-closed fan, like Wagner's theatre, where the audience sit on seats\nthat rise towards the broad end while the play is played at the narrow\nend, their pictures could be composed for eyes at a small number of points\nof view, instead of for eyes at many points of view, above and below and\nat the sides, and what is no better than a trade might become an art. With\nthe eyes watching from the sides of a half-round, on the floor and in the\nboxes and galleries, would go the solid-built houses and the flat trees\nthat shake with every breath of air; and we could make our pictures with\nrobes that contrasted with great masses of colour in the back cloth and\nsuch severe or decorative forms of hills and trees and houses as would not\noverwhelm, as our naturalistic scenery does, the idealistic art of the\npoet, and all at a little price. Naturalistic scene-painting is not an\nart, but a trade, because it is, at best, an attempt to copy the more\nobvious effects of nature by the methods of the ordinary\nlandscape-painter, and by his methods made coarse and summary. It is but\nflashy landscape-painting and lowers the taste it appeals to, for the\ntaste it appeals to has been formed by a more delicate art. Decorative\nscene-painting would be, on the other hand, as inseparable from the\nmovements as from the robes of the players and from the falling of the\nlight; and being in itself a grave and quiet thing it would mingle with\nthe tones of the voices and with the sentiment of the play, without\noverwhelming them under an alien interest. It would be a new and\nlegitimate art appealing to a taste formed by itself and copying nothing\nbut itself. Mr. Gordon Craig used scenery of this kind at the Purcell\nSociety performance the other day, and despite some marring of his effects\nby the half-round shape of the theatre, it was the first beautiful scenery\nour stage has seen. He created an ideal country where everything was\npossible, even speaking in verse, or speaking in music, or the expression\nof the whole of life in a dance, and I would like to see Stratford-on-Avon\ndecorate its Shakespeare with like scenery. As we cannot, it seems, go\nback to the platform and the curtain, and the argument for doing so is not\nwithout weight, we can only get rid of the sense of unreality, which most\nof us feel when we listen to the conventional speech of Shakespeare, by\nmaking scenery as conventional. Time after time his people use at some\nmoment of deep emotion an elaborate or deliberate metaphor, or do some\nimprobable thing which breaks an emotion of reality we have imposed upon\nhim by an art that is not his, nor in the spirit of his. It also is an\nessential part of his method to give slight or obscure motives of many\nactions that our attention may dwell on what is of chief importance, and\nwe set these cloudy actions among solid-looking houses, and what we hope\nare solid-looking trees, and illusion comes to an end, slain by our desire\nto increase it. In his art, as in all the older art of the world, there\nwas much make-believe, and our scenery, too, should remember the time\nwhen, as my nurse used to tell me, herons built their nests in old men's\nbeards! Mr. Benson did not venture to play the scene in _Richard III._\nwhere the ghosts walk, as Shakespeare wrote it, but had his scenery been\nas simple as Mr. Gordon Craig's purple back cloth that made Dido and \u00c6neas\nseem wandering on the edge of eternity, he would have found nothing absurd\nin pitching the tents of Richard and Richmond side by side. Goethe has\nsaid, 'Art is art, because it is not nature!' It brings us near to the\narchetypal ideas themselves, and away from nature, which is but their\nlooking-glass.\n\n\nIII\n\nIn _La Peau de Chagrin_ Balzac spends many pages in describing a coquette,\nwho seems the image of heartlessness, and then invents an improbable\nincident that her chief victim may discover how beautifully she can sing.\nNobody had ever heard her sing, and yet in her singing, and in her chatter\nwith her maid, Balzac tells us, was her true self. He would have us\nunderstand that behind the momentary self, which acts and lives in the\nworld, and is subject to the judgment of the world, there is that which\ncannot be called before any mortal Judgment seat, even though a great\npoet, or novelist, or philosopher be sitting upon it. Great literature has\nalways been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of\nSin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George\nEliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had\nbeen clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else. George\nEliot had a fierceness one hardly finds but in a woman turned\nargumentative, but the habit of mind her fierceness gave its life to was\ncharacteristic of her century, and is the habit of mind of the\nShakespearian critics. They and she grew up in a century of\nutilitarianism, when nothing about a man seemed important except his\nutility to the State, and nothing so useful to the State as the actions\nwhose effect can be weighed by the reason. The deeds of Coriolanus,\nHamlet, Timon, Richard II. had no obvious use, were, indeed, no more than\nthe expression of their personalities, and so it was thought Shakespeare\nwas accusing them, and telling us to be careful lest we deserve the like\naccusations. It did not occur to the critics that you cannot know a man\nfrom his actions, because you cannot watch him in every kind of\ncircumstance, and that men are made useless to the State as often by\nabundance as by emptiness, and that a man's business may at times be\nrevelation, and not reformation. Fortinbras was, it is likely enough, a\nbetter King than Hamlet would have been, Aufidius was a more reasonable\nman than Coriolanus, Henry V. was a better man-at-arms than Richard II.,\nbut after all, were not those others who changed nothing for the better\nand many things for the worse greater in the Divine Hierarchies? Blake\nhas said that 'the roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of\nthe stormy sea, and the destructive sword are portions of Eternity, too\ngreat for the eye of man,' but Blake belonged by right to the ages of\nFaith, and thought the State of less moment than the Divine Hierarchies.\nBecause reason can only discover completely the use of those obvious\nactions which everybody admires, and because every character was to be\njudged by efficiency in action, Shakespearian criticism became a vulgar\nworshipper of Success. I have turned over many books in the library at\nStratford-on-Avon, and I have found in nearly all an antithesis, which\ngrew in clearness and violence as the century grew older, between two\ntypes, whose representatives were Richard II., 'sentimental,' 'weak,'\n'selfish,' 'insincere,' and Henry V., 'Shakespeare's only hero.' These\nbooks took the same delight in abasing Richard II. that school-boys do in\npersecuting some boy of fine temperament, who has weak muscles and a\ndistaste for school games. And they had the admiration for Henry V. that\nschool-boys have for the sailor or soldier hero of a romance in some boys'\npaper. I cannot claim any minute knowledge of these books, but I think\nthat these emotions began among the German critics, who perhaps saw\nsomething French and Latin in Richard II., and I know that Professor\nDowden, whose book I once read carefully, first made these emotions\neloquent and plausible. He lived in Ireland, where everything has failed,\nand he meditated frequently upon the perfection of character which had, he\nthought, made England successful, for, as we say, 'cows beyond the water\nhave long horns.' He forgot that England, as Gordon has said, was made by\nher adventurers, by her people of wildness and imagination and\neccentricity; and thought that Henry V., who only seemed to be these\nthings because he had some commonplace vices, was not only the typical\nAnglo-Saxon, but the model Shakespeare held up before England; and he even\nthought it worth while pointing out that Shakespeare himself was making a\nlarge fortune while he was writing about Henry's victories. In Professor\nDowden's successors this apotheosis went further; and it reached its\nheight at a moment of imperialistic enthusiasm, of ever-deepening\nconviction that the commonplace shall inherit the earth, when somebody of\nreputation, whose name I cannot remember, wrote that Shakespeare admired\nthis one character alone out of all his characters. The Accusation of Sin\nproduced its necessary fruit, hatred of all that was abundant,\nextravagant, exuberant, of all that sets a sail for shipwreck, and\nflattery of the commonplace emotions and conventional ideals of the mob,\nthe chief Paymaster of accusation.\n\n\nIV\n\nI cannot believe that Shakespeare looked on his Richard II. with any but\nsympathetic eyes, understanding indeed how ill-fitted he was to be King,\nat a certain moment of history, but understanding that he was lovable and\nfull of capricious fancy, 'a wild creature' as Pater has called him. The\nman on whom Shakespeare modelled him had been full of French elegancies,\nas he knew from Hollingshead, and had given life a new luxury, a new\nsplendour, and been 'too friendly' to his friends, 'too favourable' to his\nenemies. And certainly Shakespeare had these things in his head when he\nmade his King fail, a little because he lacked some qualities that were\ndoubtless common among his scullions, but more because he had certain\nqualities that are uncommon in all ages. To suppose that Shakespeare\npreferred the men who deposed his King is to suppose that Shakespeare\njudged men with the eyes of a Municipal Councillor weighing the merits of\na Town Clerk; and that had he been by when Verlaine cried out from his\nbed, 'Sir, you have been made by the stroke of a pen, but I have been made\nby the breath of God,' he would have thought the Hospital Superintendent\nthe better man. He saw indeed, as I think, in Richard II. the defeat that\nawaits all, whether they be Artist or Saint, who find themselves where men\nask of them a rough energy and have nothing to give but some contemplative\nvirtue, whether lyrical phantasy, or sweetness of temper, or dreamy\ndignity, or love of God, or love of His creatures. He saw that such a man\nthrough sheer bewilderment and impatience can become as unjust or as\nviolent as any common man, any Bolingbroke or Prince John, and yet remain\n'that sweet lovely rose.' The courtly and saintly ideals of the Middle\nAges were fading, and the practical ideals of the modern age had begun to\nthreaten the unuseful dome of the sky; Merry England was fading, and yet\nit was not so faded that the Poets could not watch the procession of the\nworld with that untroubled sympathy for men as they are, as apart from all\nthey do and seem, which is the substance of tragic irony.\n\nShakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments,\napart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its\nflamings out of the uncivilized heart. He did indeed think it wrong to\noverturn a King, and thereby to swamp peace in civil war, and the\nhistorical plays from _Henry IV._ to _Richard III._, that monstrous birth\nand last sign of the wrath of Heaven, are a fulfilment of the prophecy of\nthe Bishop of Carlisle, who was 'raised up by God' to make it; but he had\nno nice sense of utilities, no ready balance to measure deeds, like that\nfine instrument, with all the latest improvements, Gervinus and Professor\nDowden handle so skilfully. He meditated as Solomon, not as Bentham\nmeditated, upon blind ambitions, untoward accidents, and capricious\npassions, and the world was almost as empty in his eyes as it must be in\nthe eyes of God.\n\n  'Tired with all these, for restful death I cry;--\n    As, to behold desert a beggar born,\n  And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,\n    And purest faith unhappily forsworn,\n  And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,\n    And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,\n  And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,\n    And strength by limping sway disabled,\n  And Art made tongue-tied by authority,\n    And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,\n  And simple truth miscalled simplicity,\n    And captive good attending captain ill:\n  Tired with all these, from these would I begone\n  Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.'\n\n\nV\n\nThe Greeks, a certain scholar has told me, considered that myths are the\nactivities of the D\u00e6mons, and that the D\u00e6mons shape our characters and our\nlives. I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every\nman, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and\nthought. Shakespeare's Myth, it may be, describes a wise man who was blind\nfrom very wisdom, and an empty man who thrust him from his place, and saw\nall that could be seen from very emptiness. It is in the story of Hamlet,\nwho saw too great issues everywhere to play the trivial game of life, and\nof Fortinbras, who came from fighting battles about 'a little patch of\nground' so poor that one of his Captains would not give 'six ducats' to\n'farm it,' and who was yet acclaimed by Hamlet and by all as the only\nbefitting King. And it is in the story of Richard II., that unripened\nHamlet, and of Henry V., that ripened Fortinbras. To poise character\nagainst character was an element in Shakespeare's art, and scarcely a\nplay is lacking in characters that are the complement of one another, and\nso, having made the vessel of porcelain Richard II., he had to make the\nvessel of clay Henry V. He makes him the reverse of all that Richard was.\nHe has the gross vices, the coarse nerves, of one who is to rule among\nviolent people, and he is so little 'too friendly' to his friends that he\nbundles them out of doors when their time is over. He is as remorseless\nand undistinguished as some natural force, and the finest thing in his\nplay is the way his old companions fall out of it broken-hearted or on\ntheir way to the gallows; and instead of that lyricism which rose out of\nRichard's mind like the jet of a fountain to fall again where it had\nrisen, instead of that phantasy too enfolded in its own sincerity to make\nany thought the hour had need of, Shakespeare has given him a resounding\nrhetoric that moves men, as a leading article does to-day. His purposes\nare so intelligible to everybody that everybody talks of him as if he\nsucceeded, although he fails in the end, as all men great and little fail\nin Shakespeare, and yet his conquests abroad are made nothing by a woman\nturned warrior, and that boy he and Katherine were to 'compound,' 'half\nFrench, half English,' 'that' was to 'go to Constantinople and take the\nTurk by the beard,' turns out a Saint, and loses all his father had built\nup at home and his own life.\n\nShakespeare watched Henry V. not indeed as he watched the greater souls in\nthe visionary procession, but cheerfully, as one watches some handsome\nspirited horse, and he spoke his tale, as he spoke all tales, with tragic\nirony.\n\n\nVI\n\nThe five plays, that are but one play, have, when played one after\nanother, something extravagant and superhuman, something almost\nmythological. Those nobles with their indifference to death and their\nimmense energy seem at times no nearer the common stature of men than do\nthe Gods and the heroes of Greek plays. Had there been no Renaissance and\nno Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English\nhistory would, it may be, have become as important to the English\nimagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by\nmany poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as\nthose of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like\nswallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the\nGiants. English literature, because it would have grown out of itself,\nmight have had the simplicity and unity of Greek literature, for I can\nnever get out of my head that no man, even though he be Shakespeare, can\nwrite perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in\nmany lands. And yet, could those foreign tales have come in if the great\nfamine, the sinking down of popular imagination, the dying out of\ntraditional phantasy, the ebbing out of the energy of race, had not made\nthem necessary? The metaphors and language of Euphuism, compounded of the\nnatural history and mythology of the classics, were doubtless a necessity\nalso, that something might be poured into the emptiness. Yet how they\ninjured the simplicity and unity of the speech! Shakespeare wrote at a\ntime when solitary great men were gathering to themselves the fire that\nhad once flowed hither and thither among all men, when individualism in\nwork and thought and emotion was breaking up the old rhythms of life, when\nthe common people, no longer uplifted by the myths of Christianity and of\nstill older faiths, were sinking into the earth.\n\nThe people of Stratford-on-Avon have remembered little about him, and\ninvented no legend to his glory. They have remembered a drinking-bout of\nhis, and invented some bad verses for him, and that is about all. Had he\nbeen some hard-drinking, hard-living, hard-riding, loud-blaspheming Squire\nthey would have enlarged his fame by a legend of his dealings with the\ndevil; but in his day the glory of a Poet, like that of all other\nimaginative powers, had ceased, or almost ceased outside a narrow class.\nThe poor Gaelic rhymer leaves a nobler memory among his neighbours, who\nwill talk of Angels standing like flames about his death-bed, and of\nvoices speaking out of bramble-bushes that he may have the wisdom of the\nworld. The Puritanism that drove the theatres into Surrey was but part of\nan inexplicable movement that was trampling out the minds of all but some\nfew thousands born to cultivated ease.\n\nMay 1901.\n\n\n\n\nWILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION\n\n\nThere have been men who loved the future like a mistress, and the future\nmixed her breath into their breath and shook her hair about them, and hid\nthem from the understanding of their times. William Blake was one of these\nmen, and if he spoke confusedly and obscurely it was because he spoke\nthings for whose speaking he could find no models in the world about him.\nHe announced the religion of art, of which no man dreamed in the world\nabout him; and he understood it more perfectly than the thousands of\nsubtle spirits who have received its baptism in the world about us,\nbecause, in the beginning of important things--in the beginning of love,\nin the beginning of the day, in the beginning of any work, there is a\nmoment when we understand more perfectly than we understand again until\nall is finished. In his time educated people believed that they amused\nthemselves with books of imagination but that they 'made their souls' by\nlistening to sermons and by doing or by not doing certain things. When\nthey had to explain why serious people like themselves honoured the great\npoets greatly they were hard put to it for lack of good reasons. In our\ntime we are agreed that we 'make our souls' out of some one of the great\npoets of ancient times, or out of Shelley or Wordsworth, or Goethe or\nBalzac, or Flaubert, or Count Tolstoy, in the books he wrote before he\nbecame a prophet and fell into a lesser order, or out of Mr. Whistler's\npictures, while we amuse ourselves, or, at best, make a poorer sort of\nsoul, by listening to sermons or by doing or by not doing certain things.\nWe write of great writers, even of writers whose beauty would once have\nseemed an unholy beauty, with rapt sentences like those our fathers kept\nfor the beatitudes and mysteries of the Church; and no matter what we\nbelieve with our lips, we believe with our hearts that beautiful things,\nas Browning said in his one prose essay that was not in verse, have 'lain\nburningly on the Divine hand,' and that when time has begun to wither, the\nDivine hand will fall heavily on bad taste and vulgarity. When no man\nbelieved these things William Blake believed them, and began that\npreaching against the Philistine, which is as the preaching of the Middle\nAges against the Saracen.\n\nHe had learned from Jacob Boehme and from old alchemist writers that\nimagination was the first emanation of divinity, 'the body of God,' 'the\nDivine members,' and he drew the deduction, which they did not draw, that\nthe imaginative arts were therefore the greatest of Divine revelations,\nand that the sympathy with all living things, sinful and righteous alike,\nwhich the imaginative arts awaken, is that forgiveness of sins commanded\nby Christ. The reason, and by the reason he meant deductions from the\nobservations of the senses, binds us to mortality because it binds us to\nthe senses, and divides us from each other by showing us our clashing\ninterests; but imagination divides us from mortality by the immortality of\nbeauty, and binds us to each other by opening the secret doors of all\nhearts. He cried again and again that every thing that lives is holy, and\nthat nothing is unholy except things that do not live--lethargies, and\ncruelties, and timidities, and that denial of imagination which is the\nroot they grew from in old times. Passions, because most living, are most\nholy--and this was a scandalous paradox in his time--and man shall enter\neternity borne upon their wings.\n\nAnd he understood this so literally that certain drawings to _Vala_, had\nhe carried them beyond the first faint pencillings, the first faint washes\nof colour, would have been a pretty scandal to his time and to our time.\nThe sensations of this 'foolish body,' this 'phantom of the earth and\nwater,' were in themselves but half-living things, 'vegetative' things,\nbut passion that 'eternal glory' made them a part of the body of God.\n\nThis philosophy kept him more simply a poet than any poet of his time, for\nit made him content to express every beautiful feeling that came into his\nhead without troubling about its utility or chaining it to any utility.