His dislike
of study found its exception in his love of
Dante, of whom he was a reverent student.
of study found its exception in his love of
Dante, of whom he was a reverent student.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
"
The weary bishop, feeling faint,
Replied, "I do not say it ain't,
But Time! ' my Christian friend! »
"We now proceed to something new:
Dance as the Paynes and Lauris do,
Like this one, two-one, two-one, two. "
The bishop, never proud,
But in an overwhelming heat
(His name was Peter, I repeat)
Performed the Payne and Lauri feat,
And puffed his thanks aloud.
-
Another game the dancer planned:
"Just take your ankle in your hand,
And try, my lord, if you can stand
Your body stiff and stark.
If when revisiting your see
You learnt to hop on shore, like me,
The novelty would striking be.
And must attract remark. "
## p. 6341 (#315) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6341
"No," said the worthy bishop, "no;
That is a length to which, I trow,
Colonial bishops cannot go.
You may express surprise
At finding bishops deal in pride-
But if that trick I ever tried,
I should appear undignified
In Rum-ti-Foozle's eyes.
"The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo
Are well-conducted persons, who
Approve a joke as much as you,
And laugh at it as such;
But if they saw their bishop land,
His leg supported in his hand,
The joke they wouldn't understand
'Twould pain them very much! "
GENTLE ALICE BROWN
I'
T WAS a robber's daughter, and her name was Alice Brown;
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing:
But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you! »
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen;
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten;
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode).
But Alice was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.
"O holy father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not,
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot?
Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one! "
The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone and done? »
## p. 6342 (#316) ###########################################
6342
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
1
·
"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,
I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad,
I've planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck! "
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear,
And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear:
It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.
"Girls will be girls- you're very young, and flighty in your mind;
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find;
We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks-
Let's see five crimes at half-a-crown- exactly twelve-and-six. "
―――
"O father," little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep,
You do these little things for me so singularly cheap;
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;
But oh! there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!
"A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,
I've noticed at my window, as I've sat a-catching flies;
He passes by it every day as certain as can be-
I blush to say I've winked at him and he has winked at me! "
"For shame! " said Father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word,
This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!
"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!
They are the most remunerative customers I know;
For many, many years they've kept starvation from my doors:
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!
"The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood
Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good;
And if you marry any one respectable at all,
Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul? "
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,
And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown-
To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.
Good Robber Brown he muffled up his anger pretty well;
He said, "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell:
## p. 6343 (#317) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6343
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.
"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two:
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do-
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small. "
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;
He watched his opportunity, and seized him unaware;
He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,
And Mrs. Brown dissected him before she went to bed.
And pretty little Alice grew more settled in her mind;
She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind;
Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her pretty hand
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS
SING a legend of the sea,
So hard-a-port upon your lee!
A ship on starboard tack!
I
She's bound upon a private cruise —
(This is the kind of spice I use
To give a salt-sea smack).
Behold, on every afternoon
(Save in a gale or strong monsoon)
Great Captain Capel Cleggs
(Great morally, though rather short)
Sat at an open weather-port
And aired his shapely legs.
And mermaids hung around in flocks,
On cable chains and distant rocks,
To gaze upon those limbs;
For legs like those, of flesh and bone,
Are things "not generally known"
To any merman timbs.
But mermen didn't seem to care
Much time (as far as I'm aware)
With Cleggs's legs to spend;
Though mermaids swam around all day
And gazed, exclaiming, "That's the way
A gentleman should end!
## p. 6344 (#318) ###########################################
6344
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
"A pair of legs with well-cut knees,
And calves and ankles such as these
Which we in rapture hail,
Are far more eloquent, it's clear
(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),
Than any nasty tail. "
And Cleggs a worthy, kind old boy-
Rejoiced to add to others' joy,
And when the day was dry,
Because it pleased the lookers-on,
He sat from morn till night-though con-
Stitutionally shy.
At first the mermen laughed, "Pooh! pooh! "
But finally they jealous grew,
And sounded loud recalls;
But vainly. So these fishy males
Declared they too would clothe their tails
In silken hose and smalls.
They set to work, these watermen,
And made their nether robes - but when
They drew with dainty touch
The kerseymere upon their tails,
They found it scraped against their scales,
And hurt them very much.
The silk, besides, with which they chose
To deck their tails by way of hose
(They never thought of shoon)
For such a use was much too thin,-
It tore against the caudal fin,
And went in ladders » soon.
So they designed another plan:
They sent their most seductive man,
This note to him to show:
"Our Monarch sends to Captain Cleggs
His humble compliments, and begs
He'll join him down below;
"We've pleasant homes below the sea
Besides, if Captain Cleggs should be
(As our advices say)
————---
1
H
## p. 6345 (#319) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6345
A judge of mermaids, he will find
Our lady fish of every kind
Inspection will repay. "
Good Capel sent a kind reply,
For Capel thought he could descry
An admirable plan
To study all their ways and laws-
(But not their lady fish, because
He was a married man).
The merman sank-the captain too
Jumped overboard, and dropped from view
Like stone from catapult;
And when he reached the merman's lair,
He certainly was welcomed there,
But ah! with what result!
They didn't let him learn their law,
Or make a note of what he saw,
Or interesting mem. ;
The lady fish he couldn't find,
But that, of course, he didn't mind
He didn't come for them.
For though when Captain Capel sank,
The mermen drawn in double rank
Gave him a hearty hail,
Yet when secure of Captain Cleggs,
They cut off both his lovely legs,
And gave him such a tail!
—
When Captain Cleggs returned aboard,
His blithesome crew convulsive roar'd,
To see him altered so.
The admiralty did insist
That he upon the half-pay list
Immediately should go.
In vain declared the poor old salt,
"It's my misfortune not my fault,"
With tear and trembling lip-
In vain poor Capel begged and begged.
"A man must be completely legged
Who rules a British ship. "
―
-
## p. 6346 (#320) ###########################################
I
I
•
·
6346
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
So spake the stern First Lord aloud,-
He was a wag, though very proud,
And much rejoiced to say,
"You're only half a captain now
And so, my worthy friend, I vow
You'll only get half-pay! ",
All the above selections are made from 'Fifty Bab Ballads. '
-
## p. 6347 (#321) ###########################################
6347
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
(1844-)
ICHARD WATSON GILDER is the son of a clergyman, the Rev.
William H. Gilder, who published two literary reviews in
Philadelphia. He was born in Bordentown, New Jersey,
February 8th, 1844, and with such ancestry and home influence came
easily to journalism and literary work. He got his schooling in the
Bellevue Seminary, which was founded by his father. As with so
many young Americans of the time, the war came to interrupt his
studies; and in 1863 he served in the "Emergency Corps," in the
defense of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mr. Gil-
der is one of the American writers who
have successfully combined journalism and
literature. He began by doing newspaper
work, and then by a natural transition be-
came in 1869 editor of Hours at Home, and
shortly thereafter associate editor of Scrib-
ner's Magazine with Dr. J. G. Holland.
This representative monthly was changed
in name to The Century, and upon the
death of Dr. Holland in 1881 Mr. Gilder
became its editor-in-chief. His influence in
this conspicuous position has been whole-
some and helpful in the encouraging of lit-
erature, and in the discussion of current
questions of importance through a popular medium which reaches great
numbers of the American people. The Century under his direction
has been receptive to young writers and artists of ability, and many
since known to fame made their maiden appearance in its pages.
In addition to his influence on the literary movement, Mr. Gilder
has been active in philanthropic and political work. He has secured
legislation for the improvement of tenements in cities; he has taken
interest in the formation of public kindergartens; and given of his
time and strength to further other reforms. His influence in New
York City, too, has been a factor in developing the social aspects of
literary and art life there. From Dickinson College he has received
the degree of LL. D. , and from Princeton that of L. H. D.
Mr. Gilder's reputation as a writer is based upon his verse.
Only very occasionally does he publish an essay, though thoughtful,
strongly written editorials from his pen in his magazine are frequent.
RICHARD W. GILDER
## p. 6348 (#322) ###########################################
6348
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
But it is his verse-writing that has given him his place- a distinct
and honorable one-in American letters. The fine quality and prom-
ise of his work was recognized upon the publication of 'The New
Day in 1875, a first volume which was warmly received. It showed
the influence of Italian studies, and contained lyric work of much
imaginative beauty. The musicalness of it and the delicately ideal
treatment of the love passion were noticeable characteristics. In his
subsequent books-The Celestial Passion,' 1887; Lyrics,' 1885 and
1887; Two Worlds, and Other Poems,' 1891; 'The Great Remem-
brance, and Other Poems,' 1893: the contents of these being gathered
finally into the one volume 'Five Books of Song,' 1894 - he has given
further proof of his genuine lyric gift, his work in later years having
a wider range of themes, a broadening vision and deepening purpose.
He remains nevertheless essentially a lyrist, a maker of songs; a thor-
ough artist who has seriousness, dignity, and charm. His is an ear-
nest nature, sensitive alike to vital contemporaneous problems and to
the honey-sweet voice of the Ideal.
[All the following citations from Mr. Gilder's poems are copyrighted, and
are reprinted here by special permission of the author and his publishers. ]
TWO SONGS FROM THE NEW DAY'
I
NOT
OT from the whole wide world I chose thee,
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee-
For thou art the whole wide world to me.
II
YEARS have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.
"ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET»
OSE-DARK the solemn sunset
R
That holds my thought of thee;
With one star in the heavens
And one star in the sea.
On high no lamp is lighted,
Nor where the long waves flow.
