Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

O for Friday nicht!--
Friday at the gloamin';
O for Friday nicht--
Friday's lang o' comin'!"

This love-song, which Mr. Chambers gives from recitation, is, thinks Uncle to himself, all but perfect; Burns, who in almost every instance, not only adorned, but transformed and purified whatever of the old he touched, breathing into it his own tenderness and strength, fails here, as may be seen in reading his version.

"Oh, spring's a pleasant time!
Flowers o' every color--
_The sweet bird builds her nest_,
And I lang for my lover.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and _wearie_;
Sleep I can get nane,
For thinkin' o' my dearie!

"When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Rest I canna get,
For thinkin' o' my dearie.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and weary;
_Come, come, blissful dream_,
Bring me to my dearie.

"_Darksome_ nicht comes doun--
A' the lave are sleepin';
I think on my kind lad,
And blin' my een wi' greetin'.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and wearie;
_Hope is sweet_, but ne'er
Sae sweet as my dearie!"

How weak these italics! No one can doubt which of these is the better. The old song is perfect in the procession, and in the simple beauty of its thoughts and words. A ploughman or shepherd--for I hold that it is a man's song--comes in "wat, wat" after a hard day's work among the furrows, or on the hill. The _watness_ of wat, wat, is as much wetter than wet as a Scotch mist is more of a mist than an English one; and he is not only wat, wat, but "weary," longing for a dry skin and a warm bed and rest; but no sooner said and felt, than, by the law of contrast, he thinks on "Mysie" or "Ailie," his Genevieve; and then "all thoughts, all passions, all delights," begin to stir him, and "fain wad I rise and rin" (what a swiftness beyond run is "rin"!) Love now makes him a poet; the true imaginative power enters and takes possession of him. By this time his clothes are off, and he is snug in bed; not a wink can he sleep; that "fain" is domineering over him,--and he breaks out into what is as genuine passion and poetry, as anything from Sappho to Tennyson--abrupt, vivid, heedless of syntax. "Simmer's a pleasant time." Would any of our greatest geniuses, being limited to one word, have done better than take "pleasant?" and then the fine vagueness of "time!" "Flowers o' every color;" he gets a glimpse of "herself a fairer flower," and is off in pursuit. "The water rins ower the heugh" (a steep precipice); flinging itself wildly, passionately over, and so do I long for my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and finer than

"When I sleep, I dream;
When I wauk, I'm eerie."

"Lanely nicht;" how much richer and touching than "darksome." "Feather beds are saft;" "paintit rooms are bonnie;" I would infer from this, that his "dearie," his "true love," was a lass up at "the big house"--a dapper Abigail possibly--at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we have the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht--Friday at the gloamin'! O for Friday nicht!--Friday's lang o' comin'!--it being very likely Thursday before daybreak, when this affectionate _ululatus_ ended in repose.

Now, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed Galloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon her eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel way announce that "love in thine eyes forever sits," &c. &c., or that her feet look out from under her petticoats like little mice: he is far past that; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one and a chief charm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all love-songs except those wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the Leucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the "most moving delicate and full of life." Burns makes you feel the reality and the depth, the truth of his passion; it is not her eyelashes or her nose, or her dimple, or even

"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip,"

that are "winging the fervor of his love;" not even her soul; it is herself. This concentration and earnestness, this _perfervor_ of our Scottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast curiously with the light, trifling philandering of the English; indeed, as far as I remember, we have almost no love-songs in English, of the same class as this one, or those of Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the nautical (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you know the most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language; the love being affectionate more than passionate, love in possession not in pursuit?

"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee:
Or did Misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

"Or were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou wert there:
Or were I monarch o' the globe,
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."

The following is Mr. Chambers' account of the origin of this song:--Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if she would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she desired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She sat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song, beginning with the words--

"The robin cam' to the wren's nest,
And keekit in, and keekit in:
'O weel's me on your auld pow!
Wad ye be in, wad ye be in?
Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without,
And I within, and I within,
As lang 's I hae an auld clout,
To row ye in, to row ye in.'"

Uncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, slipping up noiselessly that he might not disturb the thin sleep of the sufferer, saying in to himself--"I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;" "If thou wert there, if thou wert there;" and though the morning was at the window, he was up by eight, making breakfast for John and Mary.

* * * * *

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but love is of God, and cannot fail.

_ARTHUR H. HALLAM._

"PRAESENS _imperfectum,--perfectum, plusquam perfectum_
FUTURUM."--GROTIUS.

"_The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep
Into my study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of thy life
Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of my soul,
Than when thou livedst indeed._"

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,--and the friend to whom "_In Memoriam_" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the stately ships go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind, when the poem, "Break, break, break," which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and godliness, rose into his "study of imagination"--"into the eye and prospect of his soul."[36]

[36] The passage from Shakspeare prefixed to this paper, contains
probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than
the affectionate conditions, under which such a record as
_In Memoriam_ is produced, and may give us more insight into
the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our
philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out with the
fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a
child--"Fancy's Child"--the secret mechanism or procession
of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In
itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its
own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in
the omniscience of even Shakspeare. But, like many things
that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it
has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to
bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full
without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A
dew-drop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in
its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world
together, and by which "the most ancient heavens are fresh
and strong." This is the passage. The Friar speaking of
Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his word," says,--

"The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed."

We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative
memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like
moonlight upon midnight,--

"The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme."

This is its simple meaning--the statement of a truth, the
utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden
abstract significance--it is the revelation of what goes on
in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what
once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed
upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have
first the _Idea of her Life_--all he remembered and felt of
her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one
look, or action, or time--then the idea of her life
_creeps_--is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY
creeps,--it might have been softly or gently, but it is the
addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another
sense--and now it is in his _study of imagination_--what a
place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the _Idea_,
more particular, more questionable, but still ideal,
spiritual--_every lovely organ of her life_--then the
clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual
body--_shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more
moving delicate_--this is the transfiguring, the putting on
strength, the _poco piu_--the little more which makes
immortal,--_more full of life_, and all this submitted
to--_the eye and prospect of the soul_.

"Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

"O well for the fisherman's boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

"And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill!
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

"Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all _In Memoriam_, as a stream flows out of its spring--all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,"--"the touch of the vanished hand--the sound of the voice that is still,"--the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death,--

"The mountain infant to the sun comes forth
Like human life from darkness;"

and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,--shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, "thoughts that wander through eternity," greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! "the long unlovely street," pleasant villages and farms, "the placid ocean-plains," waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, _nemorumque noctem_, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called--

"Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow;"

now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came,--

"That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God which ever lives and loves;
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."

It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3d January, 1834, that he refers in poem XVIII. of _In Memoriam_.

"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.

"'Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest,
And in the places of his youth."

And again in XIX.:--

"The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

"There twice a day the Severn fills,
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills."

Here, too, it is, LXVI.:--

"When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest,
By that broad water of the west;
There comes a glory on the walls:

"Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o'er the number of thy years."

This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad privilege to know, all that a father's heart buried with his son in that grave, all "the hopes of unaccomplished years;" nor can we feel in its fulness all that is meant by

"Such
A friendship as had mastered Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears.
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this."

But this we may say, we know of nothing in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: "The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love for me was wonderful." We cannot, as some have done, compare it with Shakspeare's sonnets, or with _Lycidas_. In spite of the amazing genius and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking, "that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions;" and though we would hardly say with him, "that it is impossible not to wish that Shakspeare had never written them," giving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of _attendrissement_, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to us how he could give us all these;--while we hardly go so far, we agree with his other wise words:--"There is a weakness and folly in all misplaced and excessive affection;" which in Shakspeare's case is the more distressing, when we consider that "Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets," was, in all likelihood, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but always of licentious life.

