English Critical Essays Part 27

the great but vague faith--the unutterable tenets seem to him worthless, visionary; they are not enough immersed in matter; they move about 'in worlds not realized'. We wish he could be tried like the prophet once; he would have found G.o.d in the earthquake and the storm; he could have deciphered from them a bracing and a rough religion: he would have known that crude men and ignorant women felt them too, and he would accordingly have trusted them; but he would have distrusted and disregarded the 'still small voice'; he would have said it was 'fancy'--a thing you thought you heard to-day, but were not sure you had heard to-morrow: he would call it a nice illusion, an immaterial prettiness; he would ask triumphantly 'How are you to get the ma.s.s of men to heed this little thing?' he would have persevered and insisted '_My wife_ does not hear it'.

But although a suspicion of beauty, and a taste for ugly reality, have led Mr. Browning to exaggerate the functions, and to caricature the nature of grotesque art, we own or rather we maintain that he has given many excellent specimens of that art within its proper boundaries and limits. Take an example, his picture of what we may call the _bourgeois_ nature in _difficulties_; in the utmost difficulty, in contact with magic and the supernatural. He has made of it something homely, comic, true; reminding us of what _bourgeois_ nature really is. By showing us the type under abnormal conditions, he reminds us of the type under its best and most satisfactory conditions--

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin was a pity.

Rats!

They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: ''Tis clear', cried they, 'our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation--shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin!

You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease?

Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!'

At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation.

A person of musical abilities proposes to extricate the civic dignitaries from the difficulty, and they promise him a thousand guilders if he does.

Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eye twinkled Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cooking tails and p.r.i.c.king whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives-- Followed the Piper for their lives.

From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the river Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished!

--Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the ma.n.u.script he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was, 'At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of sc.r.a.ping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil flasks, And a breaking the hoops of b.u.t.ter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, "Oh rats, rejoice!

The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!

So, munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!"

And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, All ready staved, like a great sun shone Glorious scarce an inch before me, Just as methought it said, "Come, bore me!"

--I found the Weser rolling o'er me.'

You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.

'Go', cried the Mayor, 'and get long poles, Poke out the nests and block up the holes!

Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!'--when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a 'First, if you please, my thousand guilders!'

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation too.

For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest b.u.t.t with Rhenish.

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gipsy coat of red and yellow!

'Beside,' quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink, 'Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think.

So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.

Besides, our losses have made us thrifty.

A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!'

The piper's face fell, and he cried, 'No trifling! I can't wait, beside!

I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor-- With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!

And folks who put me in a pa.s.sion May find me pipe to another fas.h.i.+on.'

'How?' cried the Mayor, 'd'ye think I'll brook Being worse treated than a Cook?

Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald?

You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there till you burst!'

Once more he stept into the street And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling.

Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running.

All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls.

Tripping and skipping ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people that ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbours lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand.

Something more we had to say of Mr. Browning, but we must stop. It is singularly characteristic of this age that the poems which rise to the surface should be examples of ornate art, and grotesque art, not of pure art. We live in the realm of the _half_ educated. The number of readers grows daily, but the quality of readers does not improve rapidly. The middle cla.s.s is scattered, headless; it is well-meaning but aimless; wis.h.i.+ng to be wise, but ignorant how to be wise. The aristocracy of England never was a literary aristocracy, never even in the days of its full power, of its unquestioned predominance, did it guide--did it even seriously try to guide--the taste of England.

Without guidance young men and tired men are thrown amongst a ma.s.s of books; they have to choose which they like; many of them would much like to improve their culture, to chasten their taste, if they knew how. But left to themselves they take, not pure art, but showy art; not that which permanently relieves the eye and makes it happy whenever it looks, and as long as it looks, but _glaring_ art which catches and arrests the eye for a moment, but which in the end fatigues it. But before the wholesome remedy of nature--the fatigue--arrives, the hasty reader has pa.s.sed on to some new excitement, which in its turn stimulates for an instant, and then is pa.s.sed by for ever. These conditions are not favourable to the due appreciation of pure art--of that art which must be known before it is admired--which must have fastened irrevocably on the brain before you appreciate it--which you must love ere it will seem worthy of your love. Women too, whose voice in literature counts as well as that of men--and in a light literature counts for more than that of men--women, such as we know them, such as they are likely to be, ever prefer a delicate unreality to a true or firm art. A dressy literature, an exaggerated literature seem to be fated to us. These are our curses, as other times had theirs.

And yet Think not the living times forget, Ages of heroes fought and fell, That Homer in the end might tell; O'er grovelling generations past Upstood the Gothic fane at last; And countless hearts in countless years Had wasted thoughts, and hopes, and fears, Rude laughter and unmeaning tears; Ere England Shakespeare saw, or Rome The pure perfection of her dome.

