The State is
loosened
from the Church.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
There is something pathetic in the attitude of this great thinker sit-
ting in the dark, waiting for disclosures in nature that would sub-
stantiate what he felt was true in the realm of the spirit. A
generation later he would have seen the light for which he longed -
a light that justifies the central point of all his main contentions.
His first and most important work, Christian Nurture,' contended
that the training of children should be according to nature, - not in
the poor sense of Rousseau, but that it should be divinely natural.
So Nature and the Supernatural,' whatever place may be accorded
to the book to-day, was an effort to bring the two terms that were
## p. 2911 (#483) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2911
held as opposite and contradictory, into as close relation as God is to
his laws in nature. So in "The Vicarious Sacrifice his main pur-
pose was to take a doctrine that had been dwarfed out of its proper
proportions, and give to it the measure of God's love and the man-
ner of its action in human life. Dr. Bushnell may or may not have
thought with absolute correctness on these themes, but he thought
with consummate ability, he wrote with great eloquence and power,
and he left many pages that are to be cherished as literature, while
theologically they “point the way we are going. ”
One of the most characteristic and interesting things about Dr.
Bushnell is the method he took to find his way between this spiritual
view of things and that world of theological orthodoxy where he
stood by virtue of his profession. It was a very hard and dry world, -
a world chiefly of definitions, but it covered vital realities, and so
must have had some connection with the other world. Dr. Bushnell
bridged the chasm by a theory of language which he regarded as
original with himself. It was not new, but he elaborated it in an
original way and with great ability. In its main feature it was sim-
ply a claim to use in theology the symbolism of poetry; it regarded
language as something that attempts to make one feel the inexpress-
ible truth, rather than a series of definitions which imply that it can
be exactly stated in words; it held that truth is larger than any form
which attempts to express it; it images and reflects truth instead of
defining it.
This theory might be assumed without so long explication as he
gave, but it was greatly needed in the theological world, which at
that time was sunk in a sea of metaphysical definition, and consumed
with a lust for explaining everything in heaven and earth in terms
of alphabetic plainness. Dr. Bushnell was not only justified by the
necessity of his situation in resorting to his theory, but he had the
right which every man of genius may claim for himself. Any one
whose thought is broader than that about him, whose feeling is
deeper, whose imagination is loftier, is entitled to such a use of lan-
guage as shall afford him fullest expression; for he alone knows just
how much of thought, feeling, and imagination, how much of him-
self, he puts into his words; they are coin whose value he himself
has a right to indicate by his own stamp. There is no pact with
others to use language in any given way, except upon some very
broad basis as to the main object of language. The first object is
not to secure definite and comprehensive understanding, but to give
expression, and to start thought which may lead to full understand-
ing - as the parable hides the thought until you think it out.
Dr. Bushnell's theory did not blind the ordinary reader. No writer
is more easily apprehended by the average mind if he has any sym-
pathy with the subjects treated; but it was an inconvenient thing
## p. 2912 (#484) ###########################################
2912
HORACE BUSHNELL
for his theological neighbors to manage. While they insisted on
«the evident meaning of the words," – a mischievous phrase, - he
was breathing his meaning into attentive souls by the spirit which
he had contrived to hide within his words. It is a way that genius
has, -as Abt Vogler says: --
“But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know. ”
The first thing that brought Dr. Bushnell out of the world of
theology into the world of literature was his oration before the Phi
Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1848. He had achieved a
reputation as a preacher of remarkable insight for such as had ears
to hear, and he was already in the thick of theological controversy;
but his fine power of expression and breadth of thought had not been
specially noticed. This oration introduced him into the world of
Mr. J. T. Fields — the most discerning critic of the day-
said to the writer that the oration was heard with surprise and
delight, and that it gave the speaker an assured place in the ranks
of literature. That he should have been so readily welcomed by the
literary guild is not strange, for the title of his oration —'Work and
Play) — led the way into a discussion of the secret that underlies all
works of genius. For once, the possessor of the divine gift heard its
secret revealed and himself explained to himself; his work was set
before him as the full play of his spirit. Beginning with nature,
where our author always began, and finding there a free and sportive
element, he carries it into human life; making the contention that its
aim should be, and that its destiny will be, to free itself from the
constraint of mere work and rise into that natural action of the
faculties which may be called play — a moral and spiritual process.
His conclusion is that -
<if the world were free,- free, I mean, of themselves; brought up, all, out of
work into the pure inspiration of truth and charity,- new forms of personal
and intellectual beauty would appear, and society itself reveal the Orphic
movement. No more will it be imagined that poetry and rhythm are acci-
dents or figments of the race, one side of all ingredient or ground of nature.
But we shall know that poetry is the real and true state of man; the proper
and last ideal of souls, the free beauty they long for, and the rhythmic flow
of that universal play in which all life would live. ”
The key to Dr. Bushnell is to be found in this passage, and it is
safe to say of him that in hardly a page of a dozen volumes is he
false to it. He is always a poet, singing out of the pure inspiration
of truth and charity,” and keeping ever in mind that poetry and
rhythm are not figments outside of nature, but the real and true
state of man and the proper and last ideal of souls.
## p. 2913 (#485) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2913
The centrality of this thought is seen in his style.
It is a
remarkable style, and is only to be appreciated when the man is
understood. It is made up of long sentences full of qualifying
phrases until the thought is carved into perfect exactness; or — chang-
ing the figure — shade upon shade is added until the picture and
conception are alike. But with all this piling up of phrases, he
not only did not lose proportion and rhythm, but so set down his
words that they read like a chant and sound like the breaking of
waves upon the beach. Nor does he ever part with poetry in the
high sense in which he conceived it. I will not compare his style,
as to merit, with that of Milton and Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas
Browne, but he belongs to their class; he has the same majestic
swing, and like them he cannot forbear singing, whatever he may
have to say.
His theme may be roads, or city plans, or agriculture,
or emigration, or the growth of law; yet he never fails of lifting his
subject into that higher world of the imagination where the real
truth of the subject is to be found, and is made to appear as poetry.
