Laurence
only suppose that?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 to v20 - Phi to Qui
To the eye of true
taste, an Aquinas in his cell before a crucifix, or a Narcissus
gazing at himself in a still fountain, are — in their own ways,
you know - equally beautiful. ”
(
>
## p. 9633 (#41) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9633
«Well, really,” said Miss Merton, “I can not fancy St. Thomas
being a very taking object to people who don't believe in him
either as a saint or a philosopher. I always think that except
from a Christian point of view, a saint can be hardly better de-
scribed than by Newman's lines, as-
(A bundle of bones, whose breath
Infects the world before his death. ) »*
"I remember the lines well,” said Mr. Rose calmly, “and the
writer you mention puts them in the mouth of a yelping devil.
But devils, as far as I know, are not generally — except perhaps
Milton's - conspicuous for taste; indeed, if we may trust Goethe,
the very touch of a flower is torture to them. ”
“Dante's biggest devil,” cried Mr. Saunders, to everyone's
amazement, "chewed Judas Iscariot like a quid of tobacco, to all
eternity. He, at any rate, knew what he liked. ”
Mr. Rose started, and visited Mr. Saunders with a rapid
frown. He then proceeded, turning again to Miss Merton as if
nothing had happened.
"Let me rather,” he said, “read a nice sonnet to you, which
I had sent to me this morning, and which was in my mind
just now. These lines ” (Mr. Rose here produced a paper from
his pocket) “were written by a boy of eighteen,-a youth of
extraordinary promise, I think,— whose education I may myself
claim to have had some share in directing Listen,” he said,
laying the verses before him on a clean plate.
»
« Three visions in the watches of one night
Made sweet my sleep - almost too sweet to tell.
One was Narcissus by a woodside well,
And on the moss his limbs and feet were white;
And one, Queen Venus, blown for my delight
Across the blue sea in a rosy shell;
And one, a lean Aquinas in his cell,
Kneeling, his pen in hand, with aching sight
Strained towards a carven Christ: and of these three
I knew not which was fairest. First I turned
Towards that soft boy, who laughed and fled from me;
Towards Venus then, and she smiled once, and she
Fled also. Then with teeming heart I yearned,
O Angel of the Schools, towards Christ with thee! »
* Vide J. H. Newman's Dream of Gerontius. )
XVII-603
## p. 9634 (#42) ############################################
9634
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(
(
c
(
“Yes," murmured Mr. Rose to himself, folding up the paper,
“they are dear lines. Now there,” he said, we have a true and
tender expression of the really catholic spirit of modern æstheti-
cism, which holds nothing common or unclean. It is in this
spirit, I say, that the architects of our State will set to work.
And thus for our houses, for our picture galleries, for our
churches, -I trust we shall have many churches, - they will
,
select and combine - »
"Do you seriously mean,” broke in Allen a little impatiently,
" that it is a thing to wish for and to look forward to, that we
should abandon all attempts at original architecture, and content
ourselves with simply sponging on the past ? ”
"I do,” replied Mr. Rose suavely; "and for this reason, if
;
for no other, - that the world can now successfully do nothing
else. Nor indeed is it to be expected, or even wished, that it
should. ”
“You say we have no good architecture now! ” exclaimed
Lady Ambrose; “but, Mr. Rose, have you forgotten our modern
churches ? Don't you think them beautiful ? Perhaps you never
go to All Saints'? »
"I every now and then," said Mr. Rose, “when I am in the
weary mood for it, attend the services of our English Ritualists,
and I admire their churches very much indeed. In some places
the whole thing is really managed with surprising skill. The
dim religious twilight, fragrant with the smoke of incense; the
tangled roofs that the music seems to cling to; the tapers, the
high altar, and the strange intonation of the priests,- all produce
a curious old-world effect, and seem to unite one with things that
have been long dead. Indeed, it all seems to me far more a
part of the past than the services of the Catholics. "
Lady Ambrose did not express her approbation of the last
part of this sentiment, out of regard for Miss Merton; but she
gave a smile and a nod of pleased intelligence to Mr. Rose.
“Yes,” Mr. Rose went on, “there is a regretful insincerity
about it all, that is very nice, and that at once appeals to me,
Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage. )* The priests are
(
only half in earnest; the congregations even -
Then I am quite sure,” interrupted Lady Ambrose with
vigor, "that you can never have heard Mr. Cope preach. ”
>
*«Like some old half-forgotten legend. ”
## p. 9635 (#43) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9635
»
-
“I don't know," said Mr. Rose languidly. "I never inquired,
nor have I ever heard any one so much as mention, the names
of any of them. Now all that, Lady Ambrose, were life really
in the state it should be, you would be able to keep. ”
“Do you seriously, and in sober earnest, mean," Allen again
broke in, “that you think it a good thing that all our art and
architecture should be borrowed and insincere, and that our very
religion should be nothing but a dilettante memory? ”
« The opinion,” said Mr. Rose, - "which by the way you
slightly misrepresent, — is not mine only, but that of all those
of our own day who are really devoting themselves to art for
its own sake. I will try to explain the reason of this. In the
world's life, just as in the life of a man, there are certain peri-
ods of eager and all-absorbing action, and these are followed by
periods of memory and reflection. We then look back upon
our past and become for the first time conscious of what we
are, and of what we have done. We then see the dignity of
toil, and the grand results of it; the beauty and the strength
of faith, and the fervent power of patriotism: which whilst we
labored, and believed, and loved, we were quite blind to. Upon
such a reflective period has the world now entered. It has acted
and believed already: its task now is to learn to value action
and belief, to feel and to be thrilled at the beauty of them. And
the chief means by which it can learn this is art; the art of a
renaissance. For by the power of such art, all that was beauti-
ful, strong, heroic, or tender in the past, — all the actions, pas-
sions, faiths, aspirations of the world, that lie so many fathom
deep in the years,- float upward to the tranquil surface of the
present, and make our lives like what seems to me one of the
loveliest things in nature, the iridescent film on the face of a
stagnant water. Yes; the past is not dead unless we choose that
it shall be so. Christianity itself is not dead. There is nothing
of it that doth fade,' but turns into something rich and strange,'
for us to give a new tone to our lives with. And believe me,”
Mr. Rose went on, gathering earnestness, that the happiness
possible in such conscious periods is the only true happiness.
Indeed, the active periods of the world were not really happy at
all. We only fancy them to have been so by a pathetic fallacy.
Is the hero happy during his heroism ? No, but after it, when
he sees what his heroism was, and reads the glory of it in the
eyes of youth or maiden. ”
## p. 9636 (#44) ############################################
9636
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
>
>
(
"All this is very poor stuff very poor stuff,” murmured Dr.
Jenkinson, whose face had become gradually the very picture of
crossness,
"Do you mean, Mr. Rose,” said Miss Merton, with a half
humorous, half incredulous smile, that we never value religion
till we have come to think it nonsense ? »
« Not nonsense - no,” exclaimed Mr. Rose in gentle horror;
"I only mean that it never lights our lives so beautifully as
when it is leaving them like the evening sun. It is in such
periods of the world's life that art springs into being in its
greatest splendor. Your Raphael, Miss Merton, who painted you
your dear Madonnas,' was a luminous cloud in the sunset sky
of the Renaissance,- a cloud that took its fire from a faith that
was sunk or sinking. ”
“I'm afraid that the faith is not quite sunk yet,” said Miss
Merton, with a slight sudden Aush in her cheeks, and with just
the faintest touch of suppressed anger.
Mr. Saunders, Mr. Stockton, Mr. Storks, and Mr. Luke all
raised their eyebrows.
"No," said Mr. Rose, such cyclic sunsets are happily apt to
linger. ”
“Mr. Rose,” exclaimed Lady Ambrose, with her most gracious
of smiles, of course every one who has ears must know that all
this is very beautiful; but I am positively so stupid that I haven't
been quite able to follow it all. ”
"I will try to make my meaning clearer,” he said, in a
brisker tone. "I often figure to myself an unconscious period
and a conscious one, as two women: one an untamed creature
with embrowned limbs, native to the air and the sea; the other
marble-white and swan-soft, couched delicately on cushions be-
fore a mirror, and watching her own supple reflection gleaming
in the depths of it. On the one is the sunshine and the sea
spray.
The wind of heaven and her unbound hair are play-
mates. The light of the sky is in her eyes; on her lips is a free
laughter. We look at her, and we know that she is happy.
Ile know it, mark me; but she knows it not. Turn, however,
to the other, and all is changed. Outwardly, there is no gladness
there. Her dark, gleaming eyes open depth within depth upon
us, like the circles of a new Inferno. There is a clear, shadowy
pallor on her cheek. Only her lips are scarlet. There is a sad-
ness, a languor,- even in the grave tendrils of her heavy hair,
(
>
## p. 9637 (#45) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9637
(C
and in each changing curve of her bosom as she breathes or
sighs. ”
“What a very odd man Mr. Rose is! ” said Lady Ambrose in
a loud whisper. "He always seems to talk of everybody as if
they had no clothes on. And does he mean by this that we
ought to be always in the dumps ? "
“Yes,” Mr. Rose was meanwhile proceeding, his voice again
growing visionary, there is no eagerness, no action there: and
yet all eagerness, all action is known to her as the writing on
an open scroll; only, as she reads, even in the reading of it,
action turns into emotion and eagerness into a sighing memory.
Yet such a woman really may stand symbolically for us as the
patroness and the lady of all gladness, who makes us glad in
the only way now left us. And not only in the only way, but in
the best way - the way of ways. Her secret is self-consciousness.
She knows that she is fair; she knows, too, that she is sad: but
she sees that sadness is lovely, and so sadness turns to joy. Such
a woman may be taken as a symbol, not of our architecture only,
but of all the æsthetic surroundings with which we shall shelter
and express our life. Such a woman do I see whenever I enter
a ritualistic church
"I know,” said Mrs. Sinclair, “that very peculiar people do go
to such places; but, Mr. Rose,” she said with a look of appealing
inquiry, "I thought they were generally rather overdressed than
otherwise ? »
« The imagination,” said Mr. Rose, opening his eyes in grave
wonder at Mrs. Sinclair, “may give her what garb it chooses.
Our whole city, then — the city of our New Republic - will be in
keeping with this spirit. It will be the architectural and decorat-
ive embodiment of the most educated longings of our own times
after order and loveliness and delight, whether of the senses or
the imagination. It will be, as it were, a resurrection of the
past, in response to the longing and the passionate regret of
the present. It will be such a resurrection as took place in Italy
during its greatest epoch, only with this difference - »
“You seem to have forgotten trade and business altogether,
said Dr. Jenkinson. "I think, however rich you intend to be,
you will find that they are necessary. ”
“Yes, Mr. Rose, you're not going to deprive us of all our
shops, I hope ? ” said Lady Ambrose.
>
>
»
## p. 9638 (#46) ############################################
9638
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(C
“Because, you know,” said Mrs. Sinclair with a soft mali-
ciousness, “we can't go without dresses altogether, Mr. Rose.
And if I were there,” she continued plaintively, "I should want
a bookseller to publish the scraps of verse poetry, as I am
pleased to call it — that I am always writing. ”
"Pooh! ” said Mr. Rose, a little annoyed, "we shall have all
that somewhere, of course; but it will be out of the way, in a
sort of Piræus, where the necessary rány 20. —”
“A sort of what ? ” said Lady Ambrose.
“Mr. Rose merely means,” said Donald Gordon, “that there
must be good folding-doors between the offices and the house of
life, and that the servants are not to be seen walking about in
the pleasure-grounds. ”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rose, “exactly so. ”
“Well, then,” said Lady Ambrose, “I quite agree with you,
Mr. Rose; and if wishing were only having, I've not the least
doubt that we should all of us be going back to Mr. Rose's
city to-morrow, instead of to London, with its carts, and cabs,
and smoke, and all its thousand-and-one drawbacks. I'm sure,”
she said, turning to Miss Merton, you would, my dear, with all
your taste. ”
"It certainly,” said Miss Merton smiling, "all sounds very
beautiful. All that I am afraid of is, that we should not be
quite worthy of it. ”
"Nay,” said Mr. Rose, “but the very point is that we shall
be worthy of it, and that it will be worthy of us. I said, if you
recollect, just now, that the world's ideal of the future must
resemble in many ways its memory of the Italian Renaissance.
But don't let that mislead you. It may resemble that, but it
will be something far in advance of it. During the last three
hundred years - in fact, during the last sixty or seventy years --
the soul of man has developed strangely in its sentiments and its
powers of feeling; in its powers, in fact, of enjoying life. As I
said, I have a work in the press devoted entirely to a description
of this growth. I have some of the proof-sheets with me; and
if you will let me, I should like to read
you one
or two pas-
sages. ”
"I don't think much can be made out of that,” said Dr. Jen-
kinson, with a vindictive sweetness. Human sentiment dresses
itself in different fashions, as human ladies do; but I think
## p. 9639 (#47) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9639
>
beneath the surface it is much the same.
I mean,
» he added,
suddenly recollecting that he might thus seem to be rooting up
the wheat of his own opinions along with the tares of Mr.
Rose's, “I mean that I don't think in seventy years, or even in
three hundred, you will be able to show that human nature has
very much changed. I don't think so. ”
Unfortunately, however, the Doctor found that instead of put-
ting down Mr. Rose by this, he had only raised up Mr. Luke.
"Ah, Jenkinson, I think you are wrong there,” said Mr. Luke.
“As long as we recognize that this growth is at present confined
to a very small minority, the fact of such growth is the most
important, the most significant of all facts. Indeed, our friend
Mr. Rose is quite right thus far, in the stress he lays on our
appreciation of the past: that we have certainly in these modern
times acquired a new sense, by which alone the past can be
appreciated truly,the sense which, if I may invent a phrase
for it, I should call that of Historical Perspective; so that now
really for the first time the landscape of history is beginning to
have some intelligible charm for us. And this, you know, is not
all.
Our whole views of things (you, Jenkinson, must know this
as well as I do) — the Zeitgeist breathes upon them, and they do
not die; but they are changed, they are enlightened. ”
The Doctor was too much annoyed to make any audible
answer to this; but he murmured with some emphasis to him-
self, “That's not what Mr. Rose was saying; that's not what I
was contradicting. ”
"You take, Luke, a rather more rose-colored view of things
than you did last night,” said Mr. Storks.
"No," said Mr. Luke with a sigh, “far from it. I am not
denying (pray, Jenkinson, remember this) that the majority of
us are at present either Barbarians or Philistines; and the ugli.
ness of these is more glaring now than at any former time. But
that any of us are able to see them thus distinctly in their true
colors itself shows that there must be a deal of light somewhere.
Even to make darkness visible some light is needed. We should
always recollect that. We are only discontented with ourselves
when we are struggling to be better than ourselves. ”
"And in many ways,” said Laurence, "I think the strug-
gle has been successful. Take for instance the pleasure we get
now from the aspects of external nature, and the way in which
these seem to mix themselves with our lives. This certainly is
(C
## p. 9640 (#48) ############################################
9640
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
something distinctly modern. And nearly all our other feel.
ings, it seems to me, have changed just like this one, and have
become more sensitive and more highly organized.
If we may
judge by its expression in literature, love has, certainly; and that,
I suppose, is the most important and comprehensive feeling in
life. ”
“Does Mr.
Laurence only suppose that? ” sighed Mrs. Sinclair,
casting down her eyes.
“ "Well,” said Dr. Jenkinson, "our feelings about these two
things about love and external nature — perhaps have changed
—
somewhat. Yes, I think they have. I think you might make an
interesting magazine article out of that -- but hardly more. ”
"I rather,” said Laurence apologetically, "agree with Mr.
Luke and Mr. Rose, that all our feelings have developed just as
these two have. And I think this is partly owing to the fusion
in our minds of our sacred and secular ideas; which indeed
you were speaking of this morning in your sermon. Thus, to
find some rational purpose in life was once merely enjoined as a
supernatural duty. In our times it has taken our common nature
upon it, and become a natural longing — though I fear,” he added
softly, “a fruitless one. ”
“Yes,” suddenly exclaimed Lady Grace, who had been listen-
ing intently to her nephew's words; "and if you are speaking of
modern progress, Otho, you should not leave out the diffusion of
those grand ideas of justice and right and freedom and humanity
which are at work in the great heart of the nation.
We are
growing cultivated in Mr. Luke's noble sense of the word; and
our whole hearts revolt against the way in which women have
hitherto been treated, and against the cruelties which dogma
asserts the good God can practice, and the cruelties on the
poor animals which wicked men do practice. And war too,”
Lady Grace went on, a glow mounting into her soft faded
check: “think how fast we are outgrowing that! England at
any rate will never watch the outbreak of another war, with all
its inevitable cruelties, without giving at least one sob that shall
make all Europe pause and listen. Indeed, we must not forget
how the entire substance of religion is ceasing to be a mass of
dogmas, and is becoming embodied instead in practice and in
action.
"Quite true, Lady Grace,” said Mr. Luke. Lady Grace was
just about to have given a sign for rising; but Mr. Luke's assent
»
## p. 9641 (#49) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9641
»
((
»
(
detained her. "As to war," he went on, “there may of course
be different opinions,- questions of policy may arise: » (“As if
any policy,” murmured Lady Grace, could justify us in such a
thing! ”) «but religion -- yes, that, as I have been trying to teach
the world, is the great and important point on which culture is
beginning to cast its light; and with just the effect which you
describe. It is true that culture is at present but a little leaven
hid in a barrel of meal: but still it is doing its work slowly; and
in the matter of religion,-indeed, in all matters, for religion
rightly understood embraces all, -- " ("I do like to hear Mr. Luke
talk sometimes, murmured Lady Grace,) "its effect is just this:
to show us that religion in any civilized, any reasonable, any
sweet sense, can never be found except embodied in action; that
it is in fact nothing but right action, pointed — winged, as it
were— by right emotion, by a glow, an aspiration, an aspiration
toward God” (Lady Grace sighed with feeling) “not, of course,”
Mr. Luke went on confidentially, "that petulant Pedant of the
theologians, that irritable angry Father with the very uncertain
temper, but toward — »
“An infinite, inscrutable, loving Being,” began Lady Grace,
with a slight moisture in her eyes.
"Quite so," said Mr. Luke, not waiting to listen: towards
that great Law, that great verifiable tendency of things, that
great stream whose flowing such of us as are able are now so
anxiously trying to accelerate. There is no vain speculation
about creation and first causes and consciousness here; which are
matters we can never verify, and which matter nothing to us. ”
"But,” stammered Lady Grace aghast, Mr. Luke, do you
mean to say that? But it surely must matter something whether
God can hear our prayers, and will help us, and whether we owe
him any duty, and whether he is conscious of what we do, and
will judge us: it must matter. "
Mr. Luke leaned forward towards Lady Grace and spoke to
her in a confidential whisper.
“Not two straws- not that,” he said, with a smile, and a very
slight fillip of his finger and thumb.
Lady Grace was thunderstruck.
“But,” again she stammered softly and eagerly, “unless you
say there is no personal — ”
Mr. Luke hated the word personal: it was so much mixed
up in his mind with theology, that he even winced if he had to
speak of personal talk.
»
## p. 9642 (#50) ############################################
9642
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(
>
»
"My dear Lady Grace,” he said in a tone of surprised remon-
strance, you are talking like a bishop. ”
“Well, certainly,” said Lady Grace, rising, and struggling she
hardly knew how into a smile, “nolo episcopari. You see I do
know a little Latin, Mr. Luke. ”
“Yes,” said Mr. Luke with a bow, as he pushed back a chair
for her, “and a bit that has more wisdom in it than all other
ecclesiastical Latin put together. ”
“We're going to leave you gentlemen to smoke your cigar-
ettes,” said Lady Grace. “We think of going down on the beach
for a little, and looking at the sea, which is getting silvery; and
by-and-by, I daresay you will not expel us if we come back for
a little tea and coffee. "
“Damn it! "
Scarcely had the last trailing skirt swept glimmering out of
the pavilion into the mellow slowly brightening moonlight, than
the gentlemen were astounded by this sudden and terrible excla-
mation. It was soon found to have issued from Mr. Saunders,
who had hardly spoken more than a few sentences during the
whole of dinner.
“What can be the matter ? ” was inquired by several voices.
“My fool of a servant,” said Mr. Saunders sullenly, "has, I
find, in packing, wrapped up a small sponge of mine in my dis-
proof of God's existence. ”
"H'f,” shuddered Mr. Rose, shrinking from Mr. Saunders's
somewhat piercing tones, and resting his forehead on his hand;
“my head aches sadly. I think I will go down to the sea, and
join the ladies. ”
"T,” said Mr. Saunders, if you will excuse me, must go and
see in what state the document is, as I left it drying, hung on
the handle of my jug. ”
No sooner had Mr. Saunders and Mr. Rose departed than
Dr. Jenkinson began to recover his equanimity somewhat. Seeing
this, Mr. Storks, who had himself during dinner been first soothed
and then ruffled into silence, found suddenly the strings of his
tongue loosed.
"Now, those are the sort of young fellows,” he said, look-
ing after the retreating form of Mr. Saunders, “that really do a
good deal to bring all solid knowledge into contempt in the minds
of the half-educated. There's a certain hall in London, not far
from the top of Regent Street, where I'm told he gives Sunday
lectures. ”
(
## p. 9643 (#51) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9643
((
>
“Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson, sipping his claret, it's all very
bad taste — very bad taste. ”
"And the worst of it is,” said Mr. Storks, that these young
men really get hold of a fact or two, and then push them on to
their own coarse and insane conclusions, - which have, I admit,
to the vulgar eye, the look of being obvious. ”
“Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson with a seraphic sweetness, we
should always suspect everything that seems very obvious. Glar-
ing inconsistencies and glaring consistencies are both sure to van-
ish if you look closely into them. ”
"Now, all that about God, for instance,” Mr. Storks went on,
“is utterly uncalled for; and as young Saunders puts it, is utterly
misleading. "
« Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson, "it all depends upon the way you
say it. "
»
"I hardly think,” said Mr. Stockton with a sublime weariness,
"that we need waste much thought upon his way.
It is a very
common one, — that of the puppy that barks at the heels of the
master whose meat it steals. ”
"May 1,” said Mr. Herbert gently, after a moment's pause,
(ask this
for I am
a little puzzled here: Do I understand
that Mr. Saunders's arguments may be held, on the face of the
thing, to disprove the existence of God ? »
Mr. Storks and Mr. Stockton both stared gravely on Mr.
Herbert, and said nothing. Dr. Jenkinson stared at him too;
but the Doctor's eye lit up into a little sharp twinkle of benign
content and amusement, and he said:
"No, Mr. Herbert, I don't think Mr. Saunders can disprove
that, nor any one else either. For the world has at present no
adequate definition of God; and I think we should be able to
define a thing before we can satisfactorily disprove it. I think
I have no doubt Mr. Saunders can disprove the existence of
God as he would define him. All atheists can do that. ”
"Ah," murmured Mr. Stockton, nobly said! ”
But that's not the way,” the Doctor went on, to set to
work,- this kind of rude denial. We must be loyal to nature.
We must do nothing per saltum. We must be patient. We
mustn't leap at Utopias, either religious or irreligious. Let us
be content with the knowledge that all dogmas will expand in
proportion as we feel they need expansion; for all mere forms
are transitory, and even the personality of -- »
1
SO.
>
>
>>
(
## p. 9644 (#52) ############################################
9644
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
Fatal word! It was like a match to a cannon.
"Ah, Jenkinson,” exclaimed Mr. Luke, and Dr. Jenkinson
stopped instantly, "we see what you mean; and capital sense it
is too. But you do yourself as much as any one else a great
injustice, in not seeing that the age is composed of two parts,
and that the cultured minority is infinitely in advance of the Phi-
listine majority — which alone is, properly speaking, the present;
the minority being really the soul of the future waiting for its
body, which at present can exist only as a Utopia. It is the
wants of this soul that we have been talking over this afternoon.
When the ladies come back to us, there are several things that
I should like to say; and then you will see what we mean, Jen-
kinson, and that even poor Rose has really some right on his
side. ”
At the mention of Mr. Rose's name the Doctor's face again
curdled into frost.
“I don't think so. ” That was all he said.
## p. 9645 (#53) ############################################
9645
SIR THOMAS MALORY
AND THE MORTE D'ARTHUR
>
(FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
BY ERNEST RHYS
HE
1
one certain thing about Sir Thomas Malory is, that he
wrote the first and finest romance of chivalry in our com-
mon tongue, - the Morte d'Arthur. ' Beyond this, and the
testimony that the book affords as to its author, we have little
record of him. That he was a Welshman, however, seems highly
probable; and his name is certainly of Welsh origin, derived as it is
from Maelor. That he was a clerk in holy orders is likely too. It
was usual to distinguish vicars at that period and later by the prefix
«Sir; and various clergymen of the same Christian name and sur-
name as his may be traced by old tombs, at Mobberley in Cheshire
and elsewhere. Bale, in his interesting Latin chronicle of 1548, on
(Illustrious Writers of Great Britain,' speaks of his “many cares of
State, it is true; but church and State were then closely enough al-
lied to make the two things compatible with our view of him. Bale's
further account is brief but eloquent. Our romancer was a man, he
tells us, of heroic spirit, who shone from his youth in signal gifts of
mind and body. ” Moreover, a true scholar, a true man of letters, who
never interrupted his quest “through all the remnants of the world's
scattered antiquity. ” So it was that Malory was led to gather, from
various sources, all the traditions he could find concerning the valor
and the victories of the most renowned King Arthur of the Britons. ”
Out of many materials, in French and Latin, in Welsh and Breton, he
shaped the book “Morte d'Arthur) as now know it; working
with a sense of style, and with a feeling for the tale-teller's and the
romancer's art, which show him to be much more than the mere
compiler and book-maker that some critics have been content to call
him.
A word now as to the dates of Malory's writing, and Caxton's
publishing, the Morte d'Arthur,' and we turn from the history of the
book to the book itself. In his last page,- after asking his readers
to pray for him, — Malory says in characteristic words, which again
may be thought to point to his being more than a mere layman:
« This book was finished the ninth year of the reign of King Edward
we
## p. 9646 (#54) ############################################
9646
SIR THOMAS MALORY
the Fourth,
as Jesu help me, for his great might; as he
[i. e. , Malory) is the servant of Jesu both day and night. ” The period
thus fixed brings us approximately to the year 1469, and to the ten
years previous as the probable time when the Morte d'Arthur) was
being written. Caxton published it in 1485, and then referred to
Malory as still living. Hence he and his noble romance both fall
well within that wonderful fifteenth century which saw the rise of
English poetry, with Chaucer as its morning star,-
« — the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below,- )
and the revival of Greek learning. It is significant enough, seeing
their close kinship, that romance with Malory, and poetry with Chau-
cer, should have come into English literature in the same period.
As for Malory and his romance, there is hardly a more difficult
and a more delightful undertaking in all the history of literature
than that of the quest of its first beginnings. Principal Rhys has
in his erudite studies in the Arthurian Legend carried us far back
into the early Celtic twilight, — the twilight of the morning of man
and his spiritual awakening,- and shown us some of the curious par-
allels between certain Aryan myths and the heroic folk-tales which
lent their color to the culture-hero, Arthur.
To examine these with the critical attention they require is be-
yond the scope of the present brief essay; but we may gather from
their threads a very interesting clue to the coming of King Arthur,"
in another sense than that of the episode so finely described by Ten-
nyson. We see the mythical hero carried in vague folk-tales of the
primitive Celts, in their journey westward across Europe, when the
traditions were attached to some other name. Then we find these
folk-tales given a local habitation and a name in early Britain; until
at last the appearance of a worthy historical hero, a King Arthur of
the sixth century, provided a pivot on which the wheel of tradition
could turn with new effect. The pivot itself might be small and in-
significant enough, but the rim of the wheel might have layer after
layer of legend, and accretion after accretion of mythical matter,
added to it, till at last the pivot might well threaten to give way
under the strain. Not to work the metaphor too hard, the wheel
may be said to go to pieces at last, when the turn of the romancers,
as distinct from the folk-tale tellers, comes. The Welsh romancers
had their turn first; then their originals were turned into Latin
by quasi-historians like Geoffrey of Monmouth; carried into France,
given all manner of new chivalric additions and adornments, out of
the growing European stock, by writers like Robert de Borron; and
finally, at the right moment, recaptured by our later Welsh romancer,
## p. 9647 (#55) ############################################
SIR THOMAS MALORY
9647
Malory, working in the interest of a new language and a new litera-
ture, destined to play so extraordinary a part in both the New World
and the Old.
The art of fiction and romance displayed by Malory in making
this transfer of his French materials, is best to be gauged by com-
paring his (Morte d'Arthur) with such romances as those in the
famous Merlin cycle of De Borron and his school. To all students of
the subject, this comparative investigation will be found full of the
most curiously interesting results. Besides Malory, we have English
fourteenth-century versions of these French romances; notably (The
Romance of Merlin,' of which we owe to the Early English Text
Society an excellent reprint. To give some idea of the effect of this
translation, let us cite a sentence or two from its account of Merlin's
imprisonment in the Forest of Broceliande; which may be compared
with the briefer account in the Morte d'Arthur. ' Sir Gawain hears
the voice of Merlin, speaking as it were from a smoke or mist in
the air,” and saying:-
«From hence may I not come out,- for in all the world is not so strong a
close as is this whereas I am: and it is neither of iron, nor steel, nor timber,
nor of stone; but it is of the air without any other thing, [bound] by enchant-
ment so strong that it may never be undone while the world endureth. »
This is not unlike Malory; but a little further study of the two
side by side will show the reader curious in such things how much
he has improved upon these earlier legendary romances, by his pro-
cess of selection and concentration, and by his choice of persons and
episodes. On the other hand, we must concede to his critics that
some of his most striking passages, full of gallant adventure gallantly
described, are borrowed very closely. But then the great poets and
romancers have so often been great borrowers. Shakespeare borrowed
boldly and well; so did Herrick; so did Pope; so did Burns. And
why not Malory?
It is sufficient if we remember that romance, like other branches
of literature, is not a sudden and original growth, but a graft from
an old famous stock. To set this graft skillfully in a new tree needed
no 'prentice hand; in doing it, Malory proved himself beyond question
a master of romance. His true praise is best to be summed up in
the long-continuing tribute paid to the Morte d'Arthur) by other
poets and writers, artists and musicians. Milton, let us remember,
hesitated whether he should not choose its subject for his magnum
opus, in the place of Paradise Lost' Tennyson elected to give it
an idyllic presentment in the purple pages of his "Idylls of the King. '
Still later poets — Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Swinburne-
have gone to the same fountain-head; and in painting, the pictures
## p. 9648 (#56) ############################################
9648
SIR THOMAS MALORY
of Rossetti, Watts, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones bear a like tribute;
while in music, there is more than a reflection of the same influence
in the works of Wagner.
In all this, one may trace the vitality of the early Aryan folk-tale
out of which the Arthurian legend originally took its rise. Sun-
hero or
"culture-hero,” Celtic chieftain or British king, it is still the
radiant figure of King Arthur that emerges from the gray past, in
which myth is dimly merged into mediæval romance. In Malory's
pages, to repeat, the historical King Arthur goes for little; but «the
ideal Arthur lives and reigns securely in that kingdom of old romance
of which Camelot is the capital,” — his beautiful and fatal Guinevere
at his side, and Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot, and his Knights of the
Round Table gathered about him. And if there be, as Tennyson
made clear in his Idylls,' a moral to this noble old romance, we
may best seek it in the spirit of these words in Caxton's prologue,
which make the best and simplest induction to the book:-.
«Herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do
after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and
And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in; but
for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at
your liberty. ”
renown.
Ernen R
thus
THE FINDING OF THE SWORD EXCALIBUR
From Morte d'Arthur)
A
(C
ND so Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur
said, “I have no sword. ” “No matter," said Merlin; "here-
by is a sword that shall be yours and I may. ” So they
rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a
broad; and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was aware of
an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the
hand. "Lo,” said Merlin unto the King, yonder is the sword
that I spake of. ”
With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake.
damsel is that ? " said the King. “That is the Lady of the Lake,"
<< What
»
## p. 9649 (#57) ############################################
SIR THOMAS MALORY
9649
« Sir
>
(
said Merlin; and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as
fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this dam-
sel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to her that she
will give you that sword. ” Therewith came the damsel to King
Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. “Damsel," said the
King, “what sword is that which the arm holdeth yonder above
the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword. ”
King,” said the damsel of the lake, that sword is mine, and if
ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. ” “By
my faith,” said King Arthur, "I will give you any gift that you
will ask or desire. ” “Well,” said the damsel, "go ye into yon-
«
der barge, and row yourself unto the sword, and take it and the
scabbard with you; and I will ask my gift when I see my time. ”
So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, tied their horses to two
trees, and so they went into the barge. And when they came
to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up by
the handles, and took it with him; and the arm and the hand
went under the water, and so came to the land and rode forth.
Then King Arthur saw a rich pavilion. « What signifieth
yonder pavilion ? » « That is the knight's pavilion that ye fought
with last — Sir Pellinore; but he is out; for he is not there:
he hath had to do with a knight of yours, that hight Eglame,
and they have foughten together a great while, but at the last
Eglame fied, and else he had been dead; and Sir Pellinore hath
chased him to Carlion, and we shall anon meet with him in the
highway. ” “It is well said,” quoth King Arthur; “now have I
a sword, and now will I wage battle with him and be avenged
on him. ” "Sir, ye shall not do so," said Merlin: for the knight
is weary of fighting and chasing; so that ye shall have no wor-
ship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched
of one knight living: and therefore my counsel is, that ye let
him pass; for he shall do you good service in short time, and his
sons after his days. Also ye shall see that day in short space,
that ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wife.
taste, an Aquinas in his cell before a crucifix, or a Narcissus
gazing at himself in a still fountain, are — in their own ways,
you know - equally beautiful. ”
(
>
## p. 9633 (#41) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9633
«Well, really,” said Miss Merton, “I can not fancy St. Thomas
being a very taking object to people who don't believe in him
either as a saint or a philosopher. I always think that except
from a Christian point of view, a saint can be hardly better de-
scribed than by Newman's lines, as-
(A bundle of bones, whose breath
Infects the world before his death. ) »*
"I remember the lines well,” said Mr. Rose calmly, “and the
writer you mention puts them in the mouth of a yelping devil.
But devils, as far as I know, are not generally — except perhaps
Milton's - conspicuous for taste; indeed, if we may trust Goethe,
the very touch of a flower is torture to them. ”
“Dante's biggest devil,” cried Mr. Saunders, to everyone's
amazement, "chewed Judas Iscariot like a quid of tobacco, to all
eternity. He, at any rate, knew what he liked. ”
Mr. Rose started, and visited Mr. Saunders with a rapid
frown. He then proceeded, turning again to Miss Merton as if
nothing had happened.
"Let me rather,” he said, “read a nice sonnet to you, which
I had sent to me this morning, and which was in my mind
just now. These lines ” (Mr. Rose here produced a paper from
his pocket) “were written by a boy of eighteen,-a youth of
extraordinary promise, I think,— whose education I may myself
claim to have had some share in directing Listen,” he said,
laying the verses before him on a clean plate.
»
« Three visions in the watches of one night
Made sweet my sleep - almost too sweet to tell.
One was Narcissus by a woodside well,
And on the moss his limbs and feet were white;
And one, Queen Venus, blown for my delight
Across the blue sea in a rosy shell;
And one, a lean Aquinas in his cell,
Kneeling, his pen in hand, with aching sight
Strained towards a carven Christ: and of these three
I knew not which was fairest. First I turned
Towards that soft boy, who laughed and fled from me;
Towards Venus then, and she smiled once, and she
Fled also. Then with teeming heart I yearned,
O Angel of the Schools, towards Christ with thee! »
* Vide J. H. Newman's Dream of Gerontius. )
XVII-603
## p. 9634 (#42) ############################################
9634
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(
(
c
(
“Yes," murmured Mr. Rose to himself, folding up the paper,
“they are dear lines. Now there,” he said, we have a true and
tender expression of the really catholic spirit of modern æstheti-
cism, which holds nothing common or unclean. It is in this
spirit, I say, that the architects of our State will set to work.
And thus for our houses, for our picture galleries, for our
churches, -I trust we shall have many churches, - they will
,
select and combine - »
"Do you seriously mean,” broke in Allen a little impatiently,
" that it is a thing to wish for and to look forward to, that we
should abandon all attempts at original architecture, and content
ourselves with simply sponging on the past ? ”
"I do,” replied Mr. Rose suavely; "and for this reason, if
;
for no other, - that the world can now successfully do nothing
else. Nor indeed is it to be expected, or even wished, that it
should. ”
“You say we have no good architecture now! ” exclaimed
Lady Ambrose; “but, Mr. Rose, have you forgotten our modern
churches ? Don't you think them beautiful ? Perhaps you never
go to All Saints'? »
"I every now and then," said Mr. Rose, “when I am in the
weary mood for it, attend the services of our English Ritualists,
and I admire their churches very much indeed. In some places
the whole thing is really managed with surprising skill. The
dim religious twilight, fragrant with the smoke of incense; the
tangled roofs that the music seems to cling to; the tapers, the
high altar, and the strange intonation of the priests,- all produce
a curious old-world effect, and seem to unite one with things that
have been long dead. Indeed, it all seems to me far more a
part of the past than the services of the Catholics. "
Lady Ambrose did not express her approbation of the last
part of this sentiment, out of regard for Miss Merton; but she
gave a smile and a nod of pleased intelligence to Mr. Rose.
“Yes,” Mr. Rose went on, “there is a regretful insincerity
about it all, that is very nice, and that at once appeals to me,
Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage. )* The priests are
(
only half in earnest; the congregations even -
Then I am quite sure,” interrupted Lady Ambrose with
vigor, "that you can never have heard Mr. Cope preach. ”
>
*«Like some old half-forgotten legend. ”
## p. 9635 (#43) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9635
»
-
“I don't know," said Mr. Rose languidly. "I never inquired,
nor have I ever heard any one so much as mention, the names
of any of them. Now all that, Lady Ambrose, were life really
in the state it should be, you would be able to keep. ”
“Do you seriously, and in sober earnest, mean," Allen again
broke in, “that you think it a good thing that all our art and
architecture should be borrowed and insincere, and that our very
religion should be nothing but a dilettante memory? ”
« The opinion,” said Mr. Rose, - "which by the way you
slightly misrepresent, — is not mine only, but that of all those
of our own day who are really devoting themselves to art for
its own sake. I will try to explain the reason of this. In the
world's life, just as in the life of a man, there are certain peri-
ods of eager and all-absorbing action, and these are followed by
periods of memory and reflection. We then look back upon
our past and become for the first time conscious of what we
are, and of what we have done. We then see the dignity of
toil, and the grand results of it; the beauty and the strength
of faith, and the fervent power of patriotism: which whilst we
labored, and believed, and loved, we were quite blind to. Upon
such a reflective period has the world now entered. It has acted
and believed already: its task now is to learn to value action
and belief, to feel and to be thrilled at the beauty of them. And
the chief means by which it can learn this is art; the art of a
renaissance. For by the power of such art, all that was beauti-
ful, strong, heroic, or tender in the past, — all the actions, pas-
sions, faiths, aspirations of the world, that lie so many fathom
deep in the years,- float upward to the tranquil surface of the
present, and make our lives like what seems to me one of the
loveliest things in nature, the iridescent film on the face of a
stagnant water. Yes; the past is not dead unless we choose that
it shall be so. Christianity itself is not dead. There is nothing
of it that doth fade,' but turns into something rich and strange,'
for us to give a new tone to our lives with. And believe me,”
Mr. Rose went on, gathering earnestness, that the happiness
possible in such conscious periods is the only true happiness.
Indeed, the active periods of the world were not really happy at
all. We only fancy them to have been so by a pathetic fallacy.
Is the hero happy during his heroism ? No, but after it, when
he sees what his heroism was, and reads the glory of it in the
eyes of youth or maiden. ”
## p. 9636 (#44) ############################################
9636
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
>
>
(
"All this is very poor stuff very poor stuff,” murmured Dr.
Jenkinson, whose face had become gradually the very picture of
crossness,
"Do you mean, Mr. Rose,” said Miss Merton, with a half
humorous, half incredulous smile, that we never value religion
till we have come to think it nonsense ? »
« Not nonsense - no,” exclaimed Mr. Rose in gentle horror;
"I only mean that it never lights our lives so beautifully as
when it is leaving them like the evening sun. It is in such
periods of the world's life that art springs into being in its
greatest splendor. Your Raphael, Miss Merton, who painted you
your dear Madonnas,' was a luminous cloud in the sunset sky
of the Renaissance,- a cloud that took its fire from a faith that
was sunk or sinking. ”
“I'm afraid that the faith is not quite sunk yet,” said Miss
Merton, with a slight sudden Aush in her cheeks, and with just
the faintest touch of suppressed anger.
Mr. Saunders, Mr. Stockton, Mr. Storks, and Mr. Luke all
raised their eyebrows.
"No," said Mr. Rose, such cyclic sunsets are happily apt to
linger. ”
“Mr. Rose,” exclaimed Lady Ambrose, with her most gracious
of smiles, of course every one who has ears must know that all
this is very beautiful; but I am positively so stupid that I haven't
been quite able to follow it all. ”
"I will try to make my meaning clearer,” he said, in a
brisker tone. "I often figure to myself an unconscious period
and a conscious one, as two women: one an untamed creature
with embrowned limbs, native to the air and the sea; the other
marble-white and swan-soft, couched delicately on cushions be-
fore a mirror, and watching her own supple reflection gleaming
in the depths of it. On the one is the sunshine and the sea
spray.
The wind of heaven and her unbound hair are play-
mates. The light of the sky is in her eyes; on her lips is a free
laughter. We look at her, and we know that she is happy.
Ile know it, mark me; but she knows it not. Turn, however,
to the other, and all is changed. Outwardly, there is no gladness
there. Her dark, gleaming eyes open depth within depth upon
us, like the circles of a new Inferno. There is a clear, shadowy
pallor on her cheek. Only her lips are scarlet. There is a sad-
ness, a languor,- even in the grave tendrils of her heavy hair,
(
>
## p. 9637 (#45) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9637
(C
and in each changing curve of her bosom as she breathes or
sighs. ”
“What a very odd man Mr. Rose is! ” said Lady Ambrose in
a loud whisper. "He always seems to talk of everybody as if
they had no clothes on. And does he mean by this that we
ought to be always in the dumps ? "
“Yes,” Mr. Rose was meanwhile proceeding, his voice again
growing visionary, there is no eagerness, no action there: and
yet all eagerness, all action is known to her as the writing on
an open scroll; only, as she reads, even in the reading of it,
action turns into emotion and eagerness into a sighing memory.
Yet such a woman really may stand symbolically for us as the
patroness and the lady of all gladness, who makes us glad in
the only way now left us. And not only in the only way, but in
the best way - the way of ways. Her secret is self-consciousness.
She knows that she is fair; she knows, too, that she is sad: but
she sees that sadness is lovely, and so sadness turns to joy. Such
a woman may be taken as a symbol, not of our architecture only,
but of all the æsthetic surroundings with which we shall shelter
and express our life. Such a woman do I see whenever I enter
a ritualistic church
"I know,” said Mrs. Sinclair, “that very peculiar people do go
to such places; but, Mr. Rose,” she said with a look of appealing
inquiry, "I thought they were generally rather overdressed than
otherwise ? »
« The imagination,” said Mr. Rose, opening his eyes in grave
wonder at Mrs. Sinclair, “may give her what garb it chooses.
Our whole city, then — the city of our New Republic - will be in
keeping with this spirit. It will be the architectural and decorat-
ive embodiment of the most educated longings of our own times
after order and loveliness and delight, whether of the senses or
the imagination. It will be, as it were, a resurrection of the
past, in response to the longing and the passionate regret of
the present. It will be such a resurrection as took place in Italy
during its greatest epoch, only with this difference - »
“You seem to have forgotten trade and business altogether,
said Dr. Jenkinson. "I think, however rich you intend to be,
you will find that they are necessary. ”
“Yes, Mr. Rose, you're not going to deprive us of all our
shops, I hope ? ” said Lady Ambrose.
>
>
»
## p. 9638 (#46) ############################################
9638
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(C
“Because, you know,” said Mrs. Sinclair with a soft mali-
ciousness, “we can't go without dresses altogether, Mr. Rose.
And if I were there,” she continued plaintively, "I should want
a bookseller to publish the scraps of verse poetry, as I am
pleased to call it — that I am always writing. ”
"Pooh! ” said Mr. Rose, a little annoyed, "we shall have all
that somewhere, of course; but it will be out of the way, in a
sort of Piræus, where the necessary rány 20. —”
“A sort of what ? ” said Lady Ambrose.
“Mr. Rose merely means,” said Donald Gordon, “that there
must be good folding-doors between the offices and the house of
life, and that the servants are not to be seen walking about in
the pleasure-grounds. ”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rose, “exactly so. ”
“Well, then,” said Lady Ambrose, “I quite agree with you,
Mr. Rose; and if wishing were only having, I've not the least
doubt that we should all of us be going back to Mr. Rose's
city to-morrow, instead of to London, with its carts, and cabs,
and smoke, and all its thousand-and-one drawbacks. I'm sure,”
she said, turning to Miss Merton, you would, my dear, with all
your taste. ”
"It certainly,” said Miss Merton smiling, "all sounds very
beautiful. All that I am afraid of is, that we should not be
quite worthy of it. ”
"Nay,” said Mr. Rose, “but the very point is that we shall
be worthy of it, and that it will be worthy of us. I said, if you
recollect, just now, that the world's ideal of the future must
resemble in many ways its memory of the Italian Renaissance.
But don't let that mislead you. It may resemble that, but it
will be something far in advance of it. During the last three
hundred years - in fact, during the last sixty or seventy years --
the soul of man has developed strangely in its sentiments and its
powers of feeling; in its powers, in fact, of enjoying life. As I
said, I have a work in the press devoted entirely to a description
of this growth. I have some of the proof-sheets with me; and
if you will let me, I should like to read
you one
or two pas-
sages. ”
"I don't think much can be made out of that,” said Dr. Jen-
kinson, with a vindictive sweetness. Human sentiment dresses
itself in different fashions, as human ladies do; but I think
## p. 9639 (#47) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9639
>
beneath the surface it is much the same.
I mean,
» he added,
suddenly recollecting that he might thus seem to be rooting up
the wheat of his own opinions along with the tares of Mr.
Rose's, “I mean that I don't think in seventy years, or even in
three hundred, you will be able to show that human nature has
very much changed. I don't think so. ”
Unfortunately, however, the Doctor found that instead of put-
ting down Mr. Rose by this, he had only raised up Mr. Luke.
"Ah, Jenkinson, I think you are wrong there,” said Mr. Luke.
“As long as we recognize that this growth is at present confined
to a very small minority, the fact of such growth is the most
important, the most significant of all facts. Indeed, our friend
Mr. Rose is quite right thus far, in the stress he lays on our
appreciation of the past: that we have certainly in these modern
times acquired a new sense, by which alone the past can be
appreciated truly,the sense which, if I may invent a phrase
for it, I should call that of Historical Perspective; so that now
really for the first time the landscape of history is beginning to
have some intelligible charm for us. And this, you know, is not
all.
Our whole views of things (you, Jenkinson, must know this
as well as I do) — the Zeitgeist breathes upon them, and they do
not die; but they are changed, they are enlightened. ”
The Doctor was too much annoyed to make any audible
answer to this; but he murmured with some emphasis to him-
self, “That's not what Mr. Rose was saying; that's not what I
was contradicting. ”
"You take, Luke, a rather more rose-colored view of things
than you did last night,” said Mr. Storks.
"No," said Mr. Luke with a sigh, “far from it. I am not
denying (pray, Jenkinson, remember this) that the majority of
us are at present either Barbarians or Philistines; and the ugli.
ness of these is more glaring now than at any former time. But
that any of us are able to see them thus distinctly in their true
colors itself shows that there must be a deal of light somewhere.
Even to make darkness visible some light is needed. We should
always recollect that. We are only discontented with ourselves
when we are struggling to be better than ourselves. ”
"And in many ways,” said Laurence, "I think the strug-
gle has been successful. Take for instance the pleasure we get
now from the aspects of external nature, and the way in which
these seem to mix themselves with our lives. This certainly is
(C
## p. 9640 (#48) ############################################
9640
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
something distinctly modern. And nearly all our other feel.
ings, it seems to me, have changed just like this one, and have
become more sensitive and more highly organized.
If we may
judge by its expression in literature, love has, certainly; and that,
I suppose, is the most important and comprehensive feeling in
life. ”
“Does Mr.
Laurence only suppose that? ” sighed Mrs. Sinclair,
casting down her eyes.
“ "Well,” said Dr. Jenkinson, "our feelings about these two
things about love and external nature — perhaps have changed
—
somewhat. Yes, I think they have. I think you might make an
interesting magazine article out of that -- but hardly more. ”
"I rather,” said Laurence apologetically, "agree with Mr.
Luke and Mr. Rose, that all our feelings have developed just as
these two have. And I think this is partly owing to the fusion
in our minds of our sacred and secular ideas; which indeed
you were speaking of this morning in your sermon. Thus, to
find some rational purpose in life was once merely enjoined as a
supernatural duty. In our times it has taken our common nature
upon it, and become a natural longing — though I fear,” he added
softly, “a fruitless one. ”
“Yes,” suddenly exclaimed Lady Grace, who had been listen-
ing intently to her nephew's words; "and if you are speaking of
modern progress, Otho, you should not leave out the diffusion of
those grand ideas of justice and right and freedom and humanity
which are at work in the great heart of the nation.
We are
growing cultivated in Mr. Luke's noble sense of the word; and
our whole hearts revolt against the way in which women have
hitherto been treated, and against the cruelties which dogma
asserts the good God can practice, and the cruelties on the
poor animals which wicked men do practice. And war too,”
Lady Grace went on, a glow mounting into her soft faded
check: “think how fast we are outgrowing that! England at
any rate will never watch the outbreak of another war, with all
its inevitable cruelties, without giving at least one sob that shall
make all Europe pause and listen. Indeed, we must not forget
how the entire substance of religion is ceasing to be a mass of
dogmas, and is becoming embodied instead in practice and in
action.
"Quite true, Lady Grace,” said Mr. Luke. Lady Grace was
just about to have given a sign for rising; but Mr. Luke's assent
»
## p. 9641 (#49) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9641
»
((
»
(
detained her. "As to war," he went on, “there may of course
be different opinions,- questions of policy may arise: » (“As if
any policy,” murmured Lady Grace, could justify us in such a
thing! ”) «but religion -- yes, that, as I have been trying to teach
the world, is the great and important point on which culture is
beginning to cast its light; and with just the effect which you
describe. It is true that culture is at present but a little leaven
hid in a barrel of meal: but still it is doing its work slowly; and
in the matter of religion,-indeed, in all matters, for religion
rightly understood embraces all, -- " ("I do like to hear Mr. Luke
talk sometimes, murmured Lady Grace,) "its effect is just this:
to show us that religion in any civilized, any reasonable, any
sweet sense, can never be found except embodied in action; that
it is in fact nothing but right action, pointed — winged, as it
were— by right emotion, by a glow, an aspiration, an aspiration
toward God” (Lady Grace sighed with feeling) “not, of course,”
Mr. Luke went on confidentially, "that petulant Pedant of the
theologians, that irritable angry Father with the very uncertain
temper, but toward — »
“An infinite, inscrutable, loving Being,” began Lady Grace,
with a slight moisture in her eyes.
"Quite so," said Mr. Luke, not waiting to listen: towards
that great Law, that great verifiable tendency of things, that
great stream whose flowing such of us as are able are now so
anxiously trying to accelerate. There is no vain speculation
about creation and first causes and consciousness here; which are
matters we can never verify, and which matter nothing to us. ”
"But,” stammered Lady Grace aghast, Mr. Luke, do you
mean to say that? But it surely must matter something whether
God can hear our prayers, and will help us, and whether we owe
him any duty, and whether he is conscious of what we do, and
will judge us: it must matter. "
Mr. Luke leaned forward towards Lady Grace and spoke to
her in a confidential whisper.
“Not two straws- not that,” he said, with a smile, and a very
slight fillip of his finger and thumb.
Lady Grace was thunderstruck.
“But,” again she stammered softly and eagerly, “unless you
say there is no personal — ”
Mr. Luke hated the word personal: it was so much mixed
up in his mind with theology, that he even winced if he had to
speak of personal talk.
»
## p. 9642 (#50) ############################################
9642
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(
>
»
"My dear Lady Grace,” he said in a tone of surprised remon-
strance, you are talking like a bishop. ”
“Well, certainly,” said Lady Grace, rising, and struggling she
hardly knew how into a smile, “nolo episcopari. You see I do
know a little Latin, Mr. Luke. ”
“Yes,” said Mr. Luke with a bow, as he pushed back a chair
for her, “and a bit that has more wisdom in it than all other
ecclesiastical Latin put together. ”
“We're going to leave you gentlemen to smoke your cigar-
ettes,” said Lady Grace. “We think of going down on the beach
for a little, and looking at the sea, which is getting silvery; and
by-and-by, I daresay you will not expel us if we come back for
a little tea and coffee. "
“Damn it! "
Scarcely had the last trailing skirt swept glimmering out of
the pavilion into the mellow slowly brightening moonlight, than
the gentlemen were astounded by this sudden and terrible excla-
mation. It was soon found to have issued from Mr. Saunders,
who had hardly spoken more than a few sentences during the
whole of dinner.
“What can be the matter ? ” was inquired by several voices.
“My fool of a servant,” said Mr. Saunders sullenly, "has, I
find, in packing, wrapped up a small sponge of mine in my dis-
proof of God's existence. ”
"H'f,” shuddered Mr. Rose, shrinking from Mr. Saunders's
somewhat piercing tones, and resting his forehead on his hand;
“my head aches sadly. I think I will go down to the sea, and
join the ladies. ”
"T,” said Mr. Saunders, if you will excuse me, must go and
see in what state the document is, as I left it drying, hung on
the handle of my jug. ”
No sooner had Mr. Saunders and Mr. Rose departed than
Dr. Jenkinson began to recover his equanimity somewhat. Seeing
this, Mr. Storks, who had himself during dinner been first soothed
and then ruffled into silence, found suddenly the strings of his
tongue loosed.
"Now, those are the sort of young fellows,” he said, look-
ing after the retreating form of Mr. Saunders, “that really do a
good deal to bring all solid knowledge into contempt in the minds
of the half-educated. There's a certain hall in London, not far
from the top of Regent Street, where I'm told he gives Sunday
lectures. ”
(
## p. 9643 (#51) ############################################
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9643
((
>
“Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson, sipping his claret, it's all very
bad taste — very bad taste. ”
"And the worst of it is,” said Mr. Storks, that these young
men really get hold of a fact or two, and then push them on to
their own coarse and insane conclusions, - which have, I admit,
to the vulgar eye, the look of being obvious. ”
“Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson with a seraphic sweetness, we
should always suspect everything that seems very obvious. Glar-
ing inconsistencies and glaring consistencies are both sure to van-
ish if you look closely into them. ”
"Now, all that about God, for instance,” Mr. Storks went on,
“is utterly uncalled for; and as young Saunders puts it, is utterly
misleading. "
« Yes,” said Dr. Jenkinson, "it all depends upon the way you
say it. "
»
"I hardly think,” said Mr. Stockton with a sublime weariness,
"that we need waste much thought upon his way.
It is a very
common one, — that of the puppy that barks at the heels of the
master whose meat it steals. ”
"May 1,” said Mr. Herbert gently, after a moment's pause,
(ask this
for I am
a little puzzled here: Do I understand
that Mr. Saunders's arguments may be held, on the face of the
thing, to disprove the existence of God ? »
Mr. Storks and Mr. Stockton both stared gravely on Mr.
Herbert, and said nothing. Dr. Jenkinson stared at him too;
but the Doctor's eye lit up into a little sharp twinkle of benign
content and amusement, and he said:
"No, Mr. Herbert, I don't think Mr. Saunders can disprove
that, nor any one else either. For the world has at present no
adequate definition of God; and I think we should be able to
define a thing before we can satisfactorily disprove it. I think
I have no doubt Mr. Saunders can disprove the existence of
God as he would define him. All atheists can do that. ”
"Ah," murmured Mr. Stockton, nobly said! ”
But that's not the way,” the Doctor went on, to set to
work,- this kind of rude denial. We must be loyal to nature.
We must do nothing per saltum. We must be patient. We
mustn't leap at Utopias, either religious or irreligious. Let us
be content with the knowledge that all dogmas will expand in
proportion as we feel they need expansion; for all mere forms
are transitory, and even the personality of -- »
1
SO.
>
>
>>
(
## p. 9644 (#52) ############################################
9644
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
Fatal word! It was like a match to a cannon.
"Ah, Jenkinson,” exclaimed Mr. Luke, and Dr. Jenkinson
stopped instantly, "we see what you mean; and capital sense it
is too. But you do yourself as much as any one else a great
injustice, in not seeing that the age is composed of two parts,
and that the cultured minority is infinitely in advance of the Phi-
listine majority — which alone is, properly speaking, the present;
the minority being really the soul of the future waiting for its
body, which at present can exist only as a Utopia. It is the
wants of this soul that we have been talking over this afternoon.
When the ladies come back to us, there are several things that
I should like to say; and then you will see what we mean, Jen-
kinson, and that even poor Rose has really some right on his
side. ”
At the mention of Mr. Rose's name the Doctor's face again
curdled into frost.
“I don't think so. ” That was all he said.
## p. 9645 (#53) ############################################
9645
SIR THOMAS MALORY
AND THE MORTE D'ARTHUR
>
(FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
BY ERNEST RHYS
HE
1
one certain thing about Sir Thomas Malory is, that he
wrote the first and finest romance of chivalry in our com-
mon tongue, - the Morte d'Arthur. ' Beyond this, and the
testimony that the book affords as to its author, we have little
record of him. That he was a Welshman, however, seems highly
probable; and his name is certainly of Welsh origin, derived as it is
from Maelor. That he was a clerk in holy orders is likely too. It
was usual to distinguish vicars at that period and later by the prefix
«Sir; and various clergymen of the same Christian name and sur-
name as his may be traced by old tombs, at Mobberley in Cheshire
and elsewhere. Bale, in his interesting Latin chronicle of 1548, on
(Illustrious Writers of Great Britain,' speaks of his “many cares of
State, it is true; but church and State were then closely enough al-
lied to make the two things compatible with our view of him. Bale's
further account is brief but eloquent. Our romancer was a man, he
tells us, of heroic spirit, who shone from his youth in signal gifts of
mind and body. ” Moreover, a true scholar, a true man of letters, who
never interrupted his quest “through all the remnants of the world's
scattered antiquity. ” So it was that Malory was led to gather, from
various sources, all the traditions he could find concerning the valor
and the victories of the most renowned King Arthur of the Britons. ”
Out of many materials, in French and Latin, in Welsh and Breton, he
shaped the book “Morte d'Arthur) as now know it; working
with a sense of style, and with a feeling for the tale-teller's and the
romancer's art, which show him to be much more than the mere
compiler and book-maker that some critics have been content to call
him.
