{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33385/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33385","id":"gutenberg_33385","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33385","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Classics of Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Literature -- Collections"],"text":"Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n LIBRARY OF THE\n WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE\n ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\n\n CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER\n\n EDITOR\n\n\n HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE\n GEORGE HENRY WARNER\n\n ASSOCIATE EDITORS\n\n\n Connoisseur Edition\n\n VOL. VIII.\n\n\n NEW YORK\n THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY\n\n\n\n\n Connoisseur Edition\n\n LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES IN HALF RUSSIA\n\n _No_. ..........\n\n\n Copyright, 1896, by\n R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL\n _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\n THE ADVISORY COUNCIL\n\n\n CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M., LL. D.,\n Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.\n\n THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D., L. H. D.,\n Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of\n YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.\n\n WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D., L. H. D.,\n Professor of History and Political Science,\n PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J.\n\n BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M., LL. B.,\n Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.\n\n JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D.,\n President of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.\n\n WILLARD FISKE, A. M., PH. D.,\n Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages\n and Literatures, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y.\n\n EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M., LL. D.,\n Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,\n UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.\n\n ALCEE FORTIER, LIT. D.,\n Professor of the Romance Languages,\n TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.\n\n WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A.,\n Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of\n English and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.\n\n PAUL SHOREY, PH. D.,\n Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,\n UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.\n\n WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D.,\n United States Commissioner of Education,\n BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.\n\n MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M., LL. D.,\n Professor of Literature in the\n CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.\n\n\n\n\n TABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n VOL. VIII\n\n\n LIVED PAGE\n JOHN CALVIN 1509-1564 3117\n BY ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT\n Prefatory Address to the 'Institutes'\n Election and Predestination ('Institutes of the Christian\n Religion')\n Freedom of the Will (same)\n\n\n LUIZ VAZ DE CAMOENS 1524?-1580 3129\n BY HENRY R. LANG\n From 'The Lusiads'\n The Canzon of Life\n Adieu to Coimbra\n\n\n THOMAS CAMPBELL 1777-1844 3159\n Hope ('The Pleasures of Hope')\n The Fall of Poland (same)\n The Slave (same)\n Death and a Future Life (same)\n Lochiel's Warning\n The Soldier's Dream\n Lord Ullin's Daughter\n The Exile of Erin\n Ye Mariners of England\n Hohenlinden\n The Battle of Copenhagen\n From the 'Ode to Winter'\n\n\n CAMPION -1619 3184\n BY ERNEST RHYS\n A Hymn in Praise of Neptune\n Of Corinna's Singing\n From 'Divine and Moral Songs'\n To a Coquette\n Songs from 'Light Conceits of Lovers'\n\n\n GEORGE CANNING 1770-1827 3189\n\n Rogero's Soliloquy ('The Rovers')\n The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder\n On the English Constitution ('Speech on Parliamentary Reform')\n On Brougham and South America\n\n\n CESARE CANTU 1807-1895 3199\n\n The Execution ('Margherita Pusterla')\n\n\n GIOSUE CARDUCCI 1835- 3209\n BY FRANK SEWALL\n Roma ('Poesie')\n Homer ('Levia Gravia')\n In a Gothic Church ('Poesie')\n On the Sixth Centenary of Dante ('Levia Gravia')\n The Ox ('Poesie')\n Dante ('Levia Gravia')\n To Satan ('Poesie')\n To Aurora ('Odi Barbare')\n Ruit Hora\n The Mother\n\n\n THOMAS CAREW 1589?-1639 3221\n\n A Song\n The Protestation\n Song\n The Spring\n The Inquiry\n\n\n EMILIA FLYGARE-CARLEN 1807-1892 3225\n\n The Pursuit of the Smugglers ('Merchant House among the\n Islands')\n\n\n THOMAS CARLYLE 1795-1881 3231\n BY LESLIE STEPHEN\n Labor ('Past and Present')\n The World in Clothes ('Sartor Resartus')\n Dante ('Heroes and Hero-Worship')\n Cromwell (same)\n The Procession ('French Revolution')\n The Siege of the Bastille (same)\n Charlotte Corday (same)\n The Scapegoat (same)\n\n\n BLISS CARMAN 1861- 3302\n BY CHARLES G.D. ROBERTS\n Hack and Hew\n At the Granite Gate\n A Sea Child\n\n\n LEWIS CARROLL (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1833- 3307\n\n Alice, the Pig-Baby, and the Cheshire Cat ('Alice in\n Wonderland')\n The Mock Turtle's Education (same)\n A Clear Statement (same)\n The Walrus and the Carpenter ('Through the Looking-Glass')\n The Baker's Tale ('Hunting of the Snark')\n You are Old, Father William ('Alice in Wonderland')\n\n\n CASANOVA (De Seingalt) 1725-1803 3321\n\n Casanova's Escape from the Ducal Palace ('Escapes of\n Casanova and Latude from Prison')\n\n\n BARTOLOMEO DE LAS CASAS 1474-1566 3333\n\n Of the Island of Cuba ('A Relation of the First Voyage')\n\n\n BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE 1478-1529 3339\n\n Of the Court of Urbino ('Il Cortegiano')\n\n\n CATO THE CENSOR 234-149 B.C. 3347\n\n On Agriculture ('De Agricultura')\n From the 'Attic Nights' of Aulus Gellius\n\n\n JACOB CATS 1577-1660 3353\n\n Fear after the Trouble\n \"A Rich Man Loses his Child, a Poor Man Loses his Cow\"\n\n\n CATULLUS 84-54 B.C.? 3359\n BY J. W. MACKAIL\n Dedication for a Volume of A Brother's Grave\n Lyrics\n A Morning Call\n Home to Sirmio\n Heart-Break\n To Calvus in Bereavement\n The Pinnace\n An Invitation to Dinner\n Farewell to His Fellow Officers\n Verses from an Epithalamium\n Love is All\n Elegy on Lesbia's Sparrow\n \"Fickle and Changeable Ever\"\n Two Chords\n Last Word to Lesbia\n\n\n BENVENUTO CELLINI 1500-1571 3371\n\n The Escape from Prison\n The Casting of Perseus\n A Necklace of Pearls\n Benvenuto Loses his Brother\n An Adventure in Necromancy\n Benvenuto Loses Self-Control under Severe Provocation\n (All the above are from Cellini's 'Memoirs,'\n Symonds's Translation)\n\n\n CELTIC LITERATURE 3403\n BY WILLIAM SHARP AND ERNEST RHYS\n I--IRISH\n The Miller of Hell\n Signs of Home\n Oisin in Tirnanoge\n From 'The Coming of Cuculain'\n The Mystery of Amergin\n The Song of Fionn\n Vision of a Fair Woman\n From 'The Wanderings of Oisin'\n The Madness of King Goll\n II--SCOTTISH\n St. Bridget's Milking Song\n Prologue to Gaul\n Columcille Fecit\n In Hebrid Seas\n III--WELSH\n IV--CORNISH\n From 'The Poem of the Passion'\n From 'Origo Mundi,' in the 'Ordinalia'\n\n\n CERVANTES 1547-1616 3451\n BY GEORGE SANTAYANA\n Treating of the Character and Pursuits of Don Quixote\n Of What Happened to Don Quixote when he Left the Inn\n Don Quixote and Sancho Panza Sally Forth: and the\n Adventure with the Windmills\n Sancho Panza and his Wife Teresa Converse Shrewdly\n Of Sancho Panza's Delectable Discourse with the Duchess\n Sancho as Governor\n The Ending of All Don Quixote's Adventures\n\n\n\n\n FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n VOLUME VIII\n\n\n PAGE\n Miniature Painting of the Middle Ages (Colored Plate) Frontispiece\n John Calvin (Portrait) 3118\n The Septuagint (Fac-simile) 3124\n Luiz Vaz de Camoens (Portrait) 3130\n \"Hohenlinden\" (Photogravure) 3178\n \"Homer\" (Photogravure) 3209\n Thomas Carlyle (Portrait) 3232\n \"Charlotte Corday in Prison\" (Photogravure) 3290\n Benvenuto Cellini (Portrait) 3374\n Cervantes (Portrait) 3464\n\n\n\n\n VIGNETTE PORTRAITS\n\n\n Thomas Campbell\n George Canning\n Emilia Flygare-Carlen\n Bliss Carman\n Bartolorneo de las Casas\n Baldassare Castiglione\n Jacob Cats\n Valerius Catullus\n\n\n\n\nJOHN CALVIN\n\n(1509-1564)\n\nBY ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT\n\n\nJohn Calvin was born in the village of Noyon, in northeastern France,\non the 10th of July, 1509. He was intended by his parents for the\npriesthood, for which he seemed to be peculiarly fitted by his\nnaturally austere disposition, averse to every form of sport or\nfrivolity, and he was given an excellent education with that calling\nin view; but finally at the command of his father--whose plans for his\nson had undergone a change--he gave up his theological preparation and\ndevoted himself to the study of law. Gifted with an extraordinary\nmemory, rare insight, and an uncommonly keen reasoning faculty, he\nspeedily distinguished himself in his new field, and a brilliant\ncareer was predicted for him by his teachers. His tastes however were\nmore literary than legal, and his first published work, written at the\nage of twenty-three, was a commentary on Seneca's 'De Clementia,'\nwhich brought him wide repute as a classical scholar and as a clear\nand forceful writer.\n\nThough he had apparently renounced forever all thoughts of a clerical\nlife, he retained, even while he was engaged in the study of law and\nin the more congenial pursuit of literature, his early love for\ntheology; and in 1532, under the influence of some of Luther's\nwritings which happened to fall into his hands, he was converted to\nthe Protestant faith and threw in his fortunes with the little\nevangelical party in Paris. His intellectual attainments made him a\nmarked man wherever he went, and he speedily became the leading spirit\nin the circle to which he had attached himself. Compelled soon\nafterward by the persecuting measures of King Francis I. to flee the\ncountry, he took up his residence at Basle and settled down, as he\nhoped, to a quiet literary life. It was during his stay here that he\npublished in 1536 the first edition of his greatest work, 'The\nChristian Institutes,' in which is contained the system of theology\nwhich has for centuries borne his name, and by which he is best known\nto the world at large. Probably no other work written by so young a\nman has ever produced such a wide-spread, profound, and lasting\ninfluence. In its original form, it is true, the work was only a brief\nand simple introduction to the study of the Scriptures, much less\nimposing and forbidding than the elaborate body of divinity which is\nnow known to theologians as 'Calvin's Institutes': but all the\nsubstance of the last edition is to be found in the first; the\ntheology of the one is the theology of the other--the Calvin of 1559\nis the Calvin of 1536. The fact that at the age of twenty-six Calvin\ncould publish a system of theology at once so original and so\nprofound--a system, moreover, which with all his activity of intellect\nand love of truth he never had occasion to modify in any essential\nparticular--is one of the most striking phenomena in the history of\nthe human mind; and yet it is but one of many illustrations of the\nman's marvelous clearness and comprehensiveness of vision, and of his\nforce and decision of character. His life from beginning to end was\nthe consistent unfolding of a single dominant principle--the\nunwavering pursuit of a single controlling purpose. From his earliest\nyouth the sense of duty was all-supreme with him; he lived under a\nconstant imperative--in awe of, and in reverent obedience to, the will\nof a sovereign God; and his theology is but the translation into\nlanguage of that experience; its translation by one of the world's\ngreatest masters of logical thought and of clear speech.\n\nCalvin's great work was accompanied by a dedicatory epistle addressed\nto King Francis I., which is by common consent one of the finest\nspecimens of courteous and convincing apology in existence. A brief\nextract from it will be found in the selections given below.\n\nSoon after the publication of the 'Institutes,' Calvin's plans for a\nquiet literary career were interrupted by a peremptory call to assist\nin the work of reforming the Church and State of Geneva; and the\nremainder of his life, with the exception of a brief interval of\nexile, was spent in that city, at the head of a religious movement\nwhose influence was ultimately felt throughout all Western Europe.\nIt is true that Calvin was not the originating genius of the\nReformation--that he belonged only to the second generation of\nreformers, and that he learned the Protestant faith from Luther.\nBut he became for the peoples of Western Europe what Luther was for\nGermany, and he gave his own peculiar type of Protestantism--that type\nwhich was congenial to his disposition and experience--to Switzerland,\nto France, to the Netherlands, to Scotland, and through the Dutch, the\nEnglish Puritans, and the Scotch Presbyterians, to large portions of\nthe New World. Calvin, to be sure, is not widely popular to-day even\nin those lands which owe him most, for he had little of that human\nsympathy which glorifies the best thought and life of the present age;\nbut for all that, he has left his mark upon the world, and his\ninfluence is not likely ever to be wholly outgrown. His emphasis upon\nGod's holiness made his followers scrupulously, even censoriously\npure; his emphasis upon God's will made them stern and unyielding in\nthe performance of what they believed to be their duty; his emphasis\nupon God's majesty, paradoxical though it may seem at first sight,\npromoted in no small degree the growth of civil and religious liberty,\nfor it dwarfed all mere human authority and made men bold to withstand\nthe unlawful encroachments of their fellows. Thus Calvin became a\nmighty force in the world, though he gave the world far more of law\nthan of gospel, far more of Moses than of Christ.\n\n[Illustration: JOHN CALVIN.]\n\nCalvin's career as a writer began at an early day and continued until\nhis death. His pen was a ready one and was seldom idle. In the midst\nof the most engrossing cares and occupations--the cares and\noccupations of a preacher, a pastor, a teacher of theology, a\nstatesman, and a reformer to whom the Protestants of many lands looked\nfor inspiration and for counsel--he found time, though he died at the\nearly age of fifty-four, to produce works that to-day fill more than\nthreescore volumes, and all of which bear the unmistakable impress of\na great mind. In addition to his 'Institutes,' theological and ethical\ntracts, and treatises, sermons, and epistles without number, he wrote\ncommentaries upon almost all the books of the Bible; which for\nlucidity, for wide and accurate learning, and for sound and ripe\njudgment, have never been surpassed. Among the most characteristic and\nimportant of his briefer works are his vigorous and effective 'Reply\nto Cardinal Sadolet,' who had endeavored after Calvin's exile from\nGeneva in 1539 to win back the Genevese to the Roman Church; his tract\non 'The Necessity of Reforming the Church; presented to the Imperial\nDiet at Spires, A.D. 1544, in the cause of all who wish with Christ\nto reign'--an admirable statement of the conditions which had made a\nreformation of the Church imperatively necessary, and had led to the\ngreat religious and ecclesiastical revolution; another tract on 'The\nTrue Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the\nChurch,'--marked by a beautiful Christian spirit and permeated with\nsound practical sense; still another containing 'Articles Agreed Upon\nby the Faculty of Sacred Theology at Paris, with the Antidote', and\nfinally an 'Admonition Showing the Advantages which Christendom might\nDerive from an Inventory of Relics.' Though Calvin was from boyhood up\nof a most serious turn of mind, and though his writings, in marked\ncontrast to the writings of Luther, exhibit few if any traces of\ngenial spontaneous humor, the last two works show that he knew how to\nemploy satire on occasion in a very telling way for the overthrow of\nerror and for the discomfiture of his opponents.\n\nIn addition to the services which Calvin rendered by his writings to\nthe cause of Christianity and of sacred learning, must be recognized\nthe lasting obligation under which as an author he put his mother\ntongue. Whether he wrote in Latin or in French, his style was always\nchaste, elegant, clear, and vigorous. His Latin compares favorably\nwith the best models of antiquity; his French is a new creation. The\nlatter language indeed owes almost as much to Calvin as the German\nlanguage owes to Luther. He was unquestionably its greatest master in\nthe sixteenth century, and he did more than any one else to fix its\npermanent character--to give it that exactness, that lucidity, that\npurity and harmony of which it justly boasts.\n\nCalvin's writings bear throughout the imprint of his character. There\nappears in all of them the same horror of impurity and dishonor, the\nsame stern sense of duty, the same respect for the sovereignty of the\nAlmighty, the same severe judgment of human failings. To read them is\nto breathe the tonic air of snow-clad heights; but they are seldom if\never touched with the tender glow of human feeling or transfigured\nwith the radiance of creative imagination. There is that in David, in\nIsaiah, in Paul, in Luther, which appeals to every heart and makes\ntheir words immortal; but Calvin was neither poet nor prophet,--the\ndivine afflatus was not his,--and it is not without reason that his\nwritings, vigorous, forceful, profound, as is their context, and pure\nand elegant as is their style, are read to-day only by theologians or\nhistorians.\n\n [Signature: Arthur Cushman McGiffert]\n\n\n\nPREFATORY ADDRESS TO THE 'INSTITUTES'\n\n TO FRANCIS, KING OF THE FRENCH, the most Christian Majesty,\n the most Mighty and Illustrious Monarch, his Sovereign,--John\n Calvin prays peace and salvation in Christ.\n\n\n_Sire:_--When I first engaged in this work, nothing was further from\nmy thoughts than to write what should afterwards be presented to your\nMajesty. My intention was only to furnish a kind of rudiments, by\nwhich those who feel some interest in religion might be trained to\ntrue godliness. And I toiled at the task chiefly for the sake of my\ncountrymen the French, multitudes of whom I perceived to be hungering\nand thirsting after Christ, while very few seemed to have been duly\nimbued with even a slender knowledge of him. That this was the object\nwhich I had in view is apparent from the work itself, which is written\nin a simple and elementary form, adapted for instruction.\n\nBut when I perceived that the fury of certain bad men had risen to\nsuch a height in your realm that there was no place in it for sound\ndoctrine, I thought it might be of service if I were in the same work\nboth to give instruction to my countrymen, and also lay before your\nMajesty a Confession, from which you may learn what the doctrine is\nthat so inflames the rage of those madmen who are this day with fire\nand sword troubling your kingdom. For I fear not to declare that what\nI have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine\nwhich, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile,\nimprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea.\n\nI am aware indeed how, in order to render our cause as hateful to your\nMajesty as possible, they have filled your ears and mind with\natrocious insinuations; but you will be pleased of your clemency to\nreflect that neither in word nor deed could there be any innocence,\nwere it sufficient merely to accuse. When any one, with the view of\nexciting prejudice, observes that this doctrine of which I am\nendeavoring to give your Majesty an account has been condemned by the\nsuffrages of all the estates, and was long ago stabbed again and again\nby partial sentences of courts of law, he undoubtedly says nothing\nmore than that it has sometimes been violently oppressed by the power\nand faction of adversaries, and sometimes fraudulently and insidiously\noverwhelmed by lies, cavils, and calumny. While a cause is unheard, it\nis violence to pass sanguinary sentences against it; it is fraud to\ncharge it, contrary to its deserts, with sedition and mischief.\n\nThat no one may suppose we are unjust in thus complaining, you\nyourself, most illustrious Sovereign, can bear us witness with what\nlying calumnies it is daily traduced in your presence; as aiming at\nnothing else than to wrest the sceptres of kings out of their hands,\nto overturn all tribunals and seats of justice, to subvert all order\nand government, to disturb the peace and quiet of society, to abolish\nall laws, destroy the distinctions of rank and property, and in short\nturn all things upside down. And yet that which you hear is but the\nsmallest portion of what is said; for among the common people are\ndisseminated certain horrible insinuations--insinuations which, if\nwell founded, would justify the whole world in condemning the doctrine\nwith its authors to a thousand fires and gibbets. Who can wonder that\nthe popular hatred is inflamed against it, when credit is given to\nthose most iniquitous accusations? See why all ranks unite with one\naccord in condemning our persons and our doctrine!\n\nCarried away by this feeling, those who sit in judgment merely give\nutterance to the prejudices which they have imbibed at home, and think\nthey have duly performed their part if they do not order punishment to\nbe inflicted on any one until convicted, either on his own confession,\nor on legal evidence. But of what crime convicted? \"Of that condemned\ndoctrine,\" is the answer. But with what justice condemned? The very\nevidence of the defense was not to abjure the doctrine itself, but to\nmaintain its truth. On this subject, however, not a whisper is\nallowed....\n\nIt is plain indeed that we fear God sincerely and worship him in\ntruth, since, whether by life or by death, we desire his name to be\nhallowed; and hatred herself has been forced to bear testimony to the\ninnocence and civil integrity of some of our people, on whom death was\ninflicted for the very thing which deserved the highest praise. But if\nany, under pretext of the gospel, excite tumults (none such have as\nyet been detected in your realm), if any use the liberty of the grace\nof God as a cloak for licentiousness (I know of numbers who do), there\nare laws and legal punishments by which they may be punished up to the\nmeasure of their deserts; only in the mean time let not the gospel of\nGod be evil spoken of because of the iniquities of evil men.\n\nSire, that you may not lend too credulous an ear to the accusations of\nour enemies, their virulent injustice has been set before you at\nsufficient length: I fear even more than sufficient, since this\npreface has grown almost to the bulk of a full apology. My object\nhowever was not to frame a defense, but only with a view to the\nhearing of our cause, to mollify your mind, now indeed turned away and\nestranged from us,--I add, even inflamed against us,--but whose good\nwill, we are confident, we should regain, would you but once with\ncalmness and composure read this our Confession, which we desire your\nMajesty to accept instead of a defense. But if the whispers of the\nmalevolent so possess your ear that the accused are to have no\nopportunity of pleading their cause; if those vindictive furies, with\nyour connivance, are always to rage with bonds, scourgings, tortures,\nmaimings, and burnings--we indeed, like sheep doomed to slaughter,\nshall be reduced to every extremity; yet so that in our patience we\nwill possess our souls, and wait for the strong hand of the Lord,\nwhich doubtless will appear in its own time, and show itself armed,\nboth to rescue the poor from affliction and also take vengeance on the\ndespisers, who are now exulting so securely.\n\nMost illustrious King, may the Lord, the King of kings, establish your\nthrone in righteousness and your sceptre in equity.\n\nBASLE, August 1st, 1536.\n\n\n\nELECTION AND PREDESTINATION\n\nFrom the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion'\n\n\nThe human mind when it hears this doctrine of election cannot restrain\nits petulance, but boils and rages as if aroused by the sound of a\ntrumpet. Many, professing a desire to defend the Deity from an\ninvidious charge, admit the doctrine of election but deny that any one\nis reprobated (Bernard, in 'Die Ascensionis,' Serm. 2). This they do\nignorantly and childishly, since there could be no election without\nits opposite, reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he\nadopts for salvation. It were most absurd to say that he admits others\nfortuitously, or that they by their industry acquire what election\nalone confers on a few. Those therefore whom God passes by he\nreprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to\nexclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his\nchildren. Nor is it possible to tolerate the petulance of men in\nrefusing to be restrained by the word of God, in regard to his\nincomprehensible counsel, which even angels adore.\n\nWe have already been told that hardening is not less under the\nimmediate hand of God than mercy. Paul does not, after the example of\nthose whom I have mentioned, labor anxiously to defend God by calling\nin the aid of falsehood; he only reminds us that it is unlawful for\nthe creature to quarrel with its Creator. Then how will those who\nrefuse to admit that any are reprobated by God, explain the following\nwords of Christ? \"Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not\nplanted shall be rooted up\" (Matth. xv. 13). They are plainly told\nthat all whom the heavenly Father has not been pleased to plant as\nsacred trees in his garden are doomed and devoted to destruction. If\nthey deny that this is a sign of reprobation, there is nothing,\nhowever clear, that can be proved to them. But if they will still\nmurmur, let us in the soberness of faith rest contented with the\nadmonition of Paul, that it can be no ground of complaint that God,\n\"willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with\nmuch long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction: and\nthat he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of\nmercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory\" (Rom. ix. 22, 23). Let\nmy readers observe that Paul, to cut off all handle for murmuring and\ndetraction, attributes supreme sovereignty to the wrath and power of\nGod; for it were unjust that those profound judgments which transcend\nall our powers of discernment should be subjected to our calculation.\n\nIt is frivolous in our opponents to reply that God does not altogether\nreject those whom in lenity he tolerates, but remains in suspense with\nregard to them, if peradventure they may repent; as if Paul were\nrepresenting God as patiently waiting for the conversion of those whom\nhe describes as fitted for destruction. For Augustine, rightly\nexpounding this passage, says that where power is united to endurance,\nGod does not permit, but rules (August. Cont. Julian., Lib. v., c. 5).\nThey add also, that it is not without cause the vessels of wrath are\nsaid to be fitted for destruction, and that God is said to have\nprepared the vessels of mercy, because in this way the praise of\nsalvation is claimed for God; whereas the blame of perdition is thrown\nupon those who of their own accord bring it upon themselves. But were\nI to concede that by the different forms of expression Paul softens\nthe harshness of the former clause, it by no means follows that he\ntransfers the preparation for destruction to any other cause than the\nsecret counsel of God. This indeed is asserted in the preceding\ncontext, where God is said to have raised up Pharaoh, and to harden\nwhom he will. Hence it follows that the hidden counsel of God is the\ncause of hardening. I at least hold with Augustine, that when God\nmakes sheep out of wolves he forms them again by the powerful\ninfluence of grace, that their hardness may thus be subdued; and that\nhe does not convert the obstinate, because he does not exert that more\npowerful grace, a grace which he has at command if he were disposed to\nuse it (August, de Praedest. Sanct., Lib. i., c. 2)....\n\n [Illustration: _SEPTUAGINT._\n\n Facsimile, somewhat reduced, of a page of the\n VATICAN MANUSCRIPT.\n\n Fourth Century. Vatican Library.\n\n The Septuagint is the Greek translation, by seventy elders, of\n the Hebrew Bible.\n\n The earlier copies are all in uncial or \"capital\" letters,\n cursive or \"lower-case\" letters being a later invention.\n\n This is a good specimen of the hand-work of the ecclesiastical\n scribes of the fourth century.]\n\nAccordingly, when we are accosted in such terms as these: Why did God\nfrom the first predestine some to death, when as they were not yet in\nexistence, they could not have merited sentence of death?--let us by\nway of reply ask in our turn, What do you imagine that God owes to\nman, if he is pleased to estimate him by his own nature? As we are all\nvitiated by sin, we cannot but be hateful to God, and that not from\ntyrannical cruelty, but the strictest justice. But if all whom the\nLord predestines to death are naturally liable to sentence of death,\nof what injustice, pray, do they complain? Should all the sons of Adam\ncome to dispute and contend with their Creator, because by his eternal\nprovidence they were before their birth doomed to perpetual\ndestruction: when God comes to reckon with them, what will they be\nable to mutter against this defense? If all are taken from a corrupt\nmass, it is not strange that all are subject to condemnation. Let them\nnot therefore charge God with injustice, if by his eternal judgment\nthey are doomed to a death to which they themselves feel that, whether\nthey will or not, they are drawn spontaneously by their own nature.\nHence it appears how perverse is this affectation of murmuring, when\nof set purpose they suppress the cause of condemnation which they are\ncompelled to recognize in themselves, that they may lay the blame upon\nGod. But though I should confess a hundred times that God is the\nauthor (and it is most certain that he is), they do not however\nthereby efface their own guilt, which, engraven on their own\nconsciences, is ever and anon presenting itself to their view....\n\nIf God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and\ndispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the\nquestion, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he\nforesees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed\nthat they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience,\nwhile it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign\nappointment.\n\nThey deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that\nAdam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God who is declared\nin Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases could have made the noblest\nof his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in\naccordance with free will, he was to be the architect of his own\nfortune; that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to\nhis desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the\nomnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which\neverything depends, he rules over all? But whether they will allow it\nor not, predestination is manifest in Adam's posterity. It was not\nowing to nature that they all lost salvation by the fault of one\nparent. Why should they refuse to admit with regard to one man that\nwhich against their will they admit with regard to the whole human\nrace? Why should they in caviling lose their labor? Scripture\nproclaims that all were, in the person of one, made liable to eternal\ndeath. As this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is plain that it is\nowing to the wonderful counsel of God. It is very absurd in these\nworthy defenders of the justice of God to strain at a gnat and swallow\na camel. I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many\nnations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy,\nunless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues\nmust be dumb. The decree, I admit, is dreadful; and yet it is\nimpossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be\nbefore he made him, and foreknew because he had so ordained by his\ndecree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he\ndoes it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a\ncharge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what\nwas to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it\nmust be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd\nwhen I say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in\nhim the ruin of his posterity, but also at his own pleasure arranged\nit. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so\nit belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand.\n\n\n\nFREEDOM OF THE WILL\n\nFrom the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion'\n\n\nGod has provided the soul of man with intellect, by which he might\ndiscern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to\nfollow or to shun, reason going before with her lamp; whence\nphilosophers, in reference to her directing power, have called her\n[Greek: to hegemonichon]. To this he has joined will, to which\nchoice belongs. Man excelled in these noble endowments in his\nprimitive condition, when reason, intelligence, prudence, and judgment\nnot only sufficed for the government of his earthly life, but also\nenabled him to rise up to God and eternal happiness. Thereafter choice\nwas added to direct the appetites and temper all the organic motions;\nthe will being thus perfectly submissive to the authority of reason.\nIn this upright state, man possessed freedom of will, by which if he\nchose he was able to obtain eternal life. It were here unseasonable to\nintroduce the question concerning the secret predestination of God,\nbecause we are not considering what might or might not happen, but\nwhat the nature of man truly was. Adam, therefore, might have stood if\nhe chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but it was\nbecause his will was pliable in either direction, and he had not\nreceived constancy to persevere, that he so easily fell. Still he had\na free choice of good and evil; and not only so, but in the mind and\nwill there was the highest rectitude, and all the organic parts were\nduly framed to obedience, until man corrupted its good properties, and\ndestroyed himself. Hence the great darkness of philosophers who have\nlooked for a complete building in a ruin, and fit arrangement in\ndisorder. The principle they set out with was, that man could not be a\nrational animal unless he had a free choice of good and evil. They\nalso imagined that the distinction between virtue and vice was\ndestroyed, if man did not of his own counsel arrange his life. So far\nwell, had there been no change in man. This being unknown to them, it\nis not surprising that they throw everything into confusion. But those\nwho, while they profess to be the disciples of Christ, still seek for\nfree-will in man, notwithstanding of his being lost and drowned in\nspiritual destruction, labor under manifold delusion, making a\nheterogeneous mixture of inspired doctrine and philosophical opinions,\nand so erring as to both. But it will be better to leave these things\nto their own place. At present it is necessary only to remember that\nman at his first creation was very different from all his posterity;\nwho, deriving their origin from him after he was corrupted, received a\nhereditary taint. At first every part of the soul was formed to\nrectitude. There was soundness of mind and freedom of will to choose\nthe good. If any one objects that it was placed, as it were, in a\nslippery position because its power was weak, I answer, that the\ndegree conferred was sufficient to take away every excuse. For surely\nthe Deity could not be tied down to this condition,--to make man such\nthat he either could not or would not sin. Such a nature might have\nbeen more excellent; but to expostulate with God as if he had been\nbound to confer this nature on man, is more than unjust, seeing he had\nfull right to determine how much or how little he would give. Why he\ndid not sustain him by the virtue of perseverance is hidden in his\ncounsel; it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness. Man had\nreceived the power, if he had the will, but he had not the will which\nwould have given the power; for this will would have been followed by\nperseverance. Still, after he had received so much, there is no excuse\nfor his having spontaneously brought death upon himself. No necessity\nwas laid upon God to give him more than that intermediate and even\ntransient will, that out of man's fall he might extract materials for\nhis own glory.\n\n\n\n\nLUIZ VAZ DE CAMOENS\n\n(1524?-1580)\n\nBY HENRY R. LANG\n\n\nPortuguese literature is usually divided into six periods, which\ncorrespond, in the main, to the successive literary movements of the\nother Romance nations which it followed.\n\n_First Period_ (1200-1385), Provencal and French influences. Soon\nafter the founding of the Portuguese State by Henry of Burgundy and\nhis knights in the beginning of the twelfth century, the nobles of\nPortugal and Galicia, which regions form a unit in race and speech,\nbegan to imitate in their native idiom the art of the Provencal\ntroubadours who visited the courts of Leon and Castile. This courtly\nlyric poetry in the Gallego-Portuguese dialect, which was also\ncultivated in the rest of the peninsula excepting the East, reached\nits height under Alphonso X. of Castile (1252-84), himself a noted\npoet and patron of this art, and under King Dionysius of Portugal\n(1279-1325), the most gifted of all these troubadours. The collections\n(_cancioneiros_) of the works of this school preserved to us contain\nthe names of one hundred and sixty-three poets and some two thousand\ncompositions (inclusive of the four hundred and one spiritual songs of\nAlphonso X.). Of this body of verse, two-thirds affect the artificial\nstyle of Provencal lyrics, while one-third is derived from the\nindigenous popular poetry. This latter part contains the so-called\n_cantigas de amigo_, songs of charming simplicity of form and\nnaivete of spirit in which a woman addresses her lover either in a\nmonologue or in a dialogue. It is this native poetry, still echoed in\nthe modern folk-song of Galicia and Portugal, that imparted to the\nGallego-Portuguese lyric school the decidedly original coloring and\nvigorous growth which assign it an independent position in the\nmediaeval literature of the Romance nations.\n\nComposition in prose also began in this period, consisting chiefly in\ngenealogies, chronicles, and in translations from Latin and French\ndealing with religious subjects and the romantic traditions of British\norigin, such as the 'Demanda do Santo Graal.' It is now almost certain\nthat the original of the Spanish version of the 'Amadis de Gaula'\n(1480) was the work of a Portuguese troubadour of the thirteenth\ncentury, Joam de Lobeira.\n\n_Second Period_ (1385-1521), Spanish influence. Instead of the\nProvencal style, the courtly circles now began to cultivate the native\npopular forms, the _copla_ and _quadra_, and to compose in the\ndialect of Castile, which communicated to them the influence of the\nItalian Renaissance, with the vision and allegory of Dante and a\nfuller understanding of classical antiquity. These two literary\ncurrents became the formative elements of the second poetic school of\nan aristocratic character in Portugal, at the courts of Alphonse V.\n(1438-1481), John II. (1481-95), and Emanuel (1495-1521), whose works\nwere collected by the poet Garcia de Resende in the 'Cancioneiro\nGeral' (Lisbon, 1516).\n\nThe prose-literature of this period is rich in translations from the\nLatin classics, and chiefly noteworthy for the great Portuguese\nchronicles which it produced. The most prominent writer was Fernam\nLopes (1454), the founder of Portuguese historiography and the \"father\nof Portuguese prose.\"\n\n_Third Period_ (1521-1580), Italian influence. This is the classic\nepoch of Portuguese literature, born of the powerful rise of the\nPortuguese State during its period of discovery and conquest, and of\nthe dominant influence of the Italian Renaissance. It opens with three\nauthors who were prominently active in the preceding literary school,\nbut whose principal influence lies in this. These are Christovam\nFalcao and Bernardim Ribeiro, the founders of the bucolic poem and the\nsentimental pastoral romance, and Gil Vicente, a comic writer of\nsuperior talent, who is called the father of the Portuguese drama, and\nwho, next to Camoens, is the greatest figure of this period. Its real\ninitiator, however, was Francesco Sa' de Miranda (1495-1557) who, on\nhis return from a six-years' study in Italy in 1521, introduced the\nlyric forms of Petrarch and his followers as the only true models for\ncomposition. Besides giving by his example a classic form to lyrics,\nespecially to the sonnet, and cultivating the pastoral poem, Sa' de\nMiranda, desirous of breaking the influence of Gil Vicente's dramas,\nwrote two comedies of intrigue in the style of the Italians and of\nPlautus and Terence. His attempts in this direction, however, found no\nfollowers, the only exception being Ferreira's tragedy 'Ines de\nCastro' in the antique style. The greatest poet of this period, and\nindeed in the whole history of Portuguese literature, is Luiz de\nCamoens, in whose works, epic, lyric, and dramatic, the cultivation of\nthe two literary currents of this epoch, the national and the\nRenaissance, attained to its highest perfection, and to whom\nPortuguese literature chiefly owes its place in the literature of the\nworld.\n\nAmong the works in prose produced during this time are of especial\nimportance the historical writings, such as the 'Decadas' of Joao de\nBarros (1496-1570), the \"Livy of Portugal\" and the numerous romances\nof chivalry.\n\n[Illustration: LUIS DE CAMOENS.]\n\n_Fourth Period_ (1580-1700), Culteranistic influence. The political\ndecline of Portugal is accompanied by one in its literature. While\nsome lyric poetry is still written in the spirit of Camoens, and the\npastoral romance in the national style is cultivated by some authors,\nPortuguese literature on the whole is completely under the influence\nof the Spanish, receiving from the latter the euphuistic movement,\nknown in Spain as _culteranismo_ or _Gongorismo_. Many writers of\ntalent of this time used the Spanish language in preference to their\nown. It is thus that the charming pastoral poem 'Diana,' by Jorge de\nMontemor, though composed by a Portuguese and in a vein so peculiar to\nhis nation, is credited to Spanish literature.\n\n_Fifth Period_ (1700-1825), Pseudo-Classicism. The influence of the\nFrench classic school, felt in all European literatures, became\nparamount in Portugal. Excepting the works of a few talented members\nof the society called \"Arcadia,\" little of literary interest was\nproduced until the appearance, at the end of the century, of Francisco\nManoel de Nascimento and Manoel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, two poets of\ndecided talent who connect this period with the following.\n\n_Sixth Period_ (since 1825), Romanticism. The initiator of this\nmovement in Portugal was Almeida-Garrett (1799-1854), with Gil Vicente\nand Camoens one of the three great poets Portugal has produced, who\nrevived and strengthened the sense of national life in his country by\nhis 'Camoens,' an epic of glowing patriotism published during his\nexile in 1825, by his national dramas, and by the collection of the\npopular traditions of his people, which he began and which has since\nbeen zealously continued in all parts of the country. The second\ninfluential leader of romanticism was Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877),\ngreat especially as national historian, but also a novelist and poet\nof superior merit. The labors of these two men bore fruit, since the\nmiddle of the century, in what may be termed an intellectual\nrenovation of Portugal which first found expression in the so-called\nCoimbra School, and has since been supported by such men as Theophilo\nBraga, F. Adolpho Coelho, Joaquim de Vasconcellos, J. Leite de\nVasconcellos, and others, whose life-work is devoted to the conviction\nthat only a thorough and critical study of their country's past can\ninspire its literature with new life and vigor and maintain the sense\nof national independence.\n\n * * * * *\n\nLUIZ VAZ DE CAMOENS, Portugal's greatest poet and patriot, was born in\n1524 or 1525, most probably at Coimbra, as the son of Simao Vaz de\nCamoens and Donna Anna de Macedo of Santarem. Through his father, a\n_cavalleiro fidalgo_, or untitled nobleman, who was related with Vasco\nda Gama, Camoens descended from an ancient and once influential noble\nfamily of Galician origin. He spent his youth at Coimbra, and though\nhis name is not found in the registers of the university, which had\nbeen removed to that city in 1537, and of which his uncle, Bento de\nCamoens, prior of the monastery of Santa Cruz, was made chancellor in\n1539, it was presumably in that institution, then justly famous, that\nthe highly gifted youth acquired his uncommon familiarity with the\nclassics and with the literatures of Spain, Italy, and that of his own\ncountry. In 1542 we find Camoens exchanging his _alma mater_ for the\ngay and brilliant court of John III., then at Lisbon, where his gentle\nbirth, his poetic genius, and his fine personal appearance brought him\nmuch favor, especially with the fair sex, while his independent\nbearing and indiscreet speech aroused the jealousy and enmity of his\nrivals. Here he woos and wins the damsels of the palace until a\nhigh-born lady in attendance upon the Queen, Donna Catharina de\nAthaide,--whom, like Petrarch, he claims to have first seen on Good\nFriday in church, and who is celebrated in his poems under the anagram\nof _Natercia_,--inspires him with a deep and enduring passion.\nIrritated by the intrigues employed by his enemies to mar his\nprospects, the impetuous youth commits imprudent acts which lead to\nhis banishment from the city in 1546. For about a year he lives in\nenforced retirement on the Upper Tagus (_Ribatejo_), pouring out his\nprofound passion and grief in a number of beautiful sonnets and\nelegies. Most likely in consequence of some new offense, he is next\nexiled for two years to Ceuta in Africa, where, in a fight with the\nMoors, he loses his right eye by a chance splinter. Meeting on his\nreturn to Lisbon in 1547 neither with pardon for his indiscretions nor\nwith recognition for his services and poetic talent, he allows his\nkeen resentment of this unjust treatment to impel him into the\nreckless and turbulent life of a bully. It was thus that during the\nfestival of Corpus Christi in 1552 he got into a quarrel with Goncalo\nBorges, one of the King's equerries, in which he wounded the latter.\nFor this Camoens was thrown into jail until March, 1553, when he was\nreleased only on condition that he should embark to serve in India.\nNot quite two weeks after leaving his prison, on March 24th, he sailed\nfor India on the flag-ship Sam Bento, bidding, as a true Renaissance\npoet, farewell to his native land in the words of Scipio which were to\ncome true: \"Ingrata patria non possidebis ossa mea.\" After a stormy\npassage of six months, the Sam Bento cast anchor in the bay of Goa.\nCamoens first took part in an expedition against the King of Pimenta,\nand in the following year (1554) he joined another directed against\nthe Moorish pirates on the coast of Africa. The scenes of drunkenness\nand dissoluteness which he witnessed in Goa inspired him with a number\nof satirical poems, by which he drew upon himself much enmity and\npersecution. In 1556 his three-years' term of service expired; but\nthough ardently longing for his beloved native land, he remained in\nGoa, influenced either by his bent for the soldier's life or by the\nsad news of the death of Donna Catharina de Athaide in that year. He\nwas ordered to Macao in China, to the lucrative post of commissary for\nthe effects of deceased or absent Portuguese subjects. There, in the\nquietude of a grotto near Macao, still called the Grotto of Camoens,\nthe exiled poet finished the first six cantos of his great epic 'The\nLusiads.' Recalled from this post in 1558, before the expiration of\nhis term, on the charge of malversation of office, Camoens on his\nreturn voyage to Goa was shipwrecked near the mouth of the Me-Kong,\nsaving nothing but his faithful Javanese slave and the manuscript of\nhis 'Lusiads'--which, swimming with one hand, he held above the water\nwith the other. In Cambodia, where he remained several months, he\nwrote his marvelous paraphrase of the 137th psalm, contrasting under\nthe allegory of Babel (Babylon) and Siam (Zion), Goa and Lisbon. Upon\nhis return to Goa he was cast into prison, but soon set free on\nproving his innocence by a public trial. Though receiving, in 1557,\nanother lucrative employment, Camoens finally resolved to go home,\nburning with the desire to lay his patriotic song, now almost\ncompleted, before his nation, and to cover with honor his injured\nname.\n\nHe accepted a passage to Sofala offered him by Pedro Barreto, who had\nbecome viceroy of Mozambique in that year. Unable to refund the amount\nof the passage, he was once more held for debt and spent two years of\nmisery and distress in Mozambique, completing and polishing during\nthis time his great epic song and preparing the collection of his\nlyrics, his 'Parnasso.' In 1559 he was released by the historian Diogo\ndo Couto and other friends of his, visiting Sofala with the expedition\nof Noronha, and embarked on the Santa Clara for Lisbon.\n\nOn the 7th of April, 1570, Camoens once more set foot on his native\nsoil, only to find the city for which he had yearned, sadly changed.\nThe government was in the hands of a brave but harebrained and fanatic\nyoung monarch, ruled by the Jesuits; the capital had been ravaged by a\nterrible plague which had carried off fifty thousand souls; and its\nsociety had no room for a man who brought with him from the Indies,\nwhence so many returned with great riches, nothing but a manuscript,\nthough in it was sung in classic verse the glory of his people. Still,\nthrough the kind offices of his warm friend Dom Manoel de Portugal,\nCamoens obtained, on the 25th of September, 1571, the royal permission\nto print his epic. It was published in the spring of the following\nyear (March, 1572). Great as was the success of the work, which marked\na new epoch in Portuguese history, the reward which the poet received\nfor it was meagre. King Sebastian granted him an annual pension of\nfifteen thousand reis (fifteen dollars, which then had the purchasing\nvalue of about sixty dollars in our money), which, after the poet's\ndeath, was ordered by Philip II. to be paid to his aged mother.\nDestitute and broken in spirit, Camoens lived for the last eight years\nof his life with his mother in a humble house near the convent of\nSanta Ana, \"in the knowledge of many and in the society of few.\" Dom\nSebastian's departure early in 1578 for the conquest in Africa once\nmore kindled patriotic hopes in his breast; but the terrible defeat at\nAlcazarquivir (August 4th of the same year), in which Portugal lost\nher king and her army, broke his heart. He died on the 10th of June,\n1580, at which time the army of Philip II., under the command of the\nDuke of Alva, was marching upon Lisbon. He was thus spared the cruel\nblow of seeing, though not of foreseeing, the national death of his\ncountry. The story that his Javanese slave Antonio used to go out at\nnight to beg of passers-by alms for his master, is one of a number of\ntouching legends which, as early as 1572, popular fancy had begun to\nweave around the poet's life. It is true, however, that Camoens\nbreathed his last in dire distress and isolation, and was buried\n\"poorly and plebeianly\" in the neighboring convent of Santa Ana. It\nwas not until sixteen years later that a friend of his, Dom Goncalo\nCoutinho, caused his grave to be marked with a marble slab bearing the\ninscription:--\"Here lies Luis de Camoens, Prince of the Poets of his\ntime. He died in the year 1579. This tomb was placed for him by order\nof D. Goncalo Coutinho, and none shall be buried in it.\" The words \"He\nlived poor and neglected, and so died,\" which in the popular tradition\nform part of this inscription, are apocryphal, though entirely in\nconformity with the facts. The correctness of 1580 instead of 1579 as\nthe year of the poet's death is proven by an official document in the\narchives of Philip II. Both the memorial slab and the convent-church\nof Santa Ana were destroyed by the earthquake of 1755 and during the\nrebuilding of the convent, and the identification of the remains of\nthe great man thus rendered well-nigh impossible. In 1854, however,\nall the bones found under the floor of the convent-church were placed\nin a coffin of Brazil-wood and solemnly deposited in the convent at\nBelem, the Pantheon of King Emanuel. In 1867 a statue was erected to\nCamoens by the city of Lisbon.\n\n'The Lusiads' (Portuguese, _Os Lusiadas_), a patronymic adopted by\nCamoens in place of the usual term _Lusitanos_, the descendants of\nLusus (the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese), is an epic poem\nwhich, as its name implies, has for its subject the heroic deeds not\nof one hero, but of the whole Portuguese nation. Vasco da Gama's\ndiscovery of the way to the East Indies forms, to be sure, the central\npart of its action; but around it are grouped, with consummate art,\nthe heroic deeds and destinies of the other Lusitanians. In this,\nCamoens' work stands alone among all poems of its kind. Originating\nunder conditions similar to those which are indispensable to the\nproduction of a true epic, in the heroic period of the Portuguese\npeople, when national sentiment had risen to its highest point, it is\nthe only one among the modern epopees which comes near to the\nprimitive character of epic poetry. A trait which distinguishes this\nepic from all its predecessors is the historic truthfulness with which\nCamoens confessedly--\"_A verdade_ que eu conto nua e pura Vence toda a\ngrandiloqua escriptura\"--represents his heroic personages and their\nexploits, tempering his praise with blame where blame is due, and the\nunquestioned fidelity and exactness with which he depicts natural\nscenes. Lest, however, this adherence to historic truth should impair\nthe vivifying element of imagination indispensable to true poetry, our\nbard, combining in the true spirit of the Renaissance myth and\nmiracle, threw around his narrative the allegorical drapery of pagan\nmythology, introducing the gods and goddesses of Olympus as siding\nwith or against the Portuguese heroes, and thus calling the\nimagination of the reader into more active play. Among the many\nbeautiful inventions of his own creative fancy with which Camoens has\nadorned his poem, we shall only mention the powerful impersonation of\nthe Cape of Storms in the Giant Adamastor (c. v.), an episode used by\nMeyerbeer in his opera 'L'Africaine,' and the enchanting scene of the\nIsle of Love (c. ix.), as characteristic of the poet's delicacy of\ntouch as it is of his Portuguese temperament, in which Venus provides\nfor the merited reward and the continuance of the brave sons of Lusus.\nFor the metric form of his verse, Camoens adopted the octave rhyme of\nAriosto, while for his epic style he followed Virgil, from whom many a\nsimile and phrase is directly borrowed. His poem, justly admired for\nthe elegant simplicity, the purity and harmony of its diction, bears\nthroughout the deep imprint of his own powerful and noble personality,\nthat independence and magnanimity of spirit, that fortitude of soul,\nthat genuine and glowing patriotism which alone, amid all the\ndisappointments and dangers, the dire distress and the foibles and\nfaults of his life, could enable him to give his mind and heart\nsteadfastly to the fulfillment of the lofty patriotic task he had set\nhis genius,--the creation of a lasting monument to the heroic deeds of\nhis race. It is thus that through 'The Lusiads' Camoens became the\nmoral bond of the national individuality of his people, and inspired\nit with the energy to rise free once more out of Spanish subjection.\n\nLyrics. Here, Camoens is hardly less great than as an epic poet,\nwhether we consider the nobility, depth, and fervor of the sentiments\nfilling his songs, or the artistic perfection, the rich variety of\nform, and the melody of his verse. His lyric works fall into two main\nclasses, those written in Italian metres and those in the traditional\ntrochaic lines and strophic forms of the Spanish peninsula. The first\nclass is contained in the 'Parnasso,' which comprises 356 sonnets, 22\ncanzones, 27 elegies, 12 odes, 8 octaves, and 15 idyls, all of which\ntestify to the great influence of the Italian school, and especially\nof Petrarch, on our poet. The second class is embodied in the\n'Cancioneiro,' or song-book, and embraces more than one hundred and\nfifty compositions in the national peninsular manner. Together, these\ntwo collections form a body of lyric verse of such richness and\nvariety as neither Petrarch and Tasso nor Garcilaso de la Vega can\noffer. Unfortunately, Camoens never prepared an edition of his\n_Rimas_; and the manuscript, which, as Diogo do Couto tells us, he\narranged during his sojourn in Mozambique from 1567 to 1569, is said\nto have been stolen. It was not until 1595, fully fifteen years after\nthe poet's death, that one of his disciples and admirers, Fernao\nRodrigues Lobo Soropita, collected from Portugal, and even from India,\nand published in Lisbon, a volume of one hundred and seventy-two\nsongs, four of which, however, are not by Camoens. The great mass of\nverse we now possess has been gathered during the last three\ncenturies. More may still be discovered, while, on the other hand,\nmuch of what is now attributed to Camoens does not belong to him, and\nthe question how much of the extant material is genuine is yet to be\ndefinitely answered.\n\nIn his lyrics, Camoens has depicted, with all the passion and power of\nhis impressionable temperament, the varied experiences and emotions of\nhis eventful life. This variety and change of sentiments and\nsituations, while greatly enhancing the value of his songs by the\nimpression of fuller truth and individuality which they produce, is in\nso far disadvantageous to a just appreciation of them, as it naturally\nbrings with it much verse of inferior poetic merit, and lacks that\nharmony and unity of emotion which Petrarch was able to effect in his\n_Rime_ by confining himself to the portraiture of a lover's soul.\n\nDrama. In his youth, most likely during his life at court between 1542\nand 1546, Camoens wrote three comedies of much freshness and verve, in\nwhich he surpassed all the Portuguese plays in the national taste\nproduced up to his time. One, 'Filodemo,' derives its plot from a\nmediaeval novel; the other two, 'Rei Seleuco' (King Seleucus) and\n'Amphitryoes,' from antiquity. The last named, a free imitation of\nPlautus's 'Amphitryo,' is by far the best play of the three. In these\ncomedies we can recognize an attempt on the part of the author to fuse\nthe imperfect play in the national taste, such as it had been\ncultivated by Gil Vicente, with the more regular but lifeless pieces\nof the classicists, and thus to create a superior form of national\ncomedy. In this endeavor, however, Camoens found no followers.\n\nBibliography. The most complete edition of the works of Camoens is\nthat by the Viscount de Juromenha, 'Obras de Luiz de Camoes,' (6\nvols., Lisbon, 1860-70); a more convenient edition is the one by Th.\nBraga (in 'Bibliotheca da Actualidade,' 3 vols., Porto, 1874). The\nbest separate edition of the text of 'The Lusiads' is by F.A. Coelho\n(Lisbon, 1880). Camoens' lyric and dramatic works are published in his\ncollected works, no separate editions of them existing thus far. In\nregard to the life and works of Camoens in general cf. Adamson,\n'Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Camoens' (2 vols., London, 1820);\nTh. Braga, 'Historia de Camoens' (3 vols., Porto, 1873-75); Latino\nCoelho, 'Luiz de Camoens' (in the 'Galeria de varoes illustres,' i.,\nLisbon, 1880); J. de Vasconcellos, 'Bibliographia Camoniana' (Porto,\n1880); Brito Aranha, 'Estudos Bibliographicos' (Lisbon, 1887-8); W.\nStorck, 'Luis' de Camoens Leben' (Paderborn, 1890); and especially\nthe judicious and impartial article by Mrs. Carolina Michaelis de\nVasconcellos in Vol. ii. of Groeber's 'Grundriss der romanischen\nPhilologie' (Strassburg, 1894). The best translations of Camoens'\nworks are the one by W. Storck, 'Camoens' (Saemmtliche Gedichte, 6\nvols., Paderborn, 1880-85), into German, and the one by R.F. Burton,\nwho has also written on the life of the poet, 'The Lusiads' (2 vols.,\nLondon, 1880), and 'The Lyricks' (3 vols., London, 1884, containing\nonly those in Italian metres), into English. The extracts given below\nare from Burton.\n\n [Signature: Henry R. Lang]\n\n\n\nTHE LUSIADS\n\n\nCANTO I\n\n The feats of Arms, and famed heroick Host,\n from occidental Lusitanian strand,\n who o'er the waters ne'er by seaman crost,\n fared beyond the Taprobane-land,\n forceful in perils and in battle-post,\n with more than promised force of mortal hand;\n and in the regions of a distant race\n rear'd a new throne so haught in Pride of Place:\n\n And, eke, the Kings of mem'ory grand and glorious,\n who hied them Holy Faith and Reign to spread,\n converting, conquering, and in lands notorious,\n Africk and Asia, devastation made;\n nor less the Lieges who by deeds memorious\n brake from the doom that binds the vulgar dead;\n my song would sound o'er Earth's extremest part\n were mine the genius, mine the Poet's art.\n\n Cease the sage Grecian, and the man of Troy\n to vaunt long voyage made in by-gone day:\n Cease Alexander, Trojan cease to 'joy\n the fame of vict'ories that have pass'd away:\n The noble Lusian's stouter breast sing I,\n whom Mars and Neptune dared not disobey:\n Cease all that antique Muse hath sung, for now\n a better Brav'ry rears its bolder brow.\n\n And you, my Tagian Nymphs, who have create\n in me new purpose with new genius firing;\n if 'twas my joy whilere to celebrate\n your founts and stream my humble song inspiring;\n Oh! lend me here a noble strain elate,\n a style grandiloquent that flows untiring;\n so shall Apollo for your waves ordain ye\n in name and fame ne'er envy Hippokrene.\n\n Grant me sonorous accents, fire-abounding,\n now serves ne peasant's pipe, ne rustick reed;\n but blasts of trumpet, long and loud resounding,\n that 'flameth heart and hue to fiery deed:\n Grant me high strains to suit their Gestes astounding,\n your Sons, who aided Mars in martial need;\n that o'er the world he sung the glorious song,\n if theme so lofty may to verse belong.\n\n And Thou! O goodly omen'd trust, all-dear[1]\n to Lusitania's olden liberty,\n whereon assured esperance we rear\n enforced to see our frail Christianity:\n Thou, O new terror to the Moorish spear,\n the fated marvel of our century,\n to govern worlds of men by God so given,\n that the world's best be given to God and Heaven:\n\n Thou young, thou tender, ever-flourishing bough,\n true scion of tree by Christ beloved more\n than aught that Occident did ever know,\n \"Caesarian\" or \"Most Christian\" styled before:\n Look on thy 'scutcheon, and behold it show\n the present Vict'ory long past ages bore;\n Arms which He gave and made thine own to be\n by Him assured on the fatal tree:[2]\n\n Thou, mighty Sovran! o'er whose lofty reign\n the rising Sun rains earliest smile of light;\n sees it from middle firmamental plain;\n And sights it sinking on the breast of Night:\n Thou, whom we hope to hail the blight, the bane\n of the dishonour'd Ishmaelitish knight;\n and Orient Turk, and Gentoo--misbeliever\n that drinks the liquor of the Sacred River:[3]\n\n Incline awhile, I pray, that majesty\n which in thy tender years I see thus ample,\n E'en now prefiguring full maturity\n that shall be shrined in Fame's eternal temple:\n Those royal eyne that beam benignity\n bend on low earth: Behold a new ensample\n of hero hearts with patriot pride inflamed,\n in number'd verses manifold proclaimed.\n\n Thou shalt see Love of Land that ne'er shall own\n lust of vile lucre; soaring towards th' Eternal:\n For 'tis no light ambition to be known\n th' acclaimed herald of my nest paternal.\n Hear; thou shalt see the great names greater grown\n of Vavasors who hail the Lord Supernal:\n So shalt thou judge which were the higher station,\n King of the world or Lord of such a nation.\n\n Hark, for with vauntings vain thou shalt not view\n phantastical, fictitious, lying deed\n of lieges lauded, as strange Muses do,\n seeking their fond and foolish pride to feed\n Thine acts so forceful are, told simply true,\n all fabled, dreamy feats they far exceed;\n exceeding Rodomont, and Ruggiero vain,\n and Roland haply born of Poet's brain.\n\n For these I give thee a Nuno, fierce in fight,\n who for his King and Country freely bled;\n an Egas and a Fuas; fain I might\n for them my lay with harp Homeric wed!\n For the twelve peerless Peers again I cite\n the Twelve of England by Magrico led:\n Nay, more, I give thee Gama's noble name,\n who for himself claims all AEneas' fame.\n\n And if in change for royal Charles of France,\n or rivalling Caesar's mem'ories thou wouldst trow,\n the first Afonso see, whose conquering lance\n lays highest boast of stranger glories low:\n See him who left his realm th' inheritance\n fair Safety, born of wars that crusht the foe:\n That other John, a knight no fear deter'd,\n the fourth and fifth Afonso, and the third.\n\n Nor shall they silent in my song remain,\n they who in regions there where Dawns arise,\n by Acts of Arms such glories toil'd to gain,\n where thine unvanquisht flag for ever flies,\n Pacheco, brave of braves; th' Almeidas twain,\n whom Tagus mourns with ever-weeping eyes;\n dread Albuquerque, Castro stark and brave,\n with more, the victors of the very grave.\n\n But, singing these, of thee I may not sing,\n O King sublime! such theme I fain must fear.\n Take of thy reign the reins, so shall my King\n create a poesy new to mortal ear:\n E'en now the mighty burthen here I ring\n (and speed its terrors over all the sphere!)\n of sing'ular prowess, War's own prodigies,\n in Africk regions and on Orient seas.\n\n Casteth on thee the Moor eyne cold with fright,\n in whom his coming doom he views designed:\n The barb'rous Gentoo, sole to see thy sight\n yields to thy yoke the neck e'en now inclined;\n Tethys, of azure seas the sovran right,\n her realm, in dowry hath to thee resigned;\n and by thy noble tender beauty won,\n would bribe and buy thee to become her son.\n\n In thee from high Olympick halls behold\n themselves, thy grandsires' sprites; far-famed pair;[4]\n this clad in Peacetide's angel-robe of gold,\n that crimson-hued with paint of battle-glare:\n By thee they hope to see their tale twice told,\n their lofty mem'ries live again; and there,\n when Time thy years shall end, for thee they 'sign\n a seat where soareth Fame's eternal shrine.\n\n But, sithence ancient Time slow minutes by\n ere ruled the Peoples who desire such boon;\n bend on my novel rashness favouring eye,\n that these my verses may become thine own:\n So shalt thou see thine Argonauts o'erfly\n yon salty argent, when they see it shown\n thou seest their labours on the raging sea:\n Learn even now invok'd of man to be.[5]\n\n [1] Invocation to Dom Sebastian.\n\n [2] The Arms of Portugal (Canto iii., 53, 54).\n\n [3] The Ganges (not the Jordan).\n\n [4] D. Joam III. and the Emperor Charles Quint.\n\n [5] End of exordium: narrative begins.\n\n\nCANTO III\n\n Now, my Calliope! to teach incline\n what speech great Gama for the king did frame:\n Inspire immortal song, grant voice divine\n unto this mortal who so loves thy name.\n Thus may the God whose gift was Medicine,\n to whom thou barest Orpheus, lovely Dame!\n never for Daphne, Clytia, Leucothoe\n due love deny thee or inconstant grow he.\n\n Satisfy, Nymph! desires that in me teem,\n to sing the merits of thy Lusians brave;\n so worlds shall see and say that Tagus-stream\n rolls Aganippe's liquor. Leave, I crave,\n leave flow'ry Pindus-head; e'en now I deem\n Apollo bathes me in that sovran wave;\n else must I hold it, that thy gentle sprite,\n fears thy dear Orpheus fade through me from sight.\n\n All stood with open ears in long array\n to hear what mighty Gama mote unfold;\n when, past in thoughtful mood a brief delay,\n began he thus with brow high-raised and bold:--\n \"Thou biddest me, O King! to say my say\n anent our grand genealogy of old:\n Thou bidd'st me not relate an alien story;\n Thou bidd'st me laud my brother Lusian's glory.\n\n \"That one praise others' exploits and renown\n is honour'd custom which we all desire;\n yet fear I 'tis unfit to praise mine own;\n lest praise, like this suspect, no trust inspire;\n nor may I hope to make all matters known\n for Time however long were short; yet, sire!\n as thou commandest all is owed to thee;\n maugre my will I speak and brief will be.\n\n \"Nay, more, what most obligeth me, in fine,\n is that no leasing in my tale may dwell;\n for of such Feats whatever boast be mine,\n when most is told, remaineth much to tell:\n But that due order wait on the design,\n e'en as desirest thou to learn full well,\n the wide-spread Continent first I'll briefly trace,\n then the fierce bloody wars that waged my race.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Lo! here her presence showeth noble Spain,\n of Europe's body corporal the head;\n o'er whose home-rule, and glorious foreign reign,\n the fatal Wheel so many a whirl hath made;\n Yet ne'er her Past or force or fraud shall stain,\n nor restless Fortune shall her name degrade;\n no bonds her bellic offspring bind so tight\n but it shall burst them with its force of sprite.\n\n \"There, facing Tingitania's shore, she seemeth\n to block and bar the Med'iterranean wave,\n where the known Strait its name ennobled deemeth\n by the last labour of the Theban Brave.\n Big with the burthen of her tribes she teemeth,\n circled by whelming waves that rage and rave;\n all noble races of such valiant breast,\n that each may justly boast itself the best.\n\n \"Hers the Tarragonese who, famed in war,\n made aye-perturbed Parthenope obey;\n the twain Asturias, and the haught Navarre\n twin Christian bulwarks on the Moslem way:\n Hers the Gallego canny, and the rare\n Castilian, whom his star raised high to sway\n Spain as her saviour, and his seign'iory feel\n Baetis, Leon, Granada, and Castile.\n\n \"See, the head-crowning coronet is she\n of general Europe, Lusitania's reign,\n where endeth land and where beginneth sea,\n and Phoebus sinks to rest upon the main.\n Willed her the Heavens with all-just decree\n by wars to mar th' ignoble Mauritan,\n to cast him from herself: nor there consent\n he rule in peace the Fiery Continent.\n\n \"This is my happy land, my home, my pride;\n where, if the Heav'ens but grant the pray'er I pray\n for glad return and every risk defied,\n there may my life-light fail and fade away.\n This was the Lusitania, name applied\n by Lusus or by Lysa, sons, they say,\n of antient Bacchus, or his boon compeers,\n eke the first dwellers of her eldest years.\n\n \"Here sprang the Shepherd,[6] in whose name we see\n forecast of virile might, of virtuous meed;\n whose fame no force shall ever hold in fee,\n since fame of mighty Rome ne'er did the deed.\n This, by light Heaven's volatile decree,\n that antient Scyther, who devours his seed,\n made puissant pow'er in many a part to claim,\n assuming regal rank; and thus it came:--\n\n \"A King there was in Spain, Afonso hight,\n who waged such warfare with the Saracen,\n that by his 'sanguined arms, and arts, and might,\n he spoiled the lands and lives of many men.\n When from Herculean Calpe winged her flight\n his fame to Caucasus Mount and Caspian glen,\n many a knight, who noblesse coveteth,\n comes offering service to such King and Death.\n\n \"And with intrinsic love inflamed more\n for the True Faith, than honours popular,\n they trooped, gath'ering from each distant shore,\n leaving their dear-loved homes and lands afar.\n When with high feats of force against the Moor\n they proved of sing'ular worth in Holy War,\n willed Afonso that their mighty deeds\n commens'urate gifts command and equal meeds.\n\n \"'Mid them Henrique, second son, men say,\n of a Hungarian King, well-known and tried,\n by sort won Portugal which, in his day,\n ne prized was ne had fit cause for pride:\n His strong affection stronger to display\n the Spanish King decreed a princely bride,\n his only child, Teresa, to the count;\n And with her made him Seigneur Paramount.\n\n \"This doughty Vassal from that servile horde,\n Hagar, the handmaid's seed, great vict'ories won;\n reft the broad lands adjacent with his sword\n and did whatever Brav'ery bade be done;\n Him, for his exploits excellent to reward,\n God gave in shortest space a gallant son,\n whose arm to 'noble and enfame was fain\n the warlike name of Lusitania's reign.\n\n \"Once more at home this conqu'ering Henry stood\n who sacred Hierosol'yma had relieved,\n his eyes had fed on Jordan's holy flood,\n which the Dear Body of Lord God had laved;\n when Godfrey left no foe to be subdued,\n and all Judaea conquered was and saved,\n many that in his wars had done devoir\n to their own lordships took the way once more.\n\n \"But when this stout and gallant Hun attained\n Life's fatal period, age and travail-spent,\n he gave, by Death's necessity constrained,\n his sprite to him that had that spirit lent:\n A son of tender years alone remained,\n to whom the Sire bequeath'd his 'bodiment;\n with bravest braves the youth was formed to cope,\n for from such sire such son the world may hope.\n\n \"Yet old Report, I know not what its weight\n (for on such antique tale no man relies),\n saith that the Mother, tane in tow the State,\n A second nuptial bed did not despise:\n Her orphan son to disinher'ited fate\n she doomed, declaring hers the dignities,\n not his, with seigniory o'er all the land,\n her spousal dowry by her sire's command.\n\n \"Now Prince Afonso (who such style had tane\n in pious mem'ory of his Grandsire's name),\n seeing no part and portion in his reign\n all pilled and plundered by the Spouse and Dame.\n by dour and doughty Mars inflamed amain,\n privily plots his heritage to claim:\n He weighs the causes in his own conceit\n till firm Resolve its fit effect shall greet.\n\n \"Of Guimara'ens the field already flow'd\n with floods of civil warfare's bloody tide,\n where she, who little of the Mother show'd,\n to her own bowels love and land denied.\n Fronting the child in fight the parent stood;\n nor saw her depth of sin that soul of pride\n against her God, against maternal love:\n Her sensual passion rose all pow'r above.\n\n \"O magical Medea! O Progne dire!\n if your own babes in vengeance dared ye kill\n for alien crimes, and injuries of the sire,\n look ye, Teresa's deed was darker still.\n Foul greed of gain, incontinent desire,\n were the main causes of such bitter ill:\n Scylla her aged sire for one did slay,\n for both Teresa did her son betray.\n\n \"Right soon that noble Prince clear vict'ory won\n from his harsh Mother and her Fere indign;\n in briefest time the land obeyed the son,\n though first to fight him did the folk incline.\n But reft of reason and by rage undone\n he bound the Mother in the biting chain:\n Eftsoons avenged her griefs the hand of God:\n Such veneration is to parents ow'd.\n\n \"Lo! the superb Castilian 'gins prepare\n his pow'r to 'venge Teresa's injuries,\n against the Lusian land in men so rare,\n whereon ne toil ne trouble heavy lies.\n Their breasts the cruel battle grandly dare,\n aid the good cause angelic Potencies;\n unrecking might unequal still they strive,\n nay, more, their dreadful foe to flight they drive!\n\n \"Passeth no tedious time, before the great\n Prince a dure Siege in Guimaraens dree'd\n by passing pow'er, for to 'mend his state,\n came the fell en'emy, full of grief and greed:\n But when committed life to direful Fate,\n Egas, the faithful guardian, he was free'd,\n who had in any other way been lost,\n all unprepared 'gainst such 'whelming host.\n\n \"But when the loyal Vassal well hath known\n how weak his Monarch's arm to front such fight,\n sans order wending to the Spanish fone,\n his Sovran's homage he doth pledge and plight.\n Straight from the horrid siege th' invader flown\n trusteth the word and honour of the Knight,\n Egas Moniz: But now the noble breast\n of the brave Youth disdaineth strange behest.\n\n \"Already came the plighted time and tide,\n when the Castilian Don stood dight to see,\n before his pow'er the Prince bend low his pride,\n yielding the promised obediency.\n Egas who views his knightly word belied,\n while still Castile believes him true to be,\n Sweet life resolveth to the winds to throw,\n nor live with foulest taint of faithless vow.\n\n \"He with his children and his wife departeth\n to keep his promise with a faith immense;\n unshod and stripped, while their plight imparteth\n far more of pity than of vengeance:\n 'If, mighty Monarch! still thy spirit smarteth\n to wreak revenge on my rash confidence,'\n quoth he, 'Behold! I come with life to save\n my pledge, my knightly honour's word I gave.'\n\n \"'I bring, thou seest here, lives innocent,\n of wife, of sinless children dight to die;\n if breasts of gen'erous mould and excellent\n accept such weaklings' woeful destiny.\n Thou seest these hands, this tongue inconsequent:\n hereon alone the fierce exper'iment try\n of torments, death, and doom that pass in full\n Sinis or e'en Perillus' brazen bull.'\n\n \"As shrifted wight the hangman stands before,\n in life still draining bitter draught of death,\n lays throat on block, and of all hope forlore,\n expects the blighting blow with bated breath:\n So, in the Prince's presence angry sore,\n Egas stood firm to keep his plighted faith:\n When the King, marv'elling at such wondrous truth,\n feels anger melt and merge in Royal ruth.\n\n \"Oh the great Portingall fidelity\n of Vassal self-devote to doom so dread!\n What did the Persian more for loyalty\n whose gallant hand his face and nostrils shred?\n When great Darius mourned so grievously\n that he a thousand times deep-sighing said,\n far he prefer'd his Zop'yrus sound again,\n than lord of twenty Babylons to reign.\n\n \"But Prince Afonso now prepared his band\n of happy Lusians proud to front the foes,\n those haughty Moors that held the glorious land\n yon side where clear delicious Tagus flows:\n Now on Ourique[8] field was pitched and plan'd\n the Royal 'Campment fierce and bellicose,\n facing the hostile host of Sarrasin\n though there so many, here so few there bin.\n\n \"Confident, yet would he in naught confide,\n save in his God that holds of Heav'en the throne;\n so few baptized stood their King beside,\n there were an hundred Moors for every one:\n Judge any sober judgment, and decide\n 'twas deed of rashness or by brav'ery done\n to fall on forces whose exceeding might\n a cent'ury showed to a single Knight.\n\n \"Order five Moorish Kings the hostile host\n of whom Ismar, so called, command doth claim;\n all of long Warfare large experience boast,\n wherein may mortals win immortal fame:\n And gallant dames the Knights they love the most\n 'company, like that brave and beauteous Dame,\n who to beleaguered Troy such aidance gave\n with woman-troops that drained Thermodon's wave.\n\n \"The coolth serene, and early morning's pride,\n now paled the sparkling stars about the Pole,\n when Mary's Son appearing crucified\n in vision, strengthened King Afonso's soul.\n But he, adoring such appearance, cried,\n fired with a phrenzied faith beyond control:\n 'To th' Infidel, O Lord! to th' Infidel:[9]\n Not, Lord, to me who know Thy pow'er so well.'\n\n \"Such gracious marvel in such manner sent\n 'flamed the Lusians' spirits fierce and high,\n towards their nat'ural King, that excellent\n Prince, unto whom love-boon none could deny:\n Aligned to front the foeman prepotent,\n they shouted res'onant slogan to the sky,\n and fierce the 'larum rose, 'Real, real,\n for high Afonso, King of Portugal!'\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Accomplished his act of arms victorious,\n home to his Lusian realm Afonso[10] sped,\n to gain from Peace-tide triumphs great and glorious,\n as those he gained in wars and battles dread;\n when the sad chance, on History's page memorious,\n which can unsepulchre the sheeted dead,\n befell that ill-starr'd, miserable Dame\n who, foully slain, a throned Queen became.\n\n \"Thou, only thou, pure Love, whose cruel might\n obligeth human hearts to weal and woe,\n thou, only thou, didst wreak such foul despight,\n as though she were some foul perfidious foe.\n Thy burning thirst, fierce Love, they say aright,\n may not be quencht by saddest tears that flow;\n Nay, more, thy sprite of harsh tyrannick mood\n would see thine altars bathed with human blood.\n\n \"He placed thee, fair Ignez! in soft retreat,\n culling the first-fruits of thy sweet young years,\n in that delicious Dream, that dear Deceit,\n whose long endurance Fortune hates and fears:\n Hard by Mondego's yearned-for meads thy seat,\n where linger, flowing still, those lovely tears,\n until each hill-born tree and shrub confest\n the name of Him deep writ within thy breast.[11]\n\n \"There, in thy Prince awoke responsive-wise,\n dear thoughts of thee which soul-deep ever lay;\n which brought thy beauteous form before his eyes,\n whene'er those eyne of thine were far away;\n Night fled in falsest, sweetest phantasies,\n in fleeting, flying reveries sped the Day;\n and all, in fine, he saw or cared to see\n were memories of his love, his joys, his thee.\n\n \"Of many a dainty dame and damosel\n The coveted nuptial couches he rejecteth;\n for naught can e'er, pure Love! thy care dispel,\n when one enchanting shape thy heart subjecteth.\n These whims of passion to despair compel\n the Sire, whose old man's wisdom aye respecteth,\n his subjects murmuring at his son's delay\n to bless the nation with a bridal day.\n\n \"To wrench Ignez from life he doth design,\n better his captured son from her to wrench;\n deeming that only blood of death indign\n the living lowe of such true Love can quench.\n What Fury willed it that the steel so fine,\n which from the mighty weight would never flinch\n of the dread Moorman, should be drawn in hate\n to work that hapless delicate Ladye's fate?\n\n \"The horr'ible Hangmen hurried her before\n the King, now moved to spare her innocence;\n but still her cruel murther urged the more\n the People, swayed by fierce and false pretence.\n She with her pleadings pitiful and sore,\n that told her sorrows and her care immense\n for her Prince-spouse and babes, whom more to leave\n than her own death the mother's heart did grieve:\n\n \"And heav'enwards to the clear and crystalline skies,\n raising her eyne with piteous tears bestained;\n her eyne, because her hands with cruel ties\n one of the wicked Ministers constrained:\n And gazing on her babes in wistful guise,\n whose pretty forms she loved with love unfeigned,\n whose orphan'd lot the Mother filled with dread,\n until their cruel grandsire thus she said:--\n\n \"'If the brute-creatures, which from natal day\n on cruel ways by Nature's will were bent;\n or feral birds whose only thought is prey,\n upon aerial rapine all intent;\n if men such salvage be'ings have seen display\n to little children loving sentiment,\n e'en as to Ninus' mother did befall,\n and to the twain who rear'd the Roman wall:\n\n \"'O thou, who bear'st of man the gest and breast,\n (an it be manlike thus to draw the sword\n on a weak girl because her love imprest\n his heart, who took her heart and love in ward);\n respect for these her babes preserve, at least!\n since it may not her obscure death retard:\n Moved be thy pitying soul for them and me,\n although my faultless fault unmoved thou see!\n\n \"'And if thou know'est to deal in direful fight\n the doom of brand and blade to Moorish host,\n Know also thou to deal of life the light\n to one who ne'er deserved her life be lost;\n But an thou wouldst mine inno'cence thus requite,\n place me for aye on sad exiled coast,\n in Scythian sleet, on seething Libyan shore,\n with life-long tears to linger evermore.\n\n \"'Place me where beasts with fiercest rage abound,--\n Lyons and Tygers,--there, ah! let me find\n if in their hearts of flint be pity found,\n denied to me by heart of humankind.\n There with intrinsic love and will so fond\n for him whose love is death, there will I tend\n these tender pledges whom thou see'st; and so\n shall the sad mother cool her burning woe.'\n\n \"Inclin'ed to pardon her the King benign,\n moved by this sad lament to melting mood;\n but the rude People and Fate's dure design\n (that willed it thus) refused the pardon sued:\n They draw their swords of steely temper fine,\n They who proclaim as just such deed of blood:\n Against a ladye, caitiff, felon wights!\n how showed ye here, brute beasts or noble Knights?\n\n \"Thus on Polyxena, that beauteous maid,\n last solace of her mother's age and care,\n when doom'd to die by fierce Achilles' shade,\n the cruel Pyrrhus hasted brand to bare:\n But she (a patient lamb by death waylaid)\n with the calm glances which serene the air,\n casts on her mother, mad with grief, her eyes\n and silent waits that awesome sacrifice.\n\n \"Thus dealt with fair Ignez the murth'erous crew,\n in th' alabastrine neck that did sustain\n the charms whereby could Love the love subdue\n of him, who crown'd her after death his Queen;\n bathing their blades; the flow'ers of snowy hue,\n which often water'ed by her eyne had been,\n are blood-dyed; and they burn with blinding hate,\n reckless of tortures stor'd for them by Fate.\n\n \"Well mightest shorn of rays, O Sun! appear\n to fiends like these on day so dark and dire;\n as when Thyestes ate the meats that were\n his seed, whom Atreus slew to spite their sire.\n And you, O hollow Valleys! doomed to hear\n her latest cry from stiffening lips expire--\n her Pedro's name,--did catch that mournful sound,\n whose echoes bore it far and far around!\n\n \"E'en as Daisy sheen, that hath been shorn\n in time untimely, floret fresh and fair,\n and by untender hand of maiden torn\n to deck the chaplet for her wreathed hair;\n gone is its odor and its colours mourn;\n So pale and faded lay that Ladye there;\n dried are the roses of her cheek, and fled\n the white live color, with her dear life dead.\n\n \"Mondego's daughter-Nymphs the death obscure\n wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding;\n and for long mem'ry changed to fountain pure\n the floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding:\n The name they gave it, which doth still endure,\n revived Ignez, whose murthered love lies bleeding,\n see yon fresh fountain flowing 'mid the flowers,\n tears are its waters, and its name 'Amores!'[12]\n\n \"Time ran not long, ere Pedro saw the day\n of vengeance dawn for wounds that ever bled;\n who, when he took in hand the kingly sway,\n eke took the murth'erers who his rage had fled:\n Them a most cruel Pedro did betray;\n for both, if human life the foemen dread,\n made concert savage and dure pact, unjust as\n Lepidus made with Anthony' and Augustus.\"\n\n [6] Viriatus.\n\n [7] Valdevez, or Campo da Matanca, A.D. 1128 (Canto iv. 16).\n\n [8] Battle of Ourique, A.D. 1139.\n\n [9] _I. e._, disclose Thyself; show a sign.\n\n [10] Alfonso IV. (1325-1357).\n\n [11] Writing his name upon the tree-trunks and leaves.\n\n [12] The famous _Fonte-dos-Amores_, near Coimbra.\n\n\n\nTHE CANZON OF LIFE\n\n\nI\n\n Come here! my confidential Secretary\n Of the complaints in which my days are rife,\n Paper,--whereon I gar my griefs o'erflow.\n Tell we, we twain, Unreasons which in life\n Deal me inexorable, contrary\n Destinies surd to prayer and tearful woe.\n Dash we some water-drops on muchel lowe,\n Fire we with outcries storm of rage so rare\n That shall be strange to mortal memory.\n Such misery tell we\n To God and Man, and eke, in fine, to air,\n Whereto so many times did I confide\n My tale and vainly told as I now tell;\n But e'en as error was my birthtide-lot,\n That this be one of many doubt I not.\n And as to hit the butt so far I fail\n E'en if I sinned her cease they to chide:\n Within mine only Refuge will I 'bide\n To speak and faultless sin with free intent.\n Sad he so scanty mercies must content!\n\n\nII\n\n Long I've unlearnt me that complaint of dole\n Brings cure of dolours; but a wight in pain\n To greet is forced an the grief be great.\n I _will_ outgreet; but weak my voice and vain\n To express the sorrows which oppress my soul;\n For nor with greeting shall my dole abate.\n Who then shall grant me, to relieve my weight\n Of sorrow, flowing tears and infinite sighs\n Equal those miseries my Sprite o'erpower?\n But who at any hour,\n Can measure miseries with his tears or cries?\n I'll tell, in fine, the love for me design'd\n By wrath and woe and all their sovenance;\n For other dole hath qualities harder, sterner.\n Draw near and hear me each despairing Learner!\n And fly the many fed on Esperance\n Or wights who fancy Hope will prove her kind;\n For Love and Fortune willed, with single mind,\n To leave them hopeful, so they comprehend\n What measure of unweal in hand they hend.\n\n\nIII\n\n When fro' man's primal grave, the mother's womb,\n New eyes on earth I oped, my hapless star\n To mar my Fortunes 'gan his will enforce;\n And freedom (Free-will given me) to debar:\n I learnt a thousand times it was my doom.\n To know the Better and to work the Worse:\n Then with conforming tormentize to curse\n My course of coming years, when cast I round\n A boyish eye-glance with a gentle zest,\n It was my Star's behest\n A Boy born blind should deal me life-long wound.\n Infantine tear-drops welled out the deep\n With vague enamoured longings, nameless pine:\n My wailing accents fro' my cradle-stound\n Already sounded me love-sighing sound.\n Thus age and destiny had like design:\n For when, peraunter, rocking me to sleep\n They sung me Love-songs wherein lovers weep,\n Attonce by Nature's will asleep I fell,\n So Melancholy witcht me with her spell!\n\n\nIV\n\n My nurse some Feral was; Fate nilled approve\n By any Woman such a name be tane\n Who gave me breast; nor seemed it suitable.\n Thus was I suckled that my lips indrain\n E'en fro' my childhood venom-draught of Love,\n Whereof in later years I drained my fill,\n Till by long custom failed the draught to kill.\n Then an Ideal semblance struck my glance\n Of that fere Human deckt with charms in foyson,\n Sweet with the suavest poyson,\n Who nourisht me with paps of Esperance;\n Till later saw mine eyes the original,\n Which of my wildest, maddest appetite\n Makes sinful error sovran and superb.\n Meseems as human form it came disturb,\n But scintillating Spirit's divinest light.\n So graceful gait, such port imperial\n Were hers, unweal vainglory'd self to weal\n When in her sight, whose lively sheen and shade\n Exceeded aught and all things Nature made.\n\n\nV\n\n What new unkindly kind of human pain\n Had Love not only doled for me to dree\n But eke on me was wholly execute?\n Implacable harshness cooling fervency\n Of Love-Desire (thought's very might and main)\n Drave me far distant fro' my settled suit,\n Vext and self-shamed to sight its own pursuit.\n Hence sombre shades phantastick born and bred\n Of trifles promising rashest Esperance;\n While boons of happy chance\n Were likewise feigned and enfigured.\n But her despisal wrought me such dismay\n That made my Fancy phrenesy-ward incline,\n Turning to disconcert the guiling lure.\n Here mine 'twas to divine, and hold for sure,\n That all was truest Truth I could divine;\n And straightway all I said in shame to unsay;\n To see whatso I saw in contrayr way;\n In fine, just Reasons seek for jealousy\n Yet were the Unreasons eather far to see.\n\n\nVI\n\n I know not how she knew that fared she stealing\n With Eyen-rays mine inner man which flew\n Her-ward with subtlest passage through the eyne\n Little by little all fro' me she drew,\n E'en as from rain-wet canopy, exhaling\n The subtle humours, sucks the hot sunshine.\n The pure transparent geste and mien, in fine,\n Wherefore inadequate were and lacking sense\n \"Beauteous\" and \"Belle\" were words withouten weight;\n The soft, compassionate\n Eye-glance that held the spirit in suspense:\n Such were the magick herbs the Heavens all-wise\n Drave me a draught to drain, and for long years\n To other Being my shape and form transmew'd;\n And this transforming with such joy I view'd\n That e'en my sorrows snared I with its snares;\n And, like the doomed man, I veiled mine eyes\n To hide an evil crescive in such guise;\n Like one caressed and on flattery fed\n Of Love, for whom his being was born and bred.\n\n\nVII\n\n Then who mine absent Life hath power to paint\n Wi' discontent of all I bore in view;\n That Bide, so far from where she had her Bide,\n Speaking, which even what I spake unknew,\n Wending, withal unseeing where I went,\n And sighing weetless for what cause I sigh'd?\n Then, as those torments last endurance tried,\n That dreadful dolour which from Tartarus's waves\n Shot up on earth and racketh more than all,\n Wherefrom shall oft befall\n It turn to gentle yearning rage that raves?\n Then with repine-ful fury fever-high\n Wishing yet wishing not for Love's surcease;\n Shifting to other side for vengeaence,\n Desires deprived of their esperance,\n What now could ever change such ills as these?\n Then the fond yearnings for the things gone by,\n Pure torment sweet in bitter faculty,\n Which from these fiery furies could distill\n Sweet tears of Love with pine the soul to thrill?\n\n\nVIII\n\n For what excuses lone with self I sought,\n When my suave Love forfended me to find\n Fault in the Thing beloved and so loved?\n Such were the feigned cures that forged my mind\n In fear of torments that for ever taught\n Life to support itself by snares approved.\n Thus through a goodly part of Life I roved,\n Wherein if ever joyed I aught content\n Short-lived, immodest, flaw-full, without heed,\n 'Twas nothing save the seed\n That bare me bitter tortures long unspent.\n This course continuous dooming to distress,\n These wandering steps that strayed o'er every road\n So wrought, they quencht for me the flamy thirst\n I suffered grow in Sprite, in Soul I nurst\n With Thoughts enamoured for my daily food,\n Whereby was fed my Nature's tenderness:\n And this by habit's long and asperous stress,\n Which might of mortals never mote resist,\n Was turned to pleasure-taste of being triste.\n\n\nIX\n\n Thus fared I Life with other interchanging;\n I no, but Destiny showing fere unlove;\n Yet even thus for other ne'er I'd change.\n Me from my dear-loved patrial nide she drove\n Over the broad and boisterous Ocean ranging,\n Where Life so often saw her extreme range.\n Now tempting rages rare and missiles strange\n Of Mart, she willed that my eyes should see\n And hands should touch, the bitter fruit he dight:\n That on this Shield they sight\n In painted semblance fire of enemy,\n Then ferforth driven, vagrant, peregrine,\n Seeing strange nations, customs, tongues, costumes;\n Various heavens, qualities different,\n Only to follow, passing-diligent\n Thee, giglet Fortune! whose fierce will consumes\n Man's age upbuilding aye before his eyne\n A Hope with semblance of the diamond's shine:\n But, when it falleth out of hand we know,\n 'Twas fragile glass that showed so glorious show.\n\n\nX\n\n Failed me the ruth of man, and I descried\n Friends to unfriendly changed and contrayr,\n In my first peril; and I lacked ground,\n Whelmed by the second, where my feet could fare;\n Air for my breathing was my lot denied,\n Time failed me, in fine, and failed me Life's dull round.\n What darkling secret, mystery profound\n This birth to Life, while Life is doomed withhold\n Whate'er the world contain for Life to use!\n Yet never Life to lose\n Though 'twas already lost times manifold!\n In brief my Fortune could no horror make,\n Ne certain danger ne ancipitous case\n (Injustice dealt by men, whom wild-confused\n Misrule, that rights of olden days abused,\n O'er neighbour-men upraised to power and place!)\n I bore not, lashed to the sturdy stake,\n Of my long suffering, which my heart would break\n With importuning persecuting harms\n Dasht to a thousand bits by forceful arms.\n\n\nXI\n\n Number I not so numerous ills as He\n Who, 'scaped the wuthering wind and furious flood,\n In happy harbour tells his travel-tale;\n Yet now, e'en now, my Fortune's wavering mood\n To so much misery obligeth me\n That e'en to pace one forward pace I quail:\n No more shirk I what evils may assail;\n No more to falsing welfare I pretend;\n For human cunning naught can gar me gain.\n In fine on sovran Strain\n Of Providence divine I now depend:\n This thought, this prospect 'tis at times I greet\n My sole consoler for dead hopes and fears.\n But human weakness when its eyne alight\n Upon the things that fleet, and can but sight\n The sadding Memories of the long-past years;\n What bread such times I break, what drink I drain,\n Are bitter tear-floods I can ne'er refrain,\n Save by upbuilding castles based on air,\n Phantastick painture fair and false as fair.\n\n\nXII\n\n For an it possible were that Time and Tide\n Could bend them backward and, like Memory, view\n The faded footprints of Life's earlier day;\n And, web of olden story weaving new,\n In sweetest error could my footsteps guide\n 'Mid bloom of flowers where wont my youth to stray;\n Then would the memories of the long sad way\n Deal me a larger store of Life-content:\n Viewing fair converse and glad company,\n Where this and other key\n She had for opening hearts to new intent;--\n The fields, the frequent stroll, the lovely show,\n The view, the snow, the rose, the formosure,\n The soft and gracious mien so gravely gay,\n The singular friendship casting clean away\n All villein longings, earthly and impure,\n As one whose Other I can never see;--\n Ah, vain, vain memories! whither lead ye me\n With this weak heart that still must toil and tire\n To tame (as tame it should) your vain Desire?\n\n L'ENVOI\n\n No more, Canzon! no more: for I could prate\n Sans compt a thousand years; and if befall\n Blame to thine over-large and long-drawn strain\n We ne'er shall see (assure who blames) contain\n An Ocean's water packt in vase so small,\n Nor sing I delicate lines in softest tone\n For gust of praise; my song to man makes known\n Pure Truth wherewith mine own Experience teems;\n Would God they were the stuff that builds our dreams!\n\n\n\nADIEU TO COIMBRA\n\n\n Sweet lucent waters of Mondego-stream,\n Of my Remembrance restful jouissance,\n Where far-fet, lingering, traitorous Esperance\n Long whiles misled me in a blinding Dream:\n Fro' you I part, yea, still I'll ne'er misdeem\n That long-drawn Memories which your charms enhance\n Forbid me changing and, in every chance,\n E'en as I farther speed I nearer seem.\n Well may my Fortunes hale this instrument\n Of Soul o'er new strange regions wide and side,\n Offered to winds and watery element:\n But hence my Spirit, by you 'companied,\n Borne on the nimble wings that Reverie lent,\n Flies home and bathes her, Waters! in your tide.\n\n\n\n\nTHOMAS CAMPBELL\n\n(1777-1844)\n\n[Illustration: THOMAS CAMPBELL]\n\n\nThe life of Thomas Campbell, though in large measure fortunate,\nwas uneventful. It was not marked with such brilliant successes as\nfollowed the career of Scott; nor was fame purchased at the price of\nso much suffering and error as were paid for their laurels by Byron,\nShelley, and Burns; but his star shone with a clear and steady ray,\nfrom the youthful hours that saw his first triumph until near life's\nclose. The world's gifts--the poet's fame, and the public honors\nand rewards that witnessed to it--were given with a generous hand;\nand until the death of a cherished wife and the loss of his two\nchildren--sons, loved with a love beyond the common love of\nfathers--broke the charm, Campbell might almost have been taken\nas a type of the happy man of letters.\n\nThomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, July 27th, 1777. His family\nconnection was large and respectable, and the branch to which he\nbelonged had been settled for many years in Argyleshire, where they\nwere called the Campbells of Kirnan, from an estate on which the\npoet's grandfather resided and where he died. His third son,\nAlexander, the father of the poet, was at one time the head of a firm\nin Glasgow, doing a profitable business with Falmouth in Virginia; but\nin common with almost all merchants engaged in the American trade, he\nwas ruined by the War of the Revolution. At the age of sixty-five he\nfound himself a poor man, involved in a costly suit in chancery, which\nwas finally decided against him, and with a wife and nine children\ndependent upon him. All that he had to live on, at the time his son\nThomas was born, was the little that remained to him of his small\nproperty when the debts were paid, and some small yearly sums from two\nprovident societies of which he was a member. The poet was fortunate\nin his parents: both of them were people of high character, warmly\ndevoted to their children, whose education was their chief\ncare,--their idea of education including the training of the heart and\nthe manners as well as the mind.\n\nWhen eight years old Thomas was sent to the grammar school at Glasgow,\nwhere he began the study of Latin and Greek. \"I was so early devoted\nto poetry,\" he writes, \"that at ten years old, when our master, David\nAllison, interpreted to us the first Eclogue of Virgil, I was\nliterally thrilled with its beauty. In my thirteenth year I went to\nthe University of Glasgow, and put on the red gown. The joy of the\noccasion made me unable to eat my breakfast. Whether it was\npresentiment or the mere castle-building of my vanity, I had even then\na day-dream that I should one day be Lord Rector of the university.\"\n\nAs a boy, Campbell gained a considerable familiarity with the Latin\nand Greek poets usually read in college, and was always more inclined\nto pride himself on his knowledge of Greek poetry than on his own\nreputation in the art. His college life was passed in times of great\npolitical excitement. Revolution was in the air, and all youthful\nspirits were aflame with enthusiasm for the cause of liberty and with\ngenerous sympathy for oppressed people, particularly the Poles and the\nGreeks. Campbell was caught by the sacred fire which later was to\ntouch the lips of Byron and Shelley; and in his earliest published\npoem his interest in Poland, which never died out from his heart,\nfound its first expression. This poem, 'The Pleasures of Hope,' a work\nwhose title was thenceforth to be inseparably associated with its\nauthor's name, was published in 1799, when Campbell was exactly\ntwenty-one years and nine months old. It at once placed him high in\npublic favor, though it met with the usual difficulty experienced by a\nfirst poem by an unknown writer, in finding a publisher. The copyright\nwas finally bought by Mundell for sixty pounds, to be paid partly in\nmoney and partly in books. Three years after the publication, a London\npublisher valued it as worth an annuity of two hundred pounds for\nlife; and Mundell, disregarding his legal rights, behaved with so much\nliberality that from the sale of the first seven editions Campbell\nreceived no less than nine hundred pounds. Besides this material\ntestimony to its success, scores of anecdotes show the favor with\nwhich it was received by the poets and writers of the time. The\ngreatest and noblest of them all, Walter Scott, was most generous in\nhis welcome. He gave a dinner in Campbell's honor, and introduced him\nto his friends with a bumper to the author of 'The Pleasures of Hope.'\n\nIt seemed the natural thing for a young man so successfully launched\nin the literary coteries of Edinburgh and Glasgow to pursue his\nadvantage in the larger literary world of London. But Campbell judged\nhimself with humorous severity. \"At present,\" he writes in a letter,\n\"I am a raw Scotch lad, and in a company of wits and geniuses would\nmake but a dull figure with my northern brogue and my 'braw Scotch\nboos.'\" The eyes of many of the young men of the time were turned\ntoward Germany, where Goethe and Schiller, Lessing and Wieland, were\ncreating the golden age of their country's literature; and Campbell,\nfull of youthful hope and enthusiasm, and with a little money in his\npocket, determined to visit the Continent before settling down to work\nin London. In 1800 he set out for Ratisbon, which he reached three\ndays before the French entered it with their army. His stay there was\ncrowded with picturesque and tragic incidents, described in his\nletters to friends at home--\"in prose,\" as his biographer justly says,\n\"which even his best poetry hardly surpasses.\" From the roof of the\nScotch Benedictine Convent of St. James, where Campbell was often\nhospitably entertained while in Ratisbon, he saw the battle of\nHohenlinden, on which he wrote the poem once familiar to every\nschoolboy. Wearied with the bloody sights of war, he left Ratisbon and\nthe next year returned to England. While living at Altona he wrote no\nless than fourteen of his minor poems, but few of these escaped the\nseverity of his final judgment when he came to collect his verses for\npublication. Among these few the best were 'The Exile of Erin' and the\nnoble ode 'Ye Mariners of England,' the poem by which alone, perhaps,\nhis name deserves to live; though 'The Battle of the Baltic' in its\noriginal form 'The Battle of Copenhagen'--unfortunately not the one\nbest known--is well worthy of a place beside it.\n\nOn his return from the Continent, Campbell found himself received in\nthe warmest manner, not only in the literary world but in circles\nreckoned socially higher. His poetry hit the taste of all the classes\nthat go to make up the general reading public; his harp had many\nstrings, and it rang true to all the notes of patriotism, humanity,\nlove, and feeling. \"His happiest moments at this period,\" says his\nbiographer, \"seem to have been passed with Mrs. Siddons, the Kembles,\nand his friend Telford, the distinguished engineer, for whom he\nafterward named his eldest son.\" Lord Minto, on his return from\nVienna, became much interested in Campbell and insisted on his taking\nup his quarters for the season in his town-house in Hanover Square.\nWhen the season was over Lord Minto went back to Scotland, taking the\npoet with him as traveling companion. At Castle Minto, Campbell found\namong other visitors Walter Scott, and it was while there that\n'Lochiel's Warning' was composed and 'Hohenlinden' revised, and both\npoems prepared for the press.\n\nIn 1803 Campbell married his cousin, Matilda Sinclair. The marriage\nwas a happy one; Washington Irving speaks of the lady's personal\nbeauty, and says that her mental qualities were equally matched with\nit. \"She was, in fact,\" he adds, \"a more suitable wife for a poet than\npoets' wives are apt to be; and for once a son of song had married a\nreality and not a poetical fiction.\"\n\nFor seventeen years he supported himself and his family by what was\nfor the most part task-work, not always well paid, and made more\nonerous by the poor state of his health. In 1801 Campbell's father\ndied, an old man of ninety-one, and with him ceased the small\nbenevolent-society pensions that, with what Thomas and the eldest son\nliving in America could contribute, had hitherto kept the parents in\ndecent comfort. But soon after Thomas's marriage and the birth of his\nfirst child, the American brother failed, so that the pious duty of\nsupporting the aged mother now came upon the poet alone. He accepted\nthe addition to his burden as manfully as was to be expected of so\ngenerous a nature, but there is no doubt that he was in great poverty\nfor a few years. Although often despondent, and with good reason, his\nnatural cheerfulness and his good sense always came to the rescue, and\nin his lowest estate he retained the respect and the affection of his\nmany friends.\n\nIn 1805 Campbell received a pension of L200, which netted him, when\nfees and expenses were deducted, L168 a year. Half of this sum he\nreserved for himself and the remainder he divided between his mother\nand his two sisters. In 1809 he published 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' which\nhad been completed the year before. It was hailed with delight in\nEdinburgh and with no less favor in London, and came to a second\nedition in the spring of 1810. But like most of Campbell's more\npretentious poetry, it has failed to keep its place in the world's\nfavor. The scene of the poem is laid in an impossible Pennsylvania\nwhere the bison and the beaver, the crocodile, the condor, and the\nflamingo, live in happy neighborhood in groves of magnolia and olive;\nwhile the red Indian launches his pirogue upon the Michigan to hunt\nthe bison, while blissful shepherd swains trip with maidens to the\ntimbrel, and blue-eyed Germans change their swords to pruning-hooks,\nAndalusians dance the saraband, poor Caledonians drown their homesick\ncares in transatlantic whisky, and Englishmen plant fair Freedom's\ntree! The story is as unreal as the landscape, and it is told in a\nstyle more labored and artificial by far than that of Pope, to whom\nindeed the younger poet was often injudiciously compared. Yet it is to\nbe noted that Campbell's prose style was as direct and unaffected as\ncould be wished, while in his two best lyrical poems, 'Ye Mariners of\nEngland,' and the first cast of 'The Battle of the Baltic,' he shows a\nvividness of conception and a power of striking out expression at\nwhite heat in which no one of his contemporaries excelled him.