The article on “The Barrier Kingdoms” was in type before the news arrived of a near prospect of peace. The new aspect of the question will be discussed in our next number.—Ed.

The most important fact developed during the present war unquestionably is the recent treaty which has been entered into between the Western Powers and Sweden. Until this event, it seemed as though the most unscrupulous and open aggression on the part of Russia, and all the assurances of the West, were alike insufficient to arouse into action and life the nationalities most immediately in contact with the gigantic power of the North,—the nations whom, as well as Turkey, the contest most nearly concerns. The brave example of Sardinia was unfollowed; no danger, no encouragement, as it seemed, was capable of rekindling the extinct spirit of patriotism in the races of Europe. This is the less to be wondered at when we recollect the humiliating concessions made by England herself, during the two latest generations of her statesmen, to the power against which she now stands in arms. If England herself, with revenue, resources, and all the essentials of national well-being as ten to one, when compared with Russia,



was unable to resist Russian intrigue, cautious of incurring Russian hostility, and timorously eager at explanation and retractation in every case of actual collision, great allowance is to be made for the hesitation of the weaker nations which lie directly within the grasp and design of the Russian system. This Russian system, which has for its object simply the idea of foreign conquest irrespective of any other consideration, without regard to advantaging the subjugated, or any of the other pretexts under which aggression is usually veiled, and which certainly can introduce no element towards the advancement of human happiness, has hitherto worked its way without molestation or opposition. From the time of Peter it (the sacred idea) has descended as an inheritance from Czar to Czar, from Cabinet to Cabinet, from generation to generation. There has been no system of policy to counteract it, no league, no confederation of Europe, as there should have been, with the express object of antagonizing it. Sweden has been deprived of Finland; Poland has been reduced to a province; Germany has been deprived of the command of the Danube; the Russian eagles have planted themselves within a short march of Vienna and Berlin; while the whole vast German population has become hopelessly Russianized; Georgia has been wrested from the Caucasian district, and the influence of Russia has been suffered to become paramount in the East. We have stood by apathetically watching, where we have not been actively abetting, the interference of Russia in the affairs of Hungary, Greece, Italy, and Armenia and Persia. Yet, notwithstanding these errors, which now stand confessed by the general consent of the nation, it has become evident that Russia has all along marked and prepared against the nations of the West as her ultimate and implacable opposers. The skilful diplomatists who guide the councils of Russia have seen in the active vitality of England and France something beyond the reach of their appliances. All their efforts have been directed to the great end of dividing against one another, of embroiling in foreign quarrel, and so weakening the two nations which they were conscious possessed alone in the earth that national existence unpolluted and perennial, which could serve as a counteracting force to their one idea of conquest and spoliation. England and France have been during the years of peace knitting close the bonds which make them one—bonds which have been felt to exist, and have been acknowledged as interrupted during the years of bitterest hostility. During the forty years of peace, the two nations have been undergoing the same modifying revolutions, even where the process has been most different. Each has been striving after the highest form of social good, each has had a circulation and system independent and its own; the power of revolution, whether revolution has been armed or unarmed, has been to each a renovating power, preventing the necessity of renovation from without. With this integrity



defying the efforts of Russian intrigue, and invulnerable in reality, even when most vacillating and uncertain in foreign policy, it has caused profound astonishment to the Western nations to witness the wilful lethargy or active subserviency of the rest of Europe, Sardinia excepted, since the time when the proclamation of war, so long and studiously avoided, declared the imminent danger of the world from the encroachments of Russia. It is only very slowly and unwillingly that France and England are becoming conscious that they alone are the real champions of law and order against the Autocratic doer of wrong, inasmuch as they alone have been zealous and successful in their endeavours to attain to law and order among themselves.* We must learn as the great fact to regulate our present conduct that we have no one to depend upon but ourselves; that this mighty contest must be conducted on our part without external aid; that we have to create nationalities, and must not expect to find any material of public spirit or patriotism ready to our hands, and that our great triumph will be at the end of the war to present to the nations of Europe the liberty which we shall have won for them.

But in the meantime it is encouraging to find that the exertions which we have already made are beginning to produce good fruits. We shall have something to say on all the nations above mentioned, which are mostly conterminous with Russia, and without exception peculiarly exposed to her menaces and overpowering pressure. It will rejoice the heart of every Englishman that of these nations the first to assert its right to independent national action has been Sweden. Since the time of the establishment of St. Petersburgh on the Neva, the growth of Russia and the decay of Sweden have been almost fabulous. At that time Sweden, “heroic Sweden,” was one of the greatest of European powers. Her population was that most heroic Norseman race which spread itself with irresistible valour over Europe, and from which it is our pride to have descended. Her armies were the most efficient in Europe, and boasted a long succession of unparalleled achievement. She had the entire command of the Baltic Sea, and her hardy Finns were among the best seamen in the world. From the battle of Pultowa down to 1809, when she was compelled by the treaty of Fredericksham to cede the whole of Finland, East Bothnia, and Aland, Sweden has been constantly diminishing, while Russia has been as constantly increasing at her expense. And from the commencement of the present war we have seen with deep grief that it appeared as though the ancient Scandinavian spirit was extinct, had succumbed to the Sclavonic despotism which was oppressing it. Finland, once the nurse of a race of heroes, was known to be alienated from its mother state, and it was feared that the hardy and daring patriotism of the Swede had finally yielded to the corrupting influences brought lavishly to bear upon it. The Swedish treaty has made it appear that these suspicions were ill-founded; Sweden only awaited due encouragement and assurance of the sincerity of the Western Powers, to declare herself in a decisive manner. There cannot be the smallest doubt but that this treaty is the prelude to an open rupture with Russia on the part of Sweden. The conduct of Sweden, we are informed, is looked upon by the Russians with scornful astonishment, so entirely had they come to regard this noble and mighty nation as their subservient tool and vassal. There is every expectation that this accession of Sweden will be the foundation of a union of the Scandinavian nations against Russia. It would be impossible for the latter power to make head against such a union, and its



most probable consequence would be the recovery of the Baltic. The idea is said to be viewed with greater favour in Denmark than even in Sweden and Norway, if indeed it did not originate in that country. To realize such an alliance would be consistent with the soundest policy which the Western Powers can adopt, and herein France and England would have the glory of rekindling the life and greatness which they themselves once received from the North.

The Scandinavian Union, again, is of paramount importance as regards the great question of the Danish Succession. On this point we quote the letter of “A Norwegian,” written to “The Times,” Dec. 31, 1855.

“In the treaty that was concluded in 1852, under the auspices of England, France, and Russia, a relation of the Czar was made successor to the throne of Denmark, and thus the Russian Emperor has not only paved the way for exercising a powerful influence on the government of Denmark, but may by a no means impossible concurrence of events become himself the heir to a portion of the territory. This treaty, which was the last but most dangerous in which the Western statesmen allowed themselves to be circumvented by Russian diplomacy, has already been deeply deplored, and not the least by its originators. The Danish people received it with disgust, and it was only acknowledged by the Diet because they did not feel themselves strong enough to oppose the determination of Europe. Let Europe now avail herself of the opportunity that offers of correcting an error into which it was led by Russian cunning, by a free union of the three kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, under the flourishing dynasty of Bernadotte. With the possession of the Sound, and the Belts thus secured, the work will be complete. On the decease of King Frederick VII. and his aged uncle, Prince Ferdinand, the male line of the royal house of Denmark will be extinct. It has been rumoured that the King once offered to sacrifice his crown for the welfare of his people, and it is not impossible or inconsistent with the character of this noble and patriotic Prince to anticipate that if he believed that the fitting time had arrived, he would now carry his resolution into effect. Such a step is however by no means necessary to the object proposed.”

This extract will show the form and consistence to which the Scandinavian idea has attained. It is no novelty, and requires no coercion in order to its realization; but is deeply seated in the imagination and associations of the Northern people themselves.

It would be well if there were any prospect of Germany following the noble example of Sweden; but such a contingency can have no place in the reckoning of the allies. The most melancholy fact of the war is the entire prostration of public spirit in Germany. In that king-ridden and priest-ridden land, the finesse and chicanery of diplomacy have been exalted into a perfect science, so that it seems impossible for any one to move except in a well-worn groove of idle ceremony and refinement. All clear and sound views of policy are lost, and anything like real statesmanship is looked for in vain. We regard the keen and subtle diplomatists of Germany as exquisitely skilful manœuvrers at a game, only anxious that the existing mesh of complication may last as long as possible, intent, if possible, upon duping the rest of the world, and regarding the present great struggle as a kind of delicious element, in which they may display their mazy evolutions and disport themselves in strenuous idleness. If any real sense of the danger of their position has been awakened in them by the serious warnings which have been given them, it is in vain to expect any vigour or action whatever from them. The partition of Poland has joined the frontiers of Austria and Prussia with the frontier of Russia, and the two German kingdoms are menaced through the whole line of boundary by a cordon of formidable fortresses. This is alone sufficient to deter these timid powers from adventuring a contest with Russia. But, moreover, there can be little inclination for such a contest from the



nature of the case. If Russia is an arbitrary power, despotic, and given to foreign aggression, Austria is no less so, though on a minor scale. To say nothing of her Italian and Hungarian conquests, or of her growth from a duchy to an empire, attained by unprincipled spoliation of her neighbours, she is deeply implicated in the affair of Poland, she has aided to destroy the barrier which separated her from Russia, and is a sharer in the questionable gains of the transaction. The same thing is true of Prussia; the two are inextricably blended with Russia in the lust and guilt of conquest. Their forms of government are substantially the same, the principles of their foreign policy are identical. The reigning houses, moreover, of Germany, which supply alliances to the royal families of the whole earth, have not, we may be sure, failed to connect themselves most closely by intermarriage with the so-called house of Romanoff, and, as in policy, so in consanguinity, the rulers of Germany are nearly related to Russia. Under these circumstances, and having already had a fair taste of German spirit and policy, it is much to be regretted that the Western powers are permitting themselves to be again made the subjects of a display of German statescraft. What is to be expected from the humble petition of Count Esterhazy at St. Petersburgh? No one in France or England expects anything; it is understood to be a mere farcical exhibition of diplomatic gymnastics, originating, if in nothing worse, at any rate in the timid desire of Austria to appear to be doing something; and it is to be backed by a similar mission from Prussia. Of the value of German mediation we have just had a lesson from our enemy. Russia has declared to us, through Count Buol, that she is no longer averse to the neutralization of the Black Sea, meaning by the term, the withdrawal of our fleets, and the maintenance of a number of Turkish and Russian vessels in those waters, the conditions to be settled between Turkey and Russia herself, without the intervention of any other power. This, which is a deliberate insult, and a fresh provocation to us, is not devoid of a satirical reflection upon German diplomacy. Russia can scarcely be serious in her proposal. Is this the sort of answer which she makes to the timid importunities and proffered good offices of her German cousins?

There is at present no likelihood of a Prussian or Austrian alliance. If in either of those countries there should arise a philosopher statesman, such as Plato has described, one fully acquainted with the particulars of the case, and skilful in the management of business, but at the same time one who has been much in contact with the immutably and eternally true, and is able constantly to refer to the paradigm of truth and righteousness in his own soul as the standard of his actions—if such a man were to arise as administrator of the German powers, then the alliance with Austria and Prussia would be the complement of the great Anti-Russian confederation. The foreign policy of those powers would be altered in principle; and they would consent to the restoration of Poland as a return to a normal state of things. But, as at present constituted, they cannot join us without making war upon their own species, and we must be content to maintain our position unaided by them. This is deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as their co-operation would be a material aid; and, if they could be induced to act, the change in policy to which we have alluded would necessitate itself. Great national changes do not take place at once and suddenly. We ourselves have drifted gradually into the war with Russia, and are perhaps scarcely yet aware of our real position. We represent the principle of restitution, in opposition to the Russian principle of aggression. These are the



two leading antagonistic principles, and this is what is meant in reality, when we call ourselves the champions of civilization. Now, if Austria and Prussia finally proclaim themselves on the side of Russia, they will do no more than openly assert the principle which history declares to have been throughout their spring of action. If, on the contrary, they range themselves with us, they cannot fail to become, by degrees, and in the course of events, assimilated in policy to the other extreme, that is, to what we have called the principle of restitution.

But France and England are not to surrender or abate the idea which animates them in order to secure the evident strategical advantages which the accession of the German states would confer. The question has been asked, querulously, “What are we at war for?” and it has been thought difficult to find an answer. The answer is easy. We are at war for the express purpose of undoing whatever Russia has been doing in Europe and Asia for the last fifty years; and we are at war because we, the allies, are the only powers of Europe free from the scandal of despoiling our neighbours; and in this are evidently fulfilling our destiny. England has always been employed by Providence as the means of overthrowing whatever power has become predominant in Europe, so as to threaten the liberties of other nations. The Spanish Armada, the domination of the grand Monarque, the legions of the first Napoleon, alike found defeat and annihilation at the hands of Englishmen. It will be seen, if we are faithful to our work, that Russian despotism will share the fate of the tyrannies which have perished before. Meanwhile, we may well congratulate ourselves on the noble and worthy allies who are found fighting by our side. France has at length attained, to all appearance, the true and normal position for which she has been struggling ever since her first revolution. The first Napoleon, to whom she then confided her hard-won freedom, betrayed his trust. The revolutionary ardour of France compelled him to launch himself against the ancient despotisms of Europe; but he did so as a conqueror, not as a redresser. Thus it was that he found the power of England arrayed against him, and fell in the shock which ensued. The present Emperor, on the other hand, is found fighting in alliance with England for the protection of the nationalities oppressed by Russia. The method of performing most efficiently the task allotted to the allies indisputably will be to reverse, as far as possible, the process which Russia has observed in her aggressions. A definitive barrier must be erected on every point towards which she has directed her approaches. Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia must be restored to Sweden, and the Scandinavian nations joined together in a permanent attitude of watchfulness against Russia. Poland, if we are to carry out the principle which we profess to have adopted, must be reconstituted on a lasting basis. The Danubian principalities must be assigned to a sufficient government; Turkey must be reorganized; Georgia must be restored to Circassia, and Circassia secured. Of the difficulties connected with some of these proposed changes, we hope to speak more fully upon a future occasion; but at present, we observe, that less than these would be incomplete work, and a compromise. The world ought to have learnt a sufficient lesson already from the insidious advances of Russia towards any object exciting her cupidity. Give Russia a footing anywhere, and you give her everything. Give Russia Finland, and you give her Sweden; give Russia Poland, and you give her Germany; give Russia Georgia, and you give her Persia. The soundest policy is that which excites the most universal opposition to Russia, and leads to the establishment



of the most decisive checks upon her.

The claims of Circassia upon the protection of the West are not less valid and imperative than the claims of the oppressed nations of Europe, and as a campaign for the ensuing year in the regions of the Caucasus and Asia Minor is contemplated as the possible direction of the allied armies, a word or two on this important point will be pardoned. If ever a people earned a right to freedom by heroic exploits, it is the mountain tribes of the Caucasus. For two generations these tribes, under the chieftain and prophet, Mansour, and under his successor, the chieftain and prophet, Schamyl, have combated successfully the undivided military force of the Russian empire. The Georgian Caucasus has been included in the frontier of Russia, but has never been subdued. Year after year has the Russian army gone up to the attack of the strongholds of the mountaineers, and year after year has it returned to its forts baffled, defeated, and diminished. The amount of blood and treasure which the stubborn resistance of these petty tribes, clinging with invincible tenacity to their native rocks, has cost Russia, is incalculable, and will never be guessed at. The Russians themselves own that the Caucasus war has consumed annually twenty thousand of their best soldiers. But they have latterly adopted another system. Instead of marching in force into the interior, they have been content to cut off the Circassians from the sea by a chain of forts, and at the same time to attempt to seduce the fidelity of the tribes, by establishing depôts, at which salt, a necessary of life which is scarce in the Caucasus, and other things, can be conditionally obtained. All this has been of no avail in breaking the morale or the organization of the resistance. The Russians may have succeeded in alluring some of the outlying tribes, and have doubtless caused distress to the rest, but the Anti-Muscovite enthusiasm continues to burn as fiercely as before. In the summer of the year before last Schamyl descended in great strength from his fastnesses, threatened Tiflis, the Russian base of operations, and compelled the Russians to abandon their expedition into Armenia. Here then, in this resistance of the Caucasus, is a fact worthy of the notice of the world. Secluded from the observation of other nations, with no one to witness and chronicle the struggle, without sympathy, encouragement, or assistance, the sea that washes their shores traversed by no keels except those of their enemy; in want of the necessaries of life, without ammunition, exposed to the terrible artillery of Russia, these tribes have for thirty years defied the utmost efforts of the Czar, flung themselves, armed only with the sabre, upon the serried bayonets and devastating grapeshot of the Muscovite infantry; and in this condition have again and again routed, in open fight, the overwhelming numbers brought against them. The whole history of these campaigns will, in all probability, never be known; the few details which have reached us in the narratives of such travellers as Mr. Bell, equal in marvellous and successful heroism whatever has been attributed by romance to the choicest Paladins and Princes of chivalry. For thirty years the struggle of Russia for the Caucasus has been watched with placid ignorance and indifference, without an effort to relieve these unaided heroes. We have left the battle of the world to be fought by the tribes of Circassia, and have not so much as supplied them with powder and shot! Here then is an important point of defence to be secured against Russia, as is instantly proved by the desperate nature of the efforts of Russia to gain it. If Russia were once seated upon the Caucasus, the whole of the East would lie at her feet. Persia would, in no long time, be added to the territory



of the Czar, and thus at one point the Russian frontier would touch India. The safety of our Indian empire, from at least the attempts of Russia, is by no means so certain as we are willing to believe. The reduction of Georgia, which was perhaps in the process of accomplishment under the masterly plans of Woronzoff, when the war broke out, would bring Russia really, as she is nominally, nearly a thousand miles nearer India than she was at the beginning of the century; and the history of the Russian empire proves that no undertaking is so vast or so remote as to be impossible to her. India is the tendency of her progress southward in this direction, and would it not be as well to stop that progress whilst we can do so cheaply, and before it become troublesome to our Eastern dominions, by rendering the natural barrier of the Caucasus, which has been impassable, even when guarded by its handful of heroes, absolutely and for ever impassable to Russia?

We venture on these grounds to advocate the idea of a campaign, in 1856, in Asia Minor, Mingrelia, and Georgia. There are other considerations, moreover, which favour immediate action in this area of country. On this point, at any rate, we can work effectually and uncompromisingly at our great task of restoring the ravages caused by Russia, without fear of offending anybody. Here are no Austria and Prussia to embarrass us with mediation, which is nothing more than a baffling attempt to hide from us the real object at which we ought to aim. Georgia is, in one respect, unlike Poland. Georgia is the destined prey of Russia alone, and we can wrest the prey from the spoiler without fear of involving ourselves with any confederates. Let us then go to work zealously, and with the sternest purpose of leaving no incomplete result behind us, on the field which lies open to us. If we succeed in expelling the Russians from Georgia, and permanently securing the independence of the whole Caucasian district, one great object of the war will have been accomplished, and we might make peace with the satisfaction of knowing that, even if nothing else had been done, yet all the blood and treasure expended by the allies would not have been wasted. The fall of Kars, however great the misfortune in itself, has occurred opportunely to direct the serious attention of the allies to this quarter; and it is trusted that such a catastrophe will have the effect of arousing the energies of the English nation by that sort of teaching by which it seems to be the fate of England to learn.

Of the other great points, at which it is plain that we must aim in this war, the formation of a Scandinavian union, above alluded to, is the most immediately feasible. The Polish question may perhaps better be in abeyance at present; perhaps we have enough in the more immediate objects indicated by the course of events, to occupy our power for some time to come; and certainly, we shall, at all events, by the Scandinavian union, and the restoration of the Caucasus, sufficiently indicate that we are not contending blindly, but for understood principles. But it is certain, and the certainty is acknowledged by the present manœuvrers of Austria and Prussia, that if the war is to continue, it will assume proportions more and more gigantic, and the question of the restoration of Poland will ultimately be forced upon the world. Upon no other basis can the security of central Europe against Russia be ensured, than upon the principle of restitution. The first Napoleon attacked Russia, and signally failed, because he attacked Russia as a conqueror, not as a restorer and preserver of other nations. He had no principle to oppose to the Russian principle of conquest. The



struggle between Napoleon and Alexander was no more than a struggle between two schemes of universal domination, and was decided by the strength of the combatants. If, then, Napoleon failed against Russia, it is beyond expectation that any other mere conqueror should succeed. If Russia is to be subdued, it must be by the operation of a principle directly antagonistic to the Russian principle; and this, we repeat, can be no other than the principle of restitution, put into operation by the allied powers.

These considerations tend to simplify the true course of Austria and Prussia. So long as the allies are engaged in vindicating their principle elsewhere, Austria and Prussia may be allowed to dabble in negotiation and mediation, fondly persuading themselves that they are throwing dust in our eyes; but when the time arrives, supposing the war to continue, when the principle of the allies is to be applied to the case of Poland, these powers will be necessitated to declare themselves on the one side or the other. We have this hope for them, that they will not be so suicidal as to declare against us, but will secure their own future safety against Russia by the noble method of surrendering their share of the ill-gotten gains of the partition of Poland. Something of the kind seems to be expected in Russia, if we are to trust to the expressions of hatred and malice towards Austria, attributed to the Russian statesmen. Austria has made conquests in Italy and Hungary, with which, whilst she is our ally and Russia our enemy, we can have no concern. But should Austria unite with Russia against us, significant hints have already been thrown out as to what would be the course of the Western Powers with these acquisitions.

