Chapter I: WAS no longer young: in fact I was well over sixty. The winter had (2)

Is it true that less evidence is necessary to prove an event which is probable than one that is improbable? The probability of an event is no evidence that it actually happened. Its probability may be the reason why we should examine the evidence more closely, because witnesses are more likely, in the case of a probable event, to refrain from scrutiny than in the case of one not probable. I sit at my window and see a whitish object with four legs in a field. I am short-sighted, but I at once say ‘a cow,’ and take no pains to ascertain whether it is a cow or not. If I had seen a white object apparently with three legs only, I should have gone out, inspected it closely, and should have called other people to look at it.

* * * * *

I pray for a gift which perhaps would be miraculous: simply to be able to see that field of waving grass as I should see it if association and the ‘film of custom’ did not obscure it.

* * * * *

Why do we admire intellect when it is united with even diabolic disregard of moral laws? Partly because it stands out more prominently; partly because it triumphs over obstacles; but mainly because we are all more or less in sympathy with insurrection and the assertion of individuality.

* * * * *

As we move higher, personality becomes of less consequence. We do not live in the ‘I,’ but in truths. Something of a metaphysical hint here.

* * * * *

Principles are dangerous tools for a fool. What awful mischief they have done!

* * * * *

Never was there a time in which men were less governed by ideas. The Church and the sects are neither Calvinist nor Arminian, orthodox nor rational, and in politics an idea damns a measure at once.

* * * * *

We have no capitalised happiness, nothing on which to draw when temporary sources fail.

* * * * *

A decided bent or twist, is not unsuitable in a man, but I do not care for it in a woman. I love that equipoise in the faces of the Greek women in the old statues and sculptures. It appears also in some pictures of the Virgin.

* * * * *

The duty of the State as to toleration cannot be decided by an appeal to rights. Everybody admits that government is sometimes justified in suppressing what is honestly believed. But if government had not been resisted we should have had no Christianity. The vindication of the authority of the State is a vindication of persecution, and if we dispute this authority we cannot logically disallow dangerous licence. There is no way out of the difficulty so long as we generalise. Toleration is an abstraction, nothing but a word. What we have to decide is, whether it is wise or unwise to send to prison the people now before us who preach bigamy, assassination of kings, or theological heresy.

* * * * *

When we struggle to see more than we possibly can see we undervalue what we indubitably see.

* * * * *

There is but little thinking, or perhaps it is more correct to say but little reflection, in the Bible. There is profound sympathy with a few truths, but ideas are not sought for their own sake. Carlyle is Biblical. It has been said scoffingly that he is no thinker. It is his glory that he is not.

* * * * *

What we have toiled after painfully often lies unused. No opportunity occurs for saying or doing a tithe of it. The hour demands its own special wisdom.

* * * * *

When we really love we cannot believe that our love is mortal. We feel, not only that it is immortal, but that it is eternal, in the sense in which Spinoza uses the word. It is not the attraction of something entirely limited and personal to that which is also limited and personal.

* * * * *

We think of rest as natural to bodies, and motion as something added. But the new doctrine is that motion is primary. Nothing is at rest, and, so far as we know, rest has never been. It is an astounding conception.

* * * * *

There is a certain distance at which each person whom we know is naturally placed from us. It varies with each, and we must not attempt to alter it. We may clasp him who is close, and we are not to pull closer him who is more remote.

* * * * *

Many people would be much better if they would let themselves be as good as they really are. They seem to take delight in making themselves less.

* * * * *

We are much misled by characters in fiction or on the stage, for they are always more consistent than men and women in real life. Real men and women are seldom controlled for twenty-four hours by the same motives or principles. If my friend is mean to-day, let me not doubt his generosity to-morrow. Let me joyously believe in it when the morrow comes.

* * * * *

What a pest is the re-appearance in us of discarded conclusions! It would be of service if we could keep a register of those things which, after careful examination, we have determined to be false.

* * * * *

Acting from the strongest motives, even if they are bad, is perhaps not so dangerous as acting from none. The evils which arise through deeds done from conspicuous motives attract attention, but the vast sum of misery caused by mere idle, irresolute swaying hither and thither passes unnoticed.

* * * * *

Pig-headedness is often a sign of weakness of will. The pig-headed person knows he is weak, and to convince himself and others of his resolution holds to any chance purpose with tenacity. The less reasonable the purpose is, the more obstinately he clings to it, because, by so doing, he shows as he thinks his strength of volition.

* * * * *

If we desire peace we must get beyond the notion of personality. Nothing of any value is bound up with it: it is an illusion.

* * * * *

Intense feeling gives intellectual precision. The man who feels profoundly the beauty of a cloud is the man who can describe it. But the first effect of intense feeling is often to break up false precision. The ideas of God, life, personality, right and wrong, are examples.

* * * * *

The blue sky is more beautiful because we know it is not painted opacity, but transparent.

* * * * *

The slowness of the change in the sky is exquisite, the dying out of the light in the clouds after sunset. The quiet abiding of the grey cloud as darkness thickens is wonderful.

* * * * *

_June_—Sky and sea pure blue. The blue tint suffuses the distant vessels. One large sailing ship with sails all set is so blue that it differs only by a shade from sky and sea.

* * * * *

It is not true that guileless people are the most easily deceived. S. G. is not sharp-witted, but she is transparent as a pool of rain on meadow grass, and consequently it is impossible to deceive her, and ridiculous to attempt it: her eyes forbid it. She does not infer insincerity: it is automatically rejected.

* * * * *

_July_.—North-easterly wind, strong: hateful in the streets and even in the house: dust everywhere. Inclined to shut the windows and stay indoors, but went out for a long walk up to the flag-staff. A perfect day for that view. The bay all shades of blue; here and there deep, and, inshore, the blue is broken with pure white from the tops of the waves: the yellow beach to the farthest point clasping the sea like an arm. So beautiful that it gives pain: it is not possible to extend oneself to it.

* * * * *

Whether truth does or does not lie in the mean depends on the selection of the extremes. A mechanical choice of the mean is stupidity.

* * * * *

The Athanasian Creed is not objectionable because of its damnatory clauses. Neglect to observe the finest distinctions continually involves damnation. The difference between a vice and a virtue may be a hair-line. The true reason for rejecting the Creed is that it is manufactured, that it is not a statement of what is seen and felt to be true. There is nevertheless a certain dogmatic pride in it, a desire to affirm as offensively as possible.

* * * * *

The peace which orthodox religion is said to bring is obtained by clipping the Infinite and reducing it to a finite. The joy of _inclusion_ is great but false.

* * * * *

‘And thy fats shall overflow with new wine’—Proverbs iii. 10, Revised Version. Called on A. in London. I forget how it came about, but in course of conversation he asked me if ‘fats’ were not a mistake for ‘vats.’ I told him it was not, turning up the word in the dictionary as an equivalent to ‘vats.’ Called on his sister, who was staying three or four miles away and had come up to town that afternoon from the country where she lived. That very evening she asked me the same question her brother had asked. She had not seen him, nor held any communication with him on the subject, nor had it been suggested to them by any person or book. Moreover, neither of them is a frequent reader of the Bible. Yesterday I told the story to A. in his sister’s presence. She confirmed it, and A., who is accustomed to scientific investigation, was quite unable to account for it. If a jury were trying a prisoner charged with murder, and an equally singular concurrence of circumstances were in evidence against him, they would not hesitate to hang him.

* * * * *

If you are very short-sighted or half blind, it is safer in the twilight to shut the eyes and depend entirely on the touch in moving about.

* * * * *

The books on the adjustment of astronomical instruments say that if there is a slight error, it is better always to make allowance for it than to attempt to correct it.

* * * * *

The sun, we say, is the cause of heat, but the heat _is_ the sun, here on this window-ledge.

* * * * *

The contact of a _system_ of philosophy or religion with reality is that of a tangent with a circle. It touches the circle at one point, but instantly the circle edges away.

* * * * *

In every man there is something of the Universal Spirit, strangely limited by that which is finite and personal, but still there. Occasionally it makes itself known in a word, look, or gesture, and then he becomes one with the stars and sea.

* * * * *

We cannot really understand a religion unless we have believed it.

* * * * *

We ought to cultivate strength of will by doing what we have once decided to do. Subsequent reasons for not doing it may appear plausible, but it will generally be better to adhere to our first resolution. The advantage gained by change will not be equal to that derived from persistence.

* * * * *

Never be afraid of being commonplace. Never turn aside from the truth because it is commonplace.

* * * * *

A nightmare is not scattered while we are asleep. It disappears simply by—_waking_.

* * * * *

_Cursed temperament_.—A long drought broke up. The grass had been burnt, and the cattle were dying for want of water. In one week two inches of rain fell.

_A._ ‘What a blessing this rain is!’

_B._ ‘Yes, but a reaction is sure to follow. I’ve noticed that after weather like this we always have a spell of dry, northerly winds.’

* * * * *

The prompter which urges us on from one point to another, never discouraged by failure to see in the present moment what it seemed to possess when we pursued it, or rather, not permitting us to stop to find out if there be any failure—this it is by which we live. When it departs it is time to die.

* * * * *

_January_.—The wind is north-west after yesterday’s fog and rain from the south. Suddenly and silently, just after sunset, the whole south-western sky has blazed up, passing from glowing flame-colour on the horizon to carmine on the zenith. Between the promontories of cloud are lakes and gulfs of the tenderest green and blue. What magnificent pomp, fit to celebrate the death of a god for the world’s salvation! But there is nothing below to explain it. It must be a spectacle displayed for celestial reasons altogether hidden.

* * * * *

Much misunderstanding would be prevented if we were to say exactly what we believe and not modify it to suit, as we suppose, the person to whom we speak.