A word now as to the dates of Malory's writing, and Caxton's
publishing, the Morte d'Arthur,' and we turn from the history of the
book to the book itself. In his last page,- after asking his readers
to pray for him, — Malory says in characteristic words, which again
may be thought to point to his being more than a mere layman:
« This book was finished the ninth year of the reign of King Edward
we
## p. 9646 (#54) ############################################
9646
SIR THOMAS MALORY
the Fourth,
as Jesu help me, for his great might; as he
[i. e. , Malory) is the servant of Jesu both day and night. ” The period
thus fixed brings us approximately to the year 1469, and to the ten
years previous as the probable time when the Morte d'Arthur) was
being written. Caxton published it in 1485, and then referred to
Malory as still living. Hence he and his noble romance both fall
well within that wonderful fifteenth century which saw the rise of
English poetry, with Chaucer as its morning star,-
« — the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below,- )
and the revival of Greek learning. It is significant enough, seeing
their close kinship, that romance with Malory, and poetry with Chau-
cer, should have come into English literature in the same period.
As for Malory and his romance, there is hardly a more difficult
and a more delightful undertaking in all the history of literature
than that of the quest of its first beginnings. Principal Rhys has
in his erudite studies in the Arthurian Legend carried us far back
into the early Celtic twilight, — the twilight of the morning of man
and his spiritual awakening,- and shown us some of the curious par-
allels between certain Aryan myths and the heroic folk-tales which
lent their color to the culture-hero, Arthur.
To examine these with the critical attention they require is be-
yond the scope of the present brief essay; but we may gather from
their threads a very interesting clue to the coming of King Arthur,"
in another sense than that of the episode so finely described by Ten-
nyson. We see the mythical hero carried in vague folk-tales of the
primitive Celts, in their journey westward across Europe, when the
traditions were attached to some other name. Then we find these
folk-tales given a local habitation and a name in early Britain; until
at last the appearance of a worthy historical hero, a King Arthur of
the sixth century, provided a pivot on which the wheel of tradition
could turn with new effect. The pivot itself might be small and in-
significant enough, but the rim of the wheel might have layer after
layer of legend, and accretion after accretion of mythical matter,
added to it, till at last the pivot might well threaten to give way
under the strain. Not to work the metaphor too hard, the wheel
may be said to go to pieces at last, when the turn of the romancers,
as distinct from the folk-tale tellers, comes. The Welsh romancers
had their turn first; then their originals were turned into Latin
by quasi-historians like Geoffrey of Monmouth; carried into France,
given all manner of new chivalric additions and adornments, out of
the growing European stock, by writers like Robert de Borron; and
finally, at the right moment, recaptured by our later Welsh romancer,
## p. 9647 (#55) ############################################
SIR THOMAS MALORY
9647
Malory, working in the interest of a new language and a new litera-
ture, destined to play so extraordinary a part in both the New World
and the Old.
The art of fiction and romance displayed by Malory in making
this transfer of his French materials, is best to be gauged by com-
paring his (Morte d'Arthur) with such romances as those in the
famous Merlin cycle of De Borron and his school. To all students of
the subject, this comparative investigation will be found full of the
most curiously interesting results. Besides Malory, we have English
fourteenth-century versions of these French romances; notably (The
Romance of Merlin,' of which we owe to the Early English Text
Society an excellent reprint. To give some idea of the effect of this
translation, let us cite a sentence or two from its account of Merlin's
imprisonment in the Forest of Broceliande; which may be compared
with the briefer account in the Morte d'Arthur. ' Sir Gawain hears
the voice of Merlin, speaking as it were from a smoke or mist in
the air,” and saying:-
«From hence may I not come out,- for in all the world is not so strong a
close as is this whereas I am: and it is neither of iron, nor steel, nor timber,
nor of stone; but it is of the air without any other thing, [bound] by enchant-
ment so strong that it may never be undone while the world endureth. »
This is not unlike Malory; but a little further study of the two
side by side will show the reader curious in such things how much
he has improved upon these earlier legendary romances, by his pro-
cess of selection and concentration, and by his choice of persons and
episodes. On the other hand, we must concede to his critics that
some of his most striking passages, full of gallant adventure gallantly
described, are borrowed very closely. But then the great poets and
romancers have so often been great borrowers. Shakespeare borrowed
boldly and well; so did Herrick; so did Pope; so did Burns. And
why not Malory?
It is sufficient if we remember that romance, like other branches
of literature, is not a sudden and original growth, but a graft from
an old famous stock. To set this graft skillfully in a new tree needed
no 'prentice hand; in doing it, Malory proved himself beyond question
a master of romance. His true praise is best to be summed up in
the long-continuing tribute paid to the Morte d'Arthur) by other
poets and writers, artists and musicians. Milton, let us remember,
hesitated whether he should not choose its subject for his magnum
opus, in the place of Paradise Lost' Tennyson elected to give it
an idyllic presentment in the purple pages of his "Idylls of the King. '
Still later poets — Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Swinburne-
have gone to the same fountain-head; and in painting, the pictures
## p. 9648 (#56) ############################################
9648
SIR THOMAS MALORY
of Rossetti, Watts, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones bear a like tribute;
while in music, there is more than a reflection of the same influence
in the works of Wagner.
In all this, one may trace the vitality of the early Aryan folk-tale
out of which the Arthurian legend originally took its rise. Sun-
hero or
"culture-hero,” Celtic chieftain or British king, it is still the
radiant figure of King Arthur that emerges from the gray past, in
which myth is dimly merged into mediæval romance. In Malory's
pages, to repeat, the historical King Arthur goes for little; but «the
ideal Arthur lives and reigns securely in that kingdom of old romance
of which Camelot is the capital,” — his beautiful and fatal Guinevere
at his side, and Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot, and his Knights of the
Round Table gathered about him. And if there be, as Tennyson
made clear in his Idylls,' a moral to this noble old romance, we
may best seek it in the spirit of these words in Caxton's prologue,
which make the best and simplest induction to the book:-.
«Herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do
after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and
And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in; but
for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at
your liberty. ”
renown.
Ernen R
thus
THE FINDING OF THE SWORD EXCALIBUR
From Morte d'Arthur)
A
(C
ND so Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur
said, “I have no sword. ” “No matter," said Merlin; "here-
by is a sword that shall be yours and I may. ” So they
rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a
broad; and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was aware of
an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the
hand. "Lo,” said Merlin unto the King, yonder is the sword
that I spake of. ”
With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake.
damsel is that ? " said the King. “That is the Lady of the Lake,"
<< What
»
## p. 9649 (#57) ############################################
SIR THOMAS MALORY
9649
« Sir
>
(
said Merlin; and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as
fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this dam-
sel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to her that she
will give you that sword. ” Therewith came the damsel to King
Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. “Damsel," said the
King, “what sword is that which the arm holdeth yonder above
the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword. ”
King,” said the damsel of the lake, that sword is mine, and if
ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. ” “By
my faith,” said King Arthur, "I will give you any gift that you
will ask or desire. ” “Well,” said the damsel, "go ye into yon-
«
der barge, and row yourself unto the sword, and take it and the
scabbard with you; and I will ask my gift when I see my time. ”
So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, tied their horses to two
trees, and so they went into the barge. And when they came
to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up by
the handles, and took it with him; and the arm and the hand
went under the water, and so came to the land and rode forth.
Then King Arthur saw a rich pavilion. « What signifieth
yonder pavilion ? » « That is the knight's pavilion that ye fought
with last — Sir Pellinore; but he is out; for he is not there:
he hath had to do with a knight of yours, that hight Eglame,
and they have foughten together a great while, but at the last
Eglame fied, and else he had been dead; and Sir Pellinore hath
chased him to Carlion, and we shall anon meet with him in the
highway. ” “It is well said,” quoth King Arthur; “now have I
a sword, and now will I wage battle with him and be avenged
on him. ” "Sir, ye shall not do so," said Merlin: for the knight
is weary of fighting and chasing; so that ye shall have no wor-
ship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched
of one knight living: and therefore my counsel is, that ye let
him pass; for he shall do you good service in short time, and his
sons after his days. Also ye shall see that day in short space,
that ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wife.
