MY
COMMONPLACE
BOOK

J. T. HACKETT

“Omne meum, nihil meum”

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

First publication in Great Britain, September, 1919.

Second English Edition, September, 1920.

Third English Edition, January, 1921.

O Memories!

O Past that is!

George Eliot.

DEDICATED
TO MY
DEAR FRIEND
RICHARD HODGSON
WHO HAS PASSED OVER
TO THE OTHER SIDE

Of wounds and sore defeat

I made my battle-stay;

Wingèd sandals for my feet

I wove of my delay;

Of weariness and fear

I made my shouting spear;

Of loss, and, doubt, and dread,

And swift oncoming doom

I made a helmet for my head

And a floating plume.

From the shutting mist of death,

From the failure of the breath

I made a battle-horn to blow

Across the vales of overthrow.

O hearken, love, the battle-horn!

The triumph clear, the silver scorn!

O hearken where the echoes bring,

Down the grey disastrous morn,

Laughter and rallying![1]

William Vaughn Moody.

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me.

Macbeth, IV, 3.

PREFACE[2]

A large proportion of the most interesting quotations in this book was collected between 1874 and 1886. During that period I was under the influence of Richard Hodgson, who was my close friend from childhood. To him directly and indirectly this book is largely indebted.

Hodgson (1855-1905) had a remarkably pure, noble, and lovable character, and was one of the most gifted men Australia has produced. He is known in philosophic circles from some early contributions to Mind and other journals, but is mainly known from his work in psychical research, to which he devoted the best years of his life. Apart from his great ability in other directions, he was endowed, even in youth, with fine taste and a clear and mature literary judgment. This will appear to some extent in the quotations over his name, and the note on [p. 208] will give further particulars of his career. He was from two to three years older than myself, and guided me in my early reading. Therefore, indirectly, he has to do with most of the contents of this book.

But, more than this, about one-third of the main quotations (not including the notes which I have only now added) came direct from Hodgson. He left Australia in 1877, but we maintained a voluminous correspondence until 1886. This correspondence contained most of the quotations referred to, and the remainder Hodgson gave me in London on the only occasion I met him after he left Australia. (After 1886 he became so immersed in psychical research, and I in legal work, that our correspondence ceased to be of a literary character.) Thus directly and indirectly Hodgson has much to do with the book—and, if it had been practicable, I would have placed his name on the title-page.

This book is simply one to be taken up at odd moments, like any other collection of quotations. But there are two reasons why it may have some special interest. One reason is that it includes passages from a number of authors who appear to have become forgotten, or, at any rate, to be passing Lethe-wards. We, who dwell in the underworld,[3] cannot, of course, have a complete knowledge of what is known or forgotten in the inner literary circles of England. We can depend only on the books and periodicals that happen to come to our hands, and perhaps should not rely too much on such sources of information. Yet I cannot but think that Robert Buchanan, for example, has become largely forgotten, and apparently this is the case also with a number of other authors from whom I quote. Because of this, I have retained all the passages I had from such authors.

It must be remembered that this book is not an anthology. A commonplace book is usually a collection of reminders made by a young man who cannot afford an extensive library. There is no system in such a collection. A book is borrowed and extracts made from it; another book by the same author is bought and no extract made from it. On the one hand a favourite verse, although well known, is written out for some reason or other; on the other hand hundreds of beautiful poems are omitted. So far from this being an anthology, I have, as a matter of course, omitted many poems that since the seventy-eighty period have become general favourites; and, as regards the most beautiful gems of our literature, they are almost all excluded. There are for example, only a few lines from Shakespeare.

Some exceptions have, however, been made. In a series of word-pictures, a few of the best-known passages will be found. A few others have been included for reasons that will readily appear; they either form part of a series or the reason is apparent from the notes. Apart from these I have retained Blanco White’s great sonnet and “The Night has a thousand eyes,” written by F. W. Bourdillon when an undergraduate at Worcester College, Oxford, because with regard to these I had an interesting and instructive experience. I accidentally discovered that of four well-read men (two at least of them more thorough students of poetry than myself) two were ignorant of the one poem and two of the other. Seeking an explanation, I turned to the anthologies. I could not find in any of them Bourdillon’s little gem until I came to the comparatively recent Oxford Book of Victorian Verse and The Spirit of Man. The Blanco White sonnet I could find nowhere except in collections of sonnets, which in my opinion are little read. It will be observed that in anthologies alone can Blanco White’s one and only poem be kept alive.

The second reason why this book may have a special interest is that it may serve as a reminder to my contemporaries of our stirring thoughts and experiences in the seventies and eighties. How interesting this period was it is difficult to show in a few lines. In pure literature, books of value simply poured from the press. In the closing year, 1889, “One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward” died on the day that his last book, Asolando, was published, leaving Tennyson, an old man of eighty, the sole survivor of the poets of a great period. At almost the same moment “Crossing the Bar” was published.

Apart from literature, the seventies and eighties were an eventful period in science and religion. Darwinism was still causing its tremendous upheaval, and the supposed conflict between religion and science exercised an enormous effect on the minds of men. Evolution had explained so much of the processes in the history of life, that the majority of thinkers at that time imagined that no room was left for the super-natural. Science was supposed to have given a death-blow to religion, and the greatest wave of materialism ever known in the history of the world swept over England and Europe. It is strange how many great thinkers missed what now appears so obvious a fact, that causality still stood behind all law, and that Darwin, like Newton, had merely helped to show the method by which the universe is governed. (It seems to me that James Martineau stood supreme at that time as a man of genius who saw clearly the inherent defect of the whole materialist movement.)

However, agnosticism, materialism, positivism flourished and triumphed. Science, whose dignity had been so long unrecognized, came into her own, and, in her turn, usurped the same dogmatic superior attitude she had resented in ecclesiasticism. On the one hand pessimistic literature and philosophy poured from the press; on the other hand new religions arose to take the place of the old. Theosophy and spiritualism were in evidence everywhere (leading in 1882 to the happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded). Harrison, Clifford, Swinburne and others preached the deification of man. There were discords within, as well as foes without the church. The severely orthodox fought against the revelations of Colenso and the higher criticism; Seeley’s Ecce Homo and a host of other works aroused fierce antagonism; Pius IX, who had in 1864 published his Syllabus which would have destroyed modern civilization, proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope in 1870—and in 1872 was deprived of temporal power. Such questions as the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible were the subjects of intense conflict—and especially strange is it to remember the dire struggle of well-intentioned men to maintain the horrible doctrine of eternal punishment. I imagine that this book will assist to some extent in recalling the atmosphere and aroma of that remarkable period.

