ST. CEADDA.
Hark! what sweet sounds beneath these lonely skies!
St. Mary’s Convent deep in yonder dell
Lies hidden. Echoes thus the minster bell
Through the thin air? or hear we litanies
That, sung by monks at even-song, arise
And heavenward, full of holy rapture, swell?
No; but within the walls of yonder cell,
Where, near his death, God’s faithful servant lies,
Led by his brother’s soul, an angel throng
Welcomes St. Chad, whose prayerful life is o’er.
His feet shall tread the Mercian vales no more.
His work is done. Hark! fainter sounds their song,
While his glad spirit leaves its frame outworn,
And homeward turns, on seraph-wings upborne.
THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”
CHAPTER III.
THE RIVALS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
On the return to Kilkenley I placed my guest beside Father O’Dowd in the car, as I saw that the former was bursting with impatience to get at the Home-Rule question. During the luncheon he had made several ineffectual attempts at drawing out the priest, which were deftly shunted off in favor of lighter subjects; but having extracted a promise from Father O’Dowd that during the drive he would discuss the “idea” with him, no sooner had the horse commenced to tear up the gravel in the little lawn than the member for Doodleshire opened fire by asking if there was any real issue at stake in the question.
“What is Home Rule? Is it Fenianism veiled or unveiled? Is it Repeal? Is it less than Repeal or more than Repeal? Is it a surrender or—ahem!—a compromise of the national demand, or is it a demand founded upon the—ahem!—supposed necessities of the country at this present time?”
“I must go back a little in order to reply to your queries; as the French say, Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter—one must draw back a little, in order to make a better spring. You have heard, Mr. Hawthorne, that the law of defeats separates the vanquished into two or three well-defined parties or sections: one party more bitter in opposition than ever, one party quietly put out of the way, who retire upon their shields, and a little party who recognize no defeat. This is just the outcome in Ireland of forty-eight and forty-nine. The Young Ireland movement in forty-eight was never national in dimensions or acceptance—”
“Thrue for ye, father darlint,” exclaimed Peter O’Brien from his coigne of vantage, and whose heart and soul were in the discussion. “The boys wasn’t riz properly.”
Without noticing the interruption Father O’Dowd continued:
“O’Connell’s movement was from forty-two to forty-four; but from that date, although Smith O’Brien and John Mitchel came to the front, the country was not at their back.”
“Did not the Young Irelanders break with O’Connell on a war policy?”
“That is a fallacy. They had no war policy, nor had he. It was the blaze of revolution lighted in Paris in forty-eight that set men on fire here. They seceded from O’Connell on the point of the celebrated test resolutions, which declared it would not be lawful to take up arms for the recovery of national rights. The non-acceptance of this declaration led to the Irish Confederation. The confederates were decidedly unpopular, especially after the death of O’Connell, whose demise was laid at their door, and they themselves became the victims of secession. John Mitchel and his following were for preparing the people for war against England. Thus we had three parties and no real national movement. When Paris hurled Louis Philippe from the throne, the pulse of Ireland became intensely agitated, and two schools of insurrectionists were to be found in the new insurrectionary party: one that declared that Smith O’Brien wanted a rose-water revolution, the other that Mitchel was a Red and wanted a Jacquerie. The refusal to rise for the release of Mitchel led to bad blood, and the subsequent rising resulted in a fiasco. The men who ordered it had no command from the nation, and were but a fraction of a fraction.”
“Were you opposed to them, father—I mean your order?”
“Assuredly not in a combative sense, but in the sense of a decided disapproval of the insurrection. They had also against them the bulk of the Repeal millions.”
“But the cities—”
“Yes, the cities became imbued with the spirit of the revolution and a desire to see it out, but, beyond their national antipathy to English rule, the rural population had little or no participation in the forty-eight movement.”
“They wor aisy enough beyant in Kilpeddher, where they bet Mickey Rooney wud his own pike-handle an’ called him a bladdher-um-skite, no less,” cried my coachman.
“Peter, be good enough to keep your observations to yourself,” I said, struggling with a laugh.
“Faix I will, thin, Masther Freddy, for sorra a word the darlint father is spakin’ I’d like for to lose. But as for th’ other omadhaun,” lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “I’d as lave be spakin’ to—”
“Silence!”
“After the forty-eight movement had exhausted itself in transportations and expatriations,” continued Father O’Dowd, “and the flower of Ireland’s intellect and patriotism was literally pining away in England’s penal settlements, the gaze of the country turned instinctively toward one man, Charles Gavan Duffy, and behind him crouched the terrible problem: ‘What next?’”
“Is this—ahem!—the Mr. Duffy who holds a somewhat prominent position in Victoria?”
“Only that of prime minister,” laughed the priest.
“And what was his—ahem!—policy in the crisis you mention?”
“A retreat all along the line. He tried the original Irish Confederation policy, but received no support. He at last got together a party under the banner of ‘tenant right.’ This was a move that brought the Presbyterians of Ulster to take counsel with the Catholics of Munster; it brought Repealers, and Anti-Repealers, and men of every shade of politics and religion upon one common platform, and an organization was formed to compel Parliament to pass a measure which would prevent the eviction of the tenant farmer, except for the non-payment of rent, and to prevent also the arbitrary raising of the rent.”
“That’s me jewel!” cried Peter, in an ecstasy of approbation. “Faix ye’d think it was on th’ althar he was.” This latter observation being addressed to me.
“You flooded us in the House, if I remember—ahem!—rightly, with a very strange set of representatives as the outcome of this movement,” observed Mr. Hawthorne.
“Yes, we sent you about thirty-five or forty members, returned at the instance of the Tenant League and to work out its programme. They used the new shibboleth to suit their own ends, and many of them being both corrupt and dishonest, the pass was sold and the party bought up through its leaders, Sadlier and Keogh. Some of us thought it was a goodly step in the right direction to see Catholics on the bench, and lulled our consciences with this soporific; but the cause of the poor tenant was lost, and we grasped the shadow while the substance floated beyond our reach.”
“The curse o’ Crummle on Sadlier and Billy Keogh! Amin,” muttered Peter.
“A cohort of the exasperated section of the forty-eight party now came to the front, who, seeing the utter and shameful defeat of the Gavan-Duffy following, instantly raised their voices for war to the knife, war to the bitter end, and out of this cry arose the Fenian movement.”
“I should like to hear your ideas upon this insane movement,” observed the M.P., endeavoring to face Father O’Dowd, and succeeding only in jerking himself partly off the car, to the hand-rail of which he clung with the tenacity of an octopus. “What support did it receive?”
“It did not represent anything like the full force of Irish patriotism, or even, indeed, a considerable portion of it. The bulk of the millions who believed in O’Connell and Smith O’Brien stood with folded arms outside this movement. Its policy was disbelieved in, although the Fenians worked with an energy worthy of the highest admiration, while an honest, manly, self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who were its martyrs. Never did braver men stand in the dock; and to the Fenians Ireland owes that stirring up of public opinion upon Irish subjects which hitherto had slumbered in a masterly inactivity. You see, Mr. Hawthorne, as we say at whist, I am leading up to your strong suit, and if I have been a little prolix—”
“My dear sir, I am receiving more information than the Bodleian Library or all the blue-books could possibly give me.”
“Sorra a lie in that! Ah! wud ye?” The latter addressed to the horse, in order to parry my inevitable censure.
“Well, sir,” continued the priest after he had duly acknowledged the compliment bestowed upon him by my guest, “we had arrived at that stage when, as Phædrus says:
Gratis anhelans, multo agendo nihil agens.
We had been checkmated, and Britannia smiled contemptuously at us from behind the glistening bayonets of the regiments with which she flooded the country. It was again the horrors of the lash and triangle, loathsome details of the treachery of informers and prosecutors, the chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham, and the terrible outrages inflicted upon men whose only fault lay in loving Ireland not wisely but too well. I shall pass over that, because there is a wicked beat underneath my waistcoat, and curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent. I shall come at once to the question of Home Rule and dismiss it briefly; for there is the stable dome of Kilkenley right over beyond that group of firs.”
“Yev more nor a quarther av an hour, yer riverince, for the baste’s purty well bet up.”
“Five minutes will do me, Peter,” laughed Father O’Dowd. “The Irish passion for national existence still glowed in our bosoms, and we cried for light. A field for Irish devotion and heroism was what was wanted. We were sick of the hecatombs of victims offered up by the last sad effort. As you are well aware, Mr. Hawthorne, the Tory party came into power during the Fenian scare, and they went to their work in a spirit which would have shamed Oliver Cromwell himself. They fined, fettered, imprisoned, and hanged, until a glut of vengeance seemed an impossibility. ‘This is my chance,’ says Mr. Gladstone. ‘I’ll make capital out of this Fenian scare, and, dashing at the Church Establishment, I’ll gather in the straying bands which once formed the rank and file of the liberal party. England wants a salve, and when she finds herself doing a virtuous thing she will purge her conscience of all her recent evil-doing.’”
“I never heard of Mr. Gladstone’s having used those words,” exclaimed the member for Doodleshire pompously. “If he had used them in the House, they would have been ordered to be taken down by the Speaker.”
“They are my words, not Mr. Gladstone’s.”
“Blur an’ ages!” began Peter O’Brien, but, upon my administering no light touch of the whip to his shoulders, he suddenly pulled himself in. “Now, I ax ye, Masther Freddy, isn’t that the hoighth, now—the hoighth av an ignoraymus? Why, a turf creel—”
“Silence, sir!” I exclaimed, in a frenzy of terror lest my guest should by any possibility overhear him.
“With the war-whoop of ‘Down with the Irish Church!’ Mr. Gladstone bounded into office at the head of a majority only equalled by that of Sir Robert Peel in forty-one, and, with the faculty of persuading himself into a fervid conscientiousness upon any subject he likes, he flung himself body and soul into the disestablishment of the church established in Ireland. At this uprose the Irish Protestants, who declared that, as faith had been broken with them by the English government, they would repeal the Union by way of retaliation, and kick another crown into the Boyne. ‘Break with us,’ said they, ‘and we’ll break with you. We’ll become Irishmen first and anything else afterwards.’ Well, Mr. Hawthorne, the Irish Church was disestablished—”
“I am happy to say that my humble vote was recorded in favor of that measure,” interrupted the M.P.
“More power to ye for that, anyhow,” muttered Peter.
“And a good vote it was, Mr. Hawthorne. Well, sir, the Irish Protestants were in a craze of indignation, and eagerly sought a vent for their feelings of revenge. They wouldn’t touch Fenianism, and their minds insensibly reverted to eighty-two, and to such Protestants as Grattan, Flood, Curran, and Charlemont. Some of our most influential Protestant countrymen were now prepared to take up the cudgels—peers, dignitaries of the Protestant Church, large landed proprietors, bankers, merchants, deputy lieutenants, and even fellows of Trinity College. This was no Falstaffian army, no mere food for powder, but a band of men who had a vast property at stake in the country, who saw a thousand reasons why Irishmen alone should regulate Irish affairs. And now Mr. Butt comes upon the stage.”
“The sorra a shupayriorer man in the counthry,” observed Peter, despite my previous admonition. “An’, be the mortial, me own first cousin wud have got six months for delayin’ Jim Fogarty’s ould ram from goin’ home wan night, an’ he as innocint as a cluckin’ hin, av it wasn’t for the shupayrior spakin’ av Counsellor Butt. ‘There isn’t a bigger rogue in the barony, me lord,’ sez he, addhressin’ the binch, ‘but this wanst, me lord, he wasn’t in it at all, at all.’ That’s what I call spakin’ up.”
