_ III.[73]
[BYRON]
"Parching summer hath no warrant
To consume this crystal well;
Rains, that make each brook a torrent,
Neither sully it, nor swell."
53. So was it year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.
But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and their father's house.
Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high on Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is wise and innocent.
Maps many have we, nowadays clear in display of earth constituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing the depth, or drought,--the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?
54. For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself then, in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between Cockermouth and Shap?
Not altogether so; but indeed the _Vocal_ piety seemed conclusively to have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little Langdale. The _Un_vocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon, east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and Burger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death--while even Puritan Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the "unco guid," put but limited faith in gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness the _Morgante Maggiore_.[74]
55. Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it, might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the period--dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were, from the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of angels,--again I say--hesitatingly--_is_ it possible that the goodness of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr. Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves despised,[75] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the desert found them, and slew.
This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair, and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of these, her despised.
56. I take one at mere chance:
"Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?"[76]
Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober coloring in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our eyes _have_ kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it difficult to make anyone nowadays believe that such sobriety can be; and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's _Im_mortality instead of dulled by his death,--and, gazing on the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also--for behold, He cometh with clouds--this it is no more possible for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.
57. "But Byron was not thinking of such things!"--He, the reprobate! how should such as he think of Christ?
Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another line or two, to try:
"Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[77]
If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land."
Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron--almost shallow Byron--these are of the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn--nor in a hurry.
"Just now behaved as in the Holy Land." How _did_ Carnage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he was bid stand still _for_? or if not--will you please look--and what also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing?
"Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah--and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein." And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, "and Joshua smote all the country of the hills and of the south--and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed--as the Lord God of Israel commanded."
58. Thus, "it is written": though you perhaps do not so often hear _these_ texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its life--and God has taken it at its word. But Death is not _His_ Begotten Son, for all that; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage His "instrument for working out a pure intent" as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;--neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad "Thunderer" utter thunders of God--which facts if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this day for _you_, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.
59. It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George Fox--its folly shown practically by Penn. But the _compassion_ of the pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that
"The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore."[78]
Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle song too, when it is _his_ cue to fight. If you look at the introduction to the "Isles of Greece," namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd canto of "Don Juan,"--you will find--what will you _not_ find, if only you understand them! "He" in the first line, remember, means the typical modern poet.
"Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,
He gave the different nations something national.
'Twas all the same to him--'God save the King'
Or 'Ca ira' according to the fashion all;
His muse made increment of anything
From the high lyric down to the low rational:
If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder
Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?
In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;
In England a six-canto quarto tale;
In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on
The last war--much the same in Portugal;
In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on
Would be old Goethe's--(see what says de Stael)
In Italy, he'd ape the 'Trecentisti';
In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t'ye."
60. Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling power. The "God Save the Queen" in England, fallen hollow now, as the "Ca ira" in France--not a man in France knowing where either France or "that" (whatever "that" may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing he doesn't like;--nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, "high lyric to low rational." Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France--resumed in a word--Beranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then 'Romance in Spain on--the _last_ war, (_present_ war not being to Spanish poetical taste,) then, Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in Rossetti's "blessed damozels" or Burne Jones's "days of creation." Lastly comes the mock at himself--the modern English Greek--(followed up by the "degenerate into hands like mine" in the song itself); and then--to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles-voice. We have had one line of him in his clearness--five of him in his depth--sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:--
"What,--silent yet? and silent _all_?
Ah no, the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, 'Let _one_ living head,
But one, arise--we come--we come:'
--'Tis but the living who are dumb."
Resurrection, this, you see like Buerger's; but not of death unto death.
61. "Sound like a distant torrent's fall." I said the _whole_ heart of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world in which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock Hills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.
Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--
"And silence aids--though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills;
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.
Nought living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near;
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low,
Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid
Where erst his simple fathers prayed."
And last take the same note of sorrow--with Burns's finger on the fall of it:
"Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,
Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens
Wi' toddlin' din,
Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens
Frae lin to lin."
62. As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that of "Parching summer hath no warrant"? Is it more profane, think you--or more tender--nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?
For instance, when we are told that
"Wharfe, as he moved along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,"
is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement, (itself by no means rythmically dulcet,) that
"The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,
And strangled by a merciless force"?
Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,
"How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more
Than 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,
From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!"
--is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at leisure, and in a reclining attitude--as compared with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity,--poetical extraction, and moral position?
63. On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words more of the school of Belial?
Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some very wicked people--mutineers, in fact--have retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves safe indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink:
"A little stream came tumbling from the height
And straggling into ocean as it might.
Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray
And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,
Close on the wild wide ocean,--yet as pure
And fresh as Innocence; and more secure.
Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,
While, far below, the vast and sullen swell
Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell."[79]
Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here is entirely first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassedly good, the closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race of the sea-kings.
64. But Lucifer himself _could_ not have written it; neither any servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's "style" depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as "style" should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,--or check,--his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes or speaks aside, do you, good reader, _know_ good "style" when you get it? Can you say, of half a dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad?
65. I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of pages.
I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, _i. e._, kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger, the second of love.
(1)
"We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,
His present, and your pains, we thank you for.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard."
(2)
"My gracious Silence, hail!
Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home
That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear
And mothers that lack sons."
66. Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both these passages, so opposite in temper.
A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, "We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto _whose grace_ our passion is as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons"); and with this self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the "style" in an instant.
B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without obscurity: (thus, "his present, and your pains, we thank you for" is better than "we thank you for his present and your pains," because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but "when to these balls our rackets we have matched" would have spoiled the style in a moment, because--I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also here the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have precedence of the French ball). In the fourth line the "in France" comes first, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the "by God's grace" next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible; the detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King does not say "danger," far less "dishonor," but "hazard" only; of _that_ he is, humanly speaking, sure.
67. C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words; slowly in the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word not absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of final dissyllable. Thus "play a set shall strike" is better than "play a set _that_ shall strike," and "match'd" is kingly short--no necessity of meter could have excused "matched" instead. On the contrary, the three first words, "We are glad," would have been spoken by the king more slowly and fully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly "we" at its proudest, and then the "are" as a continuous state, and then the "glad," as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors expected him to be.[80]
D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the heart beats. The king _cannot_ speak otherwise than he does--nor the hero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even lisping numbers "come," but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.
E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion, fitted to it exactly, and the utmost of which the language is capable--the melody in prose being Eolian and variable--in verse, nobler by submitting itself to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.
F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker meaning according to the passion--nearly always indicated by metaphor: "play a set"--sometimes by abstraction--(thus in the second passage "silence" for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct epithet ("coffined" for dead) but always indicative of there being more in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fullness depends the majesty of style; that is to say, virtually, on the quantity of contained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving and true: and this the sum of all--that nothing can be well said, but with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.
68. These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music, that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time and harmony.
When Byron says "rhyme is of the rude,"[81] he means that Burns needs it,--while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah--yet in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme--the best of Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.
69. I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's "Anglo-Saxons." I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in King Canute's impromptu
"Gaily" (or is it sweetly?--I forget which, and it's no matter)
"sang the monks of Ely,
As Knut the king came sailing by;"
much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss, chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain; while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. So, Gibbon can write in _his_ manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in _his_ manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in _his_ manner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.
"Master of Masters--sweet source, and springing well,
Wide where over all rings thy heavenly bell;
* * * * *
Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,
With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,
With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue
Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,
Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?
Na, na--not so; but kneel when I them hear.
But farther more--and lower to descend
Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend
Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme
Since _thou_ wast but ane mortal man sometime."
"Before honor is humility." Does not clearer light come for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words? And note you _whose_ humility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of--Archibald Bell-the-Cat!
70. And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in "Marmion" between his father and King James.
"His hand the monarch sudden took--
'Now, by the Bruce's soul,
Angus, my hasty speech forgive,
For sure as doth his spirit live
As he said of the Douglas old
I well may say of you,--
That never king did subject hold,
In speech more free, in war more bold,
More tender and more true:'
And while the king his hand did strain
The old man's tears fell down like rain."
I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognize further in them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.
"Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,
Hye you there apace;
Let none come there but that virgins been
To adorn her grace:
And when you come, whereas she in place,
See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;
Bind your fillets fast,
And gird in your waste,
For more fineness, with a taudry lace.
Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine
With gylliflowers;
Bring coronatioens, and sops in wine,
Worn of paramours;
Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies
And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;
The pretty paunce
And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the fair flowre-delice."[82]
71. Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test all by.
(1)
"No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,
No more, at yearly festivals,
We cowslip balls
Or chains of columbines shall make,
For this or that occasion's sake.
No, no! our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee."[83]
(2)
"Death is now the phoenix nest,
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:
Truth and beauty buried be."[84]
72. If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognize these following kinds of mischief in him. First, if anyone offends him--as for instance Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin--"his manners have not that repose that marks the caste," etc. _This_ defect in his Lordship's style, being myself scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[85]
Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint; an indefinable--evening flavor of Covent Garden, as it were;--not to say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself--London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll, things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to town--modern town--like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.
Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full of hope, and all pain of balsam.
Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line prophetic of all things since and now. "Where _he_ gazed, a gloom pervaded space."[86]
So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,
"The sordor of civilization, mixed
With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed."[87]
73. Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, color-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,--with other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be analyzed by extreme care,--is found, to the full, only in five men that I know of in modern times; namely, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and myself,--differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for "Rokkes blak" and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to climb, or cross;--all this love of impending mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulfs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston.
74. And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct of Astraean justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene "whatever is, is right"; but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that about ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong: conviction making four of us, according to our several manners, leaders of revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous to the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less sanguine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope and the implacableness of Fate.
In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the death: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally, no conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental public, offering up daily the pure oblation of divine tranquillity, shrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.
75. Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with more precise illustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this present one has been hitherto somewhat somber, and perhaps, to gentle readers, not a little discomposing, I will conclude it with a piece of light biographic study, necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this place as afterwards;--namely, the account of the manner in which Scott--whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,--spent his Sunday.
76. As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the first thing we want to know,--whether Scott worked after his week-day custom, on the Sunday morning. But, I gather, not; at all events his household and his cattle rested (L. iii. 108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or read quietly in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in the house, "Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at eleven, when I expect you all to attend" (vii. 306). Question of college and other externally unanimous prayer settled for us very briefly: "if you have no faith, have at least manners." He read the Church of England service, lessons and all, the latter, if interesting, eloquently (_ibid._). After the service, one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After sermon, if the weather was fine, walk with his family, dogs included and guests, to _cold_ picnic (iii. 109), followed by short extempore biblical novelettes; for he had his Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart, it having been his mother's last gift to him (vi. 174). These lessons to his children in Bible history were always given, whether there was picnic or not. For the rest of the afternoon he took his pleasure in the woods with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his master's elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life to the laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh of whisky or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 195). Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the week, Scott always dined at home on Sunday; and with old friends: never, unless inevitably, receiving any person with whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room rubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gamboling about him, "and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail with sympathy." For the usquebaugh of the less honored week-days, at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair share afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scottish worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favorite author, for the amusement or edification of his little circle. Shakespeare it might be, or Dryden,--Johnson, or Joanna Baillie,--Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in those days "Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a new piece from _his_ hand had appeared, it was _sure to be read by Scott the Sunday evening afterwards_; and that with such delighted emphasis as showed how completely the elder bard had kept up his enthusiasm for poetry at pitch of youth, and all his admiration of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop of literary jealousy" (v. 341).
77. With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as chanced in having Dandie Dinmont or Captain Brown for guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel Mannering, Counselor Pleydell, and Dr. Robertson in Castle Street, such was Scott's habitual Sabbath: a day, we perceive, of eating the fat, (_dinner_, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and mercy--thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Turnbull, hast thine!) and drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of Mr. Southey's cataract of Lodore,--"Here it comes, sparkling." A day bestrewn with coronatioens and sops in wine; deep in libations to good hope and fond memory; a day of rest to beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that can be merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of delight, signifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, there or far away;--always excepting the French, and Boney.
"Yes, and see what it all came to in the end."
Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath; the end came of quite other things; of _these_, came such length of days and peace as Scott had in his Fatherland, and such immortality as he has in all lands.
78. Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his sometimes overmuch lightmindedness, was administered to him by the more grave and thoughtful Byron. For the Lord Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart as well as Scott, though it had never been given him by his mother as her dearest possession. Knew it, and what was more, had thought of it, and sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, nor been fain to seek.
And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible pleasure in the way he sees to be most agreeable to him--as, for instance, remembering with precision, and writing down the very next morning, every blessed word that the Prince Regent had been pleased to say of him before courtly audience,--he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his own "Bride of Abydos," for instance, which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the traveling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,--the drama of "Cain." Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, and of White Maidens, also of Gray Friars, and Green Fairies; also of sacred hollies by the well, and haunted crooks in the glen. But of the bushes that the black dogs rend in the woods of Phlegethon; and of the crooks in the glen, and the bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest of us; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a dwarfed one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than Hobbie Elliot may tremblingly ask "Gude guide us, what's yon?" hast thou yet known, seeing that thou hast yet told, _nothing_.
Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time hear.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 73: September, 1880.]
[Footnote 74: "It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion--and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.
"I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet--but the masquing goes on the same." (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1820.) "A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife, except your neighbor's."]
[Footnote 75: See quoted _infra_ the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other modern poets, "Juan," canto iii. stanza 80, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always for canto; the second for stanza; the third, if necessary, for line.]
[Footnote 76: "Island," ii. 16, where see context.]
[Footnote 77: "Juan," viii. 5; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth says "instrument,"--not "daughter." Your Lordship had better have said "Infant" and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant would not have rymed.]
[Footnote 78: "Juan," viii. 3; compare 14, and 63, with all its lovely context 61-68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the Devil's speech, beginning, "Yes, Sir, you forget" in scene 2 of "The Deformed Transformed": then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning, "he is gone, and on his finger bears my signet," and finally the "Vision of Judgment," stanzas 3 to 5.]
[Footnote 79: "Island," iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the "slings its high flakes, shivered into sleet" of stanza 7.]
[Footnote 80: A modern editor--of whom I will not use the expressions which occur to me--finding the "we" a redundant syllable in the iambic line, prints, "we're." It is a little thing--but I do not recollect, in the forty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch quite so base. But I don't read the new editions much: that must be allowed for.]
[Footnote 81: "Island," ii. 5. I was going to say, "Look to the context," but am fain to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school-introduction to the literature of the world.
"Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,
Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys
In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign
Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;
Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye,
But yields young history all to harmony;
A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.
For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave,
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labors or the student's dream;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil--
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil,
Such was this rude rhyme--rhyme is of the rude,
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilize,
Exist; and what can our accomplish'd art
Of verse do more than reach the awaken'd heart?"]
[Footnote 82: "Shepherd's Calendar." "Coronatioen," loyal-pastoral for Carnation; "sops in wine," jolly-pastoral for double pink; "paunce," thoughtless pastoral for pansy; "chevisaunce," I don't know (not in Gerarde); "flowre-delice"--pronounce dellice--half made up of "delicate" and "delicious."]
[Footnote 83: Herrick, "Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter."]
[Footnote 84: "Passionate Pilgrim."]
[Footnote 85: In this point compare the "Curse of Minerva" with the "Tears of the Muses."]
[Footnote 86: "He,"--Lucifer; ("Vision of Judgment," 24). It is precisely because Byron was _not_ his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and prosperity; with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue; and of the "progress" of things in general:--in smooth sea and fair weather,--and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when once one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.]
[Footnote 87: "Island," ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial of the fall,--nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with deeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its civilization.] _