## p. 6349 (#323) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6349
Save the one star of evening
And the shadow star below.
Light of my life, the darkness
Comes with the twilight dream;
Thou art the bright star shining,
And I but the shadowy gleam.
NON SINE DOLORE
HAT, then, is Life,- what Death?
Thus the Answerer saith;
WHA
O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:
Down o'er the vibrant strings,
That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.
A voiceless pause: then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with unimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,
While, shaken with woe,
With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,
On, on the ceaseless music sings,
Restless, intense, serene;
Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.
—
Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss
That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death
Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!
If, having soared pure spirit at the last,
Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh
Ah! who would care to die
From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;
These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?
## p. 6350 (#324) ###########################################
6350
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
Again the Answerer saith:
O ye of little faith,
Shall then the spirit prove craven,
And Death's divine deliverance but give
A summer rest and haven?
By all most noble in us, by the light that streams
Into our waking dreams,
Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!
Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?
Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;
But Life, still Life, that leads to higher Life,
Even though the highest be not free from immortal strife.
The highest! Soul of man, oh be thou bold,
And to the brink of thought draw near, behold!
Where, on the earth's green sod,
Where, where in all the universe of God,
Hath strife forever ceased?
When hath not some great orb flashed into space
The terror of its doom? When hath no human face
Turned earthward in despair,
For that some horrid sin had stamped its image there?
If at our passing Life be Life increased,
And we ourselves flame pure unfettered soul,
Like the Eternal Power that made the whole
And lives in all he made
From shore of matter to the unknown spirit shore;
If, sire to son, and tree to limb,
Cycle on countless cycle more and more
We grow to be like him;
If he lives on, serene and unafraid,
Through all his light, his love, his living thought,
One with the sufferer, be it soul or star;
If he escape not pain, what beings that are
Can e'er escape while Life leads on and up the unseen way and far?
If he escape not, by whom all was wrought,
Then shall not we,
Whate'er of godlike solace still may be,-
For in all worlds there is no Life without a pang, and can be naught.
-
No Life without a pang! It were not Life,
If ended were the strife-
Man were not man, nor God were truly God!
See from the sod
## p. 6351 (#325) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6351
The lark thrill skyward in an arrow of song:
Even so from pain and wrong
Upsprings the exultant spirit, wild and free.
He knows not all the joy of liberty
Who never yet was crushed 'neath heavy woe.
He doth not know,
Nor can, the bliss of being brave
Who never hath faced death, nor with unquailing eye
Hath measured his own grave.
Courage, and pity, and divinest scorn-
Self-scorn, self-pity, and high courage of the soul;
The passion for the goal;
The strength to never yield though all be lost-
All these are born
Of endless strife; this is the eternal cost
Of every lovely thought that through the portal
Of human minds doth pass with following light.
Blanch not, O trembling mortal!
But with extreme and terrible delight
Know thou the truth,
Nor let thy heart be heavy with false ruth.
No passing burden is our earthly sorrow,
That shall depart in some mysterious morrow.
'Tis His one universe where'er we are
One changeless law from sun to viewless star.
Were sorrow evil here, evil it were forever,
—
Beyond the scope and help of our most keen endeavor
God doth not dote,
His everlasting purpose shall not fail.
Here where our ears are weary with the wail
And weeping of the sufferers; there where the Pleiads float-
Here, there, forever, pain most dread and dire
Doth bring the intensest bliss, the dearest and most sure.
'Tis not from Life aside, it doth endure
Deep in the secret heart of all existence.
It is the inward fire,
The heavenly urge, and the divine insistence.
Uplift thine eyes, O Questioner, from the sod!
It were no longer Life,
If ended were the strife;
Man were not man, God were not truly God.
## p. 6352 (#326) ###########################################
6352
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
·
·
"HOW PADEREWSKI PLAYS»
I
I'
F SONGS were perfume, color, wild desire;
If poets' words were fire
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins;
If with a bird-like thrill the moments throbbed to hours;
If summer's rains
Turned drop by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers;
If God made flowers with light and music in them,
And saddened hearts could win them;
If loosened petals touched the ground
With a caressing sound;
If love's eyes uttered word
No listening lover e'er before had heard;
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle's voice;
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice! Rejoice! "
If words could picture life's, hope's, heaven's eclipse
When the last kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips;
If all of mortal woe
Struck on one heart with breathless blow on blow;
If melody were tears, and tears were starry gleams
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams;
Ah yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue,
Trembling to earth in dew;
Or if the boreal pulsings, rose and white,
Made a majestic music in the night;
If all the orbs lost in the light of day
In the deep, silent blue began their harps to play;
And when in frightening skies the lightnings flashed
And storm-clouds crashed,
If every stroke of light and sound were but excess of beauty;
If human syllables could e'er refashion
That fierce electric passion;
If other art could match (as were the poet's duty)
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder
Of that keen hour of wonder,—
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell,—
How Paderewski plays then might I dare to tell.
II
How Paderewski plays! And was it he
Or some disbodied spirit which had rushed
From silence into singing; and had crushed
## p. 6353 (#327) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6353
Into one startled hour a life's felicity,
And highest bliss of knowledge-that all life, grief, wrong,
Turn at the last to beauty and to song!
WHA
HAT is a sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell
THE SONNET
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song-ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is- - beware who ventureth!
—
For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.
AMERICA
From The Great Remembrance>
L
AND that we love! Thou Future of the World!
Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed!
Oh, never be thy shining image hurled
From its high place in the adoring breast
Of him who worships thee with jealous love!
Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove
All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined!
Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind,
And to despair of thee were to despair
Of man, of man's high destiny, of God!
Of thee should man despair, the journey trod
Upward, through unknown eons, stair on stair,
By this our race, with bleeding feet and slow,
Were but the pathway to a darker woe
Than yet was visioned by the heavy heart
Of prophet. To despair of thee! Ah no!
For thou thyself art Hope; Hope of the World thou art!
XI-398
## p. 6354 (#328) ###########################################
6354
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THIS
HIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day-
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength-his pure and mighty heart.
—
"CALL ME NOT DEAD »
CA
ALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the ever-living
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say:-"He at last hath won
Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces;
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.
To-morrow (who can say ? ) Shakespeare may pass,
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;
Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass
Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still
To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill. "
AFTER-SONG
From The New Day'
TH
HROUGH love to light! Oh, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
:
## p. 6355 (#329) ###########################################
6355
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
(1809-1850)
IUSEPPE GIUSTI, an Italian satirical poet, was born of an influ-
ential family, May 12th, 1809, in the little village of Mon-
summano, which lies between Pistoja and Pescia, and was
in every fibre of his nature a Tuscan. As a child he imbibed the
healthful, sunny atmosphere of that Campagna, and grew up loving
the world and his comrades, but with a dislike of study which con-
vinced himself and his friends that he was born to no purpose.
He
was early destined to the bar, and began his law studies in Pistoja
and Lucca, completing them a number of
years later at Pisa, where he obtained his
degree of doctor.
In 1834 he went to Florence, under pre-
tence of practicing with the advocate Ca-
poquadri; but here as elsewhere he spent
his time in the world of gayety, whose fas-
cination and whose absurdity he seems to
have felt with equal keenness.
His dislike
of study found its exception in his love of
Dante, of whom he was a reverent student.
He was himself continually versifying, and
his early romantic lyrics are inspired by
lofty thought. His penetrating humor, how-
ever, and his instinctive sarcasm, whose
expression was never unkind, led him soon to abandon idealism and
to distinguish himself in the field of satire, which has no purer rep-
resentative than he. His compositions are short and terse, and are
seldom blemished by personalities. He was wont to say that absurd
persons did not merit even the fame of infamy. He leveled his wit
against the lethargy and immoralities of the times, and revealed them
clear-cut in the light of his own stern principles and patriotism.
The admiration and confidence which he now began to receive
from the public was to him a matter almost of consternation, wont
as he was to consider himself a good-for-nothing. He confesses
somewhat bashfully however that there was always within him,
half afraid of itself, an instinct of power which led him to say in
his heart, Who knows what I may be with time? His frail constitu-
tion and almost incessant physical suffering account for a natural
indolence against which he constantly inveighs, but above which he
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
## p. 6356 (#330) ###########################################
6356
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
was powerless to rise except at vehement intervals. No careless-
ness, however, marks his work. He was a tireless reviser, and pos-
sessed the rare power of cutting, polishing, and finishing his work
with exquisite nicety, without robbing it of vigor. His writings ex-
erted a distinct political and moral influence. His is not alone the
voice of pitiless and mocking irony, but it is that of the humanita-
rian, who in overthrow and destruction sees only the first step toward
the creation of something better. When war broke out he laid aside
his pen, saying that this was no time for a poet to pull down, and
that hi was not the power to build up. His health forbade his
entering the army, which was a cause of poignant sorrow to him.
His faith in Italy and her people and in the final triumph of unity
remained unshaken and sublime in the midst of every reverse.