I have made very little attempt to arrange my quotations—and now wish I had done less in that direction. The book is intended for casual reading, and to arrange it under headings would tend to make it heavy. The element of surprise is more calculated to make the book attractive.

I began the notes that are appended to some of the quotations with the intention of giving only such short, necessary explanations as would be of assistance to the inexperienced reader. When, however, I began to write, I found my pen running away with me. Apart from the usual, ineffectual efforts of one’s youth, I had never before attempted literary work, and for the first time experienced the great pleasure there is in such writing. With the immense variety of subjects in a collection of quotations, one could continue to write over a series of years; but it was necessary to keep the book within reasonable bounds, and, therefore, I had arbitrarily to come to a stop. In these notes I do not claim that there is much, if any, originality,[4] they are mostly recollections of old reading. Still they may serve the important purpose of revivifying old truths ([see p. 78]).

I have been astonished at the great deal of work this book has involved—and also how much I have needed the assistance of my friends. There were some sixty or seventy quotations in respect to which I had neglected to give any reference to the authors (for the same reason as one did not put the names on photographs of old friends—it seemed impossible that the names could be forgotten). The difficulty of finding even one such quotation is enormous, and we have no British Museum in Adelaide, but only some limited public libraries. However, with the help of my friends I have succeeded in tracing the paternity of most of these “orphans.” In this and other directions I have had the kind assistance of many gentlemen. Of these first and foremost comes Mr. G. F. Hassell, the publisher of the Adelaide edition, who, in his devotion to literature as well as to his own art of printing, is a worthy representative of the old Renaissance printers. He has given me every assistance, has gone through every line, and, as he is both an exceedingly well-read man and also of a younger generation than myself, I have left it to him to decide what should be omitted and what retained in this book. Professor Mitchell has also been so kind as to revise and make suggestions concerning a number of notes on philosophic and other subjects. Professor Darnley Naylor has been uniformly good in revising any notes of a classical nature—though he takes no responsibility whatever for the views I express. Dr. E. Harold Davies has also helped me with two notes on music, in one instance correcting a serious mistake I had made. Sir Langdon Bonython, my friend of many years, has assisted me with practical as well as literary suggestions, and has thrown open his library to me. Mr. Francis Edwards, of High Street, Marylebone, has assisted in my search for references to quotations. Mr. H. Rutherford Purnell, Public Librarian of Adelaide, and his staff have helped me throughout, and Mr. E. La Touche Armstrong, Public Librarian of Melbourne, has gone to great trouble on my account. Miss M. R. Walker has assisted me in various ways, and especially in preparing the very difficult Index of Subjects. Mr. Sydney Temple Thomas has lent me a number of important books I specially required. Others who have helped me in one way or another are two English friends, Mrs. Caroline Sidgwick and Mrs. Rachael Bray, Messrs. J. R. Fowler, H. W. Uffindell, S. Talbot Smith and Dr. J. W. Browne, of Adelaide, Professor Dettmann of New Zealand, Professor Hyslop of New York and Mr. F. C. Govers of the State War Council, Sydney.

For permission to include quotations from their works I thank the following authors: Rev. F. W. Boreham, Mr. F. W. Bourdillon, Mr. A. J. Edmunds, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Thomas Hardy, O.M., Professor Hobhouse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. E. F. Knight, Mr. R. Le Gallienne, Mr. W. S. Lilly, Mr. Robert Loveman, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Professor A. H. Sayce, Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner, Mr. J. C. Squire, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Samuel Waddington, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. F. A. Westbury, Mr. F. S. Williamson and Sir Francis Younghusband.

For extracts from the writings of their relatives I am grateful to Lady Arnold, Sir Francis Darwin, Mr. Henry James, The Earl of Lytton, Dr. Greville McDonald, Miss Martineau, Miss Massey, Mr. W. M. Meredith, Mrs. F. W. H. Myers, the Rev. Conrad Noel, Mr. William M. Rossetti, Sir Herbert Stephen and Lord Tennyson. Mr. Piddington has also given much assistance.

I am indebted to the following for quotations from the works of the authors named: of Ruskin to the Ruskin Literary Trustees and their publishers, Messrs. George Allen and Unwin; of Brunton Stephens to Messrs. Angus and Robertson; of C. S. Calverley to Messrs. G. Bell and Sons; of George Eliot to Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons; of James Kenneth Stephen to Messrs. Bowes and Bowes; of Francis Thompson to Messrs. Burns and Oates; of R. L. Stevenson to Messrs. Chatto and Windus and to Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons; of Robert Buchanan to Messrs. Chatto and Windus and to Mr. W. E. Martyn; of James Thomson (B.V.) to Messrs. P. J. and A. E. Dobell; of D. G. Rossetti to Messrs. Ellis; of Swinburne to Mr. W. Heinemann; of Mr. Le Gallienne, H. D. Lowry, Stephen Phillips and J. B. Tabb to Mr. John Lane; of R. Loveman to the J. B. Lippincott Co.; of A. K. H. Boyd, R. Jeffries, W. E. H. Lecky and the Rev. James Martineau, to Messrs. Longmans Green & Co.; of Alfred Austin, T. E. Brown, Lewis Carroll, Edward Fitzgerald, F. W. H. Myers, Walter Pater, Lord Tennyson and Charles Tennyson Turner to Messrs. Macmillan & Co.; of V. O’Sullivan to Mr. Elkin Matthews; of Mrs. Elizabeth Waterhouse to Messrs. Methuen & Co.; of Robert Browning to Mr. John Murray; of Dr. Moncure Conway and Sir Alfred Lyall to Messrs. Paul (Kegan), Trench Trubner & Co.; of George Gissing to Mr. James B. Pinker; of John Payne to Mr. O. M. Pritchard, his executor, and to Mr. Thomas Wright; of Sir Edwin Arnold, P. J. Bailey (Festus) and Coventry Patmore to Messrs. George Routledge & Sons; of G. Whyte Melville to Messrs. Ward Lock & Co. (songs and verses); of George MacDonald to Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son; Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s “L’Envoi” is reprinted from Departmental Ditties, by kind permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co.; “To the True Romance” is published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., to whom I am deeply indebted, not only for this and the permissions mentioned above, but also for much assistance in tracing copyrights. Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Mr. John Murray and Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son have been most helpful in this direction, as have also been Messrs. T. B. Lippincott, the Oxford University Press and Messrs. Watts & Co. Messrs. Constable & Co. have generously granted permission for the quotations from George Meredith and, as the representatives in London of the Houghton Mifflin Co. of Boston, Mass., have secured the quotations from the works of American authors published by that Firm, viz., T. B. Aldrich, R. W. Gilder, W. V. Moody, S. M. B. Piatt, E. M. Thomas, C. D. Warner and the Classics of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier. Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons have also given much help; the lines from Anna Reeve Aldrich and R. C. Rogers are published by their New York House. Mr. Martin Seeker joins in the consent given by Mr. Squire for the extract from his poems. I thank the Editor of the Contemporary Review for quotations from the writings of Professor A. Bain and the Rev. R. F. Littledale; and the Editor of the Nineteenth Century for some lines by W. M. Hardinge (Greek Anthology) and an article on Multiplex Personality. I thank also the Society for Psychical Research for an obituary article by F. W. H. Myers on Gladstone, printed in the Journal of that Society.