\nSometimes one feels, even when one is reading poets of a better\ntime--Tennyson or Wordsworth, let us say--that they have troubled the\nenergy and simplicity of their imaginative passions by asking whether they\nwere for the helping or for the hindrance of the world, instead of\nbelieving that all beautiful things have 'lain burningly on the Divine\nhand.' But when one reads Blake, it is as though the spray of an\ninexhaustible fountain of beauty was blown into our faces, and not merely\nwhen one reads the _Songs of Innocence_, or the lyrics he wished to call\n'The Ideas of Good and Evil,' but when one reads those 'Prophetic Works'\nin which he spoke confusedly and obscurely because he spoke of things for\nwhose speaking he could find no models in the world about him. He was a\nsymbolist who had to invent his symbols; and his counties of England, with\ntheir correspondence to tribes of Israel, and his mountains and rivers,\nwith their correspondence to parts of a man's body, are arbitrary as some\nof the symbolism in the _Ax\u00ebl_ of the symbolist Villiers De L'Isle Adam is\narbitrary, while they mix incongruous things as _Ax\u00ebl_ does not. He was a\nman crying out for a mythology, and trying to make one because he could\nnot find one to his hand. Had he been a Catholic of Dante's time he would\nhave been well content with Mary and the angels; or had he been a scholar\nof our time he would have taken his symbols where Wagner took his, from\nNorse mythology; or have followed, with the help of Prof. Rhys, that\npathway into Welsh mythology which he found in 'Jerusalem'; or have gone\nto Ireland--and he was probably an Irishman--and chosen for his symbols\nthe sacred mountains, along whose sides the peasant still sees enchanted\nfires, and the divinities which have not faded from the belief, if they\nhave faded from the prayers of simple hearts; and have spoken without\nmixing incongruous things because he spoke of things that had been long\nsteeped in emotion; and have been less obscure because a traditional\nmythology stood on the threshold of his meaning and on the margin of his\nsacred darkness. If 'Enitharmon' had been named Freia, or Gwydeon, or\nDanu, and made live in Ancient Norway, or Ancient Wales, or Ancient\nIreland, we would have forgotten that her maker was a mystic; and the hymn\nof her harping, that is in _Vala_, would but have reminded us of many\nancient hymns.\n\n  'The joy of woman is the death of her beloved,\n  Who dies for love of her,\n  In torments of fierce jealousy and pangs of adoration.\n  The lover's night bears on my song,\n  And the nine spheres rejoice beneath my powerful control.\n\n  They sing unwearied to the notes of my immortal hand.\n  The solemn, silent moon\n  Reverberates the long harmony sounding upon my limbs.\n  The birds and beasts rejoice and play,\n  And every one seeks for his mate to prove his inmost joy.\n\n  Furious and terrible they rend the nether deep,\n  The deep lifts up his rugged head,\n  And lost in infinite hovering wings vanishes with a cry.\n  The fading cry is ever dying,\n  The living voice is ever living in its inmost joy.'\n\n1897.\n\n\n\n\nWILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO _THE DIVINE COMEDY_\n\n\nI. HIS OPINIONS UPON ART\n\nWilliam Blake was the first writer of modern times to preach the\nindissoluble marriage of all great art with symbol. There had been\nallegorists and teachers of allegory in plenty, but the symbolic\nimagination, or, as Blake preferred to call it, 'vision,' is not allegory,\nbeing 'a representation of what actually exists really and unchangeably.'\nA symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence,\na transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many\npossible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and\nbelongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the\nother an amusement. It is happily no part of my purpose to expound in\ndetail the relations he believed to exist between symbol and mind, for in\ndoing so I should come upon not a few doctrines which, though they have\nnot been difficult to many simple persons, ascetics wrapped in skins,\nwomen who had cast away all common knowledge, peasants dreaming by their\nsheepfolds upon the hills, are full of obscurity to the man of modern\nculture; but it is necessary to just touch upon these relations, because\nin them was the fountain of much of the practice and of all the precept of\nhis artistic life.\n\nIf a man would enter into 'Noah's rainbow,' he has written, and 'make a\nfriend' of one of 'the images of wonder' which dwell there, and which\nalways entreat him 'to leave mortal things,' 'then would he arise from the\ngrave and meet the Lord in the air'; and by this rainbow, this sign of a\ncovenant granted to him who is with Shem and Japhet, 'painting, poetry and\nmusic,' 'the three powers in man of conversing with Paradise which the\nflood \"of time and space\" did not sweep away,' Blake represented the\nshapes of beauty haunting our moments of inspiration: shapes held by most\nfor the frailest of ephemera, but by him for a people older than the\nworld, citizens of eternity, appearing and reappearing in the minds of\nartists and of poets, creating all we touch and see by casting distorted\nimages of themselves upon 'the vegetable glass of nature'; and because\nbeings, none the less symbols, blossoms, as it were, growing from\ninvisible immortal roots, hands, as it were, pointing the way into some\ndivine labyrinth. If 'the world of imagination' was 'the world of\neternity,' as this doctrine implied, it was of less importance to know men\nand nature than to distinguish the beings and substances of imagination\nfrom those of a more perishable kind, created by the phantasy, in\nuninspired moments, out of memory and whim; and this could best be done by\npurifying one's mind, as with a flame, in study of the works of the great\nmasters, who were great because they had been granted by divine favour a\nvision of the unfallen world from which others are kept apart by the\nflaming sword that turns every way; and by flying from the painters who\nstudied 'the vegetable glass' for its own sake, and not to discover there\nthe shadows of imperishable beings and substances, and who entered into\ntheir own minds, not to make the unfallen world a test of all they heard\nand saw and felt with the senses, but to cover the naked spirit with 'the\nrotten rags of memory' of older sensations. The struggle of the first part\nof his life had been to distinguish between these two schools, and to\ncleave always to the Florentine, and so to escape the fascination of those\nwho seemed to him to offer the sleep of nature to a spirit weary with the\nlabours of inspiration; but it was only after his return to London from\nFelpham in 1804 that he finally escaped from 'temptations and\nperturbations' which sought to destroy 'the imaginative power' at 'the\nhands of Venetian and Flemish Demons.' 'The spirit of Titian'--and one\nmust always remember that he had only seen poor engravings, and what his\ndisciple, Palmer, has called 'picture-dealers' Titians'--'was particularly\nactive in raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a\nmodel; and when once he had raised the doubt it became easy for him to\nsnatch away the vision time after time'; and Blake's imagination\n'weakened' and 'darkened' until a 'memory of nature and of the pictures of\nvarious schools possessed his mind, instead of appropriate execution'\nflowing from the vision itself. But now he wrote, 'O glory, and O delight!\nI have entirely reduced that spectrous fiend to his station'--he had\novercome the merely reasoning and sensual portion of the mind--'whose\nannoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last twenty years of my\nlife.... I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which\nhas passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him, I have\nhad twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as he was.... Suddenly,\non the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures'--this was\na gallery containing pictures by Albert D\u00fcrer and by the great\nFlorentines--'I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my\nyouth, and which had for exactly twenty years been closed from me, as by a\ndoor and window shutters.... Excuse my enthusiasm, or rather madness, for\nI am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or\ngraver in my hand, as I used to be in my youth.'\n\nThis letter may have been the expression of a moment's enthusiasm, but was\nmore probably rooted in one of those intuitions of coming technical power\nwhich every creator feels, and learns to rely upon; for all his greatest\nwork was done, and the principles of his art were formulated, after this\ndate. Except a word here and there, his writings hitherto had not dealt\nwith the principles of art except remotely and by implication; but now he\nwrote much upon them, and not in obscure symbolic verse, but in emphatic\nprose, and explicit if not very poetical rhyme. In his _Descriptive\nCatalogue_, in _The Address to the Public_, in the notes on Sir Joshua\nReynolds, in _The Book of Moonlight_--of which some not very dignified\nrhymes alone remain--in beautiful detached passages in _The MS. Book_, he\nexplained spiritual art, and praised the painters of Florence and their\ninfluence, and cursed all that has come of Venice and Holland. The\nlimitation of his view was from the very intensity of his vision; he was a\ntoo literal realist of imagination, as others are of nature; and because\nhe believed that the figures seen by the mind's eye, when exalted by\ninspiration, were 'eternal existences,' symbols of divine essences, he\nhated every grace of style that might obscure their lineaments. To wrap\nthem about in reflected lights was to do this, and to dwell over-fondly\nupon any softness of hair or flesh was to dwell upon that which was least\npermanent and least characteristic, for 'The great and golden rule of art,\nas of life, is this: that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the\nboundary-line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and\nsharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and\nbungling.' Inspiration was to see the permanent and characteristic in all\nforms, and if you had it not, you must needs imitate with a languid mind\nthe things you saw or remembered, and so sink into the sleep of nature\nwhere all is soft and melting. 'Great inventors in all ages knew this.\nProtogenes and Apelles knew each other by their line. Raphael and Michael\nAngelo and Albert D\u00fcrer are known by this and this alone. How do we\ndistinguish the owl from the beast, the horse from the ox, but by the\nbounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from\nanother but by the bounding-line and its infinite inflections and\nmovements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden but the\ndefinite and determinate? What is it that distinguished honesty from\nknavery but the hard and wiry line of rectitude and certainty in the\nactions and intentions? Leave out this line and you leave out life itself;\nand all is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out\nupon it before man or beast can exist.' He even insisted that 'colouring\ndoes not depend upon where the colours are put, but upon where the light\nand dark are put, and all depends upon the form or outline'--meaning, I\nsuppose, that a colour gets its brilliance or its depth from being in\nlight or in shadow. He does not mean by outline the bounding-line dividing\na form from its background, as one of his commentators has thought, but\nthe line that divides it from surrounding space, and unless you have an\novermastering sense of this you cannot draw true beauty at all, but only\n'the beauty that is appended to folly,' a beauty of mere voluptuous\nsoftness, 'a lamentable accident of the mortal and perishing life,' for\n'the beauty proper for sublime art is lineaments, or forms and features\ncapable of being the receptacles of intellect,' and 'the face or limbs\nthat alter least from youth to old age are the face and limbs of the\ngreatest beauty and perfection.' His praise of a severe art had been\nbeyond price had his age rested a moment to listen, in the midst of its\nenthusiasm for Correggio and the later Renaissance, for Bartolozzi and for\nStothard; and yet in his visionary realism, and in his enthusiasm for\nwhat, after all, is perhaps the greatest art, and a necessary part of\nevery picture that is art at all, he forgot how he who wraps the vision in\nlights and shadows, in iridescent or glowing colour, having in the midst\nof his labour many little visions of these secondary essences, until form\nbe half lost in pattern, may compel the canvas or paper to become itself\na symbol of some not indefinite because unsearchable essence; for is not\nthe Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian a talisman as powerfully charged with\nintellectual virtue as though it were a jewel-studded door of the city\nseen on Patmos?\n\nTo cover the imperishable lineaments of beauty with shadows and reflected\nlights was to fall into the power of his 'Vala,' the indolent fascination\nof nature, the woman divinity who is so often described in 'the prophetic\nbooks' as 'sweet pestilence,' and whose children weave webs to take the\nsouls of men; but there was yet a more lamentable chance, for nature has\nalso a 'masculine portion' or 'spectre' which kills instead of merely\nhiding, and is continually at war with inspiration. To 'generalize' forms\nand shadows, to 'smooth out' spaces and lines in obedience to 'laws of\ncomposition,' and of painting; founded, not upon imagination, which\nalways thirsts for variety and delights in freedom, but upon reasoning\nfrom sensation which is always seeking to reduce everything to a lifeless\nand slavish uniformity; as the popular art of Blake's day had done, and as\nhe understood Sir Joshua Reynolds to advise, was to fall into 'Entuthon\nBenithon,' or 'the Lake of Udan Adan,' or some other of those regions\nwhere the imagination and the flesh are alike dead, that he names by so\nmany resonant phantastical names. 'General knowledge is remote knowledge,'\nhe wrote; 'it is in particulars that wisdom consists, and happiness too.\nBoth in art and life general masses are as much art as a pasteboard man is\nhuman. Every man has eyes, nose and mouth; this every idiot knows. But he\nwho enters into and discriminates most minutely the manners and\nintentions, the characters in all their branches, is the alone wise or\nsensible man, and on this discrimination all art is founded.... As poetry\nadmits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain\nof sand or a blade of grass insignificant, much less an insignificant blot\nor blur.'\n\nAgainst another desire of his time, derivative also from what he has\ncalled 'corporeal reason,' the desire for a 'tepid moderation,' for a\nlifeless 'sanity in both art and life,' he had protested years before with\na paradoxical violence. 'The roadway of excess leads to the palace of\nwisdom,' and we must only 'bring out weight and measure in time of\ndearth.' This protest, carried, in the notes on Sir Joshua Reynolds, to\nthe point of dwelling with pleasure on the thought that 'The _Lives of the\nPainters_ say that Raphael died of dissipation,' because dissipation is\nbetter than emotional penury, seemed as important to his old age as to his\nyouth. He taught it to his disciples, and one finds it in its purely\nartistic shape in a diary written by Samuel Palmer, in 1824: 'Excess is\nthe essential vivifying spirit, vital spark, embalming spice of the finest\nart. There are many mediums in the _means_--none, oh, not a jot, not a\nshadow of a jot, in the _end_ of great art. In a picture whose merit is to\nbe excessively brilliant, it can't be too brilliant, but individual tints\nmay be too brilliant.... We must not begin with medium, but think always\non excess and only use medium to make excess more abundantly excessive.'\n\nThese three primary commands, to seek a determinate outline, to avoid a\ngeneralized treatment, and to desire always abundance and exuberance, were\ninsisted upon with vehement anger, and their opponents called again and\nagain 'demons' and 'villains,' 'hired' by the wealthy and the idle; but in\nprivate, Palmer has told us, he could find 'sources of delight throughout\nthe whole range of art,' and was ever ready to praise excellence in any\nschool, finding, doubtless, among friends, no need for the emphasis of\nexaggeration. There is a beautiful passage in 'Jerusalem' in which the\nmerely mortal part of the mind, 'the spectre,' creates 'pyramids of\npride,' and 'pillars in the deepest hell to reach the heavenly arches,'\nand seeks to discover wisdom in 'the spaces between the stars,' not 'in\nthe stars,' where it is, but the immortal part makes all his labours vain,\nand turns his pyramids to 'grains of sand,' his 'pillars' to 'dust on the\nfly's wing,' and makes of 'his starry heavens a moth of gold and silver\nmocking his anxious grasp.' So when man's desire to rest from spiritual\nlabour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation and memory,\nseem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to a new\ninspiration; and here and there among the pictures born of sensation and\nmemory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talismans\nand symbols.\n\nIt was during and after the writing of these opinions that Blake did the\nvarious series of pictures which have brought him the bulk of his fame. He\nhad already completed the illustrations to Young's _Night Thoughts_--in\nwhich the great sprawling figures, a little wearisome even with the\nluminous colours of the original water-colour, became nearly intolerable\nin plain black and white--and almost all the illustrations to 'the\nprophetic books,' which have an energy like that of the elements, but are\nrather rapid sketches taken while some phantasmic procession swept over\nhim, than elaborate compositions, and in whose shadowy adventures one\nfinds not merely, as did Dr. Garth Wilkinson, 'the hells of the ancient\npeople, the Anakim, the Nephalim, and the Rephaim ... gigantic\npetrifactions from which the fires of lust and intense selfish passion\nhave long dissipated what was animal and vital'; not merely the shadows\ncast by the powers who had closed the light from him as 'with a door and\nwindow shutters,' but the shadows of those who gave them battle. He did\nnow, however, the many designs to Milton, of which I have only seen those\nto _Paradise Regained_; the reproductions of those to _Comus_, published,\nI think, by Mr. Quaritch; and the three or four to _Paradise Lost_,\nengraved by Bell Scott--a series of designs which one good judge considers\nhis greatest work; the illustrations to Blair's _Grave_, whose gravity and\npassion struggle with the mechanical softness and trivial smoothness of\nSchiavonetti's engraving; the illustrations to Thornton's _Virgil_, whose\ninfluence is manifest in the work of the little group of\nlandscape-painters who gathered about him in his old age and delighted to\ncall him master. The member of the group, whom I have already so often\nquoted, has alone praised worthily these illustrations to the first\n_eclogue_: 'There is in all such a misty and dreamy glimmer as penetrates\nand kindles the inmost soul and gives complete and unreserved delight,\nunlike the gaudy daylight of this world. They are like all this wonderful\nartist's work, the drawing aside of the fleshly curtain, and the glimpse\nwhich all the most holy, studious saints and sages have enjoyed, of the\nrest which remains to the people of God.' Now, too, he did the great\nseries, the crowning work of his life, the illustrations to _The Book of\nJob_ and the illustrations to _The Divine Comedy_. Hitherto he had\nprotested against the mechanical 'dots and lozenges' and 'blots and blurs'\nof Woollett and Strange, but had himself used both 'dot and lozenge,'\n'blot and blur,' though always in subordination 'to a firm and determinate\noutline'; but in Marc Antonio, certain of whose engravings he was shown by\nLinnell, he found a style full of delicate lines, a style where all was\nliving and energetic, strong and subtle. And almost his last words, a\nletter written upon his death-bed, attack the 'dots and lozenges' with\neven more than usually quaint symbolism, and praise expressive lines. 'I\nknow that the majority of Englishmen are bound by the indefinite ... a\nline is a line in its minutest particulars, straight or crooked. It is\nitself not intermeasurable by anything else ... but since the French\nRevolution'--since the reign of reason began, that is--'Englishmen are all\nintermeasurable with one another, certainly a happy state of agreement in\nwhich I do not agree.' The Dante series occupied the last years of his\nlife; even when too weak to get out of bed he worked on, propped up with\nthe great drawing-book before him. He sketched a hundred designs, but left\nall incomplete, some very greatly so, and partly engraved seven plates, of\nwhich the 'Francesca and Paolo' is the most finished. It is not, I think,\ninferior to any but the finest in the Job, if indeed to them, and shows in\nits perfection Blake's mastery over elemental things, the swirl in which\nthe lost spirits are hurried, 'a watery flame' he would have called it,\nthe haunted waters and the huddling shapes. In the illustrations of\nPurgatory there is a serene beauty, and one finds his Dante and Virgil\nclimbing among the rough rocks under a cloudy sun, and in their sleep upon\nthe smooth steps towards the summit, a placid, marmoreal, tender, starry\nrapture.\n\nAll in this great series are in some measure powerful and moving, and not,\nas it is customary to say of the work of Blake, because a flaming\nimagination pierces through a cloudy and indecisive technique, but because\nthey have the only excellence possible in any art, a mastery over artistic\nexpression. The technique of Blake was imperfect, incomplete, as is the\ntechnique of well-nigh all artists who have striven to bring fires from\nremote summits; but where his imagination is perfect and complete, his\ntechnique has a like perfection, a like completeness. He strove to embody\nmore subtle raptures, more elaborate intuitions than any before him; his\nimagination and technique are more broken and strained under a great\nburden than the imagination and technique of any other master. 