His mastery of the Tuscan dialect and his elegance of idiom won
him membership in the Accademia della Crusca; but his love for
Tuscany was always subservient to his love for Italy. To those who
favored the division of the peninsula, he used to reply that he had
but one fatherland, and that was
a unit. He died in Florence,
March 31, 1850, at the home of his devoted friend the Marquis Gino
Capponi. In the teeth of Austrian prohibition, a throng of grateful
and loving citizens followed his body to the church of San Miniato
al Monte, remembering that at a time when freedom of thought
was deemed treason, this man had fearlessly raised the battle-cry
and prepared the way for the insurrection of 1848. Besides his satires,
Giusti has left us a life of the poet Giuseppe Parini, a collection of
Tuscan proverbs, and an unedited essay on the 'Divine Comedy. '
CRY
LULLABY
From Gingillino
>
[The poem of Gingillino, one of Giusti's finest satires, is full of personal
hits, greatly enjoyed by the author's countrymen. The Lullaby is sung by
a number of personified Vices round the cradle of the infant Gingillino, who,
having come into the world naked and possessed of nothing, is admonished
how to behave if he would go out of it well dressed and rich. A few verses
only are given out of the many. The whole poem was one of the most pop-
ular of all Giusti's satires. ]
RY not, dear baby,
Of nothing possessed;
But if thou wouldst, dear,
Expire well dressed
Let nothing vex thee,-
Love's silly story,
·
## p. 6357 (#331) ###########################################
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
6357
Ghosts of grand festivals
Spectres of glory;
Let naught annoy thee:
The burdens of fame,
The manifold perils
That wait on a name.
Content thyself, baby,
With learning to read:
Don't be vainglorious;
That's all thou canst need.
All promptings of genius
Confine in thy breast,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Let not God nor Devil
Concern thy poor wits,
And tell no more truth
Than politeness permits.
With thy soul and thy body,
Still worship the Real;
Nor ever attempt
To pursue the Ideal.
As for thy scruples,
Let them be suppressed,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE STEAM-GUILLOTINE
[The monarch satirized in this poem was Francesco IV. , Duke of Modena,
a petty Nero, who executed not a few of the Italian patriots of 1831. ]
A
MOST Wonderful steam-machine,
One time set up in China-land,
Outdid the insatiate guillotine,
For in three hours, you understand,
It cut off a hundred thousand heads
In a row, like hospital beds.
## p. 6358 (#332) ###########################################
6358
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
This innovation stirred a breeze,
And some of the bonzes even thought
Their barbarous country by degrees
To civilization might be brought,
Leaving Europeans, with their schools,
Looking like fools.
The Emperor was an honest man
A little stiff, and dull of pate;
Like other asses, hard and slow.
He loved his subjects and the State,
And patronized all clever men
Within his ken.
His people did not like to pay
Their taxes and their other dues,-
They cheated the revenue, sad to say:
So their good ruler thought he'd choose
As the best argument he'd seen,
This sweet machine.
The thing's achievements were so great,
They gained a pension for the man,-
The executioner of State,-
Who got a patent for his plan,
Besides becoming a Mandarin
Of great Pekin.
―――――――
A courtier cried: "Good guillotine!
Let's up and christen it, I say! "
"Ah, why," cries to his counselor keen
A Nero of our present day,
"Why was not born within my State
A man so great? ”
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. '
## p. 6358 (#333) ###########################################
## p. 6358 (#334) ###########################################
MCKIN
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.
9
HER
## p. 6359 (#335) ###########################################
6359
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
(1809-)
N VIEW of his distinguished career, it is interesting to know
that it is a part of Mr. Gladstone's unresting ambition to
take a place among the literary men of the time, and to
guide the thoughts of his countrymen in literary as well as in politi-
cal, social, and economic subjects. Mr. Gladstone's preparation to
become a man of letters was extensive. Born in Liverpool December
29th, 1809, he was sent to Eton and afterwards to Oxford, where he
took the highest honors, and was the most remarkable graduate of
his generation. His fellow students carried away a vivid recollection
of his viva voce examination for his degree: the tall figure, the flash-
ing eye, the mobile countenance, in the midst of the crowd who
pressed to hear him, while the examiners plied him with questions
till, tested in some difficult point in theology, the candidate ex-
claimed, "Not yet, if you please! " and began to pour forth a fresh
store of learning and argument.
From the university Mr. Gladstone carried away two passions-
the one for Greek literature, especially Greek poetry, the other for
Christian theology. The Oxford that formed these tastes was in-
tensely conservative in politics, representing the aristocratic system
of English society and the exclusiveness of the Established Church,
whose creed was that of the fourth century. Ecclesiasticism is not
friendly to literature; but how far Oxford's most loyal son was
permeated by ecclesiasticism is a matter of opinion. Fortunately, per-
sonality is stronger than dogma, and ideas than literary form; and
Mr. Gladstone, than whom few men outside the profession of letters
have written more, is always sure of an intelligent hearing. His dis-
cussion of a subject seems to invest it with some of his own marvel-
ous vitality; and when he selects a book for review, he is said to
make the fortune of both publisher and author, if only the title be
used as a crotchet to hang his sermon on.
And this not merely because curiosity is excited concerning the
opinion of the greatest living Englishman (for notwithstanding his
political vacillations, his views on inward and higher subjects have
little changed since his Oxford days, and may easily be prognosti-
cated), but on account of the subtlety and fertility of his mind and
the adroitness of his argument. Plunging into the heart of the
## p. 6360 (#336) ###########################################
6360
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
subject, he is at the same time working round it, holding it up
for inspection in one light and then in another, reasoning from this
premise and that; while the string of elucidations and explanations
grows longer and longer, and the atmosphere of complexity thick-
ens. It was out of such an atmosphere that a barrister advised his
client, a bigamist, to get Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his
wives.
When Mr. Gladstone made his début as an author, he locked horns
with Macaulay in the characteristic paper 'Church and State' (1837).
He published his 'Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age' in 1858,
'Juventus Mundi' in 1869, Homeric Synchronism' in 1857. In 1879
most of his essays, political, social, economic, religious, and literary,
written between 1843 and 1879, were collected in seven volumes, and
appeared under the title of Gleanings of Past Years. He has pub-
lished a very great number of smaller writings not reprinted.
From that time to the present, neither his industry nor his energy
has abated; but he is probably at his best in the several remarkable
essays on Blanco White, Bishop Patterson, Tennyson, Leopardi, and
the position of the Church of England. The reader spoiled for the
Scotch quality of weight by the "light touch" which is the grace-
ful weapon of the age, wonders, when reading these essays, that Mr.
Gladstone has not more assiduously cultivated the instinct of style,—
sentence-making. Milton himself has not a higher conception of the
business of literature; and when discussing these congenial themes,
Mr. Gladstone's enthusiasm does not degenerate into vehemence, nor
does he descend from the high moral plane from which he views the
world.
It is the province of the specialist to appraise Mr. Gladstone's
Homeric writings; but even the specialist will not, perhaps, forbear
to quote the axiom of the pugilist in the Iliad concerning the fate of
him who would be skillful in all arts. No man is less a Greek in
temperament, but no man cherishes deeper admiration for the Greek
genius, and nowhere else is a more vivid picture of the life and poli-
tics of the heroic age held up to the unlearned. While the critic
may question technical accuracy, or plausible structures built on
insufficient data, the laity will remember how earnestly Mr. Gladstone
insists that Homer is his own best interpreter, and that the student
of the Iliad must go to the Greek text and not elsewhere for accurate
knowledge.
But Greek literature is only one of Mr. Gladstone's two passions,
and not the paramount one. That he would have been a great theo-
logian had he been other than Mr. Gladstone, is generally admitted.
And it is interesting to note that while he glories in the combats of
the heroes of Hellas, his enthusiasm is as quickly kindled by the
## p. 6361 (#337) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6361
humilities of the early Church. He recognizes the prophetic quality
of Homer, but he bows before the sublimer genius of an Isaiah, and
sees in the lives and writings of the early Fathers the perfect bloom
of human genius and character.
MACAULAY
From Gleanings of Past Years'
L
ORD MACAULAY lived a life of no more than fifty-nine years
and three months. But it was an extraordinarily full life,
of sustained exertion; a high table-land, without depressions.
If in its outer aspect there be anything wearisome, it is only the
wearisomeness of reiterated splendors, and of success so uniform
as to be almost monotonous. He speaks of himself as idle; but
his idleness was more active, and carried with it hour by hour a
greater expenditure of brain power, than what most men regard
as their serious employments. He might well have been, in his
mental career, the spoiled child of fortune; for all he tried suc-
ceeded, all he touched turned into gems and gold. In a happy
childhood he evinced extreme precocity. His academical career
gave sufficient, though not redundant, promise of after celebrity.
The new Golden Age he imparted to the Edinburgh Review, and
his first and most important, if not best, Parliamentary speeches
in the grand crisis of the first Reform Bill, achieved for him,
years before he had reached the middle point of life, what may
justly be termed an immense distinction.
For a century and more, perhaps no man in this country,
with the exceptions of Mr. Pitt and of Lord Byron, had attained
at thirty-two the fame of Macaulay. His Parliamentary success
and his literary eminence were each of them enough, as they
stood at this date, to intoxicate any brain and heart of a meaner
order. But to these was added, in his case, an amount and
quality of social attentions such as invariably partake of adula-
tion and idolatry, and as perhaps the high circles of London.
never before or since have lavished on a man whose claims lay
only in himself, and not in his descent, his rank, or his posses-
sions.
One of the very first things that must strike the observer of
this man is, that he was very unlike to any other man. And
yet this unlikeness, this monopoly of the model in which he
was made, did not spring from violent or eccentric features of
## p. 6362 (#338) ###########################################
6362
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
originality, for eccentricity he had none whatever, but from the
peculiar mode in which the ingredients were put together to
make up the composition. In one sense, beyond doubt, such
powers as his famous memory, his rare power of illustration, his
command of language, separated him broadly from others: but
gifts like these do not make the man; and we now for the first
time know that he possessed, in a far larger sense, the stamp of
a real and strong individuality. The most splendid and complete
assemblage of intellectual endowments does not of itself suffice
to create an interest of the kind that is, and will be, now felt in
Macaulay. It is from ethical gifts alone that such an interest
can spring.
These existed in him not only in abundance, but in forms
distant from and even contrasted with the fashion of his intel-
lectual faculties, and in conjunctions which come near to paradox.
Behind the mask of splendor lay a singular simplicity; behind a
literary severity which sometimes approached to vengeance, an
extreme tenderness; behind a rigid repudiation of the senti-
mental, a sensibility at all times quick, and in the latest times.
almost threatening to sap, though never sapping, his manhood.
He who as speaker and writer seemed above all others to repre-
sent the age and the world, had the real centre of his being in
the simplest domestic tastes and joys. He for whom the mys-
teries of human life, thought, and destiny appear to have neither
charm nor terror, and whose writings seem audibly to boast in
every page of being bounded by the visible horizon of the practi-
cal and work-day sphere, yet in his virtues and in the combination
of them; in his freshness, bounty, bravery; in his unshrinking
devotion both to causes and to persons; and most of all, per-
haps, in the thoroughly inborn and spontaneous character of all
these gifts, really recalls the age of chivalry and the lineaments
of the ideal. The peculiarity, the differentia (so to speak) of
Macaulay seems to us to lie in this: that while as we frankly
think, there is much to question-nay, much here and there to
regret or even censure-in his writings, the excess, or defect, or
whatever it may be, is never really ethical, but is in all cases
due to something in the structure and habits of his intellect.
And again, it is pretty plain that the faults of that intellect were.
immediately associated with its excellences: it was in some sense,
to use the language of his own Milton, "dark with excessive
bright. "
•
-
## p. 6363 (#339) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6363
His moderation in luxuries and pleasures is the more notable
and praiseworthy because he was a man who, with extreme
healthiness of faculty, enjoyed keenly what he enjoyed at all.
Take in proof the following hearty notice of a dinner a quattr'
occhi to his friend: "Ellis came to dinner at seven. I gave him
a lobster curry, woodcock, and macaroni.
I think that I will
note dinners, as honest Pepys did. "
His love of books was intense, and was curiously developed.
In a walk he would devour a play or a volume. Once, indeed,
his performance embraced no less than fourteen Books of the
Odyssey. "His way of life," says Mr. Trevelyan, "would have
been deemed solitary by others; but it was not solitary to him. "
This development blossomed into a peculiar specialism. Hender-
son's Iceland' was a favorite breakfast-book" with him. "Some
books which I would never dream of opening at dinner please
me at breakfast, and vice versa! " There is more subtlety in this
distinction than could easily be found in any passage of his writ-
ings. But how quietly both meals are handed over to the domin-
ion of the master propensity! This devotion, however, was not
without its drawbacks. Thought, apart from books and from
composition, perhaps he disliked; certainly he eschewed.
Cross-
ing that evil-minded sea the Irish Channel at night in rough
weather, he is disabled from reading; he wraps himself in a pea-
jacket and sits upon the deck. What is his employment? He
cannot sleep, or does not. What an opportunity for moving
onward in the processes of thought, which ought to weigh on the
historian! The wild yet soothing music of the waves would have
helped him to watch the verging this way or that of the judicial
scales, or to dive into the problems of human life and action
which history continually is called upon to sound. No, he cared
for none of this. He set about the marvelous feat of going
over 'Paradise Lost' from memory, when he found he could
still repeat half of it. In a word, he was always conversing, or
recollecting, or reading, or composing; but reflecting never.
The laboriousness of Macaulay as an author demands our
gratitude; all the more because his natural speech was in sen-
tences of set and ordered structure, well-nigh ready for the press.
It is delightful to find that the most successful prose writer
of the day was also the most painstaking. Here is indeed a liter-
ary conscience. The very same gratification may be expressed
with reference to our most successful poet, Mr. Tennyson.
## p. 6364 (#340) ###########################################
6364
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
Great is the praise due to the poet; still greater, from the
nature of the case, that share which falls to the lot of Macaulay.
For a poet's diligence is, all along, a honeyed work. He is ever
traveling in flowery meads. Macaulay, on the other hand, un-
shrinkingly went through an immense mass of inquiry, which even
he sometimes felt to be irksome, and which to most men would
have been intolerable. He was perpetually picking the grain of
corn out of the bushel of chaff. He freely chose to undergo the
dust and heat and strain of battle, before he would challenge from
the public the crown of victory. And in every way it was
remarkable that he should maintain his lofty standard of concep-
tion and performance. Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous,
commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writ-
ers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest
exceptions. The tests of excellence in prose are as much less
palpable as the public appetite is less fastidious. Moreover, we
are moving downward in this respect. The proportion of mid-
dling to good writing constantly and rapidly increases. With the
average of performance, the standard of judgment progressively
declines. The inexorable conscientiousness of Macaulay, his deter-
mination to put out nothing from his hand which his hand was
still capable of improving, was a perfect godsend to the best
hopes of our slipshod generation.
It was naturally consequent upon this habit of treating com-
position in the spirit of art, that he should extend to the body
of his books much of the regard and care which he so profusely
bestowed upon their soul. We have accordingly had in him, at
the time when the need was greatest, a most vigilant guardian
of the language. We seem to detect rare and slight evidences
of carelessness in his Journal: of which we can only say that in
a production of the moment, written for himself alone, we are
surprised that they are not more numerous and considerable. In
general society, carelessness of usage is almost universal, and it is
exceedingly difficult for an individual, however vigilant, to avoid
catching some of the trashy or faulty usages which are contin-
ually in his ear. But in his published works his grammar, his
orthography, nay, his punctuation (too often surrendered to the
printer), are faultless. On these questions, and on the lawful-
ness or unlawfulness of a word, he may even be called an author-
ity without appeal; and we cannot doubt that we owe it to
his works, and to their boundless circulation, that we have not in
0
## p. 6365 (#341) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6365
this age witnessed a more rapid corruption and degeneration of
the language.
To the literary success of Macaulay it would be difficult to
find a parallel in the history of recent authorship. For this and
probably for all future centuries, we are to regard the public as
the patron of literary men; and as a patron abler than any that
went before to heap both fame and fortune on its favorites. Set-
ting aside works of which the primary purpose was entertain-
ment, Tennyson alone among the writers of our age, in point of
public favor and of emolument following upon it, comes near to
Macaulay. But Tennyson was laboriously cultivating his gifts
for many years before he acquired a position in the eye of the
nation. Macaulay, fresh from college in 1825, astonished the
world by his brilliant and most imposing essay on Milton. Full-
orbed, he was seen above the horizon; and full-orbed after thirty-
five years of constantly emitted splendor, he sank beneath it.
His gains from literature were extraordinary. The check for
£20,000 is known to all. But his accumulation was reduced by
his bounty; and his profits would, it is evident, have been far
larger still had he dealt with the products of his mind on the
principles of economic science (which however he heartily pro-
fessed), and sold his wares in the dearest market, as he undoubt-
edly acquired them in the cheapest. No one can measure the
elevation of Macaulay's character above the mercenary level,
without bearing in mind that for ten years after 1825 he was a
poor and
contented man, though ministering to the wants of a
father and a family reduced in circumstances; though in the
blaze of literary and political success; and though he must have
been conscious from the first of the possession of a gift which
by a less congenial and more compulsory use would have rapidly
led him to opulence. Yet of the comforts and advantages, both
social and physical, from which he thus forbore, it is so plain.
that he at all times formed no misanthropic or ascetic, but on
the contrary a very liberal and genial estimate. It is truly touch-
ing to find that never, except as a minister, until 1851, when he
had already lived fifty years of his fifty-nine, did this favorite of
fortune, this idol of society, allow himself the luxury of a car-
riage.
It has been observed that neither in art nor letters did Mac-
aulay display that faculty of the higher criticism which depends
upon certain refined perceptions and the power of subtle analysis.
## p. 6366 (#342) ###########################################
6366
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
His analysis was always rough, hasty, and sweeping, and his
perceptions robust. By these properties it was that he was so
eminently popriкóç, not in the vulgar sense of an appeal to spuri-
ous sentiment, but as one bearing his reader along by violence,
as the River Scamander tried to bear Achilles. Yet he was
never pretentious; and he said frankly of himself that a criticism.
like that of Lessing in his 'Laocoön,' or of Goethe on 'Hamlet,'
filled him with wonder and despair. His intense devotion to the
great work of Dante is not perhaps in keeping with the general
tenor of his tastes and attachments, but is in itself a circum-
stance of much interest.
We remember however at least one observation of Macaulay's
in regard to art, which is worth preserving. He observed that
the mixture of gold with ivory in great works of ancient art-
for example, in the Jupiter of Phidias-was probably a conde-
scension to the tastes of the people who were to be the worship-
ers of the statue; and he noticed that in Christian times it has
most rarely happened that productions great in art have also
been the objects of warm popular veneration.
It has been felt and pointed out in many quarters that Mac-
aulay as a writer was the child, and became the type, of his
country and his age. As fifty years ago the inscription "Bath"
used to be carried on our letter-paper, so the word "English" is,
as it were, in the water-mark of every leaf of Macaulay's writ-
ing. His country was not the Empire, nor was it the United
Kingdom. It was not even Great Britain. Though he was
descended in the higher, that is the paternal, half from Scottish
ancestry, and was linked specially with that country through the
signal virtues, the victorious labors, and the considerable reputa-
tion of his father Zachary,- his country was England. On this
little spot he concentrated a force of admiration and of worship
which might have covered all the world. But as in space, so in
time, it was limited. It was the England of his own age.
The weary bishop, feeling faint,
Replied, "I do not say it ain't,
But Time! ' my Christian friend! »
"We now proceed to something new:
Dance as the Paynes and Lauris do,
Like this one, two-one, two-one, two. "
The bishop, never proud,
But in an overwhelming heat
(His name was Peter, I repeat)
Performed the Payne and Lauri feat,
And puffed his thanks aloud.
-
Another game the dancer planned:
"Just take your ankle in your hand,
And try, my lord, if you can stand
Your body stiff and stark.
If when revisiting your see
You learnt to hop on shore, like me,
The novelty would striking be.
And must attract remark. "
## p. 6341 (#315) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6341
"No," said the worthy bishop, "no;
That is a length to which, I trow,
Colonial bishops cannot go.
You may express surprise
At finding bishops deal in pride-
But if that trick I ever tried,
I should appear undignified
In Rum-ti-Foozle's eyes.
"The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo
Are well-conducted persons, who
Approve a joke as much as you,
And laugh at it as such;
But if they saw their bishop land,
His leg supported in his hand,
The joke they wouldn't understand
'Twould pain them very much! "
GENTLE ALICE BROWN
I'
T WAS a robber's daughter, and her name was Alice Brown;
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing:
But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you! »
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen;
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten;
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode).
But Alice was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.
"O holy father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not,
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot?
Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one! "
The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone and done? »
## p. 6342 (#316) ###########################################
6342
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
1
·
"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,
I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad,
I've planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck! "
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear,
And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear:
It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.
"Girls will be girls- you're very young, and flighty in your mind;
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find;
We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks-
Let's see five crimes at half-a-crown- exactly twelve-and-six. "
―――
"O father," little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep,
You do these little things for me so singularly cheap;
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;
But oh! there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!
"A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,
I've noticed at my window, as I've sat a-catching flies;
He passes by it every day as certain as can be-
I blush to say I've winked at him and he has winked at me! "
"For shame! " said Father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word,
This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!
"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!
They are the most remunerative customers I know;
For many, many years they've kept starvation from my doors:
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!
"The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood
Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good;
And if you marry any one respectable at all,
Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul? "
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,
And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown-
To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.
Good Robber Brown he muffled up his anger pretty well;
He said, "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell:
## p. 6343 (#317) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6343
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.
"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two:
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do-
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small. "
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;
He watched his opportunity, and seized him unaware;
He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,
And Mrs. Brown dissected him before she went to bed.
And pretty little Alice grew more settled in her mind;
She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind;
Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her pretty hand
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS
SING a legend of the sea,
So hard-a-port upon your lee!
A ship on starboard tack!
I
She's bound upon a private cruise —
(This is the kind of spice I use
To give a salt-sea smack).
Behold, on every afternoon
(Save in a gale or strong monsoon)
Great Captain Capel Cleggs
(Great morally, though rather short)
Sat at an open weather-port
And aired his shapely legs.
And mermaids hung around in flocks,
On cable chains and distant rocks,
To gaze upon those limbs;
For legs like those, of flesh and bone,
Are things "not generally known"
To any merman timbs.
But mermen didn't seem to care
Much time (as far as I'm aware)
With Cleggs's legs to spend;
Though mermaids swam around all day
And gazed, exclaiming, "That's the way
A gentleman should end!
## p. 6344 (#318) ###########################################
6344
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
"A pair of legs with well-cut knees,
And calves and ankles such as these
Which we in rapture hail,
Are far more eloquent, it's clear
(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),
Than any nasty tail. "
And Cleggs a worthy, kind old boy-
Rejoiced to add to others' joy,
And when the day was dry,
Because it pleased the lookers-on,
He sat from morn till night-though con-
Stitutionally shy.
At first the mermen laughed, "Pooh! pooh! "
But finally they jealous grew,
And sounded loud recalls;
But vainly. So these fishy males
Declared they too would clothe their tails
In silken hose and smalls.
They set to work, these watermen,
And made their nether robes - but when
They drew with dainty touch
The kerseymere upon their tails,
They found it scraped against their scales,
And hurt them very much.
The silk, besides, with which they chose
To deck their tails by way of hose
(They never thought of shoon)
For such a use was much too thin,-
It tore against the caudal fin,
And went in ladders » soon.
So they designed another plan:
They sent their most seductive man,
This note to him to show:
"Our Monarch sends to Captain Cleggs
His humble compliments, and begs
He'll join him down below;
"We've pleasant homes below the sea
Besides, if Captain Cleggs should be
(As our advices say)
————---
1
H
## p. 6345 (#319) ###########################################
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
6345
A judge of mermaids, he will find
Our lady fish of every kind
Inspection will repay. "
Good Capel sent a kind reply,
For Capel thought he could descry
An admirable plan
To study all their ways and laws-
(But not their lady fish, because
He was a married man).
The merman sank-the captain too
Jumped overboard, and dropped from view
Like stone from catapult;
And when he reached the merman's lair,
He certainly was welcomed there,
But ah! with what result!
They didn't let him learn their law,
Or make a note of what he saw,
Or interesting mem. ;
The lady fish he couldn't find,
But that, of course, he didn't mind
He didn't come for them.
For though when Captain Capel sank,
The mermen drawn in double rank
Gave him a hearty hail,
Yet when secure of Captain Cleggs,
They cut off both his lovely legs,
And gave him such a tail!
—
When Captain Cleggs returned aboard,
His blithesome crew convulsive roar'd,
To see him altered so.
The admiralty did insist
That he upon the half-pay list
Immediately should go.
In vain declared the poor old salt,
"It's my misfortune not my fault,"
With tear and trembling lip-
In vain poor Capel begged and begged.
"A man must be completely legged
Who rules a British ship. "
―
-
## p. 6346 (#320) ###########################################
I
I
•
·
6346
WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
So spake the stern First Lord aloud,-
He was a wag, though very proud,
And much rejoiced to say,
"You're only half a captain now
And so, my worthy friend, I vow
You'll only get half-pay! ",
All the above selections are made from 'Fifty Bab Ballads. '
-
## p. 6347 (#321) ###########################################
6347
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
(1844-)
ICHARD WATSON GILDER is the son of a clergyman, the Rev.
William H. Gilder, who published two literary reviews in
Philadelphia. He was born in Bordentown, New Jersey,
February 8th, 1844, and with such ancestry and home influence came
easily to journalism and literary work. He got his schooling in the
Bellevue Seminary, which was founded by his father. As with so
many young Americans of the time, the war came to interrupt his
studies; and in 1863 he served in the "Emergency Corps," in the
defense of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mr. Gil-
der is one of the American writers who
have successfully combined journalism and
literature. He began by doing newspaper
work, and then by a natural transition be-
came in 1869 editor of Hours at Home, and
shortly thereafter associate editor of Scrib-
ner's Magazine with Dr. J. G. Holland.
This representative monthly was changed
in name to The Century, and upon the
death of Dr. Holland in 1881 Mr. Gilder
became its editor-in-chief. His influence in
this conspicuous position has been whole-
some and helpful in the encouraging of lit-
erature, and in the discussion of current
questions of importance through a popular medium which reaches great
numbers of the American people. The Century under his direction
has been receptive to young writers and artists of ability, and many
since known to fame made their maiden appearance in its pages.
In addition to his influence on the literary movement, Mr. Gilder
has been active in philanthropic and political work. He has secured
legislation for the improvement of tenements in cities; he has taken
interest in the formation of public kindergartens; and given of his
time and strength to further other reforms. His influence in New
York City, too, has been a factor in developing the social aspects of
literary and art life there. From Dickinson College he has received
the degree of LL. D. , and from Princeton that of L. H. D.
Mr. Gilder's reputation as a writer is based upon his verse.
Only very occasionally does he publish an essay, though thoughtful,
strongly written editorials from his pen in his magazine are frequent.
RICHARD W. GILDER
## p. 6348 (#322) ###########################################
6348
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
But it is his verse-writing that has given him his place- a distinct
and honorable one-in American letters. The fine quality and prom-
ise of his work was recognized upon the publication of 'The New
Day in 1875, a first volume which was warmly received. It showed
the influence of Italian studies, and contained lyric work of much
imaginative beauty. The musicalness of it and the delicately ideal
treatment of the love passion were noticeable characteristics. In his
subsequent books-The Celestial Passion,' 1887; Lyrics,' 1885 and
1887; Two Worlds, and Other Poems,' 1891; 'The Great Remem-
brance, and Other Poems,' 1893: the contents of these being gathered
finally into the one volume 'Five Books of Song,' 1894 - he has given
further proof of his genuine lyric gift, his work in later years having
a wider range of themes, a broadening vision and deepening purpose.
He remains nevertheless essentially a lyrist, a maker of songs; a thor-
ough artist who has seriousness, dignity, and charm. His is an ear-
nest nature, sensitive alike to vital contemporaneous problems and to
the honey-sweet voice of the Ideal.
[All the following citations from Mr. Gilder's poems are copyrighted, and
are reprinted here by special permission of the author and his publishers. ]
TWO SONGS FROM THE NEW DAY'
I
NOT
OT from the whole wide world I chose thee,
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee-
For thou art the whole wide world to me.
II
YEARS have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.
"ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET»
OSE-DARK the solemn sunset
R
That holds my thought of thee;
With one star in the heavens
And one star in the sea.
On high no lamp is lighted,
Nor where the long waves flow.
## p. 6349 (#323) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6349
Save the one star of evening
And the shadow star below.
Light of my life, the darkness
Comes with the twilight dream;
Thou art the bright star shining,
And I but the shadowy gleam.
NON SINE DOLORE
HAT, then, is Life,- what Death?
Thus the Answerer saith;
WHA
O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:
Down o'er the vibrant strings,
That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.
A voiceless pause: then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with unimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,
While, shaken with woe,
With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,
On, on the ceaseless music sings,
Restless, intense, serene;
Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.
—
Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss
That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death
Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!
If, having soared pure spirit at the last,
Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh
Ah! who would care to die
From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;
These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?
## p. 6350 (#324) ###########################################
6350
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
Again the Answerer saith:
O ye of little faith,
Shall then the spirit prove craven,
And Death's divine deliverance but give
A summer rest and haven?
By all most noble in us, by the light that streams
Into our waking dreams,
Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!
Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?
Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;
But Life, still Life, that leads to higher Life,
Even though the highest be not free from immortal strife.
The highest! Soul of man, oh be thou bold,
And to the brink of thought draw near, behold!
Where, on the earth's green sod,
Where, where in all the universe of God,
Hath strife forever ceased?
When hath not some great orb flashed into space
The terror of its doom? When hath no human face
Turned earthward in despair,
For that some horrid sin had stamped its image there?
If at our passing Life be Life increased,
And we ourselves flame pure unfettered soul,
Like the Eternal Power that made the whole
And lives in all he made
From shore of matter to the unknown spirit shore;
If, sire to son, and tree to limb,
Cycle on countless cycle more and more
We grow to be like him;
If he lives on, serene and unafraid,
Through all his light, his love, his living thought,
One with the sufferer, be it soul or star;
If he escape not pain, what beings that are
Can e'er escape while Life leads on and up the unseen way and far?
If he escape not, by whom all was wrought,
Then shall not we,
Whate'er of godlike solace still may be,-
For in all worlds there is no Life without a pang, and can be naught.
-
No Life without a pang! It were not Life,
If ended were the strife-
Man were not man, nor God were truly God!
See from the sod
## p. 6351 (#325) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6351
The lark thrill skyward in an arrow of song:
Even so from pain and wrong
Upsprings the exultant spirit, wild and free.
He knows not all the joy of liberty
Who never yet was crushed 'neath heavy woe.
He doth not know,
Nor can, the bliss of being brave
Who never hath faced death, nor with unquailing eye
Hath measured his own grave.
Courage, and pity, and divinest scorn-
Self-scorn, self-pity, and high courage of the soul;
The passion for the goal;
The strength to never yield though all be lost-
All these are born
Of endless strife; this is the eternal cost
Of every lovely thought that through the portal
Of human minds doth pass with following light.
Blanch not, O trembling mortal!
But with extreme and terrible delight
Know thou the truth,
Nor let thy heart be heavy with false ruth.
No passing burden is our earthly sorrow,
That shall depart in some mysterious morrow.
'Tis His one universe where'er we are
One changeless law from sun to viewless star.
Were sorrow evil here, evil it were forever,
—
Beyond the scope and help of our most keen endeavor
God doth not dote,
His everlasting purpose shall not fail.
Here where our ears are weary with the wail
And weeping of the sufferers; there where the Pleiads float-
Here, there, forever, pain most dread and dire
Doth bring the intensest bliss, the dearest and most sure.
'Tis not from Life aside, it doth endure
Deep in the secret heart of all existence.
It is the inward fire,
The heavenly urge, and the divine insistence.
Uplift thine eyes, O Questioner, from the sod!
It were no longer Life,
If ended were the strife;
Man were not man, God were not truly God.
## p. 6352 (#326) ###########################################
6352
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
·
·
"HOW PADEREWSKI PLAYS»
I
I'
F SONGS were perfume, color, wild desire;
If poets' words were fire
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins;
If with a bird-like thrill the moments throbbed to hours;
If summer's rains
Turned drop by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers;
If God made flowers with light and music in them,
And saddened hearts could win them;
If loosened petals touched the ground
With a caressing sound;
If love's eyes uttered word
No listening lover e'er before had heard;
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle's voice;
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice! Rejoice! "
If words could picture life's, hope's, heaven's eclipse
When the last kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips;
If all of mortal woe
Struck on one heart with breathless blow on blow;
If melody were tears, and tears were starry gleams
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams;
Ah yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue,
Trembling to earth in dew;
Or if the boreal pulsings, rose and white,
Made a majestic music in the night;
If all the orbs lost in the light of day
In the deep, silent blue began their harps to play;
And when in frightening skies the lightnings flashed
And storm-clouds crashed,
If every stroke of light and sound were but excess of beauty;
If human syllables could e'er refashion
That fierce electric passion;
If other art could match (as were the poet's duty)
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder
Of that keen hour of wonder,—
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell,—
How Paderewski plays then might I dare to tell.
II
How Paderewski plays! And was it he
Or some disbodied spirit which had rushed
From silence into singing; and had crushed
## p. 6353 (#327) ###########################################
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6353
Into one startled hour a life's felicity,
And highest bliss of knowledge-that all life, grief, wrong,
Turn at the last to beauty and to song!
WHA
HAT is a sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell
THE SONNET
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song-ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is- - beware who ventureth!
—
For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.
AMERICA
From The Great Remembrance>
L
AND that we love! Thou Future of the World!
Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed!
Oh, never be thy shining image hurled
From its high place in the adoring breast
Of him who worships thee with jealous love!
Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove
All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined!
Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind,
And to despair of thee were to despair
Of man, of man's high destiny, of God!
Of thee should man despair, the journey trod
Upward, through unknown eons, stair on stair,
By this our race, with bleeding feet and slow,
Were but the pathway to a darker woe
Than yet was visioned by the heavy heart
Of prophet. To despair of thee! Ah no!
For thou thyself art Hope; Hope of the World thou art!
XI-398
## p. 6354 (#328) ###########################################
6354
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THIS
HIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day-
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength-his pure and mighty heart.
—
"CALL ME NOT DEAD »
CA
ALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the ever-living
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say:-"He at last hath won
Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces;
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.
To-morrow (who can say ? ) Shakespeare may pass,
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;
Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass
Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still
To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill. "
AFTER-SONG
From The New Day'
TH
HROUGH love to light! Oh, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
:
## p. 6355 (#329) ###########################################
6355
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
(1809-1850)
IUSEPPE GIUSTI, an Italian satirical poet, was born of an influ-
ential family, May 12th, 1809, in the little village of Mon-
summano, which lies between Pistoja and Pescia, and was
in every fibre of his nature a Tuscan. As a child he imbibed the
healthful, sunny atmosphere of that Campagna, and grew up loving
the world and his comrades, but with a dislike of study which con-
vinced himself and his friends that he was born to no purpose.
He
was early destined to the bar, and began his law studies in Pistoja
and Lucca, completing them a number of
years later at Pisa, where he obtained his
degree of doctor.
In 1834 he went to Florence, under pre-
tence of practicing with the advocate Ca-
poquadri; but here as elsewhere he spent
his time in the world of gayety, whose fas-
cination and whose absurdity he seems to
have felt with equal keenness.
His dislike
of study found its exception in his love of
Dante, of whom he was a reverent student.
He was himself continually versifying, and
his early romantic lyrics are inspired by
lofty thought. His penetrating humor, how-
ever, and his instinctive sarcasm, whose
expression was never unkind, led him soon to abandon idealism and
to distinguish himself in the field of satire, which has no purer rep-
resentative than he. His compositions are short and terse, and are
seldom blemished by personalities. He was wont to say that absurd
persons did not merit even the fame of infamy. He leveled his wit
against the lethargy and immoralities of the times, and revealed them
clear-cut in the light of his own stern principles and patriotism.
The admiration and confidence which he now began to receive
from the public was to him a matter almost of consternation, wont
as he was to consider himself a good-for-nothing. He confesses
somewhat bashfully however that there was always within him,
half afraid of itself, an instinct of power which led him to say in
his heart, Who knows what I may be with time? His frail constitu-
tion and almost incessant physical suffering account for a natural
indolence against which he constantly inveighs, but above which he
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
## p. 6356 (#330) ###########################################
6356
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
was powerless to rise except at vehement intervals. No careless-
ness, however, marks his work. He was a tireless reviser, and pos-
sessed the rare power of cutting, polishing, and finishing his work
with exquisite nicety, without robbing it of vigor. His writings ex-
erted a distinct political and moral influence. His is not alone the
voice of pitiless and mocking irony, but it is that of the humanita-
rian, who in overthrow and destruction sees only the first step toward
the creation of something better. When war broke out he laid aside
his pen, saying that this was no time for a poet to pull down, and
that hi was not the power to build up. His health forbade his
entering the army, which was a cause of poignant sorrow to him.
His faith in Italy and her people and in the final triumph of unity
remained unshaken and sublime in the midst of every reverse.
His mastery of the Tuscan dialect and his elegance of idiom won
him membership in the Accademia della Crusca; but his love for
Tuscany was always subservient to his love for Italy. To those who
favored the division of the peninsula, he used to reply that he had
but one fatherland, and that was
a unit. He died in Florence,
March 31, 1850, at the home of his devoted friend the Marquis Gino
Capponi. In the teeth of Austrian prohibition, a throng of grateful
and loving citizens followed his body to the church of San Miniato
al Monte, remembering that at a time when freedom of thought
was deemed treason, this man had fearlessly raised the battle-cry
and prepared the way for the insurrection of 1848. Besides his satires,
Giusti has left us a life of the poet Giuseppe Parini, a collection of
Tuscan proverbs, and an unedited essay on the 'Divine Comedy. '
CRY
LULLABY
From Gingillino
>
[The poem of Gingillino, one of Giusti's finest satires, is full of personal
hits, greatly enjoyed by the author's countrymen. The Lullaby is sung by
a number of personified Vices round the cradle of the infant Gingillino, who,
having come into the world naked and possessed of nothing, is admonished
how to behave if he would go out of it well dressed and rich. A few verses
only are given out of the many. The whole poem was one of the most pop-
ular of all Giusti's satires. ]
RY not, dear baby,
Of nothing possessed;
But if thou wouldst, dear,
Expire well dressed
Let nothing vex thee,-
Love's silly story,
·
## p. 6357 (#331) ###########################################
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
6357
Ghosts of grand festivals
Spectres of glory;
Let naught annoy thee:
The burdens of fame,
The manifold perils
That wait on a name.
Content thyself, baby,
With learning to read:
Don't be vainglorious;
That's all thou canst need.
All promptings of genius
Confine in thy breast,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Let not God nor Devil
Concern thy poor wits,
And tell no more truth
Than politeness permits.
With thy soul and thy body,
Still worship the Real;
Nor ever attempt
To pursue the Ideal.
As for thy scruples,
Let them be suppressed,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE STEAM-GUILLOTINE
[The monarch satirized in this poem was Francesco IV. , Duke of Modena,
a petty Nero, who executed not a few of the Italian patriots of 1831. ]
A
MOST Wonderful steam-machine,
One time set up in China-land,
Outdid the insatiate guillotine,
For in three hours, you understand,
It cut off a hundred thousand heads
In a row, like hospital beds.
## p. 6358 (#332) ###########################################
6358
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
This innovation stirred a breeze,
And some of the bonzes even thought
Their barbarous country by degrees
To civilization might be brought,
Leaving Europeans, with their schools,
Looking like fools.
The Emperor was an honest man
A little stiff, and dull of pate;
Like other asses, hard and slow.
He loved his subjects and the State,
And patronized all clever men
Within his ken.
His people did not like to pay
Their taxes and their other dues,-
They cheated the revenue, sad to say:
So their good ruler thought he'd choose
As the best argument he'd seen,
This sweet machine.
The thing's achievements were so great,
They gained a pension for the man,-
The executioner of State,-
Who got a patent for his plan,
Besides becoming a Mandarin
Of great Pekin.
―――――――
A courtier cried: "Good guillotine!
Let's up and christen it, I say! "
"Ah, why," cries to his counselor keen
A Nero of our present day,
"Why was not born within my State
A man so great? ”
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. '
## p. 6358 (#333) ###########################################
## p. 6358 (#334) ###########################################
MCKIN
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.
9
HER
## p. 6359 (#335) ###########################################
6359
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
(1809-)
N VIEW of his distinguished career, it is interesting to know
that it is a part of Mr. Gladstone's unresting ambition to
take a place among the literary men of the time, and to
guide the thoughts of his countrymen in literary as well as in politi-
cal, social, and economic subjects. Mr. Gladstone's preparation to
become a man of letters was extensive. Born in Liverpool December
29th, 1809, he was sent to Eton and afterwards to Oxford, where he
took the highest honors, and was the most remarkable graduate of
his generation. His fellow students carried away a vivid recollection
of his viva voce examination for his degree: the tall figure, the flash-
ing eye, the mobile countenance, in the midst of the crowd who
pressed to hear him, while the examiners plied him with questions
till, tested in some difficult point in theology, the candidate ex-
claimed, "Not yet, if you please! " and began to pour forth a fresh
store of learning and argument.
From the university Mr. Gladstone carried away two passions-
the one for Greek literature, especially Greek poetry, the other for
Christian theology. The Oxford that formed these tastes was in-
tensely conservative in politics, representing the aristocratic system
of English society and the exclusiveness of the Established Church,
whose creed was that of the fourth century. Ecclesiasticism is not
friendly to literature; but how far Oxford's most loyal son was
permeated by ecclesiasticism is a matter of opinion. Fortunately, per-
sonality is stronger than dogma, and ideas than literary form; and
Mr. Gladstone, than whom few men outside the profession of letters
have written more, is always sure of an intelligent hearing. His dis-
cussion of a subject seems to invest it with some of his own marvel-
ous vitality; and when he selects a book for review, he is said to
make the fortune of both publisher and author, if only the title be
used as a crotchet to hang his sermon on.
And this not merely because curiosity is excited concerning the
opinion of the greatest living Englishman (for notwithstanding his
political vacillations, his views on inward and higher subjects have
little changed since his Oxford days, and may easily be prognosti-
cated), but on account of the subtlety and fertility of his mind and
the adroitness of his argument. Plunging into the heart of the
## p. 6360 (#336) ###########################################
6360
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
subject, he is at the same time working round it, holding it up
for inspection in one light and then in another, reasoning from this
premise and that; while the string of elucidations and explanations
grows longer and longer, and the atmosphere of complexity thick-
ens. It was out of such an atmosphere that a barrister advised his
client, a bigamist, to get Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his
wives.
When Mr. Gladstone made his début as an author, he locked horns
with Macaulay in the characteristic paper 'Church and State' (1837).
He published his 'Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age' in 1858,
'Juventus Mundi' in 1869, Homeric Synchronism' in 1857. In 1879
most of his essays, political, social, economic, religious, and literary,
written between 1843 and 1879, were collected in seven volumes, and
appeared under the title of Gleanings of Past Years. He has pub-
lished a very great number of smaller writings not reprinted.
From that time to the present, neither his industry nor his energy
has abated; but he is probably at his best in the several remarkable
essays on Blanco White, Bishop Patterson, Tennyson, Leopardi, and
the position of the Church of England. The reader spoiled for the
Scotch quality of weight by the "light touch" which is the grace-
ful weapon of the age, wonders, when reading these essays, that Mr.
Gladstone has not more assiduously cultivated the instinct of style,—
sentence-making. Milton himself has not a higher conception of the
business of literature; and when discussing these congenial themes,
Mr. Gladstone's enthusiasm does not degenerate into vehemence, nor
does he descend from the high moral plane from which he views the
world.
It is the province of the specialist to appraise Mr. Gladstone's
Homeric writings; but even the specialist will not, perhaps, forbear
to quote the axiom of the pugilist in the Iliad concerning the fate of
him who would be skillful in all arts. No man is less a Greek in
temperament, but no man cherishes deeper admiration for the Greek
genius, and nowhere else is a more vivid picture of the life and poli-
tics of the heroic age held up to the unlearned. While the critic
may question technical accuracy, or plausible structures built on
insufficient data, the laity will remember how earnestly Mr. Gladstone
insists that Homer is his own best interpreter, and that the student
of the Iliad must go to the Greek text and not elsewhere for accurate
knowledge.
But Greek literature is only one of Mr. Gladstone's two passions,
and not the paramount one. That he would have been a great theo-
logian had he been other than Mr. Gladstone, is generally admitted.
And it is interesting to note that while he glories in the combats of
the heroes of Hellas, his enthusiasm is as quickly kindled by the
## p. 6361 (#337) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6361
humilities of the early Church. He recognizes the prophetic quality
of Homer, but he bows before the sublimer genius of an Isaiah, and
sees in the lives and writings of the early Fathers the perfect bloom
of human genius and character.
MACAULAY
From Gleanings of Past Years'
L
ORD MACAULAY lived a life of no more than fifty-nine years
and three months. But it was an extraordinarily full life,
of sustained exertion; a high table-land, without depressions.
If in its outer aspect there be anything wearisome, it is only the
wearisomeness of reiterated splendors, and of success so uniform
as to be almost monotonous. He speaks of himself as idle; but
his idleness was more active, and carried with it hour by hour a
greater expenditure of brain power, than what most men regard
as their serious employments. He might well have been, in his
mental career, the spoiled child of fortune; for all he tried suc-
ceeded, all he touched turned into gems and gold. In a happy
childhood he evinced extreme precocity. His academical career
gave sufficient, though not redundant, promise of after celebrity.
The new Golden Age he imparted to the Edinburgh Review, and
his first and most important, if not best, Parliamentary speeches
in the grand crisis of the first Reform Bill, achieved for him,
years before he had reached the middle point of life, what may
justly be termed an immense distinction.
For a century and more, perhaps no man in this country,
with the exceptions of Mr. Pitt and of Lord Byron, had attained
at thirty-two the fame of Macaulay. His Parliamentary success
and his literary eminence were each of them enough, as they
stood at this date, to intoxicate any brain and heart of a meaner
order. But to these was added, in his case, an amount and
quality of social attentions such as invariably partake of adula-
tion and idolatry, and as perhaps the high circles of London.
never before or since have lavished on a man whose claims lay
only in himself, and not in his descent, his rank, or his posses-
sions.
One of the very first things that must strike the observer of
this man is, that he was very unlike to any other man. And
yet this unlikeness, this monopoly of the model in which he
was made, did not spring from violent or eccentric features of
## p. 6362 (#338) ###########################################
6362
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
originality, for eccentricity he had none whatever, but from the
peculiar mode in which the ingredients were put together to
make up the composition. In one sense, beyond doubt, such
powers as his famous memory, his rare power of illustration, his
command of language, separated him broadly from others: but
gifts like these do not make the man; and we now for the first
time know that he possessed, in a far larger sense, the stamp of
a real and strong individuality. The most splendid and complete
assemblage of intellectual endowments does not of itself suffice
to create an interest of the kind that is, and will be, now felt in
Macaulay. It is from ethical gifts alone that such an interest
can spring.
These existed in him not only in abundance, but in forms
distant from and even contrasted with the fashion of his intel-
lectual faculties, and in conjunctions which come near to paradox.
Behind the mask of splendor lay a singular simplicity; behind a
literary severity which sometimes approached to vengeance, an
extreme tenderness; behind a rigid repudiation of the senti-
mental, a sensibility at all times quick, and in the latest times.
almost threatening to sap, though never sapping, his manhood.
He who as speaker and writer seemed above all others to repre-
sent the age and the world, had the real centre of his being in
the simplest domestic tastes and joys. He for whom the mys-
teries of human life, thought, and destiny appear to have neither
charm nor terror, and whose writings seem audibly to boast in
every page of being bounded by the visible horizon of the practi-
cal and work-day sphere, yet in his virtues and in the combination
of them; in his freshness, bounty, bravery; in his unshrinking
devotion both to causes and to persons; and most of all, per-
haps, in the thoroughly inborn and spontaneous character of all
these gifts, really recalls the age of chivalry and the lineaments
of the ideal. The peculiarity, the differentia (so to speak) of
Macaulay seems to us to lie in this: that while as we frankly
think, there is much to question-nay, much here and there to
regret or even censure-in his writings, the excess, or defect, or
whatever it may be, is never really ethical, but is in all cases
due to something in the structure and habits of his intellect.
And again, it is pretty plain that the faults of that intellect were.
immediately associated with its excellences: it was in some sense,
to use the language of his own Milton, "dark with excessive
bright. "
•
-
## p. 6363 (#339) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6363
His moderation in luxuries and pleasures is the more notable
and praiseworthy because he was a man who, with extreme
healthiness of faculty, enjoyed keenly what he enjoyed at all.
Take in proof the following hearty notice of a dinner a quattr'
occhi to his friend: "Ellis came to dinner at seven. I gave him
a lobster curry, woodcock, and macaroni.
I think that I will
note dinners, as honest Pepys did. "
His love of books was intense, and was curiously developed.
In a walk he would devour a play or a volume. Once, indeed,
his performance embraced no less than fourteen Books of the
Odyssey. "His way of life," says Mr. Trevelyan, "would have
been deemed solitary by others; but it was not solitary to him. "
This development blossomed into a peculiar specialism. Hender-
son's Iceland' was a favorite breakfast-book" with him. "Some
books which I would never dream of opening at dinner please
me at breakfast, and vice versa! " There is more subtlety in this
distinction than could easily be found in any passage of his writ-
ings. But how quietly both meals are handed over to the domin-
ion of the master propensity! This devotion, however, was not
without its drawbacks. Thought, apart from books and from
composition, perhaps he disliked; certainly he eschewed.
Cross-
ing that evil-minded sea the Irish Channel at night in rough
weather, he is disabled from reading; he wraps himself in a pea-
jacket and sits upon the deck. What is his employment? He
cannot sleep, or does not. What an opportunity for moving
onward in the processes of thought, which ought to weigh on the
historian! The wild yet soothing music of the waves would have
helped him to watch the verging this way or that of the judicial
scales, or to dive into the problems of human life and action
which history continually is called upon to sound. No, he cared
for none of this. He set about the marvelous feat of going
over 'Paradise Lost' from memory, when he found he could
still repeat half of it. In a word, he was always conversing, or
recollecting, or reading, or composing; but reflecting never.
The laboriousness of Macaulay as an author demands our
gratitude; all the more because his natural speech was in sen-
tences of set and ordered structure, well-nigh ready for the press.
It is delightful to find that the most successful prose writer
of the day was also the most painstaking. Here is indeed a liter-
ary conscience. The very same gratification may be expressed
with reference to our most successful poet, Mr. Tennyson.
## p. 6364 (#340) ###########################################
6364
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
Great is the praise due to the poet; still greater, from the
nature of the case, that share which falls to the lot of Macaulay.
For a poet's diligence is, all along, a honeyed work. He is ever
traveling in flowery meads. Macaulay, on the other hand, un-
shrinkingly went through an immense mass of inquiry, which even
he sometimes felt to be irksome, and which to most men would
have been intolerable. He was perpetually picking the grain of
corn out of the bushel of chaff. He freely chose to undergo the
dust and heat and strain of battle, before he would challenge from
the public the crown of victory. And in every way it was
remarkable that he should maintain his lofty standard of concep-
tion and performance. Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous,
commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writ-
ers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest
exceptions. The tests of excellence in prose are as much less
palpable as the public appetite is less fastidious. Moreover, we
are moving downward in this respect. The proportion of mid-
dling to good writing constantly and rapidly increases. With the
average of performance, the standard of judgment progressively
declines. The inexorable conscientiousness of Macaulay, his deter-
mination to put out nothing from his hand which his hand was
still capable of improving, was a perfect godsend to the best
hopes of our slipshod generation.
It was naturally consequent upon this habit of treating com-
position in the spirit of art, that he should extend to the body
of his books much of the regard and care which he so profusely
bestowed upon their soul. We have accordingly had in him, at
the time when the need was greatest, a most vigilant guardian
of the language. We seem to detect rare and slight evidences
of carelessness in his Journal: of which we can only say that in
a production of the moment, written for himself alone, we are
surprised that they are not more numerous and considerable. In
general society, carelessness of usage is almost universal, and it is
exceedingly difficult for an individual, however vigilant, to avoid
catching some of the trashy or faulty usages which are contin-
ually in his ear. But in his published works his grammar, his
orthography, nay, his punctuation (too often surrendered to the
printer), are faultless. On these questions, and on the lawful-
ness or unlawfulness of a word, he may even be called an author-
ity without appeal; and we cannot doubt that we owe it to
his works, and to their boundless circulation, that we have not in
0
## p. 6365 (#341) ###########################################
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6365
this age witnessed a more rapid corruption and degeneration of
the language.
To the literary success of Macaulay it would be difficult to
find a parallel in the history of recent authorship. For this and
probably for all future centuries, we are to regard the public as
the patron of literary men; and as a patron abler than any that
went before to heap both fame and fortune on its favorites. Set-
ting aside works of which the primary purpose was entertain-
ment, Tennyson alone among the writers of our age, in point of
public favor and of emolument following upon it, comes near to
Macaulay. But Tennyson was laboriously cultivating his gifts
for many years before he acquired a position in the eye of the
nation. Macaulay, fresh from college in 1825, astonished the
world by his brilliant and most imposing essay on Milton. Full-
orbed, he was seen above the horizon; and full-orbed after thirty-
five years of constantly emitted splendor, he sank beneath it.
His gains from literature were extraordinary. The check for
£20,000 is known to all. But his accumulation was reduced by
his bounty; and his profits would, it is evident, have been far
larger still had he dealt with the products of his mind on the
principles of economic science (which however he heartily pro-
fessed), and sold his wares in the dearest market, as he undoubt-
edly acquired them in the cheapest. No one can measure the
elevation of Macaulay's character above the mercenary level,
without bearing in mind that for ten years after 1825 he was a
poor and
contented man, though ministering to the wants of a
father and a family reduced in circumstances; though in the
blaze of literary and political success; and though he must have
been conscious from the first of the possession of a gift which
by a less congenial and more compulsory use would have rapidly
led him to opulence. Yet of the comforts and advantages, both
social and physical, from which he thus forbore, it is so plain.
that he at all times formed no misanthropic or ascetic, but on
the contrary a very liberal and genial estimate. It is truly touch-
ing to find that never, except as a minister, until 1851, when he
had already lived fifty years of his fifty-nine, did this favorite of
fortune, this idol of society, allow himself the luxury of a car-
riage.
It has been observed that neither in art nor letters did Mac-
aulay display that faculty of the higher criticism which depends
upon certain refined perceptions and the power of subtle analysis.
## p. 6366 (#342) ###########################################
6366
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
His analysis was always rough, hasty, and sweeping, and his
perceptions robust. By these properties it was that he was so
eminently popriкóç, not in the vulgar sense of an appeal to spuri-
ous sentiment, but as one bearing his reader along by violence,
as the River Scamander tried to bear Achilles. Yet he was
never pretentious; and he said frankly of himself that a criticism.
like that of Lessing in his 'Laocoön,' or of Goethe on 'Hamlet,'
filled him with wonder and despair. His intense devotion to the
great work of Dante is not perhaps in keeping with the general
tenor of his tastes and attachments, but is in itself a circum-
stance of much interest.
We remember however at least one observation of Macaulay's
in regard to art, which is worth preserving. He observed that
the mixture of gold with ivory in great works of ancient art-
for example, in the Jupiter of Phidias-was probably a conde-
scension to the tastes of the people who were to be the worship-
ers of the statue; and he noticed that in Christian times it has
most rarely happened that productions great in art have also
been the objects of warm popular veneration.
It has been felt and pointed out in many quarters that Mac-
aulay as a writer was the child, and became the type, of his
country and his age. As fifty years ago the inscription "Bath"
used to be carried on our letter-paper, so the word "English" is,
as it were, in the water-mark of every leaf of Macaulay's writ-
ing. His country was not the Empire, nor was it the United
Kingdom. It was not even Great Britain. Though he was
descended in the higher, that is the paternal, half from Scottish
ancestry, and was linked specially with that country through the
signal virtues, the victorious labors, and the considerable reputa-
tion of his father Zachary,- his country was England. On this
little spot he concentrated a force of admiration and of worship
which might have covered all the world. But as in space, so in
time, it was limited. It was the England of his own age.