For any unintentional omissions, oversights, or failures to trace rights I beg to tender my apologies. The distance of Adelaide from the centre of publication may, in some measure, serve as an excuse for such shortcomings.

All profits derived from the sale of this book will be paid to the Red Cross Fund.

J. T. Hackett.

Adelaide.

PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND ENGLISH EDITION.

In preparing this edition I have made a great number of more or less important corrections, alterations and additions. Most of these occupy only a few lines apiece and, although none call for special mention, they should together add to the interest and usefulness of this book. For a number of them I am indebted to Mr. Vernon Rendall, formerly editor of the Athenæum and Notes and Queries. With his wonderfully wide and exact knowledge of English and classical literature, he gave me much assistance and I am grateful to him.

The issue of a Second Edition enables me to thank my friend, Sir John Cockburn, for his truly remarkable kindness to me. When I sent this book home from Adelaide to be published, he undertook the heavy work of seeking the consent of the numerous copyright owners, negotiating with publishers, and seeing the book through the press. Only those who are experienced in such matters can realize the enormous amount of time and labour that all this involved. It is impossible for me to express adequately my obligations to my friend. He did not include any reference to himself in the original Preface, in spite of my insistence by letter and cable.

In associating his name with this book, I am bound to add that Sir John disagrees with and, therefore, disapproves of much that I have said in some notes on the Ancient Greeks.

J. T. Hackett.

London, September, 1920.

PREFACE
TO THE
THIRD ENGLISH EDITION.

This has presumably to be called a new edition, rather than a new issue, seeing that there are revisions and alterations. But these are not numerous, and the only ones to which I need call special attention are the substituted verses on [pp. 153-5].

I am indebted to Mr. Denys Bray for permission to include his daughter’s verses.

J. T. Hackett.

Mentone, December, 1920.

YOUTH AND AGE

Verse, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—

Both were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

When I was young?—Ah, woful When!

Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then!

This breathing house not built with hands,

This body that does me grievous wrong,

O’er aery cliffs and glittering sands

How lightly then it flashed along:—

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather

When Youth and I lived in’t together.

Flowers are lovely: Love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah, woful Ere,

Which tells me, Youth’s no longer here!

O Youth! for years so many and sweet

’Tis known that Thou and I were one,

I’ll think it but a fond conceit—

It cannot be, that thou art gone!

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll’d:—

And thou wert aye a masker bold!

What strange disguise hast now put on

To make believe that Thou art gone?

I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this alter’d size:

But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but Thought: so think I will

That Youth and I are house-mates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve!

Where no hope is, life’s a warning

That only serves to make us grieve

When we are old:

—That only serves to make us grieve

With oft and tedious taking-leave,

Like some poor nigh-related guest

That may not rudely be dismist,

Yet hath outstay’d his welcome while,

And tells the jest without the smile.

S. T. Coleridge.

My Commonplace Book

Our God and soldier we alike adore,

When at the brink of ruin, not before;

After deliverance both alike requited,

Our God forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.

Francis Quarles (1592-1644).

In an age of fops and toys,

Wanting wisdom, void of right,

Who shall nerve heroic boys

To hazard all in Freedom’s fight?

...

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can.

R. W. Emerson (Voluntaries).

ENGLAND

When I have borne in memory what has tamed

Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart

When men change swords for ledgers, and desert

The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed

I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?

Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,

Verily, in the bottom of my heart,

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.

For dearly must we prize thee; we who find

In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;

And I by my affection was beguiled:

What wonder if a Poet now and then,

Among the many movements of his mind,

Felt for thee as a lover or a child!

Wordsworth (1803).

Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record

One death struggle in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

J. R. Lowell (The Present Crisis).

Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her,

Many with crossed hands sighed for her;

But these, our brothers, fought for her,

At life’s dear peril wrought for her,

So loved her that they died for her....

They saw her plumed and mailed,

With sweet, stern face unveiled,

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

J. R. Lowell (Ode at Harvard Commemoration, 1865).

This Ode was written in memory of the Harvard University men who had died in the Secession war. Our own brave men are also fighting in the cause of Truth, against the hideous falsity of German teaching and morals.

The future’s gain

Is certain as God’s truth; but, meanwhile, pain

Is bitter, and tears are salt: our voices take

A sober tone; our very household songs

Are heavy with a nation’s griefs and wrongs;

And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake

Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat.

The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet!

J. G. Whittier (In War Time).

PRIEST

“The glory of Man is his strength,

And the weak man must die,” said the Lord.

CHORUS

Hark to the Song of the Sword!

PRIEST

Uplift! let it gleam in the sun—

Uplift in the name of the Lord!

KAISER

Lo! how it gleams in the light,

Beautiful, bloody, and bright.

Yea, I uplift the Sword

Thus in the name of the Lord!

THE CHIEFS

Form ye a circle of fire

Around him, our King and our Sire—

While in the centre he stands,

Kneel with your swords in your hands,

Then with one voice deep and free

Echo like waves of the sea—

“In the name of the Lord!”

VOICES WITHOUT

Where is he?—he fades from our sight!

Where the Sword?—all is blacker than night.

Is it finish’d, that loudly ye cry?

Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die?

O bury us deep, most deep;

Write o’er us, wherever we sleep,

“In the name of the Lord!”

KAISER

While I uplift the Sword,

Thus in the name of the Lord,

Why, with mine eyes full of tears,

Am I sick of the song in mine ears?

God of the Israelite, hear;

God of the Teuton, be near;

Strengthen my pulse lest I fail.

Shut out these slain while they wail—

For they come with the voice of the grave

On the glory they give me and gave.

CHORUS

In the name of the Lord? Of what Lord?

Where is He, this God of the Sword?