'I am,'\nwrote Blake, 'like others, just equal in invention and execution.' And\nagain, 'No man can improve an original invention; nor can an original\ninvention exist without execution, organized, delineated and articulated\neither by God or man ... I have heard people say, \"Give me the ideas; it\nis no matter what words you put them into;\" and others say, \"Give me the\ndesigns; it is no matter for the execution.\"... Ideas cannot be given but\nin their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its\nminutely appropriate execution.' Living in a time when technique and\nimagination are continually perfect and complete, because they no longer\nstrive to bring fire from heaven, we forget how imperfect and incomplete\nthey were in even the greatest masters, in Botticelli, in Orcagna, and in\nGiotto.\n\nThe errors in the handiwork of exalted spirits are as the more\nphantastical errors in their lives; as Coleridge's opium cloud; as\nVilliers De L'Isle Adam's candidature for the throne of Greece; as Blake's\nanger against causes and purposes he but half understood; as the\nflickering madness an Eastern scripture would allow in august dreamers;\nfor he who half lives in eternity endures a rending of the structures of\nthe mind, a crucifixion of the intellectual body.\n\n\nII. HIS OPINIONS ON DANTE\n\nAs Blake sat bent over the great drawing-book, in which he made his\ndesigns to _The Divine Comedy_, he was very certain that he and Dante\nrepresented spiritual states which face one another in an eternal enmity.\nDante, because a great poet, was 'inspired by the Holy Ghost'; but his\ninspiration was mingled with a certain philosophy, blown up out of his\nage, which Blake held for mortal and the enemy of immortal things, and\nwhich from the earliest times has sat in high places and ruled the world.\nThis philosophy was the philosophy of soldiers, of men of the world, of\npriests busy with government, of all who, because of the absorption in\nactive life, have been persuaded to judge and to punish, and partly also,\nhe admitted, the philosophy of Christ, who in descending into the world\nhad to take on the world; who, in being born of Mary, a symbol of the law\nin Blake's symbolic language, had to 'take after his mother,' and drive\nthe money-changers out of the Temple. Opposed to this was another\nphilosophy, not made by men of action, drudges of time and space, but by\nChrist when wrapped in the divine essence, and by artists and poets, who\nare taught by the nature of their craft to sympathize with all living\nthings, and who, the more pure and fragrant is their lamp, pass the\nfurther from all limitations, to come at last to forget good and evil in\nan absorbing vision of the happy and the unhappy. The one philosophy was\nworldly, and established for the ordering of the body and the fallen will,\nand so long as it did not call its 'laws of prudence' 'the laws of God,'\nwas a necessity, because 'you cannot have liberty in this world without\nwhat you call moral virtue'; the other was divine, and established for the\npeace of the imagination and the unfallen will, and, even when obeyed with\na too literal reverence, could make men sin against no higher principality\nthan prudence. He called the followers of the first philosophy pagans, no\nmatter by what name they knew themselves, because the pagans, as he\nunderstood the word pagan, believed more in the outward life, and in what\nhe called 'war, princedom, and victory,' than in the secret life of the\nspirit; and the followers of the second philosophy Christians, because\nonly those whose sympathies had been enlarged and instructed by art and\npoetry could obey the Christian command of unlimited forgiveness. Blake\nhad already found this 'pagan' philosophy in Swedenborg, in Milton, in\nWordsworth, in Sir Joshua Reynolds, in many persons, and it had roused him\nso constantly and to such angry paradox that its overthrow became the\nsignal passion of his life, and filled all he did and thought with the\nexcitement of a supreme issue. Its kingdom was bound to grow weaker so\nsoon as life began to lose a little in crude passion and na\u00efve tumult, but\nBlake was the first to announce its successor, and he did this, as must\nneeds be with revolutionists who have 'the law' for 'mother,' with a firm\nconviction that the things his opponents held white were indeed black, and\nthat the things they held black, white; with a strong persuasion that all\nbusy with government are men darkness and 'something other than human\nlife'; one is reminded of Shelley, who was the next to take up the cry,\nthough with a less abundant philosophic faculty, but still more of\nNietzsche, whose thought flows always, though with an even more violent\ncurrent, in the bed Blake's thought has worn.\n\nThe kingdom that was passing was, he held, the kingdom of the Tree of\nKnowledge; the kingdom that was coming was the kingdom of the Tree of\nLife: men who ate from the Tree of Knowledge wasted their days in anger\nagainst one another, and in taking one another captive in great nets; men\nwho sought their food among the green leaves of the Tree of Life condemned\nnone but the unimaginative and the idle, and those who forget that even\nlove and death and old age are an imaginative art.\n\nIn these opposing kingdoms is the explanation of the petulant sayings he\nwrote on the margins of the great sketch-book, and of those others, still\nmore petulant, which Crabb Robinson has recorded in his diary. The sayings\nabout the forgiveness of sins have no need for further explanation, and\nare in contrast with the attitude of that excellent commentator, Herr\nHettinger, who, though Dante swooned from pity at the tale of Francesca,\nwill only 'sympathize' with her 'to a certain extent,' being taken in a\ntheological net. 'It seems as if Dante,' Blake wrote, 'supposes God was\nsomething superior to the Father of Jesus; for if He gives rain to the\nevil and the good, and His sun to the just and the unjust, He can never\nhave builded Dante's Hell, nor the Hell of the Bible, as our parsons\nexplain it. It must have been framed by the dark spirit itself, and so I\nunderstand it.' And again, 'Whatever task is of vengeance and whatever is\nagainst forgiveness of sin is not of the Father but of Satan, the accuser,\nthe father of Hell.' And again, and this time to Crabb Robinson, 'Dante\nsaw devils where I saw none. I see good only.' 'I have never known a very\nbad man who had not something very good about him.' This forgiveness was\nnot the forgiveness of the theologian who has received a commandment from\nafar off, but of the poet and artist, who believes he has been taught, in\na mystical vision, 'that the imagination is the man himself,' and believes\nhe has discovered in the practice of his art that without a perfect\nsympathy there is no perfect imagination, and therefore no perfect life.\nAt another moment he called Dante 'an atheist, a mere politician busied\nabout this world, as Milton was, till, in his old age, returned to God\nwhom he had had in his childhood.' 'Everything is atheism,' he has already\nexplained, 'which assumed the reality of the natural and unspiritual\nworld.' Dante, he held, assumed its reality when he made obedience to its\nlaws a condition of man's happiness hereafter, and he set Swedenborg\nbeside Dante in misbelief for calling Nature 'the ultimate of Heaven,' a\nlowest rung, as it were, of Jacob's ladder, instead of a net woven by\nSatan to entangle our wandering joys and bring our hearts into captivity.\nThere are certain curious unfinished diagrams scattered here and there\namong the now separated pages of the sketch-book, and of these there is\none which, had it had all its concentric rings filled with names, would\nhave been a systematic exposition of his animosities and of their various\nintensity. It represents Paradise, and in the midst, where Dante emerges\nfrom the earthly Paradise, is written 'Homer,' and in the next circle\n'Swedenborg,' and on the margin these words: 'Everything in Dante's\nParadise shows that he has made the earth the foundation of all, and its\ngoddess Nature, memory,' memory of sensations, 'not the Holy Ghost....\nRound Purgatory is Paradise, and round Paradise vacuum. Homer is the\ncentre of all, I mean the poetry of the heathen.' The statement that round\nParadise is vacuum is a proof of the persistence of his ideas, and of his\ncuriously literal understanding of his own symbols; for it is but another\nform of the charge made against Milton many years before in _The Marriage\nof Heaven and Hell_. 'In Milton the Father is destiny, the son a ratio of\nthe five senses,' Blake's definition of the reason which is the enemy of\nthe imagination, 'and the Holy Ghost vacuum.' Dante, like other medieval\nmystics, symbolized the highest order of created beings by the fixed\nstars, and God by the darkness beyond them, the _Primum Mobile_. Blake,\nabsorbed in his very different vision, in which God took always a human\nshape, believed that to think of God under a symbol drawn from the outer\nworld was in itself idolatry, but that to imagine Him as an unpeopled\nimmensity was to think of Him under the one symbol furthest from His\nessence--it being a creation of the ruining reason, 'generalizing' away\n'the minute particulars of life.' Instead of seeking God in the deserts of\ntime and space, in exterior immensities, in what he called 'the abstract\nvoid,' he believed that the further he dropped behind him memory of time\nand space, reason builded upon sensation, morality founded for the\nordering of the world; and the more he was absorbed in emotion; and, above\nall, in emotion escaped from the impulse of bodily longing and the\nrestraints of bodily reason, in artistic emotion; the nearer did he come\nto Eden's 'breathing garden,' to use his beautiful phrase, and to the\nunveiled face of God. No worthy symbol of God existed but the inner world,\nthe true humanity, to whose various aspects he gave many names,\n'Jerusalem,' 'Liberty,' 'Eden,' 'The Divine Vision,' 'The Body of God,'\n'The Human Form Divine,' 'The Divine Members,' and whose most intimate\nexpression was art and poetry. He always sang of God under this symbol:\n\n  'For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love\n    Is God Our Father dear;\n  And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love\n    Is man, His child and care.\n\n  For Mercy has a human heart;\n    Pity a human face;\n  And Love the human form divine;\n    And Peace, the human dress.\n\n  Then every man of every clime,\n    That prays in his distress,\n  Prays to the human form divine--\n    Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.'\n\nWhenever he gave this symbol a habitation in space he set it in the sun,\nthe father of light and life; and set in the darkness beyond the stars,\nwhere light and life die away, Og and Anak and the giants that were of\nold, and the iron throne of Satan.\n\nBy thus contrasting Blake and Dante by the light of Blake's paradoxical\nwisdom, and as though there was no important truth hung from Dante's beam\nof the balance, I but seek to interpret a little-understood philosophy\nrather than one incorporate in the thought and habits of Christendom.\nEvery philosophy has half its truth from times and generations; and to us\none-half of the philosophy of Dante is less living than his poetry, while\nthe truth Blake preached and sang and painted is the root of the\ncultivated life, of the fragile perfect blossom of the world born in ages\nof leisure and peace, and never yet to last more than a little season; the\nlife those Ph\u00e6acians, who told Odysseus that they had set their hearts in\nnothing but in 'the dance and changes of raiment, and love and sleep,'\nlived before Poseidon heaped a mountain above them; the lives of all who,\nhaving eaten of the Tree of Life, love, more than did the barbarous ages\nwhen none had time to live, 'the minute particulars of life,' the little\nfragments of space and time, which are wholly flooded by beautiful emotion\nbecause they are so little they are hardly of time and space at all.\n'Every space smaller than a globule of man's blood,' he wrote, 'opens into\neternity of which this vegetable earth is but a shadow.' And again, 'Every\ntime less than a pulsation of the artery is equal' in its tenor and value\n'to six thousand years, for in this period the poet's work is done, and\nall the great events of time start forth, and are conceived: in such a\nperiod, within a moment, a pulsation of the artery.' Dante, indeed,\ntaught, in the 'Purgatorio,' that sin and virtue are alike from love, and\nthat love is from God; but this love he would restrain by a complex\neternal law, a complex external Church. Blake upon the other hand cried\nscorn upon the whole spectacle of external things, a vision to pass away\nin a moment, and preached the cultivated life, the internal Church which\nhas no laws but beauty, rapture and labour. 'I know of no other\nChristianity, and of no other gospel, than the liberty, both of body and\nmind, to exercise the divine arts of imagination, the real and eternal\nworld of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow, and in which\nwe shall live in our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable\nmortal bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other gospel. What are\nall their spiritual gifts? What is the divine spirit? Is the Holy Ghost\nany other than an intellectual fountain? What is the harvest of the gospel\nand its labours? What is the talent which it is a curse to hide? What are\nthe treasures of heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any\nother than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the\ngospel, are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit who must be\nworshipped in spirit and truth? Are not the gifts of the spirit everything\nto man? O ye religious! discountenance every one among you who shall\npretend to despise art and science. I call upon you in the name of Jesus!\nWhat is the life of man but art and science? Is it meat and drink? Is not\nthe body more than raiment? What is mortality but the things relating to\nthe body which dies? What is immortality but the things relating to the\nspirit which lives immortally? What is the joy of Heaven but improvement\nin the things of the spirit? What are the pains of Hell but ignorance,\nidleness, bodily lust, and the devastation of the things of the spirit?\nAnswer this for yourselves, and expel from amongst you those who pretend\nto despise the labours of art and science, which alone are the labours of\nthe gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think\nat all, and not pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build\nJerusalem, and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her\nbuilders? And remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in\nanother, calling it pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the\ngiver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving\nhypocrites as sins. But that which is sin in the sight of cruel man is not\nsin in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian as much as in him\nlies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some\nmental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem.' I have given the whole of\nthis long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought, it is\nlittle known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound thoughts,\nin the mysterious prophetic books. Obscure about much else, they are\nalways lucid on this one point, and return to it again and again. 'I care\nnot whether a man is good or bad,' are the words they put into the mouth\nof God, 'all I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go put off\nholiness and put on intellect.' This cultivated life, which seems to us so\nartificial a thing, is really, according to them, the laborious\nre-discovery of the golden age, of the primeval simplicity, of the simple\nworld in which Christ taught and lived, and its lawlessness is the\nlawlessness of Him 'who being all virtue, acted from impulse and not from\nrules,'\n\n  And his seventy disciples sent\n  Against religion and government.\n\nThe historical Christ was indeed no more than the supreme symbol of the\nartistic imagination, in which, with every passion wrought to perfect\nbeauty by art and poetry, we shall live, when the body has passed away for\nthe last time; but before that hour man must labour through many lives and\nmany deaths. 'Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed\nand governed their passions, but because they have cultivated their\nunderstandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion but\nrealities of intellect from which the passions emanate uncurbed in their\neternal glory. The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so\nholy. Holiness is not the price of entering into heaven. Those who are\ncast out are all those who, having no passions of their own, because no\nintellect, have spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's\nlives by the various arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern\nChurch crucifies Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to you\nhypocrites.' After a time man has 'to return to the dark valley whence he\ncame and begin his labours anew,' but before that return he dwells in the\nfreedom of imagination, in the peace of the 'divine image,' 'the divine\nvision,' in the peace that passes understanding and is the peace of art.\n'I have been very near the gates of death,' Blake wrote in his last\nletter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man, feeble and tottering\nbut not in spirit and life, not in the real man, the imagination which\nliveth for ever. In that I grow stronger and stronger as this foolish body\ndecays.... Flaxman is gone, and we must all soon follow, every one to his\neternal home, leaving the delusions of goddess Nature and her laws, to get\ninto freedom from all the laws of the numbers,' the multiplicity of\nnature, 'into the mind in which every one is king and priest in his own\nhouse.' The phrase about the king and priest is a memory of the crown and\nmitre set upon Dante's head before he entered Paradise. Our imaginations\nare but fragments of the universal imagination, portions of the universal\nbody of God, and as we enlarge our imagination by imaginative sympathy,\nand transform with the beauty and peace of art, the sorrows and joys of\nthe world, we put off the limited mortal man more and more and put on the\nunlimited 'immortal man.' 'As the seed waits eagerly watching for its\nflower and fruit, anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse\nto see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible array, so man looks\nout in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird, and beast, collecting up the\nfragments of his immortal body into the elemental forms of everything that\ngrows.... In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in his universe, sorrowing\nin birds over the deep, or howling in the wolf over the slain, and moaning\nin the cattle, and in the winds.' Mere sympathy for living things is not\nenough because we must learn to separate their 'infected' from their\neternal, their satanic from their divine part; and this can only be done\nby desiring always beauty, the one mask through which can be seen the\nunveiled eyes of eternity. We must then be artists in all things, and\nunderstand that love and old age and death are first among the arts. In\nthis sense he insists that 'Christ's apostles were artists,' that\n'Christianity is Art,' and that 'the whole business of man is the arts.'\nDante, who deified law, selected its antagonist, passion, as the most\nimportant of sins, and made the regions where it was punished the largest.\nBlake, who deified imaginative freedom, held 'corporeal reason' for the\nmost accursed of things, because it makes the imagination revolt from the\nsovereignty of beauty and pass under the sovereignty of corporeal law, and\nthis is 'the captivity in Egypt.' True art is expressive and symbolic, and\nmakes every form, every sound, every colour, every gesture, a signature of\nsome unanalyzable imaginative essence. False art is not expressive but\nmimetic, not from experience but from observation, and is the mother of\nall evil, persuading us to save our bodies alive at no matter what cost of\nrapine and fraud. True art is the flame of the last day, which begins for\nevery man, when he is first moved by beauty, and which seeks to burn all\nthings until they 'become infinite and holy.'\n\n\nIII. THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF DANTE\n\nThe late Mr. John Addington Symonds wrote--in a preface to certain Dante\nillustrations by Stradanus, a sixteenth-century artist of no great\nexcellence, published in phototype by Mr. Unwin in 1892--that the\nillustrations of Gustave Dor\u00e9, 'in spite of glaring artistic defects,\nmust, I think, be reckoned first among numerous attempts to translate\nDante's conceptions into terms of plastic art.' One can only account for\nthis praise of a noisy and demagogic art by supposing that a temperament,\nstrong enough to explore with unfailing alertness the countless schools\nand influences of the Renaissance in Italy, is of necessity a little\nlacking in delicacy of judgment and in the finer substances of emotion. It\nis more difficult to account for so admirable a scholar not only\npreferring these illustrations to the work of what he called 'the graceful\nand affected Botticelli,'--although 'Dor\u00e9 was fitted for his task, not by\ndramatic vigour, by feeling for beauty, or by anything sternly in sympathy\nwith the supreme poet's soul, but by a very effective sense of luminosity\nand gloom,'--but preferring them because 'he created a fanciful world,\nwhich makes the movement of Dante's _dramatis person\u00e6_ conceivable,\nintroducing the ordinary intelligence into those vast regions thronged\nwith destinies of souls and creeds and empires.' When the ordinary student\nfinds this intelligence in an illustrator, he thinks, because it is his\nown intelligence, that it is an accurate interpretation of the text, while\nwork of the extraordinary intelligences is merely an expression of their\nown ideas and feelings. Dor\u00e9 and Stradanus, he will tell you, have given\nus something of the world of Dante, but Blake and Botticelli have builded\nworlds of their own and called them Dante's--as if Dante's world were more\nthan a mass of symbols of colour and form and sound which put on humanity,\nwhen they arouse some mind to an intense and romantic life that is not\ntheirs; as if it was not one's own sorrows and angers and regrets and\nterrors and hopes that awaken to condemnation or repentance while Dante\ntreads his eternal pilgrimage; as if any poet or painter or musician\ncould be other than an enchanter calling with a persuasive or compelling\nritual, creatures, noble or ignoble, divine or d\u00e6monic, covered with\nscales or in shining raiment, that he never imagined, out of the\nbottomless deeps of imaginations he never foresaw; as if the noblest\nachievement of art was not when the artist enfolds himself in darkness,\nwhile he casts over his readers a light as of a wild and terrible dawn.