To review In Memoriam adequately in a single short article is an impossibility; for nothing less would satisfy me than going carefully and minutely over chapter by chapter and line by line; nothing less could in any degree do justice to it. Indeed I have been advised to analyze the more difficult chapters, as I have analyzed The Vision of Sin; but, in the present case, having once begun, I should not know where to stop; and, besides, that is the part, not of a reviewer, but of a commentator. In this critique, then, there cannot but be faults of omission, and I must all the more diligently endeavour that the reader may find none, or very few, of commission. And if I lightly touch upon questions that require to be discussed at great length, and sometimes indeed give conclusions only without premisses, let him indulgently consider my confined limits, and believe me when I say that I have been forced by them upon a practice which none can condemn more strongly than myself.

I have already stated that I rank philosophical poetry the highest of all. I now place In Memoriam in this highest class, if not the first in it. But let it be distinctly understood what I mean when I call In Memoriam a philosophical poem. I am far from desiring to set it up in any way as a text-book of philosophy,—an attempt deprecated also by its author.

• “If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
• Were taken to be such as closed
• Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
• Then these were such as men might scorn.”

All the technical acquisition of philosophy that can be gained from it will



be very small; and a very slight previous acquaintance with philosophical systems, in some cases merely historical, is all that is required to understand it. But every man, in the deep of his heart, is and must be more or less a philosopher; every man must have asked himself the questions,—What am I? What are those things I see and hear, those things I think? Why am I here, why am I at all? What am I to do, what am I to look forward to, what to hope or fear? Such questions arise of necessity in every mind that thinks at all, and receive answers, more or less definite and true, elsewhere than in metaphysical treatises. And answers they receive from In Memoriam, uttered with a clearness and force and beauty not to be surpassed. To make plain what I mean,—when Tennyson in the Introduction writes,

• “Our wills are ours, we know not how,
• Our wills are ours, to make them Thine,”

he cannot be said to have philosophically discussed the Freedom of the Will. Such an assertion would be a simple absurdity. But this he has done; he has stated exactly what common men feel, and what I believe philosophers have been compelled to own, that we have free wills, though we cannot define the nature and the extent of that freedom, while the voice of conscience proclaims to all who are not wilfully deaf, that there is yet One Will with which the wills of all men must be brought into accordance, even the will of Him whose service is perfect freedom. Again, many readers may be ignorant of the doctrine alluded to in the lines,

• “That each who seems a separate whole
• Should move his rounds, and fusing all
page: 74  
• The skirts of self again, should fall
• Re-merging in the general Soul,”

but all must have speculated whether they shall meet and know their friends in the next world, and every heart must have returned the answer so definitely and beautifully enunciated in the next stanza,

• “Eternal form shall still divide
• The eternal soul from all beside,
• And I shall know him when we meet.”

To take one more example. Doubtless to many, if not most, readers, the line “He, They, One, All; within, without,” is obscure, merely from want of historical knowledge of systems of philosophy; but the mind of every observant and thinking man must have been struck by the multiplicity of the phænomena of nature, beneath which, nevertheless, there seems to lie one pervading power; every such mind must have recognized something divine, something at least like God, both within itself and without; for man was made in the image of his Maker, and external nature is, as it were, the counterpart of the spirit of man. Yes, Tennyson is, not a philosopher, however philosophical he may be, but a poet, embracing in his sympathies the learned and the ignorant, and interpreting between them; for Interpreter is the truest explanation of poet,—interpreting too between men and God; making known to men those wonders which are unveiled to him by that Inspiration which is vouchsafed to modern English poets, not less in kind, however less in degree, than to Job and David and Isaiah. I have been particular in showing that In Memoriam treats philosophical subjects not in a scientific, but in what may be called a popular, manner, in the hope that I may thereby induce some to study it, who might otherwise have been deterred by the supposition that it is a book of philosophy, intended only for such as lay claim to the name of philosophers. But not only this; but a very large portion of it is intelligible



at once to every mind, and of universal interest. I will at present enumerate some of the chapters which are the most striking instances of this, begging such of my readers as are still inclined to call Tennyson obscure, to read them, and point out what difficulty there is in them. They are Chapters vi. viii. x. xi. xiv. xviii. xx. xxviii. xxx.; but I will stop here, for I have surely mentioned enough to prove my point. And beside In Memoriam, there are scarcely any poems of Tennyson which ought to have any difficulty to a man of ordinary education, who will bring to them that attention which all knowledge desires, if not requires. But in truth this complaint of obscurity is founded on that contemptible misconception that poetry is a branch of light literature, together with that impatience of thought and presumptuous self-conceit which are not unmarked characteristics of the present generation. The fault is wholly in the reader, and the only remedy is that he should at once confess and amend.

I have treated this first point at some length, because there is a prejudice against philosophical poetry,—a prepossession not wholly unmerited; for much that is called by that noble name is altogether unworthy of it, lacking two essentials of poetry, that it should come not from the intellect alone, but also from the heart, and that it should be song flowing in spontaneous and free musical numbers.

I cannot pass over the famous opinion of one so qualified to judge as Plato, that philosophy and poetry are irreconcileable enemies. His chief arguments against poetry are that it does not attain to truth, or at best only to phænomenal truth, and that it excites the feelings, thus disturbing the mind from that calm which is necessary for philosophical contemplation. The second argument I do not think it requisite to reply to, as it is one which can never have much weight with any large portion of mankind, and as little as any with so genial-minded a people as the English. But the first, however often answered, has still great influence, and not least among us English, who, loving truth dearly, are also for the most part no less matter-of-fact. Now this grave charge that poetry does not deal with truth, is altogether to be denied. The grand creative faculty, Imagination, common to Art and Poetry, as distinctly and forcibly set forth by Ruskin, seeks after truth, after truth no less than Reason, in however different a method. Of this no better example can be taken than the poem before us, in which there is not a line which has not been written with all the heart and all the mind. Indeed, its whole value depends upon its truthfulness. If these are not the actual hopes and griefs of a human soul, throw them aside as elaborate wailings of a sentimental fancy. But of a certainty real grief alone could have taught such sorrowful utterances,—real resignation alone could have prompted those expressions of the very spirit of resignation, at length triumphing

• “In conclusive bliss,
• And that serene result of all.”

To bring forward isolated or ill-connected examples of that which I maintain pervades the whole, and which is indeed the foundation of all its excellencies, is altogether unsatisfactory; each must read and judge for himself; yet I hope that this point will be made plain, if the sort of analysis of the poem which I shall presently give be attended to.

There may be some who fancy that In Memoriam is little else than a mere collection of short poems, “like orient pearls at random strung,” with little connection and sequence. And indeed every one of the chapters is so perfect that it might well stand by itself; but a mere collection of short poems would not be a great poem. But the connection of the chapters is not the least admirable part of the book; there is not one that could be spared; the dependence



of each upon the rest is I think very easily to be traced, and between many the relation is very close. I can only give the reader a clue, if such he need; I have not space myself to be his guide.

There is a strife still raging, though it ought long ago to have been settled, whether poetry has to do with common or with uncommon things, a question which again may be stated thus, whether the beautiful is the ordinary or the extraordinary. That which is frequently ranked as the highest kind of poetry, epic, undoubtedly acts on the second principle; the Iliad, the Æneid, the Paradise Lost, are about heroes and heroic exploits, angels, and wars in heaven; though the first at least of these treats also of common things, giving minute accounts of sacrificing and feasting. And on this principle, too, proceeds that which many would claim to be the highest, which is acknowledged by all to be a very high form of poetry, pure tragedy. In the Greek tragedies the demigods and heroes of Greece, especially the Homeric heroes—in the great English tragedies, a King of Scotland, a Prince of Denmark, a King of Britain, a General of Venice, are the foremost and best-known characters. And on the whole, even in Shakespeare’s tragedies, so much less purely tragic than the Greek, the action, sentiment, and language, are on a level with the high rank of the principal characters. But side by side with these is a vast mass of poetry which has dealt with the ordinary feelings and actions of ordinary men; such as, among our own countrymen, the greater part of the poems of Cowper and Burns. This was carried so far by Wordsworth and others as to provoke a storm of ridicule, which would now be universally acknowledged to be deserved. Yet the existence of these two kinds, springing up so abundantly side by side, points to a ready answer to the question; an answer which we find emphatically given in Tennyson. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, The May Queen, Lord Burleigh, Lady Clare, The Brook—these are simplicity itself. But The Lady of Shalott, St. Simeon, Stylites, The Princess—still more The Palace of Art, The Two Voices,The Vision of Sin—these are far removed from common appreciation, and are at least in their full meaning and beauty for comparatively few readers. So it is; the ordinary and the extraordinary are alike subjects for poetry, that girdle of beauty which encircles the universe; and poets may not confine themselves to this or that class of men—to kings, heroes, and philosophers, nor yet to merchants, mechanics, and peasants, but must range through all mankind, the spokesmen of the human race; though true it is that to many has been given only a tongue for common men and common things, while, on the other hand, many can far more easily and eloquently sing heroic deeds, far more readily analyze philosophic thought, than describe the events and emotions of every-day life. The question here considered is no difficult one; it can be answered by a mere attention to facts; but it is a most important one, indeed full of the deepest significance; for it shows us how earth is indissolubly bound to heaven; how men in their most ordinary occupations, in their daily working and playing, are still spiritual creatures; not mere machines, to labour with the hand; nor yet mere brains, machines still, to think; but in one comprehensive, awful, inexplicable word, souls, into which God has breathed the breath of life. And this inseparable union between the high and the low, the far off and the near, the strange and the familiar, no poem sets forth more clearly and strikingly than In Memoriam. To the memory of a college friend, who died a few years ago in Vienna,—the son of a well-known living historian,— that is the groundwork of the story, or occasion of the poem. The illustrations are,

• “A happy lover, who has come
• To look on her that loves him well,”

a mother praying God will save her sailor son; a girl waiting for her lover, taking a riband or a rose, that she may look well in his eyes, turning to her glass once more to set a ringlet right, while at that very moment he is

• “Kill’d in falling from his horse,
• Or drown’d in passing through the ford.”

In one chapter the poet contrasts the marriage of a girl by which she leaves home, but often from time to time returns, with the death of his friend, gone never to come again. The removal of the poet’s family from one house to another is told. The poem is concluded by a minute account of the wedding of his sister. Yes, verily, if In Memoriam is poetry, poetry dwells by the firesides of men, sharing their household joys and griefs and labours;—treats of the common; stoops to the humblest. But behold a marvellous change. The Introduction is a sublime address to God the Son; the final stanzas are of the consummation of all things, when God the Father shall be all in all. The highest object of the poem, I believe, is to show how “the truths that never can be proved” can yet be believed, through love, love of God grounded on love of man.

• “I found Him not in world or sun,
• Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
• Nor through the questions men may try,
• The petty cobwebs we have spun:

• “If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
• I heard a voice, ‘believe no more,’
• And heard an ever-breaking shore,
• That tumbled in the Godless deep,

• “A warmth within the breast would melt
• 10The freezing reason’s colder part,
• And like a man in wrath, the heart
• Stood up and answer’d, ‘I have felt.’ ”

I say advisedly the highest object; for a great poem may have many great ends; and accordingly the commemoration of Arthur Hallam I would rather say is closely inwoven with, or merged in, this first and greatest end, than subordinated to it.—Turn now to the chapters,

• “That each who seems a separate whole,”

• “If sleep and death be truly one,”

• “So careful of the type, but no,”

• “That which we dare invoke to bless,”

and we are in the highest region of thought; here poetry no longer sits by the household fire, but walks on the high places of the earth, with Death and Morning on the mountains; yea, through the valley of the shadow of death passes to the Land of the Departed, where the dead on earth are alive for evermore.—Of these two kinds I do not hesitate a moment in placing first the higher, more heroic, more philosophical: the opinion that the poetry which speaks most plainly and readily to the greatest number is the best, I hold to be an error, founded on a confusion between a great and a popular poet, which I would endeavour to expose here, but that I hope to examine it at greater length in a future article.

The doctrine that poetry cannot flourish in a civilized age being so manifestly disproved by the existence of such a poet as Tennyson, (to say nothing of others now living,) and seeming to depend chiefly on the presumed hostility of poetry and philosophy,—an hypothesis which I have already been at pains to prove fallacious,—I may be allowed to pass over with this bare mention.

The truthfulness I have claimed for In Memoriam is the foundation of one of its greatest excellencies—tenderness, so striking a characteristic, that it has been called its distinguishing quality. This is certainly a mistake, for several other qualities are quite as prominent, though greater tenderness could not possibly be displayed.

Tenderness and pathos are quite distinct, yet so nearly related that this will be a fit place to make a few observations on the nature of Tennyson’s pathos. There is one kind—the simplest of all—which goes straight to the heart, without the intervention of the intellect, and speaks to all, and whose natural expression is tears. Of this kind one of the greatest masters is



Dickens, as illustrated in the deaths of Little Nell and Dora, and the conversation between Nell and Mrs. Quilp, in the sixth chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop. In music, I would select Handel, and instance the solos in the Messiah, “Thy rebuke hath broken his heart,” and “He was despised and rejected of men;” the pathos of which, whether greater or less, is of an entirely different nature from that of the Dies Iræ, of Mozart’s Requiem. Many, perhaps most, would hold this to be the highest kind of all, and that it most exactly answers to the name may perhaps be granted. Of this sort there is comparatively little in Tennyson, though it is by no means wholly wanting in him,—as the Lord of Burleigh, passages in the second and third parts of the May Queen, the concluding lines of The Gardener’s Daughter, and, perhaps, some chapters of In Memoriam. But, in general, his pathos is much more fused with the intellect, and consequently addresses itself more particularly to the educated, and expresses rather melancholy, as “Break, break, break,” or desolation of heart, as Oriana, or vehement, passionate woe, as Locksley Hall, than simple grief and pity, of which tears would be the natural sign. I cannot explain my conception of his pathos better than by quoting his own words;

• “And for a while the knowledge of his art
• Held me above the subject.”

Whether this is or is not the highest kind, I will not now enquire; but it may perhaps be of some service merely to point it out. Of this nature I think is most of the pathos of In Memoriam, as in Chapters iii., xvi., xxiii., xxvi., xxxv., xl., xliii., &c, the delineation of the grief of a strong man, strong as his grief—strong in will and strong in mind; a grief which, though recalled by

• “Summer on the steaming floods,
• And Spring, that swells the narrow brooks,
• And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
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• That gather in the waning woods
• And every pulse of wind and wave;”

yet, by that very mingling with, and embodiment in, all things, is modified and lightened; for

• “The imaginative woe
• That loved to handle spiritual strife,
• Diffused the shock through all his life,
• But in the present broke the blow.”

How great a beauty is pathos surely I need not urge. Perhaps it is that quality in a composition which most of all wins our love; which, as its very name might seem to imply, comes home most to our hearts. For, of all the intelligent beings of which we know, pathos is peculiar to man—the sweet, sad music of humanity—that nature which was made in the likeness of God, and which has now to regain that likeness through long suffering, drinking of the brook by the way, that thereby its head may be lifted up. I quote a single example of Tennyson’s tenderness, the 128th chapter of In Memoriam:

• “Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
• So far, so near in woe and weal,
• O loved the most when most I feel
• There is a lower and a higher;

• Known and unknown, human, divine!
• Sweet human hand, and lips, and eye,
• Dear heavenly friend that canst not die!
• Mine, mine for ever, ever mine!

• Strange friend, past, present, and to be,
• 10Loved deeplier, darklier understood,
• Behold I dream a dream of good,
• And mingle all the world with thee.”

But, however tender In Memoriam is, no greater misconception could be formed than that it is a mournful poem. The misconception is so thorough that it is strange, almost unaccountable, how any who has read it through, could have fallen into it. I say, read it through; for the first chapters, indeed nearly half the poem, might lead to it quite naturally. But, of all poems, the least sorrowful is In Memoriam. True, the sorrow of the commencement is very deep and dark, almost despair. Of twain, who loved each other with



more than the love of brothers, one has been taken away, leaving the other, “to wander on a darkened earth,” till “the Shadow, cloaked from head to foot,” shall wrap him in his formless mantle of forgetfulness. Sick at heart, he cannot see the end and know the good; to him the dead is dead indeed, and with that one death all life has ceased to him:

• “From out waste places comes a cry,
• And murmurs from the dying sun;
• And all the phantom, Nature, stands
• A hollow form, with empty hands.”

But the days roll on, and “the wild unrest and calm despair,” are cheered by a ray of hope, very faint at first, but gradually it grows brighter, and the sorrow is changed to less, and the love, which, more than all other elements, is the essence of happiness, grows stronger and stronger, till, at the last, it is made perfect,

• “No longer caring to embalm
• In dying songs a dead regret,
• But, like a statue, solid-set,
• And moulded in colossal calm.”

In Memoriam a mournful poem! Nay, but, on the contrary, its pervading spirit is that calm happiness which we believe to be the bliss of heaven; for it is the record of the endurance of grief by a noble mind, that in its utter woe, was still stayed at peace with God and man; brave and patient, however painful, endurance, till suffering had perfected, and love saw the dead still living, and won the victory over the intellectual doubts that yielded only to it—to love of mankind, firmly rooted in love of one man, and, grounded on love of mankind, love of Him whose name is Love, and who also is a Man like ourselves.

O happy dead, who had such a poet to raise over him this grandest mausoleum! O happy poet, who had a friend worthy to be so commemorated! And, beyond even this, O happy friends, whose love, not even death could divide, but which has already risen again to live for ever, there, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor any more pain.

Again, to test Tennyson’s truthfulness, let us see how he speaks of external nature. Perhaps the most remarkable thing in his description, is, that so much of it is of ordinary, level English scenery—of common flowers, both wild and cultivated, of trees that grow in our own parks, and fields and hedges. Not that he cannot describe grander scenery. The Palace of Art or Morte d’Arthur alone would refute that; but, brought up in the east of England, he has chosen chiefly to describe what he has seen with his own eyes; thereby once more recalling to us that oft-told, but as oft-forgotten, truth, that nature is beautiful everywhere, not only on mountains and on seas, and in forests, but also in meadows, in fens, in gardens, in wayside hedges. His descriptions are minute, and bear unmistakeably the signs of coming from direct sight. Also, they are never merely external, for that would be to describe as a naturalist, a worse fault than analyzing as a philosopher; but the landscape is drawn as it looks to a human eye and affects a human heart; in the phraseology of Ruskin, not by fancy, but by the nobler faculty, imagination. They are short too, and strictly subordinated to, and connected with, the human interest of the poem; which I hold to be the true method, at least that which most powerfully affects the largest class. Not that they need necessarily be short; some of Ruskin’s, and of Kingsley’s too, are of great length; but this rule must be observed, that they should never obstruct the action, or keep out of sight the actors, since every landscape will, at the very least, have an additional charm, if associated with a human being.

And still more to enforce and illustrate this truthfulness, which I have, to a great extent, made the central point of the critique, a few remarks



upon Tennyson’s style (to use for the present a phrase, to which I shall by and bye object,) will be necessary, in which it may happen that I shall say again some things which I have already said in the first part of the Essay, though I will endeavour to repeat myself as little as possible. The great peculiarity of it, displayed nowhere more strikingly than in the poem under review, is the rejection of all inversion of words, and the employment of the common language of every-day life, but without anything that is mean and vulgar.

There have been times in the history of English literature when it was thought that there was a poetical grammar and vocabulary, distinct from those of common life, not only of the ignorant and vulgar, but also of the educated and polite. It was considered a merit, or at least a very allowable license, to put objective cases before the verbs or prepositions that governed them, to place adjectives after their substantives, to make adjectives do the work of adverbs. Far be it from me to wish to lessen the poetic liberties; but a poet who writes the grammar which the educated classes of his countrymen ordinarily use, will naturally be more acceptable than one who twists his sentences either to suit his verses or in imitation of a foreign language. But far worse than this was the use of unfamiliar words, the disdain of familiar ones. That there are many words almost entirely appropriated to poetry, and very seldom employed in the conversation even of the best educated and most refined, cannot be denied; but this happens because conversation seldom rises into the poetical, not because there is in such words any essential unfitness for conversation; while to disuse familiar words is to forego one of the most powerful instruments for affecting the heart. Rhene, Danaw, and Sabrina must sound strangely, to our ears at least, and cannot come home to us with the same force as their popular and well-known names, with their manifold associations, Rhine, Danube, Severn. What should we say now of a poet who thought the words Sebastopol and Crimea too mean for his verse, and edified us by their classical names, and called us Angli, and our brothers in arms Gauls?

And closely connected with this use of common constructions and everyday words, is the fitness and precision of the language of Tennyson. He has himself exactly described this characteristic in the poem reviewed.

• “What practice, howsoe’er expert,
• In fitting aptest words to things.”

Throughout the whole of his poems runs the doctrine, not that truth is beauty, as the phrase often goes, for that is needlessly to confound two things essentially different, but that the beautiful is among the true. This doctrine, happily is now ever more and more gaining ground, but we must never rest till it is established beyond all dispute. We, the countrymen of Bacon, have long ago acknowledged with him, that in Physics, Truth and Utility are coincident, (“in idem coincidunt”) and behold the marvellous results that have rewarded the acknowledgment. Let us also say, with one no less able to pronounce upon another question, than Bacon upon that,

• “Truest truth is fairest beauty.”

The ideas of the divine mind are to be found not only by physical observations and experiments and the inductive method, but by the creations or interpretations of imagination also; for poetry, not less than natural science, is an interpretation of nature, and the poet, as well also the painter and the sculptor, must faithfully render what they find within and without themselves, fully believing that the things which God has created by His word are altogether nobler and more beautiful than any that man may seem to create by his fancy. Of this we



have before us an admirable example in the Pre-Raphaelites, between whom and the poets who, like them, follow nature, I would recommend a comparison to any who are competent to institute it.