Unfold Him; where hath He His throne?

Is He Lord of the Teuton alone?

Doth He walk on the earth? Doth He tread

On the limbs of the dying and dead?

Unfold Him! We sicken, and long

To look on this God of the strong!

PRIEST

Hush! In the name of the Lord,

Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword!

R. Buchanan (The Apotheosis of the
Sword, Versailles, 1871)

Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire:

For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,

Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;

But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;

And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to the slanderous breath:

And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep,

And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.

W. Morris (Sigurd the Volsung, Book III).

SACRIFICE

Though love repine, and reason chafe,

There came a voice without reply,—

“’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,

When for the truth he ought to die.”

R. W. Emerson.

GREEKS OR GERMANS?

Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For now your empire has become a despotism, a thing which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.

(Speech by Pericles.)

I have observed again and again that a democracy cannot govern an empire; and never more clearly than now, when I see you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, you are guilty of a weakness dangerous to yourselves and receive no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your empire is a despotism exercised over unwilling subjects who are ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any kindness you show them: they obey just so far as you show yourselves their masters. They have no love for you, but are held down by force....

You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.

(Speech by Cleon) Thucydides, II, 63; III, 37, 40.

It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed by the impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as to the demagogue Cleon. The Greeks were fervent supporters of Democracy and Equality, but not when it came to dealing either with foreign states or with their own women or slaves. (See also Socrates and Aristotle, [p. 367].)

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he, that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives anything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Thomas Paine (1776).

Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it would be difficult to find any single passage in the world’s literature that produced so wonderful a result as the above passage of Tom Paine’s. It was the opening paragraph of the first number of The Crisis, and was written by miserable, flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington’s ill-clad, worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then despairing from hardship and defeat, were roused by these words to such enthusiasm that next day they rushed bravely in and won the first American victory, which turned the tide of the war of independence.

Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about Common Sense and The Rights of Man. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common Sense anywhere!

For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution, Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell-doors of those to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine’s door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence!

Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by a word—but remained silent! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington and the bigotry of the time against the author of The Age of Reason, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.

When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men, Washington included.

The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure D. Conway in The Fortnightly, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway’s subsequent Life of Paine.

Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recognition of Paine’s fine character and important work. (The unpleasant flippancy[5] with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in The Americana and The Biographical Dictionary of America—and also in our own Dictionary of National Biography. The general impression among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist; as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his Common-Sense Pamphlet, free America—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.” (French Revolution.)

Buy my English posies!

You that will not turn—

Buy my hot-wood clematis,

Buy a frond o’ fern

Gather’d where the Erskine leaps

Down the road to Lorne—

Buy my Christmas creeper

And I’ll say where you were born!

West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin—

They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—

Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main—

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Ye that have your own

Buy them for a brother’s sake

Overseas, alone.

Weed ye trample underfoot

Floods his heart abrim—

Bird ye never heeded,

O, she calls his dead to him!

Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;

Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!

Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land—

Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand!

Rudyard Kipling (The Flowers).

Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various British Dominions I take only the one that represents my own country. At the time Kipling wrote, the inhabitants of our beloved mother-country did not seem to fully realize that we were their kindred—that our fern and clematis made English posies—but no doubt their feeling has altered since we have fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England was always “home,” and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered straight into our hearts.

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

RUFINUS

Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too

The windflower with her petals drenched in dew,

And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.

MELEAGER

It’s oh! to be a wild wind—when my lady’s in the sun—

She’d just unbind her neckerchief and take me breathing in,

It’s oh! to be a red rose—just a faintly blushing one—

So she’d pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I’d win.

PLATO TO ASTER

Thou gazest on the stars—a star to me

Thou[6] art—but oh! that I the heavens might be

And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee!

PALLADAS

Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we

Live, and a little space the sunlight see—

Even all that live—each being an instrument

To which the generous air its life has lent.

If with the hand one quench our draught of breath,

He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death.

We, that are nothing on our pride are fed,

Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.

AESOPUS

Is there no help from life save only death?

“Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth

I dare not break, I cannot bear”—one saith.

“Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth,

For service and for beauty these had birth,

But all the rest of life is little worth—

“Yea, all the rest is pain and grief” saith he

“For if it hap some good thing come to me

An evil end befalls it speedily!”[7]

PHILODEMUS

I loved—and you. I played—who hath not been

Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween

’Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.

Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head,

Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead,

Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.

I gathered roses while the roses blew,

Playtime is past, my play is ended too.

Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.

W. M. Hardinge (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1878).

My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the “Leslie” in Mallock’s New Republic. Another version of Plato’s beautiful epigram (which was addressed to “Aster,” or “Star”) is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor:

Thou gazest on the stars, my Star;

Oh! might I be

The starry sky with myriad eyes

To gaze on thee!

The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D. At first these poems were epigrams—using the word “epigram” in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. Still later any short lyric was included.

This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of poetry, which gives much insight into the Greek life of the time, and it also largely influenced English and European literature. For instance, the first verse of Ben Jonson’s “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is taken direct from the Anthology (Agathias, Anth. Pal., V., 261). I may add that the second verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as a compliment to the lady but as a kindness to the roses which could not wither if worn by her, is also borrowed from a Greek source. (Philostratus, Epistolai Erotikai.)

Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the difficult task of translating or paraphrasing these little poetic gems into correspondingly poetic and concise language, but the beauty of the original can never be fully retained.

PLATO TO STELLA

Thou wert the morning star among the living,

Ere thy fair light had fled:—

Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving

New splendour to the dead.

Shelley’s Version.

PTOLEMY

I know that we are mortal, the children of a day;

But when I scan the circling spires, the serried stars’ array,

I tread the earth no longer and soar where none hath trod,

To feast in Heaven’s banquet-hall and drink the wine of God.

H. Darnley Naylor’s Version.

Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no doubt the great Greek astronomer; and the epigram would date from about 140 A.D.

HERACLEITUS.

They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead,

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,

A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;

For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

William (Johnson) Cory (1823-1892).

This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on hearing of the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not the philosopher of that name).

Francis Thompson (Sister Songs) hoped that his “nightingales” would continue to sing after his death, just as light would come from a star long after it had ceased to exist:

Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,

Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,

Set with a towering press of fantasies,

Drop safely down the time,

Leaving mine islèd self behind it far

Soon to be sunk in the abysm of seas,

(As down the years the splendour voyages

From some long ruined and night-submergèd star).