\n\nCampbell was deservedly a great favorite in society, and the story\nof his life at this time is largely the record of his meeting with\ndistinguished people. The Princess of Wales freely welcomed him to her\ncourt; he had corresponded with Madame de Stael, and when she came to\nEngland he visited her often and at her request read her his lectures\non poetry; he saw much of Mrs. Siddons, and when in Paris in 1814,\nvisited the Louvre in her company to see the statues and pictures of\nwhich Napoleon had plundered Italy.\n\nIn 1826 Campbell was made Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and in\n1828 he was re-elected unanimously. During this second term his wife\ndied, and in 1829 the unprecedented honor of an election for a third\nterm was bestowed upon him, although he had to dispute it with no less\na rival than Sir Walter Scott. \"When he went to Glasgow to be\ninaugurated as Lord Rector,\" says his biographer, \"on reaching the\ncollege green he found the boys pelting each other with snowballs. He\nrushed into the melee and flung about his snowballs right and left\nwith great dexterity, much to the delight of the boys but to the great\nscandal of the professors. He was proud of the piece of plate given\nhim by the Glasgow lads, but of the honor conferred by his college\ntitle he was less sensible. He hated the sound of _Doctor_ Campbell,\nand said to an acquaintance that no friend of his would ever call him\nso.\"\n\nThe establishment through his direct agency of the University of\nLondon was Campbell's most important public work. Later his life was\nalmost wholly engrossed for a time by his interest in the cause of\nPoland--a cause indeed that from his youth had lain near his heart.\nBut as he grew older and his health declined he became more and more\nrestless, and finally in 1843 took up his residence at Boulogne. His\nparents, his brothers and sisters, his wife, his two children, so\ntenderly loved, were all gone. But he still corresponded with his\nfriends, and to the last his talk was cheerful and pleasant. In June,\n1844, he died, and in July he was buried in Westminster Abbey in\nPoets' Corner. About his grave stood Milman, the Duke of Argyle,--the\nhead of his clan,--Sir Robert Peel, Brougham, Lockhart, Macaulay,\nD'Israeli, Horace Smith, Croly and Thackeray, with many others, and\nwhen the words \"Dust to dust\" were pronounced, Colonel Szyrma, a\ndistinguished Pole, scattered over the coffin a handful of earth from\nthe grave of Kosciuszko at Cracow.\n\n\n\nHOPE\n\nFrom the 'Pleasures of Hope'\n\n\n At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow\n Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,\n Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,\n Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?\n Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear\n More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?\n 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,\n And robes the mountain in its azure hue.\n Thus with delight we linger to survey\n The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;\n Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene\n More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,\n And every form that Fancy can repair\n From dark oblivion glows divinely there.\n What potent spirit guides the raptured eye\n To pierce the shades of dim futurity?\n Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,\n The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour?\n Ah no! she darkly sees the fate of man--\n Her dim horizon bounded to a span;\n Or if she hold an image to the view,\n 'Tis Nature pictured too severely true.\n With thee, sweet Hope, resides the heavenly light\n That pours remotest rapture on the sight;\n Thine is the charm of life's bewildered way,\n That calls each slumbering passion into play.\n Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,\n On tiptoe watching, start at thy command,\n And fly where'er thy mandate bids them steer,\n To Pleasure's path or Glory's bright career....\n Where is the troubled heart consigned to share\n Tumultuous toils or solitary care,\n Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray\n To count the joys of Fortune's better day?\n Lo! nature, life, and liberty relume\n The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom;\n A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,\n Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;\n Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,\n And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe.\n Chide not his peace, proud Reason; nor destroy\n The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,\n That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour\n Spontaneous slumber on his midnight hour.\n Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale\n That wafts so slow her lover's distant sail;\n She, sad spectatress, on the wintry shore,\n Watched the rude surge his shroudless corse that bore,\n Knew the pale form, and shrieking in amaze,\n Clasped her cold hands, and fixed her maddening gaze;\n Poor widowed wretch! 'Twas there she wept in vain,\n Till Memory fled her agonizing brain:--\n But Mercy gave, to charm the sense of woe,\n Ideal peace, that truth could ne'er bestow;\n Warm on her heart the joys of Fancy beam,\n And aimless Hope delights her darkest dream.\n Oft when yon moon has climbed the midnight sky,\n And the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry,\n Piled on the steep, her blazing fagots burn\n To hail the bark that never can return;\n And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep\n That constant love can linger on the deep.\n\n\n\nTHE FALL OF POLAND\n\nFrom the 'Pleasures of Hope'\n\n\n O Sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased a while,\n And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,\n When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars\n Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce hussars,\n Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,\n Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;\n Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,\n Presaging wrath to Poland--and to man!\n Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed,\n Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid--\n O Heaven! he cried,--my bleeding country save!\n Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?\n Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,\n Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains.\n By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,\n And swear for her to live! with her to die!\n He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed\n His trusty warriors, few but undismayed;\n Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,\n Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;\n Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,\n Revenge, or death--the watchword and reply;\n Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,\n And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!\n In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!\n From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew;\n Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,\n Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;\n Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,\n Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!\n Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,\n Closed her bright eye and curbed her high career;\n Hope for a season bade the world farewell,\n And Freedom shrieked, as Kosciusko fell!\n The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there;\n Tumultuous Murder shook the midnight air--\n On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,\n His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below;\n The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,\n Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay!\n Hark, as the smoldering piles with thunder fall,\n A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!\n Earth shook--red meteors flashed along the sky,\n And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry!\n O righteous Heaven! ere Freedom found a grave,\n Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save?\n Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod,\n That smote the foes of Zion and of God;\n That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron car\n Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar?\n Where was the storm that slumbered till the host\n Of blood-stained Pharaoh left their trembling coast;\n Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,\n And heaved an ocean on their march below?\n Departed spirits of the mighty dead!\n Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled!\n Friends of the world! restore your swords to man,\n Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van;\n Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone,\n And make her arm puissant as your own;\n Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return\n The patriot Tell, the Bruce of Bannockburn!\n\n\n\nTHE SLAVE\n\nFrom the 'Pleasures of Hope'\n\n\n And say, supernal Powers! who deeply scan\n Heaven's dark decrees, unfathomed yet by man,--\n When shall the world call down, to cleanse her shame,\n That embryo spirit, yet without a name,\n That friend of Nature, whose avenging hands\n Shall burst the Libyan's adamantine bands?\n Who, sternly marking on his native soil\n The blood, the tears, the anguish and the toil,\n Shall bid each righteous heart exult to see\n Peace to the slave, and vengeance on the free!\n Yet, yet, degraded men! th' expected day\n That breaks your bitter cup is far away;\n Trade, wealth, and fashion ask you still to bleed,\n And holy men give Scripture for the deed;\n Scourged and debased, no Briton stoops to save\n A wretch, a coward--yes, because a slave!\n Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand\n Had heaved the floods and fixed the trembling land,\n When life sprang startling at thy plastic call,\n Endless thy forms, and man the lord of all:--\n Say, was that lordly form inspired by thee,\n To wear eternal chains and bow the knee?\n Was man ordained the slave of man to toil,\n Yoked with the brutes, and fettered to the soil,\n Weighed in a tyrant's balance with his gold?\n No! Nature stamped us in a heavenly mold!\n She bade no wretch his thankless labor urge,\n Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge;\n No homeless Libyan, on the stormy deep,\n To call upon his country's name and weep!\n Lo! once in triumph, on his boundless plain,\n The quivered chief of Congo loved to reign;\n With fires proportioned to his native sky,\n Strength in his arm, and lightning in his eye;\n Scoured with wild feet his sun-illumined zone,\n The spear, the lion, and the woods, his own;\n Or led the combat, bold without a plan,\n An artless savage, but a fearless man.\n The plunderer came;--alas! no glory smiles\n For Congo's chief, on yonder Indian isles;\n Forever fallen! no son of nature now,\n With Freedom chartered on his manly brow.\n Faint, bleeding, bound, he weeps the night away,\n And when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,\n Starts, with a bursting heart, for evermore\n To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore!\n The shrill horn blew; at that alarum knell\n His guardian angel took a last farewell.\n That funeral dirge to darkness hath resigned\n The fiery grandeur of a generous mind.\n Poor fettered man! I hear thee breathing low\n Unhallowed vows to Guilt, the child of Woe:\n Friendless thy heart; and canst thou harbor there\n A wish but death--a passion but despair?\n The widowed Indian, when her lord expires,\n Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires.\n So falls the heart at Thraldom's bitter sigh;\n So Virtue dies, the spouse of Liberty!\n\n\n\nDEATH AND A FUTURE LIFE\n\nFrom the 'Pleasures of Hope'\n\n\n Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn,\n When soul to soul, and dust to dust return!\n Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour.\n Oh, then thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!\n What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly\n The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye,--\n Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey\n The morning dream of life's eternal day--\n Then, then the triumph and the trance begin,\n And all the phoenix spirit burns within!\n Oh deep-enchanting prelude to repose,\n The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!\n Yet half I hear the panting spirit sigh,\n It is a dread and awful thing to die!\n Mysterious worlds, untraveled by the sun!\n Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run,--\n From your unfathomed shades and viewless spheres,\n A warning comes, unheard by other ears.\n 'Tis Heaven's commanding trumpet, long and loud,\n Like Sinai's thunder, pealing from the cloud!\n While Nature hears, with terror-mingled trust,\n The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust;\n And like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod\n The roaring waves, and called upon his God,\n With mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss,\n And shrieks, and hovers o'er the dark abyss!\n Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume\n The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb;\n Melt and dispel, ye spectre doubts, that roll\n Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!\n Fly, like the moon-eyed herald of Dismay,\n Chased on his night-steed by the star of day!\n The strife is o'er--the pangs of Nature close,\n And life's last rapture triumphs o'er her woes.\n Hark! as the spirit eyes, with eagle gaze,\n The noon of Heaven undazzled by the blaze,\n On heavenly winds that waft her to the sky\n Float the sweet tones of star-born melody;\n Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail\n Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale,\n When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still\n Watched on the holy towers of Zion hill.\n Soul of the just! companion of the dead!\n Where is thy home, and whither art thou fled?\n Back to its heavenly source thy being goes.\n Swift as the comet wheels to whence he rose;\n Doomed on his airy path a while to burn,\n And doomed like thee to travel and return.\n Hark! from the world's exploding centre driven,\n With sounds that shook the firmament of Heaven,\n Careers the fiery giant, fast and far,\n On bickering wheels and adamantine car;\n From planet whirled to planet more remote,\n He visits realms beyond the reach of thought;\n But wheeling homeward, when his course is run,\n Curbs the red yoke, and mingles with the sun:\n So hath the traveler of earth unfurled\n Her trembling wings, emerging from the world;\n And o'er the path by mortal never trod,\n Sprung to her source, the bosom of her God!\n Oh, lives there, Heaven, beneath thy dread expanse,\n One hopeless, dark idolater of Chance,\n Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined,\n The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind,\n Who, moldering earthward, reft of every trust,\n In joyless union wedded to the dust,\n Could all his parting energy dismiss,\n And call this barren world sufficient bliss?\n There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien,\n Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,\n Who hail thee, Man! the pilgrim of a day,\n Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay;\n Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower,\n Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower;\n A friendless slave, a child without a sire,\n Whose mortal life and momentary fire\n Light to the grave his chance-created form,\n As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm;\n And when the guns' tremendous flash is o'er,\n To-night and silence sink for evermore!\n Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,\n Lights of the world, and demigods of Fame?\n Is this your triumph--this your proud applause,\n Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?\n For this hath Science searched, on weary wing,\n By shore and sea, each mute and living thing?\n Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep,\n To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep?\n Or round the cope her living chariot driven,\n And wheeled in triumph through the signs of Heaven?\n O star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,\n To waft us home the message of despair?\n Then bind the palm, thy sage's brow to suit,\n Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit.\n Ah me! the laureled wreath that Murder rears,\n Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears,\n Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread,\n As waves the nightshade round the skeptic's head.\n What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain?\n I smile on death, if Heavenward Hope remain!\n But if the warring winds of Nature's strife\n Be all the faithless charter of my life;\n If Chance awaked, inexorable power,\n This frail and feverish being of an hour;\n Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,\n Swift as the tempest travels on the deep;\n To know Delight but by her parting smile,\n And toil, and wish, and weep a little while;--\n Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain\n This troubled pulse and visionary brain!\n Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom,\n And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!\n Truth, ever lovely,--since the world began,\n The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,--\n How can thy words from balmy slumber start\n Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!\n Yet if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,\n And that were true which Nature never told,\n Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field:\n No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed.\n Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,\n The doom that bars us from a better fate;\n But, sad as angels for the good man's sin,\n Weep to record, and blush to give it in!\n\n\n\nLOCHIEL'S WARNING\n\n\n WIZARD\n\n Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day\n When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!\n For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,\n And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.\n They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;\n Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!\n Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,\n And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.\n But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,\n What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?\n 'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await,\n Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.\n A steed comes at morning; no rider is there;\n But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.\n Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!\n Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:\n For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,\n Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.\n\n LOCHIEL\n\n Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!\n Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,\n Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight\n This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.\n\n WIZARD\n\n Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?\n Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!\n Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,\n From his home in the dark rolling clouds of the north?\n Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode\n Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;\n But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!\n Ah! home let him speed,--for the spoiler is nigh.\n Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast\n Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?\n 'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven\n From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.\n O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,\n Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,\n Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;\n Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!\n For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,\n And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.\n\n LOCHIEL\n\n False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshaled my clan;\n Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!\n They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,\n And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.\n Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock!\n Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!\n But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,\n When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;\n When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,\n Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud,\n All plaided and plumed in their tartan array--\n\n WIZARD\n\n Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day;\n For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,\n But man cannot cover what God would reveal;\n 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,\n And coming events cast their shadows before.\n I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring\n With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.\n Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,\n Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!\n Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:\n Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!\n 'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:\n Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.\n But where is the iron-bound prisoner? where?\n For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.\n Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,\n Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?\n Ah no! for a darker departure is near;\n The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;\n His death-bell is tolling: O Mercy, dispel\n Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!\n Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,\n And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.\n Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,\n Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,\n With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale--\n\n LOCHIEL\n\n Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:\n For never shall Albin a destiny meet\n So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.\n Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,\n Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,\n Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,\n While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,\n Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,\n With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!\n And, leaving in battle no blot on his name,\n Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.\n\n\n\nTHE SOLDIER'S DREAM\n\n\n Our bugles sang truce--for the night-cloud had lowered,\n And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;\n And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,\n The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.\n\n When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,\n By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,\n At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,\n And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.\n\n Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,\n Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:\n 'Twas Autumn,--and sunshine arose on the way\n To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.\n\n I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft\n In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;\n I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,\n And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.\n\n Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore\n From my home and my weeping friends never to part;\n My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,\n And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart.\n\n \"Stay, stay with us,--rest; thou art weary and worn!\"\n And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay:--\n But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,\n And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.\n\n\n\nLORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER\n\n\n A Chieftan, to the Highlands bound,\n Cries, \"Boatman, do not tarry!\n And I'll give thee a silver pound,\n To row us o'er the ferry.\"\n\n \"Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,\n This dark and stormy water?\"\n \"O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,\n And this Lord Ullin's daughter.\n\n \"And fast before her father's men\n Three days we've fled together;\n For should he find us in the glen,\n My blood would stain the heather.\n\n \"His horsemen hard behind us ride;\n Should they our steps discover,\n Then who will cheer my bonny bride\n When they have slain her lover?\"\n\n Out spoke the hardy Highland wight,\n \"I'll go, my chief--I'm ready;--\n It is not for your silver bright,\n But for your winsome lady;\n\n \"And by my word! the bonny bird\n In danger shall not tarry;\n So though the waves are raging white\n I'll row you o'er the ferry.\"\n\n By this the storm grew loud apace,\n The water-wraith was shrieking;\n And in the scowl of heaven each face\n Grew dark as they were speaking.\n\n But still as wilder blew the wind,\n And as the night grew drearer,\n Adown the glen rode armed men,\n Their trampling sounded nearer.\n\n \"O haste thee, haste!\" the lady cries,\n \"Though tempests round us gather,\n I'll meet the raging of the skies,\n But not an angry father.\"\n\n The boat has left a stormy land,\n A stormy sea before her,\n When, oh! too strong for human hand,\n The tempest gathered o'er her.\n\n And still they rowed amidst the roar\n Of waters fast prevailing:\n Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore;\n His wrath was changed to wailing.\n\n For sore dismayed, through storm and shade,\n His child he did discover:\n One lovely hand she stretched for aid,\n And one was round her lover.\n\n \"Come back! come back!\" he cried in grief,\n \"Across this stormy water;\n And I'll forgive your Highland chief,\n My daughter!--oh, my daughter!\"\n\n 'Twas vain: the loud waves lashed the shore,\n Return or aid preventing:--\n The waters wild went o'er his child,\n And he was left lamenting.\n\n\n\nTHE EXILE OF ERIN\n\n\n There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,\n The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill;\n For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing\n To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill;\n But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,\n For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,\n Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,\n He sang the bold anthem of _Erin go bragh_.\n\n Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger;\n The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,\n But I have no refuge from famine and danger.\n A home and a country remain not to me.\n Never again, in the green sunny bowers\n Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,\n Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,\n And strike to the numbers of _Erin go bragh_!\n\n Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,\n In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;\n But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,\n And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!\n O cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me\n In a mansion of peace, where no perils can chase me?\n Never again shall my brothers embrace me?\n They died to defend me, or live to deplore!\n\n Where is my cabin door, fast by the wildwood?\n Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?\n Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?\n And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all?\n Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,\n Why did it dote on a fast fading treasure?\n Tears, like the raindrop, may fall without measure,\n But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.\n\n Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,\n One dying wish my lone bosom can draw:\n Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!\n Land of my forefathers! _Erin go bragh_!\n Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,\n Green be thy fields, sweetest isle of the ocean!\n And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion--\n Erin mavournin--_Erin go bragh_!\n\n\n\nYE MARINERS OF ENGLAND\n\n\n Ye Mariners of England!\n That guard our native seas;\n Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,\n The battle and the breeze!\n Your glorious standard launch again\n To match another foe!\n And sweep through the deep,\n While the stormy winds do blow;\n While the battle rages loud and long,\n And the stormy winds do blow.\n\n The spirit of your fathers\n Shall start from every wave!--\n For the deck it was their field of fame,\n And Ocean was their grave:\n Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,\n Your manly hearts shall glow,\n As ye sweep through the deep,\n While the stormy winds do blow;\n While the battle rages loud and long,\n And the stormy winds do blow.\n\n Britannia needs no bulwark,\n No towers along the steep;\n Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,\n Her home is on the deep.\n With thunders from her native oak\n She quells the floods below,--\n As they roar on the shore,\n When the stormy winds do blow;\n When the battle rages loud and long,\n And the stormy winds do blow.\n\n The meteor flag of England\n Shall yet terrific burn,\n Till danger's troubled night depart,\n And the star of peace return.\n Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!\n Our song and feast shall flow\n To the fame of your name,\n When the storm has ceased to blow;\n When the fiery fight is heard no more,\n And the storm has ceased to blow.\n\n\n\nHOHENLINDEN\n\n\n On Linden, when the sun was low,\n All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow;\n And dark as winter was the flow\n Of Iser, rolling rapidly.\n\n But Linden saw another sight,\n When the drum beat, at dead of night,\n Commanding fires of death to light\n The darkness of her scenery.\n\n By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,\n Each horseman drew his battle-blade,\n And furious every charger neighed,\n To join the dreadful revelry.\n\n Then shook the hills with thunder riven,\n Then rushed the steed to battle driven,\n And louder than the bolts of heaven\n Far flashed the red artillery.\n\n But redder yet that light shall glow\n On Linden's hills of stained snow,\n And bloodier yet the torrent flow\n Of Iser, rolling rapidly.\n\n 'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun\n Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,\n Where furious Frank and fiery Hun\n Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.\n\n The combat deepens. On, ye brave,\n Who rush to glory or the grave!\n Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,\n And charge with all thy chivalry!\n\n Few, few shall part where many meet!\n The snow shall be their winding-sheet,\n And every turf beneath their feet\n Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.\n\n [Illustration: HOHENLINDEN.\n\n Photogravure from a painting by Meissonier.\n\n The battle of Hohenlinden, commemorated by Campbell's lyric,\n was fought Dec. 3, 1800. The French under Moreau defeated the\n Austrians under the Archduke John.]\n\n\n\nTHE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN\n\n\n Of Nelson and the North\n Sing the day!\n When, their haughty powers to vex,\n He engaged the Danish decks,\n And with twenty floating wrecks\n Crowned the fray!\n\n All bright, in April's sun,\n Shone the day!\n When a British fleet came down\n Through the islands of the crown,\n And by Copenhagen town\n Took their stay.\n\n In arms the Danish shore\n Proudly shone;\n By each gun the lighted brand,\n In a bold determined hand,\n And the Prince of all the land\n Led them on!\n\n For Denmark here had drawn\n All her might!\n From her battle-ships so vast\n She had hewn away the mast,\n And at anchor to the last\n Bade them fight!\n\n Another noble fleet\n Of their line\n Rode out, but these were naught\n To the batteries, which they brought,\n Like Leviathans afloat,\n In the brine.\n\n It was ten of Thursday morn,\n By the chime;\n As they drifted on their path\n There was silence deep as death,\n And the boldest held his breath\n For a time--\n\n Ere a first and fatal round\n Shook the flood;\n Every Dane looked out that day,\n Like the red wolf on his prey,\n And he swore his flag to sway\n O'er our blood.\n\n Not such a mind possessed\n England's tar;\n 'Twas the love of noble game\n Set his oaken heart on flame,\n For to him 'twas all the same--\n Sport and war.\n\n All hands and eyes on watch,\n As they keep;\n By their motion light as wings,\n By each step that haughty springs,\n You might know them for the kings\n Of the deep!\n\n 'Twas the Edgar first that smote\n Denmark's line;\n As her flag the foremost soared,\n Murray stamped his foot on board,\n And an hundred cannons roared\n At the sign!\n\n Three cheers of all the fleet\n Sung huzza!\n Then, from centre, rear, and van,\n Every captain, every man,\n With a lion's heart began\n To the fray.\n\n Oh, dark grew soon the heavens--\n For each gun\n From its adamantine lips\n Spread a death-shade round the ships,\n Like a hurricane eclipse\n Of the sun.\n\n Three hours the raging fire\n Did not slack;\n But the fourth, their signals drear\n Of distress and wreck appear,\n And the Dane a feeble cheer\n Sent us back.\n\n The voice decayed, their shots\n Slowly boom.\n They ceased--and all is wail,\n As they strike the shattered sail,\n Or in conflagration pale\n Light the gloom.\n\n Oh death!--it was a sight\n Filled our eyes!\n But we rescued many a crew\n From the waves of scarlet hue,\n Ere the cross of England flew\n O'er her prize.\n\n Why ceased not here the strife,\n O ye brave?\n Why bleeds old England's band,\n By the fire of Danish land,\n That smites the very hand\n Stretched to save?\n\n But the Britons sent to warn\n Denmark's town;\n Proud foes, let vengeance sleep;\n If another chain-shot sweep,\n All your navy in the deep\n Shall go down!\n\n Then, peace instead of death\n Let us bring!\n If you'll yield your conquered fleet,\n With the crews, at England's feet,\n And make submission meet\n To our king!\n\n Then death withdrew his pall\n From the day;\n And the sun looked smiling bright\n On a wide and woful sight,\n Where the fires of funeral light\n Died away.\n\n Yet all amidst her wrecks,\n And her gore,\n Proud Denmark blest our chief\n That he gave her wounds relief;\n And the sounds of joy and grief\n Filled her shore.\n\n All round, outlandish cries\n Loudly broke;\n But a nobler note was rung,\n When the British, old and young.\n To their bands of music sung\n 'Hearts of Oak!'\n\n Cheer! cheer! from park and tower,\n London town!\n When the King shall ride in state\n From St. James's royal gate,\n And to all his peers relate\n Our renown!\n\n The bells shall ring! the day\n Shall not close,\n But a blaze of cities bright\n Shall illuminate the night,\n And the wine-cup shine in light\n As it flows!\n\n Yet--yet--amid the joy\n And uproar,\n Let us think of them that sleep\n Full many a fathom deep\n All beside thy rocky steep,\n Elsinore!\n\n Brave hearts, to Britain's weal\n Once so true!\n Though death has quenched your flame,\n Yet immortal be your name!\n For ye died the death of fame\n With Riou!\n\n Soft sigh the winds of heaven\n O'er your grave!\n While the billow mournful rolls,\n And the mermaid's song condoles,\n Singing--\"Glory to the souls\n Of the brave!\"\n\n\n\nFROM THE 'ODE TO WINTER'\n\n\n But howling winter fled afar,\n To hills that prop the polar star,\n And loves on deer-borne car to ride\n With barren Darkness by his side,\n Round the shore where loud Lofoden\n Whirls to death the roaring whale,\n Round the hall where Runic Odin\n Howls his war-song to the gale;\n Save when adown the ravaged globe\n He travels on his native storm,\n Deflowering Nature's grassy robe,\n And trampling on her faded form:--\n Till light's returning lord assume\n The shaft that drives him to his polar field;\n Of power to pierce his raven plume\n And crystal-covered shield.\n O sire of storms! whose savage ear\n The Lapland drum delights to hear,\n When Frenzy with her bloodshot eye\n Implores thy dreadful deity.\n Archangel! power of desolation!\n Fast descending as thou art,\n Say, hath mortal invocation\n Spells to touch thy stony heart?\n Then, sullen Winter, hear my prayer,\n And gently rule the ruined year;\n Nor chill the wanderer's bosom bare,\n Nor freeze the wretch's falling tear;--\n To shuddering Want's unmantled bed\n Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lead,\n And gently on the orphan head\n Of innocence descend,--\n But chiefly spare, O king of clouds!\n The sailor on his airy shrouds;\n When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,\n And spectres walk along the deep.\n Milder yet thy snowy breezes\n Pour on yonder tented shores,\n Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,\n Or the dark-brown Danube roars.\n\n\n\n\nCAMPION\n\n(-1619)\n\nBY ERNEST RHYS\n\n\nDr. Thomas Campion, lyric poet, musician, and doctor of\nmedicine,--who, of the three liberal arts that he practiced, is\nremembered now mainly for his poetry,--was born about the middle of\nthe sixteenth century; the precise date and place being unknown. It\nhas been conjectured that he came of an Essex family; but the evidence\nfor this falls through. Nor was he, as has been ingeniously supposed,\nof any relationship to his namesake Edmund Campion, the Jesuit. What\nis certain, and thrice interesting in the case of such a poet, is that\nhe was so nearly a contemporary of Shakespeare's. He was living in\nLondon all through the period of Shakespeare's mastery of the English\nstage, and survived him only by some three or four years. From an\nentry in the register of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street, we\nlearn that Campion was buried there in February, 1619-20. But although\nit is clear that the two poets, one the most famous, the other\nwell-nigh the least known, in the greater Elizabethan galaxy, must\nhave often encountered in the narrower London of that day, there is no\nsingle reference in the lives or works of either connecting one with\nthe other.\n\nWe first hear of Campion at Gray's Inn, where he was admitted a member\nin 1586, from which it is clear that his first idea was to go in for\nlaw. He tired of it before he was called to the bar, however; and\nturning to medicine instead, he seems to have studied for his M.D. at\nCambridge, and thereafter repaired again to London and begun to\npractice as a physician,--very successfully, as the names of some of\nhis more distinguished patients show. A man of taste, in the very\nfinest sense,--cultured, musical, urbane,--his own Latin epigrams\nalone would show that he had all that social instinct and tact which\ncount for so much in a doctor's career. He was fortunate, too, in\nfinding in London the society best adapted to stimulate his finely\nintellectual and artistic faculty. The first public sign of his\nliterary art was his book of 'Poemata,' the Latin epigrams referred\nto, which appeared in 1595, and every copy of which has disappeared.\nFortunately a second series of epigrams, written in maturer years,\ngave him an excuse to republish the first series in connection with\nthem, in the year of his death, 1619. From the two series we learn\nmany interesting facts about his circle of friends and himself, and\nthe evident ease and pleasantness of his life, late and early. There\nis the same sense of style in his Latin verse that one finds in his\nEnglish lyrics; but though he had a pretty wit, with a sufficient salt\nin it on occasion,--as in his references to Barnabe Barnes,--his\nfaculty was clearly more lyrical than epigrammatical, and his lyric\npoems are all that an exacting posterity is likely to allow him to\ncarry up the steep approach to the House of Fame.\n\nHis earliest collection of these exquisite little poems was not issued\nunder his own name, but under that of Philip Rosetter the musician,\nwho wrote the music for half the book; the other half being of\nCampion's own composition. This, the first of the delightful set of\nold music-books which are the only source we have to draw upon for his\nlyric poems, was published in 1601. There is no doubt that for many\nyears previous to this, Campion had been in the habit of writing both\nthe words and music of such songs for the private delectation of his\nfriends and himself. Some of his very finest lyrics, as memorable as\nanything he has given us, appear in this first volume of 1601.\n\nThe second collection of Campion's songs was published, this time\nunder his own name, probably in 1613. It is entitled 'Two Books of\nAirs'; the first, 'Divine and Moral Songs,' which include some of the\nfinest examples of their kind in all English literature; the second\nbook, 'Light Conceits of Lovers,' is very well described by its title,\ncontaining many sweetest love-songs. We have not yet exhausted the\nlist of Campion's music-books. In 1617 two more, 'The Third & Fourth\nBooks of Airs,' were published in another small folio; and these again\nafford songs fine enough for any anthology. Meanwhile we have passed\nby all his Masques, which are among the prettiest of their kind, and\nas full of lyrical moments as of picturesque effects. The first was\nperformed at Whitehall for the marriage of \"my Lord Hayes\" (Sir James\nHay), on Twelfth Night, 1606-7. Three more were written by Campion in\n1613; and in the same year he published his 'Songs of Mourning,'\nprompted by the untimely death of the promising young Prince Henry,\nwhich had taken place in November, 1612. These songs, which do not\nshow Campion at his best, were set to music by Copario (alias John\nCooper). This completes the list of Campion's poetry; but besides his\nactual practice in the arts of poetry and music, he wrote on the\ntheory of both. His interesting 'Observations in the Art of English\nPoesie' (1602) resolves itself into a naive attack upon the use of\nrhyme in poetry, which comes paradoxically enough from one who was\nhimself so exquisite a rhymer, and which called forth a very\nconvincing reply in Daniel's 'Defence of Rhyme.' The 'Observations'\ncontain some very taking examples of what may be done in the lyric\nform, without rhyme. Campion's musical pamphlet is less generally\ninteresting, since counterpoint, on which he offered some practical\nrules, and the theory of music, have traveled so far since he wrote.\nIt remains only to add that Campion remained in the limbo of forgotten\npoets from his own day until ours, when Professor Arber and Mr. A. H.\nBullen in their different anthologies and editions rescued him for us.\nMr. Bullen's privately printed volume of his works appeared in 1889.\nThe present writer has more recently (1896) edited a very full\nselection of the lyrics in the 'Lyric Poets' series. Campion's fame,\nwithout doubt, is destined to grow steadily from this time forth,\nbased as it is on poems which so perfectly and exquisitely satisfy the\nlyric sense and the lyric relationship between music and poetry.\n\n [Signature: Ernest Rhys]\n\n\n\nA HYMN IN PRAISE OF NEPTUNE\n\n\n Of Neptune's empire let us sing,\n At whose command the waves obey;\n To whom the rivers tribute pay,\n Down the high mountains sliding;\n To whom the scaly nation yields\n Homage for the crystal fields\n Wherein they dwell;\n And every sea-god pays a gem\n Yearly out of his wat'ry cell,\n To deck great Neptune's diadem.\n\n The Tritons dancing in a ring\n Before his palace gates do make\n The water with their echoes quake,\n Like the great thunder sounding:\n The sea-nymphs chant their accents shrill,\n And the Syrens, taught to kill\n With their sweet voice,\n Make every echoing rock reply,\n Unto their gentle murmuring noise,\n The praise of Neptune's empery.\n\n From 'Ward's English Poets.'\n\n\n\nOF CORINNA'S SINGING\n\n\n When to her lute Corinna sings,\n Her voice revives the leaden strings,\n And doth in highest notes appear\n As any challenged echo clear.\n But when she doth of mourning speak,\n E'en with her sighs the strings do break.\n And as her lute doth live and die,\n Led by her passions, so must I:\n For when of pleasure she doth sing,\n My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring;\n But if she do of sorrow speak,\n E'en from my heart the strings do break.\n\n From 'Ward's English Poets'\n\n\n\nFROM 'DIVINE AND MORAL SONGS'\n\n(A. H. Bullen's modern text)\n\n\n Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,\n Never tired pilgrim's limbs affected slumber more.\n Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast.\n O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!\n\n Ever blooming are the joys of heaven's high Paradise;\n Cold age deafs not there our ears, nor vapor dims our eyes:\n Glory there the sun outshines, whose beams the Blessed only see.\n O come quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my sprite to Thee!\n\n\n\nTO A COQUETTE\n\n(A. H. Bullen's modern text)\n\n\n When thou must home to shades of underground,\n And there arrived, a new admired guest,\n The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,\n White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,\n To hear the stories of thy finished love\n From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;\n\n Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,\n Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,\n Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,\n And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake:\n When thou hast told these honors done to thee,\n Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.\n\n\n\nSONGS FROM 'LIGHT CONCEITS OF LOVERS'\n\n\n Where shee her sacred bowre adornes,\n The Rivers clearely flow;\n The groves and medowes swell with flowres,\n The windes all gently blow.\n Her Sunne-like beauty shines so fayre,\n Her Spring can never fade;\n Who then can blame the life that strives\n To harbour in her shade?\n\n Her grace I sought, her love I wooed;\n Her love though I obtaine,\n No time, no toyle, no vow, no faith,\n Her wished grace can gaine.\n Yet truth can tell my heart is hers,\n And her will I adore;\n And from that love when I depart,\n Let heav'n view me no more!\n\n GIVE beauty all her right,--\n She's not to one forme tyed;\n Each shape yeelds faire delight,\n Where her perfections bide.\n Helen, I grant, might pleasing be;\n And Ros'mond was as sweet as shee.\n\n Some, the quicke eye commends;\n Some, swelling lips and red;\n Pale lookes have many friends,\n Through sacred sweetnesse bred.\n Medowes have flowres that pleasure move,\n Though Roses are the flowres of love.\n\n Free beauty is not bound\n To one unmoved clime:\n She visits ev'ry ground,\n And favours ev'ry time.\n Let the old loves with mine compare,\n My Sov'raigne is as sweet and fair.\n\n\n\n\nGEORGE CANNING\n\n(1770-1827)\n\n[Illustration: GEORGE CANNING]\n\n\nThe political history of this famous British statesman is told by\nRobert Bell (1846), by F.H. Hill (English Worthies Series), and in\ndetail by Stapleton (his private secretary) in 'Political Life of\nCanning.' He became a friend of Pitt in 1793, entered the House of\nCommons in 1794, was made Under-Secretary of State in 1796, was\nTreasurer of the Navy from 1804 to 1806, Minister for Foreign Affairs\nfrom 1807 till 1809, Ambassador to Lisbon from 1814 to 1816, again at\nthe head of foreign affairs in 1822, and was made Premier in 1827,\ndying under the labor of forming his Cabinet.\n\nSoon after his birth in London, April 11th, 1770, his disinherited\nfather died in poverty, and his mother became an unsuccessful actress.\nAn Irish actor, Moody, took young Canning to his uncle, Stratford\nCanning, in London, who adopted him and sent him to Eton, where he\ndistinguished himself for his wit and literary talent. With his\nfriends John and Robert Smith, John Hookham Frere, and Charles Ellis,\nhe published a school magazine called The Microcosm, which attracted\nso much attention that Knight the publisher paid Canning L50 for the\ncopyright. It was modeled on the Spectator, ridiculed modes and\ncustoms, and was a unique specimen of juvenile essay-writing. A fifth\nedition of the Microcosm was published in 1825. Subsequently Canning\nstudied at Oxford. He died August 8th, 1827, at Chiswick (the\nresidence of the Duke of Devonshire), in the same room and at the same\nage as Fox, and under similar circumstances; and he was buried in\nWestminster Abbey by the side of William Pitt.\n\nIt was not until 1798 that he obtained his great reputation as a\nstatesman and orator. Every one agrees that his literary eloquence,\nwit, beauty of imagery, taste, and clearness of reasoning, were\nextraordinary. Byron calls him \"a genius--almost a universal one; an\norator, a wit, a poet, and a statesman.\" As a public speaker, we may\npicture him from Lord Dalling's description:--\n\n \"Every day, indeed, leaves us fewer of those who remember the\n clearly chiseled countenance, which the slouched hat only\n slightly concealed; the lip satirically curled; the\n penetrating eye, peering along the Opposition benches, of\n the old Parliamentary leader in the House of Commons. It is\n but here and there that we find a survivor of the old days to\n speak to us of the singularly mellifluous and sonorous voice,\n the classical language,--now pointed with epigram, now\n elevated into poetry, now burning with passion, now rich with\n humor,--which curbed into still attention a willing and\n long-broken audience.\"\n\nAs a statesman his place is more dubious. Like every English\npolitician not born to a title, however,--Burke is an instance,--he\nwas ferociously abused as a mere mercenary adventurer because his\nlivelihood came from serving the public. The following lampoon\nis a specimen; the chief sting lies not in Canning's insolent\nmockery,--\"Every time he made a speech he made a new and permanent\nenemy,\" it was said of him,--but in his not being a rich nobleman.\n\n THE UNBELOVED\n\n Not a woman, child, or man in\n All this isle that loves thee, Canning.\n Fools, whom gentle manners sway,\n May incline to Castlereagh;\n Princes who old ladies love\n Of the Doctor[A] may approve;\n Chancery lords do not abhor\n Their chatty, childish Chancellor;\n In Liverpool, some virtues strike,\n And little Van's beneath dislike.\n But thou, unamiable object,\n Dear to neither prince nor subject,\n Veriest, meanest scab for pelf\n Fastening on the skin of Guelph,\n Thou, thou must surely _loathe thyself_.\n\n [A] Addington.\n\nBut his dominant taste was literary. His literature helped him to\nthe field of statesmanship; as a compensation, his statesmanship is\nobscured by his literature. Bell says of him:--\n\n \"Canning's passion for literature entered into all his\n pursuits. It colored his whole life. Every moment of leisure\n was given up to books. He and Pitt were passionately fond of\n the classics, and we find them together of an evening after a\n dinner at Pitt's, poring over some old Grecian in a corner of\n the drawing-room while the rest of the company are dispersed\n in conversation.... In English writings his judgment was pure\n and strict; and no man was a more perfect master of all the\n varieties of composition. He was the first English Minister\n who banished the French language from our diplomatic\n correspondence and indicated before Europe the copiousness\n and dignity of our native tongue.\"\n\nPart of the time that he was Foreign Secretary, Chateaubriand held the\nlike post for France, and Canning devoted much attention to giving his\ndiplomatic correspondence a literary polish which has made these\nnational documents famous. He also formed an intimate friendship with\nSir Walter Scott, founding with him and Ellis the Quarterly Review, to\nwhich he contributed with the latter a humorous article on the bullion\nquestion.\n\nIn literature Canning takes his place from his association with the\nAnti-Jacobin, a newspaper established in 1797 under the secret\nauspices of Pitt as a literary organ to express the policy of the\nadministration,--similar to the Rolliad, the Whig paper published a\nfew years before this date; but more especially to oppose\nrevolutionary sentiment and ridicule the persons who sympathized with\nit. The house of Wright, its publisher in Piccadilly, soon became the\nresort of the friends of the Ministry and the staff, which included\nWilliam Gifford, the editor,--author of the 'Baviad' and\n'Maeviad,'--John Hookham Frere, George Ellis, Canning, Mr. Jenkinson\n(afterward Earl of Liverpool), Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward\nLord Wellesley), Lord Morpeth (afterward Earl of Carlisle), and\nWilliam Pitt, who contributed papers on finance.\n\nThe Anti-Jacobin lived through thirty-six weekly numbers, ending July\n16th, 1796. Its essays and poetry have little significance to-day\nexcept for those who can imagine the stormy political atmosphere of\nthe Reign of Terror, which threatened to extend its rule over the\nwhole of Europe. Hence the torrents of abuse and the violent attacks\nupon any one tainted with the slightest Sans-culottic tone may be\nunderstood.\n\nThe greater number of poems in the Anti-Jacobin are parodies, but not\nexclusively political ones. The 'Loves of the Triangles' is a parody\non Dr. Erasmus Darwin's 'Loves of the Plants,' and contains an amusing\ncontest between Parabola, Hyperbola, and Ellipsis for the love of the\nPhoenician Cone; the 'Progress of Man' is a parody of Payne Knight's\n'Progress of Civil Society'; the 'Inscription for the Cell of Mrs.\nBrownrigg' a parody of Southey; and 'The Rovers,' of which one scene\nis given below, is a burlesque on the German dramas then in fashion.\nThis was written by Canning, Ellis, Frere, and Gifford, and the play\nwas given at Covent Garden in 1811 with great success, especially the\nsong of the captive Rogero. 'The Needy Knife-Grinder,' also quoted\nbelow, a parody of Southey's 'Sapphics,' is by Canning and Frere. The\npoetry of the Anti-Jacobin was collected and published by Charles\nEdmonds (London, 1854), in a volume that contains also the original\nverses which are exposed to ridicule. Canning's public speeches,\nedited by R. Therry, were published in 1828.\n\n\n\nROGERO'S SOLILOQUY\n\nFrom 'The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement'\n\n\nACT I\n\n _The scene is a subterranean vault in the Abbey of\n Quedlinburgh, with coffins, 'scutcheons, death's-heads, and\n cross-bones; toads and other loathsome reptiles are seen\n traversing the obscurer parts of the stage._--Rogero _appears,\n in chains, in a suit of rusty armor, with his beard grown, and\n a cap of a grotesque form upon his head; beside him a crock,\n or pitcher, supposed to contain his daily allowance of\n sustenance.--A long silence, during which the wind is heard to\n whistle through the caverns._--Rogero _rises, and comes slowly\n forward, with his arms folded._\n\nROGERO.--Eleven years! it is now eleven years since I was first\nimmured in this living sepulchre;--the cruelty of a Minister--the\nperfidy of a Monk--yes, Matilda! for thy sake--alive amidst the\ndead--chained--coffined--confined--cut off from the converse of my\nfellow-men. Soft! what have we here! [_Stumbles over a bundle of\nsticks._] This cavern is so dark that I can scarcely distinguish the\nobjects under my feet. Oh, the register of my captivity! Let me see;\nhow stands the account? [_Takes up the sticks and turns them over with\na melancholy air; then stands silent for a few minutes as if absorbed\nin calculation._] Eleven years and fifteen days!--Hah! the\ntwenty-eighth of August! How does the recollection of it vibrate on my\nheart! It was on this day that I took my last leave of Matilda. It was\na summer evening; her melting hand seemed to dissolve in mine as I\nprest it to my bosom. Some demon whispered me that I should never see\nher more. I stood gazing on the hated vehicle which was conveying her\naway forever. The tears were petrified under my eyelids. My heart was\ncrystallized with agony. Anon I looked along the road. The diligence\nseemed to diminish every instant; I felt my heart beat against its\nprison, as if anxious to leap out and overtake it. My soul whirled\nround as I watched the rotation of the hinder wheels. A long trail of\nglory followed after her and mingled with the dust--it was the\nemanation of Divinity, luminous with love and beauty, like the\nsplendor of the setting sun; but it told me that the sun of my joys\nwas sunk forever. Yes, here in the depths of an eternal dungeon, in\nthe nursing-cradle of hell, the suburbs of perdition, in a nest of\ndemons, where despair in vain sits brooding over the putrid eggs of\nhope; where agony wooes the embrace of death; where patience, beside\nthe bottomless pool of despondency, sits angling for impossibilities.\nYet even _here_, to behold her, to embrace her! Yes, Matilda, whether\nin this dark abode, amidst toads and spiders, or in a royal palace,\namidst the more loathsome reptiles of a court, would be indifferent to\nme; angels would shower down their hymns of gratulation upon our\nheads, while fiends would envy the eternity of suffering love--Soft;\nwhat air was that? it seemed a sound of more than human warblings.\nAgain [_listens attentively for some minutes_]. Only the wind: it is\nwell, however; it reminds me of that melancholy air which has so often\nsolaced the hours of my captivity. Let me see whether the damps of\nthis dungeon have not yet injured my guitar. [_Takes his guitar, tunes\nit, and begins the following air with a full accompaniment of violins\nfrom the orchestra:--_]\n\n [_Air, 'Lanterna Magica.'_]\n\nSONG\n\n Whene'er with haggard eyes I view\n This dungeon that I'm rotting in,\n I think of those companions true\n Who studied with me at the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n [_Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his\n eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds:--_]\n\n Sweet kerchief, checked with heavenly blue,\n Which once my love sat knotting in!--\n Alas! Matilda _then_ was true!\n At least I thought so at the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n [_At the repetition of this line Rogero clanks his chains in\n cadence._]\n\n Barbs! barbs! alas! how swift you flew,\n Her neat post-wagon trotting in!\n Ye bore Matilda from my view;\n Forlorn I languished at the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n This faded form! this pallid hue!\n This blood my veins is clotting in!\n My years are many--they were few\n When first I entered at the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n There first for thee my passion grew,\n Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen!\n Thou wast the daughter of my Tu-\n tor, law professor at the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n [A]Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu!\n That kings and priests are plotting in:\n Here doomed to starve on water gru--\n el, never shall I see the U--\n --niversity of Gottingen,\n --niversity of Gottingen.\n\n [_During the last stanza Rogero dashes his head repeatedly\n against the walls of his prison, and finally so hard as to\n produce a visible contusion. He then throws himself on the\n floor in an agony. The curtain drops, the music still\n continuing to play till it is wholly fallen._]\n\n [A] This verse is said to have been added by the younger Pitt.\n\n\n\nTHE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER\n\n\n FRIEND OF HUMANITY\n\n Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?\n Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order--\n Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in't,\n So have your breeches!\n\n Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones\n Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike\n Road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, \"Knives and\n Scissors to grind O!\"\n\n Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?\n Did some rich man tyrannically use you?\n Was it some squire? or parson of the parish?\n Or the attorney?\n\n Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or\n Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?\n Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little\n All in a lawsuit?\n\n Have you not read the 'Rights of Man,' by Tom Paine?\n Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,\n Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your\n Pitiful story.\n\n KNIFE-GRINDER\n\n Story? God bless you! I have none to tell, sir;\n Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,\n This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were\n Torn in a scuffle.\n\n Constables came up for to take me into\n Custody; they took me before the justice;\n Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-\n Stocks for a vagrant.\n\n I should be glad to drink your honor's health in\n A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;\n But for my part, I never love to meddle\n With politics, sir.\n\n FRIEND OF HUMANITY\n\n I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first--\n Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance!\n Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,\n Spiritless outcast!\n\n [_Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit\n in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal\n philanthropy._]\n\n\n\nON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION\n\nFrom the 'Speech on Parliamentary Reform'\n\n\nOther nations, excited by the example of the liberty which this\ncountry has long possessed, have attempted to copy our Constitution;\nand some of them have shot beyond it in the fierceness of their\npursuit. I grudge not to other nations that share of liberty which\nthey may acquire: in the name of God, let them enjoy it! But let us\nwarn them that they lose not the object of their desire by the very\neagerness with which they attempt to grasp it. Inheritors and\nconservators of rational freedom, let us, while others are seeking it\nin restlessness and trouble, be a steady and shining light to guide\ntheir course; not a wandering meteor to bewilder and mislead them.\n\nLet it not be thought that this is an unfriendly or disheartening\ncounsel to those who are either struggling under the pressure of harsh\ngovernment, or exulting in the novelty of sudden emancipation. It is\naddressed much rather to those who, though cradled and educated amidst\nthe sober blessings of the British Constitution, pant for other\nschemes of liberty than those which that Constitution sanctions--other\nthan are compatible with a just equality of civil rights, or with the\nnecessary restraints of social obligation; of some of whom it may be\nsaid, in the language which Dryden puts into the mouth of one of the\nmost extravagant of his heroes, that\n\n \"They would be free as Nature first made man,\n Ere the base laws of servitude began,\n When wild in the woods the noble savage ran.\"\n\nNoble and swelling sentiments!--but such as cannot be reduced into\npractice. Grand ideas!--but which must be qualified and adjusted by a\ncompromise between the aspirings of individuals and a due concern for\nthe general tranquillity;--must be subdued and chastened by reason and\nexperience, before they can be directed to any useful end! A search\nafter abstract perfection in government may produce in generous minds\nan enterprise and enthusiasm to be recorded by the historian and to be\ncelebrated by the poet: but such perfection is not an object of\nreasonable pursuit, because it is not one of possible attainment; and\nnever yet did a passionate struggle after an absolutely unattainable\nobject fail to be productive of misery to an individual, of madness\nand confusion to a people. As the inhabitants of those burning\nclimates which lie beneath a tropical sun, sigh for the coolness of\nthe mountain and the grove; so (all history instructs us) do nations\nwhich have basked for a time in the torrid blaze of an unmitigated\nliberty, too often call upon the shades of despotism, even of military\ndespotism, to cover them,--\n\n \"--O quis me gelidis in vallibus Haemi\n Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!\"\n\na protection which blights while it shelters; which dwarfs the\nintellect and stunts the energies of man, but to which a wearied\nnation willingly resorts from intolerable heats and from perpetual\ndanger of convulsion.\n\nOur lot is happily cast in the temperate zone of freedom, the clime\nbest suited to the development of the moral qualities of the human\nrace, to the cultivation of their faculties, and to the security as\nwell as the improvement of their virtues;--a clime not exempt, indeed,\nfrom variations of the elements, but variations which purify while\nthey agitate the atmosphere that we breathe. Let us be sensible of the\nadvantages which it is our happiness to enjoy. Let us guard with pious\ngratitude the flame of genuine liberty, that fire from heaven, of\nwhich our Constitution is the holy depository; and let us not, for the\nchance of rendering it more intense and more radiant, impair its\npurity or hazard its extinction!\n\n\n\nON BROUGHAM AND SOUTH AMERICA\n\n\nI now turn to that other part of the honorable and learned gentleman's\n[Mr. Brougham's] speech; in which he acknowledges his acquiescence in\nthe passages of the address, echoing the satisfaction felt at the\nsuccess of the liberal commercial principles adopted by this country,\nand at the steps taken for recognizing the new States of America. It\ndoes happen, however, that the honorable and learned gentleman being\nnot unfrequently a speaker in this House, nor very concise in his\nspeeches, and touching occasionally, as he proceeds, on almost every\nsubject within the range of his imagination, as well as making some\nobservations on the matter in hand,--and having at different periods\nproposed and supported every innovation of which the law or\nConstitution of the country is susceptible,--it is impossible to\ninnovate without appearing to borrow from him. Either, therefore, we\nmust remain forever absolutely locked up as in a northern winter, or\nwe must break our way out by some mode already suggested by the\nhonorable and learned gentleman; and then he cries out, \"Ah, I was\nthere before you! That is what I told you to do; but as you would not\ndo it then, you have no right to do it now.\"\n\nIn Queen Anne's reign there lived a very sage and able critic named\nDennis, who in his old age was the prey of a strange fancy that he had\nhimself written all the good things in all the good plays that were\nacted. Every good passage he met with in any author he insisted was\nhis own. \"It is none of his,\" Dennis would always say: \"no, it's\nmine!\" He went one day to see a new tragedy. Nothing particularly good\nto his taste occurred till a scene in which a great storm was\nrepresented. As soon as he heard the thunder rolling over his head he\nexclaimed, \"That's my thunder!\" So it is with the honorable and\nlearned gentleman: it's all his thunder. It will henceforth be\nimpossible to confer any boon, or make any innovation, but he will\nclaim it as his thunder.\n\nBut it is due to him to acknowledge that he does not claim everything;\nhe will be content with the exclusive merit of the liberal measures\nrelating to trade and commerce. Not desirous of violating his own\nprinciples by claiming a monopoly of fore-sight and wisdom, he kindly\nthrows overboard to my honorable and learned friend [Sir J.\nMackintosh] near him, the praise of South America. I should like to\nknow whether, in some degree, this also is not his thunder. He thinks\nit right itself; but lest we should be too proud if he approved our\nconduct _in toto_, he thinks it wrong in point of time. I differ from\nhim essentially; for if I pique myself on anything in this affair, it\nis the time. That at some time or other, States which had separated\nthemselves from the mother country should or should not be admitted to\nthe rank of independent nations, is a proposition to which no possible\ndissent could be given. The whole question was one of time and mode.\nThere were two modes: one a reckless and headlong course by which we\nmight have reached our object at once, but at the expense of drawing\nupon us consequences not lightly to be estimated; the other was more\nstrictly guarded in point of principle, so that while we pursued our\nown interests, we took care to give no just cause of offense to other\nPowers.\n\n\n\n\nCESARE CANTU\n\n(1805-1895)\n\n\nCesare Cantu, an Italian historian, was born at Brivio on the Adda,\nDecember 2d, 1805. The eldest of ten children, he belonged to an old\nthough impoverished family. To obtain for him a gratuitous education\nhis parents destined him for the priesthood. On the death of his\nfather in 1827 he became the sole support of his mother, brothers, and\nsisters. In 1825 he had made his appearance as a writer with a poem\nentitled 'Algiso and the Lombard League.' His 'History of Como,'\nfollowing in 1829, gave him a standing in the world of letters.\n\nAlthough not a member of the revolutionary society 'Young Italy,' he\nwas the confidant of two of its leaders, Albera and Balzetti, a\ncircumstance which led to his arrest in 1833. Seized by the Austrian\nofficials in the midst of his lecture at the Lyceum in Milan, he was\nincarcerated in the prison in the Convent of Santa Margherita.\nAlthough deprived of books and pen, he beguiled the time by writing\nwith a toothpick and candle-smoke on the back of a map and on scraps\nof paper, 'Margherita Pusteria,' with one exception the most popular\nhistorical novel in the Italian language.\n\nLiberated at the end of a year, but deprived of his professorship, he\nand his family would probably have starved had he not chanced to meet\na publisher who wanted a history of the world. The result of this\nmeeting was his 'Universal History' in thirty-five volumes (Turin,\n1836 _et seq._), which has gone through forty editions and been\ntranslated into many languages. It brought the publisher a fortune and\nCantu a modest independence.\n\nUp to the time of his death in 1895, Cantu wrote almost without\nintermission. Besides the books already mentioned, the most notable\nare the 'History of a Hundred Years, 1750-1850' (1864), and the 'Story\nof the Struggles for Italian Independence' (1873). His masterpiece is\nthe 'Universal History,' the best work of its kind in Italian and\nperhaps in any language for lucidity and rapidity of narration, unity\nof plan, justness of proportion, and literary art. It is however\nwritten from the clerical point of view, and is not based on a\ncritical study of documentary sources. The political offenses for\nwhich Cantu suffered persecution were his attempts to secure a federal\nunion of the Italian States under the hegemony of Austria and the\nPapacy.\n\n\n\nTHE EXECUTION\n\nFrom 'Margherita Pusterla'\n\n\nThe beautiful sunshine which one sees in Lombardy only at the season\nof vintage, spread its white light and gentle warmth upon the sombre\nfacades of Broletto. The Piazza was packed with people; the balconies\nand belvideres were filled with motley groups. Even ladies were\ncontending for the best places to see the horrible sight. One mother\nshowed her little boy all this preparation for death, and said to\nhim:--\n\n\"Do you see that man yonder with the long black beard and rough skin?\nHe devours bad boys in two mouthfuls: if you cry, he will carry you\noff.\"\n\nThe frightened child tightly clasped his mother's neck with his small\narms, and hid his face in her breast. Another, half ashamed at being\nseen there, asked, \"Who is the victim?\"\n\n\"It is,\" replied a neighboring stranger, \"the wife of the man who was\nbeheaded yesterday.\"\n\n\"Ah, ah!\" put in a third, \"then it is the mother of the little boy who\nwas executed yesterday with Signor Pusterla?\"\n\n\"How was that?\" resumed the first speaker; \"did they behead a child?\"\n\n\"It is only too true,\" said a woman, joining in the conversation; \"and\nsuch a pretty little boy! Two blue eyes, bluer than the sky, and a\nface as gentle and sweet as that of the Christ-child, and hair like\nthreads of gold. I came here to show my boy how the wicked are\npunished, and as I stood near the scaffold, I heard and saw\neverything!\"\n\n\"Tell us, tell us, Mother Radegonda.\" And Radegonda, enchanted at\noccupying the centre of attention, began.\n\n\"I will tell you,\" she said. \"When he was there--but for the love of\ncharity, give me more room; you do not wish to stifle my little\nTanuccio?--Well, when he began to ascend the ladder, ah, see, the\nchild does not wish to go! He stamps his foot, he weeps, he cries--\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" interrupted a person named Pizzabrasa, \"for I heard\nall the way from the Loggia dei Mercanti, where I was being crushed,\nhis cries of 'Papa! Mamma!'\"\n\n\"That was it,\" continued Radegonda; \"and he recoiled with horror\nbefore that savage figure,\" she said, pointing with her forefinger to\nMastro Impicca. \"His father sobbed, and could not speak; but his\nconfessor whispered in his ear--\"\n\n\"I saw also,\" interrupted Pizzabrasa, determined to show that he had\nbeen an eye-witness, and he continued:--\"the golden hair of the child\nsoon mingled with the black hair and beard of the father. One would\nhave said they were yellow flames on a funeral pall. I also saw the\nchild caress the priest who talked to him, and the priest--\"\n\n\"Who is the priest?\" interrupted the first speaker. The question was\npassed from lip to lip, until finally a man, dressed somewhat after\nthe ecclesiastical fashion and having a serene and devout face,\nreplied:--\n\n\"He is the one who preached at Lent last year at Santa-Maria del\nSacco. He could have converted Herod himself. But the world is so\nwicked! He had no more success than if he had preached in the desert.\"\n\n\"His name?\"\n\n\"Fra Buonvicino of the monastery Della Ricchezza de Brera. But the\nriches that he covets are not those which one acquires in sewing\ncloaks. Do you know him? Ah, what a man! question him, talk to him, he\nknows everything, and--\"\n\n\"But what did he say to the child?\"--\"And what did the child\nsay?\"--\"And the child's father, what did he do?\"--It was thus they\ninterrupted the speaker, without listening to his eulogy.\n\nHere Radegonda, regretting that she had been deposed from her throne,\ntook occasion to resume her speech, for no one was able to give more\ndetails. She began again.\n\n\"Here, here,\" she said, \"who is to talk, you or I? There are some\npeople who stick their noses everywhere and who--Now do you want to\nknow what the priest said? and how the poor condemned creature walked\nwith courage? and how in one instant he was in heaven in the company\nof the angels?\"\n\n\"And what did the child say?\"\n\n\"The little child did not want to go along. He said:--'I know that it\nis beautiful in Paradise, that the angels live there, and the kind\nGod, and there lives the good Madonna: but I would rather stay here\nwith Papa and Mamma; I would rather stay with them!' he repeated, and\ncried.\"\n\n\"Sacred innocence!\" exclaimed one of the listeners by an instinctive\ncompassion, and shed a few tears; but if any one had questioned him\nregarding the justice of putting the child to death, he would have\nunhesitatingly answered in the affirmative.\n\nOur eloquent Radegonda continued:--\n\n\"But the priest! Is there any one here who did not see his face? Well,\nyou know how it looks when it rains and shines at the same time,--when\nthey say the Devil beats his wife,--that was the face of the good\nmonk. Tears large as the beads of a rosary ran down his cheeks, and at\nthe same time he had a smile like an angel.... He said to the boy,\n'Your father goes with you to Paradise!' The child looked at him with\nsad eyes, and asked, 'But Mamma?'--'Your mother,' replied the priest,\n'will come with us.'--'If I stay on earth,' said the child, 'I must\nthen live without them?' The monk answered 'Yes'; and then the little\none consented to kneel.\"\n\nHere sobs checked the course of the narrative; and the narrator was\nhalf ashamed at being affected by the fate of the condemned ones, just\nas a young lady is ashamed when she is caught weeping at the theatre.\nPizzabrasa concluded the recital:\n\n\"The child dropped upon his knees, and raised towards heaven his\nlittle hands that were whiter than snow, and then the executioner cut\nhis hair and opened his great eyes to frighten him.\"\n\n\"How much I would have been willing to pay to have been present,\"\nexclaimed one of the group; \"such affecting scenes delight me.\"\n\n\"Then why didn't you come?\" asked a neighbor.\n\nThe other replied, \"What do you think? I had to take to Saint-Victor a\nsaddle and bridle which I had mended.\"\n\nAnd then with that indifference such compassionate souls have for the\nsorrows of others which have affected them for a moment, they turned\nthe conversation on a thousand unrelated topics....\n\nOn the balconies, on the platforms, and in the magistrates' halls,\nconversation of another description was held. Ladies and gentlemen of\nhigh degree discussed arms and battles, inconstant favors of the\ncourt, passage of birds, and the scarcity of hares; they demanded and\nrelated news; and read from the books of this one and that one.\nSignora Theodora, the young wife of Francesco dei Maggi, one of the\nmost famous beauties, asked in the most nonchalant way as she drew on\nher gloves, \"Who is this one about to be executed?\"\n\n\"Margherita Visconti,\" replied Forestino, one of the sons of the Duke,\nwho was playing the gallant with all the ladies present.\n\n\"Visconti!\" exclaimed the young woman. \"She is then a relative of\nSignor Vicario?\"\n\n\"Yes, a distant relative,\" responded the young man.\n\nBut the jester Grillincervello interposed:--\"She might have been a\nnearer relative, but as she refused this, you see what has happened.\"\n\n\"She must regret her action,\" said another; \"she is so young and\nbeautiful!\"\n\n\"And then she is not accustomed to dying,\" put in the fool, a\nreflection which caused peals of laughter around him.\n\nThen he turned towards Forestino and his brother Bruzio, around whom\nall had gathered in homage: \"Serene Princes, it is my opinion that if\nyou wish to render attentions to the lady of Signor Franciscolo del\nMaggi, she will not imitate Margherita.\"\n\nAt this moment the clock struck again. There was sullen silence--then\na second stroke--then a third, vibrating with a moribund horror.\n\n\"She has arrived?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why is she so late?\" was the universal question; for the spectators\nwere impatient, and imbued with expectation and curiosity, as if they\nwere in a theatre waiting for the curtain to rise.\n\n\"Perhaps they have pardoned her?\" said one.\n\n\"Well, for my part, I should be glad.\" And the people seemed to find\nas much pleasure in imagining a pardon as in watching the execution:\neither way it gave them material for applause, emotion, criticism, and\ndiscussion.\n\nSoon all observations were interrupted, for upon the _parlera_, which\nwas covered with black cloth and velvet cushions, they saw appear the\nmagistrates, the podesta, his lieutenant, and finally the captain\nLucio. As I have told you, justice was then barbarous but honest, and\nthese men came to admire their work.\n\nThrough all the narrow streets, which terminated at this point, ran a\nwhisper; and the murmurs grew more excited towards the large gate\nwhich gave entrance to the Pescheria Vecchia. Here was seen the\nwinding funeral procession, which made a long circuit to let the\nmultitude profit by the lesson.\n\n\"Here she is! Here she is!\" they cried, and exactly like a regiment of\ninfantry in obedience to the commands of a sergeant, the entire crowd\nstood on tiptoe, stretched their necks, and turned heads and eyes to\nthe scene.\n\nThen appeared a yellow standard bordered with gold lace, upon which\nwas painted a skeleton, erect. In one hand it held a scythe and in the\nother an hour-glass. At the right of the skeleton there was painted a\nman with a cord around his neck, and to the left a man carrying his\nhead in his hands. Behind this gonfalon advanced two by two the\nBrothers of the Consolation. This was a pious fraternity founded in\nthe chapel of Santa Maria dei Disciplini; this chapel was afterwards\nchanged into a church, which yielded to none other in Milan for its\nbeauty of architecture. To-day it is a common school. This fraternity,\nwhich was transferred to San Giovanni _alle Case rotte_, had for its\none aim to succor the condemned and to prepare them for death. The\nbrothers advanced. They were attired in white habits, fitting tightly\naround their figures, and their cowls were sewn around their heads.\nInstead of a face, one saw a cross embroidered in red, and at the arms\nof this cross tiny holes were made for the eyes to peer forth. On\ntheir breasts they wore a black medal representing the death of\nChrist, and at the foot of the cross was engraved the head of Saint\nJohn the Baptist. With their long unbelted robes, the chains on their\nwrists, they resembled nocturnal phantoms.\n\nThe last ones bore a coffin, and sang in lugubrious tones the doleful\n'Miserere.' Chanting a service and carrying the bier of a person still\nin the flesh! Breaking through the crowd, they arrived near the\nscaffold and placed the bier upon the ground. Then they arranged\nthemselves in two cordons around the block, so that they could receive\nthe victim among them, and also to form a guard between the world and\nher who was to leave it. Now a car came, moving slowly and drawn by\ntwo oxen caparisoned in black. In this car was our poor Margherita.\n\nIn obedience to the curious sentiment which commands one to adorn\none's self for all occasions, even the melancholy ones, Margherita had\ndressed herself in a rich robe of sombre hue. With great pains she had\narranged her black hair, which set off to advantage the delicate\npallor of the face revealing so much suffering. Upon her neck, which\nhad so often disputed whiteness with pearls, she now wore her rosary,\nwhich seemed to outline the circle of the axe. In her hands she\nclasped the crucifix attached to the chapelet, and from this she never\nremoved her eyes,--eyes which had always beamed with kindness and\nsweetness, but which were now full of sorrow. They could only look\nupon one object--the cross, the one hope of salvation.\n\nBy her side was seated Buonvicino, even paler, if possible, than she.\nIn his hand he held an image of the Crucified God who has suffered for\nus. From time to time he spoke some consoling words to the young\nvictim,--a simple prayer such as our mothers have taught us in\ninfancy, and which come to us again in the most critical moments of\nlife:--\"Savior, unto thee I yield my spirit. Maria, pray for me at the\nhour of death. Depart, Christian soul, from this world, which is but a\nplace of exile, and return into that celestial country sanctified by\nthy suffering, so that angels may bear thee to Paradise!\"...\n\nWhen Margherita appeared, every one exclaimed: \"Oh, how beautiful she\nis! She is so young!\"\n\nThen tears flowed. Many a silken handkerchief hid the eyes of fair\nladies, and many a hand, accustomed to a sword, tried to retard tears.\n\nEvery one looked towards Lucio to see if he would not wave a white\nhandkerchief--the signal of pardon.\n\n Translated through the French by Esther Singleton, for the\n 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'\n\n\n\n\nGIOSUE CARDUCCI\n\n(1836-)\n\nBY FRANK SEWALL\n\n\nRarely in the history of ancient or modern literature has a writer,\nwhile living, been so generally recognized by his countrymen as their\nnational prophet as has the Italian poet and essayist Carducci. In\nJanuary, 1896, he completed his thirty-fifth year as Professor of\nBelles-Lettres in the University of Bologna; and the solemn and\nbrilliant festivities with which the event was celebrated, extending\nover three days and including congratulatory addresses from the king,\nfrom the municipality, from the students and graduates, from foreign\nuniversities, and from distinguished scholars at home and abroad,\ntestified to the remarkable hold this poet has gained on the\naffections and esteem of the Italian people, and the deep impress\nhis writing has made on the literature of our time.\n\nBorn in northern Italy in the year 1836, and entering upon his\nliterary career at a time coincident with the downfall of foreign\npower in Tuscany, the history of his authorship is a fair reflection\nof the growth of the new Italy of to-day. In an autobiographical\nsketch with which he prefaces his volume of 'Poesie' (1871) he depicts\nwith the utmost sincerity and frankness the transition through which\nhis own mind has passed, in breaking from the old traditions in which\nhe had been nursed at his mother's knee, and in meeting the dazzling\nradiance of modern thought and feeling; the thrill of national liberty\nand independence,--no longer a glory dreamed of, as by Alfieri, nor\nsung in tones of despair, as by Leopardi, but as a living experience\nof his own time. He felt the awakening to be at once a literary,\npolitical, and religious one; and following his deep Hellenic\ninstincts, the religious rebound in him was rather to the paganism of\nthe ancient Latin forefathers than to the spiritual worship that had\ncome in with the infusion of foreign blood.\n\n\"This paganism,\" he says, \"this cult of form, was naught else but the\nlove of that noble nature from which the solitary Semitic\nestrangements had alienated hitherto the spirit of man in such bitter\nopposition. My sentiment of opposition, at first feebly defined, thus\nbecame confirmed conceit, reason, affirmation; the hymn to Apollo\nbecame the hymn to Satan. Oh! the beautiful years from 1861 to 1865,\npassed in peaceful solitude and quiet study, in the midst of a home\nwhere the venerable mother, instead of fostering superstition, taught\nus to read Alfieri. But as I read the codices of the fourteenth\ncentury, the ideas of the Renaissance began to appear to me in the\ngilded initial letters like the eyes of nymphs in the midst of\nflowers, and between the lines of the spiritual _laude_ I detected the\nSatanic strophe.\"\n\nSo long had Italy lived in passive dependence on the fame of her great\nwriters of the times of Augustus and of the Medici, and in the apathy\nof a long-abandoned hope of political independence and achievement,\nthat it required a man of powerful instinct and genius to rouse the\npeople to a sense of their actual possession of a national life and of\na literature that is not alone of the past, and so to throw off both\nthe \"livery of the slave and the mask of the courtesan.\" Such was the\nmission of Carducci. As Howells in his 'Modern Italian Poets' remarks\nof Leopardi:--\"He seems to have been the poet of the national mood; he\nwas the final expression of that hopeless apathy in which Italy lay\nbound for thirty years after the fall of Napoleon and his\ngovernments.\" So it may be said of Carducci that in him speaks the\nhope and joy of a nation waking to new life, and recalling her past\nglories, no longer with shame but a purpose to prove herself worthy of\nsuch a heritage.\n\nA distinguished literary contemporary, Enrico Panzacchi, says of\nCarducci:--\n\n\"I believe that I do not exaggerate the importance of Carducci when I\nsay that to him and to his perseverance and steadfast work we owe in\ngreat part the poetic revival in Italy.\"\n\nCesar Lombroso, in the Paris Revue des Revues, says:--\"Among the stars\nof first magnitude shines one of greatest brilliance, Carducci, the\ntrue representative of Italian literary genius.\"\n\nThe poem that first attracted attention and caused no little flutter\nof ecclesiastical gowns was the 'Hymn to Satan,' which appeared in\n1865 in Pistoja, over the signature \"Enotrio Romaho,\" and bore the\ndate \"MMDCXVIII from the foundation of Rome.\" It is not indeed the\nsacrilegious invective that might be imagined from the title, but\nrather a hymn to Science and to Free Thought, liberated from the\nancient thraldom of dogma and superstition. It reveals the strong\nHellenic instinct which still survives in the Italian people beneath\nthe superimposed Christianity, and which here, as in many other of\nCarducci's poems, stands out in bold contrast with the subjective and\nspiritual elements in religion. It is this struggle of the pagan\nagainst the Christian instinct that accounts for the commingled\nsentiment of awe and of rebellion with which Carducci contemplates his\ngreat master Dante; for while he must revere him as the founder of\nItalian letters and the immortal poet of his race, he cannot but see\nboth in the spirituality of Dante's conception of the Church and in\nhis absolute loyalty to the Empire, motives wholly foreign to the\nancient national instinct. Referring again to his transition years, he\nwrites:\n\n\"Meanwhile the shadow of Dante looked down reproachfully upon me; but\nI might have answered:--'Father and Master, why didst thou bring\nlearning from the cloister to the piazza, from the Latin to the vulgar\ntongue? Thou first, O great public accuser of the Middle Ages, gavest\nthe signal for the rebound of thought. That the alarm was sounded from\nthe bells of a Gothic campanile mattered but little.'\"\n\nWithout a formal coronation, Carducci may be regarded as the actual\npoet laureate of Italy. He is still, at sixty years of age, an active\nand hard-working professor at the University of Bologna, where his\npopularity with his students in the lecture-room is equal to that\nwhich his writings have gained throughout the land. A favorite with\nthe Court, and often invited to lecture before the Queen, he is still\na man of great simplicity, even to roughness, of manners, and of a\ngenial and cordial nature. Not only do the Italians with one voice\ncall him their greatest author, but many both in Italy and elsewhere\nare fain to consider him the foremost living poet in Europe.\n\nThe citations here given have been selected as illustrating the\nprominent features of Carducci's genius. His joy in mental\nemancipation from the thraldom of dogma and superstition is seen in\nthe 'Roma' and in the 'Hymn to Satan.' His paganism and his \"cult of\nform,\" as also his Homeric power of description and of color, are seen\nin 'The Ox' and in 'To Aurora.' His veneration for the great masters\nfinds expression in the sonnets to Homer and Dante, and the revulsion\nof the pagan before the spiritual religious feeling is shown in the\nlines 'In a Gothic Church' and in the sonnet 'Dante.'\n\nThe poems of Carducci have appeared for the most part in the following\neditions only:--'Poesie,' embracing the 'Juvenilia,' 'Levia Gravia,'\nand the 'Decennali'; 'Nuove Poesie,' 'Odi Barbare,' 'Nuove Rime.'\nZanichelli in Bologna publishes a complete edition of his writings.\nHis critical essays have appeared generally in the Nuova Antologia,\nand embrace among the more recent a history and discussion of Tasso's\n'Aminta,' and the 'Ancient Pastoral Poetry': a preface to the\ntranslation by Sanfelice of Shelley's 'Prometheus'; the 'Torrismondo'\nof Tasso: 'Italian Life in the Fifteenth Century,' etc. Eight 'Odes'\nof Carducci have been translated into Latin by Adolfo Gandiglo of\nRavenna, and published by Calderini of that city in 1894.\n\n [Illustration: _HOMER._\n\n THE BLIND POET.\n\n Photogravure from a Painting by W. A. Bouguereau.]\n\n * * * * *\n\n Translations from Frank Sewall's 'Giosue Carducci and the\n Hellenic Reaction in Italy' and 'Carducci and the Classic\n Realism.' By permission of Dodd, Mead and Company, copyright\n 1892.\n\n\n\nROMA\n\nFrom the 'Poesie'\n\n\n Give to the wind thy locks; all glittering\n Thy sea-blue eyes, and thy white bosom bared.\n Mount to thy chariot, while in speechless roaring\n Terror and Force before thee clear the way!\n The shadow of thy helmet, like the flashing\n Of brazen star, strikes through the trembling air.\n The dust of broken empires, cloud-like rising,\n Follows the awful rumbling of thy wheels.\n So once, O Rome, beheld the conquered nations\n Thy image, object of their ancient dread.[A]\n To-day a mitre they would place upon\n Thy head, and fold a rosary between\n Thy hands. O name! again to terrors old\n Awake the tired ages and the world!\n\n [A] The allusion is to the figure of 'Roma' as seen on ancient\n coins.\n\n\n\nHOMER\n\nFrom the 'Levia Gravia'\n\n\n And from the savage Urals to the plain\n A new barbarian folk shall send alarms,\n The coast of Agenorean Thebes again\n Be waked with sound of chariots and of arms;\n And Rome shall fall; and Tiber's current drain\n The nameless lands of long deserted farms:\n But thou like Hercules shalt still remain,\n Untouched by fiery Etna's deadly charms;\n And with thy youthful temples, laurel-crowned,\n Shalt rise to the eternal Form's embrace\n Whose unveiled smile all earliest was thine;\n And till the Alps to gulfing sea give place,\n By Latin shore or on Achaean ground,\n Like heaven's sun shalt thou, O Homer, shine!\n\n\n\nIN A GOTHIC CHURCH\n\nFrom the 'Poesie'\n\n\n They rise aloft, marching in awful file,\n The polished shafts immense of marble gray,\n And in the sacred darkness seem to be\n An army of giants\n\n Who wage a war with the invisible;\n The silent arches soar and spring apart\n In distant flight, then re-embrace again\n And droop on high.\n\n So in the discord of unhappy men,\n From out their barbarous tumult there go up\n To God the sighs of solitary souls\n In Him united.\n\n Of you I ask no God, ye marble shafts,\n Ye airy vaults! I tremble--but I watch\n To hear a dainty well-known footstep waken\n The solemn echoes.\n\n 'Tis Lidia, and she turns, and slowly turning,\n Her tresses full of light reveal themselves,\n And love is shining from a pale shy face\n Behind the veil.\n\n\n\nON THE SIXTH CENTENARY OF DANTE\n\nFrom the 'Levia Gravia'\n\n\n I saw him, from the uncovered tomb uplifting\n His mighty form, the imperial prophet stand.\n Then shook the Adrian shore, and all the land\n Italia trembled as at an earthquake drifting.\n Like morning mist from purest ether sifting,\n It marched along the Apenninian strand,\n Glancing adown the vales on either hand,\n Then vanished like the dawn to daylight shifting.\n Meanwhile in earthly hearts a fear did rise,\n The awful presence of a god discerning,\n To which no mortal dared to lift the eyes.\n But where beyond the gates the sun is burning,\n The races dead of warlike men and wise\n With joy saluted the great soul's returning.\n\n\n\nTHE OX\n\nFrom the 'Poesie'\n\n\n I love thee, pious ox; a gentle feeling\n Of vigor and of peace thou giv'st my heart.\n How solemn, like a monument, thou art!\n Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing,\n Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling,\n To man's quick work thou dost thy strength impart.\n He shouts and goads, and answering thy smart,\n Thou turn'st on him thy patient eyes appealing.\n From thy broad nostrils, black and wet, arise\n Thy breath's soft fumes; and on the still air swells,\n Like happy hymn, thy lowing's mellow strain.\n In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes\n Of emerald, broad and still reflected dwells\n All the divine green silence of the plain.\n\n\n\nDANTE\n\nFrom the 'Levia Gravia'\n\n\n O Dante, why is it that I adoring\n Still lift my songs and vows to thy stern face,\n And sunset to the morning gray gives place\n To find me still thy restless verse exploring?\n Lucia prays not for my poor soul's resting;\n For me Matilda tends no sacred fount;\n For me in vain the sacred lovers mount,\n O'er star and star, to the eternal soaring.\n I hate the Holy Empire, and the crown\n And sword alike relentless would have riven\n From thy good Frederic on Olona's plains.\n Empire and Church to ruin have gone down,\n And yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven.\n Great Jove is dead. Only the song remains.\n\n\n\nTO SATAN\n\nFrom the 'Poesie'\n\n\n To thee my verses,\n Unbridled and daring,\n Shall mount, O Satan,\n King of the banquet!\n\n Away with thy sprinkling,\n O Priest, and thy droning,\n For never shall Satan,\n O Priest, stand behind thee.\n\n See how the rust is\n Gnawing the mystical\n Sword of St. Michael;\n And how the faithful\n\n Wind-plucked archangel\n Falls into emptiness;\n Frozen the thunder in\n Hand of Jehovah.\n\n Like to pale meteors, or\n Planets exhausted,\n Out of the firmament\n Rain down the angels.\n\n Here in the matter\n Which never sleeps,\n King of phenomena,\n King of all forms,\n\n Thou, Satan, livest.\n Thine is the empire\n Felt in the dark eyes'\n Tremulous flashing,\n\n Whether their languishing\n Glances resist, or\n Glittering and tearful, they\n Call and invite.\n\n How shine the clusters\n With happy blood,\n So that the furious\n Joy may not perish,\n\n So that the languishing\n Love be restored,\n And sorrow be banished\n And love be increased.\n\n Thy breath, O Satan!\n My verse inspires,\n When from my bosom\n The gods I defy\n\n Of kings pontifical,\n Of kings inhuman.\n Thine is the lightning that\n Sets minds to shaking.\n\n For thee Arimane,\n Adonis, Astarte;\n For thee lived the marbles,\n The pictures, the parchments,\n\n When the fair Venus\n Anadyomene\n Blessed the Ionian\n Heavens serene.\n\n For thee were roaring the\n Forests of Lebanon,\n Of the fair Cypri\n Lover re-born;\n\n For thee rose the chorus,\n For thee raved the dances,\n For thee the pure shining\n Loves of the virgins,\n\n Under the sweet-odored\n Palms of Idume,\n Where break in white foam\n The Cyprian waves.\n\n What if the barbarous\n Nazarene fury,\n Fed by the base rites\n Of secret feastings,\n\n Lights sacred torches\n To burn down the temples,\n Scattering abroad\n The scrolls hieroglyphic?\n\n In thee find refuge\n The humble-roofed plebs,\n Who have not forgotten\n The gods of their household.\n\n Thence comes the power,\n Fervid and loving, that,\n Filling the quick-throbbing\n Bosom of woman,\n\n Turns to the succor\n Of nature enfeebled;\n A sorceress pallid,\n With endless care laden.\n\n Thou to the trance-holden\n Eye of the alchemist,\n Thou to the view of the\n Bigoted mago,\n\n Showest the lightning-flash\n Of the new time\n Shining behind the dark\n Bars of the cloister.\n\n Seeking to fly from thee,\n Here in the world-life\n Hides him the gloomy monk\n In Theban deserts.\n\n O soul that wanderest\n Far from the straight way,\n Satan is merciful.--\n See Heloisa!\n\n In vain you wear yourself\n Thin in rough gown; I\n Still murmur the verses\n Of Maro and Flaccus\n\n Amid the Davidic\n Psalming and wailing,\n And--Delphic figures\n Close at thy side--\n\n Rosy, amid the dark\n Cowls of the friars,\n Enters Licorida,\n Enters Glicera.\n\n Then other images\n Of days more fair\n Come to dwell with thee\n In thy secret cell.\n\n Lo! from the pages of\n Livy, the Tribunes\n All ardent, the Consuls,\n The crowds tumultuous,\n\n Awake; and the fantastic\n Pride of Italians\n Drives them, O Monk,\n Up to the Capitol;\n\n And you whom the flaming\n Fire never melted,\n Conjuring voices,\n Wickliffe and Huss,\n\n Send to the broad breeze\n The cry of the watchman:--\n \"The age renews itself;\n Full is the time.\"\n\n Already tremble\n The mitres and crowns.\n Forth from the cloister\n Moves the rebellion.\n\n Under his stole, see,\n Fighting and preaching,\n Brother Girolamo\n Savonarola.\n\n Off goes the tunic\n Of Martin Luther;\n Off go the fetters\n That bound human thought.\n\n It flashes and lightens,\n Girdled with flame;\n Matter, exalt thyself;\n Satan has won!\n\n A fair and terrible\n Monster unchained\n Courses the ocean,\n Courses the earth.\n\n Flashing and smoking,\n Like the volcanoes, he\n Climbs over mountains,\n Ravages plains,\n\n Skims the abysses;\n Then he is lost\n In unknown caverns\n And ways profound,\n\n Till lo! unconquered,\n From shore to shore,\n Like to the whirlwind,\n He sends forth his cry.\n\n Like to the whirlwind\n Spreading his wings,...\n He passes, O people,\n Satan the great!\n\n Hail to thee, Satan;\n Hail the rebellion!\n Hail, of the reason the\n Great Vindicator!\n\n Sacred to thee shall rise\n Incense and vows.\n Thou hast the god\n Of the priest disenthroned!\n\n\n\nTO AURORA\n\nFrom the 'Odi Barbare'\n\n\n Thou risest and kissest, O Goddess, with thy rosy breath, the clouds,\n Kissest the dusky pinnacles of marble temples.\n\n The forests feel thee, and with a cool shiver awake;\n Up soars the falcon, flashing in eager joy.\n\n Meanwhile amid the wet leaves mutter the garrulous nests,\n And far off the gray gull screams over the purple sea.\n\n First to delight in thee, down in the laborious plain,\n Are the streams which glisten amid the rustling poplars.\n\n Daringly the sorrel colt breaks away from his feeding,\n Runs to the brooks with high-lifted mane, neighing in the wind.\n\n Wakeful answer from the huts the great pack of the hounds,\n And the whole valley is filled with the noisy sound of their barking.\n\n But the man whom thou awakest to life-consuming labor,\n He, O ancient Youth, O Youth eternal,\n\n Still thoughtful admires thee, even as on the mountain\n The Aryan Fathers adored thee, standing amid their white oxen.\n\n Again upon the wing of the fresh morning flies forth\n The hymn which to thee they sang over their heaped-up spears:--\n\n \"Shepherdess thou of heaven! from the stalls of thy jealous sister\n Thou loosest the rosy kine, and leadest them back to the skies;\n\n \"Thou leadest the rosy kine, and the white herds, and the horses\n With the blond flowing manes dear to the brothers Asvini.\"\n\n Like the youthful bride who goes from her bath to her spouse,\n Reflecting in her eyes the love of him her lover,\n\n So dost thou smiling let fall the light garments that veil thee,\n And serene to the heavens thy virgin figure reveal.\n\n Flushed thy cheeks, with white breast panting, thou runnest\n To the sovereign of worlds, to the fair flaming Suria.\n\n And he joins, and, in a bow, stretches around his mighty neck\n Thy rosy arms; but at his terrible glances thou fleest.\n\n 'Tis then the Asvinian Twins, the cavaliers of heaven,\n Welcome thee rosily trembling in thy chariot of gold,\n\n And thither thou turnest where, measured the road of glory,\n Wearied, the god awaits thee in the dull gloaming of eve.\n\n \"Gracious thy flight be above us! so invoked thee the fathers;\n Gracious the going of thy radiant car over our houses!\n\n \"Come from the coasts of the East with thy good fortune,\n Come with thy flowering oats and thy foaming milk;\n\n \"And in the midst of the calves, dancing, with yellow locks,\n All offspring shall adore thee, O Shepherdess of heaven!\"\n\n So sang the Aryans. But better pleased thee Hymettus,\n Fresh with the twenty brooks whose banks smelt to heaven of thyme;\n\n Better pleased thee on Hymettus the nimble-limbed, mortal huntsman,\n Who with the buskined foot pressed the first dews of the morn.\n\n The heavens bent down. A sweet blush tinged the forest and the hills\n When thou, O Goddess, didst descend.\n\n But thou descendedst not; rather did Cephalus, drawn by thy kiss,\n Mount all alert through the air, fair as a beautiful god,--\n\n Mount on the amorous winds and amid the sweet odors,\n While all around were the nuptials of flowers and the marriage of\n streams.\n\n Wet lies upon his neck the heavy tress of gold, and the golden quiver\n Reaches above his white shoulder, held by the belt of vermilion.\n\n O fragrant kisses of a goddess among the dews!\n O ambrosia of love in the world's youth-time!\n\n Dost thou also love, O Goddess? But ours is a wearied race;\n Sad is thy face, O Aurora, when thou risest over our towers.\n\n The dim street-lamps go out; and without even glancing at thee,\n A pale-faced troop go home, imagining they have been happy.\n\n Angrily at his door is pounding the ill-tempered laborer,\n Cursing the dawn that only calls him back to his bondage.\n\n Only the lover, perhaps, fresh from the dreams of the loved one,\n His blood still warm from her kisses, salutes with joy,\n\n Beholds with delight thy face, and feels thy cool breathing upon him:\n Then cries, \"O bear me, Aurora, upon thy swift courser of flame;\n\n \"Bear me up into the fields of the stars, that there, looking down,\n I may behold the earth beneath thy rosy light smiling;\n\n \"Behold my fair one, in the face of the rising day,\n Let fall her black tresses down over her blushing bosom.\"\n\n\n\nRUIT HORA\n\n\n O green and silent solitudes, far from the rumors of men\n Hither come to meet us true friends divine, O Lidia,\n Wine and love.\n\n O tell me why the sea, far under the flaming Hesperus\n Sends such mysterious moanings; and what songs are these, O Lidia,\n The pines are chanting.\n\n See with what longing the hills stretch their arms to the setting sun.\n The shadow lengthens and holds them; they seem to be asking\n A last kiss, O Lidia!\n\n\n\nTHE MOTHER\n\n(A GROUP BY ADRIAN CECIONI)\n\n\n Surely admired her the rosy day-dawn, when,\n summoning the farmers to the still gray fields,\n it saw her barefooted, with quick step passing\n among the dewy odors of the hay.\n\n Heard her at mid-day the elm-trees white with dust,\n as, with broad shoulders bent o'er the yellow winrows,\n she challenges in cheery song the grasshoppers,\n whose hoarse chirping rings from the hot hillsides.\n\n And when from her toil she lifted her turgid bosom,\n her sun-browned face with glossy curls surrounded,\n how then thy vesper fires, O Tuscany,\n did richly tinge with color her bold figure!\n\n 'Tis then the strong mother plays at ball with her infant,\n the lusty child whom her naked breasts have just sated;\n tosses him on high and prattles sweetly with him,\n while he, with eye fixed on the shining eyes of his mother,\n\n His little body trembling all over with fear, holds out\n his tiny fingers imploring; then loud laughs the mother,\n and into the one great embrace of love\n lets him fall, clasped close to her bosom.\n\n Around her smiles the scene of homely labor;\n tremulous nod the oats on the green hillsides;\n one hears the distant mooing of the ox,\n and on the barn-roof the gay plumed cock is crowing.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Nature has her brave ones, who for her despise\n the masks of glory dear to the vulgar throng.\n 'Tis thus, O Adrian, with holy visions\n thou comfortest the souls of fellow-men.\n\n 'Tis thus, O artist, with thy blows severe\n thou putt'st in stone the ages' ancient hope,\n the lofty hope that cries, \"Oh, when shall labor\n be happy, and faithful love secure from harm?\n\n \"When shall a mighty nation of freemen\n say in the face of the sun, 'Shine no more\n on the idle ease and the selfish wars of tyrants,\n but on the pious justice of labor?'\"\n\n\n\n\nTHOMAS CAREW\n\n(1598?-1639)\n\n\nThomas Carew is deservedly placed among the most brilliant\nrepresentatives of a class of lyrists who were not only courtiers but\nmen of rank; who, varied in accomplishments, possessing culture and\ntaste, expressed their play of fancy with elegance and ease. The lyre\nof these aristocratic poets had for its notes only love and beauty,\ndisdain, despair, and love's bounty, sometimes frivolous in sound and\nsometimes serious; and their work may be regarded as the ancestor of\nthe _vers de societe_, which has reached its perfection in Locker and\nAustin Dobson. To Carew's lyrics we may apply Izaak Walton's famous\ncriticism: \"They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.\"\n\nThomas Carew, son of Sir Matthew Carew, was born in London about 1598.\nHe left Corpus Christi, Oxford, without a degree, and early fell into\nwild habits. In 1613 his father wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton that \"one\nof his sons was roving after hounds and hawks, and the other [Thomas]\nstudying in the Middle Temple, but doing little at law.\" The result\nwas that Carleton made Thomas his secretary, and took him to Venice\nand Turin, returning in 1615. Carew accompanied him to the Hague also,\nbut resigned his post and again returned to England. In 1619 he went\nwith Lord Herbert of Cherbury to the French court. He became sewer in\nordinary to Charles I., and a gentleman of his privy chamber; and the\nKing, who was particularly fond of him, gave him the royal domain of\nSunninghill in Windsor Forest. Carew was an intimate friend of Ben\nJonson, Sir John Suckling, John Selden, Sir Kenelm Digby, Davenant,\nCharles Cotton, and also of Lord Clarendon; who writes:--\"Carew was a\nperson of a pleasant and facetious wit, and made many poems\n(especially in the amorous way) which for the sharpness of the fancy\nand the elegance of the language in which that fancy was spread, were\nat least equal, if not superior, to any of that time.