\n\nLet us therefore put away the designs to _The Divine Comedy_, in which\nthere is 'an ordinary intelligence,' and consider only the designs in\nwhich the magical ritual has called up extraordinary shapes, the magical\nlight glimmered upon a world, different from the Dantesque world of our\nown intelligence in its ordinary and daily moods, upon a difficult and\ndistinguished world. Most of the series of designs to Dante, and there are\na good number, need not busy any one for a moment. Genelli has done a\ncopious series, which is very able in the 'formal' 'generalized' way\nwhich Blake hated, and which is spiritually ridiculous. Penelli has\ntransformed the 'Inferno' into a vulgar Walpurgis night, and a certain\nSchuler, whom I do not find in the biographical dictionaries, but who was\napparently a German, has prefaced certain flaccid designs with some\nexcellent charts, while Stradanus has made a series for the 'Inferno,'\nwhich has so many of the more material and unessential powers of art, and\nis so extremely undistinguished in conception, that one supposes him to\nhave touched in the sixteenth century the same public Dor\u00e9 has touched in\nthe nineteenth.\n\nThough with many doubts, I am tempted to value Flaxman's designs to the\n'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' and the 'Paradiso,' only a little above the\nbest of these, because he does not seem to have ever been really moved by\nDante, and so to have sunk into a formal manner, which is a reflection of\nthe vital manner of his Homer and Hesiod. His designs to _The Divine\nComedy_ will be laid, one imagines, with some ceremony in that immortal\nwastepaper-basket in which Time carries with many sighs the failures of\ngreat men. I am perhaps wrong, however, because Flaxman even at his best\nhas not yet touched me very deeply, and I hardly ever hope to escape this\nlimitation of my ruling stars. That Signorelli does not seem greatly more\ninteresting except here and there, as in the drawing of 'The Angel,' full\nof innocence and energy, coming from the boat which has carried so many\nsouls to the foot of the mountain of purgation, can only be because one\nknows him through poor reproductions from frescoes half mouldered away\nwith damp. A little-known series, drawn by Adolph St\u00fcrler, an artist of\nGerman extraction, who was settled in Florence in the first half of this\ncentury, are very poor in drawing, very pathetic and powerful in\ninvention, and full of most interesting pre-Raphaelitic detail. There are\nadmirable and moving figures, who, having set love above reason, listen in\nthe last abandonment of despair to the judgment of Minos, or walk with a\npoignant melancholy to the foot of his throne through a land where owls\nand strange beasts move hither and thither with the sterile content of the\nevil that neither loves nor hates, and a Cerberus full of patient cruelty.\nAll St\u00fcrler's designs have, however, the languor of a mind that does its\nwork by a succession of delicate critical perceptions rather than the\ndecision and energy of true creation, and are more a curious contribution\nto artistic methods than an imaginative force.\n\nThe only designs that compete with Blake's are those of Botticelli and\nGiulio Clovio, and these contrast rather than compete; for Blake did not\nlive to carry his 'Paradiso' beyond the first faint pencillings, the first\nthin washes of colour, while Botticelli only, as I think, became\nsupremely imaginative in his 'Paradiso,' and Clovio never attempted the\n'Inferno' and 'Purgatorio' at all. The imaginations of Botticelli and\nClovio were overshadowed by the cloister, and it was only when they passed\nbeyond the world or into some noble peace, which is not the world's peace,\nthat they won a perfect freedom. Blake had not such mastery over figure\nand drapery as had Botticelli, but he could sympathize with the persons\nand delight in the scenery of the 'Inferno' and the 'Purgatorio' as\nBotticelli could not, and could fill them with a mysterious and spiritual\nsignificance born perhaps of mystical pantheism. The flames of Botticelli\ngive one no emotion, and his car of Beatrice is no symbolic chariot of the\nChurch led by the gryphon, half eagle, half lion, of Christ's dual nature,\nbut is a fragment of some medi\u00e6val pageant pictured with a merely\ntechnical inspiration. Clovio, the illuminator of missals, has tried to\ncreate with that too easy hand of his a Paradise of serene air reflected\nin a little mirror, a heaven of sociability and humility and prettiness, a\nheaven of women and of monks; but one cannot imagine him deeply moved, as\nthe modern world is moved, by the symbolism of bird and beast, of tree and\nmountain, of flame and darkness. It was a profound understanding of all\ncreatures and things, a profound sympathy with passionate and lost souls,\nmade possible in their extreme intensity by his revolt against corporeal\nlaw, and corporeal reason, which made Blake the one perfectly fit\nillustrator for the 'Inferno' and the 'Purgatorio': in the serene and\nrapturous emptiness of Dante's Paradise he would find no symbols but a few\nabstract emblems, and he had no love for the abstract, while with the\ndrapery and the gestures of Beatrice and Virgil, he would have prospered\nless than Botticelli or even Clovio.\n\n1897.\n\n\n\n\nSYMBOLISM IN PAINTING\n\n\nIn England, which has made great Symbolic Art, most people dislike an art\nif they are told it is symbolic, for they confuse symbol and allegory.\nEven Johnson's Dictionary sees no great difference, for it calls a Symbol\n'That which comprehends in its figure a representation of something else';\nand an Allegory, 'A figurative discourse, in which something other is\nintended than is contained in the words literally taken.' It is only a\nvery modern Dictionary that calls a Symbol 'the sign or representation of\nany moral thing by the images or properties of natural things,' which,\nthough an imperfect definition, is not unlike 'The things below are as the\nthings above' of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes! _The Faery Queen_ and _The\nPilgrim's Progress_ have been so important in England that Allegory has\novertopped Symbolism, and for a time has overwhelmed it in its own\ndownfall. William Blake was perhaps the first modern to insist on a\ndifference; and the other day, when I sat for my portrait to a German\nSymbolist in Paris, whose talk was all of his love for Symbolism and his\nhatred for Allegory, his definitions were the same as William Blake's, of\nwhom he knew nothing. William Blake has written, 'Vision or\nimagination'--meaning symbolism by these words--'is a representation of\nwhat actually exists, really or unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is formed\nby the daughters of Memory.' The German insisted with many determined\ngestures, that Symbolism said things which could not be said so perfectly\nin any other way, and needed but a right instinct for its understanding;\nwhile Allegory said things which could be said as well, or better, in\nanother way, and needed a right knowledge for its understanding. The one\ngave dumb things voices, and bodiless things bodies; while the other read\na meaning--which had never lacked its voice or its body--into something\nheard or seen, and loved less for the meaning than for its own sake. The\nonly symbols he cared for were the shapes and motions of the body; ears\nhidden by the hair, to make one think of a mind busy with inner voices;\nand a head so bent that back and neck made the one curve, as in Blake's\n'Vision of Bloodthirstiness,' to call up an emotion of bodily strength;\nand he would not put even a lily, or a rose, or a poppy into a picture to\nexpress purity, or love, or sleep, because he thought such emblems were\nallegorical, and had their meaning by a traditional and not by a natural\nright. I said that the rose, and the lily, and the poppy were so married,\nby their colour and their odour, and their use, to love and purity and\nsleep, or to other symbols of love and purity and sleep, and had been so\nlong a part of the imagination of the world, that a symbolist might use\nthem to help out his meaning without becoming an allegorist. I think I\nquoted the lily in the hand of the angel in Rossetti's 'Annunciation,' and\nthe lily in the jar in his 'Childhood of Mary Virgin,' and thought they\nmade the more important symbols, the women's bodies, and the angels'\nbodies, and the clear morning light, take that place, in the great\nprocession of Christian symbols, where they can alone have all their\nmeaning and all their beauty.\n\nIt is hard to say where Allegory and Symbolism melt into one another, but\nit is not hard to say where either comes to its perfection; and though one\nmay doubt whether Allegory or Symbolism is the greater in the horns of\nMichael Angelo's 'Moses,' one need not doubt that its symbolism has helped\nto awaken the modern imagination; while Tintoretto's 'Origin of the Milky\nWay,' which is Allegory without any Symbolism, is, apart from its fine\npainting, but a moment's amusement for our fancy. A hundred generations\nmight write out what seemed the meaning of the one, and they would write\ndifferent meanings, for no symbol tells all its meaning to any generation;\nbut when you have said, 'That woman there is Juno, and the milk out of her\nbreast is making the Milky Way,' you have told the meaning of the other,\nand the fine painting, which has added so much irrelevant beauty, has not\ntold it better.\n\nAll Art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic,\nand has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medi\u00e6val magicians\nmade with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over\ndaily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours\nand forms, a part of the Divine Essence. A person or a landscape that is a\npart of a story or a portrait, evokes but so much emotion as the story or\nthe portrait can permit without loosening the bonds that make it a story\nor a portrait; but if you liberate a person or a landscape from the bonds\nof motives and their actions, causes and their effects, and from all bonds\nbut the bonds of your love, it will change under your eyes, and become a\nsymbol of an infinite emotion, a perfected emotion, a part of the Divine\nEssence; for we love nothing but the perfect, and our dreams make all\nthings perfect, that we may love them. Religious and visionary people,\nmonks and nuns, and medicine-men, and opium-eaters, see symbols in their\ntrances; for religious and visionary thought is thought about perfection\nand the way to perfection; and symbols are the only things free enough\nfrom all bonds to speak of perfection.\n\nWagner's dramas, Keats' odes, Blake's pictures and poems, Calvert's\npictures, Rossetti's pictures, Villiers De l'Isle Adam's plays, and the\nblack-and-white art of Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Ricketts, and the lithographs\nof Mr. Shannon, and the pictures of Mr. Whistler, and the plays of M.\nMaeterlinck, and the poetry of Verlaine, in our own day, but differ from\nthe religious art of Giotto and his disciples in having accepted all\nsymbolisms, the symbolism of the ancient shepherds and star-gazers, that\nsymbolism of bodily beauty which seemed a wicked thing to Fra Angelico,\nthe symbolism in day and night, and winter and summer, spring and autumn,\nonce so great a part of an older religion than Christianity; and in having\naccepted all the Divine Intellect, its anger and its pity, its waking and\nits sleep, its love and its lust, for the substance of their art. A Keats\nor a Calvert is as much a symbolist as a Blake or a Wagner; but he is a\nfragmentary symbolist, for while he evokes in his persons and his\nlandscapes an infinite emotion, a perfected emotion, a part of the Divine\nEssence, he does not set his symbols in the great procession as Blake\nwould have him, 'in a certain order, suited' to his 'imaginative energy.'\nIf you paint a beautiful woman and fill her face, as Rossetti filled so\nmany faces, with an infinite love, a perfected love, 'one's eyes meet no\nmortal thing when they meet the light of her peaceful eyes,' as Michael\nAngelo said of Vittoria Colonna; but one's thoughts stray to mortal\nthings, and ask, maybe, 'Has her lover gone from her, or is he coming?' or\n'What pre-destinated unhappiness has made the shadow in her eyes?' If you\npaint the same face, and set a winged rose or a rose of gold somewhere\nabout her, one's thoughts are of her immortal sisters, Pity and Jealousy,\nand of her mother, Ancestral Beauty, and of her high kinsmen, the Holy\nOrders, whose swords make a continual music before her face. The\nsystematic mystic is not the greatest of artists, because his imagination\nis too great to be bounded by a picture or a song, and because only\nimperfection in a mirror of perfection, or perfection in a mirror of\nimperfection, delight our frailty. There is indeed a systematic mystic in\nevery poet or painter who, like Rossetti, delights in a traditional\nSymbolism, or, like Wagner, delights in a personal Symbolism; and such men\noften fall into trances, or have waking dreams. Their thought wanders from\nthe woman who is Love herself, to her sisters and her forebears, and to\nall the great procession; and so august a beauty moves before the mind,\nthat they forget the things which move before the eyes. William Blake, who\nwas the chanticleer of the new dawn, has written: 'If the spectator could\nenter into one of these images of his imagination, approaching them on the\nfiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if ... he could make a friend\nand companion of one of these images of wonder, which always entreat him\nto leave mortal things (as he must know), then would he arise from the\ngrave, then would he meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be\nhappy.' And again, 'The world of imagination is the world of Eternity. It\nis the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the\nvegetated body. The world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas\nthe world of generation or vegetation is finite and temporal. There exist\nin that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see\nreflected in the vegetable glass of nature.'\n\nEvery visionary knows that the mind's eye soon comes to see a capricious\nand variable world, which the will cannot shape or change, though it can\ncall it up and banish it again. I closed my eyes a moment ago, and a\ncompany of people in blue robes swept by me in a blinding light, and had\ngone before I had done more than see little roses embroidered on the hems\nof their robes, and confused, blossoming apple-boughs somewhere beyond\nthem, and recognized one of the company by his square, black curling\nbeard. I have often seen him; and one night a year ago, I asked him\nquestions which he answered by showing me flowers and precious stones, of\nwhose meaning I had no knowledge, and he seemed too perfected a soul for\nany knowledge that cannot be spoken in symbol or metaphor.\n\nAre he and his blue-robed companions, and their like, 'the Eternal\nrealities' of which we are the reflection 'in the vegetable glass of\nnature,' or a momentary dream? To answer is to take sides in the only\ncontroversy in which it is greatly worth taking sides, and in the only\ncontroversy which may never be decided.\n\n1898.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY\n\n\nI\n\n'Symbolism, as seen in the writers of our day, would have no value if it\nwere not seen also, under one disguise or another, in every great\nimaginative writer,' writes Mr. Arthur Symons in _The Symbolist Movement\nin Literature_, a subtle book which I cannot praise as I would, because it\nhas been dedicated to me; and he goes on to show how many profound writers\nhave in the last few years sought for a philosophy of poetry in the\ndoctrine of symbolism, and how even in countries where it is almost\nscandalous to seek for any philosophy of poetry, new writers are following\nthem in their search. We do not know what the writers of ancient times\ntalked of among themselves, and one bull is all that remains of\nShakespeare's talk, who was on the edge of modern times; and the\njournalist is convinced, it seems, that they talked of wine and women and\npolitics, but never about their art, or never quite seriously about their\nart. He is certain that no one, who had a philosophy of his art or a\ntheory of how he should write, has ever made a work of art, that people\nhave no imagination who do not write without forethought and afterthought\nas he writes his own articles. He says this with enthusiasm, because he\nhas heard it at so many comfortable dinner-tables, where some one had\nmentioned through carelessness, or foolish zeal, a book whose difficulty\nhad offended indolence, or a man who had not forgotten that beauty is an\naccusation. Those formulas and generalizations, in which a hidden sergeant\nhas drilled the ideas of journalists and through them the ideas of all but\nall the modern world, have created in their turn a forgetfulness like that\nof soldiers in battle, so that journalists and their readers have\nforgotten, among many like events, that Wagner spent seven years arranging\nand explaining his ideas before he began his most characteristic music;\nthat opera, and with it modern music, arose from certain talks at the\nhouse of one Giovanni Bardi of Florence; and that the Pleiade laid the\nfoundations of modern French literature with a pamphlet. Goethe has said,\n'a poet needs all philosophy, but he must keep it out of his work,' though\nthat is not always necessary; and certainly he cannot know too much,\nwhether about his own work, or about the procreant waters of the soul\nwhere the breath first moved, or about the waters under the earth that are\nthe life of passing things; and almost certainly no great art, outside\nEngland, where journalists are more powerful and ideas less plentiful than\nelsewhere, has arisen without a great criticism, for its herald or its\ninterpreter and protector, and it is perhaps for this reason that great\nart, now that vulgarity has armed itself and multiplied itself, is perhaps\ndead in England.\n\nAll writers, all artists of any kind, in so far as they have had any\nphilosophical or critical power, perhaps just in so far as they have been\ndeliberate artists at all, have had some philosophy, some criticism of\ntheir art; and it has often been this philosophy, or this criticism, that\nhas evoked their most startling inspiration, calling into outer life some\nportion of the divine life, of the buried reality, which could alone\nextinguish in the emotions what their philosophy or their criticism would\nextinguish in the intellect. They have sought for no new thing, it may be,\nbut only to understand and to copy the pure inspiration of early times,\nbut because the divine life wars upon our outer life, and must needs\nchange its weapons and its movements as we change ours, inspiration has\ncome to them in beautiful startling shapes. The scientific movement\nbrought with it a literature, which was always tending to lose itself in\nexternalities of all kinds, in opinion, in declamation, in picturesque\nwriting, in word-painting, or in what Mr. Symons has called an attempt 'to\nbuild in brick and mortar inside the covers of a book'; and now writers\nhave begun to dwell upon the element of evocation, of suggestion, upon\nwhat we call the symbolism in great writers.\n\n\nII\n\nIn 'Symbolism in Painting' I tried to describe the element of symbolism\nthat is in pictures and sculpture, and described a little the symbolism in\npoetry, but did not describe at all the continuous indefinable symbolism\nwhich is the substance of all style.\n\nThere are no lines with more melancholy beauty than these by Burns--\n\n  'The white moon is setting behind the white wave,\n  And Time is setting with me, O!'\n\nand these lines are perfectly symbolical. Take from them the whiteness of\nthe moon and of the wave, whose relation to the setting of Time is too\nsubtle for the intellect, and you take from them their beauty. But, when\nall are together, moon and wave and whiteness and setting Time and the\nmelancholy cry, they evoke an emotion which cannot be evoked by any other\narrangement of colours and sounds and forms. We may call this metaphorical\nwriting, but it is better to call it symbolical writing, because metaphors\nare not profound enough to be moving, when they are not symbols, and when\nthey are symbols they are the most perfect, because the most subtle,\noutside of pure sound, and through them one can the best find out what\nsymbols are. If one begins the reverie with any beautiful lines that one\ncan remember, one finds they are all like those by Burns. Begin with this\nline by Blake--\n\n  'The gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks up the dew;'\n\nor these lines by Nash--\n\n  'Brightness falls from the air,\n  Queens have died young and fair,\n  Dust hath closed Helen's eye;'\n\nor these lines by Shakespeare--\n\n  'Timon hath made his everlasting mansion\n  Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;\n  Who once a day with his embossed froth\n  The turbulent surge shall cover;'\n\nor take some line that is quite simple, that gets its beauty from its\nplace in a story, and see how it flickers with the light of the many\nsymbols that have given the story its beauty, as a sword-blade may flicker\nwith the light of burning towers.