Chapter XI: Part 11

Although the chiefs regulate affairs of minor import, the whole nation deliberates concerning matters of higher consequence, the chiefs afterwards discussing the public decision. The assemblies gather leisurely, for sometimes many do not arrive for two or three days. The priests enjoin silence, and on them is devolved the prerogative of correction. The chiefs are heard according to precedence, or age, or nobility, or warlike celebrity, or eloquence. Ability to persuade has more influence than authority to command. Inarticulate murmurs express displeasure at a proposition, pleasure is indicated by the brandishing of javelins and the clashing of arms.

Punishments vary with the character of crime. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; cowards, sluggards, and vicious women are smothered in bogs. Fines, to be paid in horses or cattle, are exacted for lighter offences, part of the mulct being awarded to the party wronged, part to the chief.

The Germans transact no business without carrying arms, but no man thus bears weapons till the community has tested his capacity to wield them. When the public approval has been signified, the youth is invested in the midst of the assembly by his father or other relative with a shield and javelin.

Their chief distinction is to be constantly surrounded by a great band of select young men, for their honour in peace and their help in warfare.

In battle it is disgraceful to a chief to be surpassed in feats of bravery, and it is an indelible reproach to his followers to return alive from a conflict in which their prince has been slain. The chief fights for victory, his followers fight for him. The Germans are so restless that they cannot endure repose, and thus many of the young men of rank, if their own tribe is tranquil, quit it for a community which happens to be engaged in war. In place of pay the retainers are supplied with daily repasts, grossly prepared, but always profuse.

_III.--Domestic Customs of the Germans_

Intervals of peace are not much devoted to the chase by the Germans, but rather to indolence, to sleep, and to feasting. Many surrender themselves entirely to sloth and gluttony, the cares of house, lands, and possessions being left to the wives. It is an astonishing paradox that in the same men should co-exist so much delight in idleness and so great a repugnance to tranquil life.

The Germans do not dwell in cities, and endure no contiguity in their abodes, inhabiting spots distinct and apart, just as they fancy, a fountain, a grove, or a field. Their villages consist of houses arranged in opposite rows, not joined together as are ours. Each is detached, with space around, and mortar and tiles are unknown. Many, in winter, retreat to holes dug in the ground, to which they convey their grain.

The laws of matrimony are strictly observed, and polygamy is rarely practised among the Germans. The dowry is not brought by the wife, but by the husband. Conjugal infidelity is exceedingly rare, and is instantly punished. In all families the children are reared without clothing, and thus grow into those physical proportions which are so wonderful to look upon. They are invariably suckled by their mothers, never being entrusted to nursemaids. The young people do not hasten to marry, and thus the robust vigour of the parents is inherited by their offspring.

No nation was ever more noted for hospitality. It is esteemed inhuman to refuse to admit to the home any stranger whatever. Every comer is willingly received and generously feasted. Hosts and guests delight in exchanging gifts. To continue drinking night and day is no reproach to any man. Quarrels through inebriety are very frequent, and these often result in injuries and in fatalities. But likewise, in these convivial feasts they usually deliberate about effecting reconciliation between those who are at enmity, and also about forming affinities, the election of chiefs, and peace and war.

Slaves gained in gambling with dice are exchanged in commerce to remove the shame of such victories. Of their other slaves each has a dwelling of his own, his lord treating him like a tenant, exacting from him an amount of grain, or cattle, or cloth. Thus their slaves are not subservient as are ours. For they do not perform services in the households of their masters, these duties falling to the wives and children of the family. Slaves are rarely seen in chains or punished with stripes, though in the heat of passion they may sometimes be killed.

Usury and borrowing at interest are unknown. The families every year shift on the spacious plains, cultivating fresh allotments of the soil. Only corn is grown, for there is no inclination to expend toil proportionate to the capacity of the lands by planting orchards, or enclosing meadows, or watering gardens.

Their funerals are not ostentatious, neither apparel nor perfumes being accumulated on the pile, though the arms of the deceased are thrown into the fire. Little demonstration is made in weeping or wailing, but the grief endures long. So much concerning the customs of the whole German nation.

_IV.--Tribes of the West and North_

I shall now describe the institutions of the several tribes, as they differ from one another, giving also an account of those who from thence removed, migrating to Gaul. That the Gauls were more powerful in former times is shown by that prince of authors, the deified Julius Cæsar. Hence it is probable that they have passed into Germany.