\"\n\nFour editions of Carew's poems appeared between 1640 and 1671, and\nfour have been printed within the present century, the best being a\nquarto published by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in 1870. His longest work was a\nmasque called 'Coelum Britannicum,' performed at Whitehall, February\n18th, 1633. Inigo Jones arranged the scenery, Henry Lawes the music,\nand the King, the Duke of Lennox, and other courtiers played the chief\nparts. Carew's death is supposed to have occurred in 1639.\n\n\n\nA SONG\n\n\n Ask me no more where Jove bestows,\n When June is past, the fading rose;\n For in your beauty's orient deep,\n These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.\n\n Ask me no more whither doth stray\n The golden atoms of the day;\n For in pure love heaven did prepare\n These powders to enrich your hair.\n\n Ask me no more whither doth haste\n The nightingale when May is past;\n For in your sweet dividing throat,\n She winters and keeps warm her note.\n\n Ask me no more where those stars light\n That downward fall in dead of night;\n For in your eyes they sit, and there\n Fixed become as in their sphere.\n\n Ask me no more if east or west\n The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;\n For unto you at last she flies,\n And in your fragrant bosom dies.\n\n\n\nTHE PROTESTATION\n\n\n No more shall meads be deckt with flowers,\n Nor sweetness dwell in rosy bowers,\n Nor greenest buds on branches spring,\n Nor warbling birds delight to sing,\n Nor April violets paint the grove,\n If I forsake my Celia's love.\n\n The fish shall in the ocean burn,\n And fountains sweet shall bitter turn;\n The humble oak no flood shall know,\n When floods shall highest hills o'erflow;\n Black Lethe shall oblivion leave,\n If e'er my Celia I deceive.\n\n Love shall his bow and shaft lay by,\n And Venus's doves want wings to fly;\n The Sun refuse to shew his light,\n And day shall then be turned to night;\n And in that night no star appear,\n If once I leave my Celia dear.\n\n Love shall no more inhabit earth,\n Nor lovers more shall love for worth,\n Nor joy above the heaven dwell,\n Nor pain torment poor souls in hell;\n Grim death no more shall horrid prove,\n If I e'er leave bright Celia's love.\n\n\n\nSONG\n\n\n Would you know what's soft? I dare\n Not bring you to the down, or air,\n Nor to stars to shew what's bright,\n Nor to snow to teach you white;\n\n Nor, if you would music hear,\n Call the orbs to take your ear;\n Nor, to please your sense, bring forth\n Bruised nard, or what's more worth;\n\n Or on food were your thoughts placed,\n Bring you nectar, for a taste:\n Would you have all these in one,\n Name my mistress, and 'tis done.\n\n\n\nTHE SPRING\n\n\n Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost\n Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost\n Candies the grass or casts an icy cream\n Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;\n But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,\n And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth\n To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree\n The drowsy cuckoo and the bumble-bee.\n Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring\n In triumph to the world the youthful Spring:\n The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,\n Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.\n Now all things smile; only my love doth lower;\n Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power\n To melt that marble ice which still doth hold\n Her heart congealed, and makes her pity cold.\n The ox, which lately did for shelter fly\n Into the stall, doth now securely lie\n In open fields; and love no more is made\n By the fireside; but, in the cooler shade,\n Amyntas now doth with his Cloris sleep\n Under a sycamore, and all things keep\n Time with the season--only she doth carry\n June in her eyes, in her heart January.\n\n\n\nTHE INQUIRY[1]\n\n\n Amongst the myrtles as I walked,\n Love and my sighs together talked;\n Tell me (said I in deep distress)\n Where I may find my shepherdess?\n\n Thou fool (said Love), know'st thou not this,--\n In everything that's good she is:\n In yonder tulip go and seek;\n There thou mayst find her lip, her cheek.\n\n In yonder enameled pansy by,\n There thou shalt have her curious eye;\n In bloom of peach, in rosy bud,\n There wave the streamers of her blood;\n\n In brightest lilies that there stands,\n The emblems of her whiter hands;\n In yonder rising hill there swells\n Such sweets as in her bosom dwells.\n\n 'Tis true (said I), and thereupon\n I went to pluck them one by one,\n To make of parts a union;\n But on a sudden all was gone.\n\n With that I stopped. Said Love, These be\n (Fond man) resemblances of thee;\n And in these flowers thy joys shall die,\n Even in the twinkling of an eye,\n And all thy hopes of her shall wither,\n Like these short sweets thus knit together.\n\n [1] Attributed to Herrick in Drake's 'Literary Hours.'\n\n\n\n\nEMILIA FLYGARE-CARLEN\n\n(1807-1892)\n\n[Illustration: EMILIA CARLEN]\n\n\nEmilia Smith Flygare-Carlen was born at Stroemstad, Sweden, August 8th,\n1807. She was the daughter of Rutger Smith, a merchant of that place,\nand here her childhood was passed, varied by frequent sea trips with\nher father, and excursions to different parts of the coast. It was\nprobably these early maritime experiences that laid the foundation of\nher accurate knowledge of the character and habits of the Swedish\nfisherfolk. In 1827 she was married to Dr. Flygare, a physician of\nKronbergslaen, but after his death in 1833 she returned to her native\nplace. As a child her talent for imaginative literature was known\namong her friends, but nothing of any permanent value was developed\nuntil after her thirtieth year, when her first novel, 'Waldemar\nKlein,' was published anonymously (1838). After this first successful\nliterary attempt, she went to Stockholm upon the advice of her father\n(1839), and shortly after she was married to a lawyer of that city,\nJohan Gabriel Carlen, a Swedish poet and author. Her novels appeared\nin quick succession; she at once became popular, and her books were\nwidely read. Her productivity was remarkable. The period of her\nhighest accomplishment was from 1838 to 1852, when a great affliction\nin the loss of her son suspended her activities for several years. It\nwas not until 1858 that she again resumed her writing.\n\nShe was honored by the gold medal of the Swedish Academy (1862), and\nthe success of her books was followed by abundant pecuniary reward as\nwell as distinction. Her house in Stockholm was the centre of the\nliterary life of the capital until the death of her husband in 1875,\nwhen she completely retired from the world. She established the\n\"Rutger Smith Fund\" for poor fishermen and their widows, made an\nendowment for students to the University of Upsala in memory of her\nson, and also founded in memory of her husband a fund for the\nassistance of teachers. She died at Stockholm, February 5th, 1892.\n\nAs a novelist she shares national honors with her countrywoman,\nFredrika Bremer. Her range in fiction was not confined to a single\nfield, but embraced all classes and conditions of Swedish life. Her\nstories are full of action and rich in incident, and her delineation\nof character is natural and shows her real experience of human nature.\nShe is most happy in depicting the humble fisherfolk and peasants. The\nstirring incidents of the adventurous life of the smugglers were\ncongenial themes, and her graphic descriptions give typical pictures\nof the rough coast life among sailors, fishers, and revenue officers.\n\nAmong her best and most characteristic works are: 'Gustav Lindorm'\n(1835); 'Rosen pa Tisteloen' (The Rose of Tisteloen), 1842;\n'Jungfrutornet' (The Maiden's Tower), 1848; 'Enslingen pa\nJohannisskaeret' (The Hermit of the Johannis Rock), 1846. Her\nautobiography, written in her later years, is sprightly and\ninteresting. Her collected works number more than thirty volumes, the\ngreater part of which have been translated into German, French, and\nEnglish.\n\n\n\nTHE PURSUIT OF THE SMUGGLERS\n\nFrom 'The Merchant House among the Islands'\n\n\nHe [Olagus] thundered his command to his companions:--\"Row, row as\nfast as you can to the open sea!\" And as though it had invisible\nwings, the boat turned and shot forward.\n\n\"Halt! halt!\" cried the lieutenant, whose blood was now up. \"In the\nname of his Majesty and of the Crown, down with the sails.\"\n\nLoud laughter from the smugglers' boat sounded across the water.\n\nThis scornful laughter was answered from the yacht by the firing of\nthe second cannon, which was fully loaded. The ball fell into the\nwater close to the windward of the boat.\n\nThe answer was renewed laughter from the smugglers' boat; whose crew,\nurged by the twofold desire to save their cargo and to make fools of\nthe Custom-house officers, continued to increase the distance between\nthemselves and the yacht. In spite of the more skillful guidance, the\ntwo oars of the latter could not overtake the four men. But the\nlieutenant's full strong voice could still be heard:--\n\n\"Stop, or I will shoot you to the bottom!\"\n\nBut he did not shoot, for the smugglers' boat was already out of the\nreach of shot.\n\nAt this moment it would have been impossible to detect the least trace\nof the amiable, good-natured Gudmar Guldbrandsson, the favorite of all\nthe ladies, with his light yellow curls and his slightly arched\nforehead, and the beautiful dark blue eyes, which when not enlivened\nby the power of some passion, sometimes revealed that half-dreamy\nexpression that women so often admire.\n\nMajke ought to have seen her commander now, as he stood for a moment\non the deck, leaning on his gun, his glass in his hand.\n\n\"Row, boys, row with all your might! I will not allow--\" The remainder\nof the sentence was lost in inarticulate tones.\n\nOnce more he raised the glass to his eyes.\n\nThe chase lasted some time, without any increase of the intervening\ndistance, or any hope of its diminution. It was a grave, a terrible\nchase.\n\nMeantime new and strange intentions had occurred to the commander of\nthe smugglers' boat. From what dark source could he have received the\ninspiration that dictated the command?\n\n\"Knock out the bung of the top brandy-barrel, and let us drink; that\nwill refresh our courage and rejoice our hearts. Be merry and drink as\nlong as you like.\"\n\nAnd now ensued a wild bacchanalia. The men drank out of large mugs,\nthey drank out of cans, and the result was not wanting, while the boat\nwas nearing the entrance to the sea.\n\n\"Now, my men,\" began Olagus in powerful penetrating tones, as he\nstroked his reddish beard, \"shall we allow one of those government\nfools to force us to go a different way from the one we ourselves wish\nto go?\"\n\n\"Olagus,\" Tuve ventured to interpose,--for Tuve still possessed full\nconsciousness, as he had only made a pretense of drinking,--\"dear\nOlagus, let us be content if we can place the goods in safety. I think\nI perceive that you mean something else--something dangerous.\"\n\n\"Coward! You ought to sit at home and help your father weave nets. If\nyou are afraid, creep under the tarpaulin; there are others here who\ndo not get the cramp when they are to follow the Moerkoe Bears.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" thought Boerje, as he bent over his oar, \"I should like\nto keep away from this hunt. But who dare speak a word? I feel as\nthough I were already in the fortress, the ship and crew in the\nservice of the Crown.\"\n\nPerhaps Ragnar thought so too; but the great man was so much feared\nthat when he commanded no contradiction was ever heard.\n\nIt was almost the first time that Tuve had made an objection, and his\nbrother's scornful rebuke had roused his blood also; but still he\ncontrolled himself.\n\nWhat was resolved on meantime will be seen from what follows.\n\n\"Why, what is that?\" exclaimed the lieutenant of the yacht. \"The oars\nare drawn in! He is turning,--on my life, he is turning!\"\n\n\"He knew that we should catch him up,\" said Sven, delighted once more\nto be able to indulge in his usual humor. \"Fists and sinews like mine\nare worth as much as four of them; and if we take Pelle into account,\nthey might easily recognize that the best thing they can do is to\nsurrender at once.\"\n\n\"Silence, you conceited idiot!\" commanded the lieutenant; \"this is no\nmatter of parley. He is making straight for us. The wind is falling;\nit is becoming calm.\"\n\n\"What does the lieutenant think, Pelle?\" asked Sven, in a loud\nwhisper. \"Can Olagus have weapons on board and want to attack us?\"\n\n\"It almost looks like it,\" answered Pelle shortly.\n\nMeantime the two boats approached one another with alarming speed.\n\n\"Whatever happens,\" said the lieutenant, with icy calm,--\"and the game\nlooks suspicious, you know, my friends,--would that the\ncoast-guardsman may not look behind him! The flag of the Crown may\nwave over living or dead men; that is no matter so long as it does not\nwave over one who has not done his duty.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Pelle.\n\nSven spread out his arms in a significant gesture.\n\n\"They may be excited by drink,--their copper-colored faces show that;\nbut here stands a man who will not forget that his name is Sven\nDillhufvud. There, I have spoken! But, dear sir, do take care of\nyourself. They have torn up the boards, and are fetching up stones and\npieces of iron.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see. If they attack us, take care of the oars. Do not lay-to\non the long side; but row past, and then turn. If they throw, watch\ntheir movements carefully; in that way you can escape the danger.\"\n\nThe boats, which were only a few fathoms apart, glided gently towards\none another.\n\nThe lieutenant's command was punctually executed by his people.\n\n\"Olagus Esbjoernsson,\" exclaimed the commander of the Custom-house\nyacht, \"I charge you once more in the King's name to surrender!\"\n\n\"O dear, yes,\" exclaimed the worthy descendant of the Vikings. \"I have\ncome back just with that intention. Perhaps I also wanted to fulfill\nan old vow. Do you remember what I vowed that night by the Oternnest?\"\n\nAt the same moment a whole shower of pieces of iron whistled through\nthe air, and fell rattling on to the yacht; but the sharp piece of\niron thrown by Olagus's own hands was aimed at the lieutenant himself.\nHe however darted aside so quickly that he was not wounded, although\nit flew so close past him that it tore off his straw hat and dashed it\ninto the sea.\n\n\"Olagus, and you others,\" sounded his voice, in all its youthful\npower, \"consider what you do; consider the price of an attack on a\nroyal boat and crew! The responsibility may cost you dear. I charge\nyou to cease at once.\"\n\n\"What! Are you frightened, you Crown slaves?\" roared Olagus, whose\nsparkling eyes and flushed face, so different from his usual calm in\npeaceful circumstances, lent increased wildness to his form and\ngestures. \"Come, will this warm you?\" And at the same moment another\npiece of iron flew past, aimed with such certainty that it would have\ncut off the thread of the lieutenant's life if he had not taken\nshelter behind the mast. The iron was firmly fixed in the mast.\n\nThe yacht was now bombarded on all sides. Here hung a torn sail, there\nan end of rope; and the side planks had already received a good deal\nof injury, so that the yacht was threatened with a leak. But now was\nheard for the last time the young commander's warning:--\n\n\"Stop, Olagus, and tell your people to put aside their wretched arms;\nfor, on my life, this gun is loaded with a ball, and the first of you\nwho throws another piece shall be shot down like a stag.\"\n\n\"Do it if you dare! But there, see, miserable Custom-house dog, how\nthe Moerkoe Bears respect your threats!\"\n\nThe third piece of iron was just about to be thrown; but at the same\nmoment the lieutenant took aim.\n\nThe shot was fired.\n\nDuring the long chase and the attack which followed it, the sun had\nbeen approaching the horizon, and now might be seen one of those\nbeautiful sunsets which so often delight the eye on this blue-green\nsea. They are the counterpart of the autumn apparitions during the\ndark fogs, when the ships wander about seeking their way among the\ncliffs, then glimmering whitely, and now shining red.\n\nWorthy the inspiration of poet and painter, this warm, divinely\npeaceful, and lovely scene of nature offered a new, bitter contrast to\nthe terrible picture which human passion and the claims of duty had\nconjured with lightning speed into these two spots in the sea--the\nsmugglers' boat and the Custom-house yacht.\n\nThe shot was fired, and the mighty giant of Moerkoe, Olagus Esbjoernsson,\nsank back into the tarpaulin.\n\n\"The accursed devil has shot right into my heart!\"\n\nPale as death, Tuve sprang forward, and wanted to stay the blood.\n\n\"Leave it alone,\" panted Olagus. \"It is no use. Give my love to father\nand Britje; she was a good wife. You must be a father to--my boy. The\nbusiness may cease.\"\n\nThe subduing touch of death had already extinguished the wild light\nwhich the fire of hatred had kindled in these eyes. And the last\nglance that sought his brother's gaze was gentle.\n\nSuddenly he was once more fired by the remembrance of the earthly life\nwhich was fast retreating from him.\n\n\"Quickly away with the cargo! No one must know that Olagus Esbjoernsson\nfell from a shot out of the Custom-house yacht. I--I--fell upon them.\"\n\nThey were his last words.\n\nTuve's head fell, sobbing, on the man whom he had so completely\nhonored as his superior.\n\nTuve was now the first in Moerkoe, and as though a stronger spirit had\ncome over him, he began to feel his duty. He rose, and gave orders to\nturn toward the sea, but the crew stood motionless with terror.\n\n\n\n\nTHOMAS CARLYLE\n\n(1795-1881)\n\nBY LESLIE STEPHEN\n\n\nThe hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Carlyle--(December\n4th, 1795)--was lately commemorated. The house in Cheyne Walk,\nChelsea, which he had occupied from 1834 till his death (February 4th,\n1881), was handed over to trustees to be preserved as a public\nmemorial. No house in the British islands has more remarkable\nassociations. Thither Carlyle had come in his thirty-eighth year,\nstill hardly recognized by the general public, though already regarded\nby a small circle as a man of extraordinary powers. There he went\nthrough the concluding years of the long struggle which ended by a\nhard-won and scarcely enjoyed victory. There he had been visited by\nalmost all the most conspicuous men of letters of his time: by\nJeffrey, Southey, and J. S. Mill; by Tennyson and Browning, the\ngreatest poets, and by Thackeray and Dickens, the greatest novelists\nof his generation; by the dearest friends of his youth, Irving and\nEmerson and John Sterling, and by his last followers, Froude and\nRuskin. There too had lived until 1866 the woman who had shared his\nstruggles, whom he loved and admired without stint, and whom he was\nyet destined to remember with many bitter pangs of remorse. Their\nstory, laid bare with singular fullness, has invested the scene of\ntheir joys and sorrows, their alienation and reconciliations, with\nextraordinary interest. Every one who has read the \"Reminiscences\" and\nthe later mass of biographical matter must be glad to see the\n\"sound-proof\" room, and the garden haunted by the \"demon-fowls\" and\nthe other dumb witnesses of a long tragi-comedy. No one was so keenly\nsensitive as Carlyle to the interest of the little gleams of light\nwhich reveal our ancestors not only stirred by the great passions, but\nabsorbed like ourselves by the trivialities of the day. A similar\ninterest will long attach to the scene of his own trials.\n\nCarlyle's life was a struggle and a warfare. Each of his books was\nwrenched from him, like the tale of the 'Ancient Mariner,' by a\nspiritual agony. The early books excited the wrath of his\ncontemporaries, when they were not ridiculed as the grotesque\noutpourings of an eccentric humorist. His teaching was intended to\noppose what most people take to be the general tendency of thought,\nand yet many who share that tendency gladly acknowledge that they owe\nto Carlyle a more powerful intellectual stimulus than they can\nattribute even to their accepted teachers. I shall try briefly to\nindicate the general nature of his message to mankind, without\nattempting to consider the soundness or otherwise of particular views.\n\nCarlyle describes what kind of person people went to see in Cheyne\nRow. \"The very sound of my voice,\" he says, \"has got something\nsavage-prophetic: I am as a John the Baptist girt about with a leather\ngirdle, whose food is locusts and wild honey.\" Respectable literary\nsociety at \"aesthetic tea-parties\" regarded him as the Scribes and\nPharisees regarded the Hebrew prophet. He came among them to tear the\nmask from their hypocritical cant. Carlyle was not externally a\nDiogenes. Though the son of peasants, he had the appearance and manner\nof a thorough gentleman in spite of all his irritable outbreaks. But\nhe was not the less penetrated to the core with the idiosyncrasies of\nhis class. The father, a Davie Deans of real life, had impressed the\nson profoundly. Carlyle had begun life on the same terms as\ninnumerable young Scots. Strict frugality had enabled him to get a\ncollege training and reach the threshold of the ministry. His mother\ncould look forward to the exquisite pleasure of seeing \"her own bairn\nwag his head in a pulpit!\" But at this point Carlyle's individuality\nfirst asserted itself. He could not step into any of the ordinary\ngrooves. His college teachers appeared to him to offer \"sawdust\"\ninstead of manna from heaven. The sacred formulae of their ancestral\ncreed had lost their savor. Words once expressive of the strongest\nfaith were either used to utter the bigotry of narrow pedants, or were\nadopted only to be explained away into insipid commonplace. Carlyle\nshared the intellectual movement of his time too much to profess any\nreverence for what he called the \"Hebrew old-clothes.\" Philosophers\nand critics had torn them to rags. His quarrel however was with the\naccidental embodiment, not with the spirit of the old creeds. The old\nmorality was ingrained in his very nature; nor was he shocked, like\nsome of his fellows, by the sternness of the Calvinistic views of the\nuniverse and life. The whole problem was with him precisely to save\nthis living spirit. The skeptics, he thought, were, in the German\nphrase, \"emptying out the baby with the bath.\" They were at war with\nthe spirit as well as with the letter; trying to construct a Godless\nuniverse; to substitute a dead mechanism for the living organism; and\ntherefore to kill down at the root every noble aspiration which could\nstimulate the conscience, or strengthen a man to bear the spectacle of\nthe wrongs and sufferings of mankind.\n\n[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE.]\n\nThe crisis of this struggle happened in 1821. After giving up the\nministry, Carlyle had tried \"schoolmastering\" and found himself to\nbe least fitted of mankind for a function which demands patience\nwith stupidity. He had just glanced at the legal profession only to be\ndisgusted with its chicaneries. Hack authorship was his only chance.\nThe dyspeptic disorder which tormented him through life was tormenting\nhim. \"A rat was gnawing at the pit of his stomach.\" Then he was\nembittered by the general distress of his own class. Men out of work\nwere threatening riots and the yeomanry being called out to suppress\nthem. Carlyle was asked by a friend why he too did not come out with a\nmusket. \"Hm! yes,\" he replied, \"but I haven't quite settled on which\nside.\" It was while thus distracted, that after three weeks of\nsleeplessness he experienced what he called his \"conversion.\" The\nuniverse had seemed to him \"void of life, of purpose, of volition,\neven of hostility; it was one huge and immeasurable steam-engine,\nrolling on in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh,\nthe vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha and mill of death!\" And then he\nsuddenly resolved to resist. Why go on trembling like a coward?--\"As\nI so thought, there rushed a stream of fire over my whole soul, and\nI shook base fear away from me for ever. I was strong, of unknown\nstrength; a spirit; almost a god: ever from that time the temper\nof my misery was changed; not fear or whining sorrow was in it, but\nindignation and grim, fell-eyed defiance.\" These are the phrases of\nhis imaginary hero in 'Sartor Resartus.' In the 'Reminiscences' he\nrepeats the statement in his own person. He had won \"an immense\nvictory\"; he had escaped from the \"foul mud gods\" and soared into the\n\"eternal blue of ether\" where he had \"for the spiritual part ever\nsince lived.\" He could look down upon his fellow creatures still\n\"weltering in that fatal element,\" \"pitying the religious part of them\nand indignant against the frivolous\"; enjoying an inward and supreme\nhappiness which still remained to him, though often \"eclipsed\" in\nlater years.\n\nTo understand this crisis is to understand his whole attitude. The\nchange was not of the purely logical kind. Carlyle was not converted\nby any philosophical system. Coleridge, not long before, had found in\nKant and Schelling an answer to similar perplexities. Carlyle, though\nhe respected the German metaphysicians, could never find their dogmas\nsatisfactory to his shrewd Scottish sense. His great helper, he tells\nus, in the strait, was not Kant but Goethe. The contrast between that\nserene prophet of culture and the rugged Scottish Puritan is so marked\nthat one may be tempted to explain the influence partly by personal\naccident. Carlyle grew up at a time when the British public was just\nawaking to the existence of Germany; and not only promoted the\nawakening but was recognized by the great Goethe himself. He may well\nhave been inclined in later years to exaggerate a debt due to so\nwelcome a recognition. And yet it is intelligible that in Goethe,\nCarlyle saw what he most required. A man of the highest genius and a\nfull representative of the most advanced thought could yet recognize\nwhat was elevating in the past as clearly as what was the true line of\nprogress for us to pursue; and while casting aside the dead trappings\nas decidedly as Carlyle, could reach serene heights above the petty\ncontroversies where men wrangled over extinct issues. Goethe had\nsolved the problem which vexed Carlyle's soul, and set an inspiring\nexample of the true spirit and its great reward.\n\nCarlyle, however, was not qualified by temperament or mental\ncharacteristics to follow Goethe's steps. If not primarily a reasoner,\nand too impatient perhaps for slow logical processes, he was also not\na poet. Some of the greatest English teachers of his period embodied\ntheir conceptions of the world in poetry. Wordsworth and Shelley and\nByron, in particular, were more effective representatives of the chief\nspiritual influences of the day than the few speculative writers.\nCarlyle thought for a time that he could utter himself in verse, or at\nleast in prose fiction. He tried, only to feel his incompetence. As\nFroude observes, he had little ear for metrical composition. There\nwere other and perhaps greater obstacles. A poet must be capable of\ndetachment from the actual world in which he lives, however profound\nhis interest in its great problems. He must be able to dwell with\n\"seraph contemplation\" and stand aside from the actual contest. To\nCarlyle such an attitude was partly impossible, partly contemptible.\nHe had imbibed the Puritan aversion to aesthetic enjoyments. He had\nbeen brought up in circles where it was thought wrong for a child to\nread the 'Arabian Nights,' and where Milton could only obtain a\ndoubtful admission as a versifier of the Scriptural narrative. Carlyle\nretained the prejudice. He always looked askance at poetry which had\nno immediate bearing upon conduct, and regarded \"aesthetic\" as\nequivalent to frivolous. \"May the devil fly away with the fine arts\"\nis a sentiment which he quotes with cordial sympathy. This view was\ncongenial to his inborn characteristics.\n\nOne striking peculiarity was his extraordinary \"receptivity\" of all\noutward impressions. The strange irritability which he set down to the\n\"hag Dyspepsia\" made him resemble a patient in whom disease has\nproduced a morbidly excessive sensibility. Little annoyances were\nmagnified into tragic dimensions. The noises in a next-door house\naffected him as an earthquake might affect others. His memory was as\nretentive as his impressions were strong. Froude testifies that his\naccount of a little trip to Paris, written forty years later without\nreference to memoranda, is verified down to the minutest details by\ncontemporary letters. Scenes instantaneously photographed on his\nmemory never faded. No one had a keener eye for country. When he\nvisited Germany he brought back pictures of the scenes of Frederick's\nbattles, which enabled him to reproduce them with such startling\nveracity that after reading you seem to remember the reality, not the\nbook. In history he seeks to place before us a series of visions as\ndistinct as actual eyesight: to show us Cromwell watching the descent\nof the Scottish army at Dunbar, or the human whirlpool raging round\nthe walls of the Bastille. We--the commonplace spectators--should not,\nit is true, even at present see what was visible to Carlyle, any more\nthan we see a landscape as Turner saw it. We may wish that we could.\nAt any rate, we have the conviction of absolute truthfulness to the\nimpression made on a powerful idiosyncrasy. We perceive, as by the\nhelp of a Rembrandt, vast chaotic breadths of gloomy confusion, with\ncentral figures thrown out by a light of extraordinary brilliancy.\nCarlyle, indeed, always has it in mind that what we call reality is\nbut a film on the surface of mysterious depths. We are such stuff, to\nrepeat his favorite quotation, as dreams are made of. Past history is\na series of dreams; the magic of memory may restore them for an\ninstant to our present consciousness. But the most vivid picture of\nwhatever is not irrecoverably lost always brings, too, the pathetic\nsense that we are after all but ephemeral appearances in the midst of\nthe eternities and infinities. Overwhelmed by this sense of the\nunsubstantiality even of the most real objects, Carlyle clutches, as\nit were with the energy of despair, every fading image; and tries to\ninvest it with something of its old brightness. Carlyle was so\ndesirous to gain this distinctness of vision that he could not be\nhappy in personal descriptions till, if possible, he had examined the\nportrait of his hero and satisfied himself that he could reproduce the\nactual bodily appearance. The face, he holds, shows the soul. And then\nhis shrewd Scottish sagacity never deserts him. If the hero sometimes\nbecomes, like most heroes, a little too free from human infirmities,\nthe actors in his dramas never become mere walking gentlemen. In\nDryasdust he gives us lay figures, bedizened at times with shallow\nparadoxes; but Carlyle always deals in genuine human nature. His\njudgment may not be impartial, but at least it is not nugatory. He\nsees the man from within and makes him a credible individual, not a\nmere bit of machinery worked by colorless formulae. With this eye for\ncharacter goes the keen sense of grim humor which keeps him in touch\nwith reality. Little incidents bring out the absurd side of even the\nheroic. The most exciting scenes of his 'French Revolution' are\nheightened by the vision of the shivering usher who \"accords the grand\nentries\" when the ferocious mob is rushing into the palace--not\n\"finding it convenient,\" as Carlyle observes, \"to refuse them\"; and\nof the gentleman who continues for an hour to \"demand the arrestment\nof knaves and dastards\"--a most comprehensive of all known petitions.\nCarlyle's \"mannerism\" is one result of this strain to be graphic. It\nhas been attributed to readings of Jean Paul, and by Carlyle himself,\npartly to Irving and partly to the early talk in his father's home. It\nappears at any rate as soon as Carlyle gets confidence enough in\nhimself to trust to his own modes of impression; and if it may fairly\nbe called a mannerism, was not an affectation. It was struck out in\nthe attempt to give most effective utterance to his genuine thought,\nand may be compared, as Burke said of Johnson's conversation, to the\n\"contortions of the Sibyl.\"\n\nIt is time, however, to try to say what was the prophetic message thus\ndelivered. Carlyle, I have said, had no logical system of philosophy,\nand was too much of a \"realist\" (in one sense) to find poetry\ncongenial. He has to preach by pictures of the past; by giving us\nhistory, though history transfused with poetry; an account of the\nexternal fact which shall reveal the real animating principle, quietly\nomitted by statisticians and constitutional historians. The doctrine\nso delivered appears to be vague. What, the ordinary believer may ask,\nwould be left of a religion if its historical statements should turn\nout to be mere figments and its framework of dogmas to be nonsense? He\nwould naturally reply, Nothing. Carlyle replies, Everything. The\nspirit may survive, though its whole visible embodiment should be\ndissolved into fiction and fallacy. But to define this spirit is\nobviously impossible. It represents a tone of thought, a mode of\ncontemplating life and the world, not any distinct set of definite\npropositions. Carlyle was called a \"mystic,\" and even, as he says,\nwas made into a \"mystic school.\" We may accept the phrase, so far as\nmysticism means the substitution of a \"logic of the heart\" for a\n\"logic of the head\"--an appeal to sentiment rather than to any\ndefinite reasoning process. The \"mystic\" naturally recognizes the\ninner light as shining through many different and even apparently\ncontradictory forms. But most mystics retain, in a new sense perhaps,\nthe ancient formulae. Carlyle rejected them so markedly that he shocked\nmany believers, otherwise sympathetic. His early friend Irving, who\ntried to restore life to the old forms, and many who accepted\nColeridge as their spiritual guide, were scandalized by his\nutterances. He thought, conversely, that they were still masquerading\nin \"Hebrew old-clothes,\" or were even like the apes who went on\nchattering by the banks of the Dead Sea, till they ceased to be human.\nHe regards the \"Oxford movement\" with simple contempt. His dictum that\nNewman had \"no more brain than a moderate-sized rabbit\" must have been\nfollowed, as no one will doubt who heard him talk, by one of those\ngigantic explosions of laughter which were signals of humorous\nexaggeration. But it meant in all seriousness that he held Newman to\nbe reviving superstitions unworthy of the smallest allowance of brain.\n\nYet Carlyle's untiring denunciation of \"shams\" and \"unrealities\" of\nthis, as of other varieties, does not mean unqualified antipathy. He\nfeels that the attempt to link the living spirit to the dead externals\nis a fatal enterprise. That may be now a stifling incumbrance, which\nwas once the only possible symbol of a living belief. Accordingly,\nthough Carlyle's insistence upon the value of absolute intellectual\ntruthfulness is directed against this mode of thought, his attack upon\nthe opposite error is more passionate and characteristic. The 'Sartor\nResartus,' his first complete book (1833-4), announced and tried to\nexplain his \"conversion.\" To many readers it still seems his best\nwork, as it certainly contains some of his noblest passages. It was\nunpopular in England, and (an Englishman must say it with regret)\nseems to have been first appreciated in America. It gave indeed many\nsharp blows at English society: it expresses his contempt for the\nupper literary strata, who like Jeffrey complained of him for being so\n\"desperately in earnest\"; and for the authors, who were not\n\"prophets,\" but mere caterers to ephemeral amusement. But the satire,\nI cannot but think, is not quite happy. The humor of the \"Clothes\nPhilosophy\" is a little strained; to me, I confess, rather tiresome:\nand the impressive passages just those where he forgets it.\n\nHis real power became obvious beyond all cavil on the publication of\nthe 'French Revolution' (1837). Not for a hundred years, he declared,\nhad the public received any book that \"came more direct and flamingly\nfrom the heart of a living man.\" That expresses, as I think, the\ntruth. The book is not to be \"read for information.\" The facts would\nnow require much restatement; and moreover, the narrative is too apt\nto overleap prosaic but necessary facts in order to fasten upon the\npicturesque passages. But considered as what it is, a \"prose epic,\" a\nmoving panorama, drawn with astonishing force and perception of the\ntremendous tragi-comedy involved, it is unequaled in English\nliterature. The doctrine inculcated is significant. Carlyle's\nsympathies were in one sense with the Revolution. He felt, he says,\nthat the Radicals were \"guild-brothers,\" while the Whigs were mere\n\"amateurs.\" He was even more thoroughly convinced than the Radicals\nthat a thoroughgoing demolition of the old order was essential. The\nRevolution was but the first volcanic outburst of the great forces\nstill active below the surface. Europe, he says ('Chartism'), lay\n\"hag-ridden\" and \"quack-ridden.\" The quack is the most hideous of\nhags; he is a \"falsehood incarnate.\" To blow him and his to the four\nwinds was the first necessity. The French Revolution was \"the\ninevitable stern end of much: the fearful but also wonderful,\nindispensable, and sternly beneficent beginning of much.\" So far,\nCarlyle was far more in agreement with Paine than with Burke. But what\nwas to follow when the ground was cleared? When you have cut off your\nking's head and confiscated the estates of the nobility and the\nchurch, you have only begun. A new period is to be born with\ndeath-throes and birth-throes, and there are, he guesses ('French\nRevolution,' Book iv., chapter 4), some two centuries of fighting\nbefore \"Democracy go through its dire, most baleful stage of\n'Quackocracy.'\" The radicals represent this coming \"Quackocracy.\"\nWhat was their root error? Briefly (I try to expound, not to enlarge),\nthat they were materialists. Their aim was low. They desired simply a\nmultiplication of physical comforts, or as he puts it, a boundless\nsupply of \"pigs-wash.\" Their means too were futile. Society, on their\nshowing, was a selfish herd hungering for an equal distribution\nof pigs-wash. They put unlimited faith in the mere mechanism of\nconstitution-mongering; in ballot-boxes and manipulation of votes and\ncontrivances by which a number of mean and selfish passions might be\nsomehow so directed as to balance each other. It is not by any such\ndevices that society can really be regenerated. You must raise men's\nsouls, not alter their conventions. They must not simply abolish\nkings, but learn to recognize the true king, the man who has the\nreally divine right of superior strength and wisdom, not the sham\ndivine right of obsolete tradition. You require not paper rules, but a\nnew spirit which spontaneously recognizes the voice of God. The true\nsecret of life must be to him, as to every \"mystic,\" that we should\nfollow the dictates of the inner light which speaks in different\ndialects to all of us.\n\nBut this implies a difficulty. Carlyle, spite of his emergence into\n\"blue ether,\" was constitutionally gloomy. He was more alive than any\nman since Swift to the dark side of human nature. The dullness of\nmankind weighed upon him like a nightmare. \"Mostly fools\" is his pithy\nverdict upon the race at large. Nothing then could be more idle than\nthe dream of the revolutionists that the voice of the people could be\nitself the voice of God. From millions of fools you can by no\nconstitutional machinery extract anything but folly. Where then is the\nescape? The millions, he says (essay on Johnson), \"roll hither and\nthither, whithersoever they are led\"; they seem \"all sightless and\nslavish,\" with little but \"animal instincts.\" The hope is that, here\nand there, are scattered the men of power and of insight, the\nheaven-sent leaders; and it is upon loyalty to them and capacity for\nrecognizing and obeying them that the future of the race really\ndepends. This was the moral of the lectures on 'Hero-Worship' (1840).\nOdin, Mahomet, Dante, Shakespeare, Luther, Cromwell, and Napoleon, are\ntypes of the great men who now and then visit the earth as prophets or\nrulers. They are the brilliant centres of light in the midst of the\nsurrounding darkness; and in loyal recognition of their claims lies\nour security for all external progress. By what signs, do you ask, can\nthey be recognized? There can be no sign. You can see the light if you\nhave eyes; but no other faculty can supply the want of eyesight. And\nhence arise some remarkable points both of difference from and\ncoincidence with popular beliefs.\n\nIn the 'Chartism,' 'Past and Present,' and 'Latter-Day Pamphlets'\n(1839, 1843, and 1850), Carlyle applied his theories to the problems\nof the day. They had the disadvantage which generally attaches to the\nwritings of an outsider in politics. They were, said the average\nreader, \"unpractical.\" Carlyle could not recommend any definite\nmeasures; an objection easy to bring against a man who urges rather a\nchange of spirit than of particular measures. Yet it is noticeable\nthat he recommends much that has since become popular. Much of his\nlanguage might be used by modern Socialists. In 'Past and Present,'\nfor example (Book iii., Chapter 8), he gives the principle of \"land\nnationalization.\" The great capitalist is to be turned into a \"captain\nof industry,\" and government is to undertake to organize labor, to\nprotect health, and to enforce education. Carlyle so far sympathizes\nwith the Socialist, not only as agreeing that the great end of\ngovernment is the raising of the poor, but as denouncing the\n_laissez-faire_ doctrine. The old-fashioned English Radical had\nregarded all government as a necessary evil, to be minimized as much\nas possible. When it had armed the policemen, it had fulfilled its\nwhole duty. But this, according to Carlyle, was to leave the \"dull\nmultitude\" to drift into chaos. Government should rest upon the\nloyalty of the lower to the higher. Order is essential; and good order\nmeans the spontaneous obedience to the heaven-sent hero. He, when\nfound, must supply the guiding and stimulating force. The Socialist,\nlike Carlyle, desires a strong government, but not the government of\nthe \"hero.\" Government of which the moving force comes from above\ninstead of below will be, he thinks, a government of mere force. And\nhere occurs the awkward problem to which Carlyle is constantly\nreferring. He was generally accused of identifying \"right\" with\n\"might.\" Against this interpretation he always protested. Right and\nMight, he says often, are in the long run identical. That which is\nright and that alone is ultimately lasting. Your rights are the\nexpression of the divine will; and for that reason, whatever endures\nmust be right. Work lasts so far as it is based upon eternal\nfoundations. The might, therefore, is in the long run the expression\nof the right. The Napoleonic empire, according to a favorite\nillustration, could not last because it was founded upon injustice.\nThe two tests then must coincide: what is good proves itself by\nlasting, and what lasts, lasts because good; but the test of endurance\ncannot, it is clear, be applied when it is wanted. Hence arises an\nambiguity which often gives to Carlyle the air of a man worshiping\nmere success; when, if we take his own interpretation, he takes the\nsuccess to be the consequence, not the cause, of the rightness. The\nhero is the man who sees the fact and disregards the conventional\nfiction; but for the moment he looks very like the man who disregards\nprinciples and attends to his own interest.\n\nHere again Carlyle approximates to a doctrine to which he was most\naverse, the theory of the struggle for existence and the survival of\nthe fittest. The Darwinian answers in this way Carlyle's problem, how\nit is to come to pass that the stupidity of the masses comes to\nblunder into a better order? Here and there, as in his accounts of the\nway in which the intensely stupid British public managed to blunder\ninto the establishment of a great empire, Carlyle seems to fall in\nwith the Darwinian view. That view shocked him because he thought it\nmechanical. To him the essence of history was to be found not in the\nblind striving of the dull, but in the lives of great men. They\nrepresent the incarnate wisdom which must guide all wholesome\naspiration. History is really the biography of the heroes. All\nso-called philosophies of history, attempts to discover general laws\nand to dispense with the agency of great men, are tainted with\nmaterialism. They would substitute \"blind laws\" for the living spirit\nwhich really guides the development of the race. But if you ask how\nyour hero is to be known, the only answer can be, Know him at your\nperil.\n\nCarlyle's most elaborate books, the 'Cromwell' and the 'Frederick,'\nare designed to give an explicit answer to the \"right\" and \"might\"\nproblem. Carlyle in both cases seems to be toiling amidst the\ndust-heaps of some ancient ruin, painfully disinterring the shattered\nand defaced fragments of a noble statue and reconstructing it to be\nhereafter placed in a worthy Valhalla. Cromwell, according to the\nvulgar legend, was a mere hypocrite, and Frederick a mere cynical\nconqueror. The success of both--that is his intended moral--was in\nproportion to the clearness with which they recognized the eternal\nlaws of the universe. Cromwell probably is the more satisfactory hero,\nas more really sympathetic to his admirer. But each requires an\ninterpreter. Cromwell's gifts did not lie in the direction of lucid\nutterance; and Frederick, if he could have read, would certainly have\nscorned, the doctrine of his eulogist. Carlyle, that is, has to dig\nout in the actions of great men a true significance, certainly not\nobvious to the actors themselves. Their recognition of the eternal\nlaws was in one case embodied in obsolete formulae, and in the other,\nit might seem, altogether unconscious. The hero's recognition of\ndivine purposes does not imply then that his own vision is purged from\nerror, or that his aim is distinctly realized. He may, like Mahomet or\nthe Abbot Sampson, be full of superstition. His \"veracity\" does not\nmean that his beliefs are true; only that they are sincere and such a\nversion of the truth as is possible in his dialect. This is connected\nwith Carlyle's constant insistence upon the superiority of silence to\nspeech. The divine light shines through many distracting media; it\nenlightens many who do not consciously perceive it. It may be\nrecognized because it gives life; because the work to which it prompts\nis lasting. But even the hero who tries to utter himself is sure to\ninterpolate much that is ephemeral, confused, and imperfect; and\nspeech in general represents the mere perplexed gabble of men who take\nwords for thought, and raise a hopeless clamor which drowns the still\nsmall voice of true inspiration. If men are mostly fools, their talk\nis mostly folly; forming a wild incoherent Babel in which it is hard\nto pick out the few scattered words of real meaning. Carlyle has been\nridiculed for preaching silence in so many words; but then Carlyle was\nspeaking the truth, and of that, he fully admits, we can never have\ntoo much. The hero may be a prophet, or a man of letters. He is bound\nto speak seriously, though not to be literally silent; and his words\nmust be judged not by the momentary pleasure, but by their ultimate\ninfluence on life.\n\nCarlyle's message to his fellows, which I have tried imperfectly to\nsummarize, may be condemned on grounds of taste and of morality.\nTranslated into logical formulae it becomes inconsistent, and it\nembodies some narrow prejudices in exaggerated terms. Yet I think that\nit has been useful even by the shock it has given to commonplace\noptimism. It has been far more useful because in his own dialect,\nCarlyle--as I think--expresses some vital truths with surpassing\nforce. Whatever our creeds, religious or political, he may stimulate\nour respect for veracity, in the form of respect for honest work or\ncontempt for hypocritical conventions; our loyalty to all great\nleaders, in the worlds both of thought and action; and our belief that\nto achieve any real progress, something is required infinitely deeper\nthan any mere change in the superficial arrangements of society. These\nlessons are expressed, too, as the merely literary critic must admit,\nby a series of historical pictures, so vivid and so unique in\ncharacter that for many readers they are in the full sense\nfascinating. They are revelations of new aspects of the world, never,\nwhen once observed, to be forgotten. And finally, I may add that\nCarlyle's autobiographical writings--in which we must include the\ndelightful 'Life of Sterling'--show the same qualities in a shape\nwhich, if sometimes saddening, is profoundly interesting. No man was\nmore reticent in his life, though he has been made to deliver a\nposthumous confession of extraordinary fullness. We hear all the\ngroans once kept within the walls of Cheyne Row. After making all\nallowance for the fits of temper, the harshness of judgment, and the\nwillful exaggeration, we see at last a man who under extraordinary\ndifficulties was unflinchingly faithful to what he took to be his\nvocation, and struggled through a long life, full of anxieties and\nvexations, to turn his genius to the best account.\n\n [Signature: Leslie Stephen]\n\n\n\nLABOR\n\nFrom 'Past and Present'\n\n\nFor there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were\nhe never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always\nhope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is\nthere perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, _is_ in\ncommunication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will\nitself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and\nregulations, which are truth.\n\nThe latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. \"Know\nthyself\": long enough has that poor \"self\" of thine tormented thee;\nthou wilt never get to \"know\" it, I believe! Think it not thy\nbusiness, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual:\nknow what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That\nwill be thy better plan.\n\nIt has been written, \"An endless significance lies in Work;\" a man\nperfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair\nseed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man\nhimself first ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby.\nConsider how even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of\na man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets\nhimself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair\nitself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor\nday-worker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valor\nagainst his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink\nmurmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed\nglow of Labor in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison\nis burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed\nflame!\n\nDestiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A formless\nChaos, once set it _revolving_, grows round and ever rounder; ranges\nitself by mere force of gravity into strata, spherical courses; is no\nlonger a Chaos, but a round compacted World. What would become of the\nEarth did she cease to revolve? In the poor old Earth, so long as she\nrevolves, all inequalities, irregularities, disperse themselves; all\nirregularities are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on\nthe Potter's wheel,--one of the venerablest objects; old as the\nProphet Ezekiel and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin\nthemselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes.\nAnd fancy the most assiduous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced to\nmake dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking!\nEven such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and\nlie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man\nthe kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can\nbake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what\nexpensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a\nbotch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling,\nsquint-cornered, amorphous botch,--a mere enameled vessel of dishonor!\nLet the idle think of this.\n\nBlessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other\nblessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will\nfollow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force\nthrough the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening\nriver there, it runs and flows;--draining off the sour festering water\ngradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead\nof pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing\nstream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and _its_\nvalue be great or small! Labor is Life: from the inmost heart of the\nWorker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence\nbreathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him\nto all nobleness,--to all knowledge, \"self-knowledge\" and much else,\nso soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold\ngood in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits\nthat, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but\nwhat thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of\nknowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the\nclouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try it and fix it. \"Doubt,\nof whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nAnd again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness\nto light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better next time?\nAll these, all virtues, in wrestling with the dim brute Powers of\nFact, in ordering of thy fellows in such wrestle, there, and elsewhere\nnot at all, thou wilt continually learn. Set down a brave Sir\nChristopher in the middle of black ruined Stone-heaps, of foolish\nunarchitectural Bishops, red-tape Officials, idle Nell-Gwynn Defenders\nof the Faith; and see whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathedral\nout of all that, yea or no! Rough, rude, contradictory, are all things\nand persons, from the mutinous masons and Irish hodmen up to the idle\nNell-Gwynn Defenders, to blustering red-tape Officials, foolish\nunarchitectural Bishops. All these things and persons are there not\nfor Christopher's sake and his Cathedral's; they are there for their\nown sake mainly! Christopher will have to conquer and constrain all\nthese,--if he be able. All these are against him. Equitable Nature\nherself, who carries her mathematics and architectonics not on the\nface of her, but deep in the hidden heart of her,--Nature herself is\nbut partially for him; will be wholly against him, if he constrain her\nnot! His very money, where is it to come from? The pious munificence\nof England lies far-scattered, distant, unable to speak and say, \"I am\nhere\";--must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious munificence, and\nall help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; impediments,\ncontradictions manifold, are so loud and near! O brave Sir\nChristopher, trust thou in those, notwithstanding, and front all\nthese; understand all these; by valiant patience, noble effort,\ninsight, by man's strength, vanquish and compel all these,--and on the\nwhole, strike down victoriously the last topstone of that Paul's\nEdifice; thy monument for certain centuries, the stamp \"Great Man\"\nimpressed very legibly on Portland-stone there!\n\nYes, all manner of help, and pious response from Men of Nature, is\nalways what we call silent; cannot speak or come to light, till it be\nseen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first \"Impossible.\"\nIn very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will lie\ndiffused through Immensity; inarticulate, undiscoverable except to\nfaith. Like Gideon, thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of\nthy tent; see whether under the wide arch of Heaven there be any\nbounteous moisture, or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a\nmiraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven; and\nfrom the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind Localities and\ntown and country Parishes there never could, blessed dew-moisture to\nsuffice thee shall have fallen!\n\nWork is of a religious nature;--work is of a _brave_ nature; which it\nis the aim of all religion to be. All work of man is as the swimmer's:\na waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it\nwill keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and\nbuffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its\nconqueror along. \"It is so,\" says Goethe, \"with all things that man\nundertakes in this world.\"\n\nBrave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king,--Columbus, my hero, royalest\nSea-king of all! it is no friendly environment, this of thine, in the\nwaste deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee\ndisgrace and ruin, before thee the equal, unpenetrated veil of Night.\nBrother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep basin\n(ten miles deep, I am told), are not entirely there on thy behalf!\nMeseems _they_ have other work than floating thee forward:--and the\nhuge Winds, that sweep from Ursa-Major to the Tropics and Equators,\ndancing their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity,\nthey care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small\nshoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art not\namong articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among\nimmeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling, wide as the world here.\nSecret, far off, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help\nin them: see how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till\nthe mad Southwester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science\nof defense, the while: valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou\nstrike in, when the favoring East, the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of\nmen thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt\ncheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason,\nweariness, weakness of others and thyself;--how much wilt thou\nswallow down! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than\nthis Sea, which is but ten miles deep: a Silence unsoundable; known to\nGod only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my World-Soldier, thou of\nthe World Marine-service,--thou wilt have to be _greater_ than this\ntumultuous unmeasured World here round thee is; thou, in thy strong\nsoul, as with wrestler's arms shalt embrace it, harness it down; and\nmake it bear thee on,--to new Americas, or whither God wills!\n\n\n\nTHE WORLD IN CLOTHES\n\nFrom 'Sartor Resartus'\n\n\nAs Montesquieu wrote a 'Spirit of Laws,'\" observes our Professor, \"so\ncould I write a 'Spirit of Clothes'; thus, with an 'Esprit des Lois,'\nproperly an 'Esprit de Coutumes,' we should have an 'Esprit de\nCostumes.' For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man\nproceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious\noperations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavors, an\nArchitectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are\nthe site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of\na Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded\nmantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from\namid peaks, spangles, and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs,\nbuckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into\nseparate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four\nlimbs,--will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether\nGrecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or\nAnglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Color! From the soberest\ndrab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold\nthemselves in choice of color: if the cut betoken Intellect and\nTalent, so does the Color betoken Temper and Heart. In all which,\namong nations as among individuals, there is an incessant,\nindubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect:\nevery snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by\never-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a\nsuperior order are neither invisible nor illegible.\n\n\"For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of\nClothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening\nentertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men,\nsuch Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay,\nwhat is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters\nfrom a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in\nEternity, in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain,\nnot why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but\neven why _I_ am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much therefore, if\nnot the whole, of that same 'Spirit of Clothes' I shall suppress as\nhypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and\nDeductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient\nstyle, are my humbler and proper province.\"\n\nActing on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdroeckh has nevertheless\ncontrived to take-in a well nigh boundless extent of field; at least,\nthe boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being\nindispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the\nmost cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by\nomnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same\ntime, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to\ninterest the Compilers of some Library of General, Entertaining,\nUseful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of\nthese pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in\nview, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of\npublication, \"at present the glory of British Literature\"? If so, the\nLibrary Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.\n\nTo the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and\nleads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,\nmetaphorical, cabalistico sartorial, and quite antediluvian cast, we\nshall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still\nless have we to do with \"Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to\nthe Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock,\nthe whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,\"--very\nneedlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound\nglances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely\nbrought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and\nLight) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its\ncorrectness of deduction and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore\nhave filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something\nlike astonishment.\n\nBut quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdroeckh hastens from the\nTower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole\nhabitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental,\nPelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern\nresearches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in\ncompressed shape (as the Nuernbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis\nVestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries,\nin all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we\ncan triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular\nTreasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King\nNibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three\njourneys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum\nbelts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks,\nAfghan shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though\nbreeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more\nancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are\nbrought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not\nforgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning,\nheterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true,\nconcentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and\nthrown aside.\n\nPhilosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures\nof human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first\npurpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or\ndecency, but ornament. \"Miserable indeed,\" says he, \"was the condition\nof the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of\nhair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round\nhim like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick\nnatural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on\nwild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in\nmorasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,\nwithout arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole\npossession and defense might not be lost, he had attached a long cord\nof plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with\ndeadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge\nonce satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_).\nWarmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in\nhis hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for\nDecoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find\ntattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want\nof a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the\nbarbarous classes in civilized countries.\n\n\"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene\nHighness; nay, thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden,\nworthy to glide sylph-like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshipest\nas a divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has\ndescended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling\nAboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of\nthe strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by\nTime, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or\nbeholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting\nvitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living,\never-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed\nto-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove\n(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.\n\n\"He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of _Movable\nTypes_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and\nSenates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented\nthe Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and\nCharcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will\nthe last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under\nThought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was\nin the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the\ncountry till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of\nLeather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or\n_Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet\nhereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and\nPaper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are\nRothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is\nsovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to\nfeed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over\nhim,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in\nfoolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased\nSecurity and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these?\nShame, divine Shame (_Scham_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the\nAnthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a\nmystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us\nindividuality, distinction, social polity; Clothes have made Men of\nus; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us.\n\n\"But, on the whole,\" continues our eloquent Professor, \"Man is a\nTool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of\nsmall stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled,\nof some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his\nlegs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three\nquintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses\nhim aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise\nTools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before\nhim; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his\nsmooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you\nfind him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is\nall.\"\n\nHere may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a\nremark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us,\nof all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is\ncalled a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt\nto do it: and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher?\nTeufelsdroeckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we\nmake of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal: which,\nindeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a\nTartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on\nit? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up\nhis whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how\nwould Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinoco Indians who, according\nto Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for\nhalf the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being\nunder water? But on the other hand, show us the human being, of any\nperiod or climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we\nsaw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or\ncan have.\n\n\"Man is a Tool-using Animal,\" concludes Teufelsdroeckh in his abrupt\nway; \"of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we\nconsider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by\nman, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of\nCommons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain\nblack stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport\nme and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and\nthey do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and\nfifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this\nnation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_;\nand they do it.\"\n\n\n\nDANTE\n\nFrom 'Heroes and Hero-Worship'\n\n\nMany volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his\nBook; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it\nwere, irrevocably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering,\nsorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived;\nand the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now\nintervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living\nhere. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know\nof him. The Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed\nto Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think\ngenuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of\nall faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on\nvacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow\nand pain, the known victory which is also deathless;--significant of\nthe whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that\never was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting\nface. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness,\ngentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into\nsharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud, hopeless pain.\nA soft, ethereal soul, looking-out so stern, implacable,\ngrim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is\na silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind\nof godlike disdain of the thing that is eating out his heart, as if it\nwere withal a mean, insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to\ntorture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in\nprotest, and lifelong, unsurrendering battle, against the world.\nAffection all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation;\nslow, equable, silent, like that of a god! The eye, too, it looks out\nin a kind of _surprise_, a kind of inquiry--Why the world was of such\na sort? This is Dante: so he looks, this \"voice of ten silent\ncenturies,\" and sings us \"his mystic unfathomable song.\"\n\nThe little that we know of Dante's life corresponds well enough with\nthis Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper\nclass of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then\ngoing; much school-divinity, Aristotelian logic, some Latin\nclassics,--no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things:\nand Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt,\nlearned better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear\ncultivated understanding, and great subtlety; this best fruit of\neducation he had contrived to realize from these scholastics. He knows\naccurately and well what lies close to him; but in such a time,\nwithout printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what\nwas distant: the small clear light, most luminous for what is near,\nbreaks itself into singular _chiaroscuro_ striking on what is far off.\nThis was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone\nthrough the usual destinies: been twice out campaigning as a soldier\nfor the Florentine State; been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth\nyear, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the\nChief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain\nBeatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank,\nand grown-up henceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant\nintercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account\nof this; and then of their being parted; of her being wedded to\nanother, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in\nDante's Poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all\nbeings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last\nin the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole\nstrength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but\nit seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy the rigorous earnest\nman, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make\nhappy.\n\nWe will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all gone right with him\nas he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podesta or whatsoever they\ncall it, of Florence, well accepted among neighbors,--and the world\nhad wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence\nwould have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb\ncenturies continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries\n(for there will be ten of them and more) had no 'Divina Commedia' to\nhear! We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for\nthis Dante; and he, struggling like a man led towards death and\ncrucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give _him_ the choice of\nhis happiness! He knew not, more than we do, what was really happy,\nwhat was really miserable.\n\nIn Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some\nother confused disturbances rose to such a height, that Dante, whose\nparty had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly\nforth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and\nwandering. His property was all confiscated and more; he had the\nfiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight\nof God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even\nby warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad\nonly had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in\nthe Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be\nburnt alive. Burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious civic\ndocument. Another curious document, some considerable number of years\nlater, is a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates, written\nin answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on\ncondition of apologizing and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed\nstern pride:--\"If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I\nwill never return (_nunquam revertar_).\"\n\nFor Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron\nto patron, from place to place; proving, in his own bitter words, \"How\nhard is the path (_Come e duro calle_).\" The wretched are not cheerful\ncompany. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with\nhis moody humors, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of\nhim that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his\ngloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della\nScala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones\nac histriones_) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he\nsaid:--\"Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make\nhimself so entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day after\nday, and have nothing to amuse us with at all?\" Dante answered\nbitterly:--\"No, not strange; your Highness is to recollect the\nProverb, '_Like to Like_;'\"--given the amuser, the amusee must also be\ngiven! Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and\nsorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be\nevident to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of\nbenefit, in this earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to\nwander, wander; no living heart to love him now; for his sore miseries\nthere was no solace here.\n\nThe deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him;\nthat awful reality over which, after all, this Time-world, with its\nFlorences and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence\nthou shalt never see: but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt\nsurely see! What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life\naltogether? ETERNITY: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou\nand all things bound! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made\nits home more and more in that awful other world. Naturally his\nthoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied\nor bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men:--but to Dante,\nin that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he\nno more doubted of that _Malebolge_ Pool, that it all lay there with\nits gloomy circles, with its _alti guai_, and that he himself should\nsee it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went\nthither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in\nspeechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into \"mystic\nunfathomable song\"; and this his 'Divine Comedy,' the most remarkable\nof all modern Books, is the result.\n\nIt must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see,\na proud thought for him at times, that he, here in exile, could do\nthis work; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from\ndoing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that\nit was great; the greatest a man could do. \"If thou follow thy star,\n_Se tu segui tua stella_,\"--so could the Hero, in his forsakenness,\nin his extreme need, still say to himself: \"Follow thou thy star, thou\nshalt not fail of a glorious haven!\" The labor of writing, we find,\nand indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he\nsays, \"This Book, which has made me lean for many years.\" Ah yes, it\nwas won, all of it, with pain and sore toil,--not in sport, but in\ngrim earnest. His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been\nwritten, in many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole\nhistory, this Book. He died after finishing it; not yet very old, at\nthe age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies\nburied in his death-city Ravenna: _Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris\nab oris_. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century after;\nthe Ravenna people would not give it. \"Here am I, Dante, laid,\nshut-out from my native shores.\"\n\nI said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it \"a mystic\nunfathomable Song\"; and such is literally the character of it.\nColeridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a\nsentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words,\nthere is something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and\nsoul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song:\nwe said before, it was the Heroic of Speech! All _old_ Poems, Homer's\nand the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness,\nthat all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not _sung_ is properly no\nPoem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,--to the great\ninjury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most\npart! What we want to get at is the _thought_ the man had, if he had\nany; why should he twist it into jingle, if he _could_ speak it out\nplainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of\nmelody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark,\nbecome musical by the greatness, depth, and music of his thoughts,\nthat we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet,\nand listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,--whose speech _is_ Song.\nPretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is\nfor most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business,\nthat of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be\nrhymed:--it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it\nwas aiming at. I would advise all men who _can_ speak their thought,\nnot to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious\nmen, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love\nthe true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall\nwe hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing\nhollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing.\n\nI give Dante my highest praise when I say of his 'Divine Comedy' that\nit is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there\nis a _canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his\nsimple _terza rima_, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along\nnaturally with a sort of _lilt_. But I add, that it could not be\notherwise; for the essence and material of the work are themselves\nrhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it\nmusical;--go _deep_ enough, there is music everywhere. A true inward\nsymmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, reigns in it,\nproportionates it all: architectural; which also partakes of the\ncharacter of music. The three kingdoms, _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_,\n_Paradiso_, look-out on one another like compartments of a great\nedifice; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern,\nsolemn, awful; Dante's World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the\n_sincerest_ of all Poems; sincerity, here too, we find to be the\nmeasure of worth. It came deep out of the author's heart of hearts;\nand it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people\nof Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say, \"_Eccovi l'\nnom ch' e stato all' Inferno_\" (See, there is the man that was in\nHell). Ah yes, he had been in Hell;--in Hell enough, in long severe\nsorrow and struggle; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been.\nCommedias that come-out _divine_ are not accomplished otherwise.\nThought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the\ndaughter of Pain? Born as out of the black whirlwind;--true _effort_,\nin fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is Thought.\nIn all ways we are \"to become perfect through suffering.\"--But as I\nsay, no work known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has\nall been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had made\nhim \"lean\" for many years. Not the general whole only; every\ncompartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, into truth,\ninto clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits in its\nplace, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is the\nsoul of Dante, and in this the soul of the Middle Ages, rendered\nforever rhythmically visible there. No light task; a right intense\none: but a task which is _done_.\n\nPerhaps one would say, intensity, with the much that depends on it, is\nthe prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before\nus as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian\nmind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too\nof his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself\ninto fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is\nworld-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he\npierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so\nintense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost\ndevelopment of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great\npower of vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and\nnothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the Hall of\nDite: _red_ pinnacle, red-hot cone of iron glowing through the dim\nimmensity of gloom;--so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and\nforever! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a\nbrevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more\ncondensed; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation,\nspontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and then there is silence,\nnothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than words. It is\nstrange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness\nof a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the\nblustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is \"as the sails\nsink, the mast being suddenly broken.\" Or that poor Brunette Latini,\nwith the _cotto aspetto_, \"face _baked_\", parched brown and lean; and\nthe \"fiery snow\" that falls on them there, a \"fiery snow without\nwind,\" slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs;\nsquare sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its\nSoul in torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the\nDay of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how\nCavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense \"_fue_\"!\nThe very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive,\nalmost military. It is of the inmost essence of his genius, this sort\nof painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent,\npassionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent \"pale rages\",\nspeaks itself in these things.\n\nFor though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a\nman, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is\nphysiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a\nlikeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of\ndoing it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could\nnot have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it,\nunless he had, what we may call, _sympathized_ with it,--had sympathy\nin him to bestow on objects. He must have been _sincere_ about it too;\nsincere and sympathetic: a man without worth cannot give you the\nlikeness of any object; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and\ntrivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not say that\nintellect altogether expresses itself in this power of discerning what\nan object is? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come\nout here. Is it even of business, a matter to be done? The gifted man\nis he who _sees_ the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as\nsurplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that\nhe discern the true _likeness_, not the false superficial one, of the\nthing he has got to work in. And how much of _morality_ is in the kind\nof insight we get of anything; \"the eye seeing in all things what it\nbrought with it the faculty of seeing\"! To the mean eye all things are\ntrivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael,\nthe Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No\nmost gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the\ncommonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take away with\nhim.\n\nDante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness\nas of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is every way\nnoble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what\nqualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of\neternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into\nour very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: _della bella\npersona, che mi fu tolta_; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a\nsolace that _he_ will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these\n_alti guai_. And the racking winds, in that _aer bruno_, whirl them\naway again, to wail forever!--Strange to think: Dante was the friend\nof this poor Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon\nthe Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet\nalso infinite rigor of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante\ndiscerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that of his\n'Divine Comedy's' being a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel;\nputting those into Hell whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! I\nsuppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any\nman, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not know rigor cannot pity\neither. His very pity will be cowardly, egoistic,--sentimentality, or\nlittle better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of\nDante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love: like\nthe wail of AEolian harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart;--and\nthen that stern, sore-saddened heart! These longings of his towards\nhis Beatrice; their meeting together in the 'Paradiso'; his gazing in\nher pure transfigured eyes, hers that had been purified by death so\nlong, separated from him so far:--one likens it to the song of angels;\nit is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very\npurest, that ever came out of a human soul.\n\nFor the _intense_ Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the\nessence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too\nas reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity.\nMorally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of\nall. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;--as indeed,\nwhat are they but the _inverse_ or _converse_ of his love? \"_A Dio\nspiacenti ed a' nemici sui_, Hateful to God and to the enemies of\nGod:\" lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; \"_Non\nragionam di lor_, We will not speak of _them_, look only and pass.\" Or\nthink of this: \"They have not the _hope_ to die, _Non han speranza di\nmorte_.\" One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of\nDante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full\nsurely _die_; \"that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.\"\nSuch words are in this man. For rigor, earnestness, and depth, he is\nnot to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his parallel we must\ngo into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there.\n\nI do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the\n_Inferno_ to the two other parts of the 'Divina Commedia.' Such\npreference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and\nis like to be a transient feeling. The 'Purgatorio' and\n'Paradiso,'--especially the former, one would almost say, is even more\nexcellent than it. It is a noble thing, that _Purgatorio_, \"Mountain\nof Purification\"; an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If\nSin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in\nRepentance too is man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act.\nIt is beautiful how Dante works it out. The _tremolar dell' onde_,\nthat \"trembling\" of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of\nmorning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an\naltered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company\nstill with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of daemons and reprobates\nis underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher,\nto the Throne of Mercy itself. \"Pray for me,\" the denizens of that\nMount of Pain all say to him. \"Tell my Giovanna to pray for me, my\ndaughter Giovanna; I think her mother loves me no more!\" They toil\npainfully up by that winding steep, \"bent-down like corbels of a\nbuilding,\" some of them,--crushed together so \"for the sin of pride\";\nyet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have reached\nthe top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been admitted\nin. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; the whole Mountain\nshakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises when one soul has\nperfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! I call\nall this a noble embodiment of a true, noble thought.\n\nBut indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are\nindispensable to one another. The 'Paradiso,' a kind of inarticulate\nmusic to me, is the redeeming side of the 'Inferno'; the 'Inferno'\nwithout it were untrue. All three make-up the true Unseen World, as\nfigured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing forever\nmemorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was\nperhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in\nthis of Dante's; a man _sent_ to sing it, to keep it long memorable.\nVery notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day\nreality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or third stanza, we\nfind ourselves in the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as among\nthings palpable, indubitable! To Dante they _were_ so; the real world,\nas it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely\nhigher Fact of a World. At bottom, the one was as _preter_natural as\nthe other. Has not each man a soul? He will not only be a spirit, but\nis one. To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he believes\nit, sees it; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say\nagain, is the saving merit, now as always.\n\nDante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic\nrepresentation of his Belief about this Universe:--some Critic in a\nfuture age, like some Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased\naltogether to think as Dante did, may find this, too, all an\n\"Allegory,\" perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or\nsublimest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge\nworld-wide architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good\nand Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it\nall turns; that these two differ not by _preferability_ of one to the\nother, but by incompatibility, absolute and infinite; that the one is\nexcellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as\nGehenna and the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence,\nwith everlasting Pity,--all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages\nhad it, is emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day,\nwith what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming!\nHell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems:\nwas there in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their\nbeing emblems? Were they not indubitable awful facts, the whole heart\nof man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere\nconfirming them? So is it always in these things. Men do not believe\nan Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who\nconsiders this of Dante to have been all got up as an Allegory, will\ncommit one sore mistake!--Paganism we recognize as a veracious\nexpression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the\nUniverse; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us.\nBut mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism; one great\ndifference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the\ndestinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in\nthis world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law\nof Man. One was for the sensuous nature; a rude helpless utterance of\nthe _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognized Virtue, Courage,\nSuperiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but\nfor the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!\n\n * * * * *\n\nAnd so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very\nstrange way, found a voice. The 'Divina Commedia' is of Dante's\nwriting; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only\nthe finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the\nsmith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning\nmethods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past\ninventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all\nthings. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they\nlived by stands here, in everlasting music.\n\n\n\nCROMWELL\n\nFrom 'Heroes and Hero-Worship'\n\n\nPoor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who\ncould not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with\nhis savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange,\namong the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic\nChillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull\nof chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost\nsemi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's energy working in\nthe heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight\nand fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria,\n_un_formed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what\nwas it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness\nof his wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with\nthings,--the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart\nof things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his\nhypochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery always does,\ncame of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man.\nSorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_\nenveloping him,--wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic\nman; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see.\n\nOn this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion\nof speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the\nmaterial with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He\nhad _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his\ndays; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or\nuttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of\naction, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and\nspeak fluently enough;--he did harder things than writing of Books.\nThis kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all\nthings you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and\nlogicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, _Vir-tus_, manhood,\n_hero_hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of\nall, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing, or\n_Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the\nmatter Cromwell had in him.\n\nOne understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament,\nhe might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be\ngreat in extempore prayer. These are the free out-pouring utterances\nof what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth,\ndepth, sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer\nis a notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced\nwith prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers\nand he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days,\ntill some definite resolution rose among them, some \"door of hope,\" as\nthey would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in\nfervent prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to\nmake His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as\nthey felt themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who\nhad drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not\nChristian, but Mammonish, Devilish,--they cried to God in their\nstraits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was His.\nThe light which now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any\nmeans at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to\nbe precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without\nhesitation any more? To them it was as the shining of Heaven's own\nSplendor in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night,\nthat was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. _Was_ it not\nsuch? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method\nthan intrinsically by that same,--devout prostration of the earnest\nstruggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such\n_prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one?\nThere is no other method. \"Hypocrisy\"? One begins to be weary of all\nthat. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters.\nThey never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went\nabout balancing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering votes,\nadvices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a thing at\nall.--Cromwell's prayers were likely to be \"eloquent,\" and much more\nthan that. His was the heart of a man who _could_ pray.\n\nBut indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so\nineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers\naim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from\nthe first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was\nalways understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what.\nHe disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always\nwithout premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too,\nin those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given\nthe Printer precisely what they found on their own note-paper. And\nwithal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the\npremeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the\nworld, that to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How\ncame he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to\nthe public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift\nfor themselves.\n\nBut with regard to Cromwell's \"lying,\" we will make one remark. This,\nI suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All\nparties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to\nbe meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to\nhave been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But\nnow, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a\nfalse man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must\nhave _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve\nfor daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use\nfor any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man\nalways is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to\nother men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are\nimpertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer\n_un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed,\nbut precisely as dark as he was!\n\nThis, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and\nfaithful man would aim to answer in such a case.\n\nCromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small\nsubaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little\nparty thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find\nhim not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all\nseasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how if he\nexplained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have\nshuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact\nhypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked\nin his province any more; nay perhaps they could not have now worked\nin their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man\namong small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen\neverywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to\nyou is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. But\nwould it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to\ndisturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands\nonly on some thin traditionality, conventionality to him indubitable,\nto you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths!\n\"I might have my hand full of truth,\" said Fontenelle, \"and open only\nmy little finger.\"\n\nAnd if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in\nall departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to\nhimself_ cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call\nit \"dissimulation,\" all this? What would you think of calling the\ngeneral of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal\nand private soldier who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts\nwere about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all\nthis in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex\nof such questioning \"corporals\" rolled confusedly round him through\nhis whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great\ntrue-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as\nI said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a\ncoil of things will you say so much?\n\nBut in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to\nthe very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about\ntheir \"ambition,\" \"falsity,\" and suchlike. The first is what I might\ncall substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and\nstarting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that\nhe had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he\nwas plowing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all\nmapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step\ndramatically unfolded with all manner of cunning, deceptive\ndramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow scheming [Greek: Ypochrites],\nor Play-actor, that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but\nuniversal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the\nfact is! How much does one of _us_ foresee of his own life? Short way\nahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of\napprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell\nhad _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he\nneeded then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact\ndramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it\nwas in no measure so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves,\nwere this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History!\nHistorians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but\nlook whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this\nCromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History\nonly remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous\nperfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty;\nrare, nay impossible. A very Shakespeare for faculty; or more than\nShakespeare; who could _enact_ a brother man's biography, see with the\nbrother man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw;\nin short, _know_ his course and him, as few \"Historians\" are like to\ndo. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our\nimage of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to\nrepresent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as\nthey are thrown down before us.\n\nBut a second error which I think the generality commit refers to this\nsame \"ambition\" itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we\nmistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that\nsense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man\nwho lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who\ngoes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and\nclaims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody\nfor God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the\nheads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen\nunder this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man;\nfitter for the ward of a hospital than for a throne among men. I\nadvise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths;\nunless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about\nhim, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his\ngreatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts\nthat you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no\ngreat man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real\nsubstance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in\nthis way.\n\nYour Cromwell, what good could it do him to be \"noticed\" by noisy\ncrowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was\nalready there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was.\nTill his hair was grown gray; and Life from the down-hill slope was\nall seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable\nmatter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plow the ground, and\nread his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer,\nwithout selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt\ncarriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers\nhaunting him, \"Decide this, decide that,\" which in utmost sorrow of\nheart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for\nthis man? From of old was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a\nterror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man\nset him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment, and Eternity:\nthese already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did.\nAll his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no\nspeech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of\nthat time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him.\nTo call such a man \"ambitious,\" to figure him as the prurient wind-bag\ndescribed above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will\nsay: \"Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape\nclerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me\nalone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!\" Old\nSamuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not\nambitious. \"Corsica Boswell\" flaunted at public shows with printed\nribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The\nworld-wide soul, wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;--what could\nparadings and ribbons in the hat, do for it?\n\nAh yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on the\nnoisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with\nlittle worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of _Silence_.\nThe noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his own\ndepartment; silently thinking; silently working; whom no Morning\nNewspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country\nthat has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had\nno _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must\nsoon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what\nwe can _show_, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher\nthan the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great;\nall else is small.--I hope we English will long maintain our _grand\ntalent pour le silence_. Let others that cannot do without standing on\nbarrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate\nspeech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon\nsays, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of\nsome great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson\nsays he was, by _want of money_ and nothing other, one might ask, \"Why\ndo not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your\nsect?\" \"Truly,\" he will answer, \"I am _continent_ of my thought\nhitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no\ncompulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for\npromulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by.\nThat is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honor'? Alas,\nyes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of\nyours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?\"\n\nBut now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that\nthere are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable, the other\nlaudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent\nSamuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over\nothers, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. \"Seekest\nthou great things, seek them not:\" this is most true. And yet, I say,\nthere is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself\naccording to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out,\nto act out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit,\ninevitable; nay, it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a\nman. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting\nin this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the\nfaculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of\nour existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to\n_speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide\nabout ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take\ninto view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness for\nthe man of the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place\nwas _his_, perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation to seek\nthe place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we\nblame it, if he were \"the only man in France that could have done any\ngood there\"? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much\ngood he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had\neven felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because\nthey had flung him out and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon\nmourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent\ngreat man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather!\n\nFancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson,\nin his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do\npriceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the\nperfect Heavenly Law might be made Law on this Earth; that the prayer\nhe prayed daily, \"Thy kingdom come,\" was at length to be fulfilled! If\nyou had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible,\npracticable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a\npart in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed-up into a\ndivine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act;\ncasting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all\naffliction and contradiction small,--the whole dark element of his\nexistence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It\nwere a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with\nCromwell. From of old, the sufferings of God's Church, true zealous\nPreachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories,\ntheir ears cropt off, God's Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the\nunworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had\nlooked upon it in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth;\ntrusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come,--that\nsuch a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now\nbehold the dawn of it; after twelve years' silent waiting, all England\nstirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will\nget a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come\nagain into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member\nof? Cromwell threw down his plow, and hastened thither.\n\nHe spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth,\nwhere we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove,\nlike a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all\nelse,--on and on, till the Cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable\nenemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become\nclear light of victory and certainty. That _he_ stood there as the\nstrongest soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,--what\nof this? It was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel could now\nestablish itself in the world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his\npulpit might dream of as a \"devout imagination,\" this practical man,\nexperienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to\nconsider as capable of being _realized_. Those that were highest in\nChrist's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in\nsome considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not\n_true_, God's truth? And if _true_, was it not then the very thing to\ndo? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes!\nThis I call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its own dialect, the\nnoblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a\nKnox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great\nsound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--History, I think,\nshows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating\npoint of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that \"Faith in the\nBible\" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were\nmade manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely\nvictorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as\nthe highest good to England and all lands, an attainable fact!\n\nWell, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its\nalertness and expertness in \"detecting hypocrites,\" seems to me a\nrather sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in England;\none man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any\nsuch purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years;\nand this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten;\nopponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why,\nthen, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine\nknowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, \"Given a world of\nKnaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;\"--how cumbrous a\nproblem, you may see in Chancery Law Courts, and some other places!\nTill at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great\ngrace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to\nall men a _palpably_ hopeless one.\n\n\n\nTHE PROCESSION\n\nFrom 'The French Revolution'\n\n\nWe dwell no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude, for now, behold,\nthe Commons Deputies are at hand! Which of these Six Hundred\nindividuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate\nFrance, might one guess would become their _king_? For a king or\nleader they, as all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it\nmay; there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is\nfittest of all to do it; that man, as future, not-yet-elected king\nwalks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be?\nWith the _hure_, as himself calls it, or black _boar's-head_, fit to\nbe \"shaken\" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows\nand rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face there look natural ugliness,\nsmall-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning fire of genius, like\ncomet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions? It is\nGabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man-ruling\nDeputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Stael, he steps proudly\nalong, though looked at askance here, and shakes his black\n_chevelure_, or lion's mane, as if prophetic of great deeds.\n\nYes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch, as Voltaire was\nof the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his\nvirtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man;--and\nintrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National\nAssembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say, with\nthe old Despot:--\"The National Assembly? I am that.\"\n\nOf a southern climate, of wild southern blood:--for the Riquettis, or\nArrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries\nago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they\nhave ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred, irascible,\nindomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an\nintensity and activity that sometimes verged towards madness, yet did\nnot reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow,\nchains two Mountains together, and the chain, with its \"iron star of\nfive rays,\" is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti _un_chain\nso much, and set it drifting--which also shall be seen?\n\nDestiny has work for that swart, burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has\nwatched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his Grandfather,\nstout Col-d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and\nslashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together\non the Bridge at Casano, while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and\nregalloped over him--only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle\nover that loved head; and Vendome, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out,\n\"Mirabeau is _dead_, then!\" Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to\nbreath and miraculous surgery--for Gabriel was yet to be. With his\n_silver stock_ he kept his scarred head erect, through long years,\nand wedded, and produced tough Marquis Victor, the _friend of men_.\nWhereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected,\nrough-hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the light; roughest\nlion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for\nour old Marquis, too, was lion-like, most unconquerable,\nkingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring, and\ndetermined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, O\nMarquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn\nto draw in dog-cart of Political Economy, and be a _friend of men_; he\nwill not be Thou, but must and will be Himself, another than Thou.\nDivorce law-suits, \"whole family save one in prison, and threescore\n_lettres-de-cachet_\" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.\n\nOur luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle\nof Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If,\nand heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress\nof Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in\nthe Dungeon of Vincennes;--all by _lettre-de-cachet_, from his lion\nfather. He has been in Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner);\nwas noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight\nfrom the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get\nback his wife), the public gathering on roofs, to see, since they\ncould not hear: \"The clatter-teeth (_claque-dents_)!\" snarls singular\nold Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing\nbut two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum\nspecies.\n\nBut as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has he\nnot seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime ministers, to\nforeign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All\nmanner of men he has gained; for at bottom it is a social loving\nheart, that wild unconquerable one--more especially all manner of\nwomen. From the Archer's Daughter at Saintes to that fair young\nSophie, Madame Monnier, whom he could not but \"steal\" and be beheaded\nfor--in effigy! For indeed, hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead,\nto Ali's admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the\nstrength of thirty men. In War again, he has helped to conquer\nCorsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious\nbarons. In Literature, he has written on 'Despotism,' on\n'Lettres-de-Cachet'; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities,\nProfanities; Books on the 'Prussian Monarchy,' on 'Cagliostro,' on\n'Calonne,' on 'The Water-Companies of Paris':--each book comparable,\nwe will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire, huge, smoky, sudden! The\nfire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own; but the lumber, of\nrags, old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel\nto him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers of every\ndescription under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been\nheard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is _mine_!\n\nNay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for\nborrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man, he can make his; the\nman himself he can make his. \"All reflex and echo (_tout de reflet et\nde reverbere_)!\" snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not.\nCrabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative\nnature; and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that\nforty years' \"struggle against despotism,\" he has gained the glorious\nfaculty of _self-help_, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of\n_fellowship_, of being helped. Rare union: this man can live\nself-sufficing--yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men\nlove him, work with him; a born king of men!\n\nBut consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has\n\"made away with (_hume_, swallowed, snuffed-up) all _Formulas_\"; a\nfact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is\nno man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights.\nA man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see\nthrough it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he has will, force\nbeyond other men. A man not with _logic-spectacles_, but with an\n_eye_! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed\nsort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity\nthere; a Reality, not an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having\nstruggled \"forty years against despotism,\" and \"made away with all\nformulas,\" shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the\nsame. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off\ndespotism, to make away with _her_ old formulas,--having found them\nnaught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with _such_\nformulas;--and even go _bare_, if need be, till she have found new\nones.\n\nTowards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti\nMirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the\nslouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery, fuliginous mass, which\ncould not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with\nsmoke! And now it has got _air_; it will burn its whole substance, its\nwhole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange\nlot! Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor\nenough; then victory over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes\nheaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in\nflame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and\nWonder-sign of an amazed Europe;--and then lies hollow, cold forever!\nPass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all:\nin the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none\nlike and none second to thee.\n\nBut now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be\nthe meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking\nman, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off)\ntroubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain\nfuture time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final\nshade of which may be the pale sea-green. That greenish-colored\n(_verdatre_) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is\nMaximilien Robespierre. The son of an Advocate; his father founded\nMason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender.\nMaximilien, the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk\nCamille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at\nParis. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron,\nto let him depart thence, and resign in favor of a younger brother.\nThe strict-minded Max departed, home to paternal Arras; and even had a\nLaw-case there, and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, \"in favor of the\nfirst Franklin thunder-rod.\" With a strict, painful mind, an\nunderstanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favor with\nofficial persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of\nbusiness, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore,\ntaking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese, and he faithfully\ndoes justice to the people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes\nwhose crime merits hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate,\nfor his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to\ndie. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions?\nwhose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-ale, could by\nno chance ferment into virulent _alegar_,--the mother of ever-new\nalegar;--till all France were grown acetous virulent? We shall see.\n\nBetween which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and\nmean roll on, towards their several destinies, in that Procession!\nThere is Cazales, the learned young soldier, who shall become the\neloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow of a name.\nExperienced Mounier, experienced Malouet, whose Presidential\nParlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave\nstranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a\nstormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of\nmusic. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young; convictions,\nbeliefs placid-unalterable, are in that man; not hindmost of them,\nbelief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender\nyoung eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France.\nThere are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not\nsuffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to\nproduce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such!\nThe old to heal up rents, the young to remove rubbish:--which latter\nis it not, indeed, the task here?\n\nDim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou\nnoticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens, with\nslouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a _Cahier_ of\n_doleances_ with this singular clause, and more such, in it:--\"That\nthe master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new\nguild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more\nthan sufficient!\" The Rennes people have elected farmer Gerard, \"a man\nof natural sense and rectitude without any learning.\" He walks there\nwith solid step; unique, \"in his rustic farmer-clothes;\" which he will\nwear always, careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard,\nor \"Pere Gerard, Father Gerard,\" as they please to call him, will fly\nfar, borne about in endless banter, in Royalist satires, in Republican\nDidactic Almanacks. As for the man Gerard, being asked once what he\ndid, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,--\"I\nthink,\" answered he, \"that there are a good many scoundrels among us.\"\nSo walks Father Gerard, solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.\n\nAnd worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time?\nIf not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of\nprophecy; for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late.\nSingular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric\ndestiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal\nfrom his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve\nthe ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and\n_hygiene_ be a present aid: but greater far, he can produce his\n'Report on the Penal Code,' and reveal therein a cunningly devised\nBeheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is\nthe product of Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation\nand reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a\nfeminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: _La Guillotine_!\n\"With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter\nla tete) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;\"--whereat they all\nlaugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined,\nshall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then\ndying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate\nghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive\nCaesar's.\n\nSee Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honored Historian of Astronomy\nAncient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful\nPhilosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends\nin foul thick confusion--of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic\nofficiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlasting Darkness!\nFar was it to descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the _Drapeau Rouge_:\nbeside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must\n\"tremble\", though only with cold--\"_de froid_.\" Speculation is not\npractice: to be weak is not so miserable, but to be weaker than our\ntask. Woe the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on\nthat wild Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth,\nnay, lashing at the very _stars_, no yet known Astolpho could have\nridden!\n\nIn the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters;\n374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbe Sieyes. Him also\nParis sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light, thin man; cold,\nbut elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or\nwith but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be\ncalled a passion, which in its independent concentrated greatness,\nseems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a\nkind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man,\nand wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be\nSystem-builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions\n(as many as wanted) sky-high,--which shall all unfortunately fall\nbefore he get the scaffolding away. \"_La Politique_\", said he to\nDumont, \"polity is a science I think I have completed (_achevee_).\"\nWhat things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see!\nBut were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he\nis said to be still alive) looks out on all that Constitution masonry,\nthrough the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with\nthe old irrefragable transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased\nthe gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (_victa Catoni_).\n\nThus, however, amid sky-rending _vivats_, and blessings from every\nheart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.\n\nNext follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom\nit might be asked What they specially have come for. Specially, little\nas they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of\nthunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where\nwhosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Woe, woe to\nthemselves and to all, if they can only answer; Collecting tithes,\nPreserving game! Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orleans affects to step\nbefore his own Order and mingle with the Commons. For him are\n_vivats_; few for the rest, though all wave in plumed \"hats of a\nfeudal cut,\" and have sword on thigh; though among them is\nD'Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman,--and indeed many a\npeer more or less noteworthy.\n\nThere are Liancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal Anglo-maniac\nDukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal\nLameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be\nCromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a \"formula\" has this\nLafayette, too, made away with; yet not _all_ formulas. He sticks by\nthe Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;--and hang by it, as\nby sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after\nall changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging.\nHappy for him, be it glorious or not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a\ntheory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become\na hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note\nfurther our old parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espremenil. He\nis returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist,\nrepentant to the finger-ends;--unsettled-looking; whose light,\ndusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the\nNational Assembly will by and by, to save time, \"regard as in a state\nof distraction.\" Note lastly that globular _Younger_ Mirabeau,\nindignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons; it is\n_Viscomte_ Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau _Tonneau_ (Barrel\nMirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong\nliquor he contains.\n\nThere, then, walks our French noblesse. All in the old pomp of\nchivalry; and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted\nfar down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the\nEquatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these Chivalry _Duces_\n(Dukes, as they are still named) did actually _lead_ the world,--were\nit only toward battle-spoil, where lay the world's best wages then;\nmoreover, being the ablest leaders going, they had their lion's share,\nthese _Duces_, which none could grudge them. But now, when so many\nLooms, improved Plow-shares, Steam-Engines, and Bills of Exchange have\nbeen invented; and for battle-brawling itself, men hire\nDrill-Sergeants at eighteen pence a day,--what mean these gold-mantled\nChivalry Figures, walking there in \"black-velvet cloaks,\" in\nhigh-plumed \"hats of a feudal cut\"? Reeds shaken in the wind!\n\nThe clergy have got up; with _Cahiers_ for abolishing pluralities,\nenforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. The\nDignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numerous\nUndignified,--who, indeed, are properly little other than Commons\ndisguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by strange ways,\nshall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are greatest (much to\ntheir astonishment) become least. For one example out of many, mark\nthat plausible Gregoire: one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when\nthe now stately are wandering distracted, as Bishops _in partibus_.\nWith other thought, mark also the Abbe Maury; his broad bold face,\nmouth accurately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence,\nfalsehood,--the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find\nit sophistical. Skillfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make\nit look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier, \"You\nwill see; I shall be in the Academy before you.\" Likely indeed, thou\nskillfulest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's hat, and plush and\nglory; but alas, also, in the long run--mere oblivion, like the rest\nof us, and six feet of earth! What boots it, vamping rotten leather on\nthese terms? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old\nFather earns by making shoes,--one may hope, in a sufficient manner.\nMaury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols by-and-by; and\nat death-cries of \"_La lanterne_, The Lamp-iron!\" answer coolly,\n\"Friends, will you see better there?\"\n\nBut yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop\nTalleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness lies\nin that irreverend Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer strange\nthings; and will _become_ surely one of the strangest things ever\nseen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood and on falsehood;\nyet not what you can call a false man: there is the specialty! It will\nbe an enigma for future ages, one may hope; hitherto such a product of\nNature and Art was possible only for this age of ours--Age of Paper,\nand of the Burning of Paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis\nLafayette as the topmost of their two kinds; and say once more,\nlooking at what they did and what they were. _O tempus ferax rerum_!\n\nOn the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also drifted in\nthe Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An anomalous mass of\nmen; of whom the whole world has already a dim understanding that it\ncan understand nothing. They were once a Priesthood, interpreters of\nWisdom, revealers of the Holy that is in Man; a true Clerus (or\nInheritance of God on Earth): but now?--They pass silently, with such\n_Cahiers_ as they have been able to redact; and none cries, God bless\nthem.\n\nKing Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in this day\nof hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his Minister. Not\nso the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated\nQueen! Her hair is already gray with many cares and crosses; her\nfirst-born son is dying in these weeks: black falsehood has\nineffaceably soiled her name--ineffaceably while this generation\nlasts. Instead of _Vive la reine_, voices insult her with _Vive\nd'Orleans_. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its\nstateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring.\nWith a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns\nherself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette;\nwith thy quick, noble instincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too\nfitful narrow for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store\nfor thee, bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast\nthe heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy\neyes on the future!\n\nAnd so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some\ntoward honor and quick fire-consummation; most toward dishonor; not a\nfew toward massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all toward\nEternity!--So many heterogeneities cast together into the\nfermenting-vat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction,\nelective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a\nsick, Moribund System of Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men,\nif we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an\nerrand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its\ninfinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without\nlife-rule for themselves,--other life-rule than a Gospel according to\nJean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man\nis properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty round him;\nexcept it be \"to make the Constitution.\" He is without Heaven above\nhim, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.\n\nWhat further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve\nHundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic\nscutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of\nGame-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief;\nor worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense-of-belief,--in consecrated\ndough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless,\nin that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there\nso blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said,\nthis one salient point of a New Life discernible--the deep fixed\nDetermination to have done with Shams. A determination which,\nconsciously or unconsciously, is _fixed_; which waxes ever more fixed,\ninto very madness and fixed-idea; which, in such embodiment as lies\nprovided there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous,\nstupendous, unspeakable; new for long thousands of years!--How has the\nheaven's _light_, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in\nthunder and electric murkiness, and descend as molten _lightning_,\nblasting, if purifying! Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness, and\natmospheric suffocation, that _brings_ the lightning and the light?\nThe new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the\nDestruction of a World?\n\n\n\nTHE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE\n\nFrom 'The French Revolution'\n\n\nBut, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morning\ndawns. Under all roofs of this distracted City is the nodus of a\nDrama, not untragical, crowding toward solution. The bustlings and\npreparings, the tremors and menaces; the tears that fell from old\neyes! This day, my sons, ye shall quit you like men. By the memory of\nyour fathers' wrongs; by the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny\nimpends in red wrath: help for you is none, if not in your own right\nhands. This day ye must do or die.\n\nFrom earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard the old\ncry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms! Arms! Provost\nFlesselles, or what traitors there are among you, may think of those\nCharleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty thousand of us, and but the\nthird man furnished with so much as a pike! Arms are the one thing\nneedful: with arms we are an unconquerable man-defying National Guard;\nwithout arms, a rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.\n\nHappily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,--that there\nlie muskets at the Hotel des Invalides. Thither will we: King's\nProcureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a Permanent\nCommittee can lend, shall go with us. Besenval's Camp is there;\nperhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us, we shall but die.\n\nAlas! poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner, has\nnot the smallest humor to fire! At five o'clock this morning, as he\nlay dreaming, oblivious in the Ecole Militaire, a \"figure\" stood\nsuddenly at his bedside; \"with face rather handsome, eyes inflamed,\nspeech rapid and curt, air audacious:\" such a figure drew Priam's\ncurtains! The message and monition of the figure was that resistance\nwould be hopeless; that if blood flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus\nspoke the figure: and vanished. \"Withal there was a kind of eloquence\nthat struck one.\" Besenval admits that he should have arrested him,\nbut did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and\ncurt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille Desmoulins?\nPythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with \"violent motions all night\nat the Palais Royal\"? Fame names him \"Young M. Meillar\"; then shuts\nher lips about him forever.\n\nIn any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our National\nVolunteers, rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the Hotel des\nInvalides, in search of the one thing needful. King's Procureur M.\nEthys de Corny and officials are there; the Cure of Saint-Etienne du\nMont marches unpacific at the head of his militant Parish; the Clerks\nof the Basoche in red coats we see marching, now Volunteers of the\nPalais Royal;--National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands; of\none heart and mind. The King's Muskets are the Nation's; think, old M.\nde Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de\nSombreuil would fain hold parley, send couriers, but it skills not:\nthe walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be\nflung open. Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grunsel up to\nridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for\narms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found;\nall safe there, lying packed in straw,--apparently with a view to\nbeing burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey, the\nmultitude, with clangor and vociferation, pounces on them; struggling,\ndashing, clutching,--to the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture, and\nprobable extinction of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such\nprotracted crash of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the\nScene is changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks\nare on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out of\ndarkness into fiery light.\n\nLet Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets as they flash by!\nGardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon leveled on him; ready to\nopen, if need were, from the other side of the river. Motionless sits\nhe; \"astonished,\" one may flatter one's self, \"at the proud bearing\n(_fiere contenance_) of the Parisians.\" And now to the Bastille, ye\nintrepid Parisians! There grape-shot still threatens; thither all\nmen's thoughts and steps are now tending.\n\nOld De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew \"into his interior\" soon after\nmidnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered, as all\nmilitary gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties.\nThe Hotel-de-Ville \"invites\" him to admit National Soldiers, which is\na soft name for surrendering. On the other hand, his Majesty's orders\nwere precise. His garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced\nby thirty-two young Swiss; his walls, indeed, are nine feet thick; he\nhas cannon and powder, but alas! only one day's provision of victuals.\nThe city, too, is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous\nold De Launay, think what thou wilt do!\n\nAll morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere: To the\nBastille! Repeated \"deputations of citizens\" have been here,\npassionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches\nthrough port-holes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains\nadmittance, finds De Launay indisposed for surrender, nay, disposed\nfor blowing up the place, rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the\nbattlements; heaps of paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled;\ncannon all duly leveled; in every embrasure a cannon,--only drawn back\na little! But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on,\nwelling through every street, tocsin furiously pealing, all drums\nbeating the _generale_; the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward\nwholly as one man! Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou, O Thuriot,\nas from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of\nwhat other Phantasmagories and loud-gibbering Spectral Realities which\nthou yet beholdest not, but shalt! \"_Que voulez-vous?_\" said De\nLaunay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of\nmenace. \"Monsieur,\" said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, \"what\nmean _you_? Consider if I could not precipitate _both_ of us from this\nheight,\"--say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch!\nWhereupon De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some\npinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes-cent,\nthen descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed also to\nthe Invalides, on whom however it produces but a mixed, indistinct\nimpression. The old heads are none of the clearest; besides, it is\nsaid, De Launay has been profuse of beverages (_prodigue des\nbuissons_). They think they will not fire--if not fired on--if they\ncan help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by\ncircumstances.\n\nWo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some\none firm decision, _rule_ circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve,\nhard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering between the two is\n_un_questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite\nhum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of\nstray musketry,--which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do\nexecution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; now\n_deputation of citizens_ (it is the third and noisiest of all)\npenetrates that way into the Outer Court; soft speeches producing no\nclearance of these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A\nslight sputter, which has _kindled_ the too combustible chaos, made it\na roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own\nblood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless,\nrolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration;--and over\nhead, from the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go\nbooming, to show what we _could_ do. The Bastille is besieged!\n\nOn, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies! Roar with all\nyour throats of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir\nspasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or\nspirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cartwright of\nthe Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine; smite at that Outer\nDrawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never,\nover nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it,\nman; down with it to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink\nthither, and tyranny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say, on\nthe roof of the guard-room, some \"on bayonets stuck into joints of the\nwall,\" Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old\nsoldier) seconding him; the chain yields, breaks; the huge Drawbridge\nslams down, thundering (_avec fracas_). Glorious! and yet, alas! it is\nstill but the outworks. The Eight Grim Towers, with their _Invalide_\nmusketry, their paving-stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft\nintact;--Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge\nwith its _back_ toward us; the Bastille is still to take!\n\nTo describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most\nimportant in History) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could\none but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan\nof the building! But there is open Esplanade at the end of the Rue\nSaint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts (_Cour Avance_), _Cour de\nl'Orme_, arched gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new\ndrawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight\nTowers: a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from\ntwenty years to four hundred and twenty;--beleaguered, in this its\nlast hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all\ncalibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his\nown engineer; seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there\nseen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of\nregimentals; no one would heed him in colored clothes; half-pay Hulin\nis haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic\npatriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly\nso), to the Hotel-de-Ville:--Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt!\nFlesselles is \"pale to the very lips,\" for the roar of the multitude\ngrows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled,\nall ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls\nsimmering a minor whirlpool,--strengthening the barricade, since God\nknows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into\nthat grand Fire-Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.\n\nAnd so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an\nimpromptu cannoneer. See Georget of the marine service, fresh from\nBrest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used to\nthe like). Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn; the\nKing of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of _him_, for a\nhundred years; yet now, at the right instant, they have got together,\nand discourse eloquent music. For hearing what was toward, Georget\nsprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Francaises, also,\nwill be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so\nthick!--Upward from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighboring\nroofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, without\neffect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease\nfrom behind stone; hardly through port-holes show the tip of a nose.\nWe fall, shot; and make no impression!\n\nLet conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guardrooms are\nburnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted \"Peruke-maker with two fiery\ntorches\" is for burning \"the saltpetres of the Arsenal,\" had not a\nwoman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural\nPhilosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on\npit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element.\nA young beautiful lady, seized, escaping, in these Outer Courts, and\nthought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De\nLaunay's sight; she lies, swooned, on a _paillasse_; but again a\nPatriot--it is brave Aubin Bonnemere, the old soldier--dashes in, and\nrescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled hither, go\nup in white smoke, almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that\nElie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart, and Reole the\n\"gigantic haberdasher\" another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of\nBabel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!\n\nBlood flows; the ailment of new madness. The wounded are carried into\nhouses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to\nyield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas! how fall? The\nwalls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the\nHotel-de-Ville; Abbe Fauchet (who was of one) can say with what almost\nsuperhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the\narched Gateway, and stand, rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In\nsuch Crack of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them;\nthey return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in\ntheir ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their\nfire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-holes; they\nunfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray.\nIndividuals of classical knowledge propose _catapults_. Santerre, the\nsonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the\nplace be fired by a \"mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine\nspouted up through forcing-pumps.\" O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the\nmixture _ready_? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge\nabates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with\nher sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Francaises have come; real\ncannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie,\nhalf-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of thousands.\n\nHow the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court,\nthere, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or\nthe world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began, and is\nnow pointing toward Five, and still the firing slakes not.--Far down,\nin their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of\nearthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.\n\nWoe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is\ndistant, and his ears heavy; Besenval hears, but can send no help. One\npoor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the\nQuais, as far as the Pont Neuf. \"We are come to join you,\" said the\nCaptain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish\nindividual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his\nblue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks, \"Alight then, and\ngive up your arms!\" The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to\nthe barriers and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was?\nMen answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific 'Avis au\nPeuple'! Great, truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of\nemergence and new-birth; and yet this same day come four years!--But\nlet the curtains of the Future hang.\n\nWhat shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done:\nwhat he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with\nlighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless,\nlike old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising\nThuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his\nresolution was:--Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King's\nFortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should in nowise be\nsurrendered save to the King's Messenger; one old man's life is\nworthless, so it be lost with honor: but think, ye brawling\n_canaille_, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward? In\nsuch statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might\nhave left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, Cure of\nSaint-Stephen, and all the tagrag and bobtail of the world, to work\ntheir will.\n\nAnd, yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each\nman's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men?\nHast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How\ntheir shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of\ncontumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that\nthe ground-tone of the noblest passage in one of his noblest Operas\nwas the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their\nKaiser, Bread! Bread! Great is the combined voice of men, the\nutterance of their _instincts_, which are truer than their _thoughts_;\nit is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows\nwhich make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his\nfooting somewhere _beyond_ Time. De Launay could not do it.\nDistracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of despair;\nsurrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes\ntorches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it\nis the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring, and\nJailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish.\n\nFor four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared; call it the\nWorld-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their\nbattlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a\nwhite flag of napkins; go beating the _chamade_, or seeming to beat,\nfor one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary\nof firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge; a port-hole at the\ndrawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier\nMaillard, the shifty man! On his plank swinging over the abyss of that\nstone Ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,\nhe hovers perilous; such a Dove toward such an Ark! Deftly, thou\nshifty Usher; one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there,\nagainst the masonry! Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring, he\nwalks, with out-spread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his\nport-hole; the shifty Usher snatches it and returns. Terms of\nsurrender, Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted? _\"Foi\nd'officier_, On the word of an officer,\" answers half-pay Hulin, or\nhalf-pay Elie--for men do not agree on it--\"they are!\" Sinks the\ndrawbridge,--Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes in the living\ndeluge; the Bastille is fallen! _Victoire! La Bastille est prise_!\n\n * * * * *\n\nWhy dwell on what follows? Hulin's _foi d'officier_ should have been\nkept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised in white\ncanvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise, their arms all piled\nagainst the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstasy that the death\nperil is passed, \"leaps joyfully on their necks\"; but new victors\nrush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of joy. As we said, it\nwas a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes\nFrancaises, in their cool military way, \"wheeled round with arms\nleveled,\" it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the\nthousand, into the Bastille-ditch.\n\nAnd so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing\nuncontrollable, firing from windows--on itself; in hot frenzy of\ntriumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will\nfare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back,\nwith a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Town-hall to\nbe judged! Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed\noff him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged\nthere. This same right hand, it is said, turned back De Launay from\nthe Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.\n\nDe Launay, \"discovered in gray frock with poppy-colored riband,\" is\nfor killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the\nHotel-de-Ville; Hulin, Maillard, and others escorting him, Elie\nmarching foremost, \"with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point.\"\nThrough roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at\nlast through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, fell down; Hulin\nsinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall\nnever enter the Hotel-de-Ville; only his \"bloody hair-queue, held up\nin a bloody hand\"; that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk\nlies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets, ghastly,\naloft on a pike.\n\nRigorous De Launay has died; crying out, \"O friends, kill me fast!\"\nMerciful De Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him, in this\nfearful hour, and will die for him, it avails not. Brothers, your\nwrath is cruel! Your Place de Greve is become a Throat of the Tiger,\nfull of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer\nis massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron; with\ndifficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Francaises will\nsave the rest. Provost Flesselles, stricken long since with the\npaleness of death, must descend from his seat, \"to be judged at the\nPalais Royal\"; alas, to be shot dead by an unknown hand at the turning\nof the first street!\n\nO evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on\nreapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages;\non ships far out on the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of\nVersailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now\ndancing with double-jacketed Hussar-Officers;--and also on this\nroaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville! Babel Tower, with the\nconfusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of\nthoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles,\nendless, in front of an Electoral Committee; points itself, in horrid\nradii, against this and the other accused breast. It was the Titans\nwarring with Olympus; and they, scarcely crediting it, have\n_conquered_; prodigy of prodigies; delirious,--as it could not but be.\nDenunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror;\nall outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of\nmadness!\n\n\n\nCHARLOTTE CORDAY\n\nFrom 'The French Revolution'\n\n\nIn the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments\ngerminate a set of rebellious _paper_-leaves, named Proclamations,\nResolutions, Journals, or Diurnals, \"of the Union for Resistance to\nOppression.\" In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados, sees its\npaper-leaf of Bulletin de Caen suddenly bud, suddenly establish itself\nas Newspaper there; under the Editorship of Girondin National\nRepresentatives!\n\n [Illustration: _CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON._\n\n Photogravure from a painting by C. L. Muller.\n\n Original in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.\n\n Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armans, a French young woman of\n noble birth, filled with horror at the excesses of the Reign\n of Terror, gained admission to the private apartments of Marat\n and stabbed him to death July 13, 1793. She was convicted by\n the Revolutionary tribunal and died by the guillotine July 17,\n 1793.]\n\nFor among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate\nhumor. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, \"arrested in their own\nhouses,\" will await with stoical resignation what the issue may be.\nSome, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to concealment; which,\nas the Paris Barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet\ndifficult. But others there are who will rush, with Buzot, to\nCalvados; or far over France, to Lyons, Toulon, Nantes and\nelsewhither, and then rendezvous at Caen: to awaken as with\nwar-trumpet the respectable Departments; and strike down an anarchic\nMountain Faction; at least not yield without a stroke at it. Of this\nlatter temper we count some score or more, of the Arrested, and of the\nNot-yet-arrested: a Buzot, a Barbaroux, Louvet, Guadet, Petion,\nwho have escaped from Arrestment in their own homes; a Salles, a\nPythagorean Valady, a Duchatel, the Duchatel that came in blanket and\nnight-cap to vote for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger\nand likelihood of Arrestment. These, to the number at one time of\nTwenty-seven, do accordingly lodge here, in the \"Intendance,\" or\nDepartmental Mansion, of the town of Caen in Calvados; welcomed by\nPersons in Authority; welcomed and defrayed, having no money of their\nown. And the Bulletin de Caen comes forth, with the most animating\nparagraphs: How the Bordeaux Department, the Lyons Department, this\nDepartment after the other is declaring itself; sixty, or say\nsixty-nine, or seventy-two respectable Departments either declaring,\nor ready to declare. Nay, Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris by\nitself, if need be. So has Marseilles Town said that she will march.\nBut on the other hand, that Montelimart Town has said, No\nthoroughfare; and means even to \"bury herself\" under her own stone and\nmortar first,--of this be no mention in Bulletin de Caen.\n\nSuch animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper; and fervors\nand eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the Mountain, from the pen of\nDeputy Salles; which resemble, say friends, Pascal's \"Provincials.\"\nWhat is more to the purpose, these Girondins have got a General in\nchief, one Wimpfen, formerly under Dumouriez; also a secondary\nquestionable General Puisaye, and others; and are doing their best to\nraise a force for war. National Volunteers, whosoever is of right\nheart: gather in, ye National Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our\nCalvados Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near:\nforward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the early\nJuly days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating and\nconsulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of Carabots, Anti-jacobin\nfriends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat. With all which, and\nthe editing of Bulletins, a National Representative has his hands\nfull.\n\nAt Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less animated\nin the \"Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us.\" And in a France\nbegirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn with an internal\nLa Vendee, _this_ is the conclusion we have arrived at: To put down\nAnarchy by Civil War! _Durum et durum_, the Proverb says, _non faciunt\nmurum_. La Vendee burns; Santerre can do nothing there; he may return\nhome and brew beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That\nSiege of Mentz is become famed;--lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe\nwill testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither on\nSundays, to see the artillery work and counter-work; \"you only duck a\nlittle while the shot whizzes past.\" Conde is capitulating to the\nAustrians; Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely\nbatters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp of Famars was\nstormed; General Dampierre was killed; General Custine was\nblamed,--and indeed is now come to Paris to give \"explanations.\"\n\nAgainst all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must even make head\nas they can. They, anarchic Convention as they are, publish Decrees,\nexpostulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity: they ray-forth\nCommissioners, singly or in pairs, the olive-branch in one hand, yet\nthe sword in the other. Commissioners come even to Caen; but without\neffect. Mathematical Romme, and Prieur named of the Cote d'Or,\nventuring thither, with their olive and sword, are packed into prison:\nthere may Romme lie, under lock and key, \"for fifty days\"; and\nmeditate his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendee, and\nCivil War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower ebb.\n\nAmid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially\nnotices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where\nbusy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady with an aged valet,\ntaking grave graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately\nNorman figure: in her twenty-fifth year; of beautiful still\ncountenance: her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans,\nwhile Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy\nDuperret,--him who once drew his sword in the effervescence.\nApparently she will to Paris on some errand? \"She was a Republican\nbefore the Revolution, and never wanted energy.\" A completeness, a\ndecision is in this fair female Figure: \"By energy she means the\nspirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country.\"\nWhat if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded\nstillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic,\nhalf-demonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be\nextinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she,\nthrough long centuries!--Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and\nthe dim-simmering twenty-five million within, History will look\nfixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note\nwhither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant,\nthen vanishes swallowed of the Night.\n\nWith Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we\nsee Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in the Caen Diligence,\nwith a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her\nGood-journey: her Father will find a line left, signifying that she is\ngone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy\nDiligence lumbers along; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of\nthe Mountain; in which she mingles not: all night, all day, and again\nall night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of\nNeuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and\npurpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue\ndes Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens to bed; sleeps\nall afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.\n\nOn the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates\nto certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's\nhands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent friend of Charlotte's, has\nneed of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was\nCharlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of\nFriday:--yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently\ninvestigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she\nhas seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat\nshe could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.\n\nAbout eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large\nsheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place des\nVictoires, takes a hackney-coach: \"To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine,\nNo. 44.\" It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat!--The Citoyen Marat\nis ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to disappoint her much. Her\nbusiness is with Marat, then? Hapless beautiful Charlotte; hapless\nsqualid Marat! From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the\nutmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very\nstrangely, business together.--Charlotte, returning to her Inn,\ndispatches a short Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen,\nthe seat of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and\n\"will put it in his power to do France a great service.\" No answer.\nCharlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with it\nby coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-laborers have\nagain finished their Week; huge Paris is circling and simmering,\nmanifold according to its vague wont; this one fair Figure has\ndecision in it; drives straight,--toward a purpose.\n\nIt is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month; eve of the\nBastille day,--when \"M. Marat,\" four years ago, in the crowd of the\nPont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had\nsuch friendly dispositions, \"to dismount, and give up their arms,\nthen\"; and became notable among Patriot men. Four years: what a road\nhe has traveled:--and sits now, about half-past seven of the clock,\nstewing in slipper-bath; sore afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever,--of\nwhat other malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick\nand worn, poor man: with precisely eleven-pence-half-penny of\nready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool\nfor writing on, the while; and a squalid--Washer-woman, one may call\nher: that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither\nand not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of\nBrotherhood and Perfect Felicity: yet surely on the way toward\nthat?--Hark, a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be\nrejected: it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat,\nrecognizing from within, cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is\nadmitted.\n\nCitoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished to\nspeak with you.--Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the Traitors\ndoing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?--Charlotte names some\nDeputies. \"Their heads shall fall within a fortnight,\" croaks the\neager People's-friend, clutching his tablets to write: Barbaroux,\nPetion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath:\nPetion, and Louvet, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the\nsheath; plunges it with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart.\n\"_A moi, chere amie_ (Help, dear)!\" no more could the Death-choked say\nor shriek. The helpful Washer-woman running in--there is no Friend of\nthe People, or Friend of the Washer-woman, left; but his life with a\ngroan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below!\n\nAnd so Marat, People's-friend, is ended; the lone Stylites has got\nhurled down suddenly from his pillar--_whitherward_ He that made him\nknows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail;\nre-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention, \"Chabot pale with\nterror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated,\" may decree\nhim Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for\nhim; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his\ncharacter, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call \"the\ngood Sans-culotte,\"--whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made,\nfor the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and\nnew-born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake\nmountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his\nPicture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the\nhuman genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no\nmore to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with\nclear sympathy, in the old Moniteur Newspaper: how Marat's Brother\ncomes from Neuchatel to ask of the Convention, \"that the deceased\nJean-Paul Marat's musket be given to him.\" For Marat too had a brother\nand natural affections; and was wrapped once in swaddling-clothes, and\nslept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men!--A\nsister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.\n\nAs for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the recompense of\nit is near and sure. The _chere amie_, and the neighbors of the house,\nflying at her, she \"overturns some movables,\" intrenches herself till\nthe gendarmes arrive; then quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the\nAbbaye Prison: she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage\nor admiration, round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of\nher; his Papers sealed,--which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in\nlike manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her.\nCharlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave\nfirmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet.\n\nOn Wednesday morning the thronged Palais de Justice and Revolutionary\nTribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm: she dates it \"fourth\nday of the Preparation of Peace.\" A strange murmur ran through the\nHall, at sight of her; you could not say of what character. Tinville\nhas his indictments and tape-papers: the cutler of the Palais Royal\nwill testify that he sold her the sheath-knife; \"All these details are\nneedless,\" interrupted Charlotte; \"it is I that killed Marat.\" By\nwhose instigation?--\"By no one's.\" \"What tempted you, then?\" \"His\ncrimes. I killed one man,\" added she, raising her voice extremely\n(_extremement_), as they went on with their questions, \"I killed one\nman to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage\nwild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the\nRevolution; I never wanted energy.\" There is therefore nothing to be\nsaid. The public gazes astonished: the hasty limners sketch her\nfeatures, Charlotte not disapproving: the men of law proceed with\ntheir formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advocate\nshe gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To\nthe Priest they send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving,\nany ghostly or other aid from him.\n\nOn this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o'clock, from\nthe gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the fatal Cart\nissues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of\nMurderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying toward\ndeath,--alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, saluting\nreverently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl.\nAdam Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it\nwere beautiful to die with her; the head of this young man seems\nturned. At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance of Charlotte\nwears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet;\nshe resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation,\nshe submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now\nready, they take the neckerchief from her neck, a blush of maidenly\nshame overspreads her fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged\nwith it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to\nthe people. \"It is most true,\" says Forster, \"that he struck the cheek\ninsultingly; for I saw it with my eyes; the Police imprisoned him for\nit.\"\n\nIn this manner have the Beautifulest and the Squalidest come in\ncollision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and\nMarie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. \"Day of the\nPreparation of Peace\"? Alas, how were peace possible or preparable,\nwhile for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in their\nconvent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love-paradises and the light of\nLife, but of Codrus's-sacrifices and Death well-earned? That\ntwenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this _is_ the\nAnarchy; the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be the\nembodiment! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities tenfold, will\nbe worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the\nBeautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,--in the Mother's bosom that\nbore you both!\n\nThis is the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most complete:\nangelic-demonic: like a Star!\n\n\n\nTHE SCAPEGOAT\n\nFrom the 'French Revolution'\n\n\nTo this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of\nSixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under Sixty\nKings this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning\nitself together these thousand years; and has become, one way and\nother, a most strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also\nfrightful, this Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which,\nwith swift stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and\nsouls of innumerable men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather\nKing-hood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures,--like a\nPhalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is\never so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man; injustice\nbreeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return \"always\n_home_,\" wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of\nmany generations: he too experiences that man's tribunal is not in\nthis Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him.\n\nA King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination;\nas the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the\nKing dying, but the man! Kingship is a coat: the grand loss is of the\nskin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole\ncombined world do _more_? Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled\nwith a gag. Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a\nwhole five-act Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the\ngallows, unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the\nlees. For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the\nunjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity,\nwith all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how\nfar short is it of the thing pitied!\n\n * * * * *\n\nA Confessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the\nKing knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission.\nLeave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice\nwill go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains:\nthe parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts, environed in the same\ngrim peril with us; to be left _here_! Let the Reader look with the\neyes of Valet Clery through these glass-doors, where also the\nMunicipality watches; and see the cruelest of scenes:--\n\n\"At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the Queen\nappeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and\nMadame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King.\nSilence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen\nmade a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room, where M.\nEdgeworth was waiting unknown to them: 'No', said the King, 'let us go\ninto the dining-room; it is there only that I can see you.' They\nentered there; I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat\ndown, the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right,\nMadame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained standing\nbetween his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and often held\nhim embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters;\nduring which we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when\nthe King spoke, the sobbing of the Princesses redoubled, continued for\nsome minutes; and that then the King began again to speak.\" And so our\nmeetings and our partings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other;\nthe poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our\nsufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over.\nThou good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see\nthee any more!--NEVER! O Reader, knowest thou that hard word?\n\nFor nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves\nasunder. \"Promise that you will see us on the morrow.\" He\npromises:--Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved ones; cry to\nGod for yourselves and me!--It was a hard scene, but it is over. He\nwill not see them on the morrow. The Queen, in passing through the\nante-room, glanced at the Cerberus Municipals; and with woman's\nvehemence, said through her tears, \"_Vous etes tous des scelerats_\".\n\nKing Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as he\nhad been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair: while this went\nforward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his\nfinger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the\nQueen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament; and\ncontinued in devotion, and conference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not\nsee his Family: it were too hard to bear.\n\nAt eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and\nmessages and effects; which they at first brutally refuse to take\ncharge of; he gives them a roll of gold pieces, 125 louis; these are\nto be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre\nsays the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes.\nAt the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come.\n\"Stamping on the ground with his right foot, Louis answers:\n'_Partons_' (Let us go).\"--How the rolling of those drums comes in,\nthrough the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly\nwife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A\nQueen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these\nFour does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she,\nas Duchesse d'Angouleme, will live,--not happily.\n\nAt the Temple gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of\npitiful women: \"_Grace! Grace!_\" Through the rest of the streets there\nis silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there:\nthe armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed\nby all his neighbors. All windows are down, none seen looking through\nthem. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in\nthese streets, but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked,\nlike armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match\nburning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into\nsilence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is\nthe only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of\nthe Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear in the\ngreat silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and\nforget the Earth.\n\nAs the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once\nPlace de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal\nwhere once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles\nwith cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orleans\nEgalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to\nthe Town-hall, every three minutes: near by is the Convention\nsitting,--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his\nPrayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then\nthe Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will\ngive ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all\ntempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in\nsorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned.\n\"Take care of M. Edgeworth,\" he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is\nsitting with them: then they two descend.\n\nThe drums are beating: \"_Taisez-vous_ (Silence)!\" he cries \"in a\nterrible voice (_d'une voix terrible_).\" He mounts the scaffold, not\nwithout delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings.\nHe strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of\nwhite flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns,\nresists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Savior, in whom men\ntrust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the\nfatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, \"his\nface very red,\" and says: \"Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the\nScaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my\nenemies; I desire that France--\" A General on horseback, Santerre or\nanother, prances out, with uplifted hand: \"_Tambours_!\" The drums\ndrown the voice. \"Executioners, do your duty!\" The Executioners,\ndesperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed\nRanks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of\nthem desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him\nto their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: \"Son of Saint\nLouis, ascend to Heaven.\" The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn\naway. It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged\nThirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days.\n\nExecutioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of _Vive la\nRepublique_ rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving:\nstudents of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais;\nfling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the\nTown-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, \"It is done, It is\ndone.\" There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood.\nHeadsman Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the\nhair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings. And so,\nin some half-hour it is done; and the multitude has all departed.\nPastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian\ncries, the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the\ncoffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with\nPatriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,\naccording to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was.\n\nA grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences. On the\nmorrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in disgust and\nchagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all ready, correct\nin black-on-white to the utmost farthing: these he wants but to have\naudited, that he might retire to remote obscurity, to the country and\nhis books. They will never be audited, those accounts: he will never\nget retired thither.\n\nIt was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier\nSt.-Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of Great Men.\nNotable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft,\nhalf-bare; the winding-sheet disclosing the death-wound; sabre and\nbloody clothes parade themselves; a \"lugubrious music\" wailing harsh\nnaeniae. Oak-crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks\nthere, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of\nevery color, all mourning brother-like.\n\nNotable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it was the\nlast act these men ever did with concert! All parties and figures of\nOpinion, that agitate this distracted France and its Convention, now\nstand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to dagger; the King's\nLife, round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down.\nDumouriez, conquering Holland, growls ominous discontent, at the head\nof Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orleans\nEgalite shall be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis,\ncurses his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of\nRegicides, of \"Arras Vipers\" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of\nhorrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly\nto another world than _theirs_. This is Te-Deum Fauchet, of the\nBastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was the death-hail\nrattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that Bastille day: but it was\nsoft to such wreckage of high Hope as this; one's New Golden Era going\ndown in leaden dross, and sulphurous black of the Everlasting\nDarkness!\n\n\n\n\nBLISS CARMAN\n\n(1861-)\n\nBY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS\n\n[Illustration: BLISS CARMAN]\n\n\nBliss Carman was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on April 15th,\n1861. On both sides of the house he belongs to that United Empire\nLoyalist stock which at the time of the American Revolution sacrificed\nwealth and ease to a principle, and angrily withdrew from the young\nrepublic to carve out new commonwealths in the wilds of Canada. His\nfather was William Carman, Clerk of the Pleas, a man of influence and\ndistinction in his Province. His mother was one of the Blisses of\nFredericton, the Loyalist branch of that Connecticut family to which\nEmerson's mother belonged. Mr. Carman was educated at the Collegiate\nSchool and the University of New Brunswick, both at Fredericton. He\ndistinguished himself in classics and mathematics, took his B. A. in\n1881, his M. A. in 1884, and afterwards took partial courses at\nEdinburgh and Harvard. He has been connected editorially with several\nAmerican periodicals, the Independent and the Chap-Book among them,\nbut now devotes himself exclusively to literature. He divides his time\nbetween Boston and Washington, returning to the Maritime Provinces for\nthe hot months of each year. Mr. Carman issued his first volume of\npoems in 1893, when he had already won reputation as a contributor to\nthe magazines. The volume was called 'Low Tide on Grand Pre: a Book of\nLyrics.' It was published in New York and London, and ran quickly into\na second edition. Equally successful was the volume called 'Songs from\nVagabondia,' published in 1894. About half the poems in this volume\nare by Mr. Richard Hovey, whose name appears on the title-page with\nthat of Mr. Carman. In 1895 appeared 'Behind the Arras: a Book of the\nUnseen.' Much of Mr. Carman's known work remains still uncollected.\n\nIn that outburst of intellectual energy which has of late won for\nCanada a measure of recognition in the world of letters, Mr. Carman's\nwork has played a large part. The characteristics of the Canadian\nschool may perhaps be defined as a certain semi-Sufristic worship of\nnature, combined with freshness of vision and keenness to interpret\nthe significance of the external world. These characteristics find\nintense expression in Mr. Carman's poems. And they find expression in\nan utterance so new and so distinctive that its influence is already\nactive in the verse of his contemporaries.\n\nThere are two terms which apply pre-eminently to Mr. Carman. These are\nLyrist and Symbolist. His note is always the lyric note. The \"lyric\ncry\" thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is the\nrhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then in\nhis work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion. Every\nphrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is a poem\nwhich not only haunts the ear with its harmonies but at the same time\nmakes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result is less\nsuccessful it seems sometimes as if the thought were too much diluted\nwith words,--as if, in fact, verbal music and verbal coloring were\nallowed to take the place of the legitimate thought-process. Even in\nsuch cases, the verse, however nebulous in meaning, is rarely without\nsome subtlety of technique, some charm of diction, to justify its\nexistence. But there are poems of Mr. Carman's, wherein what seems at\nfirst to be the obscurity of an over-attenuated thought is really an\nattempt to express thought in terms of pure music or pure color. In a\ncurious and beautiful poem called 'Beyond the Gamut' he elaborates a\ntheory of the oneness and interchangeability of form, sound, and\ncolor.\n\nIn the matter of conception and interpretation Mr. Carman is a\nsymbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense, and\nmust be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring\nschools. The true symbolist--and all the supreme artists of the world\nhave been in this sense symbolists--recognizes that there are truths\ntoo vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific phrase.\nThey elude set words; as a faint star, at the coming on of evening,\neludes the eye which seeks for it directly, while unveiling itself to\na side glance. Mr. Carman conveys to us, by the suggestion of\nthrilling color or inimitable phrase, perceptions and emotions which a\nmore strictly defined method could never capture.\n\nIn subject-matter Mr. Carman is simple and elemental. He looks at his\nthemes curiously, often whimsically; but the themes are those of\nuniversal and eternal import,--life, love, and death, the broad\naspects of the outer world, the \"deep heart of man,\" and the spirit\nthat informs them all. His song is sometimes in a minor key, plangent\nand piercing; sometimes in a large and virile major,--as for instance\nwhen he sings the 'War-song of Gamelba.' To his gifts of imagination,\ninsight, and lyric passion he adds a fine humor, the outflowing\nof a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified in\n'Resignation' and 'A More Ancient Mariner.' His chief defects, besides\nthe occasional obscurity already referred to, are a tendency to\nlooseness of structure in his longer poems, and once in a while, as in\nparts of 'The Silent Lodger,' a Browningesque lapse into hardness and\nbaldness when the effect aimed at is colloquial simplicity.\n\n [Signature: Charles G. D. Roberts]\n\n\n\nHACK AND HEW\n\n\n Hack and Hew were the sons of God\n In the earlier earth than now;\n One at his right hand, one at his left,\n To obey as he taught them how.\n\n And Hack was blind and Hew was dumb,\n But both had the wild, wild heart;\n And God's calm will was their burning will,\n And the gist of their toil was art.\n\n They made the moon and the belted stars,\n They set the sun to ride;\n They loosed the girdle and veil of the sea,\n The wind and the purple tide.\n\n Both flower and beast beneath their hands\n To beauty and speed outgrew,--\n The furious fumbling hand of Hack,\n And the glorying hand of Hew.\n\n Then, fire and clay, they fashioned a man,\n And painted him rosy brown;\n And God himself blew hard in his eyes:\n \"Let them burn till they smolder down!\"\n\n And \"There!\" said Hack, and \"There!\" thought Hew,\n \"We'll rest, for our toil is done.\"\n But \"Nay,\" the Master Workman said,\n \"For your toil is just begun.\n\n \"And ye who served me of old as God\n Shall serve me anew as man,\n Till I compass the dream that is in my heart\n And perfect the vaster plan.\"\n\n And still the craftsman over his craft,\n In the vague white light of dawn,\n With God's calm will for his burning will\n While the mounting day comes on,\n\n Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,\n Toils with those shadowy two,--\n The faltering restless hand of Hack,\n And the tireless hand of Hew.\n\n From 'Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson,\n Wolffe and Company\n\n\n\nAT THE GRANITE GATE\n\n\n There paused to shut the door\n A fellow called the Wind.\n With mystery before,\n And reticence behind,\n\n A portal waits me too\n In the glad house of spring;\n One day I shall pass through\n And leave you wondering.\n\n It lies beyond the marge\n Of evening or of prime,\n Silent and dim and large,\n The gateway of all time.\n\n There troop by night and day\n My brothers of the field;\n And I shall know the way\n Their wood-songs have revealed.\n\n The dusk will hold some trace\n Of all my radiant crew\n Who vanished to that place,\n Ephemeral as dew.\n\n Into the twilight dun,\n Blue moth and dragon-fly\n Adventuring alone,--\n Shall be more brave than I?\n\n There innocents shall bloom,\n And the white cherry tree,\n With birch and willow plume\n To strew the road for me.\n\n The wilding orioles then\n Shall make the golden air\n Heavy with joy again,\n And the dark heart shall dare\n\n Resume the old desire,--\n The exigence of spring\n To be the orange fire\n That tips the world's gray wing.\n\n And the lone wood-bird--Hark!\n The whippoorwill, night-long,\n Threshing the summer dark\n With his dim flail of song!--\n\n Shall be the lyric lift,\n When all my senses creep,\n To bear me through the rift\n In the blue range of sleep.\n\n And so I pass beyond\n The solace of your hand.\n But ah, so brave and fond!\n Within that morrow-land,\n\n Where deed and daring fail,\n But joy forevermore\n Shall tremble and prevail\n Against the narrow door,\n\n Where sorrow knocks too late,\n And grief is overdue,\n Beyond the granite gate\n There will be thoughts of you.\n\n From 'Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson,\n Wolffe and Company\n\n\n\nA SEA CHILD\n\n\n The lover of child Marjory\n Had one white hour of life brim full;\n Now the old nurse, the rocking sea,\n Hath him to lull.\n\n The daughter of child Marjory\n Hath in her veins, to beat and run,\n The glad indomitable sea,\n The strong white sun.\n\n Copyrighted by Bliss Carman.\n\n\n\n\nLEWIS CARROLL\n\n(CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON)\n\n(1832-)\n\n\nThat the author of the best nonsense-writing in the language should be\na professional mathematician and logician, is not a paradox but a\nsequence. A gymnast cannot divert us by pretending to lose his balance\nunless perfectly able to keep his balance. Actors who counterfeit\ninsanity must be acutely sane. Only a competent classical scholar can\nwrite good macaronics; only a good poet can write clever doggerel. The\nonly ones who can use slang effectively are those who do not need to\nuse it at all. Nor is the tone and temper of mind evinced by these dry\nand severe studies out of keeping with the airiest play of fancy or\nthe maddest fun. The one is indeed a frequent relief from the other,\nand no intellectual bent is related in the least to any special\ntemperament. Extravagant drollery can be mated to an aptitude for\ngeometry or a passion for analysis as well as to a love of pictures or\nof horses.\n\nBut the parentage of 'Alice in Wonderland' and its fellows is closer\nto their creator's intellectual being even than this. A very slight\nglance at their matter and mechanism shows that they are the work of\none trained to use words with the finest precision, to teach others to\nuse them so, to criticize keenly any inconsistency or slovenliness in\ntheir use, and to mock mercilessly any vagueness or incoherence in\nthought or diction. The fantastic framework and inconsequent scenes of\nthese wonder-stories mask from the popular view the qualities which\ngive them their superlative rank and enduring charm.\n\nThe mere machinery, ingenious and amusing as it is, would not\nentertain beyond a single reading; it can be and has often been\nimitated, along with the incarnated nursery rhymes and old saws. Yet\nthese grotesque chimeras, under Lewis Carroll's touch, are as living\nto us as any characters in Dickens or the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' and\neven more so to the elders than the children. Who does not know and\ndelight in the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the elegant White\nRabbit and the conceited and monosyllabic Caterpillar, the Cheshire\nCat and the Mock-Turtle, the March Hare and the Hatter and the\nDormouse; or the chess White King and the Queens and the White Knight,\nthe Walrus and the Carpenter, of Looking-Glass Land?\n\nThe very genesis of many of these is the logical analysis of a popular\ncomparison into sober fact, as \"grinning like a Cheshire cat,\" \"mad as\na hatter\" or \"March hare,\" \"sleeping like a dormouse,\" etc.; and a\nlarge part of their wit and fun consists in plays on ambiguous terms\nin current use, like the classic \"jam every other day,\" \"French,\nmusic, and washing,\" \"The name of the song is called--\" or in parodies\non familiar verses (or on the spirit of ballads rather than the\nwording, as in 'Jabberwocky'), or in heaps of versified\n_non-sequiturs_, like the exquisite \"poem\" read at the trial of the\nKnave of Hearts. The analyst and the logician is as patent in 'Alice'\nas in the class lectures the author gave or the technical works he has\nissued; only turning his criticism and his _reductiones ad absurdum_\ninto bases for witty fooling instead of serious lessons or didactic\nworks. Hence, while his wonder-books are nominally for children, and\nplease the children through their cheaper and commoner qualities,\ntheir real audience is the most cultivated and keen-minded part of the\nmature world; to whom indeed he speaks almost exclusively in such\npassages as the Rabelaisian satire of the jury trial in 'Alice in\nWonderland,' or the mob in 'Sylvie and Bruno' yelling \"Less bread!\nMore taxes!\" before the Lord Chancellor's house, or the infinitely\ntouching pathos of the Outlandish Watch.\n\n'Alice in Wonderland' appeared in 1865; it received universal\nadmiration at once, and was translated into many languages. By the\nrarest of good fortune, it was illustrated by an artist (John Tenniel)\nwho entered into its spirit so thoroughly that the characters in\npopular memory are as much identified with his pictures as with Lewis\nCarroll's text, and no other representation of them would be endured.\n'Through the Looking-Glass' followed in 1871; its prose matter was\nalmost equal to that of its predecessor,--the chapter of the White\nKnight is fully equal to the best of the other,--and its verse is\nsuperior. Part of the first book was based on the game of cards; the\nwhole setting of the second is based on chess moves, and Alice's\nprogress to queenship along the board. He has published several books\nof humorous prose and verse since; some of the verse equal to the best\nof his two best books, but the prose generally spoiled by conscious\ndidacticism, as in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' which however contains some of\nhis happiest nonsense verse. 'The Hunting of the Snark' is a nonsense\ntale in verse, but oddly the best things in it are his prose tags.\n'Rhyme and Reason' is a collection of verse, some of it of high merit\nin its kind: 'The Three Voices' is spun out and ill-ended, but has\nsome passages which deserve to be classic.\n\nLewis Carroll is in fact the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who\n(disliking publicity) lives in retirement at Oxford, and the world\nknows little of him. He was born in 1833 and received his degree in\nChrist Church, Oxford, with high honors in mathematics. In 1861 he\ntook orders in the Church of England. From 1855 to 1881 he was\nmathematical lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He has published\nseveral works on mathematics, including 'Euclid and His Modern\nRivals,' and 'Mathematica Curiosa,' a very valuable work. 'A Tangled\nTale,' 'Pillow Problems,' and a 'Game of Logic' are scientific and\nhumorous, but are only appreciated by experts in mathematics and\nlogic. Delighted with 'Alice in Wonderland' on its appearance, Queen\nVictoria asked Mr. Dodgson for his other works; and in response \"Lewis\nCarroll\" sent her his 'Elementary Treatise on Determinants' and other\nmathematical works. It is seldom that the dualism of a mind--writing\nnow nonsense so thoroughly and vigorously witty, and now exploring the\nintricacies of higher mathematics--has a more curious illustration.\nCertainly the illustration is seldom as diverting to the public.\n\n\n\nALICE, THE PIG-BABY, AND THE CHESHIRE CAT\n\nFrom 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'\n\n\n\"Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!\" said the Duchess to\nAlice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. \"I must go and get ready\nto play croquet with the Queen,\" and she hurried out of the room. The\ncook threw a frying-pan after her as she went, but it just missed her.\n\nAlice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a\nqueer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all\ndirections,--\"just like a star-fish,\" thought Alice. The poor little\nthing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept\ndoubling itself up and straightening itself out again; so that\naltogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could\ndo to hold it.\n\nAs soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was\nto twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its\nright ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself), she\ncarried it out into the open air. \"If I don't take this child away\nwith me,\" thought Alice, \"they're sure to kill it in a day or two:\nwouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?\" She said the last words out\nloud, and the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing\nby this time). \"Don't grunt,\" said Alice: \"that's not at all the\nproper way of expressing yourself.\"\n\nThe baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face\nto see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it\nhad a _very_ turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose;\nalso its eyes were getting extremely small, for a baby: altogether,\nAlice did not like the look of the thing at all,--\"but perhaps it was\nonly sobbing,\" she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if\nthere were any tears.\n\nNo, there were no tears. \"If you're going to turn into a pig, my\ndear,\" said Alice, seriously, \"I'll have nothing more to do with you.\nMind now!\" The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was\nimpossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.\n\nAlice was just beginning to think to herself, \"Now, what am I to do\nwith this creature when I get it home?\" when it grunted again, so\nviolently that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time\nthere could be _no_ mistake about it: it was neither more nor less\nthan a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to\ncarry it any further.\n\nSo she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it\ntrot away quietly into the wood. \"If it had grown up,\" she said to\nherself, \"it would have been a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes\nrather a handsome pig, I think.\" And she began thinking over other\nchildren she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying\nto herself, \"If one only knew the right way to change them--\" when she\nwas a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of\na tree a few yards off.\n\nThe Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she\nthought: still it had _very_ long claws and a great many teeth, so she\nfelt it ought to be treated with respect.\n\n\"Cheshire Puss,\" she began,--rather timidly, as she did not at all\nknow whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little\nwider. \"Come, it's pleased so far,\" thought Alice, and she went on:\n\"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?\"\n\n\"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,\" said the Cat.\n\n\"I don't much care where--\" said Alice.\n\n\"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk,\" said the Cat.\n\n\"--so long as I get _somewhere_,\" Alice added as an explanation.\n\n\"Oh, you're sure to do that,\" said the Cat, \"if you only walk long\nenough.\"\n\nAlice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another\nquestion. \"What sort of people live about here?\"\n\n\"In _that_ direction,\" the Cat said, waving its right paw round,\n\"lives a Hatter; and in _that_ direction,\" waving the other paw,\n\"lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to go among mad people,\" Alice remarked.\n\n\"Oh, you can't help that,\" said the Cat: \"we are all mad here. I'm\nmad. You're mad.\"\n\n\"How do you know I'm mad?\" said Alice.\n\n\"You must be,\" said the Cat, \"or you wouldn't have come here.\"\n\nAlice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on, \"And\nhow do you know that you're mad?\"\n\n\"To begin with,\" said the Cat, \"a dog's not mad. You grant that?\"\n\n\"I suppose so,\" said Alice.\n\n\"Well then,\" the Cat went on, \"you see a dog growls when it's angry,\nand wags its tail when it's pleased. Now _I_ growl when I'm pleased,\nand wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.\"\n\n\"_I_ call it purring, not growling,\" said Alice.\n\n\"Call it what you like,\" said the Cat. \"Do you play croquet with the\nQueen to-day?\"\n\n\"I should like it very much,\" said Alice, \"but I haven't been invited\nyet.\"\n\n\"You'll see me there,\" said the Cat, and vanished.\n\nAlice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so well used to\nqueer things happening. While she was still looking at the place where\nit had been, it suddenly appeared again.\n\n\"By-the-by, what became of the baby?\" said the Cat. \"I'd nearly\nforgotten to ask.\"\n\n\"It turned into a pig,\" Alice answered very quietly, just as if the\nCat had come back in a natural way.\n\n\"I thought it would,\" said the Cat, and vanished again.\n\nAlice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not\nappear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in\nwhich the March Hare was said to live. \"I've seen hatters before,\" she\nsaid to herself: \"the March Hare will be much the most interesting,\nand perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so\nmad as it was in March.\" As she said this, she looked up, and there\nwas the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree.\n\n\"Did you say pig, or fig?\" said the Cat.\n\n\"I said pig,\" replied Alice; \"and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing\nand vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,\nbeginning with the end of the tail and ending with the grin, which\nremained some time after the rest of it had gone.\n\n\"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,\" thought Alice; \"but a\ngrin without a cat!