Chapter II: Part 2

In order, however, that religion should yield its full and best fruit, one thing is necessary; and the times require that I should state it with great distinctness. It is necessary that religion should be held and professed in a liberal spirit. Just as far as it assumes an intolerant, exclusive, sectarian form, it subverts instead of strengthening the soul's freedom, and becomes the heaviest and most galling yoke which is laid on the intellect and conscience. Religion must be viewed, not as a monopoly of priests, ministers, or sects, not as conferring on any man a right to dictate to his fellow-beings, not as an instrument by which the few may awe the many, not as bestowing on one a prerogative which is not enjoyed by all; but as the property of every human being and as the great subject for every human mind. It must be regarded as the revelation of a common Father to whom all have equal access, who invites all to the like immediate communion, who has no favorites, who has appointed no infallible expounders of his will, who opens his works and word to every eye, and calls upon all to read for themselves, and to follow fearlessly the best convictions of their own understandings. Let religion be seized on by individuals or sects, as their special province; let them clothe themselves with God's prerogative of judgment; let them succeed in enforcing their creed by penalties of law, or penalties of opinion; let them succeed in fixing a brand on virtuous men whose only crime is free investigation--and religion becomes the most blighting tyranny which can establish itself over the mind. You have all heard of the outward evils which religion, when thus turned into tyranny, has inflicted; how it has dug dreary dungeons, kindled fires for the martyr, and invented instruments of exquisite torture. But to me all this is less fearful than its influence over the mind. When I see the superstitions which it has fastened on the conscience, the spiritual terrors with which it has haunted and subdued the ignorant and susceptible, the dark appalling views of God which it has spread far and wide, the dread of inquiry which it has struck into superior understandings, and the servility of spirit which it has made to pass for piety--when I see all this, the fire, the scaffold, and the outward inquisition, terrible as they are, seem to me inferior evils. I look with a solemn joy on the heroic spirits who have met, freely and fearlessly, pain and death in the cause of truth and human rights. But there are other victims of intolerance on whom I look with unmixed sorrow. They are those who, spell-bound by early prejudice or by intimidations from the pulpit and the press, dare not think; who anxiously stifle every doubt or misgiving in regard to their opinions, as if to doubt were a crime; who shrink from the seekers after truth as from infection; who deny all virtue which does not wear the livery of their own sect; who, surrendering to others their best powers, receive unresistingly a teaching which wars against reason and conscience; and who think it a merit to impose on such as live within their influence, the grievous bondage which they bear themselves. How much to be deplored is it, that religion, the very principle which is designed to raise men above the judgment and power of man, should become the chief instrument of usurpation over the soul!

GEORGE CHAPMAN

(1559?-1634)

George Chapman, the translator of Homer, is of all the Elizabethan dramatists the most undramatic. He is akin to Marlowe in being more of an epic poet than a playwright; but unlike his young compeer "of the mighty line," who in his successive plays learnt how to subdue an essentially epic genius to the demands of the stage, Chapman never got near the true secret of dramatic composition. Yet he witnessed the growth of the glorious Elizabethan drama, from its feeble beginning in 'Gorbodue' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' through its very flowering in the immortal masterpieces. He was born about 1559, five years before Marlowe, the "morning star" of the English drama, and he died in 1634, surviving Shakespeare, in whom it reached its maturity, and Beaumont, Middleton, and Fletcher, whose works foreshadow decay. From his native town Hitchin he passed on to Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar. Then for sixteen years nothing definite is known about him. His life has been called one of the great blanks of English literature. He is sometimes sent traveling on the Continent, as a convenient means of accounting for this gap, and also to explain the intimate acquaintance with German manners and customs and the language displayed in his tragedy 'Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,' which argues at least for a trip to that country. In 1594 he published the two hymns in the 'Shadow of Night'; and soon after he must have begun writing for the stage, for his first extant comedy, 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,' was acted in 1596, and two years later he appears in Francis Meres's famous enumeration of the poets and wits of the time. Hereafter his life is to be dated by his publications.

He occupies a position unique among the Elizabethans, because of his wide culture and the diverse character of his work. Though held together by his strong personality, it yet can be divided into the distinct groups of comedies, tragedies, poems, and translations. The first of these is the weakest, for Chapman was not a comic genius. 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria' and 'An Humorous Day's Mirth' deserve but a passing mention. In 1605 'All Fooles' was published, acted six years earlier under the name 'The World Runs on Wheels.' It is a realistic satire, with some good scenes and character-drawing. 'The Gentleman Usher' is full of poetry and ingenious situations. 'Monsieur D'Oline' contains also some good comedy work. 'The Widow's Tears' tells the well-known story of the Ephesian matron; though coarse, it is handled not without comic talent. In his comedy work Chapman is neither new nor original; he followed in Jonson's footsteps, and suggests moreover Terence, Plautus, Fletcher, and Lyly. He has wit, satire, and sarcasm; but along with these, poor construction and little invention. He was going against his grain, and we have here the frankest expression of "pot-boiling" to be found among the Elizabethan dramatists. Writing for the stage was the only kind of literature that really paid; the playhouse was to the Elizabethan what the paper-covered novel is to a modern reader. This accounts for the enormous dramatic productivity of the time, and also explains why the most finely endowed minds, in need of money, produced dramas instead of other imaginative work. By the time he wrote his comedies, Chapman had already won his place as poet and translator, but it earned him no income. Pope, one hundred and twenty-five years later, made a fortune by his translation of Homer. But then the number of readers had increased, and publishers could afford to give large sums to a popular author. Chapman takes rank among the dramatists mainly by his four chief tragedies: 'Bussy d'Ambois,' 'The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois,' 'The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron,' and 'The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron.' They are unique among the plays of the period, in that they deal with almost contemporary events in French history; not with the purpose of exciting any feeling for or against the parties introduced, but in calm ignoring of public opinion, they bring recent happenings on the stage to suit the dramatist's purpose. He drew his material mainly from the 'Historiae Sui Temporis' of Jacques Auguste de Thou, but he troubled himself little about following it with accuracy, or even painting the characters of the chief actors as true to life. In these tragedies, more than in the comedies, we get sight of Chapman the man; indeed, it is his great failing as playwright that his own individuality is constantly cropping out. He alone, of all the great Elizabethan dramatists, was unable to go outside of himself and enter into the habits and thoughts of his characters. Chapman was too much of a scholar and a thinker to be a successful delineator of men. His is the drama of the man who thinks about life, not of one who lives it in its fullness. He does not get into the hearts of men. He has too many theories. Homer had become the ruling influence in his life, and he looked at things from the Homeric point of view and presented life epically. He is at his best in single didactic or narrative passages, and exquisite bits of poetry are prodigally scattered up and down the pages of his tragedies. Next to Shakespeare he is the most sententious of dramatists. He sounded the depths of things in thought which theretofore only Marlowe had done. He is the most metaphysical of dramatists.

