Chapter VII: Personal Characteristics (2)

Great as was Pater’s appreciation of nature, and fine as was his perception of the quality and beauty of landscape, it is almost always through a medium of art that he beheld it. Nature is to him always a setting, a background, subordinated to the human interest. The thought that men had laboured, painfully or joyfully, over a building, or a picture, or a book, invested the result with a certain sacredness in his eyes. The nearer that outward things approached to humanity, the more they appealed to Pater. The home, the house, the room, its furniture and decoration, the garden, the pleasaunce, all these were nearer to his heart than nature in her wilder and sterner aspects, because the thought and hand of humanity had passed over them, writing its care and its dreams legibly on cornice and lintel, on panel and beam, on chest and press, on alley and bower, on border and fountain. When, as in “Duke Carl of Rosenmold,” or in “Sebastian van Storck,” he describes the sunny vine-clad country, or the lonely clump on the long hill that seems to summon the vagrant foot thither, or the frozen lake with the fur-clad skaters moving to and fro, it is always with a sense of how such scenes might have been painted. It was always nature seen through the eye of the artist rather than in the mind of the poet. There is little sense of expanse or largeness about these natural touches; they are rather caught at salient points, in glimpses and vignettes, grouped and isolated. It may be observed how rarely he alludes to natural sounds; these visions seem to be seen in a reflective silence, recorded and represented by the mind that has stored itself full of minute pictorial impressions. Pater went to nature, not in the spirit of Wordsworth, to exult in the freedom, the width, the tenderness, the energy, the vastness of it all; but rather as a great quarry of impressions, through which he walked with a perceptive gaze, selecting and detaching striking and charming effects, which could afterwards be renewed and meditated over in the home-keeping mind. None of his direct nature-touches, beautiful as they are, are penetrated with quite the same zest and emotion as his descriptions of nature when represented by some master-hand. It was the penetration of nature by human personality that gave it its value for Pater, its significance; and thus it comes about that his descriptions of scenes always seem, so to speak, to have a frame about them. He did not, like a poet, desire to escape from man to nature; but rather to suffuse nature at every point with humanity, to judge of it, to feel its beauty, not as the direct expression of the mind of God, but as it affected and appealed to man.

It might have been imagined that so deliberate and precise a craftsman, with so definite a theory of his art, would perhaps have held on his way producing his careful masterpieces, content to put it on record that he had thought thus, and expressed it just so, content that the beautiful thing should be formed and fashioned, and made available for the use or delight of any that followed the same or a like path among the things of the soul. One could have supposed Pater indifferent to criticism and censure, deeming it enough not to be unfaithful to the heavenly vision. For to him, doubtless, the first and chiefest pleasure lay in the thrilling thought, that thought which sets the writer’s spirit all aglow, leaping into the mind, as it does, with an almost physical shock, and opening up a sudden vista of possibilities; as when a man, walking in a wood, comes suddenly across a ride, and sees the green space run to left and right, with its carpet of flowers, its leafy walls. And next to that first and sacred joy came the delight of the slow and careful conception, tracing the development, restricting the ramification, foreseeing the proportion. Then followed the later joy, the gradual embroidery of the austere outline, the laying of thread by thread, of colour by colour; and then the final pleasure of strict revision, of enriching the close texture, of strengthening the languid cadence, of refining the refined epithet, the eagerness to reach that impossible perfection that seemed to recede even as he drew near.

Yet even to a craftsman thus wholeheartedly intent upon his work, there is a satisfaction in publication which is like the framing of a picture. The book with its white margins, its delicate sprinkling of ornament, its headings and mottoes, all this is the symbol of completion, of an end attained. There is a further delight still in the possibility of becoming thus the companion of the imagined reader; to be held in unknown hands and scanned by gentle eyes; to appeal to kindred natures, kindly and generous persons; the thought of this to one like Pater, who had found so many in the world whom he could love, and to whom human relations had always so deep and sacred a significance, was full of a potent attraction. But one is perhaps surprised to learn that he was also deeply sensitive to adverse criticism; that he felt about the harsh and summary treatment of his books, especially when they were misrepresented or misunderstood, something of what the old Psalmist felt, when he prayed that his darling might be delivered from the power of the dog. There were times when he suffered acutely from the attacks of critics, as when the exquisite and elaborate Essay on “Style” was treated as incomprehensible and affected; when he declared with desolate conviction that his pleasure in writing was gone, and that he could never resume his work. Only those nearest to him knew of these dark moods of discouragement, because he was not one who took the world into his confidence; indeed, to those who were without, his gentle and equable manner seemed to bear witness to a tranquillity of mind, which indeed he sedulously practised, although he never attained the deep serenity of which he was in search.