It would be unjust to identify him so thoroughly with the poets if it
should lead to the thought that he was not a close and rigorous
thinker. It should not be forgotten that all great prose-writers,
from Plato down to Carlyle and Emerson, stand outside of poetry
only by virtue of their form and not by virtue of their thought;
indeed, poet and thinker are interchangeable names. Dr. Bushnell
wrote chiefly on theology, and the value and efficacy of his writings
lie in the fact that imagination and fact, thought and sentiment,
reason and feeling, are each preserved and yet so mingled as to
make a single impression.
This combination of two realms or habits of thought appears on
every page. He was, as Novalis said of Spinoza, “A God-intoxicated
man, but it was God as containing humanity in himself. His
theology was a veritable Jacob's ladder, on which the angels of God
ascend and descend; and if in his thought they descended before
they ascended, it was because he conceived of humanity as existing
in God before it was manifest in creation; and if his head was among
the stars, his feet were always firmly planted on the earth. This
twofoldness finds a curious illustration in the sub-titles of several of
his books. "The Vicarious Sacrifice does not spring alone out of
the divine nature, but is ‘Grounded in Principles of Universal Obli-
gation. Nature and the Supernatural — the great antithesis in
theology — constitute “The One System of God. "Women's Suffrage'
is “The Reform against Nature'— the best book, I must be permitted
to say, on either side of this much-debated question.
It is a popular impression of Dr. Bushnell that he was the sub-
ject of his imagination, and that it ran away
with him in the
V-183
## p. 2914 (#486) ###########################################
2914
HORACE BUSHNELL
treatment of themes which required only severe thought: the impres-
sion is a double mistake: theology does not call for severe thought,
alone nor mainly; but first and chiefly for the imagination, and the
seeing and interpreting eye that usually goes with it; its object is to
find spirit under form, to discover what the logos expresses. For this
the imagination is the chief requisite. It is not a vagrant and
irresponsible faculty, but an inner eye whose vision is to be trusted
like that of the outer; it has in itself the quality of thought, and is
not a mere picture-making gift. Dr. Bushnell trained his imagina-
tion to work on certain definite lines, and for a definite end-
namely, to bring out the spiritual meaning hidden within the external
form. He worked in the spirit of Coleridge's words:
“I had found
That outward forms the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the Life within. ”
No analysis or recapitulation of his works can be given in these
preliminary words. Perhaps his most influential book is the first,
(Christian Nurture); while a treatise for the household, it was
surcharged with theological opinions which proved to be revolu-
tionary and epoch-making. (The Vicarious Sacrifice' has most
affected the pulpit. Nature and the Supernatural,' the tenth
chapter of which has become a classic, has done great service in
driving out the extreme dualism that invested the subject of God's
relation to creation. His ablest essay is the treatise on Language;
the most literary is that on “Work and Play'; the most penetrating
in its insight is 'Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination'; the most
personal and characteristic is “The Age of Homespun. His best
sermon is always the one last read; and they are perhaps his most
representative work.
The sermon is not usually ranked as belonging
to literature, but no canon excludes those preached by this great
They are timeless in their truth, majestic in their diction,
comm
manding in their moral tone, penetrating in their spirituality,
and pervaded by that quality without which a sermon is not one —
the divine uttering itself to the human. There is no striving and
crying in the streets, no heckling of saints nor dooming of sinners,
no petty debates over details of conduct, no dogmatic assumption,
no logical insistence, but only the gentle and mighty persuasions of
truth, coming as if breathed by the very spirit of God.
Language was to him “the sanctuary of thought," and these
sermons are the uttered worship in that temple where reason and
devotion are one.
man.
22. hungen
## p. 2915 (#487) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2915
WORK AND PLAY
From (Work and Play)
ET
L
a
man
me call to my aid, then, some thoughtful spirit in my
audience: not a poet, of necessity, or a man of genius, but
of large meditation, one who is accustomed to
observe, and, by virtue of the warm affinities of a living heart,
to draw out the meanings that are hid so often in the humblest
things. Returning into the bosom of his family in some interval
of care and labor, he shall come upon the very unclassic and
certainly unimposing scene,- his children and a kitten playing
on the floor together; and just there, possibly, shall meet him
suggestions more fresh and thoughts of higher reach concerning
himself and his race, than the announcement of a new-discovered
planet or the revolution of an empire would incite.
He surveys
with a meditative feeling this beautiful scene of muscular play,
— the unconscious activity, the exuberant life, the spirit of glee,–
and there rises in his heart the conception that possibly he is
here to see the prophecy or symbol of another and higher kind
of play,
which is the noblest exercise and last end of man
himself. Worn by the toils of years, perceiving with a sigh
that the unconscious joy of motion here displayed is spent in
himself, and that now he is effectually tamed to the doom of a
working creature, he may yet discover, in the lively sympathy
with play that bathes his inward feeling, that his soul is playing
now,- enjoying, without the motions, all it could do in them;
manifold more than it could if he were down upon the floor
himself, in the unconscious activity and lively frolic of childhood.
Saddened he may be to note how time and work have changed
his spirit and dried away the playful springs of animal life in his
being; yet he will find, or ought, a joy playing internally over
the face of his working nature, which is fuller and richer as it is
more tranquil; which is to the other as fulfillment to prophecy,
and is in fact the prophecy of a better and far more glorious
fulfillment still.
Having struck in this manner the great world-problem of
AND PLAY, his thoughts kindle under the theme, and he
pursues it. The living races are seen at a glance to be offering
in their history everywhere a faithful type of his own. They
show him what he himself is doing and preparing - all that he
WORK
## p. 2916 (#488) ###########################################
2916
HORACE BUSHNELL
finds in the manifold experience of his own higher life. They
have, all, their gambols; all, their sober cares and labors. The
lambs are sporting on the green knoll; the anxious dams are
bleating to recall them to their side. The citizen beaver is
building his house by a laborious carpentry; the squirrel is lifting
his sail to the wind on the swinging top of the tree. In the
music of the morning, he hears the birds playing with their
voices, and when the day is up, sees them sailing round in
circles on the upper air, as skaters on a lake, folding their wings,
dropping and rebounding, as if to see what sport they can make
of the solemn laws that hold the upper and lower worlds
together. And yet these play-children of the air he sees again
descending to be carriers and drudges; fluttering and screaming
anxiously about their nest, and confessing by that sign that not
even wings can bear them clear of the stern doom of work. Or,
passing to some quiet shade, meditating still on this careworn
life, playing still internally with ideal fancies and desires unreal-
ized, there returns upon him there, in the manifold and
spontaneous mimicry of nature, a living show of all that is
transpiring in his own bosom; in every flower some bee hum-
ming over his laborious chemistry and loading his body with the
fruits of his toil; in the slant sunbeam, populous nations of
motes quivering with animated joy, and catching, as in play, at
the golden particles of the light with their tiny fingers. Work
and play, in short, are the universal ordinance of God for the
living races; in which they symbolize the fortune and interpret
the errand of man. No creature lives that must not work and
may not play.