When I consider the shortness of my life, lost in an eternity before and behind, “passing away as the remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day,” the little space I fill or behold in the infinite immensity of spaces, of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me—when I reflect this, I am filled with terror, and wonder why I am here and not there, for there was no reason why it should be the one rather than the other; why now rather than then. Who set me here? By whose command and rule were this time and place appointed me? How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.

Pascal (Pensées).

Ye weep for those who weep? she said,

Ah, fools! I bid you pass them by.

Go weep for those whose hearts have bled

What time their eyes were dry.

Whom sadder can I say? she said.

E. B. Browning (The Mask).

See also Seneca (Hipp.), Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent, “Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.”

Star unto star speaks light.

P. J. Bailey (Festus, Scene 1, Heaven).

O love, my love! if I no more should see

Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—

How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope

The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,

The wind of Death’s imperishable wing!

D. G. Rossetti (Lovesight).

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.

George Eliot (Romola).

Room in all the ages

For our love to grow,

Prayers of both demanded

A little while ago:

And now a few poor moments,

Between life and death,

May be proven all too ample

For love’s breath.

Roden Noel (The Pity of It).

There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining

Under those spider-webs lying!...

Is it your moral of Life?

Such a web, simple and subtle,

Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,

Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,

Death ending all with a knife?

Over our heads truth and nature—

Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,

Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature—

God’s gold just showing its last where that lodges,

Palled beneath man’s usurpature.

So we o’ershroud stars and roses,

Cherub and trophy and garland;

Nothings grow something which quietly closes

Heaven’s earnest eye; not a glimpse of the far land

Gets through our comments and glozes.

R. Browning (Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha).

Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably indicates the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of Germany. The “masterpiece, hard number twelve,” referred to in the poem, may be (Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is in “five part” counter-point.

This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous fashion, but its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully imitative manner,[8] it describes the wrangling and disputing in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons appear to be taking part):

One is incisive, corrosive;

Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;

Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;

Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:

Five ... O Danaïdes, O Sieve!

(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaïdes were doomed to pour water everlastingly into a sieve.)

“Where in all this is the music?” asks Browning. And, although he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he finds that the fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is wanting in the essentials of true art. He prefers Palestrina’s simpler and more emotional mode of expression:

Hugues! I advise meâ poenâ[9]

(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)

Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!

Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,

Blare out the mode Palestrina.

In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly follow the poet’s thought. Music is essentially the language of feeling, of emotion; the fugue is a triumph of invention, and, therefore, the result of intellect. Feeling is elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling; the intricacies of the fugue are artificially constructed and, therefore, unsuited to the expression of pure emotion. They represent intellect as against feeling. And essentially in the moral world, but also in our general outlook upon truth and nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple human emotion rather than intellect; “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (The whole of Browning’s poetry teaches that love, not intellect, is the solution of all moral problems, and the goal of the universe.)

In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in an old church; and Browning suddenly sees an illustration of his thought in the fine gilded ceiling covered by thick cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold of the ceiling are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the fugue—and both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives. Truth and Nature, “God’s gold”—the pure, simple truths of the higher life—are over us, bright and clear as the noon-day sun. But by doubts and disputations, warring philosophies and contending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, casuistries, self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any spider’s web), by endless “comments and glozes,” we lose sight of the elemental truths and clear principles that should guide our lives. The pure and simple-hearted reach the Mount of Vision: to them comes the clear sense of Love and Duty. Those of us who turn our intellects to a perverse use and exclude the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders who cover up “stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland.” We obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God’s high “legislature,” and follow a lawless life of selfish passion and sordid ambitions. The Good and Beautiful and True have been obliterated and forgotten; “God’s gold” is tarnished, His harmonies lost in discord; and we become morally dead.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.

Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;

Cold plashing past it, crystal waters roll;

We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!...

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,

Upon our life a ruling effluence send;

And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,

And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

Matthew Arnold (Palladium).

(Referring to the Gorham case) The future historian of opinion will write of us in this strain: “The people who spoke the language of Shakespeare were great in the constructive arts: the remains of their vast works evince an extraordinary power of combining and economizing labour: their colonies were spread over both hemispheres, and their industry penetrated to the remotest tribes: they knew how to subjugate nature and to govern men: but the weakness of their thought presented a strange contrast to the vigour of their arm; and though they were an earnest people, their conceptions of human life and its Divine Author seems to have been of the most puerile nature. Some orations have been handed down—apparently delivered before one of their most dignified tribunals—in which the question is discussed: ‘In what way the washing of new-born babes according to certain rules prevented God’s hating them.’ The curious feature is, that the discussion turns entirely upon the manner in which this wetting operated; and no doubt seems to have been entertained by disputants, judges, or audience, that, without it, a child or other person dying would fall into the hands of an angry Deity, and be kept alive for ever to be tortured in a burning cave. Now, all researches into the contemporary institutions of the island show that its religion found its chief support among the classes possessing no mean station or culture, and that the education for the priesthood was the highest which the country afforded. This strange belief must be taken, therefore, as the measure, not of popular ignorance, but of their most intellectual faith. A philosophy and worship embodying such a superstition can present nothing to reward the labour of research.”

James Martineau (Essay on “The Church of England”).

In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council, it was decided that Mr. Gorham’s beliefs, although unusual, were not repugnant to the doctrines of the Church of England. His views were that baptism is generally necessary to salvation, that it is a sign of grace by which God works in us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it is not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are certainly saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow on baptism.

In such matters one question stands out very prominently. The priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the eternal truths of Christ—Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration. How can he keep those truths in due perspective when his intellect is engaged in warfare over miserable casuistries.

And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most High, they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of the lawyers paid by one side or the other to argue questions of baptism and prevenient grace! It was precisely this introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality, the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal quibbling and hair-splitting, the “letter” that “killeth” as against the “spirit” that “giveth life,” which led to Christ’s bitter invectives against the “Scribes” or lawyers of His day.

Seeley, in Ecce Homo, points out that when Christ summoned the disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not belief in any specific doctrines. As it was not until later that they learnt He was to suffer death and rise again, they could at first have held no belief in the Atonement or the Resurrection. “Nor,” says Seeley, “do we find Him frequently examining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel.... Assuredly those who represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily: ‘Believe or be damned,’ have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world.”

As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good Lord, deliver us.”[10]

For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,

And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,

And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,

And while a child, and while a flower is born,

And while one wrong cries for redress and finds

A soul to answer, still the world is young!

Lewis Morris (Epic of Hades).

Poems are painted window panes.

If one looks from the square into the church,

Dusk and dimness are his gains—

Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!

The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,

Nor anything henceforth assuage him.

