xi. An Academic Exercise
This has never been printed before. It is a Farewell, and that is why I have placed it next after the In Memoriam. The contrast between the two poems illustrates the contrast pointed out at the close of the note on “The Dislike of Death” (ante, p. 359):
“The memory of a love that has been cut short by death remains still fragrant though enfeebled, but no recollection of its past can keep sweet a love that has dried up and withered through accidents of time and life.”
In the ordinary course Butler would have talked this Sonnet over with me at the time he wrote it, that is in January, 1902; he may even have done so, but I think not. From 2nd January, 1902, until late in March, when he left London alone for Sicily, I was ill with pneumonia and remember very little of what happened then. Between his return in May and his death in June I am sure he did not mention the subject. Knowing the facts that underlie the preceding poem I can tell why Butler called it an In Memoriam; not knowing the facts that underlie this poem I cannot tell why Butler should have called it an Academic Exercise. It is his last Sonnet and is dated “Sund. Jan. 12th 1902,” within six months of his death, at a time when he was depressed physically because his health was failing and mentally because he had been “editing his remains,” reading and destroying old letters and brooding over the past. One of the subjects given in the section “Titles and Subjects” (ante) is “The diseases and ordinary causes of mortality among friendships.” I suppose that he found among his letters something which awakened memories of a friendship of his earlier life—a friendship that had suffered from a disease, whether it recovered or died would not affect the sincerity of the emotions experienced by Butler at the time he believed the friendship to be virtually dead. I suppose the Sonnet to be an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friendship as the preceding poem is an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friend.
This may be wrong, but something of the kind seems necessary to explain why Butler should have called the Sonnet an Academic Exercise. No one who has read Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered will require to be told that he disagreed contemptuously with those critics who believe that Shakespeare composed his Sonnets as academic exercises. It is certain that he wrote this, as he wrote his other Sonnets, in imitation of Shakespeare, not merely imitating the form but approaching the subject in the spirit in which he believed Shakespeare to have approached his subject. It follows therefore that he did not write this sonnet as an academic exercise, had he done so he would not have been imitating Shakespeare. If we assume that he was presenting his story as he presented the dialogue in “A Psalm of Montreal” in a form “perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other,” it would be quite in the manner of the author of The Fair Haven to burlesque the methods of the critics by ignoring the sincerity of the emotions and fixing on the little bit of inaccuracy in the facts. We may suppose him to be saying out loud to the critics: “You think Shakespeare’s Sonnets were composed as academic exercises, do you? Very well then, now what do you make of this?” And adding aside to himself: “That will be good enough for them; they’ll swallow anything.”
xii. A Prayer
Extract from Butler’s Note-Books under the date of February or March 1883:
“‘Cleanse thou me from my secret sins.’ I heard a man moralising on this and shocked him by saying demurely that I did not mind these so much, if I could get rid of those that were obvious to other people.”
He wrote the sonnet in 1900 or 1901. In the first quatrain “spoken” does not rhyme with “open”; Butler knew this and would not alter it because there are similar assonances in Shakespeare, e.g. “open” and “broken” in Sonnet LXI.
xiii. Karma