A CHINESE SAGE
(Speaker, February 8, 1890.)
A eminent Oxford theologian once remarked that his only objection to modern progress was that it progressed forward instead of backward—a view that so fascinated a certain artistic undergraduate that he promptly wrote an essay upon some unnoticed analogies between the development of ideas and the movements of the common sea-crab. I feel sure the Speaker will not be suspected even by its most enthusiastic friends of holding this dangerous heresy of retrogression. But I must candidly admit that I have come to the conclusion that the most caustic criticism of modern life I have met with for some time is that contained in the writings of the learned Chuang Tzŭ, recently translated into the vulgar tongue by Mr. Herbert Giles, Her Majesty’s Consul at Tamsui.
The spread of popular education has no doubt made the name of this great thinker quite familiar to the general public, but, for the sake of the few and the over-cultured, I feel it my duty to state definitely who he was, and to give a brief outline of the character of his philosophy.
Chuang Tzŭ, whose name must carefully be pronounced as it is not written, was born in the fourth century before Christ, by the banks of the Yellow River, in the Flowery Land; and portraits of the wonderful sage seated on the flying dragon of contemplation may still be found on the simple tea-trays and pleasing screens of many of our most respectable suburban households. The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tzŭ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all useful things. ‘Do nothing, and everything will be done,’ was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzŭ. To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, was his wicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of early Greek speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, he was an idealist, and had all the idealist’s contempt for utilitarian systems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and Jacob Böhme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was to get rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of a higher illumination. In fact, Chuang Tzŭ may be said to have summed up in himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mystical thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him of the Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediæval days who, like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss. The great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, our prosperity, if not our civilisation, is entirely due, may shrug their shoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what is the identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of that self-consciousness which is their chief characteristic. But Chuang Tzŭ was something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist. He sought to destroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and the sad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseau the scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer. There is nothing of the sentimentalist in him. He pities the rich more than the poor, if he ever pities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing as suffering. He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor does he propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds to those who come in last in the race. It is the race itself that he objects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the profession of so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to make others good is as silly an occupation as ‘beating a drum in a forest in order to find a fugitive.’ It is a mere waste of energy. That is all. While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of Chuang Tzŭ, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so misses the only possible excuse for his own existence.
Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with a sigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitive examinations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no penny dinners for the people, no Established Churches, no Humanitarian Societies, no dull lectures about one’s duty to one’s neighbour, and no tedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tells us, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, or writing to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet they never published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge to himself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kept his virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people’s business. They lived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food and raiment as they could get. Neighbouring districts were in sight, and ‘the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in the other,’ yet the people grew old and died without ever interchanging visits. There was no chattering about clever men, and no laudation of good men. The intolerable sense of obligation was unknown. The deeds of humanity left no trace, and their affairs were not made a burden for posterity by foolish historians.
In an evil moment the Philanthropist made his appearance, and brought with him the mischievous idea of Government. ‘There is such a thing,’ says Chuang Tzŭ, ‘as leaving mankind alone: there has never been such a thing as governing mankind.’ All modes of government are wrong. They are unscientific, because they seek to alter the natural environment of man; they are immoral because, by interfering with the individual, they produce the most aggressive forms of egotism; they are ignorant, because they try to spread education; they are self-destructive, because they engender anarchy. ‘Of old,’ he tells us, ‘the Yellow Emperor first caused charity and duty to one’s neighbour to interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man. In consequence of this, Yao and Shun wore the hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. They disturbed their internal economy in order to find room for artificial virtues. They exhausted their energies in framing laws, and they were failures.’ Man’s heart, our philosopher goes on to say, may be ‘forced down or stirred up,’ and in either case the issue is fatal. Yao made the people too happy, so they were not satisfied. Chieh made them too wretched, so they grew discontented. Then every one began to argue about the best way of tinkering up society. ‘It is quite clear that something must be done,’ they said to each other, and there was a general rush for knowledge. The results were so dreadful that the Government of the day had to bring in Coercion, and as a consequence of this ‘virtuous men sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of state sat trembling in ancestral halls.’ Then, when everything was in a state of perfect chaos, the Social Reformers got up on platforms, and preached salvation from the ills that they and their system had caused. The poor Social Reformers! ‘They know not shame, nor what it is to blush,’ is the verdict of Chuang Tzŭ upon them.
The economic question, also, is discussed by this almond-eyed sage at great length, and he writes about the curse of capital as eloquently as Mr. Hyndman. The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil. It makes the strong violent, and the weak dishonest. It creates the petty thief, and puts him in a bamboo cage. It creates the big thief, and sets him on a throne of white jade. It is the father of competition, and competition is the waste, as well as the destruction, of energy. The order of nature is rest, repetition, and peace. Weariness and war are the results of an artificial society based upon capital; and the richer this society gets, the more thoroughly bankrupt it really is, for it has neither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments for the wicked. There is also this to be remembered—that the prizes of the world degrade a man as much as the world’s punishments. The age is rotten with its worship of success. As for education, true wisdom can neither be learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state, to which he who lives in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compare it with the extent of the unknown, and only the unknowable is of value. Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another. That is the only result of School Boards. Besides, of what possible philosophic importance can education be, when it serves simply to make each man differ from his neighbour? We arrive ultimately at a chaos of opinions, doubt everything, and fall into the vulgar habit of arguing; and it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Look at Hui Tzu. ‘He was a man of many ideas. His works would fill five carts. But his doctrines were paradoxical.’ He said that there were feathers in an egg, because there were feathers on a chicken; that a dog could be a sheep, because all names were arbitrary; that there was a moment when a swiftly-flying arrow was neither moving nor at rest; that if you took a stick a foot long, and cut it in half every day, you would never come to the end of it; and that a bay horse and a dun cow were three, because taken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and one and two made up three. ‘He was like a man running a race with his own shadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clever gadfly, that was all. What was the use of him?’
Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, says Chuang Tzŭ, when people began to moralise. Men ceased then to be spontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish and artificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life. Then came Governments and Philanthropists, those two pests of the age. The former tried to coerce people into being good, and so destroyed the natural goodness of man. The latter were a set of aggressive busybodies who caused confusion wherever they went. They were stupid enough to have principles, and unfortunate enough to act up to them. They all came to bad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results as universal egotism. They ‘tripped people up over charity, and fettered them with duties to their neighbours.’ They gushed over music, and fussed over ceremonies. As a consequence of all this, the world lost its equilibrium, and has been staggering ever since.
Who, then, according to Chuang Tzŭ, is the perfect man? And what is his manner of life? The perfect man does nothing beyond gazing at the universe. He adopts no absolute position. ‘In motion, he is like water. At rest, he is like a mirror. And, like Echo, he answers only when he is called upon.’ He lets externals take care of themselves. Nothing material injures him; nothing spiritual punishes him. His mental equilibrium gives him the empire of the world. He is never the slave of objective existences. He knows that, ‘just as the best language is that which is never spoken, so the best action is that which is never done.’ He is passive, and accepts the laws of life. He rests in inactivity, and sees the world become virtuous of itself. He does not try to ‘bring about his own good deeds.’ He never wastes himself on effort. He is not troubled about moral distinctions. He knows that things are what they are, and that their consequences will be what they will be. His mind is the ‘speculum of creation,’ and he is ever at peace.
All this is of course excessively dangerous, but we must remember that Chuang Tzŭ lived more than two thousand years ago, and never had the opportunity of seeing our unrivalled civilisation. And yet it is possible that, were he to come back to earth and visit us, he might have something to say to Mr. Balfour about his coercion and active misgovernment in Ireland; he might smile at some of our philanthropic ardours, and shake his head over many of our organised charities; the School Board might not impress him, nor our race for wealth stir his admiration; he might wonder at our ideals, and grow sad over what we have realised. Perhaps it is well that Chuang Tzŭ cannot return.
Meanwhile, thanks to Mr. Giles and Mr. Quaritch, we have his book to console us, and certainly it is a most fascinating and delightful volume. Chuang Tzŭ is one of the Darwinians before Darwin. He traces man from the germ, and sees his unity with nature. As an anthropologist he is excessively interesting, and he describes our primitive arboreal ancestor living in trees through his terror of animals stronger than himself, and knowing only one parent, the mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturer at the Royal Society. Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode of expression, ‘putting words into other people’s mouths,’ he tells us, ‘in order to gain breadth of view.’ As a story-teller he is charming. The account of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Chê is most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over the ultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moral platitudes is ruthlessly exposed by the successful brigand. Even in his metaphysics, Chuang Tzŭ is intensely humorous. He personifies his abstractions, and makes them act plays before us. The Spirit of the Clouds, when passing eastward through the expanse of air, happened to fall in with the Vital Principle. The latter was slapping his ribs and hopping about: whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, ‘Who are you, old man, and what are you doing?’ ‘Strolling!’ replied the Vital Principle, without stopping, for all activities are ceaseless. ‘I want to know something,’ continued the Spirit of the Clouds. ‘Ah!’ cried the Vital Principle, in a tone of disapprobation, and a marvellous conversation follows, that is not unlike the dialogue between the Sphinx and the Chimera in Flaubert’s curious drama. Talking animals, also, have their place in Chuang Tzŭ’s parables and stories, and through myth and poetry and fancy his strange philosophy finds musical utterance.
Of course it is sad to be told that it is immoral to be consciously good, and that doing anything is the worst form of idleness. Thousands of excellent and really earnest philanthropists would be absolutely thrown upon the rates if we adopted the view that nobody should be allowed to meddle in what does not concern him. The doctrine of the uselessness of all useful things would not merely endanger our commercial supremacy as a nation, but might bring discredit upon many prosperous and serious-minded members of the shop-keeping classes. What would become of our popular preachers, our Exeter Hall orators, our drawing-room evangelists, if we said to them, in the words of Chuang Tzŭ, ‘Mosquitoes will keep a man awake all night with their biting, and just in the same way this talk of charity and duty to one’s neighbour drives us nearly crazy. Sirs, strive to keep the world to its own original simplicity, and, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore this undue energy?’ And what would be the fate of governments and professional politicians if we came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as governing mankind at all? It is clear that Chuang Tzŭ is a very dangerous writer, and the publication of his book in English, two thousand years after his death, is obviously premature, and may cause a great deal of pain to many thoroughly respectable and industrious persons. It may be true that the ideal of self-culture and self-development, which is the aim of his scheme of life, and the basis of his scheme of philosophy, is an ideal somewhat needed by an age like ours, in which most people are so anxious to educate their neighbours that they have actually no time left in which to educate themselves. But would it be wise to say so? It seems to me that if we once admitted the force of any one of Chuang Tzŭ’s destructive criticisms we should have to put some check on our national habit of self-glorification; and the only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them. There may, however, be a few who have grown wearied of that strange modern tendency that sets enthusiasm to do the work of the intellect. To these, and such as these, Chuang Tzŭ will be welcome. But let them only read him. Let them not talk about him. He would be disturbing at dinner-parties, and impossible at afternoon teas, and his whole life was a protest against platform speaking. ‘The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action; the true sage ignores reputation.’ These are the principles of Chuang Tzŭ.
Chuang Tzŭ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer. Translated from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles, H.B.M.’s Consul at Tamsui. (Bernard Quaritch.)
MR. PATER’S LAST VOLUME
(Speaker, March 22, 1890.)
When I first had the privilege—and I count it a very high one—of meeting Mr. Walter Pater, he said to me, smiling, ‘Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.’
It was during my undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardour and of studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacy and musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with its linked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when one solemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should be written; delightful days, in which, I am glad to say, there was far more rhyme than reason.
I may frankly confess now that at the time I did not quite comprehend what Mr. Pater really meant; and it was not till I had carefully studied his beautiful and suggestive essays on the Renaissance that I fully realised what a wonderful self-conscious art the art of English prose-writing really is, or may be made to be. Carlyle’s stormy rhetoric, Ruskin’s winged and passionate eloquence, had seemed to me to spring from enthusiasm rather than from art. I do not think I knew then that even prophets correct their proofs. As for Jacobean prose, I thought it too exuberant; and Queen Anne prose appeared to me terribly bald, and irritatingly rational. But Mr. Pater’s essays became to me ‘the golden book of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty.’ They are still this to me. It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate about them. I certainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always valueless.
But I must not allow this brief notice of Mr. Pater’s new volume to degenerate into an autobiography. I remember being told in America that whenever Margaret Fuller wrote an essay upon Emerson the printers had always to send out to borrow some additional capital ‘I’s,’ and I feel it right to accept this transatlantic warning.
Appreciations, in the fine Latin sense of the word, is the title given by Mr. Pater to his book, which is an exquisite collection of exquisite essays, of delicately wrought works of art—some of them being almost Greek in their purity of outline and perfection of form, others mediæval in their strangeness of colour and passionate suggestion, and all of them absolutely modern, in the true meaning of the term modernity. For he to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth century one must realise every century that has preceded it, and that has contributed to its making. To know anything about oneself, one must know all about others. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathise, no dead mode of life that one cannot make alive. The legacies of heredity may make us alter our views of moral responsibility, but they cannot but intensify our sense of the value of Criticism; for the true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.
Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the least successful, of the essays contained in the present volume is that on Style. It is the most interesting because it is the work of one who speaks with the high authority that comes from the noble realisation of things nobly conceived. It is the least successful, because the subject is too abstract. A true artist like Mr. Pater is most felicitous when he deals with the concrete, whose very limitations give him finer freedom, while they necessitate more intense vision. And yet what a high ideal is contained in these few pages! How good it is for us, in these days of popular education and facile journalism, to be reminded of the real scholarship that is essential to the perfect writer, who, ‘being a true lover of words for their own sake, a minute and constant observer of their physiognomy,’ will avoid what is mere rhetoric, or ostentatious ornament, or negligent misuse of terms, or ineffective surplusage, and will be known by his tact of omission, by his skilful economy of means, by his selection and self-restraint, and perhaps above all by that conscious artistic structure which is the expression of mind in style. I think I have been wrong in saying that the subject is too abstract. In Mr. Pater’s hands it becomes very real to us indeed, and he shows us how, behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’s soul.
As one passes to the rest of the volume, one finds essays on Wordsworth and on Coleridge, on Charles Lamb and on Sir Thomas Browne, on some of Shakespeare’s plays and on the English kings that Shakespeare fashioned, on Dante Rossetti, and on William Morris. As that on Wordsworth seems to be Mr. Pater’s last work, so that on the singer of the Defence of Guenevere is certainly his earliest, or almost his earliest, and it is interesting to mark the change that has taken place in his style. This change is, perhaps, at first sight not very apparent. In 1868 we find Mr. Pater writing with the same exquisite care for words, with the same studied music, with the same temper, and something of the same mode of treatment. But, as he goes on, the architecture of the style becomes richer and more complex, the epithet more precise and intellectual. Occasionally one may be inclined to think that there is, here and there, a sentence which is somewhat long, and possibly, if one may venture to say so, a little heavy and cumbersome in movement. But if this be so, it comes from those side-issues suddenly suggested by the idea in its progress, and really revealing the idea more perfectly; or from those felicitous after-thoughts that give a fuller completeness to the central scheme, and yet convey something of the charm of chance; or from a desire to suggest the secondary shades of meaning with all their accumulating effect, and to avoid, it may be, the violence and harshness of too definite and exclusive an opinion. For in matters of art, at any rate, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, recognising its dependence upon moods and upon the passion of fine moments, will not accept the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma. The critical pleasure, too, that we receive from tracing, through what may seem the intricacies of a sentence, the working of the constructive intelligence, must not be overlooked. As soon as we have realised the design, everything appears clear and simple. After a time, these long sentences of Mr. Pater’s come to have the charm of an elaborate piece of music, and the unity of such music also.
I have suggested that the essay on Wordsworth is probably the most recent bit of work contained in this volume. If one might choose between so much that is good, I should be inclined to say it is the finest also. The essay on Lamb is curiously suggestive; suggestive, indeed, of a somewhat more tragic, more sombre figure, than men have been wont to think of in connection with the author of the Essays of Elia. It is an interesting aspect under which to regard Lamb, but perhaps he himself would have had some difficulty in recognising the portrait given of him. He had, undoubtedly, great sorrows, or motives for sorrow, but he could console himself at a moment’s notice for the real tragedies of life by reading any one of the Elizabethan tragedies, provided it was in a folio edition. The essay on Sir Thomas Browne is delightful, and has the strange, personal, fanciful charm of the author of the Religio Medici, Mr. Pater often catching the colour and accent and tone of whatever artist, or work of art, he deals with. That on Coleridge, with its insistence on the necessity of the cultivation of the relative, as opposed to the absolute spirit in philosophy and in ethics, and its high appreciation of the poet’s true position in our literature, is in style and substance a very blameless work. Grace of expression and delicate subtlety of thought and phrase, characterise the essays on Shakespeare. But the essay on Wordsworth has a spiritual beauty of its own. It appeals, not to the ordinary Wordsworthian with his uncritical temper, and his gross confusion of ethical and æsthetical problems, but rather to those who desire to separate the gold from the dross, and to reach at the true Wordsworth through the mass of tedious and prosaic work that bears his name, and that serves often to conceal him from us. The presence of an alien element in Wordsworth’s art is, of course, recognised by Mr. Pater, but he touches on it merely from the psychological point of view, pointing out how this quality of higher and lower moods gives the effect in his poetry ‘of a power not altogether his own, or under his control’; a power which comes and goes when it wills, ‘so that the old fancy which made the poet’s art an enthusiasm, a form of divine possession, seems almost true of him.’ Mr. Pater’s earlier essays had their purpurei panni, so eminently suitable for quotation, such as the famous passage on Mona Lisa, and that other in which Botticelli’s strange conception of the Virgin is so strangely set forth. From the present volume it is difficult to select any one passage in preference to another as specially characteristic of Mr. Pater’s treatment. This, however, is worth quoting at length. It contains a truth eminently suitable for our age:
That the end of life is not action but contemplation—being as distinct from doing—a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified: to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation. Their work is not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man’s existence which no machinery affects, ‘on the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature’—on ‘the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow.’ To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth’s is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world:—images, in his own words, ‘of men suffering, amid awful forms and powers.’
Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed. After having read and reread Mr. Pater’s essay—for it requires re-reading—one returns to the poet’s work with a new sense of joy and wonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation. And perhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of the finest criticism.
Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone to fashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume. The difference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often, and with much over-emphasis, been discussed. But with what a light sure touch does Mr. Pater write of it! How subtle and certain are his distinctions! If imaginative prose be really the special art of this century, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century’s most characteristic artists. In certain things he stands almost alone. The age has produced wonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent with excess of rhetoric. But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find the union of personality with perfection. He has no rival in his own sphere, and he has escaped disciples. And this, not because he has not been imitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, in its essence, is inimitable.
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. By Walter Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College. (Macmillan and Co.)
PRIMAVERA
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 24, 1890.)
In the summer term Oxford teaches the exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach, and possibly as the first-fruits of the dreaming in grey cloister and silent garden, which either makes or mars a man, there has just appeared in that lovely city a dainty and delightful volume of poems by four friends. These new young singers are Mr. Laurence Binyon, who has just gained the Newdigate; Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a young Indian of brilliant scholarship and high literary attainments who gives some culture to Christ Church; Mr. Stephen Phillips, whose recent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet at the Globe Theatre was so admirable in its dignity and elocution; and Mr. Arthur Cripps, of Trinity. Particular interest attaches naturally to Mr. Ghose’s work. Born in India, of purely Indian parentage, he has been brought up entirely in England, and was educated at St. Paul’s School, and his verses show us how quick and subtle are the intellectual sympathies of the Oriental mind, and suggest how close is the bond of union that may some day bind India to us by other methods than those of commerce and military strength.
There is something charming in finding a young Indian using our language with such care for music and words as Mr. Ghose does. Here is one of his songs:
Over thy head, in joyful wanderings
Through heaven’s wide spaces, free,
Birds fly with music in their wings;
And from the blue, rough sea
The fishes flash and leap;
There is a life of loveliest things
O’er thee, so fast asleep.In the deep West the heavens grow heavenlier,
Eve after eve; and still
The glorious stars remember to appear;
The roses on the hill
Are fragrant as before:
Only thy face, of all that’s dear,
I shall see nevermore!
It has its faults. It has a great many faults. But the lines we have set in italics are lovely. The temper of Keats, the moods of Matthew Arnold, have influenced Mr. Ghose, and what better influence could a beginner have? Here are some stanzas from another of Mr. Ghose’s poems:
Deep-shaded will I lie, and deeper yet
In night, where not a leaf its neighbour knows;
Forget the shining of the stars, forget
The vernal visitation of the rose;
And, far from all delights, prepare my heart’s repose.‘O crave not silence thou! too soon, too sure,
Shall Autumn come, and through these branches weep:
Some birds shall cease, and flowers no more endure;
And thou beneath the mould unwilling creep,
And silent soon shalt be in that eternal sleep.‘Green still it is, where that fair goddess strays;
Then follow, till around thee all be sere.
Lose not a vision of her passing face;
Nor miss the sound of her soft robes, that here
Sweep over the wet leaves of the fast-falling year.’
The second line is very beautiful, and the whole shows culture and taste and feeling. Mr. Ghose ought some day to make a name in our literature.
Mr. Stephen Phillips has a more solemn classical Muse. His best work is his Orestes:
Me in far lands did Justice call, cold queen
Among the dead, who, after heat and haste
At length have leisure for her steadfast voice,
That gathers peace from the great deeps of hell.
She call’d me, saying: I heard a cry by night!
Go thou, and question not; within thy halls
My will awaits fulfilment.. . . . . .
And she lies there,
My mother! ay, my mother now; O hair
That once I play’d with in these halls! O eyes
That for a moment knew me as I came,
And lighten’d up, and trembled into love;
The next were darkened by my hand! Ah me!
Ye will not look upon me in that world.
Yet thou, perchance, art happier, if thou go’st
Into some land of wind and drifting leaves,
To sleep without a star; but as for me,
Hell hungers, and the restless Furies wait.
Milton, and the method of Greek tragedy are Mr. Phillips’s influences, and again we may say, what better influences could a young singer have? His verse is dignified, and has distinction.
* * * * *
Mr. Cripps is melodious at times, and Mr. Binyon, Oxford’s latest Laureate, shows us in his lyrical ode on Youth that he can handle a difficult metre dexterously, and in this sonnet that he can catch the sweet echoes that sleep in the sonnets of Shakespeare:
I cannot raise my eyelids up from sleep,
But I am visited with thoughts of you;
Slumber has no refreshment half so deep
As the sweet morn, that wakes my heart anew.I cannot put away life’s trivial care,
But you straightway steal on me with delight:
My purest moments are your mirror fair;
My deepest thought finds you the truth most brightYou are the lovely regent of my mind,
The constant sky to the unresting sea;
Yet, since ’tis you that rule me, I but find
A finer freedom in such tyranny.Were the world’s anxious kingdoms govern’d so,
Lost were their wrongs, and vanish’d half their woe!
On the whole Primavera is a pleasant little book, and we are glad to welcome it. It is charmingly ‘got up,’ and undergraduates might read it with advantage during lecture hours.
Primavera: Poems. By Four Authors. (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell.)
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS REVIEWED
AITCHISON, JAMES: The Chronicle of Mites
ANONYMOUS: An Author’s Love
Annals of the Life of Shakespeare
Miss Bayle’s Romance
Rachel
Sturm und Drang
The Cross and the Grail
The Judgment of the City
Warring Angels
ARMSTRONG, GEORGE FRANCIS: Stories of Wicklow
ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN: With Sa’di in the Garden
ASHBY-STERRY, J.: The Lazy Minstrel
AUSTIN, ALFRED: Days of the Year
Love’s Widowhood
Author of Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor: Ismay’s Children
Author of Lucy: Tiff
Author of Mademoiselle Mori: A Child of the Revolution
Under a Cloud
Author of The White Africans: Æonial
BALZAC, HONORÉ DE: César Birotteau
The Duchess of Langeais and Other Stories
BARKER, JOHN THOMAS: The Pilgrimage of Memory
BARR, AMELIA: A Daughter of Fife
BARRETT, FRANK: The Great Hesper
BAUCHE, EMILE: A Statesman’s Love
BAYLISS, WYKE: The Enchanted Island
BEAUFORT, RAPHAEL LEDOS DE: Letters of George Sand
BELLAIRS, LADY: Gossips with Girls and Maidens
BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN: In Vinculis
BOISSIER, GASTON: Nouvelles Promenades Archéologiques
BOWEN, SIR CHARLES: Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and Æneid I.-VI.
BOWLING, E. W.: Sagittulæ
BRODIE, E. H.: Lyrics of the Sea
BROUGHTON, RHODA: Betty’s Visions
BROWNE, PHYLLIS: Mrs. Somerville and Mary Carpenter
BUCHAN, ALEXANDER: Joseph and His Brethren
BUCHANAN, ROBERT: That Winter Night
BURNS, DAWSON: Oliver Cromwell
CAINE, HALL: Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
CAIRNS, WILLIAM: A Day after the Pair
CALDECOTT, RANDOLPH: Gleanings from the Graphic
CAMERON, MRS. HENRY LOVETT: A Life’s Mistake
CARNARVON, EARL OF: The Odyssey of Homer. Books I.-XII.
CARPENTER, EDWARD: Chants of Labour
CATTY, CHARLES: Poems in the Modern Spirit
CESARESCO, COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO: Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs
CHAPMAN, ELIZABETH RACHEL: The New Purgatory
CHETWYND, HON. MRS. HENRY: Mrs. Dorriman
CHRISTIAN, H. R. H. PRINCESS: Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth
COCKLE, J.: Guilt (Müllner)
COLE, ALAN: Embroidery and Lace (Ernest Lefébure)
COLERIDGE, HON. STEPHEN: Demetrius
COLLIER, HON. JOHN: A Manual of Oil Painting
COLVIN, SIDNEY: Keats
CONWAY, HUGH: A Cardinal Sin
COOPER, ELISE: The Queen’s Innocent
CORKRAN, ALICE: Margery Morton’s Girlhood
Meg’s Friend
CRAIK, MRS.: Poems
CRANE, WALTER: Flora’s Feast
CRAWFORD, JOHN MARTIN: The Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland
CUMBERLAND, STUART: The Vasty Deep
CURTIS, ELLA: A Game of Chance
CURZON, G.: Delamere
DALZIEL, GEORGE: Pictures in the Fire
DAVIS, CORA M.: Immortelles
DAY, RICHARD: Poems
DENMAN, HON. G.: The Story of the Kings of Rome in Verse
DENNING, JOHN RENTON: Poems and Songs
DILKE, LADY: Art in the Modern State
DIXON, CONSTANCE E.: The Chimneypiece of Bruges
DOBELL, MRS. HORACE: In the Watches of the Night
DOUDNEY, SARAH: Under False Colours
DOVETON, F. B.: Sketches in Prose and Verse
DUFFY, BELLA: Life of Madame de Staël
DURANT, HÉLOÏSE: Dante: a Dramatic Poem
DYER, REV. A. SAUNDERS: The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon
EDMONDS, E. M.: Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc.
Mary Myles
EVANS, W.: Cæsar Borgia
EVELYN, JOHN: Life of Mrs. Godolphin
FANE, VIOLET: Helen Davenant
FENN, GEORGE MANVILLE: A Bag of Diamonds
The Master of the Ceremonies
FIELD, MICHAEL: Canute the Great
FITZ GERALD, CAROLINE: Venetia Victrix
FOSKET, EDWARD: Poems
FOSTER, DAVID SKAATS: Rebecca the Witch
FOUR AUTHORS: Primavera
FROUDE, J, A.: The Two Chiefs of Dunboy
FURLONG, ATHERTON: Echoes of Memory
GALLENGA, A.: Jenny Jennet
GIBERNE, AGNES: Ralph Hardcastle’s Will
GILES, HERBERT A: Chuang Tzŭ
GLENESSA: The Discovery
GOODCHILD, JOHN A.: Somnia Medici. Second Series
GORDON, ADAM LINDSAY: Poems
GRANT, JOHN CAMERON: Vanclin
GRAVES, A. P.: Father O’Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics
GRIFFIN, EDWIN ELLIS: Vortigern and Rowena
GRIFFITHS, WILLIAM: Sonnets and Other Poems
HAMILTON, IAN: The Ballad of Hádji
HARDINGE, W. M.: The Willow Garth
HARDY, A. J.: How to be Happy Though Married
HARRISON, CLIFFORD: In Hours of Leisure
HARTE, BRET: Cressy
HAYES, ALFRED: David Westren
HEARTSEASE: God’s Garden
HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST: A Book of Verses
HEYWOOD, J. C.: Salome
HOLE, W. G.: Procris
HOPKINS, TIGHE: ’Twixt Love and Duty
HOUSTON, MRS.: A Heart on Fire
HUNT, MRS. ALFRED: That Other Person
IRWIN, H. C.: Rhymes and Renderings
KEENE, H. E.: Verses: Translated and Original
KELLY, JAMES: Poems
K. E. V.: The Circle of Saints
The Circle of Seasons
KINGSFORD, DR. ANNA.: Dreams and Dream-Stories
KNIGHT, JOSEPH: Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
KNIGHT, WILLIAM: Wordsworthiana
LAFFAN, MRS. DE COURCY: A Song of Jubilee
LANGRIDGE, REV. FREDERICK: Poor Folks’ Lives
LAUDER, SIR THOMAS: The Wolfe of Badenoch
LEE, MARGARET: Faithful and Unfaithful
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD: Volumes in Folio
LEVY, AMY: The Romance of a Shop
LINDSAY, LADY: Caroline
LINTON, W. J.: Poems and Translations
LLOYD, J. SALE: Scamp
LYALL, EDNA: In the Golden Days
MACEWEN, CONSTANCE: Soap
MACK, ROBERT ELLICE: Treasures of Art and Song
MACKENZIE, GEORGE: Highland Daydreams
MACQUOID, KATHERINE S.: Louisa
MAHAFFY, J. P.: Greek Life and Thought
The Principles of the Art of Conversation
MARTIN, FRANCES: Life of Elizabeth Gilbert
MARZIALS, FRANK T.: Life of Charles Dickens
MASSON, GUSTAVE: George Sand (Elmé Caro)
MATTHEWS, BRANDER: Pen and Ink
MCKIM, JOSEPH: Poems
MOLESWORTH, MRS.: A Christmas Posy
The Third Miss St. Quentin
MONTGOMERY, FLORENCE: The Fisherman’s Daughter
MORINE, GEORGE: Poems
MORRIS, WILLIAM: A Tale of the House of the Wolfings
The Odyssey of Homer done into English Verse
MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER: Ourselves and Our Neighbours
MULHOLLAND, ROSA: Gianetta
Marcella Grace
MUNSTER, LADY: Dorinda
NADEN, CONSTANCE: A Modern Apostle
NASH, CHARLES: The Story of the Cross
NESBIT, E.: Lays and Legends
Leaves of Life
NOEL, HON. RODEN: Essays on Poetry and Poets
NOEL, LADY AUGUSTA: Hithersea Mere
OLIPHANT, MRS.: Makers of Venice
OLIVER, PEN: All But
OUIDA: Guilderoy
OWEN, EVELYN: Driven Home
OXONIENSIS: Juvenal in Piccadilly
PATER, WALTER: Appreciations, with an Essay on Style
Imaginary Portraits
PEACOCK, THOMAS BOWER: Poems of the Plain and Songs of the Solitudes
PERKS, MRS. J. HARTLEY: From Heather Hills
PFEIFFER, EMILY: Women and Work
PHILLIMORE, MISS: Studies in Italian Literature
PIERCE, J.: Stanzas and Sonnets
PIMLICO, LORD: The Excellent Mystery
PLEYDELL-BOUVERIE, EDWARD OLIVER: J. S.; or, Trivialities
PRESTON, HARRIET WATERS: A Year in Eden
PREVOST, FRANCIS: Fires of Green Wood
QUILTER, HARRY: Sententiæ Artis
RAFFALOVICH, MARK ANDRÉ: Tuberose and Meadowsweet
RISTORI, MADAME: Etudes et Souvenirs
RITCHIE, DAVID: Darwinism and Politics
ROBERTSON, ERIC S.: Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Children of the Poets
ROBERTSON, J. LOGIE: Poems by Allan Ramsay
ROBINS, G. M.: Keep My Secret
ROBINSON, A. MARY F.: Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play
ROBINSON, MABEL: The Plan of Campaign
RODD, RENNELL: The Unknown Madonna
ROSS, JAMES: Seymour’s Inheritance
The Wind and Six Sonnets
ROSS, JANET: Three Generations of English Women
ROSSETTI, WILLIAM MICHAEL: Life of John Keats
RUETE, PRINCESS EMILY: Memoirs of an Arabian Princess
SAFFORD, MARY J.: Aphrodite (Ernst Eckstein)
SAINTSBURY, GEORGE: George Borrow
SARASVATI, PUNDITA RAMABAI: The High-Caste Hindu Woman
SCHWARTZ, J. M. W.: Nivalis
SHARP, ISAAC: Saul of Tarsus
SHARP, MRS. WILLIAM: Women’s Voices
SHARP, WILLIAM: Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy
SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY: Here’s to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen
SHORE, ARABELLA: Dante for Beginners
SKIPSEY, JOSEPH: Carols from the Coal Fields
SLADEN, DOUGLAS B. W.: Australian Poets, 1788-1888
SMITH, ALEXANDER SKENE: Holiday Recreations
SOMERSET, LORD HENRY: Songs of Adieu
SPEIGHT, T. W.: A Barren Title
STAPFER, PAUL: Molière et Shakespeare
STILLMAN, W. J.: On the Track of Ulysses
STOKES, MARGARET: Early Christian Art in Ireland
STREETS, FAUCET: A Marked Man
STUTFIELD, HUGH: El Magreb: Twelve Hundred Miles’ Ride through Morocco
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES: Poems and Ballads. Third Series
SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON: Ben Jonson
Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction
THORNTON, CYRUS: Voices of the Street
TODHUNTER, JOHN: The Banshee
TOMSON, GRAHAM R.: The Bird Bride
TOYNBEE, WILLIAM: A Selection from the Songs of De Béranger in English Verse
TURNER, C. GLADSTONE: Errata
TWO TRAMPS: Low Down
TYLOR, LOUIS: Chess: A Christmas Masque
TYRRELL, CHRISTINA: Her Son (E. Werner)
VEITCH, JOHN: The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry
VEITCH, SOPHIE: James Hepburn
VON LAUER, BARONESS: The Master of Tanagra (Ernst von Wildenbruch)
WALFORD, MRS.: Four Biographies from Blackwood
WALWORTH, REV. CLARENCE A.: Andiatorochtè
WANDERER: Dinners and Dishes
WHISHAW, FREDERICK: Injury and Insult (Fedor Dostoieffski)
WHITMAN, WALT: November Boughs
WILLIAMS, F. HARALD: Women Must Weep
WILLIAMSON, DAVID R.: Poems of Nature and Life
WILLIS, E. COOPER: Tales and Legends in Verse
WILLS, W. G.: Melchior
WILMOT, A.: The Poetry of South Africa
WINTER, JOHN STRANGE: That Imp
WOODS, MARGARET L.: A Village Tragedy
WOTTON, MABEL: Word Portraits of Famous Writers
YEATS, W. B.: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
The Wanderings of Oisin
YONGE, CHARLOTTE M., and others: Astray
Footnotes:
{119} See A ‘Jolly’ Art Critic, page 112.
{189} Shairp was Professor of Poetry at Oxford in Wilde’s undergraduate days.
{198} The Margravine of Baireuth and Voltaire. (David Stott, 1888.)
{289} February 1888.
{334a} September 1888.
{334b} See The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter XI., page 222.
{374} The Queen, December 8, 1888.
{411} From Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends of Ireland.
{437} See page 406.
{452} See Australian Poets, page 370.