Chapter D: G. Rossetti

* * * * *

The gods are on the side of the strongest.

TACITUS (_Hist._ 4, 17).

De Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, said in 1677, “God is on the side
of the heaviest battalions.” Voltaire again said, in 1770, that
there are far more fools than wise men, “and they say that God
always favours the heaviest battalions” (Letter to Le Riche).
Gibbon wrote, “The winds and waves are always on the side of
the ablest navigators” (Ch. LXVIII). (I owe part of this note
to _King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations_.)

* * * * *

THE OCTOPUS

BY ALGERNON _SINBURN_

Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed,
Whence camest to dazzle our eyes,
With thy bosom bespangled and banded,
With the hues of the seas and the skies?
Is thy name European or Asian,
Oh mystical monster marine,
Part molluscous and partly crustacean,
Betwixt and between?

Wast thou born to the sound of sea-trumpets?
Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess
Of the sponges—thy muffins and crumpets—
Of the sea-weed—thy mustard and cress?
Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral,
Remote from reproof or restraint?
Art thou innocent, art thou immoral,
Sinburnian or Saint?

Lithe limbs curling free as a creeper,
That creeps in a desolate place,
To enrol and envelop the sleeper
In a silent and stealthy embrace;
Cruel beak craning forward to bite us,
Our juices to drain and to drink,
Or to whelm as in waves of Cocytus,
Indelible ink!

Oh, breast that ’twere rapture to writhe on!
Oh, arms ’twere delicious to feel
Clinging close with the crush of the Python,
When she maketh her murderous meal!
In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden
Let our empty existence escape;
Give us death that is glorious and golden,
Crushed all out of shape!

Ah, thy red limbs lascivious and luscious,
With death in their amorous kiss!
Cling round us and clasp us and crush us,
With bitings of agonized bliss!
We are sick with the poison of pleasure,
Dispense us the potion of pain;
Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure,
And bite us again!

A. C. HILTON (1851-1877)

This extraordinarily clever parody of Swinburne’s “Dolores” was
written by Arthur Clement Hilton, when he was an undergraduate
at St. John’s, Cambridge. It appeared in _The Light Green_, a
clever but short-lived magazine published in Cambridge in the
early seventies as a rival to _The Dark Blue_, published in
London by Oxford men. Hilton was the main contributor to _The
Light Green_. He died when only twenty-six years of age. This
brilliant young author is not included in _The Dictionary of
National Biography_.

“The Octopus” is one of the best of English parodies. I had
not seen it for forty years, until I recently found it in Adam
and White’s _Parodies and Imitations_ (1912). In that book,
although the authors presumably had _The Light Green_ to print
from, the punctuation is inferior to that in my copy, and the
word “Dispose” instead of “Dispense” in the third last line
must be a misprint.

* * * * *

He seemed to me to be one of those men who have not very extended minds, but who know what they know very well—shallow streams, and clear because they are shallow.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Table Talk_).

* * * * *

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

R. L. STEVENSON (_Virginibus Puerisque_).

* * * * *

Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.

(To know all is forgive all.)

FRENCH PROVERB.

This proverb is said to have originated from a sentence in Mme.
de Staël’s _Corinne, Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent_,
“Understanding everything makes one very forgiving.”

* * * * *

The true life of the human community is planted deep in the private affections of its members; in the greatness of its individual minds; in the pure severities of its domestic conscience; in the noble and transforming thoughts that fertilize its sacred nooks. Who can observe, without astonishment, the durable action of men truly great on the history of the world, and the evanescence of vast military revolutions, once threatening all things with destruction? How often is it the fate of the former to be invisible for an age, and then live for ever; of the latter, to sweep a generation from the earth, and then vanish with slight trace?

JAMES MARTINEAU (_The Outer and the Inner Temple_).

Wars seem to leave little trace except where they result in the
immigration and settlement of a tribe or nation. Otherwise they
appear to cancel one another. The present war will probably
destroy the only trace of the Franco-Prussian war, and, with
respect to Turkey, Poland, and other countries, will no doubt
cancel the effects of many tremendous conflicts of past
centuries.