--it's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my\nlife!\"\n\n\n\nTHE MOCK-TURTLE'S EDUCATION\n\nFrom 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'\n\n\n\"When we were little,\" the Mock-Turtle went on at last, more calmly,\nthough still sobbing a little now and then, \"we went to school in the\nsea. The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--\"\n\n\"Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?\" Alice asked.\n\n\"We called him Tortoise because he taught us,\" said the Mock-Turtle\nangrily; \"really you are very dull!\"\n\n\"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple\nquestion,\" added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked\nat poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the\nGryphon said to the Mock-Turtle, \"Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all\nday about it!\" and he went on in these words:--\n\n\"Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--\"\n\n\"I never said I didn't!\" interrupted Alice.\n\n\"You did,\" said the Mock-Turtle.\n\n\"Hold your tongue!\" added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again.\nThe Mock-Turtle went on.\n\n\"We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every\nday--\"\n\n\"_I've_ been to a day-school too,\" said Alice; \"you needn't be so\nproud as all that.\"\n\n\"With extras?\" asked the Mock-Turtle a little anxiously.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alice, \"we learned French and music.\"\n\n\"And washing?\" said the Mock-Turtle.\n\n\"Certainly not!\" said Alice indignantly.\n\n\"Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,\" said the Mock-Turtle in\na tone of great relief. \"Now at _ours_ they had at the end of the\nbill, 'French, music, _and washing_--extra.'\"\n\n\"You couldn't have wanted it much,\" said Alice; \"living at the bottom\nof the sea.\"\n\n\"I couldn't afford to learn it,\" said the Mock-Turtle with a sigh. \"I\nonly took the regular course.\"\n\n\"What was that?\" inquired Alice.\n\n\"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,\" the Mock-Turtle\nreplied; \"and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition,\nDistraction, Uglification, and Derision.\"\n\n\"I never heard of 'Uglification,'\" Alice ventured to say. \"What is\nit?\"\n\nThe Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. \"Never heard of\nuglifying!\" it exclaimed. \"You know what to beautify is, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alice, doubtfully; \"it\nmeans--to--make--anything--prettier.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" the Gryphon went on, \"if you don't know what to uglify\nis, you _are_ a simpleton.\"\n\nAlice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so\nshe turned to the Mock-Turtle and said, \"What else had you to learn?\"\n\n\"Well, there was Mystery,\" the Mock-Turtle replied, counting off the\nsubjects on his flappers,--\"Mystery, ancient and modern, with\nSeaography; then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel,\nthat used to come once a week: _he_ taught us Drawling, Stretching,\nand Fainting in Coils.\"\n\n\"What was _that_ like?\" said Alice.\n\n\"Well, I can't show it you, myself,\" the Mock-Turtle said: \"I'm too\nstiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.\"\n\n\"Hadn't time,\" said the Gryphon: \"I went to the Classical master,\nthough. He was an old crab, _he_ was.\"\n\n\"I never went to him,\" the Mock-Turtle said with a sigh: \"he taught\nLaughing and Grief, they used to say.\"\n\n\"So he did, so he did,\" said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn, and\nboth creatures hid their faces in their paws.\n\n\"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?\" said Alice, in a hurry\nto change the subject.\n\n\"Ten hours the first day,\" said the Mock-Turtle: \"nine the next, and\nso on.\"\n\n\"What a curious plan!\" exclaimed Alice.\n\n\"That's the reason they're called lessons,\" the Gryphon remarked:\n\"because they lessen from day to day.\"\n\nThis was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little\nbefore she made her next remark. \"Then the eleventh day must have been\na holiday?\"\n\n\"Of course it was,\" said the Mock-Turtle.\n\n\"And how did you manage on the twelfth?\" Alice went on eagerly.\n\n\"That's enough about lessons,\" the Gryphon interrupted in a very\ndecided tone.\n\n\n\nA CLEAR STATEMENT\n\nFrom 'Alice in Wonderland'\n\n\n They told me you had been to her,\n And mentioned me to him:\n She gave me a good character,\n But said I could not swim.\n\n He sent them word I had not gone\n (We know it to be true);\n If she should push the matter on,\n What would become of you?\n\n I gave her one, they gave him two,\n You gave us three or more;\n They all returned from him to you,\n Though they were mine before.\n\n If I or she should chance to be\n Involved in this affair,\n He trusts to you to set them free,\n Exactly as we were.\n\n My notion was that you had been\n (Before she had this fit)\n An obstacle that came between\n Him, and ourselves, and it.\n\n Don't let him know she liked them best,\n For this must ever be\n A secret, kept from all the rest,\n Between yourself and me.\n\n\n\nTHE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER\n\nFrom 'Through the Looking-Glass'\n\n\n The sun was shining on the sea,\n Shining with all his might:\n He did his very best to make\n The billows smooth and bright--\n And this was odd, because it was\n The middle of the night.\n\n The moon was shining sulkily,\n Because she thought the sun\n Had got no business to be there\n After the day was done--\n \"It's very rude of him,\" she said,\n \"To come and spoil the fun!\"\n\n The sea was wet as wet could be,\n The sands were dry as dry.\n You could not see a cloud, because\n No cloud was in the sky.\n No birds were flying overhead--\n There were no birds to fly.\n\n The Walrus and the Carpenter\n Were walking close at hand;\n They wept like anything to see\n Such quantities of sand:\n \"If this were only cleared away,\"\n They said, \"it _would_ be grand!\"\n\n \"If seven maids with seven mops\n Swept it for half a year,\n Do you suppose,\" the Walrus said,\n \"That they could get it clear?\"\n \"I doubt it,\" said the Carpenter,\n And shed a bitter tear.\n\n \"O Oysters, come and walk with us!\"\n The Walrus did beseech.\n \"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,\n Along the briny beach:\n We cannot do with more than four,\n To give a hand to each.\"\n\n The eldest Oyster looked at him,\n But never a word he said:\n The eldest Oyster winked his eye,\n And shook his heavy head--\n Meaning to say he did not choose\n To leave the oyster-bed.\n\n But four young Oysters hurried up,\n All eager for the treat:\n Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,\n Their shoes were clean and neat--\n And this was odd, because, you know,\n They hadn't any feet.\n\n Four other Oysters followed them,\n And yet another four;\n And thick and fast they came at last,\n And more, and more, and more--\n All hopping through the frothy waves,\n And scrambling to the shore.\n\n The Walrus and the Carpenter\n Walked on a mile or so,\n And then they rested on a rock\n Conveniently low:\n And all the little Oysters stood\n And waited in a row.\n\n \"The time has come,\" the Walrus said,\n \"To talk of many things:\n Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--\n Of cabbages--and kings--\n And why the sea is boiling hot--\n And whether pigs have wings.\"\n\n \"But wait a bit,\" the Oysters cried,\n \"Before we have our chat;\n For some of us are out of breath,\n And all of us are fat!\"\n \"No hurry!\" said the Carpenter.\n They thanked him much for that.\n\n \"A loaf of bread,\" the Walrus said,\n \"Is what we chiefly need:\n Pepper and vinegar beside\n Are very good indeed--\n Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,\n We can begin to feed.\"\n\n \"But not on _us_!\" the Oysters cried,\n Turning a little blue.\n \"After such kindness, that would be\n A dismal thing to do!\"\n \"The night is fine,\" the Walrus said:\n \"Do you admire the view?\"\n\n \"It was so kind of you to come!\n And you are very nice!\"\n The Carpenter said nothing but\n \"Cut us another slice:\n I wish you were not quite so deaf--\n I've had to ask you twice!\"\n\n \"It seems a shame,\" the Walrus said,\n \"To play them such a trick,\n After we've brought them out so far,\n And made them trot so quick!\"\n The Carpenter said nothing but--\n \"The butter's spread too thick!\"\n\n \"I weep for you,\" the Walrus said;\n \"I deeply sympathize.\"\n With sobs and tears he sorted out\n Those of the largest size,\n Holding his pocket-handkerchief\n Before his streaming eyes.\n\n \"O Oysters,\" said the Carpenter,\n \"You've had a pleasant run!\n Shall we be trotting home again?\"\n But answer came there none--\n And this was scarcely odd, because\n They'd eaten every one.\n\n\n\nTHE BAKER'S TALE\n\nFrom 'The Hunting of the Snark'\n\n\n They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice--\n They roused him with mustard and cress--\n They roused him with jam and judicious advice--\n They set him conundrums to guess.\n\n When at length he sat up and was able to speak,\n His sad story he offered to tell;\n And the Bellman cried \"Silence! Not even a shriek!\"\n And excitedly tingled his bell.\n\n There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream,\n Scarcely even a howl or a groan,\n As the man they called \"Ho!\" told his story of woe\n In an antediluvian tone.\n\n \"My father and mother were honest, though poor--\"\n \"Skip all that!\" cried the Bellman in haste.\n \"If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Snark--\n We have hardly a minute to waste!\"\n\n \"I skip forty years,\" said the Baker, in tears,\n \"And proceed without further remark\n To the day when you took me aboard of your ship\n To help you in hunting the Snark.\n\n \"A dear uncle of mine (after whom I was named)\n Remarked when I bade him farewell--\"\n \"Oh, skip your dear uncle!\" the Bellman exclaimed,\n As he angrily tingled his bell.\n\n \"He remarked to me then,\" said that mildest of men,--\n \"'If your Snark be a Snark that is right,\n Fetch it home by all means--you may serve it with greens,\n And it's handy for striking a light.\n\n \"'You may seek it with thimbles--and seek it with care;\n You may hunt it with forks and hope;\n You may threaten its life with a railway share;\n You may charm it with smiles and soap--'\"\n\n (\"That's exactly the method,\" the Bellman bold\n In a hasty parenthesis cried:--\n \"That's exactly the way I have always been told\n That the capture of Snarks should be tried!\")\n\n \"'But oh, beamish nephew! beware of the day\n If your Snark be a Boojum! For then\n You will softly and suddenly vanish away,\n And never be met with again!'\n\n \"It is this, it is this, that oppresses my soul\n When I think of my uncle's last words;\n And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl\n Brimming over with quivering curds!\n\n \"It is this, it is this\"--\"We have had that before!\"\n The Bellman indignantly said.\n And the Baker replied: \"Let me say it once more;\n It is this, it is this that I dread!\n\n \"I engage with the Snark--every night after dark--\n In a dreamy delirious fight;\n I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,\n And I use it for striking a light:\n\n \"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,\n In a moment (of this I am sure),\n I shall softly and silently vanish away--\n And the notion I cannot endure!\"\n\n\n\nYOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM\n\nFrom 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'\n\n\n \"You are old, Father William,\" the young man said,\n \"And your hair has become very white;\n And yet you incessantly stand on your head--\n Do you think, at your age, it is right?\"\n\n \"In my youth,\" Father William replied to his son,\n \"I feared it might injure the brain;\n But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,\n Why, I do it again and again.\"\n\n \"You are old,\" said the youth, \"as I mentioned before,\n And have grown most uncommonly fat;\n Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--\n Pray what is the reason of that?\"\n\n \"In my youth,\" said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,\n \"I kept all my limbs very supple\n By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--\n Allow me to sell you a couple.\"\n\n \"You are old,\" said the youth, \"and your jaws are too weak\n For anything tougher than suet;\n Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak:\n Pray, how did you manage to do it?\"\n\n \"In my youth,\" said his father, \"I took to the law,\n And argued each case with my wife;\n And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,\n Has lasted the rest of my life.\"\n\n \"You are old,\" said the youth; \"one would hardly suppose\n That your eye was as steady as ever:\n Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--\n What made you so awfully clever?\"\n\n \"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,\"\n Said his father; \"don't give yourself airs!\n Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?\n Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!\"\n\n\n\n\nCASANOVA\n\n(JEAN JACQUES CASANOVA DE SEINGALT)\n\n(1725-1803)\n\n\nThe unique figure of Casanova stands out as a type of all that was\nmost vicious and most brilliant in the eighteenth century. The\npre-revolutionary philosophies, filtering through society, were\nweakening religious restraints and producing a hypocritical conformity\nto tradition and a new uncertainty which inclined people to present\nenjoyment and epicureanism. But even the court aristocracy, to whom\nself-indulgence was the rule of life, were astounded at the\nunrestraint of Casanova's pleasure-seeking. He professed himself a\nChristian, but during all his vicious career was never influenced by a\nconscientious scruple. In a period when social graces were extolled\nabove all others, when conversation was cultivated as a fine art, and\nwhen the salon was perhaps the greatest power in France, he was\npre-eminent for talent and charm. His physical beauty fascinated both\nmen and women; his fearlessness, often running into a mad bravado\nwhich lost no chance to fight, won him the respect of men. He could be\nwitty in many tongues; he was an adept in fashionable fads of the day;\nwas supposed to have a gift for mesmerism, and to be something of a\nsorcerer.\n\nHe could adapt himself to any society, appearing both as the idol of\nEuropean courts and a boon companion in low taverns. He had countless\nduels and love affairs, and concluded one after another with the same\ncynical heartlessness: always a gay soldier of fortune, experimenting\nwith his various talents; now a diplomat, now an abbe or popular\npreacher, and now a writer of political essays.\n\nWhen Casanova's father, a man of gentle birth, became an actor and\nmarried a pretty actress, Zanetta Farusi, the daughter of an Italian\nshoemaker, he hopelessly alienated his family. Jean-Jacques, their\nfirst child, was born in Venice, and during their professional travels\nwas left there with his grandmother. Her earnest desire was to educate\nthe beautiful and precocious child; and she economized from her scanty\nmeans until she was able to send him to the Seminary of Saint Cyprian\nin Venice. He passed his entrance examinations, and studied there for\na time, exhibiting unusual ability. Then at sixteen he was expelled\nfor a disgraceful intrigue, which would have consigned him to prison\nbut for his mother, whose influence secured him the protection of\nCardinal Acquaviva and a position in his household, which the boy soon\nresigned for a gayer life.\n\nAfter this came a long series of adventurous years, during which he\nvisited Rome, Naples, Constantinople, and other places, and was\nadmitted to many orders of chivalry. During these wanderings he became\nacquainted with Rousseau and Voltaire; visited the court of Frederick\nthe Great; went to Russia, where he was smiled upon by the Empress\nCatharine II. At Versailles, where he was a familiar figure, Louis XV.\nhonored him with a personal interview. But even in a society disposed\nto be lenient to any one who was amusing, Casanova incurred disgrace.\nAfter becoming notorious over Europe as a trickster at cards, and for\nhis dissipations, he returned to Venice in 1755.\n\nThere he was as gay and as dissolute as ever, but in his intervals of\nspare time he wrote a refutation of a work by Amelot de la Houssaye\nupon the condition of the Republic. He had hoped it would reinstate\nhim in public opinion, but it failed to do so, and before long he was\ndenounced to the government as a spy and thrown into prison. In the\n'Recit de sa Captivite' (1788) he himself has told the dramatic story\nof his confinement in the garret of a ducal palace, and of his\nwonderful escape. The hot Italian sun beating down on the leaden roof\nadded to his discomfort, and he was too daring and too ingenious to\nsuffer long in patience. With the aid of an iron bolt which he had\nsharpened, he bored a hole through the wall of his cell and gained\naccess to another prisoner, Father Balbi. For a long time they plotted\ntogether, and at last after many efforts and dangers they extricated\nthemselves by way of the roofs.\n\nThis feat added greatly to his fame. He was feted and courted\neverywhere, and his extravagances set the fashions for years. But in\nspite of the admiration he excited, he was too dangerous a citizen to\nbe allowed long in a place. He was expelled from Varsovia in\nconsequence of a duel. Then Paris, and later Madrid, drove him away.\n\nHis life of excesses had broken his health, when in 1782 he attached\nhimself to the Count of Waldstein, a German prince whom he followed\ninto Bohemia. Soon after, he began the famous 'Memoires,' his chief\nliterary achievement. He wrote several historical works, a translation\nin verse of the Iliad, and many political sketches. Others of his\nwritings, such as 'Eighty Years Spent among the Inhabitants of the\nInterior of the Globe,' show him possessed of a lively imagination.\nBut he evinced especial zest in the preparation of the 'Memoires.' In\na style as audacious as his life, strong and sparkling with wit, he\ntold the strange story of his career. He reflects the social habits of\nhis time, the contemporary point of view.\n\nHe lived on in Bohemia until he was seventy-eight, and then he died at\nDux, retaining to the end what Janin terms \"his marvelous instinct for\nvice and corruption.\"\n\n\n\nCASANOVA'S ESCAPE FROM THE DUCAL PALACE\n\nFrom 'The Escapes of Casanova and Latude from Prison'\n\n\nThe greatest comfort to a man in suffering is the hope of a speedy\nrelease. He sighs for the moment when he shall see the end of his\nwoes; he fancies that his wishes can hasten it on, and would do\nanything on earth to know what hour is fixed for the cessation of his\nmisery: but no one can tell at what moment an event will happen which\ndepends on the determination of another, unless that person has\nannounced it. But the sufferer, who is weak and impatient, is\npredisposed to be superstitious. \"God,\" says he, \"must know the very\nmoment when my pain will cease; and God may permit that it should be\nrevealed to me, never mind how.\" When he has once fallen into this\ntrain of argument, he no longer hesitates to try his fortune by any\nmeans his fancy may dictate, if he is more or less inclined to believe\nin the revelations of the oracle he happens to select. This frame of\nmind is not conspicuously unlike that of the greater number of those\nwho were wont to consult the Pythia, or the oaks of Dodona, or of\nthose who, even in our own day, study the Cabbala, or seek the\nrevelation they hope for in a verse of the Bible or a line of\nVirgil;--this indeed has made the _Sortes Virgilianae_ famous, of which\nmany writers tell us; or finally, of those who are firmly convinced\nthat their difficulties will all be solved by the fortuitous or\npremeditated arrangement of a mere pack of cards.\n\nI was in this state of mind. But not knowing what means to employ to\ncompel Fate to reveal through the Bible the end in store for me--that\nis to say, the hour at which I should recover the incomparable\nblessing of liberty--I resolved to consult the divine poem of Messer\nLudovico Ariosto, 'Orlando Furioso,' which I knew by heart, and in\nwhich I delighted up in my cell. I worshiped the genius of that great\npoet, and thought him far better fitted than Virgil to tell my\nfortune. With this idea I wrote down a question addressed to the\nimaginary intelligence, asking in which canto of Ariosto's poem I\nshould find the day of my deliverance prophesied. Afterwards I\ncomposed an inverted pyramid of the numbers derived from the words in\nthe question, and by subtracting nine from each pair of figures I had\nnine for a remainder. I concluded that the prophecy I sought must be\nin the ninth canto. I pursued the same method to arrive at the line\nand stanza containing the oracle, and I found _seven_ as the number of\nthe stanza, and _one_ for the line.\n\nI took up the poem, my heart beating as though I really had the most\nentire confidence in this oracle. I opened it, turned over the leaves,\nand read these words:--\n\n \"Fra il fin d'Ottobre e il capo di Novembre.\"\n\nThe perfect appropriateness of the line struck me as so remarkable\nthat, though I cannot say that I altogether believed in the oracle,\nthe reader will forgive me if I confess I did my utmost to verify it.\nThe curious part of the matter is, that between the last of October\nand the beginning of November there is but the one instant of\nmidnight; and it was exactly as the clock struck midnight on the 31st\nof October that I quitted my prison, as the reader will presently\nlearn....\n\nThe hour strikes. Hark! the angel!\n\nSoradaci was about to fall on his face, but I assured him that this\nwas superfluous. In three minutes the hole was pierced through; the\nboard fell at my feet, and Father Balbi slid into my arms.\n\n\"Your task is done,\" said I, \"and now mine begins.\"\n\nWe embraced, and he gave me my crowbar and a pair of scissors. I\ndesired Soradaci to trim our beards, but I could not help laughing as\nI saw the creature, open-mouthed, staring at this strange angel, who\nlooked more like a demon. Though utterly bewildered, he cut our beards\nto perfection.\n\nBeing impatient to survey the locality, I desired the monk to remain\nwith Soradaci, for I would not leave him alone, and I went out. I\nfound the hole rather narrow; however, I got through. I got above the\ncell in which the Count lay; I went down and cordially embraced the\nvenerable gentleman. I saw a man of a figure ill suited to surmount\nthe difficulties of such an escape over a steep roof covered with\nsheet lead. He asked me what my plan was, and told me that he thought\nI had been rather heedless in my action.\n\n\"I only want to go on,\" said I, \"step by step to liberty or death.\"\n\n\"If you imagine,\" said he, \"that you can pierce the roof and find a\nway along the leads,--from which, too, you must get down,--I do not\nsee how you can possibly succeed unless you have wings. I have not\ncourage enough to accompany you. I shall stay where I am and pray to\nGod for you.\"\n\nI left him to inspect the outer roof, getting as close as I could to\nthe outer side of the loft. Having succeeded in touching the inside of\nthe rafters at the part where it was lowest, I perched myself on a\nbeam, such as are to be found under the roof of every large palace. I\npoked at the rafters with the end of my bar, and to my joy found them\nhalf-rotten; at each touch the wood fell in dust. Being sure,\ntherefore, that I could make a large enough opening in less than an\nhour, I returned to my cell and spent the next four hours in cutting\nup sheets, counterpanes, and mattress covers, to make ropes of. I took\ncare to tie all the knots myself, to be sure of their firmness, for a\nsingle knot badly tied would have cost us our life. When all was done\nI found we had about a hundred yards of rope. There are certain things\nin every great enterprise which are of the highest importance, and for\nwhich a leader worthy of the name trusts no one.\n\nWhen the rope was finished, I made a bundle of my coat, my silk cloak,\nsome shirts, stockings, and handkerchiefs, and we all three went into\nthe Count's cell. This worthy man first congratulated Soradaci on\nhaving been so lucky as to be put in the same room with me, and being\nso soon enabled to recover his freedom. The man's stupid amazement\nalmost made me laugh. I no longer attempted any concealment, for I had\nthrown off the mask of Tartuffe, which I had found most inconvenient\nwhile this villain had compelled me to wear it. I saw that he was\nconvinced I had deceived him, but he could not understand how; for he\ncould not imagine how I had communicated with the sham angel so as to\nmake him come and go at fixed hours. He was listening eagerly to the\nCount, who declared we were rushing on our fate; and, coward that he\nwas, he was revolving in his mind a scheme for avoiding the perilous\nattempt. I told the monk to collect his things while I went to make\nthe hole in the roof of the loft.\n\nAt two hours after sunset the hole was finished; I had worked the\nrafters to powder, and the opening was twice as large as was needful.\nI could touch the sheet of lead outside. I could not raise it\nsingle-handed, because it was riveted; the friar helped me, and by\npushing the crowbar between the gutter and the sheet of lead I\ndetached it; then raising it on our shoulders, we bent it up high\nenough to allow of our squeezing through the opening. Putting my head\nout to reconnoitre, I saw with dismay how bright the moon was, now in\nthe first quarter. It was a check which we must endure with patience,\nand wait till midnight to escape, when the moon would have gone to\nlight up the Antipodes. On such a glorious night all Venice would be\nout on the Piazza below, and we dared not venture out on the roof; our\nshadows cast on the ground would have attracted attention; our\nextraordinary appearance up there would excite general curiosity, and\nabove all, that of Messer Grande and his spies, the sole guards of\nVenice. Our fine scheme would soon have been disturbed by their odious\ninterference. I therefore decided positively that we were not to creep\nout till the moon had set....\n\nIt was time to be off. The moon had set. I hung half the rope round\nBalbi's neck on one side and his bundle of clothes on the other\nshoulder. I did the same for myself; and both, in our waistcoats with\nour hats on, went to the opening in the roof.\n\n \"And issuing forth we then beheld the stars.\"--DANTE.\n\nI crept out first; Balbi followed me. Soradaci, who had accompanied us\nto the roof, was ordered to pull the sheet of lead down again and then\nto go and pray to his saint. Crawling on my knees on all fours, I\nclutched my crowbar firmly, and stretching as far as I could, I\nslipped it obliquely between the points of the sheets; then, grasping\nthe end of the sheet I had turned up, I dragged myself up to the ridge\nof the roof. The friar, to follow me, inserted the fingers of his\nright hand into the belt of my breeches. Thus I had the double task of\na beast which drags and carries both at once, and that on a steep\nroof, made slippery by a dense fog. Half-way up this dreadful climb,\nBalbi bid me stop, for one of his parcels had fallen, and he hoped it\nmight not have gone further than the gutter. My first impulse was to\ngive him a kick and send him after his bundle; but God be praised, I\nhad enough self-command not to do this, for the punishment would have\nbeen too severe for both of us, since I alone could never have\nescaped. I asked him whether it was the packet of ropes, but as he\nreplied that it was only his bundle, in which he had a manuscript he\nhad found in the loft, and which he had hoped would make his fortune,\nI told him he must take patience; for that a step backwards would be\nfatal. The poor monk sighed, and clinging still to my waist-band, we\nclimbed on again.\n\nAfter having got over fifteen or sixteen sheets of lead with immense\ndifficulty, we reached the ridge, on which I perched myself astride,\nand Balbi did the same. We had our backs to the island of San Giorgio\nMaggiore, and two hundred yards in front of us we saw the numerous\ncupolas of the church of Saint Mark, which is in fact part of the\nDucal Palace; for the church of Saint Mark is, properly speaking, no\nmore than the Doge's chapel, and certainly no sovereign can boast of a\nfiner one. I began by relieving myself of my load, and desired my\ncompanion to follow my example. He tucked his bundle of ropes under\nhim as best he might, but wanting to take off his hat, which\ninconvenienced him, he managed so badly that it rolled from ledge to\nledge, and went to join the bundle of clothes in the canal. My poor\ncomrade was in despair.\n\n\"A bad omen!\" he exclaimed. \"Here I am at once without a shirt,\nwithout a hat, and bereft of a precious manuscript containing a most\ncurious and unknown history of the festivals at the Ducal Palace.\"\n\nI, less disposed to be fierce than I had been when I was climbing,\ncalmly assured him that these two little accidents had nothing so\nextraordinary about them as that a superstitious spirit should regard\nthem as ominous; that I did not think them so, and that they did not\nin the least discourage me.\n\n\"They should serve you, my good fellow,\" said I, \"as a warning to be\nprudent and wise, and to suggest to you that God certainly protects\nus; for if your hat, instead of tumbling to the right, had slipped off\nto the left, we should have been lost. It would have fallen into the\ncourtyard, where the guards must have found it, and it would of course\nhave told them that there must be some one on the roof. We should have\nbeen recaptured at once.\"\n\nAfter sitting some minutes looking about me, I desired the monk to\nremain motionless till I should return, and I made my way forward,\nshuffling along astride on the roof without any difficulty, my bolt in\nmy hand. I spent above an hour going about the roof, examining and\nobserving every corner, but in vain; nowhere did I see anything to\nwhich I could attach a cord. I was in the greatest perplexity. I\ncould not for a moment think of the canal, nor of the palace\ncourtyard, and among the many cupolas of the church I saw nothing but\nprecipitous walls leading to no open space. To get beyond the church\nto the Canonica I should have had to surmount such steep slopes that I\nhad no hope of achieving it, and it was natural that I should reject\nas impossible everything that did not seem feasible. The situation in\nwhich I found myself required daring, but absolutely no rashness. It\nwas such a dilemma as I imagine can have no parallel for difficulty in\nany moral question.\n\nHowever, I had to come to some conclusion: I must either get away or\nreturn to my cell, never probably to leave it again; or again, throw\nmyself into the canal. In this predicament a great deal must be left\nto chance, and I must begin somewhere. I fixed my eyes on a dormer\nwindow on the side towards the canal, and about two-thirds of the way\ndown. It was far enough from the spot we had started from to make me\nthink that the loft it lighted was not connected with the prison I had\nbroken out of. It could light only an attic, inhabited or vacant, over\nsome room in the palace, where, when day should dawn, the doors no\ndoubt would be opened. I was morally certain that the attendants in\nthe palace, even those of the Doge himself, who should happen to see\nus, would be eager to favor our escape rather than place us in the\nhands of justice, even if they had recognized us as the greatest of\nstate criminals; so horrible was the inquisition in their eyes.\n\nWith this idea I decided on inspecting that window; so, letting myself\nslip gently down, I soon was astride on the little roof. Then resting\nmy hands on the edge, I stretched my head out and succeeded in seeing\nand touching a little barred grating, behind which there was a window\nglazed with small panes set in lead. The window did not trouble me,\nbut the grating, slight as it was, seemed to me an insurmountable\ndifficulty, for without a file I could not get through the bars, and I\nonly had my crowbar. I was checked, and began to lose heart, when a\nperfectly simple and natural incident revived my spirit....\n\nIt was the clock of Saint Mark's at this moment striking midnight\nwhich roused my spirit, and by a sudden shock brought me out of the\nperplexed frame of mind in which I found myself. That clock reminded\nme that the morning about to dawn was that of All Saints' Day; that\nconsequently of my saint's day--if indeed I had a patron saint--and\nmy Jesuit confessor's prophecy recurred to my mind. But I own that\nwhat tended most to restore my courage, and really increased my\nphysical powers, was the profaner oracle of my beloved Ariosto:--\n\n \"Between the end of October and the beginning of November.\"\n\nIf a great misfortune sometimes makes a small mind devout, it is\nalmost impossible that superstition should not have some share in the\nmatter. The sound of the clock seemed to me a spoken charm which bade\nme act and promised me success. Lying flat on the roof with my head\nover the edge, I pushed my bar in above the frame which held the\ngrating, determined to dislodge it bodily. In a quarter of an hour I\nhad succeeded; the grating was in my hands unbroken, and having laid\nit by the side of the dormer I had no difficulty in breaking in the\nwindow, though the blood was flowing from a wound I had made in my\nleft hand.\n\nBy the help of my bar I got back to the ridge of the roof in the same\nway as before, and made my way back to where I had left my companion.\nI found him desperate and raging; he abused me foully for having left\nhim there so long. He declared he was only waiting for seven to strike\nto go back to prison.\n\n\"What did you think had become of me?\"\n\n\"I thought you had fallen down some roof or wall.\"\n\n\"And you have no better way of expressing your joy at my return than\nby abusing me?\"\n\n\"What have you been doing all this time?\"\n\n\"Come with me and you will see.\"\n\nHaving gathered up my bundles, I made my way back to the window. When\nwe were just over it I explained to Balbi exactly what I had done, and\nconsulted him as to how we were to get into the loft through the\nwindow. The thing was quite easy for one of us; the other could let\nhim down. But I did not see how the second man was to follow him, as\nthere was no way of fixing the rope above the window. By going in and\nletting myself drop I might break my legs and arms, for I did not know\nthe height of the window above the floor. To this wise argument,\nspoken with perfect friendliness, the brute replied in these words:--\n\n\"Let me down, at any rate, and when I am in there you will have plenty\nof time to find out how you can follow me.\"\n\nI confess that in my first impulse of indignation I was ready to stab\nhim with my crowbar. A good genius saved me from doing so, and I did\nnot even utter one word of reproach for his selfishness and baseness.\nOn the contrary, I at once unrolled my bundle of rope, and fastening\nit firmly under his arm-pits I made him lie flat on his face, his feet\noutwards, and then let him down on to the roof of the dormer. When he\nwas there, I made him go over the edge and into the window as far as\nhis hips, leaving his arms on the sill. I next slipped down to the\nlittle roof, as I had done before, lay down on my stomach, and holding\nthe rope firmly, told the monk to let himself go without fear. When he\nhad landed on the floor of the attic he undid the rope, and I, pulling\nit up, found that the height was above fifty feet. To jump this was\ntoo great a risk. As for the monk, now he was safe after nearly two\nhours of anguish on a roof, where, I must own, his situation was far\nfrom comfortable, he called out to me to throw in the ropes and he\nwould take care of them. I, as may be supposed, took good care not to\nfollow this absurd injunction.\n\nNot knowing what to do, and awaiting some inspiration, I clambered\nonce more to the ridge; and my eye falling on a spot near a cupola,\nwhich I had not yet examined, I made my way thither. I saw a little\nterrace or platform covered with lead, close to a large window closed\nwith shutters. There was here a tub full of wet mortar with a trowel,\nand by the side a ladder, which I thought would be long enough to\nenable me to get down into the attic where my comrade was. This\nsettled the question. I slipped my rope through the top rung, and\ndragged this awkward load as far as the window. I then had to get the\nclumsy mass into the window; it was above twelve yards long. The\ndifficulty I had in doing it made me repent of having deprived myself\nof Balbi's assistance. I pushed the ladder along till one end was on\nthe level of the dormer and the other projected by a third beyond the\ngutter. Then I slid down on to the dormer roof; I drew the ladder\nclose to my side and fastened the rope to the eighth rung, after which\nI again allowed it to slip till it was parallel with the window. Then\nI did all I could to make it slip into the window, but I could not get\nit beyond the fifth rung because the end caught against the inner roof\nof the dormer, and no power on earth could get it any further without\nbreaking either the ladder or the roof. There was nothing for it but\nto tilt the outer end; then the slope would allow it to slide in by\nits own weight. I might have placed the ladder across the window and\nhave fastened the rope to it to let myself down, without any risk; but\nthe ladder would have remained there, and next morning would have\nguided the archers and Lorenzo to the spot where we might still be\nhiding.\n\nI would not run the risk of losing by such an act of imprudence the\nfruit of so much labor and peril, and to conceal all our traces the\nladder must be got entirely into the window. Having no one to help me,\nI decided on getting down to the gutter to tilt it, and attain my end.\nThis in fact I did, but at so great a risk that but for a sort of\nmiracle I should have paid for my daring with my life. I ventured to\nlet go of the cord that was attached to the ladder without any fear of\nits falling into the canal, because it was caught on the gutter by the\nthird rung. Then, with my crowbar in my hand, I cautiously let myself\nslide down to the gutter by the side of the ladder; the marble ledge\nwas against my toes, for I let myself down with my face to the roof.\nIn this attitude I found strength enough to lift the ladder a few\ninches, and I had the satisfaction of seeing it go a foot further in.\nAs the reader will understand, this diminished its weight very\nperceptibly. What I now wanted was to get it two feet further in, by\nlifting it enough; for after that I felt sure that by climbing up to\nthe roof of the dormer once more, I could, with the help of the rope,\nget it all the way in. To achieve this I raised myself from my knees;\nbut the force I was obliged to use to succeed made me slip, so that I\nsuddenly found myself over the edge of the roof as far as my chest,\nsupported only by my elbows.\n\nIt was an awful moment, which to this day I shudder to think of, and\nwhich it is perhaps impossible to conceive of in all its horror. The\nnatural instinct of self-preservation made me almost unconsciously\nlean with all my weight, supporting myself on my ribs, and I\nsucceeded--miraculously, I felt inclined to say. Taking care not to\nrelax my hold, I managed to raise myself with all the strength of my\nwrists, leaning at the same time on my stomach. Happily there was\nnothing to fear for the ladder, for the lucky--or rather the\nunlucky--push which had cost me so dear, had sent it in more than\nthree feet, which fixed it firmly. Finding myself resting on the\ngutter literally on my wrists and my groin, I found that by moving my\nright side I could raise first one knee and then the other on to the\nparapet. Then I should be safe.\n\nHowever, my troubles were not yet over, for the strain I was obliged\nto exert in order to succeed gave me such a nervous spasm that a\nviolent attack of painful cramp seemed to cripple me completely. I did\nnot lose my head, and remained perfectly still till the spasm was\nover, knowing that perfect stillness is the best cure for nervous\ncramps--I had often found it so. It was a frightful moment. A few\nminutes after, I gradually renewed my efforts. I succeeded in getting\nmy knees against the gutter, and as soon as I had recovered my breath\nI carefully raised the ladder, and at last got it to the angle where\nit was parallel with the window. Knowing enough of the laws of\nequilibrium and the lever, I now picked up my crowbar; and climbing in\nmy old fashion, I hauled myself up to the roof and easily succeeded in\ntilting in the ladder, which the monk below received in his arms. I\nthen flung in my clothes, the ropes and the broken pieces, and got\ndown into the attic, where Balbi received me very heartily and took\ncare to remove the ladder.\n\nArm in arm, we surveyed the dark room in which we found ourselves; it\nwas thirty paces long by about twenty wide. At one end we felt a\ndouble door formed of iron bars. This was unpromising, but laying my\nhand on the latch in the middle it yielded to the pressure, and the\ndoor opened. We first felt our way round this fresh room, and then,\ntrying to cross it, ran up against a table with arm-chairs and stools\naround it. We returned to the side where we had felt windows, and\nhaving opened one, by the dim starlight we could see nothing but steep\nroofs between domes. I did not for an instant think of escaping by the\nwindow; I must know where I was going, and I did not recognize the\nspot where we were. So I closed the window, and we went back to the\nfirst room, where we had left our baggage. Quite worn out, I let\nmyself drop on to the floor, and putting a bundle of rope under my\nhead, utterly bereft of all power of body or of mind, I fell into a\nsweet sleep. I gave myself up to it so passively, that even if I had\nknown that death must be the end of it I could not have resisted it;\nand I remember distinctly that the pleasure of that sleep was\nperfectly delicious.\n\n\n\n\nBARTOLOMEO DE LAS CASAS\n\n(1474-1566)\n\n[Illustration: BARTOLOMEO DE LAS CASAS]\n\n\nBartolomeo de las Casas, the Apostle of the Indians, was one of the\nfirst to protest by speech and pen against the hideous cruelties\ninflicted upon native West Indians by the invading Spaniards; and he\nleft in his writings the record of a bondage compared with which negro\nslavery was mild. Bartolomeo, the son of Antonio de las Casas, a\ncompanion of Columbus on his first voyage of discovery, was born in\nSeville in 1474. While yet a student at the University of Salamanca he\nbecame interested in the natives, through a young Indian whom he owned\nas slave. He first visited the New World as one of the followers of\nColumbus in 149-, returning after some years with Nicholas de Ovando,\nthe governor of the Indies. Here his sympathies were fully aroused, as\nhe witnessed the savage treatment of the simple natives and the\nincessant butcheries and slavery in the mines, which were rapidly\ndepopulating the islands. In 1510 he took holy orders, being probably\nthe first priest ordained in the New World.\n\nLas Casas at first was himself a slave-owner, willing to enrich\nhimself by the toil of the red men, though from the very beginning he\nsympathized with their sufferings. But a sudden illumination came to\nhim as he was preparing to preach a sermon on the Feast of Pentecost,\nin 1514, taking for his text the 34th chapter of Ecclesiasticus,\nverses 18 to 22. He awoke to the iniquity of slavery, set free his own\nIndians, and for forty years thereafter devoted himself heart and soul\nto the interests of the red men. It was at times a bitter task and\nmade him many enemies among the invaders, who thought themselves\ncurtailed in their natural rights as the superior race. Happily for\nhis cause, Las Casas had powerful friends in Spain, chief among whom\nwas the Emperor Charles V. The good priest crossed the ocean a dozen\ntimes to see that monarch on Indian affairs, following him even into\nGermany and Austria. Finally in 1547, when past his seventieth year,\nhe settled down in Valladolid, in Spain, but still wrote and talked in\nbehalf of the oppressed race. While on an errand for them to Madrid in\n1566, he died at the ripe age of ninety-two, with bodily faculties\nunimpaired.\n\nThe earliest work of Las Casas, 'A Very Short Account of the Ruin of\nthe Indies,' written in 1542, first disclosed to Europe the cruelties\npracticed beyond the sea. It was frequently reprinted, and made a\ngreat impression. Other short treatises followed, equally powerful and\neffective. They were collected in 1552 and translated into several\nlanguages. His chief work however is a 'General History of the\nIndies,' from 1492 to 1520, begun by him in 1527, unfinished in 1561.\nHe ordered that no portion should be printed until forty years after\nhis death, but it remained in manuscript for three hundred years,\nbeing published at Madrid in 1875. It has been called the corner-stone\nof the history of the American continent. Las Casas possessed\nimportant documents, among them the papers of Columbus, now lost. In\nhis long life, moreover, he knew many of the early discoverers and\nmany statesmen, as Columbus, Cortes, Ximenes, Pizarro, Gattinora, and\nhe was the contemporary of three sovereigns interested in the West\nIndies,--King Ferdinand the Catholic, the Emperor Charles V., and King\nPhilip II. of Spain.\n\nLas Casas is sometimes taxed with having brought negro slavery into\nAmerica. In his profound compassion for the Indians he maintained that\nthe negroes were better fitted for slave labor than the more delicate\nnatives. But the Portuguese had imported African slaves into the\ncolonies long before Las Casas suggested it, while he in time\nrenounced his error, and frankly confesses it in his history.\n\nHe was a large-hearted, large-brained man, unprejudiced in an age of\nbigotry; of unwearied industry and remarkable powers of physical\nendurance that enabled him to live a life of many-sided activities, as\npriest and missionary, colonist, man of business, and man of letters.\nAs a historian he was a keen observer of men and of nature, and\nchronicled with great exactness the social and physical conditions of\nthe countries he traversed. His merits are summed up in the following\nwords by John Fiske, in his 'Discovery of America':--\n\n \"He was one of the best historians of his time, and wrote a\n most attractive Spanish style, quaint, pithy, and nervous,--a\n style which goes straight to the mark and rings like true\n metal. I do not mean to be understood as calling it a\n _literary_ style. It is not graceful like that of great\n masters of expression such as Pascal or Voltaire. It is not\n seldom cumbrous and awkward, usually through trying to say\n too much at once. But in spite of this it is far more\n attractive than many a truly artistic literary style. There\n is a great charm in reading what comes from a man brimful of\n knowledge and utterly unselfish and honest. The crisp\n shrewdness, the gleams of gentle humor and occasional sharp\n flashes of wit, and the fervid earnestness, in the books of\n Las Casas, combine to make them very delightful. It was the\n unfailing sense of humor, which is so often wanting in\n reformers, that kept Las Casas from developing into a\n fanatic.... In contemplating such a life as that of Las\n Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The\n historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which\n is in some respects the most beautiful and sublime in the\n annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and\n then in the course of the centuries God's providence brings\n such a life into this world, the memory of it must be\n cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred\n possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds of such\n men there is no death; the sphere of their influence goes on\n widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit,\n from age to age.\"\n\n\n\nOF THE ISLAND OF CUBA\n\nFrom 'A Relation of the First Voyage'\n\n\nThe Spaniards passed, in the year 1511, into the Island of Cuba, which\ncontains as much ground in length as from Valladolid to Rome. There\nwere formerly fine and flourishing provinces to be seen, filled with\nvast numbers of people, who met with no milder or kinder treatment\nfrom the Spaniards than the rest. On the contrary, they seemed to have\nredoubled their cruelty upon those people. There happened divers\nthings in this island that deserve to be remarked. A rich and potent\nCacique named Hatbuey was retired to the Island of Cuba to avoid that\nslavery and death with which the Spaniards menaced him; and being\ninformed that his persecutors were upon the point of landing in this\nisland, he assembled all his subjects and domestics together, and made\na speech to 'em after this manner:--\"You know,\" said he, \"the report\nthat is spread abroad that the Spaniards are ready to invade this\nisland; and you are not ignorant of the ill usage our friends and\ncountrymen have met with at their hands, and the cruelties they have\ncommitted at Hayei.\" (So Hispaniola is called in their language.)\n\"They are now coming hither with a design to exercise the same\noutrages and persecutions upon us. Are you ignorant,\" says he, \"of the\nill intentions of the people of whom I am speaking?\" \"We know not,\"\nsay they all with one voice, \"upon what account they come hither, but\nwe know they are a very wicked and cruel people.\" \"I'll tell you\nthen,\" replied the Cacique, \"that these Europeans worship a very\ncovetous sort of god, so that 'tis difficult to satisfy him; and to\nperform the worship they render to this idol, they'll exact immense\ntreasures of us, and will use their utmost endeavor to reduce us to a\nmiserable state of slavery, or else to put us to death.\" Upon which he\ntook a box full of gold and valuable jewels which he had with him; and\nexposing it to their view,--\"Here is,\" says he, \"the god of the\nSpaniards, whom we must honor with our sports and dances, to see if we\ncan appease him, and render him propitious to us, that so he may\ncommand the Spaniards not to offer us any injury.\" They all applauded\nthis speech, and fell a-leaping and dancing round the box, till they\nhad quite tired and spent themselves. After which the Cacique Hatbuey,\nresuming his discourse, continued to speak to them in these terms: \"If\nwe keep this God,\" says he, \"till he's taken away from us, he'll\ncertainly cause our lives to be taken from us; and therefore I am of\nthe opinion 'twill be the best way to cast him into the river.\" They\nall approved of this advice, and went all together with one accord to\nthrow this pretended god into the river.\n\nThe Spaniards were no sooner arrived in the Isle of Cuba but this\nCacique, who knew 'em too well, began to think of retreating to secure\nhimself from their fury, and resolved to defend himself by force of\narms if he should happen to meet with them; but he unfortunately fell\ninto their hands; and because he had taken all the precautions he\ncould to avoid the persecutions of so cruel and impious a people, and\nhad taken arms to defend his own life, as well as the lives of his\nsubjects, this was made a capital crime in him, for he was burned\nalive. While he was in the midst of the flames, tied to a stake, a\ncertain Franciscan friar of great piety and virtue took upon him to\nspeak to him of God and our religion, and to explain to him some\narticles of the Catholic faith, of which he had never heard a word\nbefore; promising him eternal life if he would believe, and\nthreatening him with eternal torment if he continued obstinate in his\ninfidelity. Hatbuey, reflecting on the matter as much as the place and\ncondition in which he was would permit, asked the friar that\ninstructed him whether the gate of heaven was opened to the Spaniards;\nand being answered that such of them as were good men might hope for\nentrance there, the Cacique without any further deliberation told him\nhe had no mind to go to heaven, for fear of meeting with such cruel\nand wicked company as they were; but would much rather choose to go to\nhell, where he might be delivered from the troublesome sight of such\nkind of people: to so great a degree have the wicked actions and\ncruelties of the Spaniards dishonored God and his religion in the\nminds of the Americans.\n\nOne day there came to us a great number of the inhabitants of a famous\ncity, situate about ten leagues from the place where we lodged, to\ncompliment us and bring us all sort of provisions and refreshments,\nwhich they presented us with great marks of joy, caressing us after\nthe most obliging manner they could. But that evil spirit that\npossessed the Spaniards put 'em into such a sudden fury against 'em,\nthat they fell upon 'em and massacred above three thousand of 'em,\nboth men and women, upon the spot, without having received the least\noffense and provocation from 'em. I was an eye-witness of this\nbarbarity: and whatever endeavors were used to appease these inhuman\ncreatures, 'twas impossible to reduce 'em to reason; so resolutely\nwere they bent to satiate their brutal rage by this barbarous action.\n\nSoon after this I sent messengers to the most noted Indians of the\nProvince of Havane, to encourage and engage 'em to continue in their\ncountry, and not to trouble themselves to seek remote places to hide\nin; and advised 'em to come to us with assurance of our protection.\nThey knew well enough what authority I had over the Spaniards, and I\ngave 'em my word no injury should be offered 'em: for the past\ncruelties and massacres their countrymen had suffered, had spread fear\nand terror through all the country; and this assurance I gave 'em was\nwith the consent and advice of the captains and the officers. When we\nentered into this province, two-and-twenty of their chiefs came to us,\nand the very next morning the commander of our troops, without any\nregard to the promise that had been made 'em, would needs sentence 'em\nto be burnt, pretending 'twas best to put these people to death,\nbecause they might one time or other use some stratagem to surprise\nand destroy us: and I had all the difficulty in the world to prevent\n'em from throwing 'em into the fire.\n\nThe Indians of Havane, seeing themselves reduced to a state of severe\nslavery, and that there was no remedy left, but they were\nirrecoverably undone, began to take refuge in the deserts and\nmountains to secure themselves if possible from death; some strangled\nthemselves in despair. Parents hanged themselves together with their\nchildren, to put the speedier end to their misery by death. Above two\nhundred Indians perished here after this manner to avoid the cruelty\nof the Spaniards, and abundance of them afterwards voluntarily\ncondemned themselves to this kind of death, hoping thus in a moment to\nput a period to the miseries their persecutors inflicted on 'em.\n\nA certain Spaniard, who had the title of Sovereign in this island and\nhad three hundred Indians in his service, destroyed a hundred and\nsixty of them in less than three months by the excessive labor he\ncontinually exacted of them. The recruits he took to fill up their\nplaces were destroyed after the same manner; and he would in a short\ntime have unpeopled the whole island if death, which took him out of\nthe way, very happily for those poor wretches, had not sheltered 'em\nfrom his cruelties. I saw with my own eyes above six thousand children\ndie in the space of three or four months, their parents being forced\nto abandon 'em, being condemned to the mines. After this the Spaniards\ntook up a resolution to pursue those Indians that were retired into\nthe mountains, and massacred multitudes of 'em; so that this island\nwas depopulated and laid waste in a very little time. And it is a most\nlamentable spectacle to see so fine a country thus miserably ruined\nand unpeopled.\n\n\n\n\nBALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE\n\n(1478-1529)\n\n[Illustration: CASTIGLIONE]\n\n\nThe interest to be found in the literary work of \"il conte Baldassare\nCastiglione\"--in the one prose volume he wrote, 'Il Cortegiano' (The\nCourtier)--arises not only from the historical value it now has, but\nfrom its representing the charming character of a gentleman. And it\ndoes this not merely by intentionally describing the ideal gentleman\nof the fifteenth century, but by unconsciously revealing the character\nof its author. Castiglione was himself distinctively a gentleman.\nWithout eminent abilities or position, his life unmarked by any\nremarkable deeds or any striking events, he yet deserves remembrance\nas making vivid to us those admirable qualities and conditions which\nare the result, in individuals, of the long moral and intellectual\ncultivation of a large group of men and women.\n\nHe was one of the group that made famous the court of Urbino, not at\nthe time of its greatest glory under Duke Frederic II., but just\nafterward, when the duchy was ruled by Frederic's son Guidobaldo--an\nestimable invalid--and the court was presided over by Guidobaldo's\nwife, the much beloved and admired Duchess Elisabetta, one of the\ngreat Gonzaga family. Castiglione's own sketch of this court (see\ntranslation below) renders any other delineation of it supererogatory;\nbut his silence regarding himself personally makes it necessary to\ngather knowledge of his life from other sources. His person is made\nknown to us by Raffael's interesting portrait of him, now in the\nLouvre, painted in 1515. It is a portrait by a friend. Raffael was\nonly five years younger than Castiglione, and their affectionate\nrelations were of long standing.\n\nCastiglione was the son of a valorous soldier who fought by the side\nof the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, but his early youth was\nspent not at Mantua but at Milan, where he received from famous\nscholars--Demetrio Calcondile and his peers--a brilliant classical\neducation, rather than the training one would look for in his father's\nson. His father's death in 1494 obliged him, in those troublous times,\nto seek a protector. As his mother was distantly connected with his\nfather's friends, the rulers of Mantua, it was to them that his eyes\nturned, and in 1499 he was one of the suite of the Marquis on the\noccasion of the triumphal entrance of Louis XII. of France into Milan\nafter his conquest in three weeks of the duchy; a triumph followed by\nthe hideous ten-years' \"caging\" of Lodovico il Moro, Milan's duke.\n\nSuch spectacles as this triumph and this imprisonment, which the boy\nof twenty-one now beheld, were to be familiar to him all his life. The\nking-like pope Alexander VI. and his son Caesar Borgia, the warrior\nJulius II., the Medici Leo X., the soon-dead Adrian VI., and the\nirresolute Clement VII., successively ruled in Rome, or rather dwelt\nin Rome, the Cloaca Maxima of Italy, whose pollution sapped the\nstrength of all the land. The sack of Rome in 1527 was among the last\nof the long series of Italian woes Castiglione witnessed. He was not\nin Italy at that moment. The last five years of his life were spent at\nMadrid as papal nuncio at the court of Charles V. He went thither on\nthe eve of the battle of Pavia, and the imprisonment there of Francis\nI. soon followed; an imprisonment that seems a terrible echo of that\nof the enemy of France a quarter of a century before.\n\n'Il Cortegiano' was written in the intervals of military and\ndiplomatic services, rendered first to Guidobaldo of Urbino and later\nto Frederic of Mantua, the son of Francesco. The book was begun\nprobably about 1514; it received the last touches in 1524, but it was\nnot published until 1528.\n\nThe dialogues that compose the book are feigned to have occurred in\nthe winter of 1506-7. At that time the author was in England, an envoy\nfrom the Duke of Urbino to Henry VII., sent as the Duke's proxy to be\ninstalled as Companion of the Garter. He carried with him splendid\ngifts for the King, fine falcons, beautiful horses, and a picture by\nRaffael--St. George and the Dragon, in which St. George wears \"the\nGarter.\"\n\nCastiglione's public labors had made him well known, when between him\nand his high-born friends there was talk of his marriage with a\ndaughter of the house of Medici; but political influences caused her\nto be given by preference to a Strozzi. Had this alliance been formed,\nCastiglione would have found himself, in later years, the nephew of\ntwo popes and the uncle of a queen of France. But better luck was in\nkeeping for him. In 1516 he had the singular good fortune to make a\nmarriage of tender affection; but his wife died only four years later:\nfrom that time his chief pleasure was in the society of his friends.\n\nThey numbered all the most distinguished Italians of his day; men\nwhose intellectual powers found artistic expression alike in words,\nor the painter's canvas, or the sculptor's marble, or the architect's\nstone: and it is the reflection of this wide and varied companionship\nthat gives charm and also weight to the pages of 'Il Cortegiano.' A\nmore delicate delightfulness comes from the tone of liberal refinement\nwith which the impression is conveyed of singularly ennobling\nintercourse with women.\n\nCastiglione was the contemporary and the friend of the famous\nMarchioness of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna; of the brilliant Isabella\nd'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, whose daughter, the beautiful Duchess\nof Urbino, is immortalized by Titian's many portraits of her, both as\nshe was in youth and in age, and also as in youth he saw her\nidealized. This Duchess of Urbino was the niece of Castiglione's own\nDuchess Elisabetta; and by marriage with the nephew of Guidobaldo she\nbecame the successor of Elisabetta. These great ladies were involved\nby family ties in all the stirring events of their times. Isabella\nd'Este was the aunt of Constable Bourbon and the sister-in-law of\nLucrezia Borgia. Vittoria Colonna's husband was the cousin of the\nfamous Alfonso d'Avalos (Marquis del Vasto) of Spain: and in the\nentangled interests of these personages and of the rulers of Urbino,\nCastiglione was constantly concerned and occupied.\n\nHis counsels were also sought by Giuliano de' Medici--styled, like his\nfather, \"Il Magnifico\"--sitting now, ever, in helpless dignity on his\nSan Lorenzo tomb, \"mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura\"; and by the\nunfortunate Doge of Genoa, Ottaviano Fregoso; or by the participants\nin the learned discussions carried on by Cardinal Bembo, with whom he\nmade a gay excursion to Tivoli in 1516, in company with Raffael and\nthe illustrious Venetian Andrea Navigero and his friend Agostino\nBeazzano, whose portraits on the same canvas are one of Raffael's\nmasterpieces. Another ecclesiastical friend was Cardinal Bibbiena, who\nappears nowhere to more advantage than in a letter to the Marchioness\nof Mantua, describing Castiglione's grief, and that of his friends, at\nthe news that the Marchioness herself had sent them of the death of\nCastiglione's wife. The same year the Cardinal himself died. It was\nthe year of Raffael's death also, and Castiglione felt himself greatly\nbereft. The Italian Bishop of Bayeux, Ludovico Canossa,--papal nuncio\nin France and French ambassador at Venice,--was a cousin of\nCastiglione's mother and in constant relations with the son; and it is\nto him that in what may be called the \"drama\" of 'Il Cortegiano' is\ngayly assigned the task of making the first sketch of \"the perfect\ncourtier\".\n\nFrom such social relations came Castiglione's wide familiarity and\nsound judgment respecting the various worlds of men, of women, and of\nart. The higher qualities his book gives evidence of--the love of\nsimplicity, purity, sincerity, serenity, kindness, courtesy,\nmoderation, modesty, the appreciation of what is graceful, gay,\ndelicate,--these qualities were truly his own: we know not whence he\nderived them.\n\nSomething should be said of the style in which the book is written.\nIts author tells us that one of the principal criticisms made upon it\nwhile it circulated for many years in manuscript, was that its\nlanguage was not the language of Boccaccio, who was then accepted as\nthe model for Italian prose-writers. Castiglione did not bind himself\nto the manner of the Tuscan speech. He was of Lombard birth and habit,\nand he chose--in the faith of which Montaigne is the great\ndefender--the words, the phrases, the constructions that best fitted\nhis thought, no matter whence he gathered them, if only they were\nfamiliar and expressive. He thus gained the force of freedom and the\ngrace of variety, while the customary elegance and the habitual\nlong-windedness of all Italian writers molds his sentences and makes\nthem difficult of translation.\n\nThere have been few translations made of his book; none (published) as\nyet, of any literary value; and Castiglione has not been much known\nout of Italy. One of the few mentions of him in English literature is\nto be found in Donne, Satire v., and it touches on a characteristic\npage of his book, for it notes:--\n\n \"He which did lay\n Rules to make courtiers (he, being understood,\n May make good courtiers, but who courtiers good?)\n Frees from the sting of jests all who in extreme\n Are wretched or wicked.\"\n\nIn his own country Castiglione's fame has always been considerable.\nAriosto--to whose brother Alfonso, \"Messer Alfonso carissimo,\" the\nfour books of 'Il Cortegiano' are dedicated and at whose desire it was\nwritten--Ariosto in his great poem speaks of Castiglione more than\nonce; but a passage in Tasso's dialogue 'Della Corte' does him fit\nhonor:--\"I do not deem that Castiglione wrote for the men of his own\nday only:... the beauty of his writings deserves that in all ages they\nshould be read and praised; and as long as courts shall endure, as\nlong as princes, ladies, and noble gentlemen shall meet together, as\nlong as valor and courtesy shall abide in our hearts, the name of\nCastiglione will be valued.\"\n\n\n\nOF THE COURT OF URBINO\n\nFrom 'Il Cortegiano'\n\n\nOn the slopes of the Apennines, towards the Adriatic Sea, almost in\nthe centre of Italy, there lies (as every one knows) the little city\nof Urbino. Although surrounded by mountains, and rougher ones than\nperhaps some others that we see in many places, it has yet enjoyed\nsuch favor of heaven that the country round about is very fertile and\nrich in crops; so that besides the salubrity of the air, there is\ngreat abundance of everything needful for human life. But among the\ngreatest blessings that can be attributed to it, this I think to be\nthe chief, that for a long time it has ever been ruled by the best of\nlords; insomuch that in the universal calamities of the wars of Italy,\nit still for a space remained exempt. But without seeking further, we\ncan give good proof of this in the glorious memory of the Duke\nFederigo, who in his day was the light of Italy; nor is there lack of\ncredible and abundant witnesses, who are still living, to his\nprudence, humanity, justice, liberality, unconquered courage, and\nmilitary discipline; which are conspicuously attested by his numerous\nvictories, his capture of impregnable places, the sudden swiftness of\nhis expeditions, the frequency with which he put to flight large and\nformidable armies by means of a very small force, and by his loss of\nno single battle whatever; so that we may not unreasonably compare him\nto many famous ancients.\n\nAmong his other praiseworthy deeds, the Duke Federigo built on the\nrugged site of Urbino a palace, regarded by many as the most beautiful\nto be found in all Italy: and he so well furnished it with every\nsuitable thing, that it seemed not a palace but a city in the form of\na palace; and not merely with what is ordinarily used,--such as silver\nvases, hangings of richest cloth of gold and silk, and other similar\nthings,--but for ornament he added an infinity of antique statues in\nmarble and bronze, pictures most choice, and musical instruments of\nevery sort; nor would he admit anything there that was not very rare\nand excellent. Then at very large cost he collected a great number of\nmost excellent and rare books in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, all of\nwhich he adorned with gold and with silver, esteeming this to be the\nsupreme excellence of his great palace.\n\nFollowing at last the course of nature, and already sixty-five years\nold, he died as he had lived, gloriously; and he left as his successor\na little motherless boy of ten years, his only son Guidobaldo. Heir to\nhis father's state, he seemed to be heir also to all his father's\nvirtues, and soon his noble nature gave such promise as seemed not to\nbe hoped for from mortal man; so that men esteemed none among the\nextraordinary deeds of the Duke Federigo to be greater than to have\nbegotten such a son. But envious of so much virtue, fortune thwarted\nthis glorious beginning with all her might; so that before Duke Guido\nreached the age of twenty years he fell ill of the gout, which grew\nupon him with grievous pain, and in a short space of time so crippled\nall his limbs that he could neither stand upon his feet nor move; and\nthus one of the most beautiful and active forms in the world was\ndisfigured and spoiled in tender youth.\n\nAnd not yet content with this, fortune was so adverse to him in all\nhis plans that he could seldom carry to a conclusion anything that he\ndesired; and although he was most wise of counsel and unconquered in\nspirit, it seemed that what he undertook, both in war and in\neverything else, whether small or great, always ended ill for him: and\nproof of this is given in his many and diverse calamities, which he\never bore with such strength of mind that his spirit was never\nvanquished by fortune; nay, scorning her assaults with unbroken\ncourage, he lived in weakness as though strong, and in adversity as\nthough fortunate, with perfect dignity and universal esteem, so that\nalthough he was thus infirm of body, he fought with most honorable\nrank in the service of their Serene Highnesses the Kings of Naples,\nAlfonso and Fernando the Younger; later with Pope Alexander VI., and\nwith the Venetian and Florentine nobles.\n\nAfter the accession of Julius II. to the Pontificate, he was made\nCaptain of the Church; at which time, following his accustomed style,\nabove all else he took care to fill his household with very noble and\nvaliant gentlemen, with whom he lived most familiarly, delighting in\ntheir conversation; wherein the pleasure he gave to others was not\nless than that he received from others, he being well versed in both\nthe learned languages, and uniting affability and agreeableness to a\nknowledge of things without number; and besides this, the greatness of\nhis spirit so animated him that although he could not practice in\nperson the exercises of horsemanship, as he once had done, yet he took\nthe utmost pleasure in seeing them in others; and by his words, now\ncorrecting, now praising each according to desert, he clearly showed\nhow much judgment he had in those matters; wherefore in jousts and\ntournaments, in riding, in the handling of every sort of weapon, as\nwell as in pastimes, games, and music,--in short, in all the exercises\nproper to noble gentlemen,--every one strove so to carry himself as to\nmerit being deemed worthy of such noble fellowship.\n\nAll the hours of the day were assigned to honorable and pleasant\nexercises, as well for the body as for the mind; but since my lord\nDuke was always wont by reason of his infirmity to retire to sleep\nvery early after supper, every one usually betook himself at that hour\nto the presence of my lady Duchess, Elisabetta Gonzaga; where also was\never to be found my lady Emilia Pia, who was endowed with such lively\nwit and sound judgment that, as you know, she seemed the mistress of\nus all, and that every one gained wisdom and worth from her. Here,\nthen, gentle discussions and innocent pleasantries were heard, and on\nthe face of every one a jocund gayety was seen depicted, so that the\nhouse could truly be called the very abode of mirth: nor ever\nelsewhere, I think, was so relished, as once was here, how great may\nbe the sweetness of dear and cherished companionship; for apart from\nthe honor it was to each of us to serve such a lord as he of whom I\nhave just spoken, there was born in the hearts of all a supreme\ncontentment every time we came into the presence of my lady Duchess;\nand it seemed as though this contentment were a chain that held us all\nunited in love, so that never was concord of will or cordial love\nbetween brothers greater than that which here was between us all.\n\nThe same was it among the ladies, with whom there was intercourse most\nfree and honorable; for every one was permitted to talk, sit, jest,\nand laugh with whom he pleased; but such was the reverence paid to the\nwish of my lady Duchess, that this same liberty was a very great\ncheck; nor was there any one who did not esteem it the utmost pleasure\nhe could have in the world to please her, and the utmost pain to\ndisplease her. And thus most decorous manners were here joined with\nthe greatest liberty, and games and laughter in her presence were\nseasoned not only with keenest wit, but with gracious and sober\ndignity; for that purity and loftiness which governed all the acts,\nwords, and gestures of my lady Duchess, bantering and laughing, were\nsuch that she would have been known for a lady of noblest rank by any\none who saw her even but once. And impressing herself thus upon those\nabout her, she seemed to attune us all to her own quality and pitch:\naccordingly each strove to follow this example, taking as it were a\npattern of beautiful behavior from the bearing of so great and\nvirtuous a lady; whose highest qualities I do not now purpose to\nrecount, they not being my theme and being well known to all the\nworld, and far more because I could not express them with either\ntongue or pen; and those that perhaps might have been somewhat hid,\nfortune, as though wondering at such rare virtue, chose to reveal\nthrough many adversities and stings of calamity; so as to give proof\nthat in the tender breast of a woman, in company with singular beauty,\nthere may abide prudence and strength of soul and all those virtues\nthat even among stern men are very rare.\n\nBut continuing, I say that the custom of all the gentlemen of the\nhousehold was to betake themselves straightway after supper to my lady\nDuchess; where, among the other pleasant pastimes and music and\ndancing that continually were practiced, sometimes entertaining\nquestions were proposed, sometimes ingenious games were devised with\none or another as arbiter, in which under various disguises the\ncompany disclosed their thoughts figuratively to whomsoever pleased\nthem best. Sometimes other discussions arose about different matters,\nor biting retorts passed lightly back and forth; often _imprese_, as\nwe now call them, were displayed. And in these verbal contests there\nwas wonderful diversion, the household being (as I have said) full of\nvery noble talents; among whom (as you know) the most famous were my\nlord Ottaviano Fregoso, his brother Messer Federigo, the Magnifico\nGiuliano de' Medici, Messer Pietro Bembo, Messer Cesare Gonzaga, the\nCount Ludovico da Canossa, my lord Gaspar Pallavicino, my lord\nLudovico Pio, my lord Morello da Ortona, Pietro da Napoli, Messer\nRoberto da Bari, and countless other very noble gentlemen. Moreover\nthere were many who, though usually they did not remain there\nconstantly, yet spent most of the time there; like Messer Bernardo\nBibbiena, the Unico Aretino, Joan Cristoforo Romano, Pietro Monte,\nTerpandro, Messer Nicolo Frisio; so that there always flocked thither\npoets, musicians, and all kinds of agreeable men, and the most eminent\nin ability that were to be found in Italy.\n\n\n\n\nCATO THE CENSOR\n\n(234-149 B.C.)\n\n\nFor many reasons, Cato \"the Censor\" can hardly be wholly ignored in\nany adequate general view of literature. If we look to the chance of\nsurvival as a test of vitality, his practical and juiceless book on\nAgriculture is the oldest volume of Latin prose extant; though we can\nhardly speak of it as still existing in the form given it by Cato. It\nappears to have been cruelly \"modernized\" in outward form about the\ntime of Augustus. Again, the sturdy old supporter of Roman simplicity\nwas the first Italian to publish a collection of orations. A hundred\nand fifty speeches were known to Cicero. Fragments of eighty still\nsurvive; though in many cases they are represented merely by citations\ngiven incidentally by some late grammarian, to prove the existence of\nsome rare word or antiquated form. Again, the 'Origines' of Cato would\nnot only have afforded us, if preserved, welcome light upon the\nbeginnings of Rome and many other Italian cities, but a political and\nmilitary history, brought down to Cato's own day, and especially\nvaluable for its fearless treatment of recent events. Indeed, his own\nactual speeches were taken up into the history, and one of them, as\npartly preserved by Aulus Gellius, furnishes the best example we have\nof the straightforward unadorned oratory of early Rome. There is\nreason to believe, even, that Cato left what we may fairly call an\nencyclopaedia,--dedicated to, and compiled for, his son. At any rate,\nhe wrote largely--not to mention works already alluded to--on\neloquence, medicine, the military art, etc.\n\nYet it must be confessed that Cato illustrates, as strikingly as any\nfigure that could be selected, how little at home the true literary\nartist would have found himself in early Latium, if a perverse fate\nhad made it possible for him to be born there, or to stray thither, at\nall. Even his figure and face were repellent enough to stand between\nSocrates and Samuel Johnson, as the most familiar ugly old men upon\nthe stage of the world's life.\n\n \"Porcius, fiery-haired, gray-eyed, and snarling at all\n men,--\"\n\nsays the unforgiving satirist, is unwelcome even when dead, to\nPersephone in Hades! No authentic portrait-statue of him exists.\nIndeed these Roman busts and figures, especially in the earlier time,\nwere the work of Greek artists, and the likelihood of his giving a\nsitting to one of that race is exceedingly small.\n\nThe only work of Cato's which from its title might seem to have had a\npoetic form was the 'Carmen de Moribus.' It seems to have been a\neulogy upon old Roman simplicity. Not only are the extant fragments in\nprosaic prose, but the most famous of them declares, with evident\nregret over his own gentler days of degeneracy: \"Their custom was to\nbe dressed in public respectably, at home so much as was needful. They\npaid more for horses than for cooks. The poet's art was in no honor.\n_If a man was devoted to it_, or applied himself to conviviality, _he\nwas called a vagabond_!\"\n\nIndeed, Cato's activity in literature probably had for its chief end\nand aim to resist the incoming tide of Greek philosophy and of\nrefinement generally; he is the very type of Horace's \"laudator\ntemporis acti,\" \"the eulogist of a bygone time\": that crude heroic\ntime when Dentatus, hero of three triumphs, ate boiled turnips in his\nchimney-corner, and had no use for Macedonian gold.\n\nWhether there was any important mass of ballads or other purely\nnational Roman or Latin literature in that elder day has been much\ndebated. The general voice of scholars is against Niebuhr and\nMacaulay. There is every indication that the practical, unimaginative\nLatin plowmen and spearsmen received the very alphabet of every art\nfrom vanquished Hellas. Much of this same debate has turned on a\nfragment from Cato. Cicero reports:--\"In his 'Origines' Cato said that\nit had been a custom of the forefathers, for those who reclined at\nbanquet to sing to the flute the praises and merits of illustrious\nheroes.\" The combination of conviviality and song in this passage\ntempts us to connect it with the scornful words from Cato's own\n'Carmen,' already cited! Cato was half right, no doubt. The simple\ncharm and vigor of rustic Latium were threatened; Greek vice and\nOriental luxury were dangerous gifts: but his resistance was as\nhopeless as Canute's protest to the encroaching waves. That this\nresistance was offered even to the great Greek literature itself, is\nunquestionable.\n\n \"I will speak of those Greeks in a suitable place, son\n Marcus, telling what I learned at Athens, and what benefit it\n is to look into their books,--not to master them. I shall\n prove them a most worthless and unteachable (!) race. Believe\n that this is uttered by a prophet: whenever that folk imparts\n its literature, it will corrupt everything.\"\n\nThe harsh, narrow, intolerant nature of Cato is as remote as could\nwell be from the scholarly or literary temper. Even his respectful\nbiographer Plutarch bursts out with indignant protest against the\nthrifty advice to sell off slaves who had grown old in service.\nIndeed, most of Cato's sayings remind us of some canny old Scot,\nor--it may be politer to say--of a hard-headed Yankee farmer, living\nout the precepts of Poor Richard's philosophy.\n\n\"Grip the subject: words will follow,\" is his chief contribution to\nrhetoric. Another has, it must be confessed, more of Quintilian's\nflavor: \"An orator, son Marcus, is a good man skilled in speaking.\" He\nis most at home however upon his farm, preaching such familiar\neconomies as \"Buy not what you need, but what you must have: what you\ndo not need is dear at a penny.\" The nearest approach to wit is but a\nsarcastic consciousness of human weakness, like the maxim \"Praise\nlarge farms, but till a small one\"; the form of which, by the way, is\nstrikingly like the advice given long before by a kindred spirit, the\nAscraean farmer Hesiod:--\n\n \"Praise thou a little vessel, and store thy freight in a\n large one!\"\n\nEven the kindness of Cato has a bitter flavor peculiarly Roman. When\nthe great Greek historian Polybius and his fellow exiles were finally\npermitted to return to their native land, Cato turned the scale toward\nmercy in the Senate with the haughty words, \"As though we had nothing\nto do, we sit here discussing whether some old Greeks shall be carried\nto their graves here or in Achaia!\" There was a touch of real humor,\nand perhaps of real culture too, in his retort when Polybius asked in\naddition for the restoration of civic honors held in Greece seventeen\nyears agone. \"Polybius,\" he said, with a smile, \"wishes to venture\nagain into the Cyclops's cave, because he forgot his cap and belt.\" A\nfew touches like this permit us to like, as well as to admire, this\ngrim and harsh pattern of old simplicity.\n\nWhether \"Cato learned Greek at eighty\" as a grudging concession to the\nspirit of the age, or to obtain weapons from the foe's own armory\nwherewith to combat his influence, we need not argue. Indeed, it is\nnearly certain that any special study at that time could have been\nonly a revival of \"what he learned at Athens\" many years earlier.\n\nIt is however a supreme touch of irony in Cato's fate, that he\nrendered, doubtless unconsciously, a greater service to Hellenistic\nculture in Rome than did even his illustrious younger contemporary\nScipio AEmilianus, the patron of Terence and the generous friend of\nPolybius; for it was our Cato who brought in his train from Sardinia\nthe gallant young soldier afterward known as the poet Ennius,--the\ncreator of the Latin hexameter, of the artistic Roman epic, and in\ngeneral the man who more than any other made Greek poetry, and even\nGreek philosophy, well known and respected among all educated Romans.\n\nCato is chiefly known to us through Plutarch, whose sketch shows the\ntolerance of that beloved writer toward the savage enemy of Hellenism.\nThe charming central figure of Cicero's dialogue on 'Old Age' takes\nlittle save his name from the bitter, crabbed octogenarian, who was\nstill adding to his vote on any and all subjects, \"Moreover, Senators,\nCarthage must be wiped out.\" All the world admires stubborn courage,\nespecially in a hopeless cause. We, the most radical and democratic of\npeoples, especially admire the despairing stand of a belated\nconservative. The peculiar virtues of the stock were repeated no less\nstrikingly in the great-grandson, Cato of Utica, and make their name a\nsynonym forevermore of unbending stoicism. The phrase applied by a\nlater Roman poet to Cato of Utica may perhaps be quoted no less\nfittingly as the epitaph of his ancestor:--\n\n \"The gods preferred the victor's cause, but Cato the\n vanquished;\"\n\nfor in spite of him, the Latin literature which has come down to us\nmay be most truly characterized as \"the bridge over which Hellenism\nreaches the modern world.\"\n\n\n\nON AGRICULTURE\n\nFrom 'De Agricultura.'\n\n\n [The following extract gives a vivid glimpse of the life on a\n Latian farm. The Roman gentleman may be regarded as an\n \"absentee landlord,\" giving this advice to his agent. The\n \"family\" is, of course, made up of slaves.]\n\nThese shall be the bailiff's duties. He shall keep up good discipline.\nThe holidays must be observed. He shall keep his hands from other\npeople's property, and take good care of his own. He shall act as\numpire for disputes in the family. If any one is guilty of mischief,\nhe shall exact return in good measure for the harm done. The family is\nnot to suffer, to be cold, to be hungry. He is to keep it busy, as\nthus he will more easily restrain it from mischief and thieving. If\nthe bailiff does not consent to evil-doing there will be none. If he\ndoes allow it, the master must not let it go unpunished. For kindness\nhe is to show gratitude, so that the same one may be glad to do right\nin other matters. The bailiff must not be a saunterer; he must always\nbe sober; he mustn't go out to dinner. He must keep the family busy;\nmust see to it that the master's commands are carried out. He mustn't\nthink he knows more than the master. The master's friends he must\ncount as his own. He is to pay no attention to any one, unless so\nbidden. He is not to act as priest except at the Compitalia or at the\nhearthside. He is to give no one credit save at the master's orders.\nWhen the master gives credit he must exact payment. Seed-corn, kitchen\nutensils, barley, wine, oil, he must lend to no one. He may have two\nor three families from whom he borrows, and to whom he lends, but no\nmore. He must square accounts with his master often. The mechanic, the\nhireling, the sharpener of tools, he must never keep more than a day.\nHe mustn't buy anything without the master's knowledge, nor hide\nanything from the master, nor have any hanger-on. He should never\nconsult a soothsayer, prophet, priest, or Chaldean.... He should know\nhow to do every farm task and should do it often, without exhausting\nhimself. If he does this, he will know what is in the minds of the\nfamily and they will work more contentedly. Besides, if he works he\nwill have less desire to stroll about, and be healthier, and sleep\nbetter. He should be the first to get up and the last to go to bed;\nshould see that the country house is locked up, that each one is\nsleeping where he belongs, and that the cattle are fed.\n\n\n\nFROM THE 'ATTIC NIGHTS' OF AULUS GELLIUS\n\n\n [The extract given below, as will be seen, is quoted for the\n most part not from Cato but from Aulus Gellius. However, the\n practice of Gellius on other occasions where we are able to\n compare his text with the original, indicates that he merely\n modernized Cato's phraseology. In many cases such changes\n probably make no difference at all in the modern rendering.]\n\nMarcus Cato, in his book of 'Origins,' has recorded an act of Quintus\nCaedicius, a military tribune, really illustrious, and worthy of being\ncelebrated with the solemnity of Grecian eloquence. It is nearly to\nthis effect:--The Carthaginian general in Sicily, in the first Punic\nwar, advancing to meet the Roman army, first occupied some hills and\nconvenient situations. The Romans, as it happened, got into a spot\nopen to surprise, and very dangerous. The tribune came to the consul,\npointing out the danger from the inconvenience of the spot, and the\nsurrounding enemy. \"I think,\" says he, \"if you would save us, you must\nimmediately order certain four hundred to advance to yonder wart\" (for\nthus Cato indicated a rugged and elevated place) \"and command them to\ntake possession of it; when the enemy shall see this, every one among\nthem that is brave and ardent will be intent on attacking and\nfrightening them, and will be occupied by this business alone, and\nthese four hundred men will doubtless all be slain;--you, whilst the\nenemy shall be engaged in slaughter, will have an opportunity of\nwithdrawing the army from this place: there is no other possible\nmethod of escape.\"\n\nThe consul replied that the advice appeared wise and good. \"But whom,\"\nsays he, \"shall I find, that will lead these four hundred men to that\nspot against the battalions of the enemy?\"--\"If,\" answered the\ntribune, \"you find no one else, employ me in this dangerous\nenterprise; I offer my life to you and my country.\"\n\nThe consul thanked and praised him. The tribune, with his four hundred\nmen, advanced to death. The enemy, astonished at their boldness,\nwaited to see where they were going; but when it appeared that they\nwere marching to take possession of the hill, the Carthaginian general\nsent against them the ablest men of his army, both horse and foot. The\nRoman soldiers were surrounded, and being surrounded, fought; the\ncontest was long doubtful, but numbers at length prevailed; the four\nhundred, to a man, were either slain with the sword or buried under\nmissile weapons. The consul, in the interval of the engagement,\nwithdrew his troops to a spot high and secure, but the event which\nhappened to this tribune who commanded the four hundred, I shall\nsubjoin, not in my own but Cato's words: \"The immortal gods gave the\nmilitary tribune a fortune suitable to his valor: for thus it\nhappened, when he was wounded in every other part, his head alone was\nunhurt, and when they distinguished him amongst the dead, exhausted\nwith wounds, and breathing with difficulty from loss of blood, they\nbore him off. He recovered, and often afterwards performed bold and\neminent services to his country; and this exploit of his detaching\nthese troops preserved the remainder of the army. But the place where\nthe same deed is done, is of great importance. Leonidas of Lacedaemon,\nwhose conduct was the same at Thermopylae, is extolled; on account of\nhis virtues all Greece celebrated his glory, and raised his name to\nthe highest degree of eminence, testifying their gratitude for his\nexploit by monuments, trophies, statues, panegyrics, histories, and\nother similar means. But to this tribune of the people, who did the\nsame thing, and saved his country, small praise has been assigned.\"\n\n\n\n\nJACOB CATS\n\n(1577-1660)\n\n[Illustration: JACOB CATS]\n\n\nThe life of Jacob Cats falls within the golden age of Dutch\nliterature, represented in the north by Hooft, Roemer Visscher, and\nJoost van den Vondel, and in the south by the Zeeland circle of poets,\namong whom Cats was undoubtedly the greatest. There have been times\nwhen Cats's was the one name among Dutch poets; in homes where no\nother books were found, one might at least be sure of finding the\nBible and \"Father Cats.\" But it is doubtful whether he would be\nconsidered great outside of Holland. He is the most prosaic of poets,\nhas limited power of language and a still more limited choice of\nversification; with these drawbacks he is, however, most\ncharacteristically Dutch, partly on account of his practical moral\nteachings and partly on account of the monotonous tic-tac of his\nverse. The erection of a monument in his honor in his native city, and\nthe painting of his portrait by Rembrandt in 1635, were therefore\nwell-deserved tributes to a man strangely representative of his\nnation. Yet, even in Holland, voices have been raised against his\npopularity. Busken Huet has called him \"a miserable character, a\npersonified mediocrity, a vulgar and vulgarizing spirit.\"\n\nJacob Cats, the youngest of four children, was born in Brouwershaven\non the 10th of November, 1577. His mother died when he was only a few\nyears old, and his father, member of the council in Brouwershaven,\nsoon gave his children a stepmother. Cats praises her \"good deeds and\ngood management\" in his verses; but it would seem as if her management\nwere not in accordance with what the family considered beneficial to\nthe children. One of the uncles adopted little Jacob, and sent him to\nthe school of Master Dirk Kemp in Zierikzee. Here he met a young boy\nfrom Brabant who was cultivating poetry, and their daily comradeship\nawakened the same tastes in Cats. Master Kemp was a man who, although\nof good intentions, had not the power to carry them out; Jacob's uncle\naccordingly took him out of school and sent him to the University of\nLeyden to study law.\n\nFrom Leyden he went to Orleans, where he took his degree, and then to\nParis. When he had been here for some time, his uncle thought it\nwisest to call him back; and Cats's career dates from his return to\nThe Hague, where he settled as a lawyer. Very soon after he had taken\nup his practice he succeeded in saving a woman accused of witchcraft,\nand won the case of a young man who, in defending his father from a\nmurderous attack, had killed the assailant. These cases called\nattention to Cats; he soon made a name for himself. His activity was\nthen suddenly interrupted by a severe illness. He was forced to leave\nthe damp climate of Holland, and went to England to seek the counsel\nof Queen Elizabeth's famous physician Butler. The treatment gave him\nno relief, however; and he did not improve until after his return to\nHolland, where he met a learned alchemist, to whose skill he ascribed\nhis cure. In 1603 he moved to Middelburg, and began life with new\nstrength. He tells in one of his poems of his meeting in the French\nchurch with a young girl, with whom he fell in love at first sight; of\nhis growing affection for her and his intention to marry her; of the\nreport that her father had just lost all his money in a speculation;\nand he confesses with a most naive and rather cynic frankness:--\n\n \"For her in very truth, with but the least of cause\n And with a joyful heart, I'd given up the ghost.--\n Look ye, this evil lot that to the father fell\n Has in an instant's time my heart of love bereft!\"\n\nImmediately after this incident, Cats married Elizabeth van\nValkenburg, a rich girl from Antwerpen. Her good sense, faithfulness,\nand housewifely virtues found a warm expression in the following\nwords:--\n\n \"She was a worthy woman,\n A foundation for a home, a model of truth.\"\n\nThis period of Cats's life, almost coincident with the twelve-years'\narmistice ending in 1621, when the war with Spain was resumed, was one\nof varied activity. Aside from the duties of his practice, he gave\nmuch time to the diking of grounds neglected during the war, now in\ngreat danger from the sea; and while at his country-place Grijpskerke\nnear Middelburg, where his \"flock of children played under the trees,\"\nhe wrote the poems 'Emblemata of Sinnebeelden' (Emblemata or Emblems);\n'Maeghdeplicht' (Maiden Duty), in 1618; 'Selfstryt' (Inward Strife),\n1620; 'Toonel der Mannelycke Achtbaerheyd' (Scene of Manly\nRespectability), and 'Houwelyck' (Marriage).\n\nWith the beginning of the war his own peace was at an end. Several of\nthe grounds reclaimed from the sea were once more flooded to prevent\nthe advance of the enemy. In 1621 he accepted the office of pensionary\nof Middelburg, his first step toward official statesmanship. In 1623\nhe was elected pensionary of Dordrecht, and although he hesitated in\nleaving Zeeland, he finally decided to accept the office. In 1625 he\nadded to his duties those of Curator of Leyden University. His\nliterary work was consequently laid aside.\n\nIn 1627 Cats accompanied Albert Joachimi as ambassador to London to\nopen negotiations for a navigation treaty. He was only partly\nsuccessful in his mission, but was met with much consideration by\nCharles I., who decorated him with the order of St. Jovis. Shortly\nafter his return he lost his wife after a brief illness.\n\nWhile he was writing 'Trouwring' (Wedding Ring), a collection of epic\nand lyric poems, he was elected Secretary of State in 1636, and in\n1645 Keeper of the Great Seal and Governor. But he had the experience\nin his public life that a crown may often be a crown of thorns; and in\n1651 he begged to be released from his burdensome office. His demand\nwas granted, and on this occasion Cats fell on his knees in the\npresence of the States-General and thanked God for taking away his\nheavy burden. He was once more persuaded to join an embassy to\nEngland. Cromwell had meanwhile come to power; Cats and his\nfellow-travelers returned with but little accomplished, and the old\nstatesman and poet saw himself free to spend the last years of his\nlife on his place Zorgvliet, which he had built outside of The Hague\non the way to Scheveningen, in the midst of the Dunes. Although he may\nnot have been a great statesman, he had felt the responsibility of his\ncalling. He was never quite equal to it, and often felt himself\nhelpless and small against the encroachment of the Powers. But honesty\nand patriotism were his to the fullest extent.\n\nThe last eight years of his life he spent in Zorgvliet in undisturbed\npeace. He returned to his literary labors and wrote 'Onderdom en\nBuitenleven' (Age and Country Life), 'Hofgedachtess' (Court Thoughts),\nand his rhymed autobiography 'Twee-entaghtig-jarig Leven' (A Life of\nEighty-two Years). He seems to have kept his warm interest and joy in\nlife to the very last.\n\n\n\nFEAR AFTER THE TROUBLE\n\n\n Awhile ago I read a tale methinks is curious.\n Perhaps to every one the story may be useful;\n Therefore in timeliness unto the light I drag it,\n In hope that all who read, in it will find a pleasure.\n A lord once lived of old, whose joy it was to wander\n In field and flowery mead, quite to his heart's contentment.\n A horse he had withal, so sage that, slept the rider,\n It home would wisely go, without the knight to waken.\n And so it came to pass that one day forthward faring,\n To dine, the cavalier by a good friend was bidden.\n\n He met with welcome glad; good wine went freely flowing.\n At last, for all such cheer, the guest must take his leave.\n Himself then he prepared to climb into his saddle,\n And turned his beast about, that home were soon attained.\n The day was bleak and raw; the sun of light was chary;\n Through clouds before its face, a pallid light descended.\n The wise steed careful stepped onward along the highway,\n Its sober rider borne, as custom was, unwearied.\n Anon the usual drowse closed up the rider's eyelids:\n His beast walked calmly on, in faithfulness of service;\n The man, profoundly sleeping, traveled as he was wonted;\n The time at last brought near when he should reach his dwelling.\n\n But lo! a friend is met, who questions him in wonder:--\n \"How possible it was his steed had brought him thither?\"\n The knight responded straight--\"Why, I the way have ridden\n That, during seven years, I constantly have come;\n My beast on which I sit hath borne me duly houseward--\n The midnight's dark itself makes not his foot unsteady.\"\n \"How, friend?\" his questioner cried, \"even when _the bridge_ is\n broken?\n The stream to cross at all, no other means I know:\n This wondrous horse of thine old Perseus must have owned,\n Who fought the dragon once, and cut its head to pieces.\n Things sure are as they were! You came not flying hither!\n It seems to me, belike, a ghost has been your cheater.\n To take it otherwise, the joke to me seems pointless.\n Not possible it is, this story that you tell me.\n But that o'er such a thing no wrangling be between us,\n Come to the bridge with me; I gladly will be escort.\n\n The spot and fact themselves, in proof I straight will disclose,\n That you may note how ill goes with your word the matter.\"\n Whereto so long a speech? The Knight was well persuaded;\n The flood is reached again, the truth of things lies open!\n Bridge is there none indeed--rests but a strip of planking,\n Crossing the rushing wave, narrow and all unsteady.\n The foot of man must needs with prudence o'er it tiptoe,\n The nerve and will be firm to reach that further goal.\n The foot that is not true, that left or right shall waver,\n Drowns in the flood below the passenger unlucky.\n When now the man of naps marks all at once the bridge,\n Notes well the narrow path, marks the too slender footway,\n His shock in truth is great; loud his poor heart goes beating.\n In fear and shudders cold, the scene he stands and pictures;\n Sees with a frightened eye just how his path has served him.\n And more and more his soul sickens with tardy terror,\n More to his heart the blood, driven away, goes rushing;--\n That hour of fear to him brought him an endless illness.\n\n Look now, how odd it seems! He well in peace had ridden,\n Suffering no mishap, spared from the thing all mischief--\n Utterly downcast is, whereas his danger's over!\n Fear makes him sick at heart, deep in his being centred.\n Questions now any one what be this tale's life-lesson?\n Him shall I gladly give what in it lies, methinks;\n Speak out as best I can what as a maxim's plainest:--\n Friendly is never he sparing of bread and counsel.\n The man who rode his way safely and lost in slumber,\n He unto whom occurred just this strange bit of fortune,\n Like is he (it meseems) unto the lustful mortal,\n Evil in earthly course, given to sottish living,\n Wandering on, shut-eyed, lost in the way of pleasure,\n Taking no slightest notice of the abyss so open:\n Never with heed made blessed, not with his conscience warned:\n How at his side is Death, prompt to cut off the living!\n But with our Lord God's grace, suddenly on him bestowed,\n Opening wide his eye--then, not till then, he's awakened.\n Terror absorbs his soul, holy the fear that takes it;\n Now is the sinner roused, sees for the first his doings.\n Wondering see him stand, uttering loud his outcry:--\n \"Awful has been my blindness, dreadful my soul's delusion.\n How could I be so tricked? how could my sleep so grip me?\n I who, in touch with death, careless my ease was taking!\"\n Happy in truth the man fallen in no such peril,\n Since with a careful eye watches he every footstep,\n Blessed in that God himself insight to him has granted\n What was his danger to feel; how he has made escapement.\n\n Translation through the German by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.\n\n\n\n\"A RICH MAN LOSES HIS CHILD, A POOR MAN LOSES HIS COW\"\n\n\n Come hither, pray, O friends! Let me my sorrow tell you.\n Wordless such loss to bear, my heart indeed endures not:\n All that the soul downweighs seems to a man less bitter,\n If to the friendly ear sorrow can be but uttered.\n Dead is my neighbor's child: dead is my only cow.\n Comfort has fled from him; fled from me every joying.\n So do we sorrow, both, reft of our peace each bosom:\n He that his child is dead--I that my cow is taken.\n Look you now, friends! how strange ay, and how sad Fate's dealings!\n I well had spared a child--one cow he well had wanted.\n Turn things about, thou Death! Less evil seem thy doings.\n Full is my house--too full: surely is full his cow-house!\n Death, take his stalls for prey, or choose from out my seven!\n There have you, Death, full room; less to us too the trouble.\n Certain the pain's forgot--ay, and forgotten quickly,\n When, in the greater herd, one little wolf's a robber!\n What do I murmur thus? Ever is Death one earless.\n Lost on _him_ good advice, argument on him wasted.\n Onward he moves, this Death, pallid and wholly blindly.\n Oftenest he a guest just where his call's least needed.\n Ah, who can calm my grief; who, pray, shall still my neighbor's?\n Just as we would not choose, so unto each it happens!--\n He who is rich must lose all that means nearest heirship,\n I, the poor man, O God! stripped of my one possession!\n\n Translation through the German by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.\n\n\n\n\nCATULLUS\n\n(84-54 B.C.?)\n\nBY J. W. MACKAIL\n\n[Illustration: VALERIUS CATULLUS]\n\n\nThe last thirty years of the Roman Republic are, alike in thought and\naction, one of the high-water marks of the world's history. This is\nthe age of Cicero and of Julius Caesar. This brief period includes the\nconquest of Gaul, the invasion of Britain, the annexation of the\nAsiatic monarchies founded by Alexander's marshals; the final collapse\nof the Roman oligarchy which had subdued the whole known world; the\ndevelopment of the stateliest and most splendid prose that the world\nhas ever seen or is ever likely to see; and lastly, a social life\namong the Roman upper classes so brilliant, so humane, so intimately\nknown to us from contemporary historians, poets, orators,\nletter-writers, that we can live in it with as little stretch of\nimagination as we can live in the England of Queen Anne. Among the\nforemost figures of this wonderful period is Valerius Catullus, the\nfirst of Latin lyric poets, and perhaps the third, alongside of Sappho\nand Shelley, in the supreme rank of the lyric poets of the world.\n\nHe represents in his life and his genius the fine flower of his age\nand country. He was born at Verona of a wealthy and distinguished\nfamily, while Italy was convulsed by the civil wars of Marius and\nSulla; he died at the age of thirty, while Caesar was completing the\nconquest of Gaul, and the Republic, though within a few days of its\nextinction, still seemed full of the pride of life. The rush and\nexcitement of those thrilling years is mirrored fully in the life and\npoetry of Catullus. Fashion, travel, politics, criticism, all the\nthousandfold and ever-changing events and interests of the age, come\nbefore us in their most vivid form and at their highest pressure, in\nthis brief volume of lyrics. But all come involved with and\novershadowed by a story wholly personal to himself and immortal in its\nfascination: the story of an immense and ill-fated love that \"fed its\nlife's flame with self-substantial fuel,\" and mounted in the morning\nglories of sunrise only to go down in thunder and tempest before noon.\n\n\nThere are perhaps no love poems in the world like these. Of Sappho,\nseemingly the greatest poet of her sex, we can only dally with surmise\nfrom mutilated fragments. No one else in the ancient world comes into\nthe account. The Middle Ages involved love inextricably with\nmysticism. When Europe shook the Middle Ages off, it had begun to\nthink. Exquisite reflections on love, innocent pastorals, adorable\nimagery,--these it could produce; in the France of the Pleiade for\ninstance, or in the England of Greene and Campion: but thought and\npassion keep ill company. Once only, a century ago, a genius as fierce\nand flame-like as that of Catullus rose to the height of this\nargument. An intractable language, sterilizing surroundings, bad\nmodels, imperfect education, left Burns hopelessly distanced; yet the\nquintessential flame that he shares with Catullus has served to make\nhim the idol of a nation, and a household word among many millions of\nhis race.\n\nClodia, the \"Lady of the Sonnets\" in Catullus, whom he calls Lesbia by\na transparent fiction, has no ambiguous or veiled personality. She was\none of the most famous and most scandalous women of her time. By birth\nand marriage she belonged to the innermost circle of that more than\nroyal Roman aristocracy which had accumulated the wealth of the world\ninto its hands, and sent out its younger sons carelessly to misgovern\nand pillage empires. When Catullus made her acquaintance, she was a\nmarried woman some six or seven years older than himself. \"Through a\nlittle arc of heaven\" the poems show his love running its sorrowful\nand splendid course. Rapture of tenderness, infatuation, revolt,\nrelapse, re-entanglement, agonized stupor, the stinging pain of\nreviving life, fierce love passing into as fierce a hatred, all sweep\nbefore us in dazzling language molded out of pure air and fire.\n\nSo far, Burns alone, and Burns only at his rarer heights, can give a\nmodern reader some idea of Catullus. But Burns had little education\nand less taste; and so when he leaves the ground of direct personal\nemotion,--that is to say, in nineteen-twentieths of his poetry,--he is\nconstantly on the edge, and often over it, of tawdriness, vulgarity,\ncommonplace. Catullus was master of all the technical skill then known\nto poetry. Without anything approaching the immense learning of Virgil\nor Milton, he had, like Shelley among English poets, the instincts and\ntraining of a scholar. It is this fine scholarship--the eye and hand\nof the trained artist in language--combined with his lucid and\nimperious simplicity, like that of some gifted and terrible child,\nthat makes him unique among poets. When he leaves the golden fields of\npoetry and dashes into political lampoons, or insolent and unquotable\nattacks on people (men or women) who had the misfortune to displease\nhim, he becomes like Burns again, Burns the satirist; yet even here\nnimbler witted, lighter of touch, with the keenness of the rapier\nrather than of the Northern axe-edge.\n\nHis scholarliness--like that of most scholars--was not without its\ndrawbacks. His immediate literary masters, the Greeks of the\nAlexandrian school, were a coterie of pedants; it would be idle to\nclaim that he remained unaffected by their pedantry. In the last years\nof his life he seems to have lost himself somewhat in technical\nintricacies and elaborate metrical experiments; in translations from\nthat prince in preciosity, the Alexandrian Callimachus; and idyllic\npieces of overloaded ornament studied from the school of Theocritus.\nThe longest and most ambitious poem of these years, the epic idyl on\n'The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis,' is full of exquisite beauties of\ndetail, but taken in its whole effect is languid, cloying, and\nmonotonous. He makes a more brilliant success in his other long poem,\nthe famous 'Atys,' the single example in Latin of the large-scale\nlyric so familiar to Greece and England.\n\nBut indeed in every form of lyric poetry attempted by him, his touch\nis infallible. The lovely poems of travel which he wrote during and\nafter a voyage to Asia are as unequaled in their sunny beauty as the\nlove-lyrics are in fire and passion. Alongside of these there are\nlittle funny verses to his friends, and other verses to his enemies\nwhich they probably did not think funny in the least; verses of\noccasion and verses of compliment; and verses of sympathy, with a deep\nhuman throb in them that shows how little his own unhappy love had\nembittered him or shut him up in selfish broodings. Two of these\npieces are pre-eminent beyond all the rest. The one is a marriage song\nwritten by him for the wedding of two of his friends, Mallius\nTorquatus and Vinia Aurunculeia. In its straightforward unassuming\ngrace, in its musical clearness, in the picture it draws, with so\ngentle and yet so refined and distinguished a touch, of common\nhousehold happiness, it is worthy of its closing place in the golden\nvolume of his lyrics.\n\nThe other is a brief poem, only ten lines long, written at his\nbrother's grave near Troy. It is one of the best known of Latin poems;\nand before its sorrow, its simplicity, its piteous tenderness, the\nastonishing cadence of its rhythms, praise itself seems almost\nprofanation.\n\n\"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago--\" so Tennyson in\none of his own beautiful lyrics addresses Catullus; and it is this\nunsurpassed tenderness that more than all his other admirable\nqualities, than his consummate technical skill, than his white heat of\npassion, than his \"clearness as of the terrible crystal,\" brings him\nand keeps him near our hearts.\n\nThat wonderful Ciceronian age has left its mark as few ages have, deep\nupon human history. The conquests and legislation of Julius Caesar\ndetermined the future of Europe and laid the foundation of the modern\nworld. The prose invented by Cicero became and still remains the\ncommon language of civilized mankind. Among the poems of Catullus are\nverses addressed to both of these men; but his own young ivy-crowned\nbrows shine out of the darkness and the distance, with no less pure a\nradiance and no less imperishable a fame.\n\n [Signature: J.W. Mackail]\n\n NOTE.--In Mr. Mackail's closing phrase the lover of Ovid will\n note an echo from that poet's famous elegy suggested by the\n premature death of still another Roman singer, Tibullus. Among\n the kindred spirits--says Ovid--who will welcome the new-comer\n to the Elysian fields,--\n\n \"Thou, O learned Catullus, thy young brows ivy-encircled,\n Bringing thy Calvus with thee, wilt to receive him appear.\"\n\n ED.\n\n\n\nDEDICATION FOR A VOLUME OF LYRICS\n\n\n This dainty little book and new,\n Just polished with the pumice, who\n Shall now receive?--Cornelius, you!\n\n For these my trifles even then\n You counted of some value, when\n You only of Italian men\n\n Into three tomes had dared to cast\n The story of all ages past,--\n Learned, O Jupiter, and vast!\n\n So take it, prize it as you may.\n --And, gracious Virgin, this I pray:\n That it shall live beyond our day!\n\n Translation of W. C. Lawton.\n\n\n\nA MORNING CALL\n\n\n Varus would take me t'other day\n To see a little girl he knew,--\n Pretty and witty in her way,\n With impudence enough for two.\n\n Scarce are we seated, ere she chatters\n (As pretty girls are wont to do)\n About all persons, places, matters:--\n \"And pray, what has been done for _you_?\"\n\n \"Bithynia, lady!\" I replied,\n \"Is a fine province for a praetor;\n For none (I promise you) beside,\n And least of all am I her debtor.\"\n\n \"Sorry for that!\" said she. \"However,\n You have brought with you, I dare say,\n Some litter-bearers; none so clever\n In any other part as they.\n\n \"Bithynia is the very place\n For all that's steady, tall, and straight;\n It is the nature of the race.\n Could you not lend me six or eight?\"\n\n \"Why, six or eight of them or so,\"\n Said I, determined to be grand;\n \"My fortune is not quite so low\n But these are still at my command.\"\n\n \"You'll send them?\"--\"Willingly!\" I told her,\n Although I had not here or there\n One who could carry on his shoulder\n The leg of an old broken chair.\n\n \"Catullus! what a charming hap is\n Our meeting in this sort of way!\n I would be carried to Serapis\n To-morrow!\"--\"Stay, fair lady, stay!\n\n \"You overvalue my intention.\n Yes, there _are_ eight ... there may be nine:\n I merely had forgot to mention\n That they are Cinna's, and not mine.\"\n\n Paraphrase of W. S. Landor.\n\n\n\nHOME TO SIRMIO\n\n\n Dear Sirmio, that art the very eye\n Of islands and peninsulas, that lie\n Deeply embosomed in calm inland lake,\n Or where the waves of the vast ocean break;\n Joy of all joys, to gaze on thee once more!\n I scarce believe that I have left the shore\n Of Thynia, and Bithynia's parching plain,\n And gaze on thee in safety once again!\n Oh, what more sweet than when, from care set free,\n The spirit lays its burden down, and we,\n With distant travel spent, come home and spread\n Our limbs to rest along the wished-for bed!\n This, this alone, repays such toils as these!\n Smile, then, fair Sirmio, and thy master please,--\n And you, ye dancing waters of the lake,\n Rejoice; and every smile of home awake!\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\nHEART-BREAK\n\n\n With your Catullus ill it fares, alas!\n O Cornificius, and most wearily;\n Still worse with all the days and hours that pass.\n And with what greeting do you comfort me?\n The least of boons, and easiest to bestow;\n Wroth am I, that my love is answered so.\n A word of greeting, pray you; what you please;\n More sad than tear-drops of Simonides!\n\n Translation of W. C. Lawton.\n\n\n\nTO CALVUS IN BEREAVEMENT\n\n\n If there be aught, my Calvus, that out of our sorrowing proffered\n Unto the voiceless dead grateful or welcome may be,\n When we revive with insatiate longing our ancient affection,\n When for the ties we lament, broken, that once have been ours,\n Though Quintilia grieve for her own untimely departure,\n Yet in thy faithful love greater, be sure, is her joy.\n\n Translation of W. C. Lawton.\n\n\n\nTHE PINNACE\n\n\n This pinnace, friends, which here you see,\n Avers erewhile she used to be\n Unmatched for speed, and could outstrip\n Triumphantly the fastest ship\n That ever swam, or breasted gale,\n Alike with either oar or sail.\n And this, she says, her haughty boast,\n The stormy Adriatic coast,\n The Cyclad islands, Rhodes the grand,\n Rude Thrace, the wild Propontic strand,\n Will never venture to gainsay;\n\n Nor yet the Euxine's cruel bay,\n Where in her early days she stood,\n This bark to be, a shaggy wood;\n For from her vocal locks full oft,\n Where o'er Cytorus far aloft\n The fitful mountain-breezes blow,\n She piped and whistled loud or low.\n\n To thee, Amastris, on thy rocks,\n To thee, Cytorus, clad with box,\n Has long been known, my bark avers,\n This little history of hers.\n\n In her first youth, she doth protest,\n She stood upon your topmost crest,\n First in your waters dipped her oars,\n First bore her master from your shores\n Anon unscathed o'er many a deep,\n In sunshine and in storm to sweep;\n Whether the breezes, as she flew,\n From larboard or from starboard blew,\n Or with a wake of foam behind,\n She scudded full before the wind.\n Nor to the gods of ocean e'er\n For her was offered vow or prayer,\n Though from yon farthest ocean drear\n She came to this calm crystal mere.\n\n But these are things of days gone past.\n Now, anchored here in peace at last,\n To grow to hoary age, lies she,\n And dedicates herself to thee,\n Who hast alway her guardian been,\n Twin Castor, and thy brother twin!\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\nAN INVITATION TO DINNER\n\n\n If the gods will, Fabullus mine,\n With me right heartily you'll dine.\n Bring but good cheer--that chance is thine\n Some days hereafter;\n Mind, a fair girl too, wit, and wine,\n And merry laughter.\n\n Bring these--you'll feast on kingly fare;\n But bring them--for my purse--I swear\n The spiders have been weaving there;\n But thee I'll favor\n With a pure love, or what's more rare,\n More sweet of savor,\n\n An unguent I'll before you lay\n The Loves and Graces t'other day\n Gave to my girl--smell it--you'll pray\n The gods, Fabullus,\n To make you turn all nose straightway.\n Yours aye, CATULLUS.\n\n Translation of James Cranstoun.\n\n\n\nA BROTHER'S GRAVE\n\n\n Brother! o'er many lands and oceans borne,\n I reach thy grave, death's last sad rite to pay;\n To call thy silent dust in vain, and mourn,\n Since ruthless fate has hurried thee away:\n Woe's me! yet now upon thy tomb I lay--\n All soaked with tears for thee, thee loved so well--\n What gifts our fathers gave the honored clay\n Of valued friends; take them, my grief they tell:\n And now, forever hail! forever fare thee well!\n\n Translation of James Cranstoun.\n\n\n\nFAREWELL TO HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS\n\n\n The milder breath of Spring is nigh;\n The stormy equinoctial sky\n To Zephyr's gentle breezes yields.\n Behind me soon the Phrygian fields,\n Nicaea's sun-beat realm, shall lie.\n To Asia's famous towns we'll hie.\n My heart, that craves to wander free,\n Throbs even now expectantly.\n With zeal my joyous feet are strong;\n Farewell, dear comrades, loved so long!\n Afar together did we roam;\n Now ways diverse shall lead us home.\n\n Translation of W. C. Lawton.\n\n\n\nVERSES FROM AN EPITHALAMIUM\n\n\n And now, ye gates, your wings unfold!\n The virgin draweth nigh. Behold\n The torches, how upon the air\n They shake abroad their gleaming hair!\n Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!\n The day is hurrying fast away!\n\n But lost in shame and maiden fears,\n She stirs not,--weeping, as she hears\n The friends that to her tears reply,--\n Thou must advance, the hour is nigh!\n Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!\n The day is hurrying fast away!\"\n\n Dry up thy tears! For well I trow,\n No woman lovelier than thou,\n Aurunculeia, shall behold\n The day all panoplied in gold,\n And rosy light uplift his head\n Above the shimmering ocean's bed!\n\n As in some rich man's garden-plot,\n With flowers of every hue inwrought,\n Stands peerless forth with drooping brow\n The hyacinth, so standest thou!\n Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!\n The day is hurrying fast away!\n\n * * * * *\n\n Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,\n Young Torquatus on the lap\n Of his mother, as he stands\n Stretching out his tiny hands,\n And his little lips the while\n Half-open on his father smile.\n\n And oh! may he in all be like\n Manlius his sire, and strike\n Strangers, when the boy they meet,\n As his father's counterfeit,\n And his face the index be\n Of his mother's chastity!\n\n Him, too, such fair fame adorn,\n Son of such a mother born,\n That the praise of both entwined\n Call Telemachus to mind,\n With her who nursed him on her knee,\n Unparagoned Penelope!\n\n Now, virgins, let us shut the door!\n Enough we've toyed, enough and more!\n But fare ye well, ye loving pair,\n We leave ye to each other's care;\n And blithely let your hours be sped\n In joys of youth and lustyhed!\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\nNOTE.--The remaining poems of our selection are all associated with\nthe famous passion for Lesbia.\n\n\n\nLOVE IS ALL\n\n\n Let us, Lesbia darling, still\n Live our life, and love our fill;\n Heeding not a jot, howe'er\n Churlish dotards chide or stare!\n Suns go down, but 'tis to rise\n Brighter in the morning skies;\n But when sets our little light,\n We must sleep in endless night.\n A thousand kisses grant me, sweet:\n With a hundred these complete;\n Lip me a thousand more, and then\n Another hundred give again.\n A thousand add to these, anon\n A hundred more, then hurry one\n Kiss after kiss without cessation,\n Until we lose all calculation;\n So envy shall not mar our blisses\n By numbering up our tale of kisses.\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\nELEGY ON LESBIA'S SPARROW\n\n\n Loves and Graces, mourn with me,\n Mourn, fair youths, where'er ye be!\n Dead my Lesbia's sparrow is,\n Sparrow that was all her bliss,\n Than her very eyes more dear;\n For he made her dainty cheer;\n Knew her well, as any maid\n Knows her mother; never strayed\n From her bosom, but would go\n Hopping round her to and fro.\n And to her, and her alone,\n Chirruped with such pretty tone.\n Now he treads that gloomy track\n Whence none ever may come back.\n Out upon you, and your power,\n Which all fairest things devour,\n Orcus's gloomy shades, that e'er\n Ye took my bird that was so fair!\n Ah, the pity of it! Thou\n Poor bird, thy doing 'tis, that now\n My loved one's eyes are swollen and red,\n With weeping for her darling dead.\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\n\"FICKLE AND CHANGEABLE EVER\"\n\n\n Never a soul but myself, though Jove himself were to woo her,\n Lesbia says she would choose, might she have me for her mate.\n Says--but what woman will say to a lover on fire to possess her,\n Write on the bodiless wind, write on the stream as it runs.\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\nTWO CHORDS\n\n\n I Hate and love--the why I cannot tell.\n But by my tortures know the fact too well.\n\n Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.\n\n\n\n LAST WORD TO LESBIA\n\n\n O Furius and Aurelius! comrades sweet!\n Who to Ind's farthest shore with me would roam,\n Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat\n Their fury into foam;\n\n Or to Hyrcania, balm-breathed Araby,\n The Sacian's or the quivered Parthian's land,\n Or where seven-mantled Nile's swoll'n waters dye\n The sea with yellow sand;\n\n Or cross the lofty Alpine fells, to view\n Great Caesar's trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine,\n The paint-smeared Briton race, grim-visaged crew,\n Placed by earth's limit line:\n\n To all prepared with me to brave the way,\n To dare whate'er the eternal gods decree--\n These few unwelcome words to her convey\n Who once was all to me.\n\n Still let her revel with her godless train,\n Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,\n Still truly love not one, but ever drain\n The life-blood of them all.\n\n Nor let her more my once fond passion heed,\n For by her faithlessness 'tis blighted now,\n Like flow'ret on the verge of grassy mead\n Crushed by the passing plow.\n\n Translation of James Cranstoun.\n\n\n\n\nBENVENUTO CELLINI\n\n(1500-1571)\n\n\nAmong the three or four best autobiographies of the world's\nliterature, the 'Memoirs' of Benvenuto Cellini are unique as the\nself-delineation of the most versatile of craftsmen, a bizarre genius,\nand a typical exponent of the brilliant period of the later Italian\nRenaissance. As a record of the ways of living and modes of thinking\nof that fascinating epoch, they are more lively and interesting than\nhistory, more entertaining, if more true to fact, than a romance. As\none of his Italian critics, Baretti, put it:--\"The life of Benvenuto\nCellini, written by himself in the pure and unsophisticated idiom of\nthe Florentine people, surpasses every book in our literature for the\ndelight it affords the reader.\" This is high praise for the product of\na literature that boasts of Boccaccio's 'Decameron,' and gave birth to\nthe _novelle_, the parent of modern fiction. Yet the critics of other\nnations have echoed this praise. Auguste Comte, the positivist\nphilosopher, included it in his limited list for the reading of\nreformed humanity, and Goethe, laying aside his own creative work,\ndeemed it worth his time and attention to translate into German.\n\nBenvenuto Cellini was born at Florence in 1500. The father, Giovanni\nCellini, a musician and maker of musical instruments, intended that\nthe boy should likewise become a musician; but young Benvenuto very\nearly showed strong leaning toward the plastic art, and detested the\nflute he was forced to practice. The first chapters of the 'Memoirs'\nare a most lively description of the struggles between the wishes of\nthe father and those of the son, until the latter finally prevailed,\nand at fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to a goldsmith of\nFlorence. He made rapid progress, and soon attracted notice as a\nskilled craftsman. At the same time, to please his father, toward whom\nhe everywhere professes the most filial feeling, he continued \"that\nconfounded flute-playing\" as a side issue. This accomplishment,\nhowever, did him a good turn at the Papal court later on. After\nvarious youthful escapades, street broils, and quarrels with his\nfather, he fled in monk's disguise to Rome in 1521. A vase made for\nthe Bishop of Salamanca drew upon him the notice of Pope Clement VII.,\nwho appointed him court musician and also employed him in his proper\nprofession of goldsmith. When the Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome,\nin 1527, Cellini was of great service to the Pope in defending the\ncity. He boasts of having from the ramparts shot the Bourbon; and\nindeed, if one were to take him strictly at his word, his valor and\nskill as an engineer saved the castle of San Angelo and the Pope.\nHowever his lively imagination may have overrated his own importance,\nyet it is certain that his military exploit paved the way for his\nreturn to Florence, where for a time he devoted himself to the\nexecution of bronze medals and coins. The most famous of the former\nare Hercules and the Nemean Lion, and Atlas supporting the world.\n\nOn the elevation of Paul III. to the Papacy we again find Cellini at\nRome, working for the Pope and other eminent people. His extraordinary\nabilities brought him not only into the notice of the courts, but also\ndrew him into the brilliant literary and artistic society of the\nEternal City. With unrivaled vividness he flashes before us in a few\nbold strokes the artists of the decadent Renaissance, the pupils of\nRaphael, led by Giulio Romano, with their worship of every form of\nphysical beauty and their lack of elevation of thought. In consequence\nof the plottings of his implacable enemy, Pier Luigi, natural son of\nPaul III., he was arrested on the charge of having during the sack of\nRome embezzled Pontifical gold and jewels to the amount of eighty\nthousand ducats. Though the charge was groundless, he was committed to\nthe castle of San Angelo. His escape is narrated in one of the most\nthrilling chapters of the 'Memoirs.' He went in hiding to the Cardinal\nCornaro, but was delivered up again to the Pope by an act of most\ncharacteristic sixteenth-century Italian policy, and was cast into a\nloathsome underground dungeon of the castle. It was damp, swarming\nwith vermin, and for two hours of the day only received light through\na little aperture. Here he languished for many months, with only the\nchronicles of Giovanni Billani and an Italian Bible to solace him. Now\nat last his recklessness and bravado forsook him. He took on the airs\nof a saint, gave himself up to mysticism, grew delirious and had his\nfamous visions--angels visiting him, who talked with him about\nreligion.\n\nIn 1539 he was finally released at the intercession of the cardinal\nIppolito d'Este, who came from France to invite him to enter the\nKing's service. Cellini's account of his residence in France has great\nhistoric value as throwing vivid side-lights on that interesting\nperiod in the development of French social life, when Francis I. was\nlaying the foundation of the court society which was later on brought\nto perfection by Louis XIV. Cellini was one among that crowd of\nItalian artists gathered at the court in Paris and Versailles, whose\nculture was to refine the manners of the French warrior barons. He\nworked for five years at Fontainebleau and in Paris. Among his works\nthere, still extant, are a pair of huge silver candelabra, the gates\nof Fontainebleau, and a nymph in bronze, reposing among trophies of\nthe chase, now in the Louvre. Among other marks of royal favor he was\npresented with a castle, Le Petit Nesle. His efforts to gain\npossession of this grant are among the amusing episodes of his\nnarrative.\n\nHe had as usual numerous quarrels, and falling into disfavor with\nMadame d'Estampes, the King's favorite, he suddenly left Paris and\nreturned alone to Florence. The remainder of his life he passed mainly\nin the service of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The chapters of his\nnarrative dealing with this portion give a most vivid picture of\nartist life at an Italian court in the sixteenth century. To this\nthird and last period belongs the work on which his fame as sculptor\nrests, the bronze Perseus holding the head of Medusa, completed in\n1554 and still standing in the Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence. It is a\ntypical monument of the Renaissance, and was received with universal\napplause by all Italy. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and Latin\nwere written in its praise. His minute description of its casting, and\nof his many trials during that process, are among the most interesting\npassages of the narrative.\n\nIn 1558 he began to write his memoirs, dictating them for the greater\npart to an amanuensis; and he carried them down to the year 1562. The\nevents of the remaining nine years of his life are to be gathered from\ncontemporary documents. In 1558 he received the tonsure and first\necclesiastical orders, but married two years later, and died in 1571.\nHe was buried with great pomp in the Church of the Annunciata in\nFlorence.\n\nBesides his 'Memoirs' he also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's art\nand on sculpture, with especial reference to bronze-founding. They are\nof great value as manuals of the craftsmanship of the Renaissance, and\nexcellent specimens of good Italian style as applied to technical\nexposition. And like all cultivated artists of his time Cellini also\ntried his hand at poetry; but his lack of technical training as a\nwriter comes out even more in his verse than in his prose. The life of\nBenvenuto was one of incessant activity, laying hold of the whole\ndomain of the plastic arts: of restless wanderings from place to\nplace; and of rash deeds of violence. He lived to the full the life of\nhis age, in all its glory and all its recklessness. As the most famous\ngoldsmith of his time, he worked for all the great personages of the\nday, and put himself on a footing of familiar acquaintance with popes\nand princes. As an artist he came into contact with all the phases of\nItalian society, since a passion for external beauty was at that time\nthe heritage of the Italian people, and art bodied forth the innermost\nlife of the period. Furniture, plate, and personal adornments were not\nturned out wholesale by machinery as they are to-day, but engaged the\nindividual attention of the most skilled craftsmen. The memory and the\ntraditions of Raphael Sanzio were still cherished by his pupils when\nCellini first came to Rome into the brilliant circle of Giulio Romano\nand his friends; Michelangelo's frescoes were studied with rapturous\nadmiration by the young Benvenuto, and later on he proudly recorded\nsome words of praise of the mighty genius whom he worshiped; and at\nthis time, too, Titian and Tintoretto set the heart of Venice aglow\nwith the splendor and color of their marvelous canvases. The\ncontemporary though not the peer of those masters of the brush and the\nchisel, Cellini, endowed with a keen feeling for beauty, a dexterous\nhand, and a lively imagination, in his versatility reached out toward\na wider sphere of activity, and laid hold of life at more points, than\nthey.\n\nHe reflected the Renaissance, not merely on its higher artistic\naspect, but he touched it also on its lower darker levels of brute\npassion, coarseness, and vindictiveness. He had more than one murder\nto his account, and he did not slur over them in his narrative, for in\nhis make-up the bravo was equally prominent with the artist. Yet we\nmust remember that homicides were of common occurrence in those days,\ndefended by casuists and condoned by the Church. Avenging one's honor,\nor punishing an insult with the dagger, were as much a social custom\nas the adornment of the body with exquisitely wrought fabrics and\njewelry. But just because Cellini was so thoroughly awake to all the\ninfluences about him, and so entirely bent on living his life, his\n'Memoirs' are perennially fresh and attractive. They are the plain\nunvarnished annals of a career extraordinary even in that age of\nuncommon experiences; they were written, as he says, because \"all men\nof whatever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or\nwhich may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of\ntruth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand; but\nthey ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have passed\nthe age of forty.\"\n\n[Illustration: BENVENUTO CELLINI.]\n\nCellini was past fifty-eight when he began writing, and going back to\nhis earliest boyhood, he set down the facts of his long career as he\nremembered them. Of course he is the hero who recounts his own story,\nand like all heroes of romance he plays the leading part, is always in\nthe right, and comes out handsomely in the end. Carping critics who\ntax him with lack of truth in dealing with his enemies, and with\npleading his own cause too well, are apt to forget that he wrote long\nafter the events were past, and that to an ever-active imagination\nruminating over bygone happenings, facts become unconsciously colored\nto assume the hue the mind wishes them to have. Yet the fidelity and\naccuracy of his memory are remarkable, and his faculty for seeing,\ncombined with his dramatic way of putting things most vividly,\nflashes before our eyes the scenes he recounts. He does not describe\nmuch; he indicates a characteristic feature, habit, or attitude; as\nfor example, in referring to a man he disliked, as having \"long\nspidery hands and a shrill gnat-like voice\"--all that is needed to\nmake us see the man from Cellini's point of view. Again, he adds much\nto the vivacity of the narrative by reporting conversation as a\ndialogue, even if he has it himself at second-hand. So in his\ntrenchant, nervous manner this keen observer, while aiming to recount\nonly the facts of his own life and to set himself on a becoming\npedestal in the eyes of posterity, gives us at the same time\nflash-lights of the whole period in which he played a part. Popes\nClement VII. and Paul III., Cosimo de' Medici and his Duchess, the\nKing of France and Madame d' Estampes, cardinals, nobles, princes, and\ncourtiers, artists of every description, burghers and the common\nfolk,--all with whom he came in contact,--are brought before us in a\nliving pageant. Looking back over his checkered career, he lives his\nintense life over again, and because he himself saw so vividly at the\ntime, he makes us see now. We have here invaluable pictures, by an\neye-witness and actor, of the sack of Rome, the plague and siege of\nFlorence, the pomp of Charles V. at Rome. He withdraws the curtains\nfrom the Papal policies and court intrigues, not with a view to\nwriting history, but because he happened to have some relations with\nthose princes and wished to tell us about them. Again, he was no\ncritic of the manners of his time, yet he presents most faithful\npictures of artist life in Rome, Paris, and Florence. He was not given\nto introspection and self-criticism, but he describes himself as well\nas others, not by analysis but by deeds and words. He had no literary\ntraining; he wrote as he talked, and gained his effect by simplicity.\n\nHe was recognized as the first goldsmith of his time; yet as a man\nalso his contemporaries speak well of him, for he embodied the virtues\nof his age, while his morals did not fall below the average code of\nthe Renaissance. Vasari says:--\"He always showed himself a man of\ngreat spirit and veracity; bold, active, enterprising, and formidable\nto his enemies; a man, in short, who knew as well how to speak with\nprinces as to exert himself in his art.\"\n\nJ. A. Symonds, that inspiring student of the Italian Renaissance, sums\nup his impressions of the book and the man as follows:--\n\n \"I am confident that every one who may have curiously studied\n Italian history and letters will pronounce this book to be at\n one and the same time the most perfect extant monument of\n vernacular Tuscan prose, and also the most complete and lively\n source of information we possess regarding manners, customs,\n ways of feeling, and modes of acting, in the Court. Those who\n have made themselves thoroughly familiar with Cellini's\n Memoirs possess the substance of that many-sided epoch in the\n form of an epitome. It is the first book which a student of\n the Italian Renaissance should handle in order to obtain the\n right direction for his more minute researches. It is the last\n book to which he should return at the close of his exploratory\n voyages. At the commencement he will find it invaluable for\n placing him at the exactly proper point of view. At the end he\n will find it no less invaluable for testing and verifying the\n conclusion he has drawn from various sources and a wide\n circumference of learning. From the pages of this book the\n genius of the Renaissance, incarnate in a single personality,\n leans forth and speaks to us. Nowhere else, to my mind, do we\n find the full character of the epoch so authentically stamped.\n That is because this is no work of art or of reflection, but\n the plain utterance of a man who lived the whole life of his\n age, who felt its thirst for glory, who shared its adoration\n of the beautiful, who blent its paganism and its superstition,\n who represented its two main aspects of exquisite sensibility\n to form and almost brutal ruffianism. We must not expect from\n Cellini the finest, highest, purest accents of the\n Renaissance.... For students of that age he is at once more\n and less than his contemporaries: less, inasmuch as he\n distinguished himself by no stupendous intellectual qualities;\n more, inasmuch as he occupied a larger sphere than each of\n them singly. He was the first goldsmith of his time, an\n adequate sculptor, a restless traveler, an indefatigable\n workman, a Bohemian of the purest water, a turbulent bravo, a\n courtier and companion of princes; finally, a Florentine who\n used his native idiom with incomparable vivacity of style.\"\n\n\n\nTHE ESCAPE FROM PRISON\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nThe castellan was subject to a certain sickness, which came upon him\nevery year and deprived him of his wits. The sign of its approach was\nthat he kept continually talking, or rather jabbering, to no purpose.\nThese humors took a different shape each year; one time he thought he\nwas an oil-jar; another time he thought he was a frog, and hopped\nabout as frogs do; another time he thought he was dead, and then they\nhad to bury him; not a year passed but he got some such hypochondriac\nnotions into his head. At this season he imagined that he was a bat,\nand when he went abroad to take the air he used to scream like bats in\na high thin tone; and then he would flap his hands and body as though\nhe were about to fly. The doctors, when they saw the fit was coming on\nhim, and his old servants, gave him all the distractions they could\nthink of; and since they had noticed that he derived much pleasure\nfrom my conversation, they were always fetching me to keep him\ncompany. At times the poor man detained me for four or five stricken\nhours without ever letting me cease talking. He used to keep me at his\ntable, eating opposite to him, and never stopped chatting and making\nme chat; but during those discourses I contrived to make a good meal.\nHe, poor man, could neither eat nor sleep; so that at last he wore me\nout. I was at the end of my strength; and sometimes when I looked at\nhim, I noticed that his eyeballs were rolling in a frightful manner,\none looking one way and the other in another.\n\nHe took it into his head to ask me whether I had ever had a fancy to\nfly. I answered that it had always been my ambition to do those things\nwhich offer the greatest difficulties to men, and that I had done\nthem; as to flying, the God of Nature had gifted me with a body well\nsuited for running and leaping far beyond the common average, and that\nwith the talents I possessed for manual art I felt sure I had the\ncourage to try flying. He then inquired what methods I should use; to\nwhich I answered that, taking into consideration all flying creatures,\nand wishing to imitate by art what they derived from nature, none was\nso apt a model as the bat.\n\nNo sooner had the poor man heard the name bat, which recalled the\nhumor he was suffering under, than he cried out at the top of his\nvoice:--\"He says true--he says true; the bat's the thing--the bat's\nthe thing!\" Then he turned to me and said, \"Benvenuto, if one gave you\nthe opportunity, should you have the heart to fly?\" I said that if he\nwould set me at liberty, I felt quite up to flying down to Prato,\nafter making myself a pair of wings out of waxed linen. Thereupon he\nreplied:--\"I too should be prepared to take flight; but since the Pope\nhas bidden me guard you as though you were his own eyes, and I know\nyou a clever devil who would certainly escape, I shall now have you\nlocked up with a hundred keys in order to prevent you slipping through\nmy fingers.\" I then began to implore him, and remind him that I might\nhave fled, but that on account of the word which I had given him I\nwould never have betrayed his trust; therefore I begged him for the\nlove of God, and by the kindness he had always shown me, not to add\ngreater evils to the misery of my present situation. While I was\npouring out these entreaties, he gave strict orders to have me bound\nand taken and locked up in prison. On seeing that it could not be\nhelped, I told him before all his servants: \"Lock me well up, and\nkeep good watch on me; for I shall certainly contrive to escape.\"\nSo they took me and confined me with the utmost care. I then began to\ndeliberate upon the best way of making my escape. No sooner had I been\nlocked in, than I went about exploring my prison; and when I thought\nI had discovered how to get out of it, I pondered the means of\ndescending from the lofty keep, for so the great round central tower\nis called. I took those new sheets of mine, which, as I have said\nalready, I had cut in strips and sewn together; then I reckoned up the\nquantity which would be sufficient for my purpose. Having made this\nestimate and put all things in order, I took out a pair of pincers\nwhich I had abstracted from a Savoyard belonging to the guard of the\ncastle. This man superintended the casks and cisterns; he also amused\nhimself with carpentering. Now he possessed several pairs of pincers,\namong which was one both big and heavy. I then, thinking it would suit\nmy purpose, took it and hid it in my straw mattress. The time had now\ncome for me to use it; so I began to try the nails which kept the\nhinges of my door in place. The door was double, and the clinching of\nthe nails could not be seen; so that when I attempted to draw one out,\nI met with the greatest trouble; in the end however I succeeded. When\nI had drawn the first nail, I bethought me how to prevent its being\nnoticed. For this purpose I mixed some rust, which I had scraped from\nold iron, with a little wax, obtaining exactly the same color as the\nheads of the long nails which I had extracted. Then I set myself to\ncounterfeit these heads and place them on the holdfasts; for each nail\nI extracted I made a counterfeit in wax. I left the hinges attached to\ntheir door-posts at top and bottom by means of some of the same nails\nthat I had drawn; but I took care to cut these and replace them\nlightly, so that they only just supported the irons of the hinges.\n\nAll this I performed with the greatest difficulty, because the\ncastellan kept dreaming every night that I had escaped, which made him\nsend from time to time to inspect my prison. The man who came had the\ntitle and behavior of a catchpoll. He was called Bozza, a serving-man.\nGiovanni never entered my prison without saying something offensive to\nme. He came from the district of Prato, and had been an apothecary in\nthe town there. Every evening he minutely examined the holdfasts of\nthe hinges and the whole chamber, and I used to say:--\"Keep a good\nwatch over me, for I am resolved by all means to escape.\"\n\nThese words bred a great enmity between him and me, so that I was\nobliged to use precautions to conceal my tools; that is to say, my\npincers and a great big poniard and other appurtenances. All these I\nput away together in my mattress, where I also kept the strips of\nlinen I had made. When day broke, I used immediately to sweep my room\nout; and though I am by nature a lover of cleanliness, at that time I\nkept myself unusually spick and span. After sweeping up, I made my bed\nas daintily as I could, laying flowers upon it, which a Savoyard used\nto bring me nearly every morning. He had the care of the cistern and\nthe casks, and also amused himself with carpentering; it was from him\nI stole the pincers which I used in order to draw out the nails from\nthe holdfasts of the hinges.\n\nWell, to return to the subject of my bed; when Bozza and Pedignone\ncame, I always told them to give it a wide berth, so as not to dirty\nand spoil it for me. Now and then, just to irritate me, they would\ntouch it lightly, upon which I cried: \"Ah, dirty cowards! I'll lay my\nhand on one of your swords there, and will do you a mischief that will\nmake you wonder. Do you think you are fit to touch the bed of a man\nlike me? When I chastise you I shall not heed my own life, for I am\ncertain to take yours. Let me alone then with my troubles and my\ntribulations, and don't give me more annoyance than I have already; if\nnot, I shall make you see what a desperate man is able to do.\" These\nwords they reported to the castellan, who gave them express orders\nnever to go near my bed, and when they came to me, to come without\nswords; but for the rest to keep a watchful guard upon me.\n\nHaving thus secured my bed from meddlers, I felt as though the main\npoint was gained; for there lay all things useful to my venture. It\nhappened on the evening of a certain feast-day that the castellan was\nseriously indisposed; his humors grew extravagant; he kept repeating\nthat he was a bat, and if they heard that Benvenuto had flown away,\nthey must let him go to catch me up, since he could fly by night most\ncertainly \"as well or better than myself\"; for it was thus he\nargued:--\"Benvenuto is a counterfeit bat, but I am a real one; and\nsince he is committed to my care, leave me to act; I shall be sure to\ncatch him.\" He had passed several nights in this frenzy, and had worn\nout all his servants; whereof I received full information through\ndivers channels, but especially from the Savoyard, who was my friend\nat heart.\n\nOn the evening of that feast-day, then, I made up my mind to escape,\ncome what might; and first I prayed most devoutly to God, imploring\nhis Divine Majesty to protect and succor me in that so perilous a\nventure. Afterwards I set to work at all the things I needed, and\nlabored the whole of the night. It was two hours before daybreak when\nat last I removed those hinges with the greatest toil; but the wooden\npanel itself, and the bolt too, offered such resistance that I could\nnot open the door; so I had to cut into the wood; yet in the end I got\nit open, and shouldering the strips of linen which I had rolled up\nlike bundles of flax upon two sticks, I went forth and directed my\nsteps toward the latrines of the keep. Spying from within two tiles\nupon the roof, I was able at once to clamber up with ease. I wore a\nwhite doublet with a pair of white hose and a pair of half-boots, into\nwhich I had stuck the poniard I have mentioned.\n\nAfter scaling the roof, I took one end of my linen roll and attached\nit to a piece of antique tile which was built into the fortress wall;\nit happened to jut out scarcely four fingers. In order to fix the\nband, I gave it the form of a stirrup. When I had attached it to that\npiece of tile, I turned to God and said: \"Lord God, give aid to my\ngood cause; you know that it is good; you see that I am aiding\nmyself.\" Then I let myself go gently by degrees, supporting myself\nwith the sinews of my arms, until I touched the ground. There was no\nmoonshine, but the light of a fair open heaven. When I stood upon my\nfeet on solid earth, I looked up at the vast height which I had\ndescended with such spirit; and went gladly away, thinking I was free.\nBut this was not the case; for the castellan on the side of the\nfortress had built two lofty walls, the space between which he used\nfor stable and hen-yard; the place was barred with thick iron bolts\noutside. I was terribly disgusted to find there was no exit from this\ntrap; but while I paced up and down debating what to do, I stumbled on\na long pole which was covered up with straw. Not without great\ntrouble, I succeeded in placing it against the wall, and then swarmed\nup it by the force of my arms until I reached the top. But since the\nwall ended in a sharp ridge, I had not strength enough to drag the\npole up after me. Accordingly I made my mind up to use a portion of\nthe second roll of linen which I had there; the other was left hanging\nfrom the keep of the castle. So I cut a piece off, tied it to the\npole, and clambered down the wall, enduring the utmost toil and\nfatigue. I was quite exhausted, and moreover had flayed the inside of\nmy hands, which bled freely. This compelled me to rest awhile, and I\nbathed my hands in my own urine.\n\nWhen I thought that my strength was recovered, I advanced quickly\ntoward the last rampart, which faces toward Prato. There I put my\nbundle of linen lines down upon the ground, meaning to fasten them\nround a battlement, and descend the lesser as I had the greater\nheight. But no sooner had I placed the linen than I became aware\nbehind me of a sentinel, who was going the rounds. Seeing my designs\ninterrupted and my life in peril, I resolved to face the guard. This\nfellow, when he noticed my bold front, and that I was marching on him\nwith weapon in hand, quickened his pace and gave me a wide berth. I\nhad left my lines some little way behind, so I turned with hasty steps\nto regain them; and though I came within sight of another sentinel, he\nseemed as though he did not choose to take notice of me. Having found\nmy lines and attached them to the battlement, I let myself go. On the\ndescent, whether it was that I thought I had really come to earth and\nrelaxed my grasp to jump, or whether my hands were so tired that they\ncould not keep their hold, at any rate I fell, struck my head in\nfalling, and lay stunned for more than an hour and a half, so far as I\ncould judge.\n\nIt was just upon daybreak, when the fresh breeze which blows an hour\nbefore the sun revived me; yet I did not immediately recover my\nsenses, for I thought my head had been cut off, and fancied that I was\nin purgatory. With time, little by little my faculties returned, and I\nperceived that I was outside the castle, and in a flash remembered all\nmy adventures. I was aware of the wound in my head before I knew my\nleg was broken; for I put my hands up and withdrew them covered with\nblood. Then I searched the spot well, and judged and ascertained that\nI had sustained no injury of consequence there; but when I wanted to\nstand up, I discovered that my right leg was broken three inches above\nthe heel. Not even this dismayed me: I drew forth my poniard with its\nscabbard; the latter had a metal point ending in a large ball, which\nhad caused the fracture of my leg; for the bone coming into violent\ncontact with the ball, and not being able to bend, had snapped at that\npoint. I threw the sheath away, and with the poniard cut a piece of\nthe linen which I had left. Then I bound my leg up as well as I\ncould, and crawled on all fours with the poniard in my hand toward the\ncity gate. When I reached it, I found it shut; but I noticed a stone\njust beneath the door which did not appear to be very firmly fixed.\nThis I attempted to dislodge; after setting my hands to it, and\nfeeling it move, it easily gave way, and I drew it out. Through the\ngap thus made I crept into the town.\n\n\n\nTHE CASTING OF PERSEUS\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nAbandoned thus to my own resources, I took new courage and banished\nthe sad thoughts which kept recurring to my mind, making me often weep\nbitter tears of repentance for having left France; for though I did so\nonly to revisit Florence, my sweet birthplace, in order that I might\ncharitably succor my six nieces, this good action, as I well\nperceived, had been the beginning of my great misfortune. Nevertheless\nI felt convinced that when my Perseus was accomplished, all these\ntrials would be turned to high felicity and glorious well-being.\n\nAccordingly I strengthened my heart, and with all the forces of my\nbody and my purse, employing what little money still remained to me, I\nset to work. First I provided myself with several loads of pine-wood\nfrom the forests of Serristori, in the neighborhood of Montelupo.\nWhile these were on their way, I clothed my Perseus with the clay\nwhich I had prepared many months beforehand, in order that it might be\nduly seasoned. After making its clay tunic (for that is the term used\nin this art) and properly arming it and fencing it with iron girders,\nI began to draw the wax out by means of a slow fire. This melted and\nissued through numerous air-vents I had made; for the more there are\nof these the better will the mold fill. When I had finished drawing\noff the wax, I constructed a funnel-shaped furnace all round the model\nof my Perseus. It was built of bricks, so interlaced, the one above\nthe other, that numerous apertures were left for the fire to exhale\nit. Then I began to lay on wood by degrees, and kept it burning two\nwhole days and nights.\n\nAt length when all the wax was gone and the mold was well baked, I set\nto work at digging the pit in which to sink it. This I performed with\nscrupulous regard to all the rules of art. When I had finished that\npart of my work, I raised the mold by windlasses and stout ropes to a\nperpendicular position, and suspending it with the greatest care one\ncubit above the level of the furnace, so that it hung exactly above\nthe middle of the pit. I next lowered it gently down into the very\nbottom of the furnace, and had it firmly placed with every possible\nprecaution for its safety. When this delicate operation was\naccomplished, I began to bank it up with the earth I had excavated;\nand ever as the earth grew higher I introduced its proper air-vents,\nwhich were little tubes of earthenware, such as folks use for drains\nand suchlike purposes. At length I felt sure that it was admirably\nfixed, and that the filling in of the pit and the placing of the\nair-vents had been properly performed. I also could see that my\nworkpeople understood my method, which differed very considerably from\nthat of all the other masters in the trade. Feeling confident then\nthat I could rely upon them, I next turned to my furnace, which I had\nfilled with numerous pigs of copper and other bronze stuff. The pieces\nwere piled according to the laws of art; that is to say, so resting\none upon the other that the flames could play freely through them, in\norder that the metal might heat and liquefy the sooner.\n\nAt last I called out heartily to set the furnace going. The logs of\npine were heaped in, and what with the unctuous resin of the wood and\nthe good draught I had given, my furnace worked so well that I was\nobliged to rush from side to side to keep it going. The labor was more\nthan I could stand; yet I forced myself to strain every nerve and\nmuscle. To increase my anxieties, the workshop took fire, and we were\nafraid lest the roofs should fall upon our heads; while from the\ngarden such a storm of wind and rain kept blowing in that it\nperceptibly cooled the furnace.\n\nBattling thus with all these untoward circumstances for several\nhours, and exerting myself beyond even the measure of my powerful\nconstitution, I could at last bear up no longer, and a sudden fever of\nthe utmost possible intensity attacked me. I felt absolutely obliged\nto go and fling myself upon my bed. Sorely against my will, having to\ndrag myself away from the spot, I turned to my assistants,--about ten\nor more in all, what with master-founders, hand-workers, country\nfellows, and my own special journeymen; among whom was Bernandino\nMannellini of Mugello, my apprentice through several years. To him in\nparticular I spoke:--\"Look, my dear Bernandino, that you observe the\nrules which I have taught you; do your best with all dispatch, for the\nmetal will soon be fused. You cannot go wrong; these honest men will\nget the channels ready; you will easily be able to drive back the two\nplugs with this pair of iron crooks; and I am sure that my mold will\nfill miraculously. I feel more ill than I ever did in all my life, and\nverily believe it will kill me before a few hours are over.\" Thus with\ndespair at heart I left them and betook myself to bed.\n\nNo sooner had I got to bed than I ordered my serving-maids to carry\nfood and wine for all the men into the workshop; at the same time I\ncried, \"I shall not be alive to-morrow.\" They tried to encourage me,\narguing that my illness would pass over, since it came from excessive\nfatigue. In this way I spent two hours battling with the fever, which\nsteadily increased, and calling out continually, \"I feel that I am\ndying.\" My housekeeper, who was named Mona Fiore da Castel del Rio,\na very notable manager and no less warm-hearted, kept chiding me for\nmy discouragement; but on the other hand, she paid me every kind\nattention which was possible. However, the sight of my physical pain\nand moral dejection so affected her that in spite of that brave heart\nof hers, she could not refrain from shedding tears; and yet, so far as\nshe was able, she took care I should not see them.\n\nWhile I was thus terribly afflicted, I beheld the figure of a man\nenter my chamber, twisted in his body into the form of a capital S. He\nraised a lamentable, doleful voice, like one who announces their last\nhour to men condemned to die upon the scaffold, and spoke these words:\n\"O Benvenuto! your statue is spoiled, and there is no hope whatever of\nsaving it.\" No sooner had I heard the shriek of that wretch than I\ngave a howl which might have been heard from the sphere of flame.\nJumping from my bed, I seized my clothes and began to dress. The\nmaids, and my lad, and every one who came around to help me, got kicks\nor blows of the fist, while I kept crying out in lamentation, \"Ah!\ntraitors! enviers! This is an act of treason, done by malice prepense!\nBut I swear by God that I will sift it to the bottom, and before I die\nwill leave such witness to the world of what I can do as shall make a\nscore of mortals marvel.\"\n\nWhen I had got my clothes on, I strode with soul bent on mischief\ntoward the workshop; there I beheld the men whom I had left erewhile\nin such high spirits, standing stupefied and downcast. I began at once\nand spoke:--\"Up with you! Attend to me! Since you have not been able\nor willing to obey the directions I gave you, obey me now that I am\nwith you to conduct my work in person. Let no one contradict me, for\nin cases like this we need the aid of hand and hearing, not of\nadvice.\" When I had uttered these words, a certain Maestro Alessandro\nLastricati broke silence and said, \"Look you, Benvenuto, you are going\nto attempt an enterprise which the laws of art do not sanction, and\nwhich cannot succeed.\"\n\nI turned upon him with such fury and so full of mischief, that he and\nall the rest of them exclaimed with one voice, \"On then! Give orders!\nWe will obey your last commands, so long as life is left in us.\" I\nbelieve they spoke thus feelingly because they thought I must fall\nshortly dead upon the ground. I went immediately to inspect the\nfurnace, and found that the metal was all curdled; an accident which\nwe express by \"being caked.\" I told two of the hands to cross the\nroad, and fetch from the house of the butcher Capretta a load of young\noak-wood, which had lain dry for above a year; this wood had been\npreviously offered me by Madame Ginevra, wife of the said Capretta. So\nsoon as the first armfuls arrived, I began to fill the grate beneath\nthe furnace. Now oak-wood of that kind heats more powerfully than any\nother sort of tree; and for this reason, where a slow fire is wanted,\nas in the case of gun foundry, alder or pine is preferred.\nAccordingly, when the logs took fire, oh! how the cake began to stir\nbeneath that awful heat, to glow and sparkle in a blaze! At the same\ntime I kept stirring up the channels, and sent men upon the roof to\nstop the conflagration, which had gathered force from the increased\ncombustion in the furnace; also I caused boards, carpets, and other\nhangings to be set up against the garden, in order to protect us from\nthe violence of the rain.\n\nWhen I had thus provided against these several disasters, I roared out\nfirst to one man and then to another, \"Bring this thing here! Take\nthat thing there!\" At this crisis, when the whole gang saw the cake\nwas on the point of melting, they did my bidding, each fellow working\nwith the strength of three. I then ordered half a pig of pewter to be\nbrought, which weighed about sixty pounds, and flung it into the\nmiddle of the cake inside the furnace. By this means, and by piling on\nwood and stirring now with pokers and now with iron rods, the curdled\nmass rapidly began to liquefy. Then, knowing I had brought the dead to\nlife again, against the firm opinion of those ignoramuses, I felt such\nvigor fill my veins that all those pains of fever, all those fears of\ndeath, were quite forgotten.\n\nAll of a sudden an explosion took place, attended by a tremendous\nflash of flame, as though a thunderbolt had formed and been discharged\namong us. Unwonted and appalling terror astonied every one, and me\nmore even than the rest. When the din was over and the dazzling light\nextinguished, we began to look each other in the face. Then I\ndiscovered that the cap of the furnace had blown up, and the bronze\nwas bubbling over from its source beneath. So I had the mouths of my\nmold immediately opened, and at the same time drove in the two plugs\nwhich kept back the molten metal. But I noticed that it did not flow\nas rapidly as usual, the reason being probably that the fierce heat of\nthe fire we kindled had consumed its base alloy. Accordingly I sent\nfor all my pewter platters, porringers, and dishes, to the number of\nsome two hundred pieces, and had a portion of them cast, one by one,\ninto the channels, the rest into the furnace. This expedient\nsucceeded, and every one could now perceive that my bronze was in most\nperfect liquefaction, and my mold was filling; whereupon they all with\nheartiness and happy cheer assisted and obeyed my bidding, while I,\nnow here, now there, gave orders, helped with my own hands, and cried\naloud, \"O God! thou that by thy immeasurable power didst rise from the\ndead, and in thy glory didst ascend to heaven!\"... Even thus in a\nmoment my mold was filled; and seeing my work finished, I fell upon my\nknees, and with all my heart gave thanks to God.\n\nAfter all was over, I turned to a plate of salad on a bench there, and\nate with hearty appetite, and drank together with the whole crew.\n\nAfterwards I retired to bed, healthy and happy, for it was now two\nhours before morning, and slept as sweetly as though I had never felt\na touch of illness. My good housekeeper, without my giving any orders,\nhad prepared a fat capon for my repast. So that when I rose, about the\nhour for breaking fast, she presented herself with a smiling\ncountenance and said, \"Oh, is that the man who felt that he was\ndying? Upon my word, I think the blows and kicks you dealt us last\nnight, when you were so enraged, and had that demon in your body as it\nseemed, must have frightened away your mortal fever! The fever feared\nthat it might catch it too, as we did!\" All my poor household,\nrelieved in like measure from anxiety and overwhelming labor, went at\nonce to buy earthen vessels in order to replace the pewter I had cast\naway. Then we dined together joyfully: nay, I cannot remember a day in\nmy whole life when I dined with greater gladness or a better appetite.\n\nAfter our meal I received visits from the several men who had assisted\nme. They exchanged congratulations and thanked God for our success,\nsaying they had learned and seen things done which other masters\njudged impossible. I too grew somewhat glorious; and deeming I had\nshown myself a man of talent, indulged a boastful humor. So I thrust\nmy hand into my purse and paid them all to their full satisfaction.\n\nThat evil fellow, my mortal foe, Messer Pier Francesco Ricci,\nmajor-domo of the Duke, took great pains to find out how the affair\nhad gone. In answer to his questions, the two men whom I suspected of\nhaving caked my metal for me said I was no man, but of a certainty\nsome powerful devil, since I had accomplished what no craft of the art\ncould do; indeed, they did not believe a mere ordinary fiend could\nwork such miracles as I in other ways had shown. They exaggerated the\nwhole affair so much, possibly in order to excuse their own part in\nit, that the major-domo wrote an account to the Duke, who was then in\nPisa, far more marvelous and full of thrilling incidents than what\nthey had narrated.\n\nAfter I had let my statue cool for two whole days, I began to uncover\nit by slow degrees. The first thing I found was that the head of\nMedusa had come out most admirably, thanks to the air-vents; for as I\nhad told the Duke, it is the nature of fire to ascend. Upon advancing\nfarther, I discovered that the other head, that, namely, of Perseus,\nhad succeeded no less admirably; and this astonished me far more,\nbecause it is at a considerably lower level than that of the Medusa.\nNow the mouths of the mold were placed above the head of Perseus and\nbehind his shoulders; and I found that all the bronze my furnace\ncontained had been exhausted in the head of this figure. It was a\nmiracle to observe that not one fragment remained in the orifice of\nthe channel, and that nothing was wanting to the statue. In my great\nastonishment I seemed to see in this the hand of God arranging and\ncontrolling all.\n\nI went on uncovering the statue with success, and ascertained that\neverything had come out in perfect order, until I reached the foot of\nthe right leg on which the statue rests. There the heel itself was\nformed, and going further, I found the foot apparently complete. This\ngave me great joy on the one side, but was half unwelcome to me on the\nother, merely because I had told the Duke that it could not come out.\nHowever, when I reached the end, it appeared that the toes and a\nlittle piece above them were unfinished, so that about half the foot\nwas wanting. Although I knew that this would add a trifle to my labor,\nI was very well pleased, because I could now prove to the Duke how\nwell I understood my business. It is true that far more of the foot\nthan I expected had been perfectly formed; the reason of this was\nthat, from causes I have recently described, the bronze was hotter\nthan our rules of art prescribe; also that I had been obliged to\nsupplement the alloy with my pewter cups and platters, which no one\nelse, I think, had ever done before.\n\nHaving now ascertained how successfully my work had been accomplished,\nI lost no time in hurrying to Pisa, where I found the Duke. He gave me\na most gracious reception, as did also the Duchess; and although the\nmajor-domo had informed them of the whole proceedings, their\nExcellencies deemed my performance far more stupendous and astonishing\nwhen they heard the tale from my own mouth. When I arrived at the foot\nof Perseus, and said it had not come out perfect, just as I previously\nwarned his Excellency, I saw an expression of wonder pass over his\nface, while he related to the Duchess how I had predicted this\nbeforehand.\n\nObserving the Princess to be so well disposed towards me, I begged\nleave from the Duke to go to Rome. He granted it in most obliging\nterms, and bade me return as soon as possible to complete his Perseus;\ngiving me letters of recommendation meanwhile to his ambassador,\nAverardo Serristori. We were then in the first years of Pope Giulio de\nMonti.\n\n\n\nA NECKLACE OF PEARLS\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nI must beg your attention now, most gracious reader, for a very\nterrible event which happened.\n\nI used the utmost diligence and industry to complete my statue, and\nwent to spend my evenings in the Duke's wardrobe, assisting there the\ngoldsmiths who were working for his Excellency. Indeed, they labored\nmainly on designs which I had given them. Noticing that the Duke took\npleasure in seeing me at work and talking with me, I took it into my\nhead to go there sometimes also by day. It happened upon one of those\ndays that his Excellency came as usual to the room where I was\noccupied, and more particularly because he heard of my arrival.\nHis Excellency entered at once into conversation, raising several\ninteresting topics, upon which I gave my views so much to his\nentertainment that he showed more cheerfulness than I had ever seen\nin him before. All of a sudden one of his secretaries appeared, and\nwhispered something of importance in his ear; whereupon the Duke rose,\nand retired with the official into another chamber.\n\nNow the Duchess had sent to see what his Excellency was doing, and her\npage brought back this answer:--\"The Duke is talking and laughing with\nBenvenuto, and is in excellent good humor.\" When the Duchess heard\nthis, she came immediately to the wardrobe, and not finding the Duke\nthere, took a seat beside us. After watching us at work a while, she\nturned to me with the utmost graciousness, and showed me a necklace of\nlarge and really very fine pearls. On being asked by her what I\nthought of them, I said it was in truth a very handsome ornament. Then\nshe spoke as follows:--\"I should like the Duke to buy them for me; so\nI beg you, my dear Benvenuto, to praise them to him as highly as you\ncan.\" At these words, I disclosed my mind to the Duchess with all the\nrespect I could, and answered:--\"My lady, I thought this necklace of\npearls belonged already to your illustrious Excellency. Now that I am\naware you have not yet acquired them, it is right, nay more, it is my\nduty, to utter what I might otherwise have refrained from saying;\nnamely, that my mature professional experience enables me to detect\nvery grave faults in the pearls, and for this reason I could never\nadvise your Excellency to purchase them.\"\n\nShe replied:--\"The merchant offers them for six thousand crowns; and\nwere it not for some of those trifling defects you speak of, the rope\nwould be worth over twelve thousand.\"\n\nTo this I replied that, even were the necklace of quite flawless\nquality, I could not advise any one to bid up to five thousand crowns\nfor it: for pearls are not gems; pearls are but fishes' bones, which\nin the course of time must lose their freshness. Diamonds, rubies,\nemeralds, and sapphires, on the contrary, never grow old; these four\nare precious stones, and these it is right to purchase. When I had\nthus spoken, the Duchess showed some signs of irritation, and\nexclaimed, \"I have a mind to possess these pearls; so prithee, take\nthem to the Duke and praise them up to the skies; even if you have to\nuse some words beyond the bounds of truth, speak them to do me\nservice; it will be well for you!\"\n\nI have always been the greatest friend of truth and foe of lies;\nyet compelled by necessity, unwilling to lose the favor of so great\na princess, I took those confounded pearls sorely against my\ninclination, and went with them over to the other room, whither the\nDuke had withdrawn. No sooner did he set eyes upon me than he cried,\n\"O Benvenuto, what are you about here?\" I uncovered the pearls and\nsaid, \"My lord, I am come to show you a most splendid necklace of\npearls, of the rarest quality, and truly worthy of your Excellency; I\ndo not believe it would be possible to put together eighty pearls\nwhich could show better than these do in a necklace. My counsel\ntherefore is that you should buy them, for they are in good sooth\nmiraculous.\" He responded on the instant, \"I do not choose to buy\nthem; they are not pearls of the quality and goodness you affirm; I\nhave seen the necklace, and they do not please me.\" Then I added,\n\"Pardon me, Prince! These pearls exceed in rarity and beauty any which\nwere ever brought together for a necklace.\" The Duchess had risen, and\nwas standing behind a door listening to all I said. Well, when I had\npraised the pearls a thousandfold more warmly than I have described\nabove, the Duke turned toward me with a kindly look, and said, \"O my\ndear Benvenuto, I know that you have an excellent judgment in all\nthese matters. If the pearls are as rare as you certify, I should not\nhesitate about their purchase; partly to gratify the Duchess and\npartly to possess them, seeing I have always need of such things, not\nso much for her Grace as for the various uses of my sons and\ndaughters.\" When I heard him speak thus, having once begun to tell\nfibs, I stuck to them with even greater boldness; I gave all the color\nof truth I could to my lies, confiding in the promise of the Duchess\nto help me at the time of need. More than two hundred crowns were to\nbe my commission on the bargain, and the Duchess had intimated that I\nshould receive so much; but I was firmly resolved not to touch a\nfarthing, in order to secure my credit, and convince the Duke I was\nnot prompted by avarice. Once more his Excellency began to address me\nwith the greatest courtesy: \"I know that you are a consummate judge of\nthese things; therefore, if you are the honest man I always thought\nyou, tell me now the truth.\" Thereat I flushed up to my eyes, which at\nthe same time filled with tears, and said to him, \"My lord, if I tell\nyour most illustrious Excellency the truth, I shall make a mortal foe\nof the Duchess; this will oblige me to depart from Florence, and my\nenemies will begin at once to pour contempt upon my Perseus, which I\nhave announced as a masterpiece to the most noble school of your\nillustrious Excellency. Such being the case, I recommend myself to\nyour most illustrious Excellency.\"\n\nThe Duke was now aware that all my previous speeches had been, as it\nwere, forced out of me. So he rejoined, \"If you have confidence in me,\nyou need not stand in fear of anything whatever.\" I recommenced,\n\"Alas! my lord, what can prevent this coming to the ears of the\nDuchess?\" The Duke lifted his hand in sign of troth pledge and\nexclaimed, \"Be assured that what you say will be buried in a diamond\ncasket.\" To this engagement upon honor I replied by telling the truth\naccording to my judgment, namely, that the pearls were not worth above\ntwo thousand crowns. The Duchess, thinking we had stopped talking, for\nwe now were speaking in as low a voice as possible, came forward and\nbegan as follows:--\"My lord, do me the favor to purchase this\nnecklace, because I have set my heart on them, and your Benvenuto here\nhas said he never saw a finer row of pearls.\" The Duke replied, \"I do\nnot choose to buy them.\"--\"Why, my lord, will not your Excellency\ngratify me by buying them?\"--\"Because I do not care to throw my money\nout of the window.\" The Duchess recommenced, \"What do you mean by\nthrowing your money away, when Benvenuto, in whom you place such\nwell-merited confidence, has told me that they would be cheap at over\nthree thousand crowns?\" Then the Duke said, \"My lady! my Benvenuto\nhere has told me that if I purchase this necklace I shall be throwing\nmy money away, inasmuch as the pearls are neither round nor\nwell-matched, and some of them are quite faded. To prove that this is\nso, look here! look there! consider this one and then that. The\nnecklace is not the sort of thing for me.\" At these words the Duchess\ncast a glance of bitter spite at me, and retired with a threatening\nnod of her head in my direction. I felt tempted to pack off at once\nand bid farewell to Italy. Yet my Perseus being all but finished, I\ndid not like to leave without exposing it to public view. But I ask\nevery one to consider in what a grievous plight I found myself!\n\n\n\nHOW BENVENUTO LOST HIS BROTHER\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nMy brother at this period was also in Rome, serving Duke Alessandro,\non whom the Pope had recently conferred the duchy of Penna. This\nprince kept in his service a multitude of soldiers, worthy fellows,\nbrought up to valor in the school of that famous general Giovanni de'\nMedici; and among these was my brother, whom the Duke esteemed as\nhighly as the bravest of them. One day my brother went after dinner to\nthe shop of a man called Baccino della Croce, in the Banchi, which all\nthose men-at-arms frequented. He had flung himself upon a settee and\nwas sleeping. Just then the guard of the Bargello passed by; they were\ntaking to prison a certain Captain Cisti, a Lombard, who had also been\na member of Giovanni's troop, but was not in the service of the Duke.\nThe captain, Cattivanza degli Strozzi, chanced to be in the same shop;\nand when Cisti caught sight of him he whispered, \"I was bringing you\nthose crowns I owed; if you want them, come for them before they go\nwith me to prison.\" Now Cattivanza had a way of putting his neighbors\nto the push, not caring to hazard his own person. So, finding there\naround him several young fellows of the highest daring, more eager\nthan apt for so serious an enterprise, he bade them catch up Captain\nCisti and get the money from him, and if the guard resisted, overpower\nthe men, provided they had pluck enough to do so.\n\nThe young men were but four, and all four of them without a beard. The\nfirst was called Bertino Aldobrandi, another Anguillotto of Lucca; I\ncannot recall the names of the rest. Bertino had been trained like a\npupil by my brother, and my brother felt the most unbounded love for\nhim. So then off dashed the four brave lads and came up with the guard\nof the Bargello,--upwards of fifty constables, counting pikes,\narquebuses, and two-handed swords. After a few words they drew their\nweapons, and the four boys so harried the guard that if Captain\nCattivanza had but shown his face, without so much as drawing, they\nwould certainly have put the whole pack to flight. But delay spoiled\nall: for Bertino received some ugly wounds and fell; at the same time\nAnguillotto was also hit in the right arm, and being unable to use his\nsword, got out of the fray as well as he was able. The others did the\nsame. Bertino Aldobrandi was lifted from the ground seriously injured.\n\nWhile these things were happening we were all at table; for that\nmorning we had dined more than an hour later than usual. On hearing\nthe commotion one of the old man's sons, the elder, rose from table to\ngo and look at the scuffle. He was called Giovanni; and I said to him,\n\"For Heaven's sake, don't go! In such matters one is always certain to\nlose, while there is nothing to be gained.\" His father spoke to like\npurpose, \"Pray, my son, don't go!\" But the lad, without heeding any\none, ran down the stairs. Reaching the Banchi, where the great\nscrimmage was, and seeing Bertino lifted from the ground, he ran\ntowards home, and met my brother Cecchino on the way, who asked what\nwas the matter. Though some of the bystanders signed to Giovanni not\nto tell Cecchino, he cried out like a madman how it was that Bertino\nAldobrandi had been killed by the guard. My poor brother gave vent to\na bellow which might have been heard ten miles away. Then he turned to\nGiovanni: \"Ah me! but could you tell me which of those men killed him\nfor me?\" Giovanni said yes, that it was a man who had a big two-handed\nsword, with a blue feather in his bonnet. My poor brother rushed\nahead, and having recognized the homicide by those signs, he threw\nhimself with all his dash and spirit into the middle of the band, and\nbefore his man could turn on guard, ran him right through the guts,\nand with the sword's hilt thrust him to the ground. Then he turned\nupon the rest with such energy and daring that his one arm was on the\npoint of putting the whole band to flight, had it not been that while\nwheeling round to strike an arquebusier, this man fired in\nself-defense and hit the brave unfortunate young fellow above the knee\nof his right leg. While he lay stretched upon the ground the\nconstables scrambled off in disorder as fast as they were able, lest a\npair to my brother should arrive upon the scene.\n\nNoticing that the tumult was not subsiding, I too rose from table, and\ngirding on my sword--for everybody wore one then--I went to the bridge\nof Sant' Agnolo, where I saw a group of several men assembled. On my\ncoming up and being recognized by some of them, they gave way before\nme and showed me what I least of all things wished to see, albeit I\nmade mighty haste to view the sight. On the instant I did not know\nCecchino, since he was wearing a different suit of clothes from that\nin which I had lately seen him. Accordingly he recognized me first and\nsaid, \"Dearest brother, do not be upset by my grave accident: it is\nonly what might be expected in my profession; get me removed from here\nat once, for I have but few hours to live.\" They had acquainted me\nwith the whole event while he was speaking, in brief words befitting\nsuch occasion. So I answered, \"Brother, this is the greatest sorrow\nand the greatest trial that could happen to me in the whole course of\nmy life. But be of good cheer; for before you lose sight of him who\ndid the mischief, you shall see yourself revenged by my hand.\" Our\nwords on both sides were to the purport, but of the shortest.\n\nThe guard was now about fifty paces from us; for Maffio, their\nofficer, had made some of them turn back to take up the corporal my\nbrother killed. Accordingly, I quickly traversed that short space,\nwrapped in my cape, which I had tightened round me, and came up with\nMaffio, whom I should most certainly have murdered; for there were\nplenty of people round, and I had wound my way among them. With the\nrapidity of lightning I had half drawn my sword from the sheath, when\nBerlinghier Berlinghieri, a young man of the greatest daring and my\ngood friend, threw himself from behind upon my arms; he had four other\nfellows of like kidney with him, who cried out to Maffio, \"Away with\nyou, for this man here alone was killing you!\" He asked, \"Who is he?\"\nand they answered, \"Own brother to the man you see there.\" Without\nwaiting to hear more, he made haste for Torre di Nona; and they said,\n\"Benvenuto, we prevented you against your will, but did it for your\ngood; now let us go to succor him who must die shortly.\" Accordingly\nwe turned and went back to my brother, whom I had at once conveyed\ninto a house. The doctors who were called in consultation treated him\nwith medicaments, but could not decide to amputate the leg, which\nmight perhaps have saved him.\n\nAs soon as his wound had been dressed, Duke Alessandro appeared and\nmost affectionately greeted him. My brother had not as yet lost\nconsciousness; so he said to the Duke, \"My lord, this only grieves me,\nthat your Excellency is losing a servant than whom you may perchance\nfind men more valiant in the profession of arms, but none more\nlovingly and loyally devoted to your service than I have been.\" The\nDuke bade him do all he could to keep alive; for the rest, he well\nknew him to be a man of worth and courage. He then turned to his\nattendants, ordering them to see that the brave young fellow wanted\nfor nothing.\n\nWhen he was gone, my brother lost blood so copiously--for nothing\ncould be done to stop it--that he went off his head and kept raving\nall the following night, with the exception that once, when they\nwanted to give him the communion, he said, \"You would have done well\nto confess me before; now it is impossible that I should receive the\ndivine sacrament in this already ruined frame; it will be enough if I\npartake of it by the divine virtue of the eyesight, whereby it shall\nbe transmitted into my immortal soul, which only prays to Him for\nmercy and forgiveness.\" Having spoken thus, the Host was elevated; but\nhe straightway relapsed into the same delirious ravings as before,\npouring forth a torrent of the most terrible frenzies and horrible\nimprecations that the mind of man could imagine; nor did he cease once\nall that night until the day broke.\n\nWhen the sun appeared above our horizon he turned to me and said,\n\"Brother, I do not wish to stay here longer, for these fellows will\nend by making me do something tremendous, which may cause them to\nrepent of the annoyance they have given me.\" Then he kicked out both\nhis legs--the injured limb we had inclosed in a very heavy box--and\nmade as though he would fling it across a horse's back. Turning his\nface round to me, he called out thrice, \"Farewell, farewell!\" and with\nthe last word that most valiant spirit passed away.\n\nAt the proper hour, toward nightfall, I had him buried with due\nceremony in the Church of the Florentines; and afterwards I erected\nto his memory a very handsome monument of marble, upon which I caused\ntrophies and banners to be carved. I must not omit to mention that one\nof his friends had asked him who the man was that had killed him, and\nif he could recognize him; to which he answered that he could, and\ngave his description. My brother indeed attempted to prevent this\ncoming to my ears; but I got it very well impressed upon my mind, as\nwill appear in the sequel.\n\n\n\nAN ADVENTURE IN NECROMANCY\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nIt happened through a variety of singular accidents that I became\nintimate with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of very elevated genius\nand well instructed in both Latin and Greek letters. In the course of\nconversation one day we were led to talk about the art of necromancy,\napropos of which I said, \"Throughout my whole life I have had the most\nintense desire to see or learn something of this art.\" Thereto the\npriest replied, \"A stout soul and a steadfast must the man have who\nsets himself to such an enterprise.\" I answered that of strength and\nsteadfastness of soul I should have enough and to spare, provided I\nfound the opportunity. Then the priest said, \"If you have the heart to\ndare it, I will amply satisfy your curiosity.\" Accordingly we agreed\nupon attempting the adventure.\n\nThe priest one evening made his preparations, and bade me find a\ncomrade, or not more than two. I invited Vincenzio Romoli, a very dear\nfriend of mine, and the priest took with him a native of Pistoja, who\nalso cultivated the black art. We went together to the Coliseum; and\nthere the priest, having arrayed himself in necromancer's robes, began\nto describe circles on the earth with the finest ceremonies that can\nbe imagined. I must say that he had made us bring precious perfumes\nand fire, and also drugs of fetid odor. When the preliminaries were\ncompleted he made the entrance into the circle, and taking us by the\nhand, introduced us one by one inside it. Then he assigned our several\nfunctions; to the necromancer, his comrade, he gave the pentacle to\nhold; the other two of us had to look after the fire and the perfumes;\nand then he began his incantations. This lasted more than an hour and\na half; when several legions appeared, and the Coliseum was all full\nof devils. I was occupied with the precious perfumes, and when the\npriest perceived in what numbers they were present he turned to me and\nsaid, \"Benvenuto, ask them something.\" I called on them to reunite me\nwith my Sicilian Angelica. That night we obtained no answer; but I\nenjoyed the greatest satisfaction of my curiosity in such matters. The\nnecromancer said that we should have to go a second time, and that I\nshould obtain the full accomplishment of my request; but he wished me\nto bring with me a little boy of pure virginity.\n\nI chose one of my shop-lads, who was about twelve years old, and\ninvited Vincenzio Romoli again; and we also took a certain Agnolino\nGaddi, who was a very intimate friend of both. When we came once more\nto the place appointed, the necromancer made just the same\npreparations, attended by the same and even more impressive details.\nThen he introduced us into the circle, which he had reconstructed with\nart more admirable and yet more wondrous ceremonies. Afterwards he\nappointed my friend Vincenzio to the ordering of the perfumes and the\nfire, and with him Agnolino Gaddi. He next placed in my hand the\npentacle, which he bid me turn toward the points he indicated, and\nunder the pentacle I held the little boy, my workman. Now the\nnecromancer began to utter those awful invocations, calling by name on\nmultitudes of demons who are captains of their legions, and these he\nsummoned by the virtue and potency of God, the Uncreated, Living, and\nEternal, in phrases of the Hebrew, and also of the Greek and Latin\ntongues; insomuch that in a short space of time the whole Coliseum was\nfull of a hundredfold as many as had appeared upon the first occasion.\nVincenzio Romoli, together with Agnolino, tended the fire and heaped\non quantities of precious perfumes. At the advice of the necromancer I\nagain demanded to be reunited with Angelica. The sorcerer turned to me\nand said, \"Hear you what they have replied--that in the space of one\nmonth you will be where she is?\" Then once more he prayed me to stand\nfirm by him, because the legions were a thousandfold more than he had\nsummoned, and were the most dangerous of all the denizens of hell; and\nnow that they had settled what I asked, it behoved us to be civil to\nthem and dismiss them gently. On the other side, the boy, who was\nbeneath the pentacle, shrieked out in terror that a million of the\nfiercest men were swarming round and threatening us. He said moreover\nthat four huge giants had appeared, who were striving to force their\nway inside the circle. Meanwhile the necromancer, trembling with fear,\nkept doing his best with mild and soft persuasions to dismiss them.\nVincenzio Romoli, who quaked like an aspen-leaf, looked after the\nperfumes. Though I was quite as frightened as the rest of them, I\ntried to show it less, and inspired them all with marvelous courage;\nbut the truth is that I had given myself up for dead when I saw the\nterror of the necromancer. The boy had stuck his head between his\nknees, exclaiming, \"This is how I will meet death, for we are\ncertainly dead men.\" Again I said to him, \"These creatures are all\ninferior to us, and what you see is only smoke and shadow; so then\nraise your eyes.\" When he had raised them he cried out, \"The whole\nColiseum is in flames, and the fire is advancing on us;\" then covering\nhis face with his hands, he groaned again that he was dead, and that\nhe could not endure the sight longer. The necromancer appealed for my\nsupport, entreating me to stand firm by him, and to have asafetida\nflung upon the coals; so I turned to Vincenzio Romoli, and told him to\nmake the fumigation at once. While uttering these words I looked at\nAgnolino Gaddi, whose eyes were starting from their sockets in his\nterror, and who was more than half dead, and said to him, \"Agnolo, in\ntime and place like this we must not yield to fright, but do the\nutmost to bestir ourselves; therefore up at once, and fling a handful\nof that asafetida upon the fire.\"... The boy, roused by that great\nstench and noise, lifted his face a little, and hearing me laugh, he\nplucked up courage, and said the devils were taking to flight\ntempestuously. So we abode thus until the matin bells began to sound.\nThen the boy told us again that but few remained, and those were at a\ndistance. When the necromancer had concluded his ceremonies he put off\nhis wizard's robe, and packed up a great bundle of books which he had\nbrought with him; then all together we issued with him from the\ncircle, huddling as close as we could to one another, especially the\nboy, who had got into the middle, and taken the necromancer by his\ngown and me by the cloak. All the while that we were going toward our\nhouses in the Banchi he kept saying that two of the devils he had seen\nin the Coliseum were gamboling in front of us, skipping now along the\nroofs and now upon the ground. The necromancer assured me that often\nas he had entered magic circles, he had never met with such a serious\naffair as this. He also tried to persuade me to assist him in\nconsecrating a book, by means of which we should extract immeasurable\nwealth, since we could call up fiends to show us where treasures were,\nwhereof the earth is full; and after this wise we should become the\nrichest of mankind: love affairs like mine were nothing but vanities\nand follies without consequence. I replied that if I were a Latin\nscholar I should be very willing to do what he suggested. He continued\nto persuade me by arguing that Latin scholarship was of no importance,\nand that if he wanted, he could have found plenty of good Latinists;\nbut that he had never met with a man of soul so firm as mine, and that\nI ought to follow his counsel. Engaged in this conversation, we\nreached our homes, and each one of us dreamed all that night of\ndevils.\n\nAs we were in the habit of meeting daily, the necromancer kept urging\nme to join in his adventure. Accordingly I asked him how long it would\ntake, and where we should have to go. To this he answered that we\nmight get through with it in less than a month, and that the most\nsuitable locality for the purpose was the hill country of Norcia: a\nmaster of his in the art had indeed consecrated such a book quite\nclose to Rome, at a place called the Badia di Farfa; but he had met\nwith some difficulties there, which would not occur in the mountains\nof Norcia: the peasants also of that district are people to be\ntrusted, and have some practice in these matters, so that at a pinch\nthey are able to render valuable assistance.\n\nThis priestly sorcerer moved me so by his persuasions that I was well\ndisposed to comply with his request; but I said I wanted first to\nfinish the medals I was making for the Pope. I had confided what I was\ndoing about them to him alone, begging him to keep my secret. At the\nsame time I never stopped asking him if he believed that I should be\nreunited to my Sicilian Angelica at the time appointed; for the date\nwas drawing near, and I thought it singular that I heard nothing about\nher. The necromancer told me that it was quite certain I should find\nmyself where she was, since the devils never break their word when\nthey promise, as they did on that occasion; but he bade me keep my\neyes open and be on the lookout against some accident which might\nhappen to me in that connection, and put restraint upon myself to\nendure somewhat against my inclination, for he could discern a great\nand imminent danger in it: well would it be for me if I went with him\nto consecrate the book, since this would avert the peril that menaced\nme and would make us both most fortunate.\n\nI was beginning to hanker after the adventure more than he did; but I\nsaid that a certain Maestro Giovanni of Castel Bolognese had just come\nto Rome, very ingenious in the art of making medals of the sort I made\nin steel, and that I thirsted for nothing more than to compete with\nhim and take the world by storm with some great masterpiece, which I\nhoped would annihilate all those enemies of mine by the force of\ngenius and not the sword. The sorcerer on his side went on urging,\n\"Nay, prithee, Benvenuto, come with me and shun a great disaster which\nI see impending over you.\" However, I had made my mind up, come what\nwould, to finish my medal, and we were now approaching the end of the\nmonth. I was so absorbed and enamored by my work that I thought no\nmore about Angelica or anything of that kind, but gave my whole self\nup to it.\n\n\n\nBENVENUTO LOSES SELF-CONTROL UNDER SEVERE PROVOCATION\n\nFrom the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation\n\n\nIt happened one day, close on the hours of vespers, that I had to go,\nat an unusual time for me, from my house to my workshop; for I ought\nto say that the latter was in the Banchi, while I lived behind the\nBanchi, and went rarely to the shop; all my business there I left in\nthe hands of my partner, Felice. Having stayed a short while in the\nworkshop, I remembered that I had to say something to Alessandro del\nBene. So I arose, and when I reached the Banchi, I met a man called\nSer Benedetto, who was a great friend of mine. He was a notary, born\nin Florence, son of a blind man who said prayers about the streets for\nalms, and a Sienese by race. This Ser Benedetto had been very many\nyears at Naples; afterwards he had settled in Rome, where he\ntransacted business for some Sienese merchants of the Chigi. My\npartner had over and over again asked him for some moneys which were\ndue for certain little rings confided to Ser Benedetto. That very day,\nmeeting him in the Banchi, he demanded his money rather roughly, as\nhis wont was. Benedetto was walking with his masters, and they,\nannoyed by the interruption, scolded him sharply, saying they would be\nserved by somebody else, in order not to have to listen to such\nbarking.\n\nSer Benedetto did the best he could to excuse himself, swore that he\nhad paid the goldsmith, and said he had no power to curb the rage of\nmadmen. The Sienese took his words ill, and dismissed him on the spot.\nLeaving them, he ran like an arrow to my shop, probably to take\nrevenge upon Felice. It chanced that just in the middle of the street\nwe met. I, who had heard nothing of the matter, greeted him most\nkindly, according to my custom, to which courtesy he replied with\ninsults. Then what the sorcerer had said flashed all at once upon my\nmind; and bridling myself as well as I was able, in the way he bade\nme, I answered:--\n\n\"Good brother Benedetto, don't fly into a rage with me, for I have\ndone you no harm, nor do I know anything about these affairs of yours.\nPlease go and finish what you have to do with Felice. He is quite\ncapable of giving you a proper answer; but inasmuch as I know nothing\nabout it, you are wrong to abuse me in this way, especially as you are\nwell aware that I am not the man to put up with insults.\"\n\nHe retorted that I knew everything, and that he was the man to make me\nbear a heavier load than that, and that Felice and I were two great\nrascals. By this time a crowd had gathered round to hear the quarrel.\nProvoked by his ugly words, I stooped and took up a lump of mud--for\nit had rained--and hurled it with a quick and unpremeditated movement\nat his face. He ducked his head, so that the mud hit him in the middle\nof the skull. There was a stone in it with several sharp angles, one\nof which striking him, he fell stunned like a dead man; whereupon all\nthe bystanders, seeing the great quantity of blood, judged that he was\nreally dead.\n\nWhile he was still lying on the ground, and people were preparing to\ncarry him away, Pompeo the jeweler passed by. The Pope had sent for\nhim to give orders about some jewels. Seeing the fellow in such a\nmiserable plight, he asked who had struck him; on which they told him,\n\"Benvenuto did it, but the stupid creature brought it down upon\nhimself.\" No sooner had Pompeo reached the Pope than he began to\nspeak: \"Most blessed Father, Benvenuto has this very moment murdered\nTobbia; I saw it with my own eyes.\" On this the Pope in a fury ordered\nthe Governor, who was in the presence, to take and hang me at once in\nthe place where the homicide had been committed; adding that he must\ndo all he could to catch me, and not appear again before him until he\nhad hanged me.\n\n\n\n\nCELTIC LITERATURE\n\nBY WILLIAM SHARP AND ERNEST RHYS\n\n\nThe widespread and deepening contemporary interest in Celtic\nliterature is primarily due to four distinct influences. The\npublication (followed by its world-wide repute and the bitterest\nliterary controversy of modern days) of Macpherson's 'Ossian' comes\nfirst. There is no inorganic development in art, whether the art of\nwords or any other: in the fundamental sense, there is no accident.\nIt is a mistake therefore to speak of Macpherson's 'Ossian' as a\nstartling meteor which flashed across the world of literature, a brief\napparition out of a void into which it has returned, leaving only a\nmass of debris to testify to its actuality and bygone splendor: a\nmistake, for this famous production was indirectly but closely related\nto another literary influence, the publication of Bishop Percy's\ncelebrated 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.' In art there is no\nroom for accidents: for art is an organic development, and the most\nseemingly arbitrary variations are inevitable or at least natural.\n\nAfter Macpherson's 'Ossian' the next important influence is the\n'Mabinogion,' as retold in English from the early Welsh originals by\nLady Charlotte Guest. The influence, as well as the inherent beauty\nand interest, of each of these famous productions will be dealt with\nlater in these volumes.\n\n'Ossian' and the 'Mabinogion' afforded a new standpoint. The two\nheralds of the treasure we have inherited in this Celtic literature of\nthe past were Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold. Renan by his treatise\non 'La Poesie des Races Celtiques,' and later Matthew Arnold by his\nessay on 'Celtic Literature,' accomplished an almost inestimable\nservice. Everything that has been done since is but a variation along\nthe lines indicated by these two great critics; and with this result,\nthat it is already a commonplace to say we have in the Celtic\nliterature of the past not only an almost inexhaustible mine of\nbeauty, but the material for a new and vivid Anglo-Celtic literature\nof the imagination.\n\nIn the ensuing brief sketch of some of the main features of this\nsubject, at once so fascinating and so important, no attempt is made\nto do other than to interest, and perhaps allure further, the general\nreader. For convenience's sake, this brief paper may be divided into\nfour sections:--Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish.\n\n\n\nI--IRISH\n\n\n\"From what dragon's teeth, and when sown, sprang forth this warlike\ncrop?\" asks Mr. Standish O'Grady, writing in his 'History of Ireland'\nof the host of famous heroic men and women whose names have come\ndown to us from the antique periods of the Gael. \"Out of the ground\nthey start,\" he tells us, \"the armies of her demigods and\nchampions,--beautiful heroic forms,--in the North the Red Branch, in\nthe South the Ernai or Clan Dega, in the West Queen Meave and her\nchampions, in the Southeast that mysterious half-red Meave and her\nmartial grooms!\"\n\nA wonderful world! that heroic Ireland, the old Ireland of Queen Meave\nand Cuculain, which only now for the first time is become at all a\npossible region for the most of us. It is due to the remarkable modern\nband of Irish writers and scholars represented by Mr. O'Grady in the\none category, and his older namesake, Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady of\nthe 'Silva Gadelica,' in the other, that this literature is at last\nunsealed for those readers who have no Gaelic equipment to aid them.\nWith their aid Queen Meave emerges into new life in poetry and\nromance; Cuculain is seen fighting afresh his ancient battles; and St.\nPatrick encounters again the primitive Ossian: all these, fortunately,\nare now as much within the reach of an American audience as their\nclassic prototypes in Homer or in the northern sagas. These few more\nfamiliar names, out of the vast number which threaten confusion in the\nold Irish romances and bardic books, may serve as clues in the\nperplexing labyrinth of a subject which seems at first so difficult to\npenetrate. Take Queen Meave, for instance: how do we arrive at her\nplace and story, so early in the centuries? She belongs to the second\ngreat cycle of Irish legendary history, in which she has Cuculain,\nConor mac Nessa, Fergus, and Deirdre, as companions in romance. In\nthis cycle the dramatic centre is the fierce interminable war between\nConnaught and Ulster, brought about by the treacherous murder of the\nsons of Usnach. The story of their tragic end, and of the melancholy\ndeath of Deirdre, is one of the most moving in all Irish tradition.\nBut the master-romance of the cycle is not that of Deirdre, but of\nQueen Meave and her foray in quest of the famous bull of Louth; a tale\nfamiliar in Irish under its title of 'The Cattle-spoiling of Cooley.'\n\nIf one is tired of the modern world and its literary interpretations,\nits self-conscious fictions and impressionistic poetry, one cannot do\nbetter than dive deep into the past, where Queen Meave marches in\nhalf-barbaric splendor and beauty across the stage of the ancient\nEri, which was approximately contemporaneous with the birth of\nChrist. That was the time when the Red Branch mustered in the north\nits heroic array of warriors, descendants of Ir, the son of Milesius;\nand of the Red Branch came Cuculain the mighty. Connaught, the Ireland\nwest of the Shannon, was Queen Meave's patrimony, where still lived\nthe chief remnant of the prehistoric Firbolgs, the race that once\nfought with the gods themselves. And we have still to supply the\nmid-Ireland, with Tara as capital, and Cairbre as king; the Leinster\nof that day, subject to Finn and Far-Cu; and the Munster, subject to\nLok and Eocha, with the children of Conairy Mor the Beautiful, too,\nranging the south in their fullness of power. The colors to be got out\nof this Celtic antiquity, the spirit of life that surges in its\nromantic annals, the fine fury of its heroes, the beauty and\npicturesqueness of its women, combine to make a story that only an\nIreland of the first century could have inspired, and that only an\nIreland of the sixth to the ninth century could have written.\n\nThroughout Celtic history, the sixth century is for many reasons a\nclimacteric period. In Irish literature, we reach about the year 575 a\nfirst point to which we can refer approximately the more conscious\noperation of its genius. Then it was that it made its first open claim\nto something like a national recognition. At the famous conclave of\nthat year, held at Druimceta, it attained an almost academic position\nand organization. In this conclave, the then king of the Scottish\nGaels, the leading King of the Irish, and St. Columcill, assisted at\nthe deliberations which decided the _caste_ and privileges of the\n_Illuminati_. There seem to have been three grades: the first, a\npseudo-Druidic order, the _Gradh Ecna_; the second, one of law-makers\nand lawyers; the third, the Bardic order, the _Gradh Fili_, the poets\nbeing termed _File_ in Irish. Of the many degrees to which the poets\nor _File_ could attain, the highest (as in the other grades, of\n_Ecna_, \"Wisdom,\" and of _Fene_, \"Law\") was the _Ollave_, or Doctor.\nThese doctors of literature, so to call them, were already the\ncontinuators of a great tradition, especially in poetry. They had to\ncarry, written only in their heads, an immense body of bardic and\nreligious legendary history and philosophy. And inasmuch as they were\nthe sole depositories of this profound and occult learning, to say\nnothing of those heroic tales and romances in which the Celtic people\nso delighted, they received high honor wherever they went. When the\nchief poet, the ollave, or doctor of poetry, arrived, in his\nweather-beaten cloak of dark crimson trimmed with white feathers,\naccompanied by his little band of disciples, at some chieftain's\nhouse, he was received with signal hospitality and treated to the best\nhis host could afford.\n\nWhile literature was still oral, it is clear that despite the care\nused in its preservation in the bardic schools, it could not be\nmaintained with the absolute accuracy of a written or a printed text.\nThe remoter the historical matter to be remembered, the less likely\nwas it to be preserved, _literatim et verbatim_, without those little\nliberties of the imagination which the Celtic word-master of earlier\nages was always ready to take. Thus the first cycle of Irish legendary\nhistory, dating back many centuries before the Christian era,--the\nprimitive and mythological cycle,--allows full license to the\nimagination, working upon a basis of semi-barbaric tradition, with a\nmixture in it of nature-myths and remotest history. Both because of\nthe extent and the extreme difficulty of the materials afforded by\nthis cycle in the study of the pre-Christian religious beliefs of the\nCeltic races, its stories will always form a great hunting-ground for\nCeltic students. We learn from it how the Nemedians were overtaken by\nthe Fomorians and fought with them, almost to extermination, on Tory\nIsland, escaping then to the south of Europe, particularly to Greece;\nand a couple of centuries later returned, under their new name of the\nFirbolgs. The Nemedians meanwhile supplied similarly a recrudescent\nrace, the Tuatha De Danann, of whom came the Dagda,--the all-king,\nalmost the Zeus of ancient Ireland. The same cycle supplies us also\nwith the mythical types correspondent to those of the Greek mythology:\n_e. g._, Ogmuir, the Irish Heracles; Lug or Lugh, the Apollo; Diancea,\nthe Esculapius; Manannan, the Neptune; and so forth. We have also\nBridget, the Goddess of Poetry, the Gaelic Muse, and the first and\nforemost of the many illustrious Brians of Gaelic story. Later critics\ndiffer ingeniously about the precise origins and significations of\nmany of these prehistoric figures. Our own conjecture is, and it lays\nclaim to no great originality or finality, that we have in this Danann\ncycle an all-but inextricable commixture of primitive nature-myths and\nfolk-tales brought by the Milesian and pre-Milesian immigrants from\nthe Aryan cradle in the East, together with a certain addition of\nconfused history relating to the earliest adventures of the new-come\nraces upon Irish ground. But such as this traditional cycle was, it\nprovided the background for the much later second cycle, of which we\nhave already spoken, and which bears the Red Branch aloft as a sign.\nIn sight of the Red Branch, the darker part of the journey is over;\nand the mists of mythology only form the veil shutting out all but the\nmere human foreground.\n\nWe have spoken so far of two cycles--the Mythological, whose\nchronology is a matter for further criticism to decide; the Heroic, or\nRed Branch, which we place at the beginning of the Christian era.\n\nNow we come to a third cycle: the \"Fenian\" named after Finn Mac Cool,\naccording to most Irish writers; the \"Ossianic\" named after Ossian,\nFinn's famous son, according to most Scotch. We need only speak of it\nhere of course on its purely Irish side and from the Fenian aspect, as\nthe reader will find it fully dealt with under its Ossianic aspect\nelsewhere. The heroes of this cycle, if we accept their historical\nexistence in Ireland, lived from the second to the fourth centuries of\nthe Christian era. Art, his grandson Cormac, and Cormac's son,\nCairbre; Cool, his son Finn, and King Goll: these, with Owen Mor and\nmany another, fill the Fenian romances with their fierce and\npicturesque pursuit of destiny and death. They only await the hand of\nthat predestined shaper into final and positive and modernly\nintelligible form of the confused romances which treat of their\ndoings, to add a new epic to the larger literature which has the Old\nWorld for its text and the New World for its interpreter.\n\nThese three great cycles of Irish romance by no means exhaust the\nwealth of story, still lurking _perdu_ in old MSS. or in rare and\nrarely read works. Some of these additional tales have already reached\nAmerican readers under modern retellings or poetic interpretations;\nsuch as, _e. g._, 'The Voyage of Maeldune', retold memorably, and\ndifferently enough, in flowing hexametrical periods by Tennyson:--\n\n \"And we came to the Isle of Shouting; we landed; a score of wild\n birds\n Cried from the topmost summit with human voices and words;\n Once in an hour they cried, and whenever their voices pealed,\n The steer fell down at the plow and the harvest died from the field,\n And the men dropt dead in the valleys, and half of the cattle went\n lame,\n And the roof sank in on the hearth, and the dwelling broke into\n flame;\n And the shouting of these wild birds ran into the hearts of my crew,\n Till they shouted along with the shouting, and seized one another\n and slew;\n But I drew them the one from the other; I saw that we could not\n stay,\n And we left the dead to the birds, and we sailed with our wounded\n away.\"\n\nTennyson took his version from Joyce's 'Early Celtic Romances'. In\nthis volume we have, among other legendary romances, five or six of\nthe most wonderful or moving tales in Celtic or any other literature.\nThree of these are--The Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin', comprising\n'The Fate of the Children of Usna' (or 'Deirdre'); 'The Fate of the\nChildren of Lir'; and 'The Fate of the Children of Tuirenn'. The names\nof the three others are 'The Voyage of Maeldun' (the oldest copy of\nwhich is dated 1100), 'The Pursuit of Dermot and Grania', and 'Ossian\nin the Land of Youth'. Of these perhaps the story of 'Deirdre' is the\nbest known, and American readers may be referred to the fine epical\nversion by Dr. Robert D. Joyce ('Deirdre'), published some years ago\nby Roberts Brothers of Boston. Two brief examples of the short\nepisodical narratives which make up the marvelous 'Voyage of Maeldun'\nmay be cited here,--'The Miller of Hell' and 'Signs of Home,' the\nlatter giving the return of the Celtic Ulysses and his companions.\n\n\nTHE MILLER OF HELL\n\nThe next island they came to, which was not far off from the last, had\na large mill on it; and near the door stood the miller, a huge-bodied,\nstrong, burly man. They saw numberless crowds of men and horses laden\nwith corn coming towards the mill; and when their corn was ground they\nwent away towards the west. Great herds of all kinds of cattle covered\nthe plain as far as the eye could reach, and among them many wagons,\nladen with every kind of wealth that is produced on the ridge of the\nworld. All these the miller put into the mouth of his mill to be\nground; and all as they came forth went westward.\n\nMaeldun and his people now spoke to the miller, and asked him the name\nof the mill, and the meaning of all they had seen on the island. And\nhe, turning quickly towards them, replied in a few words:--\n\n\"This mill is called the Mill of Inver-tre-Kenand, and I am the Miller\nof Hell. All the corn and all the riches of the world that men are\ndissatisfied with, or which they complain of in any way, are sent here\nto be ground; and also every precious article and every kind of wealth\nwhich men try to conceal from God. All these I grind in the Mill of\nInver-tre-Kenand and send them away afterwards to the west.\"\n\nHe spoke no more, but turned round and busied himself again with his\nmill. And the voyagers, with much wonder and awe in their hearts, went\nto their curragh and sailed away.\n\n\nSIGNS OF HOME\n\nSoon after they saw a beautiful verdant island, with herds of oxen,\ncows, and sheep browsing all over its hills and valleys; but no houses\nnor inhabitants to be seen. And they rested some time on this island\nand ate the flesh of the cows and sheep.\n\nOne day while they were standing on a hill a large falcon flew by; and\ntwo of the crew, who happened to look closely at him, cried out in the\nhearing of Maeldun:--\n\n\"See that falcon! he is surely like the falcons of Erin!\"\n\n\"Watch him closely,\" cried Maeldun, \"and observe exactly in what\ndirection he is flying.\"\n\nAnd they saw that he flew to the southeast, without turning or\nwavering.\n\nThey went on board at once; and having unmoored, they sailed to the\nsoutheast after the falcon. After rowing the whole day, they sighted\nland in the dusk of the evening, which seemed to them like the land of\nErin.\n\n * * * * *\n\nOf all the books of the kind published since Macpherson's 'Ossian,'\nLady Charlotte Guest's 'Mabinogion,' and Villemarque's 'Barzaz-Breiz,'\nthis collection of Dr. Joyce's has had the most marked influence. It\nconsists of eleven tales, and was the first readable collection of the\nold Gaelic prose romances published in English. So far as the general\npublic is concerned, Dr. Joyce's method is unquestionably the best. \"A\ntranslation,\" he says, \"may either follow the very words, or reproduce\nthe life and spirit, of the original; but no translation can do both.\nIf you render word for word, you lose the spirit; if you wish to give\nthe spirit and manner, you must depart from the exact words and frame\nyour own phrases. I have chosen this latter course. My translation\nfollows the original closely enough in narrative and incident; but so\nfar as mere phraseology is concerned, I have used the English language\nfreely, not allowing myself to be trammeled by too close an adherence\nto the very words of the text. The originals are in general simple in\nstyle; and I have done my best to render them into simple, homely,\nplain English. In short, I have tried to tell the stories as I\nconceive the old Shenachies themselves would have told them if they\nhad used English instead of Gaelic.\"\n\nAnother characteristic and admirably edited translation of one of\nthese miscellaneous stories that lie outside the three cycles of Irish\nromance is 'The Vision of Mac Cougleime,' which we owe to Dr. Kuno\nMeyer (London: Nutt).\n\nAmong the legendary Celtic romances is the short but beautiful and\ncharacteristic account of Ossian's expedition to the Isle of the Blest\nor the Land of Youth, and his subsequent return as an old and decrepit\nman--in a word, the Celtic Rip Van Winkle. This legend not only\nunderlies all the spiritual romances of Celtic Ireland and Scotland,\nbut has profoundly appealed to the imagination of the whole complex\nEnglish race of to-day, whether under the badge of the rose, the\nthistle, the shamrock, or the leek, whether under the banner of the\nUnited Kingdom or that of the Stars and Stripes.\n\n\nOISIN IN TIRNANOGE;\n\nor\n\nTHE LAST OF THE FENI\n\n [According to an ancient legend, Finn's son Oisin, the hero\n poet, survived to the time of St. Patrick, two hundred years\n (the legend makes it three hundred) after the other Feni. On a\n certain occasion, when the saint asked him how he had lived to\n such a great age, the old hero related his story, of which the\n following is the close.]\n\nI lived in the Land of Youth more than three hundred years; but it\nappeared to me that only three years had passed since the day I parted\nfrom my friends. At the end of that time I began to have a longing\ndesire to see my father Finn and all my old companions, and I asked\nleave of Niam and of the king to visit Erin. The king gave permission,\nand Niam said:--\n\n\"I will give consent, though I feel sorrow in my heart, for I fear\nmuch you will never return to me.\"\n\nI replied that I would surely return, and that she need not feel any\ndoubt or dread, for that the white steed knew the way, and would bring\nme back in safety. Then she addressed me in these words, which seemed\nvery strange to me:--\n\n\"I will not refuse this request, though your journey afflicts me with\ngreat grief and fear. Erin is not now as it was when you left it. The\ngreat king Finn and his Feni are all gone; and you will find, instead\nof them, a holy father and hosts of priests and saints. Now, think\nwell on what I say to you, and keep my words in your mind. If once you\nalight from the white steed, you will never come back to me. Again I\nwarn you, if you place your feet on the green sod in Erin, you will\nnever return to this lovely land. A third time, O Oisin, my beloved\nhusband, a third time I say to you, if you alight from the white steed\nyou will never see me again.\"\n\nI promised that I would faithfully attend to her words, and that I\nwould not alight from the white steed. Then as I looked into her\ngentle face and marked her grief, my heart was weighed down with\nsadness, and my tears flowed plentifully; but even so, my mind was\nbent on coming back to Erin.\n\nWhen I had mounted the white steed, he galloped straight toward the\nshore. We moved as swiftly as before over the clear sea. The wind\novertook the waves and we overtook the wind, so that we straightway\nleft the Land of Youth behind; and we passed by many islands and\ncities till at length we landed on the green shores of Erin.\n\nAs I traveled on through the country, I looked closely around me; but\nI scarcely knew the old places, for everything seemed strangely\naltered. I saw no sign of Finn and his host, and I began to dread that\nNiam's saying was coming true. At length I espied at a distance a\ncompany of little men and women,[A] all mounted on horses as small\nas themselves; and when I came near, they greeted me kindly and\ncourteously. They looked at me with wonder and curiosity, and they\nmarveled much at my great size and at the beauty and majesty of my\nperson.\n\n [A] The gigantic race of the Feni had all passed away, and\n Erin was now inhabited by people who looked very small in\n Oisin's eyes.\n\nI asked them about Finn and the Feni; whether they were still living,\nor if any sudden disaster had swept them away. And one replied:--\n\n\"We have heard of the hero Finn, who ruled the Feni of Erin in times\nof old, and who never had an equal for bravery and wisdom. The poets\nof the Gaels have written many books concerning his deeds and the\ndeeds of the Feni, which we cannot now relate; but they are all gone\nlong since, for they lived many ages ago. We have heard also, and we\nhave seen it written in very old books, that Finn had a son named\nOisin. Now this Oisin went with a young fairy maiden to Tirnanoge, and\nhis father and his friends sorrowed greatly after him and sought him\nlong; but he was never seen again.\"\n\nWhen I heard all this I was filled with amazement, and my heart grew\nheavy with great sorrow. I silently turned my steed away from the\nwondering people, and set forward straightway for Allen of the mighty\ndeeds, on the broad green plains of Leinster. It was a miserable\njourney to me; and though my mind, being full of sadness at all I saw\nand heard, forecasted further sorrows, I was grieved more than ever\nwhen I reached Allen. For there indeed I found the hill deserted and\nlonely, and my father's palace all in ruins and overgrown with grass\nand weeds.\n\nI turned slowly away, and afterwards fared through the land in every\ndirection in search of my friends. But I met only crowds of little\npeople, all strangers, who gazed on me with wonder; and none knew me.\nI visited every place throughout the country where I knew the Feni had\nlived; but I found their houses all like Allen, solitary and in ruins.\n\nAt length I came to Glenasmole,[B] where many a time I had hunted in\ndays of old with the Feni, and there I saw a crowd of people in the\nglen. As soon as they saw me, one of them came forward and said:--\n\n [B] Glenasmole, a fine valley about seven miles south of\n Dublin, through which the river Dodder flows.\n\n\"Come to us, thou mighty hero, and help us out of our strait; for thou\nart a man of vast strength.\"\n\nI went to them, and found a number of men trying in vain to raise a\nlarge flat stone. It was half lifted from the ground; but those who\nwere under it were not strong enough either to raise it further or to\nfree themselves from its weight. And they were in great distress, and\non the point of being crushed to death.\n\nI thought it a shameful thing that so many men should be unable to\nlift this stone, which Oscar, if he were alive, would take in his\nright hand and fling over the heads of the feeble crowd. After I had\nlooked a little while, I stooped forward and seized the flag with one\nhand; and putting forth my strength, I flung it seven perches from its\nplace, and relieved the little men. But with the great strain the\ngolden saddle-girth broke, and bounding forward to keep myself from\nfalling, I suddenly came to the ground on my two feet.\n\nThe moment the white steed felt himself free, he shook himself and\nneighed. Then, starting off with the speed of a cloud-shadow on a\nMarch day, he left me standing helpless and sorrowful. Instantly a\nwoeful change came over me: the sight of my eyes began to fade, the\nruddy beauty of my face fled, I lost all my strength, and I fell to\nthe earth, a poor withered old man, blind and wrinkled and feeble.\n\nThe white steed was never seen again. I never recovered my sight, my\nyouth, or my strength; and I have lived in this manner, sorrowing\nwithout ceasing for my gentle golden-haired wife Niam, and thinking\never of my father Finn, and of the lost companions of my youth.\n\n * * * * *\n\nBetween these romances and the first definite Christian writings the\nnumerous Ossianic colloquies and narrative poems, and the Irish\nAnnals, form the connecting links. The Ossianic poetry, even where it\nis specially Irish in character, we have elected to leave aside for\nthe present, for reasons already given; but it must be remembered that\nthey form a very important section in themselves, and amount in Irish\nalone to some fifty thousand lines, even on a fairly moderate\ncomputation.\n\nTurning to the Annals, we are confronted at once by that extraordinary\nrepository of Irish lore, history, and legend known as 'The Annals of\nthe Four Masters.' This remarkable testament of the Irish genius was\ndue primarily to the zeal and energy of Michael O'Clery, born at\nDonegal about 1580--the last of a long line of scholars. Having become\na Franciscan, in his conventual calling he was living far away from\nhis native soil, at St. Anthony's monastery in Louvain. But there he\nhad another Donegal man, AEdh the son of Bhaird (Ward), for fellow\nworker; and the two together formed the idea of collecting and putting\ninto permanent form the valuable MS. flotsam of old Irish literature\nwhich in earlier days, wandering in their own land, they had found\ndrifting insecurely hither and thither. The plan they proposed was for\nO'Clery to get leave of absence and return to Ireland, there to roam\nup and down the land, collecting and copying every valuable MS. he\ncould lay hands on; then transmitting the copy to his co-worker in\nLouvain. AEdh son of Ward died too soon to carry out fully his part of\nthe undertaking: but another Irish Franciscan, Father Colgan, took up\nthe task; and it was he who gave the book its present title, 'The\nAnnals of the Four Masters,' calling it after the four men who chiefly\ncollaborated in the work, viz., Michael O'Clery, Farfassa O'Mulconry,\nPeregrine O'Clery, and Peregrine O'Duigenan. The Annals, thus\nlaboriously brought to a triumphant close, carry history back to the\nDeluge, and down to the years contemporary with their compilers and\nauthors, and the early part of the seventeenth century. \"There is no\nevent of Irish history,\" says Dr. Hyde, \"from the birth of Christ to\nthe beginning of the seventeenth century, that the first inquiry of\nthe student will not be--What do the Four Masters say about it?\" The\nAnnals indeed present in their curiously epitomized and synchronized\npages the concentrated essence of thousands of the confused MSS. which\nthe Four Masters collated, sifted, and interpreted with consummate art\nand intelligence. They wrote, we may add, in an archaic, almost\ncryptic style, full of bardic euphemisms and other difficulties; so\nthat it is fortunate even for Celtic scholars that O'Donovan's seven\ngreat volumes, in his quarto edition, present the text with an\naccompanying English translation.\n\nThe more one compares the great work of the Four Masters with other\nsucceeding works of the same historical order, the more one sees how\ngreat was the effect upon Irish literature of the growth of Christian\ninfluence. St. Patrick's are the world-wide name and fame which most\nclearly mark the early Christian history of Ireland, when the new\ndivine creed entered into the land and confronted the Celtic paganism.\nMany are the exquisite legends of St. Patrick, often so naively and so\ntenderly told; with glimmerings here and there already of the humor\nwhich we connect so much with the Irish temper of mind, and which\nreceived probably its greatest stimulus when an Irishman of earlier\ntimes wished, in all courtesy, to reconcile his old fighting instincts\nwith the Christian gentleness and self-sacrifice. This as it may be,\nthe hagiology of the mediaeval Irishman is in delightful contrast to\nthe tales of battle and foray in the three great cycles of early\nromance. As for St. Patrick, the legendary and apocryphal literature\nthat centres about him amounts in verse and prose to an immense bulk.\nMuch of this matter has of course very small historical value; but it\nmay be conceded that Patrick's traditional role as a law-maker and\nreviser, in connection with the revision of the Brehon Law, deserves\nserious attention. Similarly, though we do not accept more than a\nsmall part of the poems attributed to him as really his, there is\nenough to show him a poet, as well as a great teacher and preacher and\nlawgiver. What is most to the purpose, perhaps, is that he made his\nlife a poem; so that the mediaeval scribes can hardly speak of him\nwithout adorning and beautifying the tale they have to tell. Less\nknown but hardly less interesting is St. Columcill, whom Dr. Hyde\nclaims \"to have been, both in his failings and his virtues, the most\ntypical of Irishmen; at once sentimental and impulsive, an eminent\ntype of the race he came from.\" Dr. Hyde goes on to relate, in\nillustration of this, the tale of the heron in Iona:--When \"he saw the\nbird flying across the water from the direction of Ireland, and\nalighting half frozen with cold and faint with flight upon the rocky\ncoast there, he sent out one of his monks to go round the island and\nwarm and cherish and feed the bird; 'because,' said he weeping, 'it\nhas come from the land I shall never see on earth again!'\" Surely one\nof the most touching sentences ever uttered in all the long series of\nthe lament of the Celt in exile!\n\nThe Lives of the Saints form altogether a most important and\ncharacteristic section of Irish literature. Even when composed in\nLatin, they remain so saturated with Celtic feeling and coloring that\nthey may fairly be counted among Irish books. Dr. Hyde names several\nLatin lives of St. Patrick alone, ascribed to St. Benignus, St. Ultan,\nSt. Eleran, and others of his later followers. Of St. Columcill (St.\nColumba), one of the fullest, written in Irish in the sixteenth\ncentury, was compiled at Lifford under the direction of Manus\nO'Donnell, Prince of Tirconnell; though Adamnan's Latin life of the\nSaint is the most important book on the subject, written as it was\nonly a hundred years after the death of Columba, and by one who was\nhis spiritual successor as Abbot of Iona.\n\nThe Danish invasion of Ireland, lasting from the ninth to the eleventh\ncenturies, draws a red line across the history of its literature.\nDuring that troubled period many of the most priceless of its MSS.\nwere destroyed, and violent disruptions threatened every phase of\nlearning. However, the old impulse of the sixth century still lived;\nand we find in the tenth, Cormac, Bishop of Cashel, first among a\nredoubtable band of men of letters and men of affairs who strove\nsuccessfully to maintain the Irish spirit. Cormac's 'Glossary' is the\noldest book of its kind, and invaluable as a monument; and the reputed\npoems of Gorm'ly, his betrothed bride, whom he never married, and\nwhose tale is a sad and strange one, form in their different ways an\nextremely characteristic expression of the Irish literature of the\ntime.\n\nDuring the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the older Irish romances\nmultiplied themselves and begat new ones in the most astonishing way.\n'The Book of Leinster' mentions one hundred and eighty-one tales, duly\nclassified: Love-tales, Battle-tales, Tales of Travel, Forays, Feasts,\nVisions, Tragedies, etc. What we have called the doctors of literature\ndevoted themselves henceforth more to prose than to poetry, and poetry\nfell more and more into the hands of those who wrote not for the elect\nbut for the people.\n\nThere was no new development of Irish poetry, such as there was of\nWelsh poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The bardic\nschools, which did so much for Irish poetry from the sixth century to\nthe seventeenth, insisted upon its conventions to a degree that was\nexcessive. Geoffrey Keating, who carried on his great work at the same\ntime as the Four Masters, in the first half of the seventeenth\ncentury, and who was a poet as well as a historian, still used the\nbardic prosody, and wrote some delightful poems by its rules; but he\nlent his influence to aid the new liberty in prose and verse that\nIrish literature was learning. Keating's name is of first-rate\nimportance in its record, for this very reason. He was the first\nreally to conceive of Irish literature as a literature for the people,\nand not only for the elect. He was the first to do this; and partly\nbecause he did it, he was the last great landmark in the larger Gaelic\nliterature of Ireland. His 'History of Ireland,' the result of an\nenforced retirement from preaching, was, says Dr. Hyde, \"the most\npopular book ever written in Irish.\" He marks too the transition, as\nwe pointed out, from the old bardic tradition in Irish poetry. After\nhis coming the bards threw away their superfluous prosody and wrote\nfor the people, and became poets indeed, instead of the most ingenious\nof schoolmen. The result was the remarkable body of Irish poetry which\nbelongs to the last three centuries, and which contains many of the\ncharacteristics of folk-song and culture poetry, in a most tuneful and\nidiosyncratic fashion quite its own. Let us listen again to Dr. Hyde\non this point:--\n\n \"What the popular ballads of the folk had been like prior to\n the seventeenth century we have no means of knowing. No\n scribe would demean his learned pen by committing them to\n paper; but from that date down to the beginning of the\n present century the bards--the great houses being\n fallen--turned instinctively to the general public, and threw\n behind them the metres that required so many years of study\n in the schools, and dropped at a stroke several thousand\n words which no one understood except the great chiefs or\n those trained by the poets, while they broke out into\n beautiful but at the same time intelligible verse, which no\n one who has once heard and learned is likely to forget. This\n is to my mind the real glory of the modern Irish nation; this\n is the sweetest creation of Gaelic literature; this is the\n truest note of the enchanting Irish siren, and he who has\n once heard it and remains deaf to its charm has neither heart\n for song nor soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last\n two centuries is the most sensuous attempt to convey music in\n words ever made by man. It is absolutely impossible to convey\n the lusciousness of sound, richness of rhythm, and perfection\n of harmony in another language.\"\n\nDiscounting what we will in the natural enthusiasm of one who has\ndevoted himself heart and soul to the cause of the Gaelic tongue and\nof Irish literature, quite enough remains to carry the contention for\nthe continuing interest of native Irish poetry after so many\ncenturies. That such a poetry and such a language should suddenly\ndecay after so noble and enriched a record in the past, is nothing\nshort of a tragedy in the history of tongues.\n\nDr. Hyde's own collection of the 'Love Songs of Connacht' is the best\nexample that American readers could possibly have of this Irish\npoetry, the late flowering of so venerable and noble a tree. And with\nthis work, and some of the collections of the folk-tales still current\nin Erse-speaking Ireland, made by Dr. Hyde, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, and\nMr. Larminie, and Englished for us, we must bring this brief outline\nof the Irish contribution to Celtic literature to a close. Its modern\ninterpretation is only now beginning to take its due place, let us\nremember, both at the hands of its scholars and on the lips of its\npoets. And if any reader should think the scholars still, after all we\nhave said, too difficult to follow, let us recommend them to turn to\nthe poems and tales of Mr. W. B. Yeats and to the romantic pages of\nMr. Standish O'Grady, the latest exponents in our more modern tongue\nof that imagination, and that subtlety and energy of thought, which\nare characteristically Irish.\n\nOf the three great cycles of Gaelic literature, the third is the\n(so-called) Ossianic. Of this cycle Finn (Fionn, Fingal) is the\ncentral hero. The second great cycle is that which treats of the\nheroes of the Ultonians, _i. e._, the Red Branch of Ulster; among this\ncycle Cuculain (Cuchullin, Cohoolin, Coolin) is the supreme type. No\nliving writer has so well reconstructed the past for us as Mr.\nStandish O'Grady has done, and nowhere is he so successful as in his\nvivid and beautiful historical romance, of which Cuculain is the hero.\nOf the famous \"battle-prop of the valor and torch of the chivalry of\nthe Ultonians\" Mr. O'Grady has given us an account which deserves to\npass into the fixed literature of our race. Apart from its vividness,\ncharm, and power, 'The Coming of Cuculain' affords a general idea of\nthe first great heroic cycle (its predecessor dealing entirely with\nmythical or mythopoeic beings), and of primitive heroic life as\nreflected in that literature. The excerpts selected are (1) the\nopening of the romance, and (2) from the chapter telling how Cuculain\nwon his knighthood.\n\n\nFROM 'THE COMING OF CUCULAIN'\n\nI\n\nThe Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha.\nSo vast was the hall that a man such as men are now, standing in the\ncentre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the\ncircumference; yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was\nclearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The\nsons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, laboring there\nunder the shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs. Its\nlength was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch-pin\nshe plowed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much\nless. Trees such as earth nourished then upheld the mossy roof beneath\nwhich feasted that heroic brood, the great-hearted children of Rury,\nhuge offsprings of the gods and giants of the dawn of time. For mighty\nexceedingly were these men. At the noise of their running to battle\nall Ireland shook, and the illimitable Lir trembled in his watery\nhalls; the roar of their brazen chariots reverberated from the solid\ncanopy of heaven, and their war-steeds drank rivers dry.\n\nA vast murmur rose from the assembly, for like distant thunder or the\nfar-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their\nblended conversation and laughter, while ever and anon, cleaving the\nmany-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger\nthan battle trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink,\nwishing him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow\ndome. Innumerable candles, tall as spears, illuminated the scene. The\neyes of the heroes sparkled, and their faces, white and ruddy, beamed\nwith festal mirth and mutual affection. Their yellow hair shone. Their\nbanqueting attire, white and scarlet, glowed against the outer gloom.\nTheir round brooches and mantle-pins of gold or silver or golden\nbronze, their drinking vessels and instruments of festivity, flashed\nand glittered in the light. They rejoiced in their glory and their\nmight and in the inviolable amity in which they were knit together; a\nhost of comrades, a knot of heroic valor and affection, which no\nstrength or cunning, and no power seen or unseen, could ever release\nor untie.\n\nAt one extremity of the vast hall, upon a raised seat, sat their young\nking, Concobar Mac Nessa, slender, handsome, and upright. A canopy of\nbronze, round as the bent sling of the Sun-god, the long-handed,\nfar-shooting son of Ethlend, encircled his head. At his right hand lay\na staff of silver. Far away at the other end of the hall, on a raised\nseat, sat the Champion, Fergus Mac Roy, like a colossus. The stars and\nclouds of night were round his head and shoulders, seen through the\nwide and high entrance of the Dun, whose doors no man has ever seen\nclosed and barred. Aloft, suspended from the dim rafters, hung the\nnaked forms of great men clear against the dark dome, having the cords\nof their slaughter around their necks and their white limbs splashed\nwith blood. Kings were they, who had murmured against the sovereignty\nof the Red Branch. Through the wide doorway out of the night flew a\nhuge bird, black and gray, unseen; and soaring upwards sat upon the\nrafters, its eyes like burning fire. It was the Mor Reega, or Great\nQueen, the far-striding, terrible daughter of Iarnmas (Iron-Death).\nHer voice was like the shouting of ten thousand men. Dear to her were\nthese heroes. More she rejoiced in them feasting than in the battle\nprowess of the rest.\n\nWhen supper was ended, their bard, in his singing-robes and girt\naround the temples with a golden fillet, stood up and sang. He sang\nhow once a king of the Ultonians, having plunged into the sea-depths,\nthere slew a monster which had wrought much havoc amongst fishers and\nseafaring men. The heroes attended to his song, leaning forward with\nbright eyes. They applauded the song and the singer, and praised the\nvalor of the heroic man who had done the deed. Then the Champion\nstruck the table with his clenched hands and addressed the assembly.\nWrath and sorrow were in his voice. It resembled the brool of lions,\nheard afar by seafaring men upon some savage shore on a still night.\n\n\"Famous deeds,\" he said, \"are not wrought now among the Red Branch. I\nthink we are all become women. I grow weary of these huntings in the\nmorning and mimic exercises of war, and this training of steeds and\ncareering of brazen chariots stained never with aught but dust and\nmire, and these unearned feastings at night and vain applause of the\nbrave deeds of our forefathers. Come now, let us make an end of this.\nLet us conquer Banba (Ireland) wholly in all her green borders, and\nlet the realms of Lir, which sustain no foot of man, be the limit of\nher sovereignty. Let us gather the tributes of all Ireland, after many\nbattles and much warlike toil. Then more sweetly shall we drink, while\nthe bards chant our prowess. Once I knew a coward who boasted\nendlessly about his forefathers, and at last my anger rose, and with a\nflat hand I slew him in the middle of his speech, and paid no eric,\nfor he was nothing. We have the blood of heroes in our veins, and we\nsit here nightly boasting about them: about Rury, whose name we bear;\nand Macha the warrioress, who brought hither bound the sons of\nDithorba and made them rear this mighty Dun; and Kimbaoth son of\nFiontann; and my namesake Fergus, whose crooked mouth was no dishonor,\nand the rest of our hero sires; and we consume the rents and tributes\nof Ulster which they by their prowess conquered to us, and which flow\nhither in abundance from every corner of the province. Valiant men too\nwill one day come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here\nin Emain Macha their bards will praise them. Then in the halls of our\ndead shall we say to our sires, 'All that you got for us by your blood\nand your sweat, that we have lost, and the glory of the Red Branch is\nat an end.'\"\n\nThat speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out that\nFergus Mac Roy had spoken well. Then all at once, on a sudden\nimpulse, they sang the battle song of the Ultonians, and shouted for\nthe war so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the hall of the\nweapons there was a clangor of falling shields, and men died that\nnight for extreme dread, so mightily shouted the Ultonians around\ntheir king and around Fergus.\n\nII\n\nOn the morrow there was a great hasting of the Red Branch on the plain\nof the assemblies. It was May-day morning and the sun shone brightly,\nbut at first through radiant showers. The trees were putting forth\nyoung buds; the wet grass sparkled. All the martial pomp and glory of\nthe Ultonians were exhibited that day. Their chariots and war-horses\nringed the plain. All the horses' heads were turned towards the centre\nwhere were Concobar Mac Nessa and the chiefs of the Red Branch. The\nplain flashed with gold, bronze, and steel, and glowed with the bright\nmantles of the innumerable heroes, crimson and scarlet, blue, green,\nor purple. The huge brooches on their breasts, of gold and silver or\ngold-like bronze, were like resplendent wheels. Their long hair,\nyellow for the most part, was bound with ornaments of gold. Great\ntruly were those men; their like has not come since upon the earth.\nThey were the heroes and demigods of the heroic age of Erin, champions\nwho feared naught beneath the sun; mightiest among the mighty, huge,\nproud, and unconquerable, and loyal and affectionate beyond all\nothers; all of the blood of Ir, son of Milesius, the Clanna Rury of\ngreat renown, rejoicing in their valor, their splendor, their peerless\nking. Concobar had no crown. A plain circle of beaten gold girt his\nbroad temples. In the naked glory of his regal manhood he stood there\nbefore them all, but even so a stranger would have swiftly discovered\nthe captain of the Red Branch; such was his stature, his bearing, such\nhis slow-turning, steady-gazing eyes and the majesty of his bearded\ncountenance. His countenance was long, broad above and narrow below,\nhis nose eminent, his beard bipartite, curling and auburn in hue, his\nform without any blemish or imperfection....\n\n\"Let the tameless horses of Macha be harnessed to the chariot,\" cried\nConcobar, \"and let Laeg, son of the King of Gabra, drive them hither,\nfor those are the horses and that the chariot which shall be given\nthis day to Cuculain.\"\n\nThen, son of Sualtam, how in thy guileless breast thy heart leaped\nwhen thou heardest the thundering of the great war-car and the wild\nneighing of the immortal steeds, as they broke from the dark stable\ninto the clear-shining light of day, and heard behind them the ancient\nroaring of the brazen wheels, as in the days when they bore forth\nMacha and her martial groom against the giants of old, and mightily\nestablished in Eiria the Red Branch of the Ultonians! Soon they rushed\nto view from the rear of Emain, speeding forth impetuously out of the\nhollow-sounding ways of the city and the echoing palaces into the\nopen, and behind them in the great car green and gold, above the\nmany-twinkling wheels, the charioteer, with floating mantle, girt\nround the temples with the gold fillet of his office, leaning\nbackwards and sideways as he labored to restrain their fury\nunrestrainable: a gray long-maned steed, whale-bellied, broad-chested,\nwith mane like flying foam, under one silver yoke, and a black\nlustrous tufty-maned steed under the other; such steeds as in power,\nsize, and beauty the earth never produced before and never will\nproduce again.\n\nLike a hawk swooping along the face of a cliff when the wind is high;\nor like the rush of March wind over the smooth plain; or like the\nfleetness of the stag roused from his lair by the hounds and covering\nhis first field, was the rush of those steeds when they had broken\nthrough the restraint of the charioteer, as though they galloped over\nfiery flags; so that the earth shook and trembled with the velocity of\ntheir motion, and all the time the great car brayed and shrieked as\nthe wheels of solid and glittering bronze went round, and strange\ncries and exclamations were heard, for they were demons that had their\nabode in that car.\n\nThe charioteer restrained the steeds before the assembly, but\nnay-the-less a deep purr like the purr of a tiger proceeded from the\naxle. Then the whole assembly lifted up their voices and shouted for\nCuculain, and he himself, Cuculain the son of Sualtam, sprang into his\nchariot all armed, with a cry as of a warrior springing into his\nchariot in the battle, and he stood erect and brandished his spears,\nand the war sprites of the Gael shouted along with him; for the\nBocanahs and Bananahs and the Geniti Gluidi, the wild people of the\nglens, and the demons of the air, roared around him, when first the\ngreat warrior of the Gael, his battle-arms in his hands, stood\nequipped for war in his chariot before all the warriors of his tribe,\nthe kings of the Clanna Rury and the people of the Emain Macha. Then\ntoo there sounded from the Tec Brac the boom of shields and the\nclashing of swords and the cries and shouting of the Tuatha Dee\nDanann, who dwelt there perpetually; and Lu the long-handed, the\nslayer of Balor, the destroyer of the Fornoroh, the immortal, the\ninvisible, the maker and the decorator of the firmament, whose hound\nwas the sun, and whose son the viewless wind, thundered from heaven\nand bent his sling five-hued against the clouds; and the son of the\nillimitable Lir in his mantle blue and green, foam-fringed, passed\nthrough the assembly with a roar of far-off innumerable waters, and\nthe Mor Reega stood in the midst with a foot on either side of the\nplain, and shouted with the shout of a host, so that the Ultonians\nfell down like reaped grass with their faces to the earth, on account\nof the presence of the Mor Reega and on account of the omens and great\nsigns.\n\n * * * * *\n\nThe following poems from the ancient Erse are taken from the 'Lyra\nCeltica: an Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry,' edited by\nElizabeth A. Sharp.\n\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF AMERGIN\n\n I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,\n I am the wave of the ocean,\n I am the murmur of the billows,\n I am the ox of the seven combats,\n I am the vulture upon the rocks,\n I am a beam of the sun,\n I am the fairest of plants,\n I am a wild boar in valor,\n I am a salmon in the water,\n I am a lake in the plain,\n I am a word of science,\n I am the point of the lance of battle,\n I am the God who creates in the head [_i. e._ of man] the fire\n [_i. e._ the thought].\n Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain [if not\n I]?\n Who announces the ages of the moon [if not I]?\n Who teaches the place where couches the sun [if not I]?\n\n\nTHE SONG OF FIONN\n\n May-day, delightful time! How beautiful the color!\n The blackbirds sing their full lay. Would that Laeg were here!\n The cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is the noble\n Brilliance of the seasons ever! On the margin of the branching woods\n The summer swallows skim the stream: the swift horses seek the pool;\n The heather spreads out her long hair; the weak fair bow-down grows.\n Sudden consternation attacks the signs; the planets, in their\n courses running, exert an influence:\n The sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth.\n\n\nVISION OF A FAIR WOMAN\n\n Tell us some of the charms of the stars:\n Close and well set were her ivory teeth;\n White as the canna upon the moor\n Was her bosom the tartan bright beneath.\n\n Her well-rounded forehead shone\n Soft and fair as the mountain snow;\n Her two breasts were heaving full;\n To them did the hearts of heroes flow.\n\n Her lips were ruddier than the rose;\n Tender and tunefully sweet her tongue;\n White as the foam adown her side\n Her delicate fingers extended hung.\n\n Smooth as the dusky down of the elk\n Appeared her shady eyebrows to me;\n Lovely her cheeks were, like berries red;\n From every guile she was wholly free.\n\n Her countenance looked like the gentle buds\n Unfolding their beauty in early spring;\n Her yellow locks like the gold-browed hills;\n And her eyes like the radiance the sunbeams bring.\n\nIn contemporary Celtic poetry no one surpasses Mr. W. B. Yeats,\nparticularly in the re-creation of that wonderful past with whose\natmosphere his whole work is charged. As an example of Mr. Yeats's\nnarrative method with legendary themes we may quote some lines from\nhis beautiful 'The Wanderings of Oisin' (Ossian):--\n\n Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke,\n High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;\n And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance\n broke;\n The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.\n\n I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,\n And never a song sang Neave, and over my finger-tips\n Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,\n And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.\n\n Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly\n peace,\n An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?\n And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed\n fleece\n Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke.\n\n And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge--the sea's edge barren\n and gray,\n Gray sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,\n Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away\n Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.\n\n But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling\n bark;\n Dropping--a murmurous dropping--old silence and that one sound;\n For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark--\n Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.\n\n And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night;\n For as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and\n the sun,\n Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,\n And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was\n one.\n\nFinally, here is one of Mr. Yeats's \"old songs re-sung\":--\n\n\nTHE MADNESS OF KING GOLL\n\n I sat on cushioned otter skin:\n My word was law from Ith to Emen,\n And shook at Invar Amargin\n The hearts of the world-troubling seamen,\n And drove tumult and war away\n From girl and boy and man and beast;\n The fields grew fatter day by day,\n The wild fowl of the air increased;\n And every ancient Ollave said,\n While he bent down his faded head,--\n \"He drives away the Northern cold.\"\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n I sat and mused and drank sweet wine;\n A herdsman came from inland valleys,\n Crying, the pirates drove his swine\n To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.\n I called my battle-breaking men\n And my loud brazen battle-cars\n From rolling vale and rivery glen,\n And under the blinking of the stars\n Fell on the pirates of the deep,\n And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:\n These hands won many a torque of gold.\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n But slowly, as I shouting slew\n And trampled in the bubbling mire,\n In my most secret spirit grew\n A whirling and a wandering fire:\n I stood: keen stars above me shone,\n Around me shone keen eyes of men:\n And with loud singing I rushed on\n Over the heath and spungy fen,\n And broke between my hands the staff\n Of my long spear with song and laugh,\n That down the echoing valleys rolled.\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n And now I wander in the woods\n When summer gluts the golden bees,\n Or in autumnal solitudes\n Arise the leopard-colored trees;\n Or when along the wintry strands\n The cormorants shiver on their rocks;\n I wander on, and wave my hands,\n And sing, and shake my heavy locks.\n The gray wolf knows me; by one ear\n I lead along the woodland deer;\n The hares run by me, growing bold.\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n I came upon a little town\n That slumbered in the harvest moon,\n And passed a-tiptoe up and down,\n Murmuring to a fitful tune,\n How I have followed, night and day,\n A tramping of tremendous feet,\n And saw where this old tympan lay,\n Deserted on a doorway seat,\n And bore it to the woods with me;\n Of some unhuman misery\n Our married voices wildly trolled.\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n I sang how, when day's toil is done,\n Orchil shakes out her long dark hair\n That hides away the dying sun\n And sheds faint odors through the air:\n When my hand passed from wire to wire\n It quenched, with sound like falling dew,\n The whirling and the wandering fire,\n But left a mournful ulalu;\n For the kind wires are torn and still,\n And I must wander wood and hill,\n Through summer's heat and winter's cold.\n _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech-leaves\n old_.\n\n\n\nII--SCOTTISH\n\n\nEarly Celtic literature in Scotland is so intimately allied with the\nIrish, that much of the previous section must be held to belong as\nmuch to the present one. We shall not need to recapitulate here what\nis there dealt with. The two Gaelic currents began to separate, if\nalmost imperceptibly, even then; and only in century-long stages,\nafter passing the point marked by the mediaeval recapitulators of\nOssian and St. Patrick. How closely intermingled these currents were\nup to that point may be learnt from the evidence of such exquisite\nlines as those preserved by the Scottish Dean Macgregor, entitled\n'Ossian Sang':--\n\n Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,\n And sweeter the music of birds that soar,\n When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,\n And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.\n\n Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze\n The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun,\n The blackbird is warbling among the trees;\n And soft is the kiss of the warming sun.\n\n The cry of the eagle of Assaroe\n O'er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet,\n And sweet is the cry of the bird below\n Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet.\n\n Finn Mac Cool is the father of me,\n Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear.\n When he launches his hounds on the open lea,\n Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.\n\nThe last verse is eloquent as to the common traditions of the Scots\nand Irish Gael. Ossian is dealt with separately under his own proper\nheading, however, and we need not discuss here his interest, literary\nand historical.\n\nTurning to St. Patrick, let us accept provisionally the account that\nmakes him of Gaelo-Brythonic race, born about 387 A.D. at Kilpatrick\non the Clyde,--Strathclyde being an old famous region of the northern\nBrythonic stock. The remains, in prose and verse, of the early\nScottish literature dealing with St. Patrick are of course not so\nnumerous as the Irish; but as the two were freely interchangeable[A]\nin the early period when his record was being written down, it follows\nthat where Irish memoranda of his true and his legendary history, his\nhymns, and so forth, existed, the Scottish chroniclers and bards would\naccept them without feeling the need of making a separate record. Nor\nmust we forget, in speaking of St. Patrick, that the pre-Christian\nromantic mythology, with its Firbolgs and ancient heroic gods, giants,\nand men, is just as much to be limned into the background of the\npicture in the case of early Scottish as in that of Irish Gaelic\ntradition and its earliest scriptive forms.\n\n [A] \"The early literature of the Scottish Gael,\" says the Rev.\n Nigel MacNeill in his interesting work 'The Literature of the\n Highlanders,' \"cannot be well understood apart from early\n Irish literature. The ballads of the two countries describe\n the same struggles, the characters engaging in the strife are\n the same and bear the same names.\"\n\nCuriously enough, if Scotland gave Ireland the saint that in course of\ntime became almost its national symbol,--Patrick,--Ireland in turn\ngave Scotland its dearest saint,--Columba. He was born in 521, near\nTemple Douglas (_Tulach-Dubh-glaise_); in 545 founded a church in\nDerry; later, the famous church at Kells; and in 563, after some\njealousy had been at work against him, he left for Ireland, and after\npausing at Colonsay, he went on to Ia, now known the world over as\nIona. Iona has become now the _locus classici_ of the Gaelic, not\nto say the whole Scottish race. Recently, a writer of profound\nimagination, Miss Fiona Macleod, has dated from its lonely shores the\ndedication of that impressive book 'The Sin-Eater, and Other Tales,'\nshowing how it still keeps for those of the true faith its old\neffect:--\n\n \"I mo cridhe, i mo ghraidh,\"\n (Isle of my heart, isle of my love,)\n\nas Columba is said to have called it. His followers, the little sacred\ncircle of twelve, 'the Family of Iona,' had to be militant with a\nvengeance: Milesian--or soldiering--as well as cleric, in their work;\nand the old traditions are full of references to their fight against\nthe Feinne and the house of Ossian. But having so far prevailed as\nthey did, they became in turn the chroniclers of the very things they\nhad fought against. So in a sense, and a very real one, Iona is the\nfirst centre of the literature of the Scots Gaels to which we can\npoint. The total effect of Columba, or Columcill, upon Gaelic life and\nliterature, Irish and Scots, was immense indeed; to gather whose force\none must read in the 'Book of Deer' and the old Irish MSS. on the one\nhand, and the Latin hymnology of the Celtic church on the other.\n\nBut in speaking of Columba let us not forget the tender and beautiful\nfigure of St. Bridget,--another of that mysterious train, including\nMerlin and St. Patrick, which has associations with Strathclyde--\n\n \"Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the\n Yellow, yellow hair!\"\n\nSt. Bridget, the St. Mary of the Gael, whose story has been retold by\nMiss Fiona Macleod in 'The Washer of the Ford,' may first be found\ndepicted by the side of Patrick and Columba in the famous antique\nrelic, the 'Domhnach Airgid,' dating back to the sixth or seventh\ncentury. She appears constantly in Gaelic hagiology, and with poetic\nas well as saintly fame casting a halo about her yellow hair.\nO'Curry's 'MS. Materials,' and other collections make it possible,\nluckily, for other than purely Gaelic students to read of her as she\nappeared in early time. She is a peculiarly interesting figure,\nbecause in the Celtic races women have always counted peculiarly; and\nthere are signs that they will count even more in time to come. St.\nBridget (Brigit, Bride, Breed), then, is the type for all time of the\nCeltic womanhood dowered with divine inspiration, poetry, and charm.\nThe following variant on an old Gaelic poem is by Miss Fiona Macleod\n('From the Hills of Dream'):--\n\n\nST. BRIDGET'S MILKING SONG\n\n O sweet St. Bride of the\n Yellow, yellow hair:\n Paul said, and Peter said,\n And all the saints alive or dead\n Vowed she had the sweetest head,\n Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the\n Yellow, yellow hair.\n\n White may my milking be,\n White as thee:\n Thy face is white, thy neck is white,\n Thy hands are white, thy feet are white,\n For thy sweet soul is shining bright--\n O dear to me,\n O dear to see,\n St. Bridget white!\n\n Yellow may my butter be,\n Soft and round:\n Thy breasts are sweet,\n Soft, round, and sweet,\n So may my butter be:\n So may my butter be, O\n Bridget sweet!\n\n Safe thy way is, safe, O\n Safe, St. Bride:\n May my kye come home at even,\n None be fallin', none be leavin',\n Dusky even, breath-sweet even,\n Here, as there, where, O\n St. Bride, thou\n\n Keepest tryst with God in heaven,\n Seest the angels bow,\n And souls be shriven--\n Here, as there, 'tis breath-sweet even,\n Far and wide--\n Singeth thy little maid,\n Safe in thy shade,\n Bridget, Bride!\n\nPassing from the early legendary hagiological chronicles of the Scots\nGaels, we come to a period when the reader must be content to go again\nto Irish sources for his knowledge of the continuators of Gaelic\nliterature. What we have said previously of the Irish may be referred\nto here. The mediaeval scribes and bards busied themselves mainly with\nreproducing the past, though with a vivid coloring out of their own\nliving present. When we have referred all of their subject-matter\ndealing with the saints and heroic figures of primitive history to its\nown period, all that remains is curiously little. Unfortunately, it is\nless than it might have been, if it had not been for the terrible and\noften wanton destruction of MSS. which has bereft us, in Scotland\nespecially, of some of the richest treasures the Celtic genius\nhas produced. It is only needed to instance the tailor who was\nfound cutting up an ancient MS. for patterns, to show how almost\ninconceivably wholesale the havoc thus done has been in the last\nsix centuries.\n\nSome of the most interesting and valuable of the Scottish\ncontributions to Gaelic literature are in what we may call ballad\nform. Such is the tragic tale of 'Deirdre,' in the Glen-mason MS.\n(thirteenth century), which is preserved in the Advocates' Library,\nEdinburgh. Others again are versions of poems correspondent to those\ngiven, for instance, in the 'Book of the Dean of Lismore.' Of this\nheroic poetry much would have been lost if it had not been for the\nzeal of collectors, who for the last five centuries have been\ncollecting in old MSS. or from the mouths of the Highlanders the\nballads and tales of old time. \"The last and greatest of the ballad\nand tale collectors,\" says Mr. MacNeill, \"was Mr. Campbell, who in\n1859-60 traversed the whole Gaelic area; and assisted by intelligent\nHighlanders formed large collections, of which he has given a\nconsiderable quantity to the world in his four volumes of tales. All\nthese are genuine productions.\" We may quote further what the same\nwriter says of the uncertain chronology of these ballads:--\"They may\nhave been composed centuries before they were committed to writing.\nWe have fragments, such as the Glen-mason MS., written as early as the\ntwelfth century, in the hand and language common to the learned in\nboth Albin and Erin at the time. The 'Book of the Dean of Lismore,'\nhowever, is written phonetically to represent the spoken language of\nhis day, and is mainly in the Perthshire dialect.\" Cuculain and many\nother of the heroes that we mentioned in our Irish article reappear in\nthese ballads; and in them the Feinne fight out their ancient battles\nto the bitter end. A new and rather different coloring is lent, too,\nto the Scottish ballads by the Norse element, and the constant wars in\nwhich the Vikings and the Gaels encountered time after time lend some\nof their finest episodes to this poetry.\n\nIf we turn from the ballads to the prose tales and romances, we find\nthe same strong resemblances and the same significant differences. The\nIrish have always the more fluent and eloquent a faculty in prose and\nverse. Their adjectival energy is greater; they are more given to\nextravagances of style, both in point of sentiment and of humor. The\nScotch are on the other hand more simple and more terse, and they\ntouch the deeper notes of pathos and of mystery more often. Nothing\nmore instructive can be devised for the Celtic student than to take\nthe volumes in verse and prose representing the three Celtic lands,\nScotland, Ireland, Wales, and to compare their style, method, and\nliterary idiosyncrasies. For this comparison Mr. Campbell's wonderful\n'Tales of the West Highlands,' in prose, and in verse his 'Leabhar na\nFeinne,' may be cited, with works of Dr. Hyde, Mr. Standish Hayes\nO'Grady, Dr. Joyce, in Irish; and in Welsh, the 'Mabinogion' in Lady\nGuest's exquisite English version, or the 'Myvyrian Archaeology.'\n\nIn the fourteenth century, which gave Dafydd ap Gwilym to Wales, we\nfind Gaelic becoming more definitely a conscious literary language.\nBut the Dafydd of Scotland came more than a century earlier, being\nborn at the end of the twelfth century. This was the famous Muireadach\nAlbannach (Murdoch the Scot), several of whose poems figure in the\nDean of Lismore's book, and whose effect on succeeding bards was only\nless powerful than Dafydd's on his Welsh successors. The Dean's book\nhas poems, too, by two woman poets: Efric, wife of the last of the\nfamous MacNeills of Castle Sween, and Isabel, Countess of Argyle.\nEfric's lament for her husband contains some touching lines;\n_e. g._:--\n\n \"There's no heart among our women;\n At the sport, no men are seen;\n Like the sky when windless, silent\n Is the music of Dun Sween!\"\n\nSir Duncan Campbell, \"Duncan Mac Cailem, the good knight,\" son of Sir\nColin, is another of the poets in Dean Macgregor's collection; but\nperhaps we ought to pause here to say a word of the Dean himself.\n\"Sailing in among the inner Hebridean Isles,\" says Mr. MacNeill, \"we\nfind in the fertile island of Lismore--'the great garden'--a man in\nthe fifteenth century often referred to in Gaelic literature: the Rev.\nMr. James Macgregor. A native of Perthshire,... with a heart filled\nwith the enthusiasm and perfervid spirit of his countrymen, he and his\nbrother got up the collection of songs and ballads\" to which we have\nhad occasion so often to refer. But we must pass on now to the later\nperiod of Gaelic literature, in which the modern developments have\ntheir beginning. The Scots Gael entered on a new phase, we are told,\nwith Mary MacLeod (Mairi ni'n Alastair Ruaidh), who was born at Harris\nin 1569, and died a centenarian in Skye in 1674. Mairi was as perfect\nan example of the folk-minstrel as Celtic literature can provide; for\nshe could not even write, although her prosody is elaborate, and her\nmetres often intricate and original to a degree. The first of the\ndistinctively Jacobite bards, who flourished at the end of the\nseventeenth and through the eighteenth century, was John MacDonald,\nwhose 'Battle of Inverlochy' has been vigorously translated by\nProfessor Blackie. Hector Maclean; Roderick Morrison, called _An\nClarsair Dall_, or the Blind Harper; John Maclean, whose songs were\nheard by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Boswell on their journey to the\nHebrides; and John MacCodrum (a poet whose wit and satiric powers\nremind us not a little of more than one of the Welsh satirical bards),\nare among the poets of this time who specially deserve note.\n\nIn the eighteenth century, Gaelic Scotland produced some remarkable\nreligious poets, including David MacKellar, author of the well-known\n'MacKellar's Hymn'; John Mackay; Donal Matheson, who had satirical as\nwell as religious power; Lauchlan Maclauchlan; and Dugald Buchanan.\n\nThe great link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries\nis Duncan Ban Macintyre, \"a name loved throughout the Highlands and\nIslands.\" The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often called,--though\nhis best title is the affectionate Gaelic \"Duncan of the Songs,\"--was\nborn on the 20th of March, 1724, at Druimliaghart in Glenorchy,\nArgyll. His first song was composed on a sword with which he was armed\nat the battle of Falkirk--where he served on the Royalist side as\nsubstitute for a neighboring gentleman.\n\n \"This sword,\" says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, \"the\n poet lost or threw away in the retreat. On his return home\n therefore the gentleman to whom it belonged, and whose\n substitute he had been, refused to pay the sum for which\n he had engaged Duncan Ban to serve in his stead. Duncan\n consequently composed his song on 'The Battle of the\n Speckled Kirk'--as Falkirk is called in Gaelic--in which he\n good-humoredly satirized the gentleman who had sent him to\n the war, and gave a woful description of 'the black sword\n that worked the turmoil,' and whose loss, he says, made its\n owner 'as fierce and furious as a gray brock in his den.' The\n song immediately became popular, and incensed his employer so\n much that he suddenly fell upon the poor poet one day with\n his walking-stick, and striking him on the back, bade him\n 'go and make a song about that.' He was however afterward\n compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum\n of 300 merks Scots (L16, 17_s._ 6_d._), which was his legal\n due.\"\n\nDuncan ended his days in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812,--one of the\nlast links of the moving record of the early eighteenth century and\nits Jacobite associations.\n\nDuncan was a contemporary of Macpherson's, and with Macpherson and his\n'Ossian,' to which a special article is devoted elsewhere, we may well\nleave our chronicle, forbearing to touch on the debatable ground of\nlater and contemporary Celtic literature in Scotland. Enough to say\nthat Duncan Ban Macintyre has no lack of worthy followers in Gaelic\npoetry, and that with the Anglo-Celtic development, associated with\nsuch names as Dr. Norman Macleod, Professor Blackie, Robert Buchanan,\nGeorge MacDonald, William Black, and, among new-comers, Miss Fiona\nMacleod and Mr. Neil Munro, there seems every prospect that the Gaelic\nspirit promises to achieve greatly in the new centuries to come.\n\nThe first selection is from the 'Sean Dana,' or Ancient Poems,\ncollected, or rather written (from oral legendary lore and ballads),\nby Dr. John Smith, late in the eighteenth century.\n\n\nPROLOGUE TO GAUL\n\n How mournful is the silence of Night\n When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!\n Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:\n He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.\n The children of the mountain he pursues\n In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.\n\n Slumber, ye children of fatigue;\n Star after star is now ascending the height.\n Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble--\n Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose.\n Lonely I keep watch,--\n And dear to me is the gloom of night\n When I travel from glen to glen,\n With no hope to behold a morning or brightness.\n\n Spare thy light, O Sun!\n Waste not thy lamps so fast.\n Generous is thy soul as the King of Morven's:\n But thy renown shall yet fade;--\n Spare thy lamps of a thousand flames\n In thy blue hall, when thou retirest\n Under thy dark-blue gates to sleep,\n Beneath the dark embraces of the storm.\n Spare them, ere thou art forsaken for ever,\n As I am, without one whom I may love!\n Spare them,--for there is not a hero now\n To behold the blue flame of the beautiful lamps!\n\n Ah, Cona of the precious lights,\n Thy lamps burn dimly now:\n Thou art like a blasted oak:\n Thy dwellings and thy people are gone\n East or west; on the face of thy mountain,\n There shall be no more found of them but the trace!\n In Selma, Tara, or Temora\n There is not a song, a shell, or a harp;\n They have all become green mounds;\n Their stones have fallen into their own meadows;\n The stranger from the deep or the desert\n Will never behold them rise above the clouds.\n\n And O Selma! home of my delight,\n Is this heap my ruin,\n Where grows the thistle, the heather, and the wild grass?\n\nThe following lines of St. Columba are taken from the 'Lyra Celtica,'\ncited above:--\n\n\nCOLUMCILLE FECIT\n\n(ST. COLUMBA MADE IT)\n\n Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun\n On the pinnacle of a rock,\n That I might often see\n The face of the ocean;\n That I might see its heaving waves\n Over the wide ocean,\n When they chant music to their Father\n Upon the world's course;\n That I might see its level sparkling strand,\n It would be no cause of sorrow;\n That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,\n Source of happiness;\n That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves\n Upon the rocks;\n That I might hear the roar by the side of the church\n Of the surrounding sea;\n That I might see its noble flocks\n Over the watery ocean;\n That I might see the sea monsters,\n The greatest of all wonders;\n That I might see its ebb and flood\n In their career;\n That my mystical name might be, I say,\n Cul ri Erin [Back turned to Ireland];\n That contrition might come upon my heart\n Upon looking at her;\n That I might bewail my evils all,\n Though it were difficult to compute them;\n That I might bless the Lord\n Who conserves all,\n Heaven with its countless bright orders,\n Land, strand, and flood;\n That I might search the books all,\n That would be good for my soul;\n At times kneeling to beloved Heaven;\n At times psalm-singing;\n At times contemplating the King of Heaven,\n Holy the chief;\n At times at work without compulsion,\n This would be delightful;\n At times plucking duilisc from the rocks;\n At times at fishing;\n At times giving food to the poor;\n At times in a carcair [solitary cell];\n The best advice in the presence of God\n To me has been vouchsafed.\n The King whose servant I am will not let\n Anything deceive me.\n\nThe third selection is an example of later Gaelic. This stirring\nHebridean poem is sometimes spoken of as from the ancient Gaelic.\nProbably by this is meant merely old Gaelic, mediaeval or even later.\nThe translation is by Mr. Thomas Pattison, and is included in his\n'Gaelic Bards.' He has the following note upon it:--\n\n \"This effusion, although in its original form it is only a\n kind of wild chant,--almost indeed half prose,--yet is the\n germ of the ballad. It occurs in many of the tales contained\n in that collection,--the repository of old Gaelic lore,--the\n 'Popular Tales of the West Highlands,' sometimes more and\n sometimes less perfect. The original will be found in the\n second volume of the Tales.... The vigorous and elastic\n spirit that pervades these verses must have strung the heart\n of many a hardy mariner, who loved to feel the fresh and\n briny breeze drive his snoring birlinn bounding like a living\n creature over the tumbling billows of the inland loch, or the\n huge swell of the majestic main.\"\n\n\nIN HEBRID SEAS\n\n We turned her prow into the sea,\n Her stern into the shore,\n And first we raised the tall tough masts,\n And then the canvas hoar;\n\n Fast filled our towering cloud-like sails,\n For the wind came from the land,\n And such a wind as we might choose\n Were the winds at our command:\n\n A breeze that rushing down the hill\n Would strip the blooming heather,\n Or rustling through the green-clad grove,\n Would whirl its leaves together.\n\n But when it seized the aged saugh,\n With the light locks of gray,\n It tore away its ancient root,\n And there the old trunk lay!\n\n It raised the thatch too from the roof,\n And scattered it along;\n Then tossed and whirled it through the air,\n Singing a pleasant song.\n\n It heaped the ruins on the land:--\n Though sire and son stood by,\n They could no help afford, but gaze\n With wan and troubled eye!\n\n A flap, a flash, the green roll dashed,\n And laughed against the red;\n Upon our boards, now here, now there,\n It knocked its foamy head.\n\n She could have split a slender straw,\n So clean and well she went,\n As still obedient to the helm\n Her stately course she bent.\n\n We watched the big beast eat the small,\n The small beast nimbly fly,\n And listened to the plunging eels,\n The sea-gull's clang on high.\n\n We had no other music\n To cheer us on our way:\n Till round those sheltering hills we passed\n And anchored in this bay.\n\n\n\nIII--WELSH\n\n\nThe laws governing the life of languages are as elusive as those that\ndecide the fate of races and empires. Why is the Welsh tongue still\nalive and vigorous, and the Irish (_pace_ Dr. Douglas Hyde) moribund?\nIt is a difficult question, but some light on it may be had by\ntraversing the early history of Welsh literature.\n\nThe like difficulty meets us in both Welsh and Irish: that of deciding\nhow far the mediaeval scribes and scholars doctored the older material\nwhich fell into their hands. But in Welsh, the separation of the\nprimitive from the mediaeval element is often even a more difficult\ntask than in Irish.\n\nIn sketching the early course of Welsh literature, we cannot do better\nthan turn to the striking instance afforded by the name and fame of\nMerlin. In legendary Welsh history, Merlin appears under almost as\nmany guises as he does in the pages of Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur.'\nMerddin Emrys (Ambrosius), Merddin Sylvester (Merlin the Wild),\nMerddin ab Morvryn (or Merlin Caledonius),--his name and fame vary\naccording to the chronicler. Of these, Merlin the son of Morvryn, the\nmost tangible in the list, was also known as Caledonius, because the\nKymry of the sixth century lived in that greater Wales which ranged as\nfar north as the Caledonian Forest. After the terrible battle of\nArderydd, Merlin, having seen his kindred all but obliterated, was\nseized, tradition tells us, with a frenzy, and thereafter his bardic\nutterances assumed a more and more mystical and oracular form. This,\nadded to his mysterious and magnetic personality and wildly impressive\npersonal presence, may well have led on in process of time, by gradual\nlegendary accretions, to the final conception of a Merlin miraculous,\nsupernatural, daemonic! However this may be, nothing can be more\ninstructive than to compare the late Merlin with the early Merlin, and\nto trace his phases in Welsh folk-tale, and define his poetry finally\nin the pages of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen.'\n\nThe 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' in its strikingly decorative black and\nred manuscript, makes a wonderful testament of old Welsh poetry. If we\ncould solve all its problems and read all that is written between its\nlines, we should be very near the great secret of the Druidic religion\nand of Celtic mythology, as well as the secret of Merlin's actual and\nimaginary effect in Welsh literature.\n\nThe battle of Arderydd has been cited above as a determining event in\nMerlin's history. The opening poem in the 'Black Book of Carmarthen'\nis a remarkable rhymed dialogue between Merlin and Taliesin, some of\nwhose lines are extremely imaginative and touching in their archaic\nsimplicity. Merlin begins:--\n\n \"How sad is Merlin now! how sad!\n Keduyf and Kadvan--are they dead?\n The furious slaughter filled the field,\n And pierced was the Tryrwyd shield!\"\n\nTaliesin replies:--\n\n \"His house-folk did not falter in the fight!\"\n\nSo it goes on, telling of the battle and its consequences, until one\nreaches at the end that mysterious verse which haunts the imagination\nand the ear of the reader. Merlin again speaks:--\n\n \"Sevenscore chieftains\n Were turned into spirits;\n In the wood of Celyddon\n Were they transformed.\n\nThe wood of Celyddon is the Caledonian Forest. So far as these\nexcerpts go, they might seem to be the writing of the real Merlin.\nThere is internal evidence however that this poem, the much disputed\npoem of the 'Apple-trees,' and others that follow it in the 'Black\nBook,' were written not earlier than the twelfth century. Stephens,\nusually an acute critic, imputes in his 'Literature of the Kymry'\nthese poems to Gwalchmai and other bards of later date. But even so,\nthese poets evidently founded their poems upon earlier ones,\ntraditionally handed on as Merlin's.\n\nFrom such later sources as the 'Myvyrian Archaeology,' or Skene's 'Four\nAncient Books of Wales,' or the admirable Oxford texts edited by\nProfessor Rhys and Mr. Gwenogfvyn Evans, one can rehabilitate at will\nthe Merlin of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' much as Villemarque has\ndone after a fashion quite his own. Enough will so be certainly\ndiscovered to outline a primitive Merlin, an original sixth-century\nMerlin, under the impressive mediaeval robes of the Latin-Welsh\nromantic chroniclers and poets. Enough too will be made clear to show\na basis of myth and prehistoric legend behind the remotest recorded\nname, time, or place that can be counted historical.\n\nThe same is true of Taliesin, who appears, by the poetical remains\nattributed to him,--some of them clearly mediaeval, others just as\nclearly primitive,--even more interesting as a poet than Merlin. Just\nas there are several Merlins, however, there are two Taliesins: there\nis the fifth-century Taliesin, and there is the pseudo-Taliesin of the\ntwelfth. Both are wonderful in their way, and one knows not which to\nadmire most--him who wrote the 'Battle of Gwenystrad,' which is\nundoubtedly a primitive war song, or the mediaeval poet who chose to\ntake the disguise of Taliesin, and taking too, probably, some of the\ntraditional fragments of his early poetry, worked them up afresh with\ncurious mediaeval art and mystic imagination. For comparison let us\ntake an early and a late poem, commonly gathered, as in the 'Myvyrian\nArchaeology,' under one head.\n\nTake first one of the later poems, the mystical 'Song to the Wind,'\nwhich even in its English dress won Emerson's admiration, and which,\nif we allow for all differences between mediaeval and modern\nimagination, is as wonderful a poem of its kind as any literature is\nlikely to afford. As it is given among our selections, it need not be\nquoted here. In point of time it is usual to assign it, as Stephens\ndoes, to the twelfth or thirteenth century. But it seems to me to bear\ntraces again of being an older, more primitive poem, retouched\ncertainly, and probably reshaped, by a twelfth-century poet. And now\nfor a genuine Taliesin, or what at any rate many critics think to be\ngenuine. This you may have in the famous 'Gwaith Gwenystrad' (Battle\nof Gwenystrad), one of the most spirited war poems in existence,\ncopied and recopied by a long succession of Kymric scribes, and which\nthe writer came upon first in the MS. collection of William Morris o\nGaergybi yn Mon, who flourished about 1758. Here are four lines of\nMorris's copy _literatim_, which will give a better idea than any\ncriticism of mine of the mingled realism and imagination of the\npoem:--\n\n \"Yn nrws rhyd gwelais i wyr lledruddion,\n Eirf ddillwng y rhag blawt gofedon,\n Unynt tanc gan aethant golludion,\n Llaw ynghroes gryd ygro granwynion.\"\n\nAnd here is a rough, vigorous translation of these lines from the same\nvolume:--\n\n \"In the pass of the fort have I seen men, dyed with red, who\n hurtled their arms.... They fell to the ground together when\n the day was lost, their hands on the crucifix. And horror was\n in the pale face of the dead warriors.\"\n\nA succeeding line,\n\n \"A gwyar a uaglei ar ddillad,\"\n (And the blood was tangled in their clothing),\n\nadds the last touch of dreadful sincerity to the account. And in other\nprimitive poems that we may ascribe to Taliesin are effects as\nconvincing and vivid.\n\nBut we must leave Taliesin and his difficulties, to sketch briefly the\ncourse of poetry between his actual date in early time and his poetic\nresurrection in the Middle Ages. Not so interesting poetically but\nmore important historically is the next of the Welsh bards, Aneurin,\nwho wrote the 'Gododin.' This curious and interesting war poem tells\nof a foray made by the Ottadini, an early Kymric tribe, living in the\ngreater Wales of their time, on the Northumbrian coast. Mr. Stephens\nimagines Cattraeth, which figures as a central scene of the action of\nthe poem, to be Catterick in Yorkshire; and this we may provisionally\naccept.\n\n \"The Welshmen went to Cattraeth; and merry marched the host.\n But thro' drinking the gray mead, the day--the day was lost.\"\n\nThe expedition was one of those which show the gradual cession of\ngreater Wales by the Welsh, and their retreat to the lesser Wales that\nis still theirs.\n\nWe may pause here to remark that the bardic order was early\nconstituted among the Welsh, as among the Irish. In the Laws of Howel\nDda (Howel the Good), who flourished in the tenth century, we find\nvery explicit provision made for the bard:--\n\n \"In case of fighting, the Bard shall play the 'Monarchy of Britain'\n before the battle!\n \"His land shall be free; he shall have a horse from the King!\n \"He shall have a harp from the King, and a gold ring from the Queen,\n when he is appointed. The harp he shall never part with.\"\n\nUnless, which is highly probable, we have lost some of the records of\nthe eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, we have to conclude that Welsh\npoetry made small headway. The remarkable laws of Howel Dda are the\nmonument of the tenth century. In the eleventh we come upon the first\nsigns of a revival in Meilir, who is historically interesting, and in\nhis last poems shows himself a true poet. In the twelfth we have to\nmark a distinct further step in Gwalchmai, who is the first conscious\npoet of nature, and who may thus claim to be the founder of one of the\nfinest traditions in all Welsh poetry. Following Gwalchmai comes the\nprincely poet Howel the Tall, son of Owain Gwynedd by an Irish lady,\nand who himself wore the crown of Gwynedd for a brief two years. He\ndied in 1171 at twenty-seven, after a life of stormiest adventure; but\nin the intervals of battle he found time to write some of the\nloveliest love poems that all Welsh literature can boast. His death\nwas lamented by Periv ab Kedwoi in a much less conventional and more\nmoving tone than the official bards generally troubled to use for such\nelegies. A century or so later, and we find Llywarch ab Llywelyn\n(known as \"Prydydd y Moch,\" the Poet of the Pigs) writing a still\nfiner and more ample lament on the last native prince of Wales,\nLlywelyn ab Gruffydd, \"Llywelyn ewi Llyw Olaf,\" as he is still fondly\ncalled. These two laments may be taken as typical of a wide section of\nWelsh poetry, dealing with the deaths of heroes and princes, and\nranging in date from the fifth or sixth century to the nineteenth.\nLlywelyn the Last died in 1282, and thereafter began what has been\nwell termed \"The Great Oppression\" (y Gorthrwm Mawr), by which Norman\nand Saxon combined to crush the language and expropriate the people of\nthe country, with the result of calling up at last Owen Glendower's\nhot spirit to fight for the national cause.\n\nBut it is remarkable that in this disastrous period arose some of the\nfinest interpreters of her genius that the country was ever to find.\nWithin its term were, without a doubt, carried to an approximate\nperfection those more native romances that we term 'Mabinogion,'--the\nmost exquisite and exquisitely turned tales, in point of art, that the\nCeltic races have produced. The late Lady Charlotte Guest's edition of\nthe 'Mabinogion' serves very well to convey, in a translation of\nextreme felicity, to non-Celtic readers the art and spirit of these\ntales. But it must be kept in mind that all she gives are not strictly\n'Mabinogion'; several of them are more properly to be called romances,\nas showing strong traces of Norman and French influence. The\n'Mabinogi' originally was a tale to be recited by a _mabinog_,\n_i. e._, a 'prentice to the bardic craft who had not yet obtained his\nfull degree, and with it the right of composing and reciting poetry.\nThe idea which some critics have, that the 'Mabinogion' were boys'\ntales, or still worse, nursery tales, is quite wrong. Let us remember\nthat such tales were the delight of most of the princely halls and\nwinter hearths of mediaeval Wales, where they were recited after the\ngreat banquets and on feast nights to the most critical audience that\ncould be afforded. 'The Dream of Rhonabwy,' 'Kilhwch and Olwen,' and\n'Math, Son of Mathonwy,' may be mentioned as among the tales in Lady\nGuest's volume which are most natively original; and we have chosen\nthe portrait of Olwen from the second of these for our selections, to\nshow the art and charm of the Welsh romancers in the Middle Ages.\n\nIf the 'Mabinogion' are fine as prose, we have an equally fine\nexpression of this time in poetry, in the poems of Rhys Goch ab\nRhicert (Rhys the Red, son of Rhicert) and the ever delightful Dafydd\nab Gwilym, who will be found treated separately. After Dafydd, Welsh\npoetry was to enter upon a new phase, not fortunate even in its\nimmediate effects, disastrous in its ultimate ones. It was in the\nfourteenth century that Welsh prosody, always intricate, finally waxed\nproud, so to speak, of its complexity, and formed for itself a\nhide-bound code which was to become the bugbear of Welsh poetry in the\nfollowing centuries. To give any adequate account of its complexities\nof technique and the whole letter of its syntax would require a long\nand tedious treatise in itself. Enough to say that the underlying\nprinciple was that of what is termed in Welsh \"Eynghanedd,\" or\n\"consonancy\"; by which rhymes within rhymes and echoes within echoes\nof certain dominant syllables were insisted upon arbitrarily, until\nalmost every word in every line was subject to a rigid and invincible\nrule. Art for art, insisted upon in this way, could only end in\nconventionalizing the very thing it was meant to assist.\n\nPoetry, too carefully nursed and housed, thus fell into a bad way; but\nluckily meanwhile a new literature was to begin for Wales, along quite\nother lines, with the Reformation. The translation of the Bible into\nWelsh by Bishop Morgan in the sixteenth century marks an epoch in the\nlife of the Welsh people and their literature. Therewith the history\nof the princes and the great lords ends, and the history of the\npeople--and a people mainly peasant, let us remark--begins. Its\nprofound moral force apart, and judged purely as a literary force, the\nBible, admirably and idiomatically translated, had an incalculable\neffect. It set a fine and high and yet simple standard of prose, much\nas the English Bible does; and taught the possibilities of his tongue\nto the poorest Welsh peasant. One finds its influence strong in almost\nevery prose work of any note published in the last three centuries,\nand in a great proportion of the poetry. It did more than anything of\nlater time to save the language; and here is the simple explanation\nof the extraordinary difference between the fortunes of the Welsh and\nthe Irish tongue. Wales--the Wales of the people--became profoundly\nimpressed by the religious sentiment and the heroic and profound\npoetry of the Hebrews, and gained from them a new stimulus to express\nitself and its needs and aspirations in its own native way and in its\nown tongue.\n\nA characteristic expression of the homelier moral humor of the Welsh\nis to be had in the 'Canwyll y Cymry' (Candle of Wales), by Rhys\nPritchard, the famous Elizabethan vicar of Llandovery, which for two\ncenturies was the most popular book in Wales after the Bible. Its\nsimple rhymed didactics do not often rise into poetry; but they are\nfull of human feeling, expressed in a terse and proverbial way, with\ndistinct individuality. The book easily leads one on to the very\nremarkable band of hymn writers, from Anne Griffiths to Williams\nPantycelyn, who have flourished in Welsh. These, and some score\nbeside, really rank by their imaginative fervor and inspiration as\ntrue poets. In quite another vein, but probably a very ancient and\ntraditional one in Welsh, we have the homely interludes of Twm O'r\nNant, who was born about 1750, of whose life George Borrow gives a\nvery vigorous account in 'Wild Wales.' A greater than Twm O'r Nant,\nand born a generation earlier, Gronney Owen, a man of the finest\npoetic genius, ought to have a special interest for American readers\nbecause he was practically exiled from his beloved Anglesea by the\nungrateful church he served; and died, poor and broken-hearted, in New\nBrunswick about the year 1780. His 'Cywydd y Faru' (Ode to the Day of\nJudgment), his touching lines to his little daughter Elin, or his\nHogarthian lines upon the London garret in which he lived for a time,\nmay be cited as showing the various sides of his poetry, of which\nunluckily there are no adequate translations yet forthcoming.\n\nIn prose we must not omit to mention the 'Bardd Cwsg' (The Sleeping\nBard) of Elis Wynne,--a very imaginative and idiomatic prose\nepic-in-little, describing the bard's vision of a curiously Welsh\nInferno. Wynne's prose style is remarkably fine and pure, modeled on\nthe best Biblical standard of a Welsh without English admixture. Welsh\nprose has been admirably handled too by some of the divines who have\nflourished within the past two centuries, and who have not confined\ntheir eloquence to the pulpit. Even when the State church had no\nsympathy with the Welsh people and their language, many of its\nindividual members did much to keep the spirit of literature alive;\nwhile the nonconformist ministers of Wales have always been vigorously\nand eminently devoted to the same cause.\n\nUnder happier conditions to-day, the latest expression of this vital\npersistence of the Welsh in the quest of spiritual ideals is the\nmovement that has carried the new national university to completion,\nand rallied the younger generation under the banner of \"Cymru Fydd\"\n(Young Wales). The songs of Ceiriog Hughes, the poems of Islwyn, the\nworks of scholars like Professor John Rhys, Canon Silvain Evans, and\nMr. Gwenogfvyn Evans; the ardent writing and editing of Mr. Owen M.\nEdwards in his innumerable magazines and other adventures; and the\nnovels of Daniel Owen,--these may be named as among the influences\nthat count most to the Wales of the nineteenth century's end.\n\n NOTE.--For citations from Welsh literature see articles\n on Aneurin, Mabinogion, and Taliesin. The Breton branch\n of Celtic literature will be treated under the heading\n 'Villemarque,' the celebrated collector of 'Barzaz-Breiz.'\n\n\n\nIV--CORNISH\n\n\nThe literature of a single county of England is not likely to be very\nextensive, and when that literature and its language died for good and\nall, a century ago, it becomes still more limited. Until the reign of\nHenry VIII., though for some time English had been very generally\nspoken throughout the county, the old Celtic Cornish, holding a middle\nposition, philologically as well as geographically, between Welsh and\nBreton, was the mother tongue of at any rate the peasantry as far east\nas the Tamar. The great ecclesiastical revolution of that period\nhelped to destroy it. Neither prayer-book nor Bible was translated\ninto it; and though the ardently Catholic Cornish at first would have\nnone of the former, saying that it was \"but like a Christmas game,\"\nthey were overruled by the forcible argument of \"apostolick blows and\nknocks,\" and had to submit. Then the language receded rapidly. By the\ntime of the Great Rebellion Truro was its eastern limit; early in the\neighteenth century only the two western claw-like promontories\nretained it; and though Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1778, was not\nreally the last person who spoke it, it was dead before the present\ncentury was born. A few traditional sentences, the numerals up to\ntwenty, and some stray words lingered on until our own day,--twenty\nyears ago the present writer took down a fair collection from the\nmouths of ancient mariners in Mount's Bay,--and a few words are still\nmixed with the local dialect of English. But as a language Cornish is\ndead, though its ghost still haunts its old dwelling in the names of\nvillages, houses, woods, valleys, wells, and rocks, from Tamar to\nPenwith.\n\nAs may be expected, a great proportion of the literature is in verse,\nand most of that is in dramatic form. So little is there that an\nexhaustive list of what survives is quite possible. It is as\nfollows:--\n\n1. _The Poem of the Passion._ A versified account of the Passion of\nour Lord, recounting the events from Palm Sunday to Easter, with the\naddition of many legendary incidents from the Gospel of Nicodemus and\nother similar sources. The earliest MS. (in the British Museum) is of\nthe fifteenth century, which is probably the date of its composition.\nIt has been twice printed, once by Davies Gilbert, with a translation\nby John Keigwin in 1826, and by Dr. Whitley Stokes in 1862.\n\n2. _The Ordinalia._ Three connected dramas, known collectively under\nthis title. The first recounts the Creation and the history of the\nworld as far as Noah's Flood. The second act of this gives the story\nof Moses and of David and the Building of Solomon's Temple, ending\nwith the curiously incongruous episode of the martyrdom of St.\nMaximilla, _as a Christian_, by the bishop placed in charge of the\nTemple of Solomon. The second play represents the life of our Lord\nfrom the Temptation to the Crucifixion, and this goes on without a\nbreak into the third play, which gives the story of the Resurrection\nand Ascension, and the legend of the death of Pilate. The connecting\nlink between the three is the legend of the wood of the cross. This\nwell-known story, most of which is interwoven with the whole trilogy,\nis as follows:--Seth was sent by his dying father to beg the promised\nOil of Mercy to save him; the angel who guarded Paradise gave him\nthree seeds, or, according to the play, apple-pips; and when he\nreturned and found his father already dead, he placed them in Adam's\nmouth and buried him on Mount Moriah. In process of time the three\nseeds grew into three trees, and from them Abraham gathered the wood\nfor the sacrifice of Isaac, and Moses got his rod wherewith he smote\nthe sea and the rock. Later the three trees, to symbolize the Trinity,\ngrew into one tree, and David sat under it to bewail his sin. But\nSolomon cut it down to make a beam for the Temple, and since it would\nin no wise fit into any place, he cast it out and set it as a bridge\nover Cedron. Later on he buried it, and from the place where it lay\nthere sprang the healing spring of Bethesda, to the surface of which\nit miraculously floated up, and the Jews found it and made of it the\nCross of Calvary.\n\nThese plays were probably written in the fifteenth century, perhaps by\none of the priests of Glazeney College near Falmouth, and were acted\nwith others that are now lost in the places called _Planan-Guare_ (the\nPlain of the Play), of which several still remain. The 'Ordinalia'\nwere published with a translation by Edwin Norris in 1859.\n\n3. _The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood_, was a modernized\nversion of the first act of the first of the 'Ordinalia' trilogy. It\nwas written by William Jordan of Helston in 1611; but the author has\nborrowed whole passages of considerable length from the older play.\nThe language represents a later period of Cornish, and occasionally\nseveral lines of English are introduced. Perhaps by a natural Celtic\nantipathy to the Saxon, these are generally put into the mouths of\nLucifer and his angels, who furnish a good deal of the comic part of\nthe piece. This play was published by Davies Gilbert in 1827, and by\nDr. Whitley Stokes in 1864.\n\n4. _The Life of St. Meriasek._ This play, written in 1504, is perhaps\nthe most interesting of the batch. The story at least of the others\ncontains nothing very new to most people, but St. Meriasek or Meriadoc\n(to give him his Breton name), the patron of Camborne, is not a\nwell-known character, and his life, full as it is of allusions and\nincidents of a misty period of Cornish history, is most curious and\ninteresting. It is not perhaps simplified by being mixed up in the\nwildest manner with the legend of Constantine and St. Sylvester, and\nthe scenes shift about from Cornwall or Brittany to Rome, and from the\nfourth to the Heaven-knows-what century, with bewildering frequency.\nThere are also certain other legends interwoven with the story, and it\nseems probable that at least three plays have been, as Dr. Whitley\nStokes expresses it, \"unskillfully pieced together.\" Yet there are\nmany passages of considerable literary merit. The only existing MS. of\nthis play is in the Hengwrt collection at Peniarth, and it was edited\nand translated by Dr. Stokes in 1872.\n\n5. There were probably many other plays which have perished, but one\nother there certainly was, of which a fragment exists. What it was\ncalled or what it was about no one knows, but an actor in it, setting\nabout to learn his own part in it, wrote that short piece of\nthirty-six lines on the back of a title-deed of some land in the\nparish of St. Stephen, near Bodmin. The deed drifted eventually into\nthe British Museum, and the present writer discovered the Cornish\nverses on it, not wholly by accident, about nineteen years ago. The\nwriting belongs to the latter part of the fourteenth century, and is\ntherefore the earliest literary fragment of the language.\n\n6. The rest of the literature of the Cornish language consists of a\nfew songs, epigrams, mottoes, proverbs, and the like, a short\ndissertation on the language, and the tale of 'John of Chy-an-Hur,' a\nwidely known folk-tale. These are mostly in the latest form of\nCornish, and are contained in the MS. collection of William Gwavas in\nthe British Museum and in that of Dr. Borlase, until lately in the\npossession of his descendants. Most of them have been printed by\nDavies Gilbert (with the play of the 'Creation'), by William Pryce in\nthe 'Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica' in 1790, by Mr. W. C. Borlase in\nthe Transactions of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, and in a\nfragmentary way in a few other places. They are mostly translations or\nadaptations from the English, but a few, such as the rather doggerel\n'Pilchard Fishing Song,' are originals. Lastly, in the Church of St.\nPaul, near Penzance, there is the one solitary epitaph in the\nlanguage; written while it was still just alive, and perhaps the last\ncomposition in it.\n\n [The versions given of these specimens of Cornish literature\n are founded on those of Dr. Whitley Stokes and Dr. E. Norris.\n The phraseology has been to some extent altered, but the\n renderings are almost all the same.]\n\n\nFROM THE 'POEM OF THE PASSION'\n\n[The Death of Our Lord on the Cross]\n\n His pain was strong and sharp, so that he could not live,\n But must yield up his white soul; ever purely had he lived.\n And Christ prayed, as thus in many a place we read,\n \"My soul I do commend, O Lord, between thy hands!\"\n\n For weakly he breathed, being constrained, so that he could not rest;\n On nothing could he lean his head for the garland that he wore.\n If he leaned to one side, for his shoulder it grieved him\n And the tree did yet worse, if he set it backwards.\n\n Nor could he lean forward for fear of being choked.\n Then was it as we read in books as it is written:--\n \"For the birds to make their nests, places are prepared,\n But for Christ where he may lay his head no place is found.\"\n\n But now must he needs leave his head to hang,\n For his blood was all gone from him, and he could not live.\n To the side of the Mother that owned him, his head he would hold,\n And his soul went from him with chilling shriek and shrill cry.\n\n Beside the Cross of Jesus was a man hight Sentury,\n And when he saw the wondrous things that happened at Christ's death,\n And how his soul he yielded, against nature, with a cry,\n He said without scorning, \"This truly was God's Son;\"\n And many were there with him that testimony bore.\n\n Now was it midday in the land, or later, as is written.\n Earthquake there was and lightning, and darkness over all;\n The Temple Veil was rent in twain, and to the ground it fell,\n And likewise broken were the stones so strong and hard.\n\n Graves in many places were opened wide,\n And the bodies that were in them were raised up,\n And went straightway to the city--by many were they seen--\n To bear witness that it was God's Son that was slain.\n\n Water, earth, and fire, and wind, sun, moon, and stars likewise,\n At Christ's suffering death knew sorrow.\n Nature will cause, I trow, if the good Lord be pained,\n All his subjects, even saints, to be grieved for his pain.\n\n\nFROM 'ORIGO MUNDI,' IN THE 'ORDINALIA'\n\n [Seth, being sent to fetch the oil of mercy from Paradise for\n his dying father, comes to the guardian cherub.]\n\n_Cherubin_--\n Seth, what is thine errand,\n That thou comest so far?\n Tell me anon.\n\n_Seth_--\n O Angel, I will tell it thee:\n My father is old and weary;\n He wishes no longer to live;\n And through me he prayed thee\n To tell the truth\n Of the oil of mercy promised\n To him at the last day.\n\n_Cherubin_--\n Within the gate put thou thy head,\n And behold it all, nor fear,\n Whatever thou seest.\n And look on all sides,\n Spy out every detail,\n Search out everything carefully.\n\n_Seth_--\n Very gladly I will do it;\n I am glad to have permission\n To know what is there\n And tell it to my father.\n\n [_And he looks and turns round, saying:_\n\n Fair field to behold is this;\n Hapless he who lost the land.\n But for the tree I wonder greatly\n That it should be dry.\n But I trow that it went dry\n And all was made bare, for the sin\n Which my father and mother sinned.\n Like the prints of their feet,\n They all became dry as herbs,\n Alas, when the morsel was eaten.\n\n_Cherubin_--\n O Seth, thou art come\n Within the gate of Paradise:\n Tell me what thou sawest.\n\n_Seth_--\n All the beauty that I saw\n Tongue of man can never tell,\n Of good fruits and beauteous flowers,\n Of minstrels and sweet song,\n A fountain bright as silver,\n And flowing from it four great streams,\n That there is a desire to gaze upon them.\n In it there is a tree,\n High and with many boughs,\n But they are bare and leafless.\n Bark there is none around it;\n From the stem to the head\n All its branches are bare.\n And below when I looked,\n I saw its roots\n Even into hell descending,\n In the midst of great darkness;\n And its branches growing up\n Even to heaven high in light.\n And it was wholly without bark,\n Both the head and the boughs.\n\n_Cherubin_--\n Look yet again within,\n And all else thou shalt see\n Before thou come from it.\n\n_Seth_--\n I am happy to have leave;\n I will go to the gate at once,\n That I may see further good.\n\n [_He goes and looks and returns._\n\n_Cherubin_--\n Dost thou see more now\n Than what there was just now?\n\n_Seth_--\n There is a serpent in the tree:\n Truly a hideous beast is he.\n\n_Cherubin_--\n Go yet the third time to it,\n And look better at the tree.\n Look what you can see on it\n Besides roots and branches.\n\n_Seth_--\n Cherubin, angel of the God of grace,\n High in the branches of the tree I saw\n A new-born child, wrapped in swaddling clothes\n And bound with bands.\n\n_Cherubin_--\n It was God's son that thou sawest,\n Like a child in swaddling clothes.\n He will redeem Adam thy father\n With his flesh and blood likewise,\n When the time is come,\n And thy mother and all good people.\n He is the oil of mercy\n Which was promised to thy father.\n Through his death truly\n Shall all the world be saved.\n\n [Signature: William Sharp & Ernest Rhys]\n\n\n\n\nCERVANTES\n\n(1547-1616)\n\nBY GEORGE SANTAYANA\n\n\nCervantes is known to the world as the author of 'Don Quixote' and\nalthough his other works are numerous and creditable, and his pathetic\nlife is carefully recorded, yet it is as the author of 'Don Quixote'\nalone that he deserves to be generally known or considered. Had his\nwit not come by chance on the idea of the Ingenious Hidalgo, Cervantes\nwould never have attained his universal renown, even if his other\nworks and the interest of his career should have sufficed to give him\na place in the literary history of his country. Here, then, where our\ntask is to present in miniature only what has the greatest and most\nuniversal value, we may treat our author as playwrights are advised to\ntreat their heroes, saying of him only what is necessary to the\nunderstanding of the single action with which we are concerned. This\nsingle action is the writing of 'Don Quixote': and what we shall try\nto understand is what there was in the life and environment of\nCervantes that enabled him to compose that great book, and that\nremained imbedded in its characters, its episodes, and its moral.\n\nThere was in vogue in the Spain of the sixteenth century a species of\nromance called books of chivalry. They were developments of the\nlegends dealing with King Arthur and the Knights of the Table Round,\nand their numerous descendants and emulators. These stories had\nappealed in the first place to what we should still think of as the\nspirit of chivalry: they were full of tourneys and single combats,\ndesperate adventures and romantic loves. The setting was in the same\nvague and wonderful region as the Coast of Bohemia, where to the known\nmountains, seas, and cities that have poetic names, was added a\nprodigious number of caverns, castles, islands, and forests of the\nromancer's invention. With time and popularity this kind of story had\nnaturally intensified its characteristics until it had reached the\ngreatest extravagance and absurdity, and combined in a way the\nunreality of the fairy tale with the bombast of the melodrama.\n\nCervantes had apparently read these books with avidity, and was not\nwithout a great sympathy with the kind of imagination they embodied.\nHis own last and most carefully written book, the 'Travails of\nPersiles and Sigismunda,' is in many respects an imitation of them;\nit abounds in savage islands, furious tyrants, prodigious feats of\narms, disguised maidens whose discretion is as marvelous as their\nbeauty, and happy deliverances from intricate and hopeless situations.\nHis first book also, the 'Galatea,' was an embodiment of a kind of\npastoral idealism: sentimental verses being interspersed with\neuphuistic prose, the whole describing the lovelorn shepherds and\nheartless shepherdesses of Arcadia.\n\nBut while these books, which were the author's favorites among his own\nworks, expressed perhaps Cervantes's natural taste and ambition, the\nevents of his life and the real bent of his talent, which in time he\ncame himself to recognize, drove him to a very different sort of\ncomposition. His family was ancient but impoverished, and he was\nforced throughout his life to turn his hand to anything that could\npromise him a livelihood. His existence was a continuous series of\nexperiments, vexations, and disappointments. He adopted at first the\nprofession of arms, and followed his colors as a private soldier upon\nseveral foreign expeditions. He was long quartered in Italy; he fought\nat Lepanto against the Turks, where among other wounds he received one\nthat maimed his left hand, to the greater glory, as he tells us, of\nhis right; he was captured by Barbary pirates and remained for five\nyears a slave in Algiers; he was ransomed, and returned to Spain only\nto find official favors and recognitions denied him; and finally, at\nthe age of thirty-seven, he abandoned the army for literature.\n\nHis first thought as a writer does not seem to have been to make\ndirect use of his rich experience and varied observation; he was\nrather possessed by an obstinate longing for that poetic gift which,\nas he confesses in one place, Heaven had denied him. He began with the\nidyllic romance, the 'Galatea' already mentioned, and at various times\nduring the rest of his life wrote poems, plays, and stories of a\nromantic and sentimental type. In the course of these labors, however,\nhe struck one vein of much richer promise. It was what the Spanish\ncall the _picaresque_; that is, the description of the life and\ncharacter of rogues, pickpockets, vagabonds, and all those wretches\nand sorry wits that might be found about the highways, in the country\ninns, or in the slums of cities. Of this kind is much of what is best\nin his collected stories, the 'Novelas Exemplares.' The talent and the\nexperience which he betrays in these amusing narratives were to be\ninvaluable to him later as the author of 'Don Quixote,' where they\nenabled him to supply a foil to the fine world of his poor hero's\nimagination.\n\nWe have now mentioned what were perhaps the chief elements of the\npreparation of Cervantes for his great task. They were a great\nfamiliarity with the romances of chivalry, and a natural liking for\nthem; a life of honorable but unrewarded endeavor both in war and in\nthe higher literature; and much experience of Vagabondia, with the art\nof taking down and reproducing in amusing profusion the typical scenes\nand languages of low life. Out of these elements a single spark, which\nwe may attribute to genius, to chance, or to inspiration, was enough\nto produce a new and happy conception: that of a parody on the\nromances of chivalry, in which the extravagances of the fables of\nknighthood should be contrasted with the sordid realities of life.\nThis is done by the ingenious device of representing a country\ngentleman whose naturally generous mind, unhinged by much reading of\nthe books of chivalry, should lead him to undertake the office of\nknight-errant, and induce him to ride about the country clad in\nancient armor, to right wrongs, to succor defenseless maidens, to kill\ngiants, and to win empires at least as vast as that of Alexander.\n\nThis is the subject of 'Don Quixote.' But happy as the conception is,\nit could not have produced a book of enduring charm and well-seasoned\nwisdom, had it not been filled in with a great number of amusing and\nlifelike episodes, and verified by two admirable figures, Don Quixote\nand Sancho Panza, characters at once intimately individual and truly\nuniversal.\n\nDon Quixote at first appears to the reader, and probably appeared to\nthe author as well, as primarily a madman,--a thin and gaunt old\nvillage squire, whose brain has been turned by the nonsense he has\nread and taken for gospel truth; and who is punished for his\nridiculous mania by an uninterrupted series of beatings, falls,\nindignities, and insults. But the hero and the author together, with\nthe ingenuity proper to madness and the inevitableness proper to\ngenius, soon begin to disclose the fund of intelligence and ideal\npassion which underlies this superficial insanity. We see that Don\nQuixote is only mad north-north-west, when the wind blows from the\nquarter of his chivalrous preoccupation. At other times he shows\nhimself a man of great goodness and fineness of wit; virtuous,\ncourageous, courteous, and generous, and in fact the perfect ideal of\na gentleman. When he takes, for instance, a handful of acorns from the\ngoat-herds' table and begins a grandiloquent discourse upon the Golden\nAge, we feel how cultivated the man is, how easily the little things\nof life suggest to him the great things, and with what delight he\ndwells on what is beautiful and happy. The truth and pathos of the\ncharacter become all the more compelling when we consider how\nnaturally the hero's madness and calamities flow from this same\nexquisite sense of what is good.\n\nThe contrast to this figure is furnished by that of Sancho Panza, who\nembodies all that is matter-of-fact, gross, and plebeian. Yet he is\nwilling to become Don Quixote's esquire, and by his credulity and\ndevotion shows what an ascendency a heroic and enthusiastic nature can\ngain over the most sluggish of men. Sancho has none of the instincts\nof his master. He never read the books of chivalry or desired to right\nthe wrongs of the world. He is naturally satisfied with his crust and\nhis onions, if they can be washed down with enough bad wine. His good\ndrudge of a wife never transformed herself in his fancy into a\npeerless Dulcinea. Yet Sancho follows his master into every danger,\nshares his discomfiture and the many blows that rain down upon him,\nand hopes to the end for the governorship of that Insula with which\nDon Quixote is some day to reward his faithful esquire.\n\nAs the madness of Don Quixote is humanized by his natural intelligence\nand courage, so the grossness and credulity of Sancho are relieved by\nhis homely wit. He abounds in proverbs. He never fails to see the\nreality of a situation, and to protest doggedly against his master's\nvisionary flights. He holds fast as long as he can to the evidence of\nhis senses, and to his little weaknesses of flesh and spirit. But\nfinally he surrenders to the authority of Don Quixote, and of the\nhistorians of chivalry, although not without a certain reluctance and\nsome surviving doubts.\n\nThe character of Sancho is admirable for the veracity with which its\ndetails are drawn. The traits of the boor, the glutton, and the coward\ncome most naturally to the surface upon occasion, yet Sancho remains a\npatient, good-natured peasant, a devoted servant, and a humble\nChristian. Under the cover of such lifelike incongruities, and of a\npervasive humor, the author has given us a satirical picture of human\nnature not inferior, perhaps, to that furnished by Don Quixote\nhimself. For instance: Don Quixote, after mending his helmet, tries\nits strength with a blow that smashes it to pieces. He mends it a\nsecond time, but now, without trial, deputes it to be henceforth a\nstrong and perfect helmet. Sancho, when he is sent to bear a letter\nto Dulcinea, neglects to deliver it, and invents an account of his\ninterview with the imaginary lady for the satisfaction of his master.\nBut before long, by dint of repeating the story, he comes himself to\nbelieve his own lies. Thus self-deception in the knight is the\nridiculous effect of courage, and in the esquire the not less\nridiculous effect of sloth.\n\nThe adventures these two heroes encounter are naturally only such as\ntravelers along the Spanish roads would then have been likely to come\nupon. The point of the story depends on the familiarity and commonness\nof the situations in which Don Quixote finds himself, so that the\nabsurdity of his pretensions may be overwhelmingly shown. Critics are\nagreed in blaming the exceptions which Cervantes allowed himself to\nmake to the realism of his scenes, where he introduced romantic tales\ninto the narrative of the first part. The tales are in themselves\nunworthy of their setting, and contrary to the spirit of the whole\nbook. Cervantes doubtless yielded here partly to his story-telling\nhabits, partly to a fear of monotony in the uninterrupted description\nof Don Quixote's adventures. He avoided this mistake in the second\npart, and devised the visit to the Duke's palace, and the intentional\nsport there made of the hero, to give variety to the story.\n\nMore variety and more unity may still, perhaps, seem desirable in the\nbook. The episodes are strung together without much coherence, and\nwithout any attempt to develop either the plot or the characters.\nSancho, to be sure, at last tastes the governorship of his Insula, and\nDon Quixote on his death-bed recovers his wits. But this conclusion,\nappropriate and touching as it is, might have come almost anywhere in\nthe course of the story. The whole book has, in fact, rather the\nquality of an improvisation. The episodes suggest themselves to the\nauthor's fancy as he proceeds; a fact which gives them the same\nunexpectedness and sometimes the same incompleteness which the events\nof a journey naturally have. It is in the genius of this kind of\nnarrative to be a sort of imaginary diary, without a general dramatic\nstructure. The interest depends on the characters and the incidents\nalone; on the fertility of the author's invention, on the ingenuity of\nthe turns he gives to the story, and on the incidental scenes and\nfigures he describes.\n\nWhen we have once accepted this manner of writing fiction--which might\nbe called that of the novelist before the days of the novel--we can\nonly admire the execution of 'Don Quixote' as masterly in its kind. We\nfind here an abundance of fancy that is never at a loss for some\nprobable and interesting incident; we find a graphic power that makes\nliving and unforgettable many a minor character, even if slightly\nsketched; we find the charm of the country rendered by little touches\nwithout any formal descriptions; and we find a humorous and minute\nreproduction of the manners of the time. All this is rendered in a\nflowing and easy style, abounding in both characterization and parody\nof diverse types of speech and composition; and the whole is still but\nthe background for the figures of Don Quixote and Sancho, and for\ntheir pleasant discourse, the quality and savor of which is maintained\nto the end. These excellences unite to make the book one of the most\npermanently delightful in the world, as well as one of the most\ndiverting. Seldom has laughter been so well justified as that which\nthe reading of 'Don Quixote' continually provokes; seldom has it found\nits causes in such genuine fancy, such profound and real contrast, and\nsuch victorious good-humor.\n\nWe sometimes wish, perhaps, that our heroes were spared some of their\nbruises, and that we were not asked to delight so much in promiscuous\nbeatings and floggings. But we must remember that these three hundred\nyears have made the European race much more sensitive to physical\nsuffering. Our ancestors took that doubtful pleasure in the idea of\ncorporal writhings which we still take in the description of the\ntortures of the spirit. The idea of both evils is naturally\ndistasteful to a refined mind; but we admit more willingly the kind\nwhich habit has accustomed us to regard as inevitable, and which\npersonal experience very probably has made an old friend.\n\n'Don Quixote' has accordingly enjoyed a universal popularity, and has\nhad the singular privilege of accomplishing the object for which it\nwas written, which was to recall fiction from the extravagances of the\nbooks of chivalry to the study of real life. This is the simple object\nwhich Cervantes had and avowed. He was a literary man with literary\ninterests, and the idea which came to him was to ridicule the\nabsurdities of the prevalent literary mode. The rich vein which he\nstruck in the conception of Don Quixote's madness and topsy-turvy\nadventures encouraged him to go on. The subject and the characters\ndeepened under his hands, until from a parody of a certain kind of\nromances the story threatened to become a satire on human idealism.\nAt the same time Cervantes grew fond of his hero, and made him, as\nwe must feel, in some sort a representative of his own chivalrous\nenthusiasms and constant disappointments.\n\nWe need not, however, see in this transformation any deep-laid\nmalice or remote significance. As the tale opened out before the\nauthor's fancy and enlisted his closer and more loving attention, he\nnaturally enriched it with all the wealth of his experience. Just as\nhe diversified it with pictures of common life and manners, so he\nweighted it with the burden of human tragedy. He left upon it an\nimpress of his own nobility and misfortunes side by side with a record\nof his time and country. But in this there was nothing intentional. He\nonly spoke out of the fullness of his heart. The highest motives and\ncharacters had been revealed to him by his own impulses, and the\nlowest by his daily experience.