Yet his thought is sometimes too much for him, and he becomes obscure. He packs words as tight as Browning, and the sense is often more difficult to unravel. He is best in the closet drama. 'Caesar and Pompey,' published in 1631 but never acted, contains some of his finest thoughts.

Chapman also collaborated with other dramatists. 'Eastward Ho,' in 1605, written with Marston and Jonson, is one of the liveliest and best constructed Elizabethan comedies, combining the excellences of the three men without their faults. Some allusion to the Scottish nation offended King James; the authors were confined in Fleet Prison and barely escaped having their ears and noses slit. With Shirley he wrote the comedy 'The Ball' and the tragedy 'Chabot, Admiral of France.'

Chapman wrote comedies to make money, and tragedies because it was the fashion of the day, and he studded these latter with exquisite passages because he was a poet born. But he was above all a scholar with wide and deep learning, not only of the classics but also of the Renaissance literature. From 1613 to 1631 he does not appear to have written for the stage, but was occupied with his translations of Homer, Hesiod, Juvenal, Musaeus, Petrarch, and others. In 1614, at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, was performed in the most lavish manner the 'Memorable Masque of the two Honorable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple and Lyncoln Inne.' Chapman also completed Marlowe's unfinished 'Hero and Leander.'

His fame however rests on his version of Homer. The first portion appeared in 1598: 'Seven Bookes of the Iliade of Homer, Prince of Poets; Translated according to the Greeke in judgment of his best Commentaries.' In 1611 the Iliad complete appeared, and in 1615 the whole of the Odyssey; though he by no means reproduces Homer faithfully, he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and grandeur. It is a typical product of the English Renaissance, full of vigor and passion, but also of conceit and fancifulness. It lacks the simplicity and the serenity of the Greek, but has caught its nobleness and rapidity. As has been said, "It is what Homer might have written before he came to years of discretion." Yet with all its shortcomings it remains one of the classics of Elizabethan literature. Pope consulted it diligently, and has been accused of at times re-versifying this instead of the Greek. Coleridge said of it:--

"The Iliad is fine, but less equal in the translation [than the
Odyssey], as well as less interesting in itself. What is
stupidly said of Shakespeare is really true and appropriate of
Chapman: 'Mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties.' ...
It is as truly an original poem as the 'Faerie Queen';--it will
give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than
Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome, most anti-Homeric
Miltonisms. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,--as Homer
might have written had he lived in England in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem in spite of
its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and awkwardness, which
are however amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and
beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling."

Keats's tribute, the sonnet 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' attests another poet's appreciation of the Elizabethan's paraphrase. Keats diligently explored this "new planet" that swam into his ken, and his own poetical diction is at times touched by the quaintness and fancifulness of the elder poet he admired.

Lamb, that most sympathetic critic of the old dramatists, speaks of him as follows:--

"Webster has happily characterized the 'full and heightened'
style of Chapman, who of all the English play-writers perhaps
approaches nearest to Shakespeare in the descriptive and
didactic, in passages which are less purely dramatic. He could
not go out of himself, as Shakespeare could shift at pleasure,
to inform and animate other existences, but in himself he had
an eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and modes of
being. He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has
not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his 'Homer' is not
so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and
Ulysses rewritten. The earnestness and passion which he has put
into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader
of more modern translations.... The great obstacle to Chapman's
translations being read is their unconquerable quaintness. He
pours out in the same breath the most just and natural, and the
most violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at
whatever words come first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon
him, as if all others must be inadequate to the divine meaning.
But passion (the all-in-all in poetry) is everywhere present,
raising the low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense into
the absurd. He makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any
affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in spite of
them be disgusted and overcome their disgust."