\n\nAll sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their pre-ordained\nenergies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise\nemotions, or, as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied\npowers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotions; and when sound,\nand colour, and form are in a musical relation, a beautiful relation to\none another, they become as it were one sound, one colour, one form, and\nevoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evocations and yet is\none emotion. The same relation exists between all portions of every work\nof art, whether it be an epic or a song, and the more perfect it is, and\nthe more various and numerous the elements that have flowed into its\nperfection, the more powerful will be the emotion, the power, the god it\ncalls among us. Because an emotion does not exist, or does not become\nperceptible and active among us, till it has found its expression, in\ncolour or in sound or in form, or in all of these, and because no two\nmodulations or arrangements of these evoke the same emotion, poets and\npainters and musicians, and in a less degree because their effects are\nmomentary, day and night and cloud and shadow, are continually making and\nunmaking mankind. It is indeed only those things which seem useless or\nvery feeble that have any power, and all those things that seem useful or\nstrong, armies, moving wheels, modes of architecture, modes of government,\nspeculations of the reason, would have been a little different if some\nmind long ago had not given itself to some emotion, as a woman gives\nherself to her lover, and shaped sounds or colours or forms, or all of\nthese, into a musical relation, that their emotion might live in other\nminds. A little lyric evokes an emotion, and this emotion gathers others\nabout it and melts into their being in the making of some great epic; and\nat last, needing an always less delicate body, or symbol, as it grows more\npowerful, it flows out, with all it has gathered, among the blind\ninstincts of daily life, where it moves a power within powers, as one sees\nring within ring in the stem of an old tree. This is maybe what Arthur\nO'Shaughnessy meant when he made his poets say they had built Nineveh with\ntheir sighing; and I am certainly never certain, when I hear of some war,\nor of some religious excitement, or of some new manufacture, or of\nanything else that fills the ear of the world, that it has not all\nhappened because of something that a boy piped in Thessaly. I remember\nonce asking a seer to ask one among the gods who, as she believed, were\nstanding about her in their symbolic bodies, what would come of a charming\nbut seeming trivial labour of a friend, and the form answering, 'the\ndevastation of peoples and the overwhelming of cities.' I doubt indeed if\nthe crude circumstance of the world, which seems to create all our\nemotions, does more than reflect, as in multiplying mirrors, the emotions\nthat have come to solitary men in moments of poetical contemplation; or\nthat love itself would be more than an animal hunger but for the poet and\nhis shadow the priest, for unless we believe that outer things are the\nreality, we must believe that the gross is the shadow of the subtle, that\nthings are wise before they become foolish, and secret before they cry out\nin the market-place. Solitary men in moments of contemplation receive, as\nI think, the creative impulse from the lowest of the Nine Hierarchies, and\nso make and unmake mankind, and even the world itself, for does not 'the\neye altering alter all'?\n\n  'Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;\n  And all man's Babylons strive but to impart\n  The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.'\n\n\nIII\n\nThe purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the\nmoment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake,\nwhich is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring\nmonotony, while it holds us waking by variety, to keep us in that state of\nperhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the\nwill is unfolded in symbols. If certain sensitive persons listen\npersistently to the ticking of a watch, or gaze persistently on the\nmonotonous flashing of a light, they fall into the hypnotic trance; and\nrhythm is but the ticking of a watch made softer, that one must needs\nlisten, and various, that one may not be swept beyond memory or grow\nweary of listening; while the patterns of the artist are but the\nmonotonous flash woven to take the eyes in a subtler enchantment. I have\nheard in meditation voices that were forgotten the moment they had spoken;\nand I have been swept, when in more profound meditation, beyond all memory\nbut of those things that came from beyond the threshold of waking life. I\nwas writing once at a very symbolical and abstract poem, when my pen fell\non the ground; and as I stooped to pick it up, I remembered some\nphantastic adventure that yet did not seem phantastic, and then another\nlike adventure, and when I asked myself when these things had happened, I\nfound that I was remembering my dreams for many nights. I tried to\nremember what I had done the day before, and then what I had done that\nmorning; but all my waking life had perished from me, and it was only\nafter a struggle that I came to remember it again, and as I did so that\nmore powerful and startling life perished in its turn. Had my pen not\nfallen on the ground and so made me turn from the images that I was\nweaving into verse, I would never have known that meditation had become\ntrance, for I would have been like one who does not know that he is\npassing through a wood because his eyes are on the pathway. So I think\nthat in the making and in the understanding of a work of art, and the more\neasily if it is full of patterns and symbols and music, we are lured to\nthe threshold of sleep, and it may be far beyond it, without knowing that\nwe have ever set our feet upon the steps of horn or of ivory.\n\n\nIV\n\nBesides emotional symbols, symbols that evoke emotions alone,--and in this\nsense all alluring or hateful things are symbols, although their relations\nwith one another are too subtle to delight us fully, away from rhythm and\npattern,--there are intellectual symbols, symbols that evoke ideas alone,\nor ideas mingled with emotions; and outside the very definite traditions\nof mysticism and the less definite criticism of certain modern poets,\nthese alone are called symbols. Most things belong to one or another kind,\naccording to the way we speak of them and the companions we give them, for\nsymbols, associated with ideas that are more than fragments of the shadows\nthrown upon the intellect by the emotions they evoke, are the playthings\nof the allegorist or the pedant, and soon pass away. If I say 'white' or\n'purple' in an ordinary line of poetry, they evoke emotions so exclusively\nthat I cannot say why they move me; but if I say them in the same mood, in\nthe same breath with such obvious intellectual symbols as a cross or a\ncrown of thorns, I think of purity and sovereignty; while innumerable\nother meanings, which are held to one another by the bondage of subtle\nsuggestion, and alike in the emotions and in the intellect, move visibly\nthrough my mind, and move invisibly beyond the threshold of sleep, casting\nlights and shadows of an indefinable wisdom on what had seemed before, it\nmay be, but sterility and noisy violence. It is the intellect that decides\nwhere the reader shall ponder over the procession of the symbols, and if\nthe symbols are merely emotional, he gazes from amid the accidents and\ndestinies of the world; but if the symbols are intellectual too, he\nbecomes himself a part of pure intellect, and he is himself mingled with\nthe procession. If I watch a rushy pool in the moonlight, my emotion at\nits beauty is mixed with memories of the man that I have seen ploughing by\nits margin, or of the lovers I saw there a night ago; but if I look at the\nmoon herself and remember any of her ancient names and meanings, I move\namong divine people, and things that have shaken off our mortality, the\ntower of ivory, the queen of waters, the shining stag among enchanted\nwoods, the white hare sitting upon the hilltop, the fool of faery with\nhis shining cup full of dreams, and it may be 'make a friend of one of\nthese images of wonder,' and 'meet the Lord in the air.' So, too, if one\nis moved by Shakespeare, who is content with emotional symbols that he may\ncome the nearer to our sympathy, one is mixed with the whole spectacle of\nthe world; while if one is moved by Dante, or by the myth of Demeter, one\nis mixed into the shadow of God or of a goddess. So too one is furthest\nfrom symbols when one is busy doing this or that, but the soul moves among\nsymbols and unfolds in symbols when trance, or madness, or deep meditation\nhas withdrawn it from every impulse but its own. 'I then saw,' wrote\nG\u00e9rard de Nerval of his madness, 'vaguely drifting into form, plastic\nimages of antiquity, which outlined themselves, became definite, and\nseemed to represent symbols of which I only seized the idea with\ndifficulty.' In an earlier time he would have been of that multitude,\nwhose souls austerity withdrew, even more perfectly than madness could\nwithdraw his soul, from hope and memory, from desire and regret, that they\nmight reveal those processions of symbols that men bow to before altars,\nand woo with incense and offerings. But being of our time, he has been\nlike Maeterlinck, like Villiers de l'Isle Adam in _Ax\u00ebl_, like all who are\npreoccupied with intellectual symbols in our time, a foreshadower of the\nnew sacred book, of which all the arts, as somebody has said, are begging\nto dream, and because, as I think, they cannot overcome the slow dying of\nmen's hearts that we call the progress of the world, and lay their hands\nupon men's heart-strings again, without becoming the garment of religion\nas in old times.\n\n\nV\n\nIf people were to accept the theory that poetry moves us because of its\nsymbolism, what change should one look for in the manner of our poetry? A\nreturn to the way of our fathers, a casting out of descriptions of nature\nfor the sake of nature, of the moral law for the sake of the moral law, a\ncasting out of all anecdotes and of that brooding over scientific opinion\nthat so often extinguished the central flame in Tennyson, and of that\nvehemence that would make us do or not do certain things; or, in other\nwords, we should come to understand that the beryl stone was enchanted by\nour fathers that it might unfold the pictures in its heart, and not to\nmirror our own excited faces, or the boughs waving outside the window.\nWith this change of substance, this return to imagination, this\nunderstanding that the laws of art, which are the hidden laws of the\nworld, can alone bind the imagination, would come a change of style, and\nwe would cast out of serious poetry those energetic rhythms, as of a man\nrunning, which are the invention of the will with its eyes always on\nsomething to be done or undone; and we would seek out those wavering,\nmeditative, organic rhythms, which are the embodiment of the imagination,\nthat neither desires nor hates, because it has done with time, and only\nwishes to gaze upon some reality, some beauty; nor would it be any longer\npossible for anybody to deny the importance of form, in all its kinds, for\nalthough you can expound an opinion, or describe a thing when your words\nare not quite well chosen, you cannot give a body to something that moves\nbeyond the senses, unless your words are as subtle, as complex, as full of\nmysterious life, as the body of a flower or of a woman. The form of\nsincere poetry, unlike the form of the popular poetry, may indeed be\nsometimes obscure, or ungrammatical as in some of the best of the Songs of\nInnocence and Experience, but it must have the perfections that escape\nanalysis, the subtleties that have a new meaning every day, and it must\nhave all this whether it be but a little song made out of a moment of\ndreamy indolence, or some great epic made out of the dreams of one poet\nand of a hundred generations whose hands were never weary of the sword.\n\n1900.\n\n\n\n\nTHE THEATRE\n\n\nI\n\nI remember, some years ago, advising a distinguished, though too little\nrecognized, writer of poetical plays to write a play as unlike ordinary\nplays as possible, that it might be judged with a fresh mind, and to put\nit on the stage in some small suburban theatre, where a small audience\nwould pay its expenses. I said that he should follow it the year after, at\nthe same time of the year, with another play, and so on from year to year;\nand that the people who read books, and do not go to the theatre, would\ngradually find out about him. I suggested that he should begin with a\npastoral play, because nobody would expect from a pastoral play the\nsuccession of nervous tremours which the plays of commerce, like the\nnovels of commerce, have substituted for the purification that comes with\npity and terror to the imagination and intellect. He followed my advice in\npart, and had a small but perfect success, filling his small theatre for\ntwice the number of performances he had announced; but instead of being\ncontent with the praise of his equals, and waiting to win their praise\nanother year, he hired immediately a big London theatre, and put his\npastoral play and a new play before a meagre and unintelligent audience. I\nstill remember his pastoral play with delight, because, if not always of a\nhigh excellence, it was always poetical; but I remember it at the small\ntheatre, where my pleasure was magnified by the pleasure of those about\nme, and not at the big theatre, where it made me uncomfortable, as an\nunwelcome guest always makes one uncomfortable.\n\nWhy should we thrust our works, which we have written with imaginative\nsincerity and filled with spiritual desire, before those quite excellent\npeople who think that Rossetti's women are 'guys,' that Rodin's women are\n'ugly,' and that Ibsen is 'immoral,' and who only want to be left at\npeace to enjoy the works so many clever men have made especially to suit\nthem? We must make a theatre for ourselves and our friends, and for a few\nsimple people who understand from sheer simplicity what we understand from\nscholarship and thought. We have planned the Irish Literary Theatre with\nthis hospitable emotion, and, that the right people may find out about us,\nwe hope to act a play or two in the spring of every year; and that the\nright people may escape the stupefying memory of the theatre of commerce\nwhich clings even to them, our plays will be for the most part remote,\nspiritual, and ideal.\n\nA common opinion is that the poetic drama has come to an end, because\nmodern poets have no dramatic power; and Mr. Binyon seems to accept this\nopinion when he says: 'It has been too often assumed that it is the\nmanager who bars the way to poetic plays. But it is much more probable\nthat the poets have failed the managers. If poets mean to serve the\nstage, their dramas must be dramatic.' I find it easier to believe that\naudiences, who have learned, as I think, from the life of crowded cities\nto live upon the surface of life, and actors and managers, who study to\nplease them, have changed, than that imagination, which is the voice of\nwhat is eternal in man, has changed. The arts are but one Art; and why\nshould all intense painting and all intense poetry have become not merely\nunintelligible but hateful to the greater number of men and women, and\nintense drama move them to pleasure? The audiences of Sophocles and of\nShakespeare and of Calderon were not unlike the audiences I have heard\nlistening in Irish cabins to songs in Gaelic about 'an old poet telling\nhis sins,' and about 'the five young men who were drowned last year,' and\nabout 'the lovers that were drowned going to America,' or to some tale of\nOisin and his three hundred years in _Tir nan Oge_. Mr. Bridges' _Return\nof Ulysses_, one of the most beautiful and, as I think, dramatic of modern\nplays, might have some success in the Aran Islands, if the Gaelic League\nwould translate it into Gaelic, but I am quite certain that it would have\nno success in the Strand.\n\nBlake has said that all Art is a labour to bring again the Golden Age, and\nall culture is certainly a labour to bring again the simplicity of the\nfirst ages, with knowledge of good and evil added to it. The drama has\nneed of cities that it may find men in sufficient numbers, and cities\ndestroy the emotions to which it appeals, and therefore the days of the\ndrama are brief and come but seldom. It has one day when the emotions of\ncities still remember the emotions of sailors and husbandmen and shepherds\nand users of the spear and the bow; as the houses and furniture and\nearthen vessels of cities, before the coming of machinery, remember the\nrocks and the woods and the hillside; and it has another day, now\nbeginning, when thought and scholarship discover their desire. In the\nfirst day, it is the Art of the people; and in the second day, like the\ndramas acted of old times in the hidden places of temples, it is the\npreparation of a Priesthood. It may be, though the world is not old enough\nto show us any example, that this Priesthood will spread their Religion\neverywhere, and make their Art the Art of the people.\n\nWhen the first day of the drama had passed by, actors found that an always\nlarger number of people were more easily moved through the eyes than\nthrough the ears. The emotion that comes with the music of words is\nexhausting, like all intellectual emotions, and few people like exhausting\nemotions; and therefore actors began to speak as if they were reading\nsomething out of the newspapers. They forgot the noble art of oratory,\nand gave all their thought to the poor art of acting, that is content\nwith the sympathy of our nerves; until at last those who love poetry found\nit better to read alone in their rooms what they had once delighted to\nhear sitting friend by friend, lover by beloved. I once asked Mr. William\nMorris if he had thought of writing a play, and he answered that he had,\nbut would not write one, because actors did not know how to speak poetry\nwith the half-chant men spoke it with in old times. Mr. Swinburne's\n_Locrine_ was acted a month ago, and it was not badly acted, but nobody\ncould tell whether it was fit for the stage or not, for not one rhythm,\nnot one cry of passion, was spoken with a musical emphasis, and verse\nspoken without a musical emphasis seems but an artificial and cumbersome\nway of saying what might be said naturally and simply in prose.\n\nAs audiences and actors changed, managers learned to substitute\nmeretricious landscapes, painted upon wood and canvas, for the\ndescriptions of poetry, until the painted scenery, which had in Greece\nbeen a charming explanation of what was least important in the story,\nbecame as important as the story. It needed some imagination, some gift\nfor day-dreams, to see the horses and the fields and flowers of Colonus as\none listened to the elders gathered about OEdipus, or to see 'the\npendent bed and procreant cradle' of the 'martlet' as one listened to\nDuncan before the castle of Macbeth; but it needs no imagination to admire\na painting of one of the more obvious effects of nature painted by\nsomebody who understands how to show everything to the most hurried\nglance. At the same time the managers made the costumes of the actors more\nand more magnificent, that the mind might sleep in peace, while the eye\ntook pleasure in the magnificence of velvet and silk and in the physical\nbeauty of women. These changes gradually perfected the theatre of\ncommerce, the masterpiece of that movement towards externality in life and\nthought and Art, against which the criticism of our day is learning to\nprotest.\n\nEven if poetry were spoken as poetry, it would still seem out of place in\nmany of its highest moments upon a stage, where the superficial\nappearances of nature are so closely copied; for poetry is founded upon\nconvention, and becomes incredible the moment painting or gesture remind\nus that people do not speak verse when they meet upon the highway. The\ntheatre of Art, when it comes to exist, must therefore discover grave and\ndecorative gestures, such as delighted Rossetti and Madox Brown, and grave\nand decorative scenery, that will be forgotten the moment an actor has\nsaid 'It is dawn,' or 'It is raining,' or 'The wind is shaking the trees';\nand dresses of so little irrelevant magnificence that the mortal actors\nand actresses may change without much labour into the immortal people of\nromance. The theatre began in ritual, and it cannot come to its greatness\nagain without recalling words to their ancient sovereignty.\n\nIt will take a generation, and perhaps generations, to restore the theatre\nof Art; for one must get one's actors, and perhaps one's scenery, from the\ntheatre of commerce, until new actors and new painters have come to help\none; and until many failures and imperfect successes have made a new\ntradition, and perfected in detail the ideal that is beginning to float\nbefore our eyes. If one could call one's painters and one's actors from\nwhere one would, how easy it would be. I know some painters, who have\nnever painted scenery, who could paint the scenery I want, but they have\ntheir own work to do; and in Ireland I have heard a red-haired orator\nrepeat some bad political verses with a voice that went through one like\nflame, and made them seem the most beautiful verses in the world; but he\nhas no practical knowledge of the stage, and probably despises it.\n\nMay 1899.