I pardon
my enemies; I desire that France-» A General on horseback,
Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "Tam-
bours!
my enemies; I desire that France-» A General on horseback,
Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "Tam-
bours!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
Nay, Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris by itself,
if need be. So has Marseilles Town said that she will march.
But on the other hand, that Montélimart Town has said, No
thoroughfare; and means even to "bury herself" under her own
stone and mortar first,- of this be no mention in Bulletin de
Caen.
Such animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper;
and fervors and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the Mountain,
from the pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends,
Pascal's "Provincials. " What is more to the purpose, these
Girondins have got a General in chief, one Wimpfen, formerly
under Dumouriez; also a secondary questionable General Puisaye,
and others; and are doing their best to raise a force for war.
National Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye
National Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados
Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near:
forward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the
early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating
and consulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of Carabots,
Anti-jacobin friends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat.
With all which, and the editing of Bulletins, a National Repre-
sentative has his hands full.
At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less
animated in the "Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us. "
And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and
torn with an internal La Vendée, this is the conclusion we have
arrived at: To put down Anarchy by Civil War! Durum et
durum, the Proverb says, non faciunt murum. La Vendée burns;
Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew
beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege
of Mentz is become famed;-lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe
will testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither
on Sundays, to see the artillery work and counter-work; “you
## p. 3292 (#266) ###########################################
3292
THOMAS CARLYLE
only duck a little while the shot whizzes past. >>>> Condé is capitu-
lating to the Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several
weeks, fiercely batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp
of Famars was stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General
Custine was blamed,- and indeed is now come to Paris to give
"explanations. "
Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must
even make head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they
are, publish Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without
severity: they ray-forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the
olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other. Commis-
sioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical
Romme, and Prieur named of the Côte d'Or, venturing thither,
with their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may
Romme lie, under lock and key, "for fifty days"; and meditate
his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendée, and Civil
War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower
ebb.
Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History
specially notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de
l'Intendance, where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young
Lady with an aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of Deputy
Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure: in her twenty-fifth
year; of beautiful still countenance: her name is Charlotte Cor-
day, heretofore styled D'Armans, while Nobility still was. Bar-
baroux has given her a Note to Deputy Duperret,-him who
once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she will
to Paris on some errand?
«She was a Republican before the
Revolution, and never wanted energy. " A completeness, a decis-
ion is in this fair female Figure: "By energy she means the
spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country. "
What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her
secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-
angelic, half-demonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a
moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright com-
plete was she, through long centuries! -Quitting Cimmerian
Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five million
within, History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of
a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the
little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the
Night.
## p. 3293 (#267) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3293
With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of
luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in
the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell
of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a line left,
signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her,
and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along; amid
drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in which
she mingles not: all night, all day, and again all night. On
Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly;
here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and
purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in
the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room;
hastens to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow
morning.
On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret.
It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of
the Interior's hands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent
friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist
her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She
finished this, in the course of Friday:-yet says nothing of
returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things.
The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mount-
ain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see;
he is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large
sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place
des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach: "To the Rue de l'École de
Médecine, No. 44. " It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! -
The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to
disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hap-
less beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in
the utmost West, from Neuchâtel in the utmost East, they two
drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely,
business together. -Charlotte, returning to her Inn, dispatches a
Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat
of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put
his power to do France a great service. " No answer.
Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with
it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-
laborers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling
and simmering, manifold according to its vague wont; this one
short
it in
## p. 3294 (#268) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3294
fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight,― toward a pur-
pose.
It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month; eve
of the Bastille day,-when "M. Marat," four years ago, in the
crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval
Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount,
and give up their arms, then "; and became notable among
Patriot men. Four years: what a road he has traveled:— and
sits now, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-
bath; sore afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever, of what other
malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and
worn, poor man: with precisely eleven-pence-half-penny of
ready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed
stool for writing on, the while; and a squalid - Washer-woman,
one may call her: that is his civic establishment in Medical-
School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him.
Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity: yet surely
on the way toward that? - Hark, a rap again!
rap again! A musical
woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the Citoyenne who
would do France a service. Marat, recognizing from within,
cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.
Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and
wished to speak with you. -Be seated, mon enfant. Now what
are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen? —
Charlotte names some Deputies.
"Their heads shall fall within
a fortnight," croaks the eager People's-friend, clutching his
tablets to write: Barbaroux, Pétion, writes he with bare shrunk
arm, turning aside in the bath: Pétion, and Louvet, and-Char-
lotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it with one
sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "À moi, chère amie (Help,
dear)! " no more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The
helpful Washer-woman running in-there is no Friend of the
People, or Friend of the Washer-woman, left; but his life with a
groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below!
And so Marat, People's-friend, is ended; the lone Stylites has
got hurled down suddenly from his pillar-whither ward He that
made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in
dole and wail; re-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention,
"Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assas-
sinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral,
Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in
## p. 3295 (#269) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3295
lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to
One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sans-culotte, "-
whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the
urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-
born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake
mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his
Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place
as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but
Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole cir-
cumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old Moni-
teur Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchâtel to
ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean-Paul Marat's
musket be given to him. " For Marat too had a brother and
natural affections; and was wrapped once in swaddling-clothes,
and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of
men! —A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.
As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the
recompense of it is near and sure. The chère amie, and the
neighbors of the house, flying at her, she "overturns some
movables," intrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive; then
quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone
quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage or admiration,
round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her; his
Papers sealed,-which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in
like manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her.
Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave
firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet.
On Wednesday morning the thronged Palais de Justice and
Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm:
she dates it "fourth day of the Preparation of Peace. " A strange
murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her; you could not
say of what character. Tinville has his indictments and tape-
papers: the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold
her the sheath-knife; "All these details are needless," interrupted
Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat. " By whose instigation? —
"By no one's. " "What tempted you, then? " "His crimes. I
killed
one man," added she, raising her voice extremely (ex-
trêmement),
as they went on with their questions, "I killed one
man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a
savage wild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a Repub-
before the Revolution; I never wanted energy. " There is
lican
## p. 3296 (#270) ###########################################
3296
THOMAS CARLYLE
therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the
hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving:
the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is
Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in
gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they
send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, any
ghostly or other aid from him.
On this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o'clock,
from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the
fatal Cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in
red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life;
journeying toward death,-alone amid the World. Many take
off their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be
touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, de-
clares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to
die with her; the head of this young man seems turned. At the
Place de la Révolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the
same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she
resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation,
she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being
now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck, a blush of
maidenly shame overspreads her fair face and neck; the cheeks
were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed
head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster,
"that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes;
the Police imprisoned him for it. "
In this manner have the Beautifulest and the Squalidest come
in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and
Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. "Day
of the Preparation of Peace"? Alas, how were peace possible or
preparable, while for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in
their convent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love-paradises and the
light of Life, but of Codrus's-sacrifices and Death well-earned?
That twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this is
the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be
the embodiment! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities
tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually
extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,- in the
Mother's bosom that bore you both!
This is the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most
complete: angelic-demonic: like a Star!
## p. 3297 (#271) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3297
TE
4
D
*
THE SCAPEGOAT
From the French Revolution>
T
THIS conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis!
The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form.
of Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form
of Society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand
years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange
Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine;
dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or
by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumer-
And behold now a King himself, or say rather King-
hood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures, — like a
Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It
is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man;
injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return
"always home," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears
the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man's tri-
bunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were
not well with him.
able men.
A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the
imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at
bottom it is not the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a
coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you
take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do more?
Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled with a gag. Miser-
ablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act
Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows,
unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the
lees.
For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and
the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy ut-
most pity, with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold
contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied!
A Confessor has come; Abbé Edgeworth, of Irish extraction,
whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this
solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King;
it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A
hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones.
hearts, environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left here!
Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Cléry through these
Kind
VI-207
## p. 3298 (#272) ###########################################
3298
THOMAS CARLYLE
glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see the
cruelest of scenes:
―――――
"At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the
Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame
Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the
arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted
only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty
towards the inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting un-
known to them: 'No,' said the King, 'let us go into the dining-
room; it is there only that I can see you. ' They entered there;
I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down,
the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right,
Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained stand-
ing between his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and
often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and
three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see
only that always when the King spoke, the sobbing of the Prin-
cesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the
King began again to speak. " And so our meetings and our part-
ings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor
joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings,
and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou
good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see
thee any more! - NEVER! O Reader, knowest thou that hard.
word?
For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear them-
selves asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow. "
He promises: -Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved
ones; cry to God for yourselves and me! — It was a hard scene,
but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The
Queen, in passing through the ante-room, glanced at the Cerberus
Municipals; and with woman's vehemence, said through her tears,
"Vous êtes tous des scélérats. "
King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Cléry,
as he had been ordered, awoke him. Cléry dressed his hair:
while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and
kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is
now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell.
At half-past
six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and con-
ference with Abbé Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it
were too hard to bear.
## p. 3299 (#273) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3299
At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will,
and messages and effects; which they at first brutally refuse to
take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, 125 louis;
these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At
nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to
retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre
again says the hour is come. "Stamping on the ground with his
right foot, Louis answers: 'Partons' (Let us go). ". How the
rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions
and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a
widow !
He is gone, then, and has not seen
us? A Queen
weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these
Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one;
she, as Duchesse d'Angoulême, will live,-not happily.
shut.
At the Temple gate were some faint cries, perhaps from
voices of pitiful women: "Grâce! Grâce! » Through the rest of
the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed
is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not
express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All win-
dows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are
No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets, but
one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed
statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning,
but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence
and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the
only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers
of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear
in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heaven-
ward, and forget the Earth.
As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Révolution,
once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the
old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far
round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators
crowding in the rear; D'Orléans
D'Orléans Égalité there in cabriolet.
Swift messengers, hoquetons, speed to the Town-hall, every
three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting, vengeful for
Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the
Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Car-
riage opens.
Ten different witnesses
What temper he is in?
He is in the collision of
I will give ten different accounts of it.
all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of
――
## p. 3300 (#274) ###########################################
3300
THOMAS CARLYLE
Death in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be
resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straitly charges the
Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend.
The drums are beating: "Taisez-vous (Silence)! " he cries "in
a terrible voice (d'une voix terrible). " He mounts the scaffold,
not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white
stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-
waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind
him: he spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth has to remind him
how the Savior, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound.
His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come.
He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, "his face very red,"
and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold
and near appearing before God that I tell you so.
I pardon
my enemies; I desire that France-» A General on horseback,
Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "Tam-
bours! » The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your
duty! " The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be mur-
dered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do
not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly
desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbé
Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend
to Heaven. " The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away.
It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-
eight years four months and twenty-eight days.
Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of Vive la
République rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats
waving students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on
the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orléans drives off in his
cabriolet: the Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It
is done, It is done. " There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-
points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterward
denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are
long after worn in rings. And so, in some half-hour it is done;
and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers,
milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries, the world wags
on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that
evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in
a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,
according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing
it was.
## p. 3301 (#275) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3301
A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences.
On the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in
disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all
ready, correct in black-on-white to the utmost farthing: these he
wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote ob-
scurity, to the country and his books. They will never be
audited, those accounts; he will never get retired thither.
It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday
comes Lepelletier St. -Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pan-
theon of Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter
day. The Body is borne aloft, half-bare; the winding-sheet
disclosing the death-wound; sabre and bloody clothes parade
themselves; a "lugubrious music" wailing harsh næniæ.
crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks
there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of
every color, all mourning brother-like.
was
Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it
the last act these men ever did with concert! All parties
and figures of Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and
its Convention, now stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger
to dagger; the King's Life, round which they all struck and
battled, being hurled down. Dumouriez, conquering Holland,
growls ominous discontent, at the head of Armies. Men say
Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orléans Égalité shall
be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis, curses
his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of
Regicides, of "Arras Vipers" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons,
of horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send
him swiftly to another world than theirs. This is Te-Deum
Fauchet, of the Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp
was the death-hail rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that
Bastille day: but it was soft to such wreckage of high Hope as
this; one's New Golden Era going down in leaden dross, and
sulphurous black of the Everlasting Darkness!
## p. 3302 (#276) ###########################################
3302
BLISS CARMAN
BLISS CARMAN
(1861-)
BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
B
LISS CARMAN was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on
April 15th, 1861. On both sides of the house he belongs
to that United Empire Loyalist stock which at the time of
the American Revolution sacrificed wealth and ease to a principle,
and angrily withdrew from the young republic to carve out new
commonwealths in the wilds of Canada. His father was William
Carman, Clerk of the Pleas, a man of influence and distinction in his
Province. His mother was one of the Blisses of Fredericton, the
Loyalist branch of that Connecticut family
to which Emerson's mother belonged. Mr.
Carman was educated at the Collegiate
School and the University of New Bruns-
wick, both at Fredericton. He distinguished
himself in classics and mathematics, took
his B. A. in 1881, his M. A. in 1884, and
afterwards took partial courses at Edin-
burgh and Harvard. He has been connected
editorially with several American period-
icals, the Independent and the Chap-Book
among them, but now devotes himself ex-
clusively to literature. He divides his time
between Boston and Washington, returning.
to the Maritime Provinces for the hot months of each year.