ULYSSES AND NAUSICAA

From the Translation of Homer's Odyssey

Straight rose the lovely Morn, that up did raise
Fair-veil'd Nausicaa, whose dream her praise
To admiration took; who no time spent
To give the rapture of her vision vent
To her loved parents, whom she found within.
Her mother set at fire, who had to spin
A rock, whose tincture with sea-purple shined;
Her maids about her. But she chanced to find
Her father going abroad, to council call'd
By his grave Senate; and to him exhaled
Her smother'd bosom was:--"Loved sire," said she,
"Will you not now command a coach for me,
Stately and complete? fit for me to bear
To wash at flood the weeds I cannot wear
Before re-purified? Yourself it fits
To wear fair weeds, as every man that sits
In place of council. And five sons you have,
Two wed, three bachelors, that must be brave
In every day's shift, that they may go dance;
For these three last with these things must advance
Their states in marriage; and who else but I,
Their sister, should their dancing rites supply?"
This general cause she shew'd, and would not name
Her mind of nuptials to her sire, for shame.
He understood her yet, and thus replied:--
"Daughter! nor these, nor any grace beside,
I either will deny thee, or defer,
Mules, nor a coach, of state and circular,
Fitting at all parts. Go; my servants shall
Serve thy desires, and thy command in all."
The servants then commanded soon obey'd,
Fetch'd coach, and mules join'd in it. Then the Maid
Brought from the chamber her rich weeds, and laid
All up in coach; in which her mother placed
A maund of victuals, varied well in taste,
And other junkets. Wine she likewise fill'd
Within a goat-skin bottle, and distill'd
Sweet and moist oil into a golden cruse,
Both for her daughter's and her handmaid's use,
To soften their bright bodies, when they rose
Cleansed from their cold baths. Up to coach then goes
Th' observed Maid; takes both the scourge and reins;
And to her side her handmaid straight attains.
Nor these alone, but other virgins, graced
The nuptial chariot. The whole bevy placed,
Nausicaa scourged to make the coach-mules run,
That neigh'd, and paced their usual speed, and soon
Both maids and weeds brought to the river-side,
Where baths for all the year their use supplied.
Whose waters were so pure they would not stain,
But still ran fair forth; and did more remain
Apt to purge stains, for that purged stain within,
Which by the water's pure store was not seen.
These, here arrived, the mules uncoach'd, and drave
Up the gulfy river's shore, that gave
Sweet grass to them. The maids from coach then took
Their clothes, and steep'd them in the sable brook;
Then put them into springs, and trod them clean
With cleanly feet; adventuring wagers then,
Who should have soonest and most cleanly done.
When having thoroughly cleansed, they spread them on
The flood's shore, all in order. And then, where
The waves the pebbles wash'd, and ground was clear,
They bathed themselves, and all with glittering oil
Smooth'd their white skins; refreshing then their toil
With pleasant dinner, by the river's side.
Yet still watch'd when the sun their clothes had dried.
Till which time, having dined, Nausicaa
With other virgins did at stool-ball play,
Their shoulder-reaching head-tires laying by.
Nausicaa, with the wrists of ivory,
The liking stroke strook, singing first a song,
As custom order'd, and amidst the throng
Made such a shew, and so past all was seen,
As when the chaste-born, arrow-loving Queen,
Along the mountains gliding, either over
Spartan Taygetus, whose tops far discover,
Or Eurymanthus, in the wild boar's chace,
Or swift-hooved hart, and with her Jove's fair race,
The field Nymphs, sporting; amongst whom, to see
How far Diana had priority
(Though all were fair) for fairness; yet of all,
(As both by head and forehead being more tall)
Latona triumph'd, since the dullest sight
Might easily judge whom her pains brought to light;
Nausicaa so, whom never husband tamed,
Above them all in all the beauties flamed.
But when they now made homewards, and array'd,
Ordering their weeds; disorder'd as they play'd,
Mules and coach ready, then Minerva thought
What means to wake Ulysses might be wrought,
That he might see this lovely-sighted maid,
Whom she intended should become his aid,
Bring him to town, and his return advance.
Her mean was this, though thought a stool-ball chance:
The queen now, for the upstroke, strook the ball
Quite wide off th' other maids, and made it fall
Amidst the whirlpools. At which outshriek'd all,
And with the shriek did wise Ulysses wake;
Who, sitting up, was doubtful who should make
That sudden outcry, and in mind thus strived:--
"On what a people am I now arrived?
At civil hospitable men, that fear
The gods? or dwell injurious mortals here,
Unjust and churlish? Like the female cry
Of youth it sounds. What are they? Nymphs bred high
On tops of hills, or in the founts of floods,
In herby marshes, or in leavy woods?
Or are they high-spoke men I now am near?
I'll prove and see." With this the wary peer
Crept forth the thicket, and an olive bough
Broke with his broad hand; which he did bestow
In covert of his nakedness, and then
Put hasty head out. Look how from his den
A mountain lion looks, that, all embrued
With drops of trees, and weatherbeaten-hued,
Bold of his strength goes on, and in his eye
A burning furnace glows, all bent to prey
On sheep, or oxen, or the upland hart,
His belly charging him, and he must part
Stakes with the herdsman in his beasts' attempt,
Even where from rape their strengths are most exempt:
So wet, so weather-beat, so stung with need,
Even to the home-fields of the country's breed
Ulysses was to force forth his access,
Though merely naked; and his sight did press
The eyes of soft-haired virgins. Horrid was
His rough appearance to them; the hard pass
He had at sea stuck by him. All in flight
The virgins scattered, frighted with this sight,
About the prominent windings of the flood.
All but Nausicaa fled; but she fast stood:
Pallas had put a boldness in her breast,
And in her fair limbs tender fear comprest.
And still she stood him, as resolved to know
What man he was; or out of what should grow
His strange repair to them.

THE DUKE OF BYRON IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH

From the 'Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron'

By horror of death, let me alone in peace,
And leave my soul to me, whom it concerns;
You have no charge of it; I feel her free:
How she doth rouse, and like a falcon stretch
Her silver wings; a threatening death with death;
At whom I joyfully will cast her off.
I know this body but a sink of folly,
The groundwork and raised frame of woe and frailty;
The bond and bundle of corruption;
A quick corse, only sensible of grief,
A walking sepulchre, or household thief:
A glass of air, broken with less than breath,
A slave bound face to face to death, till death.
And what said all you more? I know, besides,
That life is but a dark and stormy night
Of senseless dreams, terrors, and broken sleeps;
A tyranny, devising pains to plague
And make man long in dying, racks his death;
And death is nothing: what can you say more?
I bring a long globe and a little earth,
Am seated like earth, betwixt both the heavens,
That if I rise, to heaven I rise; if fall,
I likewise fall to heaven; what stronger faith
Hath any of your souls? what say you more?
Why lose I time in these things? Talk of knowledge,
It serves for inward use. I will not die
Like to a clergyman; but like the captain
That prayed on horseback, and with sword in hand,
Threatened the sun, commanding it to stand;
These are but ropes of sand.

FRANCOIS RENE AUGUSTE CHATEAUBRIAND

(1768-1848)

Viscount de Chateaubriand, the founder of the romantic school in French literature, and one of the most brilliant and polished writers of the first half of the nineteenth century, was born at St. Malo in Brittany, September 14th, 1768. On the paternal side he was a direct descendant of Thierri, grandson of Alain III., who was king of Armorica in the ninth century. Destined for the Church, he became a pronounced skeptic, and entered the army. In his nineteenth year he was presented at court, and became acquainted with men of letters like La Harpe, Le Brun, and Fontanes. At the outbreak of the Revolution he quitted the service, and embarked for America in January, 1791. Tiring of the restraints of civilization, civilization, he plunged into the virgin forests of Canada, and for several months lived with the savages. This remarkable experience inspired his most notable romantic work.

Returning to France in 1792, he cast his lot with the Royalists, was wounded at Thionville, and finally retired to England, where for eight years he earned a bare support by teaching and translating. His first book was the 'Essay on Revolutions' (1797), which displayed some imagination, little reflection, and an affectation of misanthropy and skepticism. The subsequent change in his convictions followed on the death of his pious mother in 1798. Returning to France he published 'Atala,' an idyll _a la mode_, founded on the loves of two young savages. Teeming with glowing descriptions of nature, and marked by elevation of sentiment combined with a sensuousness almost Oriental, this barbaric 'Paul and Virginia' immediately established the author's fame. Thus encouraged, in the following year he gave the world his 'Genius of Christianity,' in which the poetic and symbolic features of Christianity are painted in dazzling colors and with great charm of style. The enormous success of this book during the first decade of the century unquestionably did more to revive French interest in religion than the establishment of the Concordat itself. Napoleon testified his gratitude by appointing the author secretary to the embassy at Rome, and afterward minister plenipotentiary to the Valais. When the Duke d'Enghien was assassinated (March 21st, 1804), Chateaubriand resigned from the diplomatic service, although the ink was scarcely dry in which the First Consul had signed his new commission. Two years later the successful author departed on a sentimental pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Spain, where amid the ruins of the Alhambra he wrote 'The Last of the Abencerrages.' To this interesting tour the world owes the 'Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem' (1811), that book which in Saintsbury's opinion remains "the pattern of all the picturesque travels of modern times."

With the publication of the 'Itinerary' the literary career of Chateaubriand virtually closes. On the return of the Bourbons to power, the man of letters was tempted to enter the exciting arena of politics, becoming successively ambassador at Berlin, at the court of St. James, delegate to the Congress of Verona, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1830, unwilling to pledge himself to Louis Philippe, he relinquished the dignity of peer of the realm accorded him in 1815, and retired to a life of comparative poverty, which was brightened by the friendship and devotion of Madame Recamier. Until his death on the 4th of July, 1848, Chateaubriand devoted himself to the completion of his 'Memoires d'Outre-Tombe,' an auto-biographical work which was published posthumously, and which, although diffuse and even puerile at times, contains much brilliant writing.

His contemporaries pronounced Chateaubriand the foremost man of letters of France, if not of all Europe. During the last half of this century his fame has sensibly diminished both at home and abroad, and in the history of French literature he is chiefly significant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. Yet while admitting the glaring faults, exaggerations, affectations, and egotism of the author of the 'Genius of Christianity,' a fair criticism admits his best passages to be unsurpassed for perfection of style and gorgeousness of coloring. 'Atala' is a classic with real life in it even yet,--powerful, interesting, and even thrilling, in spite of its theatricality, and often magnificent in description.

In 1811 Chateaubriand was elected to the French Academy as the successor of the poet Chenier. Among his works not already mentioned are 'Rene' (1807), a sort of sequel to 'Atala'; 'The Martyrs' (1810); 'The Natchez' (1826), containing recollections of America; an 'Essay on English Literature' (2 vols.); and a translation of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (1836).

CHRISTIANITY VINDICATED

From 'The Genius of Christianity'

During the reign of the Emperor Julian commenced a persecution, perhaps more dangerous than violence itself, which consisted in loading the Christians with disgrace and contempt. Julian began his hostility by plundering the churches; he then forbade the faithful to teach or to study the liberal arts and sciences. Sensible, however, of the important advantages of the institutions of Christianity, the emperor determined to establish hospitals and monasteries, and after the example of the gospel system to combine morality with religion; he ordered a kind of sermons to be delivered in the pagan temples....

From the time of Julian to that of Luther, the Church, flourishing in full vigor, had no occasion for apologists; but when the Western schism took place, with new enemies arose new defenders. It cannot be denied that at first the Protestants had the superiority, at least in regard to forms, as Montesquieu has remarked. Erasmus himself was weak when opposed to Luther, and Theodore Beza had a captivating manner of writing, in which his opponents were too often deficient....

It is natural for schism to lead to infidelity, and for heresy to engender atheism. Bayle and Spinoza arose after Calvin, and they found in Clarke and Leibnitz men of sufficient talents to refute their sophistry. Abbadie wrote an apology for religion, remarkable for method and sound argument. Unfortunately his style is feeble, though his ideas are not destitute of brilliancy. "If the ancient philosophers," observes Abbadie, "adored the Virtues, their worship was only a beautiful species of idolatry."

While the Church was yet enjoying her triumph, Voltaire renewed the persecution of Julian. He possessed the baneful art of making infidelity fashionable among a capricious but amiable people. Every species of self-love was pressed into this insensate league. Religion was attacked with every kind of weapon, from the pamphlet to the folio, from the epigram to the sophism. No sooner did a religious book appear than the author was overwhelmed with ridicule, while works which Voltaire was the first to laugh at among his friends were extolled to the skies. Such was his superiority over his disciples that he sometimes could not forbear diverting himself with their irreligious enthusiasm. Meanwhile the destructive system continued to spread throughout France. It was first adopted in those provincial academies, each of which was a focus of bad taste and faction. Women of fashion and grave philosophers alike read lectures on infidelity. It was at length concluded that Christianity was no better than a barbarous system, and that its fall could not happen too soon for the liberty of mankind, the promotion of knowledge, the improvement of the arts, and the general comfort of life.

To say nothing of the abyss into which we were plunged by this aversion to the religion of the gospel, its immediate consequence was a return, more affected than sincere, to that mythology of Greece and Rome to which all the wonders of antiquity were ascribed. People were not ashamed to regret that worship which had transformed mankind into a herd of madmen, monsters of indecency, or ferocious beasts. This could not fail to inspire contempt for the writers of the age of Louis XIV., who however had reached the high perfection which distinguished them only by being religious. If no one ventured to oppose them face to face, on account of their firmly established reputation, they were nevertheless attacked in a thousand indirect ways. It was asserted that they were unbelievers _in their hearts_; or at least that they would have been much greater characters had they lived _in our times_. Every author blessed his good fortune for having been born in the glorious age of the Diderots and d'Alemberts, in that age when all the attainments of the human mind were ranged in alphabetical order in the 'Encyclopedie,' that Babel of the sciences and of reason....

It was therefore necessary to prove that on the contrary the Christian religion, of all the religions that ever existed, is the most humane, the most favorable to liberty and to the arts and sciences; that the modern world is indebted to it for every improvement from agriculture to the abstract sciences, from the hospitals for the reception of the unfortunate to the temples reared by the Michael Angelos and embellished by the Raphaels. It was necessary to prove that nothing is more divine than its morality, nothing more lovely and more sublime than its tenets, its doctrine, and its worship; that it encourages genius, corrects the taste, develops the virtuous passions, imparts energy to the ideas, presents noble images to the writer, and perfect models to the artist; that there is no disgrace in being believers with Newton and Bossuet, with Pascal and Racine. In a word, it was necessary to summon all the charms of the imagination and all the interests of the heart to the assistance of that religion against which they had been set in array.

The reader may now have a clear view of the object of our work. All other kinds of apologies are exhausted, and perhaps they would be useless at the present day. Who would now sit down to read a work professedly theological? Possibly a few sincere Christians who are already convinced. But, it may be asked, May there not be some danger in considering religion in a merely human point of view? Why so? Does our religion shrink from the light? Surely one great proof of its divine origin is, that it will bear the test of the fullest and severest scrutiny of reason. Would you have us always open to the reproach of enveloping our tenets in sacred obscurity, lest their falsehood should be detected? Will Christianity be the less true for appearing the more beautiful? Let us banish our weak apprehensions; let us not, by an excess of religion, leave religion to perish. We no longer live in those times when you might say, "Believe without inquiring." People _will_ inquire in spite of us; and our timid silence, in heightening the triumph of the infidel, will diminish the number of believers.

It is time that the world should know to what all those charges of absurdity, vulgarity, and meanness, that are daily alleged against Christianity, may be reduced. It is time to demonstrate that instead of debasing the ideas, it encourages the soul to take the most daring flights, and is capable of enchanting the imagination as divinely as the deities of Homer and Virgil. Our arguments will at least have this advantage, that they will be intelligible to the world at large and will require nothing but common-sense to determine their weight and strength. In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather too much, to speak the language of their readers. It is necessary to be a scholar with a scholar, and a poet with a poet. The Almighty does not forbid us to tread the flowery path, if it serves to lead the wanderer once more to him; nor is it always by the steep and rugged mountain that the lost sheep finds its way back to the fold.