\n\nThere is nothing in the book that suggests a premeditated satire upon\nfaith and enthusiasm in general. The author's evident purpose is to\namuse, not to upbraid or to discourage. There is no bitterness in his\npathos or despair in his disenchantment; partly because he retains a\nhealthy fondness for this naughty world, and partly because his heart\nis profoundly and entirely Christian. He would have rejected with\nindignation an interpretation of his work that would see in it an\nattack on religion or even on chivalry. His birth and nurture had\nmade him religious and chivalrous from the beginning, and he remained\nso by conviction to the end. He was still full of plans and hopes when\ndeath overtook him, but he greeted it with perfect simplicity, without\nlamentations over the past or anxiety for the future.\n\nIf we could have asked Cervantes what the moral of Don Quixote was to\nhis own mind, he would have told us perhaps that it was this: that the\nforce of idealism is wasted when it does not recognize the reality of\nthings. Neglect of the facts of daily life made the absurdity of the\nromances of chivalry and of the enterprise of Don Quixote. What is\nneeded is not, of course, that idealism should be surrendered, either\nin literature or in life; but that in both it should be made\nefficacious by a better adjustment to the reality it would transform.\n\nSomething of this kind would have been, we may believe, Cervantes's\nown reading of his parable. But when parables are such direct and full\ntranscripts of life as is the story of Don Quixote, they offer almost\nas much occasion for diversity of interpretation as does the personal\nexperience of men in the world. That the moral of Don Quixote should\nbe doubtful and that each man should be tempted to see in it the\nexpression of his own convictions, is after all the greatest possible\nencomium of the book. For we may infer that the truth has been\nrendered in it, and that men may return to it always, as to Nature\nherself, to renew their theories or to forget them, and to refresh\ntheir fancy with the spectacle of a living world.\n\n [Signature: G. Santayana]\n\n\n\nTREATING OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF DON QUIXOTE\n\n\nIn a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call\nto mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep\na lance in the lance-rack, and an old buckler, a lean hack, and a\ngreyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a\nsalad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a\npigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his\nincome. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet\nbreeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a\nbrave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper\npast forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and\nmarket-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the\nbill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty;\nhe was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser\nand a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada\nor Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among\nthe authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable\nconjectures it seems plain that he was called Quixana. This, however,\nis of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to\nstray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it.\n\nYou must know then that the above-named gentleman, whenever he was at\nleisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to\nreading books of chivalry with such ardor and avidity that he almost\nentirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the\nmanagement of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and\ninfatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillage-land to buy books\nof chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get.\nBut of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous\nFeliciano de Silva's composition, for their lucidity of style and\ncomplicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in\nhis reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found\npassages like:--\"The reason of the unreason with which my reason is\nafflicted, so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your\nbeauty;\" or again:--\"The high heavens, that of your divinity divinely\nfortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your\ngreatness deserves.\" Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman\nlost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and\nworm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have\nmade out or extracted, had he come to life again for that special\npurpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis\ngave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the\nsurgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered\nall over with seams and scars. He commended however the author's way\nof ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure;\nand many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it\nproperly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and\nmade a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more\nabsorbing thoughts prevented him.\n\nMany an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned\nman, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better\nknight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas the\nvillage barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to\nthe Knight of Phoebus, and that if there was any could compare with\n_him_ it was Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had\na spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight,\nnor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter of valor he was\nnot a whit behind him. In short, he became so absorbed in his books\nthat he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from\ndawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much\nreading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew\nfull of what he used to read about in his books--enchantments,\nquarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and\nall sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that\nthe whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to\nhim no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say the\nCid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be\ncompared with the Knight of the Burning Sword, who with one back\nstroke cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of\nBernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of\nenchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he\nstrangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of\nthe giant Morgante, because although of the giant breed, which is\nalways arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and\nwell-bred. But above all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban; especially\nwhen he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing every one\nhe met, and when beyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which,\nas his history says, was entirely of gold. And to have a bout of\nkicking at that traitor of a Ganelon he would have given his\nhousekeeper, and his niece into the bargain.\n\nIn short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion\nthat ever madman in this world hit upon: and that was that he fancied\nit was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honor\nas for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant\nof himself, roaming the world over in full armor and on horseback in\nquest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had\nread of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting\nevery kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from\nwhich, in the issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already\nthe poor man saw himself crowned, by the might of his arm, Emperor of\nTrebizond at least; and so, led away by the intense enjoyment he found\nin these pleasant fancies, he set himself forthwith to put his scheme\ninto execution.\n\nThe first thing he did was to clean up some armor that had belonged to\nhis great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a\ncorner, eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and\npolished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it;\nthat it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This\ndeficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind\nof half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked\nlike a whole one. It is true that in order to see if it was strong and\nfit to stand a cut he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes,\nthe first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to\ndo. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him\nsomewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again,\nfixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its\nstrength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he\npassed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction.\n\nHe next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a\nreal and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that \"_tantum pellis\net ossa fuit_,\" surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or\nthe Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to\ngive him; because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a\nhorse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of\nhis own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to\nadapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a\nknight-errant, and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that,\nhis master taking a new character, he should take a new name, and\nthat it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting\nthe new order and calling he was about to follow. And so after having\ncomposed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a\nmultitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided upon\ncalling him Rosinante,--to his thinking lofty, sonorous, and\nsignificant of his condition as a hack before he became what he\nnow was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world.\n\nHaving got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious\nto get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this\npoint, till at last he made up his mind to call himself Don Quixote,\nwhence, as has already been said, the authors of this veracious\nhistory have inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt\nQuixada, and not Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting however\nthat the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself curtly Amadis\nand nothing more, but added the name of his kingdom and country to\nmake it famous, and called himself Amadis of Gaul: he, like a good\nknight, resolved to add on the name of his and to style himself Don\nQuixote of La Mancha; whereby he considered he described accurately\nhis origin and country, and did honor to it in taking his surname from\nit.\n\nSo then, his armor being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet,\nhis hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the\nconclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a\nlady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a\ntree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. As he said to\nhimself:--\"If for my sins or by my good fortune I come across some\ngiant hereabouts,--a common occurrence with knights-errant,--and\noverthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist,\nor in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to\nhave some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come\nin and fall on his knees before my sweet lady and in a humble,\nsubmissive voice say:--'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of\nthe island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the\nnever-sufficiently-extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has\ncommanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness\ndispose of me at your pleasure'\"? Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed\nthe delivery of this speech, especially when he had thought of some\none to call his Lady! There was, so the story goes, in a village near\nhis own a very good-looking farm-girl with whom he had been at one\ntime in love, though so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a\nthought to the matter. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he\nthought fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after\nsome search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her\nown, and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and great\nlady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso--she being of El\nToboso--a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like\nall those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things\nbelonging to him.\n\n\n\nOF WHAT HAPPENED TO DON QUIXOTE WHEN HE LEFT THE INN\n\n\nDay was dawning when Don Quixote quitted the inn, so happy, so gay, so\nexhilarated at finding himself dubbed a knight, that his joy was like\nto burst his horse-girths. However, recalling the advice of his host\nas to the requisites he ought to carry with him, especially that\nreferring to money and shirts, he determined to go home and provide\nhimself with all, and also with a squire; for he reckoned upon\nsecuring a farm-laborer, a neighbor of his, a poor man with a family,\nbut very well qualified for the office of squire to a knight. With\nthis object he turned his horse's head towards his village, and\nRosinante, thus reminded of his old quarters, stepped out so briskly\nthat he hardly seemed to tread the earth.\n\nHe had not gone far, when out of a thicket on his right there seemed\nto come feeble cries as of some one in distress; and the instant he\nheard them he exclaimed:--\"Thanks be to heaven for the favor it\naccords me, that it so soon offers me an opportunity of fulfilling the\nobligation I have undertaken, and gathering the fruit of my ambition.\nThese cries no doubt come from some man or woman in want of help, and\nneeding my aid and protection;\" and wheeling, he turned Rosinante in\nthe direction whence the cries seemed to proceed. He had gone but a\nfew paces into the wood when he saw a mare tied to an oak, and tied to\nanother, and stripped from the waist upwards, a youth of about fifteen\nyears of age, from whom the cries came. Nor were they without cause,\nfor a lusty farmer was flogging him with a belt and following up every\nblow with scoldings and commands; repeating, \"Your mouth shut and your\neyes open!\" while the youth made answer, \"I won't do it again, master\nmine; by God's passion, I won't do it again, and I'll take more care\nof the flock another time.\"\n\nSeeing what was going on, Don Quixote said in an angry voice,\n\"Discourteous knight, it ill becomes you to assail one who cannot\ndefend himself; mount your steed and take your lance\" (for there was a\nlance leaning against the oak to which the mare was tied), \"and I will\nmake you know that you are behaving as a coward.\" The farmer, seeing\nbefore him this figure in full armor, brandishing a lance over his\nhead, gave himself up for dead and made answer meekly:--\"Sir Knight,\nthis youth that I am chastising is my servant, employed by me to watch\na flock of sheep that I have hard by; and he is so careless that I\nlose one every day, and when I punish him for his carelessness and\nknavery he says I do it out of niggardliness, to escape paying him the\nwages I owe him, and before God, and on my soul, he lies.\"\n\n\"Lies before me, base clown!\" said Don Quixote. \"By the sun that\nshines on us, I have a mind to run you through with this lance. Pay\nhim at once, without another word; if not, by the God that rules us, I\nwill make an end of you, and annihilate you on the spot; release him\ninstantly.\"\n\nThe farmer hung his head, and without a word untied his servant, of\nwhom Don Quixote asked how much his master owed him.\n\nHe replied, nine months at seven reals a month. Don Quixote added it\nup, found that it came to sixty-three reals, and told the farmer to\npay it down immediately if he did not want to die for it.\n\nThe trembling clown replied that as he lived and by the oath he had\nsworn (though he had not sworn any) it was not so much; for there were\nto be taken into account and deducted three pairs of shoes he had\ngiven him, and a real for two blood-lettings when he was sick.\n\n\"All that is very well,\" said Don Quixote; \"but let the shoes and the\nblood-lettings stand as a set-off against the blows you have given him\nwithout any cause; for if he spoiled the leather of the shoes you paid\nfor, you have damaged that of his body, and if the barber took blood\nfrom him when he was sick, you have drawn it when he was sound; so on\nthat score he owes you nothing.\"\n\n\"The difficulty is, Sir Knight, that I have no money here; let Andres\ncome home with me, and I will pay him all, real by real.\"\n\n\"I go with him!\" said the youth. \"Nay, God forbid! no, senor, not for\nthe world; for once alone with me, he would flay me like a Saint\nBartholomew.\"\n\n\"He will do nothing of the kind,\" said Don Quixote; \"I have only to\ncommand and he will obey me, and he has sworn to me by the order of\nknighthood which he has received. I leave him free, and I guarantee\nthe payment.\"\n\n\"Consider what you are saying, senor,\" said the youth; \"this master of\nmine is not a knight, nor has he received any order of knighthood; for\nhe is Juan Haldudo the Rich, of Quintanar.\"\n\n\"That matters little,\" replied Don Quixote; \"there may be Haldudos\nknights; moreover, every one is the son of his works.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said Andres; \"but this master of mine--of what work is\nhe the son, when he refuses me the wages of my sweat and labor?\"\n\n\"I do not refuse, brother Andres,\" said the farmer; \"be good enough to\ncome along with me, and I swear by all the orders of knighthood there\nare in the world to pay you as I have agreed, real by real, and\nperfumed.\"\n\n\"For the perfumery I excuse you,\" said Don Quixote; \"give it to him in\nreals, and I shall be satisfied; and see that you do as you have\nsworn; if not, by the same oath I swear to come back and hunt you out\nand punish you; and I shall find you though you should lie closer than\na lizard. And if you desire to know who it is lays this command upon\nyou, that you may be more firmly bound to obey it, know that I am the\nvalorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, the undoer of wrongs and\ninjustices; and so God be with you, and keep in mind what you have\npromised and sworn under those penalties that have been already\ndeclared to you.\"\n\nSo saying, he gave Rosinante the spur and was soon out of reach. The\nfarmer followed him with his eyes, and when he saw that he had cleared\nthe wood and was no longer in sight, he turned to his boy Andres and\nsaid, \"Come here, my son; I want to pay you what I owe you, as that\nundoer of wrongs has commanded me.\"\n\n\"My oath on it,\" said Andres, \"your Worship will be well advised to\nobey the command of that good knight--may he live a thousand\nyears!--for as he is a valiant and just judge, by Roque, if you do not\npay me, he will come back and do as he said.\"\n\n\"My oath on it too,\" said the farmer; \"but as I have a strong\naffection for you, I want to add to the debt in order to add to the\npayment;\" and seizing him by the arm, he tied him up to the oak again,\nwhere he gave him such a flogging that he left him for dead.\n\n[Illustration: CERVANTES]\n\n\"Now, Master Andres,\" said the farmer, \"call on the undoer of wrongs;\nyou will find he won't undo that, though I am not sure that I have\nquite done with you, for I have a good mind to flay you alive as you\nfeared.\" But at last he untied him, and gave him leave to go look for\nhis judge in order to put the sentence pronounced into execution.\n\nAndres went off rather down in the mouth, swearing he would go to look\nfor the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha and tell him exactly what had\nhappened, and that all would have to be repaid him sevenfold; but for\nall that he went off weeping, while his master stood laughing.\n\nThus did the valiant Don Quixote right that wrong; and thoroughly\nsatisfied with what had taken place, as he considered he had made a\nvery happy and noble beginning with his knighthood, he took the road\ntowards his village in perfect self-content, saying in a low\nvoice:--\"Well mayest them this day call thyself fortunate above all on\nearth, O Dulcinea del Toboso, fairest of the fair! since it has fallen\nto thy lot to hold subject and submissive to thy full will and\npleasure a knight so renowned as is and will be Don Quixote of La\nMancha, who as all the world knows, yesterday received the order of\nknighthood, and hath to-day righted the greatest wrong and grievance\nthat ever injustice conceived and cruelty perpetrated; who hath to-day\nplucked the rod from the hand of yonder ruthless oppressor so wantonly\nlashing that tender child.\"\n\nHe now came to a road branching in four directions, and immediately he\nwas reminded of those cross-roads where knights-errant used to stop to\nconsider which road they should take. In imitation of them he halted\nfor a while, and after having deeply considered it, he gave Rosinante\nhis head, submitting his own will to that of his hack, who followed\nout his first intention, which was to make straight for his own\nstable. After he had gone about two miles Don Quixote perceived a\nlarge party of people, who as afterwards appeared were some Toledo\ntraders, on their way to buy silk at Murcia. There were six of them\ncoming along under their sun-shades, with four servants mounted, and\nthree muleteers on foot. Scarcely had Don Quixote descried them when\nthe fancy possessed him that this must be some new adventure; and to\nhelp him to imitate as far as he could those passages he had read of\nin his books, here seemed to come one made on purpose, which he\nresolved to attempt. So with a lofty bearing and determination he\nfixed himself firmly in his stirrups, got his lance ready, brought his\nbuckler before his breast, and planting himself in the middle of the\nroad, stood waiting the approach of these knights-errant, for such he\nnow considered and held them to be; and when they had come near enough\nto see and hear, he exclaimed with a haughty gesture:--\"All the world\nstand, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is no\nmaiden fairer than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del\nToboso.\"\n\nThe traders halted at the sound of this language and the sight of the\nstrange figure that uttered it, and from both figure and language at\nonce guessed the craze of their owner; they wished however to learn\nquietly what was the object of this confession that was demanded of\nthem, and one of them, who was rather fond of a joke and was very\nsharp-witted, said to him:--\"Sir Knight, we do not know who this good\nlady is that you speak of; show her to us, for if she be of such\nbeauty as you suggest, with all our hearts and without any pressure we\nwill confess the truth that is on your part required of us.\"\n\n\"If I were to show her to you,\" replied Don Quixote, \"what merit would\nyou have in confessing a truth so manifest? The essential point is\nthat without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and\ndefend it; else ye have to do with me in battle, ill-conditioned\narrogant rabble that ye are: and come ye on, one by one as the order\nof knighthood requires, or all together as is the custom and vile\nusage of your breed; here do I bide and await you, relying on the\njustice of the cause I maintain.\"\n\n\"Sir Knight,\" replied the trader, \"I entreat your Worship in the name\nof this present company of princes, that to save us from charging our\nconsciences with the confession of a thing we have never seen or heard\nof, and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and\nQueens of the Alcarria and Estremadura, your worship will be pleased\nto show us some portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a\ngrain of wheat; for by the thread one gets at the ball, and in this\nway we shall be satisfied and easy, and you will be content and\npleased: nay, I believe we are already so far agreed with you that\neven though her portrait should show her blind of one eye, and\ndistilling vermilion and sulphur from the other, we would\nnevertheless, to gratify your Worship, say all in her favor that you\ndesire.\"\n\n\"She distills nothing of the kind, vile rabble,\" said Don Quixote,\nburning with rage; \"nothing of the kind, I say; only ambergris and\ncivet in cotton; nor is she one-eyed or hump-backed, but straighter\nthan a Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have\nuttered against beauty like that of my lady.\"\n\nAnd so saying he charged with leveled lance against the one who had\nspoken, with such fury and fierceness that, if luck had not contrived\nthat Rosinante should stumble midway and come down, it would have gone\nhard with the rash trader. Down went Rosinante, and over went his\nmaster, rolling along the ground for some distance; and when he tried\nto rise he was unable, so incumbered was he with lance, buckler,\nspurs, helmet, and the weight of his old armor; and all the while he\nwas struggling to get up, he kept saying, \"Fly not, cowards and\ncaitiffs! stay, for not by my fault, but my horse's, am I stretched\nhere.\"\n\nOne of the muleteers in attendance, who could not have had much\ngood-nature in him, hearing the poor prostrate man blustering in this\nstyle, was unable to refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs;\nand coming up to him he seized his lance, and having broken it in\npieces, with one of them he began so to belabor our Don Quixote that,\nnotwithstanding and in spite of his armor, he milled him like a\nmeasure of wheat. His masters called out not to lay on so hard and to\nleave him alone, but the muleteer's blood was up, and he did not care\nto drop the game until he had vented the rest of his wrath; and\ngathering up the remaining fragments of the lance he finished with a\ndischarge upon the unhappy victim, who all through the storm of sticks\nthat rained on him never ceased threatening heaven, and earth, and the\nbrigands--for such they seemed to him. At last the muleteer was tired,\nand the traders continued their journey, taking with them matter for\ntalk about the poor fellow who had been cudgeled. He, when he found\nhimself alone, made another effort to rise; but if he was unable when\nwhole and sound, how was he to rise after having been thrashed and\nwell-nigh knocked to pieces! And yet he esteemed himself fortunate, as\nit seemed to him that this was a regular knight-errant's mishap, and\nentirely, he considered, the fault of his horse. However, battered in\nbody as he was, to rise was beyond his power.\n\n\n\nDON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA SALLY FORTH: AND THE ADVENTURE WITH THE\nWINDMILLS\n\n\nHe remained at home fifteen days very quietly, without showing any\nsigns of a desire to take up with his former delusions; and during\nthis time he held lively discussions with his two gossips, the curate\nand the barber, on the point he maintained, that knights-errant were\nwhat the world stood most in need of, and that in him was to be\naccomplished the revival of knight-errantry. The curate sometimes\ncontradicted him, sometimes agreed with him, for if he had not\nobserved this precaution he would have been unable to bring him to\nreason.\n\nMeanwhile Don Quixote worked upon a farm-laborer, a neighbor of his,\nan honest man (if indeed that title can be given to him who is poor),\nbut with very little wit in his pate. In a word, he so talked him\nover, and with such persuasions and promises, that the poor clown made\nup his mind to sally forth with him and serve him as esquire. Don\nQuixote, among other things, told him he ought to be ready to go with\nhim gladly, because at any moment an adventure might occur, that might\nwin an island in the twinkling of an eye and leave him governor of it.\nOn these and the like promises Sancho Panza (for so the laborer was\ncalled) left wife and children, and engaged himself as esquire to his\nneighbor. Don Quixote next set about getting some money; and selling\none thing and pawning another, and making a bad bargain in every case,\nhe got together a fair sum. He provided himself with a buckler, which\nhe begged as a loan from a friend, and restoring his battered helmet\nas best he could, he warned his squire Sancho of the day and hour he\nmeant to set out, that he might provide himself with what he thought\nmost needful. Above all, he charged him to take _alforjas_ with him.\nThe other said he would, and that he meant to take also a very good\nass he had, as he was not much given to going on foot. About the ass,\nDon Quixote hesitated a little, trying whether he could call to mind\nany knight-errant taking with him an esquire mounted on ass-back, but\nno instance occurred to his memory. For all that, however, he\ndetermined to take him; intending to furnish him with a more honorable\nmount when a chance of it presented itself, by appropriating the horse\nof the first discourteous knight he encountered. Himself he provided\nwith shirts and such other things as he could, according to the\nadvice the host had given him; all which being settled and done,\nwithout taking leave, Sancho Panza of his wife and children, or Don\nQuixote of his housekeeper and niece, they sallied forth unseen by\nanybody from the village one night, and made such good way in the\ncourse of it that by daylight they held themselves safe from\ndiscovery, even should search be made for them.\n\nSancho rode on his ass like a patriarch, with his _alforjas_ and\n_bota_, and longing to see himself soon governor of the island his\nmaster had promised him. Don Quixote decided upon taking the same\nroute and road he had taken on his first journey, that over the Campo\nde Montiel, which he traveled with less discomfort than on the last\noccasion; for as it was early morning and the rays of the sun fell on\nthem obliquely, the heat did not distress them.\n\nAnd now said Sancho Panza to his master, \"Your Worship will take care,\nSenor Knight-Errant, not to forget about the island you have promised\nme, for be it ever so big I'll be equal to governing it.\"\n\nTo which Don Quixote replied:--\"Thou must know, friend Sancho Panza,\nthat it was a practice very much in vogue with the knights-errant of\nold to make their squires governors of the islands or kingdoms they\nwon, and I am determined that there shall be no failure on my part in\nso liberal a custom; on the contrary, I mean to improve upon it, for\nthey sometimes, and perhaps most frequently, waited until their\nsquires were old, and then when they had had enough of service and\nhard days and worse nights, they gave them some title or other, of\ncount, or at the most marquis, of some valley or province more or\nless; but if thou livest and I live, it may well be that before six\ndays are over I may have won some kingdom that has others dependent\nupon it, which will be just the thing to enable thee to be crowned\nking of one of them. Nor needst thou count this wonderful, for things\nand chances fall to the lot of such knights in ways so unexampled and\nunexpected that I might easily give thee even more than I promise\nthee.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Sancho Panza, \"if I should become a king by one\nof those miracles your Worship speaks of, even Juana Gutierrez, my old\nwoman, would come to be queen and my children infantes.\"\n\n\"Well, who doubts it?\" said Don Quixote.\n\n\"I doubt it,\" replied Sancho Panza; \"because for my part I am\npersuaded that though God should shower down kingdoms upon earth, not\none of them would fit the head of Mari Gutierrez. Let me tell you,\nsenor, she is not worth two maravedis for a queen; countess will fit\nher better, and that only with God's help.\"\n\n\"Leave it to God, Sancho,\" returned Don Quixote, \"for he will give her\nwhat suits her best; but do not undervalue thyself so much as to come\nto be content with anything less than being governor of a province.\"\n\n\"I will not, senor,\" answered Sancho; \"especially as I have a man of\nsuch quality for master in your Worship, who will be able to give me\nall that will be suitable for me and that I can bear.\"\n\nAt this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that\nthere are on that plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said\nto his squire, \"Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we\ncould have shaped our desires ourselves; for look there, friend Sancho\nPanza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all\nof whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we\nshall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and\nit is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of\nthe earth.\"\n\n\"What giants?\" said Sancho Panza.\n\n\"Those thou seest there,\" answered his master, \"with the long arms;\nand some have them nearly two leagues long.\"\n\n\"Look, your Worship,\" said Sancho; \"what we see there are not giants\nbut windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that\nturned by the wind make the millstones go.\"\n\n\"It is easy to see,\" replied Don Quixote, \"that thou art not used to\nthis business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid,\naway with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer, while I\nengage them in fierce and unequal combat.\"\n\nSo saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rosinante, heedless of the\ncries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most\ncertainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack.\nHe however was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the\ncries of Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were; but\nmade at them, shouting, \"Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for it is a\nsingle knight that attacks you!\"\n\nA slight breeze at this moment sprang up, and the great sails began to\nmove; seeing which, Don Quixote exclaimed, \"Though ye flourish more\narms than the giant Briareus, ye have to reckon with me.\"\n\nSo saying, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady\nDulcinea, imploring her to support him in such a peril, with lance in\nrest and covered by his buckler, he charged at Rosinante's fullest\ngallop and fell upon the first mill that stood in front of him; but as\nhe drove his lance-point into the sail the wind whirled it round with\nsuch force that it shivered the lance to pieces, sweeping with it\nhorse and rider, who went rolling over on the plain in a sorry\ncondition. Sancho hastened to his assistance as fast as his ass could\ngo, and when he came up found him unable to move, with such a shock\nhad Rosinante fallen with him.\n\n\"God bless me!\" said Sancho, \"did I not tell your Worship to mind what\nyou were about, for they were only windmills? and no one could have\nmade any mistake about it but one who had something of the same kind\nin his head.\"\n\n\"Hush, friend Sancho,\" replied Don Quixote; \"the fortunes of war more\nthan any other are liable to frequent fluctuations; and moreover I\nthink, and it is the truth, that that same sage Friston who carried\noff my study and books has turned these giants into mills in order to\nrob me of the glory of vanquishing them,--such is the enmity he bears\nme; but in the end his wicked arts will avail but little against my\ngood sword.\"\n\n\"God order it as he may,\" said Sancho Panza; and helping him to rise,\ngot him up again on Rosinante, whose shoulder was half out; and then,\ndiscussing the late adventure, they followed the road to Puerto\nLapice, for there, said Don Quixote, they could not fail to find\nadventures in abundance and variety, as it was a great thoroughfare.\n\n\n\nSANCHO PANZA AND HIS WIFE TERESA CONVERSE SHREWDLY\n\n\nThe translator of this history, when he comes to write this fifth\nchapter, says that he considers it apocryphal, because in it Sancho\nPanza speaks in a style unlike that which might have been expected\nfrom his limited intelligence, and says things so subtle that he does\nnot think it possible he could have conceived them; however, desirous\nof doing what his task imposed upon him, he was unwilling to leave it\nuntranslated, and therefore he went on to say:--\n\nSancho came home in such glee and spirits that his wife noticed his\nhappiness a bowshot off, so much so that it made her ask him, \"What\nhave you got, Sancho friend, that you are so glad?\"\n\nTo which he replied, \"Wife, if it were God's will, I should be very\nglad not to be so well pleased as I show myself.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you, husband,\" said she, \"and I don't know what\nyou mean by saying you would be glad, if it were God's will, not to be\nwell pleased; for fool as I am, I don't know how one can find pleasure\nin not having it.\"\n\n\"Hark ye, Teresa,\" replied Sancho, \"I am glad because I have made up\nmy mind to go back to the service of my master Don Quixote, who means\nto go out a third time to seek for adventures; and I am going with him\nagain, for my necessities will have it so, and also the hope that\ncheers me with the thought that I may find another hundred crowns like\nthose we have spent; though it makes me sad to have to leave thee and\nthe children; and if God would be pleased to let me have my daily\nbread, dry-shod and at home, without taking me out into the byways and\ncross-roads--and he could do it at small cost by merely willing it--it\nis clear my happiness would be more solid and lasting, for the\nhappiness I have is mingled with sorrow at leaving thee; so that I was\nright in saying I would be glad, if it were God's will, not to be well\npleased.\"\n\n\"Look here, Sancho,\" said Teresa; \"ever since you joined on to a\nknight-errant you talk in such a roundabout way that there is no\nunderstanding you.\"\n\n\"It is enough that God understands me, wife,\" replied Sancho; \"for he\nis the understander of all things; that will do: but mind, sister, you\nmust look to Dapple carefully for the next three days, so that he may\nbe fit to take arms; double his feed, and see to the pack-saddle and\nother harness, for it is not to a wedding we are bound, but to go\nround the world, and play at give-and-take with giants and dragons and\nmonsters, and hear hissings and roarings and bellowings and howlings;\nand even all this would be lavender, if we had not to reckon with\nYanguesans and enchanted Moors.\"\n\n\"I know well enough, husband,\" said Teresa, \"that squires-errant don't\neat their bread for nothing, and so I will be always praying to our\nLord to deliver you speedily from all that hard fortune.\"\n\n\"I can tell you, wife,\" said Sancho, \"if I did not expect to see\nmyself governor of an island before long, I would drop down dead on\nthe spot.\"\n\n\"Nay then, husband,\" said Teresa, \"let the hen live, though it be with\nher pip; live, and let the devil take all the governments in the\nworld: you came out of your mother's womb without a government, you\nhave lived until now without a government, and when it is God's will\nyou will go, or be carried, to your grave without a government. How\nmany there are in the world who live without a government, and\ncontinue to live all the same, and are reckoned in the number of the\npeople. The best sauce in the world is hunger, and as the poor are\nnever without that, they always eat with a relish. But mind, Sancho,\nif by good luck you should find yourself with some government, don't\nforget me and your children. Remember that Sanchico is now full\nfifteen, and it is right he should go to school, if his uncle the\nabbot has a mind to have him trained for the Church. Consider, too,\nthat your daughter Maria-Sancha will not die of grief if we marry her;\nfor I have my suspicions that she is as eager to get a husband as you\nto get a government; and after all, a daughter looks better ill\nmarried than well kept.\"\n\n\"By my faith,\" replied Sancho, \"if God brings me to get any sort of a\ngovernment, I intend, wife, to make such a high match for Maria-Sancha\nthat there will be no approaching her without calling her 'my lady.'\"\n\n\"Nay, Sancho,\" returned Teresa, \"marry her to her equal, that is the\nsafest plan; for if you put her out of wooden clogs into high-heeled\nshoes, out of her gray flannel petticoat into hoops and silk gowns,\nout of the plain 'Marica' and 'thou' into 'Dona So-and-so' and 'my\nlady,' the girl won't know where she is, and at every turn she will\nfall into a thousand blunders that will show the thread of her coarse\nhomespun stuff.\"\n\n\"Tut, you fool,\" said Sancho; \"it will be only to practice it for two\nor three years, and then dignity and decorum will fit her as easily as\na glove, and if not, what matter? Let her be 'my lady,' and never mind\nwhat happens.\"\n\n\"Keep to your own station, Sancho,\" replied Teresa; \"don't try to\nraise yourself higher, and bear in mind the proverb that says, 'Wipe\nthe nose of your neighbor's son, and take him into your house.' A fine\nthing it would be, indeed, to marry our Maria to some great count or\ngrand gentleman who when the humor took him would abuse her, and call\nher 'clown-bred' and 'clodhopper's daughter' and 'spinning-wench.' I\nhave not been bringing up my daughter for that all this time, I can\ntell you, husband. Do you bring home money, Sancho, and leave marrying\nher to my care: there is Lope Tocho, Juan Tocho's son, a stout, sturdy\nyoung fellow that we know, and I can see he does not look sour at the\ngirl; and with him, one of our own sort, she will be well married, and\nwe shall have her always under our eyes, and be all one family,\nparents and children, grandchildren and sons-in-law, and the peace and\nblessing of God will dwell among us; so don't you go marrying her in\nthose courts and grand palaces where they won't know what to make of\nher, or she what to make of herself.\"\n\n\"Why, you idiot and wife for Barabbas,\" said Sancho, \"what do you mean\nby trying, without why or wherefore, to keep me from marrying my\ndaughter to one who will give me grandchildren that will be called\n'your Lordship'? Look ye, Teresa, I have always heard my elders say\nthat he who does not know how to take advantage of luck when it comes\nto him, has no right to complain if it gives him the go-by; and now\nthat it is knocking at our door, it will not do to shut it out; let us\ngo with the favoring breeze that blows upon us.\" (It is this sort of\ntalk, and what Sancho says lower down, that made the translator of the\nhistory say he considered this chapter apocryphal.) \"Don't you see,\nyou animal,\" continued Sancho, \"that it will be well for me to drop\ninto some profitable government that will lift us out of the mire, and\nmarry Mari-Sancha to whom I like; and you yourself will find yourself\ncalled 'Dona Teresa Panza,' and sitting in church on a fine carpet and\ncushions and draperies, in spite and in defiance of all the born\nladies of the town? No, stay as you are, growing neither greater nor\nless, like a tapestry figure.--Let us say no more about it, for\nSanchica shall be a countess, say what you will.\"\n\n\"Are you sure of all you say, husband?\" replied Teresa. \"Well, for all\nthat, I am afraid this rank of countess for my daughter will be her\nruin. You do as you like, make a duchess or a princess of her, but I\ncan tell you it will not be with my will and consent. I was always a\nlover of equality, brother, and I can't bear to see people give\nthemselves airs without any right. They called me Teresa at my\nbaptism,--a plain, simple name, without any additions or tags or\nfringes of Dons or Donas; Cascajo was my father's name, and as I am\nyour wife, I am called Teresa Panza, though by right I ought to be\ncalled Teresa Cascajo; but 'kings go where laws like,' and I am\ncontent with this name without having the 'Don' put on top of it to\nmake it so heavy that I cannot carry it; and I don't want to make\npeople talk about me when they see me go dressed like a countess or\ngovernor's wife; for they will say at once, 'See what airs the slut\ngives herself! Only yesterday she was always spinning flax, and used\nto go to mass with the tail of her petticoat over her head instead of\na mantle; and there she goes to-day in a hooped gown with her brooches\nand airs, as if we didn't know her!' If God keeps me in my seven\nsenses, or five, or whatever number I have, I am not going to bring\nmyself to such a pass; go you, brother, and be a government or an\nisland man, and swagger as much as you like; for by the soul of my\nmother, neither my daughter nor I are going to stir a step from our\nvillage; a respectable woman should have a broken leg and keep at\nhome, and to be busy at something is a virtuous damsel's holiday; be\noff to your adventures, along with your Don Quixote, and leave us to\nour misadventures, for God will mend them for us according as we\ndeserve it. I don't know, I'm sure, who fixed the 'Don' to him, what\nneither his father nor grandfather ever had.\"\n\n\"I declare, thou hast a devil of some sort in thy body!\" said Sancho.\n\"God help thee, woman, what a lot of things thou hast strung together,\none after the other, without head or tail! What have Cascajo, and the\nbrooches and the proverbs and the airs, to do with what I say? Look\nhere, fool and dolt (for so I may call you when you don't understand\nmy words and run away from good fortune), if I had said that my\ndaughter was to throw herself down from a tower, or go roaming the\nworld, as the Infanta Dona Urraca wanted to do, you would be right in\nnot giving way to my will; but if in an instant, in less than the\ntwinkling of an eye, I put the 'Don' and 'my lady' on her back, and\ntake her out of the stubble and place her under a canopy, on a dais,\nand on a couch with more velvet cushions than all the Almohades of\nMorocco ever had in their family, why won't you consent and fall in\nwith my wishes?\"\n\n\"Do you know why, husband?\" replied Teresa; \"because of the proverb\nthat says, 'Who covers thee, discovers thee.' At the poor man people\nonly throw a hasty glance; on the rich man they fix their eyes; and if\nthe said rich man was once on a time poor, it is then there is the\nsneering and the tattle and spite of backbiters; and in the streets\nhere they swarm as thick as bees.\"\n\n\"Look here, Teresa,\" said Sancho, \"and listen to what I am now going\nto say to you; maybe you never heard it in all your life; and I do not\ngive my own notions, for what I am about to say are the opinions of\nhis Reverence the preacher who preached in this town last Lent, and\nwho said, if I remember rightly, that all things present that our eyes\nbehold, bring themselves before us and remain and fix themselves on\nour memory much better and more forcibly than things past.\" (These\nobservations which Sancho makes here are the other ones on account of\nwhich the translator says he regards this chapter as apocryphal,\ninasmuch as they are beyond Sancho's capacity.) \"Whence it arises,\" he\ncontinued, \"that when we see any person well dressed and making a\nfigure with rich garments and retinue of servants, it seems to lead\nand impel us perforce to respect him, though memory may at the same\ntime recall to us some lowly condition in which we have seen him, but\nwhich, whether it may have been poverty or low birth, being now a\nthing of the past has no existence; while the only thing that has any\nexistence is what we see before us; and if this person whom fortune\nhas raised from his original lowly state (these were the very words\nthe padre used) to his present height of prosperity, be well-bred,\ngenerous, courteous to all, without seeking to vie with those whose\nnobility is of ancient date,--depend upon it, Teresa, no one will\nremember what he was, and every one will respect what he is, except\nindeed the envious, from whom no fair fortune is safe.\"\n\n\"I do not understand you, husband,\" replied Teresa; \"do as you like,\nand don't break my head with any more speechifying and rhetoric; and\nif you have revolved to do what you say--\"\n\n\"Resolved, you should say, woman,\" said Sancho, \"not revolved.\"\n\n\"Don't set yourself to wrangle with me, husband,\" said Teresa; \"I\nspeak as God pleases, and don't deal in out-of-the-way phrases; and I\nsay if you are bent upon having a government, take your son Sancho\nwith you, and teach him from this time on how to hold a government;\nfor sons ought to inherit and learn the trades of their fathers.\"\n\n\"As soon as I have the government,\" said Sancho, \"I will send for him\nby post, and I will send thee money, of which I shall have no lack,\nfor there is never any want of people to lend it to governors when\nthey have not got it; and do thou dress him so as to hide what he is\nand make him look what he is to be.\"\n\n\"You send the money,\" said Teresa, \"and I'll dress him up for you as\nfine as you please.\"\n\n\"Then we are agreed that our daughter is to be a countess,\" said\nSancho.\n\n\"The day that I see her a countess,\" replied Teresa, \"it will be the\nsame to me as if I was burying her; but once more I say do as you\nplease, for we women are born to this burden of being obedient to our\nhusbands, though they be dogs;\" and with this she began to weep in\ndownright earnest, as if she already saw Sanchica dead and buried.\n\nSancho consoled her by saying that though he must make her a countess,\nhe would put it off as long as possible. Here their conversation came\nto an end, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote and make\narrangements for their departure.\n\n\n\nOF SANCHO PANZA'S DELECTABLE DISCOURSE WITH THE DUCHESS\n\n\nThe history records that Sancho did not sleep that afternoon, but in\norder to keep his word, came, before he had well done dinner, to visit\nthe duchess; who, finding enjoyment in listening to him, made him sit\ndown beside her on a low seat, though Sancho out of pure good breeding\nwanted not to sit down; the duchess however told him he was to sit\ndown as governor and talk as squire, as in both respects he was worthy\nof even the chair of Cid Ruy Diaz the Campeador. Sancho shrugged his\nshoulders, obeyed, and sat down, and all the duchess's damsels and\nduennas gathered round him, waiting in profound silence to hear what\nhe would say. It was the duchess however who spoke first,\nsaying,--\"Now that we are alone, and that there is nobody here to\noverhear us, I should be glad if the senor governor would relieve me\nof certain doubts I have, rising out of the history of the great Don\nQuixote that is now in print. One is: inasmuch as worthy Sancho never\nsaw Dulcinea,--I mean the lady Dulcinea del Toboso,--nor took Don\nQuixote's letter to her,--for it was left in the memorandum-book in\nthe Sierra Morena, how did he dare to invent the answer and all that\nabout finding her sifting wheat,--the whole story being a deception\nand falsehood, and so much to the prejudice of the peerless Dulcinea's\ngood name; a thing that is not at all becoming the character and\nfidelity of a good squire?\"\n\nAt these words, Sancho, without uttering one in reply, got up from his\nchair, and with noiseless steps, with his body bent and his finger on\nhis lips, went all round the room lifting up the hangings; and this\ndone, he came back to his seat and said:--\"Now, senora, that I have\nseen that there is no one except the bystanders listening to us on the\nsly, I will answer what you have asked me, and all you may ask me,\nwithout fear or dread. And the first thing I have got to say is, that\nfor my own part I hold my master Don Quixote to be stark mad, though\nsometimes he says things that to my mind, and indeed everybody's that\nlistens to him, are so wise and run in such a straight furrow that\nSatan himself could not have said them better; but for all that,\nreally and beyond all question, it's my firm belief he is cracked.\nWell, then, as this is clear to my mind, I can venture to make him\nbelieve things that have neither head nor tail, like that affair of\nthe answer to the letter, and that other of six or eight days ago\nwhich is not yet in history,--that is to say, the affair of the\nenchantment of my lady Dulcinea; for I made him believe she is\nenchanted, though there's no more truth in it than over the hills of\nUbeda.\"\n\nThe duchess begged him to tell her about the enchantment or deception,\nso Sancho told the whole story exactly as it had happened, and his\nhearers were not a little amused by it; and then resuming, the duchess\nsaid:--\"In consequence of what worthy Sancho has told me, a doubt\nstarts up in my mind, and there comes a kind of whisper to my ears\nthat says, 'If Don Quixote be mad, crazy, cracked, and Sancho his\nsquire knows it, and notwithstanding serves and follows him, and goes\ntrusting to his empty promises, there can be no doubt he must be still\nmadder and sillier than his master; and that being so, it will be cast\nin your teeth, senora Duchess, if you give the said Sancho an island\nto govern; for how will he who does not know how to govern himself\nknow how to govern others?'\"\n\n\"My God, senora,\" said Sancho, \"but that doubt comes timely; but your\nGrace may say it out, and speak plainly, or as you like; for I know\nwhat you say is true, and if I were wise I should have left my master\nlong ago: but this was my fate, this was my bad luck; I can't help it,\nI must follow him; we're from the same village, I have eaten his\nbread, I'm fond of him, I'm grateful, he gave me his ass-colts, and\nabove all I'm faithful; so it's quite impossible for anything to\nseparate us except the pick-axe and shovel. And if your Highness does\nnot like to give me the government you promised, God made me without\nit and maybe your not giving it to me will be all the better for my\nconscience; for fool as I am, I know the proverb 'To her hurt the ant\ngot wings,' and it may be that Sancho the squire will get to heaven\nsooner than Sancho the governor. 'They make as good bread here as in\nFrance'; and 'By night all cats are gray'; and 'A hard case enough\nhis, who hasn't broken his fast at two in the afternoon'; and 'There's\nno stomach a hand's-breadth bigger than another'; and the same can be\nfilled 'with straw or hay,' as the saying is; and 'The little birds of\nthe field have God for their purveyor and caterer'; and 'Four yards of\nCuenca frieze keep one warmer than four of Segovia broadcloth'; and\n'When we quit this world and are put underground, the prince travels\nby as narrow a path as the journeyman'; and 'The Pope's body does not\ntake up more feet of earth than the sacristan's,' for all that the one\nis higher than the other; for when we go to our graves we all pack\nourselves up and make ourselves small, or rather they pack us up and\nmake us small in spite of us, and then--good-night to us. And I say\nonce more, if your ladyship does not like to give me the island\nbecause I'm a fool, like a wise man I will take care to give myself no\ntrouble about it; I have heard say that 'Behind the cross there's the\ndevil,' and that 'All that glitters is not gold,' and that from among\nthe oxen and the plows and the yokes, Wamba the husbandman was taken\nto be made king of Spain; and from among brocades and pleasures and\nriches, Roderick was taken to be devoured by adders, if the verses of\nthe old ballads don't lie.\"\n\n\"To be sure they don't lie!\" exclaimed Dona Rodriguez, the duenna, who\nwas one of the listeners. \"Why, there's a ballad that says they put\nKing Rodrigo alive into a tomb full of toads and adders and lizards,\nand that two days afterwards the king, in a plaintive, feeble voice,\ncried out from within the tomb--\n\n 'They gnaw me now, they gnaw me now,\n There where I most did sin.'\n\nAnd according to that, the gentleman has good reason to say he would\nrather be a laboring man than a king, if vermin are to eat him.\"\n\nThe duchess could not help laughing at the simplicity of her duenna,\nor wondering at the language and proverbs of Sancho, to whom she\nsaid:--\"Worthy Sancho knows very well that when once a knight has made\na promise he strives to keep it, though it should cost him his life.\nMy lord and husband the duke, though not one of the errant sort, is\nnone the less a knight for that reason, and will keep his word about\nthe promised island in spite of the envy and malice of the world. Let\nSancho be of good cheer; for when he least expects it he will find\nhimself seated on the throne of his island and seat of dignity, and\nwill take possession of his government that he may discard it for\nanother of three-bordered brocade. The charge I give him is, to be\ncareful how he governs his vassals, bearing in mind that they are all\nloyal and well-born.\"\n\n\"As to governing them well,\" said Sancho, \"there's no need of charging\nme to do that, for I'm kind-hearted by nature, and full of compassion\nfor the poor; 'There's no stealing the loaf from him who kneads and\nbakes'; and by my faith, it won't do to throw false dice with me; I am\nan old dog, and I know all about 'tus, tus'; I can be wide awake if\nneed be, and I don't let clouds come before my eyes, for I know where\nthe shoe pinches me; I say so, because with me the good will have\nsupport and protection, and the bad neither footing nor access. And it\nseems to me that in governments, to make a beginning is everything;\nand maybe after having been governor a fortnight, I'll take kindly to\nthe work and know more about it than the field labor I have been\nbrought up to.\"\n\n\"You are right, Sancho,\" said the duchess; \"for no one is born ready\ntaught, and the bishops are made out of men and not out of stones. But\nto return to the subject we were discussing just now, the enchantment\nof the lady Dulcinea: I look upon it as certain, and something more\nthan evident, that Sancho's idea of practicing a deception upon his\nmaster, making him believe that the peasant girl was Dulcinea and that\nif he did not recognize her it must be because she was enchanted, was\nall a device of one of the enchanters that persecute Don Quixote. For\nin truth and earnest, I know from good authority that the coarse\ncountry wench who jumped up on the ass was and is Dulcinea del Toboso,\nand that worthy Sancho, though he fancies himself the deceiver, is the\none that is deceived; and that there is no more reason to doubt the\ntruth of this, than of anything else we never saw. Senor Sancho Panza\nmust know that we too have enchanters here, that are well disposed to\nus, and tell us what goes on in the world, plainly and distinctly,\nwithout subterfuge or deception; and believe me, Sancho, that agile\ncountry lass was and is Dulcinea del Toboso, who is as much enchanted\nas the mother that bore her; and when we least expect it, we shall see\nher in her own proper form, and then Sancho will be disabused of the\nerror he is under at present.\"\n\n\"All that's very possible,\" said Sancho Panza; \"and now I'm willing to\nbelieve what my master says about what he saw in the cave of\nMontesinos, where he says he saw the lady Dulcinea del Toboso in the\nvery same dress and apparel that I said I had seen her in when I\nenchanted her all to please myself. It must be all exactly the other\nway, as your ladyship says; because it is impossible to suppose that\nout of my poor wit such a cunning trick could be concocted in a\nmoment, nor do I think my master is so mad that by my weak and feeble\npersuasion he could be made to believe a thing so out of all reason.\nBut, senora, your Excellence must not therefore think me ill-disposed,\nfor a dolt like me is not bound to see into the thoughts and plots of\nthose vile enchanters. I invented all that to escape my master's\nscolding, and not with any intention of hurting him; and if it has\nturned out differently, there is a God in heaven who judges our\nhearts.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said the duchess; \"but tell me, Sancho, what is this\nyou say about the cave of Montesinos, for I should like to know.\"\n\nSancho, upon this, related to her word for word what has been said\nalready touching that adventure; and having heard it, the duchess\nsaid:--\"From this occurrence it may be inferred that as the great Don\nQuixote says he saw there the same country wench Sancho saw on the way\nfrom El Toboso, it is no doubt Dulcinea, and there are some very\nactive and exceedingly busy enchanters about.\"\n\n\"So I say,\" said Sancho; \"and if my lady Dulcinea is enchanted, so\nmuch the worse for her, and I'm not going to pick a quarrel with my\nmaster's enemies, who seem to be many and spiteful. The truth is that\nthe one I saw was a country wench, and I set her down to be a country\nwench; and if that was Dulcinea it must not be laid at my door, nor\nshould I be called to answer for it or take the consequences. But they\nmust go nagging at me at every step--'Sancho said it, Sancho did it;\nSancho here, Sancho there,' as if Sancho was nobody at all, and not\nthat same Sancho Panza that's now going all over the world in books,\nso Samson Carrasco told me, and he's at any rate one that's a bachelor\nof Salamanca; and people of that sort can't lie, except when the whim\nseizes them or they have some very good reason for it. So there's no\noccasion for anybody to quarrel with me; and then I have a good\ncharacter, and as I have heard my master say, 'A good name is better\nthan great riches'; let them only stick me into this government and\nthey'll see wonders, for one who has been a good squire will be a good\ngovernor.\"\n\n\"All worthy Sancho's observations,\" said the duchess, \"are Catonian\nsentences, or at any rate out of the very heart of Michael Verino\nhimself, who _florentibus occidit annis_. In fact, to speak in his own\nstyle, 'Under a bad cloak there's often a good drinker.'\"\n\n\"Indeed, senora,\" said Sancho, \"I never yet drank out of wickedness;\nfrom thirst I have, very likely, for I have nothing of the hypocrite\nin me; I drink when I'm inclined, or, if I'm not inclined, when they\noffer it to me, so as not to look either strait-laced or ill-bred; for\nwhen a friend drinks one's health, what heart can be so hard as not to\nreturn it? But if I put on my shoes I don't dirty them; besides,\nsquires to knights-errant mostly drink water, for they are always\nwandering among woods, forests, and meadows, mountains and crags,\nwithout a drop of wine to be had if they gave their eyes for it.\"\n\n\"So I believe,\" said the duchess; \"and now let Sancho go and take his\nsleep, and we will talk by-and-by at greater length, and settle how he\nmay soon go and stick himself into the government, as he says.\"\n\nSancho once more kissed the duchess's hand, and entreated her to be so\nkind as to let good care be taken of his Dapple, for he was the light\nof his eyes.\n\n\"What is Dapple?\" said the duchess.\n\n\"My ass,\" said Sancho, \"which, not to mention him by that name, I'm\naccustomed to call Dapple; I begged this lady duenna here to take care\nof him when I came into the castle, and she got as angry as if I had\nsaid she was ugly or old, though it ought to be more natural and\nproper for duennas to feed asses than to ornament chambers. God bless\nme! what a spite a gentleman of my village had against these ladies!\"\n\n\"He must have been some clown,\" said Dona Rodriguez, the duenna; \"for\nif he had been a gentleman and well-born he would have exalted them\nhigher than the horns of the moon.\"\n\n\"That will do,\" said the duchess; \"no more of this; hush, Dona\nRodriguez, and let Senor Panza rest easy and leave the treatment of\nDapple in my charge; for as he is a treasure of Sancho's, I'll put him\non the apple of my eye.\"\n\n\"It will be enough for him to be in the stable,\" said Sancho, \"for\nneither he nor I are worthy to rest a moment in the apple of your\nHighness's eye, and I'd as soon stab myself as consent to it; for\nthough my master says that in civilities it is better to lose by a\ncard too many than a card too few, when it comes to civilities to\nasses we must mind what we are about and keep within due bounds.\"\n\n\"Take him to your government, Sancho,\" said the duchess, \"and there\nyou will be able to make as much of him as you like, and even release\nhim from work and pension him off.\"\n\n\"Don't think, senora duchess, that you have said anything absurd,\"\nsaid Sancho: \"I have seen more than two asses go to governments, and\nfor me to take mine with me would be nothing new.\"\n\nSancho's words made the duchess laugh again, and gave her fresh\namusement, and dismissing him to sleep she went away to tell the duke\nthe conversation she had had with him.\n\n\n\nSANCHO PANZA AS GOVERNOR\n\n\nThe history says that from the justice court they carried Sancho to a\nsumptuous palace, where in a spacious chamber there was a table laid\nout with royal magnificence. The clarions sounded as Sancho entered\nthe room, and four pages came forward to present him with water for\nhis hands, which Sancho received with great dignity. The music ceased,\nand Sancho seated himself at the head of the table; for there was only\nthat seat placed, and no more than the one cover laid. A personage,\nwho it appeared afterwards was a physician, placed himself standing by\nhis side, with a whalebone wand in his hand. They then lifted up a\nfine white cloth covering fruit and a great variety of dishes of\ndifferent sorts; one who looked like a student said grace, and a page\nput a laced bib on Sancho, while another who played the part of head\ncarver placed a dish of fruit before him. But hardly had he tasted a\nmorsel when the man with the wand touched the plate with it, and they\ntook it away from before him with the utmost celerity. The carver\nhowever brought him another dish, and Sancho proceeded to try it; but\nbefore he could get at it, not to say taste it, already the wand had\ntouched it and a page had carried it off with the same promptitude as\nthe fruit. Sancho seeing this was puzzled, and looking from one to\nanother, asked if this dinner was to be eaten after the fashion of a\njugglery trick.\n\nTo this he with the wand replied:--\"It is not to be eaten, senor\ngovernor, except as is usual and customary in other islands where\nthere are governors. I, senor, am a physician, and I am paid a salary\nin this island to serve its governors as such; and I have a much\ngreater regard for their health than for my own, studying day and\nnight and making myself acquainted with the governor's constitution,\nin order to be able to cure him when he falls sick. The chief thing I\nhave to do is to attend at his dinners and suppers, and allow him to\neat what appears to me to be fit for him, and keep from him what I\nthink will do him harm and be injurious to his stomach: and therefore\nI ordered that plate of fruit to be removed as being too moist, and\nthat other dish I ordered to be removed as being too hot and\ncontaining many spices that stimulate thirst; for he who drinks much\nkills and consumes the radical moisture wherein life consists.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" said Sancho, \"that dish of roast partridges there that\nseems so savory will not do me any harm.\"\n\nTo this the physician replied, \"Of those my lord the governor shall\nnot eat so long as I live.\"\n\n\"Why so?\" said Sancho.\n\n\"Because,\" replied the doctor, \"our master Hippocrates, the pole-star\nand beacon of medicine, says in one of his aphorisms, _Omnis saturatio\nmala, perdicis autem pessima_; which means, 'All repletion is bad, but\nthat of partridge is the worst of all.'\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Sancho, \"let senor doctor see among the dishes\nthat are on the table what will do me most good and least harm, and\nlet me eat it, without tapping it with his stick: for by the life of\nthe governor, and so may God suffer me to enjoy it, but I'm dying of\nhunger; and in spite of the doctor and all he may say, to deny me food\nis the way to take my life instead of prolonging it.\"\n\n\"Your worship is right, senor governor,\" said the physician; \"and\ntherefore your worship, I consider, should not eat of those stewed\nrabbits there, because it is a furry kind of food: if that veal were\nnot roasted and served with pickles, you might try it; but it is out\nof the question.\"\n\n\"That big dish that is smoking farther off,\" said Sancho, \"seems to me\nto be an olla-podrida; and out of the diversity of things in such\nollas, I can't fail to light upon something tasty and good for me.\"\n\n\"_Absit_,\" said the doctor; \"far from us be any such base thought!\nThere is nothing in the world less nourishing than an olla-podrida; to\ncanons, or rectors of colleges, or peasants' weddings with your\nollas-podridas, but let us have none of them on the tables of\ngovernors, where everything that is present should be delicate and\nrefined: and the reason is that always, everywhere and by everybody,\nsimple medicines are more esteemed than compound ones; for we cannot\ngo wrong in those that are simple, while in the compound we may, by\nmerely altering the quantity of the things composing them. But what I\nam of opinion the governor should eat now, in order to preserve and\nfortify his health, is a hundred or so of wafer cakes and a few thin\nslices of conserve of quinces, which will settle his stomach and help\nhis digestion.\"\n\nSancho on hearing this threw himself back in his chair and surveyed\nthe doctor steadily, and in a solemn tone asked him what his name was\nand where he had studied.\n\nHe replied, \"My name, senor governor, is Doctor Pedro Recio de Aguero;\nI am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, which lies between\nCaracuel and Almodovar del Campo, on the right-hand side; and I have\nthe degree of doctor from the university of Osuna.\"\n\nTo which Sancho, glowing all over with rage, returned, \"Then let\nDoctor Pedro Recio de Mal-aguero, native of Tirteafuera, a place\nthat's on the right-hand side as we go from Caracuel to Almodovar del\nCampo, graduate of Osuna, get out of my presence at once! or I swear\nby the sun I'll take a cudgel, and by dint of blows, beginning with\nhim, I'll not leave a doctor in the whole island: at least of those I\nknow to be ignorant; for as to learned, wise, sensible physicians,\nthem I will reverence and honor as divine persons. Once more I say,\nlet Pedro Recio get out this, or I'll take this chair I am sitting on\nand break it over his head. And if they call me to account for it,\nI'll clear myself by saying I served God in killing a bad doctor--a\ngeneral executioner. And now give me something to eat, or else take\nyour government; for a trade that does not feed its master is not\nworth two beans....\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nSancho, fool, boor, and clown as he was, held his own against them\nall, saying to those round him, and to Doctor Pedro Recio, who as soon\nas the private business of the duke's letter was disposed of had\nreturned to the room:--\"Now I see plainly enough that judges and\ngovernors ought to be and must be made of brass, not to feel the\nimportunities of the applicants that at all times and all seasons\ninsist on being heard and having their business dispatched, and their\nown affairs and no others attended to, come what may; and if the poor\njudge does not hear them and settle the matter,--either because he\ncannot or because that is not the time set apart for hearing\nthem,--forthwith they abuse him, run him down, and gnaw at his bones,\nand even pick holes in his pedigree. You silly stupid applicant, don't\nbe in a hurry; wait for the proper time and season for doing business;\ndon't come at dinner-hour or at bedtime: for judges are only flesh and\nblood, and must give to Nature what she naturally demands of them; all\nexcept myself, for in my case I give her nothing to eat, thanks to\nSenor Doctor Pedro Recio Tirteafuera here, who would have me die of\nhunger, and declares that death to be life; and the same sort of life\nmay God give him and all his kind--I mean the bad doctors; for the\ngood ones deserve palms and laurels.\"\n\nAll who knew Sancho Panza were astonished to hear him speak so\nelegantly, and did not know what to attribute it to, unless it were\nthat office and grave responsibility either smarten or stupefy men's\nwits. At last Doctor Pedro Recio Aguero of Tirteafuera promised to let\nhim have supper that night, though it might be in contravention of all\nthe aphorisms of Hippocrates. With this the governor was satisfied,\nand looked forward to the approach of night and supper-time with great\nanxiety; and though time to his mind stood still and made no progress,\nnevertheless the hour he so longed for came, and they gave him a beef\nsalad with onions, and some boiled calves' feet rather far gone.\n\nAt this he fell to with greater relish than if they had given him\nfrancolins from Milan, pheasants from Rome, veal from Sorrento,\npartridges from Moron, or geese from Lavajos; and turning to the\ndoctor at supper he said to him:--\"Look here, senor doctor, for the\nfuture don't trouble yourself about giving me dainty things or choice\ndishes to eat, for it will be only taking my stomach off its hinges:\nit is accustomed to goat, cow, bacon, hung beef, turnips and onions;\nand if by any chance it is given these palace dishes, it receives them\nsqueamishly, and sometimes with loathing. What the head carver had\nbest do is to serve me with what they call ollas-podridas (and the\nrottener they are the better they smell); and he can put whatever he\nlikes into them, so long as it is good to eat, and I'll be obliged to\nhim, and will requite him some day. But let nobody play pranks on me,\nfor either we are or we are not; let us live and eat in peace and\ngood-fellowship; for when God sends the dawn, he sends it for all. I\nmean to govern this island without giving up a right or taking a\nbribe: let every one keep his eye open and look out for the arrow; for\nI can tell them 'the Devil's in Cantillana,' and if they drive me to\nit they'll see something that will astonish them. Nay! make yourself\nhoney and the flies will eat you.\"\n\n\"Of a truth, senor governor,\" said the carver, \"your worship is in the\nright of it in everything you have said; and I promise you in the name\nof all the inhabitants of this island that they will serve your\nworship with all zeal, affection, and good-will, for the mild kind of\ngovernment you have given a sample of to begin with, leaves them no\nground for doing or thinking anything to your worship's disadvantage.\"\n\n\"That I believe,\" said Sancho; \"and they would be great fools if they\ndid or thought otherwise; once more I say, see to my feeding and my\nDapple's, for that is the great point and what is most to the purpose;\nand when the hour comes let us go the rounds: for it is my intention\nto purge this island of all manner of uncleanness and of all idle\ngood-for-nothing vagabonds; for I would have you know, my friends,\nthat lazy idlers are the same thing in a State as the drones in a\nhive, and eat up the honey the industrious bees make. I mean to\nprotect the husbandman, to preserve to the gentleman his privileges,\nto reward the virtuous, and above all to respect religion and honor\nits ministers. What say you to that, my friends? Is there anything in\nwhat I say, or am I talking to no purpose?\"\n\n\"There is so much in what your worship says, senor governor,\" said the\nmajor-domo, \"that I am filled with wonder when I see a man like your\nworship, entirely without learning (for I believe you have none at\nall), say such things, and so full of sound maxims and sage remarks,\nvery different from what was expected of your worship's intelligence\nby those who sent us or by us who came here. Every day we see\nsomething new in this world; jokes become realities, and the jokers\nfind the tables turned upon them.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\nDay came after the night of the governor's round: a night which the\nhead carver passed without sleeping, so full were his thoughts of the\nface and air and beauty of the disguised damsel, while the major-domo\nspent what was left of it in writing an account to his lord and lady\nof all Sancho said and did, being as much amazed at his sayings as at\nhis doings; for there was a mixture of shrewdness and simplicity in\nall his words and deeds. The senor governor got up, and by Doctor\nPedro Recio's directions they made him break his fast on a little\nconserve and four sups of cold water, which Sancho would have readily\nexchanged for a piece of bread and a bunch of grapes: but seeing there\nwas no help for it, he submitted with no little sorrow of heart and\ndiscomfort of stomach; Pedro Recio having persuaded him that light and\ndelicate diet enlivened the wits, and that was what was most essential\nfor persons placed in command and in responsible situations, where\nthey have to employ not only the bodily powers but those of the mind\nalso.\n\nBy means of this sophistry Sancho was made to endure hunger, and\nhunger so keen that in his heart he cursed the government and even him\nwho had given it to him. However, with his hunger and his conserve he\nundertook to deliver judgments that day; and the first thing that came\nbefore him was a question that was submitted to him by a stranger in\nthe presence of the major-domo and the other attendants, and it was in\nthese words:--\"Senor, a large river separated two districts of one and\nthe same lordship--will your worship please to pay attention? for the\ncase is an important and a rather knotty one. Well then, on this river\nthere was a bridge, and at one end of it a gallows, and a sort of\ntribunal, where four judges commonly sat to administer the law which\nthe lord of the river bridge and the lordship had enacted, and which\nwas to this effect: 'If any one crosses by this bridge from one side\nto the other, he shall declare on oath where he is going and with what\nobject; and if he swears truly, he shall be allowed to pass; but if\nfalsely, he shall be put to death for it by hanging on the gallows\nerected there, without any remission.' Though the law and its severe\npenalty were known, many persons crossed; but in their declarations it\nwas easy to see at once they were telling the truth, and the judges\nlet them pass free. It happened however that one man, when they came\nto take his declaration, swore and said that by the oath he took, he\nwas going to die upon that gallows that stood there, and nothing else.\nThe judges held a consultation over the oath, and they said:--'If we\nlet this man pass free, he has sworn falsely, and by the law he ought\nto die; but if we hang him, as he swore he was going to die on that\ngallows, and therefore swore the truth, by the same law he ought to go\nfree.' It is asked of your lordship, senor governor, what are the\njudges to do with this man? For they are still in doubt and\nperplexity; and having heard of your worship's acute and exalted\nintellect, they have sent me to entreat your worship on their behalf\nto give your opinion on this very intricate and puzzling case.\"\n\nTo this Sancho made answer:--\"Indeed, those gentlemen the judges that\nsend you to me might have spared themselves the trouble, for I have\nmore of the obtuse than the acute in me; however, repeat the case over\nagain so that I may understand it, and then perhaps I may be able to\nhit the point.\"\n\nThe querist repeated again and again what he had said before, and then\nSancho said:--\"It seems to me I can set the matter right in a moment,\nand in this way: the man swears that he is going to die upon the\ngallows; but if he dies upon it, he has sworn the truth, and by the\nlaw enacted deserves to go free and pass over the bridge; but if they\ndon't hang him, then he has sworn falsely, and by the same law\ndeserves to be hanged.\"\n\n\"It is as the senor governor says,\" said the messenger; \"and as\nregards a complete comprehension of the case, there is nothing left to\ndesire or hesitate about.\"\n\n\"Well then, I say,\" said Sancho, \"that of this man they should let\npass the part that has sworn truly, and hang the part that has lied;\nand in this way the conditions of the passage will be fully complied\nwith.\"\n\n\"But then, senor governor,\" replied the querist, \"the man will have to\nbe divided into two parts; and if he is divided, of course he will\ndie; and so none of the requirements of the law will be carried out,\nand it is absolutely necessary to comply with it.\"\n\n\"Look here, my good sir,\" said Sancho; \"either I'm a numskull or else\nthere is the same reason for this passenger dying as for his living\nand passing over the bridge; for if the truth saves him, the falsehood\nequally condemns him; and that being the case, it is my opinion you\nshould say to the gentlemen who sent you to me, that as the arguments\nfor condemning him and for absolving him are exactly balanced, they\nshould let him pass freely, as it is always more praiseworthy to do\ngood than to do evil; this I would give signed with my name if I knew\nhow to sign; and what I have said in this case is not out of my own\nhead, but one of the many precepts my master Don Quixote gave me the\nnight before I left to become governor of this island, that came into\nmy mind, and it was this: that when there was any doubt about the\njustice of a case I should lean to mercy; and it is God's will that I\nshould recollect it now, for it fits this case as if it was made for\nit.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said the major-domo; \"and I maintain that Lycurgus\nhimself, who gave laws to the Lacedaemonians, could not have pronounced\na better decision than the great Panza has given; let the morning's\naudience close with this, and I will see that the senor governor has\ndinner entirely to his liking.\"\n\n\"That's all I ask for--fair play,\" said Sancho; \"give me my dinner,\nand then let it rain cases and questions on me, and I'll dispatch them\nin a twinkling.\"\n\nThe major-domo kept his word, for he felt it against his conscience to\nkill so wise a governor by hunger; particularly as he intended to have\ndone with him that same night, playing off the last joke he was\ncommissioned to practice upon him.\n\nIt came to pass then, that after he had dined that day in opposition\nto the rules and aphorisms of Doctor Tirteafuera, as they were taking\naway the cloth there came a courier with a letter from Don Quixote for\nthe governor. Sancho ordered the secretary to read it to himself, and\nif there was nothing in it that demanded secrecy, to read it aloud.\nThe secretary did so, and after he had skimmed the contents he said,\n\"It may well be read aloud, for what Senor Don Quixote writes to your\nworship deserves to be printed or written in letters of gold, and it\nis as follows.\"\n\n\n\nDON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA'S LETTER TO SANCHA PANZA, GOVERNOR OF THE\nISLAND OF BARATARIA\n\n\n\"When I was expecting to hear of thy stupidities and blunders, friend\nSancho, I have received intelligence of thy displays of good sense;\nfor which I give special thanks to Heaven, that can raise the poor\nfrom the dunghill and of fools to make wise men. They tell me thou\ndost govern as if thou wert a man, and art a man as if thou wert a\nbeast, so great is the humility wherewith thou dost comport thyself.\nBut I would have thee bear in mind, Sancho, that very often it is\nfitting and necessary for the authority of office to resist the\nhumility of the heart; for the seemly array of one who is invested\nwith grave duties should be such as they require, and not measured by\nwhat his own humble tastes may lead him to prefer. Dress well; a stick\ndressed up does not look like a stick: I do not say thou shouldst wear\ntrinkets or fine raiment, or that being a judge thou shouldst dress\nlike a soldier, but that thou shouldst array thyself in the apparel\nthy office requires, and that at the same time it be neat and\nhandsome. To win the good-will of the people thou governest, there are\ntwo things among others that thou must do: one is to be civil to all\n(this however I told thee before), and the other to take care that\nfood be abundant; for there is nothing that vexes the heart of the\npoor more than hunger and high prices. Make not many proclamations;\nbut those thou makest take care that they be good ones, and above all\nthat they be observed and carried out: for proclamations that are not\nobserved are the same as if they did not exist; nay, they encourage\nthe idea that the prince who had the wisdom and authority to make them\nhad not the power to enforce them; and laws that threaten and are not\nenforced come to be like the log, the king of the frogs, that\nfrightened them at first, but that in time they despised and mounted\nupon. Be a father to virtue and a stepfather to vice. Be not always\nstrict, nor yet always lenient, but observe a mean between these two\nextremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the jails, the\nslaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the\ngovernor is of great importance in such places: it comforts the\nprisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release; it is the bugbear of\nthe butchers, who have then to give just weight; and it is the terror\nof the market-women for the same reason. Let it not be seen that thou\nart (even if perchance thou art, which I do not believe) covetous, a\nfollower of women, or a glutton; for when the people and those that\nhave dealings with thee become aware of thy special weakness they will\nbring their batteries to bear upon thee in that quarter, till they\nhave brought thee down to the depths of perdition. Consider and\nreconsider, con and con over again the advice and the instructions I\ngave thee before thy departure hence to thy government, and thou wilt\nsee that in them, if thou dost follow them, thou hast a help at hand\nthat will lighten for thee the troubles and difficulties that beset\ngovernors at every step. Write to thy lord and lady, and show thyself\ngrateful to them: for ingratitude is the daughter of pride, and one of\nthe greatest sins we know of; and he who is grateful to those who have\nbeen good to him shows that he will be so to God also, who has\nbestowed and still bestows so many blessings upon him.\n\n\"My lady the duchess sent off a messenger with thy suit and another\npresent to thy wife Teresa Panza; we expect the answer every moment. I\nhave been a little indisposed through a certain scratching I came in\nfor, not very much to the benefit of my nose: but it was nothing; for\nif there are enchanters who maltreat me, there are also some who\ndefend me. Let me know if the major-domo who is with thee had any\nshare in the Trifaldi performance, as thou didst suspect: and keep me\ninformed of everything that happens thee, as the distance is so short;\nall the more as I am thinking of giving over very shortly this idle\nlife I am now leading, for I was not born for it. A thing has occurred\nto me which I am inclined to think will put me out of favor with the\nduke and duchess; but though I am sorry for it, I do not care, for\nafter all I must obey my calling rather than their pleasure, in\naccordance with the common saying, _Amicus Plato, sed magis amica\nveritas_. I quote this Latin to thee because I conclude that since\nthou hast been a governor thou wilt have learned it. Adieu; God keep\nthee from being an object of pity to any one.\n\n \"Thy friend\n\n \"DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA.\"\n\nSancho listened to the letter with great attention, and it was praised\nand considered wise by all who heard it: he then rose up from table,\nand calling his secretary, shut himself in with him in his own room,\nand without putting it off any longer set about answering his master\nDon Quixote at once; and he bade the secretary write down what he told\nhim, without adding or suppressing anything, which he did; and the\nanswer was to the following effect.\n\n\n\nSANCHO PANZA'S LETTER TO DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA\n\n\n\"The pressure of business is so great upon me that I have no time to\nscratch my head or even to cut my nails; and I have them so long--God\nsend a remedy for it. I say this, master of my soul, that you may not\nbe surprised if I have not until now sent you word of how I fare, well\nor ill, in this government, in which I am suffering more hunger than\nwhen we two were wandering through the woods and wastes.\n\n\"My lord the duke wrote to me the other day to warn me that certain\nspies had got into this island to kill me: but up to the present I\nhave not found out any except a certain doctor who receives a salary\nin this town for killing all the governors that come here; he is\ncalled Doctor Pedro Recio, and is from Tirteafuera; so you see what a\nname he has to make me dread dying under his hands. This doctor says\nof himself that he does not cure diseases when there are any, but\nprevents them coming, and the medicines he uses are diet and more\ndiet, until he brings one down to bare bones; as if leanness was not\nworse than fever.\n\n\"In short, he is killing me with hunger, and I am dying myself of\nvexation: for when I thought I was coming to this government to get my\nmeat hot and my drink cool, and take my ease between holland sheets on\nfeather-beds, I find I have come to do penance as if I was a hermit;\nand as I don't do it willingly, I suspect that in the end the Devil\nwill carry me off.\n\n\"So far I have not handled any dues or taken any bribes, and I don't\nknow what to think of it: for here they tell me that the governors\nthat come to this island, before entering it, have plenty of money\neither given to them or lent to them by the people of the town; and\nthat this is the usual custom, not only here but with all who enter\nupon governments.\n\n\"Last night going the rounds I came upon a fair damsel in man's\nclothes, and a brother of hers dressed as a woman: my head carver has\nfallen in love with the girl, and has in his own mind chosen her for a\nwife, so he says, and I have chosen the youth for a son-in-law; to-day\nwe are going to explain our intentions to the father of the pair, who\nis one Diego de la Llana, a gentleman and an old Christian as much as\nyou please.\n\n\"I have visited the market-places, as your worship advises me, and\nyesterday I found a stall-keeper selling new hazel-nuts, and proved\nher to have mixed a bushel of old empty rotten nuts with a bushel of\nnew; I confiscated the whole for the children of the charity school,\nwho will know how to distinguish them well enough, and I sentenced her\nnot to come into the market-place for a fortnight: they told me I did\nbravely. I can tell your worship it is commonly said in this town that\nthere are no people worse than the market-women, for they are all\nbarefaced, unconscionable, and impudent; and I can well believe it\nfrom what I have seen of them in other towns.\n\n\"I am very glad my lady the duchess has written to my wife Teresa\nPanza and sent her the present your worship speaks of; and I will try\nto show myself grateful when the time comes: kiss her hands for me,\nand tell her I say she has not thrown it into a sack with a hole in\nit, as she will see in the end. I should not like your worship to have\nany difference with my lord and lady; for if you fall out with them it\nis plain it must do me harm; and as you give me advice to be grateful,\nit will not do for your worship not to be so yourself to those who\nhave shown you such kindness, and by whom you have been treated so\nhospitably in their castle.\n\n\"That about the scratching I don't understand; but I suppose it must\nbe one of the ill turns the wicked enchanters are always doing your\nworship; when we meet I shall know all about it. I wish I could send\nyour worship something; but I don't know what to send, unless it be\nsome very curious clyster pipes to work with bladders, that they make\nin this island; but if the office remains with me I'll find out\nsomething to send, one way or another. If my wife Teresa Panza writes\nto me, pay the postage and send me the letter, for I have a very great\ndesire to hear how my house and wife and children are going on. And\nso, may God deliver your worship from evil-minded enchanters, and\nbring me well and peacefully out of this government; which I doubt,\nfor I expect to take leave of it and my life together, from the way\nDoctor Pedro Recio treats me.\n\n \"Your worship's servant,\n\n \"SANCHO PANZA THE GOVERNOR.\"\n\nThe secretary sealed the letter and immediately dismissed the courier;\nand those who were carrying on the joke against Sancho, putting their\nheads together, arranged how he was to be dismissed from the\ngovernment. Sancho spent the afternoon in drawing up certain\nordinances relating to the good government of what he fancied the\nisland.... He reduced the prices of shoes, boots, and stockings, but\nof shoes in particular, as they seemed to him to run extravagantly\nhigh. He established a fixed rate for servants' wages, which were\nbecoming recklessly exorbitant. He laid extremely heavy penalties upon\nthose who sang lewd or loose songs either by day or night. He decreed\nthat no blind man should sing of any miracle in verse unless he could\nproduce authentic evidence that it was true; for it was his opinion\nthat most of those the blind men sing are trumped up, to the detriment\nof the true ones. He established and created an _alguacil_ of the\npoor, not to harass them, but to examine them and see whether they\nreally were so; for many a sturdy thief or drunkard goes about under\ncover of a make-believe crippled limb or a sham sore. In a word, he\nmade so many good rules that to this day they are preserved there, and\nare called _The constitutions of the great governor Sancho Panza_.\n\n\n\nTHE ENDING OF ALL DON QUIXOTE'S ADVENTURES\n\nOF HOW DON QUIXOTE FELL SICK, AND OF THE WILL HE MADE, AND HOW HE DIED\n\n\nAs nothing that is man's can last forever, but all tends ever\ndownwards from its beginning to its end, and above all, man's life;\nand as Don Quixote's enjoyed no special dispensation from Heaven to\nstay its course,--its end and close came when he least looked for it.\nFor--whether it was of the dejection the thought of his defeat\nproduced, or of Heaven's will that so ordered it--a fever settled upon\nhim and kept him in his bed for six days, during which he was often\nvisited by his friends the curate, the bachelor, and the barber, while\nhis good squire Sancho Panza never quitted his bedside. They,\npersuaded that it was grief at finding himself vanquished, and the\nobject of his heart, the liberation and disenchantment of Dulcinea,\nunattained, that kept him in this state, strove by all the means in\ntheir power to cheer him up: the bachelor bidding him take heart and\nget up to begin his pastoral life; for which he himself, he said, had\nalready composed an eclogue that would take the shine out of all\nSannazaro[A] had ever written, and had bought with his own money two\nfamous dogs to guard the flock, one called Barcino and the other\nButron, which a herdsman of Quintanar had sold him.\n\n [A] Jacopo Sannazaro, the Neapolitan poet, author of the\n 'Arcadia.'\n\nBut for all this Don Quixote could not shake off his sadness. His\nfriends called in the doctor, who felt his pulse and was not very well\nsatisfied with it, and said that in any case it would be well for him\nto attend to the health of his soul, as that of his body was in a bad\nway. Don Quixote heard this calmly; but not so his housekeeper, his\nniece, and his squire, who fell weeping bitterly, as if they had him\nlying dead before them. The doctor's opinion was that melancholy and\ndepression were bringing him to his end. Don Quixote begged them to\nleave him to himself, as he had a wish to sleep a little. They obeyed,\nand he slept at one stretch, as the saying is, more than six hours, so\nthat the housekeeper and niece thought he was going to sleep forever.\nBut at the end of that time he woke up, and in a loud voice exclaimed,\n\"Blessed be Almighty God, who has shown me such goodness! In truth\nhis mercies are boundless, and the sins of men can neither limit them\nnor keep them back!\"\n\nThe niece listened with attention to her uncle's words, and they\nstruck her as more coherent than what usually fell from him, at least\nduring his illness, so she asked: \"What are you saying, senor? Has\nanything strange occurred? What mercies or what sins of men are you\ntalking of?\"\n\n\"The mercies, niece,\" said Don Quixote, \"are those that God has this\nmoment shown me, and with him, as I said, my sins are no impediment to\nthem. My reason is now free and clear, rid of the dark shadows of\nignorance that my unhappy constant study of those detestable books of\nchivalry cast over it. Now I see through their absurdities and\ndeceptions, and it only grieves me that this destruction of my\nillusions has come so late that it leaves me no time to make some\namends by reading other books that might be a light to my soul. Niece,\nI feel myself at the point of death, and I would fain meet it in such\na way as to show that my life has not been so ill that I should leave\nbehind me the name of a madman; for though I have been one, I would\nnot that the fact should be made plainer at my death. Call in to me,\nmy dear, my good friends the curate, the bachelor Samson Carrasco, and\nMaster Nicholas the barber, for I wish to confess and make my will.\"\n\nBut his niece was saved the trouble by the entrance of the three. The\ninstant Don Quixote saw them he exclaimed:--\"Good news for you, good\nsirs, that I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso\nQuixano, whose way of life won for him the name of Good. Now am I the\nenemy of Amadis of Gaul and of the whole countless troop of his\ndescendants; odious to me now are all the profane stories of\nknight-errantry; now I perceive my folly, and the peril into which\nreading them brought me; now, by God's mercy schooled into my right\nsenses, I loathe them.\"\n\nWhen the three heard him speak in this way, they had no doubt whatever\nthat some new craze had taken possession of him; and said Samson,\n\"What! Senor Don Quixote! Now that we have intelligence of the lady\nDulcinea being disenchanted, are you taking this line? now, just as we\nare on the point of becoming shepherds, to pass our lives singing,\nlike princes, are you thinking of turning hermit? Hush, for heaven's\nsake; be rational, and let's have no more nonsense.\"\n\n\"All that nonsense,\" said Don Quixote, \"that until now has been a\nreality to my hurt, my death will with heaven's help turn to my good.\nI feel, sirs, that I am rapidly drawing near death: a truce to\njesting; let me have a confessor to confess me, and a notary to make\nmy will; for in extremities like this, man must not trifle with his\nsoul; and while the curate is confessing me, let some one, I beg, go\nfor the notary.\"\n\nThey looked at one another, wondering at Don Quixote's words; but\nthough uncertain they were inclined to believe him, and one of the\nsigns by which they came to the conclusion he was dying, was this so\nsudden and complete return to his senses after having been mad; for to\nthe words already quoted he added much more, so well expressed, so\ndevout, and so rational, as to banish all doubt and convince them that\nhe was sound of mind. The curate turned them all out, and left alone\nwith him, confessed him. The bachelor went for the notary, and\nreturned shortly afterwards with him and with Sancho, who, having\nalready learned from the bachelor the condition his master was in, and\nfinding the housekeeper and niece weeping, began to blubber and shed\ntears.\n\nThe confession over, the curate came out saying:--\"Alonso Quixano the\nGood is indeed dying, and is indeed in his right mind; we may now go\nin to him, while he makes his will.\"\n\nThis news gave a tremendous impulse to the brimming eyes of the\nhousekeeper, niece, and Sancho Panza his good squire, making the tears\nburst from their eyes and a host of sighs from their hearts; for of a\ntruth, as has been said more than once, whether as plain Alonso\nQuixano the Good, or as Don Quixote of La Mancha, Don Quixote was\nalways of a gentle disposition and kindly in all his ways, and hence\nhe was beloved not only by those of his own house, but by all who knew\nhim.\"\n\nThe notary came in with the rest, and as soon as the preamble of the\nwill had been set out and Don Quixote had commended his soul to God\nwith all the devout formalities that are usual, coming to the\nbequests, he said:--\"_Item_: It is my will that, touching certain\nmoneys in the hands of Sancho Panza (whom in my madness I made my\nsquire), inasmuch as between him and me there have been certain\naccounts and debits and credits, no claim be made against him, nor any\naccount demanded of him in respect of them; but that if anything\nremain over and above, after he has paid himself what I owe him, the\nbalance, which will be but little, shall be his, and much good may it\ndo him; and if as when I was mad I had a share in giving him the\ngovernment of an island, so now that I am in my senses I could give\nhim that of a kingdom, it should be his, for the simplicity of his\ncharacter and the fidelity of his conduct deserve it.\" And then\nturning to Sancho, he said, \"Forgive me, my friend, that I led thee to\nseem as mad as myself, making thee fall into the same error I myself\nfell into, that there were and still are knights-errant in the world.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Sancho weeping; \"don't die, master, but take my advice and\nlive many years; for the foolishest thing a man can do in this life is\nto let himself die without rhyme or reason, without anybody killing\nhim, or any hands but melancholy's making an end of him. Come, don't\nbe lazy, but get up from your bed and let us take to the fields in\nshepherd's trim as we agreed. Perhaps behind some bush we shall find\nthe lady Dulcinea disenchanted, as fine as fine can be. If it be that\nyou are dying of vexation at having been vanquished, lay the blame on\nme, and say you were overthrown because I had girthed Rosinante badly;\nbesides, you must have seen in your books of chivalry that it is a\ncommon thing for knights to upset one another, and for him who is\nconquered to-day to be conqueror to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Very true,\" said Samson, \"and good Sancho Panza's view of these cases\nis quite right.\"\n\n\"Sirs, not so fast,\" said Don Quixote. \"In last year's nests there are\nno birds this year. I was mad--now I am in my senses; I was Don\nQuixote of La Mancha--I am now, as I said, Alonso Quixano the Good;\nand may my repentance and sincerity restore me to the esteem you used\nto have for me; and now let Master Notary proceed.\n\n\"_Item_--I leave all my property absolutely to Antonia Quixana my\nniece, here present, after all has been deducted from the most\navailable portion of it that may be required to satisfy the bequests I\nhave made. And the first disbursement I desire to be made is the\npayment of the wages I owe for the time my housekeeper has served me,\nwith twenty ducats, over and above, for a gown. The curate and the\nbachelor Samson Carrasco, now present, I appoint my executors.\n\n\"_Item_--It is my wish that if Antonia Quixana, my niece, desires to\nmarry, she shall marry a man of whom it shall be first of all\nascertained by information taken that he does not know what books of\nchivalry are; and if it should be proved that he does, and if in spite\nof this my niece insists upon marrying him and does marry him, then\nshe shall forfeit the whole of what I have left her, which my\nexecutors shall devote to works of charity as they please.\n\n\"_Item_--I entreat the aforesaid gentlemen my executors, that if any\nhappy chance should lead them to discover the author who is said to\nhave written a history now going about under the title of 'Second Part\nof the Achievements of Don Quixote of La Mancha,' they beg of him on\nmy behalf as earnestly as they can to forgive me for having been,\nwithout intending it, the cause of his writing so many and such\nmonstrous absurdities as he has written in it; for I am leaving the\nworld with a feeling of compunction at having provoked him to write\nthem.\"\n\nWith this he closed his will, and a faintness coming over him, he\nstretched himself out at full length on the bed. All were in a flutter\nand made haste to relieve him, and during the three days he lived\nafter that on which he made his will, he fainted away very often.\nThe house was all in confusion; but still the niece ate and the\nhousekeeper drank and Sancho Panza enjoyed himself; for inheriting\nproperty wipes out or softens down in the heir the feeling of grief\nthe dead man might be expected to leave behind him.\n\nAt last Don Quixote's end came, after he had received all the\nsacraments, and had in full and forcible terms expressed his\ndetestation of books of chivalry. The notary was there at the time,\nand he said that in no book of chivalry had he ever read of any\nknight-errant dying in his bed so calmly and so like a Christian as\nDon Quixote, who amid the tears and lamentations of all present\nyielded up his spirit,--that is to say, died. On perceiving it, the\ncurate begged the notary to bear witness that Alonso Quixano the Good,\ncommonly called Don Quixote of La Mancha, had passed away from this\npresent life, and died naturally; and said he desired this testimony\nin order to remove the possibility of any other author save Cid Hamet\nBenengeli bringing him to life again falsely and making interminable\nstories out of his achievements.\n\nSuch was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, whose\nvillage Cid Hamet would not indicate precisely, in order to leave all\nthe towns and villages of La Mancha to contend among themselves for\nthe right to adopt him and claim him as a son, as the seven cities of\nGreece contended for Homer. The lamentations of Sancho and the niece\nand housekeeper are omitted here, as well as the new epitaphs upon his\ntomb; Samson Carrasco, however, put the following:--\n\n \"A doughty gentleman lies here,\n A stranger all his life to fear;\n Nor in his death could Death prevail,\n In that last hour, to make him quail.\n He for the world but little cared,\n And at his feats the world was scared;\n A crazy man his life he passed,\n But in his senses died at last.\"\n\nAnd said most sage Cid Hamet to his pen:--\n\n\"Rest here, hung up by this brass wire, upon this shelf. O my pen!\nwhether of skillful make or clumsy cut I know not; here shalt thou\nremain long ages hence, unless presumptuous or malignant story-tellers\ntake thee down to profane thee. But ere they touch thee warn them, and\nas best thou canst, say to them:--\n\n 'Hold off! ye weaklings; hold your hands!\n Adventure it let none,\n For this enterprise, my lord the King,\n Was meant for me alone.'\n\nFor me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was his to act,\nmine to write; we two together make but one, notwithstanding and in\nspite of that pretended Tordesillesque writer who has ventured or\nwould venture with his great coarse ill-trimmed ostrich quill to write\nthe achievements of my valiant knight;--no burden for his shoulders,\nnor subject for his frozen wit: whom, if perchance thou shouldst come\nto know him, thou shalt warn to leave at rest where they lie the weary\nmoldering bones of Don Quixote, and not to attempt to carry him off,\nin opposition to all the privileges of death, to Old Castile, making\nhim rise from the grave where in reality and truth he lies stretched\nat full length, powerless to make any third expedition or new sally;\nfor the two that he has already made, so much to the enjoyment and\napproval of everybody to whom they have become known, in this as well\nas in foreign countries, are quite sufficient for the purpose of\nturning into ridicule the whole of those made by the whole set of the\nknights-errant; and so doing shalt thou discharge thy Christian\ncalling, giving good counsel to one that bears ill-will to thee. And I\nshall remain satisfied, and proud to have been the first who has ever\nenjoyed the fruit of his writings as fully as he could desire; for my\ndesire has been no other than to deliver over to the detestation of\nmankind the false and foolish tales of the books of chivalry, which,\nthanks to that of my true Don Quixote, are even now tottering, and\ndoubtless doomed to fall forever. Farewell.\"\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\n\n1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.\n\n2. Images and footnotes have been moved from the middle of a paragraph\nto the closest paragraph break.\n\n3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version\nthese letters have been replaced with transliterations.\n\n4. The original text has certain words which use \"oe\" ligature. These\nare \"Coelum\", \"Phoenician\", \"Phoebus\", \"mythopoeic\" and \"phoenix\".\n\n5. The word McGIFFERT has \"c\" as superscript in the original which has\nbeen changed to lower case in this text version.\n\n6. The footnote [7] in \"The Lusiads\" does not refer to anything in the\ntext.\n\n7. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies\nin spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been\nretained.","title":"Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern \u2014 Volume 08","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":150943}