\n\n\nII\n\nDionysius, the Areopagite, wrote that 'He has set the borders of the\nnations according to His angels.' It is these angels, each one the genius\nof some race about to be unfolded, that are the founders of intellectual\ntraditions; and as lovers understand in their first glance all that is to\nbefall them, and as poets and musicians see the whole work in its first\nimpulse, so races prophesy at their awakening whatever the generations\nthat are to prolong their traditions shall accomplish in detail. It is\nonly at the awakening--as in ancient Greece, or in Elizabethan England, or\nin contemporary Scandinavia--that great numbers of men understand that a\nright understanding of life and of destiny is more important than\namusement. In London, where all the intellectual traditions gather to\ndie, men hate a play if they are told it is literature, for they will not\nendure a spiritual superiority; but in Athens, where so many intellectual\ntraditions were born, Euripides once changed hostility to enthusiasm by\nasking his playgoers whether it was his business to teach them, or their\nbusiness to teach him. New races understand instinctively, because the\nfuture cries in their ears, that the old revelations are insufficient, and\nthat all life is revelation beginning in miracle and enthusiasm, and dying\nout as it unfolds itself in what we have mistaken for progress. It is one\nof our illusions, as I think, that education, the softening of manners,\nthe perfecting of law--countless images of a fading light--can create\nnobleness and beauty, and that life moves slowly and evenly towards some\nperfection. Progress is miracle, and it is sudden, because miracles are\nthe work of an all-powerful energy, and nature in herself has no power\nexcept to die and to forget. If one studies one's own mind, one comes to\nthink with Blake, that 'every time less than a pulsation of the artery is\nequal to six thousand years, for in this period the poet's work is done;\nand all the great events of time start forth and are conceived in such a\nperiod, within a pulsation of the artery.'\n\nFebruary 1900.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CELTIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE\n\n\nI\n\nErnest Renan described what he held to be Celtic characteristics in _The\nPoetry of the Celtic Races_. I must repeat the well-known sentences: 'No\nrace communed so intimately as the Celtic race with the lower creation, or\nbelieved it to have so big a share of moral life.' The Celtic race had 'a\nrealistic naturalism,' 'a love of nature for herself, a vivid feeling for\nher magic, commingled with the melancholy a man knows when he is face to\nface with her, and thinks he hears her communing with him about his origin\nand his destiny.' 'It has worn itself out in mistaking dreams for\nrealities,' and 'compared with the classical imagination the Celtic\nimagination is indeed the infinite contrasted with the finite.' 'Its\nhistory is one long lament, it still recalls its exiles, its flights\nacross the seas.' 'If at times it seems to be cheerful, its tear is not\nslow to glisten behind the smile. Its songs of joy end as elegies; there\nis nothing to equal the delightful sadness of its national melodies.'\nMatthew Arnold, in _The Study of Celtic Literature_, has accepted this\npassion for nature, this imaginativeness, this melancholy, as Celtic\ncharacteristics, but has described them more elaborately. The Celtic\npassion for nature comes almost more from a sense of her 'mystery' than of\nher 'beauty,' and it adds 'charm and magic' to nature, and the Celtic\nimaginativeness and melancholy are alike 'a passionate, turbulent,\nindomitable reaction against the despotism of fact.' The Celt is not\nmelancholy, as Faust or Werther are melancholy, from 'a perfectly definite\nmotive,' but because of something about him 'unaccountable, defiant and\ntitanic.' How well one knows these sentences, better even than Renan's,\nand how well one knows the passages of prose and verse which he uses to\nprove that wherever English literature has the qualities these sentences\ndescribe, it has them from a Celtic source. Though I do not think any of\nus who write about Ireland have built any argument upon them, it is well\nto consider them a little, and see where they are helpful and where they\nare hurtful. If we do not, we may go mad some day, and the enemy root up\nour rose-garden and plant a cabbage-garden instead. Perhaps we must\nrestate a little, Renan's and Arnold's argument.\n\n\nII\n\nOnce every people in the world believed that trees were divine, and could\ntake a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that\ndeer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools,\nalmost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not\nless divine and changeable. They saw in the rainbow the still bent bow of\na god thrown down in his negligence; they heard in the thunder the sound\nof his beaten water-jar, or the tumult of his chariot wheels; and when a\nsudden flight of wild duck, or of crows, passed over their heads, they\nthought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest; while they\ndreamed of so great a mystery in little things that they believed the\nwaving of a hand, or of a sacred bough, enough to trouble far-off hearts,\nor hood the moon with darkness. All old literatures are full of these or\nof like imaginations, and all the poets of races, who have not lost this\nway of looking at things, could have said of themselves, as the poet of\nthe _Kalevala_ said of himself, 'I have learned my songs from the music of\nmany birds, and from the music of many waters.' When a mother in the\n_Kalevala_ weeps for a daughter, who was drowned flying from an old\nsuitor, she weeps so greatly that her tears become three rivers, and cast\nup three rocks, on which grow three birch-trees, where three cuckoos sit\nand sing, the one 'love, love,' the one 'suitor, suitor,' the one\n'consolation, consolation.' And the makers of the Sagas made the squirrel\nrun up and down the sacred ash-tree carrying words of hatred from the\neagle to the worm, and from the worm to the eagle; although they had less\nof the old way than the makers of the _Kalavala_, for they lived in a more\ncrowded and complicated world, and were learning the abstract meditation\nwhich lures men from visible beauty, and were unlearning, it may be, the\nimpassioned meditation which brings men beyond the edge of trance and\nmakes trees, and beasts, and dead things talk with human voices.\n\nThe old Irish and the old Welsh, though they had less of the old way than\nthe makers of the _Kalavala_, had more of it than the makers of the Sagas,\nand it is this that distinguishes the examples Matthew Arnold quotes of\ntheir 'natural magic,' of their sense of 'the mystery' more than of 'the\nbeauty' of nature. When Matthew Arnold wrote it was not easy to know as\nmuch as we know now of folk song and folk belief, and I do not think he\nunderstood that our 'natural magic' is but the ancient religion of the\nworld, the ancient worship of nature and that troubled ecstasy before her,\nthat certainty of all beautiful places being haunted, which it brought\ninto men's minds. The ancient religion is in that passage of the\n_Mabinogion_ about the making of 'Flower Aspect.' Gwydion and Math made\nher 'by charms and illusions' 'out of flowers.' 'They took the blossoms of\nthe oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the\nmeadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden the fairest and most\ngraceful that man ever saw; and they baptized her, and called her Flower\nAspect'; and one finds it in the not less beautiful passage about the\nburning Tree, that has half its beauty from calling up a fancy of leaves\nso living and beautiful, they can be of no less living and beautiful a\nthing than flame: 'They saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half\nof which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was\ngreen and in full leaf.' And one finds it very certainly in the quotations\nhe makes from English poets to prove a Celtic influence in English poetry;\nin Keats's 'magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in faery\nlands forlorn'; in his 'moving waters at their priest-like task of pure\nablution round earth's human shore'; in Shakespeare's 'floor of heaven,'\n'inlaid with patens of bright gold'; and in his Dido standing 'on the wild\nsea banks,' 'a willow in her hand,' and waving it in the ritual of the old\nworship of nature and the spirits of nature, to wave 'her love to come\nagain to Carthage.' And his other examples have the delight and wonder of\ndevout worshippers among the haunts of their divinities. Is there not such\ndelight and wonder in the description of Olwen in the _Mabinogion_: 'More\nyellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter\nthan the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than\nthe blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the spray of the meadow\nfountains.' And is there not such delight and wonder in--\n\n  'Meet we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,\n  By paved fountain or by rushy brook,\n  Or on the beached margent of the sea'?\n\nIf men had never dreamed that fair women could be made out of flowers, or\nrise up out of meadow fountains and paved fountains, neither passage could\nhave been written. Certainly, the descriptions of nature made in what\nMatthew Arnold calls 'the faithful way,' or in what he calls 'the Greek\nway,' would have lost nothing if all the meadow fountains or paved\nfountains were meadow fountains and paved fountains and nothing more. When\nKeats wrote, in the Greek way, which adds lightness and brightness to\nnature--\n\n  'What little town by river or sea-shore\n  Or mountain built with quiet citadel,\n  Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn';\n\nwhen Shakespeare wrote in the Greek way--\n\n  'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,\n  Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows';\n\nwhen Virgil wrote in the Greek way--\n\n  'Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,'\n\nand\n\n  'Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens\n  Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi';\n\nthey looked at nature without ecstasy, but with the affection a man feels\nfor the garden where he has walked daily and thought pleasant thoughts.\nThey looked at nature in the modern way, the way of people who are\npoetical, but are more interested in one another than in a nature which\nhas faded to be but friendly and pleasant, the way of people who have\nforgotten the ancient religion.\n\n\nIII\n\nMen who lived in a world where anything might flow and change, and become\nany other thing; and among great gods whose passions were in the flaming\nsunset, and in the thunder and the thunder-shower, had not our thoughts of\nweight and measure. They worshipped nature and the abundance of nature,\nand had always, as it seems, for a supreme ritual that tumultuous dance\namong the hills or in the depths of the woods, where unearthly ecstasy\nfell upon the dancers, until they seemed the gods or the godlike beasts,\nand felt their souls overtopping the moon; and, as some think, imagined\nfor the first time in the world the blessed country of the gods and of the\nhappy dead. They had imaginative passions because they did not live within\nour own strait limits, and were nearer to ancient chaos, every man's\ndesire, and had immortal models about them. The hare that ran by among the\ndew might have sat upon his haunches when the first man was made, and the\npoor bunch of rushes under their feet might have been a goddess laughing\namong the stars; and with but a little magic, a little waving of the\nhands, a little murmuring of the lips, they too could become a hare or a\nbunch of rushes, and know immortal love and immortal hatred.\n\nAll folk literature, and all literature that keeps the folk tradition,\ndelights in unbounded and immortal things. The _Kalevala_ delights in the\nseven hundred years that Luonaton wanders in the depths of the sea with\nW\u00e4in\u00e4m\u00f6inen in her womb, and the Mahomedan king in the Song of Roland,\npondering upon the greatness of Charlemagne, repeats over and over, 'He is\nthree hundred years old, when will he weary of war?' Cuchulain in the\nIrish folk tale had the passion of victory, and he overcame all men, and\ndied warring upon the waves, because they alone had the strength to\novercome him. The lover in the Irish folk song bids his beloved come with\nhim into the woods, and see the salmon leap in the rivers, and hear the\ncuckoo sing, because death will never find them in the heart of the woods.\nOisin, new come from his three hundred years of faeryland, and of the love\nthat is in faeryland, bids St. Patrick cease his prayers a while and\nlisten to the blackbird, because it is the blackbird of Darrycarn that\nFinn brought from Norway, three hundred years before, and set its nest\nupon the oak-tree with his own hands. Surely if one goes far enough into\nthe woods, one will find there all that one is seeking? Who knows how many\ncenturies the birds of the woods have been singing?\n\nAll folk literature has indeed a passion whose like is not in modern\nliterature and music and art, except where it has come by some straight\nor crooked way out of ancient times. Love was held to be a fatal sickness\nin ancient Ireland, and there is a love-poem in _The Songs of Connacht_\nthat is like a death cry: 'My love, O she is my love, the woman who is\nmost for destroying me, dearer is she for making me ill than the woman who\nwould be for making me well. She is my treasure, O she is my treasure, the\nwoman of the grey eyes ... a woman who would not lay a hand under my\nhead.... She is my love, O she is my love, the woman who left no strength\nin me; a woman who would not breathe a sigh after me, a woman who would\nnot raise a stone at my tomb.... She is my secret love, O she is my secret\nlove. A woman who tells me nothing,... a woman who does not remember me\nto be out.... She is my choice, O she is my choice, the woman who would\nnot look back at me, the woman who would not make peace with me.... She is\nmy desire, O she is my desire: a woman dearest to me under the sun, a\nwoman who would not pay me heed, if I were to sit by her side. It is she\nruined my heart and left a sigh for ever in me.' There is another song\nthat ends, 'The Erne shall be in strong flood, the hills shall be torn\ndown, and the sea shall have red waves, and blood shall be spilled, and\nevery mountain valley and every moor shall be on high, before you shall\nperish, my little black rose.' Nor do the old Irish weigh and measure\ntheir hatred. The nurse of O'Sullivan Bere in the folk song prays that the\nbed of his betrayer may be the red hearth-stone of hell for ever. And an\nElizabethan Irish poet cries: 'Three things are waiting for my death. The\ndevil, who is waiting for my soul and cares nothing for my body or my\nwealth; the worms, who are waiting for my body but care nothing for my\nsoul or my wealth; my children, who are waiting for my wealth and care\nnothing for my body or my soul. O Christ, hang all three in the one\nnoose.' Such love and hatred seek no mortal thing but their own infinity,\nand such love and hatred soon become love and hatred of the idea. The\nlover who loves so passionately can soon sing to his beloved like the\nlover in the poem by 'A. E.,' 'A vast desire awakes and grows into\nforgetfulness of thee.'\n\nWhen an early Irish poet calls the Irishman famous for much loving, and a\nproverb, a friend has heard in the Highlands of Scotland, talks of the\nlovelessness of the Irishman, they may say but the same thing, for if your\npassion is but great enough it leads you to a country where there are many\ncloisters. The hater who hates with too good a heart soon comes also to\nhate the idea only; and from this idealism in love and hatred comes, as I\nthink, a certain power of saying and forgetting things, especially a power\nof saying and forgetting things in politics, which others do not say and\nforget. The ancient farmers and herdsmen were full of love and hatred,\nand made their friends gods, and their enemies the enemies of gods, and\nthose who keep their tradition are not less mythological. From this\n'mistaking dreams,' which are perhaps essences, for 'realities' which are\nperhaps accidents, from this 'passionate, turbulent reaction against the\ndespotism of fact,' comes, it may be, that melancholy which made all\nancient peoples delight in tales that end in death and parting, as modern\npeoples delight in tales that end in marriage bells; and made all ancient\npeoples, who like the old Irish had a nature more lyrical than dramatic,\ndelight in wild and beautiful lamentations. Life was so weighed down by\nthe emptiness of the great forests and by the mystery of all things, and\nby the greatness of its own desires, and, as I think, by the loneliness of\nmuch beauty; and seemed so little and so fragile and so brief, that\nnothing could be more sweet in the memory than a tale that ended in death\nand parting, and than a wild and beautiful lamentation. Men did not mourn\nmerely because their beloved was married to another, or because learning\nwas bitter in the mouth, for such mourning believes that life might be\nhappy were it different, and is therefore the less mourning; but because\nthey had been born and must die with their great thirst unslaked. And so\nit is that all the august sorrowful persons of literature, Cassandra and\nHelen and Deirdre, and Lear and Tristan, have come out of legends and are\nindeed but the images of the primitive imagination mirrored in the little\nlooking-glass of the modern and classic imagination. This is that\n'melancholy a man knows when he is face to face' with nature, and thinks\n'he hears her communing with him about' the mournfulness of being born and\nof dying; and how can it do otherwise than call into his mind 'its exiles,\nits flights across the seas,' that it may stir the ever-smouldering ashes?\nNo Gaelic poetry is so popular in Gaelic-speaking places as the\nlamentations of Oisin, old and miserable, remembering the companions and\nthe loves of his youth, and his three hundred years in faeryland, and his\nfaery love: all dreams withering in the winds of time lament in his\nlamentations: 'The clouds are long above me this night; last night was a\nlong night to me; although I find this day long, yesterday was still\nlonger. Every day that comes to me is long.... No one in this great world\nis like me--a poor old man dragging stones. The clouds are long above me\nthis night. I am the last man of the Fianna, the great Oisin, the son of\nFinn, listening to the sound of bells. The clouds are long above me this\nnight.' Matthew Arnold quotes the lamentation of Leyrach Hen as a type of\nthe Celtic melancholy, but I prefer to quote it as a type of the primitive\nmelancholy; 'O my crutch, is it not autumn when the fern is red and the\nwater flag yellow? Have I not hated that which I love?... Behold, old age,\nwhich makes sport of me, from the hair of my head and my teeth, to my\neyes which women loved. The four things I have all my life most hated fall\nupon me together--coughing and old age, sickness and sorrow. I am old, I\nam alone, shapeliness and warmth are gone from me, the couch of honour\nshall be no more mine; I am miserable, I am bent on my crutch. How evil\nwas the lot allotted to Leyrach, the night he was brought forth! Sorrows\nwithout end and no deliverance from his burden.' An Elizabethan writer\ndescribes extravagant sorrow by calling it 'to weep Irish'; and Oisin and\nLeyrach Hen are, I think, a little nearer even to us modern Irish than\nthey are to most people. That is why our poetry and much of our thought is\nmelancholy. 'The same man,' writes Dr. Hyde in the beautiful prose which\nhe first writes in Gaelic, 'who will to-day be dancing, sporting,\ndrinking, and shouting, will be soliloquizing by himself to-morrow, heavy\nand sick and sad in his own lonely little hut, making a croon over\ndeparted hopes, lost life, the vanity of this world, and the coming of\ndeath.'\n\n\nIV\n\nMatthew Arnold asks how much of the Celt must one imagine in the ideal man\nof genius. I prefer to say, how much of the ancient hunters and fishers\nand of the ecstatic dancers among hills and woods must one imagine in the\nideal man of genius. Certainly a thirst for unbounded emotion and a wild\nmelancholy are troublesome things in the world, and do not make its life\nmore easy or orderly, but it may be the arts are founded on the life\nbeyond the world, and that they must cry in the ears of our penury until\nthe world has been consumed and become a vision. Certainly, as Samuel\nPalmer wrote, 'Excess is the vivifying spirit of the finest art, and we\nmust always seek to make excess more abundantly excessive.' Matthew Arnold\nhas said that if he were asked 'where English got its turn for melancholy\nand its turn for natural magic,' he 'would answer with little doubt that\nit got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source, with no doubt at all\nthat from a Celtic source is got nearly all its natural magic.'\n\nI will put this differently and say that literature dwindles to a mere\nchronicle of circumstance, or passionless phantasies, and passionless\nmeditations, unless it is constantly flooded with the passions and beliefs\nof ancient times, and that of all the fountains of the passions and\nbeliefs of ancient times in Europe, the Sclavonic, the Finnish, the\nScandinavian, and the Celtic, the Celtic alone has been for centuries\nclose to the main river of European literature. It has again and again\nbrought 'the vivifying spirit' 'of excess' into the arts of Europe. Ernest\nRenan has told how the visions of purgatory seen by pilgrims to Lough\nDerg--once visions of the pagan under-world, as the boat made out of a\nhollow tree that bore the pilgrim to the holy island were alone enough to\nprove--gave European thought new symbols of a more abundant penitence; and\nhad so great an influence that he has written, 'It cannot be doubted for a\nmoment that to the number of poetical themes Europe owes to the genius of\nthe Celt is to be added the framework of the divine comedy.'