To make selections of that which runs throughout the whole of Tennyson’s poems, which, in fact, is the only peculiarity in them which can be fairly said to constitute a style, is idle; but a few remarks on that common but as usually employed, unmeaning phrase, Tennyson’s style, may not be uncalled for. For people talk as if one mode of expression pervaded all his writings, which mode many are bold enough to stigmatize as affected and obscure. Now, it is surely unnecessary to dwell upon the absurdity of applying such epithets to The Lord of Burleigh and Lady Clare, and the very large proportion of his poems, which are as simple as these two. Those to which they can be more speciously applied, I have attempted, I trust not unsuccessfully, to defend. Therefore, it is not with these epithets that I have to do now, but with the phrase, “Tennyson’s style” itself, to which I entirely object, unless by it is meant the use of the exact words required adequately to express the thought. For compare poems not more dissimilar than Locksley Hall and In Memoriam. The expression in the former is abrupt and impetuous; in the latter equally powerful, but calm and measured; that is to say, precisely suitable to the speaker in each case—in the one the eager-hearted youth, maddened by unreturned love, and excited by the contemplation, alternately of the scientific greatness and the moral weaknesses of the present age; in the other the deep feeling, deep thinking man, remembering his friend faithfully for years, and in the course of gaining the victory over scepticism. True, the one style, as the one character, is easily reconcileable with the other; but distinct, and different with a wide difference, they certainly are. And if, with these two and The Two Voices, and the Vision of Sin, we compare The May Queen, Dora, Edward Gray, the difference becomes more evident, and the only similarity to be found in them is that adaptation of language to thought, which I have already claimed to be the only peculiarity which can rightly be said to form a style in Tennyson.

I seem to myself barely to have grazed the surface of the great poem which I have undertaken to review; but here my remarks must end, for the present at least. It only remains, dear reader, by way of summing up, to consider what decision, however rude and uncritical, we shall pass upon it. I have endeavoured to write about it quite impartially, and, so far, with as much temperance and absence of enthusiasm as I could command. But in truth, many times my heart has been hot within me, and I have longed to speak out plainly what intense love and reverence I feel for it; no hasty and ill-considered liking and admiration, but strong love and deep reverence, which I am sure will last my life through, founded on knowledge, and



by greater knowledge continually made greater. And right well shall I be rewarded for that, which indeed being a labour of love, has been its own reward, if this review shall cause any better to understand and appreciate this greatest poem of this great poet; for thus I shall have the consciousness that I have helped to discover to them a treasure that can never be exhausted, a treasure the most precious; even an El Dorado of Love and Wisdom and Beauty. Every time it is read it will be found more beautiful, more tender, more significant, more sublime; a calm retreat of pure happiness from the tumult of the world, but as widely as heaven from hell removed from selfish and misanthropic isolation; a Paradise of high and holy thoughts, which shall refine and elevate them above the meanness of their vulgar thinking, and that not least by showing the spiritual value and dignity of common things. Especially is such a poem needful and a blessing in these days of commerce and science, when men are too busy to think, too wise to learn, too intent on self-advancement to love, too restless for that tranquillity which is the highest, if not the only true, happiness.

[ To be continued.]

I walked upon the coast of Denmark that faced the north, all one winter morning, looking at the passing of the ships to and fro upon the deep green sea, as they carried freight of precious merchandise between one land and another; and there was something in the deep purple margin of the sea, and the long white line of breakers, and



the flashing of the sunlight upon distant sails, that gleamed for a moment and were gone, and something in the mournful wailing of the old sea-winds as they sung an ancient song among the rocks, that brought up a vision of that sea as it looked many hundred years ago on such a morning to brave and loving eyes that trust and look no more. And I thanked Our Father and blessed Him for the sympathy of sea and wind and cloud that day. “These,” said I, “abide for ever, watching the work of human life upon the land: all the earth is changed, and different in every generation, for where the pleasant valley was is the tumultuous city, and where the city, is the barren waste; but the sea and clouds looked even thus a thousand years ago, and some such music made the sea-winds in the ears of men.” On that day, moreover, I was filled with sadness and unquietness of heart, thinking upon the days that are past, and because so much majesty and glory had clean gone out of sight without a record. “Alas!” I said, “for I could weep and weep to think of it, so many noble deeds accomplished, so many deeds of love and holy sacrifice, so many, many gentle hearts broken in far-off times, there in the North, whereof no memory nor record comes to us, no answer from the invisible winds that have seen all and will not speak.” Therefore my heart was very heavy for love of all the silent great ones that are not named among men; “yet,” I thought, “surely when the day comes at last, after long tarrying, for the great sea to give up its dead, it will happen that the Past also shall render up the keys of its mystery-room, and as it were with stars, whereof Astronomers tell us that their light has not reached the earth, though they shine somewhere gloriously evermore, all the heaven will be a-light with new constellations, brighter, it may be, some of them than any seen before, than all we have honoured heretofore; new heroes, greater than the old ones, or all as great.” With this I comforted my heart: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?“ Fitfully there came along the wind a broken carol of the bells in the valley just below. “Ah!” I thought, “for the bitter life of all who lived before Christ and



hope were born together, and those bells rang out such happy tunes. What to them seemed Life and Death and Hereafter?” Then I remembered what holy words the poet of my own land—dear country I shall never see again until I dwell there after death—had sung about Yule-time; and I said aloud those hopeful words of his about God’s hidden purposes in man, in the hearing of the sea-birds saying,

• “And he, shall he,
• Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
• Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
• Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
• Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

• “Who trusted God was love indeed,
• And love Creation’s final law,—
• Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
• With ravine, shriek’d against his creed,—

• 10“Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
• Who battled for the True, the Just,
• Be blown about the desert dust,
• Or seal’d within the iron hills?”

After this, I sat upon the beach, at the foot of a cliff, white as the cliffs of my own country, and took a volume of illuminated writing, and opened at the first page; dark green and purple and melancholy gold lay upon the page and round about the writing; very sad and pensive was the colouring; and in among the flowers and interlacings of delicate branches, long-leaved branches, showed a castle tower grey against a sky of windy blue, and a lady leaned therefrom in the tower-window, resting her white forehead on her right hand, and playing dreamily with her left among the leaves, and an agony of long expectation sealed itself upon her face.

Then so did that pale anguish, that had gnawed upon her bloom of life, hold me tranced, that I read as if in a charmed book, and the mournful colour of the page and the sadness of the lady wrought a vision of the past to this effect.

I saw it now, clear as in a picture, that castle on the far-off coast of Norway, as it stood up fair and manfully against the breakers of the Northern Sea; and the sea-winds and mountain-winds met above its towers, and contended there, flouting the ancient banners of the kingly house of Elstein. Travellers in that distant land, going through the mountain-pass and valley where the town lay once, walk down to the beach-line, looking at the furious beating of the sea-waves that have not ceased to flow, are blown upon by the same old winds that sang through the pine-forest ages long ago; for those winds, visiting all lands within the upper zone, returning, finding all things changed from when they left the mountain-gorge years before, are still the same. No man now, passing through the valley, thinks ever of the people that dwelt there, happy and brave; thinks ever of their sorrows and their love, nor their broken lives, nor noble deaths.

And this castle faced the sea westwards and northwards, but behind it and to south of it lay a fair valley, sheltered by the rock on which the castle stood from all the north winds, and by the mountains from the east wind; and in the valley below the castle-hill stood the little town, busy and full of traffic; for though hunters on the mountains, who had pierced the dark pine-forest, brought tidings only of the ranges stretching on every side, like a great frozen sea petrified, with all its waves in act of tossing, yet seawards came traders to the town, with news of other lands and the rise of cities in the South; at times also came a message or a gift from one who had left them long before in quest of adventures,



and to whom the memory of his birth-land had not ceased to be beautiful, though he should never return. It was pleasant to talk together at the door of the old armourer’s in the morning, while the red fire burned merrily in the furnace, and listen to the ringing of the metal plates, as he fashioned armour for heroes, and proved the good sword-blades for battle; for never morning came but some fresh thing had happened to serve for telling. But it was even pleasanter at night-time, hearing fire-light stories, fit for those large shadows on the ceiling and the walls—tales of generations passed long ago. And this was the custom of Hakon the armourer, to have a gathering of the neighbours every night to hear his stories and drink with him. And there at the feet of Gertha his foster-mother, grew the little Engeltram in fear and wonder, listening to those weird legends that fell from Hakon’s mouth with such a stately flow, and learning much about heaven and earth and gods and men. And as he grew up to greater understanding, he loved still to hear those legends, and to think that whether true or not, they yet were true in this, that there lies in life, concealed somewhere, more than can be seen by all men; some better and more excellent thing than drinking in the mead-cup and singing loud wassail-songs in festival. Very loving and tender was he in his life, and Hakon and Gertha loved him as their own child, suffered him in all things, hoped and plotted for his welfare, till he grew to manhood. Now Engeltram was pale and hazel-eyed, and his hair fell about his shoulders long and brown and dark; his eyes, moreover, had the seeming of one who ever looks at some fair and far-off object, and cannot yet be satisfied with gazing; for both by day and night there stood before him in his vision the Lady Irminhilda, daughter of King Eric, who lived in Elstein. Through long years they had grown together, as a passion-flower and lily in a desolate wind-swept garden; in the spring-time of their years playing on the hills at the game of king and queen, while the sun passed overhead to warm them, laughed and mocked their little royalty with lengthened shadows on the grass. There he made a crown for her of ash-berries and hedge-flowers, and crowned her in the morning of their life; but Vorsimund her kinsman, cruel Vorsimund, he who chased all gentle harmless creatures for his pastime, came between them like a shadow, broke the little crown of ash-tree, and waited ever to torment them with his cruelty and malice. But those years went over, and brought the summer-time of life, warmer suns, and quicker thoughts, and livelier hopes; for Vorsimund had gone for ever and left them, therefore



it could not be but long companionship should bring reliance and dependence, and from this a continual want in separation and completeness in communion, till last of all, they seemed divided halves of one same life, that must be joined together lest both should perish. And this was the love that was between them, fast-enduring, and sanctified by many memories, and prepared for suffering and trial in evil days.

But Eric the king, her father, purposed, in his quiet scheming, to add kingdom to kingdom through his daughter, for she was his only child, and to leave behind him a name to be praised and had in honour as the founder of a nation; and this was the sin of Eric, that he had respect to long futurity and what might be said of him in days to come, and counted not the present time as anything, nor the happiness of living men to be compared with this poor fame of his; wherefore all wise men would judge that evil was already threatening, and would not fail to overtake him presently.

There was high festival in the castle of Elstein, among lords and elders and strangers, who had come from distant lands to be guests with Eric while the feasting lasted. Now he had proclaimed this festivity in honour of his daughter upon her twentieth birthday; and he looked that some fortunate issue to his proud hopes would follow, and that the fame of her great beauty might be spread abroad wherever the strangers travelled. All his scheming and ambition was known to the lovers, for Engeltram had found but little favour or forbearance from him lately, and judged that this was the reason; but herein he thought wrongly, for Eric, because he was over-reaching, was short-sighted also, and suspected nothing of all that passed so near him; but he hated Engeltram for his strange



resemblance to one you shall hear of presently, who had destroyed his plans in other days, and whom he had hated with a very deadly hatred. So upon this night of the festival, before all the lords and chiefs among the people, King Eric made a royal oath, that no man who was not kingly born and dowered with wide dominions, should wed the Lady Irminhilda. And Engeltram when he heard the words, left the banquet straightway, burning with indignation, for he thought they had respect to him chiefly, and that the eyes of all who knew him were set stedfastly upon him.

Now within the castle that stood four-sided, facing the four chief winds, was a court-yard, and upon the eastern side a covered balcony of woodwork looking into it and open towards it. Many a time had royal children played there in wild weather, and kings walked there looking how it fared at sea, for the balcony was high above the ground, and overlooked the west walls to the sea beyond. There leaned Engeltram when the moon was high. The Lady Irminhilda passed him going to her chamber from the banquet, for the revel and the drinking had begun: pale was she and faltered in her footsteps, only the sight of him forlorn and leaning there, sent the life blood to her cheeks again. He saw her come and stand beside him, looking unchanged, unutterable love from deep blue eyes. “I knew that you would come,” he said; “at that moment I was bending all my soul to this one desire that you would come, and it prevailed to draw you here; nevermore shall I have doubt that we are one together for life and death.” She looked upwards gently, wonderingly, sad to think how grief had made his musical sweet voice so hoarse and hollow, yet she spoke no word. “Oh! I have seen it, seen it clearly in deep sleep, the beautiful garden westwards and the fourfold river through it, and the tree with crimson fruit; and last night I dreamt of it again, and saw moreover her whom I never saw before, my mother, standing in deep grass and calling; at first I thought that it was you, but it could not be, for you were beside me, looking also. Ah! she was so strangely like you.” In the recollection of his dream he stopped awhile to linger; she spoke no word nor interrupted, only looked stedfastly and sadly. “It will be a dark and fearful night, and no man will leave the fireside nor the festival till morning; come, and I will carry you to the home that I have seen in dreams.” She saw the moonlight for a moment lying on the water, making a great highway to the west, then a flash of regal disdain lighted up her quiet eyes, but died again at sight of those worn cheeks and sound of that hoarse voice. “I may not so leave my father’s house,” she



answered coldly; “the night is dark, but treacherous heart knows greater darkness; I may not leave him so: could you rob the old man at such an hour, when he cannot follow nor pursue? it would be a brave thing truly.” He fretted at the swordless baldric that was slung about him, coldness had no charm to quiet him, and her words fell with a dull and muffled sound upon his ears. She was so grieved that she had spoken so, when the words were past recalling; what was all her queenly right, and a line of ancient kings at such an hour, in such a presence! She would have died with him there, gladly. “Oh! Engeltram, be Engeltram once more before I leave you! Such a one I knew, gentle and good, wearing truest armour of nobility, and I thought him a hidden king, but just now he passed out somewhere, and I shall go and look for him;” poor heart! making merry in its breaking.

At her feet he fell down straightway, kneeling, sobbing out his spirit to her, holding by her folded dress as the dying hold by life. In that hour she was the stronger of the twain. “Hush,” she said; “not so, not so, for now art thou indeed my Engeltram once more.” In the pauses of the sobbing of his breath you might hear her weeping gently, raining down a summer shower of tears upon his drouth of life; then she raised him, kissed him gaily, bade him lovingly remember all his former gentleness, and use it for her sake.“ I shall wait for you, my hero, till you come.” It was pitiful to see him stretch out arms of vain beseeching, arms that should never clasp her more: twice she turned and looked upon him, at feud in her divided will, for the outstretching of those dear arms seemed still to draw her in the face of will; but when the door closed with a rough and jarring sound upon his ears then he rose up, cried “Irminhilda” once, with such passionate yearning, and prolongation of the name, that all his soul seemed spent in it. Ever after, in the solemn midnight a voice went crying with a bitter cry of supplication through all the chambers of her soul,



winding with the mournful echo of cavernous depths, “Irminhilda.”

At midnight he passed out into the thick darkness: from every quarter under heaven did the armies of the winds gather together for battle; the noise of the mustering of their legions came from the outer sea with a long, low, sullen rumbling, like the sound of a multitude of chariots in mountainous lands: it was a night of storm and wind to be remembered even on that fearful coast. The great sea had gone down a little space, and left a narrow band of shore behind it; there he walked till the sea came up again, and his great heart was broken within him, and all his inner life dark and full of tempest like the night. “Ah! when will it be over? all my strength is departed from me, I am grown untimely like a leaf in winter.” By the rock of plighted vows he watched the mighty sea, drawn up by unknown influences, flood all the space where he had walked an hour before; somewhere a contest of strength raged among the winds, for they rose and shrieked through the air, fell again and buffetted the waves about, lashing up the white foam, and driving it in sheets across the land. All the dwellers in the town hard by, and the revellers in the castle, and all who lived upon the coast, trembled that night and could not sleep; from the sea and from the forest came strange wailings, cries of men mingled with the sobbing of the waters. In the old armourer’s room sat a company who had met for merriment; none dared so much as leave the threshold, for they were feeble with the weight of years, but sat there all night long, and muttered lowly by the fireside, telling sometimes stories of other storms and greater, long ago.

In that hour came Death and strove with Engeltram. He beheld him like



a fair young hero standing by the water edge; all his face was calm and tranquil, and his armour gleamed upon him whenever the moon looked out through riven spaces in the darkness. No sword nor shield had he, nor any weapon of encounter, and to Engeltram it seemed his helmet blossomed with white star flowers, set about with leaves; but withal there was no hope nor beauty in his eyes to rest on, nor colour of life upon his cheeks, so that looking at him you might not call him either fair or faulty.

“Who art thou, so peaceful and silent, and why hast thou come to me?”

“They that dread me call me Death, but from them my name is secret. I bring rest to weary people, and forgetfulness of sorrow.”

“Thy face is very still and quiet, fixed and dreamy; to-day I saw my own face, it was marred with cruel furrows and its former beauty gone: almost I seem to love thee even now, with the love of some remembrance, I know not what.”

“Yes, for I came to thee once before, and shall come again, and at that time you shall know me and call me rightly; until then my name is hidden.”

All night long they strove together, wrestled by the margin of the sea, by the rock of plighted vows; all the winds rushed out together from the sea-caves and mountain passes, and fought above them till the morning. Once the moon came out full-orbed and lonely, and looked upon them; and for a moment one great shadow of the mortal hero, lay vast and huge along the ground. “Ah!” thought he, “it will be so then, and I shall lie there presently;” and ever his arms grew fainter, and his knees beneath him shook and trembled, but the grasp of the other never slackened. So they swayed upon the rock to and fro. One looking afar off, and knowing not the fierce encounter, nor the cause, would have thought “it a a tall and stately tree bending to the fury of the winds,” so closely knit together were they. And when in the close locking of their arms together, Engeltram looked into the other’s face, he beheld it calm and peaceful as before, and a dreamy look in those lorn eyes that hinted of some great unexerted strength. “Oh! thou bright being, I shall fail before thee presently.” Yet the purple twilight of the morning came, passed overhead and by them, and with it went the winds to blow about the islands of the outer seas, and far-off countries; still they wrestled on together. And about the hour of morning Engeltram felt that his limbs grew stronger, and the sinews of his great frame stood like cords about his arms, and gathered force; but the power of the other weakened fast, and his grasp grew fainter and



fainter: and when next Engeltram looked into his face about the time of sunrise, he wondered greatly, for there was no longer any beauty in him, but ghastly pallor, and in place of that tranquillity had come a slumbrous, dreamy void, expressionless. But when the sun was fully up, and the sweet morning light lay upon the outer edge of castle, hill and tree, and the long, long wings of cloud, rosy-red, that came up with the sun, stretched out further to the north and south, as they would zone all the base of the great firmament with a girdle of crimson and gold, then Engeltram found himself alone, weak but living.

All about him sprang great beauty, everything lay robed in light, lay coloured with the tints of morning, and the summer birds sang overhead a merry song of victory; there was no sign of battle anywhere, in sea or sky or land; they had passed away with the passing of that fearful night; and with the morning came this calm.

Then he arose and went homewards; somehow there was transfiguration in his face and strange radiance upon his forehead as he stepped into the armourer’s forge; he looked so like a man who has seen a vision and will not live for long. All that summer’s day he laboured at the forge, fashioning for himself a sword; not a moment did he give for resting or looking upwards, though never morning was apparelled in raiment of sweeter colours than was this, that followed on the storm. At the hour when shadows lengthen, he saw the spaces of light upon the floor that came through the doorway and the window darken with the passers by; sometimes they would stay and watch him, yet he never gave them greeting nor looked up. It was as if his pent-up wrath found



outward satisfaction in so raising a thunderstorm of iron hailstones on the anvil, and listening to the answer of salute from helmet, shield and spear, as they shook and rattled against the wall. From another part of the armoury old Hakon worked and watched him, never spoke nor asked him question, for it was his custom to be silent in perplexity, nor “dignify an impair thought with breath;” for he knew well some grievous calamity had fallen on the young man. By night-time he had finished his labour, stood before his foster-father with the sword of his working in his hands; long and wide showed the blade in the gleaming of the furnace-light. “Ah!” laughed Engeltram in triumph, for the fire ran adown the blade like blood; “my father’s sword lies rusting in his grave upon the barren hill, he left me neither sword nor name to keep; so you see, dear Hakon, I must make them for myself.” There was neither wonder nor curiosity in the face of the old man, he seemed to be always looking for some unheard-of deed to spring from the lad; he only answered such words of comfort as came to him. “It is a better thing, my son, to leave behind us a good name, than to receive it.” But Gertha asked, “What has happened to thee, my child? come and tell me all, and why thy life is so overcast.” And the youth laid his head upon her lap, as he used to do in other days, when he was a child and was weary of play, and told her all his sorrow, while the sunset lingered yet upon the earth, saying, “Thus and thus did the king speak before his lords and men, and swore an oath before them, but as for me I have greatly desired to die and be at rest.”

“Listen to a tale, my child, for it seems thou art again my child lying so, and many strange and unheard-of stories I used to tell thee thus.” Something in his childlike purity, and simple confidence brought back a vivid memory to her, he looked so like the little Engeltram of twenty years ago. Through a wall of partition, they could hear from time to time the deep voice of Hakon and his companions, talking of the last night’s storm, and one that they remembered on the night when the old king died. Then Gertha spoke: “It was in the lifetime of king Asmundur that I served the Lady Hilda, his only daughter, and was first among the maidens that waited on her. She was so like her brother’s daughter, whom thou lovest, that I need not say how fair she was, and wonderfully formed; all the people loved her, I too, more than anything in life, though she was ever wayward, and spoke not always gently, but had bitter words and cold ones, even for those she loved.”

