Chapter VI: Part 6

Simple, brave, resolute, manly, a little given to "robustiousness," Kingsley transfigured all these qualities by possessing the soul and the heart of a poet. He was not a very great poet, indeed, but a true poet--one of the very small band who are cut off, by a gulf that can never be passed, from mere writers of verse, however clever, educated, melodious, ingenious, amiable, and refined. He had the real spark of fire, the true note; though the spark might seldom break into flame, and the note was not always clear. Never let us confuse true poets with writers of verse, still less with writers of "poetic prose." Kingsley wrote a great deal of that-perhaps too much: his descriptions of scenes are not always as good as in Hereward's ride round the Fens, or when the tall, Spanish galleon staggers from the revenge of man to the vengeance of God, to her doom through the mist, to her rest in the sea. Perhaps only a poet could have written that prose; it is certain no writer of "poetic prose" could have written Kingsley's poems.

His songs are his best things; they really are songs, not merely lyric poems. They have the merit of being truly popular, whether they are romantic, like "The Sands o' Dee," which actually reproduces the best qualities of the old ballad; or whether they are pathetic, like the "Doll's Song," in "Water Babies"; or whether they attack an abuse, as in the song of "The Merry Brown Hares"; or whether they soar higher, as in "Deep, deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding"; or whether they are mere noble nonsense, as in "Lorraine Loree":--

"She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the gallant lass was she,
And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could be;
But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree;
Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see,
And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree."

The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather made a brave and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern life, than that he directed any movement of forces. He kept cheering, as it were, and waving his sword with a contagious enthusiasm. Being a poet, and a man both of heart and of sentiment, he was equally attached to the best things of the old world and to the best of the new world, as far as one can forecast what it is to be. He loved the stately homes of England, the ancient graduated order of society, the sports of the past, the military triumphs, the patriotic glories. But he was also on the side of the poor: as "Parson Lot" he attempted to be a Christian Socialist.

Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take everything; the Christians are the persons who do not want to give more than they find convenient. Kingsley himself was ready to give, and did give, his time, his labour, his health, and probably his money, to the poor. But he was by no means minded that they should swallow up the old England with church and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, beauty, learning, refinement. The man who wrote "Alton Locke," the story of the starved tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept when he heard a fox bark, and reflected that the days of fox-hunting were numbered. He had a poet's politics, Colonel Newcome's politics. He was for England, for the poor, for the rich, for the storied houses of the chivalrous past, for the cottage, for the hall; and was dead against the ideas of Manchester, and of Mr. John Bright. "My father," he says in a letter, "would have put his hand to a spade or an axe with any man, and so could I pretty well, too, when I was in my prime; and my eldest son is now working with his own hands at farming, previous to emigrating to South America, where he will do the drudgery of his own cattle-pens and sheepfolds; and if I were twenty-four and unmarried I would go out there too, and work like an Englishman, and live by the sweat of my brow."

This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was thus _they_ lived, when not at war--thus that every gentleman who has youth and health should work, winning new worlds for his class, in place of this miserable, over-crowded, brawling England. This, I think, was, or should have been, the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the generations to come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, he had that drop of wild blood which drives men from town into the air and the desert, wherever there are savage lands to conquer, beasts to hunt, and a hardy life to be lived. But he was the son of a clergyman, and a clergyman himself. The spirit that should have gone into action went into talking, preaching, writing--all sources of great pleasure to thousands of people, and so not wasted. Yet these were not the natural outlets of Kingsley's life: he should have been a soldier, or an explorer; at least, we may believe that he would have preferred such fortune. He did his best, the best he knew, and it is all on the side of manliness, courage, kindness. Perhaps he tried too many things--science, history, fairy tales, religious and political discussions, romance, poetry. Poetry was what he did best, romance next; his science and his history are entertaining, but without authority.