“Mr. Butt, in addition to defending Peter O’Brien’s kinsman,” said Father O’Dowd, “was called to the front from an obscurity into which a wild recklessness had hurled him, to defend the Fenian prisoners in sixty-five. Mr. Butt became then a centre figure, and through the meetings of the Amnesty Association, larger than any since Tara and Mullaghmast, a centre figure he remained. The Protestants, who now chafed under the disestablishment, were many of them Butt’s old comrades, college chums, and political associates, and to them he turned, urging them no longer to act the secondary rôle of an English garrison. ‘Act boldly and promptly now,’ he said in one of his powerful addresses, ‘and you will save Ireland from revolutionary violence on the one side and from alien misgovernment on the other. You, like myself, have been early trained to mistrust the Catholic multitude, but when you come to know them you will admire them. They are not anarchists, nor would they be revolutionists if men like you would but do your duty and lead them—that is, honestly and faithfully and capably lead them—in the struggle for constitutional liberty.’ Mr. Butt made a great impression, but of course was met with the old cry of ‘wolf,’ ‘Catholic ascendency,’ ‘the tools of the priests,’ ‘yoke of Rome,’ and all that sort of low Orange claptrap. The incidents of the defeat of ‘honest John Martin’ for Longford are too recent to bore you with now, but in that election you saw a Catholic people fighting their own clergy, who had foolishly pledged themselves to support the Fulke-Greville-Nugent candidate, as vehemently as they and their own clergy had ever fought the Tory landlords. It was an exceptional and painful incident, but it vindicated both priests and people from the unworthy sneers to which I have just alluded. You are familiar with the meeting in Dublin held under the presidency of a Protestant lord mayor, and the resolution enthusiastically adopted that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland was an Irish Parliament. And now, Mr. Hawthorne, having given you an owre true but also an owre lang tale, I am happy to find ourselves within hail of the hospitable roof of Kilkenley, and—yes, to be sure, there are the ladies awaiting our arrival upon the steps.”
“Av that discoorse isn’t aiqual to the House o’ Lords, I’m an omadhaun,” was Peter’s muttered observation as we rattled gaily up to the house.
“Papa is enchanted with the priest,” said Miss Hawthorne.
It was just before dinner, and we were standing upon a small balcony overlooking the lawn.
The moon was rising in all the consciousness of her harvest beauty.
“I am so glad.”
“He says that his reverence has the Irish question at his fingers’ ends, and gave him more information than a dozen Commons debates or ten dozen editions of Hansard. We are going over to visit Father O’Dowd, are we not?”
What induced me to say: “I shall send you with great pleasure”?
“Send us! Are you not coming?”
“I fear not. Welstone will go. He is much better company.”
What a boy I was!
She looked at me in a puzzled, inquiring sort of way.
“What a glorious moon!” I said, bitterness in my heart.
“Don’t you find it a little chilly?” was her reply, as she turned into the drawing-room.
My own, shall I call it temper, or insanity, or what? lost me this chance, for which I had been longing with such fervent yearning. I felt terribly irritated with myself and angered against her. She should have expressed sorrow at my being prevented from going over to Father O’Dowd’s. Had she cared one brass farthing she would have declined the expedition; but instead of this she silently accepted Welstone’s ciceroneship, and exclaiming, “Don’t you find it a little chilly?” left me standing all alone, like the idiot that I was. And yet had I not acted strangely, rudely, in intimating my intention of remaining at Kilkenley? Was I not her host, and should I not make every effort within the scope of my power to render her visit as agreeable as possible?
I followed her into the drawing-room. The light of two moderateur lamps muffled in pink shades threw a delightfully tender glow all over the apartment. Our furniture was very old-fashioned. It bad all been purchased when my great-grandmother had been brought home, and was esteemed a wonder of its kind then. The rosewood settees and spider-legged chairs were upholstered in the richest flowered brocade, very faded now, but highly respectable in their antiquity. The mirrors were oval in gilt frames, an eagle holding a chain, to which was appended a golden ball, surmounting each. A sofa large enough to seat a dozen people in a row graced one wall, while a thin old-fashioned card-table, over which many hundreds of guineas had changed hands, adorned the other. In the alcove, in a stiff, formal, uncompromising arm-chair, so utterly different from the inviting lounges of to-day, sat Mabel, turning over the leaves of a scrap-book that had been made up by my grandmother.
Dressed in simple white, with a sprig of forget-me-not in her golden hair, she looked so lovely that my heart flew to her.
“I hope you haven’t caught cold. Shall I close the window, Miss Hawthorne?”
“Oh! dear, no; it was just a passing sensation, a shiver.”
“Somebody was treading upon your grave,” I said, alluding to the popular superstition.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
When I had told her, “I should like to know where I shall be interred.”
“I know where I shall be, if I am not hanged or lost at sea.”
“Where?”
“In the little churchyard close by; it’s in the domain.”
“Are all your family interred there?”
“We have head-stones since 1650. Cromwell’s troopers destroyed everything, digging up the graves in the hope of finding armlets and golden ornaments of our race.”
“I should like to visit the churchyard.”
“By moonlight?” I said laughingly.
“Oh! yes.
“‘If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight,’
sings Scott.”
“Your wish shall be gratified.”
“When?”
At this moment Mr. Hawthorne entered the room, carrying in his hand two telegrams.
“Startling news!” he exclaimed.
“What is it, papa?” asked his daughter somewhat affrightedly.
“Nothing alarming, my dear.” Turning to me, “Your county member is dead.”
“Dead?” I cried.
“Dropped dead on the steps of the Carlton Club.”
“Is it Mr. Bromly de Ruthven?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awfully sudden. I had a visit from him not ten days ago. He was quite a young man, and, for his party, a rising one.”
“I cannot agree with you there, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said my guest in his usual pompous style. “His speech—if speech it might be called—on the malt question was a tissue of illogical absurdity. But now, Mabel, I have a big surprise for you. The great conservative party—I call them great, sir, although in opposition—have not been idle, and already has a candidate been selected.”
“That’s rather quick work, Mr. Hawthorne.”
“Military machinery, sir—one man down, the next man forward. And whom do you think they have selected, Mabel?”
“How should I know, papa?”
“Guess.”
“I cannot. Some of the rejected at the last dissolution.”
“No; guess again. A friend of yours.”
“A friend of mine?” somewhat surprised.
“A particular friend, who telegraphs me to say that he will arrive here to-morrow,” with a knowing smile.
I guessed the name. My heart told it me with a pang of envy.
“Not Wynwood Melton?” she said.
“The very man!”
I knew it.
“I’m so glad!” she cried, clapping her dainty hands together. “It will be great fun to have him in the house! What capital imitations he will give us of Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, and Whalley! And what stories! Mr. Fitzgerald,” she added with considerable earnestness, “you must vote for him.”
I think I was about to pledge myself to do so, forgetful of the dire consequences of such a proceeding on my part, when her father interrupted:
“He cannot, my dear. Mr. Fitzgerald is one of us—a liberal.”
“I am a liberal,” she laughed.
“I presume he will have a walk-over,” said Mr. Hawthorne.
“Who will have a walk-over?” asked Father O’Dowd, who had entered unperceived.
“My friend, Mr. Wynwood Melton.”
“For a seat in Parliament?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a vacancy?”
“Yes.”
“In an Irish constituency?”
“You have not heard the news, then?”
“Not a word; and I may exclaim with Horace, Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia.”
“Well, reverend sir, your county member, Mr. Bromly de Ruthven, is dead.”
“Dead!”
“Dead, sir. And Mr. Wynwood Melton is to have a walk-over.”
“Is he?” asked Father Dowd with a quiet smile. “Who says so?”
“Well, I suppose so. He is young, clever, rich, and, better than all, the nominee of the Carlton Club, which means, of course, the De Ruthven interest.”
The priest gave a short laugh.
“Mr. Wynwood Melton will not have a walk-over; I promise you that. Neither will he win the election; I promise you that, too.”
“Is there another candidate in the field?”
“There will be, please God.”
“Are you at liberty to name him?”
“I shall name him now, as I mean to carry the county for him; and,” taking me by the shoulder, “a very good figure he will cut in St. Stephen’s.”
My heart gave one beat backward. Of name and fame I thought nothing. To defeat Wynwood Melton I would give half my life. Here was a chance—one of those marvellous chances which the whirl of the wheel turns out occasionally to fit into the exact moment. It was a high stake, but I would play for it. It was my solitary hope for an advantage over the man whom Mabel Hawthorne loved. Yes, I would stand the hazard of the die.
“Mr. Fitzgerald dislikes politics,” observed Mabel.
“You may bring a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink,” added her father.
“Besides, he will not be ungallant enough to oppose my nominee,” she laughed.
“I shall be greatly disappointed if my young friend will not stand in the gap for the old county and the old faith,” said Father O’Dowd.
“How can you expect to carry him in the teeth of the overwhelming majority which the conservatives possess in this county?” asked the M.P.
“Thank Heaven! we have the ballot, and now or never is the time to try its efficacy.”
“Well, Mr. Fitzgerald, may I hope to meet you in St. Stephen’s?” asked my guest.
“You may.”
“To oppose my nominee?”
“Yes.”
I braved even her displeasure in my agony of anxiety to cross swords with my rival.
“Bravissimo!” cried Father O’Dowd. “The day is ours. I knew you had the Fitzgerald pluck, dashed with the hot blood of the Ormondes. I look upon victory as certain. All the tenants on the De Ruthven estate are good Catholics and will vote with us—I know it. All the Derryslaghnagaun people will come up to a man. Father Brady and Father Tim Duffy will work the northern side of the county; Father Quaid and Father Ted Walsh will carry the southern side; I’ll take the Ballytore district, and—but no details now; dinner, and then I’m off. We’ll send the ‘hard word’ round like wild-fire, and, Miss Mabel, you’ll see real Irish bonfires on the hills to-morrow night. Tell your friend to stay where he is, Mr. Hawthorne; for with Virgil I may say, Animum pictura pascit inani. Why, I feel like a war-horse:
“‘My soul’s in arms, and eager for the fray.’”
“What’s all this about?” asked my mother.
“Allow me to present to you the Hon. Frederick Fitzgerald Ormonde, M.P.,” gaily exclaimed Father O’Dowd, informing her in a few words of what had happened and what was expected to happen.
“God bless my boy!” she faltered, and, bursting into tears, kissed me as if I had been in my cradle.
It was a moment of fierce inner glow. I almost tasted the sweets of victory—of victory over Mabel, for whom, had I consulted my own self, I would have sacrificed anything—everything.
“We haven’t a minute to lose,” exclaimed my Mentor, all ablaze with excitement. “We shall have to rush out and fight helter-skelter. A surprise has been sprung upon us. Oh! for one week. My brave people will be taken at a disadvantage if we be not up and stirring. Every dexterity will be used to outwit us, every dodge resorted to, bribery especially. We must arrange committees in every town and village to sit en permanence until you are elected. We must have special messengers by the hundred. Ormonde, you will place all your horses at my disposal. North, south, east, and west we must nail the Home-Rule flag to the mast. North, south, east, and west the cry Pro aris et focis must go forth. This is our first genuine election under the ballot. We allowed ourselves to be cozened by false promises when Mr. Gladstone sprung his mine last year, but now the ballot, and free and fearless voting. No more coercion, no more intimidation by landlords, no more bullying or bribing. At last we have a chance of freeing the country from the yoke which has been put upon its neck for centuries, and now we have a chance of letting its voice be heard and to pass a verdict on the Act of Union.”
“I do wish Mr. Melton was not in the field against you,” almost whispered Mabel as I led her into dinner.
There was a something in her tone, like a faint note in melody, that vibrated through me. What was it?