As for _Lycidas_, we must confess that the poetry--and we all know how consummate it is--and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton's mind, as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no glory through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But there is no such drawback in _In Memoriam_. The purity, the temperate but fervent goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned logic, the large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly fear, of

"That friend of mine who lives in God,"

which from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give to _In Memoriam_ the character of exactest portraiture. There is no excessive or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact; while everywhere and throughout it all, affection--a love that is wonderful--meets us first and leaves us last, giving form and substance and grace, and the breath of life and love, to everything that the poet's thick-coming fancies so exquisitely frame. We can recall few poems approaching to it in this quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we can think of as of the same order, are Cowper's lines on seeing his mother's portrait:--

"O that these lips had language!"

Burns to "Mary in Heaven;" and two pieces of Vaughan--one beginning

"O thou who know'st for whom I mourn;"

and the other--

"They are all gone into the world of light."

But our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson's verses, as to introduce to our readers what we ourselves have got so much delight, and, we trust, profit from--_The Remains, in Verse and Prose, of Arthur Henry Hallam_, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years been searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry Taylor struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading _In Memoriam_. We do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these Remains of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend's Memorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are our own. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts with the fulness of their truth and tenderness. They will see how accurate as well as how affectionate and "of imagination all compact" Tennyson is, and how worthy of all that he has said of him, that friend was. The likeness is drawn _ad vivum_,--

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
He summons up remembrance of things past."

"The idea of his Life" has been sown a natural body, and has been raised a spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and the raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.

The Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a nobler or more touching record of a father's love and sorrow.

"Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place,[37] London, on
the 1st of February, 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his
parents observed strong indications of his future character, in
a peculiar clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring
knowledge, and, above all, in an undeviating sweetness of
disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and
becoming. As he advanced to another stage of childhood, it was
rendered still more manifest that he would be distinguished from
ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, and a
fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little
intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no
kind of interest.

[37] "Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street;
Doors, where my heart was wont to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand."--_In Memoriam._

This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus
corrects:--"'The long unlovely street' was Wimpole Street,
No. 67, where the Hallams lived; and Arthur used to say to
his friends, You know you will always find us at sixes and
sevens.'"

"In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in
Germany and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French
language, which he had already learned to read with facility. He
had gone through the elements of Latin before this time; but
that language having been laid aside during his tour, it was
found upon his return that, a variety of new scenes having
effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with
the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time;
and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with
tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing
itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for
dramatic poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call
them either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of
talents than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other
individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents, did not
blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature
efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided everything
like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have
withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstance of
these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own
family.

"In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W.
Carmalt, at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After
leaving this school he went abroad again for some months; and in
October, 1822, became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an
Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the
summer of 1827. He was now become a good though not perhaps a
first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of
time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but far more his
increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the
strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other
faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into
play, will sufficiently account for what might seem a
comparative deficiency in classical learning. It can only,
however, be reckoned one, comparatively to his other
attainments, and to his remarkable facility in mastering the
modern languages. The Editor has thought it not improper to
print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as written
before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and
other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above
the level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should
have selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and
with whose language, he was then but very slightly acquainted,
but who was afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other,
the master-mover of his spirit. It may be added, that great
judgment and taste are perceptible in this translation, which is
by no means a literal one; and in which the phraseology of
Sophocles is not ill substituted, in some passages, for that of
Dante.

"The Latin poetry of an Etonian is generally reckoned at that
School the chief test of his literary talent. That of Arthur was
good without being excellent; he never wanted depth of thought,
or truth of feeling; but it is only in a few rare instances, if
altogether in any, that an original mind has been known to utter
itself freely and vigorously, without sacrifice of purity, in a
language the capacities of which are so imperfectly understood;
and in his productions there was not the thorough conformity to
an ancient model which is required for perfect elegance in Latin
verse. He took no great pleasure in this sort of composition;
and perhaps never returned to it of his own accord.

"In the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away
more and more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the
exclusive study of ancient literature. The poets of England,
especially the older dramatists, came with greater attraction
over his spirit. He loved Fletcher, and some of Fletcher's
contemporaries, for their energy of language and intenseness of
feeling; but it was in Shakspeare alone that he found the
fulness of soul which seemed to slake the thirst of his own
rapidly expanding genius for an inexhaustible fountain of
thought and emotion. He knew Shakspeare thoroughly; and indeed
his acquaintance with the earlier poetry of this country was
very extensive. Among the modern poets, Byron was at this time,
far above the rest, and almost exclusively, his favorite; a
preference which, in later years, he transferred altogether to
Wordsworth and Shelley.

