Landor, in a fine passage, compared the merciful tolerance of the Roman poet with the pitiless ire of Dante, contrasting in respect of the quality of mercy these two poets, one in their austere perfection, but so different in their vision of death, and judgment, and ultimate reward. The seer of lost worlds has written his own defence, and was indeed but attacked to point the sharp antithesis; but Lucretius, though he owes it to a literary feint, is very finely praised. And to me it seems that his compassionate mood increased upon him just because he was not emulous of the world's gifts or earnest for its pleasures, but withdrew from the press, and lived out his few great years contemplating apart the vicissitudes of orbs and men. He did not wait in ante-chambers or sit at wedding feasts; but severing all entangling and intricate threads of observance, followed the voice which called him to solitary places of illimitable prospect. It was not through disillusion or injustice, or wounded pride, that he walked aloof; but loneliness was his birthright, and from the hills and headlands to which solitude allured his steps he saw the dust of mad encounters rise to heaven, and the rent sails of foundering galleys. He saw, and could not but be wrung with pity for man deafened to wise counsel by the noise of vanities, and fiercely conspiring to precipitate his doom. As he went by shore and upland, there gathered in his mind those resonant hexameters of warning or consolation, those similes from the life of husbandry and dumb things, which, set like diamonds in clay, lend to the most arid arguments their own incomparable splendour, or that homelier beauty which instantly pierces the defences of the heart. Not diffident as we, but of a nature so infinitely absent and reserved that in the legend his wife must concoct a philter to remind him of his love, he is of all the pagans the best companion for our angrier moods. An archaic and elemental serenity is upon his language and thought, rebuking our unprofitable petulance; if emotion gains him he finds utterance in those tremendous periods "where single words seem to gather out of the deep and to reverberate like thunder." As the reverberation dies away and the clouds are pierced by the sun, the world is seen in new lights through an air clear as upon rain-swept mountains.
As my reading is incessant, so also is my writing. For the happiness of man is in his fertility, and of barrenness comes the worst despair. To be happy is to have issue—children, or books written, or things beautifully wrought, or monuments of goodness to live after you, if only in the memory of some tiny hamlet of the folded hills. This is the law of life that Diotima knew, by which flower and tree, animal and man, fulfil the end of their creation; and man in nothing more surely proves his lordship than by his many-handed hold upon posterity. For the lower creation is procreant in one way, but man in many; who may have offspring not of body alone but of mind and heart, and be so redeemed from the grim dismay of childlessness. The greatest human happiness is to be fertile in every way, a thing granted rarely in the world we know; the next, perhaps, is that of the parent who gives all of himself to his family, not tilling any field beyond the charmed walls confining his desire. The author sure of his fame, the born artist, the benefactor of his kind, are also happy, seeing their offspring grow in years and in the power of making a brighter world.
But he is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane within him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn, or weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into evil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate parentage. But it is no small part of human redemption that none need know the interminable misery. A man may have neither sons nor genius, but in the dark hour he can go out and give, if it be only a penny or a kind word, and on that foundation build a temple to receive his thanksgiving. To give of yourself is good. This is that grand agreement and œcumenical consent to which those words quod ab omnibus quod ubique in deed and truth may be applied. For this reason meanness is of the deeps, and avarice groans in the lowest zone of hell. And if there are faces of blank and permanent despair upon your path, be sure that these are not masks of whole men, but of those who wilfully abstained from joy and have received the greater damnation. My children are mostly writings, poor weakly creatures dying inarticulate and unchristened, tenderly remembered by myself only, but at least no nuisance to the world. I loved them at their birth, I hold them in remembrance, though they were ever of a hectic and uncertain beauty.
The comparison of children with branches of the olive is not the mere ornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and child. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly changing moods, so are the olive leaves in the blue southern air. I once read of an artist who essayed to paint a group of olives and a cypress growing before them. Against their silvery leaves its dark burnished form stood finely mysterious, the contrasting grey lending it a depth of almost sable colour; all was propitious for his work. Then suddenly, the air being to all seeming quite still, the grey-green leaves began to shake and quiver, until each olive tree was like a silver bonfire, tremulous with a thousand waves of white flame flowing and following along the branches. It was a revelation and swift effluence of life, perplexing and full of charm. The brush was laid down, the moment of inspiration gone, before the capricious leaves ceased their quivering to be robed once more in grey, casting on the ground that translucent shadow which tempers the sunlight only, and does not spoil it of its gold. In the end the canvas was covered, but with a sketch far less true and beautiful than the painter's first happy vision. Even so of all our children few attain the perfection of our dreams. While we look, some influence comes upon them and they are changed, some breeze, born we know not where, stirs them to their heart of joy while we stand perplexed; innumerable laughter of leaves, a rushing and a shivering in quick answer to a mere breath, silence as swift when unperceived it dies away—these are their replies to our silent invocations. We cannot follow the swift course, but are quickened with a glad rejuvenescence, the true prize and guerdon of parentage. They may grow old or die, or bring us sorrow; it is enough that once they so lived and stirred a pride within us. Let Hedonist and idealist dispute, let one worship pleasure and another wait on the intangible joy, but in the fathering and mothering and the bringing up of young children, of the flesh, the mind, or the spirit, lies the natural happiness of men and women. It is a joy which outlasts disillusions; it rests surely upon achievement and deserts which lie ponderable in the archangel's scales. For it is certain that he who creates as best he knows best serves God, the world and himself, and what system of Ethics has conceived a more perfect rule?
