No More Learning

look upon me! lift your sweet eyes from the ground! I will not
cease to supplicate; I dare not.
Leofric - We may think upon it.
Godiva — Never say that! What! think upon goodness when
you can be good ? Let not the infants cry for sustenance! The
mother of our blessed Lord will hear them; us never, never
afterward.


## p. 8875 (#503) ###########################################

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
8875
A DREAM ALLEGORY
W*. FI
EARIED with the length of my walk over the mountains, and
finding a soft old molehill, covered with gray grass, by
the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept. I can-
not tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision
came over me.
Two beautiful youths appeared beside me: each was winged;
but the wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to
flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard,
looking at me frequently, said to the other:-
“He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken
him with that feather. ”
Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the
feather on an arrow, and then the arrow itself: the whole of it,
even to the point, although he carried it in such a manner that
it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm’s-length of
it; the rest of the shaft and the whole of the barb was behind
his ankles.
« This feather never awakens any one,” replied he rather petu-
lantly; “but it brings more of confident security, and more of
cherished dreams, than you without me are capable of impart-
ing. ”
>
“Be it so! ” answered the gentler: “none is less inclined to
quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded
grievously, call upon me for succor. But so little am I disposed
to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than
to whisper a few words of comfort in passing. How many re-
proaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for indiffer-
ence and infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in the same
terms, as upon you! ”
“Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike! ”
said Love contemptuously. "Yonder is he who bears a nearer
resemblance to you: the dullest have observed it. ” I fancied I
turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance
the figure he designated. Meanwhile the contention went on
uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his
benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only that he might assert
his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to decide, and
to choose my patron. Under the influence first of the one, then
of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from


## p. 8876 (#504) ###########################################

8876
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
cross
me
near us.
coun-
(
rapture on repose
and knew not which was sweetest. Love
was very angry with me, and declared he would
throughout the whole of my existence. Whatever I might on
.
other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely
the conviction that he would keep his word. At last, before the
close of the altercation, the third Genius had advanced, and stood
I cannot tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be
the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I
soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only
calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful:
those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious,
less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a
tenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of
disdain; and cried, "Go away! go away! nothing that thou
touchest lives. »
Say rather, child! ” replied the advancing form, and advancing
grew loftier and statelier, «say rather that nothing of beautiful
or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed
over it. »
Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger
the stiff short feathers on his arrow-head; but he replied not.
Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him
less and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The milder and
calmer Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to con-
template him, regarded me with more and more complacency.
He had neither flower nor arrow, as the others had; but throwing
back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his counte-
nance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank
on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He
smiled, not with an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffi-
dence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the hand
of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees I
became ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my face away
I held out my arms, and felt my neck within his. Composure
strewed and allayed all the throbbings of my bosom; the coolness
of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to open
above me; while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on
my head. I would now have looked for those others; but know-
ing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily:-
“Sleep is on his way to the earth, where many are calling
him: but it is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes


## p. 8877 (#505) ###########################################

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
8877
him fly farther off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is
nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and fero-
cious one. ”
“And Love! ” said I, “whither is he departed ? If not too
late, I would propitiate and appease him. ”
“He who cannot follow me, he who cannot overtake and pass
me,” said the Genius, “is unworthy of the name, the most glorious
in earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to
receive thee. "
I looked: the earth was under me; I saw only the clear blue
sky, and something brighter above it.
(
ROSE AYLMER
A“
H, what avails the sceptred race,
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
FAREWELL TO ITALY
I
LEAVE thee, beauteous Italy! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses
Bordering the channel of the Milky Way.
Fiesole and Val d'Arno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet's song.
I did believe (what have I not believed ? )
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the mimosa's shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.


## p. 8878 (#506) ###########################################

8878
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
ART CRITICISM
FK
IRST bring me Raffael, who alone hath seen
In all her purity heaven's virgin queen,
Alone hath felt true beauty; bring me then
Titian, ennobler of the noblest men;
And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise
His little Cupids for those wicked eyes.
I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom,
Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dusty room.
With those, and Poussin's nymph-frequented woods,
His templed heights and long-drawn solitudes,
I am content, yet fain would look abroad
On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude.
LINES FROM GEBIR)
[The first passage here given was Shelley's favorite. ]
O
NCE a fair city — courted then by kings,
Mistress of nations, thronged by palaces,
Raising her head o'er destiny, her face
Glowing with pleasure and with palms refresht;
Now pointed at by Wisdom or by Wealth,
Bereft of beauty, bare of ornament-
Stood in the wilderness of woe, Masar.
Now To Aurora borne by dappled steeds,
The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold,
Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand,
Expanded slow to strains of harmony.
The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves
Glancing with wanton coyness toward their queen,
Heaved softly; thus the damsel's bosom heaves
When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek,
To which so warily her own she brings
Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth
Of coming kisses fanned by playful Dreams.
Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee;
For 'twas the morning pointed out by Fate
When an immortal maid and mortal man
Should share each other's nature knit in bliss.