* * * * *

Humour people sometimes in what you do, but not in the expression of your convictions. Go a mile out of your way to please an obstinate friend, but utter with precision what you believe. It is in the sharpness and finish that its value lies.

* * * * *

Everybody in these civilised, intercommunicative days seems arrested: everybody is a compromise. It is rare that we meet with a person who has been let alone, whose own particular self has been developed free from intrusion.

* * * * *

People believe the truth more readily if something difficult of belief or incredible is mixed with it.

* * * * *

I want no more beliefs. What I want is active strength in those I have. I know there is no ghost round the corner, but I dare not go.

* * * * *

There is always a point in our insistence or persuasion when it is most effective, and generally it is much lower than we suppose. One degree above it is waste and impediment.

* * * * *

Keep a watch upon your tongue when you are in particularly good health.

* * * * *

Early morning before sunrise: the valley was filled with mist; red clouds in the sky. For a minute or two the mist took the colour, but fainter, of the clouds. What patience is required in order to see! The sun had not risen, the grass in the field was obviously green, but not without intent fixture of the eyes upon it was the dark, twilight shade of green recognised which was its peculiar meaning and beauty. To most of us, perhaps not to artists, it is more difficult to look than to think.

* * * * *

The just judgment is not that of the judge who has no interest in it. The most unjust judgments are due to indifference.

* * * * *

The sun is setting in crimson, delicate blue and green. I think of the earth as a revolving ball. ‘This was the Creator’s design, or, if we prefer so to speak, this was the law, that there should be a ball and that it should turn on its axis. But just as surely was it the design or law that there should be these colours, crimson, blue, and green, and that I should be affected by them. This affection was rolled up in the primal impulse which started the planet and is as necessary as its revolution.

* * * * *

Zeal in proselytising is often due to an uneasy suspicion that we only half-believe.

* * * * *

We should take pains to be polite to those whom we love. Politeness preserves love, is a kind of sheath to it.

* * * * *

The hornbeam hedge is coming into leaf in patches although all parts of each side face the same point of the compass. The leaves of some patches are fully expanded, while in others they are only in bud. The dry, brown, dead leaves of last year have remained through the winter and early spring, but they are dropping off now that the new leaves begin to shoot.

* * * * *

We ought not to expect every child to be religious. The religious temper is an endowment like that for painting or poetry.

* * * * *

A. and B. meet on the road. B. is a retired official and has nothing to do.

_B._ ‘Meant to have come to see you several times’ (has not called for nine months), ‘but I have so many engagements.’ (Shows a basket.) ‘Look here, just had to take some eggs to C. for my wife.’

* * * * *

‘If a man turns to Christ, nothing in him is to be left behind. Every passion must be brought to Him to be transformed by Him. Otherwise the man does not come, but only a part of him.’ [Said to me years ago by a pious friend now dead.]

* * * * *

The real proportion between vice and virtue in a man is often misjudged because the vice is before us continually, while the virtue does not obtrude.

* * * * *

If you are to live in happiness and peace with the woman you love, you must not permit the daily course of life to have its way unchecked. There must be hours of removal to a distance when in silence you create anew her ideal and proper form, when you think of her as sculptured in white marble.

* * * * *

Blacksmiths forging one on this side of the anvil and the other on the opposite side. Each keeps his own time, not regulating his stroke by watching his mate.

* * * * *

There is in man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp.

* * * * *

Went into the cathedral and heard morning service. Miracle of miracles! Into the soul of a carpenter’s son more than eighteen centuries ago came a thought, and it is returned to us to-day in majestic architecture, music of voice and organ.

* * * * *

Disbelief in Christianity is not so much to be dreaded as its acceptance with a complete denial of it in society and politics.

* * * * *

The love that has lasted for years; which has resisted all weakness and defect; has been constant in all moods and circumstances better and worse; has exacted nothing; has been content with silence; always soft and easy as the circumambient air, a love with no reserve; what is there in any relationship to person or thing worth a straw compared with it!

* * * * *

We ought to endeavour to give our dreams reality, but in Reality we should preserve the dream.

* * * * *

If her unhappiness does not destroy my happiness, and if her happiness does not make me happy, I do not love her.

* * * * *

There are problems which cannot be solved, for directly we have stated them, as we suppose, they elude the statement and are outside. Who can say what is the meaning of the question, ‘Does God exist?’

* * * * *

There is always a multitude of reasons both in favour of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them.

* * * * *

How beautiful is a rapid rivulet trying to clear itself from stirred-up mud.

* * * * *

The most foolish things we say are said from another person’s point of view and not from our own.

* * * * *

On a siding at one of the stations on the Great Western Railway were a number of old engines waiting to be broken up. There they stood, uncleaned, their bright parts rusted and indistinguishable from the others. Some were back to back and some front to front. There they stood and saw the expresses rush past them with their new engines.