"He became, when about fifteen years old, a member of the
debating society established among the elder boys, in which he
took great interest; and this served to confirm the bias of his
intellect towards the moral and political philosophy of modern
times. It was probably, however, of important utility in giving
him that command of his own language which he possessed, as the
following Essays will show, in a very superior degree, and in
exercising those powers of argumentative discussion, which now
displayed themselves as eminently characteristic of his mind. It
was a necessary consequence that he declined still more from the
usual paths of study, and abated perhaps somewhat of his regard
for the writers of antiquity. It must not be understood,
nevertheless, as most of those who read these pages will be
aware, that he ever lost his sensibility to those ever-living
effusions of genius which the ancient languages preserve. He
loved AEschylus and Sophocles (to Euripides he hardly did
justice), Lucretius and Virgil; if he did not seem so much drawn
towards Homer as might at first be expected, this may probably
be accounted for by his increasing taste for philosophical
poetry.

"In the early part of 1827, Arthur took a part in the Eton
Miscellany, a periodical publication, in which some of his
friends in the debating society were concerned. He wrote in
this, besides a few papers in prose, a little poem on a story
connected with the Lake of Killarney. It has not been thought by
the Editor advisable, upon the whole, to reprint these lines;
though, in his opinion, they bear very striking marks of
superior powers. This was almost the first poetry that Arthur
had written, except the childish tragedies above mentioned. No
one was ever less inclined to the trick of versifying. Poetry
with him was not an amusement, but the natural and almost
necessary language of genuine emotion; and it was not till the
discipline of serious reflection, and the approach of manhood,
gave a reality and intenseness to such emotions, that he learned
the capacities of his own genius. That he was a poet by nature,
these Remains will sufficiently prove; but certainly he was far
removed from being a versifier by nature; nor was he probably
able to perform, what he scarce ever attempted, to write easily
and elegantly on an ordinary subject. The lines on the story of
Pygmalion are so far an exception, that they arose out of a
momentary amusement of society; but he could not avoid, even in
these, his own grave tone of poetry.

"Upon leaving Eton in the summer of 1827, he accompanied his
parents to the Continent, and passed eight months in Italy. This
introduction to new scenes of nature and art, and to new sources
of intellectual delight, at the very period of transition from
boyhood to youth, sealed no doubt the peculiar character of his
mind, and taught him, too soon for his peace, to sound those
depths of thought and feeling, from which, after this time, all
that he wrote was derived. He had, when he passed the Alps, only
a moderate acquaintance with the Italian language; but during
his residence in the country he came to speak it with perfect
fluency, and with a pure Sienese pronunciation. In its study he
was much assisted by his friend and instructor, the Abbate
Pifferi, who encouraged him to his first attempts at
versification. The few sonnets, which are now printed, were, it
is to be remembered, written by a foreigner, hardly seventeen
years old, and after a very short stay in Italy. The Editor
might not, probably, have suffered them to appear, even in this
private manner, upon his own judgment. But he knew that the
greatest living writer of Italy, to whom they were shown some
time since at Milan, by the author's excellent friend, Mr.
Richard Milnes, has expressed himself in terms of high
approbation.

"The growing intimacy of Arthur with Italian poetry led him
naturally to that of Dante. No poet was so congenial to the
character of his own reflective mind; in none other could he so
abundantly find that disdain of flowery redundance, that
perpetual preference of the sensible to the ideal, that
aspiration for somewhat better and less fleeting than earthly
things, to which his inmost soul responded. Like all genuine
worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he rated the _Inferno_
below the two latter portions of the _Divina Commedia_; there
was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract
it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the
_Paradiso_. Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less
idolatry than Dante; and the sonnets here printed will show to
all competent judges how fully he had imbibed the spirit,
without servile centonism, of the best writers in that style of
composition who flourished in the 16th century.