“Then,” said Engeltram, looking up, “she was not like the Lady Irminhilda, and her great beauty did belie her acts; to be ungentle in her beauty would destroy it.” “Nay, but she was beautiful, and I loved her for her pride, and would not have it otherwise; but the strangest thing to see was the love that the grim old king her father, bore to her, and in strangewise did it show itself: none, I think, who trembled at the presence of the rough-speaking king, knew aught of that fierce love for his daughter. His son walked moodily through the halls, and his father seldom spoke to him; for in his countenance shone no light of enterprise, and between them there was little sympathy. I think the old warrior scorned his son, for his own youth-time had been bloody and stormy, and little rest from battle and encounter had he known through life; so, what of good lay in his son was all unfathomed, and pride and sullenness came uppermost. But the Lady Hilda grew up like a plant that flowers late, when all about is winter; like a rose set beside a stormy sunflower. Now, she loved most of all to watch from the window that looks upon the sea, and to sit there, leaning all the summer afternoons, and never speaking; sometimes, my child, I think she must have seen him, who came afterwards, through all the interspace of earth and sea, sitting in his olive garden in the south, and so ardently breathed out her spirit through fixed gazing, that she drew him to her. For, one evening, there came in sight a gallant ship, and it neared the castle one whole hour, while my lady did not cease to draw it with her stedfast-looking, and then it anchored just below the hill where thy father lies. From it stepped one of such lordly growth and bearing, as I had set eyes upon never before, either among my own countrymen or strangers, and so, I fancy, thought my lady from her window. Those that came with him called him Angelus, and the place of his birth that same fair Southern land of which the poets come and sing to us—a summer land they called it, of flowers, and lakes that never freeze. He was tall, like the tallest of our men, but his countenance was altogether different, long and thin and pale, and over his forehead, and low upon his shoulders, fell his long dark hair. I forget how long a time the stranger lived in the castle; it was somewhere in the summer when he came, and he went with the last leaves that fall in autumn. Ah! many summers have come and gone since then, but none so warm and bright as that, when the handsome strangers were guests among the townsmen, like their lord in the castle. I remember that the king, Asmundur, was sorely puzzled by his noble guest, as indeed we all were. Sometimes, after his uncertain manner, he would be rough and uncourteous, and speak defiantly, but always there proceeded from the other such pliancy and gracious habit of forbearance, that forthwith all his wrath and changefulness would melt before him. I think he liked his guest and feared him also; liked him for a power of great persuasiveness that he had not in himself, but wished him gone that he might be the rough and stormy king of old. But Eric hated him, and would not remain in his presence, but spent his time from the castle, plotting evil. I am not wise, my child, but I could see how it fared with my lady’s heart before her father’s visitor; he bent her to all purposes of his will, her so wayward. Before the darkness of his eye she bent all her nature to obedience. He would ring out music from his harp, singing to it, till she poured out all her life before him. I could not understand him, nor his gracious words, he was so altogether unlike any of the men that I had seen.—Art thou still listening, my child, or has deep sleep overtaken thee?”

“No sleep will come to me, dear



Gertha, therefore speak on, and quickly; for I am like a lonely man nearing a height, knowing not whether a great sea, or a barren moor, or a pleasant garden is beyond; but knowing surely that a turning point of life is come.” She laid her hands again upon his head, as he bent down, and spoke on, smoothing all the while his hair, and playing with it.

“It was Eric, the king’s son, overheard them, by the rock at the end of the slip of sand, for there they plighted word for ever, and he went in straightway before Asmundur, and told an evil and a cruel tale, till the old king stood up so full of wrath and vengeance that none could stand before him. Now, I was in the passage that overlooks the court-yard, and heard all the words that had been spoken, and immediately I ran to the rock where they still stood together, looking more beautiful than ever in the autumn sun, and as I had power, told them, hurriedly and tremblingly, all that had happened; of Eric’s betrayal, and the wrath of the king; how he vowed, in my hearing, a cruel death for Angelus; and withal, I was so overtaken with fear, that I caught Angelus by the arm, and pointed to his ship, and therewith he blew his horn three several times, long and loud, and his followers gathered swiftly round him; but Hilda lay upon the ground like one dead. He bore her tenderly to the ship, and laid her there insensible of anything. It was all done so rapidly; save only the noise of the horn along the coast there was no signal of departure; and, while Asmundur meditated wrath, and Eric waited for triumph, the gay ship, and all its crew, went sailing with a strong north wind behind them, towards the olive gardens of the south. I know not what passed afterwards in the castle, for I never returned to it, though no one knew what part I had taken in the flight; but I came to the house of Hakon, having been long betrothed to him. Ah! he was strong and warlike then. So I have been happy ever since.”—She paused a little time; it was as if the name of Hakon had brought back the memory of very happy days, for a blissful and placid smile came and rested upon her countenance. His voice came in these pauses of her story, through the walls of the room where he sat, talking with the neighbours, telling, it may be, even then, of his own first love for Gertha, and the deed for which she loved him, in that black forest that lay eastward; his voice, how changed from that time, when it went ringing down the pass with the war-cry of Asmundur.

Engeltram looked up into her gentle face; time had wrought kindly there, in the treading of its footsteps had blanched the roses of her cheeks to lilies only; but when again she spoke he sunk his head as before.

“A happy time. For I could not but think my fair mistress would be happy with such a loving husband, across the sea; yet, there would come seasons of sorrow doubtless to her, whenever the north wind blew, and the swallows came southwards, telling of a dreary winter in the north, for that old desolate king, who loved her well. He never came from the room where he stood when the tidings of her flight reached him; we never heard the ringing of his sword and spear, nor his old war-cry again. But, one winter’s night, six years afterwards, there blew a great hurricane at sea, all night long; so wild and furious as I remember not. any before or after, till last night. We had been keeping Yule festival. Old men of our town had never witnessed anything so fearful. From time to time came cries of dying people from the sea, of drowning men from sinking ships, and every wind wailed like a troubled spirit along the coast. Hakon sat here with me alone, we had not spoken since the storm began. About an hour before midnight, there went up a loud and bitter cry from the



castle, so long and piercing that it seemed no one human voice could have uplifted it; for it rent the thick walls of the castle with its loudness, and was heard above all the violence of the tempest. And when it had quite ceased, Hakon left me, and went running up the hill, and I was left alone. Then it seemed as if the storm, that raved down the street with drenching waters, had driven him back; for the door re-opened, and closed, as I thought, after him. My eyes were fast locked together within my hands, and I sat rocking with terror at the storm; but, when I looked up, wondering he did not speak, I was very frightened; for there stood before me, not Hakon, but Angelus, pale, like a ghost, and drenched with rain, and in his arms a little child. I knew him in a moment, though he looked older; oh! so much older and more sorrowful; all his long dark hair lay matted on his forehead with sea-water, and his clothes hung heavily with wet. I was less frightened then, my child, when I saw thee lying in his arms, sleeping from very weariness, for I knew it could be no spirit.”

Engeltram gave no sign of listening by word or upward look, only she felt him tremble violently, and shake through all his limbs.

“He spoke with that deep voice of his, the same as of old, so gentle and sweet. ‘I am dying, Gertha; the horrors of this wild night have broken my strength, and all my companions are perished in the storm.’ ‘ And the Lady Hilda,’ I cried, impetuously, the rush of blood at my heart choking further utterance. ‘She is in my home in the happy south, waiting for me. I came to buy forgiveness of Asmundur with this child, but I die before my promise is fulfilled to her. Take him, dear Gertha, for love of your lady, when I am dead, and tell the king, her father, that Engeltram is my surety, that I will repay him all beyond the grave.’ Then, my child, he died, saying, ‘Engeltram,’ once again, for very love of thy sweet name, and that I might well remember it. The firelight rested on his pale face, till I almost thought he lived again in its glow, and made great shadows of us twain upon the walls, like watching ghosts. All night long I kept a weary watch, singing magic runes above the body of the dead, that his spirit might have rest in its journey to the gods. Thou wast then too young to understand thy woe.

“When the morning came, it was as fair as this, freshening up the valley: so calm and fair a day, as if all cloud and stormy weather had spent itself in the night. I took thee to the window, and opened it, and looked towards the castle with thee lying in my arms, all unconscious of the covered form that lay where it had fallen. Then Hakon passed the window, looking worn and sleepless; and, at the entrance, I told him of the night’s adventure, set thee down upon the ground, and took him to thy father’s side. Oh! so well I can remember, that thou camest and didst look up between us with wide eyes, and then down upon that which lay covered on the ground; and then didst lay thyself down by the face of him who loved thee, and slept there in that gentle morning. And Hakon told me how the old Asmundur dreamed a fearful dream, and woke up suddenly with a loud cry, and fell straightway on the floor, dead, about an hour before midnight. And because Eric was now king, and because of his hatred to Angelus, we agreed together never to reveal the message, nor deliver thee



to danger. I took thee, sleeping in my arms, and nursed thee all that day. Thou wast so weary, little head, all the while that Hakon and his men worked upon the hill-side, and buried Angelus. But thou didst smile and smile, in quiet sleep, all the time through, Engeltram.” “Engeltram,” she cried presently, for his silence scared her, she could not understand it. He looked up: one seeing his stedfast face had never thought that all this story was new to him, or in anywise affected him. He rose and kissed her, holding her in his arms awhile. The calmness of his look and manner was more terrible to her than all.

Gertha did not sleep that night. It was about morning twilight, that, as she lay by the side of Hakon, there passed before the window, a tall and silent shadow. Hakon was then awake, and he cried out to it, asking who or what it was. And the voice of Engeltram answered, “Come, dear Hakon, and bind on my sword, for, before the sun is up, I must be far upon the sea.” Then he went to the side of Gertha, and, stooping down, kissed her lovingly. “Is it so?” she asked. “And now I know that it is well, though I shall never see thee more. She will know thee by the baldric of thy sword, which she wrought for Angelus in my sight; but I shall never see thee more, my son, my son.” The voice of Hakon called him from below. “Come and let me gird thy sword on, dear Engeltram, for now I know that one day thou wilt come again and reign over us, cheering my old heart, and Gertha’s, with the sight of thee.”

In the third month of his voyaging, while he made still southwards, Engeltram was driven, by contrary winds, to a wild and barren coast. It was about the coming on of winter; so his men besought him that they might



harbour there; for the coast everywhere showed roughly; and onwards, as far as they might see, the waters seemed scarcely navigable, among reefs of sharp-pointed slanting cliffs, that shelved off into the sea, suddenly, and appeared again in innumerable islands, marking the place of ancient headlands, that the waves had broken through. There, upon the shore of a certain bay, they disembarked, and made fast their vessel; and, presently, the near forest rung to the sound of hatchet and pike for the building of winter huts. And Engeltram also worked with them, till all the timber for their houses was felled, making good cheer, and singing, either songs of old heroes, or of seasons and the summer of the pleasant south; but none knew how dark all summer and flower-seasons had grown to him, how one night had changed to darkness all the colour of the skies and hills for him. So, when the wooden huts were now set up along the shore, and his men had begun already to keep Yule festival, with feats of strength and swiftness, Engeltram said to them, “Last night, in the dreaming of my sleep, I saw, upon the rim of land there, where the sky stoops down to meet it, Loki, the great mischief-maker, with his evil sword of scandal, beckoning, and saying, ‘Come, and let us try our strength together;’ therefore, I am going, knowing well that some temptation waits for me. Let no man follow nor come with me, but wait here until the spring comes back again, and I return.” So, Engeltram left them sorrowful; but no man stirred from his place to follow him; somehow, the voice that called obedience a better thing than sacrifice had taught them this.

But Engeltram saw no more of Loki, neither in dreams nor waking, though he passed a five-days’ journey towards the place where he had beheld the armed figure of the god on the horizon’s edge; but, on the morning of the sixth day, he came suddenly upon a mighty inland water, dark and deep, where overhanging rocks kept out the sun by day, and made long ghostly shadows in the moonlight. It was land-locked everywhere;



there was no outlet to the sea on any side; and through a passage between these rocks he came suddenly upon this water. And immediately he heard a sobbing and broken voice near him; and, looking, beheld an old man sitting at the water’s edge, weeping bitterly. He went up, therefore, and spoke comfortingly, asking what grief had overtaken him, who looked so old and majestical. And the old man, as it were, from custom of looking to the face of one who speaks, turned where the voice came, and Engeltram saw that he was sightless. “Oh! sir, if you can give me any help, for I am not far from death.” And Engeltram said, “What help?” and the other answered, “I have lived a king among men, over all this country; but blindness overtook me, and I could not lead my armies any more to battle; so, all men forsook me, all but my daughter and my three sons; and her whom I loved more than all my kingdom and my other children, did an enemy come and carry away; and my sons went out, one by one, to fight with that cruel robber, who had come across the sea to trouble me: one by one, and three in number, but they came not back again. I only heard the noise of their conflict in the morning; and, at night, I groped about, and found their bodies each several time, and buried them; but ever since I live here desolate, knowing that Freyda is not far from me, and sometimes sees me, though she can never give me help; for he that stole her from me keeps her in strong durance in the tower at the lake’s end.” Now, when Engeltram heard this, he was full of indignation, and rattled his sword and shield together, and made a righteous vow upon them that he would bring the king his daughter back again that day, “for I shall win the victory,” said he; “the All-father will not suffer such a thing to be for ever.” Then the old king blessed him, and dismissed him, and set himself to listen with all his might. And the hero walked along the water-side a full mile, thinking deeply, and once a faint momentary gleam, unlike a memory, like he knew not what—some indefinable resemblance to something heard before, to something done or suffered in immemorial time—a quick and subtle flash that all was not new, that something most like it had happened long ago, passed through his mind in vague perplexity. And while he still revolved what this might mean, he came to the foot of a tower, that stood half in the water, and opened by the land side; and, as he beat at the doorway with the hilt of his sword, there looked out upon him the beautiful face of one that he knew; for, at first, he thought her Irminhilda, and a painful doubt if all was not a dream, seized him for a moment; but when she spoke he knew not the voice, and took strength to look again. “Art thou the Lady Freyda, daughter of the blind king, that sits for ever by the lake?” and she answered, “I am,” with a voice, from which all hope had long departed; and, therewithal, they heard the feet of one coming down the winding steps that led up the rock, and, in a moment after, Engeltram was standing face to face with an armed warrior; and it was Vorsimund.

Narrow was the space, and laid about with flint stones, but they fought together without word or dally, hand to hand, and foot to foot. No human eye looked upon them—not Freyda’s; she could not see him fall, as she had seen her brothers before, and live. When the old king caught the clamour of the conflict, and heard how it was prolonged, and that the stranger had not yet fallen, he rejoiced and sang an old song that had cheered him many a time in battle; and it was answered by Freyda in the tower, and these two kept singing, answering one another with such music as they could, while the air trembled all about the rocks with the clashing and the banging of iron arms.



And the singing of their voices made a charm over the issue of the battle, for to Engeltram it was sweet music, but to Vorsimund such discord that every blow fell from him, ill-timed and out of measurement, till he grew faint and sick, all the landscape reeling and swimming in his vision. So about the setting of the sun, he fell down upon the sharp flint-stones, and his eyes closed, and his breath left him. Then Engeltram went into the tower, and told Freyda how Vorsimund lay dead upon the earth, and told her also to prepare a place for her father’s coming; so he went and brought the blind king, whose heart trembled and beat like the heart of a little child; darkness covered all the earth when they reached the tower, and Engeltram could scarcely see the form of Vorsimund lying dead. That night they told the story of their lives, one to another, the blind king and Engeltram; but Freyda watched the stranger only, waited on him and was silent. “To morrow,” said Engeltram, “I will go and bury this evil man, for he was my kinsman.” But in the morning when he went out to see the body and to bury it, it was not anywhere; and though he sought in every place for many days, late and early, yet no signs were manifest. “Some ravenous beast,” he thought, “has carried him off, and devoured him.” Yet neither was his armour visible anywhere. Three months he abode with them: in the morning hunting for them, and bringing home such things as he had caught; and in the evening talking with them, and listening as they sang together. But he saw that Freyda ever waited on his words, and hung upon them, and showed in all her silence and her speeches that she loved him very deeply; and because he was good, and pure, and noble, he felt more anguish at this than at all the evils that had yet befallen him, and trembled when he thought how it would end. Yet he could not hinder her, yet he would not be cold to her, that so she might learn the truth; but he suffered all her loving ways which were more sharp than arrows to him, for he saw her daily growing happy, and singing gaily. If ever hope for death possessed him, it was then, chief of all. The blind king saw not anything of all this, but made excuse for her. “It is suffering that has made her silent, when the spring comes she will give you better cheer of words.” And when he heard her singing every day more gaily; “Hark! it will be as I have said, when the spring comes round she will be happy.” At such times Engeltram could not answer, for he was choked with tears.

“Happier in springtime!” Yes, verily, poor child! much happier than he had looked to; for Engeltram had spoken, and she lay dead, and her father with her, buried by those arms she died in. The grass was growing with fresh blades of resurrection when he went forth, alone, alone, by the way that he had come, and returned again to his ship.

Favourable winds blew on them as they sailed out of the little bay, and went once more into the deep sea. Something in the knowledge that he



had not failed in bitter trial, something in the happy brightness of the skies, that never ceased to change and alter, bringing every day new sights to please him; something in his heart that bade him hope in front of sorrow that all might yet be well—after long endurance, after many years, after death, might yet be well—brought him some tranquillity. Whensoever he descended on the coast, he did no harm to the peaceful; neither feeders of flocks upon the hills, nor fishers on the coast; only on the lawless and such as lived by violence, and built for themselves strongholds among the mountains, did he wage continual warfare, late and early rising up and vanquishing; so that in all wild ballads of that land, which is called Ireland, would you hear him praised and honoured; called Avenger and Defender—the beautiful hero that came from Lochlin. His fame moreover spread upon the seas. Who spoke of it? Who carried it? None could tell; only, as such things are wont to happen, it was known; and he was called great and noble in the ears of Irminhilda; and the eyes of Hakon burned with the fire of other days at mention of his deeds.

Lamentation in a convent of Madonna on the shore of Sicily; nightly vigil and the voice of weeping from every nun. She whom they called Mother lay near to death, wearily tossing. Pray for her everywhere, all good Christians! she so pure and gentle, holy, and true, lies dying, stricken with fever, and tranced; pray that the passage of her soul be not hindered, but quiet and swift.

Ten long nights, and weary days between them, and the convent has not rested. There is grave perplexity in the faces of the watchers, for words of cherished memory have fallen from her lips, unfathomable to all hearers. Why so stormy a transit for the gentle



soul that walked so quietly among her fellows? None may tell. “Watch and pray,” said the priest, “we know not the power of the Evil One, but we know the power of God.”

On the tenth night, a little before midnight, the fever departed, and she said, “who called me since I was laid in trance?” but none answered, thinking that the fever had bereft her. “Nay, but one called ‘Hilda’ quickly, in some need;” and seeing they all wondered still and denied, (for her name among them was Angela,) she sighed, and said softly, “Then he will come presently.” It was at the time of darkness, when the good ship that bore Engeltram and his men struck upon the rocks below the convent; for, while the Abbess lay dying, none had hung out lights for mariners. And the ship that had gone through many storms, and borne them bravely until now, went down swiftly into the dark waters, unlighted of moon or star or beacon. And Engeltram raised his voice mightily, and rent a passage through the winds for that cry, “Hilda,” and then went deep in the eddy of the waters, that boiled furiously on the ship as it went down.

In the space of a minute after he rose again, and struck out manfully to the shore, calling a second time upon the same name, knowing not how near his course was to fulfilment: at the second cry, Angela lifted herself up, and the radiance of new life was upon her forehead. “Bring him in to me,” she said, “and quickly, before I die.”

They were together, the mother and the son: at the last hour, after longing and fruitless watching, after many years; so was the good Lord kind to her. Twenty years! and in this brief moment it was overspanned, and made as though it had not been. Spring and autumn, summer and winter, told twenty times! and now it was over, and they had met. For a little space death withdrew himself, while they held converse together, speaking of Angelus; afterwards she told not anything about herself, which he desired chiefly, but spoke only of Christ and resurrection, saying, “We shall be together, Engeltram, even yet.” And she kissed him and blessed him there,



telling him the meaning of his name, and why it was given him, and how he must teach his people. She said moreover, “Hasten back again to your own place, dear son, and prepare for the receiving of those I send you, and give them fellowship and brotherhood.” Again and yet a third time she blessed him, calling him good and dear, and her soul passed about the time of matins, when she and Engeltram were alone.

After many days, wherein he could not speak, nor close his eyes, through his bewilderment, not believing yet that she had gone from him, he remembered her command, that he should go and make ready for those that she would send; and he took ship with all that had escaped the wreck, and steered northwards about midsummer. Overhead went long companies of wild swans, seeking the brief summer in the north, with flutterings of many wings. At evening and at morning he sat apart, in the prow, to think of all that had happened, of his mother Hilda, so late found and early lost, of her precious bequeathal of Belief that he would teach his people; Irminhilda should hear it also and receive it; then he bent his head down low, as if in deep humility or loyal fealty. Hakon also and Gertha would be surely foremost among all that loved and came out to meet him, for he had been gone a year, and had won victory and honour, and done virtuously, and now he was returning home.

Watching still and waiting, resting her white forehead on her right hand, playing dreamily with her left among the leaves, and an agony of long expectation



sealed upon her face—

“She will surely die,” they said, all the maids that waited on her.