\n\nA little later the legends of Arthur and his table, and of the Holy Grail,\nonce it seems the cauldron of an Irish God, changed the literature of\nEurope, and it may be changed, as it were, the very roots of man's\nemotions by their influence on the spirit of chivalry and on the spirit of\nromance; and later still Shakespeare found his Mab, and probably his Puck,\nand one knows not how much else of his faery kingdom, in Celtic legend;\nwhile at the beginning of our own day Sir Walter Scott gave Highland\nlegends and Highland excitability so great a mastery over all romance\nthat they seem romance herself.\n\nIn our own time Scandinavian tradition, because of the imagination of\nRichard Wagner and of William Morris and of the earlier and, as I think,\ngreater Heinrich Ibsen, has created a new romance, and through the\nimagination of Richard Wagner, become all but the most passionate element\nin the arts of the modern world. There is indeed but one other element as\npassionate, the still unfaded legends of Arthur and of the Holy Grail; and\nnow a new fountain of legends, and, as I think, a more abundant fountain\nthan any in Europe, is being opened, the great fountain of Gaelic legends;\nthe tale of Deirdre, who alone among the women who have set men mad was at\nonce the white flame and the red flame, wisdom and loveliness; the tale of\nthe Sons of Tuireann, with its unintelligible mysteries, an old Grail\nQuest as I think; the tale of the four children changed into four swans,\nand lamenting over many waters; the tale of the love of Cuchulain for an\nimmortal goddess, and his coming home to a mortal woman in the end; the\ntale of his many battles at the ford with that dear friend he kissed\nbefore the battles, and over whose dead body he wept when he had killed\nhim; the tale of his death and of the lamentations of Emer; the tale of\nthe flight of Grainne with Diarmuid, strangest of all tales of the\nfickleness of woman, and the tale of the coming of Oisin out of faeryland,\nand of his memories and lamentations. 'The Celtic movement,' as I\nunderstand it, is principally the opening of this fountain, and none can\nmeasure of how great importance it may be to coming times, for every new\nfountain of legends is a new intoxication for the imagination of the\nworld. It comes at a time when the imagination of the world is as ready,\nas it was at the coming of the tales of Arthur and of the Grail, for a\nnew intoxication. The reaction against the rationalism of the eighteenth\ncentury has mingled with a reaction against the materialism of the\nnineteenth century, and the symbolical movement, which has come to\nperfection in Germany in Wagner, in England in the Pre-Raphaelites, and in\nFrance in Villiers De l'Isle Adam, and Mallarm\u00e9, and Maeterlinck, and has\nstirred the imagination of Ibsen and D'Annunzio, is certainly the only\nmovement that is saying new things. The arts by brooding upon their own\nintensity have become religious, and are seeking, as I think Verhaeren has\nsaid, to create a sacred book. They must, as religious thought has always\ndone, utter themselves through legends; and the Sclavonic and Finnish\nlegends tell of strange woods and seas, and the Scandinavian legends are\nheld by a great master, and tell also of strange woods and seas, and the\nWelsh legends are held by almost as many great masters as the Greek\nlegends, while the Irish legends move among known woods and seas, and\nhave so much of a new beauty, that they may well give the opening century\nits most memorable symbols.\n\n1897.\n\n\nI could have written this essay with much more precision and have much\nbetter illustrated my meaning if I had waited until Lady Gregory had\nfinished her book of legends, _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, a book to set\nbeside the _Morte D'Arthur_ and the _Mabinogion_.\n\n1902.\n\n\n\n\nTHE AUTUMN OF THE BODY\n\n\nOur thoughts and emotions are often but spray flung up from hidden tides\nthat follow a moon no eye can see. I remember that when I first began to\nwrite I desired to describe outward things as vividly as possible, and\ntook pleasure, in which there was, perhaps, a little discontent, in\npicturesque and declamatory books. And then quite suddenly I lost the\ndesire of describing outward things, and found that I took little pleasure\nin a book unless it was spiritual and unemphatic. I did not then\nunderstand that the change was from beyond my own mind, but I understand\nnow that writers are struggling all over Europe, though not often with a\nphilosophic understanding of their struggle, against that picturesque and\ndeclamatory way of writing, against that 'externality' which a time of\nscientific and political thought has brought into literature. This\nstruggle has been going on for some years, but it has only just become\nstrong enough to draw within itself the little inner world which alone\nseeks more than amusement in the arts. In France, where movements are more\nmarked, because the people are pre-eminently logical, _The Temptation of\nS. Anthony_, the last great dramatic invention of the old romanticism,\ncontrasts very plainly with _Ax\u00ebl_, the first great dramatic invention of\nthe new; and Maeterlinck has followed Count Villiers de l'Isle Adam.\nFlaubert wrote unforgettable descriptions of grotesque, bizarre, and\nbeautiful scenes and persons, as they show to the ear and to the eye, and\ncrowded them with historic and ethnographical details; but Count Villiers\nde l'Isle Adam swept together, by what seemed a sudden energy, words\nbehind which glimmered a spiritual and passionate mood, as the flame\nglimmers behind the dusky blue and red glass in an Eastern lamp; and\ncreated persons from whom has fallen all even of personal characteristic\nexcept a thirst for that hour when all things shall pass away like a\ncloud, and a pride like that of the Magi following their star over many\nmountains; while Maeterlinck has plucked away even this thirst and this\npride and set before us faint souls, naked and pathetic shadows already\nhalf vapour and sighing to one another upon the border of the last abyss.\nThere has been, as I think, a like change in French painting, for one sees\neverywhere, instead of the dramatic stories and picturesque moments of an\nolder school, frail and tremulous bodies unfitted for the labour of life,\nand landscape where subtle rhythms of colour and of form have overcome the\nclear outline of things as we see them in the labour of life.\n\nThere has been a like change in England, but it has come more gradually\nand is more mixed with lesser changes than in France. The poetry which\nfound its expression in the poems of writers like Browning and of\nTennyson, and even of writers, who are seldom classed with them, like\nSwinburne, and like Shelley in his earlier years, pushed its limits as far\nas possible, and tried to absorb into itself the science and politics, the\nphilosophy and morality of its time; but a new poetry, which is always\ncontracting its limits, has grown up under the shadow of the old. Rossetti\nbegan it, but was too much of a painter in his poetry to follow it with a\nperfect devotion; and it became a movement when Mr. Lang and Mr. Gosse and\nMr. Dobson devoted themselves to the most condensed of lyric poems, and\nwhen Mr. Bridges, a more considerable poet, elaborated a rhythm too\ndelicate for any but an almost bodiless emotion, and repeated over and\nover the most ancient notes of poetry, and none but these. The poets who\nfollowed have either, like Mr. Kipling, turned from serious poetry\naltogether, and so passed out of the processional order, or speak out of\nsome personal or spiritual passion in words and types and metaphors that\ndraw one's imagination as far as possible from the complexities of modern\nlife and thought. The change has been more marked in English painting,\nwhich, when intense enough to belong to the procession order, began to\ncast out things, as they are seen by minds plunged in the labour of life,\nso much before French painting that ideal art is sometimes called English\nart upon the Continent.\n\nI see, indeed, in the arts of every country those faint lights and faint\ncolours and faint outlines and faint energies which many call 'the\ndecadence,' and which I, because I believe that the arts lie dreaming of\nthings to come, prefer to call the autumn of the body. An Irish poet whose\nrhythms are like the cry of a sea-bird in autumn twilight has told its\nmeaning in the line, 'The very sunlight's weary, and it's time to quit the\nplough.' Its importance is the greater because it comes to us at the\nmoment when we are beginning to be interested in many things which\npositive science, the interpreter of exterior law, has always denied:\ncommunion of mind with mind in thought and without words, foreknowledge in\ndreams and in visions, and the coming among us of the dead, and of much\nelse. We are, it may be, at a crowning crisis of the world, at the moment\nwhen man is about to ascend, with the wealth, he has been so long\ngathering, upon his shoulders, the stairway he has been descending from\nthe first days. The first poets, if one may find their images in the\n_Kalevala_, had not Homer's preoccupation with things, and he was not so\nfull of their excitement as Virgil. Dante added to poetry a dialectic\nwhich, although he made it serve his laborious ecstasy, was the invention\nof minds trained by the labour of life, by a traffic among many things,\nand not a spontaneous expression of an interior life; while Shakespeare\nshattered the symmetry of verse and of drama that he might fill them with\nthings and their accidental relations to one another.\n\nEach of these writers had come further down the stairway than those who\nhad lived before him, but it was only with the modern poets, with Goethe\nand Wordsworth and Browning, that poetry gave up the right to consider all\nthings in the world as a dictionary of types and symbols and began to call\nitself a critic of life and an interpreter of things as they are.\nPainting, music, science, politics, and even religion, because they have\nfelt a growing belief that we know nothing but the fading and flowering of\nthe world, have changed in numberless elaborate ways. Man has wooed and\nwon the world, and has fallen weary, and not, I think, for a time, but\nwith a weariness that will not end until the last autumn, when the stars\nshall be blown away like withered leaves. He grew weary when he said,\n'These things that I touch and see and hear are alone real,' for he saw\nthem without illusion at last, and found them but air and dust and\nmoisture. And now he must be philosophical above everything, even about\nthe arts, for he can only return the way he came, and so escape from\nweariness, by philosophy. The arts are, I believe, about to take upon\ntheir shoulders the burdens that have fallen from the shoulders of\npriests, and to lead us back upon our journey by filling our thoughts with\nthe essences of things, and not with things. We are about to substitute\nonce more the distillation of alchemy for the analyses of chemistry and\nfor some other sciences; and certain of us are looking everywhere for the\nperfect alembic that no silver or golden drop may escape. Mr. Symons has\nwritten lately on M. Mallarm\u00e9's method, and has quoted him as saying that\nwe should 'abolish the pretension, \u00e6sthetically an error, despite its\ndominion over almost all the masterpieces, to enclose within the subtle\npages other than--for example--the horror of the forest or the silent\nthunder in the leaves, not the intense dense wood of the trees,' and as\ndesiring to substitute for the old lyric afflatus or the enthusiastic\npersonal direction of the phrase' words 'that take light from mutual\nreflection, like an actual trail of fire over precious stones,' and 'to\nmake an entire word hitherto unknown to the language' 'out of many\nvocables.' Mr. Symons understands these and other sentences to mean that\npoetry will henceforth be a poetry of essences, separated one from another\nin little and intense poems. I think there will be much poetry of this\nkind, because of an ever more arduous search for an almost disembodied\necstasy, but I think we will not cease to write long poems, but rather\nthat we will write them more and more as our new belief makes the world\nplastic under our hands again. I think that we will learn again how to\ndescribe at great length an old man wandering among enchanted islands,\nhis return home at last, his slow-gathering vengeance, a flitting shape of\na goddess, and a flight of arrows, and yet to make all of these so\ndifferent things 'take light by mutual reflection, like an actual trail of\nfire over precious stones,' and become 'an entire word,' the signature or\nsymbol of a mood of the divine imagination as imponderable as 'the horror\nof the forest or the silent thunder in the leaves.'\n\n1898.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOODS\n\n\nLiterature differs from explanatory and scientific writing in being\nwrought about a mood, or a community of moods, as the body is wrought\nabout an invisible soul; and if it uses argument, theory, erudition,\nobservation, and seems to grow hot in assertion or denial, it does so\nmerely to make us partakers at the banquet of the moods. It seems to me\nthat these moods are the labourers and messengers of the Ruler of All, the\ngods of ancient days still dwelling on their secret Olympus, the angels of\nmore modern days ascending and descending upon their shining ladder; and\nthat argument, theory, erudition, observation, are merely what Blake\ncalled 'little devils who fight for themselves,' illusions of our visible\npassing life, who must be made serve the moods, or we have no part in\neternity. Everything that can be seen, touched, measured, explained,\nunderstood, argued over, is to the imaginative artist nothing more than a\nmeans, for he belongs to the invisible life, and delivers its ever new and\never ancient revelation. We hear much of his need for the restraints of\nreason, but the only restraint he can obey is the mysterious instinct that\nhas made him an artist, and that teaches him to discover immortal moods in\nmortal desires, an undecaying hope in our trivial ambitions, a divine love\nin sexual passion.\n\n1895.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BODY OF THE FATHER CHRISTIAN ROSENCRUX\n\n\nThe followers of the Father Christian Rosencrux, says the old tradition,\nwrapped his imperishable body in noble raiment and laid it under the house\nof their order, in a tomb containing the symbols of all things in heaven\nand earth, and in the waters under the earth, and set about him\ninextinguishable magical lamps, which burnt on generation after\ngeneration, until other students of the order came upon the tomb by\nchance. It seems to me that the imagination has had no very different\nhistory during the last two hundred years, but has been laid in a great\ntomb of criticism, and had set over it inextinguishable magical lamps of\nwisdom and romance, and has been altogether so nobly housed and apparelled\nthat we have forgotten that its wizard lips are closed, or but opened for\nthe complaining of some melancholy and ghostly voice. The ancients and\nthe Elizabethans abandoned themselves to imagination as a woman abandons\nherself to love, and created great beings who made the people of this\nworld seem but shadows, and great passions which made our loves and\nhatreds appear but ephemeral and trivial phantasies; but now it is not the\ngreat persons, or the great passions we imagine, which absorb us, for the\npersons and passions in our poems are mainly reflections our mirror has\ncaught from older poems or from the life about us, but the wise comments\nwe make upon them, the criticism of life we wring from their fortunes.\nArthur and his Court are nothing, but the many-coloured lights that play\nabout them are as beautiful as the lights from cathedral windows; Pompilia\nand Guido are but little, while the ever-recurring meditations and\nexpositions which climax in the mouth of the Pope are among the wisest of\nthe Christian age. I cannot get it out of my mind that this age of\ncriticism is about to pass, and an age of imagination, of emotion, of\nmoods, of revelation, about to come in its place; for certainly belief in\na supersensual world is at hand again; and when the notion that we are\n'phantoms of the earth and water' has gone down the wind, we will trust\nour own being and all it desires to invent; and when the external world is\nno more the standard of reality, we will learn again that the great\nPassions are angels of God, and that to embody them 'uncurbed in their\neternal glory,' even in their labour for the ending of man's peace and\nprosperity, is more than to comment, however wisely, upon the tendencies\nof our time, or to express the socialistic, or humanitarian, or other\nforces of our time, or even 'to sum up' our time, as the phrase is; for\nArt is a revelation, and not a criticism, and the life of the artist is in\nthe old saying, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the\nsound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth;\nso is every one that is born of the spirit.'\n\n1895.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RETURN OF ULYSSES\n\n\nI\n\nM. Maeterlinck, in his beautiful _Treasure of the Humble_, compares the\ndramas of our stage to the paintings of an obsolete taste; and the dramas\nof the stage for which he hopes, to the paintings of a taste that cannot\nbecome obsolete. 'The true artist,' he says, 'no longer chooses Marius\ntriumphing over the Cimbrians, or the assassination of the Duke of Guise,\nas fit subjects for his art; for he is well aware that the psychology of\nvictory or murder is but elementary and exceptional, and that the solemn\nvoice of men and things, the voice that issues forth so timidly and\nhesitatingly, cannot be heard amidst the idle uproar of acts of violence.\nAnd therefore will he place on his canvas a house lost in the heart of the\ncountry, a door open at the end of a passage, a face or hands at rest.' I\ndo not understand him to mean that our dramas should have no victories or\nmurders, for he quotes for our example plays that have both, but only that\ntheir victories and murders shall not be to excite our nerves, but to\nillustrate the reveries of a wisdom which shall be as much a part of the\ndaily life of the wise as a face or hands at rest. And certainly the\ngreater plays of the past ages have been built after such a fashion. If\nthis fashion is about to become our fashion also, and there are signs that\nit is, plays like some of Mr. Robert Bridges will come out of that\nobscurity into which all poetry, that is not lyrical poetry, has fallen,\nand even popular criticism will begin to know something about them. Some\nday the few among us, who care for poetry more than any temporal thing,\nand who believe that its delights cannot be perfect when we read it alone\nin our rooms and long for one to share its delights, but that they might\nbe perfect in the theatre, when we share them friend with friend, lover\nwith beloved, will persuade a few idealists to seek out the lost art of\nspeaking, and seek out ourselves the lost art, that is perhaps nearest of\nall arts to eternity, the subtle art of listening. When that day comes we\nwill talk much of Mr. Bridges; for did he not write scrupulous, passionate\npoetry to be sung and to be spoken, when there were few to sing and as yet\nnone to speak? There is one play especially, _The Return of Ulysses_,\nwhich we will praise for perfect after its kind, the kind of our new drama\nof wisdom, for it moulds into dramatic shape, and with as much as possible\nof literal translation, those closing books of the Odyssey which are\nperhaps the most perfect poetry of the world, and compels that great tide\nof song to flow through delicate dramatic verse, with little abatement of\nits own leaping and clamorous speed. As I read, the gathering passion\noverwhelms me, as it did when Homer himself was the singer, and when I\nread at last the lines in which the maid describes to Penelope the battle\nwith the suitors, at which she looks through the open door, I tremble\nwith excitement.\n\n  '_Penelope_: Alas! what cries! Say, is the prince still safe?\n\n  _The Maid_: He shieldeth himself well, and striketh surely;\n  His foes fall down before him. Ah! now what can I see?\n  Who cometh? Lo! a dazzling helm, a spear\n  Of silver or electron; sharp and swift\n  The piercings. How they fall! Ha! shields are raised\n  In vain. I am blinded, or the beggar-man\n  Hath waxed in strength. He is changed, he is young. O strange!\n  He is all in golden armour. These are gods\n  That slay the suitors. (_Runs to Penelope._) O lady, forgive me.\n  Tis Ares' self. I saw his crisp\u00e8d beard;\n  I saw beneath his helm his curl\u00e8d locks.'\n\nThe coming of Athene helmed 'in silver or electron' and her transformation\nof Ulysses are not, as the way is with the only modern dramas that popular\ncriticism holds to be dramatic, the climax of an excitement of the nerves,\nbut of that unearthly excitement which has wisdom for fruit, and is of\nlike kind with the ecstasy of the seers, an altar flame, unshaken by the\nwinds of the world, and burning every moment with whiter and purer\nbrilliance.\n\nMr. Bridges has written it in what is practically the classical manner, as\nhe has done in _Achilles in Scyros_--a placid and charming setting for\nmany placid and charming lyrics--\n\n  'And ever we keep a feast of delight\n  The betrothal of hearts, when spirits unite,\n  Creating an offspring of joy, a treasure\n      Unknown to the bad, for whom\n      The gods foredoom\n      The glitter of pleasure\n      And a dark tomb.'