* * * * *

A century ago men were following, with bated breath, the march of Napoleon, and waiting with feverish impatience for the latest news of the wars. And all the while, in their own homes, babies were being born. But who could think about _babies_? Everybody was thinking about _battles_. In one year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there stole into the world a host of heroes! During that one year, 1809, Mr. Gladstone was born in Liverpool; Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby rectory and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance in Massachusetts. On the very self-same day of that self-same year Charles Darwin made his debut at Shrewsbury, and Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath in old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. Within the same year, too, Samuel Morley was born in Homerton, Edward Fitzgerald in Woodbridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Durham, and Frances Kemble in London. But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet, viewing that age in the truer perspective which the distance of a hundred years enables us to command, we may well ask ourselves, “Which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809?” ...

We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions abroad, when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies at home. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it. That is why, long, long ago, a babe was born in Bethlehem.

FRANK W. BOREHAM (_Mountains in the Mist_).

* * * * *

REINFORCEMENTS

When little boys with merry noise
In the meadows shout and run;
And little girls, sweet woman buds,
Brightly open in the sun;
I may not of the world despair,
Our God despaireth not, I see;
For blithesomer in Eden’s air
These lads and maidens could not be.

Why were they born, if Hope must die?
Wherefore this health, if Truth should fail?
And why such Joy, if Misery
Be conquering us and must prevail?
Arouse! our spirit may not droop!
These young ones fresh from Heaven are;
Our God hath sent another troop,
And means to carry on the war.

THOMAS TOKE LYNCH (1818-1871).

* * * * *

O wind, a word with you before you pass;
What did you to the Rose that on the grass
Broken she lies and pale, who loved you so?

* * * * *

THE WIND

Roses must live and love, and winds must blow.

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON (_The Rose and the Wind_).

* * * * *

WHAT OF THE DARKNESS?

What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?
Are there great calms, and find ye silence there?
Like soft-shut lilies all your faces glow
With some strange peace our faces never know,
With some great faith our faces never dare:
Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?

Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie?
Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry?
Is it a Hand to still the pulse’s leap?
Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep?
Day shows us not such comfort anywhere:
Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?

Out of the Day’s deceiving light we call,
Day, that shows man so great and God so small.
That hides the stars and magnifies the grass;
O is the Darkness too a lying glass
Or, undistracted, do ye find truth there?
What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?

R. LE GALLIENNE.

These lines were written of _the blind_, but become even more
beautiful and true if applied to a different subject, _the
dead_.

* * * * *

Continuing the work of creation, _i.e._, co-operating as instruments of Providence in bringing order out of disorder ... is only a part of the mission of mankind, and the time will come again when its due rank will be assigned to contemplation and the calm culture of reverence and love. Then poetry will resume her equality with prose.... But that time is not yet, and the crowning glory of Wordsworth is that he has borne witness to it and kept alive its traditions in an age, which, but for him, would have lost sight of it entirely.

J. S. MILL.

In that utilitarian period the figure of the great poet stands
out in sheer sublimity. Apart from the depressing atmosphere
of the time, one needs to remember how serenely he continued
to deliver his high message in spite of the most deadly want
of appreciation. At thirty he received £10 from his poems and
nothing more until he was sixty-five! The quotation is from a
letter in Caroline Fox’s _Journals_.

* * * * *

My sarcastic friend says, with the utmost gravity, that no man with less than a thousand pounds a year can afford to have private opinions upon certain important subjects. He admits that he has known it done upon eight hundred a year; but only by very prudent people with small families.

SIR A. HELPS (_Companions of my Solitude_).