All night the roar of battle came to them, swelled up the valley to the castle walls, and faded: a noise of baying hounds and screaming curlews mingled with the sullen roar of conflict; a rueful time for timid maids that bore her company. For Engeltram waged a deadly battle among the mountains with an ancient foe, even Vorsimund, whom he had not slain outright by the Irish lake: but this time they were not alone; a thousand or more followed them to battle. Now it had happened thus: when Engeltram came in sight upon the last evening, one ran down the coast who had looked for his arrival night and day, and made signs that he should land there secretly; and the signal was seen from the ship, and there they landed. But Engeltram could not speak for terror, fearing that some evil had befallen Irminhilda; the other, therefore, told him how, three days back, Vorsimund descended suddenly upon the coast, with a band of armed men in ten ships, demanding the surrender of the castle and the king’s daughter in marriage; and hereupon a fearful battle had followed, wherein Eric had fallen, and Hakon also, leaving the castle with a few defenders, ready to open. “Where is Gertha?” said Engeltram; the other shook his head, answering that she had died quietly in her sleep on the day that Engeltram had left. Then Engeltram gathered together all the men that were armed and scattered over the mountains, and came suddenly upon the host of Vorsimund: so the battle had continued since the time of sunset, and it was now about four in the morning. “What time of the night is it?” said one: another maiden answered, “It wants an hour till morning:” whereat the clamour of the shock of arms ceased suddenly, and a silence followed for a little space, and then a shout, like a shout of triumph, so loud and piercing that it was as if the armies of the winds had lent their voices to that cry; then again a silence deeper than before.

“Listen!” said Irminhilda, and lowered her head to the speech of inaudible voices; “quick, for he has called me twice.” Instinctively they brought her fairest robes, and arrayed her in them; broidery of costly workmanship, wrought about with flowers. In her bridal dress she sat upright, looking at the sea no more, listening only; all her senses closed save one; there came only the roar of the tide, and sharp clapping of the breakers down the coast.

Now, Engeltram was dying of his grievous wounds, and his life was ebbing fast to consummation; all around him stood the lords and captains, and the chiefest of the people, speaking none, but weeping only; and so sweet a smile and painless lay upon his features, and so deep tranquillity about his lips, and inward triumph in his eyes, that great awe descended on them, made them silent in their grief. It was about the time of morning twilight when Engeltram was dying, and the night was going down behind the sea, swiftly, swiftly, all the stars and clouds together behind the sea.

“The morning is coming,” said the lords, “and a fresh wind with it; in an hour the sun will be upon the hilltops;” but Engeltram looked ever westward, though a gathering dimness darkened all his vision into night; it seemed he listened fixedly, hearkening for a signal: presently, with a mighty effort, that drove the blood up swiftly through the cruel passage of the sword, he raised himself to listen.—“Hark,” he said, “I hear a noise of rowing, and dipping of the oars in water.“ “It is the lapping of the waves along the beach,” said the lords.

Like one fathoms deep in sleep, yet with eyelids open, sat Irminhilda, swaying gently to the converse of invisible presences, as one moves to the tune of instruments, to the measure of musical rhymes. “It is nearly morning,” said her maidens, “all the hills are standing ready for the dawn; in an hour the sun will come.” But she heard them not, or hearing, seemed to hear not, but continually her head inclined forwards, and her face drooped lower. Neither the warriors at the mountain pass, nor the weary maidens in the chamber heard aught that passed between the lovers.

“Why art thou delaying so long, my hero? all my life is slipping from me while thou tarriest. Surely twice thy summons came to me; meet me by the rock of plighted vows when I have called thee once again; and my life is slipping from me before thou callest. Oh! make haste, make haste.”

“Ah! my lady, greatly loved and longed for, life-blood flows too slowly, something holds me that I cannot die and come to thee—a ringing in my ears of strange noises, like a noise of rowers, rowing on a water underground, and still ascending—a noise of innumerable bells, that answer one another, from cliff and hill and valley; what meaning is herein I know not; if no answer comes, nor counsel, before sunrise, I will come.”

“Alas, my hero, for my heart is breaking even now, and I shall stand upon the melancholy shore alone.”

In the hearing of her ladies did she speak, “Let some one stand upon the walls and watch for the coming of the sun, and when the hills are rimmed with light, let her come before me.” So one went and stood as she commanded. “Bring me now the book of Baldur, that is written in golden runes, which Engeltram, my lord, gave me on that day;” and another brought it, and sat at her feet to read therefrom, and read for a long space about the youth and beauty and holiness of Baldur, the Son of the All-Father, the beloved among the gods; and of the Evil Spirit Loki, how he conspired against Baldur, and caused him to be slain by his own friend, with the wood of that accursed branch, the mistletoe. So Baldur died, neither could any help be found for him; all the gods in Asgard wept for him, but



could not save him. She read, moreover, that he departed in a burning ship, and should yet come again and visit men; and ever in that old mythology had it seemed most beautiful to Irminhilda and to Engeltram, that Baldur should come again. And the maiden sitting there, went reading on, but looked not upwards; yet she thought the morning air was strangely cold, and a shiver more than once went through her. Then she that had been watching on the wall, came in and stood before her mistress, saying, “My lady, in a moment the sun will rest upon the hills.—Hush! she is asleep, my lady;” and they kept silence before the figure as it seemed to sleep; but a long way off upon the coast, by the rock of plighted vows, stood the real Irminhilda, waiting for her lord.

Engeltram turned, and spoke unto the lords that stood round about him: “This day I go a long journey on the sea. Let, therefore, a ship be made ready and set for launching, and when I am dead, let me be carried to the shore in my rent armour as I lie, and with the sword of my achieving with me, and there lay me in the ship, looking westward; and so soon as the first wind comes from the sun, set me adrift upon the sea, and set the ship on fire, after the manner of the ancient kings, for this night I rest in Asgard, the city of the great gods.” This he said as words they might understand, for he knew well concerning Asgard and Valhalla that they were not as his people thought, but his breath so failed him that he could not tell them, dying so, and he trusted one would come and teach them after his departure:—and once again a sound of measured dipping of the oars.

“Who shall steer thee into Asgard?” said the warriors; every man among them asked, “Let me steer thee into Asgard, in the burning ship.”

Then said Engeltram, “I go not from you alone, but unseen hands shall steer me duly.“

All the warriors said, each of them, “Let us row thee in the burning ship.” But Engeltram shook his head mournfully, and answered, “Who should then protect this people, and give them laws, and teach them wisdom? they have no king, nor any to rule them. I go this day to enquire for them of the All-Father, that he may send them some one, either king or prophet, who shall lead them right. Do, therefore, as I have required of you, and when I am out of sight, watch stedfastly upon the shore until an answer come; for it will come.” So they wept, and said that it should be so.

And after this, Engeltram smiled a happy smile, and seemed as if he were again listening, and one who kneeled and leaned over him, heard him muttering, “Yes, the same sound, nearer than before.” Then he closed his eyes, and everywhere was silence; and the sun shot up above the ridge of eastern mountains; in a moment all the valley was lighted up with orient colours, also the helmets and brazen shields of the warriors were gilded with the beams that shot afar off, striking the four towers of the castle of Elstein. Then Engeltram shouted with the noise of a battle-cry, with a victorious shout: “The morning is come; very soon I shall be with you, Irminhilda.” And the morning had come, and all the night and twilight ceased for ever.

“He is dead, he is dead.” But they wept no longer; for the spoken words of the dead die not, but are ever living, and who knows the risk of disobedience, or whether it was a human voice only that spoke in them? They laid him, therefore, in the ship, covering him with costly draperies, in his own broken armour, with his own good sword; and the chief among them took a firebrand, and lighted the helm; and the ship went off into the deep sea, blown by the early morning winds, steadily, swiftly onwards, burning like



a setting sun: as the sun dies daily in a flame of fire along the west—as the whole world together shall yet die, consumed with fire, so was his passing out of life. All along the shore, whosoever had survived the battle, with the women and the children, gathered out of every house, watched it nearing the dark sea-line, looking for some wonder to happen.

On the margin of the water and the sky there shot up from it a momentary blaze of light high into heaven, and immediately after that it went down out of sight, either beyond the visible limit of the sea, or down below, sunk into its depths: then there was silence for a little space, neither did any dare to speak, remembering his last words and the promise that he gave them; in their hearts was deep anxiety. “Will Odin come?” thought they; “himself or Baldur, the White God. Oh! if Baldur would come and teach us!”

And therewithal it seemed to the farthest seers that the ship was returning to them from the under-world; and while they watched, it came nearer, nearer; and the sun behind them lighted up the ship, and revealed it full of men, white like spirits. “It is Baldur!” said the people. And the rowers in that strange vessel never rested from their labour till the fore part struck upon the sand and pebbles of the shore. “Surely it is Baldur!” said the people. He whom they so named bore a cross, and as he stepped upon the ground, there he planted it, deep into the yellow sand: on all the warriors and the old men and children there was silence. Very calm and holy was the face of the leader; like the face of Engeltram, long and thin and dark; his great white robe fell ungirdled in heavy and mighty folds to the feet: all this saw the people, observed the strange resemblance to their lost hero, and were silent.

Then he spoke to them; all day long he spoke and stayed not, true and credible tidings of Asgard. Like a starving people waiting for food did they stand and listen; none stepped aside or looked aside all that day. He spoke to them of life hereafter, of the love of the All-Father, till the eyes of the children and women were overcharged with tears; till the hearts of all the men were strong and brave. He spoke of the White God, and called him Christ.

The everlasting sun looked out upon them through spaces of great mountain-clouds, like a painted glory on a field of blue, passed behind the clouds, declined, and sank: all the pathway by which the burning ship had gone and the strangers come, lay upon the water like a molten golden pavement. Then came all the people and stepped into the bright water some few paces, and the sun went down, gazing as though it would yet linger, looking at the baptism of a nation; sinking swiftly at the last, as it would say, “I must visit other lands, but quickly I will come again to look;” for all the land was Christian.

Thus Engeltram fulfilled his promise, died and sent a prophet to them: and to all his memory was lovely; children also in the after-time heard his name sounded musically in all songs and ballads, and poets in that land saw oftentimes in their sweet



dreaming Engeltram and Irminhilda on the other shore beyond the sea, walking hand in hand together, watching how the people fared.

Herewith I closed the volume. As if the distance across which I looked had made all speech inaudible, the lives of men in that far-off time came to me only in pictures: I could not hear them speak as they really spoke, could not know them as they were: but, just as when a friend has parted from us with whom we have held happy converse, and is now a long way behind upon the verge of land and sky, though we cannot hear him speak, yet do we none the less turn many times to look at him, yet is he none the less our friend whom we love, and his form traced upon the sky colossally we know and dwell upon. So was it with me. This book holds somewhere a page of crimson lettering, opaline and azure; on a summer day, when all the sky is laughing with merry blue, and the round shield of the sun burns in golden splendour, I will come again and open to that page, and read a story coloured like it, with love and laughter and happy issue; for the sequel of this first day’s thought has left me, as it found me, sad; only somehow the great grey clouds and dark sea and mournful wind would flow to no other music than to sadness.

Not long ago I saw for the first time some of the churches of North France; still more recently I saw them for the second time; and, remembering the love I have for them and the longing that was in me to see them, during the time that came between the first



and second visit, I thought I should like to tell people of some of those things I felt when I was there;—there among those mighty tombs of the long-dead ages.

And I thought that even if I could say nothing else about these grand churches, I could at least tell men how much I loved them; so that, though they might laugh at me for my foolish and confused words, they might yet be moved to see what there was that made me speak my love, though I could give no reason for it.

For I will say here that I think those same churches of North France the grandest, the most beautiful, the kindest and most loving of all the buildings that the earth has ever borne; and, thinking of their past-away builders, can I see through them, very faintly, dimly, some little of the mediæval times, else dead, and gone from me for ever,—voiceless for ever.

And those same builders, still surely living, still real men, and capable of receiving love, I love no less than the great men, poets and painters and such like, who are on earth now, no less than my breathing friends whom I can see looking kindly on me now. Ah! do I not love them with just cause, who certainly loved me, thinking of me sometimes between the strokes of their chisels; and for this love of all men that they had, and moreover for the great love of God, which they certainly had too; for this, and for this work of theirs, the upraising of the great cathedral front with its beating heart of the thoughts of men, wrought into the leaves and flowers of the fair earth; wrought into the faces of good men and true, fighters against the wrong, of angels who upheld them, of God who rules all things; wrought through the lapse of years, and years, and years, by the dint of chisel, and stroke of hammer, into stories of life and death, the second life, the second death, stories of God’s dealing in love and wrath with the nations of the earth, stories of the faith and love of man that dies not: for their love, and the deeds through which it worked, I think they will not lose their reward.

So I will say what I can of their works, and I have to speak of Amiens first, and how it seemed to me in the hot August weather.

I know how wonderful it would look,



if you were to mount one of the steeples of the town, or were even to mount up to the roof of one of the houses westward of the cathedral; for it rises up from the ground, grey from the paving of the street, the cavernous porches of the west front opening wide, and marvellous with the shadows of the carving you can only guess at; and above stand the kings, and above that you would see the twined mystery of the great flamboyant rose window with its thousand openings, and the shadows of the flower-work carved round it, then the grey towers and gable, grey against the blue of the August sky, and behind them all, rising high into the quivering air, the tall spire over the crossing.

But from the hot Place Royale here with its stunted pollard acacias, and statue of some one, I know not whom, but some citizen of Amiens I suppose, you can see nothing but the graceful spire; it is of wood covered over with lead, and was built quite at the end of the flamboyant times. Once it was gilt all over, and used to shine out there, getting duller and duller, as the bad years grew worse and worse; but the gold is all gone now; when it finally disappeared I know not, but perhaps it was in 1771, when the chapter got them the inside of their cathedral whitewashed from vaulting to pavement.

The spire has two octagonal stages above the roof, formed of trefoiled arches, and slim buttresses capped by leaded figures; from these stages the sloping spire springs with crocketted ribs at the angles, the lead being arranged in a quaint herring-bone pattern; at the base of the spire too is a crown of open-work and figures, making a third stage; finally, near the top of the spire the crockets swell, till you come to the rose that holds the great spire-cross of metal-work, such metal-work as the French alone knew how to make; it is all beautiful, though so late.

From one of the streets leading out of the Place Royale you can see the cathedral, and as you come nearer you see that it is clear enough of houses or such like things; the great apse rises over you, with its belt of eastern chapels; first the long slim windows of these chapels, which are each of them little apses, the Lady Chapel projecting a good way beyond the rest, and then, running under the cornice of the chapels and outer aisles all round the church, a cornice of great noble leaves; then the parapets in changing flamboyant patterns, then the conical roofs of the chapels hiding the exterior tracery of the triforium, then the great clerestory windows, very long, of four lights, and stilted, the tracery beginning a long way below the springing of their arches; and the buttresses are so thick, and their arms spread so here, that each of the clerestory windows looks down its own space between them, as if between walls: above the windows rise their canopies running through the parapet, and above all the great mountainous roof, and all below it, and around the windows and walls of the choir and apse, stand the mighty army of the buttresses, holding up the weight of the stone roof within with their strong arms for ever.

We go round under their shadows, past the sacristies, past the southern transept, only glancing just now at the sculpture there, past the chapels of the nave, and enter the church by the small door hard by the west front, with that figure of huge St. Christopher quite close over our heads; thereby we enter the church, as I said, and are in its western bay. I think I felt inclined to shout when I first entered Amiens cathedral; it is so free and vast and noble, I did not feel in the least awe-struck, or humbled by its size and grandeur. I have not often felt thus when looking on architecture, but have felt, at all events, at first, intense exultation at the beauty of it; that, and a certain kind of satisfaction in looking on the



geometrical tracery of the windows, on the sweeping of the huge arches, were, I think, my first feelings in Amiens Cathedral.

We go down the nave, glancing the while at the traceried windows of the chapels, which are later than the windows above them; we come to the transepts, and from either side the stained glass, in their huge windows, burns out on us; and, then, first we begin to appreciate somewhat the scale of the church, by looking up, along the ropes hanging from the vaulting to the pavement, for the tolling of the bells in the spire.

There is a hideous renaissance screen, of solid stone or marble, between choir and nave, with more hideous iron gates to it, through which, however, we, walking up the choir steps, can look and see the gorgeous carving of the canopied stalls; and then, alas! ‘the concretion of flattened sacks, rising forty feet above the altar;’ but, above that, the belt of the apse windows, rich with sweet mellowed stained glass, under the dome-like roof.

The stalls in the choir are very rich, as people know, carved in wood, in the early sixteenth century, with high twisted canopies, and histories, from the Old Testament mostly, wrought about them. The history of Joseph I remember best among these. Some of the scenes in it I thought very delightful; the story told in such a gloriously quaint, straightforward manner. Pharaoh’s dream, how splendid that was! the king lying asleep on his elbow, and the kine coming up to him in two companies. I think the lean kine was about the best bit of wood-carving I have seen yet. There they were, a writhing heap, crushing and crowding one another, drooping heads and starting eyes, and strange angular bodies; altogether the most wonderful symbol of famine ever conceived. I never fairly understood Pharaoh’s dream till I saw the stalls at Amiens.

There is nothing else to see in the choir; all the rest of the fittings being as bad as possible. So we will go out again, and walk round the choir-aisles. The screen round the choir is solid, the upper part of it carved (in the flamboyant times), with the history of St. John the Baptist, on the north side; with that of St. Firmin on the south. I remember very little of the sculptures relative to St. John, but I know that I did not like them much. Those about St. Firmin, who evangelized Picardy, I remember much better, and some of them especially I thought very beautiful; they are painted too, and at any rate one cannot help looking at them.

I do not remember, in the least, the order in which they come, but some of them are fixed well enough in my memory; and, principally, a bishop, (St. Firmin,) preaching, rising out of a pulpit from the midst of the crowd, in his jewelled cope and mitre, and with a beautiful sweet face. Then another, the baptizing of the king and his lords, was very quaint and lifelike. I remember, too, something about the finding of St. Firmin’s relics, and the translation of the same relics when found; the many bishops, with their earnest faces, in the first, and the priests, bearing the reliquaries, in the second; with their long vestments girded at the waist and falling over their feet, painted too, in light colours, with golden flowers on them. I wish I remembered these carvings better, I liked them so much. Just about this place, in the lower part of the screen, I remember the tomb of a priest, very gorgeous, with gold and colours; he lay in a deep niche, under a broad segmental arch, which is painted with angels; and, outside this niche, angels were drawing back painted curtains, I am sorry to say. But the priest lay there in cope and alb, and the gentle colour lay over him, as his calm face gazed ever at the angels painted in his resting-place. I have



dim recollection of seeing, when I was at Amiens before, not this last time, a tomb, which I liked much, a bishop, I think it was, lying under a small round arch, but I forget the figure now. This was in a chapel on the other side of the choir. It is very hard to describe the interior of a great church like this, especially since the whitewash (applied, as I said, on this scale in 1771) lies on everything so; before that time, some book says, the church was painted from end to end with patterns of flowers and stars, and histories: think—I might have been able to say something about it then, with that solemn glow of colour all about me, as I walked there from sunrise to sunset; and yet, perhaps, it would have filled my heart too full for speaking, all that beauty; I know not.

Up into the triforium, and other galleries, sometimes in the church, sometimes in narrow passages of close-fitting stone, sometimes out in the open air; up into the forest of beams between the slates and the real stone roof: one can look down through a hole in the vaulting and see the people walking and praying on the pavement below, looking very small from that height, and strangely foreshortened. A strange sense of oppression came over me at that time, when, as we were in one of the galleries of the west front, we looked into the church, and found the vaulting but a foot or two (or it seemed so) above our heads; also, while I was in the galleries, now out of the church, now in it, the canons had begun to sing complines, and the sound of their singing floated dimly up the winding staircases and half-shut doors.

The sun was setting when we were in the roof, and a beam of it, striking through the small window up in the gable, fell in blood-red spots on the beams of the great dim roof. We came out from the roof on to the parapet in the blaze of the sun, and then going to the crossing, mounted as high as we could into the spire, and stood there a while looking down on the beautiful country, with its many water-meadows, and feathering trees.

And here let me say something about the way in which I have taken this description upon me; for I did not write it at Amiens; moreover, if I had described it from the bare reminiscences of the church, I should have been able to say little enough about the most interesting part of all, the sculptures, namely; so, though remembering well enough the general effect of the whole, and, very distinctly, statues and faces, nay, leaves and flower-knots, here and there; yet, the external sculpture I am describing as well as I can from such photographs as I have; and these, as everybody knows, though very distinct and faithful, when they show anything at all, yet, in some places, where the shadows are deep, show simply nothing. They tell me, too, nothing whatever of the colour of the building; in fact, their brown and yellow is as unlike as possible to the grey of Amiens. So, for the facts of form, I have to look at my photographs; for facts of colour I have to try and remember the day or two I spent at Amiens, and the reference to the former has considerably dulled my memory of the latter. I have something else to say, too; it will seem considerably ridiculous, no doubt, to many people who are well acquainted with the iconography of the French churches, when I talk about the stories of some of the carvings; both from my want of knowledge as to their meaning, and also from my telling people things which everybody may be supposed to know; for which I pray forgiveness, and so go on to speak of the carvings about the south transept door.