But come just inside what conceals;

Cross the holy threshold quite—

All at once ’tis rainbow-bright,

Device and story flash to light,

A gracious splendour truth reveals.

This to God’s children is full measure,

It edifies and gives you pleasure!

Goethe.

This is George MacDonald’s translation (but never can a translation of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says of the poem: “This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough regarded from the outside; prismatic in its revelation of truth from within.” Among the arts this statement is most applicable to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are often required to assist many persons to “come inside,” to enter into the heart of a poem—to reach the point of vision.

DE TEA FABULA

Do I sleep? Do I dream?

Am I hoaxed by a scout?

Are things what they seem,

Or is Sophists about?

Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Which expressions like these

May be fairly applied

By a party who sees

A Society skied

Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.

’Twas November the third.

And I says to Bill Nye,

“Which it’s true what I’ve heard:

If you’re, so to speak, fly,

There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.”

Which I mentioned its name

And he ups and remarks:

“If dress-coats is the game

And pow-wow in the Parks,

Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”

Now the pride of Bill Nye

Cannot well be express’d;

For he wore a white tie

And a cut-away vest:

Says I: “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well dress’d.”

But not far did we wend,

When we saw Pippa pass

On the arm of a friend

—Dr. Furnivall ’twas,

And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.

“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.”

But we came pretty quick

To a sort of a quad

That was all of red brick,

And I says to the porter: “R. Browning: free passes and kindly look slick.”

But says he, dripping tears

In his check handkerchief,

“That symposium’s career’s

Been regrettably brief,

For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”

Then we tucked up the sleeves

Of our shirts (that were biled),

Which the reader perceives

That our feelings were riled,

And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.

Which emotions like these

Must be freely indulged

By a party who sees

A Society bulged

On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.

But I ask: Do I dream?

Has it gone up the spout;

Are things what they seem,

Or is Sophists about?

Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

This parody on Bret Harte’s “Plain Language from Truthful James” was written at the time when the Browning Society at Keble College, Oxford, came to an end—apparently, according to these verses, because its funds had been exhausted in afternoon teas!

τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced toe tee ane einai). In Oxford special attention is paid to Aristotle; and Quiller-Couch, being an Oxford man, assumes that his readers are familiar with this phrase. It means “the essential nature of a thing,” or, literally, “the question what a thing really is.” Such a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning of Browning’s difficult poems, so that the phrase is as appropriate as it is amusing in its application.

The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur” (Sat. 1, 69). “Wherefore do you laugh? Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.” Oxford, which Matthew Arnold called the home of lost causes, still refuses to pronounce Latin correctly, and makes te rhyme with fee, see, bee. It ought of course to rhyme with fay, say, bay. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted to the pronunciation of ea which prevailed until the end of the Eighteenth Century. See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:

Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

Dr. Furnivall (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the founder of the society, the first society ever formed to study the works of a living poet. From the context he may have specially admired, as he certainly threw special light upon, Browning’s Pippa Passes.

Scout at Oxford is a (male) college servant.

One fine frosty day,

My stomach being empty as your hat.

R. Browning (Fra Lippo Lippi).

The “cheekiest” line I know.

TO THE MOON

The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover

Wheels up and down with a windy scream;

The birch has loosen’d her bright locks over

The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream:

Yet here I linger in London City,

Thinking of meadows where I was born—

And over the roofs, like a face of pity,

Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.

O Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking

The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by,

I am looking long in those eyes, and thinking

Of one who hath loved thee longer than I;

I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish

The souls that ye witch with a harvest call?—

If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish?—

If it be idle to dream at all?

The waves of the world roll hither and thither,

The tumult deepens, the days go by,

The dead men vanish—we know not whither,

The live men anguish—we know not why;

The cry of the stricken is smothered never,

The Shadow passes from street to street;

And—o’er us fadeth, for ever and ever,

The still white gleam of thy constant feet.

The hard men struggle, the students ponder,

The world rolls round on its westward way;

The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder

Is dim on the dreamer’s cheek all day;

The old earth’s voice is a sound of weeping,

Round her the waters wash wild and vast,

There is no calm, there is little sleeping,—

Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past!

Another summer, new dreams departed,

And yet we are lingering, thou and I;

I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted,

Thou, in the void of a violet sky!

Thou art there! I am here! and the reaping and mowing

Of the harvest year is over and done,

And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing

Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.

While tower and turret lie silver’d under,

When eyes are closed and lips are dumb,

In the nightly pause of the human wonder,

From dusky portals I see thee come;

And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder,

Is witch’d like me till his days shall cease,—

For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander,

Flashes the vision of God’s white Peace.

R. Buchanan.

There is no short cut, no patent tramroad, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

George Eliot (The Lifted Veil).

Let us think less of men and more of God.

Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,

Like a small bird winging the still blue air;

And then again, at other times, it rises

Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless,

And just overhead lets itself down on us,

Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind

Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky,

That we should join with God, and give the world

The slip: but, while we wish, the world turns round

And peeps us in the face—the wanton world;

We feel it gently pressing down our arm—

The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;

We feel it softly bearing on our side—

We feel it touch and thrill us through the body,—

And we are fools, and there’s the end of us.

P. J. Bailey (Festus).

It fell upon a merry May morn,

I’ the perfect prime of that sweet time

When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—

The dear Babe Christabel was born.

...

Look how a star of glory swims

Down aching silences of space,

Flushing the Darkness till its face

With beating heart of light o’erbrims!

So brightening came Babe Christabel,

To touch the earth with fresh romance,

And light a Mother’s countenance

With looking on her miracle.

With hands so flower-like soft, and fair,

She caught at life, with words as sweet

As first spring violets, and feet

As faery-light as feet of air.

...

She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,

In shine and shower,—calm and strife;

A Rainbow on our dark of Life.

From Love’s own radiant heaven down-smiled!

In lonely loveliness she grew,—

A shape all music, light, and love,

With startling looks, so eloquent of

The spirit burning into view.

Such mystic lore was in her eyes,

And light of other worlds than ours,

She looked as she had fed on flowers,

And drunk the dews of Paradise[11]

...

Ah! she was one of those who come

With pledgèd promise not to stay

Long, ere the Angels let them stray

To nestle down in earthly home:

And, thro’ the windows of her eyes,

We often saw her saintly soul,

Serene, and sad, and beautiful,

Go sorrowing for lost Paradise.

She came—like music in the night

Floating as heaven in the brain,

A moment oped, and shut again,

And all is dark where all was light.

...

In this dim world of clouding cares,

We rarely know, till wildered eyes

See white wings lessening up the skies,

The Angels with us unawares.

Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled;

Awhile she sat with folded wings—

Sang round us a few hoverings—

Then straightway into glory sped.

And white-wing’d Angels nurture her;

With heaven’s white radiance robed and crown’d,

And all Love’s purple glory round,

She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.

Thro’ Childhood’s morning-land, serene

She walked betwixt us twain, like Love;

While, in a robe of light above,

Her better Angel walked unseen,—

Till Life’s highway broke bleak and wild;

Then, lest her starry garments trail

In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,

The Angel’s arms caught up the child.

Her wave of life hath backward roll’d

To the great ocean; on whose shore

We wander up and down, to store

Some treasures of the times of old:

And aye we seek and hunger on

For precious pearls and relics rare,

Strewn on the sands for us to wear

At heart, for love of her that’s gone.

Gerald Massey (The Ballad of Babe Christabel).

These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.

If you loved only what were worth your love,

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:

Make the low nature better by your throes!

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

R. Browning (James Lee’s Wife).

... He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.

Hereditary bent

That hedges in intent

He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.

He loves the souls He made,

He knows His own hand laid

On each the mark of some ancestral stain.

Anna Reeve Aldrich.

I have lost the dream of Doing,

And the other dream of Done,

The first spring in the pursuing,

The first pride in the Begun,—

First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.

E. B. Browning (The Lost Bower).

It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.

The other (maiden) up arose[12]

And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound

Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose:

Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around.

And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned:

So that fair spectacle from him was reft,

Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found:

So, hid in lockes and waves from looker’s theft,

Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.

Withall she laughèd, and she blushed withall,

That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,

And laughter to her blushing.

Spenser (Faerie Queene 2, XII, 67).

I love and honour Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. Nor can you excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, “He acted, and thou sittest still.” I see action to be good when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.

R. W. Emerson (Spiritual Laws).

You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. By a strange chance in these latter days, it happened that, alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. When I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of the Mussulmans, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, pray heaven there still may be heard there the voice of free innocent girls. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer the timid flock will gather round you with their large burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain; and if you imagine evil against them they will know of your ill-thought before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gone in the moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you; and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to your side, and touch the hem of your coat in playful defiance of the danger; and then the rest will follow the daring of their youthful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill controversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you with cloth so fine; and then, growing more profound in their researches, they will pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of delight and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with the hues of your sunburnt face, or with their own warmer tints. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; with tremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you, even then still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surely quite harmless and innocent—a lion that makes no spring—a bear that never hugs; and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and a controversy. But the one—the fairest and the sweetest of all—is yet the most timid; she shrinks from the daring deeds of her playmates, and seeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen her glowing consciousness from the eyes that look upon her. But her laughing sisters will have none of this cowardice; they vow that the fair one shall be their complice—shall share their dangers—shall touch the hand of the stranger; they seize her small wrist and draw her forward by force, and at last, whilst yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up her whole soul under the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmost strength, they vanquish her utmost modesty and marry her hand to yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers and throbs like a whisper upon your listening palm. For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you—in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter as though they had played too perilously and harmed their gentle sister. A moment, and all with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer; yet soon again like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze upon the danger, until they grow brave once more.

A. W. Kinglake (Eothen).

Let us hope that the present war will be a successful “Crusade” and that the Turks will disappear from the land which is sacred to the memory of our Lord.

Discedant nunc amores; maneat Amor.

(Loves, farewell; let Love, the sole, remain.)

Author not traced.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

Compare Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXI:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

... for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

I saw a son weep o’er a mother’s grave:

“Ay, weep, poor boy—weep thy most bitter tears

That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love,

Forgetfulness grows over it like grass;

That is the thing to weep for, not the dead.”

Alexander Smith (A Boy’s Poem)

UNTIL DEATH

If thou canst love another, be it so.

I would not reach out of my quiet grave

To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go.

Love shall not be a slave....

It would not make me sleep more peacefully,

That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe

For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me

Bestow it ere I go....

Forget me when I die. The violets

Above my rest will blossom just as blue

Nor miss thy tears—E’en Nature’s self forgets—

But while I live be true.

F. A. Westbury.

These verses are by a South Australian writer. “Forget me when I die” is an unpleasing sentiment; yet in “When I am dead, my dearest,” Christina Rossetti says:

If thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

As regards the latter poem, the curious fact is that it is read as an exquisite piece of music, and not for any poetic thought it contains. If it has any coherent meaning, it is that the speaker is indifferent whether or not “her dearest” will remember her or she will remember him. Yet the haunting music of the lines has made it a favourite poem, and it finds a place in all the leading anthologies. Christina Rossetti is by no means a great poet. (Mr. Gosse’s estimate in the Britannica is exaggerated), but she had a wonderful gift of language and metre. Take, for example, the pretty lilt contained in the simplest words in “Maiden-Song”:

Long ago and long ago,

And long ago still,

There dwelt three merry maidens

Upon a distant hill.

One was tall Meggan,

And one was dainty May,

But one was fair Margaret,

More fair than I can say,

Long ago and long ago.

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,

Am I not richer than of old?

Safe in thy immortality,

What change can reach the wealth I hold?

What chance can mar the pearl and gold

Thy love hath left in trust for me?

And while in life’s long afternoon,

Where cool and long the shadows grow,

I walk to meet the night that soon

Shall shape and shadow overflow,

I cannot feel that thou art far,

Since near at need the angels are;

And when the sunset gates unbar,

Shall I not see thee waiting stand,

And, white against the evening star,

The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

John Greenleaf Whittier (Snow-Bound).

I have a dream—that some day I shall go

At break of dawn adown a rainy street,

A grey old street, and I shall come in the end

To the little house I have known, and stand; and you,

Mother of mine, who watch and wait for me.

Will you not hear my footstep in the street,

And, as of old, be ready at the door,

To give me rest again?... I shall come home.

H. D. Lowry.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom

But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—

But how could I forget thee? Through what power,

Even for the least division of an hour,

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

That neither present time, nor years unborn

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

William Wordsworth

Written of the poet’s child Catherine, who died in 1812 at three years of age, and of whom Wordsworth had also written, “Loving she is, and tractable, though wild.” Forty years after the death of this child and her brother, who died about the same time, the poet spoke of them to Aubrey de Vere with the same acute sense of bereavement as if they had only recently died.

DEATH

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh

This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;

That sometime these bright stars, that now reply

In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;

That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,

And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;

That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright

Be lapp’d in alien clay and laid below;

It is not death to know this,—but to know

That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves

In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go

So duly and so oft—and when grass waves

Over the passed-away, there may be then

No resurrection in the minds of men.