## p. 8879 (#507) ###########################################

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
8879
THE LIFE OF FLOWERS
W*
THEN hath wind or rain
Borne hard upon weak plant that wanted me,
And I (however they might bluster round)
Walkt off? 'Twere most ungrateful; for sweet scents
Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
And nurse and pillow the dull memory
That would let drop without them her best stores.
They bring me tales of youth and tones of love,
And 'tis and ever was my wish and way
To let all flowers live freely, and all die
(Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart)
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose; the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
And not reproacht me; the ever-sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold.
A WELCOME TO DEATH
A
S HE who baskt in sunshine loves to go
Where in dim coolness graceful laurels grow;
In that lone narrow path whose silent sand
Hears of no footstep, while some gentle hand
Beckons, or seems to beckon, to the seat
Where ivied wall and trellised woodbine meet:
Thus I, of ear that tingles not to praise,
And feet that, weary of the world's highways,
Recline on moldering tree or jutting stone,
And (though at last I feel I am alone)
Think by a gentle hand mine too is prest
In kindly welcome to a calmer rest.
FAREWELL
I
STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,-
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.


## p. 8880 (#508) ###########################################

8880
ANDREW LANG
(1844-)
NDREW LANG is an active and conspicuous figure among the
British writing men whose work belongs in the late nine-
teenth century. His range has been very wide; his culture
is sound, and his individuality has a piquancy which scholarship has
not reduced to a pale conformity. When one thinks of Lang, one
thinks too of Gosse and Dobson, of Stevenson and Henley,— authors
who stand for the main streams of tend-
ency in the newer literature of England.
Lang is a Scotchman; one of the many
gifted men of letters that wonderful little
land has sent down to do literary battle
in London. He was carefully educated at
Edinburgh Academy, St. Andrews Univer-
sity, and Balliol College (Oxford), laying a
solid foundation for his future accomplish-
ment in letters. At Oxford he did brilliant
work, and was rewarded by a Merton Fel-
lowship in 1868. Going up to London, he
began to write for the periodicals, and soon
ANDREW LANG the first on his long list of volumes was
given to the public. This was a volume of
verse, Ballades and Lyrics of Old France (1872); containing both
translations, and original poems on the same model. Mr. Lang has
wooed the Muses at intervals ever since. His poetry shows culture
and taste, and has grace and felicity, with a lightness of touch and
a ready wit that make it pleasant reading. Along with his friends
Dobson and Gosse, he started the imitation of older French verse
forms; an exotic cult no doubt making more flexible the technique
of English writers, but otherwise having little significance for native
poetry. The titles of other of Lang's books of verse indicate the
nature of his metrical work: Ballades in Blue China,' (Ballades and
Verses Vain,' Rhymes à la Mode,' Rhymes Old and New,' 'Ban
and Arrière Ban’; — there is a suggestion of vers de société about it all
which the contents justify. Now and then Mr. Lang does something
of a broader, more imaginative sort; but the general impression of
his literary work is that of a polished craftsman and well-equipped



## p. 8881 (#509) ###########################################

ANDREW LANG
8881
scholar rather than a born poet. His poetry does not concern itself
with large elemental things; but he can do a light thing very per-
fectly, and has the good sense not to try to do more.
Lang's restless spirit has also turned occasionally to fiction; his
taste leading him towards romanticism, sometimes into melodrama.
(The Mark of Cain' (1886) has a penny-dreadful atmosphere redeemed
by its literary flavor. (The World's Desire,' written in collaboration
with Rider Haggard, is a striking and skillfully done story in which
the romantic myth and legend of Greece are utilized. «The Maid of
Fife) (1895) is a capital historic tale, with Joan of Arc as the central
figure. In this fiction, again, perhaps the scholar and trained worker
are more obvious than the literary creator. Yet Lang's art creed,
squarely opposed to modern realism and the probing of social prob-
lems after the current manner, has affected his own fiction happily;
so that it is, to say the least, wholesome and enjoyable.
One of the most fruitful, successful phases of his work has been
scholarly editing and translation. He has edited and translated sev-
eral volumes of foreign fairy tales, of which the Blue Fairy Book'
and the Red Fairy Book' are examples; has turned the Greek idyl-
lists Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus into English prose of great beauty:
and has given English readers a really superb prose rendering of
Homer; the Odyssey in collaboration with Professor Butcher, the Iliad
with the help of Messrs. Leaf and Myers. His editing of standard
literature has been so extensive that he has been facetiously dubbed
editor-in-general to the British nation. A recent example of his more
sustained scholar work is the Life of Lockhart' (1896). Mr. Lang,
moreover, has been a vigorous student of anthropology; and his vol-
umes Custom and Myth) (1884) and Myth, Ritual, and Religion'
(1887) are brilliant and able expositions of the modern theory of
the universality of myths among primitive savages, contravening the
older theory that certain myths are of exclusive Aryan development.
The conservatives have combated his views; which on the contrary
receive the warm commendation of a student like Grant Allen.
In his miscellaneous literary papers and lighter critical essays
Lang is vastly entertaining. He appears as a free-lance of literature,
always ready for a tilt; firm in his belief in the elder classics, and
in newer classics like Scott and Dumas; cock-sure of his position,
whimsically humorous or pettish, recondite of literary allusion, pro-
fuse in the display of learning. The essays are anything but dull, and
one acknowledges their liveliness and quality, even if irritated by their
tone or in profound disagreement with their dicta.
With this many-sided activity it will be seen that Andrew Lang
has a breezy force, is a decided influence in modern English literature.
And that influence, in respect of the morbid literary phenomena of
XV—556