The region between the Hercynian forest and the rivers Maine and Rhine was occupied by the Helvetians, as was that beyond it by the Boians, both Gallic tribes. The Treveri and Nervii fervently aspire to the reputation of descent from the Germans, and the Vangiones, Triboci, and Nemetes, all dwelling by the Rhine, are certainly all Germans. The Ubii are ashamed of their origin and delight to be called Agrippinenses, after the name of the founder of the Roman colony which they were judged worthy of being constituted.

The Batavi are the bravest of all these nations. They inhabit a little territory by the Rhine, but possess an island on it. Becoming willingly part of the Roman empire, they are free from all impositions and pay no tribute, but are reserved wholly for wars, precisely like a magazine of weapons and armour. In the same position are the Mattiaci, living on the opposite banks and enjoying a settlement and limits of their own, while they are in spirit and inclination attached to us.

Beginning at the Hercynian forest are the Catti, a robust and vigorous people, possessed also of much sense and ability. They are not only singularly brave, but are more skilled in the true art of war than other Germans.

Near the Catti were formerly dwelling the Bructeri, in whose stead are now settled the Chamani and the Angrivarii, by whom the Bructeri were expelled and almost exterminated, to the benefit of us Romans. May the gods perpetuate among these nations their mutual hatred, since fortune befriends our empire by sowing strife amongst our foes!

The country of the Frisii, facing that of the Angrivarii and the Chamani, is divided into two sections, called the greater and the lesser, which both extend along the Rhine to the ocean.

Hitherto I have been describing Germany towards the west. Northward it stretches with an immense compass. The great tribe of the Chauci occupy the whole region between the districts of the Frisii and of the Catti. These Chauci are the noblest people of all the Germans. They prefer to maintain their greatness by justice rather than by violence, seeking to live in tranquillity, and to avoid quarrels with others.

By the side of the Chauci and the Catti dwell the Cherusci, a people who have degenerated in both influence and character. Finding no enemy to stimulate them, they were enfeebled by too lasting a peace, and whereas they were formerly styled good and upright, they are now called cowards and fools, having been subdued by the Catti. In the same winding tract live the Cimbri, close to the sea, a tribe now small in numbers but great in fame for many monuments of their old renown. It was in the 610th year of Rome, Cæcilius Metellus and Papirius Carbo being consuls, that the first mention was made of the arms of the Cimbri. From that date to the second consulship of the Emperor Trajan comprehends an interval of nearly 210 years; so long a period has our conquest of Germany occupied. In so great an interval many have been the disasters on both sides.

Indeed, not from the Samnites, or from the Carthaginians, or from the people of Spain, or from all the tribes of Gaul, or even from the Parthians, have we received more checks or encountered more alarms. For the passion of the Germans for liberty is more indomitable than that of the Arsacidæ. What has the power of the East to lay to our dishonour? But the overthrow and abasement of Crassus, and the loss by the Romans of five great armies, all commanded by consuls, have to be laid to the account of the Germans. By the Germans, also, even the Emperor Augustus was deprived of Varus and three legions.

Only with great difficulty and the loss of many men were the Germans defeated by Caius Marius in Italy, or by the deified Julius Cæsar in Gaul, or by Drusus, or Tiberius, or Germanicus in their native territories. And next, the strenuous menaces of Caligula against these foes ended in mockery and ridicule. Afterwards, for a season they were quiet, till, tempted to take advantage of our domestic schisms and civil wars, they stormed and seized the winter entrenchments of our legions, and attempted the conquest of Gaul. Though they were once more repulsed, our success was rather a triumph than an overwhelming victory.

_V.--The Great Nation of the Suevi_

Next I must refer to the Suevi, who are not, like the Catti, a homogeneous people, but are divided into several tribes, all bearing distinct names, although they likewise are called by the generic title of Suevi. They occupy the larger part of Germany. From other Germans they are distinguished by their peculiar fashion of twisting their hair into a knot, this also marking the difference between the freemen and their slaves. Of all the tribes of the Suevi, the Semnones esteem themselves to be the most ancient and the noblest, their faith in their antiquity being confirmed by the mysteries of their religion. Annually in a sacred grove the deputies of each family clan assemble to repeat the rites practised by their ancestors. The horrible ceremonies commence with the sacrifice of a man. Their tradition is that at this spot the nation originated, and that here the supreme deity resides. The Semnones inhabit a hundred towns, and by their superior numbers and authority dominate the rest of the Suevi.

On the contrary, the Langobardi are ennobled by the paucity of their number, for, though surrounded by powerful tribes, they assert their superiority by their valour and skill instead of displaying obsequiousness. Next come the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Angli, the Varini, the Eudoses, the Suardones and the Nuithones, all defended by rivers or forests.

These are marked by no special characteristics, excepting the common worship of the goddess Nerthum, or Mother Earth, of whom they believe that she not only intervenes in human affairs, but also visits the nations. In a certain island of the sea is a wood called Castum. Here is kept a chariot sacred to the goddess, covered with a curtain, and permitted to be touched only by her priest, who perceives her whenever she enters the holy vehicle, and with deepest veneration attends the motion of the chariot, which is always drawn by yoked cows. Till the same priests re-conducts the goddess to her shrine, after she has grown weary of intercourse with mortals, feasts and games are held with great rejoicings, no arms are touched, and none go to war. Slaves wash the chariot and curtains in a sacred lake, and, if you will believe it, the goddess herself; and forthwith these unfortunate beings are doomed to be swallowed up in the same lake.

This portion of the Suevian territory stretches to the centre of Germany. Next adjoining is the district of the Hermunduri (I am now following the course of the Danube as I previously did that of the Rhine), a tribe faithful to the Romans. To them, accordingly, alone of all the Germans, is commerce permitted. They travel everywhere at their own discretion. When to others we show nothing more than our arms and our encampments, to this people we open our houses, as to men who are not longing to possess them. The Elbe rises in the territory of the Hermunduri.

_VI.--The Tribes of the Frontier_

Near the Hermunduri reside the Narisci, and next the Marcomanni and the Quadi, the former being the more famed for strength and bravery, for it was by force that they acquired their location, expelling from it the Boii. Now, here is, as it were, the frontier of Germany, as far as it is washed by the Danube. Not less powerful are several tribes whose territories enclose the lands of those just named--the Marsigni, the Gothini, the Osi, and the Burii. The Marsigni in speech and dress resemble the Suevi; but as the Gothini speak Gallic, and the Osi the Pannonian language, and as they endure the imposition of tribute, it is manifest that neither of these peoples are Germans.

Upon them, as aliens, tribute is imposed, partly by the Sarmatæ, partly by the Quadi, and, to deepen their disgrace, the Gothini are forced to labour in the iron mines. Little level country is possessed by all these several tribes, for they are located among mountainous forest regions, Suevia being parted by a continuous range of mountains, beyond which live many nations. Of these, the most numerous and widely spread are the Lygii. Among others, the most powerful are the Arii, the Helveconæ, the Manimi, the Elysii, and the Naharvali.

The Arii are the most numerous, and also the fiercest of the tribes just enumerated. They carry black shields, paint their bodies black, and choose dark nights for engaging in battle. The ghastly aspect of their army strikes terror into their foes, for in all battles the eyes are vanquished first. Beyond the Lygii dwell the Gothones, ruled by a king, and thus held in stricter subjection than the other German tribes, yet not so that their liberties are extinguished. Immediately adjacent are the Rugii and the Lemovii, dwelling by the coast. The characteristic of both is the use of a round shield and a short sword.

Next are the Suiones, a seafaring community with very powerful fleets. The ships differ in form from ours in possessing prows at each end, so as to be always ready to row to shore without turning. They are not propelled by sails, and have no benches of oars at the sides. The rowers ply in all parts of the ship alike, and change their oars from place to place according as the course is shifted hither and thither. Great homage is paid among them to wealth; they are governed by a single chief, who exacts implicit obedience. Arms are not used by these people indiscriminately, as by other German tribes. Weapons are shut up under the care of a slave. The reason is that the ocean always protects the Suiones from their foes, and also that armed bands, when not employed, grow easily demoralised.

Beyond the Suiones is another sea, dense and calm. It is thought that by this the whole globe is bounded, for the reflection of the sun, after his setting, continues till he rises, and that so radiantly as to obscure the stars. Popular opinion even adds that the tumult is heard of his emerging from the ocean, and that at sunrise forms divine are seen, and also the rays about his head. Only thus far extend the limits of Nature, if what fame reports be true.

The Æstii reside on the right of the Suevian Sea. Their dress and customs resemble those of the Suevi, but the language is akin to that of Britain. They worship the Mother of gods, and wear images of boars, without any weapons, superstitiously trusting the goddess and the images to safeguard them. But they cultivate the soil with much greater zeal than is usual with Germans, and they even search the ocean, and are the only people who gather amber, which they find in the shallows and along the shore. It lay long neglected till it gained value from our luxury.

Bordering on the Suiones are the Sitones, agreeing with them in all things excepting that they are governed by a woman. So emphatically have they degenerated, not merely from liberty, but even below a condition of bondage. Here end the territories of the Suevi. Whether I ought to include the Peucini, the Venedi, and the Fenni among the Sarmatæ or the Germani I cannot determine, although the Peucini speak the same language with the Germani, dress, build, and live like them, and resemble them in dirt and sloth.

What further accounts we have are fabulous, and these I leave untouched.

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

History of English Literature

Two years before the appearance of his "Histoire de la
Littérature Anglaise" Taine had aroused a lively interest in
England by his "Notes sur l'Angleterre," a work showing much
wayward sympathy for the English character, and an irregular
understanding of English institutions. The same mixed impression
was produced by the laboriously conceived and brilliantly
written "History of English Literature." Taine (see Vol. XXIV,
p. 177) wrote to a theory that often worked out into curious
contradictions. His method was to show how men have been shaped
by the environments and tendencies of their age. Unfortunately,
having formed an idea of the kind of literature our age should
produce according to his theory, he had eyes for nothing
except what he expected to find. He went to literature for his
confirmations of his reading of history. Taine's criticism,
in consequence, is often incomplete, and more piquant than
trustworthy. The failure to appreciate some of the great English
writers--notably Shakespeare and Milton--is patent. Still, the
critic always had the will to be just, and no foreigner has
devoted such complimentary labour to the formation of a complete
estimate of English literature. The book was published in 1863-4.

_Saxon and Norman_

History has been revolutionised by the study of literatures. A work of literature is now perceived, not to be a solitary caprice, but a transcript of contemporary manners, from which we may read the style of man's feelings for centuries back. By the study of a literature, one may construct a moral history, the psychology of a people. To find a complete literature is rare. Only ancient Greece, and modern France and England offer a complete series of great literary monuments. I have chosen England because it is alive, and one can see it with more detachment than one can see France.

Huge white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish flaxen hair; ravenous stomachs filled with meat and cheese and heated by strong drinks; a cold temperament, slow to love, home-staying, prone to drunkenness--these are to this day the features which descent and climate preserve to the English race. The heavy human brute gluts himself with sensations and noise, and this appetite finds a grazing-ground in blows and battle. Strife for strife's sake such is their pleasure. A race so constituted was predisposed to Christianity by its gloom, and beyond Christianity foreign culture could not graft any fruitful branch on this barbarous stock. The Norman conquerors of France had by intermarriage become a Latin race, and nimbly educated themselves from the Gauls, who boasted of "talking with ease." When they crossed to England, they introduced new manners and a new spirit. They taught the Saxon how ideas fall in order, and which ideas are agreeable; they taught him how to be clear, amusing, and pungent. At length, after long impotence of Norman literature, which was content to copy, and of Saxon literature, which bore no fruit, a definite language was attained, and there was room for a great writer.

_Chaucer_

Then Geoffrey Chaucer appeared, inventive though a disciple, original though a translator, and by his genius, education, and life was enabled to know and depict a whole world, but above all to satisfy the chivalric world and the splendid courts which shone upon the heights. He belonged to it, and took such part in it that his life from end to end was that of a man of the world and a man of action.

Two motives raised the middle age above the chaos of barbarism, one religious, which fashioned the gigantic cathedrals, the other secular, which built the feudal fortresses. The one produced the adventurous hero, the other the mystical monk. These master-passions gave way at last to monotony of habit and taste for worldliness. Something was then needed to make the evening hours flow sweetly. The lords at table have finished dinner; the poet arrives; they ask him for his subject, and he answers "Love."

There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, and that is a collection of fine narratives, especially when the narratives are all of different colouring. This collection Chaucer gave us, and more. If over-excited, he is always graceful, polished, full of light banter, half-mockeries, somewhat gossipy. An elegant speaker, facile, every ready to smile, he makes of love not a passion but a gay feast. But if he was romantic and gay after the fashion of his age, he also had a fashion of his own. He observes characters, notes their differences, studies the coherence of their parts, brings forward living and distinct persons--a thing unheard of in his time. It is the English positive good sense and aptitude for seeing the inside of things beginning to appear. Chaucer ceases to gossip, and thinks. Each tale is suited to the teller. Instead of surrendering himself to the facility of glowing improvisation, he plans. All his tales are bound together by veritable incidents which spring from the characters of the personages, and are such as we light upon in our travels. He advanced beyond the threshold of his art, but he paused in the vestibule. He half-opens the door of the temple, but does not take his seat there; at most he sat down at intervals. His voice is like that of a boy breaking into manhood. He sets out as if to quit the middle ages; but in the end he is still there.

_The Renaissance_

For seventeen centuries a deep and sad thought had weighed upon the spirit of man--the idea of his impotence and decadence. Greek corruption, Roman oppression, and the dissolution of the old world had given it birth; it, in its turn, had produced a stoical resignation, an epicurean indifference, Alexandrian mysticism, and the Christian hope in the Kingdom of God. At last invention makes another start. All was renewed, America and the Indies were added to the map. The system of the universe was propounded, the experimental sciences were set on foot, art and literature shot forth like a harvest, and religion was transformed. It seems as though men had suddenly opened their eyes and seen. They attained a new and superior kind of intelligence which produced extraordinary warmth of soul, a super-abundant and splendid imagination, reveries, visions, artists, believers, founders, creators. This was Europe's grand age, and the most notable epoch of human growth. To this day we live from its sap. To vent the feelings, to set free boldly on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was "merry England," as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained. It extended widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so expanded. A few sectarians, chiefly in the towns, clung gloomily to the Bible; but the Court, and the men of the world sought their teachers and their heroes from Pagan Greece and Rome. Nearer still was another Paganism, that of Italy, and civilisation was drawn thence as from a spring. Transplanted into different races and climates, this paganism received from each a distinct character--in England it becomes English. Here Surrey--the English Petrarch--introduced a new style, a manly style, which marks a great transformation of the mind. He looks forward to the last line while writing the first, and keeps the strongest word for the last. He collects his phrases in harmonious periods, and by his inversions adds force to his ideas. Every epithet contains an idea, every metaphor a sentiment. Those who have ideas now possess in the new-born art an instrument capable of expressing them. In half a century English writers had introduced every artifice of language, period, and style.

Luxuriance and irregularity were the two features of the new literature. Sir Philip Sydney may be selected as exhibiting the greatness and the folly of the prevailing taste. How can his pastoral epic, "The Arcadia," be described? It is but a recreation, a poetical romance written in the country for the amusement of a sister, a work of fashion, a relic, but it shows the best of the general spirit, the jargon of the world of culture, fantastic imagination, excessive sentiment, a medley of events which suited men scarcely recovered from barbarism. At his period men's heads were full of tragical images, and Sydney's "Arcadia" contains enough of them to supply half a dozen epics. And Sydney was only a soldier in an army; there is a multitude about him, a multitude of poets. How happens it that when this generation was exhausted true poetry ended in England as true painting in Italy and Flanders? It was because an epoch of the mind came and passed away. These men had new ideas and no theories in their heads. Their emotions were not the same as ours. For them all things had a soul, and though they had no more beauty then than now, men found them more beautiful.

_Spenser_

Among all the poems of this time there is one truly divine--Spenser's "Faërie Queene." Everything in his life was calculated to lead Spenser to ideal poetry; but the heart within is the true poet. Before all, his was a soul captivated by sublime and chaste beauty. Philosophy and landscapes, ceremonies and ornaments, splendours of the country and the court, on all which he painted or thought he impressed his inward nobleness. Spenser remains calm in the fervour of invention. He is epic, that is, a narrator. No modern is more like Homer. Like Homer, he is always simple and clear; he makes no leap, he omits no argument, he preserves the natural sequence of ideas while presenting noble classical images. Like Homer, again, he is redundant, ingenuous: even childish. He says everything, and repeats without limit his ornamental epithets.

To expand in epic faculties in the region where his soul is naturally borne, he requires an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, in a world which could never be. His most genuine sentiments are fairy-like. Magic is the mould of his mind. He carries everything that he looks upon into an enchanted land. Only the world of chivalry could have furnished materials for so elevated a fancy. It is the beauty in the poet's heart which his whole works try to express, a noble yet laughing beauty, English in sentiment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, representing a unique epoch, the appearance of Paganism in a Christian race, and the worship of form by an imagination of the North.

Among the prose writers of the Pagan renaissance, two may be singled out as characteristic, namely, Robert Burton--an ecclesiastic and university recluse who dabbled in all the sciences, was gifted with enthusiasm and spasmodically gay, but as a rule sad and morose, and according to circumstances a poet, an eccentric, a humorist, a madman, or a Puritan--and Francis Bacon, the most comprehensive, sensible, originative mind of the age; a great and luminous intellect. After more than two centuries it is still to Bacon that we go to discover the theory of what we are attempting and doing.

_The Theatre_

The theatre was a special product of the English Renaissance. If ever there was a living and natural work, it is here. There were already seven theatres in Shakespeare's time, so great and universal was the taste for representations. The inborn instincts of the people had not been tamed, nor muzzled, nor diminished. We hear from the stage as from the history of the times, the fierce murmur of all the passions. Not one of them was lacking. The poets who established the drama, carried in themselves the sentiments which the drama represents. Greene, Marlowe, and the rest, were ill-regulated, passionate, outrageously vehement and audacious. The drama is found in Marlowe as the plant in the seed, and Marlowe was a primitive man, the slave of his passions, the sport of his dreams. Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, Webster, Massinger, Ford, appear close upon each other, a new and favoured generation, flourishing in the soil fertilised by the efforts of the generation which preceded them. The characters they produced were such as either excite terror by their violence, or pity by their grace. Passion ravages all around when their tragic figures are on the stage; and contrasted with them is a troop of sweet and timid figures, tender before everything, and the most loveworthy it has been given to man to depict. The men are warlike, imperious, unpolished; the women have sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable affection--a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especially. With these women love becomes almost a holy thing. They aim not at pleasure but at devotion. When a new civilisation brings a new art to light there are about a dozen men of talent who express the general idea surrounding one or two men of genius who express it thoroughly. The first constitute the chorus, the others the leaders. The leaders in this movement are Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Ben Jonson was a genuine Englishman, big and coarsely framed, combative, proud, often morose, prone to strain splenitic imaginations. His knowledge was vast. In an age of great scholars he is one of the best classics of his time. Other poets for the most part are visionaries; Jonson is all but a logician. Whatever he undertakes, whatever be his faults, haughtiness, rough-handling, predilection for morality and the past, he is never little or commonplace. Nearly all his work consists of comedies, not sentimental and fanciful as Shakespeare's, but satirical, written to represent and correct follies and vices. Even when he grew old his imagination remained abundant and fresh. He is the brother of Shakespeare.

_Shakespeare_

Only this great age could have cradled such a child as Shakespeare. What soul! What extent of action, and what sovereignty of an unique faculty! What diverse creations, and what persistence of the same impress! Look now. Do you not see the poet behind the crowd of his creations? They have all shown somewhat of him. Ready, impetuous, impassioned, delicate, his genius is pure imagination, touched more vividly and by slighter things than ours. Hence, his style, blooming with exuberant images, loaded with exaggerated metaphors. An extraordinary species of mind, all-powerful, excessive, equally master of the sublime and the base, the most creative that ever engaged in the exact copy of the details of actual existence, in the dazzling caprice of fancy, in the profound complications of superhuman passions; a nature inspired, superior to reason, extreme in joy and pain, abrupt of gait, stormy and impetuous in its transports!

Shakespeare images with copiousness and excess; he spreads metaphors profusely over all he writes; it is a series of painting which is unfolded in his mind, picture on picture, image on image, he is forever copying the strange and splendid visions which are heaped up within him. Such an imagination must needs be vehement. Every metaphor is a convulsion. Shakespeare's style is a compound of curious impressions. He never sees things tranquilly. Like a fiery and powerful horse, he bounds but cannot run. He flies, we creep. He is obscure and original beyond all the poets of his or any other age--the most immoderate of all violaters of language, the most marvellous of all creators of souls. The critic is lost in Shakespeare as in an immense town. He can only describe a few monuments and entreat the reader to imagine the city.

_The Christian Renaissance_

Following the pagan came the Christian Renaissance born of the Reformation, a new birth in harmony with the genius of the Germanic peoples. It must be admitted that the Reformation entered England by a side door. It was established when Henry VIII. permitted the English Bible to be published. England had her book. Hence have sprung much of the English language and half of the English manners; to this day the country is Biblical. After the Bible the book most widely-read in England is the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. It is a manual of devotion for the use of simple folk. In it we hear a man of the people speaking to the people, who would render intelligible to all the terrible doctrine of damnation and salvation. Allegory is natural to Bunyan. He employs it from necessity. He only grasps truth when it is made simple by images. His work is allegorical, that it may be intelligible. Bunyan is a poet because he is a child. He has the freedom, the tone, the ease, the clearness of Homer; he is as close to Homer as an Anabaptist tinker could be to a heroic singer. He and Milton survived as the two last poets of the Reformation, oppressed and insulted, but their work continues without noise, for the ideal they raised was, after all, that which the time suggested and the race demanded.

_Milton_

John Milton was not one of those fevered souls whose rapture takes them by fits, and whose inquietude condemns them to paint the contradictions of passion. His mind was lucid, his imagination limited. He does not create souls but constructs arguments. Emotions and arguments are arranged beneath a unique sentiment, that of the sublime, and the broad river of lyric poetry streams from him with even flow, splendid as a cloth of gold.

Against external fluctuations he found a refuge in himself; and the ideal city which he had built in his soul endured impregnable to all assaults. He believed in the sublime with the whole force of his nature, and the whole authority of his logic. When after a generous education he returned from his travels he threw himself into the strife of the times heartily, armed with logic, indignation and learning, and protected by conviction and conscience. I have before me the formidable volume in which his prose works were collected. What a book! The chairs creak when you place it upon them. How we cannot fix our attention on the same point for a page at a time. We require manageable ideas; we have disused the big two-handed sword of our forefathers. If Michael Angelo's prophets could speak, it would be in Milton's style. Overloaded with ornaments, infinitely prolonged, these periods are triumphant choruses of angelic Alleluias sung by deep voices to the accompaniment of ten thousand harps of gold. But is he truly a prose-writer? Entangled dialectics, a heavy and awkward mind, fanatical and ferocious provincialism, the blast and temerities of implacable passion, the sublimity of religious and lyric exaltation--we do not recognize in these features a man born to explain, persuade, and prove.

As a poet Milton wrote not by impulse but like a man of letters with the assistance of books, seeing objects as much through previous writings as in themselves, adding to his images the images of others, borrowing and recasting their inventions. He made thus for himself a composite and brilliant style, less natural than that of his precursors, less fit for effusions, less akin to the lively first glow of sensation, but more solid, more regular, more capable of concentrating in one large patch of light all their sparklings and splendours. He compacted and ennobled the poets' domain.

When, however, after seventeen years of fighting and misfortune had steeped his soul in religious ideas, mythology yielded to theology, the habit of discussion subdued the lyric light. The poet no longer sings sublime verse, he harangues in grave verse, he gives us correct solemn discourses. Adam and Eve the first pair! I listen and hear two reasoners of the period--Colonel Hutchinson and his wife. Heavens! dress them at once. Folks so cultivated should have invented before all a pair of trousers and modesty. This Adam enters Paradise via England. There he learnt respectability and moral speechifying. Adam was your true _pater familias_ with a vote, an old Oxford man, consulted at need by his wife, and dealing out to her with prudent measure the scientific explanations which she requires. The flow of dissertations never pauses. From Paradise it gets into Heaven. Milton's Jehovah is a grave king who maintains a suitable state something like Charles I. The finest thing in connection with Paradise is Hell; and in this history of God, the chief part is taken by the devil. No poetic creation equals in horror and grandeur the spectacle that greeted Satan on leaving his dungeon.

But what a heaven! One would rather enter Charles I's troops of lackeys, or Cromwell's Ironsides. What a gap between this monarchical frippery and the visions of Dante! To the poet of the Apocalypse the voice of the deity was "as the sound of many waters; and he had in his right hand seven stars; and his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength; and when I saw him I fell at his feet as dead." When Milton arranged his celestial show, he did not fall at his feet as dead.

When we take in, in one view, the vast literary region of England, extending from the restoration of the Stuarts to the French Revolution, we perceive that all the productions bear a classical impress, such as is met with neither in the preceding nor in the succeeding time. This classical art finds its centre in the labours of Pope, and above all in Pope, whose favourite author is Dryden, of all English poets the least inspired and the most classical. Pope gave himself up to versification. He did not write because he thought, but he thought in order to write. I wish I could admire his works of imagination, but I cannot. I know the machinery. There is, however, a poet in Pope, and to discover him we have only to read him in fragments. Each verse in Pope is a masterpiece if taken alone. There is a classical architecture of ideas, and of all the masters who have practised it in England Pope is the most skilled.

_The Modern Spirit_

The spirit of the modern revolution broke out first in a Scotch peasant, Robert Burns. Scarcely ever was seen together more of misery and talent. Burns cries out in favour of instinct and joy. Love was his main business. In him for the first time a poet spoke as men speak, or, rather, as they think, without premeditation, with a mixture of all styles. Burns was much in advance of his age, and the life of men in advance of their age is not wholesome. He died worn out at 37. In him old narrow moralities give place to the wide sympathy of the modern man.

Now appeared the English romantic school. Among the multitude of its writers we may distinguish Southey, a clever man, a producer of decorative poems to suit the fashion; Coleridge, a poor fellow who had steeped himself in mystical theories; Thomas More, a witty railer; and Walter Scott, the favourite of his age, who was read over the whole of Europe, was almost equal to Shakespeare, had more popularity than Voltaire, earned about £200,000, and taught us all history. Scott gave to Scotland a citizenship of literature. Scott loves men from the bottom of his heart. By his fundamental honesty and wide humanity he was the Homer of modern life.

When the philosophical spirit passed from Germany to England, transformed itself and became Anglican, deformed itself and became revolutionary, it produced a Wordsworth, a Byron, a Shelley. Wordsworth, a new Cowper, with less talent and more ideas, was essentially an interior man, engrossed by the concerns of the soul. To such men life becomes a grave business on which we must incessantly and scrupulously reflect. Wordsworth was a wise and happy man, a thinker and dreamer, who read and walked and listened in deep calm to his own thoughts. The peace was so great within him and around him that he could perceive the imperceptible. He saw grandeur and beauty in the trivial events which weave the woof of our most commonplace days. His "Excursion" is like a Protestant temple--august though bare and monstrous.

Shelley, one of the greatest poets of the age, beautiful as an angel, of extraordinary precocity, sweet, generous, tender, overflowing with gifts of heart, mind, birth, and fortune, marred his life by introducing into his conduct the enthusiastic imagination he should have kept for his verse. His world is beyond our own. We move in it between heaven and earth, in abstraction, dreamland, symbolism. Shelley loved desert and solitary places, where man enjoys the pleasure of believing infinite what he sees--infinite as his soul. Verily there is a soul in everything; in the universe is a soul; even beyond the sensible form shines a secret essence and something divine which we catch sight of by sublime illuminations, never reaching or penetrating it. The poets hear the great heart of nature beat; they would reach it. One alone, Byron, succeeds.

I have reserved for the last the greatest and most English artist, from whom we may learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest. All styles appear dull, and all souls sluggish by the side of Byron's. No such great poet has had so narrow an imagination. They are his own sorrows, his own revolts, his own travels, which, hardly transformed and modified, he introduces into his verses. He never could make a poem save of his own heart. If Goethe was the poet of the universe, Byron was the poet of the individual; and if the German genius found its interpretation in the one, the English genius found its interpretation in the other.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

"Walden"

Henry David Thoreau, America's poet-naturalist, as he might
be called, was born at Concord, Mass., on July 12, 1817. His
great-grandparents were natives of the Channel Islands, whence
his grandfather emigrated. Thoreau was educated at Hartford, and
began work as a teacher, but under the influence of Emerson, in
whose house he lived at intervals, made writing his hobby and a
study of the outdoor world his occupation. In 1845, as related
in "Walden," he built himself a shanty near Walden Pond, on land
belonging to Emerson. There he busied himself with writing his
"Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and in recording his
observations in the woods. After the Walden experiment he mingled
the pursuit of literature and the doing of odd jobs for a living.
His books, "The Maine Woods," "A Yankee in Canada," "Excursions
in Field and Wood," were mostly published after his death. He
died on May 6, 1862, from consumption. Emerson, Hawthorne, and
Alcott were his warm friends in life, and helped the world
to appreciate his genius. A poet in heart, Thoreau was only
successful in giving his poetry a prose setting, but that setting
is harmonised with the utmost delicacy. No one has produced more
beautiful effects in English prose with simpler words.

_The Simple Life_

When I wrote the following pages, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbour, in a house I had built for myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labour of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

Men labour under a mistake. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it if not before.

But it is never too late to give up our prejudices. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. I have lived some thirty years and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable advice from my seniors.

To many creatures, there is but one necessity of life--food. None of the brute creation require more than food and shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may be distributed under the several heads of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. I find by my own experience a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of voluntary poverty.

_Ideals_

If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past it would probably astonish those who know nothing about it.

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken, concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.

How many mornings, summer and winter, before any neighbour was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! So many autumn, aye, and winter days, spent outside the town trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it. At other times waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths. I looked after the wild stock of the town. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.

My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles.

_House Building_

When I consider my neighbours, the farmers of Concord, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms; and we may regard one-third of that toil as the cost of their houses. And when the farmer has got his house he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. The very simplicity and nakedness of men's life in the primitive ages imply that they left him still a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt as it were in the tent of this world. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten Heaven.

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy, white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, having become better acquainted with it.

By the middle of April my house was framed and ready for raising. At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighbourliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. I began to occupy it on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meantime out of doors on the ground, early in the morning. When it stormed before my bread was baked I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way.

The exact cost of my house, not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually.

_Farming_

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it, chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the first season were, for employment, seed, work, etc., 14 dollars 72-1/2 cents. I got twelve bushels of beans and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. My whole income from the farm was 23 dollars 43 cents, a profit of 8 dollars 71-1/2 cents, besides produce consumed.

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land that I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plough it, and he could do all his necessary farm work, as it were, with his left hand at odd hours in the summer.

My food for nearly two years was rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses and salt, and my drink water. I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food even in this latitude, and that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals and yet retain health and strength.

Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors, but at last I found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, going back to the primitive days. Leaven, which some deem to be the soul of bread, I discovered was not indispensable.

Thus I found I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. My furniture, part of which I made myself, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass, three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying pan, a dipper, a wash bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all, I have pitied him, not because it was his all, but because he had all that to carry.

_Earning a Living_