Returning now to himself and to man, and meditating yet
more deeply, as he is thus prepared to do, on work and play,
and play and work, as blended in the compound of our human
life; asking again what is work and what is play, what are the
relations of one to the other, and which is the final end of all,
he discovers in what he was observing round him a sublimity
of import, a solemnity even, that is deep as the shadow of
eternity.
I believe in a future age yet to be revealed, which is to be
distinguished from all others as the godly or godlike age,- an
age not of universal education simply, or universal philanthropy,
or external freedom, or political well-being, but a day of reci-
procity and free intimacy between all souls and God. Learning
## p. 2917 (#489) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2917
and religion, the scholar and the Christian, will not be divided
as they have been. The universities will be filled with a pro-
found spirit of religion, and the bene orasse will be a fountain of
inspiration to all the investigations of study and the creations of
genius.
I raise this expectation of the future, not because some
prophet of old time has spoken of a day to come when the
streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the
streets thereof” (for I know not that he meant to be so inter-
preted), but because I find a prophecy of play in our nature
itself which it were a violation of all insight not to believe will
sometime be fulfilled. And when it is fulfilled it will be found
that Christianity has at last developed a new literary era, the
era of religious love.
Hitherto the passion of love has been the central fire of the
world's literature. The dramas, epics, odes, novels, and even
histories, have spoken to the world's heart chiefly through this
passion, and through this have been able to get their answer.
For this passion is a state of play, wherein the man loses him-
self in the ardor of a devotion regardless of interest, fear, care,
prudence, and even of life itself. Hence there gathers round the
lover a tragic interest, and we hang upon his destiny as if some
natural charm or spell were in it. Now this passion of love,
which has hitherto been the staple of literature, is only a crude
symbol in the life of nature, by which God designs to interpret,
and also to foreshadow, the higher love of religion,- nature's
gentle Beatrice, who puts her image in the youthful Dante, by
that to attend him afterwards in the spirit-flight of song, and be
his guide up through the wards of Paradise to the shining mount
of God. What then are we to think, but that God will some-
time bring us up out of the literature of the lower love, into
that of the higher ? — that as the age of passion yields to the age
of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give place to the
loftier, finer, more impelling love of God? And then around
that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of litera-
ture, as much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more
intellectual. Beauty, truth, and worship; song, science, and duty,
will all be unfolded together in this common love.
Most of all to be remembered are those friendly circles gath-
ered so often round the winter's fire — not the stove, but the fire,
the brightly blazing, hospitable fire. In the early dusk, the home
## p. 2918 (#490) ###########################################
2918
HORACE BUSHNELL
circle is drawn more closely and quietly round it; but a good
neighbor and his wife drop in shortly from over the way, and
the circle begins to spread. Next, a few young folk from the
other end of the village, entering in brisker mood, find as many
more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive them
also. And then a friendly sleigh-full of old and young that
have come down from the hill to spend an hour or two, spread
the circle again, moving it still farther back from the fire; and
the fire blazes just as much higher and more brightly, having a
new stick added for every guest. There is no restraint, certainly
no affectation of style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. .
They are serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on
with some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing
some hard point of theology in the minister's last sermon, or
perhaps the great danger coming to sound morals from the mul-
tiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Meantime the good
housewife brings out her choice stock of home-grown exotics,
gathered from three realms - doughnuts from the pantry, hickory-
nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples from
the cellar; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the rather
unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to the ancient hospi-
tality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of consequences.
And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on
majestically towards nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a
little more serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy
evening may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the
circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on every
face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blessed
in human fellowship.
Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age. It
was not that society that puts one in connection with the great
world of letters, or fashion, or power, raising as much the level
of his consciousness and the scale and style of his action; but it
was society back of the world, in the sacred retreats of natural
feeling, truth, and piety.
Passing to the church, or rather I should say, to the meeting-
house -- good translation, whether meant or not, of what is older
and more venerable than church, viz. , synagogue — here again
you meet the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Probably
it stands on some hill, midway between three or four valleys,
whither the tribes go up to worship, and, when the snow-drifts
## p. 2919 (#491) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2919
are deepest, go literally from strength to strength. There is no
furnace or stove save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires
of the neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather
formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, and some-
times because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly
is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality
in the worshipers. They are seated according to age,- the old
king Lemuels and their queens in front, near the pulpit, and the
younger Lemuels farther back, inclosed in pews, sitting back to
back, impounded, all, for deep thought and spiritual digestion;
only the deacons, sitting close under the pulpit by themselves,
to receive, as their distinctive honor, the more perpendicular
droppings of the Word. Clean round the front of the gallery is
drawn a single row of choir, headed by the key-pipe in the
centre. The pulpit is overhung by an august wooden canopy
called a sounding-board — study general, of course, and first lesson
of mystery to the eyes of the children, until what time their ears
are opened to understand the spoken mysteries.
There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no
mannerism of worship; some would say too little of the manner
of worship. They think of nothing, in fact, save what meets
their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They
appear like men who have a digestion for strong meat, and have
no conception that trifles more delicate can be of any account to
feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter in it,
nothing long that has not exhausted the matter. If the minister
speaks in his great-coat and thick gloves or mittens, if the howl.
ing blasts of winter drive in across the assembly fresh streams of
ventilation that move the hair upon their heads, they are none
the less content, if only he gives them good strong exercise.