Mr. Carman issued his first volume of poems in 1893, when he
had already won reputation as a contributor to the magazines. The
volume was called 'Low Tide on Grand Pré: a Book of Lyrics. ' It
was published in New York and London, and ran quickly into a
second edition. Equally successful was the volume called 'Songs
from Vagabondia,' published in 1894. About half the poems in this
volume are by Mr. Richard Hovey, whose name appears on the title-
page with that of Mr. Carman. In 1895 appeared 'Behind the Arras:
a Book of the Unseen. ' Much of Mr. Carman's known work remains
still uncollected.
In that outburst of intellectual energy which has of late won for
Canada a measure of recognition in the world of letters, Mr. Car-
man's work has played a large part. The characteristics of the
Canadian school may perhaps be defined as a certain semi-Sufiistic
## p. 3303 (#277) ###########################################
BLISS CARMAN
3303
worship of nature, combined with freshness of vision and keenness
to interpret the significance of the external world. These charac-
teristics find intense expression in Mr. Carman's poems.
And they
find expression in an utterance so new and so distinctive that its
influence is already active in the verse of his contemporaries.
There are two terms which apply pre-eminently to Mr. Carman.
These are Lyrist and Symbolist. His note is always the lyric note.
The lyric cry» thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is
the rhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then
in his work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion.
Every phrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is
a poem which not only haunts the ear with its harmonies but at the
same time makes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result
is less successful it seems sometimes as if the thought were too
much diluted with words, - as if, in fact, verbal music and verbal
coloring
were allowed to take the place of the legitimate thought-
process.
Even in such cases, the verse, however nebulous in mean-
ing, is rarely without some subtlety of technique, some charm of
diction, to justify its existence. But there are poems of Mr. Car-
man's, wherein what seems at first to be the obscurity of an over-
attenuated thought is really an attempt to express thought in terms
of pure music or pure color. In a curious and beautiful poem called
'Beyond the Gamut he elaborates a theory of the oneness and inter-
changeability of form, sound, and color.
In the matter of conception and interpretation Mr. Carman is a
symbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense, and
must be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring
schools.
The true symbolist and all the supreme artists of the
world have been in this sense symbolists-recognizes that there are
truths too vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific
phrase.
They elude set words; as a faint star, at the coming on of
evening, eludes the eye which seeks for it directly, while unveiling
itself to a side glance.
Mr. Carman conveys to us, by the suggestion
of thrilling color or inimitable phrase, perceptions and emotions
a more strictly defined method could never capture.
In subject-matter Mr. Carman is simple and elemental.
at his themes curiously, often whimsically; but the themes are those
of universal and eternal import,-life, love, and death, the broad
aspects of the outer world, the "deep heart of man," and the spirit
that informs them all.
His song is sometimes in a minor key, plan-
gent
and piercing; sometimes in a large and virile major,—as for
To his gifts of
which
He looks
instance when he sings the War-song of Gamelba. '
imagination, insight, and lyric passion he adds a fine humor, the out-
flowing of a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified
## p. 3304 (#278) ###########################################
3304
BLISS CARMAN
in 'Resignation' and 'A More Ancient Mariner. ' His chief defects,
besides the occasional obscurity already referred to, are a tendency
to looseness of structure in his longer poems, and once in a while, as
in parts of 'The Silent Lodger,' a Browningesque lapse into hardness
and baldness when the effect aimed at is colloquial simplicity.
Chart G. D. Nobals
HACK AND HEW
ACK and Hew were the sons of God
In the earlier earth than now;
One at his right hand, one at his left,
To obey as he taught them how.
H
And Hack was blind and Hew was dumb,
But both had the wild, wild heart;
And God's calm will was their burning will,
And the gist of their toil was art.
They made the moon and the belted stars,
They set the sun to ride;
They loosed the girdle and veil of the sea,
The wind and the purple tide.
Both flower and beast beneath their hands
To beauty and speed outgrew,—
The furious fumbling hand of Hack,
And the glorying hand of Hew.
Then, fire and clay, they fashioned a man,
And painted him rosy brown;
And God himself blew hard in his eyes:
"Let them burn till they smolder down! "
And "There! " said Hack, and "There! " thought Hew,
"We'll rest, for our toil is done. "
But "Nay," the Master Workman said,
"For your toil is just begun.
"And ye who served me of old as God
Shall serve me anew as man,
Till I compass the dream that is in my heart
And perfect the vaster plan. "
## p. 3305 (#279) ###########################################
BLISS CARMAN
3305
And still the craftsman over his craft,
In the vague white light of dawn,
With God's calm will for his burning will,
While the mounting day comes on,
Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,
Toils with those shadowy two,—
The faltering restless hand of Hack,
And the tireless hand of Hew.
From Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe and Company
AT THE GRANITE GATE
HERE paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind.
With mystery before,
And reticence behind,
THE
A portal waits me too
In the glad house of spring;
One day I shall pass through
And leave you wondering.
It lies beyond the marge
Of evening or of prime,
Silent and dim and large,
The gateway of all time.
There troop by night and day.
My brothers of the field;
And I shall know the way
Their wood-songs have revealed.
The dusk will hold some trace
Of all my radiant crew
Who vanished to that place,
Ephemeral as dew.
Into the twilight dun,
Blue moth and dragon-fly
Adventuring alone,-
Shall be more brave than I?
There innocents shall bloom,
And the white cherry tree,
With birch and willow plume
To strew the road for me.
## p. 3306 (#280) ###########################################
3306
BLISS CARMAN
The wilding orioles then
Shall make the golden air
Heavy with joy again,
And the dark heart shall dare
Resume the old desire,-
The exigence of spring
To be the orange fire
That tips the world's gray wing.
And the lone wood-bird - Hark!
The whippoorwill, night-long,
Threshing the summer dark
With his dim flail of song! -
Shall be the lyric lift,
When all my senses creep,
To bear me through the rift
In the blue range of sleep.
And so I pass beyond
The solace of your hand.
But ah, so brave and fond!
Within that morrow-land,
Where deed and daring fail,
But joy forevermore
Shall tremble and prevail
Against the narrow door,
Where sorrow knocks too late,
And grief is overdue,
Beyond the granite gate
There will be thoughts of you.
From Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe and Company
THE
A SEA CHILD
HE lover of child Marjory
Had one white hour of life brim full;
Now the old nurse, the rocking sea,
Hath him to lull.
The daughter of child Marjory
Hath in her veins, to beat and run,
The glad indomitable sea,
The strong white sun.
Copyrighted by Bliss Carman.
## p. 3307 (#281) ###########################################
3307
LEWIS CARROLL
(CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON)
(1832-)
T
HAT the author of the best nonsense-writing in the language
should be a professional mathematician and logician, is not
a paradox but a sequence. A gymnast cannot divert us by
pretending to lose his balance unless perfectly able to keep his
balance. Actors who counterfeit insanity must be acutely sane.
Only a competent classical scholar can write good macaronics; only
a good poet can write clever doggerel. The only ones who can use
slang effectively are those who do not need to use it at all. Nor is
the tone and temper of mind evinced by these dry and severe studies
out of keeping with the airiest play of fancy or the maddest fun.