It is divided in the midst by a pillar, whereon stands the Virgin, holding our Lord. She is crowned, and has a smile upon her face now for ever; and in the canopy above her head are three angels, bearing up the aureole there; and about these angels, and the



aureole and head of the Virgin, there is still some gold and vermilion left. The Holy Child, held in His mother’s left arm, is draped from his throat to his feet, and between His hands He holds the orb of the world. About on a level with the Virgin, along the sides of the doorway, are four figures on each side, the innermost one on either side being an angel holding a censer; the others are ecclesiastics, and (some book says) benefactors to the church. They have solemn faces, stern, with firm close-set lips, and eyes deep-set under their brows, almost frowning, and all but one or two are beardless, though evidently not young; the square door valves are carved with deep-twined leaf-mouldings, and the capitals of the door-shafts are carved with varying knots of leaves and flowers. Above the Virgin, up in the tympanum of the doorway, are carved the Twelve Apostles, divided into two bands of six, by the canopy over the Virgin’s head. They are standing in groups of two, but I do not know for certain which they are, except, I think, two, St. James and St. John; the two first in the eastern division. James has the pilgrim’s hat and staff, and John is the only beardless one among them; his face is rather sad, and exceedingly lovely, as, indeed are all those faces, being somewhat alike; and all, in some degree like the type of face received as the likeness of Christ himself. They have all long hair falling in rippled bands on each side of their faces, on to their shoulders. Their drapery, too, is lovely; they are very beautiful and solemn. Above their heads runs a cornice of trefoiled arches, one arch over the head of each apostle; from out of the deep shade of the trefoils flashes a grand leaf cornice, one leaf again to each apostle; and so we come to the next compartment, which contains three scenes from the life of St. Honoré, an early French bishop. The first scene is, I think, the election of a bishop, the monks or priests talking the matter over in chapter first, then going to tell the bishop-elect. Gloriously-draped figures the monks are, with genial faces full of good wisdom, drawn into quaint expressions by the joy of argument. This one old, and has seen much of the world; he is trying, I think, to get his objections answered by the young man there, who is talking to him so earnestly; he is listening, with a half-smile on his face, as if he had made up his mind, after all. These other two, one very energetic indeed, with his head and shoulders swung back a little, and his right arm forward, and the other listening to him, and but half-convinced yet. Then the two next, turning to go with him who is bearing to the new-chosen bishop the book of the Gospels and pastoral staff; they look satisfied and happy. Then comes he with the pastoral staff and Gospels; then, finally, the man who is announcing the news to the bishop himself, the most beautiful figure in the whole scene, perhaps, in the whole doorway; he is stooping down, lovingly, to the man they have chosen, with his left hand laid on his arm, and his long robe falls to his feet from his shoulder all along his left side, moulded a little to the shape of his body, but falling heavily and with scarce a fold in it, to the ground: the chosen one sitting there, with his book held between his two hands, looks up to him with his brave face, and he will be bishop, and rule well, I think. So, by the next scene he is bishop, I suppose, and is sitting there ordering the building of a church; for he is sitting under a trefoiled canopy, with his mitre on his head, his right hand on a reading-desk by his side. His book is lying open, his head turned toward what is going forwards. It is a splendid head and face. In the photograph I have of this subject, the mitre, short and simple, is in full light but for a little touch of shade on one side; the face is



shaded, but the crown of short crisp curls hanging over it, about half in light, half in shade. Beyond the trefoil canopy comes a wood of quaint conventional trees, full of stone, with a man working at it with a long pick: I cannot see his face, as it is altogether in shade, the light falling on his head however. He is dressed in a long robe, quite down to his feet, not a very convenient dress, one would think, for working in. I like the trees here very much; they are meant for hawthorns and oaks. There are a very few leaves on each tree, but at the top they are all twisted about, and are thicker, as if the wind were blowing them. The little capitals of the canopy, under which the bishop is sitting, are very delightful, and are common enough in larger work of this time (thirteenth century) in France. Four bunches of leaves spring from long stiff stalks, and support the square abacus, one under each corner. The next scene, in the division above, is some miracle or other, which took place at mass, it seems. The bishop is saying mass before an altar; behind him are four assistants; and, as the bishop stands there with his hand raised, a hand coming from somewhere by the altar, holds down towards him the consecrated wafer. The thing is gloriously carved, whatever it is. The assistant immediately behind the bishop, holding in his hands a candlestick, somewhat slantwise towards the altar, is, especially in the drapery, one of the most beautiful in the upper part of this tympanum; his head is a little bent, and the line made from the back of it over the heavy hair, down along the heavy-swinging robe, is very beautiful.

The next scene is the shrine of some Saint. This same bishop, I suppose, dead now, after all his building and ruling, and hard fighting possibly, with the powers that be; often to be fought with righteously in those times. Over the shrine sits the effigy of the bishop, with his hand raised to bless. On the western side are two worshippers; on the eastern, a blind and a deaf man are being healed, or waiting to be healed, by the touch of the dead bishop’s robe. The deaf man is leaning forward, and the servant of the shrine holds to his ear the bishop’s robe. The deaf man has a very deaf face, not very anxious though; not even showing very much hope, but faithful only. The blind one is coming up behind him with a crutch in his right hand, and led by a dog; the face was either in its first estate, very ugly and crabbed, or by the action of the weather or some such thing, has been changed so.

So the bishop being dead and miracles being wrought at his tomb, in the division above comes the translation of his remains; a long procession taking up the whole of the division, which is shorter than the others, however, being higher up towards the top of the arch. An acolyte bearing a cross, heads the procession, then two choristers; then priests bearing relics and books; long vestments they have, and stoles crossed underneath their girdles; then comes the reliquary borne by one at each end, the two finest figures in this division, the first especially; his head raised and his body leaning forward to the weight of the reliquary, as people nearly always do walk when they carry burdens and are going slowly; which this procession certainly is doing, for some of the figures are even turning round. Three men are kneeling or bending down beneath the shrine as it passes; cripples they are, all three have beautiful faces, the one who is apparently the worst cripple of the three, (his legs and feet are horribly twisted,) has especially a wonderfully delicate face, timid and shrinking, though faithful: behind the shrine come the people, walking slowly together with reverent faces; a woman with a little child holding her hand are the last figures in this history of St. Honoré: they both have their faces turned full



south, the woman has not a beautiful face, but a happy good-natured genial one.

The cornice below this division is of plain round-headed trefoils very wide, and the spandril of each arch is pierced with a small round trefoil, very sharply cut, looking, in fact, as if it were cut with a punch: this cornice, simple though it is, I think, very beautiful, and in my photograph the broad trefoils of it throw sharp black shadows on the stone behind the worshipping figures, and square-cut altars.

In the triangular space at the top of the arch is a representation of our Lord on the cross; St. Mary and St. John standing on either side of him, and, kneeling on one knee under the sloping sides of the arch, two angels, one on each side. I very much wish I could say something more about this piece of carving than I can do, because it seems to me that the French thirteenth century sculptors failed less in their representations of the crucifixion than almost any set of artists; though it was certainly an easier thing to do in stone than on canvass, especially in such a case as this where the representation is so highly abstract; nevertheless, I wish I could say something more about it; failing which, I will say something about my photograph of it.

I cannot see the Virgin’s face at all, it is in the shade so much; St. John’s I cannot see very well; I do not think it is a remarkable face, though there is sweet expression in it; our Lord’s face is very grand and solemn, as fine as I remember seeing it anywhere in sculpture. The shadow of the body hanging on the cross there, falls strangely and weirdly on the stone behind—both the kneeling angels (who, by the way, are holding censers,) are beautiful. Did I say above that one of the faces of the twelve Apostles was the most beautiful in the tympanum? if I did, I retract that saying, certainly, looking on the westernmost of these two angels. I keep using the word beautiful so often that I feel half inclined to apologize for it; but I cannot help it, though it is often quite inadequate to express the loveliness of some of the figures carved here; and so it happens surely with the face of this angel. The face is not of a man, I should think; it is rather like a very fair woman’s face; but fairer than any woman’s face I ever saw or thought of: it is in profile and easy to be seen in the photograph, though somewhat in the shade. I am utterly at a loss how to describe it, or to give any idea of the exquisite lines of the cheek and the rippled hair sweeping back from it, just faintly touched by the light from the southeast. I cannot say more about it. So I have gone through the carvings in the lower part of this doorway, and those of the tympanum. Now, besides these, all the arching-over of the door is filled with figures under canopies, about which I can say little, partly from want of adequate photographs, partly from ignorance of their import.

But the first of the cavettos wherein these figures are, is at any rate filled with figures of angels, some swinging censers, some bearing crowns, and other things which I cannot distinguish. Most of the niches in the next cavetto seem to hold subjects; but the square camera of the photographer clips some, many others are in shadow, in fact the niches throw heavy shadows over the faces of nearly all; and without the photograph I remember nothing but much fretted grey stone above the line of the capitals of the doorway shafts; grey stone with something carved in it, and the swallows flying in and out of it. Yet now there are three niches I can say something about at all events. A stately figure with a king’s crown on his head, and hair falling in three waves over his shoulders, a very kingly face looking straight onward; a great jewelled collar falling heavily to his elbows: his right hand holding a heavy



sceptre formed of many budding flowers, and his left just touching in front the folds of his raiment that falls heavily, very heavily to the ground over his feet. Saul, King of Israel.— A bending figure with covered head, pouring, with his right hand, oil on the head of a youth, not a child plainly, but dwarfed to a young child’s stature before the bending of the solemn figure with the covered head. Samuel anointing David.—A king again, with face hidden in deep shade, holding a naked sword in his right hand, and a living infant in the other; and two women before him, one with a mocking smile on her face, the other with her head turned up in passionate entreaty, grown women they are plainly, but dwarfed to the stature of young girls before the hidden face of the King. The judgment of Solomon.—An old man with drawn sword in right hand, with left hand on a fair youth dwarfed, though no child, to the stature of a child; the old man’s head is turned somewhat towards the presence of an angel behind him, who points downward to something unseen. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.—Noah too, working diligently that the ark may be finished before the flood comes. —Adam tilling the ground, and clothed in the skins of beasts.—There is Jacob’s stolen blessing, that was yet in some sort to be a blessing though it was stolen.—There is old Jacob whose pilgrimage is just finished now, after all his doings and sufferings, all those deceits inflicted upon him, that made him remember, perforce, the lie he said and acted long ago,—old Jacob blessing the sons of Joseph. And many more which I remember not, know not, mingled too with other things which I dimly see have to do with the daily occupations of the men who lived in the dim, far-off thirteenth century.

I remember as I came out by the north door of the west front, how tremendous the porches seemed to me, which impression of greatness and solemnity, the photographs, square-cut and brown-coloured do not keep at all; still however I can recall whenever I please the wonder I felt before that great triple porch; I remember best in this way the porch into which I first entered, namely the northernmost, probably because I saw most of it, coming in and out often by it, yet perhaps the fact that I have seen no photograph of this doorway somewhat assists this impression.

Yet I do not remember even of this anything more than the fact that the tympanum represented the life and death of some early French bishop; it seemed very interesting. I remember, too, that in the door-jambs were standing figures of bishops in two long rows, their mitred heads bowed forward solemnly, and I remember nothing further.

Concerning the southernmost porch of the west front.—The doorway of this porch also has on the centre pillar of it a statue of the Virgin standing, holding the Divine Child in her arms. Both the faces of the Virgin Mother and of her Son, are very beautiful; I like them much better than those in the south transept already spoken of; indeed I think them the grandest of all the faces of the Madonna and Child that I have seen carved by the French architects. I have seen many, the faces of which I do not like, though the drapery is always beautiful; their faces I do not like at all events, as faces of the Virgin and Child, though as faces of other people even if not beautiful they would be interesting. The Child is, as in the transept, draped down to the feet; draped too, how exquisitely I know not how to say. His right arm and hand is stretched out across His mother’s breast, His left hangs down so that His wrist as His hand is a little curved upwards, rests upon His knee;



His mother holds Him slightly with her left arm, with her right she holds a fold of her robe on which His feet rest. His figure is not by any means that of an infant, for it is slim and slender, too slender for even a young boy, yet too soft, too much rounded for a youth, and the head also is too large; I suppose some people would object to this way of carving One who is supposed to be an infant; yet I have no doubt that the old sculptors were right in doing so, and to my help in this matter comes the remembrance of Ruskin’s answer to what Lord Lindsay says concerning the inability of Giotto and his school to paint young children:* for he says that it might very well happen that Giotto could paint children, but yet did not choose to in this instance, (the Presentation of the Virgin,) for the sake of the much greater dignity to be obtained by using the more fully developed figure and face; and surely, whatever could be said about Giotto’s paintings, no one who was at all acquainted with Early French sculpture could doubt that, the carvers of this figure here, could have carved an infant if they had thought fit so to do, men who again and again grasped eagerly common everyday things when in any way they would tell their story. To return to the statues themselves. The face of the young Christ is of the same character as His figure, such a face as Elizabeth Browning tells of, the face of One “who never sinned or smiled;” at least if the sculptor fell below his ideal somewhat, yet for all that, through that face which he failed in a little, we can see when we look, that his ideal was such an one. The Virgin’s face is calm and very sweet, full of rest,—indeed the two figures are very full of rest; everything about them expresses it from the broad forehead of the Virgin, to the resting of the feet of the Child (who is almost self-balanced) in the fold of the robe that she holds gently, to the falling of the quiet lines of her robe over her feet, to the resting of its folds between them.

The square heads of the door-valves, and a flat moulding above them which runs up also into the first division of the tympanum, is covered with faintly cut diaper-work of four-leaved flowers. Along the jambs of the doorway on the north side stand six kings, all bearded men but one, who is young apparently; I do not know who these are, but think they must be French kings; one, the farthest toward the outside of the porch, has taken his crown off, and holds it in his hand: the figures on the other side of the door-jambs are invisible in the photograph except one, the nearest to the door, young, sad, and earnest to look at—I know not who he is. Five figures outside the porch, and on the angles of the door-jambs, are I suppose prophets, perhaps those who have prophesied of the birth of our Lord, as this door is apportioned to the Virgin.

The first division of the tympanum has six sitting figures in it; on each side of the canopy over the Virgin’s head, Moses and Aaron; Moses with the tables of the law, and Aaron with great blossomed staff: with them again, two on either side, sit the four greater prophets, their heads veiled, and a scroll lying along between them, over their knees; old they look, very old, old and passionate and fierce, sitting there for so long.

The next division has in it the death and burial of the Virgin,—the twelve Apostles clustering round the deathbed of the Virgin. I wish my photograph were on a larger scale, for this indeed seems to me one of the most beautiful pieces of carving about this church, those earnest faces expressing so many things mingled with their regret that she will be no more with them; and she, the Virgin-Mother, in



whom all those prophecies were fulfilled, lying so quiet there, with her hands crossed downwards, dead at last. Ah! and where will she go now? whose face will she see always? Oh! that we might be there too! Oh! those faces so full of all tender regret, which even They must feel for Her; full of all yearning, and longing that they too might finish the long fight, that they might be with the happy dead: there is a wonder on their faces too, when they see what the mighty power of Death is. The foremost is bending down, with his left hand laid upon her breast, and he is gazing there so long, so very long; one looking there too, over his shoulder, rests his hand on him; there is one at the head, one at the foot of the bed; and he at the head is turning round his head, that he may see her face, while he holds in his hands the long vestment on which her head rests.

In my photograph the shadow is so thick that I cannot see much of the burial of the Virgin, can see scarce anything of the faces, only just the forms, of the Virgin lying quiet and still there, of the bending angels, and their great wings that shadow everything there.

So also of the third and last division filling the top of the arch. I only know that it represents the Virgin sitting glorified with Christ, crowned by angels, and with angels all about her.

The first row in the vaulting of the porch has angels in it, holding censers and candlesticks; the next has in it the kings who sprung from Jesse, with a flowing bough twisted all among them; the third and last is hidden by a projecting moulding.

All the three porches of the west front have a fringe of cusps ending in flowers, hanging to their outermost arch, and above this a band of flower-work, consisting of a rose and three rose-leaves alternating with each other.

Concerning the central porch of the west front.—The pillar which divides the valves of the central porch carries a statue of Our Lord; his right hand raised to bless, his left hand holding the Book; along the jambs of the porch are the Apostles, but not the Apostles alone, I should think; those that are in the side that I can see have their distinctive emblems with them, some of them at least. Their faces vary very much here, as also their figures and dress; the one I like best among them is one who I think is meant for St. James the Less, with a long club in his hands: but they are all grand faces, stern and indignant, for they have come to judgment.

For there above in the tympanum, in the midst over the head of Christ, stand three angels, and the midmost of them bears scales in his hands, wherein are the souls being weighed against the accusations of the Accuser, and on either side of him stands another angel, blowing a long trumpet, held downwards, and their long, long raiment, tight across the breast, falls down over their feet, heavy, vast, ungirt; and at the corners of this same division stand two other angels, and they also are blowing long trumpets held downwards, so that their blast goes round the world and through it; and the dead are rising between the robes of the angels with their hands many of them lifted to heaven; and above them and below them are deep bands of wrought flowers; and in the vaulting of the porch are eight bands of niches with many, many figures carved therein; and in the first row in the lowest niche Abraham stands with the saved souls in the folds of his raiment. In the next row and in the rest of the niches are angels with their hands folded in prayer; and in the next row angels again, bearing the souls over, of which they had charge in life; and this is, I think, the most gloriously carved of all those in the vaulting. Then martyrs come bearing their palm-boughs; then priests with the chalice, each of



them; and others there are which I know not of. But above the resurrection from the dead, in the tympanum, is the reward of the good, and the punishment of the bad. Peter standing there at the gate, and the long line of the blessed entering one by one; each one crowned as he enters by an angel waiting there; and above their heads a cornice takes the shape of many angels stooping down to them to crown them. But on the inferno side the devil drives before him the wicked, all naked, presses them on toward hell-mouth, that gapes for them, and above their heads the devil-cornice hangs and weighs on them. And above these the Judge showing the wounds that were made for the salvation of the world; and St. Mary and St. John kneeling on either side of Him, they who stood so once at the Crucifixion; two angels carrying cross and spear and nails; two others kneeling, and, above, other angels, with their wings spread, and singing. Something like this is carved in the central porch at Amiens.

Once more forgive me, I pray, for the poor way in which I have done even that which I have attempted to do; and forgive me also for that which I have left undone.

And now, farewell to the church that I love, to the carved temple-mountain that rises so high above the water-meadows of the Somme, above the grey roofs of the good town. Farewell to the sweep of the arches, up from the bronze bishops lying at the west end, up to the belt of solemn windows, where, through the painted glass, the light comes solemnly. Farewell to the cavernous porches of the west front, so grey under the fading August sun, grey with the wind-storms, grey with the rain-storms, grey with the beat of many days’ sun, from sunrise to sunset; showing white sometimes, too, when the sun strikes it strongly; snowy-white, sometimes, when the moon is on it, and the shadows growing blacker; but grey now, fretted into deeper grey, fretted into black by the mitres of the bishops, by the solemn covered heads of the prophets, by the company of the risen, and the long robes of the judgment-angels, by hell-mouth and its flames gaping there, and the devils that feed it; by the saved souls and the crowning angels; by the presence of the Judge, and by the roses growing above them all for ever.

Farewell to the spire, gilt all over



with gold once, and shining out there, very gloriously; dull and grey now, alas; but still it catches, through its interlacement of arches, the intensest blue of the blue summer sky; and, sometimes at night you may see the stars shining through it.

It is fair still, though the gold is gone, the spire that seems to rock, when across it, in the wild February nights, the clouds go westward.

On Tuesday, the 13th inst., Helen, the beloved wife of Major Conway, aged 26.

Such was the first notice among the deaths in the Times, which I was reading in a German hotel. Deeply did I ponder on that word beloved, wondering whether it was a mere phrase of fashion, signifying nothing, or whether she, whose



heart, when she married, was mine, had yet been a faithful and loving wife, winning thereby her husband’s love in return. The 13th inst. Well did I remember that day; for, on that day, four years ago, she and I parted, to meet only once again. It was an old story. We had loved each other deeply, it may be not wisely, but too well. She was my first, as she has been hitherto my only, love. And so, for many months we were very happy, and, living near each other, were nearly always together. But, at last, in the early autumn, I was obliged to leave her for a few weeks; and, in my absence, a female friend told her—I could never learn exactly what; but the point of it was, that I no longer loved her; and Helen’s love for me made her very jealous of my affection, unable to endure even a suspicion of faithlessness in me, and so the whispering tongue of the false friend, poisoned the truth—the truth of Helen and me; for truly, indeed, did we love each other. She wrote to me a very strange letter, a curious mixture of warmth and coldness; with sentences that began most tenderly and ended with reproaches; concluding with a demand that I should see her as soon as I could. I hastened home immediately, without waiting even to reply to her letter, and called upon her at once. I had to walk nearly two miles. It was a dark, windy night, with occasional gleams of moonshine, in the middle of autumn. The wind raced madly over the level country, and tossed the bare arms of the trees about in a sort of rough wild play. The moon every now and then opened glaring rifts in the thick clouds, throwing black shadows on the ground, which moved restlessly as the trees rocked in the gusts. A rude night it was; yet to one who did not fear wind and cold, a pleasant night withal, rousing his strength and manliness by its rough visitation, and the sympathy between the spirit of man and the elements. Thus, when I saw a light in the house where Helen lived—in the very room where I thought she might be; strengthened and excited by my conflict with the fierce wind, I walked proudly and confidently, confident in the manhood which I knew to be in me; and which is so nearly allied with truthfulness. As I stood at the door, I heard her singing a very favourite song of ours, called “Faith.” She



was singing the last verse, and I waited till she had finished before I knocked.

• “No; ’tis not hand fast lock’d in hand,
• Nor gaze of melting eyes,
• Nor lips that meet with lingering kiss,
• Nor trembling, soft replies;
• ’Tis Faith that is the soul of love,
• Firm, fearless, shaken never;
• Two hearts once join’d in one by faith,
• Nor life nor death shall sever.”

I took it as a good omen, and entered with a wonderfully light heart. She received me with her old warmth and tenderness, and we talked for a while without alluding to the subject which had brought me to her. At last, with an uneasy smile, far too significant, but which I could not modify, I introduced it.

“Who or what could have put into her head the strange notion that I no longer loved her?”

