He is now one of the chief
literary
figures in
the eye of modern Europe.
the eye of modern Europe.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
14148 (#338) ##########################################
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which the evil and debased elements are so closely intermingled
with the noble and the beautiful, that in the assured march of
good, much that is noble and beautiful must needs share the fate
of the evil and debased. If it were not for the conviction that
however prolific and progressive the evil may have been, the
power of good is more progressive and more prolific, the chron-
icler of a system that seems to be vanishing might lay down his
pen with a heavy heart. The most enthusiastic admirer of me-
diæval life must grant that all that was good and great in it was
languishing even to death; and the firmest believer in progress
must admit that as yet there were few signs of returning health.
The sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds and thick
darkness; the coming of the Tudors gave as yet no promise of
light: it was “as the morning spread upon the mountains," —
darkest before the dawn.
The natural inquiry, how the fifteenth century affected the
development of national character, deserves an attempt at an
answer; but it can be little more than an attempt, for very little
light is thrown upon it by the life and genius of great men.
With the exception of Henry V. , English history can show
throughout the age no man who even aspires to greatness; and
the greatness of Henry V. is not of a sort that is peculiar to the
age or distinctive of a stage of national life. His personal idio-
syncrasy was that of a hero in no heroic age. Of the best of
the minor workers, none rises beyond mediocrity of character or
achievement. Bedford was a wise and noble statesman, but his
whole career was a hopeless failure. Gloucester's character had
no element of greatness at all. Beaufort, by his long life, high
rank, wealth, experience, and ability, held a position almost un-
rivaled in Europe, but he was neither successful nor disinterested:
fair and honest and enlightened as his policy may have been,
neither at the time nor ever since has the world looked upon
him as a benefactor; he appears in history as a lesser Wolsey, -
a hard sentence perhaps, but one which is justified by the gen-
eral condition of the world in which the two cardinals had to
play their part; Beaufort was the great minister of an expiring
system, Wolsey of an age of great transitions. Among the other
clerical administrators of the age, Kemp and Waynflete were
faithful, honest, enlightened, but quite unequal to the difficulties
of their position; and besides them there are absolutely none
that come within even the second class of greatness as useful
men. It is the same with the barons: such greatness as there is
## p. 14149 (#339) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14149
>
amongst them
and the greatness of Warwick is the climax and
type of it - is more conspicuous in evil than in good. In the
classes beneath the baronage, as we have them portrayed in the
Paston Letters, we see more of violence, chicanery, and greed,
than of anything else. Faithful attachment to the faction which
from hereditary or personal liking they have determined to main-
tain, is the one redeeming feature; and it is one which by itself
may produce as much evil as good, -that nation is in an evil
plight in which the sole redeeming quality is one that owes its
existence to a deadly disease. All else is languishing: literature
has reached the lowest depths of dullness; religion, so far as its
chief results are traceable, has sunk, on the one hand into a
dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot pass
either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere war-
cry of the cause of destruction. Between the two lies a narrow
borderland of pious and cultivated mysticism, far too fastidious
to do much for the world around. Yet here as everywhere else,
the dawn is approaching. Here as everywhere else, the evil is
destroying itself; and the remaining good, lying deep down and
having yet to wait long before it reaches the surface, is already
striving toward the sunlight that is to come. The good is to
come out of the evil: the evil is to compel its own remedy; the
good does not spring from it, but is drawn up through it. In
the history of nations, as of men, every good and perfect gift is
from above: the new life strikes down in the old root; there is
no generation from corruption.
So we turn our back on the age of chivalry, of ideal heroism,
of picturesque castles and glorious churches and pageants, camps
and tournaments, lovely charity and gallant self-sacrifice; with
their dark shadows of dynastic faction, bloody conquest, griev-
ous misgovernance, local tyrannies, plagues and famines unhelped
and unaverted, hollowness of pomp, disease and dissolution. The
charm which the relics of mediæval art have woven around the
later Middle Ages must be resolutely, ruthlessly broken. The
attenuated life of the later Middle Ages is in thorough dis-
crepancy with the grand conceptions of the earlier times. The
thread of national life is not to be broken; but the earlier
strands are to be sought out and bound together, and strength-
ened with threefold union for the new work. But it will be a
work of time: the forces newly liberated by the shock of the
Reformation will not at once cast off the foulness of the strata
## p. 14150 (#340) ##########################################
14150
WILLIAM STUBBS
were
through which they have passed before they reached the higher
air; much will be destroyed that might well have been con-
served, and some new growths will be encouraged that ought to
have been checked. In the new world, as in the old, the tares
are mingled with the wheat. In the destruction and in the
growth alike, will be seen the great features of difference be-
tween the old and the new.
The printing-press is an apt emblem or embodiment of the
change. Hitherto men have spent their labor on a few books,
written by the few for the few, with elaborately chosen material,
in consummately beautiful penmanship, painted and emblazoned
as if each one a distinct labor of love, each manuscript
unique, precious, — the result of most careful individual training,
and destined for the complete enjoyment of a reader educated up
to the point at which he can appreciate its beauty. Henceforth
books are to be common things. For a time the sanctity of the
older forms will hang about the printing-press; the magnificent
volumes of Fust and Colard Mansion will still recall the beauty of
the manuscript, and art will lavish its treasures on the embellish-
ment of the libraries of the great. Before long, printing will
be cheap, and the unique or special beauty of the early presses
will have departed; but light will have come into every house,
and that which was the luxury of the few will have become the
indispensable requisite of every family.
With the multiplication of books comes the rapid extension
and awakening of mental activity. As it is with the form, so
with the matter. The men of the decadence, not less than the
men of the renaissance, were giants of learning; they read and
assimilated the contents of every known book; down to the
very close of the era, the able theologian would press into the
service of his commentary or his summa every preceding com-
mentary or summa, with gigantic labor, and with an acuteness
which, notwithstanding that it was ill-trained and misdirected, is
in the eyes of the desultory reader of modern times little less
than miraculous: the books were rare, but the accomplished scholar
had worked through them all. Outside his little world all was
comparatively dark. Here too the change was coming. Scholar-
ship was to take a new form: intensity of critical power, devoted
to that which was worth criticizing, was to be substituted as the
characteristic of a learned man for the indiscriminating voracity
of the earlier learning. The multiplication of books would make
## p. 14151 (#341) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14151
such scholarship as that of Vincent of Beauvais, or Thomas Aqui-
nas, or Gerson, or Torquemada, an impossibility. Still there
would be giants like Scaliger and Casaubon,- men who culled
the fair flower of all learning; critical as the new scholars, com-
prehensive as the old: reserved for the patronage of sovereigns
and nations, and perishing when they were neglected, like the
beautiful books of the early printers. But they are a minor feat.
ure in the new picture. The real change is that by which every
man comes to be a reader and a thinker; the Bible comes to
every family, and each man is priest in his own household. The
light is not so brilliant, but it is everywhere; and it shines more
and more unto the perfect day. It is a false sentiment that leads
men in their admiration of the unquestionable glory of the old
culture, to undervalue the abundant wealth and growing glory of
the new.
The parallel holds good in other matters besides books. He
is a rash man who would, with one word of apology, compare
the noble architecture of the Middle Ages with the mean and
commonplace type of building into which, by a steady decline,
our churches, palaces, and streets had sunk at the beginning of
the present century. Here too the splendor of the few has been
exchanged for the comfort of the many; and although perhaps in
no description of culture has the break between the old and the
new been more conspicuous than in this, it may be said that the
many are now far more capable of appreciating the beauty which
they will try to rival, than ever the few were to comprehend the
value of that which they were losing. But it is needless to mul-
tiply illustrations of a truth which is exemplified by every new
invention: the steam plow and the sewing-machine are less pict-
uresque, and call for a less educated eye than that of the plow-
man and the seamstress: but they produce more work with less
waste of energy; they give more leisure and greater comfort;
they call out, in the production and improvement of their mech-
anism, a higher and more widely spread culture. And all these
things are growing instead of decaying.
To conclude with a few of the commonplaces which must be
familiar to all who have approached the study of history with a
real desire to understand it, but which are apt to strike the writer
more forcibly at the end than the beginning of his work. How-
ever much we may be inclined to set aside the utilitarian plan
of studying our subject, it cannot be denied that we must read
## p. 14152 (#342) ##########################################
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WILLIAM STUBBS
the origin and development of our Constitutional History chiefly
with the hope of educating ourselves into the true reading of its
later fortunes, and so train ourselves for a judicial examination
of its evidences,- a fair and equitable estimate of the rights and
wrongs of policy, dynasty, and party. Whether we intend to take
the position of a judge or the position of an advocate, it is most
necessary that both the critical insight should be cultivated, and
the true circumstances of the questions that arise at later stages
should be adequately explored. The man who would rightly learn
the lesson that the seventeenth century has to teach, must not
only know what Charles thought of Cromwell and what Cromwell
thought of Charles, but must try to understand the real ques-
tions at issue, not by reference to an ideal standard only, but by
tracing the historical growth of the circumstances in which those
questions arose; he must try to look at them as it might be sup-
posed that the great actors would have looked at them if Crom-
well had succeeded to the burden which Charles inherited, or if
Charles had taken up the part of the hero of reform. In such
an attitude it is quite unnecessary to exclude party feeling or
personal sympathy. Whichever way the sentiment may incline,
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is what
history would extract from her witnesses; the truth which leaves
no pitfalls for unwary advocates, and which is in the end the
fairest measure of equity to all. In the reading of that history
we have to deal with high-minded men, with zealous enthusiastic
parties, of whom it cannot be fairly said that one was less sin-
cere in his belief in his own cause than was the other. They
called each other hypocrites and deceivers, for each held his own
views so strongly that he could not conceive of the other as sin-
cere; but to us they are both of them true and sincere, which-
ever way our sympathies or our sentiments incline. We bring
to the reading of their acts a judgment which has been trained
through the Reformation history to see rights and wrongs on both
sides; sometimes see the balance of wrong on that side which
we believe, which we know, to be the right. We come to the
Reformation history from the reading of the gloomy period to
which the present volume has been devoted; a worn-out helpless
age, that calls for pity without sympathy, and yet balances weari.
ness with something like regrets. Modern thought is a little
prone to eclecticism in history: it can sympathize with Puritan-
ism as an effort after freedom, and put out of sight the fact that
## p. 14153 (#343) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14153
Puritanism was itself a grinding social tyranny, that wrought out
its ends by unscrupulous detraction, and by the profane handling
of things which should have been sacred even to the fanatic, if
he really believed in the cause for which he raged. There is
little real sympathy with the great object, the peculiar creed that
was oppressed: as a struggle for liberty, the Quarrel of Puritan-
ism takes its stand beside the Quarrel on the Investitures. Yet
like every other struggle for liberty, it ended in being a struggle
for supremacy. On the other hand, the system of Laud and of
Charles seems to many minds to contain so much that is good
and sacred, that the means by which it was maintained fall into
the background. We would not judge between the two theories
which have been nursed by the prejudices of ten generations.