## p. 8882 (#510) ###########################################

8882
ANDREW LANG
the time, has been corrective. Lang has pushed the romantic theory
to humorous exaggeration at times; but his main contention for
breadth and health and sanity in the presentation of life through art
forms is sound enough, and such criticism is especially welcome now-
adays.
FROM A BOOKMAN'S PURGATORY)
In Books and Bookmen)
To
(C
THOMAS Blinton had discovered a new sin, so to speak, in the
collecting way. Aristophanes says of one of his favorite
blackguards, "Not only is he a villain, but he has invented
an original villainy. ” Blinton was like this. He maintained that
every man who came to notoriety had, at some period, published
a volume of poems which he had afterwards repented of and
withdrawn. It was Blinton's hideous pleasure to collect stray
copies of these unhappy volumes, these péchés de jeunesse, which
always and invariably bear a gushing inscription from the author
to a friend. He had all Lord John Manners's poems, and even
Mr. Ruskin's. He had the Ode to Despair of Smith (now a
comic writer); and the 'Love Lyrics) of Brown, who is now a
permanent under-secretary, than which nothing can be less gay
nor more permanent. He had the revolutionary songs which a
dignitary of the Church published and withdrew from circulation.
Blinton was wont to say he expected to come across "Triolets of
a Tribune) by Mr. John Bright, and Original Hymns for Infant
Minds' by Mr. Henry Labouchere, if he only hunted long
enough.
On the day of which I speak he had secured a volume of love
poems which the author had done his best to destroy; and he had
gone to his club and read all the funniest passages aloud to
friends of the author, who was on the club committee. Ah, was
this a kind action ? In short, Blinton had filled up the cup of
his iniquities; and nobody will be surprised to hear that he met
the appropriate punishment of his offense. Blinton had passed,
on the whole, a happy day, notwithstanding the error about the
Elzevir. He dined well at his club, went home, slept well, and
started next morning for his office in the city; walking, as usual,
and intending to pursue the pleasures of the chase at all the
book-stalls. At the very first, in the Brompton Road, he saw a
man turning over the rubbish in the cheap-box. Blinton stared


## p. 8883 (#511) ###########################################

ANDREW LANG
8883
(
>>
a
at him, fancied he knew him, thought he didn't, and then became
a prey to the glittering eye of the other. The Stranger, who
wore the conventional cloak and slouched soft hat of Strangers,
was apparently an accomplished mesmerist or thought-reader, or
adept, or esoteric Buddhist. He resembled Mr. Isaacs, Zanoni
(in the novel of that name), Mendoza (in Codlingsby'), the soul-
less man in A Strange Story,' Mr. Home, Mr. Irving Bishop,
a Buddhist adept in the astral body, and most other mysterious
characters of history and fiction. Before his Awful Will, Blinton's
mere modern obstinacy shrank back like a child abashed. The
Stranger glided to him and whispered, “Buy these. ”
« These were a complete set of Auerbach's novels in Eng-
lish; which, I need not say, Blinton would never have dreamt of
purchasing had he been left to his own devices.
«Buy these! ” repeated the Adept, or whatever he was, in a
,
cruel whisper. Paying the sum demanded, and trailing his vast
load of German romance, poor Blinton followed the fiend.
They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, Glatigny's
Jour de l'An d'un Vagabond' was exposed.
“Look,” said Blinton: "there is a book I have wanted some
time. Glatignys are getting rather scarce, and it is an amusing
trifle. ”
Nay, buy that,” said the implacable Stranger, pointing with
a hooked forefinger at Alison's History of Europe' in an indefi-
nite number of volumes. Blinton shuddered.
“What, buy that — and why? In Heaven's name, what could
I do with it? "
“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, "and that” (indicating the
Ilios' of Dr. Schliemann,--a bulky work), “and these” (pointing
'
to all Theodore Alois Buckley's translations of the classics), and
these” (glancing at the collected writings of the late Mr. Hain
Friswell, and at a Life,' in more than one volume, of Mr. Glad-
stone).
The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along, carrying the
bargains under his arm. Now one book fell out, now another
dropped by the way. Sometimes a portion of Alison came pon-
derously to earth; sometimes the Gentle Life' sank resignedly
to the ground. The Adept kept picking them up again, and
packing them under the arm of the weary Blinton.
The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and
tried to enter into conversation with his tormentor.
»
(