* * * * *

’Tis an old theme, this Divine Love, and it cannot be exhausted. Men have not outlived it, angels cannot outlearn it. It swayed the ancient world by many a fair god and goddess; its light has been cast over ages of Christian controversy and warfare; it is still the guiding Star of the Sea to each voyager after the nobler faith. The youth leaves the old shore of belief, only because love has left it. His starved affections will no longer accept stone, though pulverized flour-like and artfully kneaded, for bread. Their white sails fill the purple and the sombre seas, and they hail each other to ask for the summer-land, where faith climbs to beauty, and the lost bowers of childhood’s trust may be found again.

MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY (1832-1907).

This fine writer was a Unitarian minister, but afterwards
became a “Free-thinker.”

* * * * *

There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of th’ everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart.
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.

JOHN KEBLE (_The Christian Year_, “_St.
Matthew._”)

* * * * *

THE DARK COMPANION

There is an orb that mocked the lore of sages
Long time with mystery of strange unrest;
The steadfast law that rounds the starry ages
Gave doubtful token of supreme behest;

But they who knew the ways of God unchanging,
Concluded some far influence unseen—
Some kindred sphere through viewless others ranging,
Whose strong persuasions spanned the void between;

And knowing it alone through perturbation
And vague disquiet of another star,
They named it, till the day of revelation,
“The Dark Companion”—darkly guessed afar.

But when, through new perfection of appliance,
Faith merged at length in undisputed sight,
The mystic mover was revealed to science,
No Dark Companion, but—a speck of light:

No Dark Companion, but a sun of glory:
No fell disturber, but a bright compeer:
The shining complement that crowned the story:
The golden link that made the meaning clear.

Oh, Dark Companion, journeying ever by us,
Oh, grim Perturber of our works and ways,
Oh, potent Dread, unseen, yet ever nigh us,
Disquieting all the tenor of our days—

Oh, Dark Companion, Death, whose wide embraces
Overtake remotest change of clime and skies—
Oh, Dark Companion, Death, whose grievous traces
Are scattered shreds of riven enterprise—

Thou, too, in this wise, when, our eyes unsealing,
The clearer day shall change our faith to sight,
Shalt show thyself, in that supreme revealing,
No Dark Companion, but a thing of light:

No ruthless wrecker of harmonious order:
No alien heart of discord and caprice:
A beckoning light upon the Blissful Border:
A kindred element of law and peace.

So, too, our strange unrest in this our dwelling,
The trembling that thou joinest with our mirth,
Are by thy magnet-communing compelling
Our spirits farther from the scope of earth.

So, doubtless, when beneath thy potence swerving,
’Tis that thou lead’st us by a path unknown,
Our seeming deviations all subserving
The perfect orbit round the central throne.

...

The night wind moans. The Austral wilds are round me.
The loved who live—ah, God! how few they are!
I looked above; and Heaven in mercy found me
This parable of comfort in a star.

J. BRUNTON STEPHENS (_Convict Once and other
Poems_).

The “Dark Companion” is no doubt the star known as the
“Companion of Sirius.” Certain peculiarities in the motion of
Sirius led Bessel in 1844 to the belief that it had an obscure
companion, with which it was in revolution. The position of
the companion having been ascertained by calculation, it was
at last found in 1862. It is equal in mass to our sun but is
obscured by the brilliancy of Sirius, which is the brightest
of the fixed stars. Brunton Stephens’ poem was published in
Melbourne in 1873.

* * * * *

SEQUEL TO “MY QUEEN”

“_When and where shall I earliest meet her_,” etc.

Yes, but the years run circling fleeter,
Ever they pass me—I watch, I wait—
Ever I dream, and awake to meet her;
She cometh never, or comes too late.

Should I press on? for the day grows shorter—
Ought I to linger? the far end nears;
Ever ahead have I looked, and sought her
On the bright sky-line of the gathering years.

Now that the shadows are eastward sloping,
As I screen mine eyes from the slanting sun,
Cometh a thought—It is past all hoping,
Look not ahead, she is missed and gone.

Here on the ridge of my upward travel,
Ere the life-line dips to the darkening vales,
Sadly I turn, and would fain unravel
The entangled maze of a search that fails.

