Chapter VII: Part 7

As in describing natural objects poetry impregnates sensible impressions with the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain by blending them with the strongest movements of passion and the most striking forms of Nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost point of sublimity or pathos by all the force of comparison or contrast, loses the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it, exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it, and lifts us from the depths of woe to the highest contemplations of human life.

The use and end of poetry, "both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to Nature," seen through the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth or abstract reason. Those who would dispel the illusions of imagination, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their stead, are not very wise. It cannot be concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to clip the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown and undefined; we can only fancy what we do not know. There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical.

Poetry combines the ordinary use of language with musical expression. As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound. The jerks, the breaks, the inequalities and harshnesses of prose are fatal to the flow of a poetical imagination, as a jolting road disturbs the reverie of an absent-minded man. But poetry makes these odds all even. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. An excuse may be made for rhyme in the same manner.

_Chaucer and Spenser_

These are two out of the four greatest English poets; but they were both much indebted to the early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in some degree, to that school. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer in severe activity of mind. Spenser was the most romantic and visionary of all great poets; Chaucer the most practical, the most a man of business and the world.

Chaucer does not affect to show his power over the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. There is no artificial, pompous display; but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the commonplaces of poetic diction in his time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things narrowly for himself, so that his descriptions produce the effect of sculpture.

His descriptions of natural scenery possess a characteristic excellence which may be termed gusto. They have a local truth and freshness which give the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story, and render the sentiment of the speaker's mind.

It was the same trust in Nature and reliance on his subject which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and patience of Griselda and the faith of Constance. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment than any other writer, except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos and intensity of conception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians.

The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom. It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. He excelled in both styles, and could pass at will from the one to the other; but he never confounded the two styles together.

Of all the poets, Spenser is the most poetical. There is an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and fictions which almost vie with the splendours of the ancient mythology. His poetry is all fairyland; he paints Nature not as we find it, but as we expected to find it, and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination.

Some people will say that Spenser's poetry may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it, on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pikestaff.

Spenser is the poet of our waking dreams, and he has invented not only a language, but a music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like those of the waves of the sea; but the effect is still the same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, from which we have no wish ever to be recalled.

_Shakespeare and Milton_

Those arts which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power have always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in general declined ever after. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dante, and Ariosto--Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it--Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek sculptors and tragedians, all lived near the beginning of their arts, perfected, and all but created them. They rose by clusters, never so to rise again.

The four greatest names in English poetry are almost the four first we come to--Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. There are no others that can really be put into competition with these. Of these four, Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser as the poet of romance; Shakespeare as the poet of Nature, in the largest use of the term; and Milton as the poet of morality. Chaucer describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to be; Shakespeare, as they would be; and Milton, as they ought to be. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, everything.

The peculiarity of Shakespeare's mind was its generic quality; its power of communication with all other minds, so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself. He was just like any other man, but he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar. The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women; and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the mind. His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them.

Chaucer's characters are narrative; Shakespeare's, dramatic; Milton's, epic. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In Shakespeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought in contact with it. Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur.

The passion in Shakespeare is full of dramatic fluctuation. In Chaucer it is like the course of a river--strong, full, and increasing; but in Shakespeare it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms. Milton, on the other hand, takes only the imaginative part of passion, that which remains after the event, and abstracts it from the world of action to that of contemplation.

The great fault of a modern school of poetry [the Lake poets] is that it would reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; or, what is worse, would divest it both of imaginary splendour and human passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakespeare did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both to Nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the moods of their own minds.

Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception of character or passion. Its movement is rapid and devious, and unites the most opposite extremes. He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's, is as sure as it is sudden. His language and versification are like the rest of him. He has a magic power over words; they come winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places. His language is hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His female characters are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakespeare was the least of a coxcomb of anyone that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Shakespeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation; in these respects, as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the muses, a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand warm from the touch of the ark of faith. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet vied with each other in his breast. He thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, and he does say them. In Milton there is always an appearance of effort; in Shakespeare, scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. He describes objects of which he could only have read in books with the vividness of actual observation.

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language, except Shakespeare's, that deserves the name of verse. The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image.

_Dryden and Pope_

These are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry, as the four poets of whom I have already treated were of the natural, and they have produced a kind and degree of excellence which existed equally nowhere else.

Pope was a man of exquisite faculties and of the most refined taste; he was a wit and critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world. He was the poet not of Nature, but of art. He saw Nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by his own. His muse never wandered with safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library back again. That which was the nearest to him was the greatest; the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of Nature. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. Yet within this narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! The wrong end of the magnifier is held to everything, but still the exhibition is highly curious. If I had to choose, there are one or two persons--and but one or two--that I should like to have been better than Pope!

Dryden was a bolder and more various versifier than Pope; he had greater strength of mind, but he had not the same delicacy of feeling. Pope describes the thing, and goes on describing his own descriptions, till he loses himself in verbal repetitions; Dryden recurs to the object often, and gives us new strokes of character as well as of his pencil.

_Thomson and Cowper_

Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets; the colours with which he paints still seem wet. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. He puts his heart into his subject, and it is for this reason that he is the most popular of all our poets. But his verse is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring uphill.

Cowper had some advantages over Thomson, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision of graphical description, and in a more careful choice of topics. But there is an effeminacy about him which shrinks from and repels common and hearty sympathy. He shakes hands with Nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on; he is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back to the drawing-room and the ladies, the sofa, and the tea-urn. He was a nervous man; but to be a coward is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love. Still, he is a genuine poet, and deserves his reputation.

_Robert Burns_

Burns was not like Shakespeare in the range of his genius; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about him. He was as much of a man, not a twentieth part as much of a poet, as Shakespeare. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel--no more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are equal to anything; they come up to Nature, and they cannot go beyond it. His strength is not greater than his weakness; his virtues were greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius; his vices to his situation.

Nothing could surpass Burns's love-songs in beauty of expression and in true pathos, except some of the old Scottish ballads themselves. There is in these a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery; a closer intimacy with Nature, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, "thoughts that often lie too deep for tears." The old English ballads are of a gayer turn. They are adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes.

_Some Contemporary Poets_

Tom Moore is heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth. Everything lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while, over all, love waves his purple light. His levity at last oppresses; his variety cloys, his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight.

Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Moore's is careless and dissipated. His passion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is the passion of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to, all other things. There is nothing less poetical or more repulsive. But still there is power; and power forces admiration. In vigour of style and force of conception he surpasses every writer of the present day.

Walter Scott is deservedly the most popular of living poets. He differs from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of expression. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He is to the great poet what an excellent mimic is to a great actor.

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. His poetry is not external, but internal; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Many of the "Lyrical Ballads" are of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. But his powers have been mistaken by the age. He cannot form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. His "Excursion" is a proof of this; the line labours, the sentiment moves slowly, but the poem stands stock-still.

The Lake school of poetry had its origin in the French Revolution, or rather in the sentiments and opinions which produced that event. The world was to be turned topsy-turvy, and poetry was to share its fate. The paradox they set out with was that all things are by Nature equally fit subjects for poetry, or rather, that the meanest and most unpromising are best. They aimed at exciting attention by reversing the established standards of estimation in the world. An adept in this school of poetry is jealous of all excellence but his own. He is slow to admire anything admirable, feels no interest in what is most interesting to others, no grandeur in anything grand. He sees nothing but himself and the universe. His egotism is, in some respects, a madness. The effect of this has been perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle has never been traced to its source before. The proofs are to be found throughout many of the poems of Mr. Southey, Mr. Coleridge, and Mr. Wordsworth.

I may say of Mr. Coleridge that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius. But his "Ancient Mariner" is the only work that gives an adequate idea of his natural powers. In it, however, he seems to "conceive of poetry but as a drunken dream, reckless, careless, and heedless of past, present, and to come."

I have thus gone through my task. I have felt my subject sinking from under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in nothing. The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every step of the progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or second act. This, however, I could not help.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

In 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes (see Vol. V, p. 87) leapt into fame
by his "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" papers in the "Atlantic
Monthly," then edited by Lowell. His "Professor" and "Poet"
series of papers followed, with hardly less success. In these
writings a robust idealism, humour, fancy, and tenderness are so
gently mixed as to amount to genius.

_Every Man His Own Boswell_

"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'facts.' They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bulldogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalisation, or pleasant fancy? I allow no 'facts' at this table."

I continued, for I was in the talking vein, "This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. They are the talkers that have what may be called jerky minds. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel."

"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady boarders.

"Madam," said I, "all men are bores except when we want them. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop the vibrations as in twanging them to bring out the music. There is this, too, about talking," I continued; "it shapes our thoughts for us; the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it, but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine--if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it."

The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior excellence.

_The Ageing of Ideas_

"I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me. I never wrote a 'good' line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning."

I wish I had not said all this then and there. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me with a wild sort of expression; and all at once she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a sling shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive me!

_The Confusion of Personality_

"We must remember that talking is one of the fine arts--the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult. It is not easy at the best for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them."

The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.

"When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together," I continued, "it is natural that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension."

Our landlady turned pale. No doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellect, and that it involved the probable loss of a boarder. Everybody looked up, and the old gentleman opposite slid the carving-knife to one side, as it were, carelessly.

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

THREE JOHNS

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.

2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike
him.

3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but
often very unlike either.

THREE THOMASES

1. The real Thomas.

2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3. John's ideal Thomas.

"It follows that until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. No wonder two disputants often get angry when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time."

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

_More on Books_

"Some of you boarders ask me why I don't write a novel, or something of that kind. Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends, and I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well. And sometimes I have thought I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write. And, finally, I think it is very likely I _shall_ write a story one of these days.

"I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. When one arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillising and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind.

"How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, 'I hate books!' I did not recognise in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character, and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many who read, with a mark to keep their place, that really 'hate books,' but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it."

_Dual Consciousness_

I am so pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain here, perhaps for years.

"Do thoughts have regular cycles? Take this: All at once a conviction flashes through us that we have been in the same precise circumstances as at the present instant once or many times before."

When I mentioned this the Schoolmistress said she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, sometimes.

The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it. He had just lighted a cheroot the other day when a tremendous conviction came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many times before.

"How do I account for it? Well, some think that one of the hemispheres of the brain hangs fire, and the small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old."

_The Race of Life_

"Nothing strikes one more in the race of life than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. 'Commencement day' always reminds me of the start of the 'Derby.' Here we are at Cambridge and a class is first 'graduating.' Poor Harry! he was to have been there, but he has paid forfeit.

"_Ten years gone._ First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. 'Cassock,' a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest. 'Meteor' has pulled up.

"_Twenty years._ Second corner turned. 'Cassock' has dropped from the front, and 'Judex,' an iron-grey, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat--five--six--how many? They will not get up again in this race be very sure!

"_Thirty years._ Third corner turned. 'Dives,' bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast--is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt 'Asteroid,' with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts. 'Cassock' is now taking it easily in a gentle trot.

"_Forty years._ More dropping off, but places much as before.

"_Fifty years._ Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying, or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!

"I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

_Sensibility and Scholarship_

"Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers. There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Be very careful to whom you entrust one of these keys of the side-door. Some of those who come in at the side-door have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play on all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi-tones. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. Be very careful to whom you give the side-door key.

"The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and I think if we could ask Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday we should feel honoured by his company."

_A Growing Romance_

"I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear them."

The schoolmistress turned in her chair and said, "If we should _like_ to hear them--we should _love_ to."

So I drew my chair a shade nearer her, and went on to speak of voices that had bewitched me.

"I wish you could hear my sister's voice," said the schoolmistress.

"If it is like yours it must be a pleasant one," said I.

Lately she has been walking early and has brought back roses in her cheeks. I love the damask rose best of all flowers.

Our talk had been of trees, and I had been comparing the American and the English elms in the walk we call the Mall. "Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after breakfast?" I said to the schoolmistress.

I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed. On the contrary, she turned a little bit pale, but smiled brightly, and said, "Yes, with pleasure." So she went to fetch her bonnet, and the old gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes, and said he wished he was a young fellow.

"This is the shortest way," she said, as we came to the corner.

"Then we won't take it," said I.

When we reached the school-room door the damask roses were so much heightened in colour by exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every morning.

I have been low-spirited and listless lately. It is coffee, I think. I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted. There are inscriptions on our hearts never seen except at dead low-tide. And there is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription.

I am not going to say which I like best, the seashore or the mountains. The one where your place is, is the best for you; but this difference there is--you can domesticate mountains. The sea is feline. It licks your feet, its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence.

"If I thought I should ever see the Alps!" said the schoolmistress.

"Perhaps you might some time or other," I said.

"It is not very likely," she answered.

_Tableau._ Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the foreground, two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman--oh--ah--yes!--the other a lady, leaning on his shoulder. (The reader will understand this was an internal, private, subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the background of my own consciousness.)

* * * * *

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favourable on her health. I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. Better too few words from the woman we love than too many; while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks she works for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men, therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.

_Nature's Patient Advance_

I don't know anything sweeter than the leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or so of earth which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-tops and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, "What are these people about?" And the small herbs look up and whisper back, "We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait until the night wind steals to them and whispers, "Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the great city--one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marble over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone, where nothing but a man is buried--and there they grow, looking down on the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery railings.

Listen to them when there is only a light breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other, "Wait awhile." The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs, "Wait awhile." By and by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants--the smaller tribes always in front--saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have camped in the market-place. Wait long enough, and you will find an old doting oak hugging in its yellow underground arms a huge worn block that was the cornerstone of the State-house. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature!

_The Long Path_

It was in talking of life that the schoolmistress and I came nearest together. I thought I knew something about that. The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before it. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptised her. Yet as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness that was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love.

I never addressed a word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed as if we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but somehow I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon--with the condition of being released if circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about this, of course, as yet.

It was on the Common that we were walking. The boulevard of the Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs across the whole length of the Common. We called it the "long path," and were fond of it.

I felt very weak indeed--though of a tolerably robust habit--as we came opposite to the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice, without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, "Will you take the long path with me?" "Certainly," said the schoolmistress, "with much pleasure." "Think," I said, "before you answer. If you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more."

The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by--the one you may still see close by the gingko-tree. "Pray sit down," I said.

"No, no," she answered softly; "I will walk the _long path_ with you!"

The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm-in-arm, about the middle of the long path, and said very charmingly to us, "Good-morning, my dears!"

LA BRUYÈRE

Characters

Jean de la Bruyère was born in Paris, in August, 1645. He studied
law and became a barrister, but at the age of twenty-eight gave
up that profession, which did not agree with his tendencies
to meditation and his scrupulous mind. In 1673, he bought the
office of Treasurer of the Finances, and led an independent and
studious life. In 1684, he became a tutor to the Duc de Bourbon,
grandson of the great Condé, and continued to reside in the Condé
household until his death in 1696. In the "Caractères," which
first appeared in 1688, La Bruyère has recorded his impressions
of men. In 1687 the manuscript was handed to Michallet, a
publisher in whose shop La Bruyère spent many hours every week.
"Will you print this?" asked the author. "I don't know whether
it will be to your advantage; but should it prove a success,
the money will be for my dear friend, your little daughter."
The sale of the book produced over $40,000. When La Bruyère was
elected a member of the French Academy, his enemies declared
that the "Characters" consisted of satirical portraits of
leading personalities, and "keys" to the portraits were widely
circulated. The pen sketches, however, are not only applicable to
that period, but to every age.

_I.--On Men and Books_

All has been said, and one comes too late after the seven thousand years during which men have existed--and thought. All that one can do is to think and speak rightly, without attempting to force one's tastes and feelings upon others.

Mediocrity in poetry, music, painting, and oratory is unbearable.

There is in art a certain degree of perfection, as there is in Nature an ideal point of matureness. To go beyond, or to remain below that degree is faulty.

The ability of a writer consists mainly in giving good definitions and apt descriptions. The superiority of Moses, Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Horace resides in the beauty of their expressions and images. One has to express the truth to write in a natural, powerful, and refined manner.

It has taken centuries for men to return to the ideal of the ancients and to all that is simple and natural.

We feed on the classics and the able, modern authors. Then, when we become authors ourselves, we ill-use our masters, like those children who, strengthened by the milk they have suckled, beat their nurses.

Read your works to those who are able to criticise and appreciate them. A good and careful writer often finds that the expression he had so long looked for was most simple and natural, and one which ought to have occurred to him at once and without effort.

The pleasure there is in criticising takes from us the joy of being moved by that which is really beautiful.

Arsène, from the top of his mind, looks down upon humanity; and, owing to the distance from which he sees men, is almost frightened at their smallness. He is so filled with his own sublime thoughts that he hardly finds time to deliver a few precious oracles.

Théocrine knows things which are rather useless; his ideas are always strange, his memory always at work. He is a supercilious dreamer, and always seems to laugh at those whom he considers as his inferiors. I read my book to him; he listens. Afterwards, he speaks to me about his own book. What does he think of mine? I told you so before: he speaks to me of his own work!

What an amazing difference there is between a beautiful book and a perfect book!

When a book elevates your mind, and inspires you with noble thoughts, you require nothing else to judge it; it is a good and masterly work.

The fools do not understand what they read. The mediocre think they understand thoroughly. Great minds do not always understand every page of a book; they think obscure that which is obscure, and clear that which is clear. The pedantic find obscure that which is not, and refuse to understand that which is perfectly clear.

Molière would have been a perfect writer had he only avoided jargon and barbarisms, and written more purely.

Ronsard had in him enough good and bad to form great disciples in prose and verse.

Corneille, at his best, is original and inimitable, but he is uneven. He had a sublime mind, and has written a few verses which are among the best ever written.

Racine is more human. He has imitated the Greek classics, and in his tragedies there is simplicity, clearness, and pathos.

Corneille paints men as they ought to be; Racine paints them as they are. Corneille is more moral; Racine is more natural. The former, it seems, owes much to Sophocles; the latter, to Euripides.

How is it that people at the theatre laugh so freely, and yet are ashamed to weep? Is it less natural to be moved by all that is worthy of pity than to burst out laughing at all that is ridiculous? Is it that we consider it weak to cry, especially when the cause of our emotion is an artificial one? But the cause of our laughter at the theatre is also artificial. Some persons think it is as childish to laugh excessively as to sob.

Not only should plays not be immoral; they should be elevating.

Logic is the art of convincing oneself of some truth. Eloquence is a gift of the soul which makes one capable of conquering the hearts and minds of the listeners and of making them believe anything one pleases.

He who pays attention only to the taste of his own century thinks more of himself than of his writings. One should always aim at perfection. If our contemporaries fail to do us justice, posterity may do so.

Horace and Boileau have said all this before. I take your word for it; but may I not, after them, "think a true thought," which others will think after me?

There are more tools than workers, and among the latter, more bad than good ones.

There is, in this world, no task more painful than that of making a name for oneself; we die before having even sketched our work. It takes, in France, much firmness of purpose and much broadmindedness to be indifferent to public functions and offices, and to consent to remain at home and do nothing.

Hardly anyone has enough merit to assume that part in a dignified manner, or enough brains to fill the gap of time without what is generally called business.

All that is required is a better name for idleness; and that meditation, conversation, reading, and repose should be called work.

You tell me that there is gold sparkling on Philémon's clothes. So there is on the clothes at the draper's. He is covered with the most gorgeous fabrics. I can see those fabrics in the shops. But the embroidery and ornaments on Philémon's clothes further increase their magnificence. If so, I praise the embroiderer's workmanship. If someone asks him the time, he takes from his pocket a jewelled watch; the hilt of his sword is made of onyx; he displays a dazzling diamond on his finger and wears all the curious and pretty trifles of fashion and vanity. You arouse my interest at last. I ought to see those precious things. Send me the clothes and jewels of Philémon; I don't require to see _him_.

It is difficult to tell the hero from the great man at war. Both have military virtues. However, the former is generally young, enterprising, gifted, self-controlled even in danger, and courageous; the latter has much judgment, foresees events, and is endowed with much ability and experience. Perhaps one might say that Alexander was only a hero and that Cæsar was a great man.

Ménippe is a bird adorned with feathers which are not his own. He has nothing to say; he has no feelings, no thoughts. He repeats what others have said, and uses their ideas so instinctively that he deceives himself, and is his first victim. He often believes that he is expressing his own thoughts, while he is only an echo of someone whom he has just left. He believes childishly that the amount of wit he possesses is all that man ever possessed. He therefore looks like a man who has nothing to desire.

_II.--On Women and Wealth_

From the age of thirteen to the age of twenty-one, a girl wishes she were beautiful; afterwards she wishes she were a man.

An unfaithful woman is a woman who has ceased to love.

A light-hearted woman is a woman who already loves another.

A fickle woman is a woman who does not know whether she loves or not, and who does not know what or whom she loves.

An indifferent woman is a woman who loves nothing.

There is a false modesty which is vanity; a false glory which is light-mindedness; a false greatness which is smallness; a false virtue which is hypocrisy; a false wisdom which is prudishness.

Why make men responsible for the fact that women are ignorant? Have any laws or decrees been issued forbidding them to open their eyes, to read, to remember what they have read, and to show that they understood it in their conversations and their works? Have they not themselves decided to know little or nothing, because of their physical weakness, or the sluggishness of their minds; because of the time their beauty requires; because of their light-mindedness which prevents them from studying; because they have only talent and genius for needlework or house-managing; or because they instinctively dislike all that is earnest and demands some effort?

Women go to extremes. They are better or worse than men.

Women go farther than men in love; but men make better friends.

It is because of men that women dislike one another.

It is nothing for a woman to say what she does not mean; it is easier still for a man to say all what he thinks.

Time strengthens the ties of friendship and loosens those of love.

There is less distance between hatred and love than between dislike and love.

One can no more decide to love for ever than decide never to love at all.

One comes across men who irritate one by their ridiculous expressions, the strangeness and unfitness of the words they use. Their weird jargon becomes to them a natural language. They are delighted with themselves and their wit. True, they have some wit, but one pities them for having so little of it; and, what is more, one suffers from it.

Arrias has read and seen everything, and he wants people to know it. He is a universal man; he prefers to lie rather than keep silent or appear ignorant about something. The subject of the conversation is the court of a certain northern country. He at once starts talking, and speaks of it as if he had been born in that country; he gives details on the manners and customs, the women and the laws: he tells anecdotes and laughs loudly at his own wit. Someone ventures to contradict him and proves to him that he is not accurate in his statements. Arrias turns to the interrupter: "I am telling nothing that is not exact," he says. "I heard all those details from Sethon, ambassador of France to that court. Sethon returned recently; I know him well, and had a long conversation with him on this matter." Arrias was resuming his story with more confidence than ever, when one of the guests said to him: "I am Sethon, and have just returned from my mission."

Cléante is a most honest man. His wife is the most reasonable person in the world. Both make everybody happy wherever they go, and it were impossible to find a more delightful and refined couple. Yet they separate to-morrow!

At thirty you think about making your fortune; at fifty you have not made it; when you are old, you start building, and you die while the painters are still at work.

Numberless persons ruin themselves by gambling, and tell you coolly they cannot live without gambling. What nonsense! Would it be allowed to say that one cannot live without stealing, murdering, or leading a riotous existence?

Giton has a fresh complexion, and an aggressive expression. He is broad-shouldered and corpulent. He speaks with confidence. He blows his nose noisily, spits to a great distance, and sneezes loudly. He sleeps a great deal, and snores whenever he pleases. When he takes a walk with his equals he occupies the centre; when he stops, they stop; when he advances again, they do the same. No one ever interrupts him. He is jovial, impatient, haughty, irritable, independent. He believes himself witty and gifted. He is rich.

Phédon has sunken eyes. He is thin, and his cheeks are hollow. He sleeps very little. He is a dreamer, and, although witty, looks stupid. He forgets to say what he knows, and when he does speak, speaks badly. He shares the opinion of others; he runs, he flies to oblige anyone; he is kind and flattering. He is superstitious, scrupulous, and bashful. He walks stealthily, speaks in a low voice, and takes no room. He can glide through the densest crowd without effort. He coughs, and blows his nose inside his hat, and waits to sneeze until he is alone. He is poor.

_III.--On Men and Manners_

Paris is divided into a number of small societies which are like so many republics. They have their own customs, laws, language, and even their own jokes.

One grows up, in towns, in a gross ignorance of all that concerns the country. City-bred men are unable to tell hemp from flax, and wheat from rye. We are satisfied as long as we can feed and dress.