It is a curious fact that Pater showed no precocious signs, in boyhood and youth, of a desire to write. Those in whose blood stirs the creative impulse, the literary energy, feel the thrill as a rule very early, and cover paper diligently from their first years. But Pater’s family cannot remember that he ever showed any particular tendency to write. He never wrote poetry in childhood, except a few humorous verses, long lost and forgotten; later on he made some verse-translations from Goethe, Alfred de Musset, and the Greek Anthology; and this abstention from the composition of verse is a remarkable fact in the case of one whose prose is so essentially poetical. It is common to differentiate the prose of poets, as in the case of Dryden, Keats, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and others, from the prose of those who have never attempted to write in verse; it is thought that it has a greater precision, a sonorous richness, a more vivid colouring. If Pater had ever practised the art of poetry, it would be easy to point to his prose as a supreme instance of these qualities, because, quite apart from its luxurious prodigality, both of epithet and image, it has a strong, rhythmical, almost metrical movement in places. But, as a matter of fact, his chief characteristics, as a prose-writer, came to him late. As a rule, the makers of gorgeous and exquisite prose have begun by erring on the side of diffuseness and ornament, and have chastened their style into due proportion and lucidity. But Pater’s earliest writings, which seem to have been essays for Societies, have none of the later charm; they tend to be austere, hard, and even dry. Neither did he arrive at his plentiful and magnificent vocabulary, as some writers have done, by the production of large masses of writing that never see the light, in which their hand has learned firmness of outline, and their teeming brain the power of summoning the supremely appropriate word from a suspended cloud of more or less suitable language. His method was far otherwise. At one time he applied himself daily for some months to translating a page of Sainte-Beuve or Flaubert, and this seems to have been his only exercise. His prose steadily grew in volume and depth; and the one serious fault of his writing, the tendency that his sentences have to become long and involved, did not diminish. What he did gain as years went on was a refined and surprising power over words, a power of condensing an elaborate effect into a single haunting sentence which suggests rather than reveals. His work was always the result of much patient and unseen labour; but though he revised carefully and jealously enough in many cases, his richness was not derived in reality so much from these stippled effects, as from the fulness of mind out of which he wrote. Any one who has ever gone over the same ground as Pater, and studied the same authorities, will be amazed to find how conscientiously and diligently the material has all been employed; not by elaborately amplifying detail, but by condensing an abundance of scattered points into a single illuminating hint, a poignant image, an apt illustration. He was entirely remote from those easy superficial writers who generalise from insufficient premises, and bridge the gaps in their knowledge by graceful fabrics of words. All Pater’s work was strongly focussed; he drew the wandering and scattered rays, as through a crystal lens, into a burning and convergent point of light. Not to travel far for instances, the essay on Leonardo is a perfect example of this. The writing is so delicate, so apparently fanciful, that it is only through a careful study of the available tradition that one comes to realise how minute is the knowledge that furnishes out these gemmed and luminous sentences. It is true that his knowledge is not pedantically applied, that he concerns himself little with minute and technical questions of art-criticism; but I conceive that Pater’s attempt was always to discern the inner beauty, the essence of the thing; to disentangle the personality, the humanity of the artist, rather than to classify or analyse the work. And so it comes about that his art-criticism is essentially a creative thing, that adds little to the historical aspect of the development of art, and falls indeed at times into positive error; the training, the severe observation, the cultivated instinct, is there, but it is relegated, so to speak, to an ante-room, while the spirit is led to apprehend something of the mysterious issues of art, initiated into the secret appreciation of beauty, and drawn to worship in the darkened innermost shrine. There is always something holy, even priestly, about Pater’s attitude to art. It insists upon the initial critical training, the necessity of ordered knowledge; but it leaves this far behind; it passes beyond the nice apprehension of eye, the cultivated sense of line and colour, the exact discrimination of style and medium, into a remote and poetical region. Such secrets cannot be explained or even analysed; they cannot be communicated to those that are without; they must be emotionally and mystically apprehended, by the soul rather than by the mind.

It was this secret vision, this inner enlightening, on which Pater had set his heart, and which he sought for urgently and diligently. He loved the symbol, not for itself alone, but for the majesty which it contained, the hidden light which it guarded. It is in this region alone that he seems to wear an absorbed and pontifical air, not with the false sacerdotal desire to enhance personal impressiveness and private dignity, through the ministry of divine powers and holy secrets, but with the unconscious emotion of one whose eyes behold great wonders enacting themselves upon the bodiless air, which the dull and the contemptuous may not discern.

It remains to attempt to indicate Pater’s position in later English literature, and his philosophy, or rather his point of view, by summarising what has already, it is to be hoped, been made clear by analysis.

In literature he practically struck out a new line. The tendency of the best prose-writers of the century had been, as a rule, to employ prose in a prosaic manner. Landor had aimed at a Greek austerity of style. Macaulay had brought to perfection a bright hard-balanced method of statement, like the blowing of sharp trumpets. This was indeed the prose that had recommended itself to the taste of the early Victorians; it was full of a certain sound and splendour; it rolled along in a kind of impassioned magnificence; but the object of it was to emphasise superficial points in an oratorical manner, to produce a glittering panorama rich in detail; it made no appeal to the heart or the spirit, awaking at best a kind of patriotic optimism, a serene self-glorification.

Carlyle had written from the precisely opposite point of view; he was overburdened with passionate metaphysics which he involved in a texture of rugged Euphuism, intensely mannerised. But he had no catholicity of grasp, and his picturesqueness had little subtlety or delicacy, because his intense admiration for certain qualities and types blinded him to finer shades of character. There was no restraint about his style, and thus his enthusiasm turned to rant, his statement of preferences degenerated into a species of frantic bombast.

With these Pater had nothing in common; the writers with whom he is more nearly connected are Charles Lamb, De Quincey, Newman, and Ruskin. He was akin to Charles Lamb in the delicacy of touch, the subtle flavour of language; and still more in virtue of his tender observation, his love of interior domestic life. He has a certain nearness to De Quincey in the impassioned autobiographical tendency, the fondness for retrospect, which Pater considered the characteristic of the poetical temperament. He is akin to Newman in respect of the restraint, the economy of effect, the perfect suavity of his work; but none of these probably exerted any very direct influence upon him. Ruskin perhaps alone of the later prose-writers had a permanent effect on the style of Pater. He learnt from Ruskin to realise intensely the suggestiveness of art, to pursue the subjective effect upon the mind of the recipient; but though the rich and glowing style of Ruskin enlarged the vocabulary of Pater, yet we can trace the time when he parted company with him, and turned aside in the direction of repression rather than volubility, of severity rather than prodigality.

It may be said, then, that Pater really struck out a new line in English prose, working on the principles enunciated by Flaubert in a widely different region. The essence of his attempt was to produce prose that had never before been contemplated in English, full of colour and melody, serious, exquisite, ornate. He devoted equal pains both to construction and ornamentation. Whether he is simple and stately, whether he is involved and intricate, he has the contrast always in view. His object was that every sentence should be weighted, charged with music, haunted with echoes; that it should charm and suggest, rather than convince or state. The danger of the perfection to which he attained is the danger of over-influence, seductive sweetness; the value is to suggest the unexplored possibilities of English as a vehicle for a kind of prose that is wholly and essentially poetical. The triumph of his art is to be metrical without metre, rhythmical without monotony. There will, of course, always be those whom this honeyed, laboured cadence will affect painfully with a sense of something stifling and over-perfumed; and, indeed, the merits of a work of art can never be established by explanation or defended by argument; but to such as can apprehend, feel, enjoy, there is the pleasure of perfected art, of language that obeys and enriches the thought, of calculated effect, of realisation, with a supreme felicity of the intention of the writer.

One does not praise his works as the perfection of style; there is a limpidity and lucidity of prose style—prose as used by Newman, by Matthew Arnold, by Ruskin, in chastened moods,—to which no style that depends upon elaborateness and artifice can attain; but it may fairly be claimed for Pater that he realised his own conception of perfection. The style is heavy with ornament, supple with artifice. It is not so much a picture as an illumination. For sunlight there is stiff burnished gold; it is full of gorgeous conceits, jewelled phrases; it has no ease or simplicity; it is all calculated, wrought up, stippled; but it must be considered from that point of view; it must be appraised rather than criticised, accepted rather than judged.

To feel the charm it is necessary to be, to some extent, in sympathy with the philosophy of Pater. We see in him a naturally sceptical spirit, desiring to plunge beneath established systems and complacent explanations; and this, in common with an intense sensibility to every hint and intimation of beauty, apprehended in a serious and sober spirit; not the spirit that desires to possess itself of the external elements, but to penetrate the essential charm. Yet it is not the patient and untroubled beauty of nature, of simple effects of sun and shade, of great mountains, of wide plains, but of a remote and symbolical beauty, seen by glimpses and in corners, of which he was in search—beauty with which is mixed a certain strangeness and mystery, that suggests an inner and a deeper principle behind, intermingled with a sadness, a melancholy, that is itself akin to beauty.

There is always an interfusion of casuistical and metaphysical thought with Pater’s apprehension of beauty; he seems to be ever desirous to draw near to the frankness, the unashamed happiness, of the Greek spirit, but to be for ever held back by a certain fence of scepticism, a malady of thought.

Yet the beauty of which he takes account is essentially of a religious kind; it draws the mind to the further issue, the inner spirit. All the charm of ritual and ceremonial in worship has for Pater an indefinable and constant attraction. He is for ever recurring to it, because it seems to him to interpret and express an emotion, a need of the human spirit, whose concern is to comprehend if it can what is the shadowy figure, the mysterious will, that moves behind the world of sight and sense.

We can trace the progress of thought in the case of Pater as clearly as it is possible to trace the thought of any recent writer; though reticent and even suavely ironical in talk, he was in his writings at once self-centred and _intime_. His own emotions, his own preoccupations, were absorbingly important to him; yet while he shrank from giving them facile utterance, he was irresistibly impelled to take the world into his confidence. He had none of the frank egotism of Wordsworth, none of the complacent belief in the interest of his revelations of himself; and yet there is no writer that speaks more persistently and self-consciously of his own point of view. He made little attempt to pass outside of it, and hardly disguised what he would fain have concealed. The instinct, indeed, for expression triumphs at every point over the instinct for reticence.

We see the silent, self-contained boyhood, the intellectual awakening, the absorption in metaphysics, and their abandonment, the eager pursuit of recondite beauty, that from the days of his maturity never left him; we see in the candour, the urbanity, the delicate and gentle outlook, the intellectual strenuousness, of his heroes a reflection of his own personal ideal. We see how he was led to trust personal intuitions rather than intellectual processes; to listen rather for the simpler, sweeter message which comes from life, from experience, from sympathy, than to obey the logical conclusions of reason, which indeed arrives so soon at the consciousness of its own limitations; we see that he determined that the function of reason was rather to keep judgment suspended; that it should be applied as a solvent alike to philosophical and religious systems; but that the spirit should not thus be bound; that reason should indeed erect the framework of the house, its walls and doorways—and that then its work was done; while the spirit should dwell within, drawing its strength from the tender observation of humanity, from humble service, from quiet companionship, while it should all the time keep its eyes open to any faintest message flashed from afar, whether it came through glance or word, through book or picture, through charm of form or colour, from tower or tree, from the clear freshness of the solitary dawn, or from the orange sunset dying softly over wide, glimmering fields.

* * * * *

“Behold, this dreamer cometh!” So, with an envious contempt, the petty-minded scheming brethren of the inspired child beloved of God greeted him, as he came in unsuspecting innocence to join them in the field. He was to learn, even in the tender days of boyhood, how heavy a burden that secret knowledge was to be, that inheritance of the inner and deeper sight which could pierce behind the veil of mortality. If he could have foreseen the weary way he was to travel to the calm and prosperous eminence of later years, would he not have hidden the visions which he revealed so guilelessly? Not even the certainty of the honour and comfort of the future would have made amends for the loneliness, the malignity, of the labyrinth which he was so gently and faithfully to thread. This power of inner sight, this perception of the essence of things, must always, it seems, bring its possessor a certain sadness, a certain isolation. The prosperous worldly spirits, that swim so vigorously on the surface of things, have always a suspicion, a jealousy, a contempt, for one who dives deeper and brings back tidings of the strange secrets that the depth holds. But if such clear-sighted spirits go tranquilly upon their way, and utter fearlessly the truth they discern, though the way be difficult and arduous, the honour comes at last, unsought, unprized. And it is well perhaps that the conquest is so hard, because if the victory came at once, with it would doubtless come the relish for the easy, the obvious triumph; but by the time that it arrives, the pure spirit, chastened and refined, has reached a region where the only pleasure that fame brings is the knowledge that the truth has somewhat prevailed. There is no taint of personal complacency, no luxurious yielding to lower satisfactions, nothing but the unstained delight that the mystery, discerned and interpreted, is bearing in other hearts its rich and reviving fruits.

Such is the life that I have attempted to depict. It is the life of one who, through a dreamful and unpraised boyhood, through a silent and undistinguished youth, gradually discerned a principle in things; learned to see, with an impassioned zest, the truth that, in art and life alike, the victory is with those who attain to a certain patient and appreciative attitude of soul; who learn through careful toil, through much sorting of accumulated thought and expression, to discriminate between what is facile, impressive, specious, and what is deep, permanent, sincere. No taste can of course be wholly catholic; it is swayed by instinct, prepossession, and preference. But the point is, in however limited a sphere, to be able to detect with unfailing certainty the true quality of things.

He of whom we speak achieved this art of subtle discrimination, a gift which is shared by dumb and learned connoisseurs; but above this rise a few, who can not only by a trained instinct recognise what is perfect, but who can express their methods and powers so that canons and standards can be formed. Then to but one or two in a generation is given a further gift: the creative, the poetical power to express in language of high and haunting beauty the deepest mysteries of art; who can not only praise in noble and inspiring terms the beautiful thing, the exquisite work, the flashing thought, but can disentangle the very essence of the secret, establish remote and subtle connections, and open, if only for one glorious instant, a door into the inner shrine, showing a vision of awful angels, bent on high service, interpreting the loud crying of mysterious voices, echoing the rising strain that fills the golden-roofed palace, and giving perhaps an awe-struck glimpse of the presence that sits enthroned there.

But not always on these august heights does the haunted spirit dwell. There is a spell unknown to those who live the eager life of affairs, who dwell in crowded cities, or who carry the busy, scheming mind abroad with them into lonelier places; the spell that broods over the wooded valley with its hazel-hidden stream, where the bird sings among the thickets; the spell that lies behind the dark tree-trunks of the grove that bar the smouldering sunset with shafts of shade; that trembles in the green twilight when the stars begin to glimmer, and the winds are hushed. This too, and its appeal to the heart of man, the tinge that it lends to his dreams, the passionate desire to record, to represent, to give permanence of form, to the hurrying moment—all this needs to be interpreted as well.

But here, to the true prophet of these mysteries, the thought that must be caught and touched and given shape, is not so much the mystery itself—for that is dark and not to be apprehended—but the thrill which such visions have communicated to the hearts of other pilgrims, who have fared eagerly and sadly through the world before us, and have passed into the darkness, just leaving, in written signs and pictured symbols, the traces of the passion, the desire, the yearning, that such things have brought them. Such a task as this—this piecing together of personality, this testing of recorded impressions, this imbuing of ancient, half-faded dreams with the sanguine vitality, the eager hope, of to-day, needs one who is not less a poet than a critic. The dreamer that comes thus must not be absorbed in his own fruitful visions, but must be able, by an energy of sympathy, a lucid purity of soul, to enter no less eagerly into the dim and far-reaching visions of other inspired spirits.

INDEX

A

Ainslie, Mr. Douglas, 21, 136, 185.

America, one of Olney Paters emigrate to, 1.

_Amiel’s Journal_ (trans. Mrs. H. Ward), 199–200.

Appleton, Dr. (editor of _Academy_), 21.

_Appreciations_, 12; 1st ed. (1889), 2nd ed. (1890), 33; 119, 122,
147—
“Aesthetic Poetry” (1868), 32, 33;
reappeared (1889 ed.), omitted (1890 ed.), 153.
“Charles Lamb,” 62–4, 78.
Coleridge, S. T., considered as a philosopher, 12–13.
“Feuillet’s _La Morte_,” 122.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost” (1898), 78, 153.
“Measure for Measure” (1874), 153, 154.
“Romanticism” (1876), 64–6, reappeared as postscript to (1889), 153.
“Shakespeare’s English Kings” (1889), 153,
superficial analysis of, 155–6.
“Sir Thomas Browne” (1886), 119–22.
“Style” (1888), 147–53, 209.

_Apuleius, Golden Book of_, 92.

Arnold, Miss Mary (Mrs. Humphry Ward), 21.

_Art, History of Ancient_ (Winckelmann), 29.

_Athenaeum_, 118.

Azay-le-Rideau, 32.

B

Brasenose College, description of, 15–17.

—— ancient ceremonies preserved at, 85.

“Bruno, Giordano” (_Gaston de Latour_), 140, 153.

Bussell, Dr. F. W., devoted companion to Pater, 21;
memorial sermon on, 24; 180–1, 183, 189.

Bywater, Prof. Ingram, 20, 192.

C

Caird, Dr. Edward, 20.

Canterbury, King’s School at, 2, 6, 134.

Capes, Mr. W. W., 20.

Carlyle, Thomas, 213.

Champneys, Mr. Basil, 21, 192.

_Child in the House, The._ See _Miscellaneous Studies_.

“Concert, The” (picture), 50.

Cowper, William, 1.

Creighton, Bishop, 21.

D

Daniel, Dr., 21.

—— Mrs., 21.

Dante (Prefatory Essay to Dr. C. L. Shadwell’s translation of), 159.

_Deffense et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse, La_ (Du Bellay), 45.

_Dialogues_ (Jowett), 56.

_Dictionary of National Biography_, 19.

Dilke, Lady, 37, 198.

E

_Earthly Paradise, The_ (Morris), 35.

Education (English system compared with Spartan theory of), 167–8.

Eliot, George, 192.

_English Poets_ (Ward’s), 12.

F

_Fortnightly Review_, publication of essays in, 32–3; 67, 119, 140,
147, 153.

“France, Some Great Churches in,” 168–9.

G

Goethe, 11, 14, 29, 131.

Gore, Dr., 199.

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 21;
letter to, 32; 54, 189, 190, 202, 205.

_Greek Studies_ (1895)—
“Aegina, The Marbles of,” 76.
“Athletic Prizemen, The Age of,” 77, 168.
“Demeter and Persephone, The Myth of,” 71–2.
“Dionysus” (1876), 67–70.
“Euripides, The Bacchanals of,” 70–1, 200.
“Greek Sculpture, Beginnings of,” 74–6.
“Hippolytus Veiled” (1889), 73–4, 122, 153.

_Guardian_, 48, 57, 118, 119, 204, 206.

_Guenevere, Defence of_ (W. Morris), 33.

H

Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, 176.

Hursley, 4.

I

_Imaginary Portraits_, 73—
“Court Painters, A Prince of” (1885), 122.
Composition of, 124–5, 126.
“Denys l’Auxerrois” (1886), 122, 123, 126–8, 131.
“Duke Carl of Rosenmold” (1887), 122, 130–1, 207.
“Sebastian van Storck” (1886), 122, 128–30, 131, 207.

Italy, 9–10, 32.

J

_Jason_ (William Morris), 35.

Johnson, Mr. Lionel, 21.

Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, 9;
his opinion of Pater’s ability, 54–5, 56, 57, 196–7;
_Life_ of, 54, 56.

K

Keble, John, 4.

_King’s Tragedy, The_ (Rossetti), 87.

Kipling, Rudyard, 205–6.

L

Lamb, Charles, 213.

_Latour, Gaston de_, 92, 140–7.

_Letters_ (Pascal), 173.

_Lettres à une Inconnue_ (Prosper Mérimée), 158.

M

_Macmillan’s Magazine_, 140, 153.

Mallock, Mr., 52.

_Marius the Epicurean_, 46, 82–3, 85–9;
autobiographical impression of, 91–115;
reception of, 118, 162, 199;
quoted, 93–9, 101–2, 104, 107, 108, 112, 114.

May, Mrs. Walter, 2.

_Miscellaneous Studies_, 10—
“Apollo in Picardy” (1893), 123, 132–4.
“Art Notes in North Italy,” 159.
_Child in the House, The_ (1898), 4, 5, 79–82, 89, 122.
_Diaphaneitè_ (1864), 10–11.
_Emerald Uthwart_ (1892), 4, 6, 123, 131, 134–9, 159.
“Notre-Dame d’Amiens,” 168–9.
“Pascal,” 169, 202.
“Prosper Mérimée” (1890), 156–9.
“Raphael,” 159–62.
“Vézelay” (1894), 169.

N

_New Republic_ (Mallock), 52–4; 55; 193.

_New Review_, 159.

_Nineteenth Century_, 168.

O

Olney, 1.

Oxford, 8, 17–19, 23, 138.

P

Paget, Miss (Vernon Lee), 89–90.

_Pall Mall Gazette_, 118.

Pater, Dr. Richard Glode (father), 1;
death of, 2.

—— Miss (sister), 180.

—— Mrs. (mother), 2;
death of, 9.

—— Walter Horatio, forefathers, 1–2;
father, 1;
birth, 2;
mother, 2, 9;
brothers and sisters, 2;
family removes to Enfield, 2;
visits to Fish Hall, 2;
goes to school at Canterbury, 2;
religion, 2, 4, 13;
religious doubts, 173–4,
life, 196–201;
love of symbolism, 3, 36, 85, 196;
reticence, 3, 185;
instinct for expression triumphs over instinct for reticence, 217;
desires to take Holy Orders, 3;
intellectual awakening, 3;
meets Keble, 4;
sensitive apprehension of beauty, 4, 6, 12, 14, 215–6;
seriousness, 164;
Ruskin’s influence, 7;
enters Queen’s College, Oxford, 8;
course of study, 8–9;
takes second-class in Final Classical Schools, 9;
vacations spent in Germany, 9;
tours in Italy, 9, 32;
elected to Fellowship at Brasenose, 9;
goes into residence, 9;
friends, 9–10, 20–1, 123,
their appreciation of, 180–1;
his loyalty to, 186, 192;
early work destroyed, 10;
member of ‘Old Mortality’ Society, 10;
ideal of intellectual and moral sincerity, 10–11;
interest in philosophy, 11, 14;
Influence of Goethe, 11, 14;
first published writing, 12;
beginning of work, 13;
description of college rooms, 17–9;
simplicity of tastes, 18, 19, 117, 179;
habits, 19–20;
as a friend, 19–22, 26;
dislike of responsibility, 23;
deep sense of, 187;
as lecturer, 20, 84;
as Tutor and Dean, 20, 23, 25, 59, 84;
takes house in Norham Gardens, 21;
attitude towards young men, 24–6;
compared to Telemachus, 26;
self-revelation in writings, 27, 170;
essays published in _Fortnightly Review_, 32;
first book produced, 32;
criticism of Morris’s “Defence of Guenevere,” 33–5;
consistency and individuality, 36;
revolt against synthetic school of art-criticism, 37;
perception of music, 44;
definition of success, 47;
art-criticism, 48–9;
a great critic, 158;
writes for _Guardian_, 48;
criticism of da Vinci, 49;
of Botticelli, 50;
style parodied, 52–4;
misunderstanding with Jowett, 54–5;
his view of Jowett, 55–8;
reputation as a talker, 59, 188, 193;
lectures on _Greek Studies_, 67,
publication of, 67–78;
work becomes creative rather than critical, 78;
appearance of “The Child in the House,” 79;
absorbed in _Marius_, 82;
resigns tutorship, 83;
physical appearance, 85, 178, 180;
method of criticism, 87–8,
of working, 89, 123–4;
_Marius_ published, 89,
letters to Miss Paget concerning, 89;
removes to London, 117;
resides at Brasenose during term, 117;
appreciation of France, 117–18;
most fruitful years, 118;
contributes to current journals, 118–19;
essay on Sir T. Browne, 119–22;
at work on _Imaginary Portraits_, 122,
intends to bring out new volume of, 123;
fantastic writing, 126–8,
lack of restraint in style of “Denys l’Auxerrois,” 128;
melancholy introspectiveness, 138–9;
engaged on _Gaston de Latour_, 140;
composition of essay on “Style,” 147;
summary of artistic creed, 151;
ethical base of temperament, 153,
view of end of art, 153,
of value of the play, 154;
skill in dealing with Shakespeare’s works, 154–5;
at work on _Plato and Platonism_, 156,
places this work at the head of his own writings, 162,
aim in, 163;
lectures on Mérimée, 159;
writes introduction to _Dante_, 159;
not a philosopher, 163–5,
epigram on, 164;
development contrasted with Henry Sidgwick’s, 165;
last utterance, 169;
deep significance of essay on “Pascal,” 169–72,
admiration for, 173;
summary of _Pensées_, 173;
settles at St. Giles’, Oxford, 174;
later days, 174–5;
receives Hon. Degree of LL.D., Glasgow, 175;
visits Northern cathedrals, 175;
first serious illness, 175;
recovery, subsequent relapse, death, 176;
buried at Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, 176;
portraits of, 178;
physical strength varies with inner mood, 179;
sensibility, 179;
dress, 179–80;
shyness, 180;
dislike to opposition, 181;
lack of appreciation at Oxford, 181–2,
personal characteristics at, 183–4;
attitude towards the world, 185;
uniform kindness, 186;
aloofness from current thought, 186;
political views, 187;
reason for residence at Oxford, 187;
sacrifice to art, 188;
quality of humour, 188–91;
attracted by cats, 190–1;
as an examiner, 191–2;
anecdotes about, 193–4;
irony, 195;
views on principles of art, 195–6;
admiration for _Amiel’s Journal_, 199;
habits of composition, 201–6;
significant writing, 204;
principal characteristics of style, 204, 215;
typical sentence, 204–5;
did not read Stevenson or Kipling, 205–6;
always regards nature as a background, 206–7;
sensitiveness to adverse criticism, 209;
no precocious desire to write, 209–10;
abstains from verse composition, 210;
late development of style, 210–1;
attitude towards art, 212;
position in later English literature, 212–15;
writing contrasted with Carlyle’s, 213;
as a writer akin to Charles Lamb, 213;
a dreamer, 217–20.

Pater’s friends, 20, 21.

Pater, William Thompson (brother), 2.

Pattison, Mark (Rector of Lincoln), 21, 37, 190, 192.

_Pensées_ (Pascal), 173.

“Philosophers, The Three” (“The Chaldean Sages”), (picture), 50.

Plato, 165, 167.

_Plato and Platonism_, 20, 54, 58,
Jowett’s admiration of, 58;
began to appear (1892), 156; 159;
eventually published (1893), 162; 163–8.

Poe, E. A., criticism of, 23.

_Purgatory_ (C. L. Shadwell’s trans. of), 159.

Q

Queen’s College (Oxford), description of, 8.

R

_Renaissance, Studies in the History of the_ (with “Preface” and
“Conclusion”), 1st ed. (1873), 2nd and 3rd (1877), 32–3; 35,
36—
“Conclusion,” 45,
reason for exclusion from 2nd ed. of _Studies_, etc., 46, 47–8;
principle of selection explained, 37;
Lady Dilke’s criticism of, 37–8; 49–51, 52, 59, 162.
“Aucassin and Nicolette” (“Two Early French Stories”) (1873), 32–3,
38.
“Joachim du Bellay,” 33, 44–5.
“_Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on_” (1869), 32, 41, 42–3, 49, 177.
“Luca della Robbia,” 33, 39.
“Michelangelo, Poetry of,” 32, 39–40.
“Pico della Mirandola” (1871), 32, 38–9.
“Sandro Botticelli, A Fragment on,” 32, 39.
“School of Giorgione, The” (1877), 43–4, 50–1, 66.
“Winckelmann” (1866), 27–31, 45.

_Robert Elsmere_ (Mrs. H. Ward), 57,
review on, 119, 198–9.

“Rossetti, Dante Gabriel” (Ward’s _English Poets_), essay on, 86–7.

Ruskin, John, 7, 51, 163, 185, 214–15.

S

“Shadows of Events” (_Gaston de Latour_), 140.

Shadwell, 2.

Shadwell, Dr. Charles Lancelot (Pater’s lifelong friend), 9, 10 _n._;
as literary executor, 21.

“Solomon, The Judgment of” (picture), 51.

Stevenson, R. L., 205–6.

“Stormy Landscape, The” (“Adrastus and Hypsipyle”) (picture), 50, 51.

“Style,” see _Appreciations_.

Swinburne, Mr. A., 21.

Symons, Mr. Arthur, 21, 123.

T

_Tailor, The_ (Moroni’s), 123.

Telemachus, 26.

U

_Uthwart, Emerald_, see _Miscellaneous Studies_.

V

Verrocchio, 49.

W

Ward, Mr. Humphry, 18,
anecdote touching Pater’s lectures, 20;
Fellow of Brasenose, 21;
description of Pater, 22;
as tutor, 25;
spends summer vacation with, 26;
on Pater as a Fellow, 84, 199.

Warren, Mr. T. H., 21, 159, 174–5.

Watteau, Anthony, 124–5;
Pater’s most ambitious creation, 125, 131.

_Westminster Review_, first published writings in, 12.

_Winckelmann, Life of_ (Otto Jahn), 14.

“Winckelmann,” Pater’s study on, see _Renaissance_.

“Wordsworth,” Study of, 60–2;
review of, 119.