Heine's songs are
everywhere
at home.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
» And the
speaker, feeling that she was being overheard by Madame Bour-
jot, leaned over and whispered in her neighbor's ear. Madame
Bourjot became serious.
After a pause the curtain went up again, and Henry Mau-
perin appeared as Pierrot or Harlequin, not in the traditional
sack of white calico and black cap, but as an Italian harlequin,
with a white three-cornered hat, and dressed entirely in white.
satin from head to foot. A shiver of interest ran through the
women, proving that the costume and the man were both charm-
ing; and the folly began.
It was the mad story of Pierrot, married to one woman and
wishing to marry another; a farce intermingled with passion,
which had been unearthed by a playwright, with the help of a
poet, from a collection of old comic plays. Renée this time acted
the part of the neglected woman, who in various disguises inter-
fered between her husband and his gallant adventures, and Naomi
that of the woman he loved. Henry, in his scenes of love with
the latter, carried all before him. He played with youth, with
brilliancy, with excitement. In the scene in which he avows his
love, his voice was full of the passionate cry of a declaration
which overflows and swamps everything. True, he had to act
with the prettiest Columbine in the world: Naomi looked delicious
that evening in her bridal costume of Louis XVI. , copied exactly
from the Bride's Minuet,' a print by Debucourt, which Barousse
had lent for the purpose.
A sort of enchantment filled the whole room, and reached
Madame Bourjot; a sort of sympathetic complicity with the actors
seemed to encourage the pretty couple to love one another. The
piece went on. Now and again Henry's eyes seemed to look for
those of Madame Bourjot, over the footlights. Meanwhile, Renée
appeared disguised as the village bailiff; it only remained to sign
the contract; Pierrot, taking the hand of the woman he loved,
began to tell her of all the happiness he was going to have with
her.
The woman who sat next to Madame Bourjot felt her lean
somewhat on her shoulder. Henry finished his speech, the piece
disentangled itself and came to an end. All at once Madame
## p. 6563 (#553) ###########################################
THE BROTHERS DE GONCOURT
6563
Bourjot's neighbor saw something glide down her arm; it was
Madame Bourjot, who had just fainted.
"Он, do pray go indoors," said Madame Bourjot to the people
who were standing around her. She had been carried into the
garden. "It is past now; it is really nothing; it was only the
heat. " She was quite pale, but she smiled. "I only want a little
air. Let M. Henry only stay with me. "
The audience retired. Scarcely had the sound of feet died.
away, when—"You love her! " said Madame Bourjot, seizing
Henry's arm as though she were taking him prisoner with her
feverish hands; "you love her! "
"Madame-" said Henry.
"Hold your tongue! you lie! " And she threw his arm from
her. Henry bowed. -"I know all. I have seen all. But look.
at me! " and with her eyes she closely scanned his face. Henry
stood before her, his head bent. -"At least speak to me! You
can speak, at any rate! Ah, I see it,-you can only act in her
company! "
"I have nothing to say to you, Laura," said Henry in his
softest and clearest voice. Madame Bourjot started at this name
of Laura as though he had touched her. "I have struggled for
a year, madame," began Henry; "I have no excuse to make.
But my heart is fast. We knew each other as children. The
charm has grown day by day. I am very unhappy, madame, at
having to acknowledge the truth to you. I love your daughter,
that is true. "
"But have you ever spoken to her? I blush for her when
there are people there! Have you ever looked at her? Do you
think her pretty? What possesses you men ? Come! I am
better-looking than she is! You men are fools. And besides, my
friend, I have spoiled you. Go to her and ask her to caress your
pride, to tickle your vanity, to flatter and to serve your ambitions,
-for you are ambitious: I know you! Ah, M. Mauperin, one
can only find that once in a lifetime! And it is only women of
my age, old women like me, do you hear me? -who love the
future of the people whom they love! You were not my lover,
you were my grandchild! " And at this word, her voice sounded.
as though it came from the bottom of her heart. Then imme-
diately changing her tone-"But don't be foolish! I tell you
you don't really love my daughter; it is not true: she is rich! "
1
## p. 6564 (#554) ###########################################
6564
THE BROTHERS DE GONCOURT
"O madame! "
"Good gracious! there are lots of people. They have been
pointed out to me. It pays sometimes to begin with the mother
and finish with the dower. And a million, you know, will gild
a good many pills. "
"Speak lower, I implore
just opened a window. "
"Calmness is very fine,
repeated Madame Bourjot.
to stifle her.
-
for your own sake: some one has
M. Mauperin, very fine, very fine,"
And her low, hissing voice seemed
Clouds were scudding across the sky, and passed over the
moon looking like huge bats' wings. Madame Bourjot gazed
fixedly into the darkness, straight in front of her. Her elbows
resting on her knees, her weight thrown on to her heels, she
was beating with the points of her satin shoes the gravel of the
path. After a few minutes she sat upright, stretched out her
arms two or three times wildly and as though but half awake;
then, hastily and with jerks, she pushed her hand down between
her gown and her waistband, pressing her hand against the rib-
bon as though she would break it. Then she rose and began to
walk. Henry followed her.
"I intend, sir, that we shall never see each other again," she
said to him, without turning round.
As they passed near the basin, she handed him her handker-
chief:
"Wet that for me. "
Henry put one knee on the margin and gave her back the
lace, which he had moistened. She laid it on her forehead and
on her eyes. "Now let us go in," she said; "give me your
arm. "
"Oh, dear madame, what courage! " said Madame Mauperin,
going to meet Madame Bourjot as she entered; "but it is unwise.
of you.
Let me order your carriage. "
"On no account," answered Madame Bourjot hastily: "I thank
you. I promised that I would sing for you, I think. I am going
to sing. "
And Madame Bourjot advanced to the piano, graceful and
valiant, with the heroic smile on her face wherewith the actors
of society hide from the public the tears that they shed within
themselves, and the wounds which are only known to their own
hearts.
## p. 6565 (#555) ###########################################
6565
•
EDMUND GOSSE
(1849-)
E
DMUND WILLIAM GOSSE, or Edmund Gosse, to give him the
name he has of late years adopted, is a Londoner, the son
of P. H. Gosse, an English zoölogist of repute. His educa-
tion did not embrace the collegiate training, but he was brought up
amid cultured surroundings, read largely, and when but eighteen was
appointed an assistant librarian in the British Museum, at the age of
twenty-six receiving the position of translator to the Board of Trade.
Gosse is a good example of the cultivated man of letters who fitted
himself thoroughly for his profession, though lacking the formal scho-
lastic drill of the university.
He began as a very young man to write for the leading English
periodicals, contributing papers and occasional poems to the Saturday
Review, Academy, and Cornhill Magazine, and soon gaining critical
recognition. In 1872 and 1874 he traveled in Scandinavia and Hol-
land, making literary studies which bore fruit in one of his best crit-
ical works. He made his literary bow when twenty-one with the
volume 'Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets' (1870), which was well re-
ceived, winning praise from Tennyson. His essential qualities as a
verse-writer appear in it: elegance and care of workmanship, close
study of nature, felicity in phrasing, and a marked tendency to draw
on literary culture for subject and reference. Other works of poetry,
'On Viol and Flute' (1873), 'New Poems' (1879), 'Firdausī in Exile'
(1885), In Russet and Gold' (1894), with the dramas King Erik'
(1876) and The Unknown Lover' (1878), show an increasingly firm
technique and a broadening of outlook, with some loss of the happy
singing quality which characterized the first volume.
Gosse as a poet
may be described as a lyrist with attractive descriptive powers. To-
gether with his fellow poets Lang and Dobson, he revived in English
verse the old French metrical forms, such as the roundel, triolet, and
ballade, and he has been very receptive to the new in literary form
and thought, while keeping a firm grip on the classic models.
As an essayist, Gosse is one of the most accomplished and agree-
able of modern English writers; he has comprehensive culture and
catholic sympathy, and commands a picturesque style, graceful and
rich without being florid. His Studies in the Literature of Northern
Europe' (1879) introduced Ibsen and other little-known foreign writers
to British readers.
## p. 6566 (#556) ###########################################
6566
EDMUND GOSSE
Gosse has been a thorough student of English literature prior to
the nineteenth century, and has made a specialty of the literary his-
tory of the eighteenth century, his series of books in this field includ-
ing-Seventeenth-Century Studies' (1883), From Shakespeare to
Pope (1885), The Literature of the Eighteenth Century' (1889),
"The Jacobean Poets' (1894), to which may be added the volume of
contemporaneous studies Critical Kit-Kats' (1896). Some of these
books are based on the lectures delivered by Gosse as Clark Lecturer
at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has also written biographies of
Sir Walter Raleigh and Congreve, and his 'Life of Thomas Gray'
(1882) and Works of Thomas Gray' (1884) comprise the best edition
and setting-forth of that poet. In such labors as that of the editing
of Heinemann's 'International Library,' his influence has been salu-
tary in the popularization of the best literature of the world. His
interest in Ibsen led him to translate, in collaboration with William
Archer, the dramatic critic of London, the Norwegian's play 'The
Master Builder. '
Edmund Gosse, as editor, translator, critic, and poet, has done
varied and excellent work. Sensitive to many literatures, and to good
literature everywhere, he has remained stanchly English in spirit, and
has combined scholarship with popular qualities of presentation.
has thus contributed not a little to the furtherance of literature in
England.
[The poems are all taken from 'On Viol and Flute,' published by Henry Holt
& Co. , New York. ]
FEBRUARY IN ROME
WHE
HEN Roman fields are red with cyclamen,
And in the palace gardens you may find,
Under great leaves and sheltering briony-bind,
Clusters of cream-white violets, oh then
The ruined city of immortal men
Must smile, a little to her fate resigned,
And through her corridors the slow warm wind
Gush harmonies beyond a mortal ken.
Such soft favonian airs upon a flute,
Such shadowy censers burning live perfume,
Shall lead the mystic city to her tomb;
Nor flowerless springs, nor autumns without fruit,
Nor summer mornings when the winds are mute,
Trouble her soul till Rome be no more Rome.
## p. 6567 (#557) ###########################################
EDMUND GOSSE
6567
DESIDERIUM
ST
IT there for ever, dear, and lean
In marble as in fleeting flesh,
Above the tall gray reeds that screen
The river when the breeze is fresh;
For ever let the morning light
Stream down that forehead broad and white,
And round that cheek for my delight.