Under their hard and, as some would say, stolid faces, great
thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. Free-will,
fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute, trinity, redemption, special
grace, eternity - give them anything high enough, and the
tough muscle of their inward man will be climbing sturdily into
it; and if they go away having something to think of, they have
had a good day. A perceptible glow will kindle in their hard
faces only when some one of the chief apostles, a Day, a Smith,
or a Bellamy, has come to lead them up some higher pinnacle of
thought or pile upon their sturdy minds some heavier weight of
argument — fainting never under any weight, even that which, to
## p. 2920 (#492) ###########################################
2920
HORACE BUSHNELL
the foreign critics of the discourses preached by them and others
of their day, it seems impossible for any, the most cultivated
audience in the world, to have supported. These royal men of
homespun— how great a thing to them was religion !
The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will perceive, in
the closest habits of industry. The keen jocky way of whittling
out a living by small bargains sharply turned, which many sup-
pose to be an essential characteristic of the Yankee race, is yet
no proper inbred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident,
that pertains to the transition period between the small, stringent
way of life in the previous times of home-production and the
new age of trade. In these olden times, these genuine days of
homespun, they supposed, in their simplicity, that thrift repre.
sented work, and looked about seldom for any more delicate and
sharper way of getting on. They did not call a man's property
his fortune, but they spoke of one or another as being worth so
much; conceiving that he had it laid up as the reward or fruit
of his deservings. The house was a factory on the farm, the
farm a grower and producer for the house. The exchanges went
on briskly enough, but required neither money nor trade. No
affectation of polite living, no languishing airs of delicacy and
softness indoors, had begun to make the fathers and sons impa-
tient of hard work out of doors, and set them at contriving some
easier and more plausible way of living. Their very dress rep-
resented work, and they went out as men whom the wives and
daughters had dressed for work; facing all weather, cold and
hot, wet and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided
hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good many
very practical experiments in mechanics, dressing the flax, thresh-
ing the rye, dragging home, in the deep snows, the great
woodpile of the year's consumption; and then when the day is
ended — having no loose money to spend in taverns — taking
their recreation all together in reading or singing or happy
talk or silent looking in the fire, and finally in sleep- to rise
again with the sun and pray over the family Bible for just such
another good day as the last. And so they lived, working out,
each year, a little advance of thrift, just within the line of
comfort.
No mode of life was ever more expensive: it was life at the
expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest culture and
the most proper enjoyment.
Even the dress of it was
more
## p. 2921 (#493) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2921
expensive than we shall ever see again. Still it was a life of
honesty and simple content and sturdy victory. Immoralities
that rot down the vigor and humble the consciousness of families
were as much less frequent as they had less thought of advent-
ure; less to do with travel and trade and money, and were closer
to nature and the simple life of home.
It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that
it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt -
a closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed all together into
the producing process, young and old, male and female, from
the boy that rode the plow-horse to the grandmother knitting
under her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering
lightly what they all had been at work, thread by thread and
grain by grain, to produce. They knew too exactly what every-
thing cost, even small things, not to husband them carefully.
Men of patrimony in the great world, therefore, noticing their
small way in trade or expenditure, are ready, as we often see,
to charge them with meanness— simply because they knew things
only in the small; or, what is not far different, because they
were too simple and rustic to have any conception of the big
operations by which other men are wont to get their money
without earning it, and lavish the more freely because it was
not earned. Still, this knowing life only in the small, it will be
found, is really anything but meanness
THE FOUNDERS
From (Work and Play)
HERE is a class of writers and critics in our country, who
T'imagine it is quite "clears that our fathers cannot have been
the proper founders of our American liberties, because it is
in proof that they were so intolerant and so clearly unrepublican
often in their avowed sentiments. They suppose the world to be
a kind of professor's chair, and expect events to transpire logic-
ally in it. They see not that casual opinions, or conventional and
traditional prejudices, are one thing, and that principles and
morally dynamic forces are often quite another; that the former
are the connectives only of history, the latter its springs of life;
and that if the former serve well enough as providential guards
and moderating weights overlying the deep geologic fires and
## p. 2922 (#494) ###########################################
2922
HORACE BUSHNELL
subterranean heavings of the new moral instincts below, these
latter will assuredly burst up at last in strong mountains of
rock, to crest the world. Unable to conceive such a truth, they
cast about them accordingly to find the paternity of our Ameri-
can institutions in purely accidental causes.
We are
clear of
aristocratic orders, they say, because there was no blood of which
to make an aristocracy; independent of king and parliament,
because we grew into independence under the natural effects of
distance and the exercise of a legislative power; republican,
because our constitutions were cast in he molds of British law;
a wonder of growth in riches, enterprise, and population, be-
cause of the hard necessities laid upon us, and our simple modes
of life.
There is yet another view of this question, that has a far
higher significance. We do not understand, as it seems to me,
the real greatness of our institutions when we look simply at the
forms under which we hold our liberties. It consists not in
these, but in the magnificent possibilities that underlie these
forms as their fundamental supports and conditions. In these
we have the true paternity and spring of our institutions; and
these, beyond a question, are the gift of our founders.
We see this, first of all, in the fixed relation between freedom
and intelligence, and the remarkable care they had of popular
education It was not their plan to raise up a body of republi-
cans. But they believed in mind as in God. Their religion was
the choice of mind. The gospel they preached must have minds
to hear it; and hence the solemn care they had, even from the
first day of their settlement, of the education of every child.
And, as God would have it, the children whom they trained up
for pillars in the church turned out also to be more than tools of
power. They grew up into magistrates, leaders of the people,
debaters of right and of law, statesmen, generals, and signers of
declarations for liberty. Such a mass of capacity had never been
seen before in so small a body of men. And this is the first
condition of liberty — the Condensation of Power. For liberty is
not the license of an hour; it is not the butchery of a royal
house, or the passion that rages behind a barricade, or the caps
that are swung or the vivas shouted at the installing of a liber-
ator. But it is the compact, impenetrable matter of much man-
hood, the compressed energy of good sense and public reason,
having power to see before and after and measure action by
## p. 2923 (#495) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2923
was
counsel — this it is that walls about the strength and liberty of a
people. To be free is not to fly abroad as the owls of the night
when they take the freedom of the air, but it is to settle and
build and be strong a commonwealth as much better com-
pacted in the terms of reason, as it casts off more of the re-
straints of force.