* * * * *

Went out this afternoon to call on C. and his wife. They are certainly the most cultivated people I know. They travel a good deal, and each of them can speak two or three languages besides English. They read the best books, and do not read those which are bad. Some friends were there, and I was entertained with intelligent criticism of literature, music, and pictures, and learned much that was worth knowing. But I came away unsatisfied, and rather dazed. On my way back—it was a singularly warm, clear evening in February—I turned in to see an old lady who lives near me. She was sitting wrapped up at her wide-open window, looking at the light that was still left in the south-west. I said, of course, that I hoped she would not take cold. ‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘I often sit here, and so long as I keep myself warm I come to no harm. I cannot read by candlelight, and I am thankful that this room faces the south. I know the stars much better than when I was young.’ I took the chair beside her, and for ten minutes neither of us spoke, but I was not conscious for an instant of the disagreeable feeling that silence must be broken, and search be made for something with which to break it. If two persons are friends in the best sense of the word, they are not uncomfortable if they do not talk when they are together. Presently she told me that she had received news that morning of the birth of a granddaughter. She was much pleased. The mother already had two sons and desired a girl. I stayed for about half an hour, and went home in debt to her for peace.

* * * * *

Bacon observes that whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion. Naturally so, because it is nearly certain to be something merely personal to ourselves.

* * * * *

Excepting in one word, the betrayal of Jesus, the defection of Peter, the examination before Pilate and Herod, and the crucifixion, are recorded, as Spedding notices, without any vituperation. The excepted word, not named by Spedding, is ‘blasphemously’ (Luke xxii. 65). {250}

* * * * *

Coleridge says that great minds are never wrong but in consequence of being right, which is perfectly true; but it may be added that they are also right through being wrong.

* * * * *

‘When he is moderate and regular in any of these things, out of a sense of Christian sobriety and self-denial, that he may offer unto God a more reasonable and holy life, then it is, that the smallest rule of this kind is naturally the beginning of great piety. For the smallest rule in these matters is of great benefit, as it teaches us some part of the government of ourselves, as it keeps up a tenderness of mind, as it presents God often to our thoughts, and brings a sense of religion into the ordinary actions of our common life.’—(Law’s _Serious Call_.) Men are restrained by fear of consequences, but it is Law’s rule which gives strength and dignity. Living in a certain way because Perfection demands it produces a result different from that obtained by living in the same way through fear of injury to health.

* * * * *

Man is the revelation of the Infinite, and it does not become finite in him. It remains the Infinite.

* * * * *

Luther says somewhere, ‘Do not anxiously search for the pillars which are to keep the sky from falling.’ Many of us have been afraid all our lives that the sky would fall, and have anxiously searched for the pillars. There are none, and yet the sky will not fall.

* * * * *

Idolatry is the worship of that which is non-significant. The worship of one God, as Coleridge says, may be idolatry.

* * * * *

What a man is conscious of, is not himself, but that which is not himself. Without a belief in the existence of an external world, I could not believe in my own existence.

* * * * *

The dialectic of Socrates is positive in so far as it shows the futility of reasoning as a means of reaching the truth. If we wish to know whether courage is knowledge, we must face imminent danger.

* * * * *

The omnipotence of God—that is to say, absolute omnipotence, a power which knows no resistance—is an utterly inconceivable abstraction. Yet much speculation is based on it.

* * * * *

There is a great reserve of incomprehensibility in all the few friends for whom I really care. It is better that it should be so. What would a comprehensible friend be worth? The impenetrable background gives the beauty to that which is in front of it. The most unfathomable also of my friends are those who are most sincere and luminous.

* * * * *

_Note on a picture_.—The sea-shore; low cliffs topped with grass; a small cove; the open sea, calm, intensely blue; sky also deep blue, but towards the horizon there are soft, white clouds. On a little sandy ridge sit a brown fisher-boy and fisher-girl, immortal as the sea, cliffs, and clouds which are a setting or frame for them.

* * * * *

The strength of the argument in favour of a philosophy or religion is proportionate to the applicability of the philosophy or religion to life. If in all situations we find it ready, it is true.

* * * * *

Bacon observes that ‘interpretations’ of Nature, that is to say real generalisations elicited from facts by a just and methodical process, ‘cannot suddenly strike the understanding’ like ‘anticipations’ collected from a few instances. I have often noticed that ‘striking’ is seldom a sign of truth, and that those things which are most true, the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables for example, do not ‘strike.’

* * * * *

We foolishly exaggerate ingratitude to us. Ought we to require of those whom we have served, that they should be always confessing their obligations to us? Why should we care about neglect? ‘Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His name.’

* * * * *

The worship of the idol is often more passionate than that of God. People prostrate themselves in ecstasy before the idol, and remain unmoved in the presence of a starry night. A starry night does not provoke hysterics. The adoration of the veritably divine is calm.

