The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.
This is its simple meaning—the statement of a truth, the utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance—it is the revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first the Idea of her Life—all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time,—then the idea of her life creeps—is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY creeps—it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another sense,—and now it is in his study of imagination—what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the Idea, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual,—every lovely organ of her life—then the clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body—shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate—this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the poco più—the little more which makes immortal,—more full of life, and all this submitted to—the eye and prospect of the soul.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street;
Doors, where my heart was wont to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.
“In Memoriam.”
This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus corrects: “‘The long unlovely street’ was Wimpole Street, No. 67, where the Hallams lived; and Arthur used to say to his friends, ‘You know you will always find us at sixes and sevens.’”
[112] We had read these lives, and had remarked them, before we knew whose they were, as being of rare merit. No one could suppose they were written by one so young. We give his estimate of the character of Burke. “The mind of this great man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, because it was painful to him to see anything, beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete rather than with abstractions. He studied men rather than man.” The words in italics imply an insight into the deepest springs of human action, the conjunct causes of what we call character, such as few men of large experience attain.
[113] This will remind the reader of a fine passage in Edwin the Fair, on the specific differences in the sounds made by the ash, the elm, the fir, etc., when moved by the wind; and of some lines by Landor on flowers speaking to each other; and of something more exquisite than either, in Consuelo—the description of the flowers in the old monastic garden, at the “sweet hour of prime.”
[114] Remains, vol. iii. p. 105.
[115] This is the passage referred to in Henry Taylor’s delightful Notes from Life (“Essay on Wisdom”):
“Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight: spiritual fear, of a foresight that reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear, of a foresight that falls short; but without fear there is neither the one foresight nor the other; and as pain has been truly said to be “the deepest thing in our nature,” so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our knowledge. A great capacity of suffering belongs to genius; and it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind.” In his Notes from Books, p. 216, he recurs to it: “‘Pain,’ says a writer whose early death will not prevent his being long remembered, ‘pain is the deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.’”