Their word «Reformation ” — “the completion of the
Reformation ”; not Luther's nor Calvin's, they expressly say;
they cannot themselves imagine it. Hitherto it is unconceived
by men. God must reveal it in the light that breaks forth from
him. And this he will do in his own good time. It is al-
ready clear to us that, in order to any further progress in this
direction, it was necessary for a new movement to begin that
should loosen the joints of despotism and emancipate the mind
of the world. And in order to this a new republic must be
planted and have time to grow.
It must be seen rising up in
the strong majesty of freedom and youth, outstripping the old
prescriptive world in enterprise and the race of power, covering
the ocean with its commerce, spreading out in populous swarms
of industry,- planting, building, educating, framing constitutions,
rushing to and fro in the smoke and thunder of travel along its
mighty rivers, across its inland seas, over its mountain-tops from
one shore to the other, strong in order as in liberty,-a savage
continent become the field of a colossal republican empire, whose
name is a name of respect and a mark of desire to the longing
eyes of mankind. And then, as the fire of new ideas and hopes
darts electrically along the nerves of feeling in the millions of the
race, it will be seen that a new Christian movement also begins
with it. Call it reformation, or formation, or by whatever name,
it is irresistible because it is intangible. In one view it is only
destruction.
The State is loosened from the Church. The Church
crumbles down into fragments. Superstition is eaten away by
the strong acid of liberty, and spiritual despotism flies affrighted
from the broken loyalty of its metropolis. Protestantism also,
divided and subdivided by its dialectic quarrels, falls into the
finest, driest powder of disintegration. Be not afraid.
The new
order crystallizes only as the old is dissolved; and no sooner is
the old unity of orders and authorities effectually dissolved than
the reconstructive affinities of a new and better unity begin to
appear in the solution.
Repugnances melt away. Thought
grows catholic.
Men look for good in each other as well as
## p. 2924 (#496) ###########################################
2924
HORACE BUSHNELL
evil. The crossings of opinion by travel and books, and the
intermixture of races and religions, issue in freer, broader views
of the Christian truth; and so the Church of the Future,” as it
has been called, gravitates inwardly towards those terms of
brotherhood in which it may coalesce and rest. I say not or
believe that Christendom will be Puritanized or Protestantized;
but what is better than either, it will be Christianized. It will
settle thus into a unity, probably not of form, but of practical
assent and love - a Commonwealth of the Spirit, much
stronger in its unity than the old satrapy of priestly despotism,
as our republic is stronger than any other government of the
world.
as
RELIGIOUS MUSIC
From "Work and Play)
A
s we are wont to argue the invisible things of God, even his
eternal power and Godhead, from the things that are seen,
finding them all images of thought and vehicles of intelli-
gence, so we have an argument for God more impressive, in one
view, because the matter of it is so deep and mysterious, from
the fact that a grand, harmonic, soul-interpreting law of music
pervades all the objects of the material creation, and that things
without life, all metals and woods and valleys and mountains and
waters, are tempered with distinctions of sound, and toned to be
a language to the feeling of the heart. It is as if God had
made the world about us to be a grand organ of music, so that
our feelings might have play in it, as our understanding has in
the light of the sun and the outward colors and forms of things.
What is called the musical scale, or octave, is fixed in the origi-
nal appointments of sound just as absolutely and definitely as
the colors of the rainbow or prism in the optical properties and
laws of light. And the visible objects of the world are not
more certainly shaped and colored to us under the exact laws
of light and the prism, than they are tempered and toned,
as objects audible, to give distinctions of sound by their vibra-
tions in the terms of the musical octave. It is not simply that
we hear the sea roar and the floods clap their hands in anthems
of joy; it is not that we hear the low winds sigh, or the storms
howl dolefully, or the ripples break peacefully on the shore, or
1
1
1
## p. 2925 (#497) ###########################################
HORACE BUSHNELL
2925
or
the waters dripping sadly from the rock, or the thunders crash-
ing in horrible majesty through the pavements of heaven; not
only do all the natural sounds we hear come to us in tones of
music as interpreters of feeling, but there is hid in the secret
temper and substance of all matter a silent music, that only
waits to sound and become a voice of utterance to the otherwise
unutterable feeling of our heart a voice, if we will have it, of
love and worship to the God of all.
First, there is a musical scale in the laws of the air itself,
exactly answering to the musical sense law of the soul.
Next, there is in all substances a temperament of quality related
to both; so that whatever kind of feeling there may be in
a soul — war and defiance, festivity and joy, sad remembrance,
remorse, pity, penitence, self-denial, love, adoration - may find
some fit medium of sound in which to express itself. And, what
is not less remarkable, connected with all these forms of sub-
stances there are mathematical laws of length and breadth, or
definite proportions of each, and reflective angles, that are every
way as exact as those which regulate the colors of the prism,
the images of the mirror, or the telescopic light of astronomic
worlds — mathematics for the heart as truly as for the head.
It cannot be said that music is a human creation, and as far
as the substances of the world are concerned, a mere accident.
