In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as will
be readily believed by all who have known him since.
be readily believed by all who have known him since.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
c'est l'heure solennelle
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous! ”
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and
submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of
his little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love -
love of his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of
all that is and ever was and ever will be
a very large order
indeed, even for Little Billee.
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love
to one figure especially beloved beyond all the rest — one figure
erect on high, with arms outstretched to him, in more than com-
mon fellowship of need: not the sorrowful Figure crowned with
thorns, for it was in the likeness of a woman; but never that of
the Virgin Mother of our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif,
all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth.
Trilby, weak and mortal like himself, and in woeful want of
pardon! and in her gray dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so
great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all
that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would
or could.
« Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur! »
## p. 5052 (#220) ###########################################
5052
GEORGE DU MAURIER
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big deep metal-
lic baritone bass — above the organ, above the incense, above
everything else in the world - till the very universe seemed to
shake with the rolling thunder of that great message of love and
forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify
and exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound,
and the singing human voice had especially strange power to
penetrate into his in most depths — even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest
there is, can give worthy utterance to such a message as that,-
the epitome, the abstract, the very essence of all collective
humanity's wisdom at its best!
«DREAMING TRUE »
From Peter Ibbetson. Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers
A
s I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat
lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that
the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to
call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these
modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within
my reach: I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but
in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment.
There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy,
well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the
gold and silver fish; and there with an aching heart I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some
means of possessing the past more fully and completely than we
do. Life is not worth living for many of us, if a want so des-
perate and yet so natural can never be satisfied. Memory is but
a poor rudimentary thing that we had better be without, if it can
only lead us to the verge of consummation like this, and madden
us with a desire it cannot slake. The touch of a vanished hand,
the sound of a voice that is still, the tender grace of a day that
is dead, should be ours forever at our beck and call, by some
exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my
beloved ones again in another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly
remembered forms in this, just as they once were, by some trick
## p. 5053 (#221) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5053
of my own brain! To see them with the eye, and hear them with
the ear, and tread with them the old obliterated ways as in a
waking dream! It would be well worth going mad, to become
such a self-conjurer as that.
I
got back to my hotel in the Rue de la Michodière.
Prostrate with emotion and fatigue, the tarantella still
jingling in my ears, and that haunting, beloved face, with its
ineffable smile, still printed on the retina of my closed eyes, I
fell asleep.
And then I dreamed a dream, and the first phase of my real,
inner life began!
All the events of the day, distorted and exaggerated and
jumbled together after the usual manner of dreams, wove them-
selves into a kind of nightmare and oppression. I was on my
way to my old abode; everything that I met or saw
was gro-
tesque and impossible, yet had now the strange, vague charm of
association and reminiscence, now the distressing sense of change
and desolation.
As I got near to the avenue gate, instead of the school on my
left there was a prison; and at the door a little thick-set jailer,
three feet high and much deformed, and a little deformed jail-
eress no bigger than himself, were cunningly watching me out of
the corners of their eyes, and toothlessly smiling. Presently they
began to waltz together to an old familiar tune, with their enor-
mous keys dangling at their sides; and they looked so funny that
I laughed and applauded.
But soon
I perceived that their
crooked faces were not really funny; indeed, they were fatal and
terrible in the extreme, and I was soon conscious that these
deadly dwarfs were trying to waltz between me and the avenue
gate for which I was bound — to cut me off, that they might run
me into the prison, where it was their custom to hang people of
a Monday morning.
In an agony of terror I made a rush for the avenue gate, and
there stood the Duchess of Towers, with mild surprise in her eyes
and a kind smile - a heavenly vision of strength and reality.
“You are not dreaming true! ” she said. “Don't be afraid
those little people don't exist! Give me your hand and come in
here. "
## p. 5054 (#222) ###########################################
5054
GEORGE DU MAURIER
With my
And as I did so she waved the troglodytes away, and they
vanished; and I felt that this was no longer a dream, but some-
thing else---some strange thing that had happened to me, some
new life that I had woke up to.
For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of
being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous
dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and
vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity —
just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested
in what is going on; only with perceptions far keener and more
alert.
I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered
all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real
body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room
on the fourth floor of an hôtel garni in the Rue de la Micho-
dière. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body too,
just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty,
my shirt collar damp with the heat, for it was hot.
disengaged hand I felt in my trousers pocket; there were my Lon-
don latch-key, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the
breast pocket of my coat, and in its tail pockets my gloves and
pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morn-
ing. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven.
I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the
pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was
awake; and I was, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand
with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who
seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her,
now at my old school.
The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo!
in its place was M. Saindou's maison d'éducation, just as it had
been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of
a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called
Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus
left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for
months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays.
Here it was anew, after fifteen years.
The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus
was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and
neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those
days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily.
## p. 5055 (#223) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5055
A crowd was looking on — le Père et la Mère François,
Madame Liard the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I
remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small
boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the
back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier.
A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well,
and had forgotten.
The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of
self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose
faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trou-
sers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left
arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified
manner as it seemed — to heaven in a golden chariot. It was
beautiful to see and hear.
I was still holding the duchess's hand, and felt the warmth of
it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic cur-
rent. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me
that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a
spirit other than mine - a most powerful and beneficent spirit.
There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self,
after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kind-
ness had found it out.
“Now you're dreaming true,” she said. « Where are those
boys going? ”
« To church, to make their première communion,” I replied.
“That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you
by the hand. Do you know that tune ? »
I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the
past, and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her
eyes screwed up deliciously.
"Quite right - quite! ” she exclaimed. «How odd that you
should know them! How well you pronounce French for an
Englishman! For you are Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect ? »
I assented, and she let go my hand.
The street was full of people — familiar forms and faces and
voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the
yellow omnibus; old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old
forgotten French ways of speech - all was long ago.
Nobody noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.
· The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that
I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel
as it
## p. 5056 (#224) ###########################################
5056
GEORGE DU MAURIER
in the Rue de la Michodière ? Could it be that the Duchess of
Towers was dead too — had been killed by some accident on her
way from St. Cloud to Paris ? and that, both having died, so near
each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly
fashion ?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told
me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life — and
also, alas! that it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every
movement of her body, every detail of her dress,— more so than
I could have been in actual life, - and said to myself, "Whatever
this is, it is no dream. ” But I felt there was about me the
unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking
moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in
comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to
me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a
slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right,
and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I
had lost my stay — the touch of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson? ”
“I am afraid not quite,” I replied.
«You must try by yourself a little — try hard. Look at this
house; what is written on the portico ? ”
I saw written in gold letters the words « Tête Noire," and
said so.
She rippled with laughter, and said, “No, try again;
» and
just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.
I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame. ”
“That's rather better,” she said, and touched me again; and I
read, Parva sed Apta, as I had so often read there before in
old days.
“And now look at that old house over there,” pointing to my
old home; how many windows are there in the top story? ”
I said seven.
“No; there are five. Look again: » and there were five; and
the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it
had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of
the windows, making my bed.
« That's better,” said the duchess; "you will soon do it — it's
very easy — ce n'est que le premier pas! My father taught me;
## p. 5057 (#225) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5057
you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your
head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the
right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must
never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in
your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must
never forget in your dream where and what you were when
awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget.
And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both
your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can
see. »
It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes,
and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and
took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of
Ville d'Avray,, a glimpse of which was visible through an open-
ing in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to
Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black
arms on the top of Mont Valérien.
"Is it all right ? ” she asked. «That's well. Henceforward,
whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight
can reach, - from this spot, - all through my introduction. See
what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing
jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.
“Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne-
there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and
make everything plain in front of you - true, before you go a
step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over
again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake,
and it will come -on condition, of course, that you have been
there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you
touch things or people - you may hear, see, and smell; but you
mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about.
It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't
know why, but it does. You must remember that everything
here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different;
we're alive and real — that is, I am; and there would seem to be
no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp
of your hands. But you're not; and why you are here, and what
business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot under-
stand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't
make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this after-
noon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are
IX-317
## p. 5058 (#226) ###########################################
5058
GEORGE DU MAURIER
just a stray figment of my over-tired brain - a very agreeable
figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now — you can't
possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Ma-
bille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French
churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young
British architect -- otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you
may be sure!
“Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of
use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to
come — especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for
what else can you be ? And now I must leave you: so good-by. ”
She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and
then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure
and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children
into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of
sight.
I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy
had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself
from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed
again.
Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot
where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but
then considered this would not have been discreet. For although
she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the
exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and
excited brain-a more than agreeable figment (what else could she
be! ) — she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect
stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kind-
ness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong
that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always
had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an
acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France -
even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to
stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.
And then what business had she in this, my particular dream
as she herself had asked of me?
But was it a dream ? I remembered my lodgings at Penton-
ville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I
was — why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at
the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking
## p. 5059 (#227) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5059
clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad
awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had
long ceased to exist — that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it, - this
edifice,- myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was every-
thing as it had been when I was a child; and all through the
agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess,
whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding
in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked
at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All
this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned
my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just
able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought
about ten feet high.
Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning
small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to
wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonish-
ment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my
temples, and my breath was short.
At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small
boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill
round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close
at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo
Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had
pen and
ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in
red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was Elegant Extracts. '
The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning
among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.
A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and
pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and
she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no
notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.
I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her
face.
I must not speak to her nor touch her — not even touch her
busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream. ”
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder.
He was
translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far,
and seemed to be stumped by the line-
“And leaves the world to darkness and to me. ”
## p. 5060 (#228) ###########################################
5060
GEORGE DU MAURIER
d
arm
ST
2
2
Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her
thumb in her mouth, one on the back of his chair. She
seemed to be stumped also; it was an awkward line to translate.
I stooped and put my hand to Médor's nose, and felt his
warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered
in his sleep. Mimsey said: -
"Regarde Médor, comme il remue la queue! C'est le Prince
Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nes. ”
Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto:-
“Do speak English, Mimsey, please. ”
O my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar,
so unutterably dear! I rushed to her and threw myself on my
knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying,
Mother, mother! ”
A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality
was lost.
All became as a dream a beautiful dream, but only
a dream; and I woke.
F
fi
BARTY JOSSELIN AT SCHOOL
From (The Martian)
From Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers
be
20
a
NDEED, even from his early boyhood, he was the most extraor-
dinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even heard of;
a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton to whom all things
came easily — and life itself as an uncommonly good joke. Dur-
ing that summer term of 1847 I did not see very much of him.
He was in the class below mine, and took up with Laferté and
little Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at
everything he said, and worshiped him. So did everybody else,
sooner or later; indeed, it soon became evident that he was
most exceptional little person.
In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as will
be readily believed by all who have known him since. The
mere sight of him as a boy made people pity his father and
mother for being dead!
Then he had a charming gift of singing little French and
English ditties, comic or touching, with his delightful fresh young
pipe, and accompanying himself quite nicely on either piano or
guitar without really knowing a note of music. Then he could
ai
lah
## p. 5061 (#229) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5061
ured up.
draw caricatures that we boys thought inimitable, much funnier
than Cham's or Bertall's or Gavarni's, and collected and treas-
I have dozens of them now they make me laugh
still, and bring back memories of which the charm is indescrib-
able; and their pathos to me!
And then how funny he was himself, without effort, and with
a fun that never failed! He was a born buffoon of the graceful
kind, - more whelp or kitten than monkey - ever playing the
fool, in and out of season, but somehow always apropos; and
French boys love a boy for that more than anything else; or
did in those days.
His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal seafar-
ing Norman ancestors (not to mention another long line of well-
fed, well-bred Yorkshire squires), was magnificent. His spirits
never failed. He could see the satellites of Jupiter with the
naked eye; this was often tested by M. Dumollard, maître de
mathématiques (et de cosmographie), who had a telescope, which,
with a little good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as
big as the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.
His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He could
hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive very high
sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf (this was found
out later); and when we played blindman's buff on a rainy day,
he could, blindfolded, tell every boy he caught hold of — not by
feeling him all over like the rest of us, but by the mere smell of
his hair, or his hands, or his blouse! No wonder he was
much more alive than the rest of us! According to the amiable,
modest, polite, delicately humorous, and ever tolerant and con-
siderate Professor Max Nordau, this perfection of the olfactory
sense proclaims poor Barty a degenerate! I only wish there
a few more like him, and that I were a little more like
him myself!
By the way, how proud young Germany must feel of its en-
lightened Max, and how fond of him, to be sure! les compli-
ments!
But the most astounding thing of all (it seems incredible, but
all the world knows it by this time, and it will be accounted for
later on) is that at certain times and seasons Barty knew by an
infallible instinct where the north was, to a point.
Most of my
SO
were
## p. 5062 (#230) ###########################################
5062
GEORGE DU MAURIER
readers will remember his extraordinary evidence as a witness in
the “Rangoon” trial, and how this power was tested in open
court, and how important were the issues involved, and how he
refused to give any explanation of a gift so extraordinary.
It was often tried at school by blindfolding him, and turning
him round and round till he was giddy, and asking him to point
out where the North Pole was, or the North Star, and seven or
eight times out of ten the answer was unerringly right. When
he failed, he knew beforehand that for the time being he had
lost the power, but could never say why. Little Doctor Larcher
could never get over his surprise at this strange phenomenon,
nor explain it; and often brought some scientific friend from
Paris to test it, who was equally nonplussed.
When cross-examined, Barty would merely say: -
"Quelquefois je sais — quelquefois je ne sais pas — mais quand
je sais, je sais, et il n'y pas à s'y tromper! ”
Indeed, on one occasion that I remember well a very strange
thing happened; he not only pointed out the north with absolute
accuracy, as he stood carefully blindfolded in the gymnastic
ground, after having been turned and twisted again and again -
but still blindfolded, he vaulted the wire fence and ran round
to the refectory door, which served as the home at rounders, all
of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his
own invention, that he called "La Paladine, the most humor-
ously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then,
taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted, «À l'amandier! » and
threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond
tree, which was quite twenty yards off; and after this he ran
round the yard from base to base, as at “la balle au camp,” till
he reached the camp again.
“If ever he goes blind,” said the wondering M. Mérovée,
“he'll never need a dog to lead him about. ”
“He must have some special friend above! ” said Madame
Germain (Mérovée's sister, who was looking on).
Prophetic words! I have never forgotten them, nor the tear
that glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a
deeply religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty
almost as if he were a child of her own.
Such women have strange intuitions.
Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance
before skeptical people — parents of boys, visitors, etc. — who had
## p. 5063 (#231) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5063
been told of it, and who believed he could not have been prop-
erly blindfolded; but he could never be induced to do so.
There was no mistake about the blindfolding - I helped in it
myself; and he afterwards told me the whole thing was “aussi
simple que bonjour" if once he felt the north – for then, with
his back to the refectory door, he knew exactly the position and
distance of every tree from where he was.
“It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do
without a dog,” he added; "I should be just as helpless as any
other blind man, unless I was in a place I knew as well as my
own pocket — like this play-ground! Besides, I shan't go blind;
nothing will ever happen to my eyes — they're the strongest and
best in the whole school! »
He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and
looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.
“But what do you feel when you feel the north, Barty — a
kind of tingling ? ” I asked.
“OhI feel where it is as if I'd got a mariner's compass
trembling inside my stomach - and as if I wasn't afraid of any-
body or anything in the world - as if I could go and have my
head chopped off and not care a fig. ”
“Ah, well - I can't make it out - I give it up, I exclaimed.
«So do 1,” exclaims Barty.
«But tell me, Barty," I whispered — have you -- have you
really got a—a— special friend above ? »
"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies,” said Barty, and
winked at me one eye after the other -- and went about his busi-
ness, and I about mine.
## p. 5064 (#232) ###########################################
5064
WILLIAM DUNBAR
(1465? -1530 ? )
saw
PICTURESQUE figure in a picturesque age is that of William
Dunbar, court minstrel to James IV. , and as Sir Walter
Scott declared, “a poet unrivaled by any that Scotland has
ever produced. ” Little of his personal history is known. Probably
he was a native of East Lothian, a member of the family of the Earl
of March, and a graduate of St. Andrews University about the year
1479. After his college days he joined the order of Franciscans and
became a mendicant friar, preaching the queer sermons of his time,
and begging his way through England and France. Yet in these
pilgrimages the young scholar learned useful habits of self-denial,
new phases of human character, and above all enjoyed that
close communion with nature which is the need of the poet. Over and
over there is a reflection of this life in that fanciful verse, which has
caught the color of the morning hours when the hedgerows are wet
and the grass dewy, when the wild roses scent the roadside and the
lark is at matins - verse full of the joy of life and the hope of youth.
After some years of this vagabond life, Dunbar left the Francis-
cans and attached himself to the court, where he speedily became a
favorite. His day was one of pageant and show, of masque and
spectacle, and into its gay assemblage of knights and courtiers, ladies
and great nobles, Dunbar fitted perfectly. When an embassy was
sent to England to negotiate the royal marriage with Margaret Tudor,
Dunbar went along, being specially accredited by the king. He
became a favorite with the young Princess, and a poem written in
honor of the city of London, and one descriptive of the Queen's
Progress, afford a faithful and valuable memorial of this mission.
History is fortunate when she secures a poet as her scribe. Dunbar
is principally known by his three poems (The Thistle and the Rose,'
'The Golden Targe,' and 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins. '
The first of these is an allegory celebrating the nuptials of the
king. It suggests of course the allegories of Chaucer; but Dunbar's
muse is his own, and the poem springs fresh and clear from native
fonts. The poet represents himself as awakened by Aurora on
spring morning and told to do homage to May. Through the sym-
bolism of the court of Nature, who crowns the Lion and Eagle, com-
missions the Thistle and Rose as her handmaidens, and orders their
praises sung by the assembled birds of earth, the political significance
a
## p. 5065 (#233) ###########################################
WILLIAM DUNBAR
5065
of the allegory appears.
But "The Thistle and the Rose,' which
is thus made to illustrate the union between the two great houses
of Scotland and England, is far more than the poem of an occasion.
It is full of the melody and fragrance of spring, saturated with that
sensuous delight which at this bountiful season fills the veins of
Nature. Here Dunbar is no longer the court laureate, but the beg-
ging friar, wandering through the green lanes and finding bed and
board under the free skies.
“The Golden Targe) is more artificial in construction.
It is an-
other allegory, descriptive of an encounter between Cupid and
Reason, who is defended by a golden targe or shield from the
attacks of love. Here again the rural landscape forms a background
to his mimic action. Amazons dressed in green fight the battle of
Cupid, and vanquish Reason, then magically vanish and leave the
poet to awake from his dream. (The Golden Targe was a poem to
be read in the royal presence, when the court assembled after a
day's hunting or an afternoon of archery; but it is filled with the
ethereal loveliness which only the true poet beholds.
It is in 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins) that Dunbar
touches the note of seriousness, which characterizes his race and his
individual genius. This satire is not so unsparing an indictment as
the vision of Piers Ploughman, and yet it provokes inevitable com-
parison with the older poem. In a dream the poet sees heaven and
hell opened. It is the eve of Ash Wednesday, and the Devil has
commanded a dance to be performed by those spirits that had never
received absolution. In obedience to this command the Seven Deadly
Sins present a masque before his Satanic Majesty, and it is in the
description of this grisly performance that Dunbar reveals a
aspect of power. The comedy here is not comic, but grotesque and
horrid. The vision of the Scot is the vision that came to the poets
of the Inferno' and Paradise Lost,' and it shows that his imagina-
tion was capable of the loftiest flights.
After the melancholy day of Flodden Field, the Scottish laureate-
ship ceased to exist, but it is remarkable that so prominent a man
as Dunbar should so completely have disappeared from contemporary
view that his subsequent career and the time of his death are mat-
ters of doubt. His period is given as between the years 1465 and
1530, but these dates are only approximate.
Had Dunbar held his genius in hand as completely as did Chaucer,
his accomplishment would doubtless have been greater than it was.
Yet his place in literature is that of one of the most important poets
of the fifteenth century, the age of Caxton and book-making, the
time of that first flush of radiance which ushered in the full day of
Spenser and Shakespeare.
new
## p. 5066 (#234) ###########################################
5066
WILLIAM DUNBAR
THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE
Q"
UHEN Merche wes with variand windis past,
And Appryle had, with her silver schouris,
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois armony to heir it wes delyt:
In bed at morrow, sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht Aurora with hir cristall ene
In at the window lukit by the day,
And halsit me, with visage paill and grene;
On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene:-
Awalk, luvaris, out of you slomering;
Sé hou the lusty morrow dois up spring.
Me thocht fresche May befoir my bed up stude,
In weid depaynt of mony diverss hew,
Sobir, benyng, and full of mansuetude,
In brycht atteir of flouris forgit new,
Hevinly of color, quhyt, reid, broun and blew,
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys;
Quhyll all the house illumynit of her lemys.
Slugird, sche said, awalk annone for schame,
And in my honour sum thing thou go wryt;
The lark hes done the mirry day proclame,
To raise up luvaris with confort and delyt;
Yit nocht incressis thy curage to indyt,
Quhois hairt sum tyme hes glaid and blisfull bene,
Sangis to mak undir the levis grene.
Than callit sche all fouris that grew on feild,
Discirnyng all thair fassionis and effeiris,
Upone the awfull Thrissil sche beheld,
And saw him kepit with a busche of speiris;
Considering him so able for the weiris,
A radius croun of rubeis sche him gaif,
And said, In feild go furth and fend the laif:
And sen thou art a King, thou be discreit;
Herb without vertew thow hald nocht of sic pryce
As herb of vertew and of odour sueit;
## p. 5067 (#235) ###########################################
WILLIAM DUNBAR
5067
And lat no nettill vyle, and full of vyce,
Hir fallow to the gudly flour-de-lyce;
Nor latt no wyld weid, full of churlicheness,
Compair hir till the lilleis nobilness.
Nor hald non udir flour in sic denty
As the fresche Rois, of cullour reid and quhyt:
For gife thow dois, hurt is thyne honesty;
Considring that no flour is so perfyt,
So full of vertew, plesans, and delyt,
So full of blisful angeilik bewty,
Imperiall birth, honour and dignité.
FROM THE GOLDEN TARGE)
RYGHT as the stern of day begouth to schyne
B.
I raise, and by a rosere did me rest :
Up sprang the goldyn candill matutyne,
With clere depurit bemes cristallyne
Glading the mery foulis in thair nest;
Or Phebus was in purpur cape revest
Up raise the lark, the hevyn's menstrale fyne
In May, in till a morrow myrthfullest.
Full angellike thir birdis sang thair houris
Within thair courtyns grene, in to thair bouris,
Apparalit quhite and red, wyth blomes suete;
Anamalit was the felde with all colouris,
The perly droppis schuke in silvir schouris;
Quhill all in balme did branch and levis flete,
To part fra Phebus did Aurora grete;
Hir cristall teris I saw hyng on the flouris
Quhilk he for lufe all drank up with his hete.
For mirth of May, wyth skippis and wyth hoppis,
The birdis sang upon the tender croppis,
With curiouse notis, as Venus chapell clerkis;
The rosis yong, new spreding of their knoppis,
War powderit brycht with hevinly beriall droppis,
Throu bemes rede, birnyng as ruby sperkis;
The skyes rang for schoutyng of the larkis.
## p. 5068 (#236) ###########################################
5068
WILLIAM DUNBAR
NO TREASURE AVAILS WITHOUT GLADNESS
B
E MERRY, man, and tak not sair in mind
The wavering of this wretchit warld of sorrow;
To God be humble, and to thy friend be kind,
And with thy neighbour gladly lend and borrow:
His chance to-nicht, it may be thine to-morrow;
Be blyth in heart for ony aventúre;
For oft with wise men't has been said aforrow
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Mak thee gude cheer of it that God thee sendis,
For warldis wrak but weilfare nocht availis;
Nae gude is thine, save only that thou spendis,
Remenant all thou brukis but with bailis:
Seek to soláce when sadness thee assailis;
In dolour lang thy life may not indure,
Wherefore of comfort set up all thy sailis;
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Follow on pitý, flee trouble and debate,
With famous folkis hald thy company;
Be charitable and humble in thine estate,
For warldly honour lastis but a cry:
For trouble in erd tak no mélancholy;
Be rich in patience, give thou in guids be puir;
Who livis merry he livis michtily:
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Thou sees thir wretches set with sorrow and care
To gather guids in all their livis space;
And when their bags are full, their selves are bare,
And of their riches but the keeping has:
While others come to spend it that has grace,
Whilk of thy winning no labour had nor cure.
Tak thou example, and spend with merriness;
Without Gladnéss availis no Treasúre.
Though all the work that e'er had living wicht
Were only thine, no more thy part does fall
But meat, drink, clais, and of the lave a sicht,
Yet to the Judge thou sall give compt of all;
Ane reckoning richt comes of ane ragment small:
But just and joyous, do to none injúre,
Ane Truth sall mak thee strang as ony wall;
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
## p. 5069 (#237) ###########################################
5069
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
(1811-1894)
BURUY, whose monumental works upon Grecian and Roman
history have been worthily reproduced in England under
the editorship of Professor Mahaffy, and in America in
sumptuous illustrated editions, was a figure of the first importance
both in the educational and in the distinctly literary history of France,
throughout nearly half the present century. He became one of the
“Immortals » in 1884, succeeding to the chair of Mignet; but his
History of Ancient Greece, which was published in 1862, had been
already crowned by the Academy. His
more extensive History of the Grecian
People, published in 1885-1887, won from
the Academy the Jean Renaud prize of
10,000 francs.
He was born September uth, 1811, of a
family employed in the Gobelins tapestry
works in Paris. His predilection for study
secured him an opportunity to enter the
College of Sainte-Barbe, whence he passed
to the Normal School.
When he was twenty-two he began teach-
ing history, first at Rheims, and then in
the College of Henry IV. in Paris. Here
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
he began his literary work, mostly upon
school-books, of which he wrote many, mainly historical and geo-
graphical. He received the degree of Doctor of Letters in 1853, and
became successively Inspector of the Academy of Paris, Master of
Conferences at the Normal School, Professor of History at the Poly-
technic School, and Inspector-General of Secondary Instruction. Dur-
ing the whole of this period he had been engaged with secondary
classes, and had become strongly impressed by the faulty condition
of the primary and secondary schools. In 1863 Louis Napoleon put
him at the head of the educational system of the empire as Minister
of Public Instruction. This appointment gave him the opportunity to
carry out numerous and important secularizing reforms which brought
him into sharp collision with the clerical party. He held his post as
minister for six years - six years of struggle with the parsimonious
## p. 5070 (#238) ###########################################
5070
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
disposition of the administration upon the one hand, and with the
hostile clericals upon the other.
The measures in which he was especially interested were the
reorganization of the Museum of Natural History, the extension of
scientific study, the introduction of the study of modern and contem-
porary history in the lyceums (a dreadful experiment, according to
his opponents), gratuitous and compulsory primary education, the
improvement of the night schools, and popular classes for adults.
He was to a large extent successful in all these, except in the
direction of compulsory education. The efforts which he made to
improve the instruction given to young girls brought upon him the
tempest. The bishops, with Monsignor Dupanloup of Orléans at their
head, raised a veritable crusade, and Pope Pio Nono himself at
length entered the hostile ranks. Probably in part because of this
conflict, he was superseded in 1869 and was made a member of the
Senate, from which he retired to private life, and the prosecution of
his literary labors on the fall of the empire, in the following year.
He died in 1894.
As an author his style is clear and direct. Among his numerous
works the most important are the two great histories, for which, as
for other achievements, honors were heaped upon him. In these he
laid particular stress upon the milieu — the conditions of place, time,
and race.
Consequently he has therein written the history of the
Greek and Roman peoples, and not merely the history of Greece and
Rome, - and has pictured them, so far as possible, as they looked
and felt and thought and acted. He exhibits, for example, the
growth of the magnificent power of Rome, and its decadence; and
shows the all-conquering empire subdued to the manners, the gods,
and the institutions of the conquered. And worse:–« They had be-
come enamored of the arts, the letters, and the philosophy of Greece,
and dying Greece had avenged itself by transmitting to them the
corruption which had dishonored its old age. ”
The drift of his argument appears in this paragraph, in which he
sums up his story of the Eternal City:--" In the earlier portion of its
history may be seen the happy effects of a progressively liberal pol-
icy; in the later the baneful consequences of absolute power, govern-
ing a servile society through a venal administration. ”
## p. 5071 (#239) ###########################################
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
5071
THE NATIONAL POLICY
From the History of Rome)
,
penetrate into
another universe, - that of the successors of
Alexander. The eternal glory of Rome, the immense bene-
faction by which she effaces the memory of so many unjust wars,
is to have reunited those two worlds that in all former ages
were divided in interest, and strangers to each other; is to have
mingled and fused the brilliant but corrupt civilization of the
East with the barbaric energy of the West. The Mediterranean
became a Roman lake, - mare nostrum, they said, - and the
same life circulated on all its shores, called for the first and
the last time to a common existence.
In this work were employed a century and a half of struggles
and diplomacy; for Rome, working for a patient aristocracy and
not for a man, was not compelled to attain her end at a bound.
Instead of rearing suddenly one of those colossal monarchies
formed like the statue of gold with feet of clay, she founded
slowly an empire which fell only under the weight of years and
of the Northern hordes. After Zama she could have attempted the
conquest of Africa, but she left Carthage and the Numidians to
enfeeble each other. After Cynoscephalæ and Magnesia, Greece
and Asia were all ready for the yoke, but she accorded them fifty
years more of liberty. This was because, along with the pride
of the Roman name and the necessity for dominion, she always
retained some of her ancient virtues. The Popiliuses were more
numerous than the Verreses. Now she preferred to rule the
world; later she will put it to pillage. Thus, wherever Rome saw
strength she sent her legions; all power was broken; the ties of
States and leagues were shattered; and when her soldiers were
recalled they left behind them only weakness and anarchy. But
the task of the legions accomplished, that of the Senate began.
After force came craft and diplomacy. Those senators, grown
old amidst the terrors of the second Punic war, seemed now to
have less pleasure in arms than in the game of politics,-the
first, in all ages, of Italian arts.
Several other causes dictated this policy of reserve. Against
the Gauls, the Samnites, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal,- in other
## p. 5072 (#240) ###########################################
5072
JEAN VICTOR DI'RUY
words, for the defense of Latium and of Italy,— Rome had em-
ployed all her strength; it was then a question of her existence:
whereas, in the wars with Greece and with Asia, her ambition
and her pride alone were interested; and wisdom demanded that
some relaxation be given to the plebeians and the allies. The
Senate had moreover too many affairs on its hands — the wars
with Spain, with Corsica, with Cisalpina, and with Istria - to
admit of its becoming deeply involved in the East. Therefore
two legions only will fight Philip and Antiochus -- that will suf-
fice to conquer, but would be too little to despoil them. Further-
more, the Senate believed that in penetrating into this Greek
world, where an old glory concealed so much weakness, they
could not accord too much to prudence. These pitiless enemies
of the Volscians and the Samnites will not proceed in their next
wars by exterminating their adversaries and wasting their coun-
try. "It was not with such a purpose," said they, that they
came to pour out their blood; they took in hand the cause of
oppressed Greece. ” And that language and that policy they will
not change after victory. The first act of Flamininus, on the day
after Cynoscephalæ, was to proclaim the liberty of the Greeks.
All who bore that respected name seemed to have the right to
Roman protection; and the little Greek cities of Caria, and of
the coasts of Asia and Thrace, received with astonishment their
liberty from a people that they hardly knew. All were capti-
vated by this apparent generosity. None perceived that in re-
storing independence to the cities and States, Rome wished
to break up the confederations that sought to reorganize and
would perhaps have given new force to Greece. In isolating them
and attaching them to herself by grateful ties, she placed them
almost insensibly under her influence. She made allies of them;
and every one knows what the allies of Rome became. Thus the
Senate was so well satisfied with this policy, which created di-
vision everywhere and awakened extinct rivalries, that for half
a century it followed no other.
## p. 5073 (#241) ###########################################
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
5073
RESULTS OF THE ROMAN DOMINION
From the History of Rome )
in
A civilized" all the Western world, for which the Greeks had
done nothing Her language, out of which sprang the
various languages of the Romance nations, is in case of need a
means of communication among scholars of all countries, and her!
books will always remain - a wise selection being made - the
best for the higher culture of the mind. They have merited
above all others the title of litteræ humaniores, the literature by
which men are made. A cardinal, reading the “Thoughts of Mar-
cus Aurelius' (written in Greek, it is true, but written by a
Roman), exclaimed, “My soul blushes redder than my scarlet at
sight of the virtues of this Gentile. "
Suppose Rome destroyed by Pyrrhus or Hannibal, before
Marius and Cæsar had driven the German tribes back from Gaul:
their invasion would have been effected five centuries sooner;
and since they would have found opposed to them only other
barbarians, what a long night would have settled down upon the
world!
It is true that when the Roman people had laid hands upon
the treasures of Alexander's successors, the scandal of their
orgies exceeded for a century anything that the East had ever
seen; that their amusements were sanguinary games or licentious
plays; that the Roman mind, after receiving a temporary benefit
from Greek philosophy, went astray in Oriental mysticism; and
that finally, after having loved liberty, Rome accepted despotism,
as if willing to astonish the world as much by her great corrup-
tion as she did by the greatness of her empire.
But can we say that no other age or nation has known servil-
ity of soul, licentiousness in public amusements, and the conspicu-
ous depravity in morals that is always to be seen where indolence
and wealth are united ?
To the legacies left by Rome which have now been enumer-
ated, we must add another, which ranks among the most pre-
cious. Notwithstanding the poetic piety of Virgil, and Livy's
official credulity, the dominant note of Latin literature is the in-
difference of Horace, when it is not the daring skepticism of
IX-318
## p. 5074 (#242) ###########################################
5074
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
Lucretius. To Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, and the great juriscon-
sults, the prime necessity was the free possession of themselves,
that independence of philosophic thought which they owed to
Greece. This spirit, begotten of pure reason, was almost stifled
during the Middle Ages. It reappeared when antiquity was re-
covered. From that day the renascent world set forward again;
and in the new path France, heir of Athens and of Rome, was
long her guide --- for art in its most charming form, and for
thought, developed in the light.
Upon a medal of Constantine his son presents to him a globe
surmounted by a phenix, symbol of immortality. For once the
courtiers were not in the wrong.
The sacred bird which springs
from her own ashes is a fitting emblem of this old Rome, dead
fifteen centuries ago, yet alive to-day through her genius: Siamo
Romani.
## p. 5075 (#243) ###########################################
5075
TORU DUTT
(1856–1877)
etry of
N 1874 there appeared in the Bengal Magazine an essay upon
Leconte de Lisle, which showed not only an unusual knowl-
edge of French literature, but also decided literary quali-
ties. The essayist was Toru Dutt, a Hindu girl of eighteen, daughter
of Govin Chunder Dutt, for many years a justice of the peace at
Calcutta. The family belonged to the high-caste cultivated Hindus,
and Toru's education was conducted on broad lines. Her work fre-
quently discloses charming pictures of the home life that filled the
old garden house at Calcutta. Here it is easy to see the studious
child poring over French, German, and English lexicons. reading
every book she could lay hold of, hearing from her mother's lips those
old legends of her race which had been woven into the
native bards long before the civilization of modern Europe existed.
In her thirteenth year Toru and her younger sister were sent to
study for a few months in France, and thence to attend lectures at
Cambridge and to travel in England. A memory of this visit appears
in Toru's little poem, Near Hastings,' which shows the impression-
able nature of the Indian girl, so sensitive to the romance of an alien
race, and so appreciative of her friendly welcome to English soil.
After four years' travel in Europe the Dutts returned to India to
resume their student life, and Toru began to learn Sanskrit. She
showed great aptitude for the French language and a strong liking
for the French character, and she made a special study of French
romantic poetry. Her essays on Leconte de Lisle and Joséphin Sou-
lary, and a series of English translations of poetry, were the fruit of
her labor. The translations, including specimens from Béranger, Thé-
ophile Gautier, François Coppée, Sully-Prud'homme, and other popu-
lar writers, were collected in 1876 under the title "A Sheaf Gleaned
in French Fields. A few copies found their way into Europe, and
both French and English reviewers recognized the value of the har-
vest of this clear-sighted gleaner.
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous! ”
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and
submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of
his little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love -
love of his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of
all that is and ever was and ever will be
a very large order
indeed, even for Little Billee.
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love
to one figure especially beloved beyond all the rest — one figure
erect on high, with arms outstretched to him, in more than com-
mon fellowship of need: not the sorrowful Figure crowned with
thorns, for it was in the likeness of a woman; but never that of
the Virgin Mother of our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif,
all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth.
Trilby, weak and mortal like himself, and in woeful want of
pardon! and in her gray dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so
great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all
that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would
or could.
« Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur! »
## p. 5052 (#220) ###########################################
5052
GEORGE DU MAURIER
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big deep metal-
lic baritone bass — above the organ, above the incense, above
everything else in the world - till the very universe seemed to
shake with the rolling thunder of that great message of love and
forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify
and exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound,
and the singing human voice had especially strange power to
penetrate into his in most depths — even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest
there is, can give worthy utterance to such a message as that,-
the epitome, the abstract, the very essence of all collective
humanity's wisdom at its best!
«DREAMING TRUE »
From Peter Ibbetson. Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers
A
s I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat
lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that
the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to
call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these
modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within
my reach: I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but
in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment.
There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy,
well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the
gold and silver fish; and there with an aching heart I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some
means of possessing the past more fully and completely than we
do. Life is not worth living for many of us, if a want so des-
perate and yet so natural can never be satisfied. Memory is but
a poor rudimentary thing that we had better be without, if it can
only lead us to the verge of consummation like this, and madden
us with a desire it cannot slake. The touch of a vanished hand,
the sound of a voice that is still, the tender grace of a day that
is dead, should be ours forever at our beck and call, by some
exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my
beloved ones again in another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly
remembered forms in this, just as they once were, by some trick
## p. 5053 (#221) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5053
of my own brain! To see them with the eye, and hear them with
the ear, and tread with them the old obliterated ways as in a
waking dream! It would be well worth going mad, to become
such a self-conjurer as that.
I
got back to my hotel in the Rue de la Michodière.
Prostrate with emotion and fatigue, the tarantella still
jingling in my ears, and that haunting, beloved face, with its
ineffable smile, still printed on the retina of my closed eyes, I
fell asleep.
And then I dreamed a dream, and the first phase of my real,
inner life began!
All the events of the day, distorted and exaggerated and
jumbled together after the usual manner of dreams, wove them-
selves into a kind of nightmare and oppression. I was on my
way to my old abode; everything that I met or saw
was gro-
tesque and impossible, yet had now the strange, vague charm of
association and reminiscence, now the distressing sense of change
and desolation.
As I got near to the avenue gate, instead of the school on my
left there was a prison; and at the door a little thick-set jailer,
three feet high and much deformed, and a little deformed jail-
eress no bigger than himself, were cunningly watching me out of
the corners of their eyes, and toothlessly smiling. Presently they
began to waltz together to an old familiar tune, with their enor-
mous keys dangling at their sides; and they looked so funny that
I laughed and applauded.
But soon
I perceived that their
crooked faces were not really funny; indeed, they were fatal and
terrible in the extreme, and I was soon conscious that these
deadly dwarfs were trying to waltz between me and the avenue
gate for which I was bound — to cut me off, that they might run
me into the prison, where it was their custom to hang people of
a Monday morning.
In an agony of terror I made a rush for the avenue gate, and
there stood the Duchess of Towers, with mild surprise in her eyes
and a kind smile - a heavenly vision of strength and reality.
“You are not dreaming true! ” she said. “Don't be afraid
those little people don't exist! Give me your hand and come in
here. "
## p. 5054 (#222) ###########################################
5054
GEORGE DU MAURIER
With my
And as I did so she waved the troglodytes away, and they
vanished; and I felt that this was no longer a dream, but some-
thing else---some strange thing that had happened to me, some
new life that I had woke up to.
For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of
being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous
dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and
vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity —
just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested
in what is going on; only with perceptions far keener and more
alert.
I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered
all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real
body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room
on the fourth floor of an hôtel garni in the Rue de la Micho-
dière. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body too,
just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty,
my shirt collar damp with the heat, for it was hot.
disengaged hand I felt in my trousers pocket; there were my Lon-
don latch-key, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the
breast pocket of my coat, and in its tail pockets my gloves and
pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morn-
ing. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven.
I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the
pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was
awake; and I was, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand
with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who
seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her,
now at my old school.
The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo!
in its place was M. Saindou's maison d'éducation, just as it had
been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of
a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called
Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus
left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for
months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays.
Here it was anew, after fifteen years.
The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus
was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and
neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those
days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily.
## p. 5055 (#223) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5055
A crowd was looking on — le Père et la Mère François,
Madame Liard the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I
remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small
boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the
back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier.
A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well,
and had forgotten.
The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of
self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose
faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trou-
sers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left
arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified
manner as it seemed — to heaven in a golden chariot. It was
beautiful to see and hear.
I was still holding the duchess's hand, and felt the warmth of
it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic cur-
rent. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me
that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a
spirit other than mine - a most powerful and beneficent spirit.
There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self,
after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kind-
ness had found it out.
“Now you're dreaming true,” she said. « Where are those
boys going? ”
« To church, to make their première communion,” I replied.
“That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you
by the hand. Do you know that tune ? »
I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the
past, and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her
eyes screwed up deliciously.
"Quite right - quite! ” she exclaimed. «How odd that you
should know them! How well you pronounce French for an
Englishman! For you are Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect ? »
I assented, and she let go my hand.
The street was full of people — familiar forms and faces and
voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the
yellow omnibus; old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old
forgotten French ways of speech - all was long ago.
Nobody noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.
· The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that
I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel
as it
## p. 5056 (#224) ###########################################
5056
GEORGE DU MAURIER
in the Rue de la Michodière ? Could it be that the Duchess of
Towers was dead too — had been killed by some accident on her
way from St. Cloud to Paris ? and that, both having died, so near
each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly
fashion ?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told
me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life — and
also, alas! that it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every
movement of her body, every detail of her dress,— more so than
I could have been in actual life, - and said to myself, "Whatever
this is, it is no dream. ” But I felt there was about me the
unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking
moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in
comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to
me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a
slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right,
and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I
had lost my stay — the touch of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson? ”
“I am afraid not quite,” I replied.
«You must try by yourself a little — try hard. Look at this
house; what is written on the portico ? ”
I saw written in gold letters the words « Tête Noire," and
said so.
She rippled with laughter, and said, “No, try again;
» and
just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.
I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame. ”
“That's rather better,” she said, and touched me again; and I
read, Parva sed Apta, as I had so often read there before in
old days.
“And now look at that old house over there,” pointing to my
old home; how many windows are there in the top story? ”
I said seven.
“No; there are five. Look again: » and there were five; and
the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it
had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of
the windows, making my bed.
« That's better,” said the duchess; "you will soon do it — it's
very easy — ce n'est que le premier pas! My father taught me;
## p. 5057 (#225) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5057
you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your
head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the
right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must
never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in
your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must
never forget in your dream where and what you were when
awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget.
And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both
your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can
see. »
It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes,
and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and
took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of
Ville d'Avray,, a glimpse of which was visible through an open-
ing in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to
Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black
arms on the top of Mont Valérien.
"Is it all right ? ” she asked. «That's well. Henceforward,
whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight
can reach, - from this spot, - all through my introduction. See
what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing
jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.
“Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne-
there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and
make everything plain in front of you - true, before you go a
step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over
again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake,
and it will come -on condition, of course, that you have been
there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you
touch things or people - you may hear, see, and smell; but you
mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about.
It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't
know why, but it does. You must remember that everything
here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different;
we're alive and real — that is, I am; and there would seem to be
no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp
of your hands. But you're not; and why you are here, and what
business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot under-
stand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't
make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this after-
noon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are
IX-317
## p. 5058 (#226) ###########################################
5058
GEORGE DU MAURIER
just a stray figment of my over-tired brain - a very agreeable
figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now — you can't
possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Ma-
bille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French
churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young
British architect -- otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you
may be sure!
“Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of
use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to
come — especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for
what else can you be ? And now I must leave you: so good-by. ”
She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and
then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure
and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children
into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of
sight.
I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy
had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself
from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed
again.
Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot
where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but
then considered this would not have been discreet. For although
she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the
exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and
excited brain-a more than agreeable figment (what else could she
be! ) — she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect
stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kind-
ness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong
that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always
had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an
acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France -
even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to
stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.
And then what business had she in this, my particular dream
as she herself had asked of me?
But was it a dream ? I remembered my lodgings at Penton-
ville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I
was — why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at
the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking
## p. 5059 (#227) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5059
clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad
awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had
long ceased to exist — that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it, - this
edifice,- myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was every-
thing as it had been when I was a child; and all through the
agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess,
whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding
in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked
at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All
this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned
my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just
able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought
about ten feet high.
Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning
small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to
wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonish-
ment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my
temples, and my breath was short.
At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small
boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill
round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close
at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo
Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had
pen and
ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in
red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was Elegant Extracts. '
The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning
among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.
A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and
pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and
she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no
notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.
I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her
face.
I must not speak to her nor touch her — not even touch her
busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream. ”
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder.
He was
translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far,
and seemed to be stumped by the line-
“And leaves the world to darkness and to me. ”
## p. 5060 (#228) ###########################################
5060
GEORGE DU MAURIER
d
arm
ST
2
2
Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her
thumb in her mouth, one on the back of his chair. She
seemed to be stumped also; it was an awkward line to translate.
I stooped and put my hand to Médor's nose, and felt his
warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered
in his sleep. Mimsey said: -
"Regarde Médor, comme il remue la queue! C'est le Prince
Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nes. ”
Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto:-
“Do speak English, Mimsey, please. ”
O my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar,
so unutterably dear! I rushed to her and threw myself on my
knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying,
Mother, mother! ”
A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality
was lost.
All became as a dream a beautiful dream, but only
a dream; and I woke.
F
fi
BARTY JOSSELIN AT SCHOOL
From (The Martian)
From Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers
be
20
a
NDEED, even from his early boyhood, he was the most extraor-
dinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even heard of;
a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton to whom all things
came easily — and life itself as an uncommonly good joke. Dur-
ing that summer term of 1847 I did not see very much of him.
He was in the class below mine, and took up with Laferté and
little Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at
everything he said, and worshiped him. So did everybody else,
sooner or later; indeed, it soon became evident that he was
most exceptional little person.
In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as will
be readily believed by all who have known him since. The
mere sight of him as a boy made people pity his father and
mother for being dead!
Then he had a charming gift of singing little French and
English ditties, comic or touching, with his delightful fresh young
pipe, and accompanying himself quite nicely on either piano or
guitar without really knowing a note of music. Then he could
ai
lah
## p. 5061 (#229) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5061
ured up.
draw caricatures that we boys thought inimitable, much funnier
than Cham's or Bertall's or Gavarni's, and collected and treas-
I have dozens of them now they make me laugh
still, and bring back memories of which the charm is indescrib-
able; and their pathos to me!
And then how funny he was himself, without effort, and with
a fun that never failed! He was a born buffoon of the graceful
kind, - more whelp or kitten than monkey - ever playing the
fool, in and out of season, but somehow always apropos; and
French boys love a boy for that more than anything else; or
did in those days.
His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal seafar-
ing Norman ancestors (not to mention another long line of well-
fed, well-bred Yorkshire squires), was magnificent. His spirits
never failed. He could see the satellites of Jupiter with the
naked eye; this was often tested by M. Dumollard, maître de
mathématiques (et de cosmographie), who had a telescope, which,
with a little good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as
big as the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.
His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He could
hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive very high
sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf (this was found
out later); and when we played blindman's buff on a rainy day,
he could, blindfolded, tell every boy he caught hold of — not by
feeling him all over like the rest of us, but by the mere smell of
his hair, or his hands, or his blouse! No wonder he was
much more alive than the rest of us! According to the amiable,
modest, polite, delicately humorous, and ever tolerant and con-
siderate Professor Max Nordau, this perfection of the olfactory
sense proclaims poor Barty a degenerate! I only wish there
a few more like him, and that I were a little more like
him myself!
By the way, how proud young Germany must feel of its en-
lightened Max, and how fond of him, to be sure! les compli-
ments!
But the most astounding thing of all (it seems incredible, but
all the world knows it by this time, and it will be accounted for
later on) is that at certain times and seasons Barty knew by an
infallible instinct where the north was, to a point.
Most of my
SO
were
## p. 5062 (#230) ###########################################
5062
GEORGE DU MAURIER
readers will remember his extraordinary evidence as a witness in
the “Rangoon” trial, and how this power was tested in open
court, and how important were the issues involved, and how he
refused to give any explanation of a gift so extraordinary.
It was often tried at school by blindfolding him, and turning
him round and round till he was giddy, and asking him to point
out where the North Pole was, or the North Star, and seven or
eight times out of ten the answer was unerringly right. When
he failed, he knew beforehand that for the time being he had
lost the power, but could never say why. Little Doctor Larcher
could never get over his surprise at this strange phenomenon,
nor explain it; and often brought some scientific friend from
Paris to test it, who was equally nonplussed.
When cross-examined, Barty would merely say: -
"Quelquefois je sais — quelquefois je ne sais pas — mais quand
je sais, je sais, et il n'y pas à s'y tromper! ”
Indeed, on one occasion that I remember well a very strange
thing happened; he not only pointed out the north with absolute
accuracy, as he stood carefully blindfolded in the gymnastic
ground, after having been turned and twisted again and again -
but still blindfolded, he vaulted the wire fence and ran round
to the refectory door, which served as the home at rounders, all
of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his
own invention, that he called "La Paladine, the most humor-
ously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then,
taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted, «À l'amandier! » and
threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond
tree, which was quite twenty yards off; and after this he ran
round the yard from base to base, as at “la balle au camp,” till
he reached the camp again.
“If ever he goes blind,” said the wondering M. Mérovée,
“he'll never need a dog to lead him about. ”
“He must have some special friend above! ” said Madame
Germain (Mérovée's sister, who was looking on).
Prophetic words! I have never forgotten them, nor the tear
that glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a
deeply religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty
almost as if he were a child of her own.
Such women have strange intuitions.
Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance
before skeptical people — parents of boys, visitors, etc. — who had
## p. 5063 (#231) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5063
been told of it, and who believed he could not have been prop-
erly blindfolded; but he could never be induced to do so.
There was no mistake about the blindfolding - I helped in it
myself; and he afterwards told me the whole thing was “aussi
simple que bonjour" if once he felt the north – for then, with
his back to the refectory door, he knew exactly the position and
distance of every tree from where he was.
“It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do
without a dog,” he added; "I should be just as helpless as any
other blind man, unless I was in a place I knew as well as my
own pocket — like this play-ground! Besides, I shan't go blind;
nothing will ever happen to my eyes — they're the strongest and
best in the whole school! »
He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and
looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.
“But what do you feel when you feel the north, Barty — a
kind of tingling ? ” I asked.
“OhI feel where it is as if I'd got a mariner's compass
trembling inside my stomach - and as if I wasn't afraid of any-
body or anything in the world - as if I could go and have my
head chopped off and not care a fig. ”
“Ah, well - I can't make it out - I give it up, I exclaimed.
«So do 1,” exclaims Barty.
«But tell me, Barty," I whispered — have you -- have you
really got a—a— special friend above ? »
"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies,” said Barty, and
winked at me one eye after the other -- and went about his busi-
ness, and I about mine.
## p. 5064 (#232) ###########################################
5064
WILLIAM DUNBAR
(1465? -1530 ? )
saw
PICTURESQUE figure in a picturesque age is that of William
Dunbar, court minstrel to James IV. , and as Sir Walter
Scott declared, “a poet unrivaled by any that Scotland has
ever produced. ” Little of his personal history is known. Probably
he was a native of East Lothian, a member of the family of the Earl
of March, and a graduate of St. Andrews University about the year
1479. After his college days he joined the order of Franciscans and
became a mendicant friar, preaching the queer sermons of his time,
and begging his way through England and France. Yet in these
pilgrimages the young scholar learned useful habits of self-denial,
new phases of human character, and above all enjoyed that
close communion with nature which is the need of the poet. Over and
over there is a reflection of this life in that fanciful verse, which has
caught the color of the morning hours when the hedgerows are wet
and the grass dewy, when the wild roses scent the roadside and the
lark is at matins - verse full of the joy of life and the hope of youth.
After some years of this vagabond life, Dunbar left the Francis-
cans and attached himself to the court, where he speedily became a
favorite. His day was one of pageant and show, of masque and
spectacle, and into its gay assemblage of knights and courtiers, ladies
and great nobles, Dunbar fitted perfectly. When an embassy was
sent to England to negotiate the royal marriage with Margaret Tudor,
Dunbar went along, being specially accredited by the king. He
became a favorite with the young Princess, and a poem written in
honor of the city of London, and one descriptive of the Queen's
Progress, afford a faithful and valuable memorial of this mission.
History is fortunate when she secures a poet as her scribe. Dunbar
is principally known by his three poems (The Thistle and the Rose,'
'The Golden Targe,' and 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins. '
The first of these is an allegory celebrating the nuptials of the
king. It suggests of course the allegories of Chaucer; but Dunbar's
muse is his own, and the poem springs fresh and clear from native
fonts. The poet represents himself as awakened by Aurora on
spring morning and told to do homage to May. Through the sym-
bolism of the court of Nature, who crowns the Lion and Eagle, com-
missions the Thistle and Rose as her handmaidens, and orders their
praises sung by the assembled birds of earth, the political significance
a
## p. 5065 (#233) ###########################################
WILLIAM DUNBAR
5065
of the allegory appears.
But "The Thistle and the Rose,' which
is thus made to illustrate the union between the two great houses
of Scotland and England, is far more than the poem of an occasion.
It is full of the melody and fragrance of spring, saturated with that
sensuous delight which at this bountiful season fills the veins of
Nature. Here Dunbar is no longer the court laureate, but the beg-
ging friar, wandering through the green lanes and finding bed and
board under the free skies.
“The Golden Targe) is more artificial in construction.
It is an-
other allegory, descriptive of an encounter between Cupid and
Reason, who is defended by a golden targe or shield from the
attacks of love. Here again the rural landscape forms a background
to his mimic action. Amazons dressed in green fight the battle of
Cupid, and vanquish Reason, then magically vanish and leave the
poet to awake from his dream. (The Golden Targe was a poem to
be read in the royal presence, when the court assembled after a
day's hunting or an afternoon of archery; but it is filled with the
ethereal loveliness which only the true poet beholds.
It is in 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins) that Dunbar
touches the note of seriousness, which characterizes his race and his
individual genius. This satire is not so unsparing an indictment as
the vision of Piers Ploughman, and yet it provokes inevitable com-
parison with the older poem. In a dream the poet sees heaven and
hell opened. It is the eve of Ash Wednesday, and the Devil has
commanded a dance to be performed by those spirits that had never
received absolution. In obedience to this command the Seven Deadly
Sins present a masque before his Satanic Majesty, and it is in the
description of this grisly performance that Dunbar reveals a
aspect of power. The comedy here is not comic, but grotesque and
horrid. The vision of the Scot is the vision that came to the poets
of the Inferno' and Paradise Lost,' and it shows that his imagina-
tion was capable of the loftiest flights.
After the melancholy day of Flodden Field, the Scottish laureate-
ship ceased to exist, but it is remarkable that so prominent a man
as Dunbar should so completely have disappeared from contemporary
view that his subsequent career and the time of his death are mat-
ters of doubt. His period is given as between the years 1465 and
1530, but these dates are only approximate.
Had Dunbar held his genius in hand as completely as did Chaucer,
his accomplishment would doubtless have been greater than it was.
Yet his place in literature is that of one of the most important poets
of the fifteenth century, the age of Caxton and book-making, the
time of that first flush of radiance which ushered in the full day of
Spenser and Shakespeare.
new
## p. 5066 (#234) ###########################################
5066
WILLIAM DUNBAR
THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE
Q"
UHEN Merche wes with variand windis past,
And Appryle had, with her silver schouris,
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois armony to heir it wes delyt:
In bed at morrow, sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht Aurora with hir cristall ene
In at the window lukit by the day,
And halsit me, with visage paill and grene;
On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene:-
Awalk, luvaris, out of you slomering;
Sé hou the lusty morrow dois up spring.
Me thocht fresche May befoir my bed up stude,
In weid depaynt of mony diverss hew,
Sobir, benyng, and full of mansuetude,
In brycht atteir of flouris forgit new,
Hevinly of color, quhyt, reid, broun and blew,
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys;
Quhyll all the house illumynit of her lemys.
Slugird, sche said, awalk annone for schame,
And in my honour sum thing thou go wryt;
The lark hes done the mirry day proclame,
To raise up luvaris with confort and delyt;
Yit nocht incressis thy curage to indyt,
Quhois hairt sum tyme hes glaid and blisfull bene,
Sangis to mak undir the levis grene.
Than callit sche all fouris that grew on feild,
Discirnyng all thair fassionis and effeiris,
Upone the awfull Thrissil sche beheld,
And saw him kepit with a busche of speiris;
Considering him so able for the weiris,
A radius croun of rubeis sche him gaif,
And said, In feild go furth and fend the laif:
And sen thou art a King, thou be discreit;
Herb without vertew thow hald nocht of sic pryce
As herb of vertew and of odour sueit;
## p. 5067 (#235) ###########################################
WILLIAM DUNBAR
5067
And lat no nettill vyle, and full of vyce,
Hir fallow to the gudly flour-de-lyce;
Nor latt no wyld weid, full of churlicheness,
Compair hir till the lilleis nobilness.
Nor hald non udir flour in sic denty
As the fresche Rois, of cullour reid and quhyt:
For gife thow dois, hurt is thyne honesty;
Considring that no flour is so perfyt,
So full of vertew, plesans, and delyt,
So full of blisful angeilik bewty,
Imperiall birth, honour and dignité.
FROM THE GOLDEN TARGE)
RYGHT as the stern of day begouth to schyne
B.
I raise, and by a rosere did me rest :
Up sprang the goldyn candill matutyne,
With clere depurit bemes cristallyne
Glading the mery foulis in thair nest;
Or Phebus was in purpur cape revest
Up raise the lark, the hevyn's menstrale fyne
In May, in till a morrow myrthfullest.
Full angellike thir birdis sang thair houris
Within thair courtyns grene, in to thair bouris,
Apparalit quhite and red, wyth blomes suete;
Anamalit was the felde with all colouris,
The perly droppis schuke in silvir schouris;
Quhill all in balme did branch and levis flete,
To part fra Phebus did Aurora grete;
Hir cristall teris I saw hyng on the flouris
Quhilk he for lufe all drank up with his hete.
For mirth of May, wyth skippis and wyth hoppis,
The birdis sang upon the tender croppis,
With curiouse notis, as Venus chapell clerkis;
The rosis yong, new spreding of their knoppis,
War powderit brycht with hevinly beriall droppis,
Throu bemes rede, birnyng as ruby sperkis;
The skyes rang for schoutyng of the larkis.
## p. 5068 (#236) ###########################################
5068
WILLIAM DUNBAR
NO TREASURE AVAILS WITHOUT GLADNESS
B
E MERRY, man, and tak not sair in mind
The wavering of this wretchit warld of sorrow;
To God be humble, and to thy friend be kind,
And with thy neighbour gladly lend and borrow:
His chance to-nicht, it may be thine to-morrow;
Be blyth in heart for ony aventúre;
For oft with wise men't has been said aforrow
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Mak thee gude cheer of it that God thee sendis,
For warldis wrak but weilfare nocht availis;
Nae gude is thine, save only that thou spendis,
Remenant all thou brukis but with bailis:
Seek to soláce when sadness thee assailis;
In dolour lang thy life may not indure,
Wherefore of comfort set up all thy sailis;
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Follow on pitý, flee trouble and debate,
With famous folkis hald thy company;
Be charitable and humble in thine estate,
For warldly honour lastis but a cry:
For trouble in erd tak no mélancholy;
Be rich in patience, give thou in guids be puir;
Who livis merry he livis michtily:
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
Thou sees thir wretches set with sorrow and care
To gather guids in all their livis space;
And when their bags are full, their selves are bare,
And of their riches but the keeping has:
While others come to spend it that has grace,
Whilk of thy winning no labour had nor cure.
Tak thou example, and spend with merriness;
Without Gladnéss availis no Treasúre.
Though all the work that e'er had living wicht
Were only thine, no more thy part does fall
But meat, drink, clais, and of the lave a sicht,
Yet to the Judge thou sall give compt of all;
Ane reckoning richt comes of ane ragment small:
But just and joyous, do to none injúre,
Ane Truth sall mak thee strang as ony wall;
Without Gladness availis no Treasure.
## p. 5069 (#237) ###########################################
5069
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
(1811-1894)
BURUY, whose monumental works upon Grecian and Roman
history have been worthily reproduced in England under
the editorship of Professor Mahaffy, and in America in
sumptuous illustrated editions, was a figure of the first importance
both in the educational and in the distinctly literary history of France,
throughout nearly half the present century. He became one of the
“Immortals » in 1884, succeeding to the chair of Mignet; but his
History of Ancient Greece, which was published in 1862, had been
already crowned by the Academy. His
more extensive History of the Grecian
People, published in 1885-1887, won from
the Academy the Jean Renaud prize of
10,000 francs.
He was born September uth, 1811, of a
family employed in the Gobelins tapestry
works in Paris. His predilection for study
secured him an opportunity to enter the
College of Sainte-Barbe, whence he passed
to the Normal School.
When he was twenty-two he began teach-
ing history, first at Rheims, and then in
the College of Henry IV. in Paris. Here
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
he began his literary work, mostly upon
school-books, of which he wrote many, mainly historical and geo-
graphical. He received the degree of Doctor of Letters in 1853, and
became successively Inspector of the Academy of Paris, Master of
Conferences at the Normal School, Professor of History at the Poly-
technic School, and Inspector-General of Secondary Instruction. Dur-
ing the whole of this period he had been engaged with secondary
classes, and had become strongly impressed by the faulty condition
of the primary and secondary schools. In 1863 Louis Napoleon put
him at the head of the educational system of the empire as Minister
of Public Instruction. This appointment gave him the opportunity to
carry out numerous and important secularizing reforms which brought
him into sharp collision with the clerical party. He held his post as
minister for six years - six years of struggle with the parsimonious
## p. 5070 (#238) ###########################################
5070
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
disposition of the administration upon the one hand, and with the
hostile clericals upon the other.
The measures in which he was especially interested were the
reorganization of the Museum of Natural History, the extension of
scientific study, the introduction of the study of modern and contem-
porary history in the lyceums (a dreadful experiment, according to
his opponents), gratuitous and compulsory primary education, the
improvement of the night schools, and popular classes for adults.
He was to a large extent successful in all these, except in the
direction of compulsory education. The efforts which he made to
improve the instruction given to young girls brought upon him the
tempest. The bishops, with Monsignor Dupanloup of Orléans at their
head, raised a veritable crusade, and Pope Pio Nono himself at
length entered the hostile ranks. Probably in part because of this
conflict, he was superseded in 1869 and was made a member of the
Senate, from which he retired to private life, and the prosecution of
his literary labors on the fall of the empire, in the following year.
He died in 1894.
As an author his style is clear and direct. Among his numerous
works the most important are the two great histories, for which, as
for other achievements, honors were heaped upon him. In these he
laid particular stress upon the milieu — the conditions of place, time,
and race.
Consequently he has therein written the history of the
Greek and Roman peoples, and not merely the history of Greece and
Rome, - and has pictured them, so far as possible, as they looked
and felt and thought and acted. He exhibits, for example, the
growth of the magnificent power of Rome, and its decadence; and
shows the all-conquering empire subdued to the manners, the gods,
and the institutions of the conquered. And worse:–« They had be-
come enamored of the arts, the letters, and the philosophy of Greece,
and dying Greece had avenged itself by transmitting to them the
corruption which had dishonored its old age. ”
The drift of his argument appears in this paragraph, in which he
sums up his story of the Eternal City:--" In the earlier portion of its
history may be seen the happy effects of a progressively liberal pol-
icy; in the later the baneful consequences of absolute power, govern-
ing a servile society through a venal administration. ”
## p. 5071 (#239) ###########################################
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
5071
THE NATIONAL POLICY
From the History of Rome)
,
penetrate into
another universe, - that of the successors of
Alexander. The eternal glory of Rome, the immense bene-
faction by which she effaces the memory of so many unjust wars,
is to have reunited those two worlds that in all former ages
were divided in interest, and strangers to each other; is to have
mingled and fused the brilliant but corrupt civilization of the
East with the barbaric energy of the West. The Mediterranean
became a Roman lake, - mare nostrum, they said, - and the
same life circulated on all its shores, called for the first and
the last time to a common existence.
In this work were employed a century and a half of struggles
and diplomacy; for Rome, working for a patient aristocracy and
not for a man, was not compelled to attain her end at a bound.
Instead of rearing suddenly one of those colossal monarchies
formed like the statue of gold with feet of clay, she founded
slowly an empire which fell only under the weight of years and
of the Northern hordes. After Zama she could have attempted the
conquest of Africa, but she left Carthage and the Numidians to
enfeeble each other. After Cynoscephalæ and Magnesia, Greece
and Asia were all ready for the yoke, but she accorded them fifty
years more of liberty. This was because, along with the pride
of the Roman name and the necessity for dominion, she always
retained some of her ancient virtues. The Popiliuses were more
numerous than the Verreses. Now she preferred to rule the
world; later she will put it to pillage. Thus, wherever Rome saw
strength she sent her legions; all power was broken; the ties of
States and leagues were shattered; and when her soldiers were
recalled they left behind them only weakness and anarchy. But
the task of the legions accomplished, that of the Senate began.
After force came craft and diplomacy. Those senators, grown
old amidst the terrors of the second Punic war, seemed now to
have less pleasure in arms than in the game of politics,-the
first, in all ages, of Italian arts.
Several other causes dictated this policy of reserve. Against
the Gauls, the Samnites, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal,- in other
## p. 5072 (#240) ###########################################
5072
JEAN VICTOR DI'RUY
words, for the defense of Latium and of Italy,— Rome had em-
ployed all her strength; it was then a question of her existence:
whereas, in the wars with Greece and with Asia, her ambition
and her pride alone were interested; and wisdom demanded that
some relaxation be given to the plebeians and the allies. The
Senate had moreover too many affairs on its hands — the wars
with Spain, with Corsica, with Cisalpina, and with Istria - to
admit of its becoming deeply involved in the East. Therefore
two legions only will fight Philip and Antiochus -- that will suf-
fice to conquer, but would be too little to despoil them. Further-
more, the Senate believed that in penetrating into this Greek
world, where an old glory concealed so much weakness, they
could not accord too much to prudence. These pitiless enemies
of the Volscians and the Samnites will not proceed in their next
wars by exterminating their adversaries and wasting their coun-
try. "It was not with such a purpose," said they, that they
came to pour out their blood; they took in hand the cause of
oppressed Greece. ” And that language and that policy they will
not change after victory. The first act of Flamininus, on the day
after Cynoscephalæ, was to proclaim the liberty of the Greeks.
All who bore that respected name seemed to have the right to
Roman protection; and the little Greek cities of Caria, and of
the coasts of Asia and Thrace, received with astonishment their
liberty from a people that they hardly knew. All were capti-
vated by this apparent generosity. None perceived that in re-
storing independence to the cities and States, Rome wished
to break up the confederations that sought to reorganize and
would perhaps have given new force to Greece. In isolating them
and attaching them to herself by grateful ties, she placed them
almost insensibly under her influence. She made allies of them;
and every one knows what the allies of Rome became. Thus the
Senate was so well satisfied with this policy, which created di-
vision everywhere and awakened extinct rivalries, that for half
a century it followed no other.
## p. 5073 (#241) ###########################################
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
5073
RESULTS OF THE ROMAN DOMINION
From the History of Rome )
in
A civilized" all the Western world, for which the Greeks had
done nothing Her language, out of which sprang the
various languages of the Romance nations, is in case of need a
means of communication among scholars of all countries, and her!
books will always remain - a wise selection being made - the
best for the higher culture of the mind. They have merited
above all others the title of litteræ humaniores, the literature by
which men are made. A cardinal, reading the “Thoughts of Mar-
cus Aurelius' (written in Greek, it is true, but written by a
Roman), exclaimed, “My soul blushes redder than my scarlet at
sight of the virtues of this Gentile. "
Suppose Rome destroyed by Pyrrhus or Hannibal, before
Marius and Cæsar had driven the German tribes back from Gaul:
their invasion would have been effected five centuries sooner;
and since they would have found opposed to them only other
barbarians, what a long night would have settled down upon the
world!
It is true that when the Roman people had laid hands upon
the treasures of Alexander's successors, the scandal of their
orgies exceeded for a century anything that the East had ever
seen; that their amusements were sanguinary games or licentious
plays; that the Roman mind, after receiving a temporary benefit
from Greek philosophy, went astray in Oriental mysticism; and
that finally, after having loved liberty, Rome accepted despotism,
as if willing to astonish the world as much by her great corrup-
tion as she did by the greatness of her empire.
But can we say that no other age or nation has known servil-
ity of soul, licentiousness in public amusements, and the conspicu-
ous depravity in morals that is always to be seen where indolence
and wealth are united ?
To the legacies left by Rome which have now been enumer-
ated, we must add another, which ranks among the most pre-
cious. Notwithstanding the poetic piety of Virgil, and Livy's
official credulity, the dominant note of Latin literature is the in-
difference of Horace, when it is not the daring skepticism of
IX-318
## p. 5074 (#242) ###########################################
5074
JEAN VICTOR DURUY
Lucretius. To Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, and the great juriscon-
sults, the prime necessity was the free possession of themselves,
that independence of philosophic thought which they owed to
Greece. This spirit, begotten of pure reason, was almost stifled
during the Middle Ages. It reappeared when antiquity was re-
covered. From that day the renascent world set forward again;
and in the new path France, heir of Athens and of Rome, was
long her guide --- for art in its most charming form, and for
thought, developed in the light.
Upon a medal of Constantine his son presents to him a globe
surmounted by a phenix, symbol of immortality. For once the
courtiers were not in the wrong.
The sacred bird which springs
from her own ashes is a fitting emblem of this old Rome, dead
fifteen centuries ago, yet alive to-day through her genius: Siamo
Romani.
## p. 5075 (#243) ###########################################
5075
TORU DUTT
(1856–1877)
etry of
N 1874 there appeared in the Bengal Magazine an essay upon
Leconte de Lisle, which showed not only an unusual knowl-
edge of French literature, but also decided literary quali-
ties. The essayist was Toru Dutt, a Hindu girl of eighteen, daughter
of Govin Chunder Dutt, for many years a justice of the peace at
Calcutta. The family belonged to the high-caste cultivated Hindus,
and Toru's education was conducted on broad lines. Her work fre-
quently discloses charming pictures of the home life that filled the
old garden house at Calcutta. Here it is easy to see the studious
child poring over French, German, and English lexicons. reading
every book she could lay hold of, hearing from her mother's lips those
old legends of her race which had been woven into the
native bards long before the civilization of modern Europe existed.
In her thirteenth year Toru and her younger sister were sent to
study for a few months in France, and thence to attend lectures at
Cambridge and to travel in England. A memory of this visit appears
in Toru's little poem, Near Hastings,' which shows the impression-
able nature of the Indian girl, so sensitive to the romance of an alien
race, and so appreciative of her friendly welcome to English soil.
After four years' travel in Europe the Dutts returned to India to
resume their student life, and Toru began to learn Sanskrit. She
showed great aptitude for the French language and a strong liking
for the French character, and she made a special study of French
romantic poetry. Her essays on Leconte de Lisle and Joséphin Sou-
lary, and a series of English translations of poetry, were the fruit of
her labor. The translations, including specimens from Béranger, Thé-
ophile Gautier, François Coppée, Sully-Prud'homme, and other popu-
lar writers, were collected in 1876 under the title "A Sheaf Gleaned
in French Fields. A few copies found their way into Europe, and
both French and English reviewers recognized the value of the har-
vest of this clear-sighted gleaner.
