Chapter IV: Part 4

Jeffrey’s extraordinary blunders are too well known to need repetition, and Christopher North was not without his share of similar mishaps; Walpole cheerfully sentenced Scandinavian poetry in the bulk as the horrors of a Runic savage; Madame de Staël objected to the “commonness” of Miss Austen’s novels; Wordsworth thought Voltaire dull, and Southey complained that Lamb’s essays lacked “sound religious feeling;” George Borrow, whose literary tastes were at least as erratic as they were pronounced, condemned Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock as “tiresome, trashy, and unprincipled,” and ranked Shakespeare, Pope, Addison, and the Welsh bard Huw Morris together as “great poets,” apparently without recognizing any marked difference in their respective claims. Then there is Taine, who finds Pendennis and Vanity Fair too full of sermons; Mr. Dudley Warner, who compares the mild and genial humor of Washington Irving to the acrid vigor of Swift; and Mr. Howells, who, perhaps in pity for our sense of loss, would fain persuade us that we could no longer endure either the “mannerisms” of Dickens or the “confidential attitude” of Thackeray, were we happy enough to see these great men still in our midst.

Imagine, ye who can, the fiery Hazlitt’s wrath, if he but knew that in punishment for his youthful admiration of the Nouvelle Héloïse a close resemblance has been traced by friendly hands between himself and its author. Think of Lord Byron’s feelings, if he could hear Mr. Swinburne saying that it was greatly to his--Byron’s--credit that he knew himself for a third-rate poet! Even though it be the only thing to his credit that Swinburne has so far discovered, one doubts whether it would greatly mollify his lordship, or reconcile him to being classed as a “Bernesque poet,” and the companion of those two widely different creatures, Southey and Offenbach. Perhaps, indeed, his lively sense of humor would derive a more positive gratification from watching his angry critic run amuck through adjectives with frenzied agility. Such sentences as “the blundering, floundering, lumbering, and stumbling stanzas of Childe Harold, ... the gasping, ranting, wheezing, broken-winded verse, ... the hideous absurdities and jolter-headed jargon,” must surely be less deeply offensive to Lord Byron’s admirers than to Mr. Swinburne’s. They come as near to describing the noble beauty of Childe Harold as does Southey’s senseless collection of words to describing the cataract of Lodore, or any other cataract in existence; and, since the days when Milton and Salmasius hurled “Latin billingsgate” at each other’s heads, we have had no stronger argument in favor of the comeliness of moderation.

“The most part of Mr. Swinburne’s criticism,” hints a recent reviewer, “is surely very much of a personal matter,--personal, one may say, in expression as well as in sensation.” He has always a “neat hand at an epithet,” and the “jolter-headed jargon” of Byron is no finer in its way than the “fanfaronade and falsetto of Gray.” But even the charms of alliteration, joined to the fish-wife’s slang which has recently so tickled the fancy of Punch,[11] cannot wholly replace that clear-headed serenity which is the true test of a critic’s worth and the most pleasing expression of his genius. He should have no visible inclination to praise or blame; it is not his business, as Mr. Bagehot puts it, to be thankful, and neither is he the queen’s attorney pleading for conviction. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who considered that Byron was “the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare,” presented his arguments plainly and without the faintest show of enthusiasm. He did not feel the need of reviling somebody else in order to emphasize his views, and he did not care to advance opinions without some satisfactory explanation of their existence. Mr. Courthope may content himself with saying that a matter is one not for argument, but for perception; but Mr. Arnold gave a reason for the faith that was in him. Mere preference on the part of a critic is not a sufficient sanction for his verdicts, or at least it does not warrant his imparting them to the public. Swinburne may honestly think four lines of Wordsworth to be of more value than the whole of Byron, but that is no reason why we should think so too. When Mr. George Saintsbury avows a strong personal liking for some favorite authors,--Borrow and Peacock, for instance,--he modestly states that this fact is not in itself a convincing proof of their merit; but when Mr. Ernest Myers says that he would sacrifice the whole of Childe Harold to preserve one of Macaulay’s Lays, he seems to be offering a really impressive piece of evidence. The tendency of critics to rush into print with whatever they chance to think has resulted in readers who naturally believe that what they think is every bit as good. Macaulay and Walter Savage Landor are both instances of men whose unusual powers of discernment were too often dimmed by their prejudices. Macaulay knew that Montgomery’s poetry was bad, but he failed to see that Fouqué’s prose was good; and Landor hit right and left, amid friends and foes, like the blinded Ajax scourging the harmless flocks.

It is quite as amusing and far less painful to turn from the critics’ indiscriminate abuse to their equally indiscriminate praise, and to read the glowing tributes heaped upon authors whose mediocrity has barely saved them from oblivion. Compare the universal rapture which greeted “the majestick numbers of Mr. Cowley” to the indifference which gave scant welcome to the Hesperides. Mr. Gosse tells us that for half a century Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda, was an unquestioned light in English song. “Her name was mentioned with those of Sappho and Corinna, and language was used without reproach which would have seemed a little fulsome if addressed to the Muse herself.”

“For, as in angels, we
Do in thy verses see
Both improved sexes eminently meet;
They are than Man more strong, and more than Woman sweet.”

So sang Cowley to this much admired lady; and the Earl of Roscommon, in some more extravagant and amusing stanzas, asserted it to be his unique experience that, on meeting a pack of angry wolves in Scythia,

“The magic of Orinda’s name
Not only can their fierceness tame,
But, if that mighty word I once rehearse,
They seem submissively to roar in verse.”

“It is easier to flatter than to praise,” says Jean Paul, but even flattery is not always the facile work it seems.

Sir Walter Scott, who was strangely disposed to undervalue his own merit as a poet, preserved the most genuine enthusiasm for the work of others. When his little daughter was asked by James Ballantyne what she thought of The Lady of the Lake, she answered with perfect simplicity that she had not read it. “Papa says there is nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry.” Yet Sir Walter always spoke of Madoc and Thalaba with a reverence that would seem ludicrous were it not so frankly sincere. Southey himself could not have admired them more; and when Jeffrey criticised Madoc with flippant severity in the Edinburgh Review, we find Scott hastening to the rescue in a letter full of earnest and soothing praise. “A poem whose merits are of that higher tone,” he argues, “does not immediately take with the public at large. It is even possible that during your own life you must be contented with the applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare taste for discriminating in poetry. But the mere readers of verse must one day come in, and then Madoc will assume his real place, at the feet of Milton.”[12] The mere readers of verse, being in no wise responsible for Milton’s position in literature, have so far put no one at his feet; nor have they even verified Sir Walter’s judgment when, writing again to Southey, he says with astonishing candor, “I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor.” The same spirit of self-depreciation, rare enough to be attractive, made him write to Joanna Baillie that, after reading some of her songs, he had thrust by his own in despair.

But if Sir Walter was an uncertain critic, his views on criticism were marked by sound and kindly discretion, and his patience under attack was the result of an evenly balanced mind, conscious of its own strength, yet too sane to believe itself infallible. He had a singular fancy for showing his manuscripts to his friends, and it is quite delicious to see how doubtful and discouraging were their first comments. Gray, when hard pressed by the “light and genteel” verses of his companion, Richard West, was not more frugal of his doled-out praises. But Scott exacted homage neither from his acquaintances nor from the public. When it came--and it did come very soon in generous abundance--he basked willingly in the sunshine; but he had no uneasy vanity to be frightened by the shade. He would have been as sincerely amused to hear Mr. Borrow call Woodstock “tiresome, trashy, and unprincipled” as Matthew Arnold used to be when pelted with strong language by the London newspapers. “I have made a study of the Corinthian or leading-article style,” wrote the great critic, with exasperating urbanity; “and I know its exigencies, and that they are no more to be quarreled with than the law of gravitation.” In fact, the most hopeless barrier to strife is the steady indifference of a man who knows he has work to do, and who goes on doing it, irrespective of anybody’s opinion. Lady Harriet Ashburton, who dearly loved the war of words, in which she was sure to be a victor, was forced to confess that where no friction was excited, even her barbed shafts fell harmless. “It is like talking into a soft surface,” she sighed, with whimsical despondency; “there is no rebound.”

American critics have the reputation of being more kind-hearted than discriminating. The struggling young author, unless overweeningly foolish, has little to fear from their hands; and, if his reputation be once fairly established, all he chooses to write is received with a gratitude which seems excessive to the more exacting readers of France and England. If he be a humorist, we are always alert and straining to see the fun; if a story-teller, we politely smother our yawns, and say something about a keen analysis of character, a marked originality of treatment, or a purely unconventional theme; if a scholar, no pitfalls are dug for his unwary feet by reviewers like Mr. Collins. Such virulent and personal attacks we consider very uncomfortable reading, as in truth they are, and we have small appetite at any time for a sound kernel beneath a bitter rind. Yet surely in these days, when young students turn impatiently from the very fountain-heads of learning, too much stress cannot be laid on the continuity of literature, and on the absolute importance of the classics to those who would intelligently explore the treasure-house of English verse. Moreover, Mr. Collins has aimed a few well-directed shafts against the ingenious system of mutual admiration, by which a little coterie of writers, modern Della Cruscans, help each other into prominence, while an unsuspecting public is made “the willing dupe of puffers.” This delicate game, which is now conducted with such well-rewarded skill by a few enterprising players, consists, not so much in open flattery, though there is plenty of that too, as in the minute chronicling of every insignificant circumstance of each other’s daily lives, from the hour at which they breakfast to the amount of exercise they find conducive to appetite, and the shape and size of their dining-room tables. We are stifled by the literary gossip which fills the newspapers and periodicals. Nothing is too trivial, nothing too irrelevant, to be told; and when, in the midst of an article on any subject, from grand-dukes to gypsies, a writer gravely stops to explain that a perfectly valueless remark was made to him on such an occasion by his friend such a one, whose interesting papers on such a topic will be well remembered by the readers of such a magazine, we are forcibly reminded of the late Master of Trinity’s sarcasm as to the many things that are too unimportant to be forgotten.

People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism. There was a time, now happily past, when the reviewer’s skill lay simply in the clever detection of flaws; it was his business in life to find out whatever was weak or absurd in an author, and to hold it up for the amusement of those who were not quick enough to see such things for themselves. Now his functions are of a totally different order, and a great many writers seem to think it his sole duty to bring them before the public in an agreeable light, to say something about their books which will be pleasant for them to read and to pass over in turn to their friends. If he cannot do this, it is plain he has no sanction to say anything at all. That the critic has a duty to the public itself is seldom remembered; that his work is of the utmost importance, and second in value only to the original conception he analyzes, is a truth few people take the pains to grasp. Coleridge thought him a mere maggot, battening upon authors’ brains; yet how often has he helped us to gain some clear insight into this most shapeless and shadowy of great men! Wordsworth underrated his utility, yet Wordsworth’s criticisms, save those upon his own poems, are among the finest we can read; and, to argue after the fashion of Mr. Myers, the average student would gladly exchange The Idiot Boy, or Goody Blake and Harry Gill, for another letter upon Dryden. As a matter of fact, the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader. It is natural that poets and novelists should devoutly believe that the creative faculty alone is of any true service to the world, and that it cannot rightly be put to trial by those to whom this higher gift is rigorously denied. But the critical power, though on a distinctly lower level than the creative, is of inestimable help in its development. Great work thrives best in a critical atmosphere, and the clear light thrown upon the past is the surest of guides to the future. When the standard of criticism is high, when the influence of classical and foreign literature is understood and appreciated, when slovenly and ill-digested work is promptly recognized as such, then, and then only, may we look for the full expansion of a country’s genius. To be satisfied with less is an amiable weakness rather than an invigorating stimulant to perfection.

Matthew Arnold’s definition of true criticism is familiar to all his readers; it is simply “a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” But by disinterestedness he did not mean merely that a critic must have no distinct design of flattering either his subject or his audience. He meant that in order to recognize what is really the best a man must free himself from every form of passion or prejudice, from every fixed opinion, from every practical consideration. He must not look at things from an English, or a French, or an American, standpoint. He has no business with politics or patriotism. These things are excellent in themselves, and may be allowed to control his actions in other matters; but when the question at issue is the abstract beauty of a poem, a painting, a statue, or a piece of architecture, he is expected to stand apart from his every-day self, and to judge of it by some higher and universal law. This is a difficult task for most men, who do not respire easily in such exceedingly rarefied air, and who have no especial taste for blotting out their individuality. With Macaulay, for instance, political considerations frankly outweigh all others; he gives us the good Whig and the wicked Tory on every page, after the fashion of Hogarth’s idle and industrious apprentices. Mr. Bagehot, while a far less transparent writer, manifests himself indirectly in his literary preferences. When we have read his essay on Shakespeare, we feel pretty sure we know his views on universal suffrage. Mr. Andrew Lang has indeed objected vehemently to the intrusion of politics into literature, perhaps because of a squeamish distaste for the harsh wranglings of the political field. But Mr. Arnold was incapable of confusing the two ideas. His taste for Celtic poetry and his attitude towards home rule are both perfectly defined and perfectly isolated sentiments; just as his intelligent admiration and merciless condemnation of Heinrich Heine stand side by side, living witnesses of a mind that held its own balance, losing nothing that was good, condoning nothing that was evil, as far removed from weak enthusiasm on the one hand as from frightened depreciation on the other.

It is folly to rail at the critic until we have learned his value; it is folly to ignore a help which we are not too wise to need. “The best that is known and thought in the world” does not stand waiting for admission on our door-steps. Like the happiness of Hesiod, it “abides very far hence, and the way to it is long and steep and rough.” It is hard to seek, hard to find, and not easily understood when discovered. Criticism does not mean a random opinion on the last new novel, though even the most dismal of light literature comes fairly within its scope. It means a disinterested endeavor to learn and to teach whatever wisdom or beauty has been added by every age and every nation to the great inheritance of mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[11]

“But when poet Swinburne steps into the fray,
And slangs like a fish-wife, what, _what_ can one say?”

[12] Compare Charles Lamb’s letter to Coleridge: “On the whole I expect Southey one day to rival Milton; I already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living poets besides.”

SOME ASPECTS OF PESSIMISM.

When Mr. Matthew Arnold delivered his lecture on Emerson in this country, several years ago, it was delightful to see how the settled melancholy of his audience, who had come for a panegyric and did not get it, melted into genial applause when the lecturer touched at last upon the one responsive chord which bound his subject, his hearers, and himself in a sympathetic harmony,--I mean Emerson’s lifelong, persistent, and unconquerable optimism. This was perhaps the more apparent because Mr. Arnold’s addresses were not precisely the kind with which we Americans are best acquainted; they were singularly deficient in the oratorical flights that are wont to arouse our enthusiasm, and in the sudden descents to colloquial anecdote by which we expect to be amused. For real enjoyment it was advisable to read them over carefully after they were printed, and the oftener they were so read the better they repaid perusal; but this not being the point of view from which ordinary humanity is apt to regard a lecture, it was with prompt and genuine relief that the audience hailed a personal appeal to that cheerful, healthy hopefulness of disposition which we like to be told we possess in common with greater men. It is always pleasant to hear that happiness is “the due and eternal result of labor, righteousness, and veracity,” and to have it hinted to us that we have sane and wholesome minds because we think so; it is pleasanter still to be assured that the disparaging tone which religion assumes in relation to this earthly happiness arises from a well-intentioned desire to wean us from it, and not at all from a clear-sighted conviction of its feeble worth. When Mr. Arnold recited for our benefit a cheerless little scrap of would-be pious verse which he had heard read in a London schoolroom, all about the advantages of dying,--

“For the world at best is a dreary place,
And my life is getting low,”--

we were glad to laugh over such dismal philosophy, and to feel within ourselves an exhilarating superiority of soul.

But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full-blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile. Mr. Arnold, like Mr. Emerson, preached the gospel of compensation with much picturesqueness and beauty; but his arguments would be more convincing if our own observation and experience did not so mulishly stand in their way. A recent writer in Cornhill, who ought to be editing a magazine for Arcady, asserts with charming simplicity that man “finds a positive satisfaction in putting himself on a level with others, and in recognizing that he has his just share of life’s enjoyments.” But suppose that he cannot reach the level of others, or be persuaded that his share is just? The good things of life are not impartially divided, like the spaces on a draught-board, and man, who is a covetous animal, will never be content with a little, while his comrade enjoys a great deal. Neither does he find the solace that is expected in the contemplation of the unfortunate who has nothing; for this view of the matter, besides being a singular plea for the compensation theory, appeals too coarsely to that root of selfishness which we are none of us anxious to exhibit. The average fustian-clad man is not too good to envy his neighbor’s broadcloth, but he _is_ too good to take comfort in his brother’s nakedness. The sight of it may quicken his gratitude, but can hardly increase his happiness. Yet what did Mr. Arnold mean in his poem of Consolation--which is very charming, but not in the least consoling--save that the joys and sorrows of each hour balance themselves in a just proportion, and that the lovers’ raptures and the blind robber’s pain level the eternal scales. It is not a cheering bit of philosophy, whatever might have been the author’s intention, for the very existence of suffering darkens the horizon for thoughtful souls. It would be an insult on the part of the lovers--lovers are odious things at best--to offer their arrogant bliss as indemnification to the wretch for his brimming cup of bitterness; but the vision of his seared eyeballs and sin-laden soul might justly moderate their own expansive felicity. Sorrow has a claim on all mankind, and when the utmost that Mr. Arnold could promise for our consolation was that time, the impartial,

“Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours.”

we did not feel that he afforded us any broad ground for self-complacency.

The same key is struck with more firmness in that strange poem, The Sick King in Bokhara, where the vizier can find no better remedy for his master’s troubled mind than by pointing out to him the vast burden of misery which rests upon the world, and which he is utterly powerless to avert. It is hardly worth while, so runs the vizier’s argument, for the king to vex his soul over the sufferings of one poor criminal, whom his pity could not save, when the same tragic drama is being played with variations in every quarter of the globe. Behold, thousands are toiling for hard masters, armies are laying waste the peaceful land, robbers are harassing the mountain shepherds, and little children are being carried into captivity.

“The Kaffirs also (whom God curse!)
Vex one another night and day;
There are the lepers, and all sick;
There are the poor, who faint away.

“All these have sorrow and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer and sing.
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O king!”

Whereupon the sick monarch, who does not seem greatly cheered by this category, adds in a disconsolate sort of way that he too, albeit envied of all men, finds his secret burdens hard to bear, and that not even to him is granted the fulfillment of desire,--

“And what I would, I cannot do.”

Unless the high priests of optimism shall find us some stouter arguments than these with which to make merry our souls, it is to be feared that their opponents, who have at least the knack of stating their cases with pitiless lucidity, will hardly think our buoyancy worth pricking.

As for that small and compact band who steadfastly refuse to recognize in “this sad, swift life” any occasion for self-congratulation, they are not so badly off, in spite of their funereal trappings, as we are commonly given to suppose. It is only necessary to read a page of their writings--and few people care to read more--to appreciate how thoroughly they enjoy the situation, and how, sitting with Hecate in her cave, they weave delicate thoughts out of their chosen darkness. They are full of the hopefulness of despair, and confident in the strength of the world’s weakness. They assume that they not only represent great fundamental truths, but that these truths are for the first time being put forth in a concrete shape for the edification and adherence of mankind. Mr. Edgar Saltus informs us that, while optimism is as old as humanity, “systematic pessimism” is but a growth of the last half century, before which transition period we can find only individual expressions of discontent. Mr. Mallock claims that he is the first who has ever inquired into the worth of life “in the true scientific spirit.” But when we come to ask in what systematic or scientific pessimism differs from the older variety which has found a home in the hearts of men from the beginning, we do not receive any very coherent answer. From Mr. Mallock, indeed, we hardly expect any. It is his province in literature to propose problems which the reader, after the fashion of The Lady or the Tiger? is permitted to solve for himself. But does Mr. Saltus really suppose that Schopenhauer and Hartmann have made much headway in reducing sadness to a science, that love is in any danger of being supplanted by the “genius of the species,” or that the “principle of the unconscious” is at all likely to extinguish our controlling force? What have these two subtle thinkers said to the world that the world has not practically known and felt for thousands of years already? Hegesias, three centuries before Christ, was quite as systematic as Schopenhauer, and his system begot more definite results; for several of his disciples hanged themselves out of deference for his teachings, whereas it may be seriously doubted whether all the persuasive arguments of the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung have ever made or are likely to make a single celibate. Marcus Aurelius was as logically convinced of the inherent worthlessness of life as Dr. Hartmann, and, without any scientific apparatus whatever, he stamped his views on the face of a whole nation. We are now anxiously warned by Mr. Saltus not to confound scientific pessimism with that accidental melancholy which is the result of our own personal misfortunes; but Leopardi, whose unutterable despair arose solely from his personal misfortunes, or rather from his moral inability to cope with them,--for Joubert, who suffered as much, has left a trail of heavenly light upon his path,--Leopardi alone lays bare for us the

“Tears that spring and increase
In the barren places of mirth,”

with an appalling accuracy from which we are glad to turn away our shocked and troubled eyes.

It is a humiliating fact that, notwithstanding our avaricious greed for novelties, we are forced, when sincere, to confess that “_les anciens ont tout dit_,” and that it is probable the contending schools of thought have always held the same relative positions they do now: optimism glittering in the front ranks as a deservedly popular favorite; pessimism speaking with a still, persistent voice to those who, unluckily for themselves, have the leisure and the intelligence to attend. Schopenhauer hated the Jews with all his heart for being such stubborn optimists, and it is true that their records bear ample witness to the strong hold they took on the pleasures and the profits of the world. But their noblest and clearest voices, Isaias, Jeremias, Ezekiel, speak a different language; and Solomon, who, it must be granted, enjoyed a wider experience than most men, renders a cheerless verdict of vanity and vexation of spirit for “all things that are done under the sun.” The Egyptians, owing chiefly to their tender solicitude about their tombs, have taken rank in history as a people enamoured rather of death than of life; and from the misty flower-gardens of Buddha have been gathered for centuries the hemlock and nightshade that adorn the funeral-wreaths of literature.

But the Greeks, the blithe and jocund Greeks, who, as Mr. Arnold justly observed, ought never to have been either sick or sorry,--to them, at least, we can turn for that wholesome joy, that rational delight in mere existence, which we have somehow let slip from our nerveless grasp. Whether it was because this world gave him so much, such rare perfection in all material things, or because his own conception of the world to come promised him so exceedingly little,--for one or both of these reasons, the average Greek preferred to cling tenaciously to the good he had, to the hills, and the sea, and the sunshine, rather than to

“Move among shadows, a shadow, and wail by impassable streams;”

and his choice, under the circumstances, is perhaps hardly a matter for amazement. That a people so richly endowed should be in love with life seems to us right and natural; that amid their keen realization of its fullness and beauty we find forever sounded--and not always in a minor key--the same old notes of weariness and pain is a discouraging item, when we would like to build up an exhaustive theory of happiness. Far, far back, in the Arcadian days of Grecian piety and simplicity, the devout agriculturist Hesiod looked sorrowfully over the golden fields, searching vainly for a joy that remained ever out of reach. Homer, in a passage which Mr. Peacock says is nearly always incorrectly translated, has given us a summary of life which would not put a modern German to the blush:--

“Jove, from his urns dispensing good and ill,
Gives ill unmixed to some, and good and ill
Mingled to many, good unmixed to none.”

Sophocles says uncompromisingly that man’s happiest fate is not to be born at all; and that, failing this good fortune, the next best thing is to die as quickly as possible. Menander expresses the same thought more sweetly:--

“Whom the gods love die young;”

and Euripides, the most reverent soul ever saddened by the barrenness of paganism, forces into one bitter line all the bleak hopelessness of which the Greek tragedy alone is capable:--

“Life is called life, but it is truly pain.”

Even as isolated sentiments, these ever-recurring reflections diminish perceptibly the sum of a nation’s gayety, and, if we receive the drama as the mouthpiece of the people, we are inclined to wonder now and then how they ever could have been cheerful at all. It is easy, on the other hand, to point to Admetos and Antigone as two standing examples of the great value the Greeks placed upon life; for the sacrifice of Alkestis was not in their eyes the sordid bargain it appears in ours, and the daughter of Œdipus goes to her death with a shrinking reluctance seemingly out of keeping with her heroic mould. But Admetos, excuse him as we may, is but a refinement of a common type, old as mankind, and no great credit to its ranks. He may be found in every page of the world’s history, from the siege of Jerusalem to the siege of Paris. À Kempis has transfixed him with sharp scorn in his chapter On the Consideration of Human Misery, and a burning theatre or a sinking ship betray him, shorn of poetical disguise, in all his unadorned brutality. But to find fault with Antigone, the noblest figure in classical literature, because she manifests a natural dislike for being buried alive is to carry our ideal of heroism a little beyond reason. Flesh and blood shrink from the sickening horror that lays its cold hand upon her heart. She is young, beautiful, and beloved, standing on the threshold of matrimony, and clinging with womanly tenderness to the sacred joys that are never to be hers. She is a martyr in a just cause, but without one ray of that divine ecstasy that sent Christian maidens smiling to the lions. Beyond a chilly hope that she will not be unwelcome to her parents, or to the brother she has vainly striven to save from desecration, Antigone descends

“Into the dreary mansions of the dead,”

uncheered by any throb of expectation. Finally, the manner of her death is too appalling to be met with stoicism. Juliet, the bravest of Shakespeare’s heroines, quails before the thought of a few unconscious hours spent in the darkness of the tomb; and if our more exalted views demand indifference to such a fate, we must not look to the Greeks, nor to him who

“Saw life steadily, and saw it whole,”

for the fulfillment of our idle fancy.

Youth, health, beauty, and virtue were to the ancient mind the natural requisites for happiness; yet even these favors were so far at best from securing it, that “nature’s most pleasing invention, early death,” was too often esteemed the rarest gift of all. When Schopenhauer says of the fourth commandment, “‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,’--ah! what a misfortune to hold out as a reward for duty!” we feel both shocked and repulsed by this deliberate rejection of what is offered us as a blessing; but it is at least curious to note that the happy Greeks held much the same opinion. When the sons of Cydippe--those models of filial devotion--shamed not to yoke themselves like oxen to the cart, and with strong young arms to drag their mother to the feast of Hera, the ancient priestess begged of the dread goddess that she would grant them her best gift; and the prayer was answered, not with length of days, nor with the regal power and splendor promised of old to Paris, but with a boon more precious still than all.

“Whereat the statue from its jeweled eyes
Lightened, and thunder ran from cloud to cloud
In heaven, and the vast company was hushed.
But when they sought for Cleobis, behold,
He lay there still, and by his brother’s side
Lay Biton, smiling through ambrosial curls,
And when the people touched them they were dead.”[13]

It is hard to assert in the face of a narrative like this that the Greeks valued nothing as much as the mere delight of existence.

As for the favorite theory that Christianity is responsible for the weakening of earthly happiness, and that her ministers have systematically disparaged the things of this world in order to quicken our desire for things eternal, it might suffice to hint that Christianity is a large word, and represents at present a great many different phases of thought. Mr. Arnold objected, rationally enough, to the lugubrious hymns from which the English middle classes are wont to draw their spiritual refreshment; and Dr. Holmes, it will be remembered, has spoken quite as strongly in regard to their depressing influence upon New England households. But Christianity and the modern hymn-book are by no means synonymous terms, and to claim that the early church deliberately lowered the scale of human joy is a very different and a very grave charge, and one which Mr. Pater, in Marius the Epicurean, has striven valiantly to refute. With what clear and delicate touches he paints for us the innocent gayety of that new birth,--a gayety with no dark background, and no heart-breaking limits of time and space. Compared to it, the sombre and multitudinous rites of the Romans and the far-famed blitheness of the Greeks seem incurably narrow and insipid. The Christians of the catacombs were essentially a cheerful body, having for their favorite emblem the serene image of the Good Shepherd, and believing firmly that “grief is the sister of doubt and ill-temper, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man.” If in the Middle Ages the Church apparently darkened earth to brighten heaven, it was simply because she took life as she found it, and strove, as she still strives, to teach the only doctrine of compensation that the tyranny of facts cannot cheaply overthrow. The mediæval peasant may have been less badly off, on the whole, than we are generally pleased to suppose. He was, from all accounts, a robust, unreasoning creature, who held his neck at the mercy of his feudal lord, and the rest of his scanty possessions at the discretion of the tax-gatherer; but who had not yet bared his back to the intolerable sting of that modern gadfly, the professional agitator, and socialistic champion of the poor. Yet even without this last and sorest infliction, it is probable that life was to him but little worth the living, and that religion could not well paint the world much blacker than he found it. There was scant need, in his case, for disparaging the pleasures of the flesh; and hope, lingering alone in his Pandora box of troubles, saved him from utter annihilation by pointing steadily beyond the doors of death.

As a matter of fact, the abstract question of whether our present existence be enjoyable or otherwise is one which creeds do not materially modify. A pessimist may be deeply religious like Pascal and Châteaubriand, or utterly skeptical like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, or purely philosophical like faint-hearted Amiel. He may agree with Lamennais, that “man is the most suffering of all creatures;” or with Voltaire, that “happiness is a dream, and pain alone is real.” He may listen to Saint Theresa, “It is given to us either to die or to suffer;” or to Leopardi, “Life is fit only to be despised.” He may read in the diary of that devout recluse, Eugénie de Guérin that “dejection is the ground-work of human life;” or he may turn over the pages of Sir Walter Raleigh, and see how a typical man of the world, soldier, courtier, and navigator, can find no words ardent enough in which to praise “the workmanship of death, that finishes the sorrowful business of a wretched life.” I do not mean to imply that Leopardi and Eugénie de Guérin regarded existence from the same point of view, or found the same solace for their pain; but that they both struck the keynote of pessimistic philosophy by recognizing that, in this world at least, sorrow outbalances joy, and that it is given to all men to eat their bread in tears. On the other hand, if we are disinclined to take this view, we shall find no lack of guides, both saints and sinners, ready to look the Sphinx smilingly in the face, and puzzle out a different answer to her riddle.

Another curious notion is that poets have a prescriptive right to pessimism, and should feel themselves more or less obliged, in virtue of their craft, to take upon their shoulders the weight of suffering humanity. Mr. James Sully, for instance, whose word, as a student of these matters, cannot be disregarded, thinks it natural and almost inevitable that a true poet should be of a melancholy cast, by reason of the sensitiveness of his moral nature and his exalted sympathy for pain. But it has yet to be proved that poets are a more compassionate race than their obscurer brethren who sit in counting-houses or brew beer. They are readier, indeed, to moralize over the knife-grinder, but quite as slow to tip him the coveted sixpence. Shelley, whose soul swelled at the wrongs of all mankind, did not hesitate to inflict pain on the one human being whom it was his obvious duty to protect. But then Shelley, like Carlyle, belonged to the category of reformers rather than to the pessimists; believing that though the world as he saw it was as bad as possible, things could be easily mended by simply turning them topsy-turvy under his direction. Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. He does not flatter himself for a moment that he can alter the existing state of evil, or that the human race, by its combined efforts, can do anything better than simply cease to live. He may entertain with Novalis a shadowy hope that when mankind, wearied of its own impotence, shall efface itself from the bosom of the earth, a better and happier species shall fill the vacant land. Or he may believe with Hartmann that there is even less felicity possible in the coming centuries than in the present day; that humanity is already on the wane; that the higher we stand in the physical and intellectual scale the more inevitable becomes our suffering; and that when men shall have thrown aside the last illusion of their youth, namely, the hope of any obtainable good either in this world or in another, they will then no longer consent to bear the burden of life, but, by the supreme force of their united volition, will overcome the resistance of nature, and achieve the destruction of the universe. But under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

To return to the poets, however, it is edifying to hear Mr. Leslie Stephen assert that “nothing is less poetical than optimism,” or to listen to Mr. John Addington Symonds, who, scanning the thoughtful soul for a solution of man’s place in the order of creation, can find for him no more joyous task than, Prometheus-like,

“To dree life’s doom on Caucasus.”

Even when a poem appears to the uninitiated to be of a cheerful, not to say blithesome cast, the critics are busy reading unutterable sadness between the lines; and while we smile at Puck, and the fairies, and the sweet Titania nursing her uncouth love, we must remember that the learned Dr. Ulrici has pronounced the Midsummer Night’s Dream to be a serious homily, preached with grave heart to an unthinking world. But is Robin Goodfellow really a missionary in disguise, and are the poets as pessimistic in their teaching as their interpreters would have us understand? Heine undoubtedly was, and Byron pretended to be. Keats, with all the pathos of his shadowed young life, was nothing of the sort, nor was Milton, nor Goethe, nor Wordsworth; while Scott, lost, apparently, to the decent requirements of his art, confessed unblushingly that fortune could not long play a dirge upon his buoyant spirits. And Shakespeare? Why, he was all and everything. Day and night, sunlight and starlight, were embraced in his affluent nature. He laid his hand on the quivering pulses of the world, and, recognizing that life was often in itself both pleasant and good, he yet knew, and knew it without pain, that death was better still. Look only at the character of Horatio, the very type of the blithe, sturdy, and somewhat commonplace young student, to whom enjoyment seems a birthright,--

“A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks.”

Yet it is to this man, of all others, that the dying Hamlet utters the pathetic plea,--

“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.”

Here at last is a ray of real light, guiding us miles away from the murky paths of modern French and English poetry, where we have stumbled along, growing despondent in the gloom. To brave life cheerfully, to welcome death gladly, are possible things, after all, and better worth man’s courage and convictions than to dree on Caucasus forever.

It is ludicrous to turn from the poets to the politicians, but nowadays every question, even the old unanswered one, “Is life worth living?” must needs be viewed from its political standpoint. What can be more delightful than to hear Mr. Courthope assert that optimism is the note of the Liberal party, while the Conservatives are necessarily pessimistic?--especially when one remembers the genial utterance of Mr. Walter Bagehot, contending that the very essence of Toryism is enjoyment. “The way to be satisfied with existing things is to enjoy them.” Yet Sir Francis Doyle bears witness in his memoirs that the stoutest of Tories can find plenty to grumble at, which is not altogether surprising in a sadly ill-regulated world; and while the optimistic Liberal fondly believes that he is marching straight along the chosen road to the gilded towers of El Dorado, the less sanguine Conservative contents himself with trying, after his dull, practical fashion, to step clear of some of the ruts and quagmires by the way. As for the extreme Radicals,--and every nation has its full share of these gentry,--their optimism is too glittering for sober eyes to bear. A classical tradition says that each time Sisyphos rolls his mighty stone up the steep mountain side he believes that it will reach the summit; and, its ever-repeated falls failing to teach him any surer lesson, his doom, like that of our reforming brothers, is softened into eternal hope. But it may at least be questioned whether the other inhabitants of Tartarus--none of whom, it will be remembered, are without their private grievances--do not occasionally weary of the dust and racket, and of the great ball forever thundering about their ears, as it rolls impotently down to the level whence it came.

The pessimist, however,--be it recorded to his credit,--is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced. We have, indeed, an anecdote of Dr. Johnson, who broadly asserted upon one occasion that no one could well be happy in this world, whereupon an unreasonable old lady had the bad taste to contradict him, and to insist that she, for one, was happy, and knew it. “Madam,” replied the irate philosopher, “it is impossible. You are old, you are ugly, you are sickly and poor. How, then, can you be happy?” But this, we think, was rather a natural burst of indignation on the good doctor’s part than a distinct attempt at proselytizing, though it is likely that he somewhat damped the boasted felicity of his antagonist. Schopenhauer, the great apostle of pessimism, while willing enough to make converts on a grand scale, was scornfully unconcerned about the every-day opinions of his every-day--I was going to say associates, but the fact is that Schopenhauer was never guilty of really associating with anybody. He had at all times the courage of his convictions, and delighted in illustrating his least attractive theories. Teaching asceticism, he avoided women; despising human companionship, he isolated himself from men. A luminous selfishness guided him through life, and saved him from an incredible number of discomforts. It was his rule to expect nothing, to desire as little as possible, and to learn all he could. Want, he held to be the scourge of the poor, as _ennui_ is that of the rich; accordingly, he avoided the one by looking sharply after his money, and the other by working with unremitting industry. Pleasure, he insisted, was but a purely negative quality, a mere absence from pain. He smiled at the sweet, hot delusions of youth, and shrugged his shoulders over the limitless follies of manhood, regarding both from the standpoint of a wholly disinterested observer. If the test of happiness in the Arabian paradise be to hear the measured beating of one’s own heart, Schopenhauer was certainly qualified for admission. Even in this world he was so far from being miserable, that an atmosphere of snug comfort surrounds the man whose very name has become a synonym for melancholy; and to turn from his cold and witty epigrams to the smothered despair that burdens Leopardi’s pages is like stepping at once from a pallid, sunless afternoon into the heart of midnight. It is always a pleasant task for optimists to dwell as much as possible on the buoyancy with which every healthy man regards his unknown future, and on the natural pleasure he takes in recalling the brightness of the past; but Leopardi, playing the trump card of pessimism, demonstrates with merciless precision the insufficiency of such relief. We cannot in reason expect, he argues, that, with youth behind us and old age in front, our future will be any improvement on our past, for with increasing years come increasing sorrows to all men; and as for the boasted happiness of that past, which of us would live it over again for the sake of the joys it contained? Memory cheats us no less than hope by hazing over those things that we would fain forget; but who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?

Such thoughts are not cheerful companions; but if they stand the test of application, it is useless to call them morbid. The pessimist does not contend that there is no happiness in life, but that, for the generality of mankind, it is outbalanced by trouble; and this flinty assurance is all he has to offer in place of the fascinating theory of compensation. It would seem as though no sane man could hesitate between them, if he had the choice, for one pleasant delusion is worth a hundred disagreeable facts; but in this serious and truth-hunting age people have forgotten the value of fiction, and, like sulky children, refuse to play at anything. Certainly it would be hard to find a more dispiriting literature than we enjoy at present. Scientists, indeed, are reported by those who have the strength of mind to follow them as being exceedingly merry and complacent; but the less ponderous illuminati, to whom feebler souls turn instinctively for guidance, are shining just now with a severe and chastened light. When on pleasure bent they are as frugal as Mrs. Gilpin, but they sup sorrow with a long spoon, utterly regardless of their own or their readers’ digestions. Germany still rings with Heine’s discordant laughter, and France, rich in the poets of decadence, offers us Les Fleurs du Mal to wear upon our bosoms. England listens, sighing, while Carlyle’s denunciations linger like muttering thunder in the air; or while Mr. Ruskin, “the most inspired of the modern prophets,” vindicates his oracular spirit by crying,

“Woe! woe! O earth! Apollo, O Apollo!”

with the monotonous persistency of Cassandra. Mr. Mallock, proud to kneel at Mr. Ruskin’s feet as “an intellectual debtor to a public teacher,” binds us in his turn within the fine meshes of his exhaustless subtleties, until we grow light-headed rather than light-hearted under such depressing manipulation. Mr. Pater, who at one time gave us to understand that he would teach us how to enjoy life, has, so far, revealed nothing but its everlasting sadness. If the old Cyrenaics were no gayer than their modern representatives, Aristippus of Cyrene might just as well have been Diogenes sulking in his tub, or Heraclitus adding useless tears to the trickling moisture of his cave.

Even our fiction has grown disconcertingly sad within the last few years, and with a new order of sadness, invented apparently to keep pace with the melancholy march of mind. The novelist of the past had but two courses open to him: either to leave Edwin and Angelina clasped in each other’s arms, or to provide for one of them a picturesque and daisy-strewn grave. Ordinarily he chose the former alternative, as being less harassing to himself, and more gratifying to his readers. Books that end badly have seldom been really popular, though sometimes a tragic conclusion is essential to the artistic development of the story. When Tom and Maggie Tulliver go down, hand in hand, amid the rushing waters of the Floss, we feel, even through our tears,--and mine are fresh each time I read the page,--that the one possible solution of the problem, has been reached; that only thus could the widely contrasting natures of brother and sister meet in unison, and the hard-fought battle be gained. Such an end is not sad, it is happy and beautiful; and, moreover, it is in a measure inevitable, the climax being shadowed from the beginning, as in the tragedy of the Greeks, and the whole tale moving swiftly and surely to its appointed close. If we compare a finely chiseled piece of work like this with the flat, faintly colored sketches which are at present passing muster for novels, we feel that beauty of form is something not compounded of earthly materials only, and that neither the savage strength of French and Russian realism, nor the dreary monotony of German speculative fiction, can lift us any nearer the tranquil realms of art.