Father O’Dowd would only swallow a few mouthfuls of food. “Up, guards, and at them! Eh, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“The duke never uttered those words. I can give you exactly what occurred. When Napoleon was advancing at the head of the remnant of his shattered army the duke—”
“Excuse me, my dear sir, but I have to marshal an army for my Waterloo. Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illuc—this way and that way my anxious mind is turning. Ormonde, you’ll come over to me to-morrow, and be prepared to address a meeting of your constituents. Don’t be later than one o’clock. And now sans adieux all!” And the worthy priest, buttoning up his ulster, sprang upon the car.
In vain we implored of him to stay. In vain I asked to be permitted to accompany him. No. “I am all aflame,” he cried. “I go to light a fire that will not be extinguished until the high-sheriff is compelled to declare a Catholic and a Home-Ruler the member for this Orangest of all Orange counties. I feel like one inspired. Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.” And with this quotation ringing in our ears Father O’Dowd sped upon his mission out into the night.
“An’ so yer goin’ for to be the mimber? Good luck to ye, Masther Fred darlint!” exclaimed Peter O’Brien, who was wild with delight at the intelligence, regarding the election as a foregone conclusion.
“I hope so, Peter.”
“For to repale the Union, Masther Fred?”
“Not quite so fast, Peter.”
“Och, murther!” he groaned, with disappointment delineated in every feature. “I thought ye wor for tee-total separation like Dan.”
“I’ll go as near to it as I can.”
“Do, avic; an’ begorr, av ye don’t take the consait out av some av thim on th’ other side, I’m a boneen, no less. Mind the dalin’ thrick, and keep your thumb on the ace av hearts—the card that always is thrumps.”
On the following morning, as I was preparing for my drive over to Father O’Dowd’s, and endeavoring to pull my ideas together on the burning topic of the hour, my mind being a prey to love, jealousy, politics, and despair-a crushing mélange—an outside car whirled up the avenue, and gracefully lounging upon the back cushion, attired in the fulness of fashionable travelling costume, a cigar in his mouth, and dainty lavender-colored kid gloves upon his hands, sat, or lay, Mr. Wynwood Melton. I recognized him even before he came within clear eye-shot, and, despite my bitter feeling against him, could not help paying him an involuntary tribute of admiration.
I knew what brought him to Kilkenley. It was not to seek my vote, it was not to visit Mr. Hawthorne—it was to see Mabel; and now, with a dull, dead ache at my heart, I should play host to my rival in love and my opponent in the hustings. I hastened downstairs and met him in the hall. I resolved that no one should come between me and my devoir as a gentleman.
Melton was a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, whose Henri Quatre beard and thin, dark moustache set off a round, carefully-groomed head—one of those heads that reveal the execution done by double brushes and hand-mirrors, as a woman’s bespeaks the delicate manipulations of the fille de chambre. He was quite pictorial in his get-up, from a Vandyke collar to black velveteen coat, knee-breeches, purple stockings, and shoes with great strings almost resembling those coquettish rosettes so much in vogue with ladies whom nature has blessed with Lilliputian feet. He might, but for his soft plaid woollen ulster, have represented one of the old portraits of my ancestors that hung in the dining-room; and as he stood thus I could not avoid contrasting my own homely appearance with his, and bitterly flinging the heavy odds into the scale against myself.
“Mr. Melton?” I said.
“Yaas,” with a drawl and a bow.
“You are welcome to Kilkenley,” extending my hand.
“Mr. Ormonde! Ah! glad to meet you. What a drive I’ve had, over such roads and such a vehicle! Caun’t say I like your cars. Per Bacco! one’s spine gets divided into sections during the drive. You’ve got old Hawthorne here. I suppose he has bored you to death. I expected to find this place like the enchanted wood—everybody asleep, even the princess.”
“Whom you would like to awaken as in the fairy tale,” I added bitterly.
“Don’t care for kissing. How does Miss Hawthorne like this precious country?”
“I assume she will like it all the better for your arrival.”
I was going to resent the impertinence, but withheld the burning retort that rose to my lips.
A self-sufficient smile appeared as he almost yawned:
“I should hope so.”
At this moment Mabel appeared upon the steps.
“Ah! Mr. Melton,” she exclaimed, a bright, happy flush upon her lovely face; “this is a surprise,” shaking hands with him.
“Agreeable?”
“Of course. You have introduced yourself, I see, to Mr. Ormonde.”
“How’s the governor?” not noticing her observation.
“Papa is wonderfully well; his trip has agreed with him à merveille. He will be able to encounter the late hours of the coming session without flinching.”
“They shau’n’t catch me sitting up, except at the club. You know what brought me over?”
“Oh! dear, yes.”
“I saw the De Ruthven lot, and, as I could have been elected without leaving London, I’m doosid sorry I came away, except,” he added, “for the pleasure of seeing you.”
“Are you quite sure of being returned?” she asked.
“Rather,” with a quiet, self-satisfied smile.
Miss Hawthorne glanced at me.
“You are to be opposed,” I said.
“Haw! haw!” he laughed. “That for opposition,” flinging away his cigar-butt.
“But I tell you it will be a fierce fight, Mr. Melton,” exclaimed Mabel. “You’ve got a foeman worthy of your steel.”
“Some cad of a farmer’s son or a briefless Irish barrister. Ireland wants Englishmen to sit for her and upon her.”
“I am going to oppose you, Mr. Melton,” my heart beating very fast as I uttered the words.
“Aw!” And extracting an eye-glass from the folds of his coat, he deliberately stuck it in his eye and coolly surveyed me from head to foot.
I would have knocked him heels over head, if Miss Hawthorne had not been present.
“Fire away,” he said; “but, if you take my advice, you will not run your head against a stone wall.”
“And if you take my advice,” I hotly retorted, “you’ll take the next train en route for London, for you have come upon a bootless errand.”
“Nous allons voir,” with a shrug.
“Yes, we shall see the outcome.”
“You don’t mean to go on?”
“To the bitter end.”
“The sinews of war are at my command.”
“The sinews of the county are at mine; but come,” I added, suddenly recollecting my position of host, “let us talk the coming campaign over a cutlet and a bottle of champagne.”
We entered the house together. Mr. Hawthorne met us in the hall.
“Glad to see you, Wynwood, although,” with a ponderous laugh, “I find you in the camp of the enemy.”
As I proceeded cellarwards to look up the wine I heard Mr. Melton say: “That cad; I’ll lick him into a cocked hat.”
“You’ll eat those words, my fine fellow,” I muttered, “or my name isn’t Ormonde; and for every sneer against Ireland you’ll have my riding-whip across your shoulders.”
I couldn’t play the hypocrite, I couldn’t act the Arab, and, while sharing bread and salt with mine enemy, plot his downfall as soon as he quitted my tent; so, making a very plausible excuse, I betook myself to my gay little dog-cart, and was about to give the mare her head when Peter O’Brien whispered to me:
“Isn’t that the spalpeen that’s cum over for to thry a fall wud ye, Masther Fred?”
“That is Mr. Melton,” I replied.
“That’s enough. The boys is waitin’ for to ketch him below at the crass-roads; and faix it’s little he’ll be thinkin’ av Parlimint if Teddy Delaney wanst gets a rowl out av him.”
“Peter,” I said, “if there is any insult offered to Mr. Melton while on my land, I’ll take it as to myself, and I will not contest the county. I pledge my honor to this.”
“Shure a little bit av a fight wudn’t be amiss.”
“I won’t have it.”
“The pond below is convaynient.”
“Silence, sir!”
“Tim Moriarty, the boy that dhruv him from the station, only wants the word for to land him in Brierly’s Pool”—a great slimy ditch about half a mile from the gate lodge.
I’m afraid I swore at my retainer.
“Wirra, wirra! is there to be no divarshin at all, at all?” he muttered to himself as I ordered him to let go the mare’s head.
Miss Hawthorne suddenly appeared upon the steps.
“Bon voyage,” she gaily cried. “Go where glory waits you.”
“I am going to lick that cad into a cocked hat!” I fiercely shouted, dashing from her presence like a lightning-bolt.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.
REGIONALISM VERSUS POLITICAL UNITY IN ITALY.[[1]]
Matters do not run smoothly in United Italy. There is a screw of considerable magnitude loose in the national machine. It jerks in its motion, pitches, staggers, and men who affect a knowledge of the mechanism of nations predict for Italy—unless the screw adverted to receive proper attention—a dead, disastrous standstill. There are fashions in politics nowadays, as there are in the styles of dress, just as capricious, just as irrational, equally expensive in their own sphere, but unconscionably malicious. It is the fashion, then, in the politics of Italy, to attribute to the Papacy the only obstacle to the full enjoyment of political unity and its consequent blessings. The deep-rooted antipathy of the Vatican to a nationality in Italy, its traditional hatred of new institutions, and its equally prolonged and powerful influence over the people—who, after all, are the mainspring of action—all this is adduced by the liberal party in explanation of the palpable want of unity in Italy.
The explanation may be satisfactory to conceited sciolists, especially if a hatred of the Papacy be one of the component parts of their moral constitution. Latterly, however, a veritable enemy to the political unity of Italy has begun to assert itself, in a manner so striking as to alarm even the most sanguine liberals. Not a spectre but a startling reality assists at the deliberations of the Italian legislature, and, insinuating itself with deadly effect into every department of governmental administration, produces jealousies, feuds, and schisms which threaten ultimately to dismember the nation. This danger is what is called Regionalism.
Solomon’s apothegm on the newness of nothing under the sun is applicable to Regionalism. It is of ancient birth in Italy, albeit of recent manifestation, at least in its present form. It may be defined as the interested affection which an Italian has for the geographical part of the Peninsula in which he was born—for the abode of his domestic gods, so to say, with its surroundings. The affection must be interested, and of its very nature aim at effecting the prevalence of the interests, moral or material, of his own region over those of the others. A Platonic affection for one’s own natal region does not, according to the liberals, constitute Regionalism; for, say they, such an affection merely contemplates historical rights, and the love of one’s rights is purely Platonic. Moreover, this affection should be directed to the region and not to the city or town of one’s birth. An interested affection for the latter has its own appellation already, being known as amore di campanile, and bears the same relation to Regionalism as a part to a whole. But the Regionalism of today, which threatens to produce fatal consequences in Italy, is referable to those portions of Italy which in times past formed separate states, or at least notable portions of an independent state, which, in its history, its traditions, its genius, its style of speech, and its interests, differed from the other states of Italy—as, for instance, Tuscany from Piedmont, the two Sicilies from Lombardy and Venice, or even the island of Sicily itself from continental Sicily, Venice from Lombardy.
Having explained our terms, we would remind the reader of the fact that, when the question of uniting Italy into one body with Piedmont at the head was first mooted, a formidable obstacle at once presented itself in the shape of the difficulties arising at once from the different and almost contradictory elements to be united. It was argued—and with reason, too—that to build up a new state upon the foundation of new institutions, and annul disparities which had existed for centuries, was easier to plan than to carry through. The conflict of interests, of local affections and jealousies, notoriously characteristic of the Italian states, was pronounced by the distinguished statesmen of Italy and Europe a fatal obstacle, if not to the formation, at least to the preservation, of unity. Count Cavour himself was of the number of those who proposed such a consideration, and, for his own part, expressed himself perfectly satisfied if Lombardy and Venice were but annexed to Sardinia. But the liberals and sectarians were urged on to the unification of Italy by the irresistible force of Mazzini’s mind, and to do so quickly, even without Venice and Rome, because the arms of Napoleon III. were at their disposal. A happy opportunity had presented itself, and they seized it. They obviated the difficulties alleged above by a heroic compact. Arrogating to themselves the right of representing the sentiments of the Italian people at large, and assuming the moral personality of the various regions to which they belonged, they proclaimed to the whole world that the all-absorbing desire of the people was to be united in one nation, and that they sacrificed for ever upon the altar of their country the interests, traditions, jealousies, and local affections which had hitherto divided them, and swore to seek no other glory for the future but the one only glory of Italy united.