"But poetry was not an absorbing passion at this time in his
mind. His eyes were fixed on the best pictures with silent
intense delight. He had a deep and just perception of what was
beautiful in this art, at least in its higher schools; for he
did not pay much regard, or perhaps quite do justice, to the
masters of the 17th century. To technical criticism he made no
sort of pretension; painting was to him but the visible language
of emotion; and where it did not aim at exciting it, or employed
inadequate means, his admiration would be withheld. Hence he
highly prized the ancient paintings, both Italian and German, of
the age which preceded the full development of art. But he was
almost as enthusiastic an admirer of the Venetian, as of the
Tuscan and Roman schools; considering these masters as reaching
the same end by the different agencies of form and color. This
predilection for the sensitive beauties of painting is somewhat
analogous to his fondness for harmony of verse, on which he laid
more stress than poets so thoughtful are apt to do. In one of
the last days of his life, he lingered long among the fine
Venetian pictures of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.

"He returned to England in June, 1828; and, in the following
October, went down to reside at Cambridge; having been entered
on the boards of Trinity College before his departure to the
Continent. He was the pupil of the Rev. William Whewell. In some
respects, as soon became manifest, he was not formed to obtain
great academical reputation. An acquaintance with the learned
languages, considerable at the school where he was educated, but
not improved, to say the least, by the intermission of a year,
during which his mind had been so occupied by other pursuits,
that he had thought little of antiquity even in Rome itself,
though abundantly sufficient for the gratification of taste and
the acquisition of knowledge, was sure to prove inadequate to
the searching scrutiny of modern examinations. He soon,
therefore, saw reason to renounce all competition of this kind;
nor did he ever so much as attempt any Greek or Latin
composition during his stay at Cambridge. In truth he was very
indifferent to success of this kind; and conscious as he must
have been of a high reputation among his contemporaries, he
could not think that he stood in need of any University
distinctions. The Editor became by degrees almost equally
indifferent to what he perceived to be so uncongenial to
Arthur's mind. It was however to be regretted, that he never
paid the least attention to mathematical studies. That he should
not prosecute them with the diligence usual at Cambridge, was of
course to be expected; yet his clearness and acumen would
certainly have enabled him to master the principles of
geometrical reasoning; nor, in fact, did he so much find a
difficulty in apprehending demonstrations, as a want of
interest, and a consequent inability to retain them in his
memory. A little more practice in the strict logic of geometry,
a little more familiarity with the physical laws of the
universe, and the phenomena to which they relate, would possibly
have repressed the tendency to vague and mystical speculations
which he was too fond of indulging. In the philosophy of the
human mind, he was in no danger of the materializing theories of
some ancient and modern schools; but in shunning this extreme,
he might sometimes forget that, in the honest pursuit of truth,
we can shut our eyes to no real phenomena, and that the
physiology of man must always enter into any valid scheme of his
psychology.

"The comparative inferiority which he might show in the usual
trials of knowledge, sprung in a great measure from the want of
a prompt and accurate memory. It was the faculty wherein he
shone the least, according to ordinary observation; though his
very extensive reach of literature, and his rapidity in
acquiring languages, sufficed to prove that it was capable of
being largely exercised. He could remember anything, as a friend
observed to the Editor, that was associated with an idea. But he
seemed, at least after he reached manhood, to want almost wholly
the power, so common with inferior understandings, of retaining
with regularity and exactness, a number of unimportant
uninteresting particulars. It would have been nearly impossible
to make him recollect for three days the date of the battle of
Marathon, or the names in order of the Athenian months. Nor
could he repeat poetry, much as he loved it, with the
correctness often found in young men. It is not improbable, that
a more steady discipline in early life would have strengthened
this faculty, or that he might have supplied its deficiency by
some technical devices; but where the higher powers of intellect
were so extraordinarily manifested, it would have been
preposterous to complain of what may perhaps have been a
necessary consequence of their amplitude, or at least a natural
result of their exercise.

"But another reason may be given for his deficiency in those
unremitting labors which the course of academical education, in
the present times, is supposed to exact from those who aspire to
its distinctions. In the first year of his residence at
Cambridge, symptoms of disordered health, especially in the
circulatory system, began to show themselves; and it is by no
means improbable, that these were indications of a tendency to
derangement of the vital functions, which become ultimately
fatal. A too rapid determination of blood towards the brain,
with its concomitant uneasy sensations, rendered him frequently
incapable of mental fatigue. He had indeed once before, at
Florence, been affected by symptoms not unlike these. His
intensity of reflection and feeling also brought on occasionally
a considerable depression of spirits, which had been painfully
observed at times by those who watched him most, from the time
of his leaving Eton, and even before. It was not till after
several months that he regained a less morbid condition of mind
and body. This same irregularity of circulation returned again
in the next spring, but was of less duration. During the third
year of his Cambridge life, he appeared in much better health.

"In this year (1831) he obtained the first college prize for an
English declamation. The subject chosen by him was the conduct
of the Independent party during the civil war. This exercise was
greatly admired at the time, but was never printed. In
consequence of this success, it became incumbent on him,
according to the custom of the college, to deliver an oration in
the chapel immediately before the Christmas vacation of the same
year. On this occasion he selected a subject very congenial to
his own turn of thought and favorite study, the influence of
Italian upon English literature. He had previously gained
another prize for an English essay on the philosophical writings
of Cicero. This essay is perhaps too excursive from the
prescribed subject; but his mind was so deeply imbued with the
higher philosophy, especially that of Plato, with which he was
very conversant, that he could not be expected to dwell much on
the praises of Cicero in that respect.

"Though the bent of Arthur's mind by no means inclined him to
strict research into facts, he was full as much conversant with
the great features of ancient and modern history, as from the
course of his other studies and the habits of his life it was
possible to expect. He reckoned them, as great minds always do,
the groundworks of moral and political philosophy, and took no
pains to acquire any knowledge of this sort from which a
principle could not be derived or illustrated. To some parts of
English history, and to that of the French Revolution, he had
paid considerable attention. He had not read nearly so much of
the Greek and Latin historians as of the philosophers and poets.
In the history of literary, and especially of philosophical and
religious opinions, he was deeply versed, as much so as it is
possible to apply that term at his age. The following pages
exhibit proofs of an acquaintance, not crude or superficial,
with that important branch of literature.

"His political judgments were invariably prompted by his strong
sense of right and justice. These, in so young a person, were
naturally rather fluctuating, and subject to the correction of
advancing knowledge and experience. Ardent in the cause of those
he deemed to be oppressed, of which, in one instance, he was led
to give a proof with more of energy and enthusiasm than
discretion, he was deeply attached to the ancient institutions
of his country.

"He spoke French readily, though with less elegance than
Italian, till from disuse he lost much of his fluency in the
latter. In his last fatal tour in Germany, he was rapidly
acquiring a readiness in the language of that country. The whole
range of French literature was almost as familiar to him as that
of England.

"The society in which Arthur lived most intimately, at Eton and
at the University, was formed of young men, eminent for natural
ability, and for delight in what he sought above all things, the
knowledge of truth, and the perception of beauty. They who loved
and admired him living, and who now revere his sacred memory, as
of one to whom, in the fondness of regret, they admit of no
rival, know best what he was in the daily commerce of life; and
his eulogy should, on every account, better come from hearts,
which, if partial, have been rendered so by the experience of
friendship, not by the affection of nature.

"Arthur left Cambridge on taking his degree in January 1832. He
resided from that time with the Editor in London, having been
entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the
desire of the Editor that he should engage himself in the study
of the law; not merely with professional views, but as a useful
discipline for a mind too much occupied with habits of thought,
which, ennobling and important as they were, could not but
separate him from the every-day business of life, and might, by
their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be productive of
considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long
vacation, read with the Editor the Institutes of Justinian, and
the two works of Heineccius which illustrate them; and he now
went through Blackstone's Commentaries, with as much of other
law-books as, in the Editor's judgment, was required for a
similar purpose. It was satisfactory at that time to perceive
that, far from showing any of that distaste to legal studies
which might have been anticipated from some parts of his
intellectual character, he entered upon them not only with great
acuteness, but considerable interest. In the month of October
1832, he began to see the practical application of legal
knowledge in the office of an eminent conveyancer, Mr. Walters
of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with whom he continued till his
departure from England in the following summer.

"It was not, however, to be expected, or even desired by any who
knew how to value him, that he should at once abandon those
habits of study which had fertilized and invigorated his mind.
But he now, from some change or other in his course of thinking,
ceased in a great measure to write poetry, and expressed to more
than one friend an intention to give it up. The instances after
his leaving Cambridge were few. The dramatic scene between
Raffaelle and Fiammetta was written in 1832; and about the same
time he had a design to translate the _Vita Nuova_ of his
favorite Dante; a work which he justly prized, as the
development of that immense genius, in a kind of autobiography,
which best prepares us for a real insight into the _Divine
Comedy_. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the sonnets
which the _Vita Nuova_ contains; but the Editor does not believe
that he made any progress in the prose translation. These
sonnets appearing rather too literal, and consequently harsh, it
has not been thought worth while to print.

"In the summer of 1832, the appearance of Professor Rosetti's
_Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale_, in which the writings
of Arthur's beloved masters, Dante and Petrarch, as well as most
of the mediaeval literature of Italy, were treated as a series
of enigmas, to be understood only by a key that discloses a
latent Carbonarism, a secret conspiracy against the religion of
their age, excited him to publish his own Remarks in reply. It
seemed to him the worst of poetical heresies to desert the
Absolute, the Universal, the Eternal, the Beautiful and True,
which the Platonic spirit of his literary creed taught him to
seek in all the higher works of genius, in quest of some
temporary historical allusion, which could be of no interest
with posterity. Nothing, however, could be more alien from his
courteous disposition than to abuse the license of controversy,
or to treat with intentional disrespect a very ingenious person,
who had been led on too far in pursuing a course of
interpretation, which, within certain much narrower limits, it
is impossible for any one conversant with history not to admit.

"A very few other anonymous writings occupied his leisure about
this time. Among these were slight memoirs of Petrarch,
Voltaire, and Burke, for the Gallery of Portraits, published by
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.[38] His time
was, however, principally devoted, when not engaged at his
office, to metaphysical researches, and to the history of
philosophical opinions.

[38] We had read these Lives, and had remarked them, before we
knew whose they were, as being of rare merit. No one could
suppose they were written by one so young. We give his
estimate of the character of Burke. "The mind of this great
man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general
characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was
solid, practical, and conversant with the details of
business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a
superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw
little, _because it was painful to him_ to see anything
beyond the limits of the national character. In all things,
while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with
the concrete rather than with abstractions. He studied men
rather than man." The words in italics imply an insight into
the deepest springs of human action, the conjunct causes of
what we call character such as few men of large experience
can attain.

"From the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual
but very perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his
spirits gladdened his family and his friends; intervals there
doubtless were, when the continual seriousness of his habits of
thought, or the force of circumstances, threw something more of
gravity into his demeanor; but in general he was animated and
even gay, renewing or preserving his intercourse with some of
those he had most valued at Eton and Cambridge. The symptoms of
deranged circulation which had manifested themselves before,
ceased to appear, or at least so as to excite his own attention;
and though it struck those who were most anxious in watching
him, that his power of enduring fatigue was not quite so great
as from his frame of body and apparent robustness might have
been anticipated, nothing gave the least indication of danger
either to their eyes, or to those of the medical practitioners
who were in the habit of observing him. An attack of
intermittent fever, during the prevalent influenza of the spring
of 1833, may perhaps have disposed his constitution to the last
fatal blow."

To any one who has watched the history of the disease by which "so quick this bright thing came to confusion," and who knows how near its subject must often, perhaps all his life, have been to that eternity which occupied so much of his thoughts and desires, and the secrets of which were so soon to open on his young eyes, there is something very touching in this account. Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to produce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual seriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look at the true life of things--that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and that occasional sinking of the heart, which make his noble and strong inner nature, his resolved mind, so much more impressive and endearing.

This feeling of personal insecurity--of life being ready to slip away--the sensation that this world and its ongoings, its mighty interests, and delicate joys, is ready to be shut up in a moment--this instinctive apprehension of the peril of vehement bodily enjoyment--all this would tend to make him "walk softly," and to keep him from much of the evil that is in the world, and would help him to live soberly, righteously, and godly even in the bright and rich years of his youth. His power of giving himself up to the search after absolute truth, and the contemplation of Supreme goodness, must have been increased by this same organization. But all this delicate feeling, this fineness of sense, did rather quicken the energy and fervor of the indwelling soul--the {ti thermon pragma} that burned within. In the quaint words of Vaughan, it was "manhood with a female eye." These two conditions must, as we have said, have made him dear indeed. And by a beautiful law of life, having that organ out of which are the issues of life, under a sort of perpetual nearness to suffering, and so liable to pain, he would be more easily moved for others--more alive to their pain--more filled with fellow-feeling.

"The Editor cannot dwell on anything later. Arthur accompanied
him to Germany in the beginning of August. In returning to
Vienna from Pesth, a wet day probably gave rise to an
intermittent fever, with very slight symptoms, and apparently
subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood to the head put an
instantaneous end to his life on the 15th of September 1833. The
mysteriousness of such a dreadful termination to a disorder
generally of so little importance, and in this instance of the
slightest kind, has been diminished by an examination which
showed a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a want of
sufficient energy in the heart. Those whose eyes must long be
dim with tears, and whose hopes on this side the tomb are broken
down forever, may cling, as well as they can, to the poor
consolation of believing that a few more years would, in the
usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail union of his
graceful and manly form with the pure spirit that it enshrined.

"The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on
the 3d of January 1834, in the chancel of Clevedon Church in
Somersetshire, belonging to his maternal grandfather Sir Abraham
Elton, a place selected by the Editor, not only from the
connection of kindred, but on account of its still and
sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol
Channel.

"More ought perhaps to be said--but it is very difficult to
proceed. From the earliest years of this extraordinary young
man, his premature abilities were not more conspicuous than an
almost faultless disposition, sustained by a more calm
self-command than has often been witnessed in that season of
life. The sweetness of temper which distinguished his childhood,
became with the advance of manhood a habitual benevolence, and
ultimately ripened into that exalted principle of love towards
God and man, which animated and almost absorbed his soul during
the latter period of his life, and to which most of the
following compositions bear such emphatic testimony. He seemed
to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world; and in
bowing to the mysterious will which has in mercy removed him,
perfected by so short a trial, and passing over the bridge which
separates the seen from the unseen life, in a moment, and, as we
may believe, without a moment's pang, we must feel not only the
bereavement of those to whom he was dear, but the loss which
mankind have sustained by the withdrawing of such a light.

"A considerable portion of the poetry contained in this volume
was printed in the year 1830, and was intended by the author to
be published together with the poems of his intimate friend, Mr.
Alfred Tennyson. They were however withheld from publication at
the request of the Editor. The poem of Timbuctoo was written for
the University prize in 1829, which it did not obtain.
Notwithstanding its too great obscurity, the subject itself
being hardly indicated, and the extremely hyperbolical
importance which the author's brilliant fancy has attached to a
nest of barbarians, no one can avoid admiring the grandeur of
his conceptions, and the deep philosophy upon which he has built
the scheme of his poem. This is however by no means the most
pleasing of his compositions. It is in the profound reflection,
the melancholy tenderness, and the religious sanctity of other
effusions that a lasting charm will be found. A commonplace
subject, such as those announced for academical prizes generally
are, was incapable of exciting a mind which, beyond almost every
other, went straight to the farthest depths that the human
intellect can fathom, or from which human feelings can be drawn.
Many short poems of equal beauty with those here printed, have
been deemed unfit even for the limited circulation they might
obtain, on account of their unveiling more of emotion than,
consistently with what is due to him and to others, could be
exposed to view.