* * * * *

‘It is a sad thing,’ said she, ‘that so kind and good a man should be an infidel.’ ‘It is a sad thing to me,’ said her terrible sister, ‘that an infidel should be what you call kind and good.’

* * * * *

_Plus sapit vulgus_, _quia tantum_, _quantum opus est_, _sapit_. {254} Quoted by Montaigne (_Of Presumption_) from Lactantius. Characteristic of Montaigne and true, so far that a man can know nothing thoroughly unless the knowledge be a necessity.

* * * * *

‘Certainty of knowledge,’ says Dr. Johnson in the _Idler_ (No. 84), ‘not only excludes mistake, but fortifies veracity. . . . That which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of conscience: of understanding, the lover of truth; of conscience, the sentinel of virtue.’

At the present day we are chiefly taken up with that which is beyond our grasp. Our literature is the newspapers, and nine-tenths of what we read in them morning and evening we do not understand. Everybody is expected to take sides in politics, but not one person in a thousand can give an intelligible account of political questions. The difficulty of so doing is much increased by the absence of systematic information. We get leading articles and columns of telegrams, but seldom concise exposition or carefully edited and connected history.

An object is of importance to us in inverse proportion to the square of the distance, but men worry themselves about the news from China and will not give five minutes’ thought in a week to their own souls or to those of wife or child. It is pathetic to see how excited they become about remote events which cannot affect their happiness one iota. Why should we not occupy ourselves with that which is definite when there is so much of it? Political problems confront us, but if they are too big for us, let us avoid them by every means in our power. If we are in doubt we ought not to vote. The question which we are incapable of settling will be settled better by Time than by the intermeddling of ignorance.

In religion, and science also, we dare not say _I do not know_. We must always be dabbling in matters on which we can come to no conclusion worth a rotten nut. We busy ourselves with essays on the dates and composition of the books of the Old Testament and cannot tell the story of Joshua or Saul; we listen to lectures on radium, or the probable exhaustion of the sun’s energy, and have never learned the laws of motion. Few people estimate properly the evil of habitual intercourse with that which is vague and indeterminate. The issues before us not being clearly cut and comprehensible, the highest faculties of our minds are not exercised. We lazily wander over the surface without coming to a definite conclusion. Perhaps we pick up by chance some irrational notion, which we defend with obstinacy, for we are more dogmatic concerning that which we cannot prove than we are concerning a truth which is incontrovertible. The former is our own personal property, the latter is common. One step further, and by constantly affirming and denying when we have no demonstration, lying becomes easy.

There is much which is called criticism that is poisonous, not because it is mistaken, but because it invites people to assert beyond their knowledge or capacity. A popular lecturer discusses the errors of Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Bronte, or George Eliot before an audience but superficially acquainted with the works of these great authors and not qualified to pass judgment upon them. He is considered ‘cheap’ if he does not balance

‘His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss.’

If we will be content with admiring, we are on much surer ground. It is by admiration and not by criticism that we live, and the main purpose of criticism should be to point out something to admire, which we should not have noticed. One great advantage of studying Nature is that we are not tempted to criticise her. We go to the Academy, and for a whole morning contrast faults with merits. If the time so spent had been passed in the fields with the clouds we should have gone home less conceited.

* * * * *

It is an awful thought that behind human speech, incapable by its very nature of anything but approximate expression, and distorted by weakness and wilfulness, lies the TRUTH as it is, exact without qualification.

* * * * *

The long apprenticeship has ended in little or nothing. What I was fifty years ago I am now; certainly no better, with no greater self-control, with no greater magnanimity. How much I might have gained had I taken life as an art I cannot say.

* * * * *

I have been looking at a cabinet of flies. Hundreds of them, each different, were arranged in order and named. Some I had to examine through a microscope. Their beauty was marvellous, but more marvellous was their variety. The differences, although the type was preserved, seemed inexhaustible, and all reasons for them broke down. If a particular modification is an advantage, why is it confined to one species? Why this range of colour? Why these purely fantastic forms? The only word we can say with certainty is that Nature is infinite and tends to infinite expression. _Verum ego me satis clare ostendisse puto_, _a summa Dei potentia sive infinita natura infinita infinitis modis_, _hoc est_, _omnia necessario effluxisse_, _vel semper eadem necessitate sequi_; _eodem modo_, _ac ex natura trianguli ab æterno et in æternum sequitur ejus tres angulos æquari duobus rectis_. _Quare Dei omnipotentia actu ab æterno fuit et in æternum in eadem actualitate manebit_.

* * * * *

Johnson is religious through and through, but there are passages in the _Rambler_ and _Idler_ dark as starless, moonless midnight. ‘None would have recourse to an invisible power, but that all other subjects have eluded their hopes . . . That misery does not make all virtuous, experience too certainly informs us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greatest part.’

* * * * *

There is seldom in life any occasion for great virtues, and we must not be disappointed if it passes without great passion. We must expect to be related to one another by nothing more than ordinary bonds and satisfied if human beings give us pleasure without excitement.

* * * * *

I have good reason to believe that I am passing on life’s journey through what almost all wayfarers therein have had to pass through, but nobody has told me of it.

* * * * *

How wonderful is the withdrawal of heat! It silently departs, the iron grows cold, but the heat spreads and lives!

‘Who knows, though he sees the snow-cold blossom shed,
If haply the heart that burned within the rose,
The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?
If haply the wind that slays with storming snows
Be one with the wind that quickens?’

SWINBURNE, _A Reminiscence_.

* * * * *

With increase of reading we have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of God the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and there is Darkness.

SHAKESPEARE

‘Glory to thee in the highest, thou confidant of our Creator!’
(Landor, _Imaginary Conversations_, Delille and Landor).

* * * * *

2 _Henry VI._ iii. 3.—The lines beginning with the one which follows are not in the old play and are Shakespeare’s own:

‘O thou eternal Mover of the heavens,’ etc.

Johnson’s note is: ‘This is one of the scenes which have been applauded by the criticks, and which will continue to be admired when prejudices shall cease, and bigotry give way to impartial examination. These are beauties that rise out of nature and of truth; the superficial reader cannot miss them, the profound can image nothing beyond them.’ We talk idly of Johnson’s pompous redundance. His sentences are balanced, and it is therefore supposed that the second part repeats the first, but the truth is that each part contains a new thought. It was his manner to throw successive ideas into this form. Those who are acquainted with his history and his awful mental struggles will find infinite pathos in this restrained comment.

* * * * *

_Midsummer Night’s Dream_.—Shakespeare’s overlooking quality, as that of a god surveying human affairs, is shown in this play:

‘When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.’
. . .
‘Her dotage now I do begin to pity.’
. . .
‘And think no more of this night’s accidents
But as the fierce vexation of a dream.’
. . .

All this night’s storm from a drop of magic juice! Oberon has been watching Titania’s courtship of Bottom. She sleeps, and he touches her eyes with Dian’s bud:

‘Now, my Titania, wake you, my sweet queen’

* * * * *

_Romeo and Juliet_.—The love of Juliet is a thing altogether by itself, not to be classed, never anticipated by any other author, and not imitable. It is sensuous. Look at her soliloquy, ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,’ etc., and yet it is woven through and through with immortal threads of fidelity and contempt of death:

‘O! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of yonder tower.
. . .
Or bid me go into a new-made grave.’

How great this girl is! If I were to meet her, how I should be awed! The Juliets I have seen on the stage fail here. They do not bend my knees in that adoration which is inspired by the sea and stars. The love of Romeo for Juliet and of Juliet for Romeo does not stimulate passion, but rather controls it. I never become hot in reading the play. What a solemnity there is in its movement! The lovers are not merely two human beings with no other meaning. The Eternal Powers are at work throughout. Romeo’s love for Rosaline is taken over from Brooke’s poem. Shakespeare adds the touch that it was not genuine. He makes Friar Laurence say:

‘O she knew well!
Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.’

The love for Rosaline is different altogether from the love for Juliet.

‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity!’

is artificial.

Shakespeare also follows Brooke in Juliet’s momentary outburst against Romeo when she hears of Tybalt’s death, but the contradiction of the echo by the nurse is Shakespeare’s own:

‘Blister’d be thy tongue
For such a wish! he was not born to shame.’

Apart from the quarrel between the Montagus and Capulets, we feel that the love between Romeo and Juliet could have no other than a tragic end. This world of ours conspires against such passion.

* * * * *

I _Henry IV._ v. 4—

‘O Harry, thou hast robb’d me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:
But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.’

The last three lines are not melancholy philosophising. As such they would be out of place coming from Hotspur. They are consolation and joy. Death will extinguish for us the memory of certain things suffered and done. That is a gain which is not outweighed by the loss of any pleasure life can give.

Luders’ essay three parts of a century ago showed conclusively that Holinshed’s and Shakespeare’s Prince of Wales, as we see him in the play of _Henry IV._, wild and dissolute with ignoble companions, is a legend which is disproved by documentary history, but Shakespeare’s Prince is nevertheless dramatically true. Johnson says, ‘He is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just.’ Johnson’s criticism is true. There is no interruption or strain in the passage from one self to the other self: they are both in fact the same self. It is something of a shock that the King should cast off Falstaff, but if a man is appointed to command it is necessary that he should at once take up his proper position. I remember the promotion of a subordinate to a responsible post. His manner changed the next day. He had the courage to ring his bell and give orders to his senior under whom he had been serving.

He became one of the most efficient administrators I ever knew. On the other hand, nearly at the same time another subordinate was promoted who was timid and continued his habits of familiarity with his colleagues. His department fell into disorder and he was dismissed.

* * * * *

_As You Like It_.—Lady Anne Blunt in her admirable books, _A Pilgrimage to Nejd_ and _The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates_, notices that the true Arab sheykh of the desert, when a traveller seeks his hospitality, asks no questions until food and drink have been offered, and even then is in no hurry. So also the Duke:

‘Welcome, fall to: I will not trouble you
As yet, to question you about your fortunes.’

Curiosity about personal matters is ignoble.

Rosalind’s love for Orlando is born of pity. ‘If I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.’

It is a proof of Orlando’s gentle breeding that he instantly yields to courtesy:

‘Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you.’

Orlando says to Jaques: ‘I will chide no breather in the world, but myself, against whom I know most faults.’ This is characteristic of Shakespeare, and is in the spirit of the Gospels.

The difficulty in this play is not Oliver’s sudden love for Celia, although Shakespeare seems to have felt that it was a little too rapid, for Orlando asks Oliver, ‘Is’t possible that on so little acquaintance you should like her?’ It is rather Celia’s prompt response which takes us aback. It looks too much like ‘any woman to any man.’ It may be said in excuse that Celia had heard the piteous story of his conversion, how he had become ‘a wretched ragged man o’ergrown with hair,’ and what is more to the point, she had heard of Orlando’s noble kindness to him. It is odd that Shakespeare does not adopt from Lodge’s novel Oliver’s rescue of Celia from a band of ruffians. Johnson says, ‘To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship.’ She forsook not only her father—she had reason not to care much about him—but she forsook the _court_ for Rosalind.

* * * * *

_Much Ado about Nothing_.—Why should Don Pedro offer to take Claudio’s place in the wooing of Hero and why should Claudio consent?

Borachio says, ‘Hear me call Margaret, Hero; hear Margaret call me Claudio.’

When Borachio recounts to Conrad what he had done, he makes no mention of his personation of Claudio—‘Know, that I have to-night wooed Margaret, the lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero; she leans me out at her mistress’s chamber-window, bids me a thousand times good night.’

Theobald remarks that if Claudio saw another man with the woman supposed to be Hero and heard her call him Claudio, Claudio would merely suppose that Hero was deceived. Theobald proposes to substitute ‘Borachio’ for ‘Claudio’ in the line just quoted. Borachio had just asked Don John to tell Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero loved him, Borachio. But if Theobald’s emendation be received, difficulties still remain. Margaret must have been persuaded to answer to the name of Hero. After Borachio’s arrest he tells us that Margaret wore Hero’s garments. But Shakespeare, deserting Spenser, from whom this mystification appears to be borrowed, gives no reason which induced Margaret to play this part.

Where was Hero on that night? Borachio promises Don John that ‘he will so fashion the matter, that Hero shall be absent.’ Claudio asks Hero

‘What man was he talk’d with you yesternight
Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?’

She does not reply, as we should think she would, that she was not sleeping in that room, although Benedick asks Beatrice,

‘Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?’

and Beatrice replies,

‘No, truly not; although until last night,
I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.’

Claudio is despicable, and his marriage with Hero is a foul, black spot in the play. Observe that in the first scene he asks Don Pedro,

‘Hath Leonato any son, my lord?’

and Don Pedro, understanding the drift of the question, replies:

‘No child but Hero, she’s his only heir.’

What a mean, damnable excuse he makes.

‘Yet sinn’d I not,
But in mistaking.’

Beatrice with sure eye discerns the scoundrel. ‘Kill Claudio.’ Not Don Pedro, not even Don John, although she had heard Benedick denounce him as the author of the villainy.

Beatrice and the Friar never doubt Hero’s innocence. The Friar declares that

‘In her eye there hath appear’d a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth.’

What an amplitude there is in Beatrice! What a sweep it is to bring into what we already know of her such divine faith in her friend! This light-hearted girl suddenly becomes sublime.

* * * * *

_Hamlet_.—Coleridge’s remark that the two former appearances of the Ghost increase its objectivity when it appears to Hamlet is subtle and true. Observe that the Ghost is visible to Hamlet, Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio, but not to the Queen.

There is in Coleridge an activity of intellect which is so fascinating that we do not stay to inquire whether the result is in accordance with the facts. He says that _tædium vitæ_ as in the case of Hamlet is due to ‘unchecked appetency of the ideal.’ Was the appetency of the ideal strong in Hamlet? The ideal exalts our interest in earthly things.

‘Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.’ Johnson says that this speech, in which Hamlet contrives damnation for the man he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered; whereupon Coleridge remarks that Hamlet’s postponement of revenge till it should bring damnation to soul as well as body ‘was merely the excuse Hamlet made to himself for not taking advantage of this particular and favourable moment for doing justice upon his guilty uncle, at the urgent instance of the spirit of his father.’ I doubt if this is a complete explanation. Would it strike the audience as the motive? Men of Hamlet’s mould not only speak but feel extravagantly. Incapacity for prompt action is accompanied with more intense emotion than that which is felt by him who acts at once. Hamlet meditates on revenge instead of executing it, and his desire, by brooding, becomes diabolic.

Generalisations like those of Polonius are obtained from observation during youth and middle age. In old age the creation of generalisations ceases and we fall back on our acquired stock. They remain true, but the application fails. We must be increasingly careful in the use of these ancient abstractions, and more intent on the consideration of the instance before us. The temptation to drag it under what we already know is great and must be resisted. Proverbs and wise saws are more suitable to common life than to intricate relationships. They are inapplicable to deep passion and spiritual matters.

Johnson notes that the Ghost’s visits are a failure so far as Hamlet’s resolution is concerned.

Hamlet says,

‘O! from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!’

but they remained thoughts. The play is to be the thing to decide him, but when it is over and he has the clearest proofs, he does not act, but consents to leave Denmark and returns by accident. Had he obeyed the Ghost’s promptings and killed the King at the end of the play in the third act, Polonius, Ophelia, the Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet himself might have been saved.

* * * * *

_Troilus and Cressida_ is an inexplicable play. It is a justification of those critics who obstinately, but without external evidence, refuse to believe that much which is attributed to Shakespeare really belongs to him. It is absolutely impossible that the man who put these words into the mouth of Achilles:

‘I have a woman’s longing,
An appetite that I am sick withal,
To see great Hector in his weeds of peace;
To talk with him, and to behold his visage,
Even to my full of view.’

could have adapted from the _Recuyell_ the shocking ignominy of the ninth scene in the fifth act in which Achilles calls on his myrmidons to slay Hector unarmed, and then triumphs in these lines:

‘My half-supp’d sword, that frankly would have fed,
Pleas’d with this dainty bit, thus goes to bed.
[_Sheathes his sword_.
Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail;
Along the field I will the Trojan trail.’

* * * * *

_Measure for Measure_ as a play is hateful to me, although there are passages in it as truly Shakespeare as anything to be found in all his works. The chief objection to it is that justice, to use Coleridge’s word, is ‘baffled.’ There are other objections almost as great. From beginning to end almost everybody is base, foolish, or uninteresting. The Duke’s temporary withdrawal is stupid and contemptible, considering that he is the governor of the state; the condemnation of Claudio is wildly unnatural; the substitution of Mariana loathsome; the treachery of Angelo in not reprieving Claudio inconceivable, notwithstanding what we already know of the deputy’s hypocrisy and villainy. The lowest depth of scoundrelism is reached when, face to face with Mariana and publicly at the city gate before the Duke and all the company assembled, he excuses himself from marrying her because

‘her reputation was disvalued
In levity.’

And yet he is let off scot-free, and Mariana marries him! Isabella’s apology,

‘I partly think,
A due sincerity govern’d his deeds,
Till he did look on me,’

might be sufficient for an outbreak of his lust but not for his lying, and Mariana’s is still worse:

‘Best men are moulded out of faults.’

Not out of such faults as Angelo’s are the best men moulded.

The punishment inflicted on the poor wretch Lucio is horrible.

_Lucio_. ‘I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore! . . .
Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping and hanging.

_Duke_. Slandering a prince deserves it.’

This is a foul line. I should like to discover documentary proof that it is not Shakespeare’s, but the gag of some actor desirous of pleasing court folk!

The _Promos and Cassandra_ from which _Measure for Measure_ is taken is certainly worse, for Promos (Angelo) is made to marry Cassandra (Isabella) and after the marriage is to die, but Cassandra, ‘tyed in the greatest bondes of affection to her husband, becomes an earnest suter for his life.’

* * * * *

_Henry VIII._—The scene in which Katherine appears before the court is perhaps the finest in the play. To what noble use is her Spanish pride turned! The last line of the following quotation from Katherine’s reply to Wolsey is infinite:

‘For it is you
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me,
Which God’s dew quench.’

* * * * *

_Othello_ is pure tragedy, for the judgment which falls on Othello and Desdemona, although it is disproportionate to the character or life of either, is necessary from the beginning. Brabantio was not wholly without justification in thinking the marriage unnatural, and Desdemona’s desertion of him without a word was unfeeling. The depth of the tragedy is increased by his death.

‘Poor Desdemon I am glad thy father’s dead.
Thy match was mortal to him.’

Iago feels the necessity of obtaining motives for his conduct. He tries to find them in the supposed infidelity of his wife with Othello and in his supersession by Cassio. Neither is sufficient, but he partly believes in them, and they partly serve their purpose.

Coleridge says Othello was not jealous: he lacked the suspicion that is essential to jealousy. Perhaps so, but in that case we want a name for the passion which rushes to belief of that which it prays may be false. The very intensity of love, so far from inducing careful examination of slander against the divinity I worship, prevents reflection by anxiety; by terror lest the love should be disturbed. Iago’s evidence, thinks Coleridge, was so strong that Othello could not have done otherwise; but would he have acted in war on evidence equally weak?