Cavour resigned himself with so much tact to the situation that he seemed to have created it. And thus, by assiduous application of his maxim, that, in order to make Italy, morality must be put aside, and of that other, promulgated by Salvagnoli, one cannot govern and tell the truth, the great undertaking was accomplished. Two Italies soon began to exist, the legal and the real, which, as Iacini, a minister of the Italian Cabinet, wrote, are directly contradictory to each other. Legal Italy, the supplanter, conquered, and real Italy had to bow the head and submit to a series of civil and fiscal persecutions without example in modern history. But Regionalism was immolated to unity, and the world lauded the sacrifice.
Italy is a land of promise, or rather a promissory land. Promises are given with amazing facility—only to be equalled, however, by the reluctance with which they are fulfilled. While it was a question of sacrificing the interests of some one else—the majority of the liberals who labored in the construction of the national fabric had very little of their own to sacrifice, but everything to gain—all went well, especially while the novelty of the situation lasted. But when the excitement consequent on the formation of the nation had subsided, people began to perceive that the much-vaunted political unity of the country was not real. The promissory notes of the liberals touching the eternal sepulture of provincial differences remained unhonored. The practical sacrifice was impossible. It is now more than eighteen years since the promise was given, and during that time Venice and Rome have been added to the kingdom of Italy, with a view of consolidating for ever the nationality. But the great obstacle remains unmoved, ay, and avows itself, by the eloquence of facts, immovable.
We assert this much on the authority of a member of the Italian Parliament. In an address to his constituents, delivered on the 9th of September last, Federico Gabelli said: “Do differences and divisions exist in the country? Yes, great ones; and no wonder. We have had in Italy different histories, different glories, different sufferings, and different styles of education. We have ideas, habits, tendencies, and characters, different in different regions. For many years we were unknown to one another. The sole fact of our accomplished unity—the living together, so to speak—has revealed to us the existence of these great diversities. But the most profound diversity has been constituted by the material wants of the different parts of Italy. I do not take into account the petty desires of municipalities. I look at the matter very broadly. A real difference exists between the wants of the northerners and southerners, greater still between the demands of the two parties. There, the great word is said, the fearful phrase pronounced—a real and profound disparity between meridionali and settentrionali (southerners and northerners). But why hide it? Is it possible to hide it? This division is felt by all, but all are afraid to declare its existence. They are afraid (and their fear is honorable, because inspired by the holy love of country) to compromise, by the declaration, the grand fact of the unity of Italy.”
Great was the scandal produced among the liberals by this declaration of Gabelli, and greater still when he subsequently made a careful diagnosis of the evil, and prescribed a remedy—nothing less, by the bye, than a confederation similar to that proposed by Pope Pius IX. thirty-one years ago.
When the first Italian legislature assembled in Turin it was observed that nearly all the deputies formed themselves into groups, separate and divided, not politically in parties, but geographically in regions. There was the Tuscan group, the Sicilian group, the Neapolitan group, and later on the Lombard and the Venetian groups, which were the occasion of constant lamentations on the part of the Piedmontese. Then began the general struggle for power, to the almost incurable laceration of poor, real Italy. All the martyrs and confessors of the country clamored for offices in compensation for their heroic sufferings. As their number bordered on the infinite for such a puny state as Italy, so infinite was the number of positions created, and, consequently, infinite was (and continues to be) the number of peculations. But with masterly tact the Piedmontese element maintained the preponderance in power, and so great was the fury of the other patriots that they finally, with one accord, devoted all their energies to the extermination of Piedmonteseism. The molestations and bitternesses which fell to the lot of Count Cavour in the struggle that ensued were, in the opinion of many Piedmontese, among the causes which hastened his death. Whenever a new ministry was to be formed, to the personal rivalries which are inseparable from such an occasion were superadded the jealousies, the intrigues, and the pretensions of the different regions. Every region clamored for the exaltation to the ministerial bench of its own representative, not as the exponent of a political principle, but as the defender of some provincial interest. The Unità Cattolica, apropos of this, observes (September 21, 1877): “When it is a question of forming a cabinet in England, in France, in Spain, do they take care to have representatives of the various English, French, and Spanish regions? Certainly not. Personages are chosen according to their opinions, not according to the regions from which they come. But here in Italy a ministry cannot spring into existence but there enters at least one Piedmontese, one Neapolitan, one Lombard, one Sicilian, one Tuscan. Examine all our ministries, from 1861 down, and you will find that they were formed more on a regional than a political basis.” This is quite true as regards the past few years. Formerly, however, as we have already intimated, the Piedmontese held the majority in the cabinets, to the unquenchable ire of the other provincials.
Another cause of jealousy to the provinces, and the occasion, at least, of the pre-eminence of the Piedmontese, was the existence of the capital at Turin. The Peruzzi-Minghetti ministry, however, according to the convention with Napoleon III. of September 14, 1864, succeeded in having the capital transferred to Florence. This roused the hatred of the Piedmontese against the Tuscans, and was the cause of some bloody scenes in Turin. But Lanza and Sella, both Piedmontese, vindicated their countrymen by bearing the national lares away from the banks of the Arno, and enshrining them for ever, as they thought, on the banks of the Tiber. Nor did the evil disappear with the annexation of the Venetian province and the Pontifical territory. The Venetians constituted another group in Parliament, and, if the Romans did not do likewise, it was simply in default of the necessary elements, considering the aversion of the Eternal City and the neighboring provinces for the invaders. Rome became what the Baron d’Ondes Reggio predicted—a very Tower of Babel. The war of interests broke out afresh and was carried on with redoubled fury. The combatants ranged themselves into two grand divisions of northerners and southerners. The Tuscan group alone enacted the part of moderator. The Piedmontese element asserted its pre-eminence anew in Rome, and invaded not only every department of state, but extended its ruling influence even over municipal matters. The patriots of meridional Italy prepared themselves, during the intervals when a common attack against the church did not withdraw their attention from provincial feuds, to give battle to the Piedmontese, whose ascendency was stoutly maintained by Ponza di San Martino, Lanza, Sella, and General Cadorna. The language of the southern papers was in something like the following tenor: “Here we are at last in Rome! It is high time now that the patronage of the Piedmontese should be suspended, and a check put upon that political monopoly which they arrogate to themselves as a right of conquest. They gave us a dynasty—good. They also gave us a constitution, but we mean to perfect it and adapt it to the demands of progressing civilization. But in Rome Italy belongs to the Italians, not to the Piedmontese. Piedmonteseism oppresses us. Everything in the kingdom has a subalpine odor—the organic laws, bureaucratic systems, fiscal arrangements. The administrative machine is run entirely by Piedmontese. The ministers, their secretaries (with rare exceptions), the supernumeraries who lackey these—all Piedmontese. The secret offices are given to Piedmontese, and the Piedmontese enjoy the sinecures of the secret funds. The national bank itself is but a transformation of the old subalpine bank. The army is in the hands of the Piedmontese, with a Piedmontese as the Minister of War. In short, the nerve and fibre of government is Piedmontese. There must be an end of this!”
It took seven years of laborious intrigues, amalgamations, and combinations of parties to effect the downfall of the Piedmontese. Their obituary notice is dated March 18, 1876. On the same day began the reign of the Neapolitans, and within the short space of nineteen months they have so thoroughly disposed of Piedmonteseism in every branch of civil and military administration that even the word Buzzurri (chestnut-roasters), applied seven years ago by the Romans to their new masters, has become obsolete. The Venetian Gabelli has given us a description of the condition of affairs at present. In the discourse alluded to he proposes a league of the septentrionals. He says: “There is nothing, gentlemen, that drives people to an abuse of power more than the certainty of having so much of it that there is no danger of being made responsible for the abuse. The meridionals are in this position to-day, because they are supported therein by the division of the septentrionals. A part, and a great part, of our votes and forces is subordinate to the votes and forces of the meridionals. But is it true that in Parliament they vote for regional interests?” He answers in the affirmative, and adduces a series of amusing yet startling facts to prove his assertion. He then continues: “I might go on indefinitely with the enumeration of facts proving the existence of the struggle of interests between the northerners and the southerners. This struggle is real and active. Many preach that, even admitting the unfortunate existence of these divisions in the country, they should be kept secret, should not be proclaimed or discussed; above all, they should not be considered as a test in government. What would you say, gentlemen, of the logic of a physician who would reason in this wise: ‘I have a patient prostrate with typhoid fever. But, as this disease is very serious, I will hide it from myself, deny its existence; and because this disease can terminate fatally for my patient I will treat it as a simple inflammation of the bowels.’ That physician would be a fool. But would those rulers be more logical who, recognizing the existence of a condition so serious for the country, would persist in governing without taking it into account? The struggle of interests is an evil. Let us cure it. But to cure it let us begin with an exact diagnosis, and with a recognition that the evil exists. Without an exact diagnosis an efficacious cure would be a miracle. I am for unity. But the unity, and even the existence, of Italy might be threatened by mistrust in our systems of government, by the ever-increasing discontent. The country will always be governed badly, unless consideration be had for its actual condition. I am for unity. But I hold it to be fatal for Italy to pass through a crisis determined by the war of northern and southern interests. What the vicissitudes of this war will be, or who will prevail, no one can foresee. If we northerners remain united and form a compact party, our more advanced civilization, and, let us speak frankly, our honesty, more extensive and serious, will ensure for us a just predominance. If we continue to be divided, while the southerners form one phalanx, we will have to submit to the law of their interests, to the influence of a social condition entirely different from our own.”
We have said nothing in reference to Regionalism—of that faction in the liberal camp which is always conspiring against the monarchical unity of Italy, with a view of substituting a regional confederation of independent republics; nothing of the multitude of liberals who are clamoring for administrative decentralization, as a restoration, in part, of the independence in administration which was taken from the individual regions by political unity; nothing of the absolute impossibility of having a territorial army in Italy, for the reason that Regionalism might assert itself in a more material style, to the imminent peril of the government. We have simply narrated facts furnished by the liberals themselves—by legal Italy, which assumes to be the nation. Narration has the force of demonstration in this instance, and clearly establishes the fact that Regionalism exists in the very core of Italy, nay, rules supreme, regulating politics, constituting parties, biassing every discussion, and threatening, in the long run, not only the unity of the nation but the monarchy personified in the unity.
This much established, a very reasonable doubt may be put forth as to whether the unity of Italy be accomplished, even among the liberals, who arrogated to themselves the right and the faculty to unite it, spite of the nature, the history, the traditions, the genius, and the diverse and contrary interests of the Peninsula. That there is a species of unity we do not question. But it is neither moral nor organic unity, such as forms one whole, ordained to a living purpose, founded on the same principle, agreeing in its operations, harmonious in its members. It is a mechanical and artificial unity, without bonds of life, without order in purpose, without concord in action, without harmony in its parts; in short, it is merely fiscal, not national, unity. This is a logical conclusion, derived entirely from a consideration of legal Italy.
Our conclusion does not assume a more favorable aspect for the unity of Italy if we consider its passive subject—that is to say, the immense number of Italians who were united against their own wish; who never entered into the calculations of the demagogues; who, in deference to the Unity described above, have been outraged in the tenderest affections of the heart and in the most sacred rights of nature; who have gathered no other fruits from unity than regional, municipal, and domestic impoverishment; who perceive that, in the name of this unity, their nation is perverted and their religion vilified, and who consequently recognize in the government naught but an enemy of their purse, their conscience, their family, and their liberty.
From what has been said already the absurdity and, we will add, the malice of the accusation that the Papacy is the only obstacle to the perfection and enjoyment of political unity in Italy become quite apparent. The most powerful obstacle to such unity is not in the Papacy, but in the very nature of things; it is in the history of ages, in the varied character of the people, in the contrariety of the material and moral interests of the different portions of the country. Let liberalism eradicate from its bosom the gnawing worm of Regionalism; let it reconcile opposing interests, quiet regional passions, which are the seeds of civil war; and, having done this much, let it effect a unity with the real country. Until this much be accomplished, to charge the Papacy with the ill success of the national unity is absurd. It is malicious, also, inasmuch as it manifestly tends to separate the people from the Catholic Church, making them regard the spiritual head of the church and their father in the faith as an enemy of their country. Nay, were the liberals successful in effecting their daring purpose, which is the separation of the people from the see of Peter, then indeed would the political unity of Italy receive its death-blow; then indeed would the bond which unites the Italian people be severed, the bond of one faith, the bond of the only unity they really can boast of—religious unity. It were well if the demagogues of Italy bestowed the necessary consideration upon the incomparable uniting force of religion to a people, instead of promoting and hailing with delight every measure devised to destroy it. Since they deem it advisable to affect Prussian and Russian ways and means, why do they not perceive the manifest wisdom of Bismarck’s measures against the Catholic Church?—measures the fundamental purpose of which is not the extinction of the church, as much as the establishment of a firm and lasting basis to the unity of the empire in a uniformity of worship—Protestant, of course. And with this intent were the Falk laws promulgated. Russia, too, fully alive to the importance of a religious uniformity as the indestructible basis of political unity, has peopled Siberia and the squalid prisons of the empire with non-conformists to the so-called Orthodox creed of the land. Never yet was there a dynasty which did not find its main support and perpetuation in the religious unity of its subjects. True or false though the religion may have been, the principle of support was there. And Italy’s patriots, with the connivance, not to say the active concurrence, of a petty provincial dynasty, would perpetuate unity by sowing religious discord among the people; by making of a people, one in faith, in baptism, and actual religious profession, a discordant, divided multitude of Evangelicals, Calvinists, Waldensians, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Methodists. The discord produced in Italy to-day by Regionalism is a great and, in all probability, a fatal evil to the unity of the country. Add the religious disunion of the people to that caused by Regionalism, and the result will be simply chaotic.
The reader may add to these conclusions: If the Pope came to terms with Italy, as she now exists, would not the political unity of the country improve, not to say receive its formal perfection, in consequence? We answer, the hypothesis is inadmissible. Waiving the fact that, as governments are conceived nowadays, the Pope cannot be the subject of any one of them, and that he cannot in conscience accept terms from the Italian government without compromising rights which he is bound to maintain—though in fact they be trampled under foot and no human probability predict their restoration—it is sufficient for us that he declares a Non possumus. But admitting the supposition of a reconciliation, of a cession of imprescriptible rights, would the confusion which now predominates in Italy give place to order? Would the only beatitude to which Italy now aspires be realized? Would the political unity of the nation be established for ever? Would the war of interests cease? Would the interests themselves change their nature? Would the “more civilized” northerners of Italy leave off increasing their prosperity at the expense of the southerners, and these be content with contributing as taxpayers of the land, not as rulers? Would Sicilians and Calabrians live en famille with Venetians and Ligurians? Would Turin, and Venice, and Modena, and Parma, and Florence, and Naples forget that they were once the flourishing capitals of separate, independent states, and be beatified in their present condition, simply the residence of a prefect, and he a favorite of an ill-favored ministry? The glory of being made the capital of Italy presumably satisfies Rome. Think you, however, that the old city is never retrospective? If the puny provincial cities and regions, in struggling for their own regional interests and asserting their importance, cause people to yield to dark forebodings, and to re-peruse and reflect upon the history of the Italian states, what confusion could not the mistress of the world produce, were she to fall back upon her eighteen centuries of glory as the centre of Christendom?
The great obstacle to the enjoyment of political unity in Italy is not in the Vatican, but in the character, genius, history, traditions, and conflicting interests of the Italians themselves, and it is called Regionalism.
AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.
VIRGIL AND HORACE.—IV.
In passages of quiet beauty such as the first six books are full of—the Odyssey, we may call them, of the Æneid, as the last six are its Iliad—Conington is almost always happy. Take, for instance, the picture of the happy valley in Elysium (book vi. 703):
“Meantime, Æneas in the vale
A sheltered forest sees,
Deep woodlands where the evening gale
Goes whispering thro’ the trees,
And Lethe river which flows by
Those dwellings of tranquillity.
Nations and tribes in countless ranks
Were crowding to its verdant banks;
As bees afield in summer clear
Beset the flowerets far and near,
And round the fair white lilies pour,
The deep hum sounds the champaign o’er.”
In such lines, too, Mr. Morris, judging from his own poetry, should be at his best; and here again it is hard to choose between him and his predecessor:
“But down amid a hollow dale, meanwhile, Æneas sees
A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,
And Lethe’s stream that all along that quiet place doth wend;
O’er which there hovered countless folks and peoples without end.
And as when bees, amid the fields in summer-tide the bright,
Settle on diverse flowery things, and round the lilies white
Go streaming, so the fields were filled with mighty murmuring.”
Hypercriticism might here point out as a blemish the use of the same word “murmuring” to express the different sounds indicated in the Latin by the words sonantia and murmure; these are just the delicacies to be looked for in Virgil and not to be overlooked by his translator. Moreover, the line,
“A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,”
asks considerable good-will and knowledge of the Latin to make it sound quite reasonable, and “diverse flowery things” we have some private doubts about. But “hovered” is certainly a better equivalent for “volabant” than “crowded,” which gives no hint of the shadowy, unsubstantial nature of these dwellers in the realms of Dis—animæ, quibus altera fato corpora debentur:
“Là, les peuples futurs sont des ombres légères,”
as Delille puts it by an anticipative paraphrase. Here Mr. Cranch may meet his antagonists on somewhat better terms, though still we seem to miss in his lines the poetical flavor, which he rarely catches throughout:
“Meanwhile, Æneas in a valley deep
Sees a secluded grove, with rustling leaves
And branches; there the river Lethe glides
Past many a tranquil home; and round about
Innumerable tribes and nations flit.
As in the meadows in the summer-time
The bees besiege the various flowers, and swarm
About the snow-white lilies; and the field
Is filled with murmurings soft.”
The pathos, too, of his author—that exquisite pathos of Virgil which pervades the Æneid like a perfume, which one feels not more in the eloquent compression of the En Priamus wherewith Æneas recognizes his country’s painted woes on the walls of the Carthaginian temple, or the passionate heartbreak of the
“O patria, o divûm domus, Ilium, et incluta bello
Mœnia Dardanidum,”
or the subtle, touching beauty of the epitaph on Æolus, scarcely to be read even now without a quiver of the eyelids:
“Domus alta sub Ida,
Lyrnessi domus alta, solo Laurente sepulcrum,”
than in the
“Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta
Jam sua,”
of the farewell to Helenus, or the manly fortitude of the hero’s admonition to his son:
“Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis”
—the pathos of the Æneid Prof. Conington has not been unsuccessful in preserving, as we might show in more quotations than we have room for. But for the expression of sublimity or intense emotion the octosyllabic verse is scarcely so apt; and in striving to do justice to the tragic grandeur of the second book, the passionate despair of the fourth, and the elevated majesty of the sixth, or even the splendid rhetoric of Juno and Turnus in the tenth and eleventh, Prof. Conington must often “have been made sensible,” as he says in his preface, “of the profound difference between the poetry of Scott and the poetry of Virgil.” In the battle-scenes, however, he takes his full revenge, and in his nimble-footed verse Turnus falls on with a fire and fury, or swift Camilla scours the plain with a grace and lightness, which most of his competitors toil after in vain. And in rendering those epigrammatic turns of phrase of which the Æneid is full, and which are so characteristic a feature of Virgil’s style, we know of no version which surpasses his. Take such examples as these:
“Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem”:
“No safety can the vanquished find
Till hope of safety be resigned”;
“Mixtoque insania luctu
Et furiis agitatus amor et conscia virtus”:
“A warrior’s pride, a father’s pain,
In mingled madness glow”;
“Sed neque currentem se nec cognoscit euntem
Tollentemve manu saxumque immane moventem”
(how well in the heavy movement of the last line the sound echoes the sense!—a beauty which the translator certainly misses):
“Running, he knew not that he ran:
Nor, throwing, that he threw”;
the description of Turnus’ horses in book xii.:
“Qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras”:
“To match the whiteness of the snow,
The swiftness of the breeze”;
or Corœbus’ appeal to his comrades in book ii.:
“Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?”
“Who questions, when with foes we deal,
If craft or courage guides the steel?”
Have we not here all needful fidelity united to the air of genuine poetry? Compare Mr. Cranch’s versions of the first and last of these examples:
“The only safety of the vanquished is
To hope for none”;
and
“Whether we make use
Of stratagem or valor who inquires
In dealing with an enemy?”
If Æneas and Corœbus had harangued their fellow-Trojans in this wise, we doubt if they would have helped them so gallantly to make some of the finest poetry in the Æneid. There is no trumpet in such lines as these.
Nevertheless, in spite of many suspicious flavors of prose in his version, Mr. Cranch, we suppose, is to be called a poet. The Boston muses are liberal to their votaries, and do not ask that a man shall be Shakspere or Milton before crowning him with all their laurels. At least, we may fairly say that he is a gentleman of accomplishments and—we should be tempted to add culture, the proper term, we believe, for a person “in society” who knows all the things that are proper for “persons in society” to know, were it not that glib dilettanteism and newspaper sciolists have well-nigh sent that much-abused word into the Coventry of cant. Mr. Cranch is, moreover, a writer of much poetic taste and no little poetic faculty, as he has shown in many pleasant essays in many varieties of metre. Among the kinds of metre which he can write, however, his version of the Æneid has not convinced us that blank-verse is included; or, to put it more agreeably, if not more justly, we are not persuaded that the kind of blank-verse he writes is best fitted to do justice to Virgil.