When and where have I seen and passed her?
What are the words I forgot to say?
Should we have met had a boat rowed faster?
Should we have loved, had I stayed that day?

Was it her face that I saw, and started,
Gliding away in a train that crossed?
Was it her form that I once, faint-hearted,
Followed awhile in a crowd and lost?

Was it there she lived, when the train went sweeping
Under the moon through the landscape hushed?
Somebody called me, I woke from sleeping,
Saw but a hamlet—and on we rushed.

Listen and linger—She yet may find me
In the last faint flush of the waning light—
Never a step on the path behind me;
I must journey alone, to the lonely night.

But is there somewhere on earth, I wonder,
A fading figure, with eyes that wait,
Who says, as she stands in the distance yonder,
“He cometh never, or comes too late?”

SIR ALFRED LYALL.

* * * * *

Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate;
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leaped,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (_The Prince’s Progress_).

* * * * *

Where waitest thou,
Lady I am to love? Thou comest not!
Thou knowest of my sad and lonely lot;
I looked for thee ere now!...

Where art thou, sweet?
I long for thee, as thirsty lips for streams!
Oh, gentle promised Angel of my dreams,
Why do we never meet?

Thou art as I,—
Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart; must meeting be
Never before we die ...?

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD (_À Ma Future_).

* * * * *

Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have sooth’d it all.

W. S. LANDOR.

* * * * *

The devil has made the stuff of our life and God makes the hem.

VICTOR HUGO (_By the King’s Command_).

* * * * *

I think, I said, I can make it plain that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in a dialogue between John and Thomas.

Three Johns: The real John—known only to his Maker. John’s
ideal John—never the real one, and often very unlike him.
Thomas’s ideal John—never the real John, nor John’s John, but
often very unlike either.

Three Thomases: The real Thomas. Thomas’s ideal Thomas. John’s
ideal Thomas.

Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he _is_, so far as Thomas’s attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.

(A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me _via_ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches.)

O. W. HOLMES (_Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_).

* * * * *

When aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die—
Remember me a little then, I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.

W. MORRIS (_The Earthly Paradise_).

* * * * *

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?—
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?—
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine, as He Shines now and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done:
I fear no more.

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631).

In line (1) the reference is to the old doctrine that the guilt
of Adam and Eve’s “original sin” tainted all generations of
man; (3) “run,” ran; (8) his sin—the example he has set—is the
door which opened to others the way of sin.

In this fine poem there are _puns_. In the last verse one pun
is on the words “Son” and “Sun,” Christ being the “Sun of
righteousness who arises with healing in his wings” (_Malachi_
iv, 2). Also in the fifth, eleventh, and seventeenth lines,
the play is on the last word “done” and the poet’s name Donne,
which was pronounced _dun_.[17] (It was occasionally written
Dun, Dunne, or Done: see Grierson’s _Poems of John Donne_, Vol.
II, pp. lvii, lxxvii, lxxxvii, 8 and 12. Contrariwise, the
adjective “dun,” dull-brown, was spelt _donne_ in the poet’s
time.) We are accustomed only to the jocular use of puns, but
here there is a serious intention to give two meanings to one
expression. Such a use of puns was one of the “quaint conceits”
of that period of our literature, and it is found also in
serious Persian poetry.

* * * * *

Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure, which we men don’t understand, which accompanies the pain of being scarified.

THACKERAY (_Pendennis_).

* * * * *

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Felix Holt_).

* * * * *

LET IT BE THERE.

Not there, not there!
Not in that nook, that ye deem so fair;—
Little reck I of the bright, blue sky,
And the stream that floweth so murmuringly,
And the bending boughs, and the breezy air—
Not there, good friends, not there!

In the city churchyard, where the grass
Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray
Of that self-same sun doth find its way
Through the heaped-up houses’ serried mass—
Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng,
And the clatter of wheels as they rush along—
Or the plash of the rain, or the wind’s hoarse cry,
Or the busy tramp of the passer-by,
Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air—
Good friends, let it be _there_!

