No More Learning

This representative monthly was changed
in name to The Century, and upon the
death of Dr. Holland in 1881 Mr. Gilder
became its editor-in-chief. His influence in
this conspicuous position has been whole-
some and helpful in the encouraging of lit-
erature, and in the discussion of current
questions of importance through a popular medium which reaches great
numbers of the American people. The Century under his direction
has been receptive to young writers and artists of ability, and many
since known to fame made their maiden appearance in its pages.
In addition to his influence on the literary movement, Mr. Gilder
has been active in philanthropic and political work. He has secured
legislation for the improvement of tenements in cities; he has taken
interest in the formation of public kindergartens; and given of his
time and strength to further other reforms. His influence in New
York City, too, has been a factor in developing the social aspects of
literary and art life there. From Dickinson College he has received
the degree of LL. D. , and from Princeton that of L. H. D.
Mr. Gilder's reputation as a writer is based upon his verse.
Only very occasionally does he publish an essay, though thoughtful,
strongly written editorials from his pen in his magazine are frequent.

RICHARD W. GILDER


## p. 6348 (#322) ###########################################


6348
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
But it is his verse-writing that has given him his place- a distinct
and honorable one-in American letters. The fine quality and prom-
ise of his work was recognized upon the publication of 'The New
Day in 1875, a first volume which was warmly received. It showed
the influence of Italian studies, and contained lyric work of much
imaginative beauty. The musicalness of it and the delicately ideal
treatment of the love passion were noticeable characteristics. In his
subsequent books-The Celestial Passion,' 1887; Lyrics,' 1885 and
1887; Two Worlds, and Other Poems,' 1891; 'The Great Remem-
brance, and Other Poems,' 1893: the contents of these being gathered
finally into the one volume 'Five Books of Song,' 1894 - he has given
further proof of his genuine lyric gift, his work in later years having
a wider range of themes, a broadening vision and deepening purpose.
He remains nevertheless essentially a lyrist, a maker of songs; a thor-
ough artist who has seriousness, dignity, and charm. His is an ear-
nest nature, sensitive alike to vital contemporaneous problems and to
the honey-sweet voice of the Ideal.
[All the following citations from Mr. Gilder's poems are copyrighted, and
are reprinted here by special permission of the author and his publishers. ]
TWO SONGS FROM THE NEW DAY'
I
NOT
OT from the whole wide world I chose thee,
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee-
For thou art the whole wide world to me.
II
YEARS have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.
"ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET»
OSE-DARK the solemn sunset
R
That holds my thought of thee;
With one star in the heavens
And one star in the sea.
On high no lamp is lighted,
Nor where the long waves flow.


## p. 6349 (#323) ###########################################


RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6349
Save the one star of evening
And the shadow star below.
Light of my life, the darkness
Comes with the twilight dream;
Thou art the bright star shining,
And I but the shadowy gleam.
NON SINE DOLORE
HAT, then, is Life,- what Death?
Thus the Answerer saith;
WHA
O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:
Down o'er the vibrant strings,
That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.
A voiceless pause: then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with unimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,
While, shaken with woe,
With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,
On, on the ceaseless music sings,
Restless, intense, serene;
Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.
—
Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss
That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death
Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!
If, having soared pure spirit at the last,
Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh
Ah! who would care to die
From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;
These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?


## p. 6350 (#324) ###########################################

6350
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
Again the Answerer saith:
O ye of little faith,
Shall then the spirit prove craven,
And Death's divine deliverance but give
A summer rest and haven?
By all most noble in us, by the light that streams
Into our waking dreams,
Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!
Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?
Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;
But Life, still Life, that leads to higher Life,
Even though the highest be not free from immortal strife.
The highest! Soul of man, oh be thou bold,
And to the brink of thought draw near, behold!
Where, on the earth's green sod,
Where, where in all the universe of God,
Hath strife forever ceased?
When hath not some great orb flashed into space
The terror of its doom? When hath no human face
Turned earthward in despair,
For that some horrid sin had stamped its image there?
If at our passing Life be Life increased,
And we ourselves flame pure unfettered soul,
Like the Eternal Power that made the whole
And lives in all he made
From shore of matter to the unknown spirit shore;
If, sire to son, and tree to limb,
Cycle on countless cycle more and more
We grow to be like him;
If he lives on, serene and unafraid,
Through all his light, his love, his living thought,
One with the sufferer, be it soul or star;
If he escape not pain, what beings that are
Can e'er escape while Life leads on and up the unseen way and far?
If he escape not, by whom all was wrought,
Then shall not we,
Whate'er of godlike solace still may be,-
For in all worlds there is no Life without a pang, and can be naught.
-
No Life without a pang! It were not Life,
If ended were the strife-
Man were not man, nor God were truly God!
See from the sod


## p. 6351 (#325) ###########################################


RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6351
The lark thrill skyward in an arrow of song:
Even so from pain and wrong
Upsprings the exultant spirit, wild and free.
He knows not all the joy of liberty
Who never yet was crushed 'neath heavy woe.
He doth not know,
Nor can, the bliss of being brave
Who never hath faced death, nor with unquailing eye
Hath measured his own grave.
Courage, and pity, and divinest scorn-
Self-scorn, self-pity, and high courage of the soul;
The passion for the goal;
The strength to never yield though all be lost-
All these are born
Of endless strife; this is the eternal cost
Of every lovely thought that through the portal
Of human minds doth pass with following light.
Blanch not, O trembling mortal!
But with extreme and terrible delight
Know thou the truth,
Nor let thy heart be heavy with false ruth.
No passing burden is our earthly sorrow,
That shall depart in some mysterious morrow.
'Tis His one universe where'er we are
One changeless law from sun to viewless star.
Were sorrow evil here, evil it were forever,
—
Beyond the scope and help of our most keen endeavor
God doth not dote,
His everlasting purpose shall not fail.
Here where our ears are weary with the wail
And weeping of the sufferers; there where the Pleiads float-
Here, there, forever, pain most dread and dire
Doth bring the intensest bliss, the dearest and most sure.
'Tis not from Life aside, it doth endure
Deep in the secret heart of all existence.
It is the inward fire,
The heavenly urge, and the divine insistence.
Uplift thine eyes, O Questioner, from the sod!
It were no longer Life,
If ended were the strife;
Man were not man, God were not truly God.


## p. 6352 (#326) ###########################################

6352
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
·
·
"HOW PADEREWSKI PLAYS»
I
I'
F SONGS were perfume, color, wild desire;
If poets' words were fire
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins;
If with a bird-like thrill the moments throbbed to hours;
If summer's rains
Turned drop by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers;
If God made flowers with light and music in them,
And saddened hearts could win them;
If loosened petals touched the ground
With a caressing sound;
If love's eyes uttered word
No listening lover e'er before had heard;
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle's voice;
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice! Rejoice! "
If words could picture life's, hope's, heaven's eclipse
When the last kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips;
If all of mortal woe
Struck on one heart with breathless blow on blow;
If melody were tears, and tears were starry gleams
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams;
Ah yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue,
Trembling to earth in dew;
Or if the boreal pulsings, rose and white,
Made a majestic music in the night;
If all the orbs lost in the light of day
In the deep, silent blue began their harps to play;
And when in frightening skies the lightnings flashed
And storm-clouds crashed,
If every stroke of light and sound were but excess of beauty;
If human syllables could e'er refashion
That fierce electric passion;
If other art could match (as were the poet's duty)
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder
Of that keen hour of wonder,—
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell,—
How Paderewski plays then might I dare to tell.
II
How Paderewski plays! And was it he
Or some disbodied spirit which had rushed
From silence into singing; and had crushed


## p. 6353 (#327) ###########################################


RICHARD WATSON GILDER
6353
Into one startled hour a life's felicity,
And highest bliss of knowledge-that all life, grief, wrong,
Turn at the last to beauty and to song!
WHA
HAT is a sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell
THE SONNET
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song-ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is- - beware who ventureth!
—
For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.
AMERICA
From The Great Remembrance>
L
AND that we love! Thou Future of the World!
Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed!
Oh, never be thy shining image hurled
From its high place in the adoring breast
Of him who worships thee with jealous love!
Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove
All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined!
Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind,
And to despair of thee were to despair
Of man, of man's high destiny, of God!
Of thee should man despair, the journey trod
Upward, through unknown eons, stair on stair,
By this our race, with bleeding feet and slow,
Were but the pathway to a darker woe
Than yet was visioned by the heavy heart
Of prophet. To despair of thee! Ah no!
For thou thyself art Hope; Hope of the World thou art!
XI-398


## p. 6354 (#328) ###########################################


6354
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THIS
HIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day-
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength-his pure and mighty heart.
—
"CALL ME NOT DEAD »
CA
ALL me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the ever-living
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say:-"He at last hath won
Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces;
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.
To-morrow (who can say ? ) Shakespeare may pass,
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;
Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass
Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still
To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill. "
AFTER-SONG
From The New Day'
TH
HROUGH love to light! Oh, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
:


## p. 6355 (#329) ###########################################

6355
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
(1809-1850)
IUSEPPE GIUSTI, an Italian satirical poet, was born of an influ-
ential family, May 12th, 1809, in the little village of Mon-
summano, which lies between Pistoja and Pescia, and was
in every fibre of his nature a Tuscan. As a child he imbibed the
healthful, sunny atmosphere of that Campagna, and grew up loving
the world and his comrades, but with a dislike of study which con-
vinced himself and his friends that he was born to no purpose.
He
was early destined to the bar, and began his law studies in Pistoja
and Lucca, completing them a number of
years later at Pisa, where he obtained his
degree of doctor.

In 1834 he went to Florence, under pre-
tence of practicing with the advocate Ca-
poquadri; but here as elsewhere he spent
his time in the world of gayety, whose fas-
cination and whose absurdity he seems to
have felt with equal keenness. His dislike
of study found its exception in his love of
Dante, of whom he was a reverent student.
He was himself continually versifying, and
his early romantic lyrics are inspired by
lofty thought. His penetrating humor, how-
ever, and his instinctive sarcasm, whose
expression was never unkind, led him soon to abandon idealism and
to distinguish himself in the field of satire, which has no purer rep-
resentative than he. His compositions are short and terse, and are
seldom blemished by personalities. He was wont to say that absurd
persons did not merit even the fame of infamy. He leveled his wit
against the lethargy and immoralities of the times, and revealed them
clear-cut in the light of his own stern principles and patriotism.
The admiration and confidence which he now began to receive
from the public was to him a matter almost of consternation, wont
as he was to consider himself a good-for-nothing. He confesses
somewhat bashfully however that there was always within him,
half afraid of itself, an instinct of power which led him to say in
his heart, Who knows what I may be with time? His frail constitu-
tion and almost incessant physical suffering account for a natural
indolence against which he constantly inveighs, but above which he
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI


## p. 6356 (#330) ###########################################


6356
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
was powerless to rise except at vehement intervals. No careless-
ness, however, marks his work. He was a tireless reviser, and pos-
sessed the rare power of cutting, polishing, and finishing his work
with exquisite nicety, without robbing it of vigor. His writings ex-
erted a distinct political and moral influence. His is not alone the
voice of pitiless and mocking irony, but it is that of the humanita-
rian, who in overthrow and destruction sees only the first step toward
the creation of something better. When war broke out he laid aside
his pen, saying that this was no time for a poet to pull down, and
that hi was not the power to build up. His health forbade his
entering the army, which was a cause of poignant sorrow to him.
His faith in Italy and her people and in the final triumph of unity
remained unshaken and sublime in the midst of every reverse.
His mastery of the Tuscan dialect and his elegance of idiom won
him membership in the Accademia della Crusca; but his love for
Tuscany was always subservient to his love for Italy. To those who
favored the division of the peninsula, he used to reply that he had
but one fatherland, and that was
a unit. He died in Florence,
March 31, 1850, at the home of his devoted friend the Marquis Gino
Capponi. In the teeth of Austrian prohibition, a throng of grateful
and loving citizens followed his body to the church of San Miniato
al Monte, remembering that at a time when freedom of thought
was deemed treason, this man had fearlessly raised the battle-cry
and prepared the way for the insurrection of 1848. Besides his satires,
Giusti has left us a life of the poet Giuseppe Parini, a collection of
Tuscan proverbs, and an unedited essay on the 'Divine Comedy. '
CRY
LULLABY
From Gingillino
>
[The poem of Gingillino, one of Giusti's finest satires, is full of personal
hits, greatly enjoyed by the author's countrymen. The Lullaby is sung by
a number of personified Vices round the cradle of the infant Gingillino, who,
having come into the world naked and possessed of nothing, is admonished
how to behave if he would go out of it well dressed and rich. A few verses
only are given out of the many. The whole poem was one of the most pop-
ular of all Giusti's satires. ]
RY not, dear baby,
Of nothing possessed;
But if thou wouldst, dear,
Expire well dressed
Let nothing vex thee,-
Love's silly story,
·


## p. 6357 (#331) ###########################################


GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
6357
Ghosts of grand festivals
Spectres of glory;
Let naught annoy thee:
The burdens of fame,
The manifold perils
That wait on a name.
Content thyself, baby,
With learning to read:
Don't be vainglorious;
That's all thou canst need.
All promptings of genius
Confine in thy breast,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Let not God nor Devil
Concern thy poor wits,
And tell no more truth
Than politeness permits.
With thy soul and thy body,
Still worship the Real;
Nor ever attempt
To pursue the Ideal.
As for thy scruples,
Let them be suppressed,
If thou wouldst, baby,
Expire well dressed.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE STEAM-GUILLOTINE
[The monarch satirized in this poem was Francesco IV. , Duke of Modena,
a petty Nero, who executed not a few of the Italian patriots of 1831. ]
A
MOST Wonderful steam-machine,
One time set up in China-land,
Outdid the insatiate guillotine,
For in three hours, you understand,
It cut off a hundred thousand heads
In a row, like hospital beds.


## p. 6358 (#332) ###########################################

6358
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
This innovation stirred a breeze,
And some of the bonzes even thought
Their barbarous country by degrees
To civilization might be brought,
Leaving Europeans, with their schools,
Looking like fools.
The Emperor was an honest man
A little stiff, and dull of pate;
Like other asses, hard and slow.
He loved his subjects and the State,
And patronized all clever men
Within his ken.
His people did not like to pay
Their taxes and their other dues,-
They cheated the revenue, sad to say:
So their good ruler thought he'd choose
As the best argument he'd seen,
This sweet machine.
The thing's achievements were so great,
They gained a pension for the man,-
The executioner of State,-
Who got a patent for his plan,
Besides becoming a Mandarin
Of great Pekin.
―――――――
A courtier cried: "Good guillotine!
Let's up and christen it, I say! "
"Ah, why," cries to his counselor keen
A Nero of our present day,
"Why was not born within my State
A man so great? ”
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature. '


## p. 6358 (#333) ###########################################



## p. 6358 (#334) ###########################################


MCKIN
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.
9
HER


## p. 6359 (#335) ###########################################

6359
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
(1809-)
N VIEW of his distinguished career, it is interesting to know
that it is a part of Mr. Gladstone's unresting ambition to
take a place among the literary men of the time, and to
guide the thoughts of his countrymen in literary as well as in politi-
cal, social, and economic subjects. Mr. Gladstone's preparation to
become a man of letters was extensive. Born in Liverpool December
29th, 1809, he was sent to Eton and afterwards to Oxford, where he
took the highest honors, and was the most remarkable graduate of
his generation. His fellow students carried away a vivid recollection
of his viva voce examination for his degree: the tall figure, the flash-
ing eye, the mobile countenance, in the midst of the crowd who
pressed to hear him, while the examiners plied him with questions
till, tested in some difficult point in theology, the candidate ex-
claimed, "Not yet, if you please! " and began to pour forth a fresh
store of learning and argument.
From the university Mr. Gladstone carried away two passions-
the one for Greek literature, especially Greek poetry, the other for
Christian theology. The Oxford that formed these tastes was in-
tensely conservative in politics, representing the aristocratic system
of English society and the exclusiveness of the Established Church,
whose creed was that of the fourth century. Ecclesiasticism is not
friendly to literature; but how far Oxford's most loyal son was
permeated by ecclesiasticism is a matter of opinion. Fortunately, per-
sonality is stronger than dogma, and ideas than literary form; and
Mr. Gladstone, than whom few men outside the profession of letters
have written more, is always sure of an intelligent hearing. His dis-
cussion of a subject seems to invest it with some of his own marvel-
ous vitality; and when he selects a book for review, he is said to
make the fortune of both publisher and author, if only the title be
used as a crotchet to hang his sermon on.
And this not merely because curiosity is excited concerning the
opinion of the greatest living Englishman (for notwithstanding his
political vacillations, his views on inward and higher subjects have
little changed since his Oxford days, and may easily be prognosti-
cated), but on account of the subtlety and fertility of his mind and
the adroitness of his argument. Plunging into the heart of the


## p. 6360 (#336) ###########################################

6360
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
subject, he is at the same time working round it, holding it up
for inspection in one light and then in another, reasoning from this
premise and that; while the string of elucidations and explanations
grows longer and longer, and the atmosphere of complexity thick-
ens. It was out of such an atmosphere that a barrister advised his
client, a bigamist, to get Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his
wives.
When Mr. Gladstone made his début as an author, he locked horns
with Macaulay in the characteristic paper 'Church and State' (1837).
He published his 'Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age' in 1858,
'Juventus Mundi' in 1869, Homeric Synchronism' in 1857. In 1879
most of his essays, political, social, economic, religious, and literary,
written between 1843 and 1879, were collected in seven volumes, and
appeared under the title of Gleanings of Past Years. He has pub-
lished a very great number of smaller writings not reprinted.
From that time to the present, neither his industry nor his energy
has abated; but he is probably at his best in the several remarkable
essays on Blanco White, Bishop Patterson, Tennyson, Leopardi, and
the position of the Church of England. The reader spoiled for the
Scotch quality of weight by the "light touch" which is the grace-
ful weapon of the age, wonders, when reading these essays, that Mr.
Gladstone has not more assiduously cultivated the instinct of style,—
sentence-making. Milton himself has not a higher conception of the
business of literature; and when discussing these congenial themes,
Mr. Gladstone's enthusiasm does not degenerate into vehemence, nor
does he descend from the high moral plane from which he views the
world.
It is the province of the specialist to appraise Mr.
Gladstone's
Homeric writings; but even the specialist will not, perhaps, forbear
to quote the axiom of the pugilist in the Iliad concerning the fate of
him who would be skillful in all arts. No man is less a Greek in
temperament, but no man cherishes deeper admiration for the Greek
genius, and nowhere else is a more vivid picture of the life and poli-
tics of the heroic age held up to the unlearned. While the critic
may question technical accuracy, or plausible structures built on
insufficient data, the laity will remember how earnestly Mr. Gladstone
insists that Homer is his own best interpreter, and that the student
of the Iliad must go to the Greek text and not elsewhere for accurate
knowledge.
But Greek literature is only one of Mr. Gladstone's two passions,
and not the paramount one. That he would have been a great theo-
logian had he been other than Mr. Gladstone, is generally admitted.
And it is interesting to note that while he glories in the combats of
the heroes of Hellas, his enthusiasm is as quickly kindled by the


## p. 6361 (#337) ###########################################


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6361
humilities of the early Church. He recognizes the prophetic quality
of Homer, but he bows before the sublimer genius of an Isaiah, and
sees in the lives and writings of the early Fathers the perfect bloom
of human genius and character.
MACAULAY
From Gleanings of Past Years'
L
ORD MACAULAY lived a life of no more than fifty-nine years
and three months. But it was an extraordinarily full life,
of sustained exertion; a high table-land, without depressions.
If in its outer aspect there be anything wearisome, it is only the
wearisomeness of reiterated splendors, and of success so uniform
as to be almost monotonous. He speaks of himself as idle; but
his idleness was more active, and carried with it hour by hour a
greater expenditure of brain power, than what most men regard
as their serious employments. He might well have been, in his
mental career, the spoiled child of fortune; for all he tried suc-
ceeded, all he touched turned into gems and gold. In a happy
childhood he evinced extreme precocity. His academical career
gave sufficient, though not redundant, promise of after celebrity.
The new Golden Age he imparted to the Edinburgh Review, and
his first and most important, if not best, Parliamentary speeches
in the grand crisis of the first Reform Bill, achieved for him,
years before he had reached the middle point of life, what may
justly be termed an immense distinction.
For a century and more, perhaps no man in this country,
with the exceptions of Mr. Pitt and of Lord Byron, had attained
at thirty-two the fame of Macaulay. His Parliamentary success
and his literary eminence were each of them enough, as they
stood at this date, to intoxicate any brain and heart of a meaner
order. But to these was added, in his case, an amount and
quality of social attentions such as invariably partake of adula-
tion and idolatry, and as perhaps the high circles of London.
never before or since have lavished on a man whose claims lay
only in himself, and not in his descent, his rank, or his posses-
sions.
One of the very first things that must strike the observer of
this man is, that he was very unlike to any other man. And
yet this unlikeness, this monopoly of the model in which he
was made, did not spring from violent or eccentric features of


## p. 6362 (#338) ###########################################

6362
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
originality, for eccentricity he had none whatever, but from the
peculiar mode in which the ingredients were put together to
make up the composition. In one sense, beyond doubt, such
powers as his famous memory, his rare power of illustration, his
command of language, separated him broadly from others: but
gifts like these do not make the man; and we now for the first
time know that he possessed, in a far larger sense, the stamp of
a real and strong individuality. The most splendid and complete
assemblage of intellectual endowments does not of itself suffice
to create an interest of the kind that is, and will be, now felt in
Macaulay. It is from ethical gifts alone that such an interest
can spring.
These existed in him not only in abundance, but in forms
distant from and even contrasted with the fashion of his intel-
lectual faculties, and in conjunctions which come near to paradox.
Behind the mask of splendor lay a singular simplicity; behind a
literary severity which sometimes approached to vengeance, an
extreme tenderness; behind a rigid repudiation of the senti-
mental, a sensibility at all times quick, and in the latest times.
almost threatening to sap, though never sapping, his manhood.
He who as speaker and writer seemed above all others to repre-
sent the age and the world, had the real centre of his being in
the simplest domestic tastes and joys. He for whom the mys-
teries of human life, thought, and destiny appear to have neither
charm nor terror, and whose writings seem audibly to boast in
every page of being bounded by the visible horizon of the practi-
cal and work-day sphere, yet in his virtues and in the combination
of them; in his freshness, bounty, bravery; in his unshrinking
devotion both to causes and to persons; and most of all, per-
haps, in the thoroughly inborn and spontaneous character of all
these gifts, really recalls the age of chivalry and the lineaments
of the ideal. The peculiarity, the differentia (so to speak) of
Macaulay seems to us to lie in this: that while as we frankly
think, there is much to question-nay, much here and there to
regret or even censure-in his writings, the excess, or defect, or
whatever it may be, is never really ethical, but is in all cases
due to something in the structure and habits of his intellect.
And again, it is pretty plain that the faults of that intellect were.
immediately associated with its excellences: it was in some sense,
to use the language of his own Milton, "dark with excessive
bright. "
•
-


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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
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His moderation in luxuries and pleasures is the more notable
and praiseworthy because he was a man who, with extreme
healthiness of faculty, enjoyed keenly what he enjoyed at all.
Take in proof the following hearty notice of a dinner a quattr'
occhi to his friend: "Ellis came to dinner at seven. I gave him
a lobster curry, woodcock, and macaroni.
I think that I will
note dinners, as honest Pepys did. "
His love of books was intense, and was curiously developed.
In a walk he would devour a play or a volume. Once, indeed,
his performance embraced no less than fourteen Books of the
Odyssey. "His way of life," says Mr. Trevelyan, "would have
been deemed solitary by others; but it was not solitary to him. "
This development blossomed into a peculiar specialism. Hender-
son's Iceland' was a favorite breakfast-book" with him. "Some
books which I would never dream of opening at dinner please
me at breakfast, and vice versa! " There is more subtlety in this
distinction than could easily be found in any passage of his writ-
ings. But how quietly both meals are handed over to the domin-
ion of the master propensity! This devotion, however, was not
without its drawbacks. Thought, apart from books and from
composition, perhaps he disliked; certainly he eschewed.
Cross-
ing that evil-minded sea the Irish Channel at night in rough
weather, he is disabled from reading; he wraps himself in a pea-
jacket and sits upon the deck. What is his employment? He
cannot sleep, or does not. What an opportunity for moving
onward in the processes of thought, which ought to weigh on the
historian! The wild yet soothing music of the waves would have
helped him to watch the verging this way or that of the judicial
scales, or to dive into the problems of human life and action
which history continually is called upon to sound. No, he cared
for none of this. He set about the marvelous feat of going
over 'Paradise Lost' from memory, when he found he could
still repeat half of it. In a word, he was always conversing, or
recollecting, or reading, or composing; but reflecting never.
The laboriousness of Macaulay as an author demands our
gratitude; all the more because his natural speech was in sen-
tences of set and ordered structure, well-nigh ready for the press.
It is delightful to find that the most successful prose writer
of the day was also the most painstaking. Here is indeed a liter-
ary conscience. The very same gratification may be expressed
with reference to our most successful poet, Mr. Tennyson.


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6364
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
Great is the praise due to the poet; still greater, from the
nature of the case, that share which falls to the lot of Macaulay.
For a poet's diligence is, all along, a honeyed work. He is ever
traveling in flowery meads. Macaulay, on the other hand, un-
shrinkingly went through an immense mass of inquiry, which even
he sometimes felt to be irksome, and which to most men would
have been intolerable. He was perpetually picking the grain of
corn out of the bushel of chaff. He freely chose to undergo the
dust and heat and strain of battle, before he would challenge from
the public the crown of victory. And in every way it was
remarkable that he should maintain his lofty standard of concep-
tion and performance. Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous,
commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writ-
ers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest
exceptions. The tests of excellence in prose are as much less
palpable as the public appetite is less fastidious. Moreover, we
are moving downward in this respect. The proportion of mid-
dling to good writing constantly and rapidly increases. With the
average of performance, the standard of judgment progressively
declines. The inexorable conscientiousness of Macaulay, his deter-
mination to put out nothing from his hand which his hand was
still capable of improving, was a perfect godsend to the best
hopes of our slipshod generation.
It was naturally consequent upon this habit of treating com-
position in the spirit of art, that he should extend to the body
of his books much of the regard and care which he so profusely
bestowed upon their soul. We have accordingly had in him, at
the time when the need was greatest, a most vigilant guardian
of the language. We seem to detect rare and slight evidences
of carelessness in his Journal: of which we can only say that in
a production of the moment, written for himself alone, we are
surprised that they are not more numerous and considerable. In
general society, carelessness of usage is almost universal, and it is
exceedingly difficult for an individual, however vigilant, to avoid
catching some of the trashy or faulty usages which are contin-
ually in his ear. But in his published works his grammar, his
orthography, nay, his punctuation (too often surrendered to the
printer), are faultless. On these questions, and on the lawful-
ness or unlawfulness of a word, he may even be called an author-
ity without appeal; and we cannot doubt that we owe it to
his works, and to their boundless circulation, that we have not in
0


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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6365
this age witnessed a more rapid corruption and degeneration of
the language.
To the literary success of Macaulay it would be difficult to
find a parallel in the history of recent authorship. For this and
probably for all future centuries, we are to regard the public as
the patron of literary men; and as a patron abler than any that
went before to heap both fame and fortune on its favorites. Set-
ting aside works of which the primary purpose was entertain-
ment, Tennyson alone among the writers of our age, in point of
public favor and of emolument following upon it, comes near to
Macaulay. But Tennyson was laboriously cultivating his gifts
for many years before he acquired a position in the eye of the
nation. Macaulay, fresh from college in 1825, astonished the
world by his brilliant and most imposing essay on Milton. Full-
orbed, he was seen above the horizon; and full-orbed after thirty-
five years of constantly emitted splendor, he sank beneath it.
His gains from literature were extraordinary. The check for
£20,000 is known to all. But his accumulation was reduced by
his bounty; and his profits would, it is evident, have been far
larger still had he dealt with the products of his mind on the
principles of economic science (which however he heartily pro-
fessed), and sold his wares in the dearest market, as he undoubt-
edly acquired them in the cheapest. No one can measure the
elevation of Macaulay's character above the mercenary level,
without bearing in mind that for ten years after 1825 he was a
poor and
contented man, though ministering to the wants of a
father and a family reduced in circumstances; though in the
blaze of literary and political success; and though he must have
been conscious from the first of the possession of a gift which
by a less congenial and more compulsory use would have rapidly
led him to opulence. Yet of the comforts and advantages, both
social and physical, from which he thus forbore, it is so plain.
that he at all times formed no misanthropic or ascetic, but on
the contrary a very liberal and genial estimate. It is truly touch-
ing to find that never, except as a minister, until 1851, when he
had already lived fifty years of his fifty-nine, did this favorite of
fortune, this idol of society, allow himself the luxury of a car-
riage.
It has been observed that neither in art nor letters did Mac-
aulay display that faculty of the higher criticism which depends
upon certain refined perceptions and the power of subtle analysis.


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6366
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
His analysis was always rough, hasty, and sweeping, and his
perceptions robust. By these properties it was that he was so
eminently popriкóç, not in the vulgar sense of an appeal to spuri-
ous sentiment, but as one bearing his reader along by violence,
as the River Scamander tried to bear Achilles. Yet he was
never pretentious; and he said frankly of himself that a criticism.
like that of Lessing in his 'Laocoön,' or of Goethe on 'Hamlet,'
filled him with wonder and despair. His intense devotion to the
great work of Dante is not perhaps in keeping with the general
tenor of his tastes and attachments, but is in itself a circum-
stance of much interest.
We remember however at least one observation of Macaulay's
in regard to art, which is worth preserving. He observed that
the mixture of gold with ivory in great works of ancient art-
for example, in the Jupiter of Phidias-was probably a conde-
scension to the tastes of the people who were to be the worship-
ers of the statue; and he noticed that in Christian times it has
most rarely happened that productions great in art have also
been the objects of warm popular veneration.
It has been felt and pointed out in many quarters that Mac-
aulay as a writer was the child, and became the type, of his
country and his age. As fifty years ago the inscription "Bath"
used to be carried on our letter-paper, so the word "English" is,
as it were, in the water-mark of every leaf of Macaulay's writ-
ing. His country was not the Empire, nor was it the United
Kingdom. It was not even Great Britain. Though he was
descended in the higher, that is the paternal, half from Scottish
ancestry, and was linked specially with that country through the
signal virtues, the victorious labors, and the considerable reputa-
tion of his father Zachary,- his country was England. On this
little spot he concentrated a force of admiration and of worship
which might have covered all the world. But as in space, so in
time, it was limited. It was the England of his own age.
The higher energies of his life were as completely summed
up in the present as those of Walter Scott were projected
upon the past. He would not have filled an Abbotsford with
armor and relics of the Middle Ages. He judges the men and
institutions and events of other times by the instruments and
measures of the present. The characters whom he admires are
those who would have conformed to the type that was before his
eyes: who would have moved with effect in the court, the camp,


## p. 6367 (#343) ###########################################

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
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the senate, the drawing-room of to-day. He contemplates the
past with no desiderium, no regretful longing, no sense of things
admirable which are also lost and irrecoverable. Upon this limit-
ation of his retrospects it follows in natural sequence that of
the future he has no glowing anticipations, and even the pres-
ent he is not apt to contemplate on its mysterious and ideal side.
As in respect to his personal capacity of loving, so in regard
to the corresponding literary power. The faculty was singularly
intense, and yet it was spent within a narrow circle. There is
a marked sign of this narrowness, in his disinclination even to
look at the works of contemporaries whose tone or manner he
disliked.
It appears that this dislike, and the ignorance consequent
upon it, applied to the works of Carlyle. Now, we may have
much or little faith in Carlyle as a philosopher or as a historian.
Half-lights and half-truths may be the utmost which, in these
departments, his works will be found to yield. But the total
want of sympathy is the more noteworthy, because the resem-
blances, though partial, are both numerous and substantial be-
tween these two remarkable men and powerful writers, as well
in their strength as in their weakness. Both are honest; and
both, notwithstanding honesty, are partisans.
Each is vastly,
though diversely, powerful in expression; and each is more power-
ful in expression than in thought. Both are, though variously,
poets using the vehicle of prose. Both have the power of por-
traitures, extraordinary for vividness and strength. For compre-
hensive disquisition, for balanced and impartial judgments, the
world will probably resort to neither; and if Carlyle gains on the
comparison in his strong sense of the inward and the ideal, he
loses in the absolute and violent character of his one-sidedness.
Without doubt, Carlyle's licentious though striking peculiarities
of style have been of a nature allowably to repel, so far as they
go, one who was so rigid as Macaulay in his literary orthodoxy,
and who so highly appreciated, and with such expenditure of
labor, all that relates to the exterior or body of a book. Still,
if there be resemblances so strong, the want of appreciation,
which has possibly been reciprocal, seems to be partly of that
nature which Aristotle would have explained by his favorite
proverb, κεραμεὺς κεραμεῖ * The discrepancy is like the discrepancy
* Potter [detests] potter.


## p. 6368 (#344) ###########################################

6368
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
of colors that are too near. Carlyle is at least a great fact in
the literature of his time, and has contributed largely,- in some
respects too largely,- toward forming its characteristic habits of
thought. But on these very grounds he should not have been
excluded from the horizon of a mind like Macaulay's, with all its
large and varied and most active interests.
There have been other men of our own generation, though
very few, who if they have not equaled have approached Mac-
aulay in power of memory, and who have certainly exceeded him
in the unfailing accuracy of their recollections; and yet not in
accuracy as to dates or names or quotations, or other matters of
hard fact, when the question was one simply between ay and
no. In these he may have been without a rival. In a list of
kings, or popes, or senior wranglers, or prime ministers, or
battles, or palaces, or as to the houses in Pall Mall or about
Leicester Square, he might be followed with implicit confidence.
But a large and important class of human recollections are not
of this order: recollections for example of characters, of feelings,
of opinions; of the intrinsic nature, details, and bearings of oc-
currences. And here it was that Macaulay's wealth" was unto
him an occasion of falling. " And that in two ways. First, the
possessor of such a vehicle as his memory could not but have
something of an overweening confidence in what it told him; and
quite apart from any tendency to be vain or overbearing, he could
hardly enjoy the benefits of that caution which arises from self-
interest, and the sad experience of frequent falls. But what is
more, the possessor of so powerful a fancy could not but illumi-
nate with the colors it supplied, the matters which he gathered
into his great magazine, wherever the definiteness of their out-
line was not so rigid as to defy or disarm the action of the in-
truding and falsifying faculty. Imagination could not alter the
date of the battle of Marathon, of the Council of Nice, or the
crowning of Pepin; but it might seriously or even fundamentally
disturb the balance of light and dark in his account of the opin-
ions of Milton or of Laud, or his estimate of the effects of the
Protectorate or the Restoration, or of the character and even the
adulteries of William III. He could detect justly this want of
dry light in others; he probably suspected it in himself; but it
was hardly possible for him to be enough upon his guard against
the distracting action of a faculty at once so vigorous, so crafty,
and so pleasurable in its intense activity.


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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6369
Hence arose, it seems reasonable to believe, that charge of
partisanship against Macaulay as a historian, on which much has
been and probably much more will be said. He may not have
possessed that scrupulously tender sense of obligation, that nice.
tact of exact justice, which is among the very rarest as well as
the most precious of human virtues. But there never was a
writer less capable of intentional unfairness. This during his life-
time was the belief of his friends, but was hardly admitted by
opponents. His biographer has really lifted the question out of
the range of controversy. He wrote for truth, but of course for
truth such as he saw it; and his sight was colored from within.
This color, once attached, was what in manufacture is called a
mordant; it was a fast color: he could not distinguish between
what his mind had received and what his mind had imparted.
Hence, when he was wrong, he could not see that he was wrong;
and of those calamities which are due to the intellect only, and
not the heart, there can hardly be a greater.
XI-399
.
However true it may be that Macaulay was a far more con-
summate workman in the manner than in the matter of his
works, we do not doubt that the works contain, in multitudes,
passages of high emotion and ennobling sentiment, just awards of
praise and blame, and solid expositions of principle, social, moral,
and constitutional. They are pervaded by a generous love of
liberty; and their atmosphere is pure and bracing, their general
aim and basis morally sound. Of the qualifications of this eulogy
we have spoken, and have yet to speak. But we can speak of
the style of the works with little qualification. We do not indeed.
venture to assert that his style ought to be imitated. Yet this
is not because it was vicious, but because it was individual and
incommunicable. It was one of those gifts of which, when it
had been conferred, Nature broke the mold. That it is the head
of all literary styles we do not allege; but it is different from
them all, and perhaps more different from them all than they
are usually different from one another. We speak only of natural
styles, of styles where the manner waits upon the matter, and not
where an artificial structure has been reared either to hide or to
make up for poverty of substance.
It is paramount in the union of ease in movement with per-
spicuity of matter, of both with real splendor, and of all with
immense rapidity and striking force. From any other pen, such


## p. 6370 (#346) ###########################################

6370
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
masses of ornament would be tawdry; with him they are only
rich. As a model of art concealing art, the finest cabinet pictures
of Holland are almost his only rivals. Like Pascal, he makes the
heaviest subject light; like Burke, he embellishes the barrenest.
When he walks over arid plains, the springs of milk and honey,
as in a march of Bacchus, seem to rise beneath his tread. The
repast he serves is always sumptuous, but it seems to create an
appetite proportioned to its abundance; for who has ever heard
of the reader that was cloyed with Macaulay? In none, perhaps,
of our prose writers are lessons such as he gives of truth and
beauty, of virtue and of freedom, so vividly associated with
delight. Could some magician but do for the career of life what
he has done for the arm-chair and the study, what a change
would pass on the face (at least) of the world we live in, what
an accession of recruits would there be to the professing follow-
ers of virtue!
"
The truth is that Macaulay was not only accustomed, like
many more of us, to go out hobby-riding, but from the portent-
ous vigor of the animal he mounted was liable more than most
of us to be run away with. His merit is that he could keep his
seat in the wildest steeple-chase; but as the object in view is
arbitrarily chosen, so it is reached by cutting up the fields, spoil-
ing the crops, and spoiling or breaking down the fences needful
to secure for labor its profit, and to man at large the full enjoy-
ment of the fruits of the earth. Such is the overpowering glow
of color, such the fascination of the grouping in the first sketches
which he draws, that when he has grown hot upon his work he
seems to lose all sense of the restraints of fact and the laws of
moderation; he vents the strangest paradoxes, sets up the most
violent caricatures, and handles the false weight and measure as
effectively as if he did it knowingly. A man so able and so
upright is never indeed wholly wrong. He never for a moment
consciously pursues anything but truth. But truth depends,
above all, on proportion and relation. The preterhuman vivid-
ness with which Macaulay sees his object, absolutely casts a
shadow upon what lies around; he loses his perspective; and
imagination, impelled headlong by the strong consciousness of
honesty in purpose, achieves the work of fraud. All things for
him stand in violent contrast to one another. For the shadows,
the gradations, the middle and transition touches, which make up


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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
6371
the bulk of human life, character, and action, he has neither eye
nor taste. They are not taken account of in his practice, and
they at length die away from the ranges of his vision.
In Macaulay all history is scenic; and philosophy he scarcely
seems to touch, except on the outer side, where it opens into
action. Not only does he habitually present facts in forms of
beauty, but the fashioning of the form predominates over, and is
injurious to, the absolute and balanced presentation of the sub-
ject. Macaulay was a master in execution, rather than in what
painting or music terms expression. He did not fetch from the
depths, nor soar to the heights; but his power upon the surface
was rare and marvelous, and it is upon the surface that an ordi-
nary life is passed and that its imagery is found. He mingled,
then, like Homer, the functions of the poet and the chronicler:
but what Homer did was due to his time; what Macaulay did,
to his temperament.
The History' of Macaulay, whatever else it may be, is the
work not of a journeyman but of a great artist, and a great
artist who lavishly bestowed upon it all his powers.