So much we are led to say, because in his preface Mr. Cranch hints that only a poet can or should attempt to translate the Æneid, and asserts that only in blank-verse can it be fitly translated at all. Into that interminable controversy as to whether any but a poet can translate a poet, or whether rhyme is a curb or a spur, a help or a hindrance, to the judicious translator who knows how to follow its inspiration, we do not propose to enter. But Mr. Cranch, in declaring against the rhymed couplet of Dryden and his followers, delivers himself in a way which to us seems to imply a curious misconception of Virgil’s manner, and leads us to anticipate on the threshold one of the points in which Mr. Cranch’s version most strikingly fails. “The incessantly-recurrent rhyme,” he says, “gives an appearance of antithesis which disturbs the very simplicity and directness of the original.” Adjectives are apt to be used somewhat vaguely—or, as our Western friends would say in their delightful, breezy idiom, “to be slung about with a looseness”—in speaking of the style of ancient writers, of which so few of us nowadays know enough to be justified in speaking at all. We have no desire to meddle more than is needful with these dangerous epithets, double-edged weapons as they are. But unless we have read Virgil quite amiss, he is especially fond of antithesis, which Mr. Cranch seems to think he is not; and he is not especially simple or direct, which Mr. Cranch seems to think he is. Not that he cannot be, as in truth he often is, both simple and direct; but that simplicity and directness are not the features of his style which we should select to characterize it, as we should select them, for example, to characterize the style of Homer. Whatever simplicity Virgil has belongs, we think, to the general conception and conduct of his story, by no means to the manner of his telling it, to the general quality of his thought or style. What directness he has belongs to the general movement of his verse and the necessities of epic composition, and is in spite of a tendency to dwell curiously on incidents not in the track of his narrative, to turn, as it were, from his epic path and linger over wayside flowers of rhetoric or sentiment—a tendency illustrated by that subtlety of allusion which all his critics have remarked, and the habit of hinting at two or three modes of expression while employing one. These characteristics of his poetry would naturally have resulted from the quality of his genius—the genius of taste the Abbé Delille calls it; he was the first of the racinien poets, says Sainte-Beuve[[2]]—and the character of his time. The age he wrote for was one of extreme literary and social refinement, of keen philosophical speculation; the Latin he wrote in was already a literary language—as much so as the French of Racine or the English of Pope. The age of Augustus, in many points, was strikingly like that of Louis XIV. in France and of Charles II. or, still closer, of Queen Anne in England, as has been more than once pointed out. Sainte-Beuve, with his usual insight, has seized upon this resemblance to explain why Virgil, in the account of the shipwreck in the first book (vv. 81 seq.), which is an ingenious cento from the Iliad and Odyssey, should have dropped two of Homer’s most striking similes: that the pilot, struck by the falling mast, went overboard “like a diver,” and that the scattered swimmers—rari nantes in gurgite vasto—were borne like sea-birds on the wave. Virgil omits these images, says the French critic, just because they are so salient, so life-like, so frank and real. “Comparisons of that sort the age of Augustus, like the age of Louis XIV., rather eschewed. They were by no means to the taste of Frenchmen in the days of Saint-Evremond and Segrais (I use extreme terms purposely)—men of society, of the drawing-room, nice scholars who had been often in the Hôtel Rambouillet but little at sea, and to whom divers and sea-birds were unfamiliar sights. The Frenchman of that time preferred general descriptions to images too minutely particularized, and so, too, in a measure, did the Roman of the time of Augustus and the circle of Mæcenas. Mæcenas is not so far, either in taste or philosophy, from Saint-Evremond.”
With some reservations, much the same thing applies to the ages of Dryden and of Pope—to Pope’s age and to Pope himself more strictly, perhaps, than to Dryden or his time; so that one is half inclined to think it a caprice of literary destiny that Pope should have been set to translate Homer, and Dryden Virgil, rather than the reverse. Not that the result would have been a better Homer, if we may judge from Dryden’s sample work in the first book of the Iliad; a better Homer than Pope’s was perhaps not to be looked for in an age which in its poetry thought it fine to call a spade—about which it was apt to be only too plain-spoken in free fireside prose—an agricultural implement, and the bucolic person who wielded it a swain. Pope’s famous ironical essay in the Guardian on his own and Ambrose Phillips’ pastorals is a curious illustration of the then passion for putting Nature into hoops and periwig. Phillips, in a dim, blundering way, is nearer right with his Cecilias and Rogers, who talk at least like ploughmen and milkmaids, than Pope with his gentle Delias and sprightly Sylvias, who converse like masquerading duchesses; but as all the world happened to be masquerading, the laugh was with Pope.
Yet, as between the Greek and Roman poet, it should seem that the former ought to have been more congenial to Dryden, and the latter to Pope. In many of the points where Pope was farthest from Homer he was nearest to Virgil—not least in his love of antithesis, his epigram and point, his brilliant rhetoric, the studied elegance, nay, the artifice, of his style. Even in his most didactic vein he would scarcely have been so far from Virgil as in his most epic strain he was from Homer. Virgil is not averse to a bit of sermonizing sub rosa; he writes with a moral; his Æneas is a sort of fighting parson born before his time. One cannot help feeling, too, in his most impassioned moments, that he is writing with his eye on his style, as Pope always is, as we can never fancy Homer doing. Is the rhetorical artifice any less plain in
“O dolor atque decus magnum rediture parenti”
than in
“Daphne, our grief, our glory, now no more”?
Is the antithesis less pointed in
“Qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras”
than in
“Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind”?
There are hardly more lines of the kind in Pope than in the Æneid.
When, therefore, Mr. Cranch tells us that he has taken blank-verse rather than the rhymed couplet in order to avoid the appearance of antithesis, and to secure the clear simplicity and directness of his original, he shows us where to look for some of his failures. His simplicity is too often baldness, his directness not seldom prose, and to the pointedness of the Latin he does much less than ample justice. His blank-verse seems to us monotonous in its modulation and is not always correct. Lines like the following occur too often:
“Thou seekest counsel, gracious sovereign,
In matters which to none of us are dark
Nor needing our voices. All must own
They know what best concerns the public good,
Yet hesitate to speak.”
Indeed, we must confess that we are at a loss to know what Mr. Cranch means by saying: “I am far from pretending that my versification may not frequently fail to convey the movement of the Latin lines to the ear of those to whom they are familiar.” If he means that his versification often, or even sometimes, or at all, conveys the movement of the Latin lines to his own ear, then his ear must be as curiously constructed as the “arrected ears” he bestows on Æneas in the famous shepherd simile in the second book.[[3]]
But it is ungracious to linger on faults which we have only dwelt on because they seemed to flow from what we must take to be a misconception on the part of Mr. Cranch of the true spirit of his author. His version has certainly the merit of fidelity to the sense of the original, though this, it seems to us, is sometimes bought by a sacrifice of the spirit. His verse is, for the most part, what he claims it to be, smooth, flowing, and compact, though it does not recall to us, as to him, the best models of blank-verse, and he does not sin, as one other of our translators does, against that “supreme elegance” which is Virgil’s chief fascination. We find him best in the least essentially poetic passages, which is, perhaps, not so bad a sign as it appears. The speech of Juno in the tenth book is no unfavorable specimen of his best style:
“... Then, stung with rage,
The royal Juno spake: ‘Wherefore dost thou
Force me to break my silence deep, and thus
Proclaim in words my secret sorrow? Who
Of mortals or of gods ever constrained
Æneas to pursue these wars, and face
The Latian monarch as an enemy?
Led by the fates, he came to Italy;
Be it so: Cassandra’s raving prophecies
Impelled him. Was it we who counselled him
To leave his camp and to the winds commit
His life? or to a boy entrust his life
And the chief conduct of the war? or seek
A Tuscan league? or stir up tribes at peace?
What gods, what unrelenting power of mine,
Compelled him to this fraud? What part in this
Had Juno or had Iris, sent from heaven?
A great indignity it is, forsooth,
That the Italians should surround with flames
Your new and rising Troy, and that their chief,
Turnus, should on his native land maintain
His own, whose ancestor Pilumnus was,
Whose mother was the nymph Venetia.
What is it for the Trojans to assail
The Latins with their firebrands, and subdue
The alien fields and bear away their spoils?
Choose their wives’ fathers, and our plighted brides
Tear from our breasts? sue with their hands for peace,
Yet hang up arms upon their ships? Thy power
May rescue Æneas from the Greeks, and show
In place of a live man an empty cloud;
Or change his ships into so many nymphs.
Is it a crime for us to have helped somewhat
The Rutuli against him? Ignorant
And absent, as thou sayst, Æneas is;
Absent and ignorant, then, let him be.
Thou hast thy Paphos, thy Idalium too,
And lofty seat Cythera. Why, then, try
These rugged hearts, a city big with tears?
Do we attempt to overturn your loose,
Unstable Phrygian state? Is it we or he
Who exposed the wretched Trojans to the Greeks?
Who was the cause that Europe rose in arms
With Asia, or who broke an ancient league
By a perfidious theft? Did I command
When the Dardanian adulterer
Did violence to Sparta? Or did I
Supply him weapons and foment the war
By lust? Thou shouldst have then had fear for those
Upon thy side; but now too late thou bring’st
Idle reproaches and unjust complaints.”
In rendering the phrase fovive cupidine bello (“or battles flame with passion fanned,” says Conington) Delille has a characteristic touch almost worthy of Segrais:
“Me vit-on allumer, pour embraser les terres
Au flambeau de l’amour les torches de la guerre.”
In the speech of Turnus in the eleventh book the Trojans become “brigands” and “barbarous assassins,” quite as if the Rutuli chief were a deputy of the Left Centre addressing his friends on the Right. If the good abbé had written a few years later he would no doubt have made them Communists. But his speech of Juno, though rather free, has many fine touches; and, indeed, the French seems to hit off the women’s part of the Æneid better than our English. Thus, the dumb rage with which Juno must have listened to Venus is well hinted in the line,
“Junon muette écoute auprès de son époux,”
though it is by no means so literal as Cranch’s.
Of the three translators of Virgil we are now considering, Mr. Morris certainly brought to his task the greatest natural and acquired gifts. Nay, had we been asked from the ranks of living English writers to pick out the one who could give us Virgil most fitly, with least loss of majesty or beauty, in an English dress, we think we should have named the author of Jason and the Earthly Paradise. For Mr. Morris is not only a poet—a poet of very nearly the first order; whereas Mr. Cranch, we are constrained to say in the teeth of the Boston muses, is hardly more than a poet by brevet—he is also a classical scholar who, in point of general acquirements at least, is a rival whom even Prof. Conington would respect. Since the time of Dryden, and not excepting him, we know of no English poet—unless, perhaps, Pope and the present laureate—whose natural genius should seem to have fitted him so well as Mr. Morris to interpret the Æneid. His own poetry shows many of the most distinctive qualities of Virgil’s verse: its elegance, its pathos, its pregnant allusiveness, above all the pensive grace, the under-note of tender sadness, that runs through all the strain of the Æneid, the underlying motif of its theme. And though the form of narrative verse, in which Mr. Morris has chiefly exercised his powers, is sufficiently remote in tone and spirit from the tone and spirit of epic narrative, yet here and there, as in passages of Jason and of the Lovers of Gudrun, he has come as near to striking the true epic note as any modern poet we recall, unless it be Mr. Matthew Arnold in his admirable and touching fragment of Sohrab and Rustum. Add to this his minute and well-digested knowledge of classic mythology and legend, and his rare mastery of the Saxon and Romance elements of the language, in which so much of its tear-compelling power resides—what Joubert might have called les entrailles des mots—his possession of the secret, so hard to learn, of the sweetness of short and simple words,[[4]] and we had every reason to expect from Mr. Morris a version of the Æneid which should be in the highest degree original, elegant, and fresh, which should even take rank as the best English translation of Virgil’s poem that had yet appeared. That pre-eminence, indeed, has by many English critics been assigned to it; but to their verdict we cannot assent.
Fresh and original this version certainly is; for it is altogether unlike any that has preceded it, in conception, in method, in treatment, we might almost say in metre, since Mr. Morris’ long Alexandrines are, in metrical effect, no more the Alexandrines of Phaer than those of Chapman. Elegant it is, too, so far as regards artistic workmanship and finish; that everything that Mr. Morris sets his hand to is sure to have. But it is not the elegance of Virgil; it is not even the elegance of the Earthly Paradise. The final grace of proportion and fitness it has not, and in spite of many and singular beauties—of beauties which scarcely any living English writer that we know of, except Mr. Morris, could give us—it is not to us, upon the whole, a satisfactory version. Nay, it is most unsatisfactory, and it is so because of the two qualities which should otherwise have made its chief charm—its freshness and its originality; because to the attainment of these Mr. Morris seems to us to have sacrificed the most important quality of all in a translation—fidelity to the spirit of his author.
We need go no farther than the title-page to read the story of his design and, as we incline to hold, his failure. “The Æneids of Virgil done into English verse” is what he offers us, and the affectation of the title runs through the performance and mars it. If from the result we may derive the intent, Mr. Morris set out to produce such a version of the Æneid as might have been written anywhere between the time of Chaucer and Phaer, had any poet then lived who joined to the simplicity and freshness of his own age the culture and self-consciousness of ours. At least, this is the only way we can account for Mr. Morris’ choice of the peculiar style in which he has seen fit to couch, we might almost say to smother, his version—a style which is not, indeed, the style of Chaucer, or of Phaer, or of Chapman (to whom it has been rashly referred by an English critic in the Saturday Review), or, for the matter of that, of any other English author we are acquainted with, living or dead; but which is nevertheless plainly inspired by the same effort in the direction of mediævalism and the earlier manner that has borne such pleasant fruit in the author’s former productions. But the effort is here carried, it seems to us, to “a wasteful and ridiculous excess,” and is, besides, quite out of place in a translation where the writer is not free to form his own manner, but is bound to the manner of his original; unless, indeed, Mr. Morris finds in the style of Virgil the same effect of quaintness and antiquity which he has striven but too successfully to give his translation, and that he is too good a scholar to permit us to believe. Virgil’s style was that of his age, and his unfrequent archaisms, such as faxo for fecero, aulai for aulæ, and the like, can scarcely have produced on the reader of the Augustan era any stronger impression of quaintness than such poetical forms as “spake” and “drave” and “brake” produce on us when we meet them in English poetry today. We must, therefore, assume that Mr. Morris aimed at some such reproduction of the literary manner of a past age as Thackeray gives us in Esmond, or Balzac, with still greater ingenuity but much worse art, in the Contes Drolatiques. This, and a resolve to use only Saxon words as far as possible—a right idea in the main, perhaps, for translation from the Latin, certainly a most interesting and instructive one—and (a less useful idea) to say nothing in the common way which could at all be said out of the common, seem to have been his controlling influences. To these he has subordinated all else but verbal fidelity, and the result is a queer composite production of a strong mediæval flavor—a romanticized Æneid which one of the seekers after the Earthly Paradise might have told his comrades
“Under the lime-trees’ shade
By some sweet stream that knows not of the sea,”
but which, except for fidelity to its meaning, seems to us hardly nearer being Virgil’s Æneid than Pope’s Iliad was to being Homer’s. Close it certainly is; we may say marvellously close. Indeed, so far as we have been able to collate, it surpasses in this respect all previous rhymed versions, even Conington’s, and falls but little below any of those in blank-verse. Not only does it render the Latin line for line—no trifling task, even for the Alexandrine, with its unvarying fourteen syllables against the average fifteen of the hexameter—but not seldom word for word. Moreover, notwithstanding its exactness, it reads as smoothly and as spiritedly as an original poem; it is everywhere set off with those verbal graces of which Mr. Morris is a master, and the metre, which has many merits for the purpose, is throughout handled with admirable skill. Wherein and how, then, does it fail of giving us Virgil?
Because, we answer, not only is Virgil’s tone—his coloring, his local atmosphere-conspicuously absent from Mr. Morris’ translation, not only is the tone of the latter as unlike the tone of the Æneid as can well be, but it is even carefully, studiously, nay, laboriously, removed from it. It may be taken as a rule in translation that any word is out of place which violently disturbs the associations that belong to the original, the train of ideas raised by the original in the reader’s mind. For instance, when Mr. Theodore Martin makes use of the word “madrigal” in his translation of the Carmen Amœbæum of Horace, we somehow feel that he has struck a false note; we are sensible of a discord. The word to the English reader brings up associations wholly foreign to Horace and his time, turns the thoughts of the English reader into a widely different track, and dispels the Horatian effect. Mr. Morris not only does this in single words, but his very design is based on doing it as often as he can; his entire vocabulary is carefully selected with a view to doing it uniformly throughout his work. From the stately towers of Ilium, city of the gods, the arces Pergameæ and incluta bello mœnia Dardanidum; from the splendid temples of Carthage; from the fertile plains of Hesperia, the royal city of Laurentum, and the mighty hundred-pillared palace of Picus; from the Ausonian battle-fields, ringing with the clatter of chariots, the clang of sword on helm and spear on buckler, the shouts and shocks of the contending heroes—from all the scenes and characters so familiar to us in the Virgilian story, Mr. Morris ushers us into a strange, remote, wild Westland, where all the famous doings we thought we knew so well are transformed in the most grotesque fashion. It is a land of “steads” and “firths,” of “meres” and “leas” and “fells,” he takes us into, inhabited not by a people but by “a folk,” who are not named but “hight”; who dwell in “garths” and “burgs” and worship “very godheads” in “fanes”; who never by any chance go anywhere, but either “wend” or “fare” when they are not engaged in “flitting”—a mysterious kind of locomotion which they sometimes achieve by means of “wains”—and who hold converse among themselves not in words but in “speech-lore,” which they at times condescend to speak, but very much prefer, when the rhyme will give them the ghost of a chance, “to waft” through “tooth-hedge” (ore locutus). In this mysterious region are neither times nor numbers, but only “tales” and “tides”; what would be mere tillers of the soil (agricolæ) in Virgil are here become “acre-biders” or “field-folk,” who for cattle have “merry, wholesome herds of neat” (læta boum armenta), and for horses “war-threatening herd-beasts.” Here things are rarely carried, but, like the “speech-lore” above spoken of, are “wafted” whenever humanly possible, and are never done or made when they can by any means be “dight.” Here we are puzzled to recognize our old friends, the Muses, under the disguise of “Song-maids”; we fairly cut those amiable sisters, the Furies, when they are introduced to us as the “Well-willers”; and of the heroes who roar and ruffle so gallantly through the battlefields of the Æneid we have scarcely a glimpse, but instead a “tale” of “lads of war,” “begirded” with “war-gear” and led by “Dukes of man,” who are for ever falling on and smiting or being smitten by a “sort of fellows” dight in “war-weeds,” who fare around in “war-wains” and “deal out iron-bane” (dant funera ferro) with “shot-spears” or “weapon-smiths” and “wound-smiths” instead of simple javelins and swords. Following Mr. Morris’ lead, in short, we find ourselves in a land where Virgil would be as much at home as he would in Asgard or Valhalla, or as the hero Beowulf might be in Elysium. It is a pleasant land enough in its way, and the folk are entertaining folk, but we feel that we have left the Æneid behind us.
It is far from our wish or aim to set Mr. Morris’ work in an unworthy or ridiculous light. Our respect for him is too great, our admiration too sincere, to treat any performance of his lightly. But some such impression as that we have given above is the chief one left on our mind by reading his Æneids. We are no longer in Italy but in Norseland, or, if in Italy, an Italy after the Gothic irruption; Æneas and Turnus, Pallas and Lausus, fortisque Gygas fortisque Cloanthus, are no longer Trojans or Rutules, but Norse jarls and vikings. They bear their Latin names, but that is all that is Latin about them: the hand is the hand of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob. What associations connect themselves in the mind of the English reader with such words as “garth” and “burg” and “firth”? Are they not as unlike as possible to any that belong to Virgil? Do they not disturb and trouble, even totally obscure, the effect the English reader habitually derives from Virgil—these incongruous words dropped into the clear current of the poet’s manner—as a stone flung into a limpid pool may trouble and obscure it? What is there in common between Morris’ “lads of war in vain beleaguered” and Virgil’s nequidquam obsessa juventus?—between Morris’ “very Duke of man” and Virgil’s ipsis ductoribus? (v. 249). What impression is the English reader apt to get from phrases like “flitting by in wain”? It is certainly not that of a hero rushing to battle, but, if any—and we are not sure that upon our own mind any very tangible impression is left at all—rather of a bucolic ghost disappearing somewhere in a spectral hay-cart. To say Carthage is to be “Lady of all lands” is surely to produce an utterly different effect from that of dea gentibus esse (i. 17); and they must have shrewder eyes than ours who can find in such lines as
“Lo! what was there to heave aloft in fashioning of Rome,”
or
“Those fed on good hap all things may because they deem they may,”
anything more than the shell of Virgil’s
“Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem”
or,
“Hos successus alit; possunt quia posse videntur,”
where the pretence of verbal fidelity only makes the verbal affectation more annoyingly weak. These ever-recurring eccentricities of phrase tease the reader and spoil half his enjoyment. In a translator whose daily speech was of “trowing” instead of “trusting,” of “tale” for number or “sort” for company, of “wending” and “wafting,” and “folk” in the singular, and who used “very” rather profusely, and on slight provocation, as an adjective, and “feared” and “learned” as transitive verbs, and agreed with some modern great men in thinking grammar generally a bore, such lines as
“O Palinure, that trowed the shies and soft seas overmuch”;
“These tidings hard for us to trow unto our ears do win”;
“In all thou needest toil herein, from me the deed should wend”;
“A hundred more, and youths withal of age and tale the same”;
“There with his hand he maketh sign and mighty speech he wafts”;
“From the open gates another sort is come”;
“And her much folk of Latin land were fain enow to wed”;
“Hard strive the folk in smiting sea, and oar-blades brush the main”;
“The straits besprent with many a folk”;
“To Helenus his very thrall me very thrall gave o’er”;
“So with their weapons every show of very fight they stir”;
“But learn me now who fain the sooth would wot”;
“About me senseless, throughly feared with marvels grim and great”;
“And many a saying furthermore of God-loved seers of old
Fears her with dreadful memories”;
“Nor was he worser than himself in such a pinch bestead”
—such lines in a translator to whom this dialect was still a living language would not seem unnatural. They would be simply the expression of the effect made by Virgil on the mind of that age, and so far, since every age has its own idiom, they would not necessarily be un-Virgilian at all. Even such extraordinary phrases as
“An ash ...
Round which, sore smitten by the steel, the acre biders throng,
And strive in speeding of the axe,”
for
“Ornum
Cum ferro accisam crebrisque bipennibus instant
Eruere agricolæ certatim”;
or
“When Jove, a-looking down
From highest lift on sail-skimmed sea, and lands that round it lie,
And shores and many folk about in topmost burg of sky,
Stood still,”
for
“Cum Jupiter, æthere summo
Despiciens mare velivolum terrasque jacentes
Litoraque et latos populos, sic vertice cœli
Constitit”;
or
“An ancient mighty rock, indeed, which lay upon the lea,
Set for a landmark, judge and end of acre-strife to be,”
for
“Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis”;
or,
“No footstrife but the armed hand must doom betwixt us twain,”
for
“Non cursu, certandum sævis est comminus armis”
—such phrases as these, if to any translator at any time they could have seemed a natural way of saying things, would not then, in such a translator’s version, have struck us with more than the passing and not unpleasant sense of quaintness which is part of the charm we find in the diction of a past age when used by its lawful owners. But when a poet of the nineteenth century sacrilegiously invades the tomb and seizes upon this castoff and moth-eaten verbal bravery of buried ages to bedeck himself withal, it is much as if he should come to make his bow in a modern drawing-room arrayed in the conventional dress-coat, Elizabethan ruff and trunks, Wellington boots, and a Vandyke hat. The novelty might please for a moment, but the incongruity must offend in the end. In the very time which Mr. Morris so much admires they knew this to be false art. “That same framing of his stile to an old rusticke language,” says Sir Philip Sidney in his Apologie for Poesie, speaking of The Shepherd’s Calendar, “I dare not alowe, since neither Theocritus in Greeke, Virgile in Latin, nor Sannazar in Italian did affect it.”