As well can it be said that man creates the colors of the prism,
and that they are not in the properties of the light, because he
shapes the prism by his own mechanical art. Or if still we
doubt; if it seems incredible that the soul of music is in the heart
of all created being; then the laws of harmony themselves shall
answer, one string vibrating to another, when it is not struck
itself, and uttering its voice of concord simply because the con-
cord is in it and it feels the pulses on the air to which it cannot
be silent. Nay, the solid mountains and their giant masses of
rock shall answer; catching, as they will, the bray of horns or
the stunning blast of cannon, rolling it across from one top to
another in reverberating pulses, till it falls into bars of musical
rhythm and chimes and cadences of silver melody. I have heard
some fine music, as men are wont to speak — the play of orchestras,
the anthems of choirs, the voices of song that moved admiring
nations. But in the lofty passes of the Alps I heard a music
overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks of rock
and ice, curtained in by the driving mist and only dimly visible
## p. 2926 (#498) ###########################################
2926
HORACE BUSHNELL
athwart the sky through its folds, such as mocks all sounds our
lower worlds of art can ever hope to raise. I stood (excuse the
simplicity) calling to them, in the loudest shouts I could raise,
even till my power was spent, and listening in compulsory trance
to their reply. I heard them roll it up through their cloudy
worlds of snow, sifting out the harsh qualities that were tearing
in it as demon screams of sin, holding on upon it as if it were a
hymn they were fining to the ear of the great Creator, and send-
ing it round and round in long reduplications of sweetness, minute
after minute; till finally receding and rising, it trembled, as it
were, among the quick gratulations of angels, and fell into the
silence of the pure empyrean. I had never any conception before
of what is meant by quality in sound. There was more power
upon the soul in one of those simple notes than I ever expect to
feel from anything called music below, or ever can feel till I
hear them again in the choirs of the angelic world. I had never
such a sense of purity, or of what a simple sound may tell of
purity by its own pure quality; and I could not but say, O my
God, teach me this! Be this in me forever! And I can truly
affirm that the experience of that hour has consciously made me
better able to think of God ever since — better able to worship.
All other sounds are gone; the sounds of yesterday, heard in the
silence of enchanted multitudes, are gone; but that is with me
still, and I hope will never cease to ring in my spirit till I go
down to the slumber of silence itself.
## p. 2927 (#499) ###########################################
2927
SAMUEL BUTLER
(1612–1680)
PRETTY picture of the time is the glimpse of young Mr.
Pepys at the bookseller's in London Strand on a February
morning in 1663, making haste to buy a new copy of Hudi-
bras,' and carefully explaining that it was “ill humor of him to
be so against that which all the world cries up to be an example of
wit. ” The Clerk of the Admiralty had connections at court; and
between that February morning and a December day when Mr.
Battersby was at the Wardrobe using the King's time in gossip
about the new book of drollery, the merry
Stuart had found out Sam Butler's poem
and had given it the help of his royal
approval. Erstwhile, Samuel the courtier
had thought the work of Samuel the poet
silly, and had given warranty of his opinion
by suffering loss of one shilling eightpence
on his purchase of the book. A view not
to be wondered at in one who sets down
(Midsummer Night's Dream' as “insipid
and ridiculous,” and Othello' as a “mean
thing”! Perhaps it was because Butler had
a keen knowledge of Shakespeare, and un-
consciously used much of the actor's quick SAMUEL BUTLER
witted method, that his delicately feathered
barbs made no dent on the hard head of Pepys. Like his neighbor
of the Avon, the author of Hudibras) was a merciless scourge to
the vainglorious follies of the time in which he poorly and obscurely
lived; and like the truths which he told in his inimitable satires, the
virtue and decency of his life was obscured by the disorder of the
Commonwealth and the unfaith of the restored monarchy.
Samuel Butler was born near Strensham, Worcestershire, in 1612,
the fifth child and second son of a farmer of that parish, whose
homestead was known to within the present century as Butler's tene-
ment. » The elder Butler was not well-to-do, but had enough to ed-
ucate his son at the Worcester Grammar School, and to send him to a
university. Whether or what time he was at Oxford or Cambridge
remains doubtful. A Samuel Butler went up from Westminster to
Christ Church, Oxford, 1623, too for the Worcester lad of
soon
## p. 2928 (#500) ###########################################
2928
SAMUEL BUTLER
eleven years. Another doubtful tradition places him at Cambridge
in 1620. There is evidence that he was employed as a clerk by Mr.
Jeffreys, a justice of the peace at Earl's Croombe in Worcestershire,
and that while in this position he studied painting under Samuel
Cooper. A portrait of Oliver Cromwell attributed to his hand was
once in existence, and a number of paintings, said to have been by
him, hung on the walls at Earl's Croombe until they were used to
patch broken windows there in the last century. Butler went into
the service of Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, at Wrest in Bedfordshire,
where he had the use of a good library and the friendship of John
Selden, then steward of the Countess's estate. It was there and in
association with Selden that he began his literary work. Some time
afterward he held a servitor's position in the family of an officer of
Cromwell's army, Sir Samuel Luke, of Woodend, Bedfordshire. A
manuscript note in an old edition of Hudibras,' 1710, “from the
books of Phil. Lomax by gift of his father, G. Lomax,” confirms the
tradition that this Cromwellian colonel was the original of Hudibras.
The elder Lomax is said to have been an intimate friend of Butler.
Another name on the list of candidates for this humorous honor –
the honor of contributing with Don Quixote to the increase of lan-
guage – is that of Sir Henry Rosewell of Ford Abbey, Devonshire.
But it is unnecessary to limit to an individual sample the satirist
and poet of the whole breadth of human nature. A presumption
that Butler was in France and Holland for a time arises from certain
references in his writings. It was about 1659, when the decline of
the Cromwells became assured, that Butler ventured, but anony-
mously, into print with a tract warmly advocating the recall of the
King. At the Restoration, and probably in reward for this evidence
of loyalty, he was made secretary to the Earl of Carbury, President
of Wales, by whom he was appointed steward of Ludlow Castle.
About this time he married a gentlewoman of small fortune, and is
said to have lived comfortably upon her money until it was lost by
bad investments. The King having come to his own again, Butler
obtained permission in November 1662 to print the first part of 'Hudi-
bras. ' The quaint title of this poem has attracted much curious
cavil. The name is used by Milton, Spenser, and Robert of Glouces-
ter for an early king of Britain, the grandfather of King Lear; and
by Ben Jonson — from whom Butler evidently adopted it — for a
swaggering fellow in the Magnetic Lady):
«Rut — Where is your captain
Rudhudibrass de Ironside ? >
Act iii. , Scene 3.
Charles II. was so delighted with the satire that he not only read
and reread it, but gave many copies to his intimates.
The royal
## p. 2929 (#501) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2929
generosity, lavish in promises, never exerted itself further than to
give Butler - or Boteler, as he is writ in the warrant - a monopoly
of printing his own poem.