The one is indeed a frequent relief from the other, and no intellect-
ual bent is related in the least to any special temperament. Extrava-
gant drollery can be mated to an aptitude for geometry or a
passion for analysis as well as to a love of pictures or of horses.
But the parentage of Alice in Wonderland' and its fellows is
closer to their creator's intellectual being even than this. A very
slight glance at their matter and mechanism shows that they are the
work of one trained to use words with the finest precision, to teach
others to use them so, to criticize keenly any inconsistency or
slovenliness in their use, and to mock mercilessly any vagueness
incoherence in thought or diction. The fantastic framework and
inconsequent scenes of these wonder-stories mask from the popular
view the qualities which give them their superlative rank and endur-
ing charm.
The mere machinery, ingenious and amusing as it is, would not
entertain beyond a single reading; it can be and has often been
imitated, along with the incarnated nursery rhymes and old saws.
Yet these grotesque chimeras, under Lewis Carroll's touch, are as
living to us as any characters in Dickens or the 'Ingoldsby Legends,'
and even more so to the elders than the children. Who does not
know and delight in the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the
elegant White Rabbit and the conceited and monosyllabic Caterpillar,
the Cheshire Cat and the Mock-Turtle, the March Hare and the
Hatter and the Dormouse; or the chess White King and the Queens
and the White Knight, the Walrus and the Carpenter, of Looking-
Glass Land?
## p. 3308 (#282) ###########################################
3308
LEWIS CARROLL
The very genesis of many of these is the logical analysis of a
popular comparison into sober fact, as "grinning like a Cheshire cat,"
"mad as a hatter" or "March_hare," "sleeping like a dormouse,"
etc. ; and a large part of their wit and fun consists in plays on
ambiguous terms in current use, like the classic "jam every other
day," "French, music, and washing," "The name of the song is
called or in parodies on familiar verses (or on the spirit of
ballads rather than the wording, as in Jabberwocky'), or in heaps
of versified non-sequiturs, like the exquisite poem" read at the trial
of the Knave of Hearts. The analyst and the logician is as patent
in 'Alice' as in the class lectures the author gave or the technical
works he has issued; only turning his criticism and his reductiones
ad absurdum into bases for witty fooling instead of serious lessons or
didactic works. Hence, while his wonder-books are nominally for
children, and please the children through their cheaper and com-
moner qualities, their real audience is the most cultivated and keen-
minded part of the mature world; to whom indeed he speaks almost
exclusively in such passages as the Rabelaisian satire of the jury
trial in Alice in Wonderland,' or the mob in Sylvie and Bruno'
yelling "Less bread! More taxes! " before the Lord Chancellor's
house, or the infinitely touching pathos of the Outlandish Watch.
'Alice in Wonderland' appeared in 1865; it received universal
admiration at once, and was translated into many languages. By
the rarest of good fortune, it was illustrated by an artist (John Ten-
niel) who entered into its spirit so thoroughly that the characters
in popular memory are as much identified with his pictures as with
Lewis Carroll's text, and no other representation of them would be
endured. Through the Looking-Glass' followed in 1871; its prose
matter was almost equal to that of its predecessor, — the chapter of
the White Knight is fully equal to the best of the other, and its
verse is superior. Part of the first book was based on the game of
cards; the whole setting of the second is based on chess moves, and
Alice's progress to queenship along the board. He has published
several books of humorous prose and verse since; some of the verse
equal to the best of his two best books, but the prose generally
spoiled by conscious didacticism, as in Sylvie and Bruno,' which
however contains some of his happiest nonsense verse. The Hunt-
ing of the Snark' is a nonsense tale in verse, but oddly the best
things in it are his prose tags. Rhyme and Reason' is a collection
of verse, some of it of high merit in its kind: The Three Voices' is
spun out and ill-ended, but has some passages which deserve to be
classic.
«<
Lewis Carroll is in fact the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who
(disliking publicity) lives in retirement at Oxford, and the world
## p. 3309 (#283) ###########################################
LEWIS CARROLL
3309
knows little of him. He was born in 1833 and received his degree
in Christ Church, Oxford, with high honors in mathematics. In 1861
he took orders in the Church of England. From 1855 to 1881 he
was mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He has pub-
lished several works on mathematics, including 'Euclid and His
Modern Rivals,' and 'Mathematica Curiosa,' a very valuable work.
'A Tangled Tale,' 'Pillow Problems,' and a 'Game of Logic' are
scientific and humorous, but are only appreciated by experts in
mathematics and logic. Delighted with Alice in Wonderland' on
its appearance, Queen Victoria asked Mr. Dodgson for his other
works; and in response "Lewis Carroll» sent her his 'Elementary
Treatise on Determinants' and other mathematical works. It is sel-
dom that the dualism of a mind-writing now nonsense so thor-
oughly and vigorously witty, and now exploring the intricacies of
higher mathematics - has a more curious illustration. Certainly the
illustration is seldom as diverting to the public.
(
ALICE, THE PIG-BABY, AND THE CHESHIRE CAT
From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
"H
ERE! you may nurse it a bit, if you like! " said the Duchess
to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. "I must
go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen," and
she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after
her as she went, but it just missed her.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-
shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all
directions,-"just like a star-fish," thought Alice. The poor little
thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and
kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again; so
that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as
she could do to hold it.
As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it,
(which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep
tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its
undoing itself), she carried it out into the open air. "If I don't
take this child away with me," thought Alice, "they're sure to
kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it
behind? " She said the last words out loud, and the little thing
grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time).
grunt," said Alice: "that's not at all the proper way of express-
ing yourself. "
"Don't
## p. 3310 (#284) ###########################################
LEWIS CARROLL
3310
The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into
its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no
doubt that it had a very turn-up nose, much more like a snout
than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small, for
a baby: altogether, Alice did not like the look of the thing at
all,—“but perhaps it was only sobbing," she thought, and looked
into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears.
No, there were no tears. "If you're going to turn into a pig,
my dear," said Alice, seriously, "I'll have nothing more to do
with you.
Mind now! " The poor little thing sobbed again (or
grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for
some while in silence.
Alice was just beginning to think to herself, "Now, what am
I to do with this creature when I get it home? " when it grunted
again, so violently that she looked down into its face in some
alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was
neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be
quite absurd for her to carry it any further.
So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to
see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up,"
she said to herself, "it would have been a dreadfully ugly child:
but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think. " And she began
thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well
as pigs, and was just saying to herself, "If one only knew the
right way to change them » when she was a little startled by
seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards
off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-
natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great
many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect.
"Cheshire Puss," she began,- rather timidly, as she did not at
all know whether it would like the name: however, it only
grinned a little wider. Come, it's pleased so far," thought
Alice, and she went on: "Would you tell me, please, which way
I ought to walk from here? "
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,”
said the Cat.