Still worse is it when our amateur of second-hand finery, the bric-à-brac of language, selects such a poet as Virgil—Virgil, whose name is a synonym for supreme, for perfect elegance, whose “taste was his genius”—as a lay figure to drape with these shreds and tatters of an obsolete, fantastic verbiage, “mouldy-dull as Eld herself”—to quote and illustrate at once from Mr. Morris[[5]]—and smelling of the grave. This persistence in going out of the way to hunt for archaisms at once—to repeat a word which best hits our own feeling—teases the reader and distracts him. We seem to feel Mr. Morris amiably tugging our coat-sleeve at every turn to point out this or that fresh eccentricity of language. We fancy we see him chuckling and rubbing his hands gleefully here and there over the discovery of some more than usually exasperating way of violating the usages of modern speech. So vexed and harassed, it is impossible to get much taste of the Æneid; through this word-jugglery we catch such glimpses of it as of the painted scene a conjurer has set behind him to throw his tricks into relief Of a piece with this laborious renaissance of a forgotten tongue are the studied mispronunciations, such as Ænĕas for Ænēas and Erāto for Erăto:
“So did the Father Ænĕas, with all at stretch to hear”;
“To aid, Erāto, while I tell what kings, what deedful tide”;
the false rhymes, such as “wrath” and “forth,” “poured” and “abroad,” “abroad” and “reward,” which might be forgiven to the stress of so long and difficult a task had we not such reason for suspecting them to be intentional; the occasional use of phrases familiar, even low, and totally at variance with Virgil’s lofty and cultivated style, such as “gobbets of the men” for frusta, iii. 632; “Phrygian fellows” (Phrygii comites); “those Teucrian fellows”; “the other lads” for juventus; “but as they gave and took in talk” (hac vice sermonum); “he spake and footed it afore” (dixit et ante tulit gressum); “unlearned Æneas fell aquake” (Horruit ... inscius Æneas)—surely a most undignified proceeding for a hero; “so east and west he called to him, and spake such words to tell” (dehinc talia fatur)—the list is long, scarce a page but would swell it; or the compound epithets which Mr. Morris—herein, no doubt, taking his cue from Chapman, but not so happily or with such good reason—has coined profusely. “In the Augustan poets,” says Prof. Conington, “compound epithets are chiefly conspicuous by their absence, and a translator of an Augustan poet ought not to suffer them to be too prominent a feature of his style.” This assertion must be qualified with regard to Virgil, who, in imitation of his model, Homer, and in obedience, perhaps, to a supposed law of epic composition, has too many compounds to permit it to pass unchallenged—such, for instance, as armisonus (Palladis armisonæ—“Pallas of the weapon-din”), velivolus (“sail-skimmed”), legifer (legiferæ Cereri—“Ceres wise of law”), letifer (“deadly”), cælicolus (“heaven-abider”), laniger (“woolly”), noctivagus (“nightly-straying”), and the like. Yet, not content to render these by English compounds even where it is not always expedient—since the compound form in our own language will often, from its strangeness in a familiar tongue, seem strained and awkward, where in the less familiar Latin it seems only natural and elegant[[6]]—Mr. Morris has introduced many other compounds of his own invention for which there is no authority in Virgil at all, which in many instances are discordant with his style and not seldom downright grotesque—such combinations as “hot-heart” for ardens, or “cold-hand in the war” (frigidus bello) or even “fate-wise,” “weapon-won,” “war-lord,” “battle-lord,” “air-high,” “star-smiting,” “outland-wrought,” “heaven-abider” (cœlicolus), “like-aged,” “goddess-led,” etc., which meet us at every turn. And what are we to say of such inventions as “murder-wolf,” “death-stealth” (“on death-stealth onward the Trojan went”—hic furio fervidus instat), “dreaming-tide” for somnus, “war-Turnus,” “weapon-great,” “helpless-fain” for nequidquam avidus, “hero-gathered stone” (lapis ipsi viri), “anger-seas,” “wounding-craft,” “bit-befoaming,” “speech-masters,” or those others, if possible still more extraordinary, already mentioned, “weapon-smith,” “wound-smith,” “tooth-hedge”? These, and scores of other such we have marked for notice, are surely as little like Virgil as they are like any English that is spoken to-day; and they are scarcely less potent than Mr. Morris’ archaisms in disturbing and altering the Virgilian tone. Of a like effect are the quaint and unconsequential translations now and then of Latin names—as of Musæ into “Song-maids,” Eumenides into “Well-willers,” Avernus into “Fowlless,” and soon—whereby for a perfectly familiar and intelligible term of the Latin is substituted in the English a grotesque and puzzling word, and which again stops the current of the story until the reader can readjust his mind to the novel ideas it awakes. The most unclassical of readers has his notions formed of the Muses and the Furies, at least, if not of the Eumenides; but of these Song-maids—who might as well be milk-maids—and of these Well-willers—who rather suggest well-diggers—he must form a new notion as he reads. And one might add, at the risk of seeming to split hairs, that in thus translating the word Eumenides we lose much of the effect of that euphemism with which the Greeks, like all strongly imaginative peoples, sought to keep disagreeable subjects at arm’s length—the form τι παθεῖν, as a synonym for dying, is exactly paralleled by the Irish phrase “suffered,” applied to an executed rebel—or perhaps to ward off the wrath of these ticklish neighbors, as Celtic races, again, are in the habit of calling fairies “the good people.” A more substantial objection is that Mr. Morris seems capricious in the matter, for we see no particular reason for his translating one such name and others not at all—-why he should not give us Quail-land for Ortygia, or Chalk Island for Crete, as well as Westland for Hesperia, or Fowlless for Avernus.
It is a result of these affectations, or—for we are loath to press the charge of affectation against a poet whose own writing is so genuine and sincere—of these peculiarities of style, which have on the reader all the seeming and effect of affectation, that the pathos of Virgil, the one quality to which Mr. Morris should have been best fitted to do justice, he has greatly impaired. Affectation is fatal to pathos; one cannot have much feeling for the woes which are carefully set forth in verbal mosaic. Take but a single example—a passage in Virgil already referred to—which sets forth admirably that faculty the Latin poet has to so curious a degree of infusing sadness into mere words, but in which Mr. Morris is little behind him. It is the death of Æolus, which Mr. Morris renders thus:
“Thee also, warring Æolus, did that Laurentine field
See fallen and cumbering the earth with body laid alow;
Thou diest, whom the Argive hosts might never overthrow,
Nor that Achilles’ hand that wrought the Priam’s realm its wrack.
Here was thy meted mortal doom: high house ‘neath Ida’s back—
High house within Lyrnessus’ garth, grave in Laurentine lea.”
It only needs to compare this with the original to see how far it misses the pathos of the Latin; it needs only to compare it with Mr. Morris himself, where he has forgotten or failed to be sufficiently archaic, to see the reason of the miss. Take, again, the passage from the shipwreck in the second book already referred to:
“Now therewithal Æneas’ limbs grew weak with chilly dread;
He groaned, and, lifting both his palms aloft to heaven, he said:
O thrice and four times happy ye that had the fate to fall
Before your fathers’ faces there by Troy’s beloved wall!
Tydidĕs, thou of Danaan folk, the mightiest under shield,
Why might I never lay me down upon the Ilian field?
Why was my soul forbid release at thy most mighty hand,
Where eager Hector stooped and lay before Achilles’ wand,
Where huge Sarpedon fell asleep, where Simois rolls along
The shields of men and helms of men and bodies of the strong?”
The word “wand” for telo has an odd look, but that may be forgiven to the rhyme; and the rest is simple, emotional, and true. In like happy moments of oblivion we catch an echo of Jason, as in the opening of book vii.:
“The faint winds breathe about the night, the moon shines clear and kind;
Beneath the quivering, shining road the wide seas gleaming lie....
The fowl that love the river-bank and haunt the river-bed
Sweetened the air with plenteous song and through the thicket fled.”
The rising of the Rutules in vii. 623 is an animated picture unmarred by too many of the mannerisms we have spoken of:
“... All Ausonia yet unstirred brake suddenly ablaze;
And some will go afoot to field, and some will wend their ways
Aloft on horses dusty-fierce; all seek their battle-gear.
Some polish bright the buckler’s face and rub the pike-point clear
With fat of sheep; and many an axe upon the wheel is worn.
They joy to rear the banners up and hearken to the horn.
And now five mighty cities forge the point and edge anew
On new-raised anvils: Tibur proud, Atina stanch to do,
Ardea and Crustumerium’s folk, Antennæ castle-crowned.
They hollow helming for the head; they bend the withe around
For buckler-boss; or other some beat breastplates of the brass,
Or from the toughened silver bring the shining greaves to pass.
Now fails all prize of share and work, all yearning for the plough;
The swords their fathers bore afield anew they smithy now.
Now is the gathering trumpet blown; the battle-token speeds,
And this man catches helm from wall; this thrusteth foaming steeds
To collar; this his shield does on, and mail-coat threesome laid
Of golden link, and girdeth him with ancient trusty blade.”
Passages like this—and, indeed, there are many of them—only deepen our regret that Mr. Morris should let a whim of doubtful taste deprive us of what might have been otherwise the best rendering of the Æneid yet. One other passage we will give, and then cease to tax longer the patience of the reader. It shall be the gallant picture of Turnus sallying forth to battle (xi. 486), which, as it is taken from the like description of Paris, near the end of the sixth Iliad, will permit us to compare Morris’ manner with Chapman’s:
“Now eager Turnus for the war his body did begird:
The ruddy gleaming coat of mail upon his breast he did,
And roughened him with brazen scales; with gold his legs he hid;
With brow yet bare, unto his side he girt the sword of fight,
And, all a glittering, golden man, ran down the castle’s height.[[7]]
High leaps his heart, his hope runs forth the foeman’s force to face;
As steed, when broken are the bonds, fleeth the stabling place,
Set free at last, and, having won the unfenced open mead.
Now runneth to the grassy ground wherein the mare-kind feed;
Or, wont to water, speedeth him in well-known stream to wash,
And, wantoning, with uptost head about the world doth dash,
While wave his mane-locks o’er his neck, and o’er his shoulders play.”
Compare Chapman, Iliad vi. 503 (Οὐδέ Πάρις δήθυνεν ἐν ὑψηλοῖοι δόμοιοιν):
“And now was Paris come
From his high towers, who made no stay when once he had put on
His richest armor, but flew forth; the flints he trod upon
Sparkled with lustre of his arms; his long-ebb’d spirits now flow’d
The higher for their lower ebb. And as a fair steed, proud,
With full-giv’n mangers, long tied up, and now his head-stall broke,
He breaks from stable, runs the field, and with an ample stroke
Measures the centre; neighs and lifts aloft his wanton head,
About his shoulders shakes his crest, and where he hath been fed,
Or in some calm flood wash’d, or stung with his high plight, he flies
Amongst his females; strength put forth his beauty, beautifies,
And like life’s mirror bears his gait: so Paris from the tower
Of lofty Pergamos came forth.”
Is not the modern older in style than the ancient?
We lay aside Mr. Morris’ book with a mingling of admiration and regret. The critical and poetical ability shown in it is of the first order—no man could have spoiled Virgil so thoroughly as we think Mr. Morris has in places who did not know him au bout des ongles, just as a clever parody shows true appreciation of an author—and its ingenuity is amazing. But one feels it to be a wasted ingenuity, and the predominant sentiment with which we leave the book is one of annoyance that a man should so wilfully do ill what his very errors prove him capable of doing so well. Yet for all that the book wins upon us as most of Mr. Morris’ work has a way of doing; and if one could but get reconciled to a Norseland Æneis, we should no doubt find it pleasant enough.
Perhaps we cannot better dismiss our subject than by saying, in the old-time fashion of comparison, that of these three translations Conington’s will probably be read for the story by those who know Virgil not at all; Mr. Cranch’s for its literalness by those who half know Virgil and are willing to know him better; and Mr. Morris’ for its very ingenuity of perversion by those who know Virgil so well that to see him in any new light, even a false light, only adds a fillip to their love for him.