The second part of Hudibras' appeared in 1664, and the third
and last in 1678.
The Duke of Buckingham was, we are told by Aubrey, well dis-
posed towards Butler, and Wycherley was a constant suitor in his
behalf; but the fickle favorite forgot his promises as easily as did
the King. Lord Clarendon, who had the witty poet's portrait painted
for his library, was no better at promise-keeping. It is natural that
such neglect should have provoked the sharp but just satires which
Butler wrote against the manners of Charles's dissolute court.
"Hudibras) was never finished; for Butler, who had been confined
by his infirmities to his room in Rose Court, Covent Garden, since
1676, died on September 25th, 1680. William Longueville, a devoted
friend but for whose kindness the poet might have starved, buried
the remains at his own expense in the churchyard of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden. In 1721 John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, set up
in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey an inscription to Butler's
memory, which caused later satirists to suggest that this was giving
a stone to him who had asked for bread.
Butler was a plain man of middle stature, strong-set, high-colored,
with a head of sorrel hair. He possessed a severe and sound judg-
ment, but was “a good fellow,” according to his friend Aubrey.
Many of Butler's writings were not published in his lifetime, dur-
ing which only the three parts of Hudibras' and some trifles
appeared. Longueville, who received his papers, left them, unpub-
lished, to his son Charles; from whom they came to John Clarke of
Cheshire, by whose permission the (Genuine Remains) in two vol-
umes were published in 1759. The title of this book is due to the
fact that poor Butler, as is usual with his kind, became very popular
immediately after his death, and the ghouls of literature supplied the
book-shops with forgeries. Butler's manuscripts, many of which have
never been published, were placed in the British Museum in 1885.
V-184
## p. 2930 (#502) ###########################################
2930
SAMUEL BUTLER
HUDIBRAS DESCRIBED
WHEN
HEN civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For dame Religion as for Punk,
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Tho' not a man of them knew wherefore;
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a-colonelling.
A Wight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood,
That never bent his stubborn knee
To anything but chivalry;
Nor put up blow, but that which laid
Right worshipful on shoulder-blade;
Chief of domestic knights, and errant,
Either for chartel or for warrant;
Great on the bench, great in the saddle,
That could as well bind o'er, as swaddle:
Mighty he was at both of these,
And styl'd of War as well as Peace.
So some rats of amphibious nature
Are either for the land or water.
But here our authors make a doubt,
Whether he were more wise, or stout.
Some hold the one, and some the other;
But howsoe'er they make a pother,
The diff'rence was so small, his brain
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain;
Which made some take him for a tool
That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool;
And offer'd to lay wagers that
As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
Much more she wou'd Sir Hudibras:
## p. 2931 (#503) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2931
For that's the name our valiant knight
To all his challenges did write.
But they're mistaken very much;
'Tis plain enough he was no such:
We grant, although he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out;
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holy-days, or so,
As men their best apparel do.
He was in Logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in Analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side;
On either side he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a Lord may be an owl;
A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice,
And rooks Committee-Men or Trustees.
He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination.
All this by syllogism true,
In mood and figure, he would do.
For Rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope:
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words, ready to shew why
And tell what rules he did it by.
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk.
For all a Rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
His ordinary rate of speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;
A Babylonish dialect,
Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a parti-color'd dress
Of patch'd and piebald languages.
## p. 2932 (#504) ###########################################
2932
SAMUEL BUTLER
'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone,
As if h’ had talk'd three parts in one;
Which made some think, when he did gabble,
Th’ had heard three laborers of Babel;
Or Cerberus himself pronounce
A leash of languages at once.
This he as volubly would vent
As if his stock would ne'er be spent :
And truly, to support that charge,
He had supplies as vast and large,
For he could coin or counterfeit
New words with little or no wit:
Words so debas'd and hard, no stone
Was hard enough to touch them on;
And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em,
The ignorant for current took 'em -
That had the orator who once
Did fill his mouth with pebble-stones
When he harangu'd, but known his phrase,
He would have us'd no other ways.
In Mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o'th' day
The clock does strike, by Algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd Philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over:
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b'implicit faith:
Whatever Skeptic could inquire for;
For every WHY he had a WHEREFORE:
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go.
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion serv'd, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong,
They might be either said or sung.
## p. 2933 (#505) ###########################################
SAMUEL BUTLER
2933
His notions fitted things so well,
That which was which he could not tell,
But oftentimes mistook the one
For th' other, as great clerks have done.
He could reduce all things to acts,
And knew their natures by abstracts;
Where entity and quiddity,
The ghost of defunct bodies, fly;
Where Truth in person does appear,
Like words congealed in northern air.
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
For his religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit:
'Twas Presbyterian, true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true church militant:
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery ;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carry'd on,
And still be doing, never done,
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies:
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss:
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way:
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worship'd God for spite.
## p. 2934 (#506) ###########################################
2934
SAMUEL BUTLER
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow.
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin.
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly:
Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend — plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
His puissant sword unto his side,
Near his undaunted heart, was ty'd,
With basket-hilt, that would hold broth,
And serve for fight and dinner both.
In it he melted lead for bullets,
To shoot at foes, and sometimes pullets;
To whom he bore so fell a grutch,
He ne'er gave quarter t'any such.
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.
The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt
The rancor of its edge had felt.
This sword a dagger had, his page,
That was but little for his age:
And therefore waited on him so,
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.
It was a serviceable dudgeon,
Either for fighting or for drudging:
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread,
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse-trap, 'twould not care:
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth:
It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this, and more, it did endure;
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done, on the same score.
## p. 2934 (#507) ###########################################
## p. 2934 (#508) ###########################################
LORD GEORGE GORDON BYRON.
## p. 2935 (#509) ###########################################
2935
LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
OETHE, in one of his conversations with Henry Crabb Robin-
son about Byron, said “There is no padding in his poetry)
(“Es sind keine Flickwörter im Gedichte"). This was in
1829, five years after Byron died. “This, and indeed every evening,
I believe, Lord Byron was the subject of his praise. He com-
pared the brilliancy and clearness of his style to a metal wire
drawn through a steel plate. ” He expressed regret that Byron
should not have lived to execute his vocation, which he said was “to
dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands
would the Tower of Babel have been ! » Byron's views of nature he
declared were “equally profound and poetical. ” Power in all its
forms Goethe had respect for, and he was captivated by the indom-
itable spirit of Manfred. He enjoyed the Vision of Judgment
when it was read to him, exclaiming “ Heavenly! » «Unsurpassable! ”
“Byron has surpassed himself. ” He equally enjoyed the satire on
George IV. He did not praise Milton with the warmth with which
he eulogized Byron, of whom he said that “the like would never
come again; he was inimitable. ”
Goethe's was the Continental opinion, but it was heightened by
his conception of “realism ”; he held that the poet must be matter-
of-fact, and that it was the truth and reality that made writing
popular: «It is by the laborious collection of facts that even
poetical view of nature is to be corrected and authenticated. ”
Tennyson was equally careful for scientific accuracy in regard to all
the phenomena of nature. Byron had not scientific accuracy, but
with his objectivity Goethe sympathized more than with the reflection
and introspection of Wordsworth.
Byron was hailed on the Continent as a poet of power, and the
judgment of him was not influenced by his disregard of the society
conventions of England, nor by his personal eccentricities, nor
because he was not approved by the Tory party and the Tory
writers. Perhaps unconsciously-certainly not with the conviction of
Shelley – Byron was on the side of the new movement in Europe;
the spirit of Rousseau, the unrest of (Wilhelm Meister,' the revolu-
tionary seething, with its tinge of morbidness and misanthropy, its
brilliant dreams of a new humanity, and its reckless destructive
a
## p. 2936 (#510) ###########################################
2936
LORD BYRON
theories. In France especially his influence was profound and lasting.
His wit and his lyric fire excused his morbidness and his sentimental
posing as a waif, unfriended in a cold and treacherous world of women
and men; and his genius made misanthropy and personal recklessness
a fashion. The world took his posing seriously and his grievances
to heart, sighed with him, copied his dress, tried to imitate his ad-
ventures, many of them imaginary, and accepted him as a perturbed,
storm-tost spirit, representative of an age of agitation.
So he was, but not by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for
his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false
education, an undisciplined temper, and a changing mind. He was
guided by the impulse of the moment. I think it a supportable
thesis that every age, every wide and popular movement, finds its
supreme expression in a Poet.
Byron was the mouthpiece of a certain
phase of his time. He expressed it, and the expression remains and
is important as a record, like the French Revolution and the battle
of Waterloo. Whatever the judgment in history may be of the value
to civilization of this eighteenth-century movement extending into
the nineteenth, in politics, sociology, literature, with all its reckless-
ness, morbidness, hopefulness, Byron represented it. He was the
poet of Revolt. He sounded the note of intemperate, unconsidered
defiance in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. This satire
was audacious; many of its judgments were unjust; but its wit and
poetic vigor announced a new force in English literature, and the
appearance of a man who was abundantly able to take care of him-
self and secure respectful treatment. In moments afterward he
expressed regret for it, or for portions of it, and would have liked
to soften its personalities. He was always susceptible to kindness,
and easily won by the good opinion of even a declared enemy. He
and Moore became lifelong friends, and between him and Walter
Scott there sprang up a
warm friendship, with sincere reciprocal
admiration of each other's works. Only on politics and religion did
they disagree, but Scott thought Byron's Liberalism not very deep:
« It appeared to me,” he said, that the pleasure it afforded him as a
vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office
was at the bottom of this habit of thinking. At heart I would have
termed Byron a patrician on principle. ” Scott shared Goethe's opin-
ion of Byron's genius:-"He wrote from impulse, never for effect, and
therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine
poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century before me. We
have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing
and perennial fountain of natural waters. It has been a fashion of
late years to say that both Byron and Scott have gone by; I fancy it
is a case of “not lost, but gone before. Among the men satirized
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LORD BYRON
2937
in the Bards) was Wordsworth. Years after, Byron met him at a
dinner, and on his return told his wife that the one feeling he had
for him from the beginning to the end of the visit was reverence. ”
Yet he never ceased to gird at him in his satires. The truth is,
that consistency was never to be expected in Byron. Besides, he
inherited none of the qualities needed for an orderly and noble life.
He came of a wild and turbulent race.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, the sixth of the name, was born in
London, January 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Greece, April
19th, 1824. His father, John Byron, a captain in the Guards, was a
heartless profligate with no redeeming traits of character. He eloped
with Amelia D'Arcy, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and after
her divorce from her husband married her and treated her like a
brute. One daughter of this union was Augusta, Byron's half-
sister, who married Colonel Leigh, and who was the good angel of
the poet, and the friend of Lady Byron until there was a rupture of
their relations in 1830 on a matter of business. A year after the
death of his first wife, John Byron entrapped and married Catherine
Gordon of Gicht, - a Scotch heiress, very proud of her descent from
James I. of Scotland, — whose estate he speedily squandered. In less
than two years after the birth of George, John Byron ran away from
his wife and his creditors, and died in France.
Mrs. Byron was a wholly undisciplined and weak woman, proud
of her descent, wayward and hysterical. She ruined the child, whom
she alternately petted and abused. She interfered with his educa-
tion and fixed him in all his bad tendencies. He never learned
anything until he was sent away from her, to Harrow. He was pas-
sionate, sullen, defiant of authority, but very amenable to kindness;
and with a different mother his nobler qualities, generosity, sense of.
justice, hatred of hypocrisy, and craving for friendship would have
been developed, and the story of his life would be very different
from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the
careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and
loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad
temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him
from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embit-
tered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet
was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, and the evil was
aggravated by surgical attempts to straighten the limb. His sensi-
tiveness was increased by unfeeling references to it. His mother
used to call him “a lame brat,” and his pride received an incurable
wound in the heartless remark of Mary Chaworth, «Do you think I
could care for that lame boy? ”Byron was two years her junior,
but his love for her was the purest passion of his life, and it has the
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2938
LORD BYRON
sincerest expression in the famous Dream.