"I don't much care where- » said Alice.
if need be. So has Marseilles Town said that she will march.
But on the other hand, that Montélimart Town has said, No
thoroughfare; and means even to "bury herself" under her own
stone and mortar first,- of this be no mention in Bulletin de
Caen.
Such animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper;
and fervors and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the Mountain,
from the pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends,
Pascal's "Provincials. " What is more to the purpose, these
Girondins have got a General in chief, one Wimpfen, formerly
under Dumouriez; also a secondary questionable General Puisaye,
and others; and are doing their best to raise a force for war.
National Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye
National Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados
Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near:
forward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the
early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating
and consulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of Carabots,
Anti-jacobin friends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat.
With all which, and the editing of Bulletins, a National Repre-
sentative has his hands full.
At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less
animated in the "Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us. "
And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and
torn with an internal La Vendée, this is the conclusion we have
arrived at: To put down Anarchy by Civil War! Durum et
durum, the Proverb says, non faciunt murum. La Vendée burns;
Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew
beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege
of Mentz is become famed;-lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe
will testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither
on Sundays, to see the artillery work and counter-work; “you
## p. 3292 (#266) ###########################################
3292
THOMAS CARLYLE
only duck a little while the shot whizzes past. >>>> Condé is capitu-
lating to the Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several
weeks, fiercely batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp
of Famars was stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General
Custine was blamed,- and indeed is now come to Paris to give
"explanations. "
Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must
even make head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they
are, publish Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without
severity: they ray-forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the
olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other. Commis-
sioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical
Romme, and Prieur named of the Côte d'Or, venturing thither,
with their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may
Romme lie, under lock and key, "for fifty days"; and meditate
his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendée, and Civil
War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower
ebb.
Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History
specially notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de
l'Intendance, where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young
Lady with an aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of Deputy
Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure: in her twenty-fifth
year; of beautiful still countenance: her name is Charlotte Cor-
day, heretofore styled D'Armans, while Nobility still was. Bar-
baroux has given her a Note to Deputy Duperret,-him who
once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she will
to Paris on some errand?
«She was a Republican before the
Revolution, and never wanted energy. " A completeness, a decis-
ion is in this fair female Figure: "By energy she means the
spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country. "
What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her
secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-
angelic, half-demonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a
moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright com-
plete was she, through long centuries! -Quitting Cimmerian
Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five million
within, History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of
a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the
little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the
Night.
## p. 3293 (#267) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3293
With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of
luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in
the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell
of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a line left,
signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her,
and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along; amid
drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in which
she mingles not: all night, all day, and again all night. On
Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly;
here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and
purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in
the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room;
hastens to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow
morning.
On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret.
It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of
the Interior's hands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent
friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist
her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She
finished this, in the course of Friday:-yet says nothing of
returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things.
The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mount-
ain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see;
he is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large
sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place
des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach: "To the Rue de l'École de
Médecine, No. 44. " It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! -
The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to
disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hap-
less beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in
the utmost West, from Neuchâtel in the utmost East, they two
drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely,
business together. -Charlotte, returning to her Inn, dispatches a
Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat
of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put
his power to do France a great service. " No answer.
Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with
it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-
laborers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling
and simmering, manifold according to its vague wont; this one
short
it in
## p. 3294 (#268) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3294
fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight,― toward a pur-
pose.
It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month; eve
of the Bastille day,-when "M. Marat," four years ago, in the
crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval
Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount,
and give up their arms, then "; and became notable among
Patriot men. Four years: what a road he has traveled:— and
sits now, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-
bath; sore afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever, of what other
malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and
worn, poor man: with precisely eleven-pence-half-penny of
ready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed
stool for writing on, the while; and a squalid - Washer-woman,
one may call her: that is his civic establishment in Medical-
School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him.
Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity: yet surely
on the way toward that? - Hark, a rap again!
rap again! A musical
woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the Citoyenne who
would do France a service. Marat, recognizing from within,
cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.
Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and
wished to speak with you. -Be seated, mon enfant. Now what
are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen? —
Charlotte names some Deputies.
"Their heads shall fall within
a fortnight," croaks the eager People's-friend, clutching his
tablets to write: Barbaroux, Pétion, writes he with bare shrunk
arm, turning aside in the bath: Pétion, and Louvet, and-Char-
lotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it with one
sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "À moi, chère amie (Help,
dear)! " no more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The
helpful Washer-woman running in-there is no Friend of the
People, or Friend of the Washer-woman, left; but his life with a
groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below!
And so Marat, People's-friend, is ended; the lone Stylites has
got hurled down suddenly from his pillar-whither ward He that
made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in
dole and wail; re-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention,
"Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assas-
sinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral,
Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in
## p. 3295 (#269) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3295
lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to
One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sans-culotte, "-
whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the
urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-
born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake
mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his
Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place
as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but
Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole cir-
cumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old Moni-
teur Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchâtel to
ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean-Paul Marat's
musket be given to him. " For Marat too had a brother and
natural affections; and was wrapped once in swaddling-clothes,
and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of
men! —A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.
As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the
recompense of it is near and sure. The chère amie, and the
neighbors of the house, flying at her, she "overturns some
movables," intrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive; then
quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone
quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage or admiration,
round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her; his
Papers sealed,-which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in
like manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her.
Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave
firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet.
On Wednesday morning the thronged Palais de Justice and
Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm:
she dates it "fourth day of the Preparation of Peace. " A strange
murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her; you could not
say of what character. Tinville has his indictments and tape-
papers: the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold
her the sheath-knife; "All these details are needless," interrupted
Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat. " By whose instigation? —
"By no one's. " "What tempted you, then? " "His crimes. I
killed
one man," added she, raising her voice extremely (ex-
trêmement),
as they went on with their questions, "I killed one
man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a
savage wild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a Repub-
before the Revolution; I never wanted energy. " There is
lican
## p. 3296 (#270) ###########################################
3296
THOMAS CARLYLE
therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the
hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving:
the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is
Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in
gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they
send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, any
ghostly or other aid from him.
On this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o'clock,
from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the
fatal Cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in
red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life;
journeying toward death,-alone amid the World. Many take
off their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be
touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, de-
clares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to
die with her; the head of this young man seems turned. At the
Place de la Révolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the
same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she
resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation,
she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being
now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck, a blush of
maidenly shame overspreads her fair face and neck; the cheeks
were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed
head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster,
"that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes;
the Police imprisoned him for it. "
In this manner have the Beautifulest and the Squalidest come
in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and
Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. "Day
of the Preparation of Peace"? Alas, how were peace possible or
preparable, while for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in
their convent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love-paradises and the
light of Life, but of Codrus's-sacrifices and Death well-earned?
That twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this is
the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be
the embodiment! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities
tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually
extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,- in the
Mother's bosom that bore you both!
This is the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most
complete: angelic-demonic: like a Star!
## p. 3297 (#271) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3297
TE
4
D
*
THE SCAPEGOAT
From the French Revolution>
T
THIS conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis!
The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form.
of Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form
of Society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand
years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange
Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine;
dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or
by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumer-
And behold now a King himself, or say rather King-
hood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures, — like a
Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It
is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man;
injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return
"always home," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears
the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man's tri-
bunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were
not well with him.
able men.
A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the
imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at
bottom it is not the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a
coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you
take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do more?
Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled with a gag. Miser-
ablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act
Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows,
unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the
lees.
For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and
the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy ut-
most pity, with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold
contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied!
A Confessor has come; Abbé Edgeworth, of Irish extraction,
whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this
solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King;
it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A
hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones.
hearts, environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left here!
Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Cléry through these
Kind
VI-207
## p. 3298 (#272) ###########################################
3298
THOMAS CARLYLE
glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see the
cruelest of scenes:
―――――
"At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the
Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame
Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the
arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted
only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty
towards the inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting un-
known to them: 'No,' said the King, 'let us go into the dining-
room; it is there only that I can see you. ' They entered there;
I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down,
the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right,
Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained stand-
ing between his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and
often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and
three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see
only that always when the King spoke, the sobbing of the Prin-
cesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the
King began again to speak. " And so our meetings and our part-
ings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor
joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings,
and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou
good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see
thee any more! - NEVER! O Reader, knowest thou that hard.
word?
For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear them-
selves asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow. "
He promises: -Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved
ones; cry to God for yourselves and me! — It was a hard scene,
but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The
Queen, in passing through the ante-room, glanced at the Cerberus
Municipals; and with woman's vehemence, said through her tears,
"Vous êtes tous des scélérats. "
King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Cléry,
as he had been ordered, awoke him. Cléry dressed his hair:
while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and
kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is
now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell.
At half-past
six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and con-
ference with Abbé Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it
were too hard to bear.
## p. 3299 (#273) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3299
At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will,
and messages and effects; which they at first brutally refuse to
take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, 125 louis;
these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At
nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to
retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre
again says the hour is come. "Stamping on the ground with his
right foot, Louis answers: 'Partons' (Let us go). ". How the
rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions
and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a
widow !
He is gone, then, and has not seen
us? A Queen
weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these
Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one;
she, as Duchesse d'Angoulême, will live,-not happily.
shut.
At the Temple gate were some faint cries, perhaps from
voices of pitiful women: "Grâce! Grâce! » Through the rest of
the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed
is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not
express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All win-
dows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are
No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets, but
one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed
statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning,
but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence
and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the
only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers
of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear
in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heaven-
ward, and forget the Earth.
As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Révolution,
once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the
old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far
round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators
crowding in the rear; D'Orléans
D'Orléans Égalité there in cabriolet.
Swift messengers, hoquetons, speed to the Town-hall, every
three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting, vengeful for
Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the
Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Car-
riage opens.
Ten different witnesses
What temper he is in?
He is in the collision of
I will give ten different accounts of it.
all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of
――
## p. 3300 (#274) ###########################################
3300
THOMAS CARLYLE
Death in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be
resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straitly charges the
Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend.
The drums are beating: "Taisez-vous (Silence)! " he cries "in
a terrible voice (d'une voix terrible). " He mounts the scaffold,
not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white
stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-
waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind
him: he spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth has to remind him
how the Savior, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound.
His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come.
He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, "his face very red,"
and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold
and near appearing before God that I tell you so.
I pardon
my enemies; I desire that France-» A General on horseback,
Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "Tam-
bours! » The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your
duty! " The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be mur-
dered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do
not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly
desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbé
Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend
to Heaven. " The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away.
It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-
eight years four months and twenty-eight days.
Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of Vive la
République rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats
waving students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on
the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orléans drives off in his
cabriolet: the Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It
is done, It is done. " There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-
points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterward
denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are
long after worn in rings. And so, in some half-hour it is done;
and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers,
milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries, the world wags
on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that
evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in
a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,
according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing
it was.
## p. 3301 (#275) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3301
A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences.
On the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in
disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all
ready, correct in black-on-white to the utmost farthing: these he
wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote ob-
scurity, to the country and his books. They will never be
audited, those accounts; he will never get retired thither.
It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday
comes Lepelletier St. -Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pan-
theon of Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter
day. The Body is borne aloft, half-bare; the winding-sheet
disclosing the death-wound; sabre and bloody clothes parade
themselves; a "lugubrious music" wailing harsh næniæ.
crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks
there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of
every color, all mourning brother-like.
was
Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it
the last act these men ever did with concert! All parties
and figures of Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and
its Convention, now stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger
to dagger; the King's Life, round which they all struck and
battled, being hurled down. Dumouriez, conquering Holland,
growls ominous discontent, at the head of Armies. Men say
Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orléans Égalité shall
be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis, curses
his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of
Regicides, of "Arras Vipers" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons,
of horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send
him swiftly to another world than theirs. This is Te-Deum
Fauchet, of the Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp
was the death-hail rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that
Bastille day: but it was soft to such wreckage of high Hope as
this; one's New Golden Era going down in leaden dross, and
sulphurous black of the Everlasting Darkness!
## p. 3302 (#276) ###########################################
3302
BLISS CARMAN
BLISS CARMAN
(1861-)
BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
B
LISS CARMAN was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on
April 15th, 1861. On both sides of the house he belongs
to that United Empire Loyalist stock which at the time of
the American Revolution sacrificed wealth and ease to a principle,
and angrily withdrew from the young republic to carve out new
commonwealths in the wilds of Canada. His father was William
Carman, Clerk of the Pleas, a man of influence and distinction in his
Province. His mother was one of the Blisses of Fredericton, the
Loyalist branch of that Connecticut family
to which Emerson's mother belonged. Mr.
Carman was educated at the Collegiate
School and the University of New Bruns-
wick, both at Fredericton. He distinguished
himself in classics and mathematics, took
his B. A. in 1881, his M. A. in 1884, and
afterwards took partial courses at Edin-
burgh and Harvard. He has been connected
editorially with several American period-
icals, the Independent and the Chap-Book
among them, but now devotes himself ex-
clusively to literature. He divides his time
between Boston and Washington, returning.
to the Maritime Provinces for the hot months of each year.
Mr. Carman issued his first volume of poems in 1893, when he
had already won reputation as a contributor to the magazines. The
volume was called 'Low Tide on Grand Pré: a Book of Lyrics. ' It
was published in New York and London, and ran quickly into a
second edition. Equally successful was the volume called 'Songs
from Vagabondia,' published in 1894. About half the poems in this
volume are by Mr. Richard Hovey, whose name appears on the title-
page with that of Mr. Carman. In 1895 appeared 'Behind the Arras:
a Book of the Unseen. ' Much of Mr. Carman's known work remains
still uncollected.
In that outburst of intellectual energy which has of late won for
Canada a measure of recognition in the world of letters, Mr. Car-
man's work has played a large part. The characteristics of the
Canadian school may perhaps be defined as a certain semi-Sufiistic
## p. 3303 (#277) ###########################################
BLISS CARMAN
3303
worship of nature, combined with freshness of vision and keenness
to interpret the significance of the external world. These charac-
teristics find intense expression in Mr. Carman's poems.
And they
find expression in an utterance so new and so distinctive that its
influence is already active in the verse of his contemporaries.
There are two terms which apply pre-eminently to Mr. Carman.
These are Lyrist and Symbolist. His note is always the lyric note.
The lyric cry» thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is
the rhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then
in his work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion.
Every phrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is
a poem which not only haunts the ear with its harmonies but at the
same time makes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result
is less successful it seems sometimes as if the thought were too
much diluted with words, - as if, in fact, verbal music and verbal
coloring
were allowed to take the place of the legitimate thought-
process.
Even in such cases, the verse, however nebulous in mean-
ing, is rarely without some subtlety of technique, some charm of
diction, to justify its existence. But there are poems of Mr. Car-
man's, wherein what seems at first to be the obscurity of an over-
attenuated thought is really an attempt to express thought in terms
of pure music or pure color. In a curious and beautiful poem called
'Beyond the Gamut he elaborates a theory of the oneness and inter-
changeability of form, sound, and color.
In the matter of conception and interpretation Mr. Carman is a
symbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense, and
must be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring
schools.
The true symbolist and all the supreme artists of the
world have been in this sense symbolists-recognizes that there are
truths too vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific
phrase.
They elude set words; as a faint star, at the coming on of
evening, eludes the eye which seeks for it directly, while unveiling
itself to a side glance.
Mr. Carman conveys to us, by the suggestion
of thrilling color or inimitable phrase, perceptions and emotions
a more strictly defined method could never capture.
In subject-matter Mr. Carman is simple and elemental.
at his themes curiously, often whimsically; but the themes are those
of universal and eternal import,-life, love, and death, the broad
aspects of the outer world, the "deep heart of man," and the spirit
that informs them all.
His song is sometimes in a minor key, plan-
gent
and piercing; sometimes in a large and virile major,—as for
To his gifts of
which
He looks
instance when he sings the War-song of Gamelba. '
imagination, insight, and lyric passion he adds a fine humor, the out-
flowing of a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified
## p. 3304 (#278) ###########################################
3304
BLISS CARMAN
in 'Resignation' and 'A More Ancient Mariner. ' His chief defects,
besides the occasional obscurity already referred to, are a tendency
to looseness of structure in his longer poems, and once in a while, as
in parts of 'The Silent Lodger,' a Browningesque lapse into hardness
and baldness when the effect aimed at is colloquial simplicity.
Chart G. D. Nobals
HACK AND HEW
ACK and Hew were the sons of God
In the earlier earth than now;
One at his right hand, one at his left,
To obey as he taught them how.
H
And Hack was blind and Hew was dumb,
But both had the wild, wild heart;
And God's calm will was their burning will,
And the gist of their toil was art.
They made the moon and the belted stars,
They set the sun to ride;
They loosed the girdle and veil of the sea,
The wind and the purple tide.
Both flower and beast beneath their hands
To beauty and speed outgrew,—
The furious fumbling hand of Hack,
And the glorying hand of Hew.
Then, fire and clay, they fashioned a man,
And painted him rosy brown;
And God himself blew hard in his eyes:
"Let them burn till they smolder down! "
And "There! " said Hack, and "There! " thought Hew,
"We'll rest, for our toil is done. "
But "Nay," the Master Workman said,
"For your toil is just begun.
"And ye who served me of old as God
Shall serve me anew as man,
Till I compass the dream that is in my heart
And perfect the vaster plan. "
## p. 3305 (#279) ###########################################
BLISS CARMAN
3305
And still the craftsman over his craft,
In the vague white light of dawn,
With God's calm will for his burning will,
While the mounting day comes on,
Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,
Toils with those shadowy two,—
The faltering restless hand of Hack,
And the tireless hand of Hew.
From Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe and Company
AT THE GRANITE GATE
HERE paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind.
With mystery before,
And reticence behind,
THE
A portal waits me too
In the glad house of spring;
One day I shall pass through
And leave you wondering.
It lies beyond the marge
Of evening or of prime,
Silent and dim and large,
The gateway of all time.
There troop by night and day.
My brothers of the field;
And I shall know the way
Their wood-songs have revealed.
The dusk will hold some trace
Of all my radiant crew
Who vanished to that place,
Ephemeral as dew.
Into the twilight dun,
Blue moth and dragon-fly
Adventuring alone,-
Shall be more brave than I?
There innocents shall bloom,
And the white cherry tree,
With birch and willow plume
To strew the road for me.
## p. 3306 (#280) ###########################################
3306
BLISS CARMAN
The wilding orioles then
Shall make the golden air
Heavy with joy again,
And the dark heart shall dare
Resume the old desire,-
The exigence of spring
To be the orange fire
That tips the world's gray wing.
And the lone wood-bird - Hark!
The whippoorwill, night-long,
Threshing the summer dark
With his dim flail of song! -
Shall be the lyric lift,
When all my senses creep,
To bear me through the rift
In the blue range of sleep.
And so I pass beyond
The solace of your hand.
But ah, so brave and fond!
Within that morrow-land,
Where deed and daring fail,
But joy forevermore
Shall tremble and prevail
Against the narrow door,
Where sorrow knocks too late,
And grief is overdue,
Beyond the granite gate
There will be thoughts of you.
From Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe and Company
THE
A SEA CHILD
HE lover of child Marjory
Had one white hour of life brim full;
Now the old nurse, the rocking sea,
Hath him to lull.
The daughter of child Marjory
Hath in her veins, to beat and run,
The glad indomitable sea,
The strong white sun.
Copyrighted by Bliss Carman.
## p. 3307 (#281) ###########################################
3307
LEWIS CARROLL
(CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON)
(1832-)
T
HAT the author of the best nonsense-writing in the language
should be a professional mathematician and logician, is not
a paradox but a sequence. A gymnast cannot divert us by
pretending to lose his balance unless perfectly able to keep his
balance. Actors who counterfeit insanity must be acutely sane.
Only a competent classical scholar can write good macaronics; only
a good poet can write clever doggerel. The only ones who can use
slang effectively are those who do not need to use it at all. Nor is
the tone and temper of mind evinced by these dry and severe studies
out of keeping with the airiest play of fancy or the maddest fun.
The one is indeed a frequent relief from the other, and no intellect-
ual bent is related in the least to any special temperament. Extrava-
gant drollery can be mated to an aptitude for geometry or a
passion for analysis as well as to a love of pictures or of horses.
But the parentage of Alice in Wonderland' and its fellows is
closer to their creator's intellectual being even than this. A very
slight glance at their matter and mechanism shows that they are the
work of one trained to use words with the finest precision, to teach
others to use them so, to criticize keenly any inconsistency or
slovenliness in their use, and to mock mercilessly any vagueness
incoherence in thought or diction. The fantastic framework and
inconsequent scenes of these wonder-stories mask from the popular
view the qualities which give them their superlative rank and endur-
ing charm.
The mere machinery, ingenious and amusing as it is, would not
entertain beyond a single reading; it can be and has often been
imitated, along with the incarnated nursery rhymes and old saws.
Yet these grotesque chimeras, under Lewis Carroll's touch, are as
living to us as any characters in Dickens or the 'Ingoldsby Legends,'
and even more so to the elders than the children. Who does not
know and delight in the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the
elegant White Rabbit and the conceited and monosyllabic Caterpillar,
the Cheshire Cat and the Mock-Turtle, the March Hare and the
Hatter and the Dormouse; or the chess White King and the Queens
and the White Knight, the Walrus and the Carpenter, of Looking-
Glass Land?
## p. 3308 (#282) ###########################################
3308
LEWIS CARROLL
The very genesis of many of these is the logical analysis of a
popular comparison into sober fact, as "grinning like a Cheshire cat,"
"mad as a hatter" or "March_hare," "sleeping like a dormouse,"
etc. ; and a large part of their wit and fun consists in plays on
ambiguous terms in current use, like the classic "jam every other
day," "French, music, and washing," "The name of the song is
called or in parodies on familiar verses (or on the spirit of
ballads rather than the wording, as in Jabberwocky'), or in heaps
of versified non-sequiturs, like the exquisite poem" read at the trial
of the Knave of Hearts. The analyst and the logician is as patent
in 'Alice' as in the class lectures the author gave or the technical
works he has issued; only turning his criticism and his reductiones
ad absurdum into bases for witty fooling instead of serious lessons or
didactic works. Hence, while his wonder-books are nominally for
children, and please the children through their cheaper and com-
moner qualities, their real audience is the most cultivated and keen-
minded part of the mature world; to whom indeed he speaks almost
exclusively in such passages as the Rabelaisian satire of the jury
trial in Alice in Wonderland,' or the mob in Sylvie and Bruno'
yelling "Less bread! More taxes! " before the Lord Chancellor's
house, or the infinitely touching pathos of the Outlandish Watch.
'Alice in Wonderland' appeared in 1865; it received universal
admiration at once, and was translated into many languages. By
the rarest of good fortune, it was illustrated by an artist (John Ten-
niel) who entered into its spirit so thoroughly that the characters
in popular memory are as much identified with his pictures as with
Lewis Carroll's text, and no other representation of them would be
endured. Through the Looking-Glass' followed in 1871; its prose
matter was almost equal to that of its predecessor, — the chapter of
the White Knight is fully equal to the best of the other, and its
verse is superior. Part of the first book was based on the game of
cards; the whole setting of the second is based on chess moves, and
Alice's progress to queenship along the board. He has published
several books of humorous prose and verse since; some of the verse
equal to the best of his two best books, but the prose generally
spoiled by conscious didacticism, as in Sylvie and Bruno,' which
however contains some of his happiest nonsense verse. The Hunt-
ing of the Snark' is a nonsense tale in verse, but oddly the best
things in it are his prose tags. Rhyme and Reason' is a collection
of verse, some of it of high merit in its kind: The Three Voices' is
spun out and ill-ended, but has some passages which deserve to be
classic.
«<
Lewis Carroll is in fact the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who
(disliking publicity) lives in retirement at Oxford, and the world
## p. 3309 (#283) ###########################################
LEWIS CARROLL
3309
knows little of him. He was born in 1833 and received his degree
in Christ Church, Oxford, with high honors in mathematics. In 1861
he took orders in the Church of England. From 1855 to 1881 he
was mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He has pub-
lished several works on mathematics, including 'Euclid and His
Modern Rivals,' and 'Mathematica Curiosa,' a very valuable work.
'A Tangled Tale,' 'Pillow Problems,' and a 'Game of Logic' are
scientific and humorous, but are only appreciated by experts in
mathematics and logic. Delighted with Alice in Wonderland' on
its appearance, Queen Victoria asked Mr. Dodgson for his other
works; and in response "Lewis Carroll» sent her his 'Elementary
Treatise on Determinants' and other mathematical works. It is sel-
dom that the dualism of a mind-writing now nonsense so thor-
oughly and vigorously witty, and now exploring the intricacies of
higher mathematics - has a more curious illustration. Certainly the
illustration is seldom as diverting to the public.
(
ALICE, THE PIG-BABY, AND THE CHESHIRE CAT
From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
"H
ERE! you may nurse it a bit, if you like! " said the Duchess
to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. "I must
go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen," and
she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after
her as she went, but it just missed her.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-
shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all
directions,-"just like a star-fish," thought Alice. The poor little
thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and
kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again; so
that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as
she could do to hold it.
As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it,
(which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep
tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its
undoing itself), she carried it out into the open air. "If I don't
take this child away with me," thought Alice, "they're sure to
kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it
behind? " She said the last words out loud, and the little thing
grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time).
grunt," said Alice: "that's not at all the proper way of express-
ing yourself. "
"Don't
## p. 3310 (#284) ###########################################
LEWIS CARROLL
3310
The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into
its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no
doubt that it had a very turn-up nose, much more like a snout
than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small, for
a baby: altogether, Alice did not like the look of the thing at
all,—“but perhaps it was only sobbing," she thought, and looked
into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears.
No, there were no tears. "If you're going to turn into a pig,
my dear," said Alice, seriously, "I'll have nothing more to do
with you.
Mind now! " The poor little thing sobbed again (or
grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for
some while in silence.
Alice was just beginning to think to herself, "Now, what am
I to do with this creature when I get it home? " when it grunted
again, so violently that she looked down into its face in some
alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was
neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be
quite absurd for her to carry it any further.
So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to
see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up,"
she said to herself, "it would have been a dreadfully ugly child:
but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think. " And she began
thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well
as pigs, and was just saying to herself, "If one only knew the
right way to change them » when she was a little startled by
seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards
off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-
natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great
many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect.
"Cheshire Puss," she began,- rather timidly, as she did not at
all know whether it would like the name: however, it only
grinned a little wider. Come, it's pleased so far," thought
Alice, and she went on: "Would you tell me, please, which way
I ought to walk from here? "
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,”
said the Cat.
"I don't much care where- » said Alice.
