For it is precisely the exact and delicate response to such subtle visitings, whether it be a visiting of fear and dread or of beauty and delight, which, expressing itself in the individual's manner of living and taste for life, we call personality; which, manifesting itself in his art, we call style; which, exhibiting itself in his purpose and action, we call character.
It is in this sense, then, that the lives of all of us, and very especially the lives of the great, may, without fantastical imagery, be said to be haunted. And if this be true, then it is obvious that, without reference to such hauntings, no so-called 'lives' or biographies of great men can be complete.
III
It seems likely that the new criticism must more and more take into account these delicate and psychological reckonings; but meanwhile how shall we, the unelect, seeking unacademically among the lives of the great, become aware of these subtle influences which forever haunt the characters and the works of great men? How shall we put ourselves sensitively in touch with that which is so essentially characteristic; with those mysterious influences of personality which, working together, make, for instance, a poem of Arnold's a poem of Arnold's unmistakably, and a painting of Raphael's so much his own that we are wont to speak of it as 'a Raphael'?
Again I turn to Horatio. There must first of all be in us, I believe, a deep love of the men whom we would know—'O my sweet lord!' There must be on our part all that loyal and watchful friendship which would make any hearsay or report concerning them a matter of interest to us; further, there must be that full intimate companionship to be had, not by hearsay at all, but only by living day after day with these men and their works; and lastly, there must be in us a sensitiveness to spiritual and haunting presences in their lives—a patient and sensitive watching as it were upon the battlements of Elsinore.
If we turn from Leonardo, as Pater presents him to us, to another notable and equally strong type—to Isaiah; if we ignore all those facts usually insisted upon in biography; if we dismiss as less important the kings and rulers of his age and the dramatic yet negligible circumstances of his times; and if we give our attention rather to the subtle predilections and preoccupations of this great mind, we find Isaiah visited again and again, haunted unceasingly it would seem, by certain effects and meanings, and lovelinesses and memories of light.
Again and again we see him sensitive to its manifestations. Here and there throughout his writings we find him noting and delighting in its return, greeting it with relief and rejoicing, as after a long night's watching; calling to his people passionately to arise and waken from the darkness of their sins, holding up his own streaming torch, as it were, across their night, in shining prophecy of the better luminary already on the way, which was to be the light of the world.
'Arise! Shine!' he cries, 'for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.... The People that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.... Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.... And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.... The Lord shall be to thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.... The sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself.'
His mention also of trees and their boughs and roots and branches is even more frequent still. Here, likewise, 'two ideas' seem 'especially fixed in him as reflexes of things that touched his brain in childhood beyond the measure of other impressions.'
When we study Dante carefully and watch with him also, we find him to have been, hardly less than Isaiah, haunted by the same loveliness, the beauty and meaning of light. For him not less, light would seem to have had a most insistent and spiritual appeal. Far too many to quote are his innumerable exact and sensitive descriptions of it, his careful and repeated observations of its gradations and delicate alterations. Memorably, too, he has it in mind in speaking of Saint Francis of Assisi, that sun of righteousness risen out of the mediæval night. 'Call it not Assisi,' he cries; 'if you would truthfully name it, call it the East because of the sun that rose there.'