I am old, my friends—I am very old—
Fourscore and five—and bitter cold
Were that air on the hill-side far away;
Eighty full years, content, I trow,
Have I lived in the home where ye see me now,
And trod those dark streets day by day,
Till my soul doth love them; I love them all,
Each battered pavement, and blackened wall,
Each court and corner. Good sooth! to me
They are all comely and fair to see—
They have _old faces_—each one doth tell
A tale of its own, that doth like me well,
Sad or merry, as it may be,
From the quaint old book of my history.
And, friends, when this weary pain is past,
Fain would I lay me to rest at last
In their very midst; full sure am I,
How dark soever be earth and sky,
I shall sleep softly—I shall know
That the things I loved so here below
Are about me still—so never care
That my last home looketh all bleak and bare—
Good friends, let it be _there_!

THOMAS WESTWOOD (1814-1888).

* * * * *

Every man hath his gift, one a cup of wine, another heart’s blood.

HAFIZ.

Some poets sing of wine or sensuous enjoyment, but Hafiz pours
out his heart’s blood in song. Presumably wine and blood are
contrasted because of their similar appearance.

* * * * *

The devil could drive woman out of Paradise; but the devil himself cannot drive the Paradise out of a woman.

G. MACDONALD (_Robert Falconer_).

* * * * *

THE PULLEY

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said He, “pour on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
_Rest_ in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said He,
“Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.”

GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633).

“The Pulley” because by the desire for rest after toil and
tribulation God _draws man up_ to Himself.

* * * * *

(Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ was published in November, 1859.) At the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860 Huxley had on Thursday, June 28, directly contradicted Professor Owen’s statement that a gorilla’s brain differed more from a man’s than it did from the brain of the lowest of the Quadrumana (apes, monkeys, and lemurs). He was thus marked out as the champion of evolution. On the Saturday, although the public were not admitted, the members crowded the room to suffocation, anxious to hear the brilliant controversialist, Bishop Wilberforce, take part in the debate. An unimportant paper was read bearing upon Darwinism, and a discussion followed. The Bishop, inspired by Owen, began his speech. He spoke in dulcet tones, persuasive manner, and with well-turned periods, but ridiculing Darwin badly and Huxley savagely. “In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution: rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to Huxley, with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, _was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey_.”

As he said this, Huxley turned to his neighbour and said, “The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands!” On rising to speak, he first gave a forcible and eloquent reply to the scientific part of the Bishop’s argument. Then “he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words—words, which no one seems sure of now, nor, I think, could remember just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. “He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor: but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth.” No one doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous. One lady fainted and had to be carried out; I, for one, jumped out of my seat.” (_Macmillan’s_, 1898.) There is no verbatim report of this incident, but the varying accounts agree in outline.

(_Extracted from Life of Huxley._)

One object of this book is to bring back the memories of the
seventy-eighties—and of overwhelming interest at the time was
the alleged conflict between religion and science. Through
Darwin’s great discovery and Herbert Spencer’s world-wide
extension of the evolution theory, so much was found covered
by law that men were blinded to the fact that the essential
question of causality, lying behind all law, was still
untouched.

The important and thrilling incident referred to above took
place in 1860, when I was two years old, but it was still an
absorbing topic thirteen or fourteen years later, and is one of
my most vivid recollections.

Wilberforce (1805-1873) was a great Churchman and, indeed,
has been said to be the greatest prelate of his age, although
his nickname “Soapy Sam” led to a popular depreciation of his
merits. (This epithet originally meant that he was evasive
on certain questions, but it took a further meaning from his
persuasive eloquence.) In this instance he meddled with a
subject of which he was ignorant. Owen, who instigated him to
make this attack on Darwin and Huxley had at first welcomed
the theory of evolution, but quailed before the orthodox
indignation against the necessary extension of that theory to
the origin of man. Huxley (1825-1895) was thirty-five years of
age when he thus showed himself a strong debater and a power in
the scientific world.

* * * * *

On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the _protogenes_ of Haeckel, in which we have “a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.” Can we pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking; but however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do _something_ similar in the case of life?... Believing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and justified by science I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and _discern in that Matter_ which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, _the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life_.

(Referring to the question of inquiring into the mystery of our origin). Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to handle, but which will assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds, _when you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past_.

JOHN TYNDALL.

The italics are mine.

As in the preceding quotation the subject is the alleged
conflict between religion and science, which occupied so large
a space in our life and thought in the seventies and eighties.
The above are the two passages from Tyndall’s presidential
address at the Belfast meeting of the British Association in
1874, which caused an immense sensation. The Belfast Address,
like Huxley’s smashing reply to Bishop Wilberforce, was useful
in showing that all scientific questions must be considered
with an open mind, free of theological bias, and also in
adding testimony to the importance and value of Darwin’s
investigation. Although fifteen years had passed since _The
Origin of Species_ was published, this was still necessary. (At
that very time Professor McCoy, afterwards Sir Frederick McCoy,
F.R.S., when lecturing at the Melbourne University to his
students, of whom I was one, was still making inane jokes about
evolution and our monkey cousins.)

But, while the world was in ferment over the question of
man’s alleged kinship with the monkey, there came the further
startling fact that the President of the British Association
also proclaimed his belief in _materialism_ and, inferentially,
that there was no life after death. Englishmen had not before
realized how widely materialism had spread through England
and Europe. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that
a _majority_ at least of the leading thinkers had become
materialists.

In travelling outside science into metaphysics, Tyndall
betrayed a lamentable ignorance of the latter—a parallel case
to that of Bishop Wilberforce when he attempted to meddle with
science. Martineau, referring to the first quotation above,
wrote: “There is no magic in the superlatively little to draw
from the universe its last secret. Size is but relative,
magnified or dwindled by a glass, variable with the organ of
perception: to one being, the speck which only the microscope
can show us may be a universe; to another, the solar system but
a molecule; and in the passing from the latter to the former
you reach no end of search or beginning of things. You merely
substitute a miniature of nature for its life-size without at
all showing whence the features arise.”

* * * * *

THE NEW GOSPEL

_HAECKELIUS loquitur_:

The ages have passed and come with the beat of a measureless tread
And piled up their palace-dome on the dust of the ageless dead,
Since the atom of life first glowed in the breast of eternal time,
And shaped for itself its abode in the womb of the shapeless slime;
And the years matured its form with slow, unwearying toil.
Moulded by sun and storm, and rich with the centuries’ spoil,
Till the face of the earth was fair, and life grew up into mind,
And breathed its earliest prayer to its god in the dawn or wind,
And called itself by the name of man, the master and lord,
Who conquers the strength of flame and tempers the spear and sword;
For the world grows wiser by war, and death is the law of life,
The lowermost rock in the scar is red with the stains of strife.
Burst thro’ the bounds of sight, and measure the least of things,
Plummet the infinite and make to thy fancy wings;
From crystal, and coral, and weed, up to man in his noblest race,
The weaker shall fail in his need, and the stronger shall hold his place!

_RENANUS loquitur_:

Ah! leave me yet a little while, to watch
The golden glory of the dying day,
Till all the purple mountains gleam and catch
The last faint light that slowly steals away.

Too soon the night is on us; aye, too soon
We know the cloud is born of blinding mist:
The throne, whereon the gods sate crowned at noon
With ruby rays and liquid amethyst,

Is but a vapour, dim and grey, a streak
Of hollow rain that freezes in its fall,
A dull, cold shape that settles on the peak,
Icy and stifling as a dead man’s pall.

The world’s old faith is fairest in its death,
For death is fairer oftentimes than life;
No vulgar passion quivers in the breath:
The dead forget their weariness and strife.

Say not that death is even as decay,
A hideous charnel choked with rotting dust;
The cold white lips are beautiful as spray
Cast on an iceberg by the northern gust.

The memories of the past are diadem’d
About the brow and folded on the eyes;
The weary lids beneath are bent and gemm’d
With charmèd dreams and mystic reveries.

Once more she sits in her imperial chair,
And kings and Cæsars kneel before her feet,
And clouds of incense fill the heavy air,
And shouts of homage echo thro’ the street.

Or yet, again, she stretches forth the hand,
And men are done to death at her desire;
The smoke of burning cities dims the land,
And limbs are torn or shrivelled in the fire.

Once more the scene is shifted, and the gleam
Of eastern suns about her brow is curled;
Once more she roams a maiden by the stream,
Despised of men, the Magdalen of the world.

So scene on scene floats lightly, as a haze
That comes and goes with sudden gust and lull:
Limned with the sunset hues of other days,
They are but dreams; yet dreams are beautiful.

ARCHIBALD HENRY SAYCE (_Academy, Dec. 5, 1885_).

As in the two preceding quotations, the subject is the
supposed conflict of religion and science. Haeckel (born 1834,
recently dead) was the most ruthless of all the biologists in
accounting for evolution and all progress by a struggle for
existence. Renan (1823-1892), the French writer, whose love of
Christianity survived his belief in it, speaks of the passing
away of the old faith as “the golden glory of the dying day,”
and says that in its death it will be more beautiful than in
its life, when it led to passion, persecution and war. The
penultimate verse refers to the time when temporal power was
removed from the church, and she reverted to the humility, and
also the beauty, of primitive Christianity when it came in its
morning glory from the East.

The fact that these fine verses are by the great philologist
and archæologist, Professor Sayce, who has not publicly
appeared in the rôle of a poet, adds greatly to their interest.
The few verses he has published have mostly appeared over the
initials “A.H.S.” in the old _Academy_ (the present periodical
is a different concern), and he was not known to the public as
the author.

Anything about Professor Sayce must be interesting to the
reader, and I, therefore, need not apologize for mentioning
the following incidents, which, I imagine, are known only
among his friends. In 1870, during the Franco-German War, Mr.
Sayce was ordered to be shot at Nantes as a German spy, and
only escaped “by the skin of his teeth.” It was just before
Gambetta had flown in his balloon out of Paris, and there was
no recognized Government in the country. Nantes was full of
fugitives, and bands of Uhlans were in the neighbourhood. Mr.
Sayce was arrested when walking round the old citadel examining
its walls—not realizing that it was occupied by French troops.
Fortunately, some ladies of the garrison came in during his
examination to see the interesting young prisoner and, after
Mr. Sayce had been placed against the wall and a soldier told
off to shoot him, they prevailed upon the Commandant to give
him a second examination, which ended in his acquittal.

Mr. Sayce was also among the Carlists in the Carlist war of
1873, and was present at some of the so-called battles which,
he says, were dangerous only to the onlookers. He also once had
a pitched battle with Bedouins in Syria.

Professor Sayce (he became Professor in 1876) has also the
proud distinction of being the only person known to have
survived the bite of the Egyptian cerastes asp, which is
supposed to have killed Cleopatra. He accidentally trod on
the reptile in the desert some three or four miles north of
Assouan and was bitten in the leg. Luckily, he happened to
be just outside the dahabieh in which he was travelling with
three Oxford friends, one of them the late Master of Balliol.
The cook had a small pair of red-hot tongs, with which he had
been preparing lunch, and Professor Sayce was able to burn
the bitten leg down to the bone within two minutes after the
accident; thus saving his life at the expense of a few weeks’
lameness.

* * * * *

But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear—
A soft and silvery sound—I know it well.
Its tinkling tells me that a time is near
Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell.
O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,
Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:
Seared is, of course, my heart—but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.

I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen;
But on one statement I may safely venture:
That few of our most highly gifted men
Have more appreciation of the trencher.
I go. One pound of British beef, and then
What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher”;
That, “home-returning,” I may “soothly say,”
“Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.”