“She had been told so, and reasons had been given; but she did not feel justified in disclosing the name of her informant.”

Then, conscious of my innocence, I disdained to defend myself, but commenced a bitter tirade against the mischievous tongue of the unknown false friend, which made her reply, angrily,

“I will not have a friend abused to my face; it is for you to prove the assertions false, not rail against them.”

This made me angry in my turn, and our explanation soon became mutual accusations and reproaches, which in her were cold and stinging, and in me were vehement and passionate, till at length she took from a book which I had given her, my last letter, and saying in a deliberate, though trembling, voice,

“I will no longer submit to this; here, sir, is the letter I last received from you; the others I will send you in the morning,” placed it on the table before me. I took it up,—the letter in which I had so lately called her my sweetest, and noblest, and best beloved,—and furiously tore it to pieces, which I dashed about the room. With that assumption of dignity and self-respect so common in women, she said in a tone that was now quite cold and firm,

“Sir, I should have thought you would have had more self-command, if not more respect for me. Leave me at once, and let me never see you again.”

Then, wrathful and impassioned, I spoke with loud vehemence in which my whole heart was poured out.

“Helen, Helen, do not drive me mad by this wicked, heartless woman’s pride. I will leave you; I will never see you again. I will thank God, night and day, that he has opened my eyes to your faithlessness before it was too late. I will tear out all remembrance of you. Fool, fool that I am—I am almost mad; my heart overflows with bitterness, through you, whom once I loved so truly and tenderly.”

Oh could I have looked at her with eyes that could judge impartially; for I still remember—I shall never forget—how I vaguely seemed to see in her a sort of hesitation, an involuntary hurried movement towards me; but I hastily turned away, and left her—I thought for ever; but it proved only for years, but years that were long and weary enough. And some time in the course of those years some one told me how, while I was standing near the door of the house, till now the gate of heaven to me, but now for ever closed upon me, though I could not but linger still near it, she threw herself on the sofa, weeping and sobbing violently, then gathered up the fragments of my letter, and kissed them passionately. Oh, in this world of error and wrong, we hear what should have been kept silent; and what should have been made known, we hear not, or hear too late. Had they told me this then, when only it could have availed, my first love and I had never parted thus, to meet for a little time years after, and then part for ever.

Out again, in the wild night, with the boisterous wind playing roughly around me as before; but it seemed



no longer play to me now, but was stern, though apparently aimless, earnest,—like my own thoughts, which were all in a whirl, with only one thing stedfast, the resolution not to be overcome, even by lost love. So I walked on wildly in the wild night, almost running, mad with excitement, with the world before me; for it was plain that I could no longer live where I had lived before, so near Helen. I soon made up my mind to leave England altogether, and then very soon fixed on Germany as my future country; partly because I expected to find the German character, of all the continental nations, most akin to the English, and partly because I wished to increase a knowledge, already extensive, of German literature.

While I was making my preparations, and while I was travelling, and even for some time after I had settled in my new country, the excitement and the novelty distracted my thoughts; and, though they could not make me happy, left me not at leisure to be miserable. But when I was fairly settled, and the new scenes and faces began to grow familiar to me, as they very soon did, then I had leisure to turn my thoughts inwards, and soon I did little else than brood alone over my woe.

For six long months, I was as one stunned, caring for nothing, heeding nothing; then despair gradually settled into deep melancholy, and I felt that my only remedy lay in constant action, to keep off the thoughts that I durst not face. So I worked on steadily for three years, writing much, and reading more, and mixing much with men, not only with my equals in rank, but also entering the abodes of the poor and needy, and aiding and comforting them as well as I could. And before long I began to find the reward of my exertions in a peace of mind which continually increased, though with occasional ebbs; and sometimes I even gained glimpses of the solution of that which was the great question of my life, why Helen had been of so little faith towards me. Verily, it was a fearful problem, and one which I could never wholly solve; usually I fled from it, and blindly trusted and hoped, though often it was a sore grief and temptation that I could not see the end and know the good.

And not a day passed on which I did not think of her, some days for hours; belying that futile boast of my hot youth, proud of its strength of will, that I would never think of her again.

Would it have been better had I forgotten her? Or did those thoughts, so varied, sad, sometimes bitter, but generally hopeful, at least trustful, work some great work within me, and make me fitter for—? Do souls parted here, souls that have really loved each other, do they ever renew and accomplish their love in the ages of the great eternity? At least hope on, hope and trust, though to the end of life. But my loss, borne with whatsoever fortitude, leavened my whole life, and in the dimness of my sorrow all things wore a sorrowful look; and I saw the pain and the grief far more readily than the pleasure and the joy;



and I heard how, day by day, yea, night by night, rose up from all the earth the cry of woe to the throne of God—woe diverse as the fortunes of men; famished moans from those who starved in deserts and villages, far from help; yea, and in great cities, too, in the very midst of overflowing wealth; groans of pain from the sick and the maimed and the dying; the low complaining of discontent, not only from the cottage and the alley, but from mansions and palaces also: the one continual undertone of sadness from the hearts whose light, like mine, had been darkened by one great disappointment, one great sorrow, struggled against, borne stoutly and sternly through the long years, but never healed: for ever, day after day, the myriad-toned cry went up. And yet the glad bosom of the earth bore corn-fields and rice-fields, the oak and the alder, the rose and the lily; and the grand solemn cathedrals still stood, on the green sward and in the paved square, stately and strong, for ages; and the proud palaces, reared gay or sombre fronts, high over the misery; and music, awful and holy from mighty organs in dim churches, weird and wondrous, from horn and violin in painted halls, festive and merry in bright saloons—sometimes sad too, but still sweet and beautiful, ever sounded on; and the voices of parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers talked, low and tenderly, with words of trust and affection; and the war-shouts of giant nations thundered to the booming and crashing of cannon and shell. And still, amid all the beauty and grandeur, amid the sweet and beautiful music, and the tender talking of love, and the roar of battle, went up for ever that voice of multitudinous woe, wailing and mourning, and deep lamentation. Neither would the riddle of the painful earth give one sign, even a hint of solution,—a voiceless, motionless, passionless sphinx—sitting, for ever, in the desert of life—perplexing, mocking, torturing me; to me, as to thousands, both now and of old, the good and the evil, the beautiful and the ugly, the grand and the mean—existing, working side by side, not in harmony, but in a sort of discordant union, which seemed as if it could never be broken, yet never be made into order. And from the depths of my soul came ever the still, small cry, how long? how long?

At length, about three years after our separation, I was obliged to return to England; and, one evening, was at a party, at the house of Captain Dalton. Early in the evening, the hostess came up to me, and, smiling somewhat significantly, said, “Mr. Gordon, I want to introduce you to an old friend; come with me.”

I expected to see an old school-fellow; but it was a lady, whom I almost immediately recognized as Helen. I started back, feeling all the blood go from my cheeks, and gasping for breath. She scarcely suppressed a cry of surprise; and, when I looked at her again, was as pale as death. Mrs. Dalton, of course, perceived our emotion, but she left us to ourselves. Helen soon recovered, and had bowed with tolerable self-possession; for, I scarcely know why, we did not shake hands. For a few moments we remained silent, not knowing what to say. She was the first to speak.

“Have you been in England long?”

“About a fortnight;” and then came another pause.

“I am glad to see you,” she said presently, with a smile so constrained and sad, that it filled me at once with pity and dread. But it broke the spell that was upon me, and I said, earnestly,

“Helen, do not let us lose this happy opportunity. Come with me into that room, and let us speak out our hearts to each other.”

She accompanied me into the room which I pointed out, and which was at the present quite unoccupied. I locked



the door, and began at once with a vehemence that made my voice quaver.

“O Helen, I cannot tell you how I have longed for this time. I knew it would come, though it has been so long coming; and, now, I must speak out and tell you all. Through all the long years that we have been parted, I have striven to forget you. You remember, perhaps, what I said on that last miserable night, that I would never think of you again. Oh! how little I knew my own heart then! Not a day has passed in which I have not thought much about you; and almost always tenderly. And now, meeting you again so suddenly, I will not say that my old love has returned, but I feel that the love which has never ceased can no longer be repressed.”

I stretched forth my hand, as if to take her own, but she held it still by her side; and I now saw that she was trembling violently.

“O Arthur, Arthur,” at length she sobbed, “why did you return? Or, why did we not meet a year ago? Now it is too late. Oh! it is fearful, fearful. We must never meet again. In a month I am to be married.”

My heart seemed to stop its beating at those words; and, for several moments, I stood quite quiet, in calm despair. Then I heard her say, again,

“Yes, go at once; it will be best for both. That it should have come to this! This is worse even than I thought it would be. Say good bye at once, and leave me for ever.”

Tears choked her voice, but I durst not console her. I took her hand (she gave it me at last), the hand I once knew so well; hot tears—I could not check them—fell upon it, as I pressed it, oh how passionately and hopelessly! then I forced myself to say, “Good bye, good bye,” gazing the while into her deep blue eyes, the eyes that I was never more to look into; and, in another minute was out of the house.

Back again to my adopted country, with my grief renewed and intensified—grief that threatened to become despair; only, the self-command that I had gained in the fearful struggle of the previous three years saved me, and before long brought me back my old tranquillity,—peace of mind, however sad, and even stern. But she;—how did she bear it?

Married to another, when her heart was mine. But why think of that? I could not help her, save by my prayers, which I offered up for her night and day; but, otherwise, I could not aid her. For, however much we may bear each other’s burdens; yet, in this world of isolation every heart must know its own sorrow. Moreover, cruel Absence and Time put ever a greater distance between us; and though they could never lessen my love, yet they took, ever more and more, her presence from me; so that I forgot the face that was once the most beautiful thing in the world to me, and the voice that sounded sweetest in my ear. And now, for long months, until this morning, it had seemed all a dream. The past existed for me only historically, the few incidents that I could still recollect, no longer bringing back the old feelings with them. Alas, alas! it is the greatest triumph of Time, this destruction of old feelings, even when the events are left in; when the pressure of the hand is still remembered, but the thrill that it shot through the pulses



quickens the blood no more. It is then that the past seems most utterly gone from us; gone, wholly, and for ever. And, it is only a month since I wrote this song, when Helen seemed to me almost like some maiden in the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights:

And I know, too, that soon this vividness of memory will fade also; and her face and voice again become a shadow and an echo to me; but I know, also, that henceforth she will be ever present to me; not to eye and ear, but spirit to spirit; present to me through all my life. And, when death shall take me away from earth, God grant I may find that I have died into Life and Love; for the consummation has at length come; and Helen is once more mine, and I am hers.

It is now upwards of eighty years since the world was assured by Steevens that Shakspeare’s neglected sonnets were unreadable, and that nothing short of an Act of Parliament could make them popular. Men were awe-stricken at this decision, and believed



it for thirty years, after which period eighteenth century criticism began to fall into disrepute. Inquiry was made, and the result proved the worthlessness of the judgment that had banned their circulation; and, ever since that discovery, opinion, though constantly vacillating about them, has been gradually rising; so that, after deliberation of a few years longer, we shall probably accept them as a standard work, worthy of our great poet. It seems, moreover, a principle of Time to neglect overmuch the less powerful, though meritorious productions of a great man, for those that pre-eminently display his genius. The sonnet-stanza, too, has never thoroughly made itself a favourite with us; for, while, on the one hand, the extreme difficulty of success draws a narrow limit to the number of good sonnets, the extreme ease of mediocrity has created such an inundation of them that many readers, after once emerging, do not care a second time to trust themselves to their barren depths. That the popularity of Shakspeare’s minor poems is increasing, is also shown from the numerous editions that of late years have been put forth. It was not until recently that they were taken into consideration as forming a clue to the author’s life, but the hints and traces to be found are far from being exhausted, and many of those already discovered can be scarcely said to be satisfactorily accounted for.

I shall proceed to give a short sketch of the poems; and, at the same time, point out how far they may be made autobiographical.

The “Venus and Adonis” was published in 1593, when the poet was twenty-nine years of age. He had at that time spent some seven or eight years in the metropolis: but the only authentic clue to his mode of living during this interval is supplied by a passage from Robert Greene’s “Groat’s worth of wit,” where the author, in lamenting the thankless task of writing for the stage, mentions “an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only



Shake-scene in the country.” This Greene must not be confounded with a celebrated comedian of the same name, a fellow-townsman of Shakspeare, who probably introduced him to his theatrical life. No reason can be given for his bitterness, except the disordered malice naturally felt at another’s success by a man who has ruined all his own prospects by profligacy. Chettle, the publisher of the book, shortly after Greene’s death, in a work that he then edited, made the “amende honorable” to the poet for his own share in the matter. “Shakspeare,” says he, “whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that, as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, especially in such a case, the author (Greene) being dead, that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent, in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art.” From these passages we gather not only somewhat of his social character, but that, up to this time, he had been engaged in revising and remodelling old pieces, and also, perhaps, adapting the works of contemporary authors for the stage; and it was by uniting this practice with his occupation as an actor that he gained that thorough knowledge of stage appliances, which gives such additional vividness to his dramas when rightly represented. In dedicating the “Venus and Adonis” to the Earl of Southampton, who, though then but twenty years of age, was a munificent patron of literature, he calls it “the first heir of my invention.” This, (laying aside the conjecture that Shakspeare intended to arrogate the word as equivalent to “genius,”) must mean either that, previous to the publication of the “Venus and Adonis,” he had merely practised upon the works of predecessors, or that it was first in date of invention, though subsequent in that of publication.

There is a strong presumption, however, for supposing that he was not aware that any of his already acted dramas had been hitherto printed. It is probable that the “Venus and Adonis” had been lying by him in an incomplete form for some time, and that an opportunity of publishing it occurred upon the general closing of theatres during the previous year, in consequence of the plague then prevalent. This hypothesis is strengthened by the vivid impressions of rural life that it contains, and by the marked difference in character between it and the “Tarquin and Lucrece,” which came out in the year following; for we cannot agree with Mr. Collins’ suggestion, that the latter, as well as the “Venus and Adonis,” was composed before he went to London, and received additions preparatory to entering the press. For the variance in style and treatment, the vaster and deeper range of reflection in a subject which brought into play feelings more subtle and matured, quite justify us, independently of minor considerations, in esteeming the “Tarquin and Lucrece” to have been composed some years later than the other. Their contemporary popularity is evident, not only from the number of editions through which they both rapidly passed, but also from frequent mention incidentally made by other authors; but there is some reason for distrusting the anecdote told on the authority of the poet Davenant, that Shakspeare received a thousand guineas from the nobleman to whom he dedicated them. Of their respective merits there can be no doubt. The “Venus and Adonis” has nearly universally been preferred to its companion. It displays signs of more careful and gradual composition; the



parts are written with more regard to the symmetry of the whole; while, in the “Tarquin and Lucrece,” besides the painfulness of the subject, the versification is less pleasing, the energy is not so elastic, the self-expostulation of the heroine after her woe is too argumentative and lengthened, and the pathos, though there is greater scope for it, is less deep and more elaborated. Taking then the “Venus and Adonis” as the first heir of his invention, it may be interesting to ascertain the promises it affords of that genius which when more matured, wrought for him pre-eminently the title of “the myriad-minded,” and “Nature’s child.” “The first and most obvious excellence of the ‘Venus and Adonis,’ ” writes Coleridge, “is the perfect sweetness of its versification.” Unless an extraordinary gift of the melody of words is early evinced, a man may never rise to the hope of being a great poet; with it, there is the greatest hope; for much he may acquire by experience well regulated; but this, of all his powers, seems most intuitive. Music is the poet’s alchymy, whereby he refines and embodies afresh the wisdom of his heart and the knowledge of his brain, tipping every utterance with a jewelled grace; the key-note is his birthright, and to this he fits all nature’s symphonies, from “the dreary melody of bedded reeds” to the silver cadence of wings and the passionate speech of mountain gusts “Such harmony is in immortal souls,” the souls of poets as well as of angels. We know not how intimately music is interwoven with the first principles of existence, with light, and order, and motion; for what is music but motion spiritualized, and expressed for the most part indeed by sound, but sometimes not, as in the silent melody of the constellations?

“God expounds His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.” Witness how music’s power fell that night upon Lorenzo in the fulness of his love and happiness, when he exclaims:

• “The man hath no music in himself. . . . .
• Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
• The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
• And his affections dark as Erebus.”

In the “Venus and Adonis” we find this power in full play. The metre, which is original, as far as I know, is perfectly adapted to the subject, and wonderfully perfect in its stanzas; the modulation is musical in its varied glow without ever getting the upper hand of the thoughts, with that same fondness for alliteration so generally exhibited by great poets.

The next great faculty, as necessary as the former to the poet, but much more capable of development, is the Imagination; and, with the consideration of this power, as manifested in the “Venus and Adonis,” I shall say a few words upon the charge sometimes brought against Shakspeare and others, of a seeming unfairness, if not of want of originality, that some of their productions evince, in making a free use of the compositions of their predecessors. Men are nowadays ever restless in their demand for what they term originality, though the more suitable word would be novelty, as it mainly consists in freshness of incident. This is an offshoot from that morbid desire of superficial knowledge that so characterizes us, that were it not for a reaction that has set in from some quarters, we should shortly in vain search for any existing reminiscence of old legends and old beliefs, which were and are still the truth-telling charter of our national dignity and aspirations. Now, there is a short poem, entitled “The Shepherd’s Song of Venus and Adonis,” by Henry Constable, a contemporary writer, and from some few passages being alike in the two, Malone and others have concluded that the greater poet was the appropriator, though a little more attention to dates and details would probably



undeceive them in this case; but the benefit of the doubt may be readily granted. From whom did Constable draw the incidents? from another source, probably from Spenser. Ovid himself was not the legend’s inventor. Shakspeare’s (granting what is most improbable, that it is subsequent to the other) is a recast, not a copy: he took that before him as a bare legend, the incidents of which might be altered or appropriated at will. “Henry VI.” is a fine play as it now exists. Would it have been more, or even at all read if its scattered materials had never been handled by Shakspeare? He was merely turning to account useless capital. A great work, beyond mere refinement, will not bear improvement from foreign hands. To improve upon anything in art, implies that a man must first be able to make that his own upon which he practises. He must be equal to it, and something more; and that this has not been attempted generally with works of art is because art is not progressive. Can we imagine a humanity so intellectually exalted as to treat Hamlet or Lear in similar fashion to Shakspeare’s treatment of the old plays that furnished his “Henry VI?” It is now generally conceded, perhaps even the infallible “gods” would agree, that Colley Cibber did not improve Shakspeare; but that was an error of the criticism of the time. Let us not boast on this point; for, however great our short-comings may be in appreciating poetry, still greater are they in painting; and, in architecture, copyism after copyism is admired; nay, scarce anything but copyism countenanced.

The invention of our ancestors in legend and incident is our heir-loom; we may vary it in detail, and engraft our own addition, but its depth will be according to the measure of that man’s power who handles it, and breathes into it his own spirit. It would be tedious to select from this poem any particular instances of that part of the imagination wherein the poet penetrates to the heart of his characters, and renders them distinct and full of human interest. Besides this, there are innumerable instances of genius herein displayed in the process of contemplation and association. As was originally suggested by Coleridge, and discussed by Wordsworth in the Preface to his own poems, and has been since analyzed with greater completeness by Ruskin, fine images have individually little weight; they are evidences of genius only when they are modified by a predominant passion; when the intensity of touch on the chief chord sustains its power through the entire song, uniting the parts into one harmonious whole. The sunset cannot always similarly effect a man; its impressions will generally vary with the intenseness of some main thought at the time, and will fall in deep unison with this, or in marked contrast; if not felt thus, if it has merely an outward and transitory effect, or be subservient to or modified by no inward suggestion, it can only be called a play of the fancy. Such may be introduced as the drapery of a poem; for drapery can be shifted any-whither, though it may not well fit every position, and perhaps none; but the soul beneath all cannot be so dealt with. As instances of this power we might mention the opening lines:

• “ Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
• Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn.”

---

and farther on,

• “Once more the ruby-coloured portal opened,
• Which to his speech did honey passage yield
• Like a red morn.”

---

• “Look the world’s comforter with weary gait
• His day’s hot task hath ended in the west.”

• “And as she runs, the bushes in the way,
• Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,
• Some twine about her thigh to make her stay;
• She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace.”

As to the freedom of expression in the “Venus and Adonis,” we hold with Coleridge, that though “the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, never was poem less dangerous on a moral account;” for we are totally prevented from brooding over the portrayal of the animal impulse by the rapidity of action and constant diversion, by the emphasis of thought demanded in the reflections that are encountered in almost every stanza, while the death of Adonis and the touching grief of the Queen of Love, who, instead of deserting his memory after the attainment of her desire was impossible, retired to Paphos, intending there, says the poet, “to immure herself, and not be seen,” in a wonderful manner raise the sympathy and etherealize her passion.

We have next to consider what forms by far the most important part of Shakspeare’s minor poems, the Sonnets, which have become alike interesting for the variety of opinions expressed upon their merits and the curiosity felt in the attempts to discover the man who could claim this dear friendship of the poet. Of all kinds of verse, popularity has ever been most blunted against the sonnet-stanza. Milton’s were scarcely thought of until late in the last century; those of Shakspeare have but recently been rescued from oblivion, and so difficult is it to obtain excellence in this kind of poetry, that with the exception perhaps of those of Wordsworth and Keats, they are the only sonnets much read; yet in the interim we find sonnets on “A Lady drinking green tea,” “On a watch-paper cut by a young lady,” &c, and all the enormities of the Della Cruscan school passing in a few years through more editions than those of our great dramatist had attained in a century and a half. But we have lighted upon days that find other cause for poetical grief than that “Cyndaraxa cleans the hearth in vain,” that believe long names and mawkish sentimentalism do not form the soul of poetry; that dare, alas! to boast that Fate has permitted Pope to be outdone. It is worth while to glance at the different opinions that have been held upon the merits of the sonnets. Steevens, as before quoted, to whose infallible judgment Malone timidly succumbs, considered that only an act of parliament could cause them to be generally read. Guizot in his late work follows this authority, at the same time implying that he himself has not read them. Wordsworth says of them, “In no part of the writings of this poet is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed.” Campbell, in his edition of the poet, thinks that some, though not all, of these effusions, are worthy of Shakspeare. Hare considers them as “not the spontaneous utterances and creations of his genius, but artificial compositions.” All recent editors and critics who have studied them have been unvarying in their praise. With the sonnets appeared the following dedication:—“To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness and that eternity promised by our everliving Poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth.—T. T.” The T. T. are the initials of the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, but the identity of Mr. W. H., like the Rosalind of Spenser and the Junius of later days, can only be arrived at by a satisfactory string of probabilities and presumptions. Coleridge believed them all to be addressed to a woman. Chalmers, going further, fancied it must be the withered Queen Elizabeth whose beauty and youth he was lauding; others



have had similar impressions about them. It is needless to attempt a refutation of such an untenable position. Most critics, however, have considered upwards of two-thirds to be addressed to a man, the Mr. W. H. above mentioned. As to the name itself, the utmost variety of speculation has been evinced; it is, however, important to attempt a discovery, which might tend to draw the veil of obscurity from the poet’s private life, and free him for ever from the appearance of flattery. Farmer conjectured, absurdly enough, that the person intended was the poet’s nephew, William Hart, but in that case many of the sonnets must have been written in anticipation of his birth. Tyrwhitt suggested that the name was William Hughes, basing his supposition on a line in the xxth sonnet.

• “A man in hue, all hues in his controlling.”

This conclusion was induced by the word “hues” standing originally with a capital letter prefixed, a very common mistake of the period. There are certainly similar jokes upon his own name in sonnets cxxxv. cxxxvi. cxliii, but it is sufficiently disproved by the general context. Mr. Collier, while agreeing in the main with Mr. Armitage Brown, whose views we shall presently mention, hints at a possibility that “begetter” is only equal to “getter or “procurer,” in which case the succeeding sentence must refer to the poems themselves. It has been objected to him that Shakspeare never so uses the word, but it must be remembered that the dedication is not Shakspeare’s, but T. T.’s. Amidst such an infinitude of speculation, it would have been strange had no one with the spirit of Porson conjectured that the punctuation after the H was misplaced, and that the incognito was Mr. W. Hall, a surname so familiar in connection with Shakspeare. The words were certainly originally in the same line, and the authority of the second edition of 1640 is utterly worthless, as it copies every fault of the former edition.

There are only two conjectures which are entitled to much consideration; first, that the initials applied to Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, originally suggested, I believe, by Dr. Drake, and the second, that the individual intended is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Whether either of these be the right must remain doubtful until additional light be thrown upon the matter by future discoveries. Mr. Charles Armitage Brown appears to be the most able and confident exponent of the latter view. We will first premise a few words about the sonnets. They were published about the middle of the year 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, and dedicated to this Mr. W. H. There are good reasons for supposing that they, like many of his dramas, and also the Passionate Pilgrim, were surreptitiously obtained; from the absence of a dedication from the poet himself, the manifest disorder of their arrangement, (confessed more or less on all hands,) the improbability that he would disclose in his lifetime the private feelings therein expressed, which, if not real, must be charged with the deepest hypocrisy, for the plea of flattery is absurd and contradicted everywhere. And this supposition too may account for ignorance of the person to whom they were addressed, or timidity to express his name in full. We must now discover how far the internal evidence of the poems themselves agrees with the biographical facts known concerning these two noblemen. That these are all the sonnets ever written by the poet is improbable. Meres speaks in 1598 of his “sugred sonnets among his friends,” while these are confined to two or three themes at most. Mr. Brown fancied that he had detected the secret of their continuity up to the cxxvith, but that the last



twenty-eight, which are for the most part addressed to one person, were somewhat in confusion. There can be no doubt that the first 126, with perhaps one or two exceptions, have the same man for their subject, but that they follow the order now maintained I cannot be convinced, and still less that they form themselves into five distinct and continuous poems, each of which terminates with what Mr. Brown calls “the envoy.” While reading them consecutively, one cannot help being struck with an inseparable connection that exists between some of them, but so arbitrary and wholesale combination as that proposed by Mr. Brown, cannot be maintained. For instance, he makes his first division at sonnet xxvi, styling these “the poet’s advice to his friend to marry,” but beyond the xviith there is not a word upon that subject; the second poem, from xxvii-lv, is the forgiveness of his friend, who had robbed the poet of his mistress; but except from xxxiii-xliii, there is not a word, not a hint mentioned of it; and the rest have no connection whatever with these, and might have been written before or after them: the third poem, from lvi-lxxvii, is to his friend, stated by Mr. Brown to be a complaint of his coldness, and warning him of life’s decay, but only lvi-lviii. mention his coldness, and three or four at the most warn him of life’s decay; the rest are for the most part a promise to ensure his friend’s immortality, and expostulations against the slander that had attacked him; and the other poems are still more arbitrarily divided. The Envoys too which Mr. Brown has fixed upon as the proper termination of each “poem,” are most capriciously chosen; xvii. lx. lxiii. lxv. lxxxi. civ. would have served equally well with those given; ci. particularly, must be taken continuously both ways. For my own part, I am far from believing that even the general order, as it now stands, is consistent, and of individual sonnets, xxi. is clearly out of place, and comes with a startling abruptness after what has been already said; its real position is with cxxx. The xxvth and xxixth are too intimately connected to be severed; those also marked xxvii. xxviii. xlviii. l. lii. properly should be combined, being now entirely isolated; xviii. and lviii. must be taken similarly; xlix. should come between lxxxvii. and lxxxviii, and many other irregularities might be pointed out.

The period in the poet’s life at which these sonnets individually were written is difficult to arrive at accurately, inasmuch as from sonnet civ. we gather that three or four years elapsed between the earliest and latest of them. In the lxxiiird he says of himself,

• “The time of year thou may’st in me behold,
• When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
• Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
• Bare, ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

and immediately afterwards:

• “In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
• That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.”

In sonnets ii. and xxii. we again find seeming allusions to his age. We can more readily understand what he meant by “old,” on reference to cxxxviii; where he declares, “My days are past the best.”

This sonnet, together with that numbered cxliv, was published in 1599, when the poet could not have been much over thirty-five; the former is unconnected with the rest, but upwards of forty of the sonnets must have been written previous to the cxlivth. Meres, in Nov. 1598, speaks of “sugred sonnets,” but though it cannot be absolutely proved, there is great probability that these are among the present collection. I therefore conclude that none of those that concern the question at issue were written later than 1602, and none earlier than 1595.

If sonnets lxxviii. lxxxvi. xc. cvii. were understood, we should probably be able at once to unravel the doubt.



Now as to the position and age of the poet’s friend we have abundant guidance. In sonnet xxxvii. he says,

• “Beauty, birth, and wealth, and wit,
• Entitled in thy parts do thronèd sit.”

His truth and beauty are constant themes of praise; at the same time his youth is manifest from the confident, though respectful, tone assumed towards him by the poet. In some of the latest sonnets he is styled “sweet boy,” “my lovely boy.” In the third we find this passage:

• “Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
• Calls back the lovely April of her prime.”

and in the thirteenth,

• “You had a father.”

From this we gather that his mother only was living. He is also spoken of as a favourite “argument” of poets, though Shakspeare claims the precedence over them both in time and truth-telling. We shall now see how far the conjectures fulfil these conditions. The earl of Southampton was born in 1573, and would therefore be twenty-five at least when the title of “sweet boy” was applied to him. He came to his honours when only eight years of age. In July, 1597, he went with Essex on an expedition against Spain, returning before the spring of 1598, during which year it is nearly certain that he married. From March till October, 1599, he was in Ireland, where he was removed from his office as General of the Horse to Essex, on account of his having married a kinswoman of that nobleman without the Queen’s leave. In February, 1601, Southampton was taken prisoner along with Essex and other nobles, who were disaffected at the tyranny and intrigues of the Court, and, more fortunate than his comrades, escaped the block, but was kept in prison till the commencement of the succeeding reign. That he befriended Shakspeare is clear from the dedications of the two former poems, which are in spirit similar to sonnet xxvi, and it is found that he addressed a letter also to Lord Ellesmere in 1606, in favour of the poet and his company. We can learn nothing of the personal appearance of Southampton; his truth and chivalrous character are matter of history, but so turbulent were the pursuits of his life at the time at which the sonnets were written, that it is rendered still more doubtful whether they could have been addressed to him; moreover, there is no reason to suppose him liable to accusations of libertinism, with which the poet charges his friend; and had it been Southampton, we should have expected some of his brave deeds mentioned. William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, was born in 1580, succeeded to his title in Jan. 1601, became Governor of Portsmouth in 1609, and Chancellor of Oxford in 1617; died 1630. We find his name constantly in conjunction with those of the favourites of King James’s Court. His mother was Mary, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, a lady of great learning and virtue, to whom her brother dedicated his Arcadia. She died September 25, 1621, leaving two sons, William and Philip, the fourth Earl. She it is whose epitaph Ben Jonson wrote, styling her “Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,” and her reputation may account for this incidental mention. That the brothers were patrons of Shakspeare we learn from Heminge and Condell’s dedication of his works in 1623. “Since your lordships have been pleased to think these trifles something heretofore, and have prosecuted both them and their author, while living, with so much favour, we hope that they, outliving him, (and he not having the fate common with some, to be executor to his own writing,) you will use the same indulgence towards them you have done unto their parent.” Beaumont and Fletcher’s works were dedicated to the surviving brother in 1647, above thirty years after Shakspeare’s death;



we there meet with the following passage: “Directed by the example of some, who once steered in your quality, and so fortunately aspired to choose your honour, joined with your now glorified brother, patron to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet swan of Avon, Shakspeare.” From this one would suppose that the friendship was well known, as indeed the poet himself implies repeatedly. As to the Earl of Pembroke’s beauty, “If,” says Mr. Brown, “the existing portrait is like him, it must have been very great.” His brother Philip, created Earl of Montgomery, is mentioned by Clarendon as a man of singularly good fortune, for having been by the comeliness of his person and his skill and industry in hunting matters, the first to draw the King’s eyes towards him with affection;” though beyond these qualities and his patronage of literary men, it appears that this royal favourite was but a sorry character. His brother, however, was less likely to ingratiate himself with such a monarch as James, who “was always jealous of men who had the reputation of great parts.” William Herbert might thus have been at the time of the poet’s exhortation to marry, eighteen, or probably more, (for there is no reason to suppose that these sonnets were written before any that Meres mentioned,) and about of age when the last, with the title of “boy,” were addressed to him. It is known that he came to London early in 1598, and succeeded his father in Jan. 1601; and therefore, if he proffered his friendship at once to the poet, the title of Mr. W. H. might have been consistently applied to him, had the folio been published immediately; for in speaking of the length of their acquaintance in sonnet civ, he says,

• “Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d
• Since first I saw you fresh, who yet are green”

It is a matter worthy of notice that Shakspeare discontinued his lays to his friend after about three years. To indulge in suggesting reasons for his doing so, is easy but unprofitable, and necessarily unfair to one or other of them; that their friendship did not cease is certain, from his works being ultimately dedicated to the Earl.

In sonnet xcv, while blaming his friend for excess, he says:

• “How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
• Which like a canker in the fragrant rose,
• Doth stop the beauty of thy budding name.”

I see no reason why this should not be taken as an allusion to the name Herbert itself, a practice so common among contemporary authors; at all events, it must be otherwise regarded as a strange coincidence.

Beyond the mystery in the dedication, I am not aware of any tangible objection against the probability that William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was the friend of Shakspeare, to whom he addressed his sonnets; at the same time, it is yet far from amounting to a moral certainty. In reading Shakspeare’s sonnets we are struck at once with the passionate tenderness expressed by the poet for his friend, and the intense unrestrained admiration of his beauty. Personal loveliness, doubtless, beyond most influences, would affect a poet like Shakspeare, including, as it nearly invariably does, in a man, grace of action, and every attribute of vigour and dignity. Though his bearing might first have recommended him to the poet, yet it was his truth and worth that clenched their friendship; and though he once gave cause for limiting the praise of these, it is clear that the poet always gave the precedence to them over mere external beauty. It has been often objected that it is impossible to believe that Shakspeare could have had such wonderful and unbiassed love for a young nobleman. The world is strangely slow



to believe in any approach to perfectibility, to believe in anything disinterested, particularly where affection stronger, or conduct more glorious than ordinary is implicated. Mr. Hallam, in a passage of his ‘Literature of Europe,’ wherein he demonstrates his total misapprehension of the sonnets, writes, “It is true that in the poetry, as well as in the fiction of early ages, we find a more ardent tone of affection in the language of friendship than has since been usual, and yet no instance has there been of such rapturous devotedness, such an idolatry of admiring love, as one of the greatest beings, whom nature ever produced in the human form, pours forth to some unknown youth, in the majority of these sonnets,” and he goes on to say that we cannot help feeling a wish that they had never been written. Whatever they might disclose, this was surely a short-sighted judgment, forgetful alike that truth needs no veil, and of the relative conditions of this friendship. But I confess my sorrow upon finding such a passage from the pen of one, to whose sad loss the world owes the most passionate offering of devoted love, the noblest dirge poet ever chanted over the ashes of a friend. Such love as Shakspeare’s for his friend was by no means uncommon at that period: in fact Bacon laments that that between equals had become unusual, and given place to the friendship of superior and inferior.* The description of his love’s intensity reminds me of the 129th lyric of the “In Memoriam.” It presents itself to him in all his wanderings by day, modifying all forms and colours, mingling all the world with it; and in the ghastliness of night his friend’s shadow

• “Like a jewel hung,
• Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.”

He defines true love as

• “An ever-fixed mark,
• That looks on tempests, and is never shaken.”

and in harmony with this is his own affirmation of stedfastness:

• “No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change;
• The pyramids built up with newer might,
• To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
• They are but dressings of a former sight.”

The charge of flattery has not been left unhandled by certain of the poet’s critics; but of all charges this has been proved by Mr. Armitage Brown to be most unfounded, both in his dramas and sonnets. After the wrong done to him by his friend, who had been reduced to tears by his upbraidings, which not improbably were of a public nature, the poet in manly and decisive words forgives him, at the same time expressing his own hate for his sinful love towards his mistress, whom he resolves to leave for ever. Afterwards, when his affection for his friend had been fully re-established, he is agonized by the seeming magnitude of his own resentment, and at last calmly looks upon their alienation before the eyes of the world as necessary;

• “I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
• Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame.”

He everywhere speaks thus confidently that their love is reciprocal.

Thus much would sufficiently disprove the charge of flattery as far as the sonnets could suggest it: in speaking of it, Mr. Brown says, “If we regard the youth as a friend, we cannot find fault with Shakspeare for celebrating the most worthy qualities he perceived; first, truth, and next to that, personal beauty. If as a patron, the poet was assuredly a wretched courtier, openly reproving the noble youth for having committed the ‘crime’ (such is the plain term) of treachery to his friend; for having been addicted to licentious conversation; and for having delighted in the ‘gross painting’ of another poet,



in preference to honest praise. It must follow that if Shakspeare, with all his knowledge of the human heart, intended to flatter a patron, he betrayed more ignorance of the means than the dullest slave.”

In the original edition of the sonnets was included a short poem of about fifty seven-lined stanzas, entitled “A Lover’s Complaint,” and herein is displayed so much power and subtle analysis of human character that, were it not for the manifold precedents of oversight and obtuseness displayed by the commentators of last century, it might appear strange that so little, or rather that nothing, has been said in its favour by them. The only real drawback to its popularity is that the recital takes the form of a prolonged dialogue, as in the “Venus and Adonis,” and “Tarquin and Lucrece,” and that obsolete expressions are more frequent than in the other minor poems. The first stanza introduces us to a maid

• “Full pale,
• Tearing of papers, breaking rings atwain,
• Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.”

A reverend shepherd hard by beholds her grief, and in the hope of assuaging it, seats himself beside her at a comely distance, and claiming the privilege of age, beseeches her to communicate it. To this kindly and delicate-hearted “blusterer” she pours out all her woe. It is a phase of the old tale of Paris and Œnone, of Faust and Margaret, of Steerforth and Emily, of the West wind and Wenonah,—the tale of wounded innocency and desertion. Her seducer, though one of that large class, who use words as a carpet to the heart, concealing beneath sometimes a finer, sometimes a coarser, grain—a conspicuous phenomenon of the last three centuries—bears withal the distinctive features of contemporaneous gallantry; though a veritable Rochester within, yet he dared not be so in outward semblance; for the sprightly form of address at this time, however exaggerated and pedantic, was not yet impure, and was far removed from the wanton flattery and rotten-heartedness that characterised the court of Charles the Second.

The man herein depicted was born for a hero, to devote his whole existence to the welfare of mankind, not to the wretched conquest of and the embittering of life to a few.

• “On the top of his subduing tongue
• All kinds of argument and question deep,
• All replication prompt, and reason strong!
• Catching all passions in his craft of will.”

In spite of his almost intuitive insight of the intricate windings of the human heart, his impassioned eloquence, his entire intellectual greatness, he is a most consummate master of hypocrisy; his passion is but “an art of craft,” his vows but panders to his appetites, his knowledge he uses as a battery to storm what strives against his will.

• “When most he burn’d in heart-wish’d luxury,
• He preach’d pure maid, and praised cold chastity.”

Upon all his qualities, upon his beauty and horsemanship, upon his speech maiden-tongued, but often varied to vehemence, she dilates with a lurking fondness that sometimes even banishes from her mind the recollection of its irremediable effects; once only in her outpourings does the fulness of his unscrupulous hypocrisy flash upon her, in relating how, after his self-exculpation and his display and oblation to her of all his former trophies of subdued affections, and his assurance that “Love’s arms are peace to shame and sense,”—after all these devices had failed, he abused his knowledge of woman’s infirmities by having recourse to tears, and thereby melting her reason prevailed upon her to doff the white stole of chastity. In her contemplation of this she exclaims passionately:

• “O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
• In the small orb of one particular tear.”

Notwithstanding the bitterness of



her misery must have been aggravated by fresh recital, it is to the first remembrance of the apparent worth and tenderness of him who darkened her life, shattered its hopes, and rendered its woe indelible, and to that only as yet, that she clings for a broken ray of comfort. She is calm enough at last to call up a half-bitter, half-fond feeling of self-distrust:

• “Ah me! I fell; and yet do question make,
• What I should do again for such a sake.”

In 1599 appeared a small collection of miscellaneous poems under the title of “The Passionate Pilgrim,” imputing the authorship to William Shakspeare, but containing along with some pieces undoubtedly genuine, others that were notoriously the productions of other contemporary authors, by whom they had been already published. This literary freebooting was still further aggravated in the reprint of 1612, which declares itself to be the third edition; though in the absence of any existing copy of a second, it is not altogether improbable that this is part and parcel of the general fraud. It is found that Heywood, upon whom William Jaggard, the printer of “The Passionate Pilgrim,” had levied considerable contributions, in a subsequent collection of his own poems, complained of this injustice, and probably took more vigorous steps to prevent its continuance, for the title-page of the edition of 1612 gave way to another from which the name was cancelled. It may seem matter of surprise that the poet himself did not interfere against so base and illicit use of his name; but he probably never heard of it, or left it to die a natural death, although it is not impossible that it was he who caused its withdrawal from the volume. By the researches of Collier, it seems placed almost beyond a doubt that, of his plays, at all events, Shakspeare in no instance authorized the publication, but allowed many of them to be circulated in the most garbled form, and this custom was shared by nearly all the dramatists of the period. From Heminge and Condell’s dedication he evidently had it in view to revise and edit them himself, but the suddenness of his death prevented. Heywood, the playwright above mentioned, says of one of his own dramas, that

• “Some by stenography drew
• The plot, put it in print, scarce one word true.”

Among others that thus found their way into the volume, were some previously published as Barnfield’s; the madrigal of Kit Marlowe, “Come Live with me and be my Love,” with its answer by Raleigh, which are prettily introduced by old Izaak Walton as the song of the Milkmaid and her Mother’s Reply, and perhaps supposed to be Shakspeare’s because he makes Sir Hugh Evans attempt to sing a stanza; beside two or three lyrics from “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which had been published the preceding year. That there were some slight grounds for the great dramatist’s name lies in the fact that amongst the pieces in the original edition appeared two sonnets, probably gained surreptitiously, for they were ten years afterwards published with alterations in the regular collection, and these numbered 138 and 144; of



the authenticity of the rest we can only conjecture from internal evidence, but only one or two possess much merit; that one commencing with “Good night, good rest,” is exceeding sweet, and its rhythm is greatly enhanced by the alliteration.

These are all the minor poems of Shakspeare that have come down to us, and I have attempted to show how far they illustrate his life, of which so little is known. The belief that the sonnets are not autobiographical is received with the greatest scepticism by their studious reader, and I cannot but think the ground upon which such supposition rests utterly untenable. We have here the great poet exhibited in an aspect worthy of his genius: the sonnets throughout bear witness to his love of truth, which has never been otherwise doubted; they obliterate every charge of flattery; they declare him to be manly and loving in his friendship, not blind to faults, but reproving decisively where they merit reproof, and willingly confessing his own sin; quick at resenting an injury, and ready in forgiveness; a sensitiveness to evil report and slander; and manifestations of all those qualities which justify the application of the epithet “gentle.”

“Sir Philip Sydney” will be continued in March.