Already that flushed moment grows
So dark, so distant; through the ranks
Of scented reed the river flows,
Still murmuring to its willowy banks;
But we can never hope to share
Again that rapture fond and rare,
Unless you turn immortal there.
There is no other way to hold
These webs of mingled joy and pain;
Like gossamer their threads enfold
The journeying heart without a strain,—
Then break, and pass in cloud or dew,
And while the ecstatic soul goes through,
Are withered in the parching blue.
Hold, Time, a little while thy glass,
And Youth, fold up those peacock wings!
More rapture fills the years that pass
Than any hope the future brings;
Some for to-morrow rashly pray,
And some desire to hold to-day,
But I am sick for yesterday.
Since yesterday the hills were blue
That shall be gray for evermore,
And the fair sunset was shot through
With color never seen before!
Tyrannic Love smiled yesterday,
And lost the terrors of his sway,
But is a god again to-day.
Ah, who will give us back the past?
Ah woe, that youth should love to be
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,
And is so fain to find the sea,-
-
## p. 6568 (#558) ###########################################
6568
EDMUND GOSSE
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,
For breakers of the homeless deep.
Then sit for ever, dear, in stone,
As when you turned with half a smile,
And I will haunt this islet lone,
And with a dream my tears beguile;
And in my reverie forget
That stars and suns were made to set;
That love grows cold, or eyes are wet.
LYING IN THE GRASS
B
ETWEEN two golden tufts of summer grass,
I see the world through hot air as through glass,
And by my face sweet lights and colors pass.
Before me dark against the fading sky,
I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie:
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.
Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,
Rich glowing color on bare throat and head,—
My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead!
And in my strong young living as I lie,
I seem to move with them in harmony,-
A fourth is mowing, and the fourth am I.
The music of the scythes that glide and leap,
The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,
And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,
The weary butterflies that droop their wings,
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,
And all the lassitude of happy things,
Is mingling with the warm and pulsing blood,
That gushes through my veins a languid flood,
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.
Behind the mowers, on the amber air,
A dark-green beech wood rises, still and fair,
A white path winding up it like a stair.
## p. 6569 (#559) ###########################################
EDMUND GOSSE
6569
And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,
And clean white apron on her gown of red, -
Her evensong of love is but half said:
She waits the youngest mower.
Now he goes;
Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose;
They climb up where the deepest shadows close.
But though they pass, and vanish, I am there.
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair;
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer.
Ah! now the rosy children come to play,
And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
Their clear, high voices sound from far away.
They know so little why the world is sad;
They dig themselves warm graves, and yet are glad;
Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!
I long to go and play among them there;
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.
The happy children! full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies;
What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!
No wonder round those urns of mingled clays
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days,
And colored like the torrid earth ablaze,
We find the little gods and Loves portrayed,
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed,
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid.
They knew, as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight.
I do not hunger for a well-stored mind;
I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.
My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose bar,—
A microcosm where all things living are.
## p. 6570 (#560) ###########################################
6570
EDMUND GOSSE
And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth;
For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,—
And why should men be sad through loss of me?
The light is flying; in the silver blue
The young moon shines from her bright window through:
The mowers are all gone, and I go too.
## p. 6571 (#561) ###########################################
6571
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
(1823-)
UDOLPH VON GOTTSCHALL was born in Breslau, September 30th,
1823. He was the son of a Prussian artillery officer, and as a
lad gave early evidence of extraordinary talent. His father
was transferred to the Rhine, and young Gottschall was sent success-
ively to the gymnasiums of Mainz and Coblenz. Even in his school
days, and before he entered the university, he had through his clev-
erness attained a certain degree of eminence. His career at the
University of Königsberg, whither he went to pursue the study of
jurisprudence, was interrupted by the results attendant upon a youth-
ful ebullition of the spirit of freedom. His sympathy with the revo-
lutionary element was too boldly expressed,
and when in 1842 he published 'Lieder der
Gegenwart' (Songs of the Present), he found
it necessary to leave the university in order
to avert impending consequences. In the
following year he published Censurflücht-
linge (Fugitives from the Censor), a poem
of a kind not in the least likely to con-
ciliate the authorities. He remained for a
time with Count Reichenbach in Silesia, and
then went to Berlin, where he was allowed
to complete his studies. He was however
refused the privilege of becoming a univer-
sity docent, although he had regularly taken R. VON GOTTSCHALL
his degree of Dr. Juris.
He now devoted himself wholly to poetry and general literature.
For a while he held the position of stage manager in the theatre of
Königsberg, and during this period produced the dramas 'Der Blinde
von Alcalá (The Blind Man of Alcalá: 1846), and 'Lord Byron in
Italien (Lord Byron in Italy: 1848). After leaving Königsberg he
frequently changed his residence, living in Hamburg and Breslau, and
later in Posen, where in 1852 he was editor of a newspaper.
In 1853
he went to Italy, and after his return he settled in Leipzig. Here
he definitely established himself, and undertook the editing of Blätter
für Litterarische Unterhaltung (Leaves for Literary Amusement), and
also of the monthly periodical Unsere Zeit (Our Time). He wrote
## p. 6572 (#562) ###########################################
6572
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
profusely, and exerted an appreciable influence upon contemporary
literature. He was ennobled by the Emperor in 1877.
As a poet and man of letters, Gottschall possesses unusual gifts,
and is a writer of most extraordinary activity. His fecundity is aston-
ishing, and the amount of his published work fills many volumes. His
versatility is no less remarkable than his productiveness. Dramatist
and critic, novelist and poet,-- in all his various fields he is never
mediocre. Chief among his dramatic works are the tragedies Kath-
arina Howard'; 'King Carl XII. '; 'Bernhard of Weimar '; 'Amy Rob-
sart'; 'Arabella Stuart'; and the excellent comedy 'Pitt and Fox. '
Of narrative poems the best known are 'Die Göttin, ein Hohes Lied
vom Weibe' (The Goddess, a Song of Praise of Woman), 1852; 'Carlo
Zeno, 1854; and 'Sebastopol,' 1856.
He has published numerous volumes of verses which take a worthy
rank in the poetry of the time. His first 'Gedichte' (Poems) appeared
in 1849; Neue Gedichte' (New Poems) in 1858; Kriegslieder' (War
Songs) in 1870; and 'Janus' and 'Kriegs und Friedens Gedichte'
(Poems of War and Peace) in 1873. In his novels he is no less suc-
cessful, and of these may be mentioned -'Im Banne des Schwarzen
Adlers' (In the Ban of the Black Eagle: 1876); Welke Blätter' (With-
ered Leaves: 1878); and 'Das Goldene Kalb' (The Golden Calf: 1880).
It is however chiefly as critic that his power has been most widely
exerted, and prominent among the noteworthy productions of later
years stand his admirable Porträts und Studien ' (Portraits and Stud-
ies: 1870-71); and 'Die Deutsche Nationallitteratur in der Ersten
Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts' (The German National Literature in the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century: 1855), continued to the present
time in 1892, when the whole appeared as 'The German National
Literature of the Nineteenth Century. '
Α
HEINRICH HEINE
From Portraits and Studies >
BOUT no recent poet
Heinrich Heine.
has so much been said and sung as about
The youngest writer, who for the first
time tries his pen, does not neglect to sketch with uncertain
outlines the portrait of this poet; and the oldest sour-tempered
professor of literature, who turns his back upon the efforts of
the present with the most distinguished disapproval, lets fall on
the picture a few rays of light, in order to prove the degenera-
tion of modern literature in the Mephistophelean features of this
its chief.
Heine's songs are everywhere at home. They are to
## p. 6573 (#563) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6573
be found upon the music rack of the piano, in the school-books,
in the slender libraries of minor officers and young clerks. How-
ever difficult it may be to compile an editio castigata of his poems,
every age, every generation has selected from among them that
which has delighted it. Citations from Heine, winged words in
verse and prose, buzz through the air of the century like a swarm
of insects: splendid butterflies with gayly glistening wings, beau-
tiful day moths and ghostly night moths, tormenting gnats, and
bees armed with evil stings. Heine's works are canonical books
for the intellectual, who season their judgments with citations
from this poet, model their conversation on his style, interpret
him, expand the germ cell of his wit to a whole fabric of clever
developments. Even if he is not a companion on the way through
life, like great German poets, and smaller Brahmins who for every
day of our house-and-life calendar give us an aphorism on the
road, there are nevertheless, in the lives of most modern men,
moods with which Heine's verse harmonize with wondrous sym-
pathy; moments in which the intimacy with this poet is greater
than the friendship, even if this be of longer duration, with our
classic poets.
It is apparently idle to attempt to say anything new of so
much discussed a singer of modern times, since testimony favor-
able and unfavorable has been drained to exhaustion by friend
and foe. Who does not know Heine, or rather, who does
not believe that he knows him? for, as is immediately to be
added, acquaintance with this poet extends really only to a few
of his songs, and to the complete picture which is delivered
over ready-made from one history of literature into another.
Nothing, however, is more perilous and more fatal than literary
tradition! Not merely decrees and laws pass along by inherit-
ance, like a constitutional infirmity, but literary judgments too.
They form at last a subject of instruction like any other; a dead
piece of furniture in the spiritual housekeeping, which, like every-
thing that has been learned, is set as completed to one side.
We know enough of this sort of fixed pictures, which at last pass
along onward as the fixed ideas of a whole epoch, until a later
unprejudiced investigation dissolves this rigid-grown wisdom, sets
it to flowing, and forms out of a new mixture of its elements a
new and more truthful portrait.
It is not to be affirmed however that Heine's picture, as it
stands fixed and finished in the literature and the opinion of the
—
## p. 6574 (#564) ###########################################
6574
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
present, is mistaken and withdrawn. It is dead, like every pict-
ure; there is lacking the living, changing play of features. We
have of Heine only one picture before us; of our great poets
several. Goethe in his "storm and stress," in Frankfurt, Strass-
burg, and Wetzlar, the ardent lover of a Friedrike of Sesen-
heim, the handsome, joyous youth, is different in our minds
from the stiff and formal Weimar minister; the youthful Apollo
different from the Olympic Jupiter. There lies a young develop-
ment between, that we feel and are curious to know. It is sim-
ilar with Schiller. The poet of the 'Robbers' with its motto In
tyrannos, the fugitive from the military school; and the Jena pro-
fessor, the Weimar court councilor who wrote 'The Homage of
the Arts,' are two different portraits.