Thomas Hood.

A little pain, a little fond regret,

A little shame, and we are living yet,

While love, that should outlive us, lieth dead.

W. Morris.

O never rudely will I blame his faith

In the might of stars and angels!...

... For the stricken heart of Love

This visible nature, and this common world,

Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import

Lurks in the legend told my infant years

Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn,

For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place:

Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,

And spirits; and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,

Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.

They live no longer in the faith of reason!

But still the heart doth need a language, still

Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,

And to yon starry world they now are gone,

Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth

With man as with their friend; and to the lover

Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky

Shoot influence down: and even at this day

’Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,

And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.

S. T. Coleridge (Wallenstein—The Piccolomini).

His faith.—Wallenstein, the great German soldier and statesman (1583-1634) believed in astrology.

The “intelligible forms of ancient poets” and “fair humanities of old religion” are the gods and inferior divinities that please our fancy. Thus the Greeks peopled the heavens (not very distant heavens to them) with their gods who visited earth and mingled with men. There were also the lesser deities, as the Hours and the Graces; and also the Nymphs—the Nereïds, Naiads, Orcades and Dryads—who inhabited seas, springs, rivers, and trees respectively. The Nymphs would correspond somewhat to the elves, gnomes and fairies of Northern religions.

Coleridge’s translation of “Wallenstein” (of which “The Piccolomini” is a portion) is considered a masterpiece. Schiller was fortunate in having a finer poet than himself to translate his drama. In the above passage Coleridge greatly improved on the original; the seven splendid lines beginning “The intelligible forms of ancient poets” are his and not Schiller’s; and, therefore, this passage may fairly be ascribed to him as author.

By rose-hung river and light-foot rill

There are who rest not; who think long

Till they discern as from a hill

At the sun’s hour of morning song.

Known of souls only, and those souls free,

The sacred spaces of the sea.

A. C. Swinburne (Prelude—Songs before Sunrise).

The sea typifies the wider, nobler life of the soul.

Je prends mon bien où je le trouve.

(I take my property wherever I find it.)

Molière (1622-1673).

This famous saying is quoted in French literature as though Molière had said, “I admit plagiarism, but I so improve what I borrow from others that it becomes my own” (see Larousse, under “Bien”).

“Tho’ old the thought and oft expressed,

’Tis his at last who says it best.”

It is, however, an interesting question whether this was the true meaning intended by Molière.

The story is told by Grimarest, the first biographer of the great dramatist. In 1671 Molière produced Les Fourberies de Scapin, in which he had inserted two scenes taken from Le Pedant Joué, of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655). (They are the amusing scenes where Geronte repeatedly says, Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère, “What the deuce was he doing in that Turkish galley?”) Grimarest says that Cyrano had used in these scenes what he had overheard from Molière, and that the latter, when taxed with the plagiarism, replied, “Je reprends mon bien où je le trouve” (“I take back my property, wherever I find it”). That is to say, he definitely denied the plagiarism.

Voltaire, in a “Life of Molière,” makes a general assertion (not referring specially to this incident) that all Grimarest’s stories are false. This must, of course, be far too sweeping an assertion, and Grimarest is in fact quoted as an authority. Voltaire himself (1694-1778) uses the saying in the sense given by Grimarest (La Pucelle, Chant III.):

Cette culotte est mienne; et je prendrai

Ce que fut mien où je le trouverai.

(“These breeches are mine, and I shall take what was mine wherever I find it.”) Agnès Sorel had been captured dressed as a man and wearing the garment in question, which had been previously stolen from the speaker.

It seems to me that Grimarest’s story must be accepted, that Molière claimed the scenes as originally his and denied plagiarism. There is no evidence to the contrary, and the saying is given its obvious meaning. (It is word for word as in the Digest, Ubi rem meam invenio, ibi vindico, “Where I find my own property, I appropriate it.”) But the question then arises, Why should so commonplace a statement have attained such notoriety?

The explanation seems simple. Molière had many jealous and bitter enemies, who laid every charge they could against him. He was well known to have borrowed ideas, characters and scenes in all directions—and his enemies constantly and persistently attacked him on this ground. Then came his most glaring plagiarism from a comparatively recent play, written by a man whose dare-devil exploits had made him a perfect hero of romance. Molière’s story that Cyrano had previously stolen the scenes from him would not been have accepted for a moment. Cyrano had never been known to plagiarize, nor would it have been natural for a man of his character to do anything clandestine. Also Molière would have had nothing to support his statement—and Cyrano was not alive to contradict him. The conclusion, therefore, seems to be that the dramatist’s statement was received in Paris with such incredulity, indignation, and ridicule that it became a byword.

But if this is so, why have the words been given an entirely fictitious meaning? The answer seems to lie in the fact that as Molière’s great genius became realized the desire arose to remove a blemish from his character. His is the greatest name in French literature, and almost anything would be excused in him. (We ourselves pass lightly over plagiarisms by Shakespeare.) Also, whether morally justified or not, Molière enriched the world’s literature by his borrowings. It was, therefore, no serious matter to Frenchmen that he should have borrowed from Cyrano, but it was a distinct blemish on his character that he should have denied the fact and also slandered a dead man. Ordinarily, in such a case, the story is ignored and forgotten, just as the one improper act of Sir Walter Scott, his borrowing from Coleridge of the “Christabel” metre, is usually ignored or slurred over. But the saying had become rooted in literature and this course was not practicable. However, there is little that enthusiasm cannot accomplish by some means or other, and the object in this instance has been achieved by reversing the meaning of Molière’s words. If this conjecture is correct, it is an illustration of what has occurred on a far greater scale in connection with the Greeks (see Index of Subjects).

As regards the meaning now given to the saying, Seneca claimed the same right to borrow at will. Quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est (Ep. XVI). After advising his reader to consider the Epistle carefully and see what value it had for him, he says, “You need not be surprised if I am still free with other people’s property. But why do I say ‘other people’s property’? Whatever has been well said by anyone belongs to me.”[13]

So also the late Samuel Butler said, “Appropriate things are meant to be appropriated.”

Our finest hope is finest memory,

As they who love in age think youth is blest

Because it has a life to fill with love.

George Eliot (A Minor Poet).

The disposition to judge every enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with years, till we sympathize with nothing for which we cannot take out a policy of assurance.

James Martineau (Hours of Thought I, 87).

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

De Quincey (Murder, as one of the Fine Arts).

For when the mellow autumn flushed

The thickets, where the chestnut fell,

And in the vales the maple blushed,