A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies
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Title: A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies
Author: Oscar Wilde
Editor: E. V. Lucas
Release date: October 6, 2009 [eBook #30191]
Most recently updated: November 2, 2009
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30191
Credits: Transcribed from the 1919 Methuen & Co. Ltd. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CRITIC IN PALL MALL: BEING EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES ***
Transcribed from the 1919 Methuen & Co. Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
A CRITIC
IN PALL MALL
BEING EXTRACTS FROM
REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES
BY
OSCAR WILDE
* * * * *
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
* * * * *
_First Published in 1919_
* * * * *
_This selection has been made by Mr._ E. V. LUCAS
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE TOMB OF KEATS 1
KEATS'S SONNET ON BLUE 4
DINNERS AND DISHES 8
SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY 10
'HENRY THE FOURTH' AT OXFORD 15
A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE 18
TO READ OR NOT TO READ 21
THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN 22
BERANGER IN ENGLAND 27
THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE 29
'THE CENCI' 32
BALZAC IN ENGLISH 34
BEN JONSON 37
MR. SYMONDS' HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE 39
MR. MORRIS'S 'ODYSSEY' 44
RUSSIAN NOVELISTS 48
MR. PATER'S 'IMAGINARY PORTRAITS' 51
A GERMAN PRINCESS 55
'A VILLAGE TRAGEDY' 63
MR. MORRIS'S COMPLETION OF THE 'ODYSSEY' 65
MRS. SOMERVILLE 70
ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA 76
EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN IRELAND 81
MADAME RISTORI 85
ENGLISH POETESSES 91
VENUS OR VICTORY 101
M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND 105
A FASCINATING BOOK 108
HENLEY'S POEMS 123
SOME LITERARY LADIES 129
POETRY AND PRISON 143
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN 146
IRISH FAIRY TALES 152
MR. W. B. YEATS 158
MR. YEATS'S 'WANDERINGS OF OISIN' 160
MR. WILLIAM MORRIS'S LAST BOOK 162
SOME LITERARY NOTES 167
MR. SWINBURNE'S 'POEMS AND BALLADS' (Third Series) 173
A CHINESE SAGE 177
MR. PATER'S 'APPRECIATIONS' 187
SENTENTIAE 194
THE TOMB OF KEATS
(_Irish Monthly_, July 1877.)
As one enters Rome from the Via Ostiensis by the Porta San Paolo, the
first object that meets the eye is a marble pyramid which stands close at
hand on the left.
There are many Egyptian obelisks in Rome--tall, snakelike spires of red
sandstone, mottled with strange writings, which remind us of the pillars
of flame which led the children of Israel through the desert away from
the land of the Pharaohs; but more wonderful than these to look upon is
this gaunt, wedge-shaped pyramid standing here in this Italian city,
unshattered amid the ruins and wrecks of time, looking older than the
Eternal City itself, like terrible impassiveness turned to stone. And so
in the Middle Ages men supposed this to be the sepulchre of Remus, who
was slain by his own brother at the founding of the city, so ancient and
mysterious it appears; but we have now, perhaps unfortunately, more
accurate information about it, and know that it is the tomb of one Caius
Cestius, a Roman gentleman of small note, who died about 30 B.C.
Yet though we cannot care much for the dead man who lies in lonely state
beneath it, and who is only known to the world through his sepulchre,
still this pyramid will be ever dear to the eyes of all English-speaking
people, because at evening its shadows fall on the tomb of one who walks
with Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Byron, and Shelley, and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning in the great procession of the sweet singers of England.
For at its foot there is a green sunny slope, known as the Old Protestant
Cemetery, and on this a common-looking grave, which bears the following
inscription:
This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who
on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart, desired these words
to be engraven on his tombstone: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN
WATER. February 24, 1821.
And the name of the young English poet is John Keats.
Lord Houghton calls this cemetery 'one of the most beautiful spots on
which the eye and heart of man can rest,' and Shelley speaks of it as
making one 'in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so
sweet a place'; and indeed when I saw the violets and the daisies and the
poppies that overgrow the tomb, I remembered how the dead poet had once
told his friend that he thought the 'intensest pleasure he had received
in life was in watching the growth of flowers,' and how another time,
after lying a while quite still, he murmured in some strange prescience
of early death, 'I feel the flowers growing over me.'
But this time-worn stone and these wildflowers are but poor memorials {2}
of one so great as Keats; most of all, too, in this city of Rome, which
pays such honour to her dead; where popes, and emperors, and saints, and
cardinals lie hidden in 'porphyry wombs,' or couched in baths of jasper
and chalcedony and malachite, ablaze with precious stones and metals, and
tended with continual service. For very noble is the site, and worthy of
a noble monument; behind looms the grey pyramid, symbol of the world's
age, and filled with memories of the sphinx, and the lotus leaf, and the
glories of old Nile; in front is the Monte Testaccio, built, it is said,
with the broken fragments of the vessels in which all the nations of the
East and the West brought their tribute to Rome; and a little distance
off, along the slope of the hill under the Aurelian wall, some tall gaunt
cypresses rise, like burnt-out funeral torches, to mark the spot where
Shelley's heart (that 'heart of hearts'!) lies in the earth; and, above
all, the soil on which we tread is very Rome!
As I stood beside the mean grave of this divine boy, I thought of him as
of a Priest of Beauty slain before his time; and the vision of Guido's
St. Sebastian came before my eyes as I saw him at Genoa, a lovely brown
boy, with crisp, clustering hair and red lips, bound by his evil enemies
to a tree, and though pierced by arrows, raising his eyes with divine,
impassioned gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening heavens. And
thus my thoughts shaped themselves to rhyme:
HEU MISERANDE PUER
Rid of the world's injustice and its pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue;
Taken from life while life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian and as foully slain.
No cypress shades his grave, nor funeral yew,
But red-lipped daisies, violets drenched with dew,
And sleepy poppies, catch the evening rain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O saddest poet that the world hath seen!
O sweetest singer of the English land!
Thy name was writ in water on the sand,
But our tears shall keep thy memory green,
And make it flourish like a Basil-tree.
_Rome_, 1877.
_Note_.--A later version of this sonnet, under the title of 'The Grave of
Keats,' is given in the _Poems_, page 157.
KEATS'S SONNET ON BLUE
(_Century Guild Hobby Horse_, July 1886.)
During my tour in America I happened one evening to find myself in
Louisville, Kentucky. The subject I had selected to speak on was the
Mission of Art in the Nineteenth Century, and in the course of my lecture
I had occasion to quote Keats's Sonnet on Blue as an example of the
poet's delicate sense of colour-harmonies. When my lecture was concluded
there came round to see me a lady of middle age, with a sweet gentle
manner and a most musical voice. She introduced herself to me as Mrs.
Speed, the daughter of George Keats, and invited me to come and examine
the Keats manuscripts in her possession. I spent most of the next day
with her, reading the letters of Keats to her father, some of which were
at that time unpublished, poring over torn yellow leaves and faded scraps
of paper, and wondering at the little Dante in which Keats had written
those marvellous notes on Milton. Some months afterwards, when I was in
California, I received a letter from Mrs. Speed asking my acceptance of
the original manuscript of the sonnet which I had quoted in my lecture.
This manuscript I have had reproduced here, as it seems to me to possess
much psychological interest. It shows us the conditions that preceded
the perfected form, the gradual growth, not of the conception but of the
expression, and the workings of that spirit of selection which is the
secret of style. In the case of poetry, as in the case of the other
arts, what may appear to be simply technicalities of method are in their
essence spiritual not mechanical, and although, in all lovely work, what
concerns us is the ultimate form, not the conditions that necessitate
that form, yet the preference that precedes perfection, the evolution of
the beauty, and the mere making of the music, have, if not their artistic
value, at least their value to the artist.
It will be remembered that this sonnet was first published in 1848 by
Lord Houghton in his _Life_, _Letters_, _and Literary Remains of John
Keats_. Lord Houghton does not definitely state where he found it, but
it was probably among the Keats manuscripts belonging to Mr. Charles
Brown. It is evidently taken from a version later than that in my
possession, as it accepts all the corrections, and makes three
variations. As in my manuscript the first line is torn away, I give the
sonnet here as it appears in Lord Houghton's edition.
ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS:
Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that make the hyacinthine bell. {5}
By J. H. REYNOLDS.
Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,--the domain
Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,--
The tent of Hesperus and all his train,--
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters--ocean
And all its vassal streams: pools numberless
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside if not to dark-blue nativeness.
Blue! gentle cousin of the forest green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,
Forget-me-not,--the blue-bell,--and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
_Feb._ 1818.
In the _Athenaeum_ of the 3rd of June 1876 appeared a letter from Mr. A.
J. Horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of _The Garden
of Florence_ in which this sonnet was transcribed. Mr. Horwood, who was
unaware that the sonnet had been already published by Lord Houghton,
gives the transcript at length. His version reads _hue_ for _life_ in
the first line, and _bright_ for _wide_ in the second, and gives the
sixth line thus:
With all his tributary streams, pools numberless,
a foot too long: it also reads _to_ for _of_ in the ninth line. Mr.
Buxton Forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine,
but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in Lord
Houghton's edition. However, now that we have before us Keats's first
draft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line in
Mr. Horwood's version is really a genuine variation. Keats may have
written,
Ocean
His tributary streams, pools numberless,
and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line
right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second.
The _Athenaeum_ version inserts a comma after _art_ in the last line,
which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of
Keats's method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton Forman has adopted it.
As for the corrections that Lord Houghton's version shows Keats to have
made in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident that
they sprang from Keats's reluctance to repeat the same word in
consecutive lines, except in cases where a word's music or meaning was to
be emphasized. The substitution of 'its' for 'his' in the sixth line is
more difficult of explanation. It was due probably to a desire on
Keats's part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of Hesperus.
It may be noticed that Keats's own eyes were brown, and not blue, as
stated by Mrs. Proctor to Lord Houghton. Mrs. Speed showed me a note to
that effect written by Mrs. George Keats on the margin of the page in
Lord Houghton's _Life_ (p. 100, vol. i.), where Mrs. Proctor's
description is given. Cowden Clarke made a similar correction in his
_Recollections_, and in some of the later editions of Lord Houghton's
book the word 'blue' is struck out. In Severn's portraits of Keats also
the eyes are given as brown.
The exquisite sense of colour expressed in the ninth and tenth lines may
be paralleled by
The Ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
of the sonnet to George Keats.
DINNERS AND DISHES
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 7, 1885.)
A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one
day without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live without
pictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author of
_Dinners and Dishes_; and this latter view is, no doubt, the more
popular. Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between an
ode and an omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is not
entirely Philistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles the
subject of South Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy give
a banquet once a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt,
insist on feeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws of
cookery should be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badly
seasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution might
follow.
Under these circumstances we strongly recommend _Dinners and Dishes_ to
every one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence,
which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure
oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The
subject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty,
but still there is always something depressing about the coloured
lithograph of a leg of mutton.
As regards the author's particular views, we entirely agree with him on
the important question of macaroni. 'Never,' he says, 'ask me to back a
bill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding.' Macaroni is
essentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes but
never with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how to
cook risotto--a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellent
chapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefully
studied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyond
lettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sprouts
eatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece.
The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much the
science of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this little
handbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen is
shown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passion
for extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which is
anything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveterate
habit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants,--all these sins and
many others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly and
rightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turned
for her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to
use.
But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he has
eaten back-hendl at Vienna and kulibatsch at St. Petersburg; he has had
the courage to face the buffalo veal of Roumania and to dine with a
German family at one o'clock; he has serious views on the right method of
cooking those famous white truffles of Turin of which Alexandre Dumas was
so fond; and, in the face of the Oriental Club, declares that Bombay
curry is better than the curry of Bengal. In fact he seems to have had
experience of almost every kind of meal except the 'square meal' of the
Americans. This he should study at once; there is a great field for the
philosophic epicure in the United States. Boston beans may be dismissed
at once as delusions, but soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks,
blue fish and the pompono of New Orleans are all wonderful delicacies,
particularly when one gets them at Delmonico's. Indeed, the two most
remarkable bits of scenery in the States are undoubtedly Delmonico's and
the Yosemite Valley; and the former place has done more to promote a good
feeling between England and America than anything else has in this
century.
We hope the 'Wanderer' will go there soon and add a chapter to _Dinners
and Dishes_, and that his book will have in England the influence it
deserves. There are twenty ways of cooking a potato and three hundred
and sixty-five ways of cooking an egg, yet the British cook, up to the
present moment, knows only three methods of sending up either one or the
other.
_Dinners and Dishes_. By 'Wanderer.' (Simpkin and Marshall.)
SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY
(_Dramatic Review_, March 14, 1885.)
I have often heard people wonder what Shakespeare would say, could he see
Mr. Irving's production of his _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Mr. Wilson
Barrett's setting of his _Hamlet_. Would he take pleasure in the glory
of the scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested in
the Cathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would he
be indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?
Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present case
happen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see what
Shakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if one
reads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is written
about him.
Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre,
through the lips of the chorus in _Henry V._, he complains of the
smallness of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big
historical play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out
many of its most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number
of supers who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the
properties, and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring
on real horses.
In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, again, he gives us a most amusing
picture of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were
reduced by the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read
him without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two
special limitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable
scenery, and the fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he
protests against other difficulties with which managers of theatres have
still to contend, such as actors who do not understand their words;
actors who miss their cues; actors who overact their parts; actors who
mouth; actors who gag; actors who play to the gallery, and amateur
actors.
And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt very
much hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of a
play in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that the
scene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of a
particular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that the
stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of
a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which
inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply
apologizes. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other
substitutes for scenery--the hanging out of a placard, and his
descriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passion
for picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did not
satisfy the dramatic critic of his day. But as regards the description,
to those of us who look on Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but as
a poet, and who enjoy reading him at home just as much as we enjoy seeing
him acted, it may be a matter of congratulation that he had not at his
command such skilled machinists as are in use now at the Princess's and
at the Lyceum. For had Cleopatra's barge, for instance, been a structure
of canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over or
broken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived to
our own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by this
time. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and the
purple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired of
keeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid's
flower-soft hands of touching its silken tackle; the mermaid still lies
at its helm, and still on its deck stand the boys with their coloured
fans. Yet lovely as all Shakespeare's descriptive passages are, a
description is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are far
more impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and the
modern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visibly
presented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage for
which Shakespeare often expresses his desire. It is true that
Shakespeare's descriptions are not what descriptions are in modern
plays--accounts of what the audience can observe for themselves; they are
the imaginative method by which he creates in the mind of the spectators
the image of that which he desires them to see. Still, the quality of
the drama is action. It is always dangerous to pause for
picturesqueness. And the introduction of self-explanatory scenery
enables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness of
form and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create an
artistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beauty
for beauty's sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can never
be understood, to which, and to which only, are they ever revealed.
To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and of
sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words.
A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eye
as well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitely
receptive of the influence of imaginative work. And as regards a bad
play, have we not all seen large audiences lured by the loveliness of
scenic effect into listening to rhetoric posing as poetry, and to
vulgarity doing duty for realism? Whether this be good or evil for the
public I will not here discuss, but it is evident that the playwright, at
any rate, never suffers.
Indeed, the artist who really has suffered through the modern mounting of
plays is not the dramatist at all, but the scene-painter proper. He is
rapidly being displaced by the stage-carpenter. Now and then, at Drury
Lane, I have seen beautiful old front cloths let down, as perfect as
pictures some of them, and pure painter's work, and there are many which
we all remember at other theatres, in front of which some dialogue was
reduced to graceful dumb-show through the hammer and tin-tacks behind.
But as a rule the stage is overcrowded with enormous properties, which
are not merely far more expensive and cumbersome than scene-paintings,
but far less beautiful, and far less true. Properties kill perspective.
A painted door is more like a real door than a real door is itself, for
the proper conditions of light and shade can be given to it; and the
excessive use of built-up structures always makes the stage too glaring,
for as they have to be lit from behind, as well as from the front, the
gas-jets become the absolute light of the scene instead of the means
merely by which we perceive the conditions of light and shadow which the
painter has desired to show us.
So, instead of bemoaning the position of the playwright, it were better
for the critics to exert whatever influence they may possess towards
restoring the scene-painter to his proper position as an artist, and not
allowing him to be built over by the property man, or hammered to death
by the carpenter. I have never seen any reason myself why such artists
as Mr. Beverley, Mr. Walter Hann, and Mr. Telbin should not be entitled
to become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have many
of those R.A.'s whose total inability to paint we can see every May for a
shilling.
And lastly, let those critics who hold up for our admiration the
simplicity of the Elizabethan stage remember that they are lauding a
condition of things against which Shakespeare himself, in the spirit of a
true artist, always strongly protested.
_HENRY THE FOURTH_ AT OXFORD
(_Dramatic Review_, May 23, 1885.)
I have been told that the ambition of every Dramatic Club is to act
_Henry IV_. I am not surprised. The spirit of comedy is as fervent in
this play as is the spirit of chivalry; it is an heroic pageant as well
as an heroic poem, and like most of Shakespeare's historical dramas it
contains an extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each of
which is absolutely individual in character, and each of which
contributes to the evolution of the plot.
To Oxford belongs the honour of having been the first to present on the
stage this noble play, and the production which I saw last week was in
every way worthy of that lovely town, that mother of sweetness and of
light. For, in spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and
the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisector, in spite of
Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still
remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life
and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in most
other towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reaction
against the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes to
us as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive of
life's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by the
Ilissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to her
as were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of the
house of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance to
Christ Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feet
have stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in the
river-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dullness of the
lecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not to
define virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on the
swift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in the
young Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedy
bank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurels to her poets, and rue to
those who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to all
who dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;
and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she has
welcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they have
sought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caught
with much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardour
and this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxford
performance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any fine
dramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation of
life the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what is
not conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all to
others.
I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for the
study than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree.
Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alter
the form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work.
Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed to
us only through the actor's art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford the
other night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me to
gain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and the
ideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators by
the chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and the fine passion of its
exponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Their
archaeological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain,
a perfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved across
the stage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel of
battle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land the
play's action was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignity
and grace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicate
harmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty which
added to the intellectual realism of archaeology the sensuous charm of
art.
I have rarely seen a production better stage-managed. Indeed, I hope
that the University will take some official notice of this delightful
work of art. Why should not degrees be granted for good acting? Are
they not given to those who misunderstand Plato and who mistranslate
Aristotle? And should the artist be passed over? No. To Prince Hal,
Hotspur and Falstaff, D.C.L.'s should be gracefully offered. I feel sure
they would be gracefully accepted. To the rest of the company the
crimson or the sheepskin hood might be assigned _honoris causa_ to the
eternal confusion of the Philistine, and the rage of the industrious and
the dull. Thus would Oxford confer honour on herself, and the artist be
placed in his proper position. However, whether or not Convocation
recognizes the claims of culture, I hope that the Oxford Dramatic Society
will produce every summer for us some noble play like _Henry IV_. For,
in plays of this kind, plays which deal with bygone times, there is
always this peculiar charm, that they combine in one exquisite
presentation the passions that are living with the picturesqueness that
is dead. And when we have the modern spirit given to us in an antique
form, the very remoteness of that form can be made a method of increased
realism. This was Shakespeare's own attitude towards the ancient world,
this is the attitude we in this century should adopt towards his plays,
and with a feeling akin to this it seemed to me that these brilliant
young Oxonians were working. If it was so, their aim is the right one.
For while we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of
the actor to give realism to romance.
A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 18, 1885.)
In spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highly
recommended to every one. As for the authorities the author quotes, they
are almost numberless, and range from Socrates down to Artemus Ward. He
tells us of the wicked bachelor who spoke of marriage as 'a very harmless
amusement' and advised a young friend of his to 'marry early and marry
often'; of Dr. Johnson who proposed that marriage should be arranged by
the Lord Chancellor, without the parties concerned having any choice in
the matter; of the Sussex labourer who asked, 'Why should I give a woman
half my victuals for cooking the other half?' and of Lord Verulam who
thought that unmarried men did the best public work. And, indeed,
marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men
disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the
Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was
to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal
solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the
married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made
men, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, from the view recently
put forward by a lady or two on the Women's Rights platform that Solomon
owed all his wisdom to the number of his wives, still he appeals to
Bismarck, John Stuart Mill, Mahommed, and Lord Beaconsfield, as instances
of men whose success can be traced to the influence of the women they
married. Archbishop Whately once defined woman as 'a creature that does
not reason and pokes the fire from the top,' but since his day the higher
education of women has considerably altered their position. Women have
always had an emotional sympathy with those they love; Girton and Newnham
have rendered intellectual sympathy also possible. In our day it is best
for a man to be married, and men must give up the tyranny in married life
which was once so dear to them, and which, we are afraid, lingers still,
here and there.
'Do you wish to be my wife, Mabel?' said a little boy. 'Yes,'
incautiously answered Mabel. 'Then pull off my boots.'
On marriage vows our author has, too, very sensible views and very
amusing stories. He tells of a nervous bridegroom who, confusing the
baptismal and marriage ceremonies, replied when asked if he consented to
take the bride for his wife: 'I renounce them all'; of a Hampshire rustic
who, when giving the ring, said solemnly to the bride: 'With my body I
thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou'; of another
who when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife,
replied with shameful indecision: 'Yes, I'm willin'; but I'd a sight
rather have her sister'; and of a Scotch lady who, on the occasion of her
daughter's wedding, was asked by an old friend whether she might
congratulate her on the event, and answered: 'Yes, yes, upon the whole it
is very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then
there's always a something!' Indeed, the good stories contained in this
book are quite endless and make it very pleasant reading, while the good
advice is on all points admirable.
Most young married people nowadays start in life with a dreadful
collection of ormolu inkstands covered with sham onyxes, or with a
perfect museum of salt-cellars. We strongly recommend this book as one
of the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthly
Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and
the Baedeker of bliss.
_How to be Happy though Married_: _Being a Handbook to Marriage_. By a
Graduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin.)
TO READ OR NOT TO READ
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 8, 1886.)
Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:
1. Books to read, such as Cicero's _Letters_, Suetonius, Vasari's _Lives
of the Painters_, the _Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, Sir John
Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's _Memoirs_, Mommsen, and (till we get
a better one) Grote's _History of Greece_.
2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry,
the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not
the _savants_.
3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson's _Seasons_, Rogers's
_Italy_, Paley's _Evidences_, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all
John Stuart Mill except the essay on _Liberty_, all Voltaire's plays
without any exception, Butler's _Analogy_, Grant's _Aristotle_, Hume's
_England_, Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, all argumentative books and
all books that try to prove anything.
The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to
read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of
literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus
there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning.
But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I
venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.
Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an age
that reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much,
that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos of
our modern curricula 'The Worst Hundred Books,' and publish a list of
them, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit.
After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestions
at all with regard to 'The Best Hundred Books,' but I hope you will allow
me the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claim
for a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellent
judges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the _Greek
Anthology_. The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me
to hold the same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do
the delicate little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to
be quite as necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit.
I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over.
Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place? If,
in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some one
else, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might be
most advantageously substituted for Keble.
No doubt, both in the _Curse of Kehama_ and in the _Christian Year_ there
are poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste
is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire
all schools of art.
THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 6, 1886.)
Of the many collections of letters that have appeared in this century
few, if any, can rival for fascination of style and variety of incident
the letters of George Sand which have recently been translated into
English by M. Ledos de Beaufort. They extend over a space of more than
sixty years, from 1812 to 1876, in fact, and comprise the first letters
of Aurore Dupin, a child of eight years old, as well as the last letters
of George Sand, a woman of seventy-two. The very early letters, those of
the child and of the young married woman, possess, of course, merely a
psychological interest; but from 1831, the date of Madame Dudevant's
separation from her husband and her first entry into Paris life, the
interest becomes universal, and the literary and political history of
France is mirrored in every page.
For George Sand was an indefatigable correspondent; she longs in one of
her letters, it is true, for 'a planet where reading and writing are
absolutely unknown,' but still she had a real pleasure in letter-writing.
Her greatest delight was the communication of ideas, and she is always in
the heart of the battle. She discusses pauperism with Louis Napoleon in
his prison at Ham, and liberty with Armand Barbes in his dungeon at
Vincennes; she writes to Lamennais on philosophy, to Mazzini on
socialism, to Lamartine on democracy, and to Ledru-Rollin on justice.
Her letters reveal to us not merely the life of a great novelist but the
soul of a great woman, of a woman who was one with all the noblest
movements of her day and whose sympathy with humanity was boundless
absolutely. For the aristocracy of intellect she had always the deepest
veneration, but the democracy of suffering touched her more. She
preached the regeneration of mankind, not with the noisy ardour of the
paid advocate, but with the enthusiasm of the true evangelist. Of all
the artists of this century she was the most altruistic; she felt every
one's misfortunes except her own. Her faith never left her; to the end
of her life, as she tells us, she was able to believe without illusions.
But the people disappointed her a little. She saw that they followed
persons not principles, and for 'the great man theory' George Sand had no
respect. 'Proper names are the enemies of principles' is one of her
aphorisms.
So from 1850 her letters are more distinctly literary. She discusses
modern realism with Flaubert, and play-writing with Dumas _fils_; and
protests with passionate vehemence against the doctrine of _L'art pour
l'art_. 'Art for the sake of itself is an idle sentence,' she writes;
'art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good,
that is the creed I seek.' And in a delightful letter to M. Charles
Poncy she repeats the same idea very charmingly. 'People say that birds
sing for the sake of singing, but I doubt it. They sing their loves and
happiness, and in that they are in keeping with nature. But man must do
something more, and poets only sing in order to move people and to make
them think.' She wanted M. Poncy to be the poet of the people and, if
good advice were all that had been needed, he would certainly have been
the Burns of the workshop. She drew out a delightful scheme for a volume
to be called _Songs of all Trades_ and saw the possibilities of making
handicrafts poetic. Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a little
too much, and she hardly understood that art for art's sake is not meant
to express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation;
but, as she herself had scaled Parnassus, we must not quarrel at her
bringing Proletarianism with her. For George Sand must be ranked among
our poetic geniuses. She regarded the novel as still within the domain
of poetry. Her heroes are not dead photographs; they are great
possibilities. Modern novels are dissections; hers are dreams. 'I make
popular types,' she writes, 'such as I do no longer see, but such as they
should and might be.' For realism, in M. Zola's acceptation of the word,
she had no admiration. Art to her was a mirror that transfigured truths
but did not represent realities. Hence she could not understand art
without personality. 'I am aware,' she writes to Flaubert, 'that you are
opposed to the exposition of personal doctrine in literature. Are you
right? Does not your opposition proceed rather from a want of conviction
than from a principle of aesthetics? If we have any philosophy in our
brain it must needs break forth in our writings. But you, as soon as you
handle literature, you seem anxious, I know not why, to be another man,
the one who must disappear, who annihilates himself and is no more. What
a singular mania! What a deficient taste! The worth of our productions
depends entirely on our own. Besides, if we withhold our own opinions
respecting the personages we create, we naturally leave the reader in
uncertainty as to the opinion he should himself form of them. That
amounts to wishing not to be understood, and the result of this is that
the reader gets weary of us and leaves us.'
She herself, however, may be said to have suffered from too dominant a
personality, and this was the reason of the failure of most of her plays.
Of the drama in the sense of disinterested presentation she had no idea,
and what is the strength and life-blood of her novels is the weakness of
her dramatic works. But in the main she was right. Art without
personality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to reveal
personality, but to please. This she hardly recognized in her
aesthetics, though she realized it in her work. On literary style she
has some excellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the
romantic school and sees the beauty of simplicity. 'Simplicity,' she
writes, 'is the most difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the
last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.' She hated the
slang and _argot_ of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants
in the provinces. 'The provinces,' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition
of the original tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect
for the language of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the more
correct.'
She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, and
makes these excellent observations to him--perhaps her best piece of
literary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is but
the effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion and
emotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by that
which we ardently believe in.' Literary schools she distrusted.
Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. 'Do not
belong to any school: do not imitate any model,' is her advice. Yet she
never encouraged eccentricity. 'Be correct,' she writes to Eugene
Pelletan, 'that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It is
much more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross of
honour.'
On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She never
shrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. And
the whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house of
suggestions both on art and on politics.
_Letters of George Sand_. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos de
Beaufort. (Ward and Downey.)
BERANGER IN ENGLAND
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 21, 1886.)
A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form of
government is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads.
Without at all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regret
that the new democracy does not use poetry as a means for the expression
of political opinion. The Socialists, it is true, have been heard
singing the later poems of Mr. William Morris, but the street ballad is
really dead in England. The fact is that most modern poetry is so
artificial in its form, so individual in its essence and so literary in
its style, that the people as a body are little moved by it, and when
they have grievances against the capitalist or the aristocrat they prefer
strikes to sonnets and rioting to rondels.
Possibly, Mr. William Toynbee's pleasant little volume of translations
from Beranger may be the herald of a new school. Beranger had all the
qualifications for a popular poet. He wrote to be sung more than to be
read; he preferred the Pont Neuf to Parnassus; he was patriotic as well
as romantic, and humorous as well as humane. Translations of poetry as a
rule are merely misrepresentations, but the muse of Beranger is so simple
and naive that she can wear our English dress with ease and grace, and
Mr. Toynbee has kept much of the mirth and music of the original. Here
and there, undoubtedly, the translation could be improved upon; 'rapiers'
for instance is an abominable rhyme to 'forefathers'; 'the hated arms of
Albion' in the same poem is a very feeble rendering of 'le leopard de
l'Anglais,' and such a verse as
'Mid France's miracles of art,
Rare trophies won from art's own land,
I've lived to see with burning heart
The fog-bred poor triumphant stand,
reproduces very inadequately the charm of the original:
Dans nos palais, ou, pres de la victoire,
Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats,
J'ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire,
De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas.
On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee's work is good; _Les Champs_, for
example, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poems
_Rosette_ and _Ma Republique_; and there is a good deal of spirit in _Le
Marquis de Carabas_:
Whom have we here in conqueror's _role_?
Our grand old marquis, bless his soul!
Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!)
Has borne him back to claim his own.
Note, if you please, the grand old style
In which he nears his grand old pile;
With what an air of grand old state
He waves that blade immaculate!
Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass,
The grand old Marquis of Carabas!--
though 'that blade immaculate' has hardly got the sting of 'un sabre
innocent'; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, 'Marquise, you'll
have the bed-chamber' does not very clearly convey the sense of the line
'La Marquise a le tabouret.' Beranger is not nearly well enough known in
England, and though it is always better to read a poet in the original,
still translations have their value as echoes have their music.
_A Selection from the Songs of De Beranger in English Verse_. By William
Toynbee. (Kegan Paul.)
THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 13, 1886.)
The Countess Martinengo deserves well of all poets, peasants and
publishers. Folk-lore is so often treated nowadays merely from the point
of view of the comparative mythologist, that it is really delightful to
come across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. For
the Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the mother
of all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitive
people it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as the
drama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highest
expression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, however
poetical, of any nation, but in the great masterpieces of self-conscious
Art; yet it is pleasant sometimes to leave the summit of Parnassus to
look at the wildflowers in the valley, and to turn from the lyre of
Apollo to listen to the reed of Pan. We can still listen to it. To this
day, the vineyard dressers of Calabria will mock the passer-by with
satirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and the
peasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amoebaean
strains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, and
the children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villages
in spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead.
Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and
sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its
inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in
picturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that
there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of
art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by
too constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognize in
the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one
strong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it is
only in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find
any parallel to the Corsican _voceri_ with their shrill intensity of
passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as the
feeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in the
poems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism,
but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails.
Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and loveliness
of lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by which
mirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even where
there are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born of
fancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied that
wonderful love-song of Provence:
If thou wilt be the falling dew
And fall on me alway,
Then I will be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray.
If thou wilt be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray,
Then I will be the honey-bee
And kiss thee all the day.
If thou wilt be the honey-bee
And kiss me all the day,
Then I will be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray.
If thou wilt be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray,
Then I will be the dawn, and we
Shall meet at break of day.
How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings her
babe to sleep!
Gold and pearls my vessel lade,
Silk and cloth the cargo be,
All the sails are of brocade
Coming from beyond the sea;
And the helm of finest gold,
Made a wonder to behold.
Fast awhile in slumber lie;
Sleep, my child, and hushaby.
After you were born full soon,
You were christened all aright;
Godmother she was the moon,
Godfather the sun so bright.
All the stars in heaven told
Wore their necklaces of gold.
Fast awhile in slumber lie;
Sleep, my child, and hushaby.
Or this from Roumania:
Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour;
Mother's darling gilliflower.
Mother rocks thee, standing near,
She will wash thee in the clear
Waters that from fountains run,
To protect thee from the sun.
Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour,
Grow thou as the gilliflower.
As a tear-drop be thou white,
As a willow tall and slight;
Gentle as the ring-doves are,
And be lovely as a star!
We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope they
are as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them.
The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book.
In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor too
brief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examples
of modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging in
his armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North to
Sicily's orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listen
to the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession,
and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it has
the limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and is
one with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field.
_Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs_. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo
Cesaresco. (Redway.)
_THE CENCI_
(_Dramatic Review_, May 15, 1886.)
The production of _The Cenci_ last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington,
may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century,
and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of
all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the
conditions he himself desired for it. For _The Cenci_ was written
absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's own
wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime
at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal
parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully
the aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is
disinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merely
mouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terror
and for pity. 'I have endeavoured,' he says, 'as nearly as possible to
represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid
the error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong,
false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the
sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. . . .
'I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonly
called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached
simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of
the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of
that nature.'
He recognized that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom of
expression than what is conceded to a poet. 'In a dramatic composition,'
to use his own words, 'the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate
one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development
and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which
should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus
that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for
dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling,
which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is
lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other
respects I have written more carelessly, that is, without an
over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely
agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to
true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men.'
He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example,
not by precept.
'The highest moral purpose,' he remarks, 'aimed at in the highest species
of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and
antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of
which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and
kind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place for
the enforcement of them.' He fully realizes that it is by a conflict
between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest
dramatic effects are produced. 'It is in the restless and anatomizing
casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel
that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious
horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge,
that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.'
In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of
the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.
BALZAC IN ENGLISH
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 13, 1886.)
Many years ago, in a number of _All the Year Round_, Charles Dickens
complained that Balzac was very little read in England, and although
since then the public has become more familiar with the great
masterpieces of French fiction, still it may be doubted whether the
_Comedie Humaine_ is at all appreciated or understood by the general run
of novel readers. It is really the greatest monument that literature has
produced in our century, and M. Taine hardly exaggerates when he says
that, after Shakespeare, Balzac is our most important magazine of
documents on human nature. Balzac's aim, in fact, was to do for humanity
what Buffon had done for the animal creation. As the naturalist studied
lions and tigers, so the novelist studied men and women. Yet he was no
mere reporter. Photography and _proces-verbal_ were not the essentials
of his method. Observation gave him the facts of life, but his genius
converted facts into truths, and truths into truth. He was, in a word, a
marvellous combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific
spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples; the former was
entirely his own. The distinction between such a book as M. Zola's
_L'Assommoir_ and such a book as Balzac's _Illusions Perdues_ is the
distinction between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. 'All
Balzac's characters,' said Baudelaire, 'are gifted with the same ardour
of life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply coloured
as dreams. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. The
very scullions have genius.' He was, of course, accused of being
immoral. Few writers who deal directly with life escape that charge.
His answer to the accusation was characteristic and conclusive. 'Whoever
contributes his stone to the edifice of ideas,' he wrote, 'whoever
proclaims an abuse, whoever sets his mark upon an evil to be abolished,
always passes for immoral. If you are true in your portraits, if, by
dint of daily and nightly toil, you succeed in writing the most difficult
language in the world, the word immoral is thrown in your face.' The
morals of the personages of the _Comedie Humaine_ are simply the morals
of the world around us. They are part of the artist's subject-matter;
they are not part of his method. If there be any need of censure it is
to life, not to literature, that it should be given. Balzac, besides, is
essentially universal. He sees life from every point of view. He has no
preferences and no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. He
feels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret. 'Il cree un
monde et se tait.'
And what a world it is! What a panorama of passions! What a pell-mell
of men and women! It was said of Trollope that he increased the number
of our acquaintances without adding to our visiting list; but after the
_Comedie Humaine_ one begins to believe that the only real people are the
people who never existed. Lucien de Rubempre, le Pere Goriot, Ursule
Mirouet, Marguerite Claes, the Baron Hulot, Madame Marneffe, le Cousin
Pons, De Marsay--all bring with them a kind of contagious illusion of
life. They have a fierce vitality about them: their existence is fervent
and fiery-coloured; we not merely feel for them but we see them--they
dominate our fancy and defy scepticism. A steady course of Balzac
reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the
shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to meet
Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home with
Lucien de Rubempre? It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac's
society than to receive cards from all the duchesses in Mayfair.
In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the _Comedie
Humaine_ to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what about
truffles? Balzac's publisher refused to be disturbed by any such
criticism as that. 'Indigestible, is it?' he exclaimed with what, for a
publisher, was rare good sense. 'Well, I should hope so; who ever thinks
of a dinner that isn't?'
Balzac's Novels in English. _The Duchesse de Langeais and Other
Stories_; _Cesar Birotteau_. (Routledge and Sons.)
BEN JONSON
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 20, 1886.)
As for Mr. Symonds' estimate of Jonson's genius, it is in many points
quite excellent. He ranks him with the giants rather than with the gods,
with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and huge
strength of intellectual muscle, not with those 'who share the divine
gifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct.' Here he is
right. Pelion more than Parnassus was Jonson's home. His art has too
much effort about it, too much definite intention. His style lacks the
charm of chance. Mr. Symonds is right also in the stress he lays on the
extraordinary combination in Jonson's work of the most concentrated
realism with encyclopaedic erudition. In Jonson's comedies London slang
and learned scholarship go hand in hand. Literature was as living a
thing to him as life itself. He used his classical lore not merely to
give form to his verse, but to give flesh and blood to the persons of his
plays. He could build up a breathing creature out of quotations. He
made the poets of Greece and Rome terribly modern, and introduced them to
the oddest company. His very culture is an element in his coarseness.
There are moments when one is tempted to liken him to a beast that has
fed off books.
We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Symonds when he says that Jonson
'rarely touched more than the outside of character,' that his men and
women are 'the incarnations of abstract properties rather than living
human beings,' that they are in fact mere 'masqueraders and mechanical
puppets.' Eloquence is a beautiful thing but rhetoric ruins many a
critic, and Mr. Symonds is essentially rhetorical. When, for instance,
he tells us that 'Jonson made masks,' while 'Dekker and Heywood created
souls,' we feel that he is asking us to accept a crude judgment for the
sake of a smart antithesis. It is, of course, true that we do not find
in Jonson the same growth of character that we find in Shakespeare, and
we may admit that most of the characters in Jonson's plays are, so to
speak, ready-made. But a ready-made character is not necessarily either
mechanical or wooden, two epithets Mr. Symonds uses constantly in his
criticism.
We cannot tell, and Shakespeare himself does not tell us, why Iago is
evil, why Regan and Goneril have hard hearts, or why Sir Andrew Aguecheek
is a fool. It is sufficient that they are what they are, and that nature
gives warrant for their existence. If a character in a play is lifelike,
if we recognize it as true to nature, we have no right to insist on the
author explaining its genesis to us. We must accept it as it is: and in
the hands of a good dramatist mere presentation can take the place of
analysis, and indeed is often a more dramatic method, because a more
direct one. And Jonson's characters are true to nature. They are in no
sense abstractions; they are types. Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca,
Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La Foole, Volpone and Mosca, Subtle and Sir
Epicure Mammon, Mrs. Purecraft and the Rabbi Busy are all creatures of
flesh and blood, none the less lifelike because they are labelled. In
this point Mr. Symonds seems to us unjust towards Jonson.
We think, also, that a special chapter might have been devoted to Jonson
as a literary critic. The creative activity of the English Renaissance
is so great that its achievements in the sphere of criticism are often
overlooked by the student. Then, for the first time, was language
treated as an art. The laws of expression and composition were
investigated and formularized. The importance of words was recognized.
Romanticism, Realism and Classicism fought their first battles. The
dramatists are full of literary and art criticisms, and amused the public
with slashing articles on one another in the form of plays.
'English Worthies.' Edited by Andrew Lang. _Ben Jonson_. By John
Addington Symonds. (Longmans, Green and Co.)
MR. SYMONDS' HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 10, 1886.)
Mr. Symonds has at last finished his history of the Italian Renaissance.
The two volumes just published deal with the intellectual and moral
conditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth century
which followed the coronation of Charles the Fifth at Bologna, an era to
which Mr. Symonds gives the name of the Catholic Reaction, and they
contain a most interesting and valuable account of the position of Spain
in the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, the
specific organization of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, and
the state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear. In
his previous volumes Mr. Symonds had regarded the past rather as a
picture to be painted than as a problem to be solved. In these two last
volumes, however, he shows a clearer appreciation of the office of
history. The art of the picturesque chronicler is completed by something
like the science of the true historian, the critical spirit begins to
manifest itself, and life is not treated as a mere spectacle, but the
laws of its evolution and progress are investigated also. We admit that
the desire to represent life at all costs under dramatic conditions still
accompanies Mr. Symonds, and that he hardly realizes that what seems
romance to us was harsh reality to those who were engaged in it. Like
most dramatists, also, he is more interested in the psychological
exceptions than in the general rule. He has something of Shakespeare's
sovereign contempt of the masses. The people stir him very little, but
he is fascinated by great personalities. Yet it is only fair to remember
that the age itself was one of exaggerated individualism, and that
literature had not yet become a mouthpiece for the utterances of
humanity. Men appreciated the aristocracy of intellect, but with the
democracy of suffering they had no sympathy. The cry from the
brickfields had still to be heard. Mr. Symonds' style, too, has much
improved. Here and there, it is true, we come across traces of the old
manner, as in the apocalyptic vision of the seven devils that entered
Italy with the Spaniard, and the description of the Inquisition as a
Belial-Moloch, a 'hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot from
burning human flesh.' Such a sentence, also, as 'over the Dead Sea of
social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy,'
reminds us that rhetoric has not yet lost its charms for Mr. Symonds.
Still, on the whole, the style shows far more reserve, balance and
sobriety, than can be found in the earlier volumes where violent
antithesis forms the predominant characteristic, and accuracy is often
sacrificed to an adjective.
Amongst the most interesting chapters of the book are those on the
Inquisition, on Sarpi, the great champion of the severance of Church from
State, and on Giordano Bruno. Indeed, the story of Bruno's life, from
his visit to London and Oxford, his sojourn in Paris and wanderings
through Germany, down to his betrayal at Venice and martyrdom at Rome, is
most powerfully told, and the estimate of the value of his philosophy and
the relation he holds to modern science, is at once just and
appreciative. The account also of Ignatius Loyola and the rise of the
Society of Jesus is extremely interesting, though we cannot think that
Mr. Symonds is very happy in his comparison of the Jesuits to 'fanatics
laying stones upon a railway' or 'dynamiters blowing up an emperor or a
corner of Westminster Hall.' Such a judgment is harsh and crude in
expression and more suitable to the clamour of the Protestant Union than
to the dignity of the true historian. Mr. Symonds, however, is rarely
deliberately unfair, and there is no doubt but that his work on the
Catholic Reaction is a most valuable contribution to modern history--so
valuable, indeed, that in the account he gives of the Inquisition in
Venice it would be well worth his while to bring the picturesque fiction
of the text into some harmony with the plain facts of the footnote.
On the poetry of the sixteenth century Mr. Symonds has, of course, a
great deal to say, and on such subjects he always writes with ease,
grace, and delicacy of perception. We admit that we weary sometimes of
the continual application to literature of epithets appropriate to
plastic and pictorial art. The conception of the unity of the arts is
certainly of great value, but in the present condition of criticism it
seems to us that it would be more useful to emphasize the fact that each
art has its separate method of expression. The essay on Tasso, however,
is delightful reading, and the position the poet holds towards modern
music and modern sentiment is analysed with much subtlety. The essay on
Marino also is full of interest. We have often wondered whether those
who talk so glibly of Euphuism and Marinism in literature have ever read
either _Euphues_ or the _Adone_. To the latter they can have no better
guide than Mr. Symonds, whose description of the poem is most
fascinating. Marino, like many greater men, has suffered much from his
disciples, but he himself was a master of graceful fancy and of exquisite
felicity of phrase; not, of course, a great poet but certainly an artist
in poetry and one to whom language is indebted. Even those conceits that
Mr. Symonds feels bound to censure have something charming about them.
The continual use of periphrases is undoubtedly a grave fault in style,
yet who but a pedant would really quarrel with such periphrases as
_sirena de' boschi_ for the nightingale, or _il novello Edimione_ for
Galileo?
From the poets Mr. Symonds passes to the painters: not those great
artists of Florence and Venice of whom he has already written, but the
Eclectics of Bologna, the Naturalists of Naples and Rome. This chapter
is too polemical to be pleasant. The one on music is much better, and
Mr. Symonds gives us a most interesting description of the gradual steps
by which the Italian genius passed from poetry and painting to melody and
song, till the whole of Europe thrilled with the marvel and mystery of
this new language of the soul. Some small details should perhaps be
noticed. It is hardly accurate, for instance, to say that Monteverde's
_Orfeo_ was the first form of the recitative-Opera, as Peri's _Dafne_ and
_Euridice_ and Cavaliere's _Rappresentazione_ preceded it by some years,
and it is somewhat exaggerated to say that 'under the regime of the
Commonwealth the national growth of English music received a check from
which it never afterwards recovered,' as it was with Cromwell's auspices
that the first English Opera was produced, thirteen years before any
Opera was regularly established in Paris. The fact that England did not
make such development in music as Italy and Germany did, must be ascribed
to other causes than 'the prevalence of Puritan opinion.'
These, however, are minor points. Mr. Symonds is to be warmly
congratulated on the completion of his history of the Renaissance in
Italy. It is a most wonderful monument of literary labour, and its value
to the student of Humanism cannot be doubted. We have often had occasion
to differ from Mr. Symonds on questions of detail, and we have more than
once felt it our duty to protest against the rhetoric and over-emphasis
of his style, but we fully recognize the importance of his work and the
impetus he has given to the study of one of the vital periods of the
world's history. Mr. Symonds' learning has not made him a pedant; his
culture has widened not narrowed his sympathies, and though he can hardly
be called a great historian, yet he will always occupy a place in English
literature as one of the remarkable men of letters in the nineteenth
century.
_Renaissance in Italy_: _The Catholic Reaction_. In Two Parts. By John
Addington Symonds. (Smith, Elder and Co.)
MR. MORRIS'S _ODYSSEY_
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 26, 1887.)
Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified by
nature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of the
wanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer since
Chaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was a
time when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods and
men, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is of
decorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in the
visible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate and
delightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and
exquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have a
keener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and the
craftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
embroiderers in purple and gold, to the weaver sitting by the loom and
the dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carver
of wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of high
romance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, the
subtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life.
It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked
forward to Mr. Morris's version of the Odyssean epic, and now that the
first volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all our
English translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying.
In spite of Coleridge's well-known views on the subject, we have always
held that Chapman's _Odyssey_ is immeasurably inferior to his _Iliad_,
the mere difference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former in
a secondary place; Pope's _Odyssey_, with its glittering rhetoric and
smart antithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowper
is dull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserian
prettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang's version
undoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merely
the facts of the _Odyssey_ without providing anything of its artistic
effect. Avia's translation even, though better than almost all its
predecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr.
Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of
language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new
spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek,
and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a
vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that
stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that,
producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses no
less than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here and
there, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of the
Homeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, he
has occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made stateliness
give place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse as
Milton's that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and in
all other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium for
reproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter. One merit,
at any rate, Mr. Morris's version entirely and absolutely possesses. It
is, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately with
life itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form and
colour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something of
the 'large utterance of the early gods.'
As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than the
wonderful description of the house of the Phoeacian king, or the whole
telling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageant
of the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps the
huge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realized, but
there is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating
story into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should not
complain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting and
parting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told. How
good, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book:
But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake:
'Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take,
And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around.
Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found.
But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed,
Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed.'
So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may,
But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away
The brine from his back and shoulders wrought broad and mightily,
And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea;
But when he had thoroughly washed him, and the oil about him had
shed,
He did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed.
But Athene, Zeus-begotten, dealt with him in such wise
That bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes,
With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil.
And as when the silver with gold is o'erlaid by a man of skill,
Yea, a craftsman whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athene have taught
To be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought;
So she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly.
It may be objected by some that the line
With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil,
is a rather fanciful version of
[Greek text]
and it certainly seems probable that the allusion is to the dark colour
of the hero's hair; still, the point is not one of much importance,
though it may be worth noting that a similar expression occurs in
Ogilby's superbly illustrated translation of the _Odyssey_, published in
1665, where Charles II.'s Master of the Revels in Ireland gives the
passage thus:
Minerva renders him more tall and fair,
Curling in rings like daffodils his hair.
No anthology, however, can show the true merit of Mr. Morris's
translation, whose real merit does not depend on stray beauties, nor is
revealed by chance selections, but lies in the absolute rightness and
coherence of the whole, in its purity and justice of touch, its freedom
from affectation and commonplace, its harmony of form and matter. It is
sufficient to say that this is a poet's version of a poet, and for such
surely we should be thankful. In these latter days of coarse and vulgar
literature, it is something to have made the great sea-epic of the South
native and natural to our northern isle, something to have shown that our
English speech may be a pipe through which Greek lips can blow, something
to have taught Nausicaa to speak the same language as Perdita.
_The Odyssey of Homer_. Done into English Verse by William Morris,
author of _The Earthly Paradise_. In two volumes. Volume I. (Reeves
and Turner.)
For review of Volume II. see _Mr. Morris's Completion of the Odyssey_,
page 65.
RUSSIAN NOVELISTS
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 2, 1887.)
Of the three great Russian novelists of our time Tourgenieff is by far
the finest artist. He has that spirit of exquisite selection, that
delicate choice of detail, which is the essence of style; his work is
entirely free from any personal intention; and by taking existence at its
most fiery-coloured moments he can distil into a few pages of perfect
prose the moods and passions of many lives.
Count Tolstoi's method is much larger, and his field of vision more
extended. He reminds us sometimes of Paul Veronese, and, like that great
painter, can crowd, without over-crowding, the giant canvas on which he
works. We may not at first gain from his works that artistic unity of
impression which is Tourgenieff's chief charm, but once that we have
mastered the details the whole seems to have the grandeur and the
simplicity of an epic. Dostoieffski differs widely from both his rivals.
He is not so fine an artist as Tourgenieff, for he deals more with the
facts than with the effects of life; nor has he Tolstoi's largeness of
vision and epic dignity; but he has qualities that are distinctively and
absolutely his own, such as a fierce intensity of passion and
concentration of impulse, a power of dealing with the deepest mysteries
of psychology and the most hidden springs of life, and a realism that is
pitiless in its fidelity, and terrible because it is true. Some time ago
we had occasion to draw attention to his marvellous novel _Crime and
Punishment_, where in the haunt of impurity and vice a harlot and an
assassin meet together to read the story of Dives and Lazarus, and the
outcast girl leads the sinner to make atonement for his sin; nor is the
book entitled _Injury and Insult_ at all inferior to that great
masterpiece. Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story may
seem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the noble victims of Greek
tragedy; she is Antigone with the passion of Phaedra, and it is
impossible to approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is the
gloom of Nemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesis
that does not stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and of
the same material as life itself. Aleosha, the beautiful young lad whom
Natasha follows to her doom, is a second Tito Melema, and has all Tito's
charm and grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would never
have denied Baldassare in the Square at Florence, nor lied to Romola
about Tessa. He has a magnificent, momentary sincerity, a boyish
unconsciousness of all that life signifies, an ardent enthusiasm for all
that life cannot give. There is nothing calculating about him. He never
thinks evil, he only does it. From a psychological point of view he is
one of the most interesting characters of modern fiction, as from an
artistic he is one of the most attractive. As we grow to know him he
stirs strange questions for us, and makes us feel that it is not the
wicked only who do wrong, nor the bad alone who work evil.
And by what a subtle objective method does Dostoieffski show us his
characters! He never tickets them with a list nor labels them with a
description. We grow to know them very gradually, as we know people whom
we meet in society, at first by little tricks of manner, personal
appearance, fancies in dress, and the like; and afterwards by their deeds
and words; and even then they constantly elude us, for though
Dostoieffski may lay bare for us the secrets of their nature, yet he
never explains his personages away; they are always surprising us by
something that they say or do, and keep to the end the eternal mystery of
life.
Irrespective of its value as a work of art, this novel possesses a deep
autobiographical interest also, as the character of Vania, the poor
student who loves Natasha through all her sin and shame, is
Dostoieffski's study of himself. Goethe once had to delay the completion
of one of his novels till experience had furnished him with new
situations, but almost before he had arrived at manhood Dostoieffski knew
life in its most real forms; poverty and suffering, pain and misery,
prison, exile, and love, were soon familiar to him, and by the lips of
Vania he has told his own story. This note of personal feeling, this
harsh reality of actual experience, undoubtedly gives the book something
of its strange fervour and terrible passion, yet it has not made it
egotistic; we see things from every point of view, and we feel, not that
fiction has been trammelled by fact, but that fact itself has become
ideal and imaginative. Pitiless, too, though Dostoieffski is in his
method as an artist, as a man he is full of human pity for all, for those
who do evil as well as for those who suffer it, for the selfish no less
than for those whose lives are wrecked for others and whose sacrifice is
in vain. Since _Adam Bede_ and _Le Pere Goriot_ no more powerful novel
has been written than _Insult and Injury_.
_Injury and Insult_. By Fedor Dostoieffski. Translated from the Russian
by Frederick Whishaw. (Vizetelly and Co.)
MR. PATER'S _IMAGINARY PORTRAITS_
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, June 11, 1887.)
To convey ideas through the medium of images has always been the aim of
those who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and it is to a
desire to give a sensuous environment to intellectual concepts that we
owe Mr. Pater's last volume. For these Imaginary or, as we should prefer
to call them, Imaginative Portraits of his, form a series of philosophic
studies in which the philosophy is tempered by personality, and the
thought shown under varying conditions of mood and manner, the very
permanence of each principle gaining something through the change and
colour of the life through which it finds expression. The most
fascinating of all these pictures is undoubtedly that of Sebastian Van
Storck. The account of Watteau is perhaps a little too fanciful, and the
description of him as one who was 'always a seeker after something in the
world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all,' seems to
us more applicable to him who saw Mona Lisa sitting among the rocks than
the gay and debonair _peintre des fetes galantes_. But Sebastian, the
grave young Dutch philosopher, is charmingly drawn. From the first
glimpse we get of him, skating over the water-meadows with his plume of
squirrel's tail and his fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness of
boyhood, down to his strange death in the desolate house amid the sands
of the Helder, we seem to see him, to know him, almost to hear the low
music of his voice. He is a dreamer, as the common phrase goes, and yet
he is poetical in this sense, that his theorems shape life for him,
directly. Early in youth he is stirred by a fine saying of Spinoza, and
sets himself to realize the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness,
separating himself more and more from the transient world of sensation,
accident and even affection, till what is finite and relative becomes of
no interest to him, and he feels that as nature is but a thought of his,
so he himself is but a passing thought of God. This conception, of the
power of a mere metaphysical abstraction over the mind of one so
fortunately endowed for the reception of the sensible world, is
exceedingly delightful, and Mr. Pater has never written a more subtle
psychological study, the fact that Sebastian dies in an attempt to save
the life of a little child giving to the whole story a touch of poignant
pathos and sad irony.
_Denys l'Auxerrois_ is suggested by a figure found, or said to be found,
on some old tapestries in Auxerre, the figure of a 'flaxen and flowery
creature, sometimes well-nigh naked among the vine-leaves, sometimes
muffled in skins against the cold, sometimes in the dress of a monk, but
always with a strong impress of real character and incident from the
veritable streets' of the town itself. From this strange design Mr.
Pater has fashioned a curious mediaeval myth of the return of Dionysus
among men, a myth steeped in colour and passion and old romance, full of
wonder and full of worship, Denys himself being half animal and half god,
making the world mad with a new ecstasy of living, stirring the artists
simply by his visible presence, drawing the marvel of music from reed and
pipe, and slain at last in a stage-play by those who had loved him. In
its rich affluence of imagery this story is like a picture by Mantegna,
and indeed Mantegna might have suggested the description of the pageant
in which Denys rides upon a gaily-painted chariot, in soft silken raiment
and, for head-dress, a strange elephant scalp with gilded tusks.
If _Denys l'Auxerrois_ symbolizes the passion of the senses and
_Sebastian Van Storck_ the philosophic passion, as they certainly seem to
do, though no mere formula or definition can adequately express the
freedom and variety of the life that they portray, the passion for the
imaginative world of art is the basis of the story of _Duke Carl of
Rosenmold_. Duke Carl is not unlike the late King of Bavaria, in his
love of France, his admiration for the _Grand Monarque_ and his fantastic
desire to amaze and to bewilder, but the resemblance is possibly only a
chance one. In fact Mr. Pater's young hero is the precursor of the
_Aufklarung_ of the last century, the German precursor of Herder and
Lessing and Goethe himself, and finds the forms of art ready to his hand
without any national spirit to fill them or make them vital and
responsive. He too dies, trampled to death by the soldiers of the
country he so much admired, on the night of his marriage with a peasant
girl, the very failure of his life lending him a certain melancholy grace
and dramatic interest.
On the whole, then, this is a singularly attractive book. Mr. Pater is
an intellectual impressionist. He does not weary us with any definite
doctrine or seek to suit life to any formal creed. He is always looking
for exquisite moments and, when he has found them, he analyses them with
delicate and delightful art and then passes on, often to the opposite
pole of thought or feeling, knowing that every mood has its own quality
and charm and is justified by its mere existence. He has taken the
sensationalism of Greek philosophy and made it a new method of art
criticism. As for his style, it is curiously ascetic. Now and then, we
come across phrases with a strange sensuousness of expression, as when he
tells us how Denys l'Auxerrois, on his return from a long journey, 'ate
flesh for the first time, tearing the hot, red morsels with his delicate
fingers in a kind of wild greed,' but such passages are rare. Asceticism
is the keynote of Mr. Pater's prose; at times it is almost too severe in
its self-control and makes us long for a little more freedom. For
indeed, the danger of such prose as his is that it is apt to become
somewhat laborious. Here and there, one is tempted to say of Mr. Pater
that he is 'a seeker after something in language, that is there in no
satisfying measure, or not at all.' The continual preoccupation with
phrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. And yet,
when all is said, what wonderful prose it is, with its subtle
preferences, its fastidious purity, its rejection of what is common or
ordinary! Mr. Pater has the true spirit of selection, the true art of
omission. If he be not among the greatest prose writers of our
literature he is, at least, our greatest artist in prose; and though it
may be admitted that the best style is that which seems an unconscious
result rather than a conscious aim, still in these latter days when
violent rhetoric does duty for eloquence and vulgarity usurps the name of
nature, we should be grateful for a style that deliberately aims at
perfection of form, that seeks to produce its effect by artistic means
and sets before itself an ideal of grave and chastened beauty.
_Imaginary Portraits_. By Walter Pater, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose
College, Oxford. (Macmillan and Co.)
A GERMAN PRINCESS
(_Woman's World_, November 1887.)
The Princess Christian's translation of the _Memoirs of Wilhelmine_,
_Margravine of Baireuth_, is a most fascinating and delightful book. The
Margravine and her brother, Frederick the Great, were, as the Princess
herself points out in an admirably written introduction, 'among the first
of those questioning minds that strove after spiritual freedom' in the
last century. 'They had studied,' says the Princess, 'the English
philosophers, Newton, Locke, and Shaftesbury, and were roused to
enthusiasm by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. Their whole lives
bore the impress of the influence of French thought on the burning
questions of the day. In the eighteenth century began that great
struggle of philosophy against tyranny and worn-out abuses which
culminated in the French Revolution. The noblest minds were engaged in
the struggle, and, like most reformers, they pushed their conclusions to
extremes, and too often lost sight of the need of a due proportion in
things. The Margravine's influence on the intellectual development of
her country is untold. She formed at Baireuth a centre of culture and
learning which had before been undreamt of in Germany.'
The historical value of these _Memoirs_ is, of course, well known.
Carlyle speaks of them as being 'by far the best authority' on the early
life of Frederick the Great. But considered merely as the autobiography
of a clever and charming woman, they are no less interesting, and even
those who care nothing for eighteenth-century politics, and look upon
history itself as an unattractive form of fiction, cannot fail to be
fascinated by the Margravine's wit, vivacity and humour, by her keen
powers of observation, and by her brilliant and assertive egotism. Not
that her life was by any means a happy one. Her father, to quote the
Princess Christian, 'ruled his family with the same harsh despotism with
which he ruled his country, taking pleasure in making his power felt by
all in the most galling manner,' and the Margravine and her brother 'had
much to suffer, not only from his ungovernable temper, but also from the
real privations to which they were subjected.' Indeed, the picture the
Margravine gives of the King is quite extraordinary. 'He despised all
learning,' she writes, 'and wished me to occupy myself with nothing but
needlework and household duties or details. Had he found me writing or
reading, he would probably have whipped me.' He 'considered music a
capital offence, and maintained that every one should devote himself to
one object: men to the military service, and women to their household
duties. Science and the arts he counted among the "seven deadly sins."'
Sometimes he took to religion, 'and then,' says the Margravine, 'we lived
like trappists, to the great grief of my brother and myself. Every
afternoon the King preached a sermon, to which we had to listen as
attentively as if it proceeded from an Apostle. My brother and I were
often seized with such an intense sense of the ridiculous that we burst
out laughing, upon which an apostolic curse was poured out on our heads,
which we had to accept with a show of humility and penitence.' Economy
and soldiers were his only topics of conversation; his chief social
amusement was to make his guests intoxicated; and as for his temper, the
accounts the Margravine gives of it would be almost incredible if they
were not amply corroborated from other sources. Suetonius has written of
the strange madness that comes on kings, but even in his melodramatic
chronicles there is hardly anything that rivals what the Margravine has
to tell us. Here is one of her pictures of family life at a Royal Court
in the last century, and it is not by any means the worst scene she
describes:
On one occasion, when his temper was more than usually bad, he told
the Queen that he had received letters from Anspach, in which the
Margrave announced his arrival at Berlin for the beginning of May.
He was coming there for the purpose of marrying my sister, and one of
his ministers would arrive previously with the betrothal ring. My
father asked my sister whether she were pleased at this prospect, and
how she would arrange her household. Now my sister had always made a
point of telling him whatever came into her head, even the greatest
home-truths, and he had never taken her outspokenness amiss. On this
occasion, therefore, relying on former experience, she answered him
as follows: 'When I have a house of my own, I shall take care to have
a well-appointed dinner-table, better than yours is, and if I have
children of my own, I shall not plague them as you do yours, and
force them to eat things they thoroughly dislike!'
'What is amiss with my dinner-table?' the King enquired, getting very
red in the face.
'You ask what is the matter with it,' my sister replied; 'there is
not enough on it for us to eat, and what there is is cabbage and
carrots, which we detest.' Her first answer had already angered my
father, but now he gave vent to his fury. But instead of punishing
my sister he poured it all on my mother, my brother, and myself. To
begin with he threw his plate at my brother's head, who would have
been struck had he not got out of the way; a second one he threw at
me, which I also happily escaped; then torrents of abuse followed
these first signs of hostility. He reproached the Queen with having
brought up her children so badly. 'You will curse your mother,' he
said to my brother, 'for having made you such a good-for-nothing
creature.' . . . As my brother and I passed near him to leave the
room, he hit out at us with his crutch. Happily we escaped the blow,
for it would certainly have struck us down, and we at last escaped
without harm.
Yet, as the Princess Christian remarks, 'despite the almost cruel
treatment Wilhelmine received from her father, it is noticeable that
throughout her memoirs she speaks of him with the greatest affection.
She makes constant reference to his "good heart"'; and says that his
faults 'were more those of temper than of nature.' Nor could all the
misery and wretchedness of her home life dull the brightness of her
intellect. What would have made others morbid, made her satirical.
Instead of weeping over her own personal tragedies, she laughs at the
general comedy of life. Here, for instance, is her description of Peter
the Great and his wife, who arrived at Berlin in 1718:
The Czarina was small, broad, and brown-looking, without the
slightest dignity or appearance. You had only to look at her to
detect her low origin. She might have passed for a German actress,
she had decked herself out in such a manner. Her dress had been
bought second-hand, and was trimmed with some dirty looking silver
embroidery; the bodice was trimmed with precious stones, arranged in
such a manner as to represent the double eagle. She wore a dozen
orders; and round the bottom of her dress hung quantities of relics
and pictures of saints, which rattled when she walked, and reminded
one of a smartly harnessed mule. The orders too made a great noise,
knocking against each other.
The Czar, on the other hand, was tall and well grown, with a handsome
face, but his expression was coarse, and impressed one with fear. He
wore a simple sailor's dress. His wife, who spoke German very badly,
called her court jester to her aid, and spoke Russian with her. This
poor creature was a Princess Gallizin, who had been obliged to
undertake this sorry office to save her life, as she had been mixed
up in a conspiracy against the Czar, and had twice been flogged with
the knout!
* * * * *
The following day [the Czar] visited all the sights of Berlin,
amongst others the very curious collection of coins and antiques.
Amongst these last named was a statue, representing a heathen god.
It was anything but attractive, but was the most valuable in the
collection. The Czar admired it very much, and insisted on the
Czarina kissing it. On her refusing, he said to her in bad German
that she should lose her head if she did not at once obey him. Being
terrified at the Czar's anger she immediately complied with his
orders without the least hesitation. The Czar asked the King to give
him this and other statues, a request which he could not refuse. The
same thing happened about a cupboard, inlaid with amber. It was the
only one of its kind, and had cost King Frederick I. an enormous sum,
and the consternation was general on its having to be sent to
Petersburg.
This barbarous Court happily left after two days. The Queen rushed
at once to Monbijou, which she found in a state resembling that of
the fall of Jerusalem. I never saw such a sight. Everything was
destroyed, so that the Queen was obliged to rebuild the whole house.
Nor are the Margravine's descriptions of her reception as a bride in the
principality of Baireuth less amusing. Hof was the first town she came
to, and a deputation of nobles was waiting there to welcome her. This is
her account of them:
Their faces would have frightened little children, and, to add to
their beauty, they had arranged their hair to resemble the wigs that
were then in fashion. Their dresses clearly denoted the antiquity of
their families, as they were composed of heirlooms, and were cut
accordingly, so that most of them did not fit. In spite of their
costumes being the 'Court Dresses,' the gold and silver trimmings
were so black that you had a difficulty in making out of what they
were made. The manners of these nobles suited their faces and their
clothes. They might have passed for peasants. I could scarcely
restrain my laughter when I first beheld these strange figures. I
spoke to each in turn, but none of them understood what I said, and
their replies sounded to me like Hebrew, because the dialect of the
Empire is quite different from that spoken in Brandenburg.
The clergy also presented themselves. These were totally different
creatures. Round their necks they wore great ruffs, which resembled
washing baskets. They spoke very slowly, so that I might be able to
understand them better. They said the most foolish things, and it
was only with much difficulty that I was able to prevent myself from
laughing. At last I got rid of all these people, and we sat down to
dinner. I tried my best to converse with those at table, but it was
useless. At last I touched on agricultural topics, and then they
began to thaw. I was at once informed of all their different
farmsteads and herds of cattle. An almost interesting discussion
took place as to whether the oxen in the upper part of the country
were fatter than those in the lowlands.
* * * * *
I was told that as the next day was Sunday, I must spend it at Hof,
and listen to a sermon. Never before had I heard such a sermon! The
clergyman began by giving us an account of all the marriages that had
taken place from Adam's time to that of Noah. We were spared no
detail, so that the gentlemen all laughed and the poor ladies
blushed. The dinner went off as on the previous day. In the
afternoon all the ladies came to pay me their respects. Gracious
heavens! What ladies, too! They were all as ugly as the gentlemen,
and their head-dresses were so curious that swallows might have built
their nests in them.
As for Baireuth itself, and its petty Court, the picture she gives of it
is exceedingly curious. Her father-in-law, the reigning Margrave, was a
narrow-minded mediocrity, whose conversation 'resembled that of a sermon
read aloud for the purpose of sending the listener to sleep,' and he had
only two topics, Telemachus, and Amelot de la Houssaye's _Roman History_.
The Ministers, from Baron von Stein, who always said 'yes' to everything,
to Baron von Voit, who always said 'no,' were not by any means an
intellectual set of men. 'Their chief amusement,' says the Margravine,
'was drinking from morning till night,' and horses and cattle were all
they talked about. The palace itself was shabby, decayed and dirty. 'I
was like a lamb among wolves,' cries the poor Margravine; 'I was settled
in a strange country, at a Court which more resembled a peasant's farm,
surrounded by coarse, bad, dangerous, and tiresome people.'
Yet her _esprit_ never deserted her. She is always clever, witty, and
entertaining. Her stories about the endless squabbles over precedence
are extremely amusing. The society of her day cared very little for good
manners, knew, indeed, very little about them, but all questions of
etiquette were of vital importance, and the Margravine herself, though
she saw the shallowness of the whole system, was far too proud not to
assert her rights when circumstances demanded it, as the description she
gives of her visit to the Empress of Germany shows very clearly. When
this meeting was first proposed, the Margravine declined positively to
entertain the idea. 'There was no precedent,' she writes, 'of a King's
daughter and the Empress having met, and I did not know to what rights I
ought to lay claim.' Finally, however, she is induced to consent, but
she lays down three conditions for her reception:
I desired first of all that the Empress's Court should receive me at
the foot of the stairs, secondly, that she should meet me at the door
of her bedroom, and, thirdly, that she should offer me an armchair to
sit on.
* * * * *
They disputed all day over the conditions I had made. The two first
were granted me, but all that could be obtained with respect to the
third was, that the Empress would use quite a small armchair, whilst
she gave me a chair.
Next day I saw this Royal personage. I own that had I been in her
place I would have made all the rules of etiquette and ceremony the
excuse for not being obliged to appear. The Empress was small and
stout, round as a ball, very ugly, and without dignity or manner.
Her mind corresponded to her body. She was terribly bigoted, and
spent her whole day praying. The old and ugly are generally the
Almighty's portion. She received me trembling all over, and was so
upset that she could not say a word.
After some silence I began the conversation in French. She answered
me in her Austrian dialect that she could not speak in that language,
and begged I would speak in German. The conversation did not last
long, for the Austrian and low Saxon tongues are so different from
each other that to those acquainted with only one the other is
unintelligible. This is what happened to us. A third person would
have laughed at our misunderstandings, for we caught only a word here
and there, and had to guess the rest. The poor Empress was such a
slave to etiquette that she would have thought it high treason had
she spoken to me in a foreign language, though she understood French
quite well.
Many other extracts might be given from this delightful book, but from
the few that have been selected some idea can be formed of the vivacity
and picturesqueness of the Margravine's style. As for her character, it
is very well summed up by the Princess Christian, who, while admitting
that she often appears almost heartless and inconsiderate, yet claims
that, 'taken as a whole, she stands out in marked prominence among the
most gifted women of the eighteenth century, not only by her mental
powers, but by her goodness of heart, her self-sacrificing devotion, and
true friendship.' An interesting sequel to her _Memoirs_ would be her
correspondence with Voltaire, and it is to be hoped that we may shortly
see a translation of these letters from the same accomplished pen to
which we owe the present volume. {63}
_Memoirs of Wilhelmine Margravine of Baireuth_. Translated and edited by
Her Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess of
Great Britain and Ireland. (David Stott.)
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY
One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appeared
is _A Village Tragedy_ by Margaret L. Woods. To find any parallel to
this lurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy de
Maupassant. Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either of
these two great masters of fiction as her model, but there is something
in her work that recalls their method; she has not a little of their
fierce intensity, their terrible concentration, their passionless yet
poignant objectivity; like them, she seems to allow life to suggest its
own mode of presentation; and, like them, she recognizes that a frank
acceptance of the facts of life is the true basis of all modern imitative
art. The scene of Mrs. Woods's story lies in one of the villages near
Oxford; the characters are very few in number, and the plot is extremely
simple. It is a romance of modern Arcadia--a tale of the love of a
farm-labourer for a girl who, though slightly above him in social station
and education, is yet herself also a servant on a farm. True Arcadians
they are, both of them, and their ignorance and isolation serve only to
intensify the tragedy that gives the story its title. It is the fashion
nowadays to label literature, so, no doubt, Mrs. Woods's novel will be
spoken of as 'realistic.' Its realism, however, is the realism of the
artist, not of the reporter; its tact of treatment, subtlety of
perception, and fine distinction of style, make it rather a poem than a
_proces-verbal_; and though it lays bare to us the mere misery of life,
it suggests something of life's mystery also. Very delicate, too, is the
handling of external Nature. There are no formal guide-book descriptions
of scenery, nor anything of what Byron petulantly called 'twaddling about
trees,' but we seem to breathe the atmosphere of the country, to catch
the exquisite scent of the beanfields, so familiar to all who have ever
wandered through the Oxfordshire lanes in June; to hear the birds singing
in the thicket, and the sheep-bells tinkling from the hill.
Characterization, that enemy of literary form, is such an essential part
of the method of the modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almost
become to the novelist what light and shade are to the painter--the one
permanent element of style; and if the power of _A Village Tragedy_ be
due to its portrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm comes
from its Theocritean setting.
_A Village Tragedy_. By Margaret L. Woods. (Bentley and Son.)
MR. MORRIS'S COMPLETION OF THE _ODYSSEY_
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 24, 1887.)
Mr. Morris's second volume brings the great romantic epic of Greek
literature to its perfect conclusion, and although there can never be an
ultimate translation of either _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_, as each successive
age is sure to find pleasure in rendering the two poems in its own manner
and according to its own canons of taste, still it is not too much to say
that Mr. Morris's version will always be a true classic amongst our
classical translations. It is not, of course, flawless. In our notice
of the first volume we ventured to say that Mr. Morris was sometimes far
more Norse than Greek, nor does the volume that now lies before us make
us alter that opinion. The particular metre, also, selected by Mr.
Morris, although admirably adapted to express 'the strong-winged music of
Homer,' as far as its flow and freedom are concerned, misses something of
its dignity and calm. Here, it must be admitted, we feel a distinct
loss, for there is in Homer not a little of Milton's lofty manner, and if
swiftness be an essential of the Greek hexameter, stateliness is one of
its distinguishing qualities in Homer's hands. This defect, however, if
we must call it a defect, seems almost unavoidable, as for certain
metrical reasons a majestic movement in English verse is necessarily a
slow movement; and, after all that can be said is said, how really
admirable is this whole translation! If we set aside its noble qualities
as a poem and look on it purely from the scholar's point of view, how
straightforward it is, how honest and direct! Its fidelity to the
original is far beyond that of any other verse-translation in our
literature, and yet it is not the fidelity of a pedant to his text but
rather the fine loyalty of poet to poet.
When Mr. Morris's first volume appeared many of the critics complained
that his occasional use of archaic words and unusual expressions robbed
his version of the true Homeric simplicity. This, however, is not a very
felicitous criticism, for while Homer is undoubtedly simple in his
clearness and largeness of vision, his wonderful power of direct
narration, his wholesome sanity, and the purity and precision of his
method, simple in language he undoubtedly is not. What he was to his
contemporaries we have, of course, no means of judging, but we know that
the Athenian of the fifth century B.C. found him in many places difficult
to understand, and when the creative age was succeeded by the age of
criticism and Alexandria began to take the place of Athens as the centre
of culture for the Hellenistic world, Homeric dictionaries and glossaries
seem to have been constantly published. Indeed, Athenaeus tells us of a
wonderful Byzantine blue-stocking, a _precieuse_ from the Propontis, who
wrote a long hexameter poem, called _Mnemosyne_, full of ingenious
commentaries on difficulties in Homer, and in fact, it is evident that,
as far as the language is concerned, such a phrase as 'Homeric
simplicity' would have rather amazed an ancient Greek. As for Mr.
Morris's tendency to emphasize the etymological meaning of words, a point
commented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number of
_Macmillan_'_s Magazine_, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete
accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all
early poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a
system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a
ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican
monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the
spot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then keenly
conscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, is
full of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe to it no small
portion of its poetic power and charm. These old words, then, and this
old use of words which we find in Mr. Morris's _Odyssey_ can be amply
justified upon historical grounds, and as for their artistic effect, it
is quite excellent. Pope tried to put Homer into the ordinary language
of his day, with what result we know only too well; but Mr. Morris, who
uses his archaisms with the tact of a true artist, and to whom indeed
they seem to come absolutely naturally, has succeeded in giving to his
version by their aid that touch, not of 'quaintness,' for Homer is never
quaint, but of old-world romance and old-world beauty, which we moderns
find so pleasurable, and to which the Greeks themselves were so keenly
sensitive.
As for individual passages of special merit, Mr. Morris's translation is
no robe of rags sewn with purple patches for critics to sample. Its real
value lies in the absolute rightness and coherence of the whole, in the
grand architecture of the swift, strong verse, and in the fact that the
standard is not merely high but everywhere sustained. It is impossible,
however, to resist the temptation of quoting Mr. Morris's rendering of
that famous passage in the twenty-third book of the epic, in which
Odysseus eludes the trap laid for him by Penelope, whose very faith in
the certainty of her husband's return makes her sceptical of his identity
when he stands before her; an instance, by the way, of Homer's wonderful
psychological knowledge of human nature, as it is always the dreamer
himself who is most surprised when his dream comes true.
Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart,
Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art:
'O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me!
Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it
be,
For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here,
Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.
But no mortal man is living, how strong soe'er in his youth,
Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth
Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone.
In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree full-grown,
That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about,
So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out
With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead,
And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead.
Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree,
And, shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly,
I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto,
And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through.
So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly,
And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory,
And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made
bright.
Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright
If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place
Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base.'
These last twelve books of the _Odyssey_ have not the same marvel of
romance, adventure and colour that we find in the earlier part of the
epic. There is nothing in them that we can compare to the exquisite
idyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops'
cave. Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirens
may sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he stands
on the threshold of his hall. Yet, for sheer intensity of passionate
power, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterly
dramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled. Indeed,
they show very clearly how it was that, as Greek art developed, the epos
passed into the drama. The whole scheme of the argument, the return of
the hero in disguise, his disclosure of himself to his son, his terrible
vengeance on his enemies and his final recognition by his wife, reminds
us of the plot of more than one Greek play, and shows us what the great
Athenian poet meant when he said that his own dramas were merely scraps
from Homer's table. In rendering this splendid poem into English verse,
Mr. Morris has done our literature a service that can hardly be
over-estimated, and it is pleasant to think that, even should the
classics be entirely excluded from our educational systems, the English
boy will still be able to know something of Homer's delightful tales, to
catch an echo of his grand music and to wander with the wise Odysseus
round 'the shores of old romance.'
_The Odyssey of Homer_. Done into English Verse by William Morris,
Author of _The Earthly Paradise_. Volume II. (Reeves and Turner.)
MRS. SOMERVILLE
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 30, 1887.)
Phyllis Browne's Life of Mrs. Somerville forms part of a very interesting
little series, called 'The World's Workers'--a collection of short
biographies catholic enough to include personalities so widely different
as Turner and Richard Cobden, Handel and Sir Titus Salt, Robert
Stephenson and Florence Nightingale, and yet possessing a certain
definite aim. As a mathematician and a scientist, the translator and
popularizer of _La Mecanique Celeste_, and the author of an important
book on physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known.
The scientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust stands
in the hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women's Colleges at
Oxford bears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife and
a mother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidity
is the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual women
must of necessity be helpless with their hands, cannot do better than
read Phyllis Browne's pleasant little book, in which they will find that
the greatest woman-mathematician of any age was a clever needlewoman, a
good housekeeper, and a most skilful cook. Indeed, Mrs. Somerville seems
to have been quite renowned for her cookery. The discoverers of the
North-West Passage christened an island 'Somerville,' not as a tribute to
the distinguished mathematician, but as a recognition of the excellence
of some orange marmalade which the distinguished mathematician had
prepared with her own hands and presented to the ships before they left
England; and to the fact that she was able to make currant jelly at a
very critical moment she owed the affection of some of her husband's
relatives, who up to that time had been rather prejudiced against her on
the ground that she was merely an unpractical Blue-stocking.
Nor did her scientific knowledge ever warp or dull the tenderness and
humanity of her nature. For birds and animals she had always a great
love. We hear of her as a little girl watching with eager eyes the
swallows as they built their nests in summer or prepared for their flight
in the autumn; and when snow was on the ground she used to open the
windows to let the robins hop in and pick crumbs on the breakfast-table.
On one occasion she went with her father on a tour in the Highlands, and
found on her return that a pet goldfinch, which had been left in the
charge of the servants, had been neglected by them and had died of
starvation. She was almost heart-broken at the event, and in writing her
_Recollections_, seventy years after, she mentioned it and said that, as
she wrote, she felt deep pain. Her chief pet in her old age was a
mountain sparrow, which used to perch on her arm and go to sleep there
while she was writing. One day the sparrow fell into the water-jug and
was drowned, to the great grief of its mistress who could hardly be
consoled for its loss, though later on we hear of a beautiful paroquet
taking the place of _le moineau d'Uranie_, and becoming Mrs. Somerville's
constant companion. She was also very energetic, Phyllis Browne tells
us, in trying to get a law passed in the Italian Parliament for the
protection of animals, and said once, with reference to this subject, 'We
English cannot boast of humanity so long as our sportsmen find pleasure
in shooting down tame pigeons as they fly terrified out of a cage'--a
remark with which I entirely agree. Mr. Herbert's Bill for the
protection of land birds gave her immense pleasure, though, to quote her
own words, she was 'grieved to find that "the lark, which at heaven's
gate sings," is thought unworthy of man's protection'; and she took a
great fancy to a gentleman who, on being told of the number of singing
birds that is eaten in Italy--nightingales, goldfinches, and
robins--exclaimed in horror, 'What! robins! our household birds! I would
as soon eat a child!' Indeed, she believed to some extent in the
immortality of animals on the ground that, if animals have no future, it
would seem as if some were created for uncompensated misery--an idea
which does not seem to me to be either extravagant or fantastic, though
it must be admitted that the optimism on which it is based receives
absolutely no support from science.
On the whole, Phyllis Browne's book is very pleasant reading. Its only
fault is that it is far too short, and this is a fault so rare in modern
literature that it almost amounts to a distinction. However, Phyllis
Browne has managed to crowd into the narrow limits at her disposal a
great many interesting anecdotes. The picture she gives of Mrs.
Somerville working away at her translation of Laplace in the same room
with her children is very charming, and reminds one of what is told of
George Sand; there is an amusing account of Mrs. Somerville's visit to
the widow of the young Pretender, the Countess of Albany, who, after
talking with her for some time, exclaimed, 'So you don't speak Italian.
You must have had a very bad education'! And this story about the
Waverley Novels may possibly be new to some of my readers:
A very amusing circumstance in connection with Mrs. Somerville's
acquaintance with Sir Walter arose out of the childish
inquisitiveness of Woronzow Greig, Mrs. Somerville's little boy.
During the time Mrs. Somerville was visiting Abbotsford the Waverley
Novels were appearing, and were creating a great sensation; yet even
Scott's intimate friends did not know that he was the author; he
enjoyed keeping the affair a mystery. But little Woronzow discovered
what he was about. One day when Mrs. Somerville was talking about a
novel that had just been published, Woronzow said, 'I knew all these
stories long ago, for Mr. Scott writes on the dinner-table; when he
has finished he puts the green cloth with the papers in a corner of
the dining-room, and when he goes out Charlie Scott and I read the
stories.'
Phyllis Browne remarks that this incident shows 'that persons who want to
keep a secret ought to be very careful when children are about'; but the
story seems to me to be far too charming to require any moral of the
kind.
Bound up in the same volume is a Life of Miss Mary Carpenter, also
written by Phyllis Browne. Miss Carpenter does not seem to me to have
the charm and fascination of Mrs. Somerville. There is always something
about her that is formal, limited, and precise. When she was about two
years old she insisted on being called 'Doctor Carpenter' in the nursery;
at the age of twelve she is described by a friend as a sedate little
girl, who always spoke like a book; and before she entered on her
educational schemes she wrote down a solemn dedication of herself to the
service of humanity. However, she was one of the practical, hardworking
saints of the nineteenth century, and it is no doubt quite right that the
saints should take themselves very seriously. It is only fair also to
remember that her work of rescue and reformation was carried on under
great difficulties. Here, for instance, is the picture Miss Cobbe gives
us of one of the Bristol night-schools:
It was a wonderful spectacle to see Mary Carpenter sitting patiently
before the large school gallery in St. James's Back, teaching,
singing, and praying with the wild street-boys, in spite of endless
interruptions caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles at any
object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out
'Amen' in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising _en masse_ and
tearing like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the
gallery, round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into
the street. These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite
good humour.
Her own account is somewhat pleasanter, and shows that 'the troop of
bisons in hob-nailed shoes' was not always so barbarous.
I had taken to my class on the preceding week some specimens of ferns
neatly gummed on white paper. . . . This time I took a piece of
coal-shale, with impressions of ferns, to show them. . . . I told
each to examine the specimen, and tell me what he thought it was. W.
gave so bright a smile that I saw he knew; none of the others could
tell; he said they were ferns, like what I showed them last week, but
he thought they were chiselled on the stone. Their surprise and
pleasure were great when I explained the matter to them.
The history of Joseph: they all found a difficulty in realizing that
this had actually occurred. One asked if Egypt existed now, and if
people lived in it. When I told them that buildings now stood which
had been erected about the time of Joseph, one said that it was
impossible, as they must have fallen down ere this. I showed them
the form of a pyramid, and they were satisfied. One asked if _all_
books were true.
The story of Macbeth impressed them very much. They knew the name of
Shakespeare, having seen his name over a public-house.
A boy defined conscience as 'a thing a gentleman hasn't got, who, when a
boy finds his purse and gives it back to him, doesn't give the boy
sixpence.'
Another boy was asked, after a Sunday evening lecture on 'Thankfulness,'
what pleasure he enjoyed most in the course of a year. He replied
candidly, 'Cock-fightin', ma'am; there's a pit up by the "Black Boy" as
is worth anythink in Brissel.'
There is something a little pathetic in the attempt to civilize the rough
street-boy by means of the refining influence of ferns and fossils, and
it is difficult to help feeling that Miss Carpenter rather over-estimated
the value of elementary education. The poor are not to be fed upon
facts. Even Shakespeare and the Pyramids are not sufficient; nor is
there much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also give
them those conditions under which culture can be realized. In these
cold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using the
word in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture,
not in books.
Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognize that Mary Carpenter gave
to the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. In
early life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness of
being a wife and a mother; but later she became content that her
affection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse in
the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,'
seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, she
rather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the best
public work. 'It is quite striking,' she says in one of her letters, 'to
observe how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed of
late years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, have
quite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb all
their powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them by
God, and want no more.' The whole passage is extremely interesting, and
the phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one of
Charles Lamb.
_Mrs. Somerville_ and _Mary Carpenter_. By Phyllis Browne, Author of
_What Girls Can Do_, _etc._ (Cassell and Co.)
ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 16, 1887.)
In society, says Mr. Mahaffy, every civilized man and woman ought to feel
it their duty to say something, even when there is hardly anything to be
said, and, in order to encourage this delightful art of brilliant
chatter, he has published a social guide without which no _debutante_ or
dandy should ever dream of going out to dine. Not that Mr. Mahaffy's
book can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular. In discussing
this important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed the
scientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he has
adopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible.
There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration,
and the reader is left to put the Professor's abstract rules into
practice, without either the examples or the warnings of history to
encourage or to dissuade him in his reckless career. Still, the book can
be warmly recommended to all who propose to substitute the vice of
verbosity for the stupidity of silence. It fascinates in spite of its
form and pleases in spite of its pedantry, and is the nearest approach,
that we know of, in modern literature to meeting Aristotle at an
afternoon tea.
As regards physical conditions, the only one that is considered by Mr.
Mahaffy as being absolutely essential to a good conversationalist, is the
possession of a musical voice. Some learned writers have been of opinion
that a slight stammer often gives peculiar zest to conversation, but Mr.
Mahaffy rejects this view and is extremely severe on every eccentricity
from a native brogue to an artificial catchword. With his remarks on the
latter point, the meaningless repetition of phrases, we entirely agree.
Nothing can be more irritating than the scientific person who is always
saying '_Exactly so_,' or the commonplace person who ends every sentence
with '_Don't you know_?' or the pseudo-artistic person who murmurs
'_Charming_, _charming_,' on the smallest-provocation. It is, however,
with the mental and moral qualifications for conversation that Mr.
Mahaffy specially deals. Knowledge he, naturally, regards as an absolute
essential, for, as he most justly observes, 'an ignorant man is seldom
agreeable, except as a butt.' Upon the other hand, strict accuracy
should be avoided. 'Even a consummate liar,' says Mr. Mahaffy, is a
better ingredient in a company than 'the scrupulously truthful man, who
weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every
inaccuracy.' The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not
instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized
being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story
which is told simply for the amusement of the company. Mr. Mahaffy,
however, makes an exception in favour of the eminent specialist and tells
us that intelligent questions addressed to an astronomer, or a pure
mathematician, will elicit many curious facts which will pleasantly
beguile the time. Here, in the interest of Society, we feel bound to
enter a formal protest. Nobody, even in the provinces, should ever be
allowed to ask an intelligent question about pure mathematics across a
dinner-table. A question of this kind is quite as bad as inquiring
suddenly about the state of a man's soul, a sort of _coup_ which, as Mr.
Mahaffy remarks elsewhere, 'many pious people have actually thought a
decent introduction to a conversation.'
As for the moral qualifications of a good talker, Mr. Mahaffy, following
the example of his great master, warns us against any disproportionate
excess of virtue. Modesty, for instance, may easily become a social
vice, and to be continually apologizing for one's ignorance or stupidity
is a grave injury to conversation, for, 'what we want to learn from each
member is his free opinion on the subject in hand, not his own estimate
of the value of that opinion.' Simplicity, too, is not without its
dangers. The _enfant terrible_, with his shameless love of truth, the
raw country-bred girl who always says what she means, and the plain,
blunt man who makes a point of speaking his mind on every possible
occasion, without ever considering whether he has a mind at all, are the
fatal examples of what simplicity leads to. Shyness may be a form of
vanity, and reserve a development of pride, and as for sympathy, what can
be more detestable than the man, or woman, who insists on agreeing with
everybody, and so makes 'a discussion, which implies differences in
opinion,' absolutely impossible? Even the unselfish listener is apt to
become a bore. 'These silent people,' says Mr. Mahaffy, 'not only take
all they can get in Society for nothing, but they take it without the
smallest gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those who
have laboured for their amusement.' Tact, which is an exquisite sense of
the symmetry of things, is, according to Mr. Mahaffy, the highest and
best of all the moral conditions for conversation. The man of tact, he
most wisely remarks, 'will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard' in
the company of a woman who is a man's third wife; he will never be guilty
of talking like a book, but will rather avoid too careful an attention to
grammar and the rounding of periods; he will cultivate the art of
graceful interruption, so as to prevent a subject being worn threadbare
by the aged or the inexperienced; and should he be desirous of telling a
story, he will look round and consider each member of the party, and if
there be a single stranger present will forgo the pleasure of anecdotage
rather than make the social mistake of hurting even one of the guests.
As for prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt for
it and tells us of a certain college don (let us hope not at Oxford or
Cambridge) who always carried a jest-book in his pocket and had to refer
to it when he wished to make a repartee. Great wits, too, are often very
cruel, and great humorists often very vulgar, so it will be better to try
and 'make good conversation without any large help from these brilliant
but dangerous gifts.'
In a _tete-a-tete_ one should talk about persons, and in general Society
about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium,
but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always
ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Really
domestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtues
in home life have dulled their interest in outer things. The very best
mothers will insist on chattering of their babies and prattling about
infant education. In fact, most women do not take sufficient interest in
politics, just as most men are deficient in general reading. Still,
anybody can be made to talk, except the very obstinate, and even a
commercial traveller may be drawn out and become quite interesting. As
for Society small talk, it is impossible, Mr. Mahaffy tells us, for any
sound theory of conversation to depreciate gossip, 'which is perhaps the
main factor in agreeable talk throughout Society.' The retailing of
small personal points about great people always gives pleasure, and if
one is not fortunate enough to be an Arctic traveller or an escaped
Nihilist, the best thing one can do is to relate some anecdote of 'Prince
Bismarck, or King Victor Emmanuel, or Mr. Gladstone.' In the case of
meeting a genius and a Duke at dinner, the good talker will try to raise
himself to the level of the former and to bring the latter down to his
own level. To succeed among one's social superiors one must have no
hesitation in contradicting them. Indeed, one should make bold
criticisms and introduce a bright and free tone into a Society whose
grandeur and extreme respectability make it, Mr. Mahaffy remarks, as
pathetically as inaccurately, 'perhaps somewhat dull.' The best
conversationalists are those whose ancestors have been bilingual, like
the French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within the
reach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, or
whose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity of
demeanour and a general dullness of mind.
These are the broad principles contained in Mr. Mahaffy's clever little
book, and many of them will, no doubt, commend themselves to our readers.
The maxim, 'If you find the company dull, blame yourself,' seems to us
somewhat optimistic, and we have no sympathy at all with the professional
storyteller who is really a great bore at a dinner-table; but Mr. Mahaffy
is quite right in insisting that no bright social intercourse is possible
without equality, and it is no objection to his book to say that it will
not teach people how to talk cleverly. It is not logic that makes men
reasonable, nor the science of ethics that makes men good, but it is
always useful to analyse, to formularize and to investigate. The only
thing to be regretted in the volume is the arid and jejune character of
the style. If Mr. Mahaffy would only write as he talks, his book would
be much pleasanter reading.
_The Principles of the Art of Conversation_: _A Social Essay_. By J. P.
Mahaffy. (Macmillan and Co.)
EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN IRELAND
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 17, 1887.)
The want of a good series of popular handbooks on Irish art has long been
felt, the works of Sir William Wilde, Petrie and others being somewhat
too elaborate for the ordinary student; so we are glad to notice the
appearance, under the auspicesof the Committee of Council on Education,
of Miss Margaret Stokes's useful little volume on the early Christian art
of her country. There is, of course, nothing particularly original in
Miss Stokes's book, nor can she be said to be a very attractive or
pleasing writer, but it is unfair to look for originality in primers, and
the charm of the illustrations fully atones for the somewhat heavy and
pedantic character of the style.
This early Christian art of Ireland is full of interest to the artist,
the archaeologist and the historian. In its rudest forms, such as the
little iron hand-bell, the plain stone chalice and the rough wooden
staff, it brings us back to the simplicity of the primitive Christian
Church, while to the period of its highest development we owe the great
masterpieces of Celtic metal-work. The stone chalice is now replaced by
the chalice of silver and gold; the iron bell has its jewel-studded
shrine, and the rough staff its gorgeous casing; rich caskets and
splendid bindings preserve the holy books of the Saints and, instead of
the rudely carved symbol of the early missionaries, we have such
beautiful works of art as the processional cross of Cong Abbey.
Beautiful this cross certainly is with its delicate intricacy of
ornamentation, its grace of proportion and its marvel of mere
workmanship, nor is there any doubt about its history. From the
inscriptions on it, which are corroborated by the annals of Innisfallen
and the book of Clonmacnoise, we learn that it was made for King Turlough
O'Connor by a native artist under the superintendence of Bishop O'Duffy,
its primary object being to enshrine a portion of the true cross that was
sent to the king in 1123. Brought to Cong some years afterwards,
probably by the archbishop, who died there in 1150, it was concealed at
the time of the Reformation, but at the beginning of the present century
was still in the possession of the last abbot, and at his death it was
purchased by Professor MacCullagh and presented by him to the museum of
the Royal Irish Academy. This wonderful work is alone well worth a visit
to Dublin, but not less lovely is the chalice of Ardagh, a two-handled
silver cup, absolutely classical in its perfect purity of form, and
decorated with gold and amber and crystal and with varieties of
_cloisonne_ and _champleve_ enamel. There is no mention of this cup, or
of the so-called Tara brooch, in ancient Irish history. All that we know
of them is that they were found accidentally, the former by a boy who was
digging potatoes near the old Rath of Ardagh, the latter by a poor child
who picked it up near the seashore. They both, however, belong probably
to the tenth century.
Of all these works, as well as of the bell shrines, book-covers,
sculptured crosses and illuminated designs in manuscripts, excellent
pictures are given in Miss Stokes's handbook. The extremely interesting
_Fiachal Phadrig_, or shrine of St. Patrick's tooth, might have been
figured and noted as an interesting example of the survival of ornament,
and one of the old miniatures of the scribe or Evangelist writing would
have given an additional interest to the chapter on Irish MSS. On the
whole, however, the book is wonderfully well illustrated, and the
ordinary art student will be able to get some useful suggestions from it.
Indeed, Miss Stokes, echoing the aspirations of many of the great Irish
archaeologists, looks forward to the revival of a native Irish school in
architecture, sculpture, metal-work and painting. Such an aspiration is,
of course, very laudable, but there is always a danger of these revivals
being merely artificial reproductions, and it may be questioned whether
the peculiar forms of Irish ornamentation could be made at all expressive
of the modern spirit. A recent writer on house decoration has gravely
suggested that the British householder should take his meals in a Celtic
dining-room adorned with a dado of Ogham inscriptions, and such wicked
proposals may serve as a warning to all who fancy that the reproduction
of a form necessarily implies a revival of the spirit that gave the form
life and meaning, and who fail to recognize the difference between art
and anachronisms. Miss Stokes's proposal for an ark-shaped church in
which the mural painter is to repeat the arcades and 'follow the
architectural compositions of the grand pages of the Eusebian canons in
the Book of Kells,' has, of course, nothing grotesque about it, but it is
not probable that the artistic genius of the Irish people will, even when
'the land has rest,' find in such interesting imitations its healthiest
or best expression. Still, there are certain elements of beauty in
ancient Irish art that the modern artist would do well to study. The
value of the intricate illuminations in the Book of Kells, as far as
their adaptability to modern designs and modern material goes, has been
very much overrated, but in the ancient Irish torques, brooches, pins,
clasps and the like, the modern goldsmith will find a rich and,
comparatively speaking, an untouched field; and now that the Celtic
spirit has become the leaven of our politics, there is no reason why it
should not contribute something to our decorative art. This result,
however, will not be obtained by a patriotic misuse of old designs, and
even the most enthusiastic Home Ruler must not be allowed to decorate his
dining-room with a dado of Oghams.
_Early Christian Art in Ireland_. By Margaret Stokes. (Published for
the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall.)
MADAME RISTORI
(_Woman's World_, January 1888.)
Madame Ristori's _Etudes et Souvenirs_ is one of the most delightful
books on the stage that has appeared since Lady Martin's charming volume
on the Shakespearian heroines. It is often said that actors leave
nothing behind them but a barren name and a withered wreath; that they
subsist simply upon the applause of the moment; that they are ultimately
doomed to the oblivion of old play-bills; and that their art, in a word,
dies with them, and shares their own mortality. 'Chippendale, the
cabinet-maker,' says the clever author of _Obiter Dicta_, 'is more potent
than Garrick the actor. The vivacity of the latter no longer charms
(save in Boswell); the chairs of the former still render rest impossible
in a hundred homes.' This view, however, seems to me to be exaggerated.
It rests on the assumption that acting is simply a mimetic art, and takes
no account of its imaginative and intellectual basis. It is quite true,
of course, that the personality of the player passes away, and with it
that pleasure-giving power by virtue of which the arts exist. Yet the
artistic method of a great actor survives. It lives on in tradition, and
becomes part of the science of a school. It has all the intellectual
life of a principle. In England, at the present moment, the influence of
Garrick on our actors is far stronger than that of Reynolds on our
painters of portraits, and if we turn to France it is easy to discern the
tradition of Talma, but where is the tradition of David?
Madame Ristori's memoirs, then, have not merely the charm that always
attaches to the autobiography of a brilliant and beautiful woman, but
have also a definite and distinct artistic value. Her analysis of the
character of Lady Macbeth, for instance, is full of psychological
interest, and shows us that the subtleties of Shakespearian criticism are
not necessarily confined to those who have views on weak endings and
rhyming tags, but may also be suggested by the art of acting itself. The
author of _Obiter Dicta_ seeks to deny to actors all critical insight and
all literary appreciation. The actor, he tells us, is art's slave, not
her child, and lives entirely outside literature, 'with its words for
ever on his lips, and none of its truths engraven on his heart.' But
this seems to me to be a harsh and reckless generalization. Indeed, so
far from agreeing with it, I would be inclined to say that the mere
artistic process of acting, the translation of literature back again into
life, and the presentation of thought under the conditions of action, is
in itself a critical method of a very high order; nor do I think that a
study of the careers of our great English actors will really sustain the
charge of want of literary appreciation. It may be true that actors pass
too quickly away from the form, in order to get at the feeling that gives
the form beauty and colour, and that, where the literary critic studies
the language, the actor looks simply for the life; and yet, how well the
great actors have appreciated that marvellous music of words, which in
Shakespeare, at any rate, is so vital an element of poetic power, if,
indeed, it be not equally so in the case of all who have any claim to be
regarded as true poets. 'The sensual life of verse,' says Keats, in a
dramatic criticism published in the _Champion_, 'springs warm from the
lips of Kean, and to one learned in Shakespearian hieroglyphics, learned
in the spiritual portion of those lines to which Kean adds a sensual
grandeur, his tongue must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and left
them honeyless.' This particular feeling, of which Keats speaks, is
familiar to all who have heard Salvini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ristori, or any
of the great artists of our day, and it is a feeling that one cannot, I
think, gain merely by reading the passage to oneself. For my own part, I
must confess that it was not until I heard Sarah Bernhardt in _Phedre_
that I absolutely realized the sweetness of the music of Racine. As for
Mr. Birrell's statement that actors have the words of literature for ever
on their lips, but none of its truths engraved on their hearts, all that
one can say is that, if it be true, it is a defect which actors share
with the majority of literary critics.
The account Madame Ristori gives of her own struggles, voyages and
adventures, is very pleasant reading indeed. The child of poor actors,
she made her first appearance when she was three months old, being
brought on in a hamper as a New Year's gift to a selfish old gentleman
who would not forgive his daughter for having married for love. As,
however, she began to cry long before the hamper was opened, the comedy
became a farce, to the immense amusement of the public. She next
appeared in a mediaeval melodrama, being then three years of age, and was
so terrified at the machinations of the villain that she ran away at the
most critical moment. However, her stage-fright seems to have
disappeared, and we find her playing Silvio Pellico's _Francesca da
Rimini_ at fifteen, and at eighteen making her _debut_ as Marie Stuart.
At this time the naturalism of the French method was gradually displacing
the artificial elocution and academic poses of the Italian school of
acting. Madame Ristori seems to have tried to combine simplicity with
style, and the passion of nature with the self-restraint of the artist.
'J'ai voulu fondre les deux manieres,' she tells us, 'car je sentais que
toutes choses etant susceptibles de progres, l'art dramatique aussi etait
appele a subir des transformations.' The natural development, however,
of the Italian drama was almost arrested by the ridiculous censorship of
plays then existing in each town under Austrian or Papal rule. The
slightest allusion to the sentiment of nationality or the spirit of
freedom was prohibited. Even the word _patria_ was regarded as
treasonable, and Madame Ristori tells us an amusing story of the
indignation of a censor who was asked to license a play, in which a dumb
man returns home after an absence of many years, and on his entrance upon
the stage makes gestures expressive of his joy in seeing his native land
once more. 'Gestures of this kind,' said the censor, 'are obviously of a
very revolutionary tendency, and cannot possibly be allowed. The only
gestures that I could think of permitting would be gestures expressive of
a dumb man's delight in scenery generally.' The stage directions were
accordingly altered, and the word 'landscape' substituted for 'native
land'! Another censor was extremely severe on an unfortunate poet who
had used the expression 'the beautiful Italian sky,' and explained to him
that 'the beautiful Lombardo-Venetian sky' was the proper official
expression to use. Poor Gregory in _Romeo and Juliet_ had to be
rechristened, because Gregory is a name dear to the Popes; and the
Here I have a pilot's thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come,
of the first witch in _Macbeth_ was ruthlessly struck out as containing
an obvious allusion to the steersman of St. Peter's bark. Finally, bored
and bothered by the political and theological Dogberrys of the day, with
their inane prejudices, their solemn stupidity, and their entire
ignorance of the conditions necessary for the growth of sane and healthy
art, Madame Ristori made up her mind to leave the stage. She, however,
was extremely anxious to appear once before a Parisian audience, Paris
being at that time the centre of dramatic activity, and after some
consideration left Italy for France in the year 1855. There she seems to
have been a great success, particularly in the part of Myrrha; classical
without being cold, artistic without being academic, she brought to the
interpretation of the character of Alfieri's great heroine the
colour-element of passion, the form-element of style. Jules Janin was
loud in his praises, the Emperor begged Ristori to join the troupe of the
Comedie Francaise, and Rachel, with the strange narrow jealousy of her
nature, trembled for her laurels. Myrrha was followed by Marie Stuart,
and Marie Stuart by Medea. In the latter part Madame Ristori excited the
greatest enthusiasm. Ary Scheffer designed her costumes for her; and the
Niobe that stands in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, suggested to Madame
Ristori her famous pose in the scene with the children. She would not
consent, however, to remain in France, and we find her subsequently
playing in almost every country in the world from Egypt to Mexico, from
Denmark to Honolulu. Her representations of classical plays seem to have
been always immensely admired. When she played at Athens, the King
offered to arrange for a performance in the beautiful old theatre of
Dionysos, and during her tour in Portugal she produced _Medea_ before the
University of Coimbra. Her description of the latter engagement is
extremely interesting. On her arrival at the University, she was
received by the entire body of the undergraduates, who still wear a
costume almost mediaeval in character. Some of them came on the stage in
the course of the play as the handmaidens of Creusa, hiding their black
beards beneath heavy veils, and as soon as they had finished their parts
they took their places gravely among the audience, to Madame Ristori's
horror, still in their Greek dress, but with their veils thrown back and
smoking long cigars. 'Ce n'est pas la premiere fois,' she says, 'que
j'ai du empecher, par un effort de volonte, la tragedie de se terminer en
farce.' Very interesting, also, is her account of the production of
Montanelli's _Camma_, and she tells an amusing story of the arrest of the
author by the French police on the charge of murder, in consequence of a
telegram she sent to him in which the words 'body of the victim'
occurred. Indeed, the whole book is full of cleverly written stories,
and admirable criticisms on dramatic art. I have quoted from the French
version, which happens to be the one that lies before me, but whether in
French or Italian the book is one of the most fascinating autobiographies
that has appeared for some time, even in an age like ours when literary
egotism has been brought to such an exquisite pitch of perfection.
_Etudes et Souvenirs_. By Madame Ristori. (Paul Ollendorff.)
ENGLISH POETESSES
(_Queen_, December 8, 1888.)
England has given to the world one great poetess, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. By her side Mr. Swinburne would place Miss Christina Rossetti,
whose New Year hymn he describes as so much the noblest of sacred poems
in our language, that there is none which comes near it enough to stand
second. 'It is a hymn,' he tells us, 'touched as with the fire, and
bathed as in the light of sunbeams, tuned as to chords and cadences of
refluent sea-music beyond reach of harp and organ, large echoes of the
serene and sonorous tides of heaven.' Much as I admire Miss Rossetti's
work, her subtle choice of words, her rich imagery, her artistic naivete,
wherein curious notes of strangeness and simplicity are fantastically
blended together, I cannot but think that Mr. Swinburne has, with noble
and natural loyalty, placed her on too lofty a pedestal. To me, she is
simply a very delightful artist in poetry. This is indeed something so
rare that when we meet it we cannot fail to love it, but it is not
everything. Beyond it and above it are higher and more sunlit heights of
song, a larger vision, and an ampler air, a music at once more passionate
and more profound, a creative energy that is born of the spirit, a winged
rapture that is born of the soul, a force and fervour of mere utterance
that has all the wonder of the prophet, and not a little of the
consecration of the priest.
Mrs. Browning is unapproachable by any woman who has ever touched lyre or
blown through reed since the days of the great AEolian poetess. But
Sappho, who to the antique world was a pillar of flame, is to us but a
pillar of shadow. Of her poems, burnt with other most precious work by
Byzantine Emperor and by Roman Pope, only a few fragments remain.
Possibly they lie mouldering in the scented darkness of an Egyptian tomb,
clasped in the withered hand of some long-dead lover. Some Greek monk at
Athos may even now be poring over an ancient manuscript, whose crabbed
characters conceal lyric or ode by her whom the Greeks spoke of as 'the
Poetess' just as they termed Homer 'the Poet,' who was to them the tenth
Muse, the flower of the Graces, the child of Eros, and the pride of
Hellas--Sappho, with the sweet voice, the bright, beautiful eyes, the
dark hyacinth coloured hair. But, practically, the work of the
marvellous singer of Lesbos is entirely lost to us.
We have a few rose-leaves out of her garden, that is all. Literature
nowadays survives marble and bronze, but in the old days, in spite of the
Roman poet's noble boast, it was not so. The fragile clay vases of the
Greeks still keep for us pictures of Sappho, delicately painted in black
and red and white; but of her song we have only the echo of an echo.
Of all the women of history, Mrs. Browning is the only one that we could
name in any possible or remote conjunction with Sappho.
Sappho was undoubtedly a far more flawless and perfect artist. She
stirred the whole antique world more than Mrs. Browning ever stirred our
modern age. Never had Love such a singer. Even in the few lines that
remain to us the passion seems to scorch and burn. But, as unjust Time,
who has crowned her with the barren laurels of fame, has twined with them
the dull poppies of oblivion, let us turn from the mere memory of a
poetess to one whose song still remains to us as an imperishable glory to
our literature; to her who heard the cry of the children from dark mine
and crowded factory, and made England weep over its little ones; who, in
the feigned sonnets from the Portuguese, sang of the spiritual mystery of
Love, and of the intellectual gifts that Love brings to the soul; who had
faith in all that is worthy, and enthusiasm for all that is great, and
pity for all that suffers; who wrote the _Vision of Poets_ and _Casa
Guidi Windows_ and _Aurora Leigh_.
As one, to whom I owe my love of poetry no less than my love of country,
said of her:
Still on our ears
The clear 'Excelsior' from a woman's lip
Rings out across the Apennines, although
The woman's brow lies pale and cold in death
With all the mighty marble dead in Florence.
For while great songs can stir the hearts of men,
Spreading their full vibrations through the world
In ever-widening circles till they reach
The Throne of God, and song becomes a prayer,
And prayer brings down the liberating strength
That kindles nations to heroic deeds,
She lives--the great-souled poetess who saw
From Casa Guidi windows Freedom dawn
On Italy, and gave the glory back
In sunrise hymns to all Humanity!
She lives indeed, and not alone in the heart of Shakespeare's England,
but in the heart of Dante's Italy also. To Greek literature she owed her
scholarly culture, but modern Italy created her human passion for
Liberty. When she crossed the Alps she became filled with a new ardour,
and from that fine, eloquent mouth, that we can still see in her
portraits, broke forth such a noble and majestic outburst of lyrical song
as had not been heard from woman's lips for more than two thousand years.
It is pleasant to think that an English poetess was to a certain extent a
real factor in bringing about that unity of Italy that was Dante's dream,
and if Florence drove her great singer into exile, she at least welcomed
within her walls the later singer that England had sent to her.
If one were asked the chief qualities of Mrs. Browning's work, one would
say, as Mr. Swinburne said of Byron's, its sincerity and its strength.
Faults it, of course, possesses. 'She would rhyme moon to table,' used
to be said of her in jest; and certainly no more monstrous rhymes are to
be found in all literature than some of those we come across in Mrs.
Browning's poems. But her ruggedness was never the result of
carelessness. It was deliberate, as her letters to Mr. Horne show very
clearly. She refused to sandpaper her muse. She disliked facile
smoothness and artificial polish. In her very rejection of art she was
an artist. She intended to produce a certain effect by certain means,
and she succeeded; and her indifference to complete assonance in rhyme
often gives a splendid richness to her verse, and brings into it a
pleasurable element of surprise.
In philosophy she was a Platonist, in politics an Opportunist. She
attached herself to no particular party. She loved the people when they
were king-like, and kings when they showed themselves to be men. Of the
real value and motive of poetry she had a most exalted idea. 'Poetry,'
she says, in the preface of one of her volumes, 'has been as serious a
thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing.
There has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook
pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the
poet. I have done my work so far, not as mere hand and head work apart
from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain.'
It certainly is her completest expression, and through it she realizes
her fullest perfection. 'The poet,' she says elsewhere, 'is at once
richer and poorer than he used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but
speaks no more oracles.' These words give us the keynote to her view of
the poet's mission. He was to utter Divine oracles, to be at once
inspired prophet and holy priest; and as such we may, I think, without
exaggeration, conceive her. She was a Sibyl delivering a message to the
world, sometimes through stammering lips, and once at least with blinded
eyes, yet always with the true fire and fervour of lofty and unshaken
faith, always with the great raptures of a spiritual nature, the high
ardours of an impassioned soul. As we read her best poems we feel that,
though Apollo's shrine be empty and the bronze tripod overthrown, and the
vale of Delphi desolate, still the Pythia is not dead. In our own age
she has sung for us, and this land gave her new birth. Indeed, Mrs.
Browning is the wisest of the Sibyls, wiser even than that mighty figure
whom Michael Angelo has painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel at
Rome, poring over the scroll of mystery, and trying to decipher the
secrets of Fate; for she realized that, while knowledge is power,
suffering is part of knowledge.
To her influence, almost as much as to the higher education of women, I
would be inclined to attribute the really remarkable awakening of woman's
song that characterizes the latter half of our century in England. No
country has ever had so many poetesses at once. Indeed, when one
remembers that the Greeks had only nine muses, one is sometimes apt to
fancy that we have too many. And yet the work done by women in the
sphere of poetry is really of a very high standard of excellence. In
England we have always been prone to underrate the value of tradition in
literature. In our eagerness to find a new voice and a fresh mode of
music, we have forgotten how beautiful Echo may be. We look first for
individuality and personality, and these are, indeed, the chief
characteristics of the masterpieces of our literature, either in prose or
verse; but deliberate culture and a study of the best models, if united
to an artistic temperament and a nature susceptible of exquisite
impressions, may produce much that is admirable, much that is worthy of
praise. It would be quite impossible to give a complete catalogue of all
the women who since Mrs. Browning's day have tried lute and lyre. Mrs.
Pfeiffer, Mrs. Hamilton King, Mrs. Augusta Webster, Graham Tomson, Miss
Mary Robinson, Jean Ingelow, Miss May Kendall, Miss Nesbit, Miss May
Probyn, Mrs. Craik, Mrs. Meynell, Miss Chapman, and many others have done
really good work in poetry, either in the grave Dorian mode of thoughtful
and intellectual verse, or in the light and graceful forms of old French
song, or in the romantic manner of antique ballad, or in that 'moment's
monument,' as Rossetti called it, the intense and concentrated sonnet.
Occasionally one is tempted to wish that the quick, artistic faculty that
women undoubtedly possess developed itself somewhat more in prose and
somewhat less in verse. Poetry is for our highest moods, when we wish to
be with the gods, and in our poetry nothing but the very best should
satisfy us; but prose is for our daily bread, and the lack of good prose
is one of the chief blots on our culture. French prose, even in the
hands of the most ordinary writers, is always readable, but English prose
is detestable. We have a few, a very few, masters, such as they are. We
have Carlyle, who should not be imitated; and Mr. Pater, who, through the
subtle perfection of his form, is inimitable absolutely; and Mr. Froude,
who is useful; and Matthew Arnold, who is a model; and Mr. George
Meredith, who is a warning; and Mr. Lang, who is the divine amateur; and
Mr. Stevenson, who is the humane artist; and Mr. Ruskin, whose rhythm and
colour and fine rhetoric and marvellous music of words are entirely
unattainable. But the general prose that one reads in magazines and in
newspapers is terribly dull and cumbrous, heavy in movement and uncouth
or exaggerated in expression. Possibly some day our women of letters
will apply themselves more definitely to prose.
Their light touch, and exquisite ear, and delicate sense of balance and
proportion would be of no small service to us. I can fancy women
bringing a new manner into our literature.
However, we have to deal here with women as poetesses, and it is
interesting to note that, though Mrs. Browning's influence undoubtedly
contributed very largely to the development of this new song-movement, if
I may so term it, still there seems to have been never a time during the
last three hundred years when the women of this kingdom did not
cultivate, if not the art, at least the habit, of writing poetry.
Who the first English poetess was I cannot say. I believe it was the
Abbess Juliana Berners, who lived in the fifteenth century; but I have no
doubt that Mr. Freeman would be able at a moment's notice to produce some
wonderful Saxon or Norman poetess, whose works cannot be read without a
glossary, and even with its aid are completely unintelligible. For my
own part, I am content with the Abbess Juliana, who wrote
enthusiastically about hawking; and after her I would mention Anne Askew,
who in prison and on the eve of her fiery martyrdom wrote a ballad that
has, at any rate, a pathetic and historical interest. Queen Elizabeth's
'most sweet and sententious ditty' on Mary Stuart is highly praised by
Puttenham, a contemporary critic, as an example of 'Exargasia, or the
Gorgeous in Literature,' which somehow seems a very suitable epithet for
such a great Queen's poems. The term she applies to the unfortunate
Queen of Scots, 'the daughter of debate,' has, of course, long since
passed into literature. The Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney's
sister, was much admired as a poetess in her day.
In 1613 the 'learned, virtuous, and truly noble ladie,' Elizabeth Carew,
published a _Tragedie of Marian_, _the Faire Queene of Jewry_, and a few
years later the 'noble ladie Diana Primrose' wrote _A Chain of Pearl_,
which is a panegyric on the 'peerless graces' of Gloriana. Mary Morpeth,
the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden; Lady Mary Wroth, to
whom Ben Jonson dedicated _The Alchemist_; and the Princess Elizabeth,
the sister of Charles I., should also be mentioned.
After the Restoration women applied themselves with still greater ardour
to the study of literature and the practice of poetry. Margaret, Duchess
of Newcastle, was a true woman of letters, and some of her verses are
extremely pretty and graceful. Mrs. Aphra Behn was the first
Englishwoman who adopted literature as a regular profession. Mrs.
Katharine Philips, according to Mr. Gosse, invented sentimentality. As
she was praised by Dryden, and mourned by Cowley, let us hope she may be
forgiven. Keats came across her poems at Oxford when he was writing
_Endymion_, and found in one of them 'a most delicate fancy of the
Fletcher kind'; but I fear nobody reads the Matchless Orinda now. Of
Lady Winchelsea's _Nocturnal Reverie_ Wordsworth said that, with the
exception of Pope's _Windsor Forest_, it was the only poem of the period
intervening between _Paradise Lost_ and Thomson's _Seasons_ that
contained a single new image of external nature. Lady Rachel Russell,
who may be said to have inaugurated the letter-writing literature of
England; Eliza Haywood, who is immortalized by the badness of her work,
and has a niche in _The Dunciad_; and the Marchioness of Wharton, whose
poems Waller said he admired, are very remarkable types, the finest of
them being, of course, the first named, who was a woman of heroic mould
and of a most noble dignity of nature.
Indeed, though the English poetesses up to the time of Mrs. Browning
cannot be said to have produced any work of absolute genius, they are
certainly interesting figures, fascinating subjects for study. Amongst
them we find Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who had all the caprice of
Cleopatra, and whose letters are delightful reading; Mrs. Centlivre, who
wrote one brilliant comedy; Lady Anne Barnard, whose _Auld Robin Gray_
was described by Sir Walter Scott as 'worth all the dialogues Corydon and
Phillis have together spoken from the days of Theocritus downwards,' and
is certainly a very beautiful and touching poem; Esther Vanhomrigh and
Hester Johnson, the Vanessa and the Stella of Dean Swift's life; Mrs.
Thrale, the friend of the great lexicographer; the worthy Mrs. Barbauld;
the excellent Miss Hannah More; the industrious Joanna Baillie; the
admirable Mrs. Chapone, whose _Ode to Solitude_ always fills me with the
wildest passion for society, and who will at least be remembered as the
patroness of the establishment at which Becky Sharp was educated; Miss
Anna Seward, who was called 'The Swan of Lichfield'; poor L. E. L. whom
Disraeli described in one of his clever letters to his sister as 'the
personification of Brompton--pink satin dress, white satin shoes, red
cheeks, snub nose, and her hair _a la_ Sappho'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, who
introduced the romantic novel, and has consequently much to answer for;
the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that she was
'made for something better than a Duchess'; the two wonderful sisters,
Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; Mrs. Tighe, whose _Psyche_ Keats read with
pleasure; Constantia Grierson, a marvellous blue-stocking in her time;
Mrs. Hemans; pretty, charming 'Perdita,' who flirted alternately with
poetry and the Prince Regent, played divinely in the _Winter's Tale_, was
brutally attacked by Gifford, and has left us a pathetic little poem on a
Snowdrop; and Emily Bronte, whose poems are instinct with tragic power,
and seem often on the verge of being great.
Old fashions in literature are not so pleasant as old fashions in dress.
I like the costume of the age of powder better than the poetry of the age
of Pope. But if one adopts the historical standpoint--and this is,
indeed, the only standpoint from which we can ever form a fair estimate
of work that is not absolutely of the highest order--we cannot fail to
see that many of the English poetesses who preceded Mrs. Browning were
women of no ordinary talent, and that if the majority of them looked upon
poetry simply as a department of _belles lettres_, so in most cases did
their contemporaries. Since Mrs. Browning's day our woods have become
full of singing birds, and if I venture to ask them to apply themselves
more to prose and less to song, it is not that I like poetical prose, but
that I love the prose of poets.
VENUS OR VICTORY
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 24, 1888.)
There are certain problems in archaeology that seem to possess a real
romantic interest, and foremost among these is the question of the
so-called Venus of Melos. Who is she, this marble mutilated goddess whom
Gautier loved, to whom Heine bent his knee? What sculptor wrought her,
and for what shrine? Whose hands walled her up in that rude niche where
the Melian peasant found her? What symbol of her divinity did she carry?
Was it apple of gold or shield of bronze? Where is her city and what was
her name among gods and men? The last writer on this fascinating subject
is Mr. Stillman, who in a most interesting book recently published in
America, claims that the work of art in question is no sea-born and
foam-born Aphrodite, but the very Victory Without Wings that once stood
in the little chapel outside the gates of the Acropolis at Athens. So
long ago as 1826, that is to say six years after the discovery of the
statue, the Venus hypothesis was violently attacked by Millingen, and
from that time to this the battle of the archaeologists has never ceased.
Mr. Stillman, who fights, of course, under Millingen's banner, points out
that the statue is not of the Venus type at all, being far too heroic in
character to correspond to the Greek conception of Aphrodite at any
period of their artistic development, but that it agrees distinctly with
certain well-known statues of Victory, such as the celebrated 'Victory of
Brescia.' The latter is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the
type is unmistakable, and though not a reproduction it is certainly a
recollection of the Melian statue. The representation of Victory on the
coin of Agathocles is also obviously of the Melian type, and in the
museum of Naples is a terra-cotta Victory in almost the identical action
and drapery. As for Dumont d'Urville's statement that, when the statue
was discovered, one hand held an apple and the other a fold of the
drapery, the latter is obviously a mistake, and the whole evidence on the
subject is so contradictory that no reliance can be placed on the
statement made by the French Consul and the French naval officers, none
of whom seems to have taken the trouble to ascertain whether the arm and
hand now in the Louvre were really found in the same niche as the statue
at all. At any rate, these fragments seem to be of extremely inferior
workmanship, and they are so imperfect that they are quite worthless as
data for measure or opinion. So far, Mr. Stillman is on old ground. His
real artistic discovery is this. In working about the Acropolis of
Athens, some years ago, he photographed among other sculptures the
mutilated Victories in the Temple of Nike Apteros, the 'Wingless
Victory,' the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victory
of which it was said that '_the Athenians made her without wings that she
might never leave Athens_.' Looking over the photographs afterwards,
when the impression of the comparatively diminutive size had passed, he
was struck with the close resemblance of the type to that of the Melian
statue. Now, this resemblance is so striking that it cannot be
questioned by any one who has an eye for form. There are the same large
heroic proportions, the same ampleness of physical development, and the
same treatment of drapery, and there is also that perfect spiritual
kinship which, to any true antiquarian, is one of the most valuable modes
of evidence. Now it is generally admitted on both sides that the Melian
statue is probably Attic in its origin, and belongs certainly to the
period between Phidias and Praxiteles, that is to say, to the age of
Scopas, if it be not actually the work of Scopas himself; and as it is to
Scopas that these bas-reliefs have been always attributed, the similarity
of style can, on Mr. Stillman's hypothesis, be easily accounted for.
As regards the appearance of the statue in Melos, Mr. Stillman points out
that Melos belonged to Athens as late as she had any Greek allegiance,
and that it is probable that the statue was sent there for concealment on
the occasion of some siege or invasion. When this took place, Mr.
Stillman does not pretend to decide with any degree of certainty, but it
is evident that it must have been subsequent to the establishment of the
Roman hegemony, as the brickwork of the niche in which the statue was
found is clearly Roman in character, and before the time of Pausanias and
Pliny, as neither of these antiquaries mentions the statue. Accepting,
then, the statue as that of the Victory Without Wings, Mr. Stillman
agrees with Millingen in supposing that in her left hand she held a
bronze shield, the lower rim of which rested on the left knee where some
marks of the kind are easily recognizable, while with her right hand she
traced, or had just finished tracing, the names of the great heroes of
Athens. Valentin's objection, that if this were so the left thigh would
incline outwards so as to secure a balance, Mr. Stillman meets partly by
the analogy of the Victory of Brescia and partly by the evidence of
Nature herself; for he has had a model photographed in the same position
as the statue and holding a shield in the manner he proposes in his
restoration. The result is precisely the contrary to that which Valentin
assumes. Of course, Mr. Stillman's solution of the whole matter must not
be regarded as an absolutely scientific demonstration. It is simply an
induction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable or
equally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part, but to this
mode of interpretation archaeologists as a class have been far too
indifferent; and it is certain that in the present case it has given us a
theory which is most fruitful and suggestive.
The little temple of Nike Apteros has had, as Mr. Stillman reminds us, a
destiny unique of its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little
more than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it was
razed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered the
front of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylaea. It
was dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German
architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just as
Pausanias described it on the spot where old AEgeus watched for the
return of Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and AEgina,
and beyond the purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue be
indeed the Victory Without Wings, she had no unworthy shrine.
There are some other interesting essays in Mr. Stillman's book on the
wonderful topographical knowledge of Ithaca displayed in the _Odyssey_,
and discussions of this kind are always interesting as long as there is
no attempt to represent Homer as the ordinary literary man; but the
article on the Melian statue is by far the most important and the most
delightful. Some people will, no doubt, regret the possibility of the
disappearance of the old name, and as Venus not as Victory will still
worship the stately goddess, but there are others who will be glad to see
in her the image and ideal of that spiritual enthusiasm to which Athens
owed her liberty, and by which alone can liberty be won.
_On the Track of Ulysses_; _together with an Excursion in Quest of the
So-called Venus of Melos_. By W. J. Stillman. (Houghton, Mifflin and
Co., Boston.)
M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 14, 1888.)
The biography of a very great man from the pen of a very ladylike
writer--this is the best description we can give of M. Caro's Life of
George Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charmingly
about culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplished
phrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contempt
for Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with the
Duchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in history or in
literature that he could not explain away for their edification; having
never done anything remarkable he was naturally elected a member of the
Academy, and he always remained loyal to the traditions of that
thoroughly respectable and thoroughly pretentious institution. In fact,
he was just the sort of man who should never have attempted to write a
Life of George Sand or to interpret George Sand's genius. He was too
feminine to appreciate the grandeur of that large womanly nature, too
much of a _dilettante_ to realize the masculine force of that strong and
ardent mind. He never gets at the secret of George Sand, and never
brings us near to her wonderful personality. He looks on her simply as a
litterateur, as a writer of pretty stories of country life and of
charming, if somewhat exaggerated, romances. But George Sand was much
more than this. Beautiful as are such books as _Consuelo_ and _Mauprat_,
_Francois le Champi_ and _La Mare au Diable_, yet in none of them is she
adequately expressed, by none of them is she adequately revealed. As Mr.
Matthew Arnold said, many years ago, 'We do not know George Sand unless
we feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole.' With this
spirit, however, M. Caro has no sympathy. Madame Sand's doctrines are
antediluvian, he tells us, her philosophy is quite dead and her ideas of
social regeneration are Utopian, incoherent and absurd. The best thing
for us to do is to forget these silly dreams and to read _Teverino_ and
_Le Secretaire Intime_. Poor M. Caro! This spirit, which he treats with
such airy flippancy, is the very leaven of modern life. It is remoulding
the world for us and fashioning our age anew. If it is antediluvian, it
is so because the deluge is yet to come; if it is Utopian, then Utopia
must be added to our geographies. To what curious straits M. Caro is
driven by his violent prejudices may be estimated by the fact that he
tries to class George Sand's novels with the old _Chansons de geste_, the
stories of adventure characteristic of primitive literatures; whereas in
using fiction as a vehicle of thought, and romance as a means of
influencing the social ideals of her age, George Sand was merely carrying
out the traditions of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Diderot and of
Chateaubriand. The novel, says M. Caro, must be allied either to poetry
or to science. That it has found in philosophy one of its strongest
allies seems not to have occurred to him. In an English critic such a
view might possibly be excusable. Our greatest novelists, such as
Fielding, Scott and Thackeray, cared little for the philosophy of their
age. But coming, as it does, from a French critic, the statement seems
to show a strange want of recognition of one of the most important
elements of French fiction. Nor, even in the narrow limits that he has
imposed upon himself, can M. Caro be said to be a very fortunate or
felicitous critic. To take merely one instance out of many, he says
nothing of George Sand's delightful treatment of art and the artist's
life. And yet how exquisitely does she analyse each separate art and
present it to us in its relation to life! In _Consuelo_ she tells us of
music; in _Horace_ of authorship; in _Le Chateau des Desertes_ of acting;
in _Les Maitres Mosaistes_ of mosaic work; in _Le Chateau de Pictordu_ of
portrait painting; and in _La Daniella_ of the painting of landscape.
What Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Browning have done for England she did for
France. She invented an art literature. It is unnecessary, however, to
discuss any of M. Caro's minor failings, for the whole effect of the
book, so far as it attempts to portray for us the scope and character of
George Sand's genius, is entirely spoiled by the false attitude assumed
from the beginning, and though the dictum may seem to many harsh and
exclusive, we cannot help feeling that an absolute incapacity for
appreciating the spirit of a great writer is no qualification for writing
a treatise on the subject.
As for Madame Sand's private life, which is so intimately connected with
her art (for, like Goethe, she had to live her romances before she could
write them), M. Caro says hardly anything about it. He passes it over
with a modesty that almost makes one blush, and for fear of wounding the
susceptibilities of those _grandes dames_ whose passions M. Paul Bourget
analyses with such subtlety, he transforms her mother, who was a typical
French _grisette_, into 'a very amiable and _spirituelle_ milliner'! It
must be admitted that Joseph Surface himself could hardly show greater
tact and delicacy, though we ourselves must plead guilty to preferring
Madame Sand's own description of her as an 'enfant du vieux pave de
Paris.'
_George Sand_. By the late Elme Marie Caro. Translated by Gustave
Masson, B.A., Assistant Master, Harrow School. 'Great French Writers'
Series. (Routledge and Sons.)
A FASCINATING BOOK
(_Woman's World_, November 1888.)
Mr. Alan Cole's carefully-edited translation of M. Lefebure's history of
_Embroidery and Lace_ is one of the most fascinating books that has
appeared on this delightful subject. M. Lefebure is one of the
administrators of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at Paris, besides being a
lace manufacturer; and his work has not merely an important historical
value, but as a handbook of technical instruction it will be found of the
greatest service by all needle-women. Indeed, as the translator himself
points out, M. Lefebure's book suggests the question whether it is not
rather by the needle and the bobbin, than by the brush, the graver or the
chisel, that the influence of woman should assert itself in the arts. In
Europe, at any rate, woman is sovereign in the domain of art-needlework,
and few men would care to dispute with her the right of using those
delicate implements so intimately associated with the dexterity of her
nimble and slender fingers; nor is there any reason why the productions
of embroidery should not, as Mr. Alan Cole suggests, be placed on the
same level with those of painting, engraving and sculpture, though there
must always be a great difference between those purely decorative arts
that glorify their own material and the more imaginative arts in which
the material is, as it were, annihilated, and absorbed into the creation
of a new form. In the beautifying of modern houses it certainly must be
admitted--indeed, it should be more generally recognized than it is--that
rich embroidery on hangings and curtains, _portieres_, couches and the
like, produces a far more decorative and far more artistic effect than
can be gained from our somewhat wearisome English practice of covering
the walls with pictures and engravings; and the almost complete
disappearance of embroidery from dress has robbed modern costume of one
of the chief elements of grace and fancy.
That, however, a great improvement has taken place in English embroidery
during the last ten or fifteen years cannot, I think, be denied. It is
shown, not merely in the work of individual artists, such as Mrs.
Holiday, Miss May Morris and others, but also in the admirable
productions of the South Kensington School of Embroidery (the
best--indeed, the only real good--school that South Kensington has
produced). It is pleasant to note on turning over the leaves of M.
Lefebure's book, that in this we are merely carrying out certain old
traditions of Early English art. In the seventh century, St. Ethelreda,
first abbess of the monastery of Ely, made an offering to St. Cuthbert of
a sacred ornament she had worked with gold and precious stones, and the
cope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which are preserved at Durham, are
considered to be specimens of _opus Anglicanum_. In the year 800, the
Bishop of Durham allotted the income of a farm of two hundred acres for
life to an embroideress named Eanswitha, in consideration of her keeping
in repair the vestments of the clergy in his diocese. The battle
standard of King Alfred was embroidered by Danish Princesses; and the
Anglo-Saxon Gudric gave Alcuid a piece of land, on condition that she
instructed his daughter in needle-work. Queen Mathilda bequeathed to the
Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen a tunic embroidered at Winchester by
the wife of one Alderet; and when William presented himself to the
English nobles, after the Battle of Hastings, he wore a mantle covered
with Anglo-Saxon embroideries, which is probably, M. Lefebure suggests,
the same as that mentioned in the inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral,
where, after the entry relating to the _broderie a telle_ (representing
the conquest of England), two mantles are described--one of King William,
'all of gold, powdered with crosses and blossoms of gold, and edged along
the lower border with an orphrey of figures.' The most splendid example
of the _opus Anglicanum_ now in existence is, of course, the Syon cope at
the South Kensington Museum; but English work seems to have been
celebrated all over the Continent. Pope Innocent IV. so admired the
splendid vestments worn by the English clergy in 1246, that he ordered
similar articles from Cistercian monasteries in England. St. Dunstan,
the artistic English monk, was known as a designer for embroideries; and
the stole of St. Thomas a Becket is still preserved in the cathedral at
Sens, and shows us the interlaced scroll-forms used by Anglo-Saxon MS.
illuminators.
How far this modern artistic revival of rich and delicate embroidery will
bear fruit depends, of course, almost entirely on the energy and study
that women are ready to devote to it; but I think that it must be
admitted that all our decorative arts in Europe at present have, at
least, this element of strength--that they are in immediate relationship
with the decorative arts of Asia. Wherever we find in European history a
revival of decorative art, it has, I fancy, nearly always been due to
Oriental influence and contact with Oriental nations. Our own keenly
intellectual art has more than once been ready to sacrifice real
decorative beauty either to imitative presentation or to ideal motive.
It has taken upon itself the burden of expression, and has sought to
interpret the secrets of thought and passion. In its marvellous truth of
presentation it has found its strength, and yet its weakness is there
also. It is never with impunity that an art seeks to mirror life. If
Truth has her revenge upon those who do not follow her, she is often
pitiless to her worshippers. In Byzantium the two arts met--Greek art,
with its intellectual sense of form, and its quick sympathy with
humanity; Oriental art, with its gorgeous materialism, its frank
rejection of imitation, its wonderful secrets of craft and colour, its
splendid textures, its rare metals and jewels, its marvellous and
priceless traditions. They had, indeed, met before, but in Byzantium
they were married; and the sacred tree of the Persians, the palm of
Zoroaster, was embroidered on the hem of the garments of the Western
world. Even the Iconoclasts, the Philistines of theological history,
who, in one of those strange outbursts of rage against Beauty that seem
to occur only amongst European nations, rose up against the wonder and
magnificence of the new art, served merely to distribute its secrets more
widely; and in the _Liber Pontificalis_, written in 687 by Athanasius,
the librarian, we read of an influx into Rome of gorgeous embroideries,
the work of men who had arrived from Constantinople and from Greece. The
triumph of the Mussulman gave the decorative art of Europe a new
departure--that very principle of their religion that forbade the actual
representation of any object in nature being of the greatest artistic
service to them, though it was not, of course, strictly carried out. The
Saracens introduced into Sicily the art of weaving silken and golden
fabrics; and from Sicily the manufacture of fine stuffs spread to the
North of Italy, and became localized in Genoa, Florence, Venice, and
other towns. A still greater art-movement took place in Spain under the
Moors and Saracens, who brought over workmen from Persia to make
beautiful things for them. M. Lefebure tells us of Persian embroidery
penetrating as far as Andalusia; and Almeria, like Palermo, had its Hotel
des Tiraz, which rivalled the Hotel des Tiraz at Bagdad, _tiraz_ being
the generic name for ornamental tissues and costumes made with them.
Spangles (those pretty little discs of gold, silver, or polished steel,
used in certain embroidery for dainty glinting effects) were a Saracenic
invention; and Arabic letters often took the place of letters in the
Roman characters for use in inscriptions upon embroidered robes and
Middle Age tapestries, their decorative value being so much greater. The
book of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268,
contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris,
among which we find 'the tapiciers, or makers of the _tapis sarrasinois_
(or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only of
churches, or great men like kings and counts'; and, indeed, even in our
own day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures and
decorative methods point to an Oriental origin. What the inroads of the
Mohammedans did for Sicily and Spain, the return of the Crusaders did for
the other countries of Europe. The nobles who left for Palestine clad in
armour, came back in the rich stuffs of the East; and their costumes,
pouches (_aumonieres sarrasinoises_), and caparisons excited the
admiration of the needle-workers of the West. Matthew Paris says that at
the sacking of Antioch, in 1098, gold, silver and priceless costumes were
so equally distributed among the Crusaders, that many who the night
before were famishing and imploring relief, suddenly found themselves
overwhelmed with wealth; and Robert de Clair tells us of the wonderful
fetes that followed the capture of Constantinople. The thirteenth
century, as M. Lefebure points out, was conspicuous for an increased
demand in the West for embroidery. Many Crusaders made offerings to
churches of plunder from Palestin
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