All young life is instinct with such a beauty and trustfulness, that though he himself may have no part or lot in its creation, and be dumb or awkward in its presence, a man will be the brighter for having passed, if but for a moment, out of the darkness of his own course into the radiance within its orbit. To the diffident this is an especial grace. For children by some deeper intuition understand us as their parents cannot do; and when all the world is cold will often smile upon us with happy upturned faces. It is one of my consolations that the little players in the parks come running to me rather than to others with their eternal question after the exact hour of day. For I reflect that though my face grows wrinkled and drawn with years, there must yet hover something about its ugly surface which tells of a good will within. There was a time when I found the children's question importunate, and drew out my watch ungraciously; but now I feel disappointment if during their hours of play I can walk my mile without answering one of these high-pitched inquiries.
To have the confidence of children is indeed a thing of which a poor wanderer may be proud, a credential confirming his self-respect, and worthy one day to be presented at the gate of heaven. Once during one of my worst hours of desolation, when I was tramping across the fields, I found a little maid of seven picking primroses on the edge of an old orchard. For some time I stood watching, so charmed with the grace of her movements and the beauty of the spring sunlight on her golden mane, that I lost all consciousness of present trouble, and beyond her fairy form began to see vague visions of lost happiness returning. As I stood thus forgetful and looking absently before me, I suddenly felt a touch which recalled my scattered thoughts: she had come to me and put her hand in mine. I think in all my lonely life I never felt so swift a thankfulness as that which suffused me then: the memory of it is always with me, and now I never see a happy child engrossed in its little task of duty or pleasure without thinking to myself there is one of those who truly have power to remit sins. I will not repeat the fond things often written about children. Not all of them are like the infant angels of Bellini or Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio; some indeed are strident, pert, without charm or candour, not doves but little jays; but for the loveliness of those who have smiled upon me, whether rich or poor, whether wild or tended flowers, I shall ever hold the whole company dear.
Whether I read or write, or go painfully upon difficult paths of thought, like many other men whom the world dismays, I win a larger tranquillity and a clearer vision from an increased simplicity of life. I know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to incur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose motto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and universal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness which renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the leanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down by ecclesiastical exaggeration upon the good Greek word ἄσκησις, which means nothing more than the practice of fitness, has prejudiced men against all system of conduct bold enough to include it in their terminology.
Kant's chapter on the Ascetic Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and by self-imposed punishment the sinners expect to do penance, instead of ethically repenting." And again—"All ethical gymnastics consist therefore singly in subjugating the instincts and appetites of our physical system ... a gymnastic exercise rendering the will hardy and robust, which by the consciousness of regained freedom makes the heart glad."
This is sound doctrine, neither ungodly nor inhuman, the word of a man in whose veins the warm blood yet flowed. Few pictures of venerable age please more than that of the old philosopher of Königsberg drawn for us by de Quincey in one of his miscellaneous Essays. There we see Immanuel Kant, leading his tranquil sane existence, giving his friends sober entertainment, talking brightly of mundane things, practising "the hilarity which goes hand in hand with virtue." For me the very eccentricities of his daily routine have a fascination, and I read them as a devout Catholic reads many a quaint passage in the Acta Sanctorum. How wise was his nightly habit, as he settled himself in bed before falling asleep, to asseverate with a sigh of thankfulness that no man living was more contented and healthier than he! Here is the true asceticism, the child's glad abandonment to nature maintained and grown articulate in philosophic age.
To this beauty of plain life I cannot attain. But my own life is as far removed as may be from brilliant or luxurious pleasures, and I divide my time between the country and the town. This I do from obedience to reason rather than fashion; for while the country has my love, the city is more remedial to my peculiar pain. There the shy man may have what Lamb called the perfect and sympathetic solitude, as opposed to the "inhuman and cavern-haunting solitariness," to which his infirmity inclines. There he and those who rub shoulders with him on the pavement can "enjoy each other's want of conversation." No creature with a heart can jostle daily with his kind, but he wins some consciousness of kindly feeling. The very annoyances and constraints of propinquity are in their own way disciplinary, and insistent, uncongenial persons, like glaring red buoys with clanging bells, serve at least to keep us in the fairway of navigation. And in a city there are voices of cheerful exhortation always echoing in the higher air above the roar and the trampling, which in the interludes of coarser sound, or by our removal into some quiet court or garden, may be heard repeating their stirring watchwords of endeavour. We are told that no word spoken ever dies, but goes reverberating through space for ever. It is my fancy that only evil words escape into the outer void, which eternally engulfs their profitless message, while words of hope and helpfulness are not thus lightly sundered from the world that needs them, but hover still near above us, descending with every lull of the tumult into those ears which are strained towards them. The laden air of towns carries not the rumour of the battle only, but by the presence of these fair echoes held within it, gives back to the soul more health than ever it drew from the body. With this thought I am often consoled as I go my way through gloom and clamour and unloveliness, finding a Providence in places which else seem abandoned in the outer desolation.