We think that this mode of considering Christianity displays associations of ideas which are but imperfectly known. Sublime in the antiquity of its recollections, which go back to the creation of the world; ineffable in its mysteries, adorable in its sacraments, interesting in its history, celestial in its morality, rich and attractive in its ceremonial,--it is fraught with every species of beauty. Would you follow it in poetry? Tasso, Milton, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, will depict to you its miraculous effects. In belles-lettres, in oratory, history, and philosophy, what have not Bossuet, Fenelon, Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bacon, Pascal, Euler, Newton, Leibnitz, produced by its inspiration! In the arts, what masterpieces! If you examine it in its worship, what ideas are suggested by its antique Gothic churches, its admirable prayers, its impressive ceremonies! Among its clergy, behold all those scholars who have handed down to you the languages and the works of Greece and Rome; all those anchorets of Thebais; all those asylums for the unfortunate; all those missionaries to China, to Canada, to Paraguay; not forgetting the military orders whence chivalry derived its origin. Everything has been engaged in our cause--the manners of our ancestors, the pictures of days of yore, poetry, even romances themselves. We have called smiles from the cradle, and tears from the tomb. Sometimes, with the Maronite monk, we dwell on the summits of Carmel and Lebanon; at others we watch with the Daughter of Charity at the bedside of the sick. Here two American lovers summon us into the recesses of their deserts; there we listen to the sighs of the virgin in the solitude of the cloister. Homer takes his place by Milton, and Virgil beside Tasso; the ruins of Athens and of Memphis form contrasts with the ruins of Christian monuments, and the tombs of Ossian with our rural churchyards. At St. Denis we visit the ashes of kings; and when our subject requires us to treat of the existence of God, we seek our proofs in the wonders of Nature alone. In short, we endeavor to strike the heart of the infidel in every possible way; but we dare not flatter ourselves that we possess the miraculous rod of religion which caused living streams to burst from the flinty rock.

DESCRIPTION OF A THUNDER-STORM IN THE FOREST

From 'Atala'

It was the twenty-seventh sun since our departure from the Cabins: the _lune de fer_ (month of July) had commenced its course, and all signs indicated the approach of a violent storm. Toward the hour when the Indian matrons hang up the plowshares on the branches of the junipers, and when the paroquets retire into the hollows of the cypress trees, the sky grew overcast. The vague sounds of solitude gradually ceased, the forests were wrapped in universal calm. Suddenly the pealing of distant thunder, re-echoing through these vast woods as old as the world itself, startled the ear with a diapason of noises sublime. Fearing to be overwhelmed in the flood, we hastily disembarked on the river's bank and sought safety in the seclusion of one of the forest glades.

The ground was swampy. We pressed forward with difficulty beneath a roof of smilax, among grape-vines and climbing plants of all kinds, in which our feet were continually entangled. The spongy soil trembled all around us, and every instant we were on the verge of being engulfed in the quagmires. Swarms of insects and enormous bats nearly blinded us; rattlesnakes were heard on all sides; and the wolves, bears, panthers, and badgers which had sought a refuge in this retreat filled the air with their roarings.

Meanwhile the obscurity increased; the lowering clouds entered beneath the shadows of the trees. The heavens were rent, and the lightning traced a flashing zigzag of fire. A furious gale from the west piled up the angry clouds in heavy masses; the mighty trees bowed their heads to the blast. Again and again the sky was rent, and through the yawning crevices one beheld new heavens and vales of fire. What an awful, what a magnificent spectacle! The trees were struck by lightning and ignited; the conflagration spread like a flaming garland; the showers of sparks and the columns of smoke ascended to the very heavens, which vomited their thunders into the sea of fire.

Then the Great Spirit enveloped the mountains in utter darkness; from the midst of this vast chaos came a confused roaring made by the tumult of many winds, the moaning of the trees, the howlings of ferocious beasts, the crackling of the flames, and the descent of balls of fire which hissed as they were extinguished in the water.

The Great Spirit knows the truth of what I now say! At this moment I saw only Atala, I had no thought but for her. Beneath the bent trunk of a birch-tree, I succeeded in protecting her from the torrents of rain. Seated myself under the tree, supporting my well-beloved on my knees, and chafing her bare feet between my hands, I was even happier than the young wife who feels for the first time the consciousness of her motherhood.

THOMAS CHATTERTON

(1752-1770)

To the third quarter of the eighteenth century belongs the tragedy of the life of Thomas Chatterton, who, misunderstood and neglected during his brief seventeen years of poetic revery, has by the force of his genius and by his actual achievement compelled the nineteenth century, through one of its best critics, to acknowledge him as the father of the New Romantic school, and to accord him thereby a place unique among his contemporaries. His family and early surroundings serve in a way to explain his development. He was born at Bristol, a town rich in the traditions and monuments of bygone times. For nearly two hundred years the office of sexton to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe had been handed down in the family. At the time of the poet's birth it was held by a maternal uncle; for his father, a "musical genius, somewhat of a poet, an antiquary and dabbler in occult arts," was the first to aspire to a position above the hereditary one, and had taken charge of the Pyle free schools in Bristol. He died before his son's birth, and left his widow to support her two children by keeping a little school and by needlework. The boy, reserved and given to revery from his earliest years, was at first considered dull, but finally learned to spell by means of the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio and a black-letter Bible. He spent much of his time with his uncle, in and about the church. St. Mary Redcliffe, one of the finest specimens of mediaeval church architecture in England, is especially rich in altar tombs with recumbent carved figures of knights, and ecclesiastic and civic dignitaries of bygone days. These became the boy's familiar associates, and he amused himself on his lonely visits by spelling out the old inscriptions on their monuments. There he got hold of some quaint oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch, filled with parchments old as the Wars of the Roses, and these deeds and charters of the Henrys and Edwards became his primers. In 1760 he entered Colston's "Blue-Coat" charity school, located in a fine old building of the Tudor times. The rules of the institution provided for the training of its inmates "in the principles of the Christian religion as laid down in the Church catechism," and in fitting them to be apprenticed in due course to some trade. During the six years of his stay, Chatterton received only the rudiments of a common-school education, and found little to nourish his genius. But being a voracious reader, he went on his small allowance through three circulating libraries, and became acquainted with the older English poets, and also read history and antiquities. He very early entertained dreams of ambition, without however finding any sympathy; so he lived in a world of his own, conceiving before the age of twelve the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary clerk of the fifteenth century, and his patron Master William Canynge, a former mayor of Bristol whose effigy was familiar to him from the tomb in the church. This fiction, which after his death gave rise to the celebrated controversy of the 'Rowley Poems,' matured at this early age as a boy's life-dream, he fashioned into a consistent romance, and wove into it among the prose fragments the ballads and lyrics on which his fame as poet now rests. His earliest literary forgery was a practical joke played on a credulous pewterer at Bristol, for whom he fabricated a pedigree dating back to the time of the Norman Conquest, which he professed to have collected from ancient manuscripts. It is remarkable as the work of a boy not yet fourteen. He was rewarded with a crown piece, and the success of this hoax encouraged him further to play upon the credulity of his townspeople, and to continue writing prose and verse in pseudo-antique style.

In 1767 he was bound apprentice to John Lambert, attorney. The office duties were light. He spent his spare time in poetizing, and sent anonymously transcripts from professedly old poems to the local papers. Their authorship being traced to him, he now claimed that his father had found numerous old poems and other manuscripts in a coffer of the muniment room at Redcliffe, and that he had transcribed them. Under guise of this fiction he produced, within the two years of his apprenticeship, a mass of pseudo-antique dramatic, lyric, and descriptive poems, and fragments of local and general history, connected all with his romance of the clerk of Bristol. A scholarly knowledge of Middle English was rare one hundred and thirty years ago, and the self-taught boy easily gulled the local antiquaries. He even deceived Horace Walpole, who, dabbling in mediaevalism, had opened the way for prose romances with his 'Castle of Otranto,' a spurious antique of the same time in which Chatterton had placed his fiction. Walpole at first treated him courteously, even offering to print some of the poems. But when Gray and Mason pronounced them modern, he at once gave Chatterton the cold shoulder, entirely forgetting his own imposition on a credulous public.

Chatterton now turned to periodical literature and the politics of the day, and began to contribute to various London magazines. In the spring of 1770 he finally came up to London, to start on the life of a literary adventurer on a capital of less than five pounds. He lived abstemiously and worked incessantly, literally day and night. He had a wonderful versatility; he would write in the manner of any one he chose to imitate, and he tried his hand at every species of book-work. But even under the strain of this incessant productivity he found time to turn back to his boyhood dreams, and produced one of his finest poems, the 'Ballad of Charity.' At first his contributions were freely accepted, but he was poorly paid, and sometimes not at all. Yet out of his scanty earnings he bought costly presents for his mother and sister, as tokens of affection and an earnest of what he hoped to do for them. After scarcely two months in London he was at the end of his resources. He made an attempt to gain a position as surgeon's assistant on board of an African trader, but was unsuccessful. He now found himself face to face with famine; and, too proud to ask for assistance or to accept even the hospitality of a single meal, he on the night of August 25th, 1770, locked himself into his garret, destroyed all his note-books and papers, and swallowed a dose of arsenic. It is believed that he was privately buried in the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe. There a monument has been erected, with an inscription from his poem 'Will':--

"To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou
art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a superior
power. To that power alone is he now answerable."

His death attracted little notice, for he was regarded merely as the transcriber of the 'Rowley' poems. They were collected after his death, from the various persons to whom he had given the manuscripts, and occasioned a controversy that has lasted almost down to the present generation. But only an age untrained in philological research could ever have received them as genuine productions of the fifteenth century: for Chatterton, who knew little of the old authors antedating Spenser, constructed with the help of Bailey's and Kersey's English dictionaries a lingo of his own; he strung together old words of all periods and dialects, and even coined words himself to suit the metre. His lingo resembles anything rather than Middle English. It is supposed that he wrote first in modern English, and then translated into his own dialect; for the poems do not suffer by retranslation,--on the contrary, they are more intelligible and often more rhythmical. Chatterton had a wonderful memory, and having read enormously, there are frequent though perhaps unconscious plagiarisms from Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Gray, and others.

Yet after all has been said against the spurious character of the 'Rowley' poems, Chatterton's two volumes of collected writings, produced under the most adverse circumstances, are a record of youthful precocity unparalleled in literary history. He wrote spirited satires at ten, and some of his best old verse before sixteen. 'AElla' is a dramatic poem of sustained power and originality, and its songs have the true lyric ring; the 'Ode to Liberty,' a fragment from the tragedy of 'Goddwyn,' is with its bold imagery one of the finest martial lyrics in the language; the 'Ballad of Charity,' almost the last poem he wrote, comes in its objectivity and artistic completeness near to some of Keats's best ballad work. But more wonderful perhaps than this early blossoming of his genius is its absolute originality. At a time when Johnson was the literary dictator of London, and Pope's manner still paramount, Chatterton, unmindful of their conventionalities and the current French influence, instinctively turned to earlier models, and sought his inspiration at the true source of English song. Bishop Percy's 'Reliques of Old English Poetry,' published in 1765, first made the people acquainted with their fine old ballads; but by that year Chatterton had already planned the story of the monk of Bristol and written some of the poems. Gifted with a rich vein of romance, he heralded the coming revival of mediaeval literature. But he not only divined the new movements of poetry--he was also responsible for one side of its development. He had a poet's ear for metrical effects, and transmitted this gift to the romantic poets through Coleridge; for the latter, deeply interested in the tragedy of the life of the Bristol boy, studied his work; and traces of this study, resulting in freer rhythm and new harmonies, are found in Coleridge's own verse. The influence of the author of 'Christabel' on his brother poets is indisputable; hence his indebtedness to Chatterton gives to the latter at once his rightful position as the father of the New Romantic school. Keats also shows signs of close acquaintance with Chatterton; and he proves moreover by the dedication of his 'Endymion' that he cherished the memory of the unfortunate young poet, with whom he had, as far as the romantic temper on its objective side goes, perhaps the closest spiritual kinship of any poet of his time.