This, when one reads it again, seems a cold, unfriendly estimate of a man so ardent and so genuine, a writer so vivacious and courageous as Kingsley. Even the elderly reviewer bears to him, and to his brother Henry, a debt he owes to few of their generation. The truth is we should _read_ Kingsley; we must not criticise him. We must accept him and be glad of him, as we accept a windy, sunny autumn day--beautiful and blusterous--to be enjoyed and struggled with. If once we stop and reflect, and hesitate, he seems to preach too much, and with a confidence which his knowledge of the world and of history does not justify. To be at one with Kingsley we must be boys again, and that momentary change cannot but be good for us. Soon enough--too soon--we shall drop back on manhood, and on all the difficulties and dragons that Kingsley drove away by a blast on his chivalrous and cheery horn.

CHARLES LEVER: HIS BOOKS, ADVENTURES AND MISFORTUNES

Surely it is a pleasant thing that there are books, like other enjoyments, for all ages. You would not have a boy prefer whist to fives, nor tobacco to toffee, nor Tolstoi to Charles Lever. The ancients reckoned Tyrtaecus a fine poet, not that he was particularly melodious or reflective, but that he gave men heart to fight for their country. Charles Lever has done as much. In his biography, by Mr. Fitzpatrick, it is told that a widow lady had but one son, and for him she obtained an appointment at Woolwich. The boy was timid and nervous, and she fancied that she must find for him some other profession--perhaps that of literature. But he one day chanced on Lever's novels, and they put so much heart into him that his character quite altered, and he became the bravest of the brave.

Lever may not do as much for every one, but he does teach contempt of danger, or rather, delight in it: a gay, spontaneous, boyish kind of courage--Irish courage at its best. We may get more good from that than harm from all his tales of much punch and many drinking bouts. These are no longer in fashion and are not very gay reading, perhaps, but his stories and songs, his duels and battles and hunting scenes are as merry and as good as ever. Wild as they seem in the reading, they are not far from the truth, as may be gathered out of "Barrington's Memoirs," and their tales of the reckless Irish life some eighty years ago.

There were two men in Charles Lever--a glad man and a sad man. The gaiety was for his youth, when he poured out his "Lorrequers" and "O'Malleys," all the mirth and memories of his boyhood, all the tales of fighting and feasting he gleaned from battered, seasoned old warriors, like Major Monsoon. Even then, Mr. Thackeray, who knew him, and liked and laughed at him, recognised through his merriment "the fund of sadness beneath." "The author's character is _not_ humour, but sentiment . . . extreme delicacy, sweetness and kindliness of heart. The spirits are mostly artificial, the _fond_ is sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and people." Even in "Charles O'Malley," what a true, dark picture that is of the duel beside the broad, angry river on the level waste under the wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, Bodkin, and with Considine, his second, is making his escape. "Considine cried out suddenly, 'Too infamous, by Jove: we are murdered men!'"

"'What do you mean?' said I.

"'Don't you see that?' said he, pointing to something black which floated from a pole at the opposite side of the river.

"'Yes; what is it?'

"'It's his coat they've put upon an oar, to show the people he's killed--that's all. Every man here's his tenant; and look there! they're not giving us much doubt as to their intentions.'

"Here a tremendous yell burst forth from the mass of people along the shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank gradually down to a low wailing, then rose and fell several times, as the Irish death-cry filled the air, and rose to heaven, as if imploring vengeance on a murderer."

Passages like this, and that which follows--the dangerous voyage through the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the reefs--are what Mr. Thackeray may have had in his mind when he spoke of Lever's underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early stories that we remember, and that he lives by--the pages thrown off at a heat, when he was a lively doctor with few patients, and was not over-attentive to them. These were the days of Harry Lorrequer and Tom Burke; characters that ran away with him, and took their own path through a merry world of diversion. Like the knights in Sir Thomas Malory, these heroes "ride at adventure," ride amazing horses that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a mountain crest, or be it the bayonets of a French square.

Mr. Lever's biographer has not been wholly successful in pleasing the critics, and he does not seem to affect very critical airs himself, but he tells a straightforward tale. The life of Charles Lever is the natural commentary on his novels. He was born at Dublin in 1806, the son of a builder or architect. At school he was very much flogged, and the odds are that he deserved these attentions, for he had high spirits beyond the patience of dominies. Handsome, merry and clever, he read novels in school hours, wore a ring, and set up as a dandy. Even then he was in love with the young lady whom he married in the end. At a fight with boys of another school, he and a friend placed a mine under the ground occupied by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the only time, this romancer of the wars "smelled powder." He afterwards pleaded for his party before the worthy police magistrate, and showed great promise as a barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he was full of his fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in disguise (like Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night collected thirty shillings in coppers.

The original of Frank Webber, in "Charles O'Malley," was a chum of his, and he took part in the wonderful practical jokes which he has made immortal in that novel.

From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Gottingen, where he found fun and fighting enough among the German students. From that hour he became a citizen of the world, or, at least, of Europe, and perhaps, like the prophets, was most honoured when out of his own country. He returned to Dublin and took his degree in medicine, after playing a famous practical joke. A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class himself. On another day he was standing outside the Foundling Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone cradle for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted up his friend, popped him into the cradle, and had the joy of seeing the promising infant picked out by the porter.

It seems a queer education for a man of letters; but, like Sir Walter Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he "was making himself all the time." He was collecting myriads of odd experiences and treasures of anecdotes; he was learning to know men of all sorts; and later, as a country doctor, he had experiences of mess tables, of hunting, and of all the ways of his remarkable countrymen. When cholera visited his district he stuck to his work like a man of heart and courage. But the usual tasks of a country doctor wearied him; he neglected them, he became unpopular with the authorities, he married his first love and returned to Brussels, where he practised as a physician. He had already begun his first notable book, "Harry Lorrequer," in the _University Magazine_. It is merely a string of Irish and other stories, good, bad, and indifferent--a picture gallery full of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd characters. The plot is of no importance; we are not interested in Harry's love affairs, but in his scrapes, adventures, duels at home and abroad. He fights people by mistake whom he does not know by sight, he appears on parade with his face blackened, he wins large piles at _trente et quarante_, he disposes of coopers of claret and bowls of punch, and the sheep on a thousand hills provide him with devilled kidneys. The critics and the authors thought little of the merry medley, but the public enjoyed it, and defied the reviewers. One paper preferred the book to a wilderness of "Pickwicks"; and as this opinion was advertised everywhere by M'Glashan, the publisher, Mr. Dickens was very much annoyed indeed. Authors are easily annoyed. But Lever writes _ut placeat pueris_, and there was a tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the "Slogger Williams" and "Tom Brown" of the period, for the possession of "Harry Lorrequer." When an author has the boys of England on his side, he can laugh at the critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was easily vexed, and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. Next he began "Charles O'Malley"; and if any man reads this essay who has not read the "Irish Dragoon," let him begin at once. "O'Malley" is what you can recommend to a friend. Here is every species of diversion: duels and steeplechases, practical jokes at college (good practical jokes, not booby traps and apple-pie beds); here is fighting in the Peninsula. If any student is in doubt, let him try chapter xiv.--the battle on the Douro. This is, indeed, excellent military writing, and need not fear comparison as art with Napier's famous history. Lever has warmed to his work; his heart is in it; he had the best information from an eye-witness; and the brief beginning, on the peace of nature before the strife of men, is admirably poetical.

To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the deep and rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular transport. "He dared the deed. What must have been his confidence in the men he commanded! what must have been his reliance on his own genius!"

You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans charge, till at last the field is won, and the dust of the French columns retreating in the distance blows down the road to Spain.

The Great Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew certain things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the humours of war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is alone in the literature of the world, but if ever there came a later Falstaff, Monsoon was the man. And where have you such an Irish Sancho Panza as Micky Free, that independent minstrel, or such an Irish Di Vernon as Baby Blake? The critics may praise Lever's thoughtful and careful later novels as they will, but "Charles O'Malley" will always be the pattern of a military romance. The anecdote of "a virtuous weakness" in O'Shaughnessy's father's character would alone make the fortune of many a story. The truth is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to leave off reading it, and get on with the account of Lever.

His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable notice from the press. This may have been because it was so popular; but Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at the papers. When he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine there, he was more fiercely assailed than ever. It is difficult for an Irishman to write about the Irish, or for a Scot to write about the Scottish, without hurting the feelings of his countrymen. While their literary brethren are alive they are not very dear to the newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and thus Jeffrey was more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the Irish press, it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met Lever in Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's military propensities have been objected to strongly by his squeamish Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in Ireland who is fond of military spectacles? Why does the _Nation_ publish these edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it that prates about the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy, and the Irish at Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr. O'Connell, like a wise rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to flatter the national military passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?"

Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is the humour of it.

Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," nor Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you rather admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very differently when you come to thirty years or more, and see other men doing what you cannot do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And then, if you are a reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for what it does not give," as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:--

"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in geological information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and worthless, for his facts are not borne out by any authority, and he gives us no information about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! our country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" and so forth.

It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not only did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom Burke," that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of authors. He edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which people are permitted to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust there is in it to how few pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually and politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered contributions of many a magazine, but Lever was even more casual and careless than an experienced office cat. He grew crabbed, and tried to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful parody "Phil Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever.

Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style (Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so entertaining. He actually published a criticism of Beyle, of Stendhal, that psychological prig, the darling of culture and of M. Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He nearly fought a duel with the gentleman who is said to have suggested Mr. Pecksniff to Dickens! Yet they call his early novels improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a combat between Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, resembled the father of Cherry and Merry.

Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his life. He saw the Italian revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is plain from one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." He wrote it at the same time as "The Daltons," and he did not sign it. The reviewers praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed work, rejoicing that Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, and that a new Irish author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming to eclipse him. In short, he eclipsed himself, and he did not like it. His right hand was jealous of what his left hand did. It seems odd that any human being, however dull and envious, failed to detect Lever in the rapid and vivacious adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," hero of one of the very best among his books, a piece not unworthy of Dumas. "Con" was written after midnight, "The Daltons" in the morning; and there can be no doubt which set of hours was more favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked "The Daltons" best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst critics.

It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. Again he drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper Carew"--which contain some of his most powerful situations. When almost an old man, sad, outworn in body, straitened in circumstances, he still produced excellent tales in this later manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," and many more. These are the thoughts of a tired man of the world, who has done and seen everything that such men see and do. He says that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for the grave and the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and curly, and merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is added that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his affairs in perfect order.

Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he is not prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn back and read him once more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy member of that famous company--a romancer for boys and men.

THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle of St. Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage,

"And took with him this elvish page
To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes,"

it was to the ruined chapel _here_ that he came,

"For there, beside our Ladye's lake,
An offering he had sworn to make,
And he would pay his vows."

But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,

"Of the best that would ride at her command,"

and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still; and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, "where victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten miles. These gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at feud with the Kers, tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone St. Mary of the Waves."

"They were three hundred spears and three.
Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream,
Their horses prance, their lances gleam.
They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day;
But the chapel was void, and the Baron away.
They burned the chapel for very rage,
And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page."

The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I read again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in his own country, and have one drop of the blood of his Border robbers in my own veins?

It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, whom we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we have changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was "The Lady of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world's poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott's good novels make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must go? _Pro captu lectoris_, by the reader's taste, they stand or fall; yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that the Waverley Novels are mortal. They were once the joy of every class of minds; they cannot cease to be the joy of those who cling to the permanently good, and can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the poems, many give them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric and narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; by perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we not to read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into vogue. This accounts for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's lays. They are spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must always be the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in verse; it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there better verse in story telling in the whole of English literature? The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of the Lake," do so because they dislike stories told in poetry. From poetry they expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic of style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's pictures, certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent enough, his manner is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every one who wants to read Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." From opening to close it never falters:--

"Nine and twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall;
Nine and twenty squires of name
Brought their steeds to bower from stall,
Nine and twenty yeomen tall
Waited, duteous, on them all . . .
Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel;
They quitted not their harness bright
Neither by day nor yet by night:
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred."

Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? Then, when William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride across the haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like the heavy armoured horse?

"Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine,
To ancient Riddell's fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountains freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed,
In vain! no torrent, deep or broad,
Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road;
At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow."

These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This, of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark among the melancholy hills.

The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:--

"For the young heir of Branksome's line,
God be his aid, and God be mine;
Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.
Then if thy Lords their purpose urge,
Take our defiance loud and high;
Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,
Our moat, the grave where they shall lie."

Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed, he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a noble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his "Mort d'Arthur"? Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and immortal affection:--

"True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the Heaven.
It is not Fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
_It liveth not in fierce desire_,
_With dead desire it dock not die_:
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind."

Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always,

"Yarrow, as he rolls along,
Bears burden to the minstrel's song."

After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far more ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them--

"Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought and cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend:
_Though wild as cloud_, _as stream_, _as gale_,
_Flow forth_, _flow unrestrained_, _my tale_!"

Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--forth from the far- off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example--

"And think what he must next have felt,
At buckling of the falchion belt."

The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the world. "The Lady of the Lake," except in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the "Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion." "Rokeby" lives only by its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, the "Field of Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the poems are interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of "Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on _these_ far more than on his later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild and free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carolled, or witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to the world, music with no maker's name. For example, take the Outlaw's rhyme--

"With burnished brand and musketoon,
So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold dragoon
That lists the tuck of drum.
I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum,
My comrades take the spear.
And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair,
And Greta woods be gay,
Yet mickle must the maiden dare,
Would reign my Queen of May!"

How musical, again, is this!--

"This morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;
But she shall bloom in winter snow,
Ere we two meet again.
He turned his charger as he spake,
Upon the river shore,
He gave his bridle-reins a shake,
Said, 'Adieu for evermore,
My love!
Adieu for evermore!'"

Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten that Scott was a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not too lenient a judge, and his "Golden Treasury" is a touchstone, as well as a treasure, of poetic gold. In this volume Wordsworth contributes more lyrics than any other poet: Shelley and Shakespeare come next; then Sir Walter. For my part I would gladly sacrifice a few of Wordsworth's for a few more of Scott's. But this may be prejudice. Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how high is his value for Sir Walter.

There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or gay as a hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and found by him on the moors: all these--not prized by Sir Walter himself--are in his gift, and in that of no other man. For example, his "Eve of St. John" is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among ballads. Nothing but an old song moves us like--

"Are these the links o' Forth, she said,
Are these the bends o' Dee!"

He might have done more of the best, had he very greatly cared. Alone among poets, he had neither vanity nor jealousy; he thought little of his own verse and his own fame: would that he had thought more! would that he had been more careful of what was so precious! But he turned to prose; bade poetry farewell.

"Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp,
Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway.
_And little reck I of the censure sharp_
_May idly cavil at an idle lay_."

People still cavil idly, complaining that Scott did not finish, or did not polish his pieces; that he was not Keats, or was not Wordsworth. He was himself; he was the Last Minstrel, the latest, the greatest, the noblest of natural poets concerned with natural things. He sang of free, fierce, and warlike life, of streams yet rich in salmon, and moors not yet occupied by brewers; of lonely places haunted in the long grey twilights of the North; of crumbling towers where once dwelt the Lady of Branksome or the Flower of Yarrow. Nature summed up in him many a past age a world of ancient faiths; and before the great time of Britain wholly died, to Britain, as to Greece, she gave her Homer. When he was old, and tired, and near his death--so worn with trouble and labour that he actually signed his own name wrong--he wrote his latest verse, for a lady. It ends--

"My country, be thou glorious still!"

and so he died, within the sound of the whisper of Tweed, foreseeing the years when his country would no more be glorious, thinking of his country only, forgetting quite the private sorrow of his own later days.

People will tell you that Scott was not a great poet; that his bolt is shot, his fame perishing. Little he cared for his fame! But for my part I think and hope that Scott can never die, till men grow up into manhood without ever having been boys--till they forget that

"One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name!"

Thus, the charges against Sir Walter's poetry are, on the whole, little more than the old critical fallacy of blaming a thing for not being something else. "It takes all sorts to make a world," in poetry as in life. Sir Walter's sort is a very good sort, and in English literature its place was empty, and waiting for him. Think of what he did. English poetry had long been very tame and commonplace, written in couplets like Pope's, very artificial and smart, or sensible and slow. He came with poems of which the music seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs and ringing bridles of a rushing border troop. Here were goblin, ghost, and fairy, fight and foray, fair ladies and true lovers, gallant knights and hard blows, blazing beacons on every hill crest and on the bartisan of every tower. Here was a world made alive again that had been dead for three hundred years--a world of men and women.

They say that the archaeology is not good. Archaeology is a science; in its application to poetry, Scott was its discoverer. Others can name the plates of a coat of armour more learnedly than he, but he made men wear them. They call his Gothic art false, his armour pasteboard; but he put living men under his castled roofs, living men into his breastplates and taslets. Science advances, old knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry that does not die, and that will not die, while--

"The triple pride
Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde."

JOHN BUNYAN

Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee, and asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The child answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor; "then I would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down and took no further notice of her.

This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather intolerant. We must not excommunicate people because they have not our taste in books. The majority of people do not care for books at all.

There is a descendant of John Bunyan's alive now, or there was lately, who never read the "Pilgrim's Progress." Books are not in his line. Nay, Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great reader. An Oxford scholar who visited him in his study found no books at all, except some of Bunyan's own and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs."

Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has read Bunyan more than most. One hundred thousand copies of the "Pilgrim" are believed to have been sold in his own day, and the story has been done into the most savage languages, as well as into those of the civilised world.

Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention, imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he wished longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote." Well, Dr. Johnson would not have given a farthing for _me_, as I am quite contented with the present length of these masterpieces. What books do _you_ wish longer? I wish Homer had written a continuation of the Odyssey, and told us what Odysseus did among the far-off men who never tasted salt nor heard of the sea. A land epic after the sea epic, how good it would have been--from Homer! But it would have taxed the imagination of Dante to continue the adventures of Christian and his wife after they had once crossed the river and reached the city.

John Bunyan has been more fortunate than most authors in one of his biographies.

His life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Brown, who is now minister of his old congregation at Bedford; and an excellent life it is. Dr. Brown is neither Roundhead nor Cavalier; for though he is, of course, on Bunyan's side, he does not throw stones at the beautiful Church of England.

Probably most of us are on Bunyan's side now. It might be a good thing that we should all dwell together in religious unity, but history shows that people cannot be bribed into brotherhood. They tried to bully Bunyan; they arrested and imprisoned him--unfairly even in law, according to Dr. Brown, not unfairly, Mr. Froude thinks--and he would not be bullied.

What was much more extraordinary, he would not be embittered. In spite of all, he still called Charles II. "a gracious Prince." When a subject is in conscience at variance with the law, Bunyan said, he has but one course--to accept peaceably the punishment which the law awards. He was never soured, never angered by twelve years of durance, not exactly in a loathsome dungeon, but in very uncomfortable quarters. When there came a brief interval of toleration, he did not occupy himself in brawling, but in preaching, and looking after the manners and morals of the little "church," including one woman who brought disagreeable charges against "Brother Honeylove." The church decided that there was nothing in the charges, but somehow the name of Brother Honeylove does not inspire confidence.

Almost everybody knows the main facts of Bunyan's life. They may not know that he was of Norman descent (as Dr. Brown seems to succeed in proving), nor that the Bunyans came over with the Conqueror, nor that he was a gipsy, as others hold. On Dr. Brown's showing, Bunyan's ancestors lost their lands in process of time and change, and Bunyan's father was a tinker. He preferred to call himself a brazier--his was the rather unexpected trade to which Mr. Dick proposed apprenticing David Copperfield.

Bunyan himself, "the wondrous babe," as Dr. Brown enthusiastically styles him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a cottage, long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable slough of despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places he found at his doors. He had some schooling, "according to the rate of other poor men's children," and assuredly it was enough.

The great civil war broke out, and Bunyan was a soldier; he tells us not on which side. Dr. Brown and Mr. Lewis Morris think he was on that of the Parliament, but his old father, the tinker, stood for the King. Mr. Froude is rather more inclined to hold that he was among the "gay gallants who struck for the crown." He does not seem to have been much under fire, but he got that knowledge of the appearance of war which he used in his siege of the City of Mansoul. One can hardly think that Bunyan liked war--certainly not from cowardice, but from goodness of heart.

In 1646 the army was disbanded, and Bunyan went back to Elstow village and his tinkering, his bell-ringing, his dancing with the girls, his playing at "cat" on a Sunday after service.

He married very young and poor. He married a pious wife, and read all her library--"The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The Practice of Piety." He became very devout in the spirit of the Church of England, and he gave up his amusements. Then he fell into the Slough of Despond, then he went through the Valley of the Shadow, and battled with Apollyon.

People have wondered _why_ he fancied himself such a sinner? He confesses to having been a liar and a blasphemer. If I may guess, I fancy that this was merely the literary genius of Bunyan seeking for expression. His lies, I would go bail, were tremendous romances, wild fictions told for fun, never lies of cowardice or for gain. As to his blasphemies, he had an extraordinary power of language, and that was how he gave it play. "Fancy swearing" was his only literary safety-valve, in those early days, when he played cat on Elstow Green.

Then he heard a voice dart from heaven into his soul, which said, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?" So he fell on repentance, and passed those awful years of mental torture, when all nature seemed to tempt him to the Unknown Sin.

What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within an ace of madness.

It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought up, to suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are afraid of that awful unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as Bunyan and Cowper were afraid.

Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who believed he had been guilty of the unpardonable offence? Bullying is an offence much less pardonable than most men are guilty of. Their best plan (in Bunyan's misery) is to tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, to do their work and speak the truth.

Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in the goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, "Well, if all my fears are true, what then?" His was a Christian, not a stoical deliverance.

The "church" in which Bunyan found shelter had for minister a converted major in a Royalist regiment. It was a quaint little community, the members living like the early disciples, correcting each other's faults, and keeping a severe eye on each other's lives. Bunyan became a minister in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his Pilgrims dance on joyful occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt waltzes with a young lady of the Pilgrim company.

As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of controversy with Quakers and clergymen. The points debated are no longer important to us; the main thing was that he got a pen into his hand, and found a proper outlet for his genius, a better way than fancy swearing.

If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a cottage, he might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor become all that he was. The leisures of gaol were long. In that "den" the Muse came to him, the fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw all that company of his, so like and so unlike Chaucer's: Faithful, and Hopeful, and Christian, the fellowship of fiends, the truculent Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant Despair, with his grievous crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who are with us always,--the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman whose name was Dull, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing Bothways, and Byends, all the persons of the comedy of human life.

He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears them, but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says himself. He beheld the country of Beulah, and the Delectable Mountains, that earthly Paradise of nature where we might be happy yet, and wander no farther, if the world would let us--fair mountains in whose streams Izaak Walton was then even casting angle.

It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met and talked, under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers were falling. Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good old man to Formalist; and certainly Walton would have enjoyed travelling with Christian, though the book was by none of his dear bishops, but by a Non-conformist. They were made to like but not to convert each other; in matters ecclesiastical they saw the opposite sides of the shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It is too late to praise "The Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." You may put ingenuity on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is true about the best romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of old English life.

The people are living now--all the people: the noisy bullying judges, as of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the Hanging Courts after Monmouth's war; the demure, grave Puritan girls; and Matthew, who had the gripes; and lazy, feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill an end, poor fellow; and sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing; not single persons, but dozens, arise on the memory.

They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or Moliere; the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as the greatest, almost; his style is pure, and plain, and sound, full of old idioms, and even of something like old slang. But even his slang is classical.

Bunyan is everybody's author. The very Catholics have their own edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place. Unheralded, unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the Tinker of being a plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court wits, the learned, the poets of the Restoration, and even the great theologians.

His other books, except "Grace Abounding" (an autobiography), "The Holy War," and "Mr. Badman," are only known to students, nor much read by them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology, passed away; it is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance, that he lives.