But Heine is to our view always the same, always the repre-
sentative of humor with "a laughing tear" in his escutcheon,
always the poetic anomaly, coquetting with his pain and scoffing
it away. Young or old, well or ill, we do not know him dif-
ferent.
――――
-
And yet this poet too had a development, upon which at
different times different influences worked.
•
«<
The first epoch in this course of development may be called
the youthful"; the Travel Pictures' and the lyrics contained.
in it form its brilliant conclusion. This is no storm-and-stress
period in the way that, as Schiller and Goethe passed through it,
completed works first issued under its clarifying influence. On
the contrary, it is characteristic of Heine that we have to thank
this youthful epoch for his best and most peculiarly national
poems. The wantonness and the sorrows of this youth, in their
piquant mixture, created these songs permeated by the breath of
original talent, whose physiognomy, more than all that follow
later, bears the mark of the kind and manner peculiar to Heine,
and which for a long time exercised in our literature through
a countless host of imitators an almost epidemic effect. But
these lyric pearls, which in their purity and their crystalline
polish are a lasting adornment of his poet's crown, and belong to
the lyric treasures of our national literature, were also gathered
in his first youthful epoch, when he still dived down into the
depths of life in the diving-bell of romanticism.
Although Heinrich Heine asserted of himself that he belonged
to the "first men of the century," since he was born in the
middle of New Year's night, 1800, more exact investigation has
## p. 6575 (#565) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6575
nevertheless shown that truth is here sacrificed to a witticism.
Heine is still a child of the eighteenth century, by whose most
predominant thoughts his work too is influenced, and with whose
European coryphæus, Voltaire, he has an undeniable relationship.
He was born, as Strodtmann proves, on the 13th of December,
1799, in Düsseldorf.
His father was a plain cloth-merchant; his
mother, of the family Von Geldern, the daughter of a physician.
of repute. The opinion, however, that Heine was the fruit of a
Jewish-Christian marriage, is erroneous. The family Von Geldern
belonged to the orthodox Jewish confession. One of its early
members, according to family tradition, although he was a Jew,
had received the patent of nobility from one of the prince electors
of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, on account of a service accorded him. As,
moreover, Schiller's and Goethe's mothers worked upon their sons
an appreciable educational influence, so was this also the case with
Heine's mother, who is described as a pupil of Rousseau and an
adorer of Goethe's elegies, and thus reached far out beyond the
measure of the bourgeois conditions in which she lived.
That which however worked upon his youthful spirit, upon his
whole poetical manner, was the French sovereignty in the Rhine-
lands at the time of his childhood and youth. The Grand Duchy
of Berg, to which Düsseldorf belonged, was ruled in the French
manner; a manner which, apart from the violent conscriptions,
when compared with the Roman imperial periwig style had great
advantages, and in particular granted to Jews complete equal
rights with Christians, since the revolutionary principle of equal-
ity had outlived the destruction of freedom. Thus the Jews in
Düsseldorf in their greater part were French sympathizers, and
Heine's father too was an ardent adherent of the new régime.
This as a matter of course could not remain without influence
upon the son, so much the less as he had French instruction at
the lyceum. A vein of the lively French blood is unmistakable
in his works. It drew him later on to Paris, where he made the
martyr stations of his last years. And of all recent German
poets, Heinrich Heine is the best known in France, better known
even than our classic poets; for the French feel this vein of
related blood.
From his youth springs, too, Heine's enthusiasm for the great
Napoleon, which however he has never transmitted to the suc-
cessors of the idées Napoléoniennes. The thirteen-year-old pupil
of the gymnasium saw the Emperor in the year 1811, and then
## p. 6576 (#566) ###########################################
6576
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
again in May 1812; and later on in the 'Book Legrand' of the
"Travel Pictures' he strikes up the following dithyrambic, which,
as is always the case with Heine where the great Cæsar is con-
cerned, tones forth pure and full, with genuine poetic swing,
without those dissonances in which his inmost feelings often
flow. "What feelings came over me," he exclaims, "when I
saw him himself, with my own highly favored eyes, him himself,
Hosanna, the Emperor! It was in the avenue of the Court
garden in Düsseldorf. As I pushed myself through the gaping
people, I thought of his deeds and his battles, and my heart.
beat the general march- and nevertheless, I thought at the same
time of the police regulation that no one under a penalty of five
thalers should ride through the middle of the avenue. And the
Emperor rode quietly through the middle of the avenue;
policeman opposed him. Behind him, his suite rode proudly on
snorting horses and loaded with gold and jewels, the trumpets
sounded, and the people shouted with a thousand voices, 'Long
live the Emperor! "" To this enthusiasm for Napoleon, Heine
not long afterward gave a poetic setting in the ballad The Two
Grenadiers. '
no
The Napoleonic remembrances of his youth, which retained
that unfading freshness and enthusiasm that are wont to belong
to all youthful remembrances, were of vital influence upon Heine's
later position in literature; they formed a balance over against
the romantic tendency, and hindered him from being drawn into
it. Precisely in that epoch when the beautiful patriotism of the
Wars of Liberation went over into the weaker feeling of the
time of the restoration, and romanticism, grown over-devout, in
part abandoned itself to externals, in part became a centre of
reactionary efforts, Heine let this Napoleonic lightning play on
the sultry heavens of literature, in the most daring opposition to
the ruling disposition of the time and a school of poetry from
which he himself had proceeded; while he declared war upon its
followers. However greatly he imperiled his reputation as a
German patriot through these hosannas offered to the hereditary
enemy, just as little was it to be construed amiss that the re-
membrance of historical achievements, and of those principles of
the Revolution which even the Napoleonic despotism must repre-
sent, were a salutary ventilation in the miasmic atmosphere of
the continually decreasing circle which at that time described.
German literature. In the prose of Heine, which like Béranger
## p. 6577 (#567) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6577
glorified Cæsar, slumbered the first germs of the political lyric,
which led again out of the moonlit magic realm of romanticism
into the sunny day of history.
A hopeless youthful love for a charming Hamburg maiden
was the Muse of the Heine lyric, whose escutcheon has for a
symbol "the laughing tear. " With the simplicity of Herodotus
the poet himself relates the fact, the experience, in the well-
known poem with the final strophe:-
"It is an ancient story,
But still 'tis ever new:
To whomsoe'er it happens
His heart is broken too. "
We comprehend from biographical facts the inner genesis of
the Heine lyric. Heine was in the position of Werther, but a
Werther was for the nineteenth century an anomaly; a lyric of
this sort in yellow nankeen breeches would have travestied itself.
The content of the range of thought, the circle of world-shaping
efforts, had so expanded itself since the French Revolution that
a complete dissolution into sentimental extravagance had become
an impossibility. The justification of the sentiment was not to
be denied; but it must not be regarded as the highest, as the
life-determining element. It needed a rectification which should
again rescue the freedom of the spirit. Humor alone could ac-
complish Munchausen's feat, and draw itself by its own hair out of
the morass. Heine expressed his feelings with genuine warmth;
he formed them into drawn pictures and visions; but then he
placed himself on the defensive against them. He is the mod-
ern Werther, who instead of loading his pistol with a ball, loads
it with humor. Artistic harmony suffered under this triumph of
spiritual freedom; but that which appeared in his imitators as
voluntary quibbling came from Heine of inner necessity. The
subject of his first songs is the necessary expression of a struggle
between feeling and spirit, between the often visionary dream life
of a sentiment and self-consciousness, soaring free out over the
world, which adjudged absorption in a single feeling as one-sided
and unjustified. Later on, to be sure, these subjects of youthful
inspiration became in Heine himself a satiric-humoristic manner,
which regarded as a model worked much evil in literature. In
addition to personal necessity through one's own experience, there
was for a genius such as Heine's also a literary necessity, which
XI-412
## p. 6578 (#568) ###########################################
6578
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
lay in the development of our literature in that epoch.
It was
the Indian Summer of romanticism, whose cobwebs at this time
flew over the stubble of our poetry. The vigorous onset of the
lyricists of the Wars of Liberation had again grown lame; people
reveled in the album sentiments of Tiedge and Mahlmann; the
spectres of Amadeus Hoffmann and the lovely high-born maidens
of knight Fouqué were regarded then as the noblest creations of
German fantasy. Less chosen spirits, that is to say, the entire
great reading public of the German nation, which ever felt toward
its immortals a certain aversion, refreshed itself with the luke-
warm water of the poetry of Clauren, from out of which, instead
of the Venus Anadyomene, appear a Mimili and other maiden
forms, pretty, but drawn with a stuffed-out plasticism. On the
stage reigned the "fate tragedies" upon whose lyre the strings.
were wont to break even in the first scene, and whose ghosts
slipped silently over all the German boards. In a word, spirits
controlled the poetry of the time more than spirit.
Heine however was a genuine knight of the spirit, and even
if he conjured up his lyric spectres, he demanded no serious
belief in them-they were dissolving pictures of mist; and if
he followed his overflowing feelings, the mawkish sentiments of
romanticism occurred to him and disgusted him with the extrav-
agant expression of his love pain, and he mocked himself, the
time, and the literature,-dissolved the sweet accords in glaring
dissonances, so that they should not be in tune with the senti-
mental street songs of the poets of the day. In these outer and
inner reasons lie the justification and the success of the lyric
poetry of Heine. It designates an act of self-consciousness of
the German spirit, which courageously lifts itself up out of idle.
love complainings and fantastic dream life, and at the same time
mocks them both. An original talent like Heine's was needed to
give to the derided sentiment such a transporting magic, to the
derision itself such an Attic grace, that the sphinx of his poetry,
with the beautiful face and the rending claws, always produced
the impression of a work of art. The signification in literary
history of these songs of Heine is not to be underestimated.
They indicate the dissolution of romanticism, and with them
begins the era of modern German poetry.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William
H. Carpenter
## p. 6579 (#569) ###########################################
6579
JOHN GOWER
(1325? -1408)
INCE Caxton, the first printer of 'Confessio Amantis' (The
Confession of a Lover), described Gower as a "squyer borne
in Walys in the tyme of Kyng Richard the second," there
has been a diversity of opinion about his birthplace, and he has been
classed variously with prosperous Gowers until of late, when the
county assigned to him is Kent. His birth-year is placed approxi-
mately at 1325. We know nothing of his early life and education.
It has been guessed that he went to Oxford,
and afterwards traveled in the troubled
kingdom of France. Such a course might
have been followed by a man of his estate.
He had means, for English property records
(in this instance the rolls of Chancery, the
parchment foundation of English society)
still preserve deeds of his holdings in Kent
and Essex and elsewhere.
JOHN GOWER
His life lay along with that of Chaucer's,
in the time when Edward III. and his son
the Black Prince were carrying war into
France, and the English Parliament were
taking pay in plain speaking for what they
granted in supplies, and wresting at the
same time promises of reform from the royal hand. But Gower and
Chaucer were not only contemporaries: they were of like pursuit,
tastes, and residence; they were friends; and when Chaucer under
Richard II. , the grandson and successor of Edward, went to France
upon the mission of which Froissart speaks, he named John Gower as
one of his two attorneys while he should be away. Notice of Gower's
marriage to Agnes Groundolf late in life-in 1397-is still preserved.
Three years after this he became blind,-it was the year 1400, in
which Chaucer died, and in 1408 he died.
Pos
"The infirm poet," says Morley, "spent the evening of his life at St. Mary
Overies [St. Mary-over-the-River], in retirement from all worldly affairs except
pious and liberal support of the advancing building works in the priory, and
in the church now known as St. Saviour's [Southwark], to which he bequeathed
his body. His will, made not long before death, bequeathed his soul to God,
## p. 6580 (#570) ###########################################
6580
JOHN GOWER
his body to be buried in St. Mary Overies. The poet bequeathed also 135. 4ď.
to each of the four parish churches of Southwark for ornaments and lights,
besides 6s. 8d. for prayers to each of their curates. It is not less character-
istic that he left also 40s. for prayers to the master of St. Thomas's Hospital,
and, still for prayers, 6s. 8d. to each of its priests, 3s. 4d. to each Sister in
the hospital, twenty pence to each nurse of the infirm there, and to each of
the infirm twelve pence. There were similar bequests to St. Thomas Elsing
Spital, a priory and hospital that stood where now stands Sion College. St.
Thomas Elsing Spital, founded in 1329 by William Elsing, was especially
commended to the sympathies of the blind old poet, as it consisted of a col-
lege for a warden, four priests, and two clerks, who had care of one hundred
old, blind, and poor persons of both sexes, preference being given to blind,
paralytic, and disabled priests. Like legacies were bequeathed also to Bedlam-
without-Bishopsgate, and to St. Mary's Hospital, Westminster. Also there
were bequests of ten shillings to each of the leper-nurses. Two robes (one of
white silk, the other of blue baudekin,-a costly stuff with web of gold and
woof of silk), also a new dish and chalice, and a new missal, were bequeathed
to the perpetual service of the altar of the chapel of St. John the Baptist, in
which his body was to be buried. To the prior and convent he left a great
book, a 'Martyrology,' which had been composed and written for them at his
expense. To his wife Agnes he left a hundred pounds, three cups, che cover-
let, two salt-cellars, and a dozen silver spoons; also all his beds and chests,
with the furnishings of hall, pantry, and kitchen; also a chalice and robe for
the altar of the chapel of their house; and she was to have for life all rents
due to him from his manors of Southwell (in Nottingham) and Moulton (in
Suffolk). »
The will is still preserved at
His wife was one of his executors.
Lambeth Palace.
Gower's tomb and monument may also still be seen at St. Saviour's,
where the description Berthelet gave of them in 1532 is, aside from
the deadening of the paintings, true:- "Somewhat after the olde
ffashion he lyeth ryght sumptuously buryed, with a garland on his
head, in token that he in his lyfe dayes flouryshed freshely in liter-
ature and science. " The head of his stone effigy lies upon three
volumes representing Gower's three great works; the hair falls in long
curls; the robe is closely buttoned to the feet, which rest upon a
lion, and the neck is encircled with a collar, from which a chain held
a small swan, the badge of Henry IV. "Besyde on the wall where
as he lyeth," continues Berthelet, "there be peynted three virgins,
with crownes on theyr heades; one of the which is written Charitie,
and she holdeth this devise in her hande:-
――
'En toy qui fitz de Dieu le Pere
Sauve soit que gist souz cest piere. '
(In thee, who art Son of God the Father,
Be he saved who lieth under this stone. )
## p. 6581 (#571) ###########################################
JOHN GOWER
6581
"The second is wrytten Mercye, which holdeth in her hande this
devise:-
O bone Jesu fait ta mercy
Al alme dont le corps gist icy. '
(O good Jesus, grant thy mercy
To the soul whose body lies here. )
"The thyrde of them is wrytten Pity, which holdeth in her hand
this devise :-
-
'Pur ta pite, Jesu regarde,
Et met cest alme en sauve garde. »»
(For thy pity, Jesus, see;
And take this soul in thy safe guard. )
The monument was repaired in 1615, 1764, and 1830.
The three works which pillow the head of the effigy indicate
Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis' (The Looking-Glass of One Meditat-
ing), which the poet wrote in French; the 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice
of One Crying), in Latin; and the 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. It
should be remembered in noting this mixture of tongues, that in
Gower's early life the English had no national speech. The court,
Parliament, nobles, and the courts of law used French; the Church
held its service in Latin; while the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon blood
clung to the language of their fathers, which they had modified by
additions from the Norman tongue. It was not until 1362 that Parlia-
ment was opened by a speech in English. "There is," says Dr. Pauli,
"no better illustration of the singular transition to the English lang-
uage than a short enumeration and description of Gower's writings. "
Of the 'Speculum Meditantis,' a treatise in ten books on the duties
of married life, no copy is known to exist. The Vox Clamantis >
was the voice of the poet, singing in Latin elegiac of the terrible
evils which led to the rise of the commons and their march to Lon-
don under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in 1381. It is doubtless a true
picture of the excesses and miseries of the day. The remedy, the
poet says, is in reform-right living and love of England. Simony
in the prelates, avarice and drunkenness in the libidinous priests,
wealth and luxury in the mendicant orders, miscarrying of justice in
the courts, enrichment of individuals by excessive taxes, - these are
the subjects of the voice crying in the wilderness.
Gower's greatest work, however, is the Confessio Amantis. ' In
form it is a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a
priest of Venus. In substance it is a setting-forth, with moraliz-
ings which are at times touching and elevated, of one hundred and
twelve different stories, from sources so different as the Bible, Ovid,
## p. 6582 (#572) ###########################################
6582
JOHN GOWER
Josephus, the Gesta Romanorum,' Valerius Maximus, Statius, Boc-
caccio, etc. Thirty thousand eight-syllabled rhymed lines make up
the work. There are different versions. The first was dedicated to
Richard II. , and the second to his successor, Henry of Lancaster.
Besides these large works, a number of French ballades, and also
English and Latin short poems, are preserved. "They have real and
intrinsic merit," says Todd: "they are tender, pathetic, and poet-
ical, and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of
view than that in which he has heretofore been usually seen. ”
Estimates of Gower's writings are various; but even his most hos-
tile judges admit the pertinence of the epithet with which Chaucer
hails him in his dedication of Troilus and Creseide':-
"O morall Gower, this bookè I direct
To thee and to the philosophicall Strode,
To vouchsafè there need is to correct
Of your benignities and zealès good. "
Then Skelton the laureate, in his long song upon the death of
Philip Sparrow (which recalls the exquisite gem of Catullus in a like.
threnody), takes occasion to say:
And again:
"Gower's englysshe is olde,
And of no valúe is tolde;
His mattér is worth gold,
And worthy to be enrold. "
"Gower that first garnished our English rude. »
Old Puttenham also bears this testimony:-"But of them all [the
English poets] particularly this is myne opinion, that Chaucer, with
Gower, Lidgate, and Harding, for their antiquitie ought to have the
first place. "
Taine dismisses him with little more than a fillip, and Lowell,
while discoursing appreciatively on Chaucer, says:-
"Gower has positively raised tediousness to the precision of science; he has
made dullness an heirloom for the students of our literary history. As you
slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foothold to the
mind; as your nervous ear awaits the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regu-
larly pertinacious as the tick of an eight-day clock, and reminding you of
Wordsworth's
'Once more the ass did lengthen out
The hard dry seesaw of his horrible bray,'
## p. 6583 (#573) ###########################################
JOHN GOWER
6583
you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this indefatigable man.
He is the undertaker of the fair mediæval legend, and his style has the hate-
ful gloss, the seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin. "
Yet hear Morley:-
"To this day we hear among our living countrymen, as was to be heard
in Gower's time and long before, the voice passing from man to man, that in
spite of admixture with the thousand defects incident to human character, sus-
tains the keynote of our literature, and speaks from the soul of our history
the secret of our national success. It is the voice that expresses the persistent
instinct of the English mind to find out what is unjust among us and undo it,
to find out duty to be done and do it, as God's bidding. . . In his own
Old English or Anglo-Saxon way he tries to put his soul into his work. Thus
in the Vox Clamantis' we have heard him asking that the soul of his book,
not its form, be looked to; and speaking the truest English in such sentences
as that the eye is blind and the ear deaf, that convey nothing down to the
heart's depth; and the heart that does not utter what it knows is as a live coal
under ashes. If I know little, there may be another whom that little will help.
.
. . But to the man who believes in God, no power is unattainable if he
but rightly feels his work; he ever has enough, whom God increases. ' This is
the old spirit of Cædmon and of Bede; in which are laid, while the earth lasts,
the strong foundations of our literature. It was the strength of such a tem-
per in him that made Gower strong. God knows,' he says again, my
wish is to be useful; that is the prayer that directs my labor. ' And while he
thus touches the root of his country's philosophy, the form of his prayer —
that what he has written may be what he would wish it to be — is still a
thoroughly sound definition of good English writing. His prayer is that
there may be no word of untruth, and that each word may answer to the
thing it speaks of, pleasantly and fitly; that he may flatter in it no one, and
seek in it no praise above the praise of God. '»
-
The part of Gower's writing here brought before the reader is the
quaintly told and charming story of Petronella, from 'Liber Primus'
of the 'Confessio. ' It may be evidence that all the malediction upon
the poet above quoted is not deserved.
The Confessio Amantis' has been edited and collated with the
best manuscripts by Dr. Reinhold Pauli (1857). The Vox Claman-
tis' was printed for the first time in 1850, under the editorship of
H.
speaker, feeling that she was being overheard by Madame Bour-
jot, leaned over and whispered in her neighbor's ear. Madame
Bourjot became serious.
After a pause the curtain went up again, and Henry Mau-
perin appeared as Pierrot or Harlequin, not in the traditional
sack of white calico and black cap, but as an Italian harlequin,
with a white three-cornered hat, and dressed entirely in white.
satin from head to foot. A shiver of interest ran through the
women, proving that the costume and the man were both charm-
ing; and the folly began.
It was the mad story of Pierrot, married to one woman and
wishing to marry another; a farce intermingled with passion,
which had been unearthed by a playwright, with the help of a
poet, from a collection of old comic plays. Renée this time acted
the part of the neglected woman, who in various disguises inter-
fered between her husband and his gallant adventures, and Naomi
that of the woman he loved. Henry, in his scenes of love with
the latter, carried all before him. He played with youth, with
brilliancy, with excitement. In the scene in which he avows his
love, his voice was full of the passionate cry of a declaration
which overflows and swamps everything. True, he had to act
with the prettiest Columbine in the world: Naomi looked delicious
that evening in her bridal costume of Louis XVI. , copied exactly
from the Bride's Minuet,' a print by Debucourt, which Barousse
had lent for the purpose.
A sort of enchantment filled the whole room, and reached
Madame Bourjot; a sort of sympathetic complicity with the actors
seemed to encourage the pretty couple to love one another. The
piece went on. Now and again Henry's eyes seemed to look for
those of Madame Bourjot, over the footlights. Meanwhile, Renée
appeared disguised as the village bailiff; it only remained to sign
the contract; Pierrot, taking the hand of the woman he loved,
began to tell her of all the happiness he was going to have with
her.
The woman who sat next to Madame Bourjot felt her lean
somewhat on her shoulder. Henry finished his speech, the piece
disentangled itself and came to an end. All at once Madame
## p. 6563 (#553) ###########################################
THE BROTHERS DE GONCOURT
6563
Bourjot's neighbor saw something glide down her arm; it was
Madame Bourjot, who had just fainted.
"Он, do pray go indoors," said Madame Bourjot to the people
who were standing around her. She had been carried into the
garden. "It is past now; it is really nothing; it was only the
heat. " She was quite pale, but she smiled. "I only want a little
air. Let M. Henry only stay with me. "
The audience retired. Scarcely had the sound of feet died.
away, when—"You love her! " said Madame Bourjot, seizing
Henry's arm as though she were taking him prisoner with her
feverish hands; "you love her! "
"Madame-" said Henry.
"Hold your tongue! you lie! " And she threw his arm from
her. Henry bowed. -"I know all. I have seen all. But look.
at me! " and with her eyes she closely scanned his face. Henry
stood before her, his head bent. -"At least speak to me! You
can speak, at any rate! Ah, I see it,-you can only act in her
company! "
"I have nothing to say to you, Laura," said Henry in his
softest and clearest voice. Madame Bourjot started at this name
of Laura as though he had touched her. "I have struggled for
a year, madame," began Henry; "I have no excuse to make.
But my heart is fast. We knew each other as children. The
charm has grown day by day. I am very unhappy, madame, at
having to acknowledge the truth to you. I love your daughter,
that is true. "
"But have you ever spoken to her? I blush for her when
there are people there! Have you ever looked at her? Do you
think her pretty? What possesses you men ? Come! I am
better-looking than she is! You men are fools. And besides, my
friend, I have spoiled you. Go to her and ask her to caress your
pride, to tickle your vanity, to flatter and to serve your ambitions,
-for you are ambitious: I know you! Ah, M. Mauperin, one
can only find that once in a lifetime! And it is only women of
my age, old women like me, do you hear me? -who love the
future of the people whom they love! You were not my lover,
you were my grandchild! " And at this word, her voice sounded.
as though it came from the bottom of her heart. Then imme-
diately changing her tone-"But don't be foolish! I tell you
you don't really love my daughter; it is not true: she is rich! "
1
## p. 6564 (#554) ###########################################
6564
THE BROTHERS DE GONCOURT
"O madame! "
"Good gracious! there are lots of people. They have been
pointed out to me. It pays sometimes to begin with the mother
and finish with the dower. And a million, you know, will gild
a good many pills. "
"Speak lower, I implore
just opened a window. "
"Calmness is very fine,
repeated Madame Bourjot.
to stifle her.
-
for your own sake: some one has
M. Mauperin, very fine, very fine,"
And her low, hissing voice seemed
Clouds were scudding across the sky, and passed over the
moon looking like huge bats' wings. Madame Bourjot gazed
fixedly into the darkness, straight in front of her. Her elbows
resting on her knees, her weight thrown on to her heels, she
was beating with the points of her satin shoes the gravel of the
path. After a few minutes she sat upright, stretched out her
arms two or three times wildly and as though but half awake;
then, hastily and with jerks, she pushed her hand down between
her gown and her waistband, pressing her hand against the rib-
bon as though she would break it. Then she rose and began to
walk. Henry followed her.
"I intend, sir, that we shall never see each other again," she
said to him, without turning round.
As they passed near the basin, she handed him her handker-
chief:
"Wet that for me. "
Henry put one knee on the margin and gave her back the
lace, which he had moistened. She laid it on her forehead and
on her eyes. "Now let us go in," she said; "give me your
arm. "
"Oh, dear madame, what courage! " said Madame Mauperin,
going to meet Madame Bourjot as she entered; "but it is unwise.
of you.
Let me order your carriage. "
"On no account," answered Madame Bourjot hastily: "I thank
you. I promised that I would sing for you, I think. I am going
to sing. "
And Madame Bourjot advanced to the piano, graceful and
valiant, with the heroic smile on her face wherewith the actors
of society hide from the public the tears that they shed within
themselves, and the wounds which are only known to their own
hearts.
## p. 6565 (#555) ###########################################
6565
•
EDMUND GOSSE
(1849-)
E
DMUND WILLIAM GOSSE, or Edmund Gosse, to give him the
name he has of late years adopted, is a Londoner, the son
of P. H. Gosse, an English zoölogist of repute. His educa-
tion did not embrace the collegiate training, but he was brought up
amid cultured surroundings, read largely, and when but eighteen was
appointed an assistant librarian in the British Museum, at the age of
twenty-six receiving the position of translator to the Board of Trade.
Gosse is a good example of the cultivated man of letters who fitted
himself thoroughly for his profession, though lacking the formal scho-
lastic drill of the university.
He began as a very young man to write for the leading English
periodicals, contributing papers and occasional poems to the Saturday
Review, Academy, and Cornhill Magazine, and soon gaining critical
recognition. In 1872 and 1874 he traveled in Scandinavia and Hol-
land, making literary studies which bore fruit in one of his best crit-
ical works. He made his literary bow when twenty-one with the
volume 'Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets' (1870), which was well re-
ceived, winning praise from Tennyson. His essential qualities as a
verse-writer appear in it: elegance and care of workmanship, close
study of nature, felicity in phrasing, and a marked tendency to draw
on literary culture for subject and reference. Other works of poetry,
'On Viol and Flute' (1873), 'New Poems' (1879), 'Firdausī in Exile'
(1885), In Russet and Gold' (1894), with the dramas King Erik'
(1876) and The Unknown Lover' (1878), show an increasingly firm
technique and a broadening of outlook, with some loss of the happy
singing quality which characterized the first volume.
Gosse as a poet
may be described as a lyrist with attractive descriptive powers. To-
gether with his fellow poets Lang and Dobson, he revived in English
verse the old French metrical forms, such as the roundel, triolet, and
ballade, and he has been very receptive to the new in literary form
and thought, while keeping a firm grip on the classic models.
As an essayist, Gosse is one of the most accomplished and agree-
able of modern English writers; he has comprehensive culture and
catholic sympathy, and commands a picturesque style, graceful and
rich without being florid. His Studies in the Literature of Northern
Europe' (1879) introduced Ibsen and other little-known foreign writers
to British readers.
## p. 6566 (#556) ###########################################
6566
EDMUND GOSSE
Gosse has been a thorough student of English literature prior to
the nineteenth century, and has made a specialty of the literary his-
tory of the eighteenth century, his series of books in this field includ-
ing-Seventeenth-Century Studies' (1883), From Shakespeare to
Pope (1885), The Literature of the Eighteenth Century' (1889),
"The Jacobean Poets' (1894), to which may be added the volume of
contemporaneous studies Critical Kit-Kats' (1896). Some of these
books are based on the lectures delivered by Gosse as Clark Lecturer
at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has also written biographies of
Sir Walter Raleigh and Congreve, and his 'Life of Thomas Gray'
(1882) and Works of Thomas Gray' (1884) comprise the best edition
and setting-forth of that poet. In such labors as that of the editing
of Heinemann's 'International Library,' his influence has been salu-
tary in the popularization of the best literature of the world. His
interest in Ibsen led him to translate, in collaboration with William
Archer, the dramatic critic of London, the Norwegian's play 'The
Master Builder. '
Edmund Gosse, as editor, translator, critic, and poet, has done
varied and excellent work. Sensitive to many literatures, and to good
literature everywhere, he has remained stanchly English in spirit, and
has combined scholarship with popular qualities of presentation.
has thus contributed not a little to the furtherance of literature in
England.
[The poems are all taken from 'On Viol and Flute,' published by Henry Holt
& Co. , New York. ]
FEBRUARY IN ROME
WHE
HEN Roman fields are red with cyclamen,
And in the palace gardens you may find,
Under great leaves and sheltering briony-bind,
Clusters of cream-white violets, oh then
The ruined city of immortal men
Must smile, a little to her fate resigned,
And through her corridors the slow warm wind
Gush harmonies beyond a mortal ken.
Such soft favonian airs upon a flute,
Such shadowy censers burning live perfume,
Shall lead the mystic city to her tomb;
Nor flowerless springs, nor autumns without fruit,
Nor summer mornings when the winds are mute,
Trouble her soul till Rome be no more Rome.
## p. 6567 (#557) ###########################################
EDMUND GOSSE
6567
DESIDERIUM
ST
IT there for ever, dear, and lean
In marble as in fleeting flesh,
Above the tall gray reeds that screen
The river when the breeze is fresh;
For ever let the morning light
Stream down that forehead broad and white,
And round that cheek for my delight.
Already that flushed moment grows
So dark, so distant; through the ranks
Of scented reed the river flows,
Still murmuring to its willowy banks;
But we can never hope to share
Again that rapture fond and rare,
Unless you turn immortal there.
There is no other way to hold
These webs of mingled joy and pain;
Like gossamer their threads enfold
The journeying heart without a strain,—
Then break, and pass in cloud or dew,
And while the ecstatic soul goes through,
Are withered in the parching blue.
Hold, Time, a little while thy glass,
And Youth, fold up those peacock wings!
More rapture fills the years that pass
Than any hope the future brings;
Some for to-morrow rashly pray,
And some desire to hold to-day,
But I am sick for yesterday.
Since yesterday the hills were blue
That shall be gray for evermore,
And the fair sunset was shot through
With color never seen before!
Tyrannic Love smiled yesterday,
And lost the terrors of his sway,
But is a god again to-day.
Ah, who will give us back the past?
Ah woe, that youth should love to be
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,
And is so fain to find the sea,-
-
## p. 6568 (#558) ###########################################
6568
EDMUND GOSSE
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,
For breakers of the homeless deep.
Then sit for ever, dear, in stone,
As when you turned with half a smile,
And I will haunt this islet lone,
And with a dream my tears beguile;
And in my reverie forget
That stars and suns were made to set;
That love grows cold, or eyes are wet.
LYING IN THE GRASS
B
ETWEEN two golden tufts of summer grass,
I see the world through hot air as through glass,
And by my face sweet lights and colors pass.
Before me dark against the fading sky,
I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie:
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.
Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,
Rich glowing color on bare throat and head,—
My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead!
And in my strong young living as I lie,
I seem to move with them in harmony,-
A fourth is mowing, and the fourth am I.
The music of the scythes that glide and leap,
The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,
And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,
The weary butterflies that droop their wings,
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,
And all the lassitude of happy things,
Is mingling with the warm and pulsing blood,
That gushes through my veins a languid flood,
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.
Behind the mowers, on the amber air,
A dark-green beech wood rises, still and fair,
A white path winding up it like a stair.
## p. 6569 (#559) ###########################################
EDMUND GOSSE
6569
And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,
And clean white apron on her gown of red, -
Her evensong of love is but half said:
She waits the youngest mower.
Now he goes;
Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose;
They climb up where the deepest shadows close.
But though they pass, and vanish, I am there.
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair;
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer.
Ah! now the rosy children come to play,
And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
Their clear, high voices sound from far away.
They know so little why the world is sad;
They dig themselves warm graves, and yet are glad;
Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!
I long to go and play among them there;
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.
The happy children! full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies;
What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!
No wonder round those urns of mingled clays
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days,
And colored like the torrid earth ablaze,
We find the little gods and Loves portrayed,
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed,
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid.
They knew, as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight.
I do not hunger for a well-stored mind;
I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.
My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose bar,—
A microcosm where all things living are.
## p. 6570 (#560) ###########################################
6570
EDMUND GOSSE
And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth;
For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,—
And why should men be sad through loss of me?
The light is flying; in the silver blue
The young moon shines from her bright window through:
The mowers are all gone, and I go too.
## p. 6571 (#561) ###########################################
6571
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
(1823-)
UDOLPH VON GOTTSCHALL was born in Breslau, September 30th,
1823. He was the son of a Prussian artillery officer, and as a
lad gave early evidence of extraordinary talent. His father
was transferred to the Rhine, and young Gottschall was sent success-
ively to the gymnasiums of Mainz and Coblenz. Even in his school
days, and before he entered the university, he had through his clev-
erness attained a certain degree of eminence. His career at the
University of Königsberg, whither he went to pursue the study of
jurisprudence, was interrupted by the results attendant upon a youth-
ful ebullition of the spirit of freedom. His sympathy with the revo-
lutionary element was too boldly expressed,
and when in 1842 he published 'Lieder der
Gegenwart' (Songs of the Present), he found
it necessary to leave the university in order
to avert impending consequences. In the
following year he published Censurflücht-
linge (Fugitives from the Censor), a poem
of a kind not in the least likely to con-
ciliate the authorities. He remained for a
time with Count Reichenbach in Silesia, and
then went to Berlin, where he was allowed
to complete his studies. He was however
refused the privilege of becoming a univer-
sity docent, although he had regularly taken R. VON GOTTSCHALL
his degree of Dr. Juris.
He now devoted himself wholly to poetry and general literature.
For a while he held the position of stage manager in the theatre of
Königsberg, and during this period produced the dramas 'Der Blinde
von Alcalá (The Blind Man of Alcalá: 1846), and 'Lord Byron in
Italien (Lord Byron in Italy: 1848). After leaving Königsberg he
frequently changed his residence, living in Hamburg and Breslau, and
later in Posen, where in 1852 he was editor of a newspaper.
In 1853
he went to Italy, and after his return he settled in Leipzig. Here
he definitely established himself, and undertook the editing of Blätter
für Litterarische Unterhaltung (Leaves for Literary Amusement), and
also of the monthly periodical Unsere Zeit (Our Time). He wrote
## p. 6572 (#562) ###########################################
6572
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
profusely, and exerted an appreciable influence upon contemporary
literature. He was ennobled by the Emperor in 1877.
As a poet and man of letters, Gottschall possesses unusual gifts,
and is a writer of most extraordinary activity. His fecundity is aston-
ishing, and the amount of his published work fills many volumes. His
versatility is no less remarkable than his productiveness. Dramatist
and critic, novelist and poet,-- in all his various fields he is never
mediocre. Chief among his dramatic works are the tragedies Kath-
arina Howard'; 'King Carl XII. '; 'Bernhard of Weimar '; 'Amy Rob-
sart'; 'Arabella Stuart'; and the excellent comedy 'Pitt and Fox. '
Of narrative poems the best known are 'Die Göttin, ein Hohes Lied
vom Weibe' (The Goddess, a Song of Praise of Woman), 1852; 'Carlo
Zeno, 1854; and 'Sebastopol,' 1856.
He has published numerous volumes of verses which take a worthy
rank in the poetry of the time. His first 'Gedichte' (Poems) appeared
in 1849; Neue Gedichte' (New Poems) in 1858; Kriegslieder' (War
Songs) in 1870; and 'Janus' and 'Kriegs und Friedens Gedichte'
(Poems of War and Peace) in 1873. In his novels he is no less suc-
cessful, and of these may be mentioned -'Im Banne des Schwarzen
Adlers' (In the Ban of the Black Eagle: 1876); Welke Blätter' (With-
ered Leaves: 1878); and 'Das Goldene Kalb' (The Golden Calf: 1880).
It is however chiefly as critic that his power has been most widely
exerted, and prominent among the noteworthy productions of later
years stand his admirable Porträts und Studien ' (Portraits and Stud-
ies: 1870-71); and 'Die Deutsche Nationallitteratur in der Ersten
Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts' (The German National Literature in the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century: 1855), continued to the present
time in 1892, when the whole appeared as 'The German National
Literature of the Nineteenth Century. '
Α
HEINRICH HEINE
From Portraits and Studies >
BOUT no recent poet
Heinrich Heine.
has so much been said and sung as about
The youngest writer, who for the first
time tries his pen, does not neglect to sketch with uncertain
outlines the portrait of this poet; and the oldest sour-tempered
professor of literature, who turns his back upon the efforts of
the present with the most distinguished disapproval, lets fall on
the picture a few rays of light, in order to prove the degenera-
tion of modern literature in the Mephistophelean features of this
its chief.
Heine's songs are everywhere at home. They are to
## p. 6573 (#563) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6573
be found upon the music rack of the piano, in the school-books,
in the slender libraries of minor officers and young clerks. How-
ever difficult it may be to compile an editio castigata of his poems,
every age, every generation has selected from among them that
which has delighted it. Citations from Heine, winged words in
verse and prose, buzz through the air of the century like a swarm
of insects: splendid butterflies with gayly glistening wings, beau-
tiful day moths and ghostly night moths, tormenting gnats, and
bees armed with evil stings. Heine's works are canonical books
for the intellectual, who season their judgments with citations
from this poet, model their conversation on his style, interpret
him, expand the germ cell of his wit to a whole fabric of clever
developments. Even if he is not a companion on the way through
life, like great German poets, and smaller Brahmins who for every
day of our house-and-life calendar give us an aphorism on the
road, there are nevertheless, in the lives of most modern men,
moods with which Heine's verse harmonize with wondrous sym-
pathy; moments in which the intimacy with this poet is greater
than the friendship, even if this be of longer duration, with our
classic poets.
It is apparently idle to attempt to say anything new of so
much discussed a singer of modern times, since testimony favor-
able and unfavorable has been drained to exhaustion by friend
and foe. Who does not know Heine, or rather, who does
not believe that he knows him? for, as is immediately to be
added, acquaintance with this poet extends really only to a few
of his songs, and to the complete picture which is delivered
over ready-made from one history of literature into another.
Nothing, however, is more perilous and more fatal than literary
tradition! Not merely decrees and laws pass along by inherit-
ance, like a constitutional infirmity, but literary judgments too.
They form at last a subject of instruction like any other; a dead
piece of furniture in the spiritual housekeeping, which, like every-
thing that has been learned, is set as completed to one side.
We know enough of this sort of fixed pictures, which at last pass
along onward as the fixed ideas of a whole epoch, until a later
unprejudiced investigation dissolves this rigid-grown wisdom, sets
it to flowing, and forms out of a new mixture of its elements a
new and more truthful portrait.
It is not to be affirmed however that Heine's picture, as it
stands fixed and finished in the literature and the opinion of the
—
## p. 6574 (#564) ###########################################
6574
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
present, is mistaken and withdrawn. It is dead, like every pict-
ure; there is lacking the living, changing play of features. We
have of Heine only one picture before us; of our great poets
several. Goethe in his "storm and stress," in Frankfurt, Strass-
burg, and Wetzlar, the ardent lover of a Friedrike of Sesen-
heim, the handsome, joyous youth, is different in our minds
from the stiff and formal Weimar minister; the youthful Apollo
different from the Olympic Jupiter. There lies a young develop-
ment between, that we feel and are curious to know. It is sim-
ilar with Schiller. The poet of the 'Robbers' with its motto In
tyrannos, the fugitive from the military school; and the Jena pro-
fessor, the Weimar court councilor who wrote 'The Homage of
the Arts,' are two different portraits.
But Heine is to our view always the same, always the repre-
sentative of humor with "a laughing tear" in his escutcheon,
always the poetic anomaly, coquetting with his pain and scoffing
it away. Young or old, well or ill, we do not know him dif-
ferent.
――――
-
And yet this poet too had a development, upon which at
different times different influences worked.
•
«<
The first epoch in this course of development may be called
the youthful"; the Travel Pictures' and the lyrics contained.
in it form its brilliant conclusion. This is no storm-and-stress
period in the way that, as Schiller and Goethe passed through it,
completed works first issued under its clarifying influence. On
the contrary, it is characteristic of Heine that we have to thank
this youthful epoch for his best and most peculiarly national
poems. The wantonness and the sorrows of this youth, in their
piquant mixture, created these songs permeated by the breath of
original talent, whose physiognomy, more than all that follow
later, bears the mark of the kind and manner peculiar to Heine,
and which for a long time exercised in our literature through
a countless host of imitators an almost epidemic effect. But
these lyric pearls, which in their purity and their crystalline
polish are a lasting adornment of his poet's crown, and belong to
the lyric treasures of our national literature, were also gathered
in his first youthful epoch, when he still dived down into the
depths of life in the diving-bell of romanticism.
Although Heinrich Heine asserted of himself that he belonged
to the "first men of the century," since he was born in the
middle of New Year's night, 1800, more exact investigation has
## p. 6575 (#565) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6575
nevertheless shown that truth is here sacrificed to a witticism.
Heine is still a child of the eighteenth century, by whose most
predominant thoughts his work too is influenced, and with whose
European coryphæus, Voltaire, he has an undeniable relationship.
He was born, as Strodtmann proves, on the 13th of December,
1799, in Düsseldorf.
His father was a plain cloth-merchant; his
mother, of the family Von Geldern, the daughter of a physician.
of repute. The opinion, however, that Heine was the fruit of a
Jewish-Christian marriage, is erroneous. The family Von Geldern
belonged to the orthodox Jewish confession. One of its early
members, according to family tradition, although he was a Jew,
had received the patent of nobility from one of the prince electors
of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, on account of a service accorded him. As,
moreover, Schiller's and Goethe's mothers worked upon their sons
an appreciable educational influence, so was this also the case with
Heine's mother, who is described as a pupil of Rousseau and an
adorer of Goethe's elegies, and thus reached far out beyond the
measure of the bourgeois conditions in which she lived.
That which however worked upon his youthful spirit, upon his
whole poetical manner, was the French sovereignty in the Rhine-
lands at the time of his childhood and youth. The Grand Duchy
of Berg, to which Düsseldorf belonged, was ruled in the French
manner; a manner which, apart from the violent conscriptions,
when compared with the Roman imperial periwig style had great
advantages, and in particular granted to Jews complete equal
rights with Christians, since the revolutionary principle of equal-
ity had outlived the destruction of freedom. Thus the Jews in
Düsseldorf in their greater part were French sympathizers, and
Heine's father too was an ardent adherent of the new régime.
This as a matter of course could not remain without influence
upon the son, so much the less as he had French instruction at
the lyceum. A vein of the lively French blood is unmistakable
in his works. It drew him later on to Paris, where he made the
martyr stations of his last years. And of all recent German
poets, Heinrich Heine is the best known in France, better known
even than our classic poets; for the French feel this vein of
related blood.
From his youth springs, too, Heine's enthusiasm for the great
Napoleon, which however he has never transmitted to the suc-
cessors of the idées Napoléoniennes. The thirteen-year-old pupil
of the gymnasium saw the Emperor in the year 1811, and then
## p. 6576 (#566) ###########################################
6576
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
again in May 1812; and later on in the 'Book Legrand' of the
"Travel Pictures' he strikes up the following dithyrambic, which,
as is always the case with Heine where the great Cæsar is con-
cerned, tones forth pure and full, with genuine poetic swing,
without those dissonances in which his inmost feelings often
flow. "What feelings came over me," he exclaims, "when I
saw him himself, with my own highly favored eyes, him himself,
Hosanna, the Emperor! It was in the avenue of the Court
garden in Düsseldorf. As I pushed myself through the gaping
people, I thought of his deeds and his battles, and my heart.
beat the general march- and nevertheless, I thought at the same
time of the police regulation that no one under a penalty of five
thalers should ride through the middle of the avenue. And the
Emperor rode quietly through the middle of the avenue;
policeman opposed him. Behind him, his suite rode proudly on
snorting horses and loaded with gold and jewels, the trumpets
sounded, and the people shouted with a thousand voices, 'Long
live the Emperor! "" To this enthusiasm for Napoleon, Heine
not long afterward gave a poetic setting in the ballad The Two
Grenadiers. '
no
The Napoleonic remembrances of his youth, which retained
that unfading freshness and enthusiasm that are wont to belong
to all youthful remembrances, were of vital influence upon Heine's
later position in literature; they formed a balance over against
the romantic tendency, and hindered him from being drawn into
it. Precisely in that epoch when the beautiful patriotism of the
Wars of Liberation went over into the weaker feeling of the
time of the restoration, and romanticism, grown over-devout, in
part abandoned itself to externals, in part became a centre of
reactionary efforts, Heine let this Napoleonic lightning play on
the sultry heavens of literature, in the most daring opposition to
the ruling disposition of the time and a school of poetry from
which he himself had proceeded; while he declared war upon its
followers. However greatly he imperiled his reputation as a
German patriot through these hosannas offered to the hereditary
enemy, just as little was it to be construed amiss that the re-
membrance of historical achievements, and of those principles of
the Revolution which even the Napoleonic despotism must repre-
sent, were a salutary ventilation in the miasmic atmosphere of
the continually decreasing circle which at that time described.
German literature. In the prose of Heine, which like Béranger
## p. 6577 (#567) ###########################################
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
6577
glorified Cæsar, slumbered the first germs of the political lyric,
which led again out of the moonlit magic realm of romanticism
into the sunny day of history.
A hopeless youthful love for a charming Hamburg maiden
was the Muse of the Heine lyric, whose escutcheon has for a
symbol "the laughing tear. " With the simplicity of Herodotus
the poet himself relates the fact, the experience, in the well-
known poem with the final strophe:-
"It is an ancient story,
But still 'tis ever new:
To whomsoe'er it happens
His heart is broken too. "
We comprehend from biographical facts the inner genesis of
the Heine lyric. Heine was in the position of Werther, but a
Werther was for the nineteenth century an anomaly; a lyric of
this sort in yellow nankeen breeches would have travestied itself.
The content of the range of thought, the circle of world-shaping
efforts, had so expanded itself since the French Revolution that
a complete dissolution into sentimental extravagance had become
an impossibility. The justification of the sentiment was not to
be denied; but it must not be regarded as the highest, as the
life-determining element. It needed a rectification which should
again rescue the freedom of the spirit. Humor alone could ac-
complish Munchausen's feat, and draw itself by its own hair out of
the morass. Heine expressed his feelings with genuine warmth;
he formed them into drawn pictures and visions; but then he
placed himself on the defensive against them. He is the mod-
ern Werther, who instead of loading his pistol with a ball, loads
it with humor. Artistic harmony suffered under this triumph of
spiritual freedom; but that which appeared in his imitators as
voluntary quibbling came from Heine of inner necessity. The
subject of his first songs is the necessary expression of a struggle
between feeling and spirit, between the often visionary dream life
of a sentiment and self-consciousness, soaring free out over the
world, which adjudged absorption in a single feeling as one-sided
and unjustified. Later on, to be sure, these subjects of youthful
inspiration became in Heine himself a satiric-humoristic manner,
which regarded as a model worked much evil in literature. In
addition to personal necessity through one's own experience, there
was for a genius such as Heine's also a literary necessity, which
XI-412
## p. 6578 (#568) ###########################################
6578
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
lay in the development of our literature in that epoch.
It was
the Indian Summer of romanticism, whose cobwebs at this time
flew over the stubble of our poetry. The vigorous onset of the
lyricists of the Wars of Liberation had again grown lame; people
reveled in the album sentiments of Tiedge and Mahlmann; the
spectres of Amadeus Hoffmann and the lovely high-born maidens
of knight Fouqué were regarded then as the noblest creations of
German fantasy. Less chosen spirits, that is to say, the entire
great reading public of the German nation, which ever felt toward
its immortals a certain aversion, refreshed itself with the luke-
warm water of the poetry of Clauren, from out of which, instead
of the Venus Anadyomene, appear a Mimili and other maiden
forms, pretty, but drawn with a stuffed-out plasticism. On the
stage reigned the "fate tragedies" upon whose lyre the strings.
were wont to break even in the first scene, and whose ghosts
slipped silently over all the German boards. In a word, spirits
controlled the poetry of the time more than spirit.
Heine however was a genuine knight of the spirit, and even
if he conjured up his lyric spectres, he demanded no serious
belief in them-they were dissolving pictures of mist; and if
he followed his overflowing feelings, the mawkish sentiments of
romanticism occurred to him and disgusted him with the extrav-
agant expression of his love pain, and he mocked himself, the
time, and the literature,-dissolved the sweet accords in glaring
dissonances, so that they should not be in tune with the senti-
mental street songs of the poets of the day. In these outer and
inner reasons lie the justification and the success of the lyric
poetry of Heine. It designates an act of self-consciousness of
the German spirit, which courageously lifts itself up out of idle.
love complainings and fantastic dream life, and at the same time
mocks them both. An original talent like Heine's was needed to
give to the derided sentiment such a transporting magic, to the
derision itself such an Attic grace, that the sphinx of his poetry,
with the beautiful face and the rending claws, always produced
the impression of a work of art. The signification in literary
history of these songs of Heine is not to be underestimated.
They indicate the dissolution of romanticism, and with them
begins the era of modern German poetry.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William
H. Carpenter
## p. 6579 (#569) ###########################################
6579
JOHN GOWER
(1325? -1408)
INCE Caxton, the first printer of 'Confessio Amantis' (The
Confession of a Lover), described Gower as a "squyer borne
in Walys in the tyme of Kyng Richard the second," there
has been a diversity of opinion about his birthplace, and he has been
classed variously with prosperous Gowers until of late, when the
county assigned to him is Kent. His birth-year is placed approxi-
mately at 1325. We know nothing of his early life and education.
It has been guessed that he went to Oxford,
and afterwards traveled in the troubled
kingdom of France. Such a course might
have been followed by a man of his estate.
He had means, for English property records
(in this instance the rolls of Chancery, the
parchment foundation of English society)
still preserve deeds of his holdings in Kent
and Essex and elsewhere.
JOHN GOWER
His life lay along with that of Chaucer's,
in the time when Edward III. and his son
the Black Prince were carrying war into
France, and the English Parliament were
taking pay in plain speaking for what they
granted in supplies, and wresting at the
same time promises of reform from the royal hand. But Gower and
Chaucer were not only contemporaries: they were of like pursuit,
tastes, and residence; they were friends; and when Chaucer under
Richard II. , the grandson and successor of Edward, went to France
upon the mission of which Froissart speaks, he named John Gower as
one of his two attorneys while he should be away. Notice of Gower's
marriage to Agnes Groundolf late in life-in 1397-is still preserved.
Three years after this he became blind,-it was the year 1400, in
which Chaucer died, and in 1408 he died.
Pos
"The infirm poet," says Morley, "spent the evening of his life at St. Mary
Overies [St. Mary-over-the-River], in retirement from all worldly affairs except
pious and liberal support of the advancing building works in the priory, and
in the church now known as St. Saviour's [Southwark], to which he bequeathed
his body. His will, made not long before death, bequeathed his soul to God,
## p. 6580 (#570) ###########################################
6580
JOHN GOWER
his body to be buried in St. Mary Overies. The poet bequeathed also 135. 4ď.
to each of the four parish churches of Southwark for ornaments and lights,
besides 6s. 8d. for prayers to each of their curates. It is not less character-
istic that he left also 40s. for prayers to the master of St. Thomas's Hospital,
and, still for prayers, 6s. 8d. to each of its priests, 3s. 4d. to each Sister in
the hospital, twenty pence to each nurse of the infirm there, and to each of
the infirm twelve pence. There were similar bequests to St. Thomas Elsing
Spital, a priory and hospital that stood where now stands Sion College. St.
Thomas Elsing Spital, founded in 1329 by William Elsing, was especially
commended to the sympathies of the blind old poet, as it consisted of a col-
lege for a warden, four priests, and two clerks, who had care of one hundred
old, blind, and poor persons of both sexes, preference being given to blind,
paralytic, and disabled priests. Like legacies were bequeathed also to Bedlam-
without-Bishopsgate, and to St. Mary's Hospital, Westminster. Also there
were bequests of ten shillings to each of the leper-nurses. Two robes (one of
white silk, the other of blue baudekin,-a costly stuff with web of gold and
woof of silk), also a new dish and chalice, and a new missal, were bequeathed
to the perpetual service of the altar of the chapel of St. John the Baptist, in
which his body was to be buried. To the prior and convent he left a great
book, a 'Martyrology,' which had been composed and written for them at his
expense. To his wife Agnes he left a hundred pounds, three cups, che cover-
let, two salt-cellars, and a dozen silver spoons; also all his beds and chests,
with the furnishings of hall, pantry, and kitchen; also a chalice and robe for
the altar of the chapel of their house; and she was to have for life all rents
due to him from his manors of Southwell (in Nottingham) and Moulton (in
Suffolk). »
The will is still preserved at
His wife was one of his executors.
Lambeth Palace.
Gower's tomb and monument may also still be seen at St. Saviour's,
where the description Berthelet gave of them in 1532 is, aside from
the deadening of the paintings, true:- "Somewhat after the olde
ffashion he lyeth ryght sumptuously buryed, with a garland on his
head, in token that he in his lyfe dayes flouryshed freshely in liter-
ature and science. " The head of his stone effigy lies upon three
volumes representing Gower's three great works; the hair falls in long
curls; the robe is closely buttoned to the feet, which rest upon a
lion, and the neck is encircled with a collar, from which a chain held
a small swan, the badge of Henry IV. "Besyde on the wall where
as he lyeth," continues Berthelet, "there be peynted three virgins,
with crownes on theyr heades; one of the which is written Charitie,
and she holdeth this devise in her hande:-
――
'En toy qui fitz de Dieu le Pere
Sauve soit que gist souz cest piere. '
(In thee, who art Son of God the Father,
Be he saved who lieth under this stone. )
## p. 6581 (#571) ###########################################
JOHN GOWER
6581
"The second is wrytten Mercye, which holdeth in her hande this
devise:-
O bone Jesu fait ta mercy
Al alme dont le corps gist icy. '
(O good Jesus, grant thy mercy
To the soul whose body lies here. )
"The thyrde of them is wrytten Pity, which holdeth in her hand
this devise :-
-
'Pur ta pite, Jesu regarde,
Et met cest alme en sauve garde. »»
(For thy pity, Jesus, see;
And take this soul in thy safe guard. )
The monument was repaired in 1615, 1764, and 1830.
The three works which pillow the head of the effigy indicate
Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis' (The Looking-Glass of One Meditat-
ing), which the poet wrote in French; the 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice
of One Crying), in Latin; and the 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. It
should be remembered in noting this mixture of tongues, that in
Gower's early life the English had no national speech. The court,
Parliament, nobles, and the courts of law used French; the Church
held its service in Latin; while the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon blood
clung to the language of their fathers, which they had modified by
additions from the Norman tongue. It was not until 1362 that Parlia-
ment was opened by a speech in English. "There is," says Dr. Pauli,
"no better illustration of the singular transition to the English lang-
uage than a short enumeration and description of Gower's writings. "
Of the 'Speculum Meditantis,' a treatise in ten books on the duties
of married life, no copy is known to exist. The Vox Clamantis >
was the voice of the poet, singing in Latin elegiac of the terrible
evils which led to the rise of the commons and their march to Lon-
don under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in 1381. It is doubtless a true
picture of the excesses and miseries of the day. The remedy, the
poet says, is in reform-right living and love of England. Simony
in the prelates, avarice and drunkenness in the libidinous priests,
wealth and luxury in the mendicant orders, miscarrying of justice in
the courts, enrichment of individuals by excessive taxes, - these are
the subjects of the voice crying in the wilderness.
Gower's greatest work, however, is the Confessio Amantis. ' In
form it is a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a
priest of Venus. In substance it is a setting-forth, with moraliz-
ings which are at times touching and elevated, of one hundred and
twelve different stories, from sources so different as the Bible, Ovid,
## p. 6582 (#572) ###########################################
6582
JOHN GOWER
Josephus, the Gesta Romanorum,' Valerius Maximus, Statius, Boc-
caccio, etc. Thirty thousand eight-syllabled rhymed lines make up
the work. There are different versions. The first was dedicated to
Richard II. , and the second to his successor, Henry of Lancaster.
Besides these large works, a number of French ballades, and also
English and Latin short poems, are preserved. "They have real and
intrinsic merit," says Todd: "they are tender, pathetic, and poet-
ical, and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of
view than that in which he has heretofore been usually seen. ”
Estimates of Gower's writings are various; but even his most hos-
tile judges admit the pertinence of the epithet with which Chaucer
hails him in his dedication of Troilus and Creseide':-
"O morall Gower, this bookè I direct
To thee and to the philosophicall Strode,
To vouchsafè there need is to correct
Of your benignities and zealès good. "
Then Skelton the laureate, in his long song upon the death of
Philip Sparrow (which recalls the exquisite gem of Catullus in a like.
threnody), takes occasion to say:
And again:
"Gower's englysshe is olde,
And of no valúe is tolde;
His mattér is worth gold,
And worthy to be enrold. "
"Gower that first garnished our English rude. »
Old Puttenham also bears this testimony:-"But of them all [the
English poets] particularly this is myne opinion, that Chaucer, with
Gower, Lidgate, and Harding, for their antiquitie ought to have the
first place. "
Taine dismisses him with little more than a fillip, and Lowell,
while discoursing appreciatively on Chaucer, says:-
"Gower has positively raised tediousness to the precision of science; he has
made dullness an heirloom for the students of our literary history. As you
slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foothold to the
mind; as your nervous ear awaits the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regu-
larly pertinacious as the tick of an eight-day clock, and reminding you of
Wordsworth's
'Once more the ass did lengthen out
The hard dry seesaw of his horrible bray,'
## p. 6583 (#573) ###########################################
JOHN GOWER
6583
you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this indefatigable man.
He is the undertaker of the fair mediæval legend, and his style has the hate-
ful gloss, the seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin. "
Yet hear Morley:-
"To this day we hear among our living countrymen, as was to be heard
in Gower's time and long before, the voice passing from man to man, that in
spite of admixture with the thousand defects incident to human character, sus-
tains the keynote of our literature, and speaks from the soul of our history
the secret of our national success. It is the voice that expresses the persistent
instinct of the English mind to find out what is unjust among us and undo it,
to find out duty to be done and do it, as God's bidding. . . In his own
Old English or Anglo-Saxon way he tries to put his soul into his work. Thus
in the Vox Clamantis' we have heard him asking that the soul of his book,
not its form, be looked to; and speaking the truest English in such sentences
as that the eye is blind and the ear deaf, that convey nothing down to the
heart's depth; and the heart that does not utter what it knows is as a live coal
under ashes. If I know little, there may be another whom that little will help.
.
. . But to the man who believes in God, no power is unattainable if he
but rightly feels his work; he ever has enough, whom God increases. ' This is
the old spirit of Cædmon and of Bede; in which are laid, while the earth lasts,
the strong foundations of our literature. It was the strength of such a tem-
per in him that made Gower strong. God knows,' he says again, my
wish is to be useful; that is the prayer that directs my labor. ' And while he
thus touches the root of his country's philosophy, the form of his prayer —
that what he has written may be what he would wish it to be — is still a
thoroughly sound definition of good English writing. His prayer is that
there may be no word of untruth, and that each word may answer to the
thing it speaks of, pleasantly and fitly; that he may flatter in it no one, and
seek in it no praise above the praise of God. '»
-
The part of Gower's writing here brought before the reader is the
quaintly told and charming story of Petronella, from 'Liber Primus'
of the 'Confessio. ' It may be evidence that all the malediction upon
the poet above quoted is not deserved.
The Confessio Amantis' has been edited and collated with the
best manuscripts by Dr. Reinhold Pauli (1857). The Vox Claman-
tis' was printed for the first time in 1850, under the editorship of
H.
