"I protest I have no heart to go on with the quotation: so unpopular is its author, just now, and so certainly its boyish heroism calls back the boyish tears to my eyes. Well, this boyish vision is what Mr. Meredith chooses to trust rather than Bubb Doddington's, and he trusts it as being the likelier to apprehend universal truths: he believes that Horatius with an army in front and a broken bridge behind him was a nobler figure than Bubb Doddington wishing his country well but not with too intense a care; and not only nobler but—this is the point—more obedient to divine law, more expressive of that which man was meant to be. If Mr. Meredith trusts youth, it is as a time of imagination; and if he trusts imagination, it is as a faculty for apprehending the Universal in life—that is to say, a divine law behind its shows and simulacra.
"In 'The Empty Purse' you will find him instructing youth towards this law; but that there may be no doubt of his own belief in it, as an order not only controlling men but overriding angels and demons, first consider his famous sonnet, 'Lucifer in Starlight'—to my thinking one of the finest in our language:—
"'On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of Heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.'"
"'On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of Heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.'"
"Suppose my contention—that poetry should concern itself with universals—to be admitted: suppose we all agreed that Poetry is an expression of the universal element in human life, that (as Shelley puts it) 'a poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.' There remains a question quite as important: and that is, How to recognise the Universal when we see it? We may talk of a Divine law, or a Divine order—call it what we will—which regulates the lives of us poor men no less than the motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? We may agree, for example, with Wordsworth that Duty is a stern daughter of the Voice of God, and that through Duty 'the most ancient heavens,' no less than we ourselves, are kept fresh and strong. But can we always discern this Universal, this Duty? What is the criterion? And what, when we have chosen, is the sanction of our choice?
"A number of honest people will promptly refer us to revealed religion. 'Take (they say) your revealed religion on faith, and there you have the law and the prophets, and your universals set out for you, and your principles of conduct laid down. What more do you want?'
"To this I answer, 'We are human, and we need also the testimony of Poetry; and the priceless value of poetry for us lies in this, that it does not echo the Gospel like a parrot. If it did, it would be servile, superfluous. It is ministerial and useful because it approaches truth by another path. It does not say ditto to Mr. Burke—it corroborates. And it corroborates precisely because it does not say ditto, but employs a natural process of its own which it employed before ever Christianity was revealed. You may decide that religion is enough for you, and that you have no need of poetry; but if you have any intelligent need of poetry it will be because poetry, though it end in the same conclusions, reaches them by another and separate path.
"Now (as I understand him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and let your honour be the highest you can pay—that of making yourself docile to her teaching. So will you stand the best chance, the only likely chance, of living in harmony with that Will which over-arches Earth and us all.'
"In this doctrine Mr. Meredith believes passionately; so let there be no mistake about the thoroughness with which he preaches it. Even prayer, he tells us in one of his novels, is most useful when like a fountain it falls back and draws refreshment from earth for a new spring heavenward:—
"'And there vitality, there, there solely in song
Besides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,
Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,
The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,
(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),
In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.
Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of the fount
To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.'