To one side liberty, to the other law, will continue to outweigh
all other considerations of disputed and detailed right or wrong:
it is enough for each to look at them as the actors themselves
looked at them, or as men look at party questions of their own
day, when much of private conviction and personal feeling must
be sacrificed to save those broader principles for which only great
parties can be made to strive.
The historian looks with actual pain upon many of these
things. Especially in quarrels where religion is concerned, the
hollowness of the pretension to political honesty becomes a
stumbling-block in the way of fair judgment. We know that no
other causes have ever created so great and bitter struggles; have
brought into the field, whether of war or controversy, greater and
more united armies. Yet no truth is more certain than this, that
the real motives of religious action do not work on men in masses;
and that the enthusiasm which creates Crusaders, Inquisitors,
Hussites, Puritans, is not the result of conviction, but of passion
provoked by oppression or resistance, maintained by self-will, or
stimulated by the mere desire of victory. And this is a lesson
for all time; and for practical life as well as historical judgment.
And on the other hand, it is impossible to regard this as an ad-
equate solution of the problem: there must be something, even if
it be not religion or liberty, for which men will make so great
sacrifices.
The best aspect of an age of controversy must be sought in
the lives of the best men; whose honesty carries conviction to the
understanding, whilst their zeal kindles the zeal, of the many.
A study of the lives of such men will lead to the conclusion, that
a
## p. 14154 (#344) ##########################################
14154
WILLIAM STUBBS
in spite of internecine hostility in act, the real and true leaders
had far more in common than they knew of: they struggled, in
the dark or in the twilight, against the evil which was there, and
which they hated with equal sincerity; they fought for the good
which was there, and which really was strengthened by the issue
of the strife. Their blows fell at random: men perished in arms
against one another whose hearts were set on the same end
and aim; and that good end and aim which neither of them had
seen clearly was the inheritance they left to their children, made
possible and realized not so much by the victory of one as by
the truth and self-sacrifice of both.
At the close of so long a book, the author may be suffered
to moralize. His end will have been gained if he has succeeded
in helping to train the judgment of his readers to discern the
balance of truth and reality; and whether they go on to further
reading with the aspirations of the advocate or the calmness of
the critic, to rest content with nothing less than the attainable
maximum of truth, to base their arguments on nothing less
sacred than that highest justice which is found in the deepest
sympathy with erring and straying men.
## p. 14155 (#345) ##########################################
14155
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
(1608-1642)
IR JOHN SUCKLING is an interesting product of an interesting
age. His portrait by Vandyke - that of a fair-haired gal-
lant, his long curls hanging over his shoulders, his eyes a
steely blue, firm red lips, and a stalwart yet graceful figure arrayed
in the richest silks and velvets — tells much of his story. But there
are other characteristics less easily discovered. With the nonchalant
manner, half bravado, half indifference, of the cavalier, he took good
care of himself on at least two occasions when the spirit of the age
and his training would have led him to dis-
play less caution. The King himself (Charles
I. ) did not excel him in the gorgeousness of
his entertainments, nor was there so prodi-
gal a gamester in the kingdom; yet he was
capable of giving the soundest and the most
virtuous advice, and of expressing the most
edifying and Christian sentiments. Had his
brother-in-law Sir George Southcott but lived
to read Sir John's remarkable epistle on
Southcott's death by his own hand, he
would have refrained from such a proceed-
ing for very shame of becoming an object
of ridicule. Yet when Suckling, an exile Sir John SUCKLING
and in distress, came to a dangerous pass
in his fortunes, he committed suicide, regardless of his own satire.
His splendid, erratic, melancholy career left no trace either of sad-
ness or sentiment in his poems. There is nothing of the troubadour,
nothing of the minor strain of melancholy cheerfulness which touches
the heart in Lovelace's gay lyrics. The poem beginning
«Why so pale and wan, fond lover ?
Prythee why so pale ? »
is completely Suckling, and shows that his wreaths were not twined
from the cypress-tree.
Debt and love were both troublesome, with
perhaps a slight difference in favor of debt. He never, according to
the scanty facts known of his life, had a serious love affair, and cer-
tainly he sported with the grande passion. Yet he treated it with a
## p. 14156 (#346) ##########################################
14156
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
curious, contradictory respect. He required of his imaginary “soul's
mistress » neither beauty, nor wit, nor charm, - making all these qual.
ities subjective, and bidding her teach him only to be true, that love
might last forever. In an age of license he degraded literature with
no coarse or impure line; and now and then he who had written with
such pious zeal the paper Religious Thoughts on the State of the
Nation, composed a poem which chills the blood, though he who gave
it birth has slept for more than two centuries among those who in
fine garments and chests of cedar are laid up for immortality. ”
Suckling, whose "pretty touch savors more of the grape than the
lamp,” little as he heeded it often saw the death's-head at the feast.
He saw it in the lovely lines Farewell to Love,' after taking leave
of the “dear nothings” with which he had floated in the shadowed
landscape of life. The poem Against Absence'-chiefly acute rail-
lery, though there is a Comus-like touch in its simple force — cannot
be read without producing a feeling of solitude. And in the rich,
luxuriant Dream, cold fingers seem to press the brow.
Suckling's poems, all collected, are comprised in one thin volume.
He set out to be a dramatist, fancying that what genius for letters
he possessed was dramatic; and although he had written a satire
entitled “The Session of the Poets,' — which Byron imitated in Eng-
lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and which, in its day had as great
a vogue,- and two prose essays, the "Thoughts on Religion and A
Tract on Socinianism, he made his first serious dramatic attempt in
1638, when he published Aglaura,'— a play studded with beautiful
passages but without reality or development. The poets who had
themselves been ridiculed all laughed at it, and called it “a rivulet
of text and a meadow of margin. ” Its interest to us is in its having
been the first play acted with regular scenery, which had hitherto
been used only in the masques. His next play, Brennoralt (1639),
has finer qualities, but might have been written by any of the mob
of gentlemen” whom Pope described as writing as well as they did
anything else. Steele greatly admired a description of the loves of
the hero and heroine, Brennoralt and Franclia; comparing it to a
passage in Paradise Lost. 'The Goblins,' modeled after (Macbeth,
need not detain us but that it contains the oft-quoted line, original
with Sir John, “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman” (Act iii. ,
Scene 2).
As a lyric poet alone then, Suckling will be remembered; and
probably as the author of the single lyric, Ballad on a Wedding,'
composed on the marriage of Roger Boyle (first Earl of Orrery) with
Lady Mary Howard. The nimble grace, the happy turn, the elegance
and sparkle of fancy in this poem, the light and delicate touch, and
the ingenious conception, have placed it among the masterpieces of
>
## p. 14157 (#347) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14157
English lyrics. He has written other poems that will not be readily
forgotten, though they may not secure immortality:-
“I prythee send me back my heart,"
with recurring lines like a fugue –
“No,
>
fair Mistress, it must be ;)
no,
)
the stanzas headed “The Invocation, with their difficult construction
and recurring rhymes; the love song with its reverent gallantry, -
«I touch her as my beads, with devout care,
And go in to my courtship as my prayer;”
>
and the ideally lovely poem beginning "If you refuse me once,” and,
after the first three stanzas that breathe the very soul of manliness,
the beautiful and passionate outburst Would that I were all soul,”
and the “Why so pale and wan, fond lover? ” already referred to.
Hallam, chary of praise, says, “Suckling is acknowledged to have
left behind him all former writers of song, in gayety and ease. It is
not equally clear that he has ever been surpassed. ”
Few facts are known of his brief, brilliant career. His father,
John Suckling, was a knight and a Secretary of State; the son was
born at Winton in Middlesex, and baptized February Toth, 1608-9.
He was early attached to the court, and, says Sir William Dave-
nant, for his accomplishments and ready sparkling witt was the
bull that was most bayted; his repartee being most sparkling when
set on and provoked. ” He went abroad, and served under Gustavus
Adolphus. To aid Charles on his Scottish campaign, he raised a
troop of horse; but though they cost him twelve thousand pounds,
and were clad in white and red, when they came in sight of the
army at Dunse they fled without the loss of a feather. Hence the
lampoon Percy preserves:-
(
«Sir John got him an ambling nag
To Scotland for to ride-a! »
He gave good advice to both King and Queen in their subsequent
troubles; but at the fall of Strafford, Aed to France, where his faint
heart and gay philosophy failed him. He died in Paris in 1642. His
memoir and poems were published by his relative, Rev. Alfred Suck-
ling (London, 1832).
## p. 14158 (#348) ##########################################
14158
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
SONG
W"
HY so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale ?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail ?
Prithee, why so pale ?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner ?
Prithee, why so mute ?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't ?
Prithee, why so mute ?
Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move:
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The Devil take her!
A BRIDE
From the Ballad Upon a Wedding'
)
T"
HE maid — and thereby hangs a tale,
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce;
No grape that's kindly ripe, could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.
Her finger was so small, the ring
Would not stay on which they did bring, –
It was too wide a peck;
And to say truth (for out it must),
It looked like the great collar (just)
About our young colt's neck.
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light:
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
## p. 14159 (#349) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14159
Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone:
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun.
Her lips were red, and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly;
But Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.
Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break,
That they might passage get;
But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours, or better,
And are not spent a whit.
THE HONEST LOVER
H
ONEST lover whosoever,
If in all thy love there ever
Was one wavering thought, if thy flame
Were not still even, still the same,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If, when she appears i'th' room,
Thou dost not quake, and art struck dumb,
And in striving this to cover,
Dost not speak thy words twice over,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If fondly thou dost not mistake,
And all defects for graces take.
Persuad'st thyself that jests are broken
When she hath little or nothing spoken, -
## p. 14160 (#350) ##########################################
14160
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If when thou appear'st to be within,
Thou lett'st not men ask and ask again;
And when thou answer'st, if it be
To what was asked thee properly,–
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If when thy stomach calls to eat,
Thou cutt'st not fingers 'stead of meat,
And, with much gazing on her face
Dost not rise hungry from the place,
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If by this thou dost discover
That thou art no perfect lover,
And, desiring to love true,
Thou dost begin to love anew,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
THE CONSTANT LOVER
OT
UT upon it! I have loved
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more.
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
## p. 14161 (#351) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14161
But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.
Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
VERSES
1
AM confirmed a woman can
Love this, or that, or any man:
This day she's melting hot,
To-morrow swears she knows you not;
If she but a new object find,
Then straight she's of another mind.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
-
Yet still I love the fairsome — why?
For nothing but to please my eye:
And so the fat and soft-skinned dame
I'll flatter to appease my flame;
For she that's musical I'll long,
When I am sad, to sing a song.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
I'll give my fancy leave to range
Through everywhere to find out change;
The black, the brown, the fair shall be
But objects of variety:
I'll court you all to serve my turn,
But with such fames as shall not burn.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
XXIV-886
## p. 14162 (#352) ##########################################
14162
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
THE METAMORPHOSIS
T**
He little boy, to show his might and power,
Turned lo to a cow, Narcissus to a flower;
Transformed Apollo to a homely swain,
And Jove himself into a golden rain.
These shapes were tolerable, but by the mass
He's metamorphosed me into an ass.
SONG
I
PRITHEE send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine;
For if from thine thou wilt not part,
Why then shouldst thou have mine?
Yet now I think on't, let it lie:
To find it were in vain,
For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.
Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together ?
O love, where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever?
But lov is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out;
For when I think I'm best resolved
I then am most in doubt.
Then farewell care, and farewell woe,
I will no longer pine;
For I'll believe I have her heart,
As much as she hath mine.
## p. 14163 (#353) ##########################################
14163
HERMANN SUDERMANN
(1857–)
mere
own
ROm every new literary mode, however madcap and ephem-
eral, something of value may be won. In the back-and-
forward swing between the fancies of an overheated ideal-
ism and the facts of a frigid realism, the pendulum returns to its
vertical with something brought from each of the extremes. From
the crass realism into which, for a time, the once so fantastic litera-
ture of Germany threatened to petrify, emerges Hermann Sudermann,
equipped with all the trenchant power of the realistic workman, but
bringing to his work the sympathetic in-
sight of the idealist. He deals with social
problems, with the struggles of impuls-
ive human nature at war with social con-
ditions; but he does not repel by sordid
details, nor delight in depicting
wretchedness and woe. His characters are
swayed by the passions, sorrows, and men-
tal twists, of which all of us in our
experience have had glimpses at least that
render them intelligible. His unswerving
belief in the uplifting forces of man's na-
ture gives to his gloomiest conceptions a
saving buoyancy; he finds a way to rec- HERMANN SUDERMANN
oncilement with life, even though the way
lie through death. Wide gray plains and moorlands, like those of
East Prussia where the poet was born, stretch far away; but behind
waving reed and withering sedge is the white sky-line of the dawn.
Sudermann cannot be classed with any school or cult. In him the
swaying pendulum of fads and fashions has come to rest. He is
the sane artist; painting the world as he sees it, and seeing it with
the intuitions of a poet.
Sudermann has, within a decade, taken his place among the fore-
most German novelists and dramatists that mark the end of the
nineteenth century.
He is now one of the chief literary figures in
the eye of modern Europe. He was born at Matzicken, in the great
Baltic plain near the boundaries of Russia, on September 30th, 1857;
and the wide outreach of this level country is the scene upon which
## p. 14164 (#354) ##########################################
14164
HERMANN SUDERMANN
most of his tales and novels run their course. His parents were
poor; and it was a matter of pecuniary necessity when, at the age of
fourteen, he was apprenticed to a chemist. Subsequently, however,
he was enabled to study at Tilsit, Königsberg, and Berlin, and be-
came tutor in the household of the genial story-teller Hans Hopfen.
In 1881, after devoting the leisure hours of six years to history, phi-
lology, and modern languages, he turned to journalism, and assumed
the editorial management of a political weekly in Berlin. In 1885 a
collection of his stories from the newspapers was published under
the title of Im Zwielicht' (In the Twilight). Though not without a
melancholy touch, they possess the wit and sprightliness of French
stories; but they struck a more serious note, which gave promise
of greater work to follow. In 1886, with the publication of Frau
Sorge) (Dame Care), Sudermann stepped at once into the front rank
of German novelists. Three years later, again at a single bound,
he took the first place among the dramatists with his admirably
constructed play of Ehre' (Honor). It began its triumphant career
on the Berlin stage in November 1889, and rapidly conquered the
theatres of all Germany. Meanwhile in 1887, three volumes of his
tales had appeared, under the general title of "Geschwister' (Brothers
and Sisters); and two years afterward came (Der Katzensteg) (The
Cat Bridge), which some critics have not hesitated to pronounce the
most powerful novel of contemporary German literature.
In 1890 a
new drama, (Sodoms Ende? (Destruction of Sodom), displayed the
author's increasing command of stage technique, which in Heimath
(Home) becomes complete mastery. The more recent Schmetter-
lingsschlacht' (Battle of the Butterflies) is less satisfactory. In 1892
appeared the story of Iolanthe's Hochzeit” (Iolanthe's Wedding), full
of delightful humor and merry-making, and without a shade of mel-
ancholy. In the following year Es War' (It Was) made a genuine
sensation, running through fifteen editions in twelve months. Suder-
mann's fame seems now secure, whatever the future may hold.
The tendency of German novelists to subordinate narrative and
dramatic development to sentiment and psychological comment, has
rendered the average German novel dull and distasteful to foreign
readers. Sudermann appeals to a cosmopolitan taste: in him is
no trace either of sentimentality or moral reflection. He is strong,
brilliant, concise, effective; the impression he makes is indelible; the
mood into which he throws the reader, though sombre, is sympa-
thetic; and if melancholy, never morbid. Of the longer novels,
Dame Care) best exhibits the perfection of his workmanship. It is
the story of a lad whose life is a constant struggle with adversity;
upon him devolve all the cares of a large family, until he has be-
come so completely enslaved by the Lady of Sorrows that he never
## p. 14165 (#355) ##########################################
HERMANN SUDERMANN
14165
even thinks of making a claim for personal happiness. To save his
aged father from committing a crime, he sets fire to his own prop-
erty, and is sentenced as an incendiary. Over all his weary life
hovers the love that Elsbeth bears him, but he never permits himself
to love her; through her he is finally set free from the thraldom of
Dame Care. The tale is infinitely sad; but told with tenderness and
a sympathetic fidelity to nature. That out of his troubles Paul is led
by a woman's hand into ultimate peace and serenity, shows that here
is a realist who does not mix his colors with misery only. In the
saving power of woman, Sudermann has firm faith. In Der Wunsch'
the heroine and her conscience are the protagonists: it is a psycho-
logical study. Olga falls in love with her sister's husband; and while
she is nursing her sister through a severe illness, the thought comes
unbidden: «If only she were to die! ” She does die, and the wid-
ower offers himself to Olga; but she, conscience-stricken lest it was
her wish that killed her sister, and almost convinced of her guilt, wins
back her moral tranquillity by committing suicide. In Der Katzen-
steg,' it is again the heroine who is the centre of interest. Regine
exhibits the character-building of a girl, who, with the barbarous
elements of her untamed nature, combines a primitive nobility of soul
rising even to the sublime heights of complete self-renunciation.
Es War, the most successful of Sudermann's novels, draws the pict-
ure of an innocent young girl, Hertha, in love with a man much
older than herself; he in turn is in love with a married woman.
This to Hertha's unworldliness seems, in spite of her suspicions,
impossible; and conviction dawns upon her slowly. The study is
perfectly natural: the author has not shrunk from great frankness of
speech; but with it all he proclaims his faith in the essential good-
ness of the human heart.
As a dramatist, Sudermann has won international fame. (Ehre)
roused the German public from its apathy, and the new genius was
all-hailed as the re-creator of the German stage. Ruthlessly the play
points out the falsity of current ideas about honor, of social forms,
of conventional distinctions. Its success
was phenomenal, and the
highest hopes were cherished of a national dramatic revival. (Sodoms.
Ende' nourished these hopes, for it showed an advance both in
power and technique; but it had to be altered by the censor before
it could be produced in Berlin, and it is still impossible in English.
The title of the play is that given by the hero to a picture he is
painting. On his way to success and fame he falls into the toils of
a soulless, pleasure-loving woman, who ruins him body and soul. It
was in (Heimath, however, which was produced in January 1893,
that Sudermann reached the height of his achievement thus far, and
secured international success. The strong character of Magda, the
heroine, by whose name the play is known in English, has inspired
## p. 14166 (#356) ##########################################
14166
HERMANN SUDERMANN
the genius of three great actresses of our time,- Modjeska, Duse,
and Bernhardt, — who have spread the fame of the German drama-
tist through America, Italy, France, and England. Its theme is the
relative duty of parent and child, and the contrast between the
self-reliant broad-mindedness of a free child of the great world and
the dull petty conventions of a respectable bourgeois home. Magda
marks the highest point of characterization that Sudermann's creative
genius has reached. The (Schmetterlingsschlacht lacks, not the fine-
ness of observation, but the dramatic power, of the other plays. It is
a series of debates between three girls who have supported them-
selves by painting butterflies on fans; two of them, grown weary of
this dull life of hard-working virtue, have fallen, and with the third,
who has remained virtuous and industrious, they discuss the compar-
ative merits of their modes of living. In 1896 three of Sudermann's
one-act plays were grouped together under the general title of Mori-
turi. ' They are entirely distinct, united only by having each the
central idea of death as a liberator. In each the chief character is
freed and ennobled by death; rises above himself by the will to die.
Sudermann in 1897 finished his Johannes,' – a play which turns
upon the Biblical incident of John the Baptist, Herodias, and Salome.
Although it is entirely reverent in tone, it was forbidden by the Ber-
lin censor.
An English critic has insisted that Sudermann failed to keep the
promise of Ehre,' in that he has not continued the battle there be-
gun against the «Spiessbürgerliches » element, the Philistinism so
dear to the average German heart, against which Goethe and Schil-
ler waged a lifelong war. It may be that he has found it easier to
follow than to form the public taste; but his latest works reveal
a determination to go his independent way: and it is to Sudermann
that we unhesitatingly turn if asked to point out the chief inter-
national representative of the German drama at the end of the nine-
teenth century.
RETURNING FROM THE CONFIRMATION LESSON
From Dame Care. ) Copyright 1891, by Harper & Brothers
W**
((
(
"HEN he arrived home his mother kissed him on both cheeks,
and asked, "Well, was it nice ? »
“Quite nice,” he answered; "and mamma, Elsbeth
from the White House was there too. ”
Then she blushed with joy, and asked all sorts of things: how
she looked, whether she had grown pretty, and what she had said
to him.
## p. 14167 (#357) ##########################################
HERMANN SUDERMANN
14167
»
or
»
Nothing at all,” he answered, ashamed; and as his mother
looked at him surprised, he added eagerly, "but you know she is
not proud. ”
Next Monday when he entered the church, he found her
already sitting in her place. She had the Bible lying on her
knee, and was learning the verses they had been given as their
task.
There were not many children there: and when he sat down
opposite to her she made a half movement as if she meant to get
up and come over to him; but she sat down again immediately
and went on learning.
His mother had told him before he left just how to address
Elsbeth. She had charged him with many greetings for her
mother, and he was also to ask how she was. On his way he
had studied a long speech, only he was not quite decided yet
whether to address her with Du “ Sie. ” “Du” would have
been the simplest; his mother took it for granted. But the «Sie”
sounded decidedly more distinguished, --so nice and grown-up.
And as he could come to no decision, he avoided addressing her
at all. He also took out his Bible, and both put their elbows on
their knees and studied as if for a wager.
It was not of much use to him, because when the vicar ques-
tioned him afterwards he had forgotten every word of it.
A painful silence ensued; the Erdmanns laughed viciously,
and he had to sit down again, his face burning with shame. He
dared not look up any more; and when, on leaving the church,
he saw Elsbeth standing at the porch as if she was waiting for
something, he lowered his eyes and tried to pass her quickly.
However, she stepped forward and spoke to him.
“My mother has charged me — I am to ask you — how your
mother is ? »
He answered that she was well.
"And she sends her many kind regards, continued Elsbeth.
“And my mother also sends many kind regards to yours," he
answered, turning the Bible and hymn-book between his fingers;
“and I also was to ask you how she is? ”
“Mamma told me to say,” she replied, like something learned
by heart, “that she is often ill, and has to keep in-doors very
much; but now that spring is here she is better: and would you
not like to drive in our carriage as far as your house? I was to
ask you, she said. ”
(
(
## p. 14168 (#358) ##########################################
14168
HERMANN SUDERMANN
“Just look: Meyerhofer is sweethearting! ” cried the elder
Erdmann, who had hidden behind the church door, through the
crack of which he wanted to tickle his companions with a little
straw.
Elsbeth and Paul looked at each other in surprise, for they
did not know the meaning of this phrase; but as they felt that
it must signify something very bad, they blushed and sepa-
rated.
Paul looked after her as she got into the carriage and drove
away. This time the old lady was not waiting for her. It was
her governess, he had heard. Yes: she was of such high rank
that she even had a governess of her own.
«The Erdmanns will get a good licking yet:) with that he
ended his reflections.
The next week passed without his speaking to Elsbeth. When
he entered the church, she was generally already in her seat.
Then she would nod to him kindly, but that was all.
And then came a Monday when her carriage was not waiting
for her. He noticed it at once: and as he walked towards the
church-yard he breathed more freely; for the proud coachman
with his fur cap, which he wore even in summer, always caused
him a feeling of oppression. He had only to think of this coach-
man when he sat opposite to her, and she appeared to him like
a being from another world.
To-day he ventured to nod to her almost familiarly; and it
seemed to him as if she answered more kindly than usual.
And when the lesson was ended, she came towards him of
her own accord, and said, “I must walk home to-day, for our
horses are all in the fields. Mamma thought you might walk
with me part of the way, as we go the same road. ”
He felt very happy, but did not dare to walk by her side as
long as they were in the village. He also looked back anxiously
from time to time, to see whether the two Erdmanns were lurk-
ing anywhere with their mocking remarks. But when they went
through the open fields, it was quite natural that they should
walk side by side.
It was
a sunny forenoon in June. The white sand on the
road glittered; round about, golden hawkweed was blooming, and
meadow-sweet waved in the warm wind; the midday bell sounded
from the village: no human creature was to be seen far and
wide; the heath seemed quite deserted.
## p. 14169 (#359) ##########################################
HERMANN SUDERMANN
14169
(
>>>
C
>>
Elsbeth wore a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head as a
protection against the sun's rays.
She took it off now, and
swung it to and fro by the elastic.
“ You will be too hot,” he said; but as she laughed at him a
little he took his off also, and threw it high in the air.
“You are quite a merry fellow,” she said, nodding approv-
ingly.
He shook his head; and the lines of care which always made
him look old appeared again upon his brow.
“ "Oh no,” he said: "merry I am certainly not. ”
“Why not? she asked.
“I have always so many things to think of,” he answered;
and if ever I want to be really happy, something always goes
wrong. ”
“But what do you always have to think about ? ” she asked.
He reflected for a while, but nothing occurred to him. “Oh,
it is all nonsense,” he said: “clever thoughts never come to me
by any means. »
And then he told her about his brothers; of the thick books,
which were quite filled with figures (the name he had forgotten),
and which they had already known by heart when they were only
as old as he was now.
« Why don't you learn that as well, if it gives you pleasure ? ”
she asked.
“But it gives me no pleasure,” he answered: "I have such a
dull head. ”
But something you know, surely ? ” she went on.
“I know absolutely nothing at all,” he replied sadly: “father
says that I am too stupid. ”
Oh, you must not heed that,” she replied consolingly.
My
Fräulein Rothmaier also finds fault with many things I do. But
I - pah, I-” she was silent, and pulled up a sorrel-plant which
she began to chew.
“Has your father still such sparkling eyes ? ” he asked.
She nodded, and her face brightened.
“ You love him very much — your father ? »
She looked at him wonderingly, as if she had not understood
his question; then answered, “Oh yes: I love him very much. ”
"And he loves you too ? ”
“Well, I should think so. ”
Now he also rooted up a sorrel-plant and sighed.
»
(
C
(
## p. 14170 (#360) ##########################################
14170
HERMANN SUDERMANN
C
»
(
(
"Why do you sigh ? ” she asked.
Something was just crossing his mind, he said; and then
asked laughingly if her father still took her on his knee some-
times, as on the day when he had been in the White House.
She laughed and said she was a big girl now, and he should
not ask such silly questions; but afterwards it came out that all
the same she still sat on her father's knee,– “Of course, not
astride any more! ” she added laughing.
“Yes, that was a nice day,” he said; and I sat on his other
knee.
How small we must have been then. "
"And we were so pitifully stupid,” she answered: when I
«
think now how you wanted to whistle, and could not! ”
“Do you remember that? ” he asked; and his eyes sparkled in
the consciousness of his present attainments in the art.
“Of course," she replied; and when you went away you
came running back and - do you still remember? »
He remembered very well.
"Now you can whistle, of course,” she laughed: (at our age
that is no longer an accomplishment, - even I can do it;” and
she pointed her lips in a very funny manner.
He was sad that she spoke so slightingly of his art, and re-
flected whether it would not be better to give up whistling alto-
gether.
“Why are you so silent ? ” she asked. "Are you tired too ? ”
“Oh no; but you - eh ? ”
Yes: the walk through the sand and the noontide heat had
tired her.
« Then come into our house and rest,” he cried with sparkling
eves; for he thought what joy his mother would feel at seeing
her.
But she refused. “Your father is not kindly disposed towards
us, mamma said; and that's why you may not come for a visit
to Helenenthal. Your father would perhaps send me away. ”
He replied with a deep blush, My father would not do that; ”
and felt much ashamed.
She cast a glance towards the Haidehof, which lay scarcely a
hundred yards from the road. The red fence shone in the sun-
shine, and even the gray half-ruined barns looked more cheerful
than usual.
“Your house looks very nice,” she said, shading her eyes with
her hand.
(
(
(C
(C
## p. 14171 (#361) ##########################################
HERMANN SUDERMANN
14171
(
»
“Oh yes,” he answered, his heart swelling with pride; "and
there is an owl nailed to the door of one of the sheds. But it
shall become much nicer still,” he added after a little while,
seriously, only let me begin to rule. ” And then he set to work
“
to explain to her all his plans for the future. She listened
attentively, but when he had finished she said again:
“I am tired -I must rest;” and she wanted to sit down on
the edge of the ditch,
« Not here in the blazing sun,” he cautioned her: we'll look
(
out for the first juniper-bush we can find. ”
She gave him her hand, and let him drag her wearily over
the heath, which undulated with mole-hills like the waves on a
lake; and near the edge of the wood there were some solitary
juniper-bushes, which stood out like a group of black dwarfs
above the level plain.
Under the first of these bushes she cowered down, so that its
shadow almost entirely shrouded her slight, delicate figure.
“Here is just room enough for your head,” she said, pointing
to a mole-hill which was just within range of the shade.
He stretched himself out on the grass, his head resting on the
mole-hill, his forehead covered by the hem of her dress.
She leaned back on the bush in order to find support in its
branches.
“The needles don't prick at all,” she said: they mean well
by us. I believe we could pass through the Sleeping Beauty's
hedge of thorns. ”
“You — not 1,” he answered, lifting his eyes to her from his
recumbent position: “every thorn has pricked me. I am no fairy
prince; not even a simple Hans in luck, am I ? ”
«That will all come in time,” she replied consolingly: "you
must not always have sad thoughts. ”
He wanted to reply, but he lacked the right words; and as he
looked up meditatively, a swallow fitted through the blue sky.
Then involuntarily he uttered a whistle, as if he wanted to call
it; and as it did not come, he whistled again, and for a second
and third time.
Elsbeth laughed, but he went on whistling -- first without
knowing how, and without reflecting why; but when one tone
after the other flowed from his lips, he felt as if he had become
very eloquent all of a sudden, and as if in this manner he could
say all that weighed on his heart, and for which in words he
never could have found courage. All that which made him sad,
(c
## p. 14172 (#362) ##########################################
14172
HERMANN SUDERMANN
((
(
C
>>
all that which he cared about, came pouring forth. He shut his
eyes and listened, so to speak, to what the tones were saying for
him. He thought that the good God in heaven spoke for him,
and was relating all that concerned him, even that which he had
never been clear about himself.
When he looked up, he did not know how long he had been
lying there whistling; but he saw that Elsbeth was crying.
Why do you cry? ” he asked.
She did not answer him; but dried her eyes with her hand-
kerchief, and rose.
Silently they walked side by side for a while. When they
reached the wood, which lay thick and dark before them, she
stopped and asked :-
“Who has taught you that? ”
“Nobody,” he said: “it came to me quite naturally.
Can
you
also play the flute ? she went on.
No, he could not: he had never even heard it; he only knew
that it was the favorite pastime of Old Fritz. ”
“You must learn it,” she said.
14148
WILLIAM STUBBS
which the evil and debased elements are so closely intermingled
with the noble and the beautiful, that in the assured march of
good, much that is noble and beautiful must needs share the fate
of the evil and debased. If it were not for the conviction that
however prolific and progressive the evil may have been, the
power of good is more progressive and more prolific, the chron-
icler of a system that seems to be vanishing might lay down his
pen with a heavy heart. The most enthusiastic admirer of me-
diæval life must grant that all that was good and great in it was
languishing even to death; and the firmest believer in progress
must admit that as yet there were few signs of returning health.
The sun of the Plantagenets went down in clouds and thick
darkness; the coming of the Tudors gave as yet no promise of
light: it was “as the morning spread upon the mountains," —
darkest before the dawn.
The natural inquiry, how the fifteenth century affected the
development of national character, deserves an attempt at an
answer; but it can be little more than an attempt, for very little
light is thrown upon it by the life and genius of great men.
With the exception of Henry V. , English history can show
throughout the age no man who even aspires to greatness; and
the greatness of Henry V. is not of a sort that is peculiar to the
age or distinctive of a stage of national life. His personal idio-
syncrasy was that of a hero in no heroic age. Of the best of
the minor workers, none rises beyond mediocrity of character or
achievement. Bedford was a wise and noble statesman, but his
whole career was a hopeless failure. Gloucester's character had
no element of greatness at all. Beaufort, by his long life, high
rank, wealth, experience, and ability, held a position almost un-
rivaled in Europe, but he was neither successful nor disinterested:
fair and honest and enlightened as his policy may have been,
neither at the time nor ever since has the world looked upon
him as a benefactor; he appears in history as a lesser Wolsey, -
a hard sentence perhaps, but one which is justified by the gen-
eral condition of the world in which the two cardinals had to
play their part; Beaufort was the great minister of an expiring
system, Wolsey of an age of great transitions. Among the other
clerical administrators of the age, Kemp and Waynflete were
faithful, honest, enlightened, but quite unequal to the difficulties
of their position; and besides them there are absolutely none
that come within even the second class of greatness as useful
men. It is the same with the barons: such greatness as there is
## p. 14149 (#339) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14149
>
amongst them
and the greatness of Warwick is the climax and
type of it - is more conspicuous in evil than in good. In the
classes beneath the baronage, as we have them portrayed in the
Paston Letters, we see more of violence, chicanery, and greed,
than of anything else. Faithful attachment to the faction which
from hereditary or personal liking they have determined to main-
tain, is the one redeeming feature; and it is one which by itself
may produce as much evil as good, -that nation is in an evil
plight in which the sole redeeming quality is one that owes its
existence to a deadly disease. All else is languishing: literature
has reached the lowest depths of dullness; religion, so far as its
chief results are traceable, has sunk, on the one hand into a
dogma fenced about with walls which its defenders cannot pass
either inward or outward, on the other hand into a mere war-
cry of the cause of destruction. Between the two lies a narrow
borderland of pious and cultivated mysticism, far too fastidious
to do much for the world around. Yet here as everywhere else,
the dawn is approaching. Here as everywhere else, the evil is
destroying itself; and the remaining good, lying deep down and
having yet to wait long before it reaches the surface, is already
striving toward the sunlight that is to come. The good is to
come out of the evil: the evil is to compel its own remedy; the
good does not spring from it, but is drawn up through it. In
the history of nations, as of men, every good and perfect gift is
from above: the new life strikes down in the old root; there is
no generation from corruption.
So we turn our back on the age of chivalry, of ideal heroism,
of picturesque castles and glorious churches and pageants, camps
and tournaments, lovely charity and gallant self-sacrifice; with
their dark shadows of dynastic faction, bloody conquest, griev-
ous misgovernance, local tyrannies, plagues and famines unhelped
and unaverted, hollowness of pomp, disease and dissolution. The
charm which the relics of mediæval art have woven around the
later Middle Ages must be resolutely, ruthlessly broken. The
attenuated life of the later Middle Ages is in thorough dis-
crepancy with the grand conceptions of the earlier times. The
thread of national life is not to be broken; but the earlier
strands are to be sought out and bound together, and strength-
ened with threefold union for the new work. But it will be a
work of time: the forces newly liberated by the shock of the
Reformation will not at once cast off the foulness of the strata
## p. 14150 (#340) ##########################################
14150
WILLIAM STUBBS
were
through which they have passed before they reached the higher
air; much will be destroyed that might well have been con-
served, and some new growths will be encouraged that ought to
have been checked. In the new world, as in the old, the tares
are mingled with the wheat. In the destruction and in the
growth alike, will be seen the great features of difference be-
tween the old and the new.
The printing-press is an apt emblem or embodiment of the
change. Hitherto men have spent their labor on a few books,
written by the few for the few, with elaborately chosen material,
in consummately beautiful penmanship, painted and emblazoned
as if each one a distinct labor of love, each manuscript
unique, precious, — the result of most careful individual training,
and destined for the complete enjoyment of a reader educated up
to the point at which he can appreciate its beauty. Henceforth
books are to be common things. For a time the sanctity of the
older forms will hang about the printing-press; the magnificent
volumes of Fust and Colard Mansion will still recall the beauty of
the manuscript, and art will lavish its treasures on the embellish-
ment of the libraries of the great. Before long, printing will
be cheap, and the unique or special beauty of the early presses
will have departed; but light will have come into every house,
and that which was the luxury of the few will have become the
indispensable requisite of every family.
With the multiplication of books comes the rapid extension
and awakening of mental activity. As it is with the form, so
with the matter. The men of the decadence, not less than the
men of the renaissance, were giants of learning; they read and
assimilated the contents of every known book; down to the
very close of the era, the able theologian would press into the
service of his commentary or his summa every preceding com-
mentary or summa, with gigantic labor, and with an acuteness
which, notwithstanding that it was ill-trained and misdirected, is
in the eyes of the desultory reader of modern times little less
than miraculous: the books were rare, but the accomplished scholar
had worked through them all. Outside his little world all was
comparatively dark. Here too the change was coming. Scholar-
ship was to take a new form: intensity of critical power, devoted
to that which was worth criticizing, was to be substituted as the
characteristic of a learned man for the indiscriminating voracity
of the earlier learning. The multiplication of books would make
## p. 14151 (#341) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14151
such scholarship as that of Vincent of Beauvais, or Thomas Aqui-
nas, or Gerson, or Torquemada, an impossibility. Still there
would be giants like Scaliger and Casaubon,- men who culled
the fair flower of all learning; critical as the new scholars, com-
prehensive as the old: reserved for the patronage of sovereigns
and nations, and perishing when they were neglected, like the
beautiful books of the early printers. But they are a minor feat.
ure in the new picture. The real change is that by which every
man comes to be a reader and a thinker; the Bible comes to
every family, and each man is priest in his own household. The
light is not so brilliant, but it is everywhere; and it shines more
and more unto the perfect day. It is a false sentiment that leads
men in their admiration of the unquestionable glory of the old
culture, to undervalue the abundant wealth and growing glory of
the new.
The parallel holds good in other matters besides books. He
is a rash man who would, with one word of apology, compare
the noble architecture of the Middle Ages with the mean and
commonplace type of building into which, by a steady decline,
our churches, palaces, and streets had sunk at the beginning of
the present century. Here too the splendor of the few has been
exchanged for the comfort of the many; and although perhaps in
no description of culture has the break between the old and the
new been more conspicuous than in this, it may be said that the
many are now far more capable of appreciating the beauty which
they will try to rival, than ever the few were to comprehend the
value of that which they were losing. But it is needless to mul-
tiply illustrations of a truth which is exemplified by every new
invention: the steam plow and the sewing-machine are less pict-
uresque, and call for a less educated eye than that of the plow-
man and the seamstress: but they produce more work with less
waste of energy; they give more leisure and greater comfort;
they call out, in the production and improvement of their mech-
anism, a higher and more widely spread culture. And all these
things are growing instead of decaying.
To conclude with a few of the commonplaces which must be
familiar to all who have approached the study of history with a
real desire to understand it, but which are apt to strike the writer
more forcibly at the end than the beginning of his work. How-
ever much we may be inclined to set aside the utilitarian plan
of studying our subject, it cannot be denied that we must read
## p. 14152 (#342) ##########################################
14152
WILLIAM STUBBS
the origin and development of our Constitutional History chiefly
with the hope of educating ourselves into the true reading of its
later fortunes, and so train ourselves for a judicial examination
of its evidences,- a fair and equitable estimate of the rights and
wrongs of policy, dynasty, and party. Whether we intend to take
the position of a judge or the position of an advocate, it is most
necessary that both the critical insight should be cultivated, and
the true circumstances of the questions that arise at later stages
should be adequately explored. The man who would rightly learn
the lesson that the seventeenth century has to teach, must not
only know what Charles thought of Cromwell and what Cromwell
thought of Charles, but must try to understand the real ques-
tions at issue, not by reference to an ideal standard only, but by
tracing the historical growth of the circumstances in which those
questions arose; he must try to look at them as it might be sup-
posed that the great actors would have looked at them if Crom-
well had succeeded to the burden which Charles inherited, or if
Charles had taken up the part of the hero of reform. In such
an attitude it is quite unnecessary to exclude party feeling or
personal sympathy. Whichever way the sentiment may incline,
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is what
history would extract from her witnesses; the truth which leaves
no pitfalls for unwary advocates, and which is in the end the
fairest measure of equity to all. In the reading of that history
we have to deal with high-minded men, with zealous enthusiastic
parties, of whom it cannot be fairly said that one was less sin-
cere in his belief in his own cause than was the other. They
called each other hypocrites and deceivers, for each held his own
views so strongly that he could not conceive of the other as sin-
cere; but to us they are both of them true and sincere, which-
ever way our sympathies or our sentiments incline. We bring
to the reading of their acts a judgment which has been trained
through the Reformation history to see rights and wrongs on both
sides; sometimes see the balance of wrong on that side which
we believe, which we know, to be the right. We come to the
Reformation history from the reading of the gloomy period to
which the present volume has been devoted; a worn-out helpless
age, that calls for pity without sympathy, and yet balances weari.
ness with something like regrets. Modern thought is a little
prone to eclecticism in history: it can sympathize with Puritan-
ism as an effort after freedom, and put out of sight the fact that
## p. 14153 (#343) ##########################################
WILLIAM STUBBS
14153
Puritanism was itself a grinding social tyranny, that wrought out
its ends by unscrupulous detraction, and by the profane handling
of things which should have been sacred even to the fanatic, if
he really believed in the cause for which he raged. There is
little real sympathy with the great object, the peculiar creed that
was oppressed: as a struggle for liberty, the Quarrel of Puritan-
ism takes its stand beside the Quarrel on the Investitures. Yet
like every other struggle for liberty, it ended in being a struggle
for supremacy. On the other hand, the system of Laud and of
Charles seems to many minds to contain so much that is good
and sacred, that the means by which it was maintained fall into
the background. We would not judge between the two theories
which have been nursed by the prejudices of ten generations.
To one side liberty, to the other law, will continue to outweigh
all other considerations of disputed and detailed right or wrong:
it is enough for each to look at them as the actors themselves
looked at them, or as men look at party questions of their own
day, when much of private conviction and personal feeling must
be sacrificed to save those broader principles for which only great
parties can be made to strive.
The historian looks with actual pain upon many of these
things. Especially in quarrels where religion is concerned, the
hollowness of the pretension to political honesty becomes a
stumbling-block in the way of fair judgment. We know that no
other causes have ever created so great and bitter struggles; have
brought into the field, whether of war or controversy, greater and
more united armies. Yet no truth is more certain than this, that
the real motives of religious action do not work on men in masses;
and that the enthusiasm which creates Crusaders, Inquisitors,
Hussites, Puritans, is not the result of conviction, but of passion
provoked by oppression or resistance, maintained by self-will, or
stimulated by the mere desire of victory. And this is a lesson
for all time; and for practical life as well as historical judgment.
And on the other hand, it is impossible to regard this as an ad-
equate solution of the problem: there must be something, even if
it be not religion or liberty, for which men will make so great
sacrifices.
The best aspect of an age of controversy must be sought in
the lives of the best men; whose honesty carries conviction to the
understanding, whilst their zeal kindles the zeal, of the many.
A study of the lives of such men will lead to the conclusion, that
a
## p. 14154 (#344) ##########################################
14154
WILLIAM STUBBS
in spite of internecine hostility in act, the real and true leaders
had far more in common than they knew of: they struggled, in
the dark or in the twilight, against the evil which was there, and
which they hated with equal sincerity; they fought for the good
which was there, and which really was strengthened by the issue
of the strife. Their blows fell at random: men perished in arms
against one another whose hearts were set on the same end
and aim; and that good end and aim which neither of them had
seen clearly was the inheritance they left to their children, made
possible and realized not so much by the victory of one as by
the truth and self-sacrifice of both.
At the close of so long a book, the author may be suffered
to moralize. His end will have been gained if he has succeeded
in helping to train the judgment of his readers to discern the
balance of truth and reality; and whether they go on to further
reading with the aspirations of the advocate or the calmness of
the critic, to rest content with nothing less than the attainable
maximum of truth, to base their arguments on nothing less
sacred than that highest justice which is found in the deepest
sympathy with erring and straying men.
## p. 14155 (#345) ##########################################
14155
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
(1608-1642)
IR JOHN SUCKLING is an interesting product of an interesting
age. His portrait by Vandyke - that of a fair-haired gal-
lant, his long curls hanging over his shoulders, his eyes a
steely blue, firm red lips, and a stalwart yet graceful figure arrayed
in the richest silks and velvets — tells much of his story. But there
are other characteristics less easily discovered. With the nonchalant
manner, half bravado, half indifference, of the cavalier, he took good
care of himself on at least two occasions when the spirit of the age
and his training would have led him to dis-
play less caution. The King himself (Charles
I. ) did not excel him in the gorgeousness of
his entertainments, nor was there so prodi-
gal a gamester in the kingdom; yet he was
capable of giving the soundest and the most
virtuous advice, and of expressing the most
edifying and Christian sentiments. Had his
brother-in-law Sir George Southcott but lived
to read Sir John's remarkable epistle on
Southcott's death by his own hand, he
would have refrained from such a proceed-
ing for very shame of becoming an object
of ridicule. Yet when Suckling, an exile Sir John SUCKLING
and in distress, came to a dangerous pass
in his fortunes, he committed suicide, regardless of his own satire.
His splendid, erratic, melancholy career left no trace either of sad-
ness or sentiment in his poems. There is nothing of the troubadour,
nothing of the minor strain of melancholy cheerfulness which touches
the heart in Lovelace's gay lyrics. The poem beginning
«Why so pale and wan, fond lover ?
Prythee why so pale ? »
is completely Suckling, and shows that his wreaths were not twined
from the cypress-tree.
Debt and love were both troublesome, with
perhaps a slight difference in favor of debt. He never, according to
the scanty facts known of his life, had a serious love affair, and cer-
tainly he sported with the grande passion. Yet he treated it with a
## p. 14156 (#346) ##########################################
14156
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
curious, contradictory respect. He required of his imaginary “soul's
mistress » neither beauty, nor wit, nor charm, - making all these qual.
ities subjective, and bidding her teach him only to be true, that love
might last forever. In an age of license he degraded literature with
no coarse or impure line; and now and then he who had written with
such pious zeal the paper Religious Thoughts on the State of the
Nation, composed a poem which chills the blood, though he who gave
it birth has slept for more than two centuries among those who in
fine garments and chests of cedar are laid up for immortality. ”
Suckling, whose "pretty touch savors more of the grape than the
lamp,” little as he heeded it often saw the death's-head at the feast.
He saw it in the lovely lines Farewell to Love,' after taking leave
of the “dear nothings” with which he had floated in the shadowed
landscape of life. The poem Against Absence'-chiefly acute rail-
lery, though there is a Comus-like touch in its simple force — cannot
be read without producing a feeling of solitude. And in the rich,
luxuriant Dream, cold fingers seem to press the brow.
Suckling's poems, all collected, are comprised in one thin volume.
He set out to be a dramatist, fancying that what genius for letters
he possessed was dramatic; and although he had written a satire
entitled “The Session of the Poets,' — which Byron imitated in Eng-
lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and which, in its day had as great
a vogue,- and two prose essays, the "Thoughts on Religion and A
Tract on Socinianism, he made his first serious dramatic attempt in
1638, when he published Aglaura,'— a play studded with beautiful
passages but without reality or development. The poets who had
themselves been ridiculed all laughed at it, and called it “a rivulet
of text and a meadow of margin. ” Its interest to us is in its having
been the first play acted with regular scenery, which had hitherto
been used only in the masques. His next play, Brennoralt (1639),
has finer qualities, but might have been written by any of the mob
of gentlemen” whom Pope described as writing as well as they did
anything else. Steele greatly admired a description of the loves of
the hero and heroine, Brennoralt and Franclia; comparing it to a
passage in Paradise Lost. 'The Goblins,' modeled after (Macbeth,
need not detain us but that it contains the oft-quoted line, original
with Sir John, “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman” (Act iii. ,
Scene 2).
As a lyric poet alone then, Suckling will be remembered; and
probably as the author of the single lyric, Ballad on a Wedding,'
composed on the marriage of Roger Boyle (first Earl of Orrery) with
Lady Mary Howard. The nimble grace, the happy turn, the elegance
and sparkle of fancy in this poem, the light and delicate touch, and
the ingenious conception, have placed it among the masterpieces of
>
## p. 14157 (#347) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14157
English lyrics. He has written other poems that will not be readily
forgotten, though they may not secure immortality:-
“I prythee send me back my heart,"
with recurring lines like a fugue –
“No,
>
fair Mistress, it must be ;)
no,
)
the stanzas headed “The Invocation, with their difficult construction
and recurring rhymes; the love song with its reverent gallantry, -
«I touch her as my beads, with devout care,
And go in to my courtship as my prayer;”
>
and the ideally lovely poem beginning "If you refuse me once,” and,
after the first three stanzas that breathe the very soul of manliness,
the beautiful and passionate outburst Would that I were all soul,”
and the “Why so pale and wan, fond lover? ” already referred to.
Hallam, chary of praise, says, “Suckling is acknowledged to have
left behind him all former writers of song, in gayety and ease. It is
not equally clear that he has ever been surpassed. ”
Few facts are known of his brief, brilliant career. His father,
John Suckling, was a knight and a Secretary of State; the son was
born at Winton in Middlesex, and baptized February Toth, 1608-9.
He was early attached to the court, and, says Sir William Dave-
nant, for his accomplishments and ready sparkling witt was the
bull that was most bayted; his repartee being most sparkling when
set on and provoked. ” He went abroad, and served under Gustavus
Adolphus. To aid Charles on his Scottish campaign, he raised a
troop of horse; but though they cost him twelve thousand pounds,
and were clad in white and red, when they came in sight of the
army at Dunse they fled without the loss of a feather. Hence the
lampoon Percy preserves:-
(
«Sir John got him an ambling nag
To Scotland for to ride-a! »
He gave good advice to both King and Queen in their subsequent
troubles; but at the fall of Strafford, Aed to France, where his faint
heart and gay philosophy failed him. He died in Paris in 1642. His
memoir and poems were published by his relative, Rev. Alfred Suck-
ling (London, 1832).
## p. 14158 (#348) ##########################################
14158
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
SONG
W"
HY so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale ?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail ?
Prithee, why so pale ?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner ?
Prithee, why so mute ?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't ?
Prithee, why so mute ?
Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move:
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The Devil take her!
A BRIDE
From the Ballad Upon a Wedding'
)
T"
HE maid — and thereby hangs a tale,
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce;
No grape that's kindly ripe, could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.
Her finger was so small, the ring
Would not stay on which they did bring, –
It was too wide a peck;
And to say truth (for out it must),
It looked like the great collar (just)
About our young colt's neck.
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light:
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
## p. 14159 (#349) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14159
Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone:
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun.
Her lips were red, and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly;
But Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.
Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break,
That they might passage get;
But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours, or better,
And are not spent a whit.
THE HONEST LOVER
H
ONEST lover whosoever,
If in all thy love there ever
Was one wavering thought, if thy flame
Were not still even, still the same,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If, when she appears i'th' room,
Thou dost not quake, and art struck dumb,
And in striving this to cover,
Dost not speak thy words twice over,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If fondly thou dost not mistake,
And all defects for graces take.
Persuad'st thyself that jests are broken
When she hath little or nothing spoken, -
## p. 14160 (#350) ##########################################
14160
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If when thou appear'st to be within,
Thou lett'st not men ask and ask again;
And when thou answer'st, if it be
To what was asked thee properly,–
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If when thy stomach calls to eat,
Thou cutt'st not fingers 'stead of meat,
And, with much gazing on her face
Dost not rise hungry from the place,
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If by this thou dost discover
That thou art no perfect lover,
And, desiring to love true,
Thou dost begin to love anew,-
Know this:
Thou lov'st amiss,
And, to love true,
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
THE CONSTANT LOVER
OT
UT upon it! I have loved
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more.
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
## p. 14161 (#351) ##########################################
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
14161
But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.
Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
VERSES
1
AM confirmed a woman can
Love this, or that, or any man:
This day she's melting hot,
To-morrow swears she knows you not;
If she but a new object find,
Then straight she's of another mind.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
-
Yet still I love the fairsome — why?
For nothing but to please my eye:
And so the fat and soft-skinned dame
I'll flatter to appease my flame;
For she that's musical I'll long,
When I am sad, to sing a song.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
I'll give my fancy leave to range
Through everywhere to find out change;
The black, the brown, the fair shall be
But objects of variety:
I'll court you all to serve my turn,
But with such fames as shall not burn.
Then hang me, ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.
XXIV-886
## p. 14162 (#352) ##########################################
14162
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
THE METAMORPHOSIS
T**
He little boy, to show his might and power,
Turned lo to a cow, Narcissus to a flower;
Transformed Apollo to a homely swain,
And Jove himself into a golden rain.
These shapes were tolerable, but by the mass
He's metamorphosed me into an ass.
SONG
I
PRITHEE send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine;
For if from thine thou wilt not part,
Why then shouldst thou have mine?
Yet now I think on't, let it lie:
To find it were in vain,
For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.
Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together ?
O love, where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever?
But lov is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out;
For when I think I'm best resolved
I then am most in doubt.
Then farewell care, and farewell woe,
I will no longer pine;
For I'll believe I have her heart,
As much as she hath mine.
## p. 14163 (#353) ##########################################
14163
HERMANN SUDERMANN
(1857–)
mere
own
ROm every new literary mode, however madcap and ephem-
eral, something of value may be won. In the back-and-
forward swing between the fancies of an overheated ideal-
ism and the facts of a frigid realism, the pendulum returns to its
vertical with something brought from each of the extremes. From
the crass realism into which, for a time, the once so fantastic litera-
ture of Germany threatened to petrify, emerges Hermann Sudermann,
equipped with all the trenchant power of the realistic workman, but
bringing to his work the sympathetic in-
sight of the idealist. He deals with social
problems, with the struggles of impuls-
ive human nature at war with social con-
ditions; but he does not repel by sordid
details, nor delight in depicting
wretchedness and woe. His characters are
swayed by the passions, sorrows, and men-
tal twists, of which all of us in our
experience have had glimpses at least that
render them intelligible. His unswerving
belief in the uplifting forces of man's na-
ture gives to his gloomiest conceptions a
saving buoyancy; he finds a way to rec- HERMANN SUDERMANN
oncilement with life, even though the way
lie through death. Wide gray plains and moorlands, like those of
East Prussia where the poet was born, stretch far away; but behind
waving reed and withering sedge is the white sky-line of the dawn.
Sudermann cannot be classed with any school or cult. In him the
swaying pendulum of fads and fashions has come to rest. He is
the sane artist; painting the world as he sees it, and seeing it with
the intuitions of a poet.
Sudermann has, within a decade, taken his place among the fore-
most German novelists and dramatists that mark the end of the
nineteenth century.
He is now one of the chief literary figures in
the eye of modern Europe. He was born at Matzicken, in the great
Baltic plain near the boundaries of Russia, on September 30th, 1857;
and the wide outreach of this level country is the scene upon which
## p. 14164 (#354) ##########################################
14164
HERMANN SUDERMANN
most of his tales and novels run their course. His parents were
poor; and it was a matter of pecuniary necessity when, at the age of
fourteen, he was apprenticed to a chemist. Subsequently, however,
he was enabled to study at Tilsit, Königsberg, and Berlin, and be-
came tutor in the household of the genial story-teller Hans Hopfen.
In 1881, after devoting the leisure hours of six years to history, phi-
lology, and modern languages, he turned to journalism, and assumed
the editorial management of a political weekly in Berlin. In 1885 a
collection of his stories from the newspapers was published under
the title of Im Zwielicht' (In the Twilight). Though not without a
melancholy touch, they possess the wit and sprightliness of French
stories; but they struck a more serious note, which gave promise
of greater work to follow. In 1886, with the publication of Frau
Sorge) (Dame Care), Sudermann stepped at once into the front rank
of German novelists. Three years later, again at a single bound,
he took the first place among the dramatists with his admirably
constructed play of Ehre' (Honor). It began its triumphant career
on the Berlin stage in November 1889, and rapidly conquered the
theatres of all Germany. Meanwhile in 1887, three volumes of his
tales had appeared, under the general title of "Geschwister' (Brothers
and Sisters); and two years afterward came (Der Katzensteg) (The
Cat Bridge), which some critics have not hesitated to pronounce the
most powerful novel of contemporary German literature.
In 1890 a
new drama, (Sodoms Ende? (Destruction of Sodom), displayed the
author's increasing command of stage technique, which in Heimath
(Home) becomes complete mastery. The more recent Schmetter-
lingsschlacht' (Battle of the Butterflies) is less satisfactory. In 1892
appeared the story of Iolanthe's Hochzeit” (Iolanthe's Wedding), full
of delightful humor and merry-making, and without a shade of mel-
ancholy. In the following year Es War' (It Was) made a genuine
sensation, running through fifteen editions in twelve months. Suder-
mann's fame seems now secure, whatever the future may hold.
The tendency of German novelists to subordinate narrative and
dramatic development to sentiment and psychological comment, has
rendered the average German novel dull and distasteful to foreign
readers. Sudermann appeals to a cosmopolitan taste: in him is
no trace either of sentimentality or moral reflection. He is strong,
brilliant, concise, effective; the impression he makes is indelible; the
mood into which he throws the reader, though sombre, is sympa-
thetic; and if melancholy, never morbid. Of the longer novels,
Dame Care) best exhibits the perfection of his workmanship. It is
the story of a lad whose life is a constant struggle with adversity;
upon him devolve all the cares of a large family, until he has be-
come so completely enslaved by the Lady of Sorrows that he never
## p. 14165 (#355) ##########################################
HERMANN SUDERMANN
14165
even thinks of making a claim for personal happiness. To save his
aged father from committing a crime, he sets fire to his own prop-
erty, and is sentenced as an incendiary. Over all his weary life
hovers the love that Elsbeth bears him, but he never permits himself
to love her; through her he is finally set free from the thraldom of
Dame Care. The tale is infinitely sad; but told with tenderness and
a sympathetic fidelity to nature. That out of his troubles Paul is led
by a woman's hand into ultimate peace and serenity, shows that here
is a realist who does not mix his colors with misery only. In the
saving power of woman, Sudermann has firm faith. In Der Wunsch'
the heroine and her conscience are the protagonists: it is a psycho-
logical study. Olga falls in love with her sister's husband; and while
she is nursing her sister through a severe illness, the thought comes
unbidden: «If only she were to die! ” She does die, and the wid-
ower offers himself to Olga; but she, conscience-stricken lest it was
her wish that killed her sister, and almost convinced of her guilt, wins
back her moral tranquillity by committing suicide. In Der Katzen-
steg,' it is again the heroine who is the centre of interest. Regine
exhibits the character-building of a girl, who, with the barbarous
elements of her untamed nature, combines a primitive nobility of soul
rising even to the sublime heights of complete self-renunciation.
Es War, the most successful of Sudermann's novels, draws the pict-
ure of an innocent young girl, Hertha, in love with a man much
older than herself; he in turn is in love with a married woman.
This to Hertha's unworldliness seems, in spite of her suspicions,
impossible; and conviction dawns upon her slowly. The study is
perfectly natural: the author has not shrunk from great frankness of
speech; but with it all he proclaims his faith in the essential good-
ness of the human heart.
As a dramatist, Sudermann has won international fame. (Ehre)
roused the German public from its apathy, and the new genius was
all-hailed as the re-creator of the German stage. Ruthlessly the play
points out the falsity of current ideas about honor, of social forms,
of conventional distinctions. Its success
was phenomenal, and the
highest hopes were cherished of a national dramatic revival. (Sodoms.
Ende' nourished these hopes, for it showed an advance both in
power and technique; but it had to be altered by the censor before
it could be produced in Berlin, and it is still impossible in English.
The title of the play is that given by the hero to a picture he is
painting. On his way to success and fame he falls into the toils of
a soulless, pleasure-loving woman, who ruins him body and soul. It
was in (Heimath, however, which was produced in January 1893,
that Sudermann reached the height of his achievement thus far, and
secured international success. The strong character of Magda, the
heroine, by whose name the play is known in English, has inspired
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HERMANN SUDERMANN
the genius of three great actresses of our time,- Modjeska, Duse,
and Bernhardt, — who have spread the fame of the German drama-
tist through America, Italy, France, and England. Its theme is the
relative duty of parent and child, and the contrast between the
self-reliant broad-mindedness of a free child of the great world and
the dull petty conventions of a respectable bourgeois home. Magda
marks the highest point of characterization that Sudermann's creative
genius has reached. The (Schmetterlingsschlacht lacks, not the fine-
ness of observation, but the dramatic power, of the other plays. It is
a series of debates between three girls who have supported them-
selves by painting butterflies on fans; two of them, grown weary of
this dull life of hard-working virtue, have fallen, and with the third,
who has remained virtuous and industrious, they discuss the compar-
ative merits of their modes of living. In 1896 three of Sudermann's
one-act plays were grouped together under the general title of Mori-
turi. ' They are entirely distinct, united only by having each the
central idea of death as a liberator. In each the chief character is
freed and ennobled by death; rises above himself by the will to die.
Sudermann in 1897 finished his Johannes,' – a play which turns
upon the Biblical incident of John the Baptist, Herodias, and Salome.
Although it is entirely reverent in tone, it was forbidden by the Ber-
lin censor.
An English critic has insisted that Sudermann failed to keep the
promise of Ehre,' in that he has not continued the battle there be-
gun against the «Spiessbürgerliches » element, the Philistinism so
dear to the average German heart, against which Goethe and Schil-
ler waged a lifelong war. It may be that he has found it easier to
follow than to form the public taste; but his latest works reveal
a determination to go his independent way: and it is to Sudermann
that we unhesitatingly turn if asked to point out the chief inter-
national representative of the German drama at the end of the nine-
teenth century.
RETURNING FROM THE CONFIRMATION LESSON
From Dame Care. ) Copyright 1891, by Harper & Brothers
W**
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"HEN he arrived home his mother kissed him on both cheeks,
and asked, "Well, was it nice ? »
“Quite nice,” he answered; "and mamma, Elsbeth
from the White House was there too. ”
Then she blushed with joy, and asked all sorts of things: how
she looked, whether she had grown pretty, and what she had said
to him.
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or
»
Nothing at all,” he answered, ashamed; and as his mother
looked at him surprised, he added eagerly, "but you know she is
not proud. ”
Next Monday when he entered the church, he found her
already sitting in her place. She had the Bible lying on her
knee, and was learning the verses they had been given as their
task.
There were not many children there: and when he sat down
opposite to her she made a half movement as if she meant to get
up and come over to him; but she sat down again immediately
and went on learning.
His mother had told him before he left just how to address
Elsbeth. She had charged him with many greetings for her
mother, and he was also to ask how she was. On his way he
had studied a long speech, only he was not quite decided yet
whether to address her with Du “ Sie. ” “Du” would have
been the simplest; his mother took it for granted. But the «Sie”
sounded decidedly more distinguished, --so nice and grown-up.
And as he could come to no decision, he avoided addressing her
at all. He also took out his Bible, and both put their elbows on
their knees and studied as if for a wager.
It was not of much use to him, because when the vicar ques-
tioned him afterwards he had forgotten every word of it.
A painful silence ensued; the Erdmanns laughed viciously,
and he had to sit down again, his face burning with shame. He
dared not look up any more; and when, on leaving the church,
he saw Elsbeth standing at the porch as if she was waiting for
something, he lowered his eyes and tried to pass her quickly.
However, she stepped forward and spoke to him.
“My mother has charged me — I am to ask you — how your
mother is ? »
He answered that she was well.
"And she sends her many kind regards, continued Elsbeth.
“And my mother also sends many kind regards to yours," he
answered, turning the Bible and hymn-book between his fingers;
“and I also was to ask you how she is? ”
“Mamma told me to say,” she replied, like something learned
by heart, “that she is often ill, and has to keep in-doors very
much; but now that spring is here she is better: and would you
not like to drive in our carriage as far as your house? I was to
ask you, she said. ”
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“Just look: Meyerhofer is sweethearting! ” cried the elder
Erdmann, who had hidden behind the church door, through the
crack of which he wanted to tickle his companions with a little
straw.
Elsbeth and Paul looked at each other in surprise, for they
did not know the meaning of this phrase; but as they felt that
it must signify something very bad, they blushed and sepa-
rated.
Paul looked after her as she got into the carriage and drove
away. This time the old lady was not waiting for her. It was
her governess, he had heard. Yes: she was of such high rank
that she even had a governess of her own.
«The Erdmanns will get a good licking yet:) with that he
ended his reflections.
The next week passed without his speaking to Elsbeth. When
he entered the church, she was generally already in her seat.
Then she would nod to him kindly, but that was all.
And then came a Monday when her carriage was not waiting
for her. He noticed it at once: and as he walked towards the
church-yard he breathed more freely; for the proud coachman
with his fur cap, which he wore even in summer, always caused
him a feeling of oppression. He had only to think of this coach-
man when he sat opposite to her, and she appeared to him like
a being from another world.
To-day he ventured to nod to her almost familiarly; and it
seemed to him as if she answered more kindly than usual.
And when the lesson was ended, she came towards him of
her own accord, and said, “I must walk home to-day, for our
horses are all in the fields. Mamma thought you might walk
with me part of the way, as we go the same road. ”
He felt very happy, but did not dare to walk by her side as
long as they were in the village. He also looked back anxiously
from time to time, to see whether the two Erdmanns were lurk-
ing anywhere with their mocking remarks. But when they went
through the open fields, it was quite natural that they should
walk side by side.
It was
a sunny forenoon in June. The white sand on the
road glittered; round about, golden hawkweed was blooming, and
meadow-sweet waved in the warm wind; the midday bell sounded
from the village: no human creature was to be seen far and
wide; the heath seemed quite deserted.
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Elsbeth wore a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head as a
protection against the sun's rays.
She took it off now, and
swung it to and fro by the elastic.
“ You will be too hot,” he said; but as she laughed at him a
little he took his off also, and threw it high in the air.
“You are quite a merry fellow,” she said, nodding approv-
ingly.
He shook his head; and the lines of care which always made
him look old appeared again upon his brow.
“ "Oh no,” he said: "merry I am certainly not. ”
“Why not? she asked.
“I have always so many things to think of,” he answered;
and if ever I want to be really happy, something always goes
wrong. ”
“But what do you always have to think about ? ” she asked.
He reflected for a while, but nothing occurred to him. “Oh,
it is all nonsense,” he said: “clever thoughts never come to me
by any means. »
And then he told her about his brothers; of the thick books,
which were quite filled with figures (the name he had forgotten),
and which they had already known by heart when they were only
as old as he was now.
« Why don't you learn that as well, if it gives you pleasure ? ”
she asked.
“But it gives me no pleasure,” he answered: "I have such a
dull head. ”
But something you know, surely ? ” she went on.
“I know absolutely nothing at all,” he replied sadly: “father
says that I am too stupid. ”
Oh, you must not heed that,” she replied consolingly.
My
Fräulein Rothmaier also finds fault with many things I do. But
I - pah, I-” she was silent, and pulled up a sorrel-plant which
she began to chew.
“Has your father still such sparkling eyes ? ” he asked.
She nodded, and her face brightened.
“ You love him very much — your father ? »
She looked at him wonderingly, as if she had not understood
his question; then answered, “Oh yes: I love him very much. ”
"And he loves you too ? ”
“Well, I should think so. ”
Now he also rooted up a sorrel-plant and sighed.
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"Why do you sigh ? ” she asked.
Something was just crossing his mind, he said; and then
asked laughingly if her father still took her on his knee some-
times, as on the day when he had been in the White House.
She laughed and said she was a big girl now, and he should
not ask such silly questions; but afterwards it came out that all
the same she still sat on her father's knee,– “Of course, not
astride any more! ” she added laughing.
“Yes, that was a nice day,” he said; and I sat on his other
knee.
How small we must have been then. "
"And we were so pitifully stupid,” she answered: when I
«
think now how you wanted to whistle, and could not! ”
“Do you remember that? ” he asked; and his eyes sparkled in
the consciousness of his present attainments in the art.
“Of course," she replied; and when you went away you
came running back and - do you still remember? »
He remembered very well.
"Now you can whistle, of course,” she laughed: (at our age
that is no longer an accomplishment, - even I can do it;” and
she pointed her lips in a very funny manner.
He was sad that she spoke so slightingly of his art, and re-
flected whether it would not be better to give up whistling alto-
gether.
“Why are you so silent ? ” she asked. "Are you tired too ? ”
“Oh no; but you - eh ? ”
Yes: the walk through the sand and the noontide heat had
tired her.
« Then come into our house and rest,” he cried with sparkling
eves; for he thought what joy his mother would feel at seeing
her.
But she refused. “Your father is not kindly disposed towards
us, mamma said; and that's why you may not come for a visit
to Helenenthal. Your father would perhaps send me away. ”
He replied with a deep blush, My father would not do that; ”
and felt much ashamed.
She cast a glance towards the Haidehof, which lay scarcely a
hundred yards from the road. The red fence shone in the sun-
shine, and even the gray half-ruined barns looked more cheerful
than usual.
“Your house looks very nice,” she said, shading her eyes with
her hand.
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“Oh yes,” he answered, his heart swelling with pride; "and
there is an owl nailed to the door of one of the sheds. But it
shall become much nicer still,” he added after a little while,
seriously, only let me begin to rule. ” And then he set to work
“
to explain to her all his plans for the future. She listened
attentively, but when he had finished she said again:
“I am tired -I must rest;” and she wanted to sit down on
the edge of the ditch,
« Not here in the blazing sun,” he cautioned her: we'll look
(
out for the first juniper-bush we can find. ”
She gave him her hand, and let him drag her wearily over
the heath, which undulated with mole-hills like the waves on a
lake; and near the edge of the wood there were some solitary
juniper-bushes, which stood out like a group of black dwarfs
above the level plain.
Under the first of these bushes she cowered down, so that its
shadow almost entirely shrouded her slight, delicate figure.
“Here is just room enough for your head,” she said, pointing
to a mole-hill which was just within range of the shade.
He stretched himself out on the grass, his head resting on the
mole-hill, his forehead covered by the hem of her dress.
She leaned back on the bush in order to find support in its
branches.
“The needles don't prick at all,” she said: they mean well
by us. I believe we could pass through the Sleeping Beauty's
hedge of thorns. ”
“You — not 1,” he answered, lifting his eyes to her from his
recumbent position: “every thorn has pricked me. I am no fairy
prince; not even a simple Hans in luck, am I ? ”
«That will all come in time,” she replied consolingly: "you
must not always have sad thoughts. ”
He wanted to reply, but he lacked the right words; and as he
looked up meditatively, a swallow fitted through the blue sky.
Then involuntarily he uttered a whistle, as if he wanted to call
it; and as it did not come, he whistled again, and for a second
and third time.
Elsbeth laughed, but he went on whistling -- first without
knowing how, and without reflecting why; but when one tone
after the other flowed from his lips, he felt as if he had become
very eloquent all of a sudden, and as if in this manner he could
say all that weighed on his heart, and for which in words he
never could have found courage. All that which made him sad,
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all that which he cared about, came pouring forth. He shut his
eyes and listened, so to speak, to what the tones were saying for
him. He thought that the good God in heaven spoke for him,
and was relating all that concerned him, even that which he had
never been clear about himself.
When he looked up, he did not know how long he had been
lying there whistling; but he saw that Elsbeth was crying.
Why do you cry? ” he asked.
She did not answer him; but dried her eyes with her hand-
kerchief, and rose.
Silently they walked side by side for a while. When they
reached the wood, which lay thick and dark before them, she
stopped and asked :-
“Who has taught you that? ”
“Nobody,” he said: “it came to me quite naturally.
Can
you
also play the flute ? she went on.
No, he could not: he had never even heard it; he only knew
that it was the favorite pastime of Old Fritz. ”
“You must learn it,” she said.