Others I doubt not, if not we, The issue of our toils shall see; And (they forgotten and unknown) Young children gather as their own The harvest that the dead had sown.

WALTER HORATIO PATER

1839-1894

COLERIDGE'S WRITINGS (1866)

_Conversations, Letters, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge._ Edited by THOMAS ALLSOP. London. 1864.

Forms of intellectual and spiritual culture often exercise their subtlest and most artful charm when life is already pa.s.sing from them.

Searching and irresistible as are the changes of the human spirit on its way to perfection, there is yet so much elasticity of temper that what must pa.s.s away sooner or later is not disengaged all at once even from the highest order of minds. Nature, which by one law of development evolves ideas, moralities, modes of inward life, and represses them in turn, has in this way provided that the earlier growth should propel its fibres into the later, and so transmit the whole of its forces in an unbroken continuity of life. Then comes the spectacle of the reserve of the elder generation exquisitely refined by the antagonism of the new. That current of new life chastens them as they contend against it. Weaker minds do not perceive the change; clearer minds abandon themselves to it. To feel the change everywhere, yet not to abandon oneself to it, is a situation of difficulty and contention. Communicating in this way to the pa.s.sing stage of culture the charm of what is chastened, high-strung, athletic, they yet detach the highest minds from the past by pressing home its difficulties and finally proving it impossible. Such is the charm of Julian, of St. Louis, perhaps of Luther; in the narrower compa.s.s of modern times, of Dr. Newman and Lacordaire; it is also the peculiar charm of Coleridge.

Modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the 'relative' spirit in place of the 'absolute'. Ancient philosophy sought to arrest every object in an eternal outline, to fix thought in a necessary formula, and types of life in a cla.s.sification by 'kinds'

or _genera_. To the modern spirit nothing is, or can be rightly known except relatively under conditions. An ancient philosopher indeed started a philosophy of the relative, but only as an enigma. So the germs of almost all philosophical ideas were enfolded in the mind of antiquity, and fecundated one by one in after ages by the external influences of art, religion, culture in the natural sciences, belonging to a particular generation, which suddenly becomes preoccupied by a formula or theory, not so much new as penetrated by a new meaning and expressiveness. So the idea of 'the relative' has been fecundated in modern times by the influence of the sciences of observation. These sciences reveal types of life evanescing into each other by inexpressible refinements of change. Things pa.s.s into their opposites by acc.u.mulation of undefinable quant.i.ties. The growth of those sciences consists in a continual a.n.a.lysis of facts of rough and general observation into groups of facts more precise and minute. A faculty for truth is a power of distinguis.h.i.+ng and fixing delicate and fugitive details. The moral world is ever in contact with the physical; the relative spirit has invaded moral philosophy from the ground of the inductive science. There it has started a new a.n.a.lysis of the relations of body and mind, good and evil, freedom and necessity. Hard and abstract moralities are yielding to a more exact estimate of the subtlety and complexity of our life. Always, as an organism increases in perfection the conditions of its life become more complex. Man is the most complex of the products of nature.

Character merges into temperament; the nervous system refines itself into intellect. His physical organism is played upon not only by the physical conditions about it, but by remote laws of inheritance, the vibrations of long past acts reaching him in the midst of the new order of things in which he lives. When we have estimated these conditions he is not yet simple and isolated; for the mind of the race, the character of the age, sway him this way or that through the medium of language and ideas. It seems as if the most opposite statements about him were alike true; he is so receptive, all the influences of the world and of society ceaselessly playing upon him, so that every hour in his life is unique, changed altogether by a stray word, or glance, or touch. The truth of these relations experience gives us; not the truth of eternal outlines effected once for all, but a world of fine gradations and subtly linked conditions, s.h.i.+fting intricately as we ourselves change; and bids us by constant clearing of the organs of observation and perfecting of a.n.a.lysis to make what we can of these. To the intellect, to the critical spirit, these subtleties of effect are more precious than anything else. What is lost in precision of form is gained in intricacy of expression. To suppose that what is called 'ontology' is what the speculative instinct seeks, is the misconception of a backward school of logicians. Who would change the colour or curve of a roseleaf for that ??s?a ????at??, ?s???t?st??, ??af??. A transcendentalism that makes what is abstract more excellent than what is concrete has nothing akin to the leading philosophies of the world. The true ill.u.s.tration of the speculative temper is not the Hindoo, lost to sense, understanding, individuality; but such an one as Goethe, to whom every moment of life brought its share of experimental, individual knowledge, by whom no touch of the world of form, colour, and pa.s.sion was disregarded.

The literary life of Coleridge was a disinterested struggle against the application of the relative spirit to moral and religious questions. Everywhere he is restlessly scheming to apprehend the absolute; to affirm it effectively; to get it acknowledged. Coleridge failed in that attempt, happily even for him, for it was a struggle against the increasing life of the mind itself. The real loss was, that this controversial interest betrayed him into a direction which was not for him the path of the highest intellectual success; a direction in which his artistic talent could never find the conditions of its perfection. Still, there is so much witchery about his poems, that it is as a poet that he will most probably be permanently remembered. How did his choice of a controversial interest, his determination to affirm the absolute, weaken or modify his poetical gift?

In 1798 he joined Wordsworth in the composition of a volume of poems--the _Lyrical Ballads_. What Wordsworth then wrote is already vibrant with that blithe _elan_ which carried him to final happiness and self-possession. In Coleridge we feel already that faintness and obscure dejection which cling like some contagious damp to all his writings. Wordsworth was to be distinguished by a joyful and penetrative conviction of the existence of certain latent affinities between nature and the human mind, which reciprocally gild the mind and nature with a kind of 'heavenly alchemy':

... My voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external world Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too, The external world is fitted to the mind: And the creation, by no lower name Can it be called, which they with blended might Accomplish.[37]

[37] Preface to the _Excursion_.

In Wordsworth this took the form of an unbroken dreaming over the aspects and transitions of nature, a reflective, but altogether unformulated, a.n.a.lysis of them.

There are in Coleridge's poems expressions of this conviction as deep as Wordsworth's. But Coleridge could never have abandoned himself to the dream as Wordsworth did, because the first condition of such abandonment is an unvexed quietness of heart. No one can read the _Lines composed above Tintern_ without feeling how potent the physical element was among the conditions of Wordsworth's genius:--'felt in the blood and felt along the heart,'--'My whole life I have lived in quiet thought.' The stimulus which most artists require from nature he can renounce. He leaves the ready-made glory of the Swiss mountains to reflect a glory on a mouldering leaf. He loves best to watch the floating thistledown, because of its hint at an unseen life in the air. Coleridge's temperament, ?e? ?? sf?d?? ????e?, with its faintness, its grieved dejection, could never have been like that.

My genial spirits fail And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?

It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The pa.s.sion and the life whose fountains are within.

It is that flawless temperament in Wordsworth which keeps his conviction of a latent intelligence in nature within the limits of sentiment or instinct, and confines it, to those delicate and subdued shades of expression which perfect art allows. In sadder dispositions, that is in the majority of cases, where such a conviction has existed, it has stiffened into a formula, it has frozen into a scientific or pseudo-scientific theory. For the perception of those affinities brings one so near the absorbing speculative problems of life--optimism, the proportion of man to his place in nature, his prospects in relation to it--that it ever tends to become theory through their contagion. Even in Goethe, who has brilliantly handled the subject in his lyrics ent.i.tled _Gott und Welt_, it becomes something stiffer than poetry; it is tempered by the 'pale cast' of his technical knowledge of the nature of colours, of anatomy, of the metamorphosis of plants.

That, however, which had only a limited power over Coleridge as sentiment, entirely possessed him as a philosophical idea. We shall see in what follows how deep its power was, how it pursued him everywhere, and seemed to him to interpret every question.

Wordsworth's poetry is an optimism; it says man's relation to the world is, and may be seen by man to be, a perfect relation; but it is an optimism that begins and ends in an abiding instinct. Coleridge accepts the same optimism as a philosophical idea, but an idea is relative to an intellectual a.s.sent; sometimes it seems a better expression of facts, sometimes a worse, as the understanding weighs it in the logical balances. And so it is not a permanent consolation. It is only in the rarer moments of intellectual warmth and sunlight that it is entirely credible. In less exhilarating moments that perfect relation of man and nature seems to s.h.i.+ft and fail; that is, the philosophical idea ceases to be realizable; and with Coleridge its place is not supplied, as with Wordsworth, by the corresponding sentiment or instinct.

What in Wordsworth is a sentiment or instinct, is in Coleridge a philosophical idea. In other words, Coleridge's talent is a more intellectual one than Wordsworth's, more dramatic, more self-conscious. Wordsworth's talent, deeply reflective as it is, because its base is an instinct, is deficient in self-knowledge.

Possessed by the rumours and voices of the haunted country, the borders of which he has pa.s.sed alone, he never thinks of withdrawing from it to look down upon it from one of the central heights of human life. His power absorbs him, not he it; he cannot turn it round or get without it; he does not estimate its general relation to life. But Coleridge, just because the essence of his talent is the intuition of an idea, commands his talent. He not only feels with Wordsworth the expression of mind in nature, but he can project that feeling outside him, reduce it to a psychological law, define its relation to other elements of culture, place it in a complete view of life.