But quite apart from his youthful precocity and his influence on later poets, Chatterton holds no mean place in English literature because of the intrinsic value of his performance. His work, on the one hand, aside from the 'Rowley' poems, shows him a true poet of the eighteenth century, and the best of it entitles him to a fair place among his contemporaries; but on the other hand he stands almost alone in his generation in possessing the highest poetic endowments,--originality of thought, a quick eye to see and note, the gift of expression, sustained power of composition, and a fire and intensity of imagination. In how far he would have fulfilled his early promise it is idle to surmise; yet what poet, in the whole range of English, nay of _all_ literature, at seventeen years and nine months of age, has produced work of such excellence as this "marvelous boy," who, unrecognized and driven by famine, took his own life in a London garret?

FINAL CHORUS FROM 'GODDWYN'

When Freedom, dreste yn blodde-steyned veste,
To everie knyghte her warre-songe sunge,
Uponne her hedde wylde wedes were spredde;
A gorie anlace bye her honge.
She daunced onne the heathe;
She hearde the voice of deathe;
Pale-eyned affryghte, hys harte of sylver hue,
In vayne assayled her bosomme to acale;
She hearde onflemed the shriekynge voice of woe,
And sadnesse ynne the owlette shake the dale.
She shooke the burled speere,
On hie she jeste her sheelde,
Her foemen all appere,
And flizze alonge the feelde.
Power, wythe his heafod straught ynto the skyes,
Hys speere a sonne-beame, and hys sheelde a starre,
Alyche twaie brendeynge gronfyres rolls hys eyes,
Chaftes with hys yronne feete and soundes to war.
She syttes upon a rocke,
She bendes before hys speere,
She ryses from the shocke,
Wieldynge her owne yn ayre.
Harde as the thonder dothe she drive ytte on,
Wytte scillye wympled gies ytte to hys crowne,
Hys longe sharpe speere, hys spreddynge sheelde ys gon,
He falles, and fallynge rolleth thousandes down.
War, goare-faced war, bie envie burld, arist,
Hys feerie heaulme noddynge to the ayre,
Tenne bloddie arrowes ynne hys streynynge fyste.

THE FAREWELL OF SIR CHARLES BALDWIN TO HIS WIFE

From 'The Bristowe Tragedie'

And nowe the bell beganne to tolle,
And claryonnes to sounde;
Syr Charles hee herde the horses' feete
A-prauncing onne the grounde:

And just before the officers
His lovynge wyfe came ynne,
Weepynge unfeigned teeres of woe,
Wythe loude and dysmalle dynne.

"Sweet Florence! nowe I praie forbere,
Ynne quiet lett mee die;
Praie Godde, thatt ev'ry Christian soule
May looke onne dethe as I.

"Sweet Florence! why these brinie teeres?
Theye washe my soule awaie,
And almost make mee wyshe for lyfe,
Wythe thee, sweete dame, to staie.

"'Tys butt a journie I shalle goe
Untoe the lande of blysse;
Nowe, as a proofe of husbande's love,
Receive thys holie kysse."

Thenne Florence, fault'ring ynne her saie,
Tremblynge these wordyes spoke:--
"Ah, cruele Edwarde! bloudie kynge!
My herte ys welle nyghe broke:

"Ah, sweete Syr Charles! why wylt thou goe,
Wythoute thye lovynge wyfe?
The cruelle axe thatt cuttes thye necke,
Ytte eke shall ende mye lyfe."

And nowe the officers came ynne
To brynge Syr Charles awaie,
Whoe turnedd toe hys lovynge wyfe,
And thus to her dydd saie:--

"I goe to lyfe, and nott to dethe;
Truste thou ynne Godde above,
And teache thye sonnes to feare the Lorde,
And ynne theyre hertes hym love:

"Teache them to runne the nobile race
Thatt I theyre fader runne:
Florence! shou'd dethe thee take--adieu!
Yee officers, leade onne."

Thenne Florence rav'd as anie madde,
And dydd her tresses tere;
"Oh! staie, mye husbande! lorde! and lyfe!"
Syr Charles thenne dropt a teare.

'Tyll tyredd oute wythe ravynge loud,
She fellen onne the flore;
Syr Charles exerted alle hys myghte,
And march'd fromme oute the dore.

Uponne a sledde hee mounted thenne,
Wythe lookes fulle brave and swete;
Lookes, thatt enshone ne more concern
Thanne anie ynne the strete.

MYNSTRELLES SONGE

O! synge untoe mie roundelaie,
O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,
Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie,
Lycke a reynynge ryver bee;
Mie love ys dedde,
Gon to hys deathe-bedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree.