No More Learning

It appears to me, too, that Socrates did talk on natural philoso-
phy. In fact, Xenophon says so, though he states that Socrates.
held discourse only upon moral questions. Plato indeed, in the
'Apology,' mentioning Anaxagoras and other natural philosophers,
himself says of them things whereof Socrates denies any knowl-
edge; yet it is all ascribed to Socrates.
Aristotle states that a certain mage from Syria came to
Athens, and among other prophecies concerning Socrates foretold
that his death would be a violent one.
The following verses upon him are our own:
Drink, in the palace of Zeus, O Socrates, seeing that truly
Thou by a god wert called wise, who is wisdom itself.
Foolish Athenians, who to thee offered the potion of hemlock,
Through thy lips themselves draining the cup to the dregs!
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William
C. Lawton.
EXAMPLES OF GREEK WIT AND WISDOM
BIAS
The ves-
ON
NCE he was on a voyage with some impious men.
sel was overtaken by a storm, and they began to call upon
the gods for aid. But Bias said, "Be silent, so they may
not discover that you are aboard our ship! "
He declared it was pleasanter to decide a dispute between his
enemies than between friends. "For of two friends," he ex-
plained, "one is sure to become my enemy; but of two enemies
I make one friend. "
PLATO
IT is said Socrates, in a dream, seemed to be holding on his
knees a cygnet, which suddenly grew wings and flew aloft, sing-
ing sweetly. Next day Plato came to him; and Socrates said he
was the bird.
It is told that Plato, once seeing a man playing at dice,
reproved him. "The stake is but a trifle," said the other. "Yes,
but," responded Plato, "the habit is no trifle. "
Once when Xenocrates came into Plato's house, the latter
bade him scourge his slave for him, explaining that he could not


## p. 4721 (#515) ###########################################

DIOGENES LAERTIUS
4721
do it himself, because he was angry. Again, he said to one
of his slaves, "You would have had a beating if I were not
angry.
>>
ARISTIPPUS
«<
DIONYSIUS Once asked him why it is that the philosophers are
seen at rich men's doors, not the rich men at the doors of the
sages. Aristippus replied, Because the wise realize what they
lack, but the rich do not. " On a repetition of the taunt on an-
other occasion he retorted, "Yes, and physicians are seen at sick
men's doors; yet none would choose to be the patient rather than
the leech! "
Once when overtaken by a storm on a voyage to Corinth, he
was badly frightened. Somebody said to him, "We ordinary folk
are not afraid, but you philosophers play the coward. " "Yes,"
was his reply, we are not risking the loss of any such wretched
life as yours.
<<
Some one reproached him for his extravagance in food. He
answered, "If you could buy these same things for threepence,
wouldn't you do it? "-"Oh yes. "Why then, 'tis not I who
am too fond of the luxurious food, but you that are over-fond of
your money! "
ARISTOTLE
WHEN asked, "What is Hope? " he answered, "The dream of
a man awake. " Asked what grows old quickest, he replied,
"Gratitude. " When told that some one had slandered him in
his absence, he said, "He may beat me too-in my absence! "
Being asked how much advantage the educated have over the
ignorant, he replied, "As much as the living over the dead. "
Some one asked him why we spend much time in the society
of the beautiful. "That," he said, "is a proper question for a
blind man! " [Cf. Emerson's 'Rhodora. ']
Once being asked how we should treat our friends, he said,
"As we would wish them to treat us. " Asked what a friend is,
he answered, "One soul abiding in two bodies. "
VIII-296


## p. 4722 (#516) ###########################################

4722
DIOGENES LAERTIUS
THEOPHRASTUS
To A man who at a feast was persistently silent, he remarked,
"If you are ignorant, you are acting wisely; if you are intelligent,
you are behaving foolishly. "
DEMETRIUS
IT WAS a saying of his that to friends in prosperity we should'
go when invited, but to those in misfortune unbidden.
When told that the Athenians had thrown down his statues,
he answered, "But not my character, for which they erected
them. "
ANTISTHENES
SOME one asked him what he gained from philosophy. He
replied, "The power to converse with myself. "
He advised the Athenians to pass a vote that asses were
horses. When they thought that irrational, he said, “But cer-
tainly, your generals are not such because they have learned any-
thing, but simply because you have elected them! "
DIOGENES
HE USED to say that when in the course of his life he saw
pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the most
sensible of animals; but when he saw interpreters of dreams, and
soothsayers, and those who paid attention to them, and those
puffed up by fame or wealth, he believed no creature was sillier
than man.
Some said to him, "You are an old man.
Take life easy
now. " He replied,
He replied, "And if I were running the long-distance
race, should I when nearing the goal slacken, and not rather
exert myself? "
When he saw a child drink out of his hands, he took the cup
out of his wallet and flung it away, saying, "A child has beaten
me in simplicity. "
He used to argue thus, "All things belong to the gods. The
wise are the friends of the gods. The goods of friends are com-
mon property. Therefore all things belong to the wise. "
To one who argued that motion was impossible, he made no
answer, but rose and walked away.


## p. 4723 (#517) ###########################################

DIOGENES LAERTIUS
4723
When the Athenians urged him to be initiated into the Mys-
teries, assuring him that in Hades those who were initiated have
the front seats, he replied, "It is ludicrous, if Agesilaus and
Epaminondas are to abide in the mud, and some ignoble wretches
who are initiated are to dwell in the Isles of the Blest! "
Plato made the definition "Man is a two-footed featherless
animal," and was much praised for it. Diogenes plucked a fowl
and brought it into his school, saying "This is Plato's man! "
So the addition was made to the definition, "with broad nails. "
When a man asked him what was the proper hour for lunch,
he said, "If you are rich, when you please; if you are poor,
when you can get it. "
He used often to shout aloud that an easy life had been given
by the gods to men, but they had covered it from sight in their
search for honey-cakes and perfumes and such things.
The musician who was always left alone by his hearers he
greeted with "Good morning, cock! " When the other asked
him the reason, he said, "Because your music starts everybody
up. ”
When an exceedingly superstitious man said to him, "With
one blow I will break your head! " he retorted, "And with a
sneeze at your left side I will make you tremble. "
«<
When asked what animal had the worst bite, he said, Of.
wild beasts, the sycophant; and of tame creatures, the flatterer. ”
Being asked when was the proper time to marry, he responded,
"For young men, not yet; and for old men, not at all. "
When he was asked what sort of wine he enjoyed drink-
ing, he answered, "Another man's. " [Of a different temper
was Dante, who knew too well "how salt the bread of others
tastes! "]
Some one advised him to hunt up his runaway slave. But
he replied, "It is ridiculous if Manes lives without Diogenes, but
Diogenes cannot without Manes. "
When asked why men give to beggars, but not to philoso-
phers, he said, "Because they expect themselves to become lame
and blind; but philosophers, never! "
CLEANTHES
WHEN a comic actor apologized for having ridiculed him from
the stage, he answered gently, "It would be preposterous, when


## p. 4724 (#518) ###########################################

DIOGENES LAERTIUS
4724
Bacchus and Hercules bear the raillery of the poets without
showing any anger, if I should be indignant when I chance to
be attacked. "
PYTHAGORAS
Precepts
Do NOT stir the fire with a sword.
Do not devour your heart.
Always have your bed packed up.
Do not walk in the main street.
Do not cherish birds with crooked talons.
Avoid a sharp sword.
When you travel abroad, look not back at your own borders.
[Diogenes explains this: be resigned to death. ]
Consider nothing exclusively your own.
Destroy no cultivated tree, or harmless animal.
Modesty and decorum consist in never yielding to laughter,
and yet not looking stern. [Cf. Emerson on Manners. ]
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William C.
Lawton.


## p. 4725 (#519) ###########################################

4725
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
(1766-1848)
MONG the writers whose education and whose tastes were the
outcome of the classicism of the eighteenth century, yet
whose literary life lapped over into the Victorian epoch,
was Isaac D'Israeli, born at Enfield in May 1766. D'Israeli was of
Jewish origin, his ancestors having fled from the Spanish persecu-
tions of the fifteenth century to find a home in Venice, whence a
younger branch migrated to England.
At the time of his birth his family had stood for generations among
the foremost English Jews, his father hav-
ing been made a citizen by special legisla-
tion. The boy, however, did not inherit
the commercial spirit which had established
his house. He was a lover of books and
a dreamer of dreams, and so early devel-
oped literary tendencies that his frightened
father sent him off to Amsterdam to school,
in the hope of curing proclivities so dan-
gerous. Here he became familiar with the
works of the Encyclopædists, and adopted
the theories of Rousseau. On returning to
England in his nineteenth year, he replied
to his father's proposition that he should
enter a commercial house at Bordeaux, by
a long poem in which he passionately inveighed against the commer-
cial spirit, and avowed himself a student of philosophy and letters.
His father's reluctant acquiescence was obtained at last through the
good offices of the laureate Pye, to whom the youth had already
dedicated his first book, 'A Defence of Poetry. '
At the outset of his career he found himself received with consid-
eration by the men whose acquaintance he most desired. Following
the fashion of the day, and inspired by the books of anecdotes so
successfully published by his friend Douce, D'Israeli in 1791 pro-
duced anonymously a small volume entitled 'Curiosities of Litera-
ture,' the copyright of which he magnanimously presented to his
publisher. The extraordinary success of this book can be accounted
for only by the curious taste of the time, which still reflected the
more unworthy traditions of the Addisonian era. It was an age of
clubs and tea-tables, of society scandal-mongering and fireside gossip;

ISAAC D'ISRAELI


## p. 4726 (#520) ###########################################

4726
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
and the reading public welcomed a contribution whose refined dilet-
tantism so well matched its own. The mysteries of Eleusis and the
origin of wigs received the same grave attention. This popularity
induced D'Israeli to buy back the copyright at a generous valuation;
he enlarged the work to five volumes, which passed through twelve
in his own lifetime, and still serves to illustrate a curious literary
phase.
Other compilations of similar nature met the same success: 'The
Calamities of Authors,' 'Quarrels of Authors,' and 'Literary Recol-
lections'; but the Amenities of Literature,' his last work, is the
most purely literary in form, and affords perhaps the best index to
D'Israeli's abilities as a writer. The reader of to-day, however, is
struck by the ephemeral nature of this criticism, which yet by a
curious literary experience is keeping a place among the permanent
productions of its age. The reader is everywhere impressed by the
human sympathy, by the wide if rather superficial knowledge, and
by innumerable felicities of expression and style, which betray the
cultivated mind. To lovers of the curious the books still appeal, and
they will continue to hold an honorable place among the bric-a-brac
of literature.
The spirit of curiosity which characterized the mind of D'Israeli
assumed its most dignified concrete form in the 'Commentaries on
the Reign of Charles I. ' D'Israeli had an artistic sense of the values
in a historical picture, with a keen perception of the importance of
side lights; and although the book is not a great contribution to the
literature of history, yet it became popular, and in July 1832 earned
for its author the degree of D. C. L. from Oxford.
D'Israeli's romances were tedious tales, but his hold upon the pub-
lic was secure, and the vast amount of miscellaneous matter which
he published always found a delighted audience. The Genius of
Judaism,' a philosophical inquiry into the historical significance of
the permanence of the Jewish race, showed the author's psychic limi-
tations. He designed a history of English literature, for which he
had gathered much material, but increasing blindness forced him to
abandon it. Much of D'Israeli's popularity was unquestionably due
to his qualities of heart. His nature was fine; he was an affectionate
and devoted friend, and held an enviable position in the literary cir-
cles of the day. Campbell, Byron, Rogers, and Scott alike admired
and loved him, while a host of lesser men eagerly sought his friend-
ship.
Although brought up in the Jewish faith, D'Israeli affiliated early
in life with the Church of England, in which his three sons and one
daughter were baptized. He died in 1848, and was buried at Bran-
denham. Twenty years later his daughter-in-law, the Countess of
Beaconsfield, erected at Hughenden a monument to his memory.


## p. 4727 (#521) ###########################################

ISAAC D'ISRAELI
4727
POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS MADE BY ACCIDENT
From Curiosities of Literature'
Α
CCIDENT has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses.
to display their powers. It was at Rome, says Gibbon, on
the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the
ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the
decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Father Malebranche, having completed his studies in philos-
ophy and theology without any other intention than devoting
himself to some religious order, little expected the celebrity his
works acquired for him. Loitering in an idle hour in the shop
of a bookseller, and turning over a parcel of books, 'L'Homme
de Descartes' fell into his hands. Having dipt into some parts,
he read with such delight that the palpitations of his heart com-
pelled him to lay the volume down. It was this circumstance
that produced those profound contemplations which made him the
Plato of his age.
Cowley became a poet by accident. In his mother's apart-
ment he found, when very young, Spenser's 'Fairy Queen,' and
by a continual study of poetry he became so enchanted of the
Muse that he grew irrecoverably a poet.
Dr. Johnson informs us that Sir Joshua Reynolds had the
first fondness of his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's
Treatise.
Vaucanson displayed an uncommon genius for mechanics.
His taste was first determined by an accident: when young, he
frequently attended his mother to the residence of her confessor;
and while she wept with repentance, he wept with weariness! In
this state of disagreeable vacation, says Helvetius, he was struck
with the uniform motion of the pendulum of the clock in the
hall. His curiosity was roused; he approached the clock-case,
and studied its mechanism; what he could not discover he
guessed at. He then projected a similar machine, and gradually
his genius produced a clock. Encouraged by this first success, he
proceeded in his various attempts; and the genius which thus
could form a clock, in time formed a fluting automaton.
If Shakespeare's imprudence had not obliged him to quit his
wool trade and his town; if he had not engaged with a company


## p. 4728 (#522) ###########################################

4728
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
of actors, and at length, disgusted with being an indifferent per-
former, he had not turned author, the prudent wool-seller had
never been the celebrated poet.
Accident determined the taste of Molière for the stage. His
grandfather loved the theatre, and frequently carried him there.
The young man lived in dissipation; the father, observing it,
asked in anger if his son was to be made an actor. "Would to
God," replied the grandfather, "he was as good an actor as
Montrose. " The words struck young Molière; he took a disgust
to his tapestry trade; and it is to this circumstance France owes
her greatest comic writer.
Corneille loved; he made verses for his mistress, became a
poet, composed Mélite,' and afterwards his other celebrated
works. The discreet Corneille had remained a lawyer.
Thus it is that the devotion of a mother, the death of Crom-
well, deer-stealing, the exclamation of an old man, and the
beauty of a woman, have given five illustrious characters to
Europe.
We owe the great . discovery of Newton to a very trivial acci-
dent. When a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the
time of the plague into the country. As he was reading under
an apple-tree, one of the fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow
on the head. When he observed the smallness of the apple, he
was surprised at the force of the stroke. This led him to con-
sider the accelerating motion of falling bodies; from whence he
deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the foundation of his
philosophy.
Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman who was danger-
ously wounded at the siege of Pampeluna. Having heated his
imagination by reading the Lives of the Saints, which were
brought to him in his illness instead of a romance, he conceived
a strong ambition to be the founder of a religious order; whence
originated the celebrated society of the Jesuits.
Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by the
advertisement of the singular annual subject which the Academy
of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated
Declamation against the arts and sciences; a circumstance which
determined his future literary efforts.
La Fontaine, at the age of twenty-two, had not taken any
profession or devoted himself to any pursuit. Having accidentally
heard some verses of Malherbe, he felt a sudden impulse, which


## p. 4729 (#523) ###########################################

ISAAC D'ISRAELI
4729
directed his future life. He immediately bought a Malherbe, and
was so exquisitely delighted with this poet that after passing the
nights in treasuring his verses in his memory, he would run in
the daytime to the woods, where, concealing himself, he would
recite his verses to the surrounding dryads.
Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken
from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book
'De Sphæra having been lent to him, he was so pleased with
it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies.
Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he
received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby's work on
birds; the same accident, of finding on the table of his professor
Reaumur's 'History of Insects,' of which he read more than
he attended to the lecture, and having been refused the loan,
gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet that he has-
tened to obtain a copy, but found many difficulties in procuring
this costly work. Its possession gave an unalterable direction to
his future life: this naturalist indeed lost the use of his sight by
his devotion to the microscope.
Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar
accident. "I found a work of Defoe's, entitled an Essay on
Projects,' from which perhaps I derived impressions that have
since influenced some of the principal events of my life. "
I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to
write his Schoolmaster,' one of the most curious and useful
treatises among our elder writers.
At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil during the plague in
1563, at his apartments at Windsor, where the Queen had taken
refuge, a number of ingenious men were invited. Secretary
Cecil communicated the news of the morning, that several schol-
ars at Eton had run away on account of their master's severity,
which he condemned as a great error in the education of youth.
Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe in his own
temper, he pleaded warmly in defense of hard flogging. Dr.
Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the Secretary. Sir John
Mason, adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded
the hard-hearted Sir William Petre, and adduced as an evidence
that the best schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flog-
ger. Then was it that Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed
that if such a master had an able scholar it was owing to the
boy's genius and not the preceptor's rod. Secretary Cecil and


## p. 4730 (#524) ###########################################

ISAAC D'ISRAELI
4730
others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir Richard Sack-
ville was silent; but when Ascham after dinner went to the
Queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him
aside, and frankly told him that though he had taken no part
in the debate he would not have been absent from that conversa-
tion for a great deal; that he knew to his cost the truth Ascham
had supported, for it was the perpetual flogging of such a
schoolmaster that had given him an unconquerable aversion to
study. And as he wished to remedy this defect in his own
children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his observations.
on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance which pro-
duced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.
THE MARTYRDOM OF CHARLES THE FIRST
From the Commentaries on the Reign of Charles the First'
AT
T WHITEHALL a repast had been prepared. The religious
emotions of Charles had consecrated the sacrament, which
he refused to mingle with human food. The Bishop, whose
mind was unequal to conceive the intrepid spirit of the King,
dreading lest the magnanimous monarch, overcome by the sever-
ity of the cold, might faint on the scaffold, prevailed on him to
eat half a manchet of bread and taste some claret. But the more
consolatory refreshment of Charles had been just imparted to
him in that singular testimony from his son, who had sent a carte
blanche to save the life of his father at any price. This was a
thought on which his affections could dwell in face of the scaf-
fold which he was now to ascend.
Charles had arrived at Whitehall about ten o'clock, and was
not led to the scaffold till past one. It was said that the scaffold
was not completed; it might have been more truly said that the
conspirators were not ready. There was a mystery in this delay.
The fate of Charles the First to the very last moment was in sus-
pense. Fairfax, though at the time in the palace, inquired of
Herbert how the King was, when the King was no more! and
expressed his astonishment on hearing that the execution had
just taken place. This extraordinary simplicity and abstraction
from the present scene of affairs has been imputed to the Gen-
eral as an act of refined dissimulation, yet this seems uncertain.
The Prince's carte blanche had been that morning confided to his


## p. 4731 (#525) ###########################################

ISAAC D'ISRAELI
4731
hands, and he surely must have laid it before the "Grandees of
the Army," as this new order of the rulers of England was
called. Fairfax, whose personal feelings respecting the King were
congenial with those his lady had so memorably evinced, labored
to defer for a few days the terrible catastrophe; not without the
hope of being able, by his own regiment and others in the army,
to prevent the deed altogether. It is probable-inexplicable as
it may seem to us-that the execution of Charles the First really
took place unknown to the General. Fairfax was not unaccus-
tomed to discover that his colleagues first acted, and afterwards
trusted to his own discernment.
Secret history has not revealed all that passed in those three
awful hours. We know, however, that the warrant for the exe-
cution was not signed till within a few minutes before the King
was led to the scaffold. In an apartment in the Palace, Ireton and
Harrison were in bed together, and Cromwell, with four colonels,
assembled in it. Colonel Huncks refused to sign the warrant.
Cromwell would have no further delay, reproaching the Colonel
as "a peevish, cowardly fellow," and Colonel Axtell declared that
he was ashamed for his friend Huncks, remonstrating with him,
that "the ship is coming into the harbor, and now would he
strike sail before we come to anchor? " Cromwell stepped to a
table, and wrote what he had proposed to Huncks; Colonel
Hacker, supplying his place, signed it, and with the ink hardly
dry, carried the warrant in his hand and called for the King.
At the fatal summons Charles rose with alacrity. The King
passed through the long gallery by a line of soldiers. Awe and
sorrow seem now to have mingled in their countenances. Their
barbarous commanders were intent on their own triumph, and
no farther required the forced cry of "Justice and Execution. "
Charles stepped out of an enlarged window of the Banqueting
House, where a new opening leveled it with the scaffold. Charles
came forward with the same indifference as "he would have
entered Whitehall on a masque night," as an intelligent observer
described. The King looked towards St. James's and smiled.
Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions; and the
Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps
their vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the
Monarch. These mean spirits had flattered themselves that he
who had been cradled in royalty, who had lived years in the
fields of honor, and was now, they presumed, a recreant in


## p. 4732 (#526) ###########################################

4732
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
imprisonment,-"the grand Delinquent of England,”—as they
called him, would start in horror at the block.
This last triumph at least was not reserved for them,—it was
for the King. Charles, dauntless, strode "the floor of Death," to
use Fuller's peculiar but expressive phraseology. He looked on
the block with the axe lying upon it, with attention; his only
anxiety was that the block seemed not sufficiently raised, and
that the edge of the axe might be turned by being swept by the
flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the feet of some moving about
the scaffold. "Take care they do not put me pain! - Take
heed of the axe! take heed of the axe! " exclaimed the King to
a gentleman passing by. "Hurt not the axe; that may hurt
me! " His continued anxiety concerning these circumstances
proves that he felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to
avoid the pain, for he had an idea of their cruelty. With that
sedate thoughtfulness which was in all his actions, he only looked
at the business of the hour. One circumstance Charles observed
with a smile. They had a notion that the King would resist the
executioner; on the suggestion of Hugh Peters, it is said, they
had driven iron staples and ropes into the scaffold, that their
victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon the block.
The King's speech has many remarkable points, but certainly
nothing so remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This
was the first "King's Speech" spoken from a scaffold. Time
shall confirm, as history has demonstrated, his principle that
"They mistook the nature of government; for people are free
under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by the due
administration of the laws. " "It was for this," said Charles,
"that now I am come here. If I could have given way to an
arbitrary sway, for to have all laws changed according to the
power of the sword, I need not have come here; and therefore
I tell you that I am the Martyr of the People! »


## p. 4733 (#527) ###########################################

4733
SYDNEY DOBELL
(1824-1874)
YDNEY DOBELL, the son of a wine merchant, was born at Cran-
brook in Kent. His parents, both persons of strong indi-
viduality, believed in home training, and not one of their
eight children went either to school or to university. They belonged
to the Broad Church Community founded by Sydney's maternal grand-
father, Samuel Thompson; a church intended to recall in its princi-
ples the primitive Christian ages. The parents looked upon Sydney,
their eldest-born, as destined to become the apostle of this creed.
He grew up in a kind of religious fervor, with his precocious mind
unnaturally stimulated; a course of conduct which materially weak-
ened his constitution, and made him a chronic invalid at the early
age of thirty-three. He read whatever books came to hand, many of
them far beyond his years. At the age of eight he filled his diary
with theological discussions.
Entering his father's counting-house as a mere lad, he remained to
the end of his life a business man of great energy. Notwithstand-
ing his rare poetic endowments, he never seems to have entertained
a single-minded purpose to be a poet and nothing more. On the con-
trary, he thought the ideal and the practical life perfectly compati-
ble, and he strove to unite in himself the poet and the man of affairs.
He wrote habitually until 1856, when regular literary work was for-
bidden by his physicians. With characteristic energy he now turned
his thoughts into other channels; identified himself with the affairs
of Gloucester, where he was living, looked after his business, and
was one of the first to adopt the system of industrial co-operation.
The last four years of his life, a period of suffering and helpless-
ness, he spent at Barton-End House, above the Stroud valley, where
he died in the spring of 1874.
In the work of Dobell it is curious to find so few traces of the
influences under which he grew up. He had every encouragement to
become a writer of religious poetry: yet much of his work is philo-
sophic and recondite. His delicate health is in a measure responsible
for his failure to achieve the success which his natural endowments
promised. All his literary work was done between the ages of
twenty-three and thirty-three. The Roman,' his first long poem,
appeared in 1850. Dedicated to the Italian struggle for liberty, it
showed his breadth of sympathy.
of sympathy. In 'Balder,' finished in 1853,


## p. 4734 (#528) ###########################################

SYDNEY DOBELL
4734
Dobell is at his best both as thinker and as poet. Yet its many fine
passages, its wealth of metaphor, and the exquisite songs of Amy,
hardly counterbalance the remoteness of its theme, and its over-
subtle analysis of morbid psychic states. It is a poem to be read
in fragments, and has aptly been called a mine for poets.
With Alexander Smith he published in 1855 a series of sonnets
inspired by the Crimean War. This was followed in 1856 by 'Eng-
land in War Time,' a collection of Dobell's lyrical and descriptive
poems, which possess more general human interest than any other of
his books.
After continuous work was interdicted, he still contributed verse
and prose to the periodicals. His essays have been collected by Pro-
fessor Nichol, under the title Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and
Religion. As a poet Dobell belongs to the so-called "spasmodic
school," a school "characterized by an undercurrent of discontent
with the mystery of existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle,
skeptical unrest, and an uneasy striving after some incomprehensible
end. . . . Poetry of this kind is marked by an excess of metaphor
which darkens rather than illustrates, and by a general extravagance
of language. On the other hand, it manifests freshness and original-
ity, and a rich natural beauty. " Dobell's descriptions of scenery are
among the finest in English literature. His senses were abnormally
acute, like those of a savage, a condition which intensified his appre-
ciation of natural beauty. Possessing a vivid imagination and wide
sympathies, he was often over-subtle and obscure. He strove to real-
ize in himself his ideal of a poet, and during his years of ill-health
gave himself up to promoting the welfare of his fellow-men; but of
his seventeen years of inactivity he says:-"The keen perception of
all that should be done, and that so bitterly cries for doing, accom-
panies the consciousness of all that I might but cannot do. ”
EPIGRAM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES
[ATURE, a jealous mistress, laid him low.
Ν NATE
He wooed and won her; and, by love made bold,
She showed him more than mortal man should know -
Then slew him lest her secret should be told.


## p. 4735 (#529) ###########################################

SYDNEY DOBELL
HOW'S MY BOY?
་
"Ho
O, SAILOR of the sea!
How's my boy - my boy? "
"What's your boy's name, good wife,
And in what good ship sailed he? "
"My boy John -
He that went to sea--
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy's my boy to me.
"You come back from the sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have asked some landsman,
Yonder down in the town.
There's not an ass in all the parish
But knows my John.
"How's my boy-my boy?
And unless you let me know,
I'll swear you are no sailor,
Blue jacket or no-
Brass buttons or no, sailor,
Anchor and crown or no-
"Sure, his ship was the Jolly Briton
"Speak low, woman, speak low! "
"And why should I speak low, sailor,
About my own boy John?
If I was loud as I am proud
I'd sing him over the town!
Why should I speak low, sailor? ”—
"That good ship went down. "
>>
"How's my boy-my boy?
What care I for the ship, sailor?
I was never aboard her.
Be she afloat or be she aground,
Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound
Her owners can afford her!
I say, how's my John? "-
"Every man on board went down,
Every man aboard her. "
-
4735


## p. 4736 (#530) ###########################################

4736
SYDNEY DOBELL
"How's my boy-my boy?
What care I for the men, sailor?
I'm not their mother.
How's my boy-my boy?
Tell me of him and no other!
How's my boy-my boy? "
THE SAILOR'S RETURN
THIS
HIS morn I lay a-dreaming,
This morn, this merry morn;
When the cock crew shrill from over the hill,
I heard a bugle horn.
And through the dream I was dreaming,
There sighed the sigh of the sea,
And through the dream I was dreaming,
This voice came singing to me:
"High over the breakers,
Low under the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow,
And the lash of the rolling sea!
"Boat, boat, to the billow,
Boat, boat, to the lee!
Love, on thy pillow,
Art thou dreaming of me?
«Billow, billow, breaking,
Land us low on the lee!
For sleeping or waking,
Sweet love, I am coming to thee!
"High, high, o'er the breakers,
Low, low, on the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow
That brings me back to thee! "


## p. 4737 (#531) ###########################################

SYDNEY DOBELL
AFLOAT AND ASHORE
"T
UMBLE and rumble, and grumble and snort,
Like a whale to starboard, a whale to port;
Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort,
And the steamer steams thro' the sea, love! "
"I see the ship on the sea, love;
I stand alone
On this rock;
VIII-297
The sea does not shock
The stone;
The waters around it are swirled,
But under my feet
I feel it go down
To where the hemispheres meet
At the adamant heart of the world.
Oh that the rock would move!
Oh that the rock would roll
To meet thee over the sea, love!
Surely my mighty love
Should fill it like a soul,
And it should bear me to thee, love;
Like a ship on the sea, love,
Bear me, bear me, to thee, love! "
"Guns are thundering, seas are sundering, crowds are wondering,
Low on our lee, love.
Over and over the cannon-clouds cover brother and lover, but over
and over
The whirl-wheels trundle the sea, love;
And on through the loud pealing pomp of her cloud
The great ship is going to thee, love,
Blind to her mark, like a world through the dark,
Thundering, sundering, to the crowds wondering,
Thundering over to thee, love. "
"I have come down to thee coming to me, love;
I stand, I stand
On the solid sand;
I see thee coming to me, love;
The sea runs up to me on the sand:
I start 'tis as if thou hadst stretched thine hand
4737
And touched me through the sea, love.
I feel as if I must die,
For there's something longs to fly,
Fly and fly, to thee, love.


## p. 4738 (#532) ###########################################

4738
SYDNEY DOBELL
As the blood of the flower ere she blows
Is beating up to the sun,
And her roots do hold her down,
And it blushes and breaks undone
In a rose,
So my blood is beating in me, love!
I see thee nigh and nigher;
And my soul leaps up like sudden fire,
My life's in the air
To meet thee there,
To meet thee coming to me, love!
Over the sea,
Coming to me,
Coming, and coming to me, love! "
"The boats are lowered: I leap in first,
Pull, boys, pull! or my heart will burst!
More! more! -lend me an oar! -
I'm thro' the breakers! I'm on the shore!
I see thee waiting for me, love! "
"A sudden storm
Of sighs and tears,
A clenching arm,
A look of years.
In my bosom a thousand cries,
A flash like light before my eyes,
And I am lost in thee, love! "
THE SOUL
From Balder
Α
ND as the mounting and descending bark,
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it,- so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tossed,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and, still wet with drops of death,
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum.


## p. 4739 (#533) ###########################################

SYDNEY DOBELL
TH
ENGLAND
From Balder>
HIS dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell: but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes,
Forever calm, the unforgotten dead
In quiet grave-yards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Through unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues through all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!
4739
AMERICA
NOR
OR force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye
Who north or south, or east or western land,
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God
For God; O ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand
Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand
Heroic utterance - parted, yet a whole,
Far, yet unsevered,- children brave and free
Of the great Mother tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare's soul,
Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme,
And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream.


## p. 4740 (#534) ###########################################

4740
SYDNEY DOBELL
AMY'S SONG OF THE WILLOW
From Balder>
THE
HE years they come, and the years they go,
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Down by the stream there be two sweet willows,
-
- Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-
One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
--
She is blighted, the fair young willow;
- Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-
She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark;
She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough,
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
The stream runs sparkling under the willow,
-Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-
The summer rose-leaves drop in the stream;
The winter oak-leaves drop in the stream;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her,
-Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-
The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster;
Because she touched it her tears fall faster.
Over the stream her tears fall faster,
All in the sunshine or the rain.
The years they come, and the years they go;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow,
The goodly green willow, the green waving willow.
Sweet in the willow, the wind-whispering willow;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the sun, and the dew, and the rain.


## p. 4741 (#535) ###########################################

4741
AUSTIN DOBSON
(1840-)
BY ESTHER SINGLETON
T FIRST thought it seems difficult to consider Austin Dobson
as belonging to the Victorian period, so entirely is he sat-
urated with the spirit of the eighteenth century. A careful
study of his verse reveals the fact that the Georgian era, seen
through the vista of his poetic imagination, is divested of all that is
coarse, dark, gross, and prosaic. The mental atmosphere and the
types and characters that he gives, express only beauty and charm.
One approaches the poems of Austin Dob-
son as one stands before a rare collection
of enamels, fan-mounts, jeweled snuff-boxes,
and delicate carvings in ivory and silver; and
after delighting in the beauty and finish of
these graceful curios, passes into a gallery of
paintings and water-colors, suggesting Wat-
teau, Fragonard, Boucher, Meissonier, and
Greuze. We also wander among trim box-
hedges and quaint gardens of roses and bright
hollyhocks; lean by sun-dials to watch the
shadow of Time; and enjoy the sight of gay
belles, patched and powdered and dressed in
brocaded gowns and gypsy hats. Gallant AUSTIN DOBSON
beaux, such as are associated with Reynolds's
portraits, appear, and hand them into sedan-chairs or lead them
through stately minuets to the notes of Rameau, Couperin, and Arne.
Just as the scent of rose-leaves, lavender, and musk rises from
antique Chinese jars, so Dobson's delicate verse reconstructs a life

"Of fashion gone, and half-forgotten ways. "
He is equally at home in France. Nothing could be more sym-
pathetic and exquisite than A Revolutionary Relic,' 'The Curé's
Progress,' 'Une Marquise,' and the Proverbs in Porcelain,' one of
which is cited below.
In the 'Vers de Société,' as well as his other poetry, Dobson
fulfills all the requirements of light verse- charm, mockery, pathos,
banter, and, while apparently skimming the surface, often shows us


## p. 4742 (#536) ###########################################

AUSTIN DOBSON
4742
the strange depths of the human heart. He blends so many qualities
that he deserves the praise of T. B. Aldrich, who says, « Austin
Dobson has the grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is
easily master of both in metrical art. "
Henry Austin Dobson, the son of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, a
civil engineer, was born in Plymouth, England, January 18th 1840.
His early years were spent in Anglesea, and after receiving his edu-
cation in Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, he returned to England.
to become a civil engineer. In 1856 he entered the civil service of
Great Britain, and ever since that date he has held offices in the
Board of Trade. His leisure was devoted to literature, and when
Anthony Trollope first issued his magazine St. Paul's in 1868, he
introduced to the public the verse of Austin Dobson. In 1873 his
fugitive poems were published in a small volume entitled 'Vignettes
in Rhyme' and 'Vers de Société. ' This was followed in 1877 by
'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books, with additional poems, were
printed again in two volumes: 'Old World Idylls' (1883), and 'At the
Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's original essays are contained
in three volumes: Four Frenchwomen,' studies of Charlotte Corday,
Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe, and Madame de Genlis
(1890), and Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first series 1892, second
series 1894), which touch upon a host of picturesque and fascinating
themes. He has written also several biographies: of Hogarth, of
Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith (1888), and a 'Memoir of
Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written felicitous critical intro-
ductions to many new editions of the eighteenth-century classics.
Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into
the old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roun-
dels, and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical
fables, cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint
obsolete affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne.
So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience,
that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be
realized:-
IN AFTER days, when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question nor reply.
I shall not see the morning sky,
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must,
In after days.


## p. 4743 (#537) ###########################################

AUSTIN DOBSON
4743
But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying- He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust.