Chapter XVI: Part 16

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 Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare 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 favourite; 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 sixteenth
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 seventeenth 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 colour. 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 labours 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 became 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 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 favourite 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 everyday 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 one 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 favourite 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
mediæval 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 licence 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.[112] His time was, however, principally
devoted, when not engaged at his office, to metaphysical researches,
and to the history of philosophical opinions.

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 demeanour; 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 on-goings, 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 fervour of the indwelling soul--the [Greek: 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 for ever, 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 3rd
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.

The two succeeding essays have never been printed; but were read, it
is believed, in a literary society at Trinity College, or in one to
which he afterwards belonged in London. That entitled _Theodicaea
Novissima_ is printed at the desire of some of his intimate friends. A
few expressions in it want his usual precision; and there are ideas
which he might have seen cause, in the lapse of time, to modify,
independently of what his very acute mind would probably have
perceived, that his hypothesis, like that of Leibnitz, on the origin
of evil, resolves itself at last into an unproved assumption of its
necessity. It has, however, some advantages, which need not be
mentioned, over that of Leibnitz; and it is here printed, not as a
solution of the greatest mystery of the universe, but as most
characteristic of the author's mind, original and sublime, uniting,
what is very rare except in early youth, a fearless and unblenching
spirit of inquiry into the highest objects of speculation, with the
most humble and reverential piety. It is probable that in many of his
views on such topics he was influenced by the writings of Jonathan
Edwards, with whose opinions on metaphysical and moral subjects he
seems generally to have concurred.

The extract from a review of Tennyson's poems in a publication now
extinct, the _Englishman's Magazine_, is also printed at the
suggestion of a friend. The pieces that follow are reprints, and have
been already mentioned in this Memoir.

We have given this Memoir almost entire, for the sake both of its subject and its manner--for what in it is the father's as well as for what is the son's. There is something very touching in the paternal composure, the judiciousness, the truthfulness, where truth is so difficult to reach through tears, the calm estimate and the subdued tenderness, the ever-rising but ever-restrained emotion; the father's heart-throbs throughout.

We wish we could have given in full the letters from Arthur's friends which his father has incorporated in the Memoir. They all bring out, in different but harmonious ways, his extraordinary moral and intellectual worth, his rare beauty of character, and their deep affection.

The following extract from one seems to us very interesting:

Outwardly I do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits,
except _an irregularity with regard to times and places of study_,
which may seem surprising in one whose progress in so many directions
was so eminently great and rapid. _He was commonly to be found in some
friend's room, reading or canvassing._ I daresay he lost something by
this irregularity, _but less than perhaps one would at first imagine_.
I never saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing
himself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact,
his energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of
outward aid.

There is much in this worthy of more extended notice. Such minds as his probably grow best in this way, are best left to themselves, to glide on at their own sweet wills; the stream was too deep and clear, and perhaps too entirely bent on its own errand, to be dealt with or regulated by any art or device. The same friend sums up his character thus:

I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no man
his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose
views on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of
humanity were more large and generous, and enlightened.

And all this said of a youth of twenty--_heu nimium brevis aevi decus et desiderium_!

We have given little of his verse; and what we do give is taken at random. We agree entirely in his father's estimate of his poetical gift and art, but his mind was too serious, too thoughtful, too intensely dedicated to truth and the God of truth, to linger long in the pursuit of beauty; he was on his way to God, and could rest in nothing short of Him, otherwise he might have been a poet of genuine excellence.

Dark, dark, yea, "irrecoverably dark,"
Is the soul's eye; yet how it strives and battles
Through th' impenetrable gloom to fix
That master light, the secret truth of things,
Which is the body of the infinite God!

* * * * *

Sure, we are leaves of one harmonious bower,
Fed by a sap that never will be scant,
All-permeating, all-producing mind;
And in our several parcellings of doom
We but fulfil the beauty of the whole.
Oh, madness! if a leaf should dare complain
Of its dark verdure, and aspire to be
The gayer, brighter thing that wantons near.

* * * * *

Oh, blessing and delight of my young heart,
Maiden, who wast so lovely, and so pure,
I know not in what region now thou art,
Or whom thy gentle eyes in joy assure.
Not the old hills on which we gazed together,
Not the old faces which we both did love,
Not the old books, whence knowledge we did gather,
Not these, but others now thy fancies move.

I would I knew thy present hopes and fears,
All thy companions with their pleasant talk,
And the clear aspect which thy dwelling wears:
So, though in body absent, I might walk
With thee in thought and feeling, till thy mood
Did sanctify mine own to peerless good.

* * * * *

Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,
Sitting beneath a mossy ivied wall
On a quaint bench, which to that structure old
Winds an accordant curve. Above my head
_Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves_,
Seeming received into the blue expanse
That vaults this summer noon.

* * * * *

Still here--thou hast not faded from my sight,
_Nor all the music round thee from mine ear:
Still grace flows from thee to the brightening year,
And all the birds laugh out in wealthier light_.
Still am I free to close my happy eyes,
And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form,
That soft white neck, that cheek in beauty warm,
And brow half hidden where yon ringlet lies:
With, oh! the blissful knowledge all the while
That I can lift at will each curvèd lid,
And my fair dream most highly realize.
The time will come, 'tis ushered by my sighs,
When I may shape the dark, but vainly bid
True light restore that form, those looks, that smile.

* * * * *

The garden trees _are busy with the shower_
That fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,
Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour,
One to another down the grassy walk.
Hark the laburnum from his opening flower,
This cheery creeper greets in whisper light,
While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,
Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.[113]
What shall I deem their converse? would they hail
The wild grey light that fronts yon massive cloud,
Or the half bow, rising like pillar'd fire?
Or are they fighting faintly for desire
That with May dawn their leaves may be o'erflowed,
And dews about their feet may never fail?

In the Essay, entitled _Theodicaea Novissima_, from which the following passages are taken, to the great injury in its general effect, he sets himself to the task of doing his utmost to clear up the mystery of the existence of such things as sin and suffering, in the universe of a being like God. He does it fearlessly, but like a child. It is in the spirit of his friend's words:

An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.

Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near.

It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavour to get nearer God--to assert His eternal Providence, and vindicate His ways to men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it--his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night--the jaws of darkness do devour it up--this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, "all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark," no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come--over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night shineth as the day, says, "Let there be light!" There is, we all know, a certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in this mystery, "the greatest in the universe," as Mr. Hallam truly says; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the speculations of others--it is a wise and pious saying of Augustine, _Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur_.

I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present
Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the
higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the
hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this
form, "Is there ground for believing that the existence of moral evil
is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God's essential love for
Christ?" (_i.e._ of the Father for Christ, or of [Greek: ho patêr] for
[Greek: ho logos]).

"Can man by searching find out God?" I believe not. I believe that the
unassisted efforts of man's reason have not established the existence
and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines.
However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and
however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which
it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from
considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I
derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which, without that
assistance, would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. _I see that
the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man and I
believe it to be God's book because it is man's book._ It is true that
the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity
of Atheism; _if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the
Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the
Bible_; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and
thoughts can no longer refuse their assent to _what is evidently
framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot
disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being
fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence
beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of scepticism_: we must
trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that
moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its
name. _I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely
authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it
contains, as essentially true._

* * * * *

In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect
Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are
two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions
of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss. _Unless, therefore, the
heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot
but be miserable._ Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing for
ever partly with God and partly against Him: we must either be capable
by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be
incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for a while "not
impute our trespasses to us," that is, He may interpose some temporary
barrier between sin and its attendant pain. _For in the Eternal Idea
of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive
states_, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others
that are good, _but as one indivisible object of these almost
divisible modes_, and that either in accordance with His own nature,
or in opposition to it....

Before the Gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have
this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ
has excited our love for Him by showing unutterable love for us; now
that we know Him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts,
feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become
possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to
become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of
God's person: in loving Him we are sure we are in a state of readiness
to love the Father, whom we see, He tells us, when we see Him. Nor is
this all: the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as
virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards
Christ we have become blended with His being, the beams of eternal
love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in
Him, and their returning flashes of love out of His personality will
carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become
confused with His, and so shall we be one with Christ, and through
Christ with God. Thus, then, we see the great effect of the
Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned, _was to render human
love for the Most High a possible thing_. The law had said, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength"; and could men have lived by law, "which is
the strength of sin," verily righteousness and life would have been by
that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin,
that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that
Redemption (_i.e._, what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) is
universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but
man's own will; that indeed is in the power of God's election, with
whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as
Christ is concerned, His death was for all, since His intentions and
affections were equally directed to all, and "none who come to Him
will He in any wise cast out."

I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties.
Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustine says, "pulchritudo tam
antiqua"; but he adds, "tam nova," for it is capable of presenting to
every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine which in my
judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine, _the
doctrine of personal love for a personal God_, is assuredly no
novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church.
Many are the forms of anti-christian heresy, which for a season have
depressed and obscured that principle of life, but its nature is
conflictive and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its
pomp of systematized errors, nor the worst apostasy of latitudinarian
Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to
age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love,
believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to
keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for
Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing
better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish
darkness of unregenerate man.

The following is from the Review of Tennyson's Poems; we do not know that during the lapse of years anything better has been said:

Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his conceptions,
to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty tree, and may shoot up
far beyond our grasp, but its roots are in daily life and experience.
Every bosom contains the elements of those complex emotions which the
artist feels, and every head can, to a certain extent, go over in
itself the process of their combination, so as to understand his
expressions and sympathize with his state. _But this requires
exertion_; more or less, indeed, according to the difference of
occasion, but always some degree of exertion. For since the emotions
of the poet during composition follow a regular law of association, it
follows that to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect
of the whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on
that which preceded, it is absolutely necessary _to start from the
same point_, _i.e._, clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of
the poet's mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions
are arranged. _Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by
the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously,
and according to indolent impulse!_

Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of
Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate emotion, which in former times
were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an extensive empire
over the feelings of men, were now restrained within separate spheres
of agency. The whole system no longer worked harmoniously, and by
intrinsic harmony acquired external freedom; but there arose a violent
and unusual action in the several component functions, each for
itself, all striving to reproduce the regular power which the whole
had once enjoyed. _Hence the melancholy which so evidently
characterizes the spirit of modern poetry_; hence that return of the
mind upon itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies
rather than community of interest. _In the old times the poetic
impulse went along with the general impulse of the nation._

One of the faithful Islâm, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we
are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of
Nature with the _eruditus oculus_, and his ear has a fairy fineness.
There is _a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty_, which
throws a charm over his impassioned song more easily felt than
described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We
think that he has _more definiteness and roundness of general
conception_ than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from
blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author
imitates nobody; _we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the
individual form of this or that writer_. His thoughts bear no more
resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or
Calderon, Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive
excellences of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination,
and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of
embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather modes of character,
with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of
the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the
predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by
assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of
objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them
_fused_, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong
emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite
modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of
the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought,
implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of
tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a
set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding,
_rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart_.

What follows is justly thought and well said:

And is it not a noble thing that the English tongue is, as it were,
the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties
converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength
with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some,
I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what
unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funereal praises over the
grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder,
are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred,
sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their
regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to
the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base
of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared the soil from
which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our British oak, must be
derived, I am yet proud to confess that I look with sentiments more
exulting and more reverential to the bonds by which the law of the
universe has fastened me to my distant brethren of the same Caucasian
race; to the privileges which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North,
share in common with climates imparadized in perpetual summer, to the
universality and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which,
while it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of
peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into
communion with humanity at large; and, in the "sublimer spirit" of the
Poet, to make us feel

That God is everywhere--the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the world our home.

What nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!

But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer, _as to the
general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that
energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious
repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates_.

Every one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It displays an intimate knowledge both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much in it suited to our present need:

_I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the
critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of
art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the
spirit of mechanical philosophy_, as it is fairer in appearance, and
more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and
delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very
minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society,
and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However
precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing
along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such
schemes of belief as make these the prominent objects, _there will
always be in reserve a force of antagonistic opinion, strengthened by
opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles
which are despised or forgotten by the majority_. These men _are
secured by natural temperament_ and peculiar circumstances from
participating in the common delusion: but if some other and deeper
fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should
speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual
aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living
truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be
made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of
that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all
these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be
successfully practised; I see not what hope remains for a people
against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.

But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely
tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted
by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical
conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot
entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed.
Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can
be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more
ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the
ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the
rare and difficult intuition of beauty. _To raise the many to his own
real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create
energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but
practicable with ease._ If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes
of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and
degenerate will, which "flung from his splendours" the fairest star in
heaven.

_Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the
ways and thoughts of finite humanity._ But until this step has been
taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with
all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature
exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution and the
system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made up the
difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has
made us His children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and
natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we
are, except sin, and can succour those in temptation, having been
himself tempted. _Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement
of a sound ethical system._