\n\nThe poet who writes best in the Shakespearian manner is a poet with a\ncircumstantial and instinctive mind, who delights to speak with strange\nvoices and to see his mind in the mirror of Nature; while Mr. Bridges,\nlike most of us to-day, has a lyrical and meditative mind, and delights to\nspeak with his own voice and to see Nature in the mirror of his mind. In\nreading his plays in a Shakespearian manner, I find that he is constantly\narranging his story in such and such a way because he has read that the\npersons he is writing of did such and such things, and not because his\nsoul has passed into the soul of their world and understood its\nunchangeable destinies. His _Return of Ulysses_ is admirable in beauty,\nbecause its classical gravity of speech, which does not, like\nShakespeare's verse, desire the vivacity of common life, purifies and\nsubdues all passion into lyrical and meditative ecstasies, and because the\nunity of place and time in the late acts compels a logical rather than\ninstinctive procession of incidents; and if the Shakespearian _Nero:\nSecond Part_ approaches it in beauty and in dramatic power, it is because\nit eddies about Nero and Seneca, who had both, to a great extent, lyrical\nand meditative minds. Had Mr. Bridges been a true Shakespearian, the pomp\nand glory of the world would have drowned that subtle voice that speaks\namid our heterogeneous lives of a life lived in obedience to a lonely and\ndistinguished ideal.\n\n\nII\n\nThe more a poet rids his verses of heterogeneous knowledge and irrelevant\nanalysis, and purifies his mind with elaborate art, the more does the\nlittle ritual of his verse resemble the great ritual of Nature, and become\nmysterious and inscrutable. He becomes, as all the great mystics have\nbelieved, a vessel of the creative power of God; and whether he be a great\npoet or a small poet, we can praise the poems, which but seem to be his,\nwith the extremity of praise that we give this great ritual which is but\ncopied from the same eternal model. There is poetry that is like the white\nlight of noon, and poetry that has the heaviness of woods, and poetry that\nhas the golden light of dawn or of sunset; and I find in the poetry of\nMr. Bridges in the plays, but still more in the lyrics, the pale colours,\nthe delicate silence, the low murmurs of cloudy country days, when the\nplough is in the earth, and the clouds darkening towards sunset; and had I\nthe great gift of praising, I would praise it as I would praise these\nthings.\n\n1896.\n\n\n\n\nIRELAND AND THE ARTS\n\n\nThe arts have failed; fewer people are interested in them every\ngeneration. The mere business of living, of making money, of amusing\noneself, occupies people more and more, and makes them less and less\ncapable of the difficult art of appreciation. When they buy a picture it\ngenerally shows a long-current idea, or some conventional form that can be\nadmired in that lax mood one admires a fine carriage in or fine horses in;\nand when they buy a book it is so much in the manner of the picture that\nit is forgotten, when its moment is over, as a glass of wine is forgotten.\nWe who care deeply about the arts find ourselves the priesthood of an\nalmost forgotten faith, and we must, I think, if we would win the people\nagain, take upon ourselves the method and the fervour of a priesthood. We\nmust be half humble and half proud. We see the perfect more than others,\nit may be, but we must find the passions among the people. We must\nbaptize as well as preach.\n\nThe makers of religions have established their ceremonies, their form of\nart, upon fear of death, on the hope of the father in his child, upon the\nlove of man and woman. They have even gathered into their ceremonies the\nceremonies of more ancient faiths, for fear a grain of the dust turned\ninto crystal in some past fire, a passion that had mingled with the\nreligious idea, might perish if the ancient ceremony perished. They have\nrenamed wells and images and given new meanings to ceremonies of spring\nand midsummer and harvest. In very early days the arts were so possessed\nby this method that they were almost inseparable from religion, going side\nby side with it into all life. But, to-day, they have grown, as I think,\ntoo proud, too anxious to live alone with the perfect, and so one sees\nthem, as I think, like charioteers standing by deserted chariots and\nholding broken reins in their hands, or seeking to go upon their way drawn\nby the one passion which alone remains to them out of the passions of the\nworld. We should not blame them, but rather a mysterious tendency in\nthings which will have its end some day. In England, men like William\nMorris, seeing about them passions so long separated from the perfect that\nit seemed as if they could not be changed until society had been changed,\ntried to unite the arts once more to life by uniting them to use. They\nadvised painters to paint fewer pictures upon canvas, and to burn more of\nthem on plates; and they tried to persuade sculptors that a candlestick\nmight be as beautiful as a statue. But here in Ireland, when the arts have\ngrown humble, they will find two passions ready to their hands, love of\nthe Unseen Life and love of country. I would have a devout writer or\npainter often content himself with subjects taken from his religious\nbeliefs; and if his religious beliefs are those of the majority, he may at\nlast move hearts in every cottage. While even if his religious beliefs are\nthose of some minority, he will have a better welcome than if he wrote of\nthe rape of Persephone, or painted the burning of Shelley's body. He will\nhave founded his work on a passion which will bring him to many besides\nthose who have been trained to care for beautiful things by a special\neducation. If he is a painter or a sculptor he will find churches awaiting\nhis hand everywhere, and if he follows the masters of his craft our other\npassion will come into his work also, for he will show his Holy Family\nwinding among hills like those of Ireland, and his Bearer of the Cross\namong faces copied from the faces of his own town. Our art teachers should\nurge their pupils into this work, for I can remember, when I was myself a\nDublin art student, how I used to despond, when eagerness burned low, as\nit always must now and then, at seeing no market at all.\n\nBut I would rather speak to those who, while moved in other things than\nthe arts by love of country, are beginning to write, as I was some sixteen\nyears ago, without any decided impulse to one thing more than another, and\nespecially to those who are convinced, as I was convinced, that art is\ntribeless, nationless, a blossom gathered in No Man's Land. The Greeks,\nthe only perfect artists of the world, looked within their own borders,\nand we, like them, have a history fuller than any modern history of\nimaginative events; and legends which surpass, as I think, all legends but\ntheirs in wild beauty, and in our land, as in theirs, there is no river or\nmountain that is not associated in the memory with some event or legend;\nwhile political reasons have made love of country, as I think, even\ngreater among us than among them. I would have our writers and craftsmen\nof many kinds master this history and these legends, and fix upon their\nmemory the appearance of mountains and rivers and make it all visible\nagain in their arts, so that Irishmen, even though they had gone thousands\nof miles away, would still be in their own country. Whether they chose for\nthe subject the carrying off of the Brown Bull, or the coming of Patrick,\nor the political struggle of later times, the other world comes so much\ninto it all that their love of it would move in their hands also, and as\nmuch, it may be, as in the hands of the Greek craftsmen. In other words, I\nwould have Ireland recreate the ancient arts, the arts as they were\nunderstood in Jud\u00e6a, in India, in Scandinavia, in Greece and Rome, in\nevery ancient land; as they were understood when they moved a whole people\nand not a few people who have grown up in a leisured class and made this\nunderstanding their business.\n\nI think that my reader[2] will have agreed with most that I have said up\ntill now, for we all hope for arts like these. I think indeed I first\nlearned to hope for them myself in Young Ireland Societies, or in reading\nthe essays of Davis. An Englishman, with his belief in progress, with his\ninstinctive preference for the cosmopolitan literature of the last\ncentury, may think arts like these parochial, but they are the arts we\nhave begun the making of.\n\nI will not, however, have all my readers with me when I say that no\nwriter, no artist, even though he choose Brian Boroihme or S. Patrick for\nhis subject, should try to make his work popular. Once he has chosen a\nsubject he must think of nothing but giving it such an expression as will\nplease himself. As Walt Whitman has written--\n\n  'The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress,\n      not to the audience:\n  And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own or the\n      indication of his own.'\n\nHe must make his work a part of his own journey towards beauty and truth.\nHe must picture saint or hero, or hillside, as he sees them, not as he is\nexpected to see them, and he must comfort himself, when others cry out\nagainst what he has seen, by remembering that no two men are alike, and\nthat there is no 'excellent beauty without strangeness.' In this matter he\nmust be without humility. He may, indeed, doubt the reality of his vision\nif men do not quarrel with him as they did with the Apostles, for there is\nonly one perfection and only one search for perfection, and it sometimes\nhas the form of the religious life and sometimes of the artistic life; and\nI do not think these lives differ in their wages, for 'The end of art is\npeace,' and out of the one as out of the other comes the cry: _Sero te\namavi, Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova! Sero te amavi!_\n\nThe Catholic Church is not the less the Church of the people because the\nMass is spoken in Latin, and art is not less the art of the people\nbecause it does not always speak in the language they are used to. I once\nheard my friend Mr. Ellis say, speaking at a celebration in honour of a\nwriter whose fame had not come till long after his death, 'It is not the\nbusiness of a poet to make himself understood, but it is the business of\nthe people to understand him. That they are at last compelled to do so is\nthe proof of his authority.' And certainly if you take from art its\nmartyrdom, you will take from it its glory. It might still reflect the\npassing modes of mankind, but it would cease to reflect the face of God.\n\nIf our craftsmen were to choose their subjects under what we may call, if\nwe understand faith to mean that belief in a spiritual life which is not\nconfined to one Church, the persuasion of their faith and their country,\nthey would soon discover that although their choice seemed arbitrary at\nfirst, it had obeyed what was deepest in them. I could not now write of\nany other country but Ireland, for my style has been shaped by the\nsubjects I have worked on, but there was a time when my imagination seemed\nunwilling, when I found myself writing of some Irish event in words that\nwould have better fitted some Italian or Eastern event, for my style had\nbeen shaped in that general stream of European literature which has come\nfrom so many watersheds, and it was slowly, very slowly, that I made a new\nstyle. It was years before I could rid myself of Shelley's Italian light,\nbut now I think my style is myself. I might have found more of Ireland if\nI had written in Irish, but I have found a little, and I have found all\nmyself. I am persuaded that if the Irishmen who are painting conventional\npictures or writing conventional books on alien subjects, which have been\nworn away like pebbles on the shore, would do the same, they, too, might\nfind themselves. Even the landscape-painter, who paints a place that he\nloves, and that no other man has painted, soon discovers that no style\nlearned in the studios is wholly fitted to his purpose. And I cannot but\nbelieve that if our painters of Highland cattle and moss-covered barns\nwere to care enough for their country to care for what makes it different\nfrom other countries, they would discover, when struggling, it may be, to\npaint the exact grey of the bare Burren Hills, and of a sudden it may be,\na new style, their very selves. And I admit, though in this I am moved by\nsome touch of fanaticism, that even when I see an old subject written of\nor painted in a new way, I am yet jealous for Cuchulain, and for Baile,\nand Aillinn, and for those grey mountains that still are lacking their\ncelebration. I sometimes reproach myself because I cannot admire Mr.\nHughes' beautiful, piteous _Orpheus and Eurydice_ with an unquestioning\nmind. I say with my lips, 'The Spirit made it, for it is beautiful, and\nthe Spirit bloweth where it listeth,' but I say in my heart, 'Aengus and\nEtain would have served his turn;' but one cannot, perhaps, love or\nbelieve at all if one does not love or believe a little too much.\n\nAnd I do not think with unbroken pleasure of our scholars who write about\nGerman writers or about periods of Greek history. I always remember that\nthey could give us a number of little books which would tell, each book\nfor some one country, or some one parish, the verses, or the stories, or\nthe events that would make every lake or mountain a man can see from his\nown door an excitement in his imagination. I would have some of them leave\nthat work of theirs which will never lack hands, and begin to dig in\nIreland, the garden of the future, understanding that here in Ireland the\nspirit of man may be about to wed the soil of the world.\n\nArt and scholarship like these I have described would give Ireland more\nthan they received from her, for they would make love of the unseen more\nunshakable, more ready to plunge deep into the abyss, and they would make\nlove of country more fruitful in the mind, more a part of daily life. One\nwould know an Irishman into whose life they had come--and in a few\ngenerations they would come into the life of all, rich and poor--by\nsomething that set him apart among men. He himself would understand that\nmore was expected of him than of others because he had greater\npossessions. The Irish race would have become a chosen race, one of the\npillars that uphold the world.\n\n1901.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GALWAY PLAINS\n\n\nLady Gregory has just given me her beautiful _Poets and Dreamers_, and it\nhas brought to mind a day two or three years ago when I stood on the side\nof Slieve Echtge, looking out over Galway. The Burren Hills were to my\nleft, and though I forget whether I could see the cairn over Bald Conan of\nthe Fianna, I could certainly see many places there that are in poems and\nstories. In front of me, over many miles of level Galway plains, I saw a\nlow blue hill flooded with evening light. I asked a countryman who was\nwith me what hill that was, and he told me it was Cruachmaa of the Sidhe.\nI had often heard of Cruachmaa of the Sidhe even as far north as Sligo,\nfor the country people have told me a great many stories of the great host\nof the Sidhe who live there, still fighting and holding festivals.\n\nI asked the old countryman about it, and he told me of strange women who\nhad come from it, and who would come into a house having the appearance of\ncountrywomen, but would know all that had happened in that house; and how\nthey would always pay back with increase, though not by their own hands,\nwhatever was given to them. And he had heard, too, of people who had been\ncarried away into the hill, and how one man went to look for his wife\nthere, and dug into the hill and all but got his wife again, but at the\nvery moment she was coming out to him, the pick he was digging with struck\nher upon the head and killed her. I asked him if he had himself seen any\nof its enchantments, and he said, 'Sometimes when I look over to the hill,\nI see a mist lying on the top of it, that goes away after a while.'\n\nA great part of the poems and stories in Lady Gregory's book were made or\ngathered between Burren and Cruachmaa. It was here that Raftery, the\nwandering country poet of ninety years ago, praised and blamed, chanting\nfine verses, and playing badly on his fiddle. It is here the ballads of\nmeeting and parting have been sung, and some whose lamentations for defeat\nare still remembered may have passed through this plain flying from the\nbattle of Aughrim.\n\n'I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it again.\nIt is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop thinned, not\nkeeping with one another; Och Ochone!' And here, if one can believe many\ndevout people whose stories are in the book, Christ has walked upon the\nroads, bringing the needy to some warm fireside, and sending one of His\nSaints to anoint the dying.\n\nI do not think these country imaginations have changed much for centuries,\nfor they are still busy with those two themes of the ancient Irish poets,\nthe sternness of battle and the sadness of parting and death. The emotion\nthat in other countries has made many love songs has here been given, in\na long wooing, to danger, that ghostly bride. It is not a difference in\nthe substance of things that the lamentations that were sung after battles\nare now sung for men who have died upon the gallows.\n\nThe emotion has become not less, but more noble, by the change, for the\nman who goes to his death with the thought--\n\n  'It is with the people I was,\n  It is not with the law I was,'\n\nhas behind him generations of poetry and poetical life.\n\nThe poets of to-day speak with the voice of the unknown priest who wrote,\nsome two hundred years ago, that _Sorrowful Lament for Ireland_, Lady\nGregory has put into passionate and rhythmical prose--\n\n  'I do not know of anything under the sky\n  That is friendly or favourable to the Gael,\n  But only the sea that our need brings us to,\n  Or the wind that blows to the harbour\n  The ship that is bearing us away from Ireland;\n  And there is reason that these are reconciled with us,\n  For we increase the sea with our tears,\n  And the wandering wind with our sighs.'\n\nThere is still in truth upon these great level plains a people, a\ncommunity bound together by imaginative possessions, by stories and poems\nwhich have grown out of its own life, and by a past of great passions\nwhich can still waken the heart to imaginative action. One could still, if\none had the genius, and had been born to Irish, write for these people\nplays and poems like those of Greece. Does not the greatest poetry always\nrequire a people to listen to it? England or any other country which takes\nits tune from the great cities and gets its taste from schools and not\nfrom old custom, may have a mob, but it cannot have a people. In England\nthere are a few groups of men and women who have good taste, whether in\ncookery or in books; and the great multitudes but copy them or their\ncopiers. The poet must always prefer the community where the perfected\nminds express the people, to a community that is vainly seeking to copy\nthe perfected minds. To have even perfectly the thoughts that can be\nweighed, the knowledge that can be got from books, the precision that can\nbe learned at school, to belong to any aristocracy, is to be a little pool\nthat will soon dry up. A people alone are a great river; and that is why I\nam persuaded that where a people has died, a nation is about to die.\n\n1903.\n\n\n\n\nEMOTION OF MULTITUDE\n\n\nI have been thinking a good deal about plays lately, and I have been\nwondering why I dislike the clear and logical construction which seems\nnecessary if one is to succeed on the Modern Stage. It came into my head\nthe other day that this construction, which all the world has learnt from\nFrance, has everything of high literature except the emotion of multitude.\nThe Greek drama has got the emotion of multitude from its chorus, which\ncalled up famous sorrows, long-leaguered Troy, much-enduring Odysseus, and\nall the gods and heroes to witness, as it were, some well-ordered fable,\nsome action separated but for this from all but itself. The French play\ndelights in the well-ordered fable, but by leaving out the chorus it has\ncreated an art where poetry and imagination, always the children of\nfar-off multitudinous things, must of necessity grow less important than\nthe mere will. This is why, I said to myself, French dramatic poetry is\nso often a little rhetorical, for rhetoric is the will trying to do the\nwork of the imagination. The Shakespearean Drama gets the emotion of\nmultitude out of the sub-plot which copies the main plot, much as a shadow\nupon the wall copies one's body in the firelight. We think of King Lear\nless as the history of one man and his sorrows than as the history of a\nwhole evil time. Lear's shadow is in Gloster, who also has ungrateful\nchildren, and the mind goes on imagining other shadows, shadow beyond\nshadow till it has pictured the world. In _Hamlet_, one hardly notices, so\nsubtly is the web woven, that the murder of Hamlet's father and the sorrow\nof Hamlet are shadowed in the lives of Fortinbras and Ophelia and Laertes,\nwhose fathers, too, have been killed. It is so in all the plays, or in all\nbut all, and very commonly the sub-plot is the main plot working itself\nout in more ordinary men and women, and so doubly calling up before us\nthe image of multitude. Ibsen and Maeterlinck have on the other hand\ncreated a new form, for they get multitude from the Wild Duck in the\nAttic, or from the Crown at the bottom of the Fountain, vague symbols that\nset the mind wandering from idea to idea, emotion to emotion. Indeed all\nthe great Masters have understood, that there cannot be great art without\nthe little limited life of the fable, which is always the better the\nsimpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the\nhalf-seen world beyond it. There are some who understand that the simple\nunmysterious things living as in a clear noon-light are of the nature of\nthe sun, and that vague many-imaged things have in them the strength of\nthe moon. Did not the Egyptian carve it on emerald that all living things\nhave the sun for father and the moon for mother, and has it not been said\nthat a man of genius takes the most after his mother?\n\n1903.\n\n\n\n\nFootnotes:\n\n[1] 'Marianne's Dream' was certainly copied from a real dream of\nsomebody's, but like images come to the mystic in his waking state.\n\n[2] This essay was first published in the _United Irishman_.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note:\n\nUnmatched quotation marks and spelling variants are presented as in\nthe original text.","title":"Ideas of Good and Evil","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":56616}