## p. 8884 (#512) ###########################################

8884
ANDREW LANG
"He does know about books,” thought Blinton, and he must
have a weak spot somewhere. ”
So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational
style. He talked of bindings, of Maioli, of Grolier, of De Thou,
of Derome, of Clovis Eve, of Roger Payne, of Trautz, and eke of
Bauzonnet. He discoursed of first editions, of black-letter, and
even of illustrations and vignettes. He approached the topic of
Bibles; but here his tyrant, with a fierce yet timid glance, inter-
rupted him.
Buy those! ” he hissed through his teeth.
« ”
“Those were the complete publications of the Folk-Lore
Society.
Blinton did not care for folk-lore (very bad men never do);
but he had to act as he was told.
Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire
the Ethics) of Aristotle in the agreeable versions of Williams
and Chace. Next he secured (Strathmore,' 'Chandos,' 'Under
Two Flags,' and Two Little Wooden Shoes,' and several dozen
more of Ouida's novels. The next stall was entirely filled with
school-books, old geographies, Livys, Delectuses, Arnold's Greek
Exercises,' Ollendorffs, and what not.
“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and
piled them on Blinton's head.
He tied up Quida's novels in two parcels with string, and
fastened each to one of the buttons above the tails of Blinton's
coat.
“ You are tired ? ” asked the tormentor. “Never mind: these
books will soon be off your hands. "
So speaking, the Stranger with amazing speed hurried Blinton
back through Holywell Street, along the Strand and up to Picca-
dilly, stopping at last at the door of Blinton's famous and very
expensive binder.
The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of
Blinton's treasures.
Then the miserable Blinton found himself,
as it were automatically and without the exercise of his will,
speaking thus:-
"Here are some things I have picked up,- extremely rare,-
and you will oblige me by binding them in your best manner,
regardless of expense. Morocco, of course; crushed levant mo-
rocco, doublé, every book of them, petits fers, my crest and coat
of arms, plenty of gilding: Spare no cost. Don't keep me
(
CC


## p. 8885 (#513) ###########################################

ANDREW LANG
8885
(
waiting, as you generally do;" for indeed bookbinders are the
most dilatory of the human species.
Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary
questions, Blinton's tormentor had hurried that amateur out of
the room.
“Come on to the sale," he cried.
What sale ? » asked Blinton.
«Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky
day. ”
“But I have forgotten my catalogue. ”
«Where is it ? »
“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of
the ebony bookcase at home. ”
The Stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated
itself till the hand disappeared from view round the corner.
In a moment the hand returned with the catalogue.
The pair
sped on to Messrs. Sotheby's auction rooms in Wellington Street.
Everyone knows the appearance of a great book sale. The
long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles from a little
distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort of
excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct
himself. If he bids in his own person some bookseller will out-
bid him; partly because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows
little about books, and suspects that the amateur may in this
case know more. Besides, professionals always dislike amateurs,
and in this game they have a very great advantage. Blinton
knew all this, and was in the habit of giving his commissions to
a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally) as if a demon
had entered into him. (Tirante il Bianco Valorissimo Cavaliere)
was being competed for: an excessively rare romance of chivalry,
in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari's library.
The book is one of the rarest of the Aldine Press, and beauti-
fully adorned with Canevari's device,- a simple and elegant affair
in gold and colors. “Apollo is driving his chariot across the
green waves towards the rock, on which winged Pegasus is paw-
ing the ground”; though why this action of the horse should be
called “pawing ” (the animal notoriously not possessing paws), it
is hard to say.
Round this graceful design is the inscription
OPAQ KAT MIL 10E99 (straight and not crooked). In his ordinary
mood Blinton could only have admired “Tirante il Bianco' from
a distance. But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into
>


## p. 8886 (#514) ###########################################

8886
ANDREW LANG
>
»
>>
the lists, and challenged the great Mr. - the Napoleon of
bookselling. The price had already reached five hundred pounds.
« Six hundred,” cried Blinton.
“Guineas," said the great Mr.
«Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton,
“Guineas,” replied the other,
This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. struck
his flag, with a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said “Four
thousand. ” The cheers of the audience rewarded the largest
bid ever made for any book. As if he had not done enough, the
Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with Mr. for
every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally
fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the
brain, when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless
wealth, and is determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for
the last time. Blinton owed some fifty thousand pounds; and
exclaimed audibly, as the influence of the fiend died out, "I am
a ruined man. "
« Then your books must be sold,” cried the Stranger; and
leaping on a chair, he addressed the audience:-
Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton's sale, which will
immediately take place. The collection contains some very re-
markable early English poets, many first editions of the French
classics, most of the rarer Aldines, and a singular assortment of
Americana. ”
In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room
were filled with Blinton's books, all tied up in big lots of some
thirty volumes each. His early Molières were fastened to old
French dictionaries and school-books. His Shakespeare quartos
were in the same lot with tattered railway novels.
(happily almost unique) of Richard Barnfield's Affectionate Shep-
heard’ was coupled with two old volumes of Chips from a Ger-
man Workshop and a cheap, imperfect example of Tom Brown's
School Days. ' Hooke's Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot
of American devotional works, where it kept company with an
Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine Hypnerotomachia. '
The auc-
tioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the
whole affair was a “knock-out. ” His most treasured spoils were
parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing
to be present at one's own sale. No man would bid above a
few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the
His copy
(


## p. 8887 (#515) ###########################################

ANDREW LANG
8887
plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last
his Adonais,' uncut, bound by Lortic, went in company with
some old Bradshaws,' the Court Guide' of 1881, and an odd
volume of the Sunday at Home, for sixpence. The Stranger
smiled a smile of peculiar malignity. Blinton leaped up to pro-
test; the room seemed to shake around him, but words would not
come to his lips.
Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp
shook his shoulder:-
« Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying! ”
He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep
after dinner; and Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him
from his awful vision. Beside him lay L'Enfer du Bibliophile,
vu et decrit par Charles Asselineau' (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX. ).
»
FROM (LETTER TO MONSIEUR DE MOLIÈRE, VALET DE
CHAMBRE DU ROI)
W""
In "Letters to Dead Authors )
Monsieur:
'ITH what awe does a writer venture into the presence of
the great Molière ! As a courtier in your time would
scratch humbly (with his comb! ) at the door of the Grand
Monarch, so I presume to draw near your dwelling among the
Immortals. You, like the King who among all his titles has now
none so proud as that of the friend of Molière — you found your
dominions small, humble, and distracted; you raised them to the
dignity of an empire: what Louis the XIV. did for France you
achieved for French comedy; and the bâton of Scapin still wields
its sway, though the sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim.
For the King the Pyrenees (or so he fancied) ceased to exist;
by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If
England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that
France ferum victorem cepit, and restored the dynasty of Comedy
to the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden
borrowed 'L'Étourdi,' our tardy apish nation has lived in mat-
ters theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France.
In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered.
While you lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was
the congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic


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8888
ANDREW LANG
>
grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of
Molière. Now they are diversely occupied; and it is their affair
to lend modesty where they borrow wit, and to spare a blush to
the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. But still, as has ever been
our wont since Etherege saw and envied and imitated your suc-
cesses— still we pilfer the plays of France, and take our bien, as
you said in your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We
are the privateers of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that
a comedy pleases the town which has not first been “cut out”
from the countrymen of Molière. Why this should be, and
what «tenebriferous star” (as Paracelsus, your companion in the
Dialogues des Morts,' would have believed) thus darkens the sun
of English humor, we know not; but certainly our dependence
on France is the sincerest tribute to you. Without you, neither
Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor «a wilderness of monkeys” like Scar-
ron, could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to
Europe.
While we owe to you, monsieur, the beautiful advent of Com-
edy, fair and beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes, . it
is still to you that we must turn when of comedies we desire the
best. If you studied with daily and nightly care the works of
Plautus and Terence, if you let no musty bouquin escape you"
(so your enemies declared), it was to some purpose that you
labored. Shakespeare excepted, you eclipsed all who came before
you: and from those that follow, however fresh, we turn;
turn from Regnard and Beaumarchais, from Sheridan and Gold-
smith, from Musset and Pailleron and Labiche, to that crowded
world of your creation. « Creations” one may well say, for you
anticipated Nature herself: you gave us, before she did, in
Alceste a Rousseau who was a gentleman, not a lacquey; in a
mot of Don Juan's the secret of the new religion and the watch-
word of Comte, l'amour de l'humanité.
Before you where can we find, save in Rabelais, a French-
man with humor; and where, unless it be in Montaigne, the wise
philosophy of a secular civilization ? With a heart the most ten-
der, delicate, loving, and generous,-a heart often in agony and
torment, — you had to make life endurable (we cannot doubt it)
without any whisper of promise or hope or warning from reli-
gion. Yes, in an age when the greatest mind of all, the mind of
Pascal, proclaimed that the only hope was in voluntary blindness,
that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens, you,
»
we


## p. 8889 (#517) ###########################################

ANDREW LANG
8889
monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to pretend to see what you
found invisible.
In religion you beheld no promise of help. When the Jesuits
and Jansenists of your time saw, each of them, in Tartuffe the
portrait of their rivals (as each of the laughable Marquises in
your play conceived that you were girding at his neighbor), you
all the while were mocking every credulous excess of faith. In
the sermons preached to Agnès we surely hear your private
laughter; in the arguments for credulity which are presented
to Don Juan by his valet we listen to the eternal self-defense of
superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for the perma-
nent element of life — precisely where Pascal recognized all that
was most fleeting and unsubstantial — in divertissement; in the
pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence,
an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the gods of the
Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played,
as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note comes in! What
pity, and in the laughter what an accent of tears, as of rain in
the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and human as you;
none has had a heart like you to feel for his butts, and to leave
them sometimes, in a sense, superior to their tormentors. Sgan-
arelle, M. de Pourceaugnac, George Dandin, and the rest — our
sympathy somehow is with them, after all; and M. Pourceaugnac
is a gentleman, despite his misadventures.
Though triumphant Youth and malicious Love in your plays
may batter and defeat Jealousy and Old Age, yet they have not
all the victory, or you did not mean that they should win it.
They go off with laughter, and their victim with a grimace;
but in him we that are past our youth behold an actor in an un-
ending tragedy,—the defeat of a generation. Your sympathy is
not wholly with the dogs that are having their day; you can
throw a bone or a crust to the dog that has had his, and has
been taught that it is over and ended. Yourself not unlearned
in shame, in jealousy, in endurance of the wanton pride of men,
(how could the poor player and the husband of Celimène be
untaught in that experience ? ) you never sided quite heartily, as
other comedians have done, with young prosperity and rank and
power.


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8890
ANDREW LANG
LES ROSES DE SÂDI
From Ban and Arrière Ban)
his morning I I
T'They were thrust in the band that my bodice incloses,
But the breast-knots were broken, the roses went free.
The breast-knots were broken: the roses together
Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather,
And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea.
And the sea was as red as when sunset uncloses;
But my raiment is sweet from the scent of the roses,-
Thou shalt know, love, how fragrant a memory can be.
THE ODYSSEY
Prefixed to the Butcher-Lang translation
A
S ONE that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan Isle forgets the Main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,-
So, gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers;
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.


## p. 8891 (#519) ###########################################

8891
SIDNEY LANIER
(1842-1881)
BY RICHARD BURTON
HE quiet steady widening of the influence of Sidney Lanier
since his death is more than a pleasant justification of faith
to those who have loved him and believed in him from the
first. It suggests the comforting thought that good literature, uncon-
ventional in form and original in quality, although for this very
reason slower to get a hearing, is sure to
receive the eventual recognition it deserves.
Sixteen years have elapsed since Lanier's
taking-off; and he is now seen more clearly
every day to be the most important native
singer the Southern United States has pro-
duced, and one of the most distinctive and
lovely of American singers wherever born.
Enthusiastic admirers and followers he has
always attracted to him; now the general
opinion begins to swing round to what
seemed to many, a little time ago, the ex-
travagant encomium of partiality and preju-
dice.
SIDNEY LANIER
The circumstances of Sidney Lanier's
life furnish a pathetically tragic setting to his pure-souled, beautiful
work. A Georgian, he was born at Macon, February 30, 1842; his
father was a well-known lawyer of that city. The family on the
male side was of Huguenot French descent; on the maternal side the
stock was Scotch. Sidney was educated at Oglethorpe College in his
native State. The war found him on the Confederate side; and while
a prisoner he consoled his spirit with his beloved flute and wrote
fugitive verses, - early pledges of the twin master passions of Lanier's
whole life, literature and music. It was while immured thus that
he and Father Tabb, the Maryland poet-priest, struck up the friend-
ship which the latter has commemorated in more than one loving
song. Lanier's constitution was delicate; and the exposures and hard-
ships of war developed the seeds of the consumption which he fought
heroically through young manhood and into middle life, and finally



## p. 8892 (#520) ###########################################

8892
SIDNEY LANIER
succumbed to. Some years of experimental occupation followed upon
the war experience: he was successively clerk, teacher, and lawyer,
taking up the legal profession at the earnest instigation of his father,
who could not realize that Lanier's vocation was so different from his
own. The letter which the son wrote from Baltimore, taking the
decisive step that made him a literary man and musician for better
or worse, is impressive and revelatory of his character:-
«I have given your last letter the fullest and most careful consideration.
After doing so, I feel sure that Macon is not the place for me. If you could
taste the delicious crystalline air and the champagne breeze that I've just been
rushing about in, I am equally sure that in point of climate you would agree
with me that my chance of life is ten times as great here as in Macon. Then
as to business. Why should I — nay, how can I – settle myself down to be a
third-rate struggling lawyer for the balance of my little life, as long as there
is a certainty almost absolute that I can do some other thing so much better?
My dear father, think how for twenty years, through poverty, through
pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere
of a farcical college and of a bare army, and then of an exacting business
life,- through all of the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with
literary people and literary ways,– I say, think how, in spite of all these
depressing circumstances and of a thousand more which I could enumerate,
these two figures of music and of poetry have kept in my heart so that I
could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to
have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts,
after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much
bitterness ? »
One can well believe that with a man like Lanier, such a choice
had in it the solemnity of a consecration. His ideal of Art in the
broad sense—whether literary or other — was so lofty that a dedica-
tion of himself to the service was the most serious of acts. Nor,
through whatever of set-back, stress, and failure, did he for a moment
swerve from that ideal; he held himself as a very priest of Beauty,
dignifying at once himself and his calling.
Lanier's literary career began with the publishing of a novel,
(Tiger Lilies) (1867), a book founded on his war experiences, and not
a success: fiction was not his natural medium of expression. There
is luxuriant unpruned imagination in the story, however, and it is
evident that a poet in his first ferment of fancy is hiding there.
Meanwhile Lanier was sending his poems to the magazines and get-
ting them back again, the proverbial editor on the lookout for bud-
ding genius proving mostly chimerical. Gradually a critic here and
there became aware of his worth. Corn. ' one of his finely repre-
sentative pieces, appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1875, and at-
tracted attention which led to his being employed to write the words
for a cantata by Dudley Buck, performed at the Centennial Exhibition


## p. 8893 (#521) ###########################################

SIDNEY LANIER
8893
in the next year. The Centennial year, too, marks the appearance of
the first edition of his poems,-a volume containing tentative imma-
ture verse, though promising much to one of critical foresight. The
Independent and the Century also opened their doors to the South-
ern singer. But these chance contributions to periodicals— birds of
passage finding a lodgment as it might hap — were grotesquely in-
adequate for the support of a man with a family; — for so far back as
1867, the year his first book was published, he had married Miss Mary
H. Day, also of Macon,- a woman who in all the gracious ministries
of heart and home and spirit was his leal mate. Hence was he
forced to do hack-work; a sorry spectacle of Pegasus in harness. He
could only use his pen between hemorrhages; and the slender finan-
cial resources thus heavily taxed would have utterly failed had it not
been for the kind ministries of brother and father. Lanier made a
guide-book on Florida, as unlike the customary manual as an Arabian
blood mare is unlike a dray-horse. He edited Froissart for boys, -a
more congenial task; and did youth the same service with respect to
King Arthur, the Mabinogion,' and Bishop Percy. Brave, beautiful
books they are; for the full-mouthed old words and the bygone deeds
of chivalry both appealed to the poet-editor. Then in 1879 came what
looked like brighter fortune: he was appointed lecturer on English
literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to which city he
had gone in 1873 to take the position of first flute in the Peabody
Orchestra. It must be remembered that to the end music and poetry
were the beacon stars in Lanier's overcast, uncertain skies.
Now a
modest yearly income at least was assured, — for the first time in his
experience.
The alleviation was but brief; for two years later, in the
mountains of North Carolina, whither he had wearily gone to make one
more struggle for breath, Sidney Lanier's noble soul was loosened
from its frail tenement of flesh, and, his wife beside him, he fell on
sleep :-
« From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure. »
But that final span of time enabled him to prosecute with diligence
and system his favorite studies in the old English literature, and to
leave two critical volumes of great value and individuality. (The
Science of English Verse,' published in 1880, is an elaborate and
unique analysis of the technical structure and underlying principles
of the native metric, developing a new and most interesting theory:
that the time quality obtains in English poetry as in music; this
thesis being aptly illustrated from the sister art. "The English Novel
and the Principles of its Development,' which appeared three years
later, in 1883, is made up of lectures delivered at Johns Hopkins, at


## p. 8894 (#522) ###########################################

8894
SIDNEY LANIER
a time when Lanier was obliged to sit down while speaking, so weak
was he.
The book is the most philosophic treatment of the develop-
ment of our fiction that has been written, seizing upon the central
fact of the steady growth of the idea of personality in the novel from
Greek days to the present time. It was not until 1884, several years
after his death, that his poems were collected finally into a volume,
with an admirable introductory essay upon the man and his work
by Dr. William Hayes Ward. With this book Lanier came into his
own of praise and love.
Lanier's characteristics as a poet - and despite his achievements
in prose, it is as a poet he must be considered primarily - are such
as to separate him from other American makers of literature. In the
first place, his work has the glow and color of the South, - an exuber-
ance of imagination and a rhythmic sweep which awaken a kind of
exultant delight in the sensitive reader. A consummate artist, Lanier
showed himself a pioneer in the handling of words and metres: his
richness of rhymes and alliterations, his marvelous feeling for tone-
color, fellow him with an English poet like Swinburne. He opened
new possibilities of metrical and stanzaic arrangements, and there-
with revealed new powers of word-use and combination in modern
English poetry; drawing on the treasures of the older word-hoard
which his study, taste, and instinct suggested. He certainly broad-
ened in this way the technic of verse, and on this side of his art
was truly remarkable. He was too that rare thing, a song-writer.
His Song of the Chattahoochee,' (A Song of the Future,' (A Song of
Love,' An Evening Song,' and others, are not only to be read but
set to music; they are felt to be songs in the full and literal sense.
The fact that he was a trained musician, a maker in the neighbor
art, qualified him peculiarly in this respect. The musician helped the
poet, the poet enriched the maker of music.
Looking to the essential traits that are to technic as the completed
structure to the scaffolding that makes it possible, Lanier was a man
of fine culture, much read, assimilative, strong of thought, endowed
with sane imagination. He did not take petty conceits or stale and
attenuated ideas and deck them out in the fine garments of art: he
had the modern zest for fact, and was abreast of the times in his
conceptions. - often an intellectual forerunner. On the problems of
State, religion, society, science, art, and literature, his words were
deep and wise; and his work reveals him as an advanced thinker on
the vital themes of his century. And along with this marked breadth
and independency of thought went a profound ethical earnestness,
having in it a subtle spirituality that above all else makes this poet
distinctive and precious. In his own lovely phrase, reversing the
wonted words, he believed in the holiness of beauty»: he perceived
(


## p. 8895 (#523) ###########################################

SIDNEY LANIER
8895
that beauty is but one phase of that Triune power, the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful, divinely interplaying into each other, never
to be dissevered without violence to each and all. Lanier applied
the Platonic philosophy to art, and it had for him perfect credence,
absolute allegiance.
These gifts and powers, then, - technical mastery, original thought,
and spiritual perception and fervor,- are to be recognized in his best
poems. In the shorter, simpler lyrics, notice how the characteristic
qualities shine out. How full of the broad spirit of worship is the
(Ballad of Trees and the Master'; how valiantly soul rises above
the failing flesh in “The Stirrup Cup'! What a knightly devotion to
womanhood is expressed in My Springs,' as high a strain as was
ever sung to wife! What a hymning of the ideal relation of word
and deed is heard in the melodious measures of Life and Song'!
And when we turn to the larger, more broadly conceived pieces, what
a stanch Americanism blows like a sea-wind through the remarkable
(Psalm of the West'; with what exaltation yet fearless fraternity the
Christ is glorified in that noble poem, “The Crystal'; and what a les-
son on the mean, sordid standards of trade is preached in 'The Sym-
phony,'— that wonderful creation, which under the allegory of music,
is vital with high suggestions for every aspiring soul. Nor must that
side of the work in which Nature is limned and worshiped be passed
by; for it includes some of the most unforgettable things. Lanier's
attitude towards Nature was that of a passionate lover; a pantheist
who felt God in everything. Clover,' From the Flats, Tampa
Robins,' Corn,' The Bee,' (The Dove,' are poems of this class, and
such as have come from no other American singer. They express his
loving observation of the picturesque phenomena of his own and other
Southern States. They transmute Nature in an ideality which fills
the air with voices not of earth, and makes the very grass whisper
immortal words.
The culmination of Lanier's art and thought and spiritual force is
found in the Hymns of the Marshes); two of which, (Sunrise' and
“The Marshes of Glynn,' are magnificently imaginative organ-chants
of a dying man, never so strong of soul as when his body hung by
a tenuous thread to life. The finest of this great series, a majestic
swan-song, was written when Lanier lay so weak that he could not
lift hand to mouth. And the marvel of it is, that poetry never was
made through which pulsed and surged a more puissant vitality.
a
These Marsh Hymns) stand among the major productions of modern
poetry.
It may be granted that Sidney Lanier in the full tide of plethoric
utterance sometimes sacrificed lucidity. His teeming fancy was now
and then in surplusage, and ran into the arabesque; though this is
(


## p. 8896 (#524) ###########################################

8896
SIDNEY LANIER
not true of his latest work. It is possible, again, that he pushed to
an extreme his theory of the close inter-relations of music and verse,
claiming for the latter not only lyric but symphonic powers,
- a view
illustrated to a degree in his Centennial Ode with its verbal orches-
tration. Poetry is a human product, and subject to human limitations.
Had Lanier lived longer, had he had a freer opportunity, doubtless
his literary bequest would have been richer and more completely
expressive of himself. But as it is, in quality and in accomplishment
Sidney Lanier takes his place as an American poet of distinction.
He is one of those rare illustrations of the union, in a son of genius,
of high character and artistic production in harmony therewith; a
spectacle feeding the heart with tender thoughts and pure ideals:-
“His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand.