Vol 28: The Classics

thc28

thc28f

Vol 28: The Classics

    Part 1    Part 2

ESSAYS 

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 
VOLUME 28 




/P777 



P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



I opyright, 1910 
By P. F. Collier & Son 

MANUFACTURED IN U. S. A. 

Copyright, 1S86 
By James Russell Lowell 

By arrangement with 
Houghton Mifflin Company 

Copyright, 1889 

By The Travelers Insurance Company 

of Hartford. Conn. 

Copyright, 1891 
By The Travelers Insurance Company 



Designed, Printed, and Bound at 

^fjc Collier |^re**, J@cto gorfe 
i 



HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY 

BRIGHAM VOUNG UNIVERSITY 

n nA\/n UTAH 



VI ■ w^- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

JONATHAN SWIFT 5 

William Makepeace Thackeray 



THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY 

I. WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 31 

II. SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 40 

III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS . . . . . . 52 

John Henry Newman 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 63 

Matthew Arnold 



SESAME AND LILIES 

LECTURE I.— SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES . 95 

LECTURE II.— LILIES : OF QUEENS' GARDENS . . 139 

John Ruskin 

JOHN MILTON 171 

Walter Bagehot 

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 217 

Thomas Henry Huxley 
Vol. 28— a l HC 



2 CONTENTS 

PAi"E 

RACE AND LANGUAGE .22$ 

Edward Augustus Freeman 



TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE 287 

SAMUEL PEPYS 295 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

ON THE ELEVATION OF THE LABORING CLASSES 321 
b William Ellery Channing 

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. ........... 383 

Edgar Allan Poe 

WALKING 407 

Henry David Thoreau 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 441 

DEMOCRACY 464 

James Russell Lowell 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

William Makepeace Thackeray, one of the greatest of English 
novelists, was bom at Calcutta, India, on July 18, 1811, where his 
father held an administrative position. He was sent to England 
at six for his education, which he received at the Charterhouse 
and Cambridge, after which he began, but did not prosecute, the 
study of law. Having lost his means, in part by gambling, he 
made up his mind to earn his living as an artist, and went to 
Paris to study. He had some natural gift for drawing, which 
he had already employed in caricature, but, though he made 
interesting and amusing illustrations for his books, he never 
acquired any marked technical skill. 

He now turned to literature, and, on the strength of an ap- 
pointment as Paris correspondent of a short-lived radical news- 
paper, he married. On the failure of the newspaper he took to 
miscellaneous journalism and the reviewing of books and pic- 
tures, his most important zvork appearing in "Fraser's Magazine" 
and "Punch." In 1840 his wife's mind became clouded, and, 
though she never recovered, she lived on till 1894. 

Success came to' Thackeray very slowly. "Catherine," "The 
Great Hoggarty Diamond," "Barry Lyndon," and several vol- 
umes of travel had failed to gain much attention before the 
"Snob Papers," issued in "Punch" in 1846, brought him fame. 
In the January of the next year "Vanity Fair" began to appear 
in monthly numbers, and by the time it was finished Thackeray 
had taken his place in the front rank of his profession. "Pen- 
dennis" followed in 18 so, and sustained the prestige he had won. 

The next year he began lecturing, and delivered in London 
the lectures on the "English Humourists ," which he repeated the 
following winter in America with much success. "Esmond" had 
appeared on the eve of his setting sail, and revealed his style at 
its highest point of perfection, and a tenderer if less powerful 
touch than "Vanity Fair" had displayed. In 1855 "The New- 
comes" appeared, and was followed by a second trip to America, 
when he lectured on the "Four Georges." After an unsuccessful 
attempt to enter Parliament, the novelist resumed his writing 
with "The Virginians" (1857-59), %n which he availed himself of 
his American experiences. 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

In the January of i860 the "Cornhill Magazine" was founded, 
with Thackeray as first editor, and launched on a distinguished 
career. Most of his later work was published in its pages, but 
"Lovel the Widower" and the "Adventures of Philip" have not 
taken a place beside his greater work. In the essays constituting the 
" Roundabout Papers," however, he appeared at his easiest and 
most charming. After a little more than two years he resigned 
the editorship; and on December 23, 1863, he died. 

Thackeray's greatest distinction is, of course, as a novelist, 
and an estimate of his work in this field is not in place here. 
But as an essayist he is also great. The lectures on the "English 
Humourists " of which the following paper on "Swiff' was the 
first, were the fruit of an intimate knowledge of the time of 
Queen Anne, and a warm sympathy with its spirit. And here, 
as in all his mature work, Thackeray is the master of a style 
that for ease, suppleness, and range of effect has seldom been 
equaled in English. 



JONATHAN SWIFT 1 

By William Makepeace Thackeray 

IN treating of the English humourists of the past age, it 
is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their 
books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in 
doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you 
with a merely humourous or facetious story. Harlequin with- 
out his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, 
and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient 
whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin — a man 
full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self 
must always be serious to him, under whatever mask or dis- 
guise or uniform 'he presents it to the public. And as all 
of you here must needs be grave when you think of your 
own past and present, you will not look to find, in the 
histories of those whose lives and feelings I am going to 
try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious, 
and often very sad. If Humour only meant laughter, you would 
scarcely feel more interest about humourous writers than 
about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who 
possesses in common with these the power of making you 
laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your 
kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sym- 
pathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, be- 
sides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer 
professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your 
kindness — your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture — 
your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the 
unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments 
on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He 

1 From the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century. 

5 



6 THACKERAY 

takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. 
Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth 
best we regard him, esteem him — sometimes love him. And, 
as his business is to mark other people's lives and peculi- 
arities, we moralize upon his life when he is gone — and 
yesterday's preacher becomes the text for to-day's sermon. 

Of English parents, and of a good English family of 
clergymen, Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months 
after the death of his father, who had come to practise there 
as a lawyer. The boy went to school at Kilkenny, and 
afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a de- 
gree with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. 
In 1688, by the recommendation of his mother, Swift was 
received into the family of Sir William Temple, who had 
known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in 1694, and 
the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the 
small Irish preferment which he got and returned to Temple, 
in whose family he remained until Sir William's death in 
1699. His hopes of advancement in England failing, Swift 
returned to Ireland, and took the living of Laracor. Hither 
he invited Hester Johnson, Temple's natural daughter, with 
whom he had contracted a tender friendship, while they 
were both dependants of Temple's. And with an occasional 
visit to England, Swift now passed nine years at home. 

In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to 
Ireland, during which he took possession of his deanery of 
St. Patrick, he now passed five years in England, taking 
the most distinguished part in the political transactions which 
terminated with the death of Queen Anne. After her death, 
his party disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift 
returned to Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In 
this time he wrote the famous " Drapier's Letters " and " Gul- 
liver's Travels." He married Hester Johnson, Stella, and 
buried Esther Vanhomrigh, Vanessa, who had followed him 
to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent 
passion for him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, 
which he quitted for the last time on hearing of his wife's 
illness. Stella died in January, 1728, and Swift not until I745> 
having passed the last five of the seventy-eight years of his 
life with an impaired intellect and keepers to watch him. 



SWIFT 7 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biog- 
raphers; his life has been told by the kindest and most 
good-natured of men, Scott, who admires but can't bring 
himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson, who, forced 
to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous 
Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly 
recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over 
to the other side of the street. Dr. Wilde of Dublin, who 
has written a most interesting volume on the closing years 
of Swift's life, calls Johnson "the most malignant of his 
biographers : " it is not easy for an English critic to please 
Irishmen — perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson 
truly admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's 
change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion: about 
the famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the Doctor does 
not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could not give the 
Dean that honest hand of his; the stout old man puts it into 
his breast, and moves off from him. 

Would we have liked to live with him? That is a 
question which, in dealing with these people's works, and 
thinking of their lives and peculiarities, every reader of 
biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked to 
be a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have been 
Shakspeare's shoeblack — just to have lived in his house, just 
to have worshipped him — to have run on his errands, and 
seen that sweet serene face. I should like, as a young 
man, to have lived on Fielding's staircase in the Temple, and 
after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door 
with his latch-key, to have shaken hands with him in the 
morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his 
breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give 
something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and 
Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The 
charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has 
passed to us by fond tradition — but Swift? If you had been 
his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all 
persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere 
social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted 
you; if, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him 
like a man, he would have quailed before you, and not had 



8 THACKERAY 

the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written 
a foul epigram about you — watched for you in a sewer, and 
come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty 
bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue riband, who 
flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would 
have been the most delightful company in the world. He 
would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and 
original, that you might think he had no object in view but 
the indulgence of his humour and that he was the most 
reckless, simple creature in the world. How he would have 
torn your enemies to pieces for you! and made fun of the 
Opposition ! His servility was so boisterous that it looked 
like independence; he would have done your errands, but 
with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting your 
battles, masked, in the street or the press, would have kept 
on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing- 
room, content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous 
services as a bravo. 

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Boling- 
broke: — "All my endeavours to distinguish myself were only 
for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used 
like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts; 
whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the 
reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue 
riband or a coach and six." 

Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who 
says, " These are my brains ; with these I'll win titles and 
compete with fortune. These are my bullets; these I'll turn 
into gold ; " and he hears the sound of coaches and six, 
takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and 
deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go 
my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my 
lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a 
living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug 
post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of 
his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach 
with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have 
for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's ; 
and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners 
come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, 



SWIFT 9 

and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a 
curse, and rides away into his own country. 

Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral 
or adorn a tale of ambition, as any hero's that ever lived 
and failed. But we must remember that the morality was 
lax — that other gentlemen besides himself took the road in 
his day — that public society was in a strange disordered 
condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. 
The Boyne was being fought and won, and lost — the bells 
rung in William's victory, in the very same tone with which 
they would have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon 
politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as 
old beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and 
gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble, 
almost everybody gambled; as in the Railway mania — not 
many centuries ago — almost every one took his unlucky 
share : a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition 
of Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, 
and make his spring at his opportunity. His bitterness, his 
scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are ascribed by 
some panegyrists, to a deliberate conviction of mankind's 
unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. 
His youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down 
by ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean dependence; his 
age was bitter, like that of a great genius that had fought 
the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it 
afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute 
to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or 
disappointment, or self-will. What public man — what states- 
man projecting a coup — what king determined on an inva- 
sion of his neighbour — what satirist meditating an onslaught 
on society or an individual, can't give a pretext for his 
move ? There was a French general the other day who pro- 
posed to march into this country and put it to sack and 
pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct at 
Copenhagen: there is always some excuse for men of the 
aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike, pred- 
atory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion. 

As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong a y . 
wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, 



10 THACKERAY 

that fate wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his 
wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe 
and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars. 

That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, on 
the 30th November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody 
will deny the sister island the honour and glory; but, it 
seems to me, he was no more an Irishman than a man born 
of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was 
an Irishman, and always an Irishman: Steele was an Irish- 
man, and always an Irishman: Swift's heart was English 
and in England, his habits English, his logic eminently 
English ; his statement is elaborately simple ; he shuns tropes 
and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise 
thrift and economy, as he used his money: with which he 
could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but 
which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He 
never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish 
epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you 
with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness. Dreading 
ridicule too, as a man of his humour — above all an English- 
man of his humour — certainly would, he is afraid to use the 
poetical power which he really possessed; one often fancies 
in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might ; 
that he does not speak above his voice, as it were, and the 
tone of society. 

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his 
knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature 
even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously 
during that reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the 
roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in 
after life what quantities of books he devoured there, and 
how King William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch 
fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary 
of twenty pounds ana a dinner at the upper servants' table, 
that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years' appren- 
ticeship — wore a cassock that was only not a livery — bent 
down a knee as proud as Lucifer's to supplicate my lady's 
good graces, or run on his honour's errands. It was here, 
as he was writing at Temple's table, or following his patron's 
walk, that he saw and heard the men who had governed the 



SWIFT 11 

great world — measured himself with them, looking up from 
his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, 
turned them, and tried them, and marked them. Ah ! what 
platitudes he must have heard! what feeble jokes! what 
pompous commonplaces ! what small men they must have 
seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, un- 
couth, silent Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever 
struck Temple, that that Irishman was his master? I sup- 
pose that dismal conviction did not present itself under the 
ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift. 
Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service — ate humble pie 
and came back again ; and so for ten years went on, gather- 
ing learning, swallowing scorn, and submitting with a 
stealthy rage to his fortune. 

Temple's style is the perfection of practised and easy 
good-breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a 
subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with 
it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom 
of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelope 
his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he 
wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with 
a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find 
them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in 
the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated 
for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of 
Shene or Moor Park; and lets the King's party and the 
Prince of Orange's party battle it out among themselves. 
He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever testified 
to his loyalty by so elegant a bow) ; he admires the Prince 
of Orange ; but there is one person whose ease and comfort 
he loves more than all the princes in Christendom, and that 
valuable member of society is himself, Gulielmus Temple, 
Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat ; between his study- 
chair and his tulip-beds, clipping his apricots and pruning 
his essays- -the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the 
philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier 
at St. James's as at Shene ; where in place of kings and fair 
ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks 
a minuet with the Epic Muse; or dalJies by the south wall 
with the ruddy nymph of gardens. 



12 THACKERAY 

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious 
deal of veneration from his household, and to have been 
coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about 
him, as delicately as any of the plants which he loved. When 
he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indispo- 
sition: mild Dorothea, his wife, the best companion of the 
best of men — 

" Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, 
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate." 

As for Dorinda, his sister, — 

" Those who would grief describe, might come and trace 
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. 
To see her weep, joy every face forsook, 
And grief flung sables on each menial look. 
The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, 
That furnished spirit and motion through the whole." 

Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the 
menials into a mourning livery, a fine image? One of the 
menials wrote it, who did not like that Temple livery nor 
those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth 
young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in 
hand, following at his honour's heels in the garden walk; 
or taking his honour's orders as he stands by the great 
chair, where Sir William has the gout, and his feet all 
blistered with moxa? When Sir William has the gout or 
scolds it must be hard work at the second table; the Irish 
secretary owned as much afterwards : and when he came to 
dinner, how he must have lashed and growled and torn the 
household with his gibes and scorn ! What would the 
steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards — and 
this one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if 
the truth were known — and what a contempt his Excellency's 
own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from 
Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at war. It 
is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) 
And what must have been the sadness, the sadness and ter- 
ror, of the housekeeper's little daughter with the curling 
black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary 
who teaches her to read and write, and whom she loves and 



SWIFT 13 

reverences above all things — above mother, above mild 
Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir William in his square- 
toes and periwig, — when Mr. Swift comes down from his 
master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even 
for little Hester Johnson? 

Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's con- 
descension was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir 
William would perpetually quote Latin and the ancient 
classics apropos of his gardens and his Dutch statues and 
plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laer- 
tius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the 
Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the 
Assyrian kings. Apropos of beans, he would mention 
Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this 
precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from 
public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean; he is a Pythag- 
orean philosopher; he is a wise man — that is the deduction. 
Does not Swift think so? One can imagine the downcast 
eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which 
they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope 
says nobly (as .everything Pope said and thought of his 
friend was good and noble), " His eyes are as azure as the 
heavens, and have a charming archness in them." And one 
person in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor 
Park, saw heaven nowhere else. 

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree 
with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene 
pippins; and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself 
at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of 
books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness 
which punished and tormented him through life. He could 
not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of 
courtly condolence, from which we have quoted a few lines 
of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal procession 
with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his 
own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and 
forsaken by fortune, and even hope. 

I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to 
Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the 
poor wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and 



14 THACKERAY 

deprecates his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for 
orders. " The particulars required of me are what relate to 
morals and learning; and the reasons of quitting your 
honour's family — that is, whether the last was occasioned 
by any ill action. They are left entirely to your honour's 
mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself 
for anything further than for infirmities. This is all I dare 
at present beg from your honour, under circumstances of 
life not worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next 
to the health and prosperity of your honour and family) is 
that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of 
leaving my acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my most 
humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your 
honour's lady and sister." — Can prostration fall deeper? 
could a slave bow lower? 

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing the 
same man, says, " Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and 
had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the 
antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift 
was the principal man of talk and business. He was solicit- 
ing the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of 
Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising 
Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that 
he should obtain a salary of 200/. per annum as member of 
the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, 
Esq., going into the Queen with the red bag, and told him 
aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord 
Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time 
of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said 
he was too fast. ' How can I help it,' says the Doctor, 
'if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?' 
Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in 
England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a trans- 
lation of Homer into English, for which he would have them 
all subscribe : Tor,' says he, ' he shall not begin to print till 
I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord Treasurer, after 
leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. 
Swift to follow him, — both went off just before prayers." 
There's a little malice in the Bishop's " just before prayers." 

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is 



SWIFT 15 

harsh, though riot altogether unpleasant. He was doing 
good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of these in- 
trigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand anec- 
dotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His 
hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man — 
he was cautious about his money, but ready. — If you were 
in a strait would you like such a benefactor? I think I 
would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from 
Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea 
and a dinner. He insulted a man as he served him, made 
women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and 
flung his benefactions into poor men's faces. No ; the Dean 
was no Irishman — no Irishman ever gave but with a kind 
word and a kind heart. 

It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean 
of St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every morn- 
ing regularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his 
house were never in the least aware of the ceremony. There 
was no need surely why a church dignitary should assemble 
his family privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of 
heathen persecution. But I think the world was right, and 
the bishops who advised Queen Anne, when they counselled 
her not to appoint the author of the " Tale of a Tub " to a 
bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The man who wrote 
the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, could not 
but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions 
which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and 
Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and 
the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have 
heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversa- 
tion over Pope's port, or St. John's burgundy, which would 
not bear to be repeated at other men's boards. 

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity 
of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to 
turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, 
the author of the "Beggar's Opera " — Gay, the wildest of 
the wits about town — it was this man that Jonathan Swift 
advised to take orders — to invest in a cassock and bands — 
just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his 
thousand pounds out at interest. The Queen, and the 



16 THACKERAY 

bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting the religion 
of that man. 

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious 
views, except in so far as they influence his literary char- 
acter, his life, his humour. The most notorious sinners of 
all those fellow-mortals whom it is our business to discuss — 
Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I 
believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief; they 
belaboured freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on 
all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl their 
own creed, and persecute their neighbour's, and if they 
sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with 
drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got upon their 
knees and cried " Peccavi " with a most sonorous orthodoxy. 
Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty 
and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred 
Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in gen- 
eral; and hiccupped Church and State with fervour. 

But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and 
possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred 
up in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a 
Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from 
beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clear- 
ness. In his old age, looking at the "Tale of a Tub," when 
he said, " Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that 
book ! " I think he was admiring not the genius, but the 
consequences to which the genius had brought him — a vast 
genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, 
and dazzling, and strong, — to seize, to know, to see, to flash 
upon falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into 
the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men, — 
an awful, an evil spirit. 

Ah man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you 
whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to 
swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypoc- 
risy before the Heaven which you adored with such real 
wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a rev- 
erent, was a pious spirit — for Swift could love and could 
pray. Through the storms and tempests of his furious 
mind, the stars of religion and love break out in the blue, 



SWIFT Vj 

shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and 
the maddened hurricane of his life. 

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the con- 
sciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his 
pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire. The 
paper left behind him, called st Thoughts on Religion," is 
merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says 
of his sermons that he preached pamphlets : they have scarce 
a Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the 
steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box 
of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant — he is 
too great and too proud for that ; and, in so far as the bad- 
ness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that 
cassock on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. 
He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a 
devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always 
looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come 
and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it 
was ! what a lonely rage and long agony — what a vulture 
that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of 
the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he 
always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't 
fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart 
The kings can have no company. But this man suffered so ; 
and deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of 
such a pain. 

The " saeva indignatio " of which he spoke as lacerating 
his heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — 
as if the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's 
judgment had a right to be angry, — breaks out from him in a 
thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. 
Against men in office, he having been overthrown; against 
men in England, he having lost his chance of preferment 
there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it 
fair to call the famous " Drapier's Letters " patriotism ? They 
are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective : they are 
reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as mon- 
strous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that 
the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy — the assault 
is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Sam- 



18 THACKERAY 

son, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and fell- 
ing them : one admires not the cause so much as the strength, 
the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with 
madmen, certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits 
of wrath. Marriage is one of these; in a hundred passages 
in his writings he rages against it; rages against children; 
an object of constant satire, even more contemptible in his 
eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with a large 
family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to 
bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick 
Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless 
moment of satire, have written anything like the Dean's 
famous " modest proposal " for eating children ? Not one 
of these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and 
caresses it. Mr. Dean has no such softness, and enters the 
nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre. " I have been 
assured/ 5 says he in the " Modest Proposal/' " by a very 
knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a 
young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most 
delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, 
roasted, baked, or boiled ; and I make no doubt it will equally 
serve in a ragout" And taking up this pretty joke, as his 
way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and logic. He turns 
and twists this subject in a score of different ways: he hashes 
it; and he serves it up cold; and he garnishes it; and relishes 
it always. He describes the little animal as " dropped from its 
dam," advising that the mother should let it suck plentifully 
in the last month, so as to render it plump and fat for a good 
table ! 

" A child/' says his Reverence, " will make two dishes 
at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines 
alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish/' 
and so on; and, the subject being so delightful that he 
can't leave it, he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison 
for squires' tables, " the bodies of young lads and maidens 
not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable hu- 
mourist ! laughing castigator of morals ! There was a 
process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days: 
when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded 
to what they called " roasting " him. This is roasting a 



SWIFT 19 

subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius 
for it. As the " Almanach des Gourmands " says, On nait 
rotisseur. 

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift 
exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. 
In Gulliver, the folly of love and marriage is urged by 
graver arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian 
kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice of 
instantly removing children from their parents and educating 
them by the State ; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair 
of foals are stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated 
equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, our great 
satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, 
and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example — 
God help him — which made him about the most wretched 
being in God's world. 

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as 
exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our 
author's constant method through all his works of humour. 
Given a country of people six inches or sixty feet high, 
and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful 
absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. 
Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with 
a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the " Royal 
Sovereign/' the King of Brobdingnag observes how con- 
temptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such 
a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. " The Emperor 
of Lilliput's features are strong and masculine " (what a 
surprising humour there is in this description!) — "The 
Emperor's features," Gulliver says, " are strong and mas- 
culine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, his complexion 
olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well propor- 
tioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller by the 
breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is 
enough to strike an awe into beholders." 

What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions ! 
How noble the satire is here ! how just and honest ! How 
perfect the image ! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming 
lines of the poet, where the king of the pigmies is measured 
by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the 



20 THACKERAY 

spear that was like " the mast of some tall admiral," but 
these images are surely likely to come to the comic poet 
originally. The subject is before him. He is turning it in 
a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests 
itself naturally to him, and comes out of his subject, as in 
that wonderful passage when Gulliver's box having been 
dropped by the eagle into the sea, and Gulliver having been 
received into the ship's cabin, he calls upon the crew to 
bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the table, the 
cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the 
veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man 
come from such a country as Brobdingnag he would have 
blundered so. 

But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best in that 
abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounce- 
able country, describes his parting from his master the 
horse. " I took/' he says, " a second leave of my master, 
but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he 
did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am 
not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning 
this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it im- 
probable that so illustrious a person should descend to 
give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so in- 
ferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some travel- 
lers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have re- 
ceived. But if these censurers were better acquainted with 
the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms 
they would soon change their opinion." 

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, 
the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant 
how much he has been censured, the nature of the favour 
conferred, and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, 
are surely complete; it is truth topsy-turvy, entirely logical 
and absurd. 

As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, 
I suppose there is no person who reads but must admire; as 
for the moral, I think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blas- 
phemous; and giant and great as this Dean is, I say we 
should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn't have read 
the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the 



SWIFT 21 

advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, 
and say " Don't." When Gulliver first lands among the 
Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and 
assault him, and he describes himself as " almost stifled with 
the filth which fell about him." The reader of the fourth 
part of " Gulliver's Travels " is like the hero himself in 
this instance. It is Yahoo language: a monster gibber- 
ing shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against mankind — 
tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manli- 
ness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, 
raging, obscene. 

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency 
of his creed — the fatal rocks towards which his logic des- 
perately drifted. That last part of " Gulliver " is only a 
consequence of what has gone before; and the worthlessness 
of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the 
general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, 
the pompous dulness, the mean aims, the base successes — 
all these were present to him; it was with the din of these 
curses of the world, blasphemies against heaven, shrieking 
in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory — of 
which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate 
and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, arid his 
boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the 
slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted 
reason. What had this man done? what secret remorse was 
rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that 
he should see all the world blood-shot? We view the world 
with our own eyes, each of us; and we make from within 
us the world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness out 
of sunshine; a selfish man is sceptical about friendship, as 
a man with no ear doesn't care for music. A frightful self- 
consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind 
so darkly through those keen eyes of Swift. 

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who in- 
terrupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation 
which left the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed 
away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his 
countenance, upon which the Archbishop said to Delany, 
"You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; but 



22 THACKERAY 

on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a 
question/' 

The most unhappy man on earth; — Miserrimus — what a 
character of him! And at this time all the great wits of 
England had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after 
him, and worshipped him as a liberator, a saviour, the 
greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff 
Gulliver — the most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets 
of his day, had applauded him, and done him homage; and 
at this time, writing over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he 
says, " It is time for me to have done with the world, and 
so I would if I could get into a better before I was called 
into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat 
in a hole." 

We have spoken about the men, and Swift's behaviour to 
them; and now it behoves us not to forget that there are 
certain other persons in the creation who had rather in- 
timate relations with the great Dean. Two women whom 
he loved and injured are known by every reader of books 
so familiarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been 
relatives of our own, we scarcely could have known them 
better. Who hasn't in his mind an image of Stella? Who 
does not love her? Fair and tender creature : pure and affec- 
tionate heart ! Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest 
for a hundred and twenty years, not divided in death from 
the cold heart which caused yours, whilst it beat, such faith- 
ful pangs of love and grief — boots it to you now, that the 
whole world loves and deplores you? Scarce any man, 1 
believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower 
of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, 
so lovely, so loving, so unhappy! you have had countless 
champions; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. 
From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition 
of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your 
bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, 
your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by heart. 
You are one of the saints of English story. 

And if Stella's love and innocence are charming to con- 
template, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of 
drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and union, of 



SWIFT 23 

hope delayed and sickened heart — in the teeth of Vanessa, 
and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into 
such woful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity — 
in spite of the verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as 
far as my experience and conversation go, generally take 
Vanessa's part in the controversy — in spite of the tears 
which Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and bar- 
riers which fate and temper interposed, and which prevented 
the pure course of that true love from running smoothly — 
the brightest part of Swift's story, the pure star in that dark 
and tempestuous life of Swift's, is his love for Hester John- 
son. It has been my business, professionally of course, to 
go through a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and 
to acquaint myself with love-making, as it has been described 
in various languages, and at various ages of the world; and 
I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more exqui- 
sitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written in 
what Swift calls " his little language " in his journal to 
Stella. 

He writes to her night and morning often. He never 
sends away a letter to her but he begins a new one on the 
same day. He can't bear to let go her kind little hand, as 
it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longing 
for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters 
from under his pillow and talks to them, familiarly, pater- 
nally, with fond epithets and pretty caresses — as he would 
to the sweet and artless creature who loved him. "Stay," he 
writes one morning — it is the 14th of December, 1710 — "Stay, 
I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed. Let 
me see. Come and appear, little letter ! Here I am, says 
he, and what say you to Stella this morning fresh and fast- 
ing? And can Stella read this writing without hurting her 
dear eyes ? " he goes on, after more kind prattle and fond 
whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then — 
the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, 
it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, 
and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard 
fate: but would she have changed it? I have heard a 
woman say that she would have taken Swift's cruelty to 
have had his tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her 



24 THACKERAY 

whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is gone ; 
of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, with 
a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching ; 
in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into 
pathos; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and 
he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel 
whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretched- 
ness and unworthiness, and adores her with cries of remorse 
and love : — 

" When on my sickly couch I lay, 
Impatient both of night and day, 
And groaning in unmanly strains, 
Called every power to ease my pains, 
Then Stella ran to my relief, 
With cheerful face and inward grief, 
And though by heaven's severe decree 
She suffers hourly more than me, 
No cruel master could require 
From slaves employed for daily hire, 
What Stella, by her friendship warmed, 
With vigour and delight performed. 
Now, with a soft and silent tread, 
Unheard she moves about my bed : 
My sinking spirits now supplies 
With cordials in her hands and eyes. 
Best pattern of true friends! beware; 
You pay too dearly for your care 
If, while your tenderness secures 
My life, it must endanger yours : 
For such a fool was never found 
Who pulled a palace to the ground, 
Only to have the ruins made 
Materials for a house decayed." 

One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear little 
piece of injustice was performed in her favour, for which 
I confess, for my part, I can't help thanking fate and the 
Dean. That other person was sacrificed to her — that — that 
young woman, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift's 
lodgings in Bury Street, and who flattered him, and made 
love to him in such an outrageous manner — Vanessa was 
thrown over. 

Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those 
he wrote to her. He kept Bolingbroke's, and Pope's, and 



SWIFT 25 

Harley's, and Peterborough's: but Stella, "very carefully/' 
the Lives say, kept Swift's. Of course: that is the way of 
the world: and so we cannot tell what her style was, or of 
what sort were the little letters which the Doctor placed 
there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of 
a morning. But in Letter IV. of that famous collection he 
describes his lodging in Bury Street, where he has the first- 
floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a 
week; and in Letter VI. he says "he has visited a lady just 
come to town," whose name somehow is not mentioned; and 
in Letter VIIL he enters a query of Stella's — " What do you 
mean ' that boards near me, that I dine with now and then ? ' 
What the deuce ! Yoirknow whom I have dined with every 
day since I left you, better than I do." Of course she does. 
Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what she 
means. But in a few letters more it turns out that the 
Doctor has been to dine " gravely " with a Mrs. Van- 
homrigh : then that he has been to " his neighbour : " then 
that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole 
week with his neighbour ! Stella was quite right in her 
previsions. She saw from the very first hint, what was 
going to happen ; and scented Vanessa in the air. The rival 
is at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading 
together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers 
together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating amo, 
amas, amavi together. The little language is over for poor 
Stella. By the rule of grammar and the course of conjuga- 
tion, doesn't amavi come after amo and amas? 

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa you may peruse in 
Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's 
vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him; she 
adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks him some- 
thing god-like, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his 
feet. As they are bringing him home from church, those 
divine feet of Dr. Swift's are found pretty often in Vanessa's 
parlour. He likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss 
Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and ■ 
beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day; 
he does not tell Stella about the business: until the im- 
petuous Vanessa becomes too fond of him, until the Doctor 



26 THACKERAY 

is quite frightened by the young woman's ardour, and con- 
founded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither of 
them — that I believe was the truth; but if he had not mar- 
ried Stella, Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. 
When he went back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to 
remain in her isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. In vain he 
protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied; the news of 
the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it 
killed her — she died of that passion. 

And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had 
written beautifully regarding her, "That doesn't surprise 
me," said Mrs. Stella, " for we all know the Dean could 
write beautifully about a broomstick. ,, A woman — a true 
woman ! Would you have had one of them forgive the 
other? 

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. 
Tuke of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a 
paper by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean's hand, 
the words : " Only a woman's hair!' An instance, says Scott, 
of the Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask of 
cynical indifference. 

See the various notions of critics ! Do those words in- 
dicate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling? Did you 
ever hear or read four words more pathetic? Only a 
woman's hair : only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, 
beauty; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and 
wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of 
hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless desertion: — only 
that lock of hair left; and memory and remorse, for the 
guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his 
victim. 

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given 
some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, 
must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his 
gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom he 
took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. 
People did not remain there long, and suffered for having 
been there. He shrank away from all affections sooner or 
later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away 
from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He 



SWIFT 27 

broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan; he slunk away 
from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's 
ear after seven score years. He was always alone — alone 
and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet 
smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence 
and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an 
awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, 
that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. 
We have other great names to mention — none I think, how- 
ever, so great or so gloomy. 



I? 977 



THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY 



BY 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

John Henry Newman was bom in London, February 21, 1801. 
Going up to Oxford at sixteen, he gained a scholarship at Trinity 
College, and after graduation became fellow and tutor of Oriel, 
then the most alive, intellectually, of the Oxford colleges. He 
took orders, and in 1828 was appointed vicar of St. Mary's, the 
university church. In 1832 he had to resign his tutorship on 
account of a difference of opinion with the head of the college 
as to his duties and responsibilities, Newman regarding his func- 
tion as one of a "substantially religious nature." 

Returning to Oxford the next year from a journey on the 
Continent, he began, in cooperation with R. H. Froude and 
others, the publication of the "Tracts for the Times," a series 
of pamphlets which gave a name to the "Tractarian" or "Ox- 
ford" movement for the defence of the "doctrine of apostolical 
succession and the integrity of the Prayer-Book" After several 
years of agitation, during which Newman came to exercise an 
extraordinary influence in Oxford, the movement and its leader 
fell under the official ban of the university and of the Anglican 
bishops, and Newman withdrew from Oxford, feeling that the 
Anglican Church had herself destroyed the defences which he 
had sought to build for her. In October, 1845, he was received 
into the Roman Church. 

The next year he went to Rome, and on his return introduced 
into England the institute of the Oratory. In 1854 ne went to 
Dublin for four years as rector of the new Catholic university, 
and while there wrote his volume on the "Idea of a University," 
in which he expounds with wonderful clearness of thought and 
beauty of language his view of the aim of education. In 1879 
he was created cardinal in recognition of his services to the 
cause of religion in England, and in 1890 he died. Of the his- 
tory of Newman's religious opinions and influence no hint can 
be given here. The essays which follow do, indeed, imply im- 
portant and fundamental elements of his system of belief; but 
they can be taken in detachment as the exposition of a view of 
the nature and value of culture by a man who was himself the 
fine flower of English university training and a master of 
English prose. 

30 



THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY 



I. WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY ? 

IF I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as 
I could, what a University w T as, I should draw my 
answer from its ancient designation of a Stadium Gene- 
rate, or " School of Universal Learning/* This descrip- 
tion implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in 
one spot; — from all parts; else, how will you find professors 
and students for every department of knowledge? and in one 
spot; else, how can there be any school at all ? Accordingly, 
in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowl- 
edge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from 
every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and 
satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as 
this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the„ 
communication and circulation of thought, by means of 
personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country. 

There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea 
thus presented to us; and if this be a University, then 
a University does but contemplate a necessity of our 
nature, and is but one specimen in a particular medium, out 
of many which might be adduced in others, of a provision 
for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of 
the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations 
of human society, carried on partly with set purpose, and 
partly not. One generation forms another; and the exist- 
ing generation is ever acting and reacting upon itself in the 
persons of its individual members. Now, in this process, 
books, I need scarcely say, that is, the lit era scripta, are 
one special instrument. It is true; and emphatically so in 
this age. Considering the prodigious powers of the press, 

31 



32 NEWMAN 

and how they are developed at this time in the never-inter- 
mitting issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in 
series, and light literature, we must allow there never was 
a time which promised fairer for dispensing with every 
other means of information and instruction. What can we 
want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of 
the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and 
diversified and persistent a promulgation of all kinds of 
knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowl- 
edge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sibyl wrote 
her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted 
them; but here such careless profusion might be prudently 
indulged, for it can be afforded without loss, in consequence 
of the almost fabulous fecundity of the instrument which 
these latter ages have invented. We have sermons in stones, 
and books in the running brooks; works larger and more 
comprehensive than those which have gained for ancients 
an immortality, issue forth every morning, and are pro- 
jected onwards to the ends of the earth at the rate of hun- 
dreds of miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavements 
are powdered, with swarms of little tracts; and the very 
.bricks of our city walls preach wisdom, by informing us by 
their placards where we can at once cheaply purchase it. 

I allow all this, and much more; such certainly is our 
popular education, and its effects are remarkable. Never- 
theless, after all, even in this age, whenever men are really 
serious about getting what, in the language of trade, is 
called " a good article," when they aim at something pre- 
cise, something refined, something really luminous, some- 
thing really large, something choice, they go to another 
market; they avail themselves, in some shape or other, of 
the rival method, the ancient method, of oral instruction, of 
present communication between man and man, of teachers 
instead of learning, of the personal influence of a master, 
and the humble initiation of a disciple, and, in consequence, 
of great centres of pilgrimage and throng, which such a 
method of education necessarily involves. This, I think, 
will be found to hold good in all those departments or 
aspects of society, which possess an interest sufficient to 
bind men together, or to constitute what is called " a world.'* 

Vol. 28— A He 



WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 33 

It holds in the political world, and in the high world, and 
in the religious world; and it holds also in the literary and 
scientific world. 

If the actions of men may be taken as any test of their 
convictions, then we have reason for saying this, viz.: — that 
the province and the inestimable benefit of the lit era script a 
is that of being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal, 
and an instrument of teaching in the hands of a teacher; 
but that, if we wish to become exact and fully furnished in 
any branch of knowledge which is diversified and compli- 
cated, we must consult the living man and listen to his living 
voice. I am not bound to investigate the cause of this, and 
anything I may say will, I am' conscious, be short of its 
full analysis; — perhaps we may suggest, that no books can. 
get through the number of minute questions which it is 
possible to ask on any extended subject, or can hit upon the 
very difficulties which are severally felt by each reader in 
succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special 
spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that* 
rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of 
mind with mind, thr.ough the eyes, the look, the accent, and 
the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the moment, 
and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation. But I 
am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental 
portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the 
fact is undeniable. The general principles of any study 
you may learn by books at home ; but the detail, the colour, 
the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you 
must catch all these from those in whom it lives already. 
You must imitate the student in French or German, who is 
not content with his grammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: 
you must take example from the young artist, who aspires 
to visit the great Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till 
we have discovered some intellectual daguerreotype, which 
takes off the course of thought, and the form, lineaments, 
and features of truth, as completely and minutely, as the 
optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we must 
come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must 
repair to the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may 
go from thence to the ends of the earth by means of books*, 

Vol. 28— B HC 



34 NEWMAN 

but the fulness is in one place alone. It is in such assem- 
blages and congregations of intellect that books themselves, 
the masterpieces of human genius, are written, or at least 
originated. 

The principle on which I have been insisting is so obvious, 
and instances in point are so ready, that I should think it 
tiresome to proceed with the subject, except that one or two 
illustrations may serve to explain my own language about 
it, which may not have done justice to the doctrine which 
it has been intended to enforce. 

For instance, the polished manners and high-bred bearing 
which are so difficult of attainment, and so strictly personal 
when attained, — which are so much admired in society, from 
society are acquired. All that goes to constitute a gentle- 
man, — the carriage, gait, address, gestures, voice; the ease, 
the self-possession, the courtesy, the power of conversing, 
the talent of not offending; the lofty principle, the delicacy 
of thought, the happiness of expression, the taste and pro- 
priety, the generosity and forbearance, the candour and con- 
sideration, the openness of hand; — these qualities, some of 
them come by nature, some of them may be found in any 
rank, some of them are a direct precept of Christianity; but 
the full assemblage of them, bound up in the unity of an 
individual character, do we expect they can be learned from 
books? are they^ not necessarily acquired, where they are 
to be found, in high society? The very nature of the case 
leads us to say so; you cannot fence without an antagonist, 
nor challenge all comers in disputation before you have 
supported a thesis; and in like manner, it stands to reason, 
you cannot learn to converse till you have the world to con- 
verse with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashfulness, or 
awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting deformity, till 
you serve your time in some school of manners. Well, and 
is it not so in matter of fact? The metropolis, the court, the 
great houses of the land, are the centres to which at stated 
times the country comes up, as to shrines of refinement and 
good taste; and then in due time the country goes back 
again home, enriched with a portion of the social accom- 
plishments, which those very visits serve to call out *and 
heighten in the gracious dispensers of them. We are unable 



WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 35 

to conceive how the " gentlemanlike " can otherwise be 
maintained; and maintained in this way it is. 

And now a second instance: and here too I am going 
to speak without personal experience of the subject I am 
introducing. I admit I have not been in Parliament, any 
more than I have figured in the beau monde; yet I cannot 
but think that statesmanship, as well as high breeding, is 
learned, not by books, but in certain centres of education. 
If it be not presumption to say so, Parliament puts a clever 
man an courant with politics and affairs of state in a way 
surprising to himself. A member of the Legislature, if tol- 
erably observant, begins to see things with new eyes, even 
though his views undergo no change. Words have a mean- 
ing now, and ideas a reality, such as they had not before. He 
hears a vast deal in public speeches and private conversa- 
tion, which is never put into print. The bearings of meas- 
ures and events, the action of parties, and the persons of 
friends and enemies, are brought out to the man who is in 
the midst of them with a distinctness, which the most dili- 
gent perusal of newspapers will fail to impart to them. It 
is access to the fountain-heads of political wisdom and 
experience, it is daily intercourse, of one kind or another, 
with the multitude who go up to them, it is familiarity with 
business, it is access to the contributions of fact and opinion 
thrown together by many witnesses from many quarters, 
which does this for him. However, I need not account for 
a fact, to which it is sufficient to appeal; that the Houses 
of Parliament and the atmosphere around them are a sort 
of University of politics. 

As regards the world of science, we find a remarkable 
instance of the principle which I am illustrating, in the 
periodical meetings for its advance, which have arisen in 
the course of the last twenty years, such as the British Asso- 
ciation. Such gatherings would to many persons appear at 
first sight simply preposterous. Above all subjects of study, 
Science is conveyed, is propagated, by books, or by private 
teaching; experiments and investigations are conducted in 
silence; discoveries are made in solitude. What have phil- 
osophers to do with festive celebrities, and panegyrical 
solemnities with mathematical and physical truth? Yet on 



36 NEWMAN 

a closer attention to the subject, it is found that not even 
scientific thought can dispense with the suggestions, the 
instruction, the stimulus, the sympathy, the intercourse with 
mankind on a large scale, which such meetings secure. A 
fine time of year is chosen, when days are long, skies are 
bright, the earth smiles, and all nature rejoices; a city or 
town is taken by turns, of ancient name or modern opulence, 
where buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty. The 
novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of 
strange, or the refreshment of well-known faces, the 
majesty of rank or of genius, the amiable charities of men 
pleased both with themselves ' and with each other; the ele- 
vated spirits, the circulation of thought, the curiosity; the 
morning sections, the outdoor exercise, the well-furnished, 
well-earned board, the not ungraceful hilarity, the evening 
circle; the brilliant lecture, the discussions or collisions or 
guesses of great men one with another, the narratives of 
scientific processes, of hopes, disappointments, conflicts, and 
successes, the splendid eulogistic orations; these and the 
like constituents of the annual celebration, are considered to 
do something real and substantial for the advance of knowl- 
edge which can be done in no other way. Of course they 
can but be occasional; they answer to the annual Act, or 
Commencement, or Commemoration of a University, not to 
its ordinary condition; but they are of a University nature; 
and I can well believe in their utility. They issue in the 
promotion of a certain living and, as it were, bodily com- 
munication of knowledge from one to another, of a general 
interchange of ideas, and a comparison and adjustment of 
science with science, of an enlargement of mind, intellectual 
and social, of an ardent love of the particular study, which 
may be chosen by each individual, and a noble devotion to 
its interests. 

Such meetings, I repeat, are but periodical, and only par- 
tially represent the idea of a University. The bustle and 
whirl which are their usual concomitants, are in ill keeping 
with the order and gravity of earnest intellectual education. 
We desiderate means of instruction which involve no inter- 
ruption of our ordinary habits; nor need we seek it long, for 
the natural course of things brings it about, while we de- 



WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 37 

bate over it. In every great country, the metropolis itself 
becomes a sort of necessary University, whether we will 
or no. As the chief city is the seat of the court, of high 
society, of politics, and of law, so as a matter of course 
is it the seat of letters also; and at this time, for a long 
term of years, London and Paris are in fact and in opera- 
tion Universities, though in Paris its famous University is 
no more, and in London a University scarcely exists except 
as a board of administration. The newspapers, magazines, 
reviews, journals, and periodicals of all kinds, the publish- 
ing trade, the libraries, museums, and academies there found, 
the learned and scientific societies, necessarily invest it with 
the functions of a University; and that atmosphere of intel- 
lect, which in a former age hung over Oxford or Bologna 
or Salamanca, has, with the change of times, moved away 
to the centre of civil government. Thither come up youths 
from all parts of the country, the students of law, medicine, 
and the fine arts, and the employes and attaches of litera- 
ture. There they live, as chance determines; and they are 
satisfied with their temporary home, for they find in it all 
that was promised to them there. They have not come in 
vain, as far as their own object in coming is concerned. 
They have not learned any particular religion, but they have 
learned their own particular profession well. They have, 
moreover, become acquainted with the habits, manners, and 
opinions of their place of sojourn, and done their part in 
maintaining the tradition of them. We cannot then be with- 
out virtual Universities; a metropolis is such: the simple 
question is, whether the education sought and given should 
be based on principle, formed upon rule, directed to the 
highest ends, or left to the random succession of masters 
and schools, one after another, with a melancholy waste of 
thought and an extreme hazard of truth. 

Religious teaching itself affords us an illustration of 
our subject to a certain point. It does not indeed seat itself 
merely in centres of the world; this is impossible from the 
nature of the case. It is intended for the many, not the few; 
its subject matter is truth necessary for us, not truth re- 
condite and rare; but it concurs in the principle of a Uni- 
versity so far as this, that its great instrument, or rather 



38 NEWMAN 

organ, has ever been that which nature prescribes in all 
education, the personal presence of a teacher, or, in theo- 
logical language, Oral Tradition. It is the living voice, the 
breathing form, the expressive countenance, which preaches, 
which catechises. Truth, a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, 
is poured into the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, 
through his affections, imagination, and reason ; it is poured 
into his mind and is sealed up there In perpetuity, by pro- 
pounding and repeating it, by questioning and requestioning, 
by correcting gnd explaining, by progressing and then re- 
curring to first principles, by all those ways which are implied 
in the word " catechising." In the first ages, it was a work 
of long time ; months, sometimes years, were devoted to the 
arduous task of disabusing the mind of the incipient 
Christian of its pagan errors, and of moulding it upon the 
Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at hand for 
the study of those who could avail themselves of them; but 
St. Irenaeus does not hesitate to speak of whole races, who 
had been converted to Christianity, without being able to 
read them. To be unable to read or write was in those 
times no evidence of want of learning: the hermits of the 
deserts were, in this sense of the word, illiterate; yet the 
great St. Anthony, though he knew not letters, was a match 
in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try 
him. Didymus again, the great Alexandrian theologian, was 
blind. The ancient discipline, called the Disciplina Arcani, 
involved the same principle. The more sacred doctrines of 
Revelation were not committed to books but passed on by 
successive tradition. The teaching on the Blessed Trinity 
and the Eucharist appears to have been so handed down for 
some hundred years ; and when at length reduced to writing, 
it has filled many folios, yet has not been exhausted. 

But I have said more than enough in illustration; I end 
as I began; — a University is a place of concourse, whither 
students come from every quarter for every kind of knowl- 
edge. You cannot have the best of every kind everywhere; 
you must go to some great city or emporium for it. There 
you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all 
together, which you find each in its own separate place else- 
where. All the riches of the land, and of the earth, are 



WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 39 

carried up thither ; there are the best markets, and there the 
best workmen. It is the centre of trade, the supreme court 
of fashion, the umpire of rival talents, and the standard of 
things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries 
of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful voices and 
performers of transcendent skill. It is the place for great 
preachers, great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In 
the nature of things, greatness and unity go together ; jex- 
cellence impliesja. ^centre. And such, for the third or fourth 
time, is a University; I hope I do not weary out the reader 
by repeating it. It is the place to which a thousand schools 
make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range 
&nd speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist 
activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a 
place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries veri- 
fied and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and 
error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and 
knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where the pro- 
fessor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, 
displaying his science in its most complete and most winning 
form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and 
lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers. 
It is the place where the catechist makes good his ground 
as he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready 
memory, and wedging and tightening it into the expanding 
reason. It is a place which wins the admiration of the 
young by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle- 
aged by its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its 
associations. It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, 
a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising genera- 
tion. It is this and a great deal more, and demands a some- 
what better head and hand than mine to describe it well. 

Such is a University in its idea and in its purpose; such 
in good measure has it before now been in fact. Shall it 
ever be again? We are going forward in the strength of 
the Cross, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, in 
the name of St. Patrick, to attempt it. 



II. SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 

IF we would know what a University is, considered in 
its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the 
first and most celebrated home of European literature 
and source of European civilization, to the bright and beau- 
tiful Athens, — Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, 
and then sent back again to the business of life, the youth 
of the Western World for a long thousand years. Seated 
on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly suited 
for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet, 
what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its 
neighbourhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and 
in the loveliness of the region in which it lay. Hither, then, 
as to a. sort of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great 
and the fair were found in substantial being, and all depart- 
ments of truth explored, and all diversities of intellectual 
power exhibited, where taste and philosophy were majestic- 
ally enthroned as in a royal court, where there was no 
sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of 
genius, where professors were rulers, and princes did hom- 
age, hither flocked continually from the very corners of the 
orbis terrarum, the many-tongued generation, just rising, or 
just risen into manhood, in order to gain wisdom. 

Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and nursed the 
infant genius of his people, and Cimon, after the Persian 
war, had given it a home. That war had established the 
naval supremacy of Athens; she had become an imperial 
state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the double chain of 
kindred and of subjection, were importing into her both 
their merchandize and their civilization. The arts and 
philosophy of the Asiastic coast were easily carried across 
the sea, and there was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample 
fortune, reacty to receive them with due honours. Not con- 

40 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 41 

tent with patronizing their professors, he built the first of 
those noble porticos, of which we hear so much in Athens, 
and he formed the groves, which in process of time became 
the celebrated Academy. Planting is one of the most grace- 
ful, as in Athens it was one of the most beneficent, of em- 
ployments. Cimon took in hand the wild wood, pruned 
and dressed it, and laid it out with handsome walks and 
welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors 
of the city's civilization, was he ungrateful to the instru- 
ments of her prosperity. His trees extended their cool, um- 
brageous branches over the merchants, who assembled in 
the Agora, for many generations. 

Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of 
bounty ; for all the while their ships had been carrying forth 
the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. Then 
commenced what may be called her University existence. 
Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the government and 
in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have enter- 
tained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated 
Greece : in this he failed, but his encouragement of such 
men as Phidias and Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring 
a far more lasting sovereignty over a far wider empire. 
Little understanding the sources of her own greatness, 
Athens would go to war: peace is the interest of a seat of 
commerce and the arts; but to war she went; yet to her, 
whether peace or war, it mattered not. The political power 
of Athens waned and disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell; 
centuries rolled away, — they did but bring fresh triumphs 
to the city of the poet and the sage. There at length the 
swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed 
Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, 
gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. 
Revolution after revolution passed over the face of Europe, 
as well as of Greece, but still ^he was there, — Athens, the 
city of mind, — as radiant, as splendid, as delicate, as young, 
as ever she had been. 

Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue 
^Egean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime to 
see, many a territory more ample ; but there was one charm 
in Attica, which in the same perfection was nowhere else. 



42 NEWMAN 

The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos, the Thes- 
salian vale, these had not the gift; Bceotia, which lay to its 
immediate north, was notorious for its very want of it. 
The heavy atmosphere of that Bceotia might be good for 
vegetation, but it was associated in popular belief with the 
dulness of the Boeotian intellect : on the contrary, the special 
purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity of the air of 
Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its genius, did that 
for it which earth did not ; — it brought out every bright hue 
and tender shade of the landscape over which it was spread, 
and would have illuminated the face even of a more bare 
and rugged country. 

A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, 
and thirty its greatest breadth ; two elevated rocky barriers, 
meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains, command- 
ing the plain, — Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus ; an unsat- 
isfactory soil; some streams, not always full; — such is 
about the report which the agent of a London company 
would have made of Attica. He would report that the cli- 
mate was mild ; the hills were limestone ; there was plenty of 
good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might 
have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; 
fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since 
worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But 
what he would not think of noting down, was, that that olive 
tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it 
excited a religious veneration ; and that it took so kindly to 
the light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, 
and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of 
writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of which 
I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued the 
colours on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, 
for all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, 
yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how that 
same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale 
olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed 
like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would 
say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs 
which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the 
hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare flavour 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 43 

Oi its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the 
English demand. He would look over the iEgean from 
the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye 
the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian head- 
land, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when 
they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct 
thereto across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to 
him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with 
their white edges down below; nor of those graceful, fan- 
like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft 
like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and 
spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist 
of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting 
of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping 
steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the 
hollow shore, — he would not deign to notice that restless 
living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was 
not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined colour- 
ing, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the 
jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or 
Laurium by the declining sun; — our agent of a mercantile 
firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. 
Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pil- 
grim student come from a semi-barbarous land to that small 
corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take 
his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of 
invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from 
a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who 
in a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody 
swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, learned at once what 
a real University must be, by coming to understand the sort 
of country, which was its suitable home. 

Nor was this all that a University required, and found 
in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. If 
the students at that famous place had nothing better than 
bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not have been 
able or disposed to turn their residence there to much 
account. Of course they must have the means of living, 
nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to 
be an Alma Mater at the time, or to remain afterwards 



44 NEWMAN 

a pleasant thought in their memory. And so they had: be 
it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of trade, per- 
haps the first in Greece; and this was very much to the 
point, when a number of strangers were ever flocking to it, 
whose combat was to be with intellectual, not physical diffi- 
culties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants sup- 
plied, that they might be at leisure to set about furnishing 
their minds. Now, barren as was the soil of Attica, and 
bare the face of the country, yet it had only too many 
resources for an elegant, nay luxurious abode there. So 
abundant were the imports of the place, that it was a com- 
mon saying, that the productions, which were found singly 
elsewhere, were brought all together in Athens. Corn and 
wine, the staple of subsistence in such a climate, came from 
the isles of the iEgean; fine wool and carpeting from Asia 
Minor; slaves, as now, from the Euxine, and timber too; 
and iron and brass from the coasts of the Mediterranean. 
The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures himself, 
but encouraged them in others; and a population of for- 
eigners caught at the lucrative occupation both for home 
consumption and for exportation. Their cloth, and other 
textures for dress and furniture, and their hardware — for 
instance, armour — were in great request. Labour was 
cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the taste and skill, 
which at first were devoted to public buildings, as temples 
and porticos, were in course of time applied to the mansions 
of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is unde- 
niable that art did much more. 

Here some one will interrupt me with the remark : " By 
the bye, where are we, and whither are we going? — what 
has all this to do with a University? at least what has it 
to do with education? It is instructive doubtless; but still 
how much has it to do with your subject?" Now I beg 
to assure the reader that I am most conscientiously em- 
ployed upon my subject; and I should have thought every 
one would have seen this: however, since the objection is 
made, I may be allowed to pause awhile, and show distinctly 
the drift of what I have been saying, before I go farther. 
What has this to do with my subject! why, the question of 
the site is the very first that comes into consideration, when 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 45 

a Stadium Generate is contemplated; for that site should be 
a liberal and noble one; who will deny it? All authorities 
agree in this, and very little reflection will be sufficient to 
make it clear. I recollect a conversation I once had on this 
very subject with a very eminent man. I was a youth of 
eighteen, and was leaving my University for the Long 
Vacation, when I found myself in company in a public con- 
veyance with a middle-aged person, whose face was strange 
to me. However, it was the great academical luminary of 
the day, whom afterwards I knew very well. Luckily for 
me, I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a fancy of 
his, as his friends knew, to make himself on easy terms 
especially with stage-coach companions. So, what with my 
flippancy and his condescension, I managed to hear many 
things which were novel to me at the time; and one point 
which he was strong upon, and was evidently fond of urg- 
ing, was the material pomp and circumstance which should 
environ a great seat of learning. He considered it was 
worth the consideration of the government, whether Oxford 
should not stand in a domain of its own. An ample range, 
say four miles in diameter, should be turned into wood and 
meadow, and the University should be approached on all 
sides by a magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and 
groves and avenues, and with glimpses and views of the fair 
city, as the traveller drew near it. There is nothing surely 
absurd in the idea, though it would cost a round sum to 
realise it. What has a better claim to the purest and fairest 
possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom? So thought 
my coach companion; and he did but express the tradition 
of ages and the instinct of mankind. 

For instance, take the great University of Paris. That 
famous school engrossed as its territory the whole south 
bank of the Seine, and occupied one half, and that the 
pleasanter half, of the city. King Louis had the island 
pretty well as his own, — it was scarcely more than a fortifi- 
cation; and the north of the river was given over to the 
nobles and citizens to do what they could with its marshes; 
but the eligible south, rising from the stream, which swept 
around its base, to the fair summit of St. Genevieve, with 
its broad meadows, its vineyards and its gardens, and with 



46 NEWMAN 

the sacred elevation of Montmartre confronting it, all this 
was the inheritance of the University. There was that 
pleasant Pratum, stretching along the river's bank, in which 
the students for centuries took their recreation, which 
Alcuin seems to mention in his farewell verses to Paris, 
and which has given a name to the great Abbey of St. Ger- 
main-des-Pres. For long years it was devoted to the pur- 
poses of innocent and healthy enjoyment; but evil times 
came on the University; disorder arose within its precincts, 
and the fair meadow became the scene of party brawls; 
heresy stalked through Europe, and Germany and England 
no longer sending their contingent of students, a heavy debt 
was the consequence to the academical body. To let their 
land was the only resource left to them : buildings rose upon 
it, and spread along the green sod, and the country at length 
became town. Great was the grief and indignation of the 
doctors and masters, when this catastrophe occurred. "A 
wretched sight," said the Proctor of the German nation, " a 
wretched sight, to witness the sale of that ancient manor, 
whither the Muses were wont to wander for retirement 
and pleasure. Whither shall the youthful student now be- 
take himself, what relief will he find for his eyes, wearied 
with intense reading, now that the pleasant stream is taken 
from him ? " Two centuries and more have passed since 
this complaint was uttered; and time has shown that the 
outward calamity, which it recorded, was but the emblem 
of the great moral revolution, which was to follow; till the 
institution itself has followed its green meadows, into the 
region of things which once were and now are not. 

And in like manner, when they were first contemplating 
a University in Belgium, some centuries ago, "Many," says 
Lipsius, " suggested Mechlin, as an abode salubrious and 
clean, but Louvain was preferred, as for other reasons, so 
because no city seemed from the disposition of place and 
people, more suitable for learned leisure. Who will not 
approve the decision? Can a site be healthier or more 
pleasant? The atmosphere pure and cheerful; the spaces 
open and delightful; meadows, fields, vines, groves, nay, I 
may say, a rus in urbe. Ascend and walk round the walls ; 
what do you look down upon? Does not the wonderful and 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 47 

delightful variety smooth the brow and soothe the mind? 
You have corn, and apples, and grapes ; sheep and oxen ; and 
birds chirping or singing. Now carry your feet or your 
eyes beyond the walls; there are streamlets, the river 
meandering along; country-houses, convents, the superb 
fortress; copses or woods fill up the scene, and spots for 
simple enjoyment." And then he breaks out into poetry: 

Salvete Athenae nostra, Athens Belgicae, 
Te Gallus, te Germanus, et te Sarmata 
Invisit, et Britannus, et te duplicis 
Hispaniae alumnus, etc. 

Extravagant, then, and wayward as might be the thought 
of my learned coach companion, when, in the nineteenth 
century, he imagined, Norman-wise, to turn a score of vil- 
lages into a park or pleasaunce, still, the waywardness of 
his fancy is excused by the justness of his principle; for 
certainly, such as he would have made it, a University ought 
to be. Old Antony-a-Wood, discoursing on the demands of 
a University, had expressed the same sentiment long before 
him; as Horace in ancient times, with reference to Athens 
itself, when he spoke of seeking truth " in the groves of 
Academe/' And to Athens, as will be seen, Wood himself 
appeals, when he would discourse of Oxford. Among 
" those things which are required to make a University ," 
he puts down, — 

" First, a good and pleasant site, where there is a whole- 
some and temperate constitution of the air; composed with 
waters, springs or wells, woods and pleasant fields; which 
being obtained, those commodities are enough to invite 
students to stay and abide there. As the Athenians in 
ancient times were happy for their conveniences, so also 
were the Britons, when by a remnant of the Grecians that 
came amongst them, they or their successors selected such 
a place in Britain to plant a school or schools therein, which 
for its pleasant situation was afterwards called Bellositum 
or Bellosite, now Oxford, privileged with all those con- 
veniences before mentioned." 

By others the local advantages of that University have 
been more philosophically analyzed; — for instance, with a 
reference to its position in the middle of southern England; 



48 NEWMAN 

its situation on several islands in a broad plain, through 
which many streams flowed; the surrounding marshes, 
which, in times when it was needed, protected the city from 
invaders; its own strength as a military position; its easy 
communication with London, nay with the sea, by means 
of the Thames; while the London fortifications hindered 
pirates from ascending the stream, which all the time was 
so ready and convenient for a descent. 

Alas ! for centuries past that city has lost its prime honour 
and boast, as a servant and soldier of the Truth. Once 
named the second school of the Church, second only to 
Paris, the foster-mother of St. Edmund, St. Richard, St. 
Thomas Cantilupe, the theatre of great intellects, of Scotus 
the subtle Doctor, of Hales the irrefragable, of Occam the 
special, of Bacon the admirable, of Middleton the solid, and 
of Bradwardine the profound, Oxford has now lapsed to 
that level of mere human loveliness, which in its highest 
perfection we admire in Athens. Nor would it have a place, 
now or hereafter, in these pages, nor would it occur to me 
to speak its name, except that, even in its sorrowful depri- 
vation, it still retains so much of that outward lustre, which, 
like the brightness on the prophet's face, ought to be a ray 
from an illumination within, as to afford me an illustration 
of the point on which I am engaged, viz., what should be 
the material dwelling-place and appearance, the local cir- 
cumstances, and the secular concomitants of a great Uni- 
versity. Pictures are drawn in tales of romance, of spirits 
seemingly too beautiful in their fall to be really fallen, and 
the holy Pope at Rome, Gregory, in fact, and not in fiction, 
looked upon the blue eyes and golden hair of the fierce 
Saxon youth in the slave market, and pronounced them 
Angels, not Angles; and the spell which this once loyal 
daughter of the Church still exercises upon the foreign 
visitor, even now when her true glory is departed, suggests 
to us how far more majestic and more touching, how brim- 
ful of indescribable influence would be the presence of a 
University, which was planted within, not without Jerusa- 
lem, — an influence, potent as her truth is strong, wide as her 
sway is world-wide, and growing, not lessening, by the 
extent of space over which its attraction would be exerted. 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 49 

Let the reader then listen to the words of the last learned 
German, who has treated of Oxford, and judge for him- 
self if they do not bear me out, in what I have said of the 
fascination which the very face and smile of a University 
possess over those who come within its range. 

" There is scarce a spot in the world," says Huber, " that 
bears an historical stamp so deep and varied as Oxford; 
where so many noble memorials of moral and material 
power cooperating to an honourable end, meet the eye all 
at once. He who can be proof against the strong emotions 
which the whole aspect and genius of the place tend to 
inspire, must be dull, thoughtless, uneducated, or of very 
perverted views. Others will bear us witness, that, even 
side by side with the Eternal Rome, the Alma Mater of 
Oxford may be fitly named, as producing a deep, a lasting, 
and peculiar impression. 

" In one of the most fertile districts of the Queen of the 
Seas, whom nature has so richly blessed, whom for centuries 
past no footstep of foreign armies has desecrated, lies a 
broad green vale, where the Cherwell and the Isis mingle 
their full, clear waters. Here and there primeval elms and 
oaks overshadow them ; while in their various windings they 
encircle gardens, meadows, and fields, villages, cottages, 
farm-houses, and country-seats, in motley mixture. In the 
midst rises a mass of mighty buildings, the general character 
of which varies between convent, palace, and castle. Some 
few Gothic church-towers and Romaic domes, it is true, 
break through the horizontal lines; yet the general impres- 
sion at a distance and at first sight, is essentially different 
from that of any of the towns of the middle ages. The 
outlines are far from being so sharp, so angular, so irreg- 
ular, so fantastical; a certain softness, a peculiar repose, 
reigns in those broader, terrace-like rising masses. Only 
in the creations of Claude Lorraine or Poussin could we 
expect to find a spot to compare with the prevailing charac- 
ter of this picture, especially when lit up by a favourable 
light. The principal masses consist of Colleges, the Uni- 
versity buildings, and the city churches; and by the side 
of these the city itself is lost on distant view. But on 
entering the streets, we find around us all the signs of an 



SO NEWMAN 

active and prosperous trade. Rich and elegant shops in 
profusion afford a sight to be found nowhere but in Eng- 
land; but with all this glitter and show, they sink into a 
modest, and, as it were, a menial attitude, by the side of the 
grandly severe memorials of the higher intellectual life, 
memorials which have been growing out of that life from 
almost the beginning of Christianity itself. Those rich and 
elegant shops are, as it were, the domestic offices of these 
palaces of learning, which ever rivet the eye of the observer, 
while all besides seems perforce to be subservient to them. 
Each of the larger and more ancient Colleges looks like a 
separate whole — an entire town, whose walls and monu- 
ments proclaim the vigorous growth of many centuries; 
and the town itself has happily escaped the lot of modern 
beautifying, and in this respect harmonizes with the Col- 
leges." 

There are those who, having felt the influence of this 
ancient School, and being smit with its splendour and its 
sweetness, ask wistfully, if never again it is to be Catholic, 
or whether at least some footing for Catholicity may not 
be found there. All honour and merit to the charitable and 
zealous hearts who so inquire! Nor can we dare to tell 
what in time to come may be the inscrutable purposes of 
that grace, which is ever more comprehensive than human 
hope and aspiration. But for me, from the day I left its 
walls, I never, for good or bad, have had anticipation of its 
future; and never for a moment have I had a wish to see 
again a place, which I have never ceased to love, and where 
I lived for nearly thirty years. Nay, looking at the general 
state of things at this day, I desiderate for a School of the 
Church, if an additional School is to be granted to us, a 
more central position than Oxford has to show. Since the 
age of Alfred and of the first Henry, the world has grown, 
from the west and south of Europe, into four or five con- 
tinents; and I look for a city less inland than that old 
sanctuary, and a country closer upon the highway of the 
seas. I look towards a land both old and young; old in its 
Christianity, young in the promise of its future; a nation, 
which received grace before the Saxon came to Britain, and 
which has never quenched it; a Church, which comprehends 



SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 51 

in its history the rise and fall of Canterbury and York, 
which Augustine and Paulinus found, and Pole and Fisher 
left behind them. I contemplate a people which has had a 
long night, and will have an inevitable day. I am turning 
my eyes towards a hundred years to come, and I dimly see 
the island I am gazing on, become the road of passage and 
union between two hemispheres, and the centre of the world. 
I see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France 
in vigour, and Spain in enthusiasm; and I see England 
taught by advancing years to exercise in its behalf that good 
sense which is her characteristic towards every one else. 
The capital of that prosperous and hopeful land is situate 
in a beautiful bay and near a romantic region; and in it I 
see a flourishing University, which for a while had to 
struggle with fortune, but which, when its first founders and 
servants were dead and gone, had successes far exceeding 
their anxieties. Thither, as to a sacred soil, the home of 
their fathers, and the fountain-head of their Christianity, 
students are flocking from East, West, and South, from 
America and Australia and India, from Egypt and Asia 
Minor, with the ease and rapidity of a locomotion not yet 
discovered, and last, though not least, from England, — all 
speaking one tongue, all owning one faith, all eager for 
one large true wisdom ; and thence, when their stay is over, 
going back again to carry over all the earth " peace to men 
of good will." 



III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AT 
ATHENS 



HOWEVER apposite may have been the digression 
into which I was led when I had got about half 
through the foregoing Chapter, it has had the 
inconvenience of what may be called running me off the 
rails; and now that I wish to proceed from the point at 
which it took place, I shall find some trouble, if I may con- 
tinue the metaphor, in getting up the steam again, or if I 
may change it, in getting into the swing of my subject. 

It has been my desire, were I able, to bring before the 
reader what Athens may have been, viewed as what we 
have since called a University; and to do this, not with any 
purpose of writing a panegyric on a heathen city, or of 
denying its many deformities, or of concealing what was 
morally base in what was intellectually great, but just the 
contrary, of representing things as they really were; so far, 
that is, as to enable him to see what a University is, in the 
very constitution of society and in its own idea, what is its 
nature and object, and what it needs of aid and support 
external to itself to complete that nature and to secure that 
object. 

So now let us* fancy our Scythian, or Armenian, or African, 
or Italian, or Gallic student, after tossing on the Saronic 
waves, which would be his more ordinary course to Athens, 
at last casting anchor at Piraeus. He is of any condition or 
rank of life you please, and may be made to order, from a 
prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some Cleanthes, who 
has been a boxer in the public games. Hpw did it ever 
cross his brain to betake himself to Athens in search of 
wisdom? or, if he came thither by accident, how did the love 
of it ever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens he 

52 



UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS 53 

came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got his liveli- 
hood by drawing water, carrying loads, and the like servile 
occupations. He attached himself, of all philosophers, to 
Zeno the Stoic, — to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most 
haughty of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the 
poor scholar brought his master the daily sum of an obolus, 
in payment for attending his lectures. Such progress did 
he make, that on Zeno's death he actually was his successor 
in his school; and, if my memory does not play me false, 
he is the author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is 
one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical poetry. 
Yet, even when he was the head of a school, he continued 
in his illiberal toil as if he had been a monk; and, it is said, 
that once, when the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, 
he was discovered to have no other garment at all; — some- 
thing like the German student who came up to Heidelberg 
with nothing upon him but a great coat and a pair of 
pistols. 

Or it is another disciple of the Porch, — Stoic by nature, 
earlier than by profession, — who is entering the city; but 
in what different fashion he comes ! It is no other than 
Marcus, Emperor of Rome and philosopher. Professors 
long since were summoned from Athens for his service, 
when he was a youth, and now he comes, after his victories 
in the battle field, to make his acknowledgments at the end 
of life, to the city of wisdom, and to submit himself to an 
initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries. 

Or it is a young man of great promise as an orator, were 
it not for his weakness of chest, which renders it necessary 
that he should acquire the art of speaking without over- 
exertion, and should adopt a delivery sufficient for the dis- 
play of his rhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful 
to his physical resources on the other. He is called Cicero ; 
he will stop but a short time, and will pass over to Asia 
Minor and its cities, before he returns to continue a career 
which will render his name immortal; and he will like his 
short sojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good care 
to send his son thither at an earlier age than he visited it 
himself. 

But see where comes from Alexandria (for we need not 



54 NEWMAN 

be very solicitous about anachronisms), a young man from 
twenty to twenty-two, who has narrowly escaped drowning 
on his voyage, and is to remain at Athens as many as eight 
or ten years, yet in the course of that time will not learn a 
line of Latin, thinking it enough to become accomplished in 
Greek composition, and in that he will succeed. He is a 
grave person, and difficult to make out; some say he is a 
Christian, something or other in the Christian line his 
father is for certain. His name is Gregory, he is by country 
a Cappadocian, and will in time become preeminently a 
theologian, and one of the principal Doctors of the Greek 
Church. 

Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature and black 
hair, whose father has given him an education at Rome 
above his rank in life, and now is sending him to finish it 
at Athens; he is said to have a turn for poetry: a hero he 
is not, and it were well if he knew it; but he is caught by 
the enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning with 
Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield behind him on 
the field of Philippi. 

Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his name Eunapius; though 
the voyage was not long, sea sickness, or confinement, or 
bad living on board the vessel, threw him into a fever, and, 
when the passengers landed in the evening at Piraeus, he 
could not stand. His countrymen who accompanied him, 
took him up among them and carried him to the house of 
the great teacher of the day, Proseresius, who was a friend 
of the captain's, and whose fame it was which drew the 
enthusiastic youth to Athens. His companions understand 
the sort of place they are in, and, with the license of aca- 
demic students, they break into the philosopher's house, though 
he appears to have retired for the night, and proceed to 
make themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony, 
which is only not impudence, because Proseresius takes it 
so easily. Strange introduction for our stranger to a seat 
of learning, but not out of keeping with Athens; for what 
could you expect of a place where there was a mob of 
youths and not even the pretence of control; where the 
poorer lived any how, and got on as they could, and the 
teachers themselves had no protection from the humours 






UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS 5$ 

and caprices of the students who filled their lecture-halls? 
However, as to this Eunapius, Proseresius took a fancy to 
the boy, and told him curious stories about Athenian life. 
He himself had come up to the University with one Hephaes- 
tion, and they were even worse off than Cleanthes the Stoic ; 
for they had only one cloak between them, and nothing what- 
ever besides, except some old bedding; so when Proaeresius 
went abroad, Hephsestion lay in bed, and practised himself 
in oratory; and then Hephsestion put on the cloak, and 
Proseresius crept under the coverlet. At another time there 
was so fierce a feud between what would be called "town 
and gown " in an English University, that the Professors 
did not dare lecture in public, for fear of ill treatment. 

But a freshman like Eunapius soon got experience for 
himself of the ways and manners prevalent in Athens. Such 
a one as he had hardly entered the city, when he was caught 
hold of by a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to 
practise on his awkwardness and his ignorance. At first 
sight one wonders at their childishness ; but the like conduct 
obtained in the medieval Universities ; and not many months 
have passed away since the journals have told us of sober 
Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations, and to the 
anxieties of money-making, pelting each other with snow- 
balls on their own sacred territory, and defying the magis- 
tracy, when they would interfere with their privilege of 
becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to some- 
thing or other in human nature. Meanwhile, there stands 
the new-comer, surrounded by a circle of his new asso- 
ciates, who forthwith proceed to frighten, and to banter, 
and to make a fool of him, to the extent of their wit Some 
address him with mock politeness, others with fierceness; 
and so they conduct him in solemn procession across the 
Agora to the Baths ; and as they approach, they dance about 
him like madmen. But this was to be the end of his trial, 
for the Bath was a sort of initiation; he thereupon received 
the pallium, or University gown, and was suffered by his 
tormentors to depart in peace. One alone is recorded as 
having been exempted from this persecution ; it was a youth 
graver and loftier than even St. Gregory himself: but it 
was not from his force of character, but at the instance of 



56 NEWMAN 

Gregory, that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom-friend, 
and was ready in Athens to shelter him when he came. It 
was another Saint and Doctor; the great Basil, then, (it 
would appear,) as Gregory, but a catechumen of the 
Church. 

But to return to our freshman. His troubles are not at 
an end, though he has got his gown upon him. Where is he 
to lodge? whom is he to attend? He finds himself seized, 
before he well knows where he is, by another party of men, 
or three or four parties at once, like foreign porters at a 
landing, who seize on the baggage of the perplexed stranger, 
and thrust half a dozen cards into his unwilling hands. Our 
youth is plied by the hangers-on of professor this, or sophist 
that, each of whom wishes the fame or the profit of having 
a houseful. We will say that he escapes from their hands, 
■ — but then he will have to choose for himself where he will 
put up; and, to tell the truth, with all the praise I have 
already given, and the praise I shall have to give, to the city 
of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves, the brick and wood 
which formed it, the actual tenements, where flesh and blood 
had to lodge (always excepting the mansions of great men 
of the place), do not seem to have been much better than 
those of Greek or Turkish towns, which are at this moment 
a topic of interest and ridicule in the public prints. A lively 
picture has lately been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, 
says the writer, a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses 
found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden 
tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and 
tiles, the sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish- 
markets, or river-sides can supply ; tumble them down on the 
declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces between house 
and house, thus accidentally determined, be understood to 
form streets, winding of course for no reason, and with no 
meaning, up and down the town; the roadway always nar- 
row, the breadth never uniform, the separate houses bulging 
or retiring below, as circumstances may have determined, 
and leaning forward till they meet overhead; — and you 
have a good idea of Gallipoli. I question whether this pic- 
ture would not nearly correspond to the special seat of the 
Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure us distinctly 



UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS 57 

that the houses of Athens were for the most part small and 
mean; that the streets were crooked and narrow; that the 
upper stories projected over the roadway; and that stair- 
cases, balustrades, and doors that opened outwards, ob- 
structed it; — a remarkable coincidence of description. I do 
not doubt at all, though history is silent, that that roadway 
was jolting to carriages, and all but impassable; and that 
it was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish town 
now. Athens seems in these respects to have been below 
the average cities of its time. "A stranger," says an an- 
cient, w might doubt, on the sudden view, if really he saw 
Athens." 

I grant all this, and much more, if you will ; but, recollect, 
Athens was the home of the intellectual, and beautiful ; not 
of low mechanical contrivances, and material organization. 
Why stop within your lodgings counting the rents in your 
wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature and art call 
you away? You must put up with such a chamber, and a 
table, and a stool, and a sleeping board, any where else in 
the three continents; one place does not differ from another 
indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottos in Syria 
are not perfection. I suppose you did not come to Athens 
to swarm up a ladder, or to grope about a closet: you came 
to see and to hear, what hear and see you could not else- 
where. What food for the intellect is it possible to procure 
indoors, that you stay there looking about you? do you 
think to read there? where are your books? do you expect 
to purchase books at Athens — you are much out in your 
calculations. True it is, we at this day, who live in the 
nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a per- 
petual memorial; and copies there have been, since the time 
that they were written ; but you need not go to Athens to 
procure them, nor would you find them in Athens. Strange 
to say, strange to the nineteenth century, that in the age of 
Plato and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a bookshop 
in the whole place: nor was the book trade in existence till 
the very time of Augustus. Libraries, I suspect, were the 
bright invention of Attalus or the Ptolemies; I doubt 
whether Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian. It 
was what the student gazed on, what he heard, what he 



58 NEWMAN 

caught by the magic of sympathy, not what he read., which 
was the education furnished by Athens. 

He leaves his narrow lodging early in the morning; and 
not till night, if even then, will he return. It is but a crib 
or kennel, — in which he sleeps when the weather is inclem- 
ent or the ground damp; in no respect a home. And he 
goes out of doors, not to read the day's newspaper, or to buy 
the gay shilling volume, but to imbibe the invisible atmos- 
phere of genius, and to learn by heart the oral traditions of 
taste. Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down town 
behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to the right, or he 
turns to the Areopagus on the left. He goes to the Par- 
thenon to study the sculptures of Phidias; to the temple of 
the Dioscuri to see the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed 
take our Sophocles or iEschylus out of our coat-pocket; but, 
if our sojourner at Athens would understand how a tragic 
poet can write, he must betake himself to the theatre on the 
south, and see and hear the drama literally in action. Or 
let him go westward to the Agora, and there he will hear 
Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes haranguing. 
He goes farther west still, along the shade of those noble 
planes, which Cimon has planted there ; and he looks around 
him at the statues and porticos and vestibules, each by itself 
Z) work of genius and skill, enough to be the making of 
another city. He passes through the city gate, and then he 
Is at the famous Ceramicus; here are the tombs of the 
mighty dead; and here, we will suppose, is Pericles himself, 
the most elevated, the most thrilling of orators, converting 
a funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical pane- 
gyric of the living. 

Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has come to that 
still more celebrated Academe, which has bestowed its own 
name on Universities down to this day; and there he sees 
a sight which will be graven on his memory till he dies. 
Many are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the 
statues, and the temple, and the stream of the Cephissus 
flowing by; many are the lessons which will be taught him 
day after day by teacher or by companion ; but his eye is just 
now arrested by one object; it is the very presence of Plato. 
He does not hear a word that he says ; he does not care to 



UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS 59 

hear; he asks neither for discourse nor disputation; what 
he sees is a whole, complete in itself, not to be increased by 
addition, and greater than anything else. It will be a point 
in the history of his life ; a stay for his memory to rest on, 
a burning thought in his heart, a bond of union with men 
of like mind, ever afterwards. Such is the spell which the 
living man exerts on his fellows, for good or for evil. How 
nature impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or 
genius, or name, the qualification for our doing so! A 
Spaniard is said to have travelled to Italy, simply to see 
Livy; he had his fill of gazing, and then went back again 
home. Had our young stranger got nothing by his voyage 
but the sight of the breathing and moving Plato, had he 
entered no lecture-room to hear, no gymnasium to converse, 
he had got some measure of education, and something to tell 
of to his grandchildren. 

But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of him the 
only lesson to be learned in this wonderful suburb. It is 
the region and the realm of philosophy. Colleges were the 
inventions of many centuries later; and they imply a sort of 
cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely natural to 
an Athenian. It was the boast of the philosophic statesman 
of Athens, that his countrymen achieved by the mere force 
of nature and the love of the noble and the great, what other 
people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all who came 
among them were submitted to the same method of educa- 
tion. We have traced our student on his wanderings from 
the Acropolis to the Sacred Way; and now he is in the 
region of the schools. No awful arch, no window of many- 
coloured lights marks the seats of learning there or else- 
where; philosophy lives out of doors. No close atmosphere 
oppresses the brain or inflames the eyelid; no long session 
stiffens the limbs. Epicurus is reclining in his garden; 
Zeno looks like a divinity in his porch ; the restless Aristotle, 
on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism to Plato, is 
walking his pupils off their legs in his Lyceum by the 
Ilyssus. Our student has determined on entering himself 
as a disciple of Theophrastus, a teacher of marvellous popu- 
larity, who has brought together two thousand pupils from 
all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos ; for masters,, 



60 NEWMAN 

as well as students, come hither from all regions of the 
earth, — as befits a University, How could Athens have col- 
lected hearers in such numbers, unless she had selected 
teachers of such power? it was the range of territory, which 
the notion of a University implies, which furnished both 
the quantity of the one, and the quality of the other. 
Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades from Africa, Zeno 
from Cyprus, Protagoras from Thrace, and Gorgias from 
Sicily. Andromachus was a Syrian, Proseresius an Arme- 
nian, Hilarius a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian 
a Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in civil 
matters; Athens was as liberal in intellectual. There was 
no narrow jealousy, directed against a Professor, because 
he was not an Athenian; genius and talent were the quali- 
fications; and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage 
to it as a University. There was a brotherhood and a citizen- 
ship of mind. 

Mind came first, and was the foundation of the academical 
polity ; but it soon brought along with it, and gathered round 
itself, the gifts of fortune and the prizes of life. As time 
went on, wisdom was not always sentenced to the bare cloak 
of Cleanthes; but beginning in rags, it ended in fine linen. 
The Professors became honourable and rich; and the 
students ranged themselves under their names, and were 
proud of calling themselves their countrymen. The Uni- 
versity was divided into four great nations, as the medieval 
antiquarian would style them; and in the middle of the 
fourth century, Proseresius was the leader or proctor of the 
Attic, Heph^estion of the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, 
and Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors were 
both patrons of clients, and hosts and proxeni of strangers 
and visitors, as well as masters of the schools: and the 
Cappadocian, Syrian, or Sicilian youth who came to one 
or other of them, would be encouraged to study by his pro- 
tection, and to aspire by his example. 

Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were not a hun- 
dred years old, was in circumstances to enjoy the otium cum 
dignitate. He had a villa out at Heraclea; and he left his 
patrimony to his school, in whose hands it remained, not 
only safe, but fructifying, a marvellous phenomenon in 



UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS 61 

tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight hundred 
3:ears. Epicurus too had the property of the Gardens where 
he lectured; and these too became the property of his sect. 
But in Roman times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, poli- 
tics, and the four philosophies, were handsomely endowed 
by the State; some of the Professors were themselves states- 
men or high functionaries, and brought to their favourite 
study senatorial rank or Asiatic opulence. 

Patrons such as these can compensate to the freshman, 
in whom we have interested ourselves, for the poorness of 
his lodging and the turbulence of his companions. In every 
thing there is a better side and a worse; in every place a 
disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is hardly 
known at all to the other. ^len come away f rojrj__ihe__sarjie 
University at jLls,,-day^,_wi th contradicior-y impr-ession^ and 
Contradictory statements, according to the society they have 
founJ therg ; if you belTevelhe one, nothing goes on there as 
itTsnould be: if you believe the other, nothing goes on as it 
should not. Virtue, however, and decency are at least in 
the minority everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud 
or disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so much gain 
whenever an Herodes Atticus is found, to throw the in- 
fluence of wealth and station on the side even of a decorous 
philosophy. A consular man, and the heir of an ample 
fortune, this Herod was content to devote his life to a pro- 
fessorship, and his fortune to the patronage of literature. 
He gave the sophist Polemo about eight thousand pounds, as 
the sum is calculated, for three declamations. He built at 
Athens a stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white 
marble, and capable of admitting the whole population. His 
theatre, erected to the memory of his wife, was made of 
cedar wood curiously carved. He had two villas, one at 
Marathon, the place of his birth, about ten miles from 
Athens, the other at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and 
thither he drew to him the elite, and at times the whole 
body of the students. Long arcades, groves of trees, clear 
pools for the bath, delighted and recruited the summer 
visitor. Never was so brilliant a lecture-room as his even- 
ing banqueting-hall ; highly connected students from Rome 
mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia 



62 NEWMAN 

Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, 
half philosopher, half tramp, met with a reception, courteous 
always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his 
repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting 
down, according to the emergency, both the one and the 
other. 

A higher line, though a rarer one, was that allotted to the 
youthful Basil. He was one of those men who seem by a 
sort of fascination to draw others around them even with- 
out wishing it. One might have deemed that his gravity and 
his reserve would have kept them at a distance; but, almost 
in spite of himself, he was the centre of a knot of youth6, 
who, pagans as most of them were, used Athens honestly for 
the purpose for which they professed to seek it; and, dis- 
appointed and displeased with the place himself, he seems 
nevertheless to have been the means of their profiting by 
its advantages. One of these was Sophronius, who after- 
wards held a high office in the State : Eusebius was another, 
at that time the bosom-friend of Sophronius, and afterwards 
a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards was raised 
to the government of Cilicia by the Emperor Julian. Julian 
himself, in the sequel of unhappy memory, was then at 
Athens, and known at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian 
is also mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of the 
land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better kind of 
society among the students of Athens ; and it is to the credit 
of the parties composing it, that such young men as Gregory 
and Basil, men as intimately connected with Christianity, as 
they were well known in the world, should hold so high a 
place in their esteem and love. When the two saints were 
departing, their companions came around them with the 
hope of changing their purpose. Basil persevered; but 
Gregory relented, and turned back to Athens for a season. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 



BY 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Matthew Arnold zvas the son of the well-known English 
schoolmaster, Thomas Arnold of Rugby. He was bom at Lale- 
ham in 1822, and went to school at Winchester and Rugby. Going 
up to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1841, he won a scholarship, took 
the Newdigate prize for English verse, and was elected fellow 
of Oriel in 1845. After some years as a private secretary, he 
became an Inspector of Schools and performed the routine duties 
of this office for thirty-five years. For ten years he was Pro* 
fessor of Poetry at Oxford, and in 1883-84 he lectured in America. 
He died in 1888. 

Arnold is notable among modem men of letters as being almost 
equally distinguished in poetry and prose. His poetical work 
belongs to the earlier part of his career, and was practically 
finished by 1867. At the time of its first publication it appealed 
to only a narrow public; but it rose steadily in esteem through 
Arnold's life, though he ceased to add to it, and now many critics 
hold that it will outlive his prose. The best of it is refined in 
feeling, lofty in thought, and exquisite in expression; its pre- 
vailing note, a subdued melancholy. 

In prose Arnold wrote on many themes — educational, social, 
political, and, especially, literary and religious. His attacks on 
dogmatic Christianity promise to be the most short-lived of his 
works; and perhaps deservedly so, as here Arnold was dealing 
with technical matters in which he was not an expert. In literary 
criticism he has been and still is a vital influence, urging espe- 
cially the value of an outlook over the literatures of other coun- 
tries and the cultivating of an intimacy with the great classics of 
the past. In the following essay on the "Study of Poetry/' one 
of the most famous of his utterances, there may be found exem- 
plified his characteristically vivacious and memorable style, his 
delicate appreciations brilliantly and precisely expressed, his con- 
crete and persuasive argument. Perhaps no single critical docu- 
ment of our time has contributed so many phrases to the current 
literary vocabulary, or has stimulated so many readers to the use 
of lofty and definite standards of judgment. 



64 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 1 



*f i^HE future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, 
where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, 

-L as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer 
stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an 
accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, 
not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. 
Our religion has materialised itself in the fact, in the sup- 
posed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and 
now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is every- 
thing; the rest is & world of illusion, of divine illusion. 
Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the 
fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its 
unconscious poetry/ 

Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, 
as uttering the thought which should, -in my opinion, go 
with us and govern us in all our study of poetry. In the 
present work it is the course of one great contributory stream 
to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to follow. 
We are here invited to trace the stream of English poetry. 
But whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one 
of the several streams that make the mighty river of poetry, 
or whether we seek to know them all, our governing thought 
should be the same. We should conceive of poetry worthily, 
and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of 
it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, 
and called to higher destinies, than those which in general 
men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind 
will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life 
for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, 
our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now 

1 Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to 'The English PoetS,* 
edited by T. H. Ward. 

Vol. 28— C 65 HC 



66 ARNOLD 

passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced 
by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. 
For finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry ' the 
impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all 
science ' ; and what is a countenance without its expression ? 
Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry ' the breath 
and finer spirit of all knowledge'; our religion, parading 
evidences such as those on which the popular mind relies 
now; our philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about 
causation and finite and infinite being; what are they but 
the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge? 
The day will come when w r e shall wonder at ourselves for 
having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; 
and the more we perceive their hollowness, the more we 
shall prize ' the breath and finer spirit of knowledge ' offered 
to us by poetry. 

But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, 
we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, 
to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry 
of a high order of excellence. We must accustom ourselves 
to a high standard and to a strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve 
relates that Napoleon one day said, when somebody was 
spoken of in his presence as a charlatan : ' Charlatan as 
much as you please; but where is there not charlatanism?' 
— ' Yes,' answers Sainte-Beuve, ' in politics, in the art of 
governing mankind, that is perhaps true. But in the order 
of thought, in art, the glory, the eternal honour is that 
charlatanism shall find no entrance; herein lies the invio- 
lableness of that noble portion of man's being/ It is admi- 
rably said, and let us hold fast to it. In poetry, which 
is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honour, 
that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble 
sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism is for 
confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent 
and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true 
and untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism, con- 
scious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate 
these. And in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is unper- 
missible to confuse or obliterate them. [ For in poetry the 
distinction between excellent and inferior, sound and 

Y 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 67 

unsound or only half-sound, trueand untrue or only half- 
true, is of paramount importance. 1 It is of paramount im- 
portance because of the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, 
as in criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such 
a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, 
the spirit of our race will find, we have said, as time goes 
on and as other helps fail, its consolation and stay. But 
the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion 
to the power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life 
will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is 
excellent rather than inferior, sound rather than unsound or 
' alf-sound, true rather than untrue or half-true. 

The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will 
be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and de- 
lighting us, as nothing else can. A clearer, deeper sense 
of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be 
drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can 
gather from a poetical collection such as the present. And 
yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collection 
there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us 
the consciousness of what our benefit should be, and to 
distract us from the pursuit of it. We should therefore 
steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should 
compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it 
as we proceed. 

Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best,,-, 
the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawrf j 
from it, should be present in our minds and should govern V\ »\ 
our estimate of what we read. But this real estimate, the 
only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not watch- 
ful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate and 
the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A 
poet or a poem may count to us historically, they may count 
to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count 
to us really. They may count to us historically. The 
course of development of a nation's language, thought, and 
poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet's 
work as a stage in this course of development we may easily 
bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than 
in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of 



68 ARNOLD 

quite exaggerated praise in criticising it; in short, to 
over-rate it. So arises in our poetic judgments the fal- 
lacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic. 
Then, again, a poet or poem may count to us on grounds per- 
sonal to ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings and cir- 
cumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of 
this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more im- 
portance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, 
because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here 
also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to 
it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And 
thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic 
judgments — the fallacy caused by an estimate which we 
may call personal. 

Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally 
the study of the history and development of poetry may in- 
cline a man to pause over reputations and works once con- 
spicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless 
public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and 
habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry 
to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason 
for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of 
growth in its poetry. The French have become diligent 
students of their own early poetry, which they long ne- 
glected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied with 
their so-called classical poetry, the court-tragedy of the seven- 
teenth century, a poetry which Pellisson long ago re- 
proached with its want of the true poetic stamp, with its 
politesse sterile et rampante, but which nevertheless has 
reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the per- 
fection of classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is 
natural; yet a lively and accomplished critic, M. Charles 
d'Hericault, the editor of Clement Marot, goes too far when 
he says that ' the cloud of glory playing round a classic 
is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it 
is intolerable for the purposes of history/ ' It hinders/ he 
goes on, ' it hinders us from seeing more than one single 
point, the culminating and exceptional point; the summary, 
fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It 
substitutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 69 

there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the 
labour, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims 
not study but veneration; it does not show us how the 
thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for 
the historian this creation of classic personages is inadmis- 
sible; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his 
proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds criti- 
cism by conventional admiration, and renders the investi- 
gation of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human 
personage no longer but a God seated immovable amidst 
His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly 
will it be possible for the young student to whom such work 
is exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it 
did not issue ready made from that divine head/ 

All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must 
plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the reality 
of a poet's classic character. If he is a dubious classic, 
let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him. 
But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class 
of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of 
the word classic, classical), then the great thing for us is 
to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to 
appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which 
has not the same high character. This is w*hat is salutary, 
this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be 
got from the study of poetry. Everything which interferes 
with it, which hinders it, is injurious. True, we must read 
our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with 
superstition; we must perceive when his work comes short, 
when it drops out of the class of the very best, and we must 
rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of 
this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its 
enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of 
what is truly excellent. To trace the labour, the attempts, 
the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to ac- 
quaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical 
relationships, is mere literary dilettantism unless it has that 
clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be 
said that the more we know about a classic the better we shall 
enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had 



70 ARNOLD 

all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect 
steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible 
in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case 
with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The 
elaborate philological groundwork which we require them 
to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating 
the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more thoroughly 
we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may 
be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so 
short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired and their 
power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate 
philological preparation goes on, but the authors are little 
known and less enjoyed. So with the investigator of 
' historic origins ' in poetry. He ought to enjoy the true 
classic all the better for his investigations; he often is 
distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the 
less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to over-rate 
it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him. 

The idea of tracing historic origins and historical re- 
lationships cannot be absent from a compilation like the 
present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it will 
be assigned to those persons for exhibition who are known 
to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no special 
inclination towards them. Moreover, the very occupation 
with an author, and the business of exhibiting him, dis- 
poses us to affirm and amplify his importance. In the 
present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent tempta- 
tion to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal esti- 
mate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, never- 
theless, we must employ if we are to make poetry yield 
us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of 
clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, 
the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set 
it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets 
and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the one 
principle to which, as the Imitation says, whatever we may 
read or come to know, we always return. Cum multa 
legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire prin- 
cipium. 

The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 71 

judgment and our language when we are dealing with an- 
cient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with 
poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern. The 
exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in them- 
selves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly 
enters the general ear; probably they do not always im- 
pose even on the literary men who adopt them. But they 
lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Caed- 
mon, amongst our ov/n poets, compared to Milton. I have 
already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French 
critic for ' historic origins.' Another eminent French critic, 
M. Vitet, comments upon that famous document of the early 
poetry of his nation, the Chanson de Roland. It is indeed 
a most interesting document. The jocnlator or jongleur 
Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army 
at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said the 
tradition, singing * of Charlemagne and of Roland and of 
Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux ' ; and 
it is suggested that in the Chanson de Roland by one Tur- 
oldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of 
the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we 
have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, 
of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigour 
and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is 
not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some poetic 
yalue, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he 
sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic 
genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose con- 
ception, in its details he finds the constant union of sim- 
plicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, 
of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial 
epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the 
sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. 
Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise 
due to epic poetry of the highest order only, and to no other. 
Let us try, then, the Chanson de Roland at its best. Roland, 
mortally wounded, lay himself down under a pine-tree, with 
his face turned towards Spain and the enemy — 

'De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist, 
De tantes teres cume li bers cunquist, 



72 ARNOLD 

De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, 
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit.' 9 

That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic 
quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise 
is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer — 

°&Z pdzo* rob? d ydy xariysv poalZoo$ ala 
iv AaxedaijjLovt avQi, (pilrj h -Karpidt yat7]. s 

We are here in another world, another order of poetry al- 
together ; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that 
which M. Vitet gives to the Chanson de Roland. If our 
words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to 
have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise 
upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior. 

Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering 
what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and 
can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's 
mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply 
them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are 
not to require this other poetry to resemble them ; it may be 
very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, 
when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible 
touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high 
poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all 
other poetry which we may place beside them. Short pas- 
sages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. 
Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer, the 
poet's comment on Helen's mention of her brothers; — or 
take his 

*A dsdco, rt apu)t Sojjlsv Tlfjlrfi auaxrt 
Qvtjto) ; o/ielg ? i&rdv ayyjpu> r* dOavdrto re. 
y ha duTT7Jvourt [xer &vdpdrw aXyl tyqrov ; 4 

the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus; — or take 
finally his 

* • Then began he to call many things to remembrance, — all the lands 
which his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his 
lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him.' — ' Chanson de 
Roland/ iij. 939-942. 

** So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, 
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Laced'emcn. , 

— ■ Iliad,' iii. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtrey). 
**Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 73 

Kai rri, yipov, to 7rph fikv dxouojiev oAfitov elvar* 

the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. 
Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's 
tremendous words — 

' Io no piangeva ; si dentro impietrai. 
Piangevan elli . . .' 6 

take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil — 

' Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, 
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, 
Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale • . •'* 

take the simple, but perfect, single line — 

' In la sua volontade e nostra pace.' 8 

Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's 
expostulation with sleep — 

1 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
In cradle of the rude imperious surge . . .' 

and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio — 

' 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 • • .* 

Take of Milton that Miltonic passage: 

• Darken'd so, yet shone 
Above them all the archangel; but his face 
Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care 
Sat on his faded cheek . . .' 

add two such lines as — 

' And courage never to submit or yield 
And what is else not to be overcome . . .' 

and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, 
the loss 

ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery 
ye^ might have sorrow? ' — ' Iliad,' xvii. 443-445. 

*' Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy.' — 

* Iliad,' xxiv. 543. 

•'j wailed "not, so of stone grew I within; — they wailed.' — * Inferno,' 
xxxiii. 39, 40. 

7 ' Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, that your 
misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me.'— 

* Inferno,' ii. 91-93. 

8 ' In His will is our peace.' — ' Paradiso,' iii. 85. 



74 ARNOLD 

' . . . which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world.' 

These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are 
enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our 
judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious esti- 
mates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate. 

The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one an- 
other, but they have in common this: the possession of the 
very highest poetical quality. If we are thoroughly pene- 
trated by their power, we shall find that we have ac- 
quired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid 
before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality 
is present or wanting there. Critics give themselves great 
labour to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the char- 
acters of a high quality of poetry. It is much better simply 
to have recourse to concrete examples; — to take speci- 
mens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality, and 
to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are what 
is expressed there. They are far better recognized by be- 
ing felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in 
the prose of the critic. Nevertheless if we are urgently 
pressed to give some critical account of them, we may safely, 
perhaps, venture on laying down, not indeed how and why the 
characters arise, but where and in what they arise. They are 
in the matter and substance of the poetry, and they are in 
its manner and style. Both of these, the substance and 
matter on the one hand, the style and manner on the other, 
have a mark, an accent, of high beauty, worth, and power. 
But if we are asked to define this mark and accent in the 
abstract, our answer must be: No, for we should thereby 
\ be darkening the question, not clearing it. The mark and 
\ accent are as given by the substance and matter of that 
\ poetry, by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all 
1 other poetry which is akin to it in quality. 

Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter 
of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle's profound obser- 
vation that the superiority of poetry over history consists 
in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness 
(pdoTo(pcbz£pov xai (TTcoudaiSrepov) . Let us add, therefore, to I 
what we have said, this: that the substance and matter of \ 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 75 

the best poetry acquire their special character from pos- 
sessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. We 
may add yet further, what is in itself evident, that to the 
style and manner of the best poetry their special char- 
acter, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet 
more, by their movement. And though we distinguish be- 
tween the two characters, the two accents, of superiority, 
yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with the other. 
The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the mat- 
ter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from 
the superiority of diction and movement marking its style j 
and manner. The two superiorities are closely related, and 
are in steadfast proportion one to the other. So far as 
high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's 
matter and substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a 
high poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to 
his style and manner. In proportion as this high stamp of 
diction and movement, again, is absent from a poet's style 
and manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and 
seriousness are absent from his substance and matter. 

So stated, these are but dry generalities; their whole 
force lies in their application. And I could wish every 
student of poetry to make the application of them for him- 
self. Made by himself, the application would impress it- 
self upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. 
Neither will my limits allow me to make any full application 
of the generalities above propounded; but in the hope of 
bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and 
of establishing an important principle more firmly by their 
means, I will, in the space which remains to me, follow 
rapidly from the commencement the course of our English 
poetry with them in my view. 

Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with 
which our own poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly con- 
nected. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that seed- 
time of all modern language and literature, the poetry of 
France had a clear predominance in Europe. Of the two 
divisions of that poetry, its productions in the langue d'oil 
and its productions in the langue d'oc, the poetry of the 
langue d'oCj of southern France, of the troubadours, is Q$ 



76 ARNOLD 

importance because of its effect on Italian literature; — the 
first literature of modern Europe to strike the true and grand 
note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and Petrarch it brought 
forth, classics. But the predominance of French poetry in 
Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is due 
to its poetry of the langue d'oil, the poetry of northern 
France and of the tongue which is now the French lan- 
guage. In the twelfth century the bloom of this romance- 
poetry was earlier and stronger in England, at the court 
of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in France itself. But 
it was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native poetry 
formed itself, it formed itself out of this. The romance- 
poems which took possession of the heart and imagination 
of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are 
French ; ' they are/ as Southey justly says, ' the pride of 
^French literature, nor have we anything which can be 
placed in competition with them.' Themes were supplied 
from all quarters; but the romance-setting which was com- 
mon to them all, and which gained the ear of Europe, was 
French. This constituted for the French poetry, literature, 
and language, at the height of the Middle Age, an unchal- 
lenged predominance. The Italian Brunetto Latini, the mas- 
ter of Dante, wrote his Treasure in French because, he says, 
' la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes 
gens/ In the same century, the thirteenth, the French ro- 
mance-writer, Christian of Troyes, formulates the claims, in 
chivalry and letters, of France, his native country, as 
follows : — 

1 Or vous ert par ce livre apris, 
Que Gresse ot de chevalerie 
Le premier los et de clergie; 
Puis vint chevalerie a Rome, 
Et de la clergie la some, 
Qui ore est en France venue. 
Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue, 
Et que li lius li abelisse 
Tant que de France n'isse 
L'onor qui s'i est arestee ! ' 

'Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the 
renown for chivalry and letters: then chivalry and the pri- 
macy in letters passed to Rome, and now it is come to France. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 77 

God grant it may be kept there; and that the place may 
please it so well, that the honour which has come to make 
stay in France may never depart thence ! ' 

Yet it is now , all gone, this French romance-poetry of 
which the weight of substance and the power of style are 
not unfairly represented by this extract from Christian of 
Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate can we 
persuade ourselves not to think that any of it is of poetical 
importance. 

But in the fourteenth century there comes an English- 
man nourished on this poetry, taught his trade by this 
poetry, getting words, rhyme, metre from this poetry; for 
even of that stanza which the Italians used, and which 
Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis 
and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer (I 
have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, 
but so too did Christian of Troyes and Wolfram of Eschen- 
bach. Chaucer's power of fascination, however, is enduring; 
his poetical importance does not need the assistance of the 
historic estimate; it is real. He is a genuine source of joy 
and strength, which is flowing still for us and will flow 
always. He will be read, as time goes on, far more gen- 
erally than he is read now. His language is a cause of \ 
difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in quite as great 
a degree, is the language of Burns. In Chaucer's case, as/ 
in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be unhesitatingly ac-f 
cepted and overcome. 

If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense supef 
riority of Chaucer's poetry over the romance-poetry — why 
it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we suddenly feel 
ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that his supe- 
riority is both in the substance of his poetry and in the 
style of his poetry. His superiority in substance is given 
by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human 
life, — so unlike the total want, in the romance-poets, of all 
intelligent command of it Chaucer has not their helpless- 
ness; he has gained the power to survey the world from 
a central, a truly human point of view. We have only to 
call to mind the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The 
right comment upon it is Dryden's: 'It is sufficient to say, 



78 ARNOLD 

according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.* And 
again: ' He is a perpetual fountain of good sense/ It is 
by a large, free, sound representation of things, that poetry, 
this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and 
Chaucer's poetry has truth of substance. 

Of his style and manner, if we think first of the romance- 
poetry and then of Chaucer's divine liquidness of diction, 
his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult to speak tem- 
perately. They are irresistible, and justify all the rapture 
with which his successors speak of his • gold dew-drops 
of speech/ Johnson misses the point entirely when he finds 
fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first re- 
finement of our numbers, and says that Gower also can 
show smooth numbers and easy rhymes. The refinement 
of our numbers means something far more than this. A 
nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and easy 
rhymes, and yet may have no real poetry at all. Chaucer 
is the father of our splendid English poetry; he is our 'well 
of English undefiled/ because by the lovely charm of his 
diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an 
epoch and founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, 
Milton, Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid dic- 
tion, the fluid movement of Chaucer; at one time it is his 
^liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, and 
at another time it is his fluid movement. And the virtue 
is irresistible. 

Bounded as is my space, I must yet find room for an 
example of Chaucer's virtue, as I have given examples 
to show the virtue of the great classics. I feel disposed to 
say that a single line is enough to show the charm of 
Chaucer's verse; that merely one line like thi 



' O martyr souded 9 in virginitee ! ' 

has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall not 
find in all the verse of romance-poetry; — but this is saying 
nothing. The virtue is such as we shall not find, perhaps, 
in all English poetry, outside the poets whom I have named 
as the special inheritors of Chaucer's tradition. A single 
line, however, is too little if we have not the strain of 

The French sonde; soldered, fixed fast. 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 79 

Chaucer's verse well in our memory; let us take a stanza. 
It is from The Prioress's Tale, the story of the Christian 
child murdered in a Jewry — 

' My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone 
Saide this child, and as by way of kinde 
I should have deyd, yea, longe time agone; 
But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, 
Will that his glory last and be in minde, 
And for the worship of his mother dere 
Yet may I sing O Alma loud and clere.' 

Wordsworth has modernised this Tale, and to feel how 
delicate and evanescent is the charm of verse, we have 
only to read Wordsworth's first three lines of this stanza 
after Chaucer's — 

1 My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow, 
Said this young child, and by the law of kind 
I should have died, yea, many hours ago/ 

The charm is departed. It is often said that the power of 
liquidness and fluidity in Chaucer's verse was dependent upon 
a free, a licentious dealing with language, such as is now 
impossible; upon a liberty, such as Burns too enjoyed, of 
making words like neck, bird, into a dissyllable by adding 
to them, and words like cause, rhyme, into a dissyllable by 
sounding the e mute. It is true that Chaucer's fluidity is 
conjoined with this liberty, and is admirably served by it; 
but we ought not to say that it was dependent upon it. It 
was dependent upon his talent. Other poets with a like 
liberty do not attain to the fluidity of Chaucer; Burns him- 
self does not attain to it. Poets, again, who have a talent 
akin to Chaucer's, such as Shakespeare or Keats, have 
known how to attain his fluidity without the like liberty. 

And yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics.. His 
poetry transcends and effaces, easily and without effort, all 
the romance-poetry of Catholic Christendom; it transcends 
and effaces all the English poetry contemporary with it, it 
transcends and effaces all the English poetry subsequent to\ 
it down to the age of Elizabeth. Of such avail is poetic j 
truth of substance, in its natural and necessary union with/ 
poetic truth of style. And yet, I say, Chaucer is not one or 
the great classics. He has not their accent. What is 



80 ARNOLD 

wanting to him is suggested by the mere mention of the 
name of the first great classic of Christendom, the immortal 
poet who died eighty years before Chaucer, — Dante. The 
accent of such verse as / 

* In la sua volontade e nostra pace . . .' 

is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach; we praise him, but 
we feel that this accent is out of the question for him. It 
may be said that it was necessarily out of the reach of any 
poet in the England of that stage of growth. Possibly; but 
we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate of poetry. 
However we may account for its absence, something is 
wanting, then, to the poetry of Chaucer, which poetry must 
have before it can be placed in the glorious class of the best. 
And there is no doubt what that something is. It is the 
ffnoudatoTy]? the high and excellent seriousness, which Aris- 
totle assigns as one of the grand virtues of poetry. The 
substance of Chaucer's poetry, his view of things and his 
criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewdness, be- 
nignity; but it has not this high seriousness. Homer's 
criticism of life has it, Dante's has it, Shakespeare's has it. 
•It is this chiefly which gives to our spirits what they can 
rest upon; and with the increasing demands of our modern 
ages upon poetry, this virtue of giving us what we can rest 
upon will be more and more highly esteemed. A voice from 
the slums of Paris, fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the 
voice of poor Villon out of his life of riot and crime, has at 
its happy moments (as, for instance, in the last stanza of La 
Belle Heanlmiere 10 ) more of this important poetic virtue of 

10 The name Heaulmicre is said to be derived from a head-dress (helm) 
worn as a mark by courtesans. In Villon's ballad, a poor old creature of 
this class laments her days of youth and beauty. The last stanza of the 
ballad runs thus — 

' Ainsi le bon temps regretons 

Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sottes, 

Assises bas, a croppetons, 

Tout en ung tas comme pelottes; 

A petit feu de chenevottes 

Tost allumees, tost estainctes. 

Et jadis fusmes si mignottes! 

Ainsi en prend a maintz et maintes.' 

1 Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly old things, 
low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many balls; by a little fire of 
hemp-stalks, soon lighted, soon spent. And once we were such darlings! 
So fares it with many and many a one.' 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 81 

seriousness than all the productions of Chaucer. But its ap- 
parition in Villon, and in men like Villon, is fitful ; the great- 
ness of the great poets, the power of their criticism of life, 
is that their virtue is sustained. 

To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there must 
be this limitation; he lacks the high seriousness of the great 
classics, and therewith an important part of their virtue. 
Still, the main fact for us to bear in mind about Chaucer 
is his sterling value according to that real estimate which 
we firmly adopt for all poets. He has poetic truth of sub- 
stance, though he has not high poetic seriousness, and corre- 
sponding to his truth of substance he has an exquisite virtue 
of style and manner. With him is born our real poetry. 

For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Eliza- 
bethan poetry, or on the continuation and close of this poetry 
in Milton. We all of us profess to be agreed in the estimate 
of this poetry ; we all of us recognise it as great poetry, our 
greatest, and Shakespeare and Milton as our poetical classics. 
The real estimate, here, has universal currency. With the 
next age of our poetry divergency and difficulty begin. An 
historic estimate o£ that poetry has established itself; and 
the question is, whether it will be found to coincide with the 
real estimate. 

The age of Dryden, together with our whole eighteenth 
century which followed it, sincerely believed itself to have 
produced poetical classics of its own, and even to have made 
advance, in poetry, beyond all its predecessors. Dryden re- 
gards as not seriously disputable the opinion ' that the sweet- 
ness of English verse was never understood or practised by 
our fathers.' Cowley could see nothing at all in Chaucer's 
poetry. Dryden heartily admired it, and, as we have seen, 
praised its matter admirably; but of its exquisite manner 
and movement all he can find to say is that 'there is the 
rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and 
pleasing, though not perfect.' Addison, wishing to praise 
Chaucer's numbers, compares them with Dryden's own. And 
all through the eighteenth century, and down even into our 
own times, the stereotyped phrase of approbation for good 
verse found in our early poetry has been, that it even ap- 
proached the verse of Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Johnson. 



82 ARNOLD 

Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics? Is the historic 
estimate, which represents them as such, and which has been 
so long established that it cannot easily give way, the real 
estimate? Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is well known, 
denied it; but the authority of Wordsworth and Coleridge 
does not weigh much with the young generation, and there 
are many signs to show that the eighteenth century and its 
judgments are coming into favour again. Are the favourite 
poets of the eighteenth-century classics? 

It is impossible within my present limits to discuss the 
question fully. And what man of letters would not shrink 
from seeming to dispose dictatorially of the claims of two 
men who are, at any rate, such masters in letters as Dryden 
and Pope ; two men of such admirable talent, both of them, 
and one of them, Dryden, a man, on all sides, of such ener- 
getic and genial power? And yet, if we are to gain the full 
benefit from poetry, we must have the real estimate of it. 
I cast about for some mode of arriving, in the present 
case, at such an estimate without offence. And perhaps 
the best way is to begin, as it is easy to begin, with cor- 
dial praise. 

When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of 
Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus : ' Though 
truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from 
Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope 
yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, the 
date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, 
he shall now gird his temples with the sun/ — we pronounce 
that such a prose is intolerable. When we find Milton 
writing: 'And long it was not after, when I was confirmed 
in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his 
hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought him- 
self to be a true poem/ — we pronounce that such a prose 
has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and incon- 
venient. But when we find Dryden telling us : ' What Virgil 
wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have 
undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling 
with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, 
liable to be misconstrued in all I write/ — then we exclaim 
that here at last we have the true English prose, a prose 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 83 

such as we would all gladly use if we only knew how. Yet 
Dryden was Milton's contemporary. 

But after the Restoration the time had come when our 
nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the 
time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious 
need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation 
which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was 
impossible that this freedom should be brought about with- 
out some negative excess, without some neglect and im- 
pairment of the religious life of the soul; and the spiritual 
history of the eighteenth century shows us that the freedom 
was not achieved without them. Still, the freedom was 
achieved; the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful and 
retarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. And 
as with religion amongst us at that period, so it was also 
with letters. A fit prose was a necessity; but it was im- 
possible that a fit prose should establish itself amongst us 
without some touch of frost to the imaginative life of the 
soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose are regularity, 
uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, whose 
destiny it may be to* bring their nation to the attainment of 
a fit prose, must of necessity, whether they work in prose 
or in verse, give a predominating, an almost exclusive atten- 
tion to the qualities of regularity, uniformity, precision, 
balance. But an almost exclusive attention to these qualities 
involves some repression and silencing of poetry. 

We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious 
founder, Pope as the splendid high priest, of our age of 
prose and reason, of our excellent and indispensable eight- 
eenth century. For the purposes of their mission and 
destiny their poetry, like their prose, is admirable. Do you 
ask me whether Dryden's verse, take it almost where you 
will, is not good? 

1 A milk-wEite Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged.' 

I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator of 

an age of prose and reason. Do you ask me whether Pope's 

verse, take it almost where you will, is not good ? 

' To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down 
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own.' 



84 ARNOLD 

I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of 
an age of prose and reason. But do you ask me whether 
such verse proceeds from men with an adequate poetic 
criticism of life, from men whose criticism of life has a 
high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, has 
poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity? Do you ask 
me whether the application of ideas to life in the verse of 
these men, often a powerful application, no doubt, is a 
powerful poetic application? Do you ask me whether the 
poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable 
manner of such an adequate poetic criticism; whether it 
has the accent of 



or of 
or of 



1 Absent thee f com felicity awhile . . .' 
1 And what is else not to be overcome . • .' 
1 O martyr souded in virginitee ! ' 



I answer: It has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry 
of the builders of an age of prose and reason. Though they 
may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be 
masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not 
classics of our poetry, they are classics of our prose. 
x Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age ; the 
position of Gray is singular, and demands a word of notice 
here. He has not the volume or the power of poets who, 
coming in times more favourable, have attained to an inde- 
pendent criticism of life. But he lived with the great poets, 
he lived, above all, with the Greeks, through perpetually 
studying and enjoying them; and he caught their poetic point 
of view for regarding life, caught their poetic manner. The 
point of view and the manner are not self-sprung in him, 
he caught them of others; and he had not the free and 
abundant use of them. But, whereas Addison and Pope 
never had the use of them, Gray had the use of them at 
times. He is the scantiest and frailest of classics in our 
poetry, but he is a classic. 

And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards 
the end of the eighteenth century, we are met by the great 
name of Burns. We enter now on times where the personal 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 85 

estimate of poets begins to be rife, and where the real 
estimate of them is not reached without difficulty. But in 
spite of the disturbing pressures of personal partiality, of 
national partiality, let us try to reach a real estimate of 
the poetry of Burns. 

By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the 
eighteenth century, and has little importance for us. 

' Mark ruffian Violence, distain'd with crimes, 
Rousing elate in these degenerate times; 
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, 
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; 
While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue 
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong ! ' 

Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame 
would have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda's love- 
poet, Sylvander, the real Burns either. But he tells us 
himself: 'These English songs gravel me to death. I have 
not the command of the language that I have of my native 
tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in 
English than in Scotch. I have been at Duncan Gray to 
dress it in English, but all I can do is desperately stupid/ 
We English turn naturally, in Burns, to the poems in our 
own language, because we can read them easily; but in 
those poems we have not the real Burns. 

The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let 
us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing 
perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch 
manners, a Scotchman's estimate is apt to be personal. A 
Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch re- 
ligion, and Scotch manners; he has a tenderness for it; 
he meets its poet half way. In this tender mood he reads 
pieces like the Holy Fair or Halloween. But this world 
of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners is 
against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial country- 
man who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, 
and no one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to 
deal with a beautiful world. Burns's world of Scotch drink, 
Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, is often a harsh, a 
sordid, a repulsive world: even the world of his Cotter's 
Saturday Night is not a beautiful world. No doubt a poet's 



86 ARNOLD 

criticism of life may have such truth and power that it 
triumphs over its world and delights us. Burns may triumph 
over his world, often he does triumph over his world, but 
let us observe how and where. Burns is the first case we 
have had where the bias of the personal estimate tends to 
mislead; let us look at him closely, he can bear it. 

Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, 
convivial, genuine, delightful, here — 

1 Leeze me on drink ! it gies us mair 
Than either school or college; 
It kindles wit, it waukens lair, 

It pangs us fou o' knowledge. 
Be't whisky gill or penny wheep 

Or ony stronger potion, 
It never fails, on drinking deep, 
To kittle up our notion 

By night or day. 

There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and it 
is unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, but 
because it has not that accent of sincerity which baccha- 
nalian poetry, to do it justice, very often has. There is some- 
thing in it of bravado, something which makes us feel that 
we have not the man speaking to us with his real voice; 
something, therefore, poetically unsound. 

With still more confidence will his admirers tell us that 
we have the genuine Burns, the great poet, when his strain 
asserts the independence, equality, dignity, of men, as in 
the famous song For a that, and a" that — 

' A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 
Guid faith he mauna fa' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Their dignities, and a' that, 
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 
Are higher rank than a' that.' 

Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still more, 
when this puissant genius, who so often set morality at 
defiance, falls moralising — 

The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love 
Luxuriantly indulge it; 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 37 

But never tempt th' illicit rove, 
Tho' naething should divulge it» 

I waive the quantum o' the sin, 
The hazard o' concealing, 

But och ! it hardens a' within, 
And petrifies the feeling.' 

Or in a higher strain — 

1 Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord, its various tone; 

Each spring, its various bias. 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted.' 

Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say, 
unsurpassable — 

'To make a happy fire-side clime 

To weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life.' 

There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns 
will say to us; there is the application of ideas to life! 
There is, undoubtedly. The doctrine of the last-quoted lines 
coincides almost exactly with what was the aim and end, 
Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of Socrates. And the 
application is a powerful one; made by a man of vigorous 
understanding, and (need I say?) a master of language. 

But for supreme poetical success more is required than the 
powerful application of ideas to life; it must be an appli- 
cation under the conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth 
and poetic beauty. Those laws fix as an essential condition, 
in the poet's treatment of such matters as are here in question, 
high seriousness; — the high seriousness which comes from 
absolute sincerity. The accent of high seriousness, born of 
absolute sincerity, is what gives to such verse as 

1 In la sua volontade e nostra pace . . .' 

to such criticism of life as Dante's, its power. Is this ac- 
cent felt in the passages which I have been quoting from 
Burns? Surely not; surely, if our sense is quick, we must 



88 ARNOLD 

perceive that we have not in those passages a voice from 
the very inmost soul of the genuine Burns ; he is not speak- 
ing to us from these depths, he is more or less preaching. 
And the compensation for admiring such passages less, from 
missing the perfect poetic accent in them, will be that 
we shall admire more the poetry where that accent is 
found. 

No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high serious- 
ness of the great classics, and the virtue of matter and man- 
ner which goes with that high seriousness is wanting to his 
work. At moments he touches it in a profound and pas- 
sionate melancholy, as in those four immortal lines taken 
by Byron as a motto for The Bride of Abydos, but which 
have in them a depth of poetic quality such as resides in no 
verse of Byron's own — 

' Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met, or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.' 

But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make; the 
rest, in the Farewell to Nancy, is verbiage. 

We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, 
by conceiving his work as having truth of matter and 
truth of manner, but not the accent or the poetic virtue of 
the highest masters. His genuine criticism of life, when 
the sheer poet in him speaks, is ironic; it is not — 

' Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme 
These woes of mine fulfil, 
Here firm I rest, they must be best 
Because they are Thy will ! ' 

It is far rather: Whistle owre the lave o't! Yet we may 
say of him as of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as they 
come before him, his view is large, free, shrewd, benignant, — 
truly poetic therefore; and his manner of rendering what 
he sees is to match. But we must note, at the same time, 
his great difference from Chaucer. The freedom of Chaucer 
is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy; the 
benignity of Chaucer deepens, in Burns, "into an overwhelm- 
ing sense of the pathos of things ; — of the pathos of human 
nature, the pathos, also, of non-human nature- Instead of 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 89 

the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the manner of Burns has 
spring, boundless swiftness. Burns is by far the greater 
force, though he has perhaps less charm. The world of 
Chaucer is fairer, richer, more significant than that of 
Burns; but when the largeness and freedom of Burns get 
full sweep, as in Tarn o' Shanter, or still more in that puissant 
and splendid production, The Jolly Beggars, his world may 
be what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the 
world of The Jolly Beggars there is more than hideousness 
and squalor, there is bestiality; yet the piece is a superb 
poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which make 
the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's Faust, 
seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only 
matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes. 

Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so 
admirably, and also in those poems and songs where to 
shrewdness he adds infinite archness and wit, and to benig- 
nity infinite pathos, where his manner is flawless, and 
a perfect poetic whole is the result, — in things like the ad- 
dress to the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things 
like Duncan Gray, Tarn Glen, Whistle and I'll come to you 
my Lad, Auld Lang Syne (this list might be made much 
longer), — here we have the genuine Burns, of whom the 
real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with 
the excellent (movdatorr)^ of the great classics, nor with a 
verse rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like theirs; 
but a poet with thorough truth of substance and an answer- 
ing truth of style, giving us a poetry sound to the core. 
We all of us have a leaning towards the pathetic, and may 
be inclined perhaps to prize Burns most for his touches of 
piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, pathos; for verse 
like — 

'We twa hae paidl't i* the burn 

From mornin' sun till dine ; 
But seas between us braid hae roar'd 

Sin auld lang syne . . .' 

where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is 
by the perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer 
masterpieces that he is poetically most wholesome for us. 
For the votary misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, as 



90 ARNOLD 

so many of us have been, are, and will be, — of that beautiful 
spirit building his many-coloured haze of words and images 

1 Pinnacled dim in the intense inane ' — 

no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with Burns 
at his archest and soundest. Side by side with the 

* On the brink of the night and the morning 

My coursers are wont to respire, 
But the Earth has just whispered a warning 

That their flight must be swifter than fire . . .' 

of Prometheus Unbound, how salutary, how very salutary, 
to place this from Tarn Glen — 

' My minnie does constantly deave me 
And bids me beware o' young men ; 
They flatter, she says, to deceive me ; 
But wha can think sae o' Tarn Glen ? ' 

But we enter on burning ground as we approach the 
poetry of times so near to us — poetry like that of Byron, 
Shelley, and Wordsworth — of which the estimates are so 
often not only personal, but personal with passion. For my 
purpose, it is enough to have taken the single case of Burns, 
the first poet we come to of whose work the estimate formed 
is evidently apt to be personal, and to have suggested how 
we may proceed, using the poetry of the great classics as 
a sort of touchstone, to correct this estimate, as we had 
previously corrected by the same means the historic esti- 
mate where we met with it. A collection like the present, 
with its succession of celebrated names and celebrated 
poems, offers a good opportunity to us for resolutely 
endeavouring to make our estimates of poetry real. I have 
sought to point out a method which will help us in making 
them so, and to exhibit it in use so far as to put any one 
who likes in a way of applying it for himself. 

At any rate the end to which the method and the esti- 
mate are designed to lead, and from leading to which, if 
they do lead to it, they get their whole value, — the benefit 
of being able clearly to feel and deeply to enjoy the best, the 
truly classic, in poetry, — is an end, let me say it once more 
at parting, of supreme importance. We are often told that 
an era is opening in which we are to see multitudes of a 



THE STUDY OF POETRY 91 

common sort of readers, and masses of a common sort 
of literature; that such readers do not want and could 
not relish anything better than such literature, and 
that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable 
industry. Even if good literature entirely lost currency 
with the world, it would still be abundantly worth while to 
continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose cur- 
rency with the world, in spite of monetary appearances; 
it never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are 
insured to it, not indeed by the world's deliberate and con- 
scious choice, but by something far deeper, — by the instinct 
of self-preservation in humanity. 



SESAME AND LILIES 

BY 

JOHN RUSKIN 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

John Ruskin (1810-1000), the greatest master of ornate prose 
in the English language, zvas born in London and educated at 
Oxford. He studied painting, and became a graceful and accu- 
rate draftsman, but he early transferred his main energies 
from the production to the criticism and teaching of art. In 
1843 appeared the first volume of "Modern Painters," and suc- 
ceeding volumes continued to be published till it was completed 
by the fifth in i860. The startling originality of this work, both 
in style and in the nature of its esthetic theories, brought the 
author at once into prominence, though for some time he zvas 
more attacked than followed. Meanwhile he extended his scope 
to include other fields. In "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" 
(1849) and "The Stones of Venice" (1851-53) he applied his 
theories to architecture ; in "Pre-Raphaelitism" (1851) he came 
to the defense of the new school of art then beginning to agitate 
England; in "Unto this Last" (1861) and many other writings he 
attacked the current political economy. 

In spite of the great variety of the themes of Ruskin's numerous 
volumes, there are to be found, underlying the eloquent argument, 
exposition, and exhortation of all, a few persistent principles. 
The application of these principles in one place is often incon- 
sistent with that in another, and Ruskin frankly reversed his 
opinion with great frequency in successive editions of the same 
work; yet he continued to use a dogmatic tone which is at once 
his strength and his weakness. 

The tzvo lectures which constitute "Sesame and Lilies" deal 
ostensibly with the reading of books ;*but in characteristic fashion 
the author brings into the discussion his favorite ideas on ethics, 
esthetics, economics, and many other subjects. It thus gives a 
fairly comprehensive idea of the nature of the widespread influ- 
ence which he exerted on English life and thought during the 
whole of the second half of the nineteenth century. Its style 
also, in its earnestness, its richness, and its lofty eloquence, ex- 
emplifies the pitch to which he brought the tradition of the highly 
decorated prose cultivated by De Quincey in the previous gen- 
eration, a pitch of gorgeousness in color and cadence which has 
been surpassed by none. 

94 



SESAME AND LILIES 



LECTURE I.— SESAME 
of kings' treasuries 1 

" You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 

Lucian : The Fisherman, 

MY FIRST duty this evening is to ask your pardon 
for the ambiguity of title under which the subject 
of this lecture has been announced: for indeed 
I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor 
of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite 
another order of royalty, and another material of riches, 
than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to 
ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as 
sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a favorite 
piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, 
with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unex- 
pectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. 
But — and as also I have heard it said, by men practiced 
in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued 
as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them 
no clue to his purposes, — I will take the slight mask off 
at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you 
about the treasures hidden in books; and about the way 
we find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, 
you will say ; and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall 
make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try only 
to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, 
which press themselves upon me every day more deeply, 
as I watch the course of the public mind with respect to 
our daily enlarging means of education; and the answer- 

1 This lecture was given December 6, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall, 
Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute. 

95 



96 RUSKIN 

ingly wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of 
literature. 

2. It happens that I have practically some connection with 
schools for different classes of youth; and I receive many 
letters from parents respecting the education of their chil- 
dren. In the mass of these letters I am always struck by the 
precedence which the idea of a " position in life " takes above 
all other thoughts in the parents' — more especially in the 
mothers' — minds. " The education befitting such and such 
a station in life" — this is the phrase, this the object, always. 
They never seek, as far as I can make out, an education 
good in itself; even the conception of abstract Tightness in 
training rarely seems reached by the writers. But, an educa- 
tion " which shall keep a good coat on my son's back ; — which 
shall enable him to ring with confidence the visitors' bell 
at doubled-belled doors; which shall result ultimately in 
establishment of a doubled-belled door to his own house; — 
in a word, which shall lead to 'advancement in life'; — this 
we pray for on bent knees — and this is all we pray for." 
It never seems to occur to the parents that there may be 
an education which, in itself, is advancement in Life; — that 
any other than that may perhaps be advancement in Death; 
and tha A this essential education might be more easily got, 
or given, than they fancy, if they set about it in the right 
way; while it is for no price, and by no favor, to be got, 
if they set about it in the wrong. 

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the first 
— at least that which is confessed with the greatest frank- 
ness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youthful 
exertion — is this of " Advancement in Life." May I ask 
you to consider with me what this idea practically includes, 
and what it should include? 

Practically, then, at present, "advancement in life " means, 
becoming conspicuous in life; — obtaining a position which 
shall be acknowledged by others to be respectable or honor- 
able. We do not understand by this advancement in general, 
the mere making of money, but the being known to have 
made it; not the accomplishment of any great aim, but 
the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 97 

the gratification of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if 
the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity 
of weak ones; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive in- 
fluence of average humanity: the greatest efforts of the 
race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as 
its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I 
want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort; 
especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of 
vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and balm of 
repose; so closely does it touch the very springs of life that 
the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and truly) 
as in its measure mortal; we call it " mortification," using 
the same expression which we should apply to a gangrenous 
and incurable bodily hurt. And although few of us may 
be physicians enough to recognize the various effect of this 
passion upon health and energy, I believe most honest 
men know, and would at once acknowledge, its leading 
power with them as a motive. The seaman does not com- 
monly desire to be made captain only because he knows he 
can manage the ship better than any other sailor on board. 
He wants to be made captain that he may be called captain. 
The clergyman does not usually want to be made a bishop 
only because he believes no other hand can, as firmly as 
his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. He wants to 
be made bishop primarily that he may be called " My Lord." 
And a prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject 
to gain, a kingdom, because he believes that no one else can 
as well serve the State, upon its throne; but, briefly, be- 
cause he wishes to be addressed as " Your Majesty," by as 
many lips as may be brought to such utterance. 

5. This, then, being the main idea of "advancement in 
life," the force of it applies, for all of us, according to our 
station, particularly to that secondary result of such ad- 
vancement which we call " getting into good society." We 
want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but 
that we may be seen in it; and our notion of its goodness 
depends primarily on its conspicuousness. 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what 
I fear you may think an impertinent question? I never can 

Vol. 28— D HC 



98 RUSKIN 

go on with an address unless I feel, or know, that my audi- 
ence are either with me or against me: I do not much care 
which, in beginning; but I must know where they are; and 
I would fain find out, at this instant, whether you think 
I am putting the motives of popular action too low. I am 
resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to be admitted 
as probable; for whenever, in my writings on Political 
Economy, I assume that a little honesty, or generosity — or 
what used to be called " virtue " — may be calculated upon 
as a human motive of action, people always answer me, 
saying, " You must not calculate on that : that is not in 
human nature : you must not assume anything to be common 
to men but acquisitiveness and jealousy; no other feeling 
ever has influence on them, except accidentally, and in 
matters out of the way of business. " I begin, accordingly, 
to-night low in the scale of motives; but I must know if you 
think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who 
admit the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive 
in men's minds in seeking advancement, and the honest 
desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary 
one, to hold up their hands. (About a dozen of hands held 
up — the audience, partly not being sure the lecturer is 
serious, and, partly, shy of expressing opinion,) I am quite 
serious — I really do want to know what you think; however, 
I can judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who 
think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the 
second, motive, hold up their hands? (One hand reported 
to have been held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good; I see 
you are with me, and that you think I have not begun too 
near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting 
farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit 
duty as at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think 
that the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some 
real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a 
secondary one, in most men's desire o'f advancement. You 
will grant that moderately honest men desire place and 
office, at least in some measure, for the sake of beneficent 
power; and would wish to associate rather with sensible and 
well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant persons, 
whether they are seen in the company of the sensible ones 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 99 

or not. And finally, without being troubled by repetition 
of any common truisms about the preciousness of friends, 
and the influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless 
that according to the sincerity of our desire that our friends 
may be true, and our companions wise, — and in proportion 
to the earnestness and discretion with which we choose 
both, will be the general chances of our happiness and 
usefulness. 

6. But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
to choose our friends well, how* few of us have the power ! 
or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice! 
Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or 
necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We can- 
not know whom we would; and those whom we know, we 
cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the 
higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, 
only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good 
fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the 
sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science, 
and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten 
minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once 
or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
Queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and 
spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of 
little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society 
continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long 
as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; — talk to us 
in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest 
their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous 
and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day 
long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant 
audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly furnished and 
narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no ac- 
count of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they 
would say, all day long! 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
that the apathy with which we regard this company of the 
noble, who are praying us to listen to them ; and the passion 



100 RUSKIN 

with which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble 
who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are 
grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the living 
men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which 
we desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you 
never were to see their faces; — suppose you could be put 
behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's 
chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, 
though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen? 
And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two 
instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover 
of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all day long, 
not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen 
addresses of the wisest of men; — this station of audience, 
and honorable privy council, you despise! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate 
interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay; that 
cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you 
about passing matters, much better in their writings than 
in their careless talk. But I admit that this motive does 
influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and epheme- 
ral writings to slow and enduring writings, — books, properly 
so called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the 
books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this 
distinction — it is not one of quality only. It is not merely 
the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. 
It is a distinction of species. There are good books for the 
hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, 
and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds 
before I go farther. 

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak of 
the bad ones, — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some 
person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed 
for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to 
know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk 
would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humored 
and witty discussions of question; lively or pathetic story- 
telling in the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real 
agents concerned in the events of passing history; — all these 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 101 

books of the hour, multiplying among us as education be- 
comes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present 
age ; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely 
ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But 
we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp 
the place of true books: for strictly speaking, they are not 
books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. 
Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: 
whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The 
newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but 
assuredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound 
up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant 
an account of the inns, and roads, and weather last year at 
such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives 
you the real circumstances of such and such events, how- 
ever valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in the 
real sense of the word, a " book " at all, nor in the real sense, 
to be " read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but 
a written thing; and written, not with the view of mere com- 
munication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed 
only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people 
at once; if he could, he would — the volume is mere multi- 
plication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in 
India; if you could, you would; you write instead: that is 
mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to 
multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to 
perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he 
perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So 
far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, 
no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and 
melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum 
of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
manifest to him; — this, the piece of true knowledge, or 
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted 
him to seize. He would fain set it down forever; engrave 
it on rock, if he could; saying, "This is the best of me; 
for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, 
like another; my life was as the vapor and is not; but this 
I saw and knew: this if anything of mine, is worth your 
memory." That is his " writing " ; it is, in his small human 



102 RUSKIN 

way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in 
him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a " Book." 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written. 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
or at all in kindness? or do you think there is never any 
honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I 
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit 
of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, 
that bit is his book, or his piece of art. 2 It is mixed always 
with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, affected work. 
But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true 
bits, and those are the book. 

ii. Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
by their greatest men: — by great readers, great statesmen, 
and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life 
is short. You have heard as much before; — yet have you 
measured and mapped out this short life and its possibil- 
ities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot 
read that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain 
to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, 
or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and 
kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy con- 
sciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle 
with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and 
audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open 
to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as 
its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and 
time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may 
take fellowship and rank according to your wish ; from that, 
once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your 
own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 
your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and 
the motives with which you strive to take high place in the 
society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sin- 
cerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in 
this company of the Dead. 

12. " The place you desire," and the place you fit your- 
self for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court of the 
past differs from all living aristocracy in this: — it is open 

3 Note this sentence carefully, and compare the "Queen of the Air," § 106. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 103 

to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of 
those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 
person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent 
Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question, Do you 
deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion 
of nobles ? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you 
long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand 
it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. If you 
will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord 
may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his 
thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither 
feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our 
thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our 
feelings, if you would recognize our presence. ,, 

13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that 
it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 
are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They 
scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your 
love in these two following ways: 

I. — First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter 
into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to 
find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote 
the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, 
he will think differently from you in many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good this is — 
that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, 
" How strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and 
yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some 
day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be 
sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to 
find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself quali- 
fied to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if 
the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his 
meaning all at once; — nay, that at his whole meaning you 
will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he 
does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but 
he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, 
but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may 
be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, 



104 RUSKIN 

nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward; and 
will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they 
allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical 
type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no 
reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry 
whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain 
tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold 
they could get was there; and without any trouble of dig- 
ging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, 
and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not 
manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, 
nobody knows where: you may dig long and find none; 
you must dig painfully to find any. 

14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 
"Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? 
Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in 
good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 
breath good, and my temper ? " And, keeping the figure 
a little longer, even at the cost of tiresomeness, for it is a 
thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being 
the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock 
which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. 
And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; 
your smelting- furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not 
hope to get at any good author's meaning without those 
tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest 
chiseling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one 
grain of the metal. 

15. And therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must get 
into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay letter 
by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition 
of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function 
of signs, that the study of books is called " literature," and 
that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, 
a man of letters instead of a man of books, or of words, you 






SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 105 

may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real 
fact; — that you might read all the books in the British 
Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an 
utterly " illiterate/' uneducated person; but that if you read 
ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, 
with real accuracy, — you are forevermore in some measure 
an educated person. The entire difference between educa- 
tion and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual 
part of it) consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gen- 
tleman may not know many languages, — may not be able 
to speak any but his own,— may have read very few books. 
But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely ; what- 
ever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, 
he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of 
true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from words of 
modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their inter- 
marriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which 
they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national 
noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an 
uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, 
and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any, — 
not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and sensi- 
ble seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most 
ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language 
to be known for an illiterate person: so also the accent, or 
turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a 
scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively ad- 
mitted by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken 
syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, 
to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing 
forever. 

16. And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy 
insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. 
It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile 
in the House of Commons; but it is wrong that a false 
English meaning should riot excite a frown there. Let the 
accent of words be watched; and closely: let their meaning 
be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the work. 
A few words well chosen and distinguished, will do work 
that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivo- 



106 RUSKIN 

cally, in the function of another. Yes; and words, if they 
are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There 
are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe 
just now, — (there never were so many, owing to the spread 
of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious " informa- 
tion," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to the teaching 
of catechisms and phrases at schools instead of human 
meanings) — there are masked words abroad, I say, which 
nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most 
people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying 
they mean this or that, or the other, of things dear to them: 
for such words wear chameleon cloaks — " groundlion " 
cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's fancy: on 
that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring 
from it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, 
never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, 
as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all 
men's ideas : whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most 
cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to take care 
of for him ; the word at last comes to have an infinite power 
over him, — you cannot get at him but by its ministry. 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, 
there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, 
almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek 
or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful; 
and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it 
to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, for 
instance, would be produced on the minds of people who 
are in the habit of taking the Form of the " Word " they 
live by, for the Power of which that Word tells them, if we 
always either retained, or refused, the Greek form " biblos," 
or " biblion," as the right expression for " book " — instead of 
employing it only in the one instance in which we wish to 
give dignity to the idea, and translating it into English 
everywhere else. How wholesome it would be for many 
simple persons, if, in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 
19, we retained the Greek expression, instead of translating 
it, and they had to read — " Many of them also which used 
curious arts, brought their bibles together, and burnt them 
before all men; and they counted the price of them, and 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 107 

found it fifty thousand pieces of silver ! " Or, if, on the 
other hand, we translated where we retain it, and always 
spoke of "The Holy Book," instead of "Holy Bible," it 
might come into more heads than it does at present, that 
the Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and 
by which they are now kept in store, 3 cannot be made a 
present of to anybody in morocco binding; nor sown on 
any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam press ; 
but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with 
contumely refused; and sown in us daily, and by us, as 
instantly as may be, choked. 

18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced 
on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous 
Latin form " damno," in translating the Greek xardxptva), 
when people charitably wish to make it forcible; and the 
substitution of the temperate " condemn " for it, when they 
choose to keep it gentle; and what notable sermons have 
been preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned " ; though they would shrink 
with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, " The saving of his 
house, by which he damned the world"; or John viii. 10, 11, 
"Woman, hath no man damned thee? She saith, No man, 
Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn thee; go 
and sin no more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, 
which have cost seas of blood and in the defense of which 
the noblest souls of men have been cast away in frantic 
desolation, countless as forest leaves — though, in the heart 
of them, founded on deeper causes — have nevertheless been 
rendered practicably possible, namely, by the European adop- 
tion of the Greek word for a public meeting, " ecclesia," 
to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held 
for religious purposes; and other collateral equivocations, 
such as the vulgar English one of using the word " priest " 
as a contraction for " presbyter." 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
habit you must form. Nearly every word in your language 
has been first a word of some other language — of Saxon, 
German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern 
and primitive dialects). And many words have been all 

*2 Peter, lii. 5-7. 



108 RUSKIN 

these; — that is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, 
French and German next, and English last: undergoing a 
certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation; 
but retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars 
feel in employing them, even at this day. If you do not 
know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young or old — girl or 
boy — whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously 
(which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at 
command), learn your Greek alphabet; then get good dic- 
tionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are in 
doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max 
Muller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, after that, 
never lef a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is 
severe work; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, 
and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain to 
your character, in power and precision, will be quite in- 
calculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 
Greek or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to 
learn any language perfectly. But you can easily ascer- 
tain the meanings through which the English word has 
passed; and those which in a good writer's work it must 
still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with 
your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
carefully; and see what will come out of them. I will take 
a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are 
more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with 
less sincerity. I will take these few following lines oi 
Lycidas : 

" Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
' How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 109 

A sheep-hook, or have leaned aught else, the least 

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 

What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped \ 

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 

Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St 
Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
types of it which Protestants usually refuse most passion- 
ately? His " mitred " locks! Milton was no Bishop-lover; 
how comes St. Peter to be "mitred"? "Two massy keys 
he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys claimed by 
the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged here by 
Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its pic- 
turesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys 
to help his effect? Do not think it. Great men do not play 
stage tricks with doctrines of life and death: only little 
men do that. Milton means what he says; and means it 
with his might too — is going to put the whole strength of 
his spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not 
a lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones; and 
the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of 
true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I will 
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven " quite 
honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out 
of the book because there have been bad bishops; nay, in 
order to understand him, we must understand that verse 
first; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under 
our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 
a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by 
all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on 
it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For 
clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true 
episcopate is to make us feel more weightily what is to be 
charged against the false claimants of episcopate; or gen- 
erally, against false claimants of power and rank in the body 



110 RUSKIN 

of the clergy; they who, " for their bellies' sake, creep, and 
intrude, and climb into the fold." 

21. Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three; 
specially those three, and no more than those — " creep," and 
"intrude," and " climb " ; no other words would or could 
serve the turn, and no more could be added. For they ex- 
haustively comprehend the three classes, correspondent to 
the three characters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesi- 
astical power. First, those who "creep " into the fold ; who 
do not care for office, nor name, but for secret influence, 
and do all things occultly and cunningly, consenting to any 
servility of office or conduct, so only that they may intimately 
discern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then 
those who "intrude" (thrust, that is) themselves into the 
fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence 
of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, obtain 
hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, 
those who " climb," who by labor and learning, both stout 
and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their own 
ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and become 
u lords over the heritage," though not " ensamples to the 
flock." 

22, Now go on : — 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths — " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken 
metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. 

Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries 
of right character, in the two great offices of the Church — 
those of bishop and pastor. 

A " Bishop " means a " person who sees." 
A " Pastor " means a " person who feeds." 
The most unbishoply character a man can have is there- 
fore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be 
fed, — to be a Mouth. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 111 

Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind 
mouths. " We may advisably follow out this idea a little. 
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops 
desiring power more than light. They want authority, not 
outlook. Whereas their real office is not to rule; though it 
may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke; it is the king's 
office to rule; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock; to 
number it, sheep by sheep; to be ready always to give full 
account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of 
the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies of 
his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any 
moment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every 
living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down 
in that back street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's 
teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all about it ? Has he 
his eye upon them? Has he had his eye upon them? Can 
he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit 
of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is no 
bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple; 
he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the helm instead 
of the masthead; he has no sight of things. " Nay," you 
say, " it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street." 
What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is 
only those he should look after, while (go back to your 
Milton) " the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, be- 
sides what the grim wolf with privy paw " (bishops knowing 
nothing about it) "daily devours apace, and nothing said"? 

"But that's not our idea of a bishop." 4 Perhaps not; 
but it was St. Paul's; and it was Milton's. They may be 
right, or we may be ; but we must not think we are reading 
either one or the other by putting our meaning into their 
words. 

23. I go on. 

'" But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the poor are 
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; 
they have spiritual food." 

* Compare the 13th Letter in " Time and Tide." 



112 RUSKIN 

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as spiritual 
food; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may 
think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, 
it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin and 
Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning of " Spirit." 
It is only a contraction of the Latin word "breath," and 
an indistinct translation of the Greek word for " wind." 
The same word is used in writing, "The wind bloweth 
where it listeth " ; and in writing, " So is every one that is 
born of the Spirit " ; born of the bre'ath, that is ; for it 
means the breath of God, in soul and body. We have the 
true sense of it in our words " inspiration " and " expire." 
Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock 
may be filled; God's breath, and man's. The breath of 
God is health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of 
heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but man's breath — the 
word which he calls spiritual, — is disease and contagion to 
them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it; 
they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of 
its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false 
religious teaching; the first and last, and fatalest sign of it 
is that " puffing up." Your converted children, who teach 
their parents; your converted convicts, who teach honest 
men ; your converted dunces, who, having lived in cretinous 
stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact 
of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His 
peculiar people and messengers; your sectarians of every 
species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high 
church or low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively 
in the right and others wrong; and preeminently, in every 
sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking 
rightly instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and 
wish instead of work: — these are the true fog children — 
clouds, these, without water; bodies, these, of putrescent 
vapor and skin, without blood or flesh : blown bag-pipes for 
the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — " Swollen 
with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
difference between Milton and Dante in their interpretation 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 113 

of this power: for once, the latter is weaker in thought; he 
supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven; one is 
of gold, the other of silver: they are given by St. Peter to 
the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to determine the 
meaning either of the substances of the three steps of the 
gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, 
the key of heaven; the other, of iron, the key of the prison 
in which the wicked teachers are to be bound who "have 
taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in them- 
selves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to 
see and feed; and, of all who do so it is said, "He that 
watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse 
is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered him- 
self, and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of 
sight, — shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that 
prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who is to be 
bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That com- 
mand to the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the 
image, " Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast 
him out/' issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for 
every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for 
every falsehood enforced; so that he is more strictly fettered 
the more he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more and 
more misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close 
upon him, and as " the golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 

25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done 
enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
examination of your author which is rightly called " read- 
ing" ; watching every accent and expression, and putting 
ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our own 
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able 
assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus / 
thought, in mis-reading Milton." And by this process you 
will gradually come to attach less weight to your own " Thus 
I thought " at other times. You will begin to perceive that 
what you thought was a matter of no serious importance ; — 
that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the clear- 
est and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon: — in fact, 



114 RUSKIN 

that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be 
said to have any " thoughts " at all ; that you have no 
materials for them, in any serious matters; 5 — no right to 
" think," but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, 
most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a 
singular person) you will have no legitimate right to an 
" opinion " on any business, except that instantly under 
your hand. What must of necessity be done, you can 
always find out, beyond question, how to do. Have you a 
house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, 
a ditch to cleanse. There need be no two opinions about 
these proceedings; it is at your peril if you have not much 
more than an " opinion " on the way to manage such mat- 
ters. And also, outside of your own business, there are one 
or two subjects on which you are bound to have but one 
opinion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and 
are instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever dis- 
covered; — that covetousness and love of quarreling are 
dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly dis- 
positions in men and nations; — that in the end, the God 
of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, 
and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones; — on these 
general facts you are bound to have but one and that a 
very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, 
governments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the whole, 
you can know nothing, — judge nothing; that the best you 
can do, even though you may be a well-educated person, is 
to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to under- 
stand a little more of the thoughts of others, which so soon 
as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts 
even of the wisest are very little more than pertinent 
questions. To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and 
exhibit to you the grounds for indecision, that is all they 
can generally do for you ! — and well for them and for us, 
if indeed they are able " to mix the music with our thoughts, 
and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This writer, from 
whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first 
or wisest: he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore 

6 Modern " education " for the most part signifies giving people the faculty 
of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 115 

ft is easy to find out his full meaning; but with the greater 
men, you cannot fathom their meaning; they do not even 
wholly measure it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I 
had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's 
opinion, instead of Milton's, on this matter of Church 
authority? — or for Dante's? Have any of you, at this 
instant, the least idea what either thought about it? Have 
you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in Richard 
III. against the character of Cranmer? the description of 
St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who made 
Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, — " disteso, tanto vilmente, 
neir eterno esilio " ; or of him whom Dante stood beside, 
" come '1 f rate che conf essa lo perfido assassin ? " 6 Shake- 
speare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I 
presume ! They were both in the midst of the main struggle 
between the temporal and spiritual powers. They had an 
opinion, we may guess. But where is it? Bring it into 
court ! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's creed into articles, 
and send it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and 
many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching of 
these great men; but a very little honest study of them will 
enable you to perceive that what you took for your own 
" judgment " was mere chance prejudice, and drifted, help- 
less, entangled weed of castaway thought: nay, you will see 
that most men's minds are indeed little better than rough 
heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, 
partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, 
wind-sown herbage of evil surmise ; that the first thing you 
have to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully 
to set fire to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash 
heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true literary work 
before you, for life, must begin with obedience to that order, 
" Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns/' 

27. II. 7 — Having then faithfully listened to the great 
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you have 
yet this higher advance to make; — you have to enter into 
their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so 
you must stay with them, that you may share at last their 

6 "Inferno," xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50. 7 Compare H 13 above. 



116 RUSK1N 

just and mighty Passion. Passion, or "sensation." I am 
not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. You have 
heard many outcries against sensation lately; but, I can tell 
you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The en- 
nobling difference between one man and another, — between 
one animal and another, — is precisely in this, that one feels 
more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation 
might not be easily got for us; if we were earth-worms, 
liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps 
too much sensation might not be good for us. But, being 
human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, we are only human 
in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in 
proportion to our passion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure society of 
the dead, that it would allow "no vain or vulgar person to 
enter there. ,, What do you think I meant by a " vulgar " 
person ? What do you yourselves mean by " vulgarity " ? 
You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, 
the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple 
and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and un- 
developed bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred 
vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in ex- 
tremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and 
crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and 
without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, 
in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men 
become vulgar; they are forever vulgar, precisely in pro- 
portion as they are incapable of sympathy, — of quick under- 
standing, — of all that, in deep insistence on the common, 
but most accurate term, may be called the " tact M or " touch- 
faculty " of body and soul ; that tact which the Mimosa has 
in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures; — 
fineness and fullness of sensation beyond reason ; — the guide 
and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine 
what is true: — it is the God-given passion of humanity which 
alone can recognize what God has made good. 

29. We come then to the great concourse of the Dead, 
not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly to 
feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we 
must be like them; and none of us can become that without 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 117 

pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested 
knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, — so the true 
passion is disciplined and tested passion, — not the first pas- 
sion that comes. The first that come are the vain, the 
false, the treacherous; if you yield to them they will lead 
you wildly and far in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, 
till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not 
that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but 
only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
and justice; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a 
juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you will. 
But do you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensa- 
tion less, with which every human soul is called to watch 
the golden balls of heaven tossed through the night by the 
Hand that made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a 
child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her 
master's business; — and a noble curiosity, questioning, in 
the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the 
sand, — the place of the great continents beyond the sea; 
— a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of 
the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of 
Heaven, — things which "the angels desire to look into." 
So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the 
course and catastrophe of an idle tale; but do you think 
the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you watch, or 
ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the 
life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, sel- 
fishness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to de- 
plore in England at this day; — sensation which spends itself 
in bouquets and speeches; in revelings and junketings; in 
sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on 
and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an 
effort or a tear. 

30. I said " minuteness " and " selfishness " of sensation, 
but in a word, I ought to have said " injustice " or "un- 
righteousness" of sensation. For as in nothing is a gentle- 
man better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in 
nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better 
to be discerned from a mob, than in this, — that their feelings 



118 RUSKIN 

are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of 
equal thought. You can talk a mob into anything; its feel- 
ings may be — usually are — on the whole, generous and right ; 
but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you 
may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks 
by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a 
cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself 
wild about, when the fit is on ; — nothing so great but it will 
forget in an hour, when the fit is past. But a gentleman's or 
a gentle nation's, passions are just, measured and continuous. 
A great nation, for instance, does not spend its entire na- 
tional wits for a couple of months in weighing evidence of 
a single ruffian's having done a single murder; and for a 
couple of years see its own children murder each other by 
their thousands or tens of thousands a day, considering only 
what the effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and 
caring nowise to determine which side of battle is in the 
wrong. Neither does a great nation send its poor little boys 
to jail for stealing six walnuts; and allow its bankrupts to 
steal their hundreds or thousands with a bow, and its bank- 
ers, rich with poor men's savings, to close their doors " un- 
der circumstances over which they have no control," with 
a "by your leave"; and large landed estates to be bought 
by men who have made their money by going with armed 
steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at the 
cannon's mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the foreign 
nation, the common highwayman's demand of "your money 
or your life," into that of "your money and your life." 
Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent 
poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out 
of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life 
extra per week to its landlords; 8 and then debate, with 
driveling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it ought 
not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the lives of its 
murderers. Also, a great nation having made up its mind 
that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homi- 
cides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the 
degrees of guilt in homicides ; and does not yelp like a pack 

8 See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, because the course 
of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth attention. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 119 

of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy 
crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, " perplexed i' 
the extreme," at the very moment that it is sending a Min- 
ister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is 
bayoneting young girls in their fathers sight, and killing 
noble youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher 
kills lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great nation does net 
mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a reve- 
lation which asserts the love of money to be the root of 
all evil, and declaring, at the same time, that it is actuated, 
and intends to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and 
measures, by no other love. 

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should 
talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline than 
that of reading; but, at all events, be assured, we cannot 
read. No reading is possible for a people with its mind 
in this state. No sentence of any great writer is intelligible 
to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for the English 
public, at this moment, to understand any thoughtful writ- 
ing, — so incapable of thought has it become in its insanity 
of avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, little worse than 
this incapacity of thought; it is not corruption of the inner 
nature; we ring true still, when anything strikes home to 
us ; and though the idea that everything should " pay " has 
infected our every purpose so deeply, that even when we 
would play the good Samaritan, we never take out our 
twopence and give them to the host without saying, " When 
I come again, thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a 
capacity of noble passion left in our hearts' core. We show 
it in our work, — in our war, — even in those unjust do- 
mestic affections which make us furious at a small private 
wrong, while we are polite to a boundless public one : we are 
still industrious to the last hour of the day, though we add 
the gambler's fury to the laborer's patience; we are still 
brave to the death, though incapable of discerning true cause 
for battle; and are still true in affection to our own flesh, 
to the death, as the sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. 
And there is hope for a nation while this can be still said 
of it. As long as it holds its life in its hand, ready to 
give it for its honor (though a foolish honor), for its love 



120 RUSKIN 

(though a selfish love), and for its business (though a base 
business), there is hope for it. But hope only; for this 
instinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. No nation can last, 
which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. 
It must discipline its passions, and direct them, or they will 
discipline it, one day, with scorpion whips. Above all a 
nation cannot last as a money-making mob: it cannot with 
impunity, — it cannot with existence, — go on despising liter- 
ature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, 
despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. 
Do you think these are harsh or wild words ? Have patience 
with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, 
clause by clause. 

32. I. — I say first we have despised literature. What do 
we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you 
think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, 
as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man 
spends lavishly on his library you call him mad — a biblio- 
maniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though 
men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do 
not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, 
to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of 
the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and pri- 
vate, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its 
wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on liter- 
ature take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious 
eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for 
the body ; now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly ; 
it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet 
how long most people would look at the best book before 
they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! though 
there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and 
bared their backs, to buy a book, whose libraries were 
cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's din- 
ners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more 
the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more pre- 
cious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if 
public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or 
books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish 
men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 121 

reading, as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the 
very cheapness of literature is making even wise people 
forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. 
No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor 
is it serviceable, until it has been read, and reread, and 
loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer 
to the passages you want in it as a soldier can seize the 
weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the 
spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good: but 
there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good 
book; and the family must be poor indeed which, once in 
their lives, cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay 
their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we 
are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books 
out of circulating libraries ! 

33. II. — I say we have despised science. " What ! " you 
exclaim, "are we not foremost in all discovery, 9 and is not 
the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inven- 
tions?" Yes; but do you suppose that is national work? 
That work is all done in spite of the nation; by private 
people's zeal arid money. We are glad enough, indeed, to 
make our profit of science; we snap up anything in the 
way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough ; 
but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust to us, 
that is another story. What have we publicly done for 
science? We are obliged to know what o'clock it is, for 
the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an 
observatory; and we allow ourselves, in the person of our 
Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something, 
in a slovenly way, for the British Museum; sullenly appre- 
hending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to 
amuse our children. If anybody will pay for his own tele- 
scope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the 
discernment as if it were our own; if one in ten thousand 
of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was 
indeed made to be something else than a portion for foxes, 
and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold is, 
and where the coals, we understand that there is some use 

9 Since this was written, the answer has become definitely — No ; we have 
surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental nations, as 
being ourselves too poor to pay for ships. 



122 RUSKIN 

in that; and very properly knight him; but is the accident 
of his having found out how to employ himself usefully any 
credit to us? (The negation of such discovery among his 
brother squires may perhaps be some discredit to us, if we 
would consider of it.) But if you doubt these generalities, 
here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of 
our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection 
of the fossils of Solenhof en to be sold in Bavaria ; the best 
in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfect- 
ness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole 
kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market 
worth, among private buyers, would probably have been 
some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to 
the English nation for seven hundred; but we would not 
give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been 
in the Munich Museum at this moment, if Professor Owen 10 
had not with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting 
of the British public in person of its representatives, got 
leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself 
become answerable for the other three ! which the said 
public will doubtless pay N him eventually, but sulkily, and 
caring nothing about the matter all the while; only always 
ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg 
of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual 
expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military 
apparatus), is at least fifty millions. Now 700/. is to 
50,000,000/. roughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. 
Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose 
wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent 
two thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen only, 
professes himself fond of science; and that one of his 
servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection 
of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had 
for the sum of seven pence sterling; and that the gentle- 
man, who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a 
year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting 

10 I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission: which of course 
he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it; but 1 consider 
it so important that the public should be aware of the fact that I do what 
seems to be right though rude. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 123 

several months, " Well ! I'll give you four pence for them, 
if you will be answerable for the extra three pence yourself, 
till next year ! " 

34. III. — I say you have despised Art ! " What ! " you 
again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? 
and do we not pay thousands of pounds for single pictures ? 
and have we not Art schools and institutions, more than 
ever nation had before? " Yes, truly, but all that is for the 
sake of the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as 
coals, and crockery as well as iron; you would take every 
other nation's bread out of its mouth if you could; 11 not 
being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in 
the thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, 
screaming to every passer-by, " What d'ye lack ? " You 
know nothing of your own faculties or circumstances; you 
fancy that, among your damp, flat fields of clay, you can 
have as quick art- fancy as the Frenchman among his bronzed 
vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs; — that art 
may be learned as book-keeping is, and when learned, will 
give you more books to keep. You care for pictures, abso- 
lutely, no more than you do for the bills pasted on your 
dead walls. There is always room on the walls for the bills 
to be read, — never for the pictures to be seen. You do not 
know what pictures you have (by repute) in the country, 
nor whether they are false or true, nor whether they are 
taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you calmly see 
the noblest existing pictures in the world rotting in aban- 
doned wreck — (in Venice you saw the Austrian guns de- 
liberately pointed at the palaces containing them), and if 
you heard that all the fine pictures in Europe were made 
into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, it would 
not trouble you so much as the chance of a brace or two 
of game less in your own bags, in a day's shooting. That 
is your national love of Art. 

35. IV.— You have despised Nature; that is to say, all 
the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The 
French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
France; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of 

11 That was our real idea of " Free Trade "— " All the trade to myself." 
You find now that by " competition " other people can manage to sell some- 
thing as well as you — and now we call for Protection again. Wretches! 



124 RUSKIN 

the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in 
railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. 12 
You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen. 
You have tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel; 
you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of 
Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in England that you 
have not filled with bellowing fire; there is no particle left 
of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes 
into 13 — nor any foreign city in which the spread of your 
presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy 
gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and 
perfumers' shops: the Alps themselves, which your own 
poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped 
poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, 
and slide down again with " shrieks of delight." When 
you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice 
to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their 
valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with 
cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive 
hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sor- 
rowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking 
the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs 
in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing 
rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich express- 
ing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, by 
assembling in knots in the " towers of the vineyards," and 
slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till 
evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty; 
more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, 
of mirth. 

36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need 
of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print one 
of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the habit of 
cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; here is one 
from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this year (1867) 

12 1 meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, 
South Germany, and so on— are, indeed, the truest cathedrals^ — places to 
be reverent in, and to worship in; and that we only care to drive through 
them; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 

13 I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the river shore 
at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere drift of soot- 
laden air from places many miles away. 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 125 

(date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is 
easily discoverable; for on the back of the slip, there is the 
announcement that "yesterday the seventh of the special 
services of this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon 
in St. Paul's ") ; it relates only one of such facts as happen 
now daily ; this, by chance, having taken a form in which it 
came before the coroner. I will print the paragraph in red. 
Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that color in 
a book which we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have to 
read our page of, some day. 

"An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy 
coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spital- 
fields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 
years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said that 
she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, 
Cobb's Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a ' translator ' 
of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots; deceased 
and his son made them into good ones, and then witness 
sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was 
very little indeed. Deceased and his son used to work 
night and day fo try and get a little bread and tea, and pay 
for the room (2^. a week), so as to keep the home together. 
On Friday night week, deceased got up from his bench and 
began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ' Some- 
body else must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no 
more.' There was no fire, and he said, ' I would be better 
if I was warm/ Witness therefore took two pairs of trans- 
lated boots 1 * to sell at the shop, but she could only get 14c?. 
for the two pairs, for the people at the shop said, i We must 
have our profit.' Witness got 14 lbs. of coal and a little 
tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make 
the e translations,' to get money, but deceased died on Satur- 
day morning. The family never had enough to eat. — 
Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you did not go 
into the workhouse.' Witness: 'We wanted the comforts 
of our little home.' A juror asked what the comforts were, 
for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
windows of which were broken. The witness began to cry, 

14 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the 
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear 
no " translated " articles of dress. 



126 RUSKIN 

and said that they had a quilt and other little things. The 
deceased said he never would go into the workhouse. In 
summer, when the season was good, they sometimes made 
as much as 10^. profit in a week. They then always saved 
towards the next week, which was generally a bad one. 
In winter they made not half so much. For three years 
they had been getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius Collins 
said that he had assisted his father since 1847. They used 
to work so far into the night that both nearly lost their eye- 
sight. Witness now had a film over his eyes. Five years 
ago deceased applied to the parish for aid. The relieving 
officer gave him a 4-lb. loaf, and told him if he came again 
he should ' get the stones.' 15 That disgusted deceased, and 
he would have nothing to do with them since. They got 
worse and worse until last Friday week, when they had 
not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay 
down on the straw, and said he could not live till morning. — 
A juror: 'You are dying of starvation yourself, and you 
ought to go into the house until the summer.' Witness : ' If 
we went in we should die. When we come out in the 
summer we should be like people dropped from the sky. 
No one would know us, and we would not have even a 
room. I could work now if I had food, for my sight would 
get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died from 
syncope, from exhaustion, from want of food. The de- 

15 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously coincident 
in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may remember. It 
may, perhaps, be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out 
of my store-drawer, from the " Morning Post," of about a parallel date, 

Friday, March ioth, 1865: — " The salons of Mme. C , who did the honors 

with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, 
marquises, and counts — in fact, with the same male company as one meets 
at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. 
Some English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared 
to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor 
the supper-tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your 
readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, 
I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests (about 
200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Lafitte, Tokay, 
and Champagne of the finest vintages were served most # lavishly throughout 
the morning. After supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, 
and the ball terminated with a chaine diabolique and a cancan d'enfer at 
seven in the morning. (Morning-service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, 
under the opening eyelids of the Morn. — ') Here is the menu: — | Consomme 
de volaille a la Bagration; 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Bouchees a la Talley- 
rand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de bceuf en Bellevue, timbales 
milanaises chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buis- 
sons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux 
mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces, Ananas. Dessert.' " 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 127 

ceased had had no bed-clothes. For four months he had 
had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a particle of 
fat in the body. There was no disease, but if there had 
been medical attendance, he might have survived the syn- 
cope or fainting. The coroner having remarked upon the 
painful nature of the case, the jury returned the following 
verdict: 'That deceased died from exhaustion, from want 
of food and the common necessaries of life; also through 
want of medical aid/ " 

3/. " Why would witness not go into the workhouse ? " 
you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against 
the workhouse which the rich have not ; for, of course, every 
one who takes a pension from Government goes into the 
workhouse on a grand scale; 16 only the workhouses for the 
rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called 
play-houses. But the poor like to die independently, it ap- 
pears; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them pretty 
and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at home, 
and allowed them a little introductory peculation with the 
public money, their minds might be reconciled to the con- 
ditions. Meantime, here are the facts: we make our relief 
either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they rather 
die than take it at our hands; or, for third alternative, we 
leave them so untaught and foolish that they starve like 
brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, 
or what to ask. I say, you despise compassion; if you did 
not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible 
in a Christian country as a deliberate assassination per- 
mitted in its public streets. 17 " Christian" did I say? Alas, 

16 Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how it hap- 
pens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling a week from 
the country — but no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. 

17 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the "Pall Mall Gazette" estab- 
lished; for the power of the press in the hands of highly educated men, in 
independent position, and of honest purpose, may, indeed, become all that it 
Las been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will, therefore, I doubt not, 
pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let 
pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in every 
word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve 
who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, re- 
gardless of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage: — ■ 

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bed- 
steads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought 
to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this expres- 
sion of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message 
which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in declaring 
to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist 



128 RUSKIN 

if we were but wholesomely tm-Christian, it would be 
impossible; it is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to 
commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, 
for the lewd sensation of it; dressing it up, like everything 
else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and 
aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival — the Christianity 
which we do not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, 
with our play about the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, 
— Fausts; chanting hymns through traceried windows for 
back-ground effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio " 
through variation on variation of mimicked prayer (while 
we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated 
swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of 
the Third Commandment) ; — this gas-lighted, and gas- 
inspired, Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back 
the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who 
dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteous- 
ness in a plain English word or deed; to make Christian 
law any rule of life, and found one National act or hope 
thereon, — we know too well what our faith comes to for 
that ! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke 
than true action or passion out of your modern English 
religion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the 
organ-pipes, both; leave them, and the Gothic windows, and 
the painted glass, to the property-man; give up your car- 
buretted hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look 
after Lazarus at the door-step. For there is a true Church 
wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is 
the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever 
shall be. 

of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread 
to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out (margin 
4 afflicted ') to thy house." The falsehood on which the writer had mentally 
founded himself, as previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the 
functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers 
of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious error." This sentence 
is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that its substance^ must be thus 
reversed in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of 
national distress. " To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are 
the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness 
and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to 
individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be 
supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all 
law respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the " Pall Mall 
Gazette " has become a mere party paper — like the rest; but it writes well, 
and does more good than mischief on the whole.) 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 129 

38. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, I 
repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men 
among you who do not; by whose work, by whose strength, 
by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank 
them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all 
be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget. 
The policeman, who is walking up and down the black lane 
all night to watch the guilt you have created there, and 
may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, 
at any moment, and never be thanked; the sailor wrestling 
with the sea's rage; the quiet student poring over his book 
or his vial; the common worker, without praise, and nearly 
without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your 
carts, hopeless, and spurned of all; these are the men by 
whom England lives; but they are not the nation; they are 
only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old 
habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. 
Our National wish and purpose are to be amused; our 
National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, 
and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the 
mob quietly at' work, while we amuse ourselves; and the 
necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous 
disease of parched throat and wandering eyes — senseless, 
dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-~Ea.se; the 
Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire 
moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements ! 

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement 
grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful 
flower; — when they are faithfully helpful and compassion- 
ate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and 
vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse of the body. But 
now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine 
energy into the false business of money-making; and hav- 
ing no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed 
up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with 
dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with 
their pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to 
detect. The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the 
novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in nature, 
we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the 

Vol. 28 — e hc 



130 RUSKIN 

human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow 
of some kind) for the noble grief we should have borne 
with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept 
with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, 
and gather the night-dew of the grave. 

40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these 
things; the facts are frightful enough; — the measure of 
national fault involved in them is, perhaps, not as great as 
it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, thousands of 
deaths daily, but we mean no harm; we set fire to houses, 
and ravage peasants' fields; yet we should be sorry to find 
we had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart; still 
capable of virtue, but only as children are. Chalmers, at 
the end of his long life, having had much power with the 
public, being plagued in some serious matter by a reference 
to " public opinion," uttered the impatient exclamation, " The 
public is just a great baby ! " And the reason that I have 
allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix them- 
selves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, is that, 
the more I see of our national faults and miseries, the more 
they resolve themselves into conditions of childish illiter- 
ateness, and want of education in the most ordinary habits 
of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not 
dullness of brain, which we have to lament; but an un- 
reachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from the 
true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped, because 
it acknowledges no master. 

41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the 
lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters. It 
is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its 
brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky beyond. 
And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead who have 
left these for other valleys and for other skies, a group of 
schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to 
strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the 
words of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far 
from us with our bitter, reckless will; little thinking that 
those leaves which the wind scatters had been piled, not 
only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted 
vault — nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 131 

would awake for us, and walk with us, if we knew but how 
to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the 
marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old 
kings in their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
stir the crowns on their foreheads; and still they are silent 
to us, and seem but a dusty imagery; because we know not 
the incantation of the heart that would wake them; — which, 
if they once heard, they would start up to meet us in their 
power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider 
us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, 
saying, "Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also 
become one of us ? " so would these kings, with their 
undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou 
also become pure and mighty of heart as we? art thou also 
become one of us ? " 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " 
— to be this, is, indeed, to be great in life; to become this 
increasingly, is, indeed, to u advance in life," — in life itself 
— not in the trappings of it. My friends, do you remember 
that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? 
How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, 
and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of them 
placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his presence? 
Suppose it were offered to you, in plain words, as it is 
offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this 
Scythian honor, gradually, while you yet thought yourself 
alive. Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; 
your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your 
heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. 
Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth 
into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be 
dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have 
more orders on its breast — crowns on its head, if you will. 
Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd 
after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast 
with it at their tables' heads all the night long; your soul 
shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel 
the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the 
furrow of the crown-edge on the skull; — no more. Would 
you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel ? Would 



132 RUSKIN 

the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically 
and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; 
many of us grasp at it in its fullness of horror. Every man 
accepts it, who desires to advance in life without knowing 
what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, 
and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honor, 
and — not more personal soul. He only is advancing in 
life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, 
whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living 
peace. And the men who have this life in them are the 
true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only. All 
other kingships, so far as they are true, are only the 
practical issue and expression of theirs; if less than this, 
they are either dramatic royalties, — costly shows, set off, 
indeed, with real jewels instead of tinsel, — but still only 
the toys of nations; or else, they are no royalties at 
all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and practical issue 
of national folly; for which reason I have said of them 
elsewhere, " Visible governments are the toys of some 
nations, the diseases of others, the harness of some, the 
burdens of more." 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I 
hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, 
as if governed nations were a personal property, and might 
be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of 
whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was 
to gather; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, 
" people-eating/' were the constant and proper title of all 
monarchs; and enlargement of a king's dominion meant the 
same thing as the increase of a private man's estate ! Kings 
who think so, however powerful, can no more be the true 
kings of the nation than gad-flies are the kings of a horse; 
they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide it. 
They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one could 
see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with 
bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered, trumpeting 
in the summer air; the twilight being, perhaps, sometimes 
fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists 
of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, 
if at all, and hate ruling; too many of them make u il gran 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 133 

rifiuto" 18 ; and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are 
likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make its 
u gran rifiuto " of them. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some 
day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his dominion 
by the force of it, — not the geographical boundaries. It 
matters very little whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here, 
or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it does matter 
to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this man, 
" Go," and he goeth ; and to another, " Come," and he 
cometh. Whether you can turn your people, as you can 
Trent — and where it is that you bid them come, and where 
go. It matters to you, king of men, whether your people 
hate you, and die by you, or love you, and live by you. 
You may measure your dominion by multitudes better than 
by miles; and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but 
to a wonderfully warm and indefinite equator. 

45. Measure ! nay, you cannot measure. Who shall 
measure the difference between the power of those who " do 
and teach," and who are greatest in the kingdoms of earth, 
as of heaven — and the power of those who undo, and con- 
sume — whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the 
moth and the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth-kings 
lay up treasures for the moth; and the Rust-kings, who are 
to their peoples' strength as rust to armor, lay up treasures 
for the rust ; and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber ; 
but how few kings have ever laid up treasures that 
needed no guarding — treasures of which, the more thieves 
there were, the better ! Broidered robe, only to be rent; helm 
and sword, only to be dimmed; jewel and gold, only to be 
scattered; — there have been three kinds of kings who have 
gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth 
order of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of 
long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which 
the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be 
valued with pure gold. A web made fair in the weaving, by 
Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged in divine fire by Vul- 
canian force — a gold to be mined in the sun's red heart, 
where he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep-pictured tissue, 

18 The great renunciation. 



134 RUSKIN 

impenetrable armor, potable gold! — the three great Angels 
of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and 
waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their 
winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the 
path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye 
has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard 
and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought 
forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their people? 

46. Think what an amazing business that would be ! 
How inconceivable, in the state of our present national 
wisdom ! That we should bring up our peasants to a book 
exercise instead of a bayonet exercise ! — organize, drill, 
maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, 
instead of armies of stabbers ! — find national amusement in 
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a 
fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target 
What an absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the 
wealth of the capitalists of civilized nations should ever 
come to support literature instead of war! 

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single 
sentence out of the only book, properly to be called a book, 
that I have yet written myself, the one that will stand (if 
anything stand) surest and longest of all work of mine. 

" It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 
Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth that supports 
unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to sup- 
port them ; for most of the men who wage such, wage them 
gratis; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have 
both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them 
besides, which makes such war costly to the maximum; not 
to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, 
between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough 
in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; 
as, at present, France and England, purchasing of each 
other ten millions' sterling worth of consternation, annually 
(a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, 
sown, reaped, and granaried by the ' science ' of the modern 
political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). 
And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of 
the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 135 

repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to 
have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the 
primary root of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness 
of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frank- 
ness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, 
his own separate loss and punishment to each person." 

48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic of 
each other; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand 
thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, 
instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic annually, 
they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, 
and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually; and 
that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a 
year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal 
museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not 
be better somewhat for both French and English? 

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. Never- 
theless, I hope it will not be long before royal or national 
libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a 
royal series of books in them ; the same series in every 
one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared 
for that national series in the most perfect way possible; 
their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of 
margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the 
hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of 
binders' work; and that these great libraries will be ac- 
cessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the 
day and evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanli- 
ness and quietness. 

I could shape for you other plans for art galleries, and 
for natural history galleries, and for many precious — many, 
it seems to me, needful — things; but this book plan is the 
easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable tonic 
to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen 
dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, 
and wants healthier feeding. You have got its corn laws 
repealed for it; try if you cannot get corn laws established 
for it dealing in a better bread; — bread made of that old 
enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors; — 
doors not of robbers, but of Kings' Treasuries. 



136 RUSKIN 

50. Note to *ft 30. — Respecting the increase of rent by 
the deaths of the poor, for evidence of which, see the preface 
to the Medical officers' report to the Privy Council, just 
published, there are suggestions in its preface which will 
make some stir among us, I fancy, respecting which let me 
note these points following: — 

There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, 
and in contention ; both false. 

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always 
existed, and must continue to exist, a certain number of 
hereditarily sacred persons to whom the earth, air, and 
water of the world belong, as personal property; of which 
earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, 
permit, or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, 
or to drink. This theory is not for many years longer 
tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of the land 
of the world among the mob of the world would immediately 
elevate the said mob into sacred personages; that houses 
would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and 
that everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
work for his living. This theory would also be found highly 
untenable in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments, and 
rougher catastrophes, before the generality of persons will 
be convinced that no law concerning anything, least of all 
concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting 
it high, or renting it low — would be of the smallest ultimate 
use to the people — so long as the general contest for life, 
and for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal com- 
petition. That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take 
one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make against 
it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for 
England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should 
be assigned to incomes according to classes; and that every 
nobleman's income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or 
pension by the nation; and not squeezed by him in variable 
sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. But if 
you could get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which 
would be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the 
assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure bread 



SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 137 

for a given sum, a twelvemonth would not pass before 
another currency would have been tacitly established, and 
the power of accumulative wealth would have reasserted 
itself in some other article, or some other imaginary sign. 
There is only one cure for public distress — and that is 
public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, 
and just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which 
would gradually better and strengthen the national temper; 
but, for the most part, they are such as the national temper 
must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation 
in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by 
backboards, but when it is old it cannot that way straighten 
its crooked spine. 

And besides, the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye 
one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question 
remains inexorable, — Who is to dig it? Which of us, in 
brief words, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — 
and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean 
work, and for what pay? Who is to do no work, and for 
what pay? And there are curious moral and religious ques- 
tions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a 
portion of the Soul out of a great many persons, in order to 
put the abstracted psychical quantities together and make 
one very beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to deal with 
mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing might literally 
be done — as it has been done with infants before now) — 
so that it were possible by taking a certain quantity of blood 
from the arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it 
all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded gentle- 
man of him, the thing would of course be managed; but 
secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain 
and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done 
quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, 
after the manner of weasels; that is to say, we keep a 
certain number of clowns digging and ditching, and gener- 
ally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have 
all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a 
great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and trained 
English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more 
a lady) is a great production, — a better production than 



138 RUSKIN 

most statues; being beautifully colored as well as shaped, 
and plus all the brains; a glorious thing to look at, a 
wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any 
more than a pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much 
contributed life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a 
beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or steeple 
— and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature 
far above us, than to a wall; only the beautiful human 
creature will have some duties to do in return — duties of 
living belfry and rampart — of which presently. 



SESAME AND LILIES 

LECTURE— II.— LILIES 1 
OF queens' gardens. 

" Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert ; let the desert be made cheer- 
ful, and bloom as the lily ; and the barren places of Jordan shali run 
wild with wood." — Isaiah xxxv, i. (Septuagint.) 

IT will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel of 
one previously given, that I should shortly state to you 
my general intention in both. The questions specially 
proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, 
rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to 
make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to 
Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advan- 
tages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of 
education and of literature, can only be rightly used by 
any of us when we have apprehended clearly what educa- 
tion is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to 
see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen 
reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided 
and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in 
the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest king- 
ship that can exist among men: too many other kingships 
(however distinguished by visible insignia or material 
power) being either spectral, or tyrannous; — Spectral — that 
is to say, aspects and shows only of royalty, hollow as death, 
and which only the " Likeness of a kingly crown have on " ; 
or else tyrannous — that is to say, substituting their own will 
for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 
52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave this 

1 This lecture was given December 14, 1864, at the Town Hall, Man- 
chester, in aid of the St. Andrew's Schools. 

139 



140 RUSKIN 

idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it — only 
one pure kind of kingship; an inevitable and external kind, 
crowned or not: the kingship, namely, w hich consists in a 
stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that 
of others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise 
them. Observe that word " State " ; we have got into a 
loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and 
stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the 
derived word " statue " — " the immovable thing." A king's 
majesty or " state," then, and the right of his kingdom to be 
called a state, depends on the movelessness of both: — with- 
out tremor, without quiver of balance; established and en- 
throned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can 
alter, nor overthrow. 

53. Believing that all literature and all education are only 
useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, 
and therefore kingly, power — first, over ourselves, and, 
through ourselves, over all around us, I am now going to 
ask you to consider with me farther, what special portion or 
kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, 
may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also 
are called to a true queenly power. Not in their house- 
holds merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what 
sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal 
or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by 
such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the 
territories over which each of them reigned, as " Queens' 
Gardens." 

54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far 
deeper question, which — strange though this may seem — 
remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of 
its infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of women 
should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power 
should be. We cannot consider how education may fit them 
for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed what is 
their true constant duty. And there never was a time when 
wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagination per- 
mitted, respecting this question — quite vital to all social hap- 
piness. The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, 



t 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 141 

their different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem 
never to have been yet estimated with entire consent. We 
hear of the " mission " and of the " rights " of Woman, as 
if these could ever be separate from the mission and the 
rights of Man; — as if she and her lord were creatures of 
independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, 
is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps even more foolishly 
wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove) 
— is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant 
image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile 
obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness, by the 
preeminence of his fortitude. 

f This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her 
^vho was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could 
be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 

55. I. — Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some 
clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is 
true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and 
office, with respect to man's ; and how their relations rightly 
accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, and au- 
thority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last lec- 
ture: namely, that the first use of education was to enable 
t us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men on all 
(.points of earnest difficulty. That to use books rightly, was 
to go to them for help: to appeal to them, when our own 
knowledge and power of thought failed: to be led by them 
into wider sight — purer conception — than our own, and re- 
ceive from them the united sentence of the judges and coun- 
cils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, the 
wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any wise 
on this point: let us hear the testimony they have left 
respecting what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
and her mode of help to man. 

56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 
Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes; 

— he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic 
figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the 
Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage: and the 



142 RUSKIN 

still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 
In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello 
would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so 
great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round 
him ; but he is the only example even approximating to the 
heroic type. Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony, stand in flawed 
strength, and fall by their vanities; — Hamlet is indolent, 
and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the 
Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fort- 
une; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but 
too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical 
time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Or- 
lando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, 
followed, comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is 
hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast 
in grave hope and errorless purpose: Cordelia, Desdemona, 
Isabella, Hermione, Imogen,. Queen Katherine, Perdita, 
Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps love- 
liest, Virgilia, are all faultless: conceived in the highest 
heroic type of humanity. 

57. Then observe, secondly, 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the 
folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is 
by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that, 
there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to 
his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his mis- 
understanding of his children; the virtue of his one true 
daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the 
others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she 
all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale; — nor the one weak- 
ness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his 
perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman char- 
acter in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony 
against his error : — " Oh, murderous coxcomb ! What should 
such a fool Do with so good a wife? " 

In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the 
wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience 
of her husband. In Winter's Tale and in Cymbeline, the 
happiness and existence of two princely households, lost 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 143 

through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly 
and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the 
queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure 
for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul 
cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious 
truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, 
the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved 
her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it 
is his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him — not, 
indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the 
destroyer of his country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickle- 
ness of a lover who is a mere wicked child? — of Helena, 
against the petulance and insult of a careless youth? — of 
the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly 
devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl," who appears 
among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive 
passions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and 
safety by her presence, and defeating the worst malignities 
of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in, — 
precision and accuracy of thought. 

58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures in 
Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman — 
Ophelia; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical 
moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to 
him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe 
follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women 
among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and 
Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to 
the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence also in pro- 
portion to the power for good which they have abandoned. 

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the 
position and character of women in human life. He repre- 
sents them as infallibly faithful and wise counselors, — 
incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always to 
sanctify, even when they cannot save. 

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 
nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the causes 
and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who has given 
us the broadest view of the conditions and modes of ordi- 



144 RUSKIN 

nary thought in modern society, I ask you next to receive 
the witness of JWalter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no 
value; and though the early romantic poetry is very beauti- 
ful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that of a boy's 
ideal. But his true works, studied from Scottish life, bear 
a true witness; and, in the whole range of these, there are 
but three men who reach the heroic type 2 — Dandie B.jti- 
mont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; of these, one is a border 
farmer; another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad 
cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their 
courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, 
or mistakenly applied, intellectual power; while his younger 
men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and 
only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not 
vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any 
disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose 
wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no 
trace in his conceptions of young men. Whereas in his 
imaginations of women, — in the characters of Ellen Douglas, 
of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, 
Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice 
Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with endless varieties of grace, 
tenderness, and intellectual power we find in all a quite 
infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice; a 
fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to even the 
appearance of duty, much more to its real claims; and, 
finally, a patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, 
which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a 
momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts 
the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of 
the tale, we are just able, and no more, to take patience in 

raring of their unmerited success. 
So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it 

a I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have noted 
the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great characters of 
men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrowness of thought in 
Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Glendinning, and the 
like; and I ought to have noticed that there are several quite perfect char- 
acters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds; three — let us accept joyously 
this courtesy to England and her soldiers — are English officers: Colonel 
Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 145 

is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the 
youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches 
over or educates his mistress. 

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testimony — 
that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know well the 
plan of Dante's great poem — that it is a love poem to his 
dead lady; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. 
Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from 
destruction — saves him from hell. He is going eternally 
astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his help, 
and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, inter- 
preting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human, 
and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception; if I began I 
could not cease; besides, you might think this a wild 
imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read to 
you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of 
Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling 
of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth 
century, preserved among many other such records of 
knightly honor and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered 
for us from among the early Italian poets. 

"For lo ! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honor thee ; 
And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 

"Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence; 
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense; 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail. 

And honor without fail ; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

"Lady, since I conceived 
That pleasurable aspect in my heart, 



146 RUSKIN 

My life has been apart 
In shining brightness and the place of truth; 

Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived." 

61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have 
had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. 
His spiritual subjection to them was, indeed, not so abso- 
lute; but as regards their own personal character, it was 
only because you could not have followed me so easily, that 
I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's; 
and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and 
faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; 
the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful 
kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the 
housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon 
the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety 
of the sister and daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down 
of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and, finally, the expecta- 
tion of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the 
Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, 
to save her husband, had passed calmly through the bitter- 
ness of death. 

62. Now, I could multiply witness upon witness of this 
kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and 
show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women; but no 
Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and show 
you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and 
sometimes vanquished; but the soul of Una is never dark- 
ened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient 
times, and show you how the great people, — by one of 
whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all 
the earth should be educated, rather than by his own 
kindred; — how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of 
nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 147 

woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's 
shuttle; and how the name and the form of that spirit, 
adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that 
Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in 
whom you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most 
precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 

63. But I will not wander into this distant and mythical 
element; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value to 
the testimony of these great poets and men of the world, — 
consistent, as you see it is, on this head. I will ask you 
whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main 
work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious 
and idle view of the relations between man and woman; — 
nay, worse than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be 
imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible; but this, their 
ideal of woman, is, according to our common idea of the 
marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, 
is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is 
always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, 
the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. 

64. Is it not, somewhat important to make up our minds 
on this matter? Are all these great men mistaken, or are 
we? Are Shakespeare and Aeschylus, Dante and Homer, 
merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than dolls, unnat- 
ural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, 
would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all 
affections? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all 
Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient; — 
not merely enthusiastic and worshiping in imagination, 
but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, 
however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, 
and the reward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, 
or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. 
That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonor of which are 
attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in 
peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to 
the original purity and power of which we owe the defense 



148 RUSKIN 

alike of faith, of law, and of love; — that chivalry, I say, in 
its very first conception of honorable life, assumes the sub- 
jection of the young knight to the command — should it 
even be the command in caprice- — of his lady. It assumes 
this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of 
blind service to its lady; that where that true faith and 
captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions must be ; 
and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of 
his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, and 
the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not because 
such obedience would be safe, or honorable, were it ever 
rendered to the unworthy; but because it ought to be 
impossible for every noble youth — it is impossible for 
every one rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle 
counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he 
can hesitate to obey. 

65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I 
think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge of 
what has been and to your feelings of what should be. You 
cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by 
his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It 
is the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's armor is 
never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has 
braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that 
the honor of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely 
lines — I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of 

England. — 

" Ah, wasteful woman ! — she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " s 

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I 
believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt is the 

3 Coventry Patmore. # You cannot read him too often or too carefully; 
as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens and 
purifies; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and dis- 
courage, the imagination they deeply seize. 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 149 

fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout the 
whole of human life. We think it right in the lover and 
mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is to say, we 
think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose 
affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
but partially and distantly discern; and that this reverence 
and duty are to be withdrawn, when the affection has be- 
come wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character 
has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust it 
with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how ignoble 
this is, as well as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that 
marriage, — when it is marriage at all, — is only the seal 
which marks the vowed transition of temporary into untiring 
service, and of fitful into eternal love ? 

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding 
function of the woman reconcilable with a true wifely sub- 
jection? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a determining, 
function. Let me try to show you briefly how these powers 
seem to be rightly distinguishable. 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking 
of the u superiority " of one sex to the other, as if they could 
be compared in similar things. Each has what the other 
has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the 
other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and 
perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving 
from the other w T hat the other only can give. 

68. Now their separate characters are briefly these: The 
man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is emi- 
nently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy 
for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is 
just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power 
is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not for 
invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, 
and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, 
and their places. Her great function is Praise : she enters 
into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. 
By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger 
and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, 
must encounter all peril and trial: to him, therefore, must 



150 RUSKIN 

be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he 
must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always 
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within 
his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought 
it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error 
or offense. This is the true nature of home — it is the 
place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but 
from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is 
not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer 
life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, un- 
known, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is 
allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, 
it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer 
world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But 
so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of 
the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose 
faces none may come but those whom they can receive with 
love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only 
of a nobler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a 
weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea, — 
so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
round her. The stars only may be ever her head; the 
glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at 
her foot: but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble 
woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with 
cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, 
for those who else were homeless. 

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit it to 
be, — the woman's true place and power? But do not you 
see that to fulfill this, she must — as far as one can use such 
terms of a human creature — be incapable of error? So far 
as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be 
enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise 
— wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: 
wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but 
that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the 
narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the 
passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because in- 
finitely applicable, modesty of service — the true changeful- 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 151 

mess of woman. In that great sense — " La donna e mobile," 

not " Qual pium' al vento " ; no, nor yet " Variable as the 

shade, by the light quivering aspen made " ; but variable as 

the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may 

lake the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 

( 70. II. — I have been trying, thus far, to show you what 

\ should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, 

] secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for 

/these ? 

^ And if you indeed think this is a true conception of her 
office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course 
of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her 
to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
now doubt this — is to secure for her such physical training 
and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her 
beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being unat- 
tainable without splendor of activity and of delicate strength. 
To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it 
cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far: 
only remember that all physical freedom is vain to produce 
beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart. There 
are two passages of that poet who is distinguished, it seems 
to me, from all others — not by power, but by exquisite 
Tightness — which point you to the source, and describe to 
you, in a few syllables, the completion of womanly beauty. 
I will read the introductory stanzas, but the last is the one 
I wish you specially to notice : — 

" Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, ' A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown. 
This child I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

• ' Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse ; and with me 

The girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 
To kindle, or restrain. 



1S2 RUSKIN 

"'The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

'"And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
While she and I together live, 

Here in this happy dell.' " 4 

" Vital feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly 
feelings of delight; but the natural ones are vital, necessary 
to very life. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be 
vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do 
not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on 
a good girl's nature — there is not one check you give to 
her instincts of affection or of effort — which will not be 
indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is all 
the more painful because it takes away the brightness from 
the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. 

71. This for the means: now note the end. Take from 
the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly 
beauty — 

"A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can 
only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in 
the memory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet 
records; and from the joining of this with that yet more 
majestic childishness, which is still full of change and 
promise ; — opening always — modest at once, and bright, with 
hope of better things to be won, and to be bestowed. There 
jis no old age where there is still that promise. 

72. Thus, then, y_ou have first to mould her physical frame, f 
and then, as The strength" she gains will permit you, to fill 
and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which 

4 Observe, it is " Nature " who is speaking throughout, and who says, 
" While she and I together live.'' 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 153 

tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine 
its natural tact of love. 
, / All_s uch kn owledge should^ be given her as may enable 
/her to^understan^T ancTevento aid, the work of men: and 
yeF it s hould be given, not as Jknowledge, — not as if it 
wereToF could be7"For her an object to know; but only to 
feelTanr~tb judge. TtTIs of iio "moment, as a matter of 
pri^^F'perfectness in herself, whether she knows many 
languages or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be 
able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the 
sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to 
her own w T orth or dignity that she should be acquainted 
with this science or that; but it is of the highest that she 
should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she 
should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the 
loveliness of natural laws; and follow at least some one 
path of scientTGcTattainment, as far as to the threshold of 
that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest 
and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves forever 
children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of 
little consequence how many positions of cities she knows, 
or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated persons 
f> — it is not the object of education to turn a woman into 
\a dictionary; but it is deeply necessary that she should be 
\taught to enter with her whole personality into the history 
\she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her own 
ibright imagination ; to apprehend, with her fine instincts, the 
pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, which the 
historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and dis- 
connects by his arrangement: it is for her to trace the 
hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through 
the darkness, of the fatal threads of woven fire that connect 
error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be 
taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect 
to that history which is being for her determined as the 
moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath: and 
to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly 
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She is to 
exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon 
her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the 



154 RUSKIN 

presence of the suffering which is not the less real because 
shut from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to 
understand the nothingness of the proportion which that 
little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world 
in which God lives and loves; — and solemnly she is to be 
taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble 
in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer 
more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain 
of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the 
multitudes of those who have none to love them, — and is, 
" for all who are desolate and oppressed/' 

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; 
perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most 
needful for me to say. There is one dangerous science for 
women — one which they must indeed beware how they 
profanely touch — that of theology. Strange, and miserably 
strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their 
powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every 
step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, 
and without one thought of incompetency, into that science 
in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest 
erred. Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully 
bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever 
arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into one 
bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures 
born to be Love visible, that where they can know least, 
they will condemn first, and think to recommend themselves 
to their Master, by scrambling up the steps of His judgment 
throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of all, that they 
should think they were led by the Spirit of the Comforter 
into habits of mind which have become in them the unmixed 
elements of home discomfort; and that they dare to turn 
the Household Gods of Christianity into ugly idols of their 
own; — spiritual dolls, for them to dress according to their 
caprice; and from which their husbands must turn away in 
grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at for break- 
ing them. 

74. I believe then, with this exception, that a girl's educa- 
tion should be nearly, in its course and material of study, 
the same as a boy's ; but quite differently directed. A woman, 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 155 

in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband 
is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. His 
command of it should be foundational and progressive ; hers, 
general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. Not 
but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in 
a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
the discipline and training of their mental powers in such 
branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social 
service; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any 
language or science he learns, thoroughly — while a woman 
ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as 
may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, 
and in those of his best friends. 

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she 
reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary 
knowledge and superficial knowledge — between a firm be- 
ginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing. A woman 
may always help her husband by what she knows, however 
little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only 
tease him. 

And indeed, if there were to be any difference between. 
a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two 
the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, 
into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of litera- 
ture should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to 
add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural 
poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to 
keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter 
not now into any question of choice of books; only let us 
be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they 
fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with 
the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. 

j6. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to 
that sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness 
of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over- 
wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying 
as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the 
worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false 
philosophy, or false political essays. But the best romance 
becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement it renders the 



156 RUSKIN 

ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the 
morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which 
we shall never be called upon to act. 

yy. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our mod- 
ern literature is particularly rich in types of such. Well 
read, indeed, these books have serious use, being noth- 
ing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry; 
studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I 
attach little weight to this function: they are hardly ever 
read with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it. 
The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the 
charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious 
one; for each will gather, from the novel, food for her own 
disposition. Those who are naturally proud and envious 
will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity; those who 
are naturally gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally 
shallow, to laugh at it. So also, there might be a service- 
able power in novels to bring before us, in vividness, a 
human truth which we had before dimly conceived ; but 
the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so great, 
that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it; and 
our views are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their 
vitality is rather a harm than good. 

78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at 
decision of how much novel-reading should be allowed, let 
me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or poetry, 
or history be read, they should be chosen, not for their free- 
dom from evil, but for their possession of good. The 
chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or 
hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a 
noble girl; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, 
and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have \ 
access to a good library of old and classical books, thereJ 
need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazines 
and novel out of your girl's way; turn her loose into the/ 
old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find' 
,what is good for her; you cannot; for there is just this 
difference between the making of a girl's character and a 
boy's — you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a 
rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 157 

you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a 
girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, — she will 
wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath, as the 
narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she may 
fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without 
help at some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter 
her; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take 
any, and in mind as in body, must have always — 

" Her household motions light and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a 
field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than 
you; and the good ones, too, and will eat some bitter and 
prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest 
thought would have been so. 

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and 
let her practice in all accomplishments to be accurate and 
thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than 
she accomplishes. I say the finest models — that is to say, 
the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets; they 
will range through all the arts. Try them in music, where 
you might think them the least applicable. I say the 
truest, that in which the notes most closely and faithfully 
express the meaning of the words, or the character of 
intended emotion; again, the simplest, that in which the 
meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and most 
significant notes possible; and, finally, the usefullest, that 
music which makes the best words most beautiful, which 
enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of 
sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at the 
moment we need them. 

80. And not only in the material and in the course, but 
yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's education 
be as serious as a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they 
were meant for sideboard ornament, and then complain of 
their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you 
give their brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of 
virtue in them; teach them, also, that courage and truth are 
the pillars of their being; — do you think that they would 



158 RUSKIN 

not answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even 
now, when you know that there is hardly a girl's school in 
this Christian kingdom where the children's courage or 
sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as 
their way of coming in at a door; and when the whole 
system of society, as respects the mode of establishing them 
in life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — 
cowardice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as 
their neighbors choose ; and imposture, in bringing, for the 
purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the whole 
happiness of her future existence depends upon her remain- 
ing undazzled ? 

81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings but 
noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before you send 
your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is; — ■ 
whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full 
authority over your son, and show some respect for him 
yourself; — if he comes to dine with you, you do not put 
him at a side table; you know, also, that at his college, 
your child's immediate tutor will be under the direction of 
some still higher tutor, for whom you have absolute rever- 
ence. You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the 
Master of Trinity as your inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 
reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen? 
Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or her own 
intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire 
formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
person whom you let your servants treat with less respect 
than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your 
child were a less charge than jams and groceries), and 
whom you yourself think you confer an honor upon by 
letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening? 

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. 
There is one more help which we cannot do without — one 
which, alone, has sometimes done more than all other 
influences besides, — the help of wild and fair nature. Hear 
this of the education of Joan of Arc: — 

"The education of this poor girl was mean according to 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 159 

the present standard; was ineffably grand, according to a 
purer philosophic standard; and only not good for our age, 
because for us it would be unattainable. . . . 

" Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to 
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy 
was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted 
to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest {cure) was 
obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep 
them in any decent bounds. . . . 

" But the forest of Domremy — those were the glories of 
the land; for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
secrets that towered into tragic strength. Abbeys there 
were, and abbey windows/ — ' like Moorish temples of the 
Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in Tou- 
raine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet 
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or 
vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no de- 
gree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many 
enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity 
over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness/' 5 

Now you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods 
eighteen miles deep to the centre; but you can, perhaps, 
keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
keep them. But do you wish it? Suppose you had each, 
at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for your 
children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give 
them room to run, — no more — and that you could not 
change your abode ; but that, if you choose, you could double 
your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal-shaft in the 
middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into heaps 
of coke. Would you do it? I hope not. I can tell you, 
you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income 
sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 

83. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. 
The whole country is but a little garden, not more than 
enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you 
would let them all run there. And this little garden you 

B "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's History of France." De 
Quincey's Works, Vol. Ill, page 217. 



160 RUSKIN 

will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, 
if you can; and those children of yours, not you, will suffer 
for it. For the fairies will not be all banished; there are 
fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts 
seem to be "sharp arrows of the mighty "; but their last 
gifts are "coals of juniper." 

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my 
subject that I feel more — press this upon you; for we 
made so little use of the power of nature while we had it, 
that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the 
other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and 
your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond 
the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and 
foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — 
a divine promontory, looking westward; the Holy Head or 
Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares 
first through storm. These are the hills, and these the 
bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would 
have been always loved, always fateful in influence on the 
national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus; but 
where are its Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your 
Island of iEgina, but where is its Temple to Minerva? 

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had 
achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the 
year 1848? — Here is a little account of a Welsh school, 
from page 261 of the report on Wales, published by the 
Committee of Council on Education. This is a school 
close to a town containing 5,000 persons : — 

" I then called up a larger class, most of whom had 
recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly de- 
clared that they had never heard of Christ, and two that, 
they had never heard of God. Two out of six thought Christ 
was on earth now ('they might have had a worse thought, 
perhaps ') ; three knew nothing about the crucifixion. Four 
out of seven did not know the names of the months, nor 
the number of days in a year. They had no notion of 
addition beyond two and two, or three and three ; their minds 
were perfect blanks." 

Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess of that 
Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own children 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 161 

can be brought into their true fold of rest while these are 
scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And 
do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of 
their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which 
God made at once for their school-room and their play- 
ground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them 
rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize 
them also in the sweet waters which the great Lawgiver 
strikes forth forever from the rocks of your native land — 
waters which a Pagan would have worshiped in their purity, 
and you only worship with pollution. You cannot lead your 
children faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars 
of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven — the 
mountains thai sustain your island throne, — mountains 
on which a Pagan would have seen the powers of 
heaven rest in every wreathed cloud — remain for you 
without inscription ; altars built, not to, but by, an Unknown 

86. IIL-^-Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the 
teaching, of women, and thus of her household office, and 
queenliness. We come now to our last, our widest question, 
— What is her queenly office with respect to the state? 

Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties 
are public, and a woman's private. But this is not altogether 
so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating to his own 
home, and a public work or duty, which is the expansion 
of the other, relating to the state. So a woman has a per- 
sonal work and duty, relating to her own home, and a public 
work and duty, which is also the expansion of that. 

Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been 
said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence; the 
woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a mem- 
ber of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in 
the advance, in the defense of the state. The woman's duty, 
as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the order- 
ing, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of 
the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, 
against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a 

Vol. 28— F HC 



162 RUSKIN 

more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, 
leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his 
more incumbent work there. 

And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her 
gates, as the center of order, the balm of distress, and the 
mirror of beauty; that she is also to be without her gates, 
where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveli- 
ness more rare. 

And as within the human heart there is always set an 
instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you cannot 
quench, but only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it from 
its true purpose ; — as there is the intense instinct of love, 
which, rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life, 
and, misdirected, undermines them; and must do either the 
one or the other; — so there is in the human heart an inex- 
tinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly 
directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, and, 
misdirected, wrecks them. 

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of 
man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and 
God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke 
the desire of power! — For Heaven's sake, and for Man's 
sake, desire it all you can. But what power? That is all 
the question. Power to destroy? the lion's limb, and the 
dragon's breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to 
guide, and to guard. Power of the scepter and shield; the 
power of the royal hand that heals in touching, — that binds 
the fiend and looses the captive ; the throne that is founded 
on the rock of Justice, and descended from only by steps of 
mercy. Will you not covet such power as this, and seek 
such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? 

88. It is now long since the women of England arro- 
gated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility 
only, and, having once been in the habit of accepting the 
simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of 
gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title 
of " Lady," a which properly corresponds only to the title 
of * Lord." 

6 T wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at & 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 163 

I do not blame them for this; but only for their narrow 
motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the 
title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but 
the office and duty signified by it. Lady means " bread- 
giver " or " loaf-giver," and Lord means " maintainer of 
laws/' and both titles have reference, not to the law which 
is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given 
to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude, 
and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord 
has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the main- 
tainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has 
legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that 
help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women 
once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted 
to extend to that Master Himself; and when she is known, 
as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of 
the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the Domina, or House- 
Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of those 
through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number 
of those whom it grasps within its sway; it is always re- 
garded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is founded 
on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence. 
Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, 
with a train of vassals. Be it so : you cannot be too noble, 
and your train cannot be too great; but see to it that your 
train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of 
slaves who serve and feed yon; and that the multitude which 
obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, not op- 
pressed, — whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 

90. And this, which is true of the lower or household 
dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion; — that 
highest dignity is opened to you, if you will also accept that 
highest duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine — "Right-doers " ; 
they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that their power 
is supreme over the mind as over the person — that they not 

given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only by 
certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment; and to 
be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable act. Such 
an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in a 
nation which loved honor. That it would not be possible among us is not 
to the discredit of the scheme. 



164 RUSKIN 

only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether 
consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, enthroned : 
there is no putting, by that crown ; queens you must always 
be ; queens to your lovers ; queens to your husbands and your 
sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which 
bows itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown, 
and the stainless scepter, of womanhood. But, alas ! you 
are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty 
in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and 
leaving misrule and violence to work their will among men, 
in defiance of the power, which, holding straight in gift 
from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray, 
and the good forget. 

91. "Prince of Peace." Note that name. When kings 
rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, 
they also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, receive 
the power of it. There are no other rulers than they: other 
rule than theirs is but misrult ; they who govern verily " Dei 
gratia " are all princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. There 
is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you 
women are answerable for it ; not in fhat you have provoked, 
but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, 
are prone to fight ; they will fight for any cause, or for none. 
It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid 
them when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no 
injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies 
with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not 
be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy 
in their own struggle; but men are feeble in sympathy, and 
contracted in hope; it is you only who can feel the depths of 
pain; and conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying 
to do this, you turn away from it ; you shut yourselves within 
your park walls and garden gates; and you are content to 
know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness 
— a world of secrets which you dare not penetrate; and of 
suffering which you dare not conceive. 

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing 
among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no 
depths to which, when once warped from its honor, that 
humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder at the miser's 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 165 

death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do 
not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped 
about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed murder 
of a single victim, done by the assassin in the darkness 
of the railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not 
even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multitudes, 
done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of nations, and 
the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell 
to heaven, of their priests and kings. But this is wonderful 
to me — oh, how wonderful ! — to see the tender and delicate 
woman among you, with her child at her breast, and a 
power, if she would wield it, over it, and over its father, 
purer than the air of heaven, and stronger than the seas 
of earth — nay a magnitude of blessing which her husband 
would not part with for all that earth itself, though it were 
made of one entire and perfect chrysolite: — to see her 
abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with her next- 
door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh, wonderful ! — to see 
her, with every innocent feeling fresh within her, go out in 
the morning into her garden to play with the fringes of its 
guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they are drooping, 
with her happy smile upon her face, and no cloud upon her 
brow, because there is a little wall around her place of 
peace: and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only 
look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered 
wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony 
of men, and beat level by the drift of their life blood. 

93. Have you ever considered what a deep under mean- 
ing there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our 
custom of strewing flowers before those whom we think 
most happy? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them 
into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in 
showers at their feet? — that wherever they pass they will 
tread on the herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground 
will be made smooth for them by depth of roses? So 
surely as they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk 
on bitter herbs and thorns; and the only softness to their 
feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they 
should believe; there is a better meaning in that old 
custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with 



166 RUSKIN 

flowers: but they rise behind her steps not before them 
" Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies 
rosy." 

94. You think that only a lover's fancy ; — false and vain ! 
How if it could be true? You think this also, perhaps, 
only a poet's fancy — 

" Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not 
destroy where she passes. She should revive; the hare- 
bells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think 
I am rushing into wild hyperbole? Pardon me, not a whit 
— I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute 
truth. You have heard it said — (and I believe there is 
more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a 
fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish rightly in the 
garden of some one who loves them. I know you would 
like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if 
you could flush- your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind 
look upon them: nay, more, if your look had the power, 
not only to cheer but to guard them: — if you could bid 
the black blight turn away and the knotted caterpillar spare 
— if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, 
and say to the south wind, in frost — " Come, thou south, 
and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
out." This you would think a great thing? And do you 
think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
more than this!) you can do for fairer flowers than these — 
flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
will love you for having loved them; — flowers that have 
thoughts like yours, and lives like yours; which, once saved, 
you save forever? Is this only a little power? Far among 
the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of the 
terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, with all their 
fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken — will you never 
go down to them, nor set them in order in their little 
fragrant beds, nor fence them in their trembling from the 
fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, for you, but 
not for them; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those 



LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 167 

frantic Dances of Death, 7 but no dawn rise to breathe 
upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and 
rose; nor call to you, through your casement, — call (not 
giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the 
name of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy 
Lethe, stood wreathing flowers with flowers), saying: — 

H Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown." 

Will you not go down among them? — among those sweet 
living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth 
with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in 
strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from 
the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of prom- 
ise ; — and still they turn to you and for you, " The Lark- 
spur listens — I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers — I 
wait." 

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read 
you that first stanza; and think that I had forgotten them? 
Hear them now : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown. 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear, 
not of a Maude but a Madeleine who went down to her 
garden in the dawn and found one waiting at the gate, 
whom she supposed to be the gardener? Have you not 
sought Him often; — sought Him in vain, all through the 
night; — sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden 
where the fiery sword is set? He is never there; but at 
the gate of this garden He is waiting always — waiting to 
take your hand — ready to go down to see the fruits of the 
valley, to see whether the vine has flourished, and the 
pomegranate budded. There you shall see with Him the 
little tendrils of the vines that His hand is guiding — there 

T See note, p. 124, 



168 RUSKIN 

you shall see the pomegranate springing where His hand 
cast the sanguine seed; — more: you shall see the troops 
of the angel keepers, that, with their wings, wave away the 
hungry birds from the patfisides where He has sown, and 
call to each other between the vineyard rows, " Take us the 
foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens; among 
the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall 
the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; 
and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against you, that 
they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His 
head? 



JOHN MILTON 

WALTER BAGEHOT 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Walter Bagehot, economist, journalist, and critic, was born 
at Langport, Somersetshire, February 3, 1826. He was the son 
of a banker, and after graduating at University College, London, 
and being called to the bar, he joined his father in business. In 
1851 he went to Paris, and was there during the coup d'etat of 
Louis Napoleon, of which he gave a vivacious account in letters 
to an English journal. Soon after his return he began to con- 
tribute his first series of biographical studies to the t{ Prospective 
Review" and the "National Review," of which latter he was for 
some time joint-editor. From i860 to 1877 he was editor of the 
"Economist," and during this period he published his notable 
work on "The English Constitution," his "Physics and Politics," 
and his "Lombard Street: a Description of the Money Market/' 
He died March 24, 1877. 

It is chiefly as one of the most brilliant and original of recent 
writers on political philosophy that Bagehot is known, but he 
holds also a distinct place as a critic of literature. He did not 
write criticism like a professional man of letters, and his pro- 
duction in this field is at times less fine in workmanship than that 
of some men of much less ability. But, in compensation, he was 
free from the tendency to the use of a technical literary dialect 
and to the excessive self -consciousness in style which mars so 
much modem work in this department. He wrote as a man of 
affairs with a vigorous mind and a gift of picturesque speech, a 
robust taste and a genuine love of letters. He always had some- 
thing definite to say, and no one can read his discussion of such 
a man as Milton without feeling braced and stimulated by contact 
with an intellect of uncommon strength and incisiveness. 



170 



JOHN MILTON 1 

(1859) 

THE " Life of Milton," by Prof. Masson, is a difficulty 
for the critics. It is very laborious, very learned, 
and in the main, we believe, very accurate; it is 
exceedingly long, — there are 780 pages in this volume, and 
there are to be two volumes more; it touches on very 
many subjects, and each of these has been investigated to 
the very best of the author's ability. No one can wish to 
speak with censure of a book on which so much genuine 
labor has been expended; and yet we are bound, as true 
critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a 
principle that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves 
we must explain our meaning. 

There are two methods on which biography may con- 
sistently be written. The first of these is what we may 
call the " exhaustive " method. Every fact which is known 
about the hero may be told us; everything which he did, 
everything which he would not do, everything which other 
people did to him, everything which other people would not 
do to him, may be narrated at full length. We may have 
a complete picture of all the events of his life; of all 
which he underwent, and all which he achieved. We 
may, as Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have a complete account 
" of his effect upon the universe, and of the effect of the 
universe upon him." 2 W'e admit that biographies of this 
species would be very long, and generally very tedious; we 

1 The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, 
Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his time. By David Masson, M. A., 
Professor of English Literature in University College, London, Cambridge: 
Macmillan. 

An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton. By 
Thomas Keightley; with an Introduction to "Paradise Lost." London: 
Chapman & Hall. 

The Poems of Milton, with Notes by Thomas Keightley. London: 
Chapman & Hall. 

a Review of Lockhart's Scott. 

Copyright, 1891, by The Travelers Insurance Company 
Copyright, 1899, by The Travelers Insurance Company 

171 



172 BAGEHOT 

know that the world could not contain very many of them: 
but nevertheless, the principle on which they may be written 
is intelligible. 

The second method on which the life of a man may be 
written is the selective. Instead of telling everything, we 
may choose what we will tell. We may select out of the 
numberless events, from among the innumerable actions 
of his life, those events and those actions which exemplify 
his true character, which prove to us what were the true 
limits of his talents, what was the degree of his deficiencies, 
which were his defects, which his vices; in a word, we may 
select the traits and the particulars which seem to give us 
the best idea of the man as he lived and as he was. On 
this side the Flood, as Sydney Smith would have said, we 
should have fancied that this was the only practicable prin- 
ciple on which biographies can be written about persons of 
whom many details are recorded. For ancient heroes the 
exhaustive method is possible: all that can be known of 
them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and 
Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said 
about every one of these; the result would not be unreason- 
ably bulky, though it might be dull. But in the case of men 
who have lived in the thick of the crowded modern world, 
no such course is admissible; overmuch may be said, and we 
must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are 
rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. 
They have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their 
eyes. They do not like that it should be said that " the 
work of the learned gentleman contains serious omissions: 
the events of 1562 are not mentioned; those of October, 
1579, are narrated but very cursorily"; and we fear that in 
any case such remarks will be made. Very learned people 
are pleased to show that they know what is not in the book; 
sometimes they may hint that perhaps the author did not 
know it, or surely he would have mentioned it. But a 
biographer who wishes to write what most people of cultiva- 
tion will be pleased to read must be courageous enough to 
face the pain of such censures. He must choose, as we have 
explained, the characteristic parts of his subject: and all 
that he has to take care of besides is, so to narrate them 



MILTON 173 

that their characteristic elements shall be shown; to give 
such an account of the general career as may make it clear 
what these chosen events really were, — to show their re- 
spective bearings to one another; to delineate what is ex- 
pressive in such a manner as to make it expressive. 

This plan of biography is, however, by no means that 
of Mr. Masson: he has no dread of overgrown bulk and 
overwhelming copiousness. He finds indeed what we have 
called the " exhaustive method " insufficient : he not only 
wishes to narrate in full the life of Milton, but to add those 
of his contemporaries likewise; he seems to wish to tell us 
not only what Milton did, but also what every one else did 
in Great Britain during his lifetime. He intends his book 
to be not 

" merely a biography of Milton, but also in some sort a continuous 
history of his time. . . . The suggestions of Milton's life have 
indeed determined the tracks of these historical researches and 
expositions, sometimes through the literature of the period, some- 
times through its civil and ecclesiastical politics; but the extent to 
which I have pursued them, and the space which I have assigned 
to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their 
combination, something like a connected historical view of British 
thought and British society in general prior to the great Revolution." 

We need not do more than observe that this union of hetero- 
geneous aims must always end, as it has in this case, in 
the production of a work at once overgrown and incomplete. 
A great deal which has only a slight bearing on the char- 
acter of Milton is inserted; much that is necessary to a 
true history of " British thought and British society " is of 
necessity left out. The period of Milton's life which is in- 
cluded in the published volume makes the absurdity especially 
apparent. In middle life Milton was a great controversialist 
on contemporary topics; and though it would not be proper 
for a biographer to load his pages with a full account of all 
such controversies, yet some notice of the most characteristic 
of them would be expected from him. In this part of 
Milton's life some reference to public events would be 
necessary ; and we should not severely censure a biographer 
if the great interest of those events induced him to stray a 
little from his topic. But the first thirty years of Milton's 
life require a very different treatment He passed those 



174 BAGEHOT 

years in the ordinary musings of a studious and medita- 
tive youth; it was the period of " Lycidas " and "Comus"; 
he then dreamed the 

" Sights which youthful poets dream 
On summer eve by haunted stream/'* 

We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, 
to a greater extent than may be necessary, with the harsh- 
ness of public affairs. Nor is it necessary that it should be 
so disturbed: a life of poetic retirement requires but little 
reference to anything except itself; in a biography of Mr. 
Tennyson we should not expect to hear of the Reform Bill 
or the Corn Laws. Mr. Masson is, however, of a different 
opinion: he thinks it necessary to tell us, not only all which 
Milton did, but everything also that he might have heard of. 

The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different 
scale: he tells the story of Milton's career in about half a 
small volume. Probably this is a little too concise, and the 
narrative is somewhat dry and bare. It is often, however, 
acute, and is always clear; and even were its defects greater 
than they are, we should think it unseemly to criticize the 
last work of one who has performed so many useful services 
to literature with extreme severity. 

The bare outline of Milton's life is very well known. We 
have all heard that he was born in the latter years of 
King James, just when Puritanism was collecting its strength 
for the approaching struggle; that his father and mother 
were quiet good people, inclined, but not immoderately, to 
that persuasion; that he went up to Cambridge early, and 
had some kind of dissension with the authorities there; that 
the course of his youth was in a singular degree pure and 
staid; that in boyhood he was a devour er of books, and that 
he early became, and always remained, a severely studious 
man; that he married and had difficulties of a peculiar 
character with his first wife; that he wrote on divorce; 
that after the death of his first wife, he married a second 
time a lady who died very soon,, and a third time a person 
who survived him more than fifty years; that he wrote 
early poems of singular beauty, which we still read; that 

* " 1/ Allegro." 



MILTON 175 

he travelled in Italy, and exhibited his learning in the 
academies there; that he plunged deep in the theological 
and political controversies of his time ; that he kept a school, 
— or rather, in our more modern phrase, took pupils; that 
he was a republican of a peculiar kind, and of " no church," 
which Dr. Johnson thought dangerous; 4 that he was Secre- 
tary for Foreign Languages under the Long Parliament, 
and retained that office after the coup d'etat of Cromwell; 
that he defended the death of Charles I., and became blind 
from writing a book in haste upon that subject; that after 
the Restoration he was naturally in a position of some dan- 
ger and much difficulty; that in the midst of that difficulty 
he wrote " Paradise Lost " ; that he did not fail in " heart 
or hope," 5 but lived for fourteen years after the destruction 
of all for which he had labored, in serene retirement, 
" though fallen on evil days, though fallen on evil times," 9 
— all this we have heard from our boyhood. How much is 
wanting to complete the picture — how many traits both noble 
and painful, might be recovered from the past — we shall 
never know, till some biographer skilled in interpreting 
the details of human nature shall select this subject for his 
art. All that we can hope to do in an essay like this is, 
to throw together some miscellaneous remarks on the char- 
acter of the Puritan poet, and on the peculiarities of his 
works ; and if in any part of them we may seem to make un- 
usual criticisms, and to be over-ready with depreciation or 
objection, our excuse must be, that we wish to paint a like- 
ness and that the harsher features of the subject should have 
a prominence even in an outline. 

There are two kinds of goodness conspicuous in the 
world, and often made the subject of contrast there; for 
which, however, we seem to want exact words, and which 
we are obliged to describe rather vaguely and incompletely. 
These characters may in one aspect be called the " sensuous " 
and the " ascetic." The character of the first is that which 
is almost personified in the poet-king of Israel, whose actions 
and whose history have been " improved " so often by 

* " Life of Milton." 5 Sonnet xix. 

6 " Though fallen on evil days, 

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues." 

— " Paradise Lost," Book vii. 



175 BAGEHOT 

various writers that it now seems trite even to allude to them. 
Nevertheless, the particular virtues and the particular career 
of David seem to embody the idea of what may be called 
" sensuous goodness " far more completely than a living 
being in general comes near to an abstract idea. There may 
have been shades in the actual man which would have 
modified the resemblance; but in the portrait which has 
been handed down to us, the traits are perfect and the ap- 
proximation exact. The principle of this character is its 
sensibility to outward stimulus: it is moved by all which 
occurs, stirred by all which happens, open to the influences 
of whatever it sees, hears or meets with. The certain con- 
sequence of this mental constitution is a peculiar liability 
to temptation. Men are according to the divine, " put upon 
their trial through the senses. ,, It is through the constant 
suggestions of the outer world that our minds are stimu- 
lated, that our will has the chance of a choice, that moral 
life becomes possible. The sensibility to this external stimu- 
lus brings with it, when men have it to excess, an unusual 
access of moral difficulty. Everything acts on them, and 
everything has a chance of turning them aside; the most 
tempting things act upon them very deeply and their in- 
fluence, in consequence, is extreme. Naturally, therefore, the 
errors of such men are great. We need not point the 
moral : — 

" Dizzied faith and guilt and woe ; 
Loftiest aims by earth defiled, 
Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled, 
Sated power's tyrannic mood, 
Counsels shared with men of blood, 
Sad success, parental tears, 
And a dreary gift of years." 7 

But on the other hand, the excellence of such men has 
a charm, a kind of sensuous sweetness, that is its own. 
Being conscious of frailty, they are tender to the imperfect; 
being sensitive to this world, they sympathize with the 
world; being familiar with all the moral incidents of life, 
their goodness has a richness and a complication : they fasci- 
nate their own age, and in their deaths they are " not divided" 
from the love of others. Their peculiar sensibility gives 

1 John Henry Newman's "Call of David." 



MILTON 177 

a depth to their religion: it is at once deeper and more 
human than that of other men. As their sympathetic knowl- 
edge of those whom they have seen is great, so it is with 
their knowledge of Him whom they have not seen; and 
as is their knowledge, so is their love, it is deep, from their 
nature; rich and intimate, from the variety of their experi- 
ence; chastened by the ever-present sense of their weakness 
and of its consequences. 

In extreme opposition to this is the ascetic species of 
goodness. This is not, as is sometimes believed, a self- 
produced ideal, — a simply voluntary result of discipline and 
restraint. Some men have by nature what others have to 
elaborate by effort. Some men have a repulsion from the 
world. All of us have, in some degree, a protective instinct; 
an impulse, that is to say, to start back from what may 
trouble us, to shun what may fascinate us, to avoid what may 
tempt us. On the moral side of human nature this preven- 
tive check is occasionally imperious: it holds the whole 
man under its control, — makes him recoil from the 
world, be offended at its amusements, be repelled by its occu- 
pations, be scared by its sins. The consequences of this 
tendency, when it is thus in excess, upon the character are 
very great and very singular. It secludes a man in a sort 
of natural monastery; he lives in a kind of moral solitude: 
and the effects of his isolation, for good and for evil, on his 
disposition are very many. The best result is a singular 
capacity for meditative religion. Being aloof from what is 
earthly, such persons are shut up with what is spiritual; 
being unstirred by the incidents of time, they are alone 
with the eternal; rejecting this life, they are alone with 
what is beyond. According to the measure of their minds, 
men of this removed and secluded excellence become emi- 
nent for a settled and brooding piety, for a strong and 
predominant religion. In human life, too, in a thousand 
ways, their isolated excellence is apparent. They walk 
through the whole of it with an abstinence from sense, a 
zeal of morality, a purity of ideal, which other men have 
not; their religion has an imaginative grandeur, and their 
life something of an unusual impeccability: and these are 
obviously singular excellences. But the deficiencies to which 



178 BAGEHOT 

the same character tends are equally singular. In the first 
place, their isolation gives them a certain pride in themselves 
and an inevitable ignorance of others. They are secluded 
by their constitutional daifiwv from life ; they are repelled 
from the pursuits which others care for; they are alarmed 
at the amusements which others enjoy. In consequence, they 
trust in their own thoughts; they come to magnify both them 
and themselves, — for being able to think and to retain them. 
The greater the nature of the man, the greater is this 
temptation. His thoughts are greater, and in consequence 
the greater is his tendency to prize them, the more extreme 
is his tendency to overrate them. This pride, too, goes side 
by side with a want of sympathy. Being aloof from others, 
such a mind is unlike others; and it feels, and sometimes 
it feels bitterly, its own unlikeness. Generally, however, it 
is too wrapped up in its own exalted thoughts to be sensible 
of the pain of moral isolation ; it stands apart from others, 
unknowing and unknown. It is deprived of moral experience 
in two ways, — it is not tempted itself, and it does not com- 
prehend the temptations of others. And this defect of moral 
experience is almost certain to produce two effects, one prac- 
tical and the other speculative. When such a man is wrong, 
he will be apt to believe that he is right. If his own judg- 
ment err, he will not have the habit of checking it by the 
judgment of others : he will be accustomed to think most men 
wrong; differing from them would be no proof of error, 
agreeing with them would rather be a basis for suspicion. 
He may, too, be very wrong, for the conscience of no man 
is perfect on all sides. The strangeness of secluded excel- 
lence will be sometimes deeply shaded by very strange errors. 
To be commonly above others, still more to think yourself 
above others, is to be below them every now and then, and 
sometimes much below. Again, on the speculative side, this 
defect of moral experience penetrates into the distinguishing 
excellence of the character, — its brooding and meditative 
religion. Those who see life under only one aspect can see 
religion tinder only one likewise. This world is needful to 
interpret what is beyond; the seen must explain the unseen. 
It is from a tried and a varied and a troubled moral life that 
the deepest and truest idea of God arises. The ascetic char- 



MILTON 179 

acter wants these; therefore in its religion there will be a 
harshness of outline, — a bareness, so to say, — as well as a 
grandeur. In life we may look for a singular purity; but 
also, and with equal probability, for singular self-confidence, 
a certain unsympathizing straitness, and perhaps a few sin- 
gular errors. 

The character of the ascetic or austere species of goodness 
is almost exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are 
formed on no ideal type: human nature has tendencies too 
various, and circumstances too complex ; all men's characters 
have sides and aspects not to be comprehended in a single 
definition : but in this case, the extent to which the character 
of the man as we find it delineated approaches to the moral 
abstraction which we sketch from theory is remarkable. 
The whole being of Milton may, in some sort, be summed 
up in the great commandment of the austere character, 
u Reverence thyself." We find it expressed in almost every 
one of his singular descriptions of himself, — of those strik- 
ing passages which are scattered through all his works, and 
which add to whatever interest may intrinsically belong to 
them one of the rarest of artistic charms, that of magnani- 
mous autobiography. They have been quoted a thousand 
times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted again: 

" I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning be- 
stowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion was, 
it might be soonest attained ; and as the manner is, was not unstudied 
in those authors which are most commended : whereof some were 
grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved indeed, 
but as my age then was, so I understood them ; others were the 
smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both 
for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation 
I found most easy and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and 
for their matter, which what it is there be few who know not, I was 
so allured to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome. For 
that it was then those years with me which are excused, though they 
be least severe, I may be saved the labor to remember ye. Whence 
having observed them to account it the chief glory of their wit, 
in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem 
themselves worthiest to love, those high perfections which under 
one or other name they took to celebrate, I thought with myself by 
every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false, 
that what emboldened them to this task might with such diligence 
as they used embolden me ; and that what judgment, wit, or ele- 
gance was my share would herein best appear, and best value itself, 



180 BAGEHOT 

by how much more wisely and with more love of virtue I should 
choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of not unlike praises. 
For albeit these thoughts to some will seem virtuous and commend- 
able, to others only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle, yet the 
mentioning of them now will end in serious. 

"Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves 
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in 
this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible when 
good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow 
judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the 
firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so 
much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking 
unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which 
•:efore they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me, — from that 
time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; 
and above them all, preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice 
and Laura, who never write but honor of them to whom they devote 
their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without trans- 
gression. And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this 
opinion, — that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write 
well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; 
that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things : 
_iot presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, 
unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all 
that which is praiseworthy." 8 

It may be fanciful to add, and we may be laughed at, 
but we believe that the self-reverencing propensity was a 
little aided by his singular personal beauty. All the 
describers of his youth concur in telling us that this was 
very remarkable. Mr. Masson has the following account 
of it:— 

"When Milton left Cambridge in July, 1632, he was twenty -three 
years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least, he was 
already whatever he was to be. ' In stature,' he says himself at a 
later period, when driven to speak on the subject, ' I confess I am 
not tall, but still of what is nearer to middle height than to little; 
and what if I were of little, of which stature have often been very 
great men both in peace and war — though why should that be called 
little which is great enough for virtue ? ' (' Statura, f ateor non sum 
procera, sed quae mediocri tamen quam parvse propior sit ; sed quid 
si parva, qua et sunimi saepe turn pace turn bello viri fuere — quan- 
quam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis magna est?') This 
is precise enough ; but we have Aubrey's words to the same effect. 
1 He was scarce so tall as I am,' says Aubrey ; to which, to make it 
more intelligible, he appends this marginal note, — 'Qu. Quot feet 
I am high ? Resp. Of middle stature ' : i. e. t Milton was a little 

8 " Apology for Smectymnuus." 



MILTON 181 

under middle height. ' He had light-brown hair/ continues Aubrey, 
— putting the word * abrown ' (auburn) in the margin by way of 
synonym for ' light brown ' ; — ' his complexion exceeding fair ; oval 
face ; his eye a dark gray.' " 

We are far from accusing Milton of personal vanity: his 
character was too enormous, if we may be allowed so to 
say, for a fault so petty. But a little tinge of excessive self- 
respect will cling to those who can admire themselves. Ugly 
men are and ought to be ashamed of their existence ; Milton 
was not so. 

The peculiarities of the austere type of character stand 
out in Milton more remarkably than in other men who 
partake of it, because of the extreme strength of his nature. 
In reading him this is the first thing that strikes us. We 
seem to have left the little world of ordinary writers. The 
words of some authors are said to have " hands and feet " ; 
they seem, that is, to have a vigor and animation which 
only belong to things which live and move. Milton's words 
have not this animal life, — there is no rude energy about 
them; but on the other hand, they have or seem to have a 
soul, a spirit which other words have not. He was early 
aware that what he wrote, " by certain vital signs it had," 
was such as the world would not " willingly let die." 9 After 
two centuries we feel the same. There is a solemn and 
firm music in the lines; a brooding sublimity haunts them; 
the spirit of the great writer moves over the face of the 
page. In life there seems to have been the same peculiar 
strength that his works suggest to us. His moral tenacity 
is amazing: he took his own course, and he kept his own 
course ; and we may trace in his defects the same character- 
istics. " Energy and ill temper," some say, " are the same 
thing;" and though this is a strong exaggeration, yet there 
is a basis of truth in it. People who labor much will be 
cross if they do not obtain that for which they labor; 
those who desire vehemently will be vexed if they do not 
obtain that which they desire. As is the strength of the 
impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is the pain 
which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are 
set on what is high will be proportionately offended by the 

9 " Reason of Church Government," introduction to Book iii. 



182 BAGEHOT 

intrusion of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described 
by those who knew him as " a harsh and choleric man." 
" He had," we are told, " a gravity in his temper, not melan- 
choly, or not till the latter part of his life, not sour, not 
morose or ill-natured, but a certain severity of mind; a 
mind not condescending to little things;" 10 and this although 
his daughter remembered that he was delightful company, 
the life of conversation, and that he was so " on account of 
a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civil- 
ity." Doubtless this may have been so when he was at ease, 
and at home; but there are unmistakable traces of the 
harsher tendency in almost all his works. 

Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were 
likewise augmented by his studious disposition. This be- 
gan very early in life, and continued till the end. " My 
father," he says, " destined me ... to the study of polite 
literature, which I embraced with such avidity, that from 
the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired to rest 
from my studies till midnight; which was the first source 
of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of which 
were added frequent headaches: all of which not retarding 
my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to have me 
instructed — " etc. 11 Every page of his works shows the 
result of this education. In spite of the occupations of man- 
hood, and the blindness and melancholy of old age, he still 
continued to have his principal pleasure in that " studious 
and select " reading, which, though often curiously trans- 
muted, is perpetually involved in the very texture of his 
works. We need not stay to observe how a habit in itself 
so austere conduces to the development of an austere char- 
acter. Deep study, especially deep study which haunts and 
rules the imagination, necessarily removes men from life, 
absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with 
some risk of isolating their sympathies; develops that lofti- 
ness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and 
indulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess 
to engender a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation 
which is even more displeasing to them. 

These same tendencies were aggravated also by two de- 

10 Philips* n Translated by Keightley from " Def ensio Secunda." 



MILTON 183 

fects which are exceedingly rare in great English authors, 
and which perhaps Milton alone amongst those of the 
highest class is in a remarkable degree chargeable with; 
we mean a deficiency in humor, and a deficiency in a knowl- 
edge of plain human nature. Probably when, after the 
lapse of ages, English literature is looked at in its larger 
features only, and in comparison with other literatures which 
have preceded or which may follow it, the critics will lay 
down that its most striking characteristic as a whole is its 
involution, so to say, in life; the degree to which its book 
life resembles real life; the extent to which the motives, 
dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are rep- 
resented in a medium which would seem likely to give us 
peculiarly the ideas of secluded and the tendencies of med- 
itative men. It is but an aspect of this fact, that English 
literature abounds — some critics will say abounds exces- 
sively — with humor. This is in some sense the imaginative 
element of ordinary life, — the relieving charm, partaking 
at once of contrast and similitude, which gives a human 
and an intellectual interest to the world of clowns and cot- 
tages, of fields and farmers. The degree to which Milton 
is deficient in this element is conspicuous in every page of 
his writings where its occurrence could be looked for; and 
if we do not always look for it, this is because the subjects 
of his most remarkable works are on a removed elevation, 
where ordinary life, the world of " cakes and ale," is never 
thought of and never expected. It is in his dramas, as we 
should expect, that Milton shows this deficiency the most. 
" Citizens " nev-ir talk in his pages, as they do in Shake- 
speare. We feel instinctively that Milton's eye had never 
rested with the same easy pleasure on the easy, ordinary, 
shopkeeping world. Perhaps, such is the complication of art, 
it is on the most tragic occasions that we feel this want the 
most. 

It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to 
be a true principle, that catastrophes require a comic ele- 
ment. We appear to feel the same principle in life. We 
may read solemn descriptions of great events in history, — - 
say of Lord Strafford's trial, and of his marvelous speech, 
and his appeal to his " saint in heaven " ; but we comprehend 



184 BAGEHOT 

the whole transaction much better when we learn from Mr. 
Baillie, the eye-witness, that people ate nuts and apples, 
and talked, and laughed, and betted on the great question of 
acquittal and condemnation. Nor is it difficult to understand 
why this should be so. It seems to be a law of the imagina- 
tion, at least in most men, that it will not bear concentration. 
It is essentially a glancing faculty. It goes and comes, and 
comes and goes, and we hardly know whence or why. But 
we most of us know that when we try to fix it, in a moment 
it passes away. Accordingly, the proper procedure of art 
is to let it go in such a manner as to insure its coming 
back again. The force of artistic contrasts effects exactly 
this result: skillfully disposed opposites suggest the notion 
of each other. We realize more perfectly and easily the 
great idea, the tragic conception, when we are familiarized 
with its effects on the minds of little people, with the petty 
consequences which it causes as well as with the enormous 
forces from which it comes. The catastrophe of " Samson 
Agonistes " discloses Milton's imperfect mastery of this 
element of effect. If ever there was an occasion which ad- 
mitted its perfect employment, it was this. The kind of 
catastrophe is exactly that which is sure to strike, and strike 
forcibly, the minds of common persons. If their observations 
on the occasion were really given to us, we could scarcely 
avoid something rather comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, 
of ordinary persons shows itself peculiarly at such times, 
and they say the queerest things. Shakespeare has ex- 
emplified this principle most skillfully on various occasions: 
it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His imagination 
always seems to be floating between the contrasts of things; 
and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it was this 
ordinary view of extraordinary events. Milton was under 
the great [est] obligation to use this relieving principle of 
art in the catastrophe of " Samson," because he has made 
every effort to heighten the strictly tragic element, which 
requires that relief. His art, always serious, was never more 
serious. His Samson is not the incarnation of physical 
strength which the popular fancy embodies in the character; 
nor is it the simple and romantic character of the Old Testa- 
ment. On the contrary, Samson has become a Puritan* 



MILTON 185 

the observations he makes would have done much credit 
to a religious pikeman in Cromwell's army. In consequence, 
his death requires some lightening touches to make it a 
properly artistic event. The pomp of seriousness becomes 
too oppressive. 

° At length for intermission sake they led him 
Between the pillars; he his guide requested 
(For so from such as nearer stood we heard), 
As over-tired, to let him lean awhile 
With both his arms on those two massy pillars 
That to the arched roof gave main support. 
He unsuspicious led him ; which when Samson 
Felt in his arms, with head awhile inclined, 
And eyes fast fixed, he stood, as one who prayed, 
Or some great matter in his mind revolved; 
At last with head erect thus cried aloud : 
1 Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed 
I have performed, as reason was, obeying, 
Not without wonder or delight beheld ; 
Now of my own accord such other trial 
I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater, 
As with amaze shall strike all who behold/ 
This uttered, straining all his nerves he bowed, 
As with the force of winds and waters pent 
When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars 
With horrible convulsion to and fro. 
He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew 
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder, 
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, — 
Lords, ladies, captains, counselors, or priests, 
Their choice nobility and flower, not only 
Of this, but each Philistian city round, 
Met from all parts to solemnize this feast. 
Samson with these immixed, inevitably 
Pulled down the same destruction on himself; 
The vulgar only 'scaped who stood without. 

Chor. O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious] 
Living or dying thou hast fulfilled 

The work for which thou wast foretold 
To Israel, and now liest victorious 
Among thy slain self-killed, 

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold 
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined 
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more 
Than all thy life had slain before." 

This is grave and fine; but Shakespeare would have done 
it differently and better. 



186 BAGEHOT 

We need not pause to observe how certainly this de- 
ficiency in humor and in the delineation of ordinary human 
feeling is connected with a recluse, a solitary, and to some 
extent an unsympathizing life. If we combine a certain 
natural aloofness from common men with literary habits 
and an incessantly studious musing, we shall at once see 
how powerful a force is brought to bear on an instinctively 
austere character, and how sure it will be to develop the 
peculiar tendencies of it, both good arid evil. It was to no 
purpose that Milton seems to have practiced a sort of pro- 
fessional study of life. No man could rank more highly 
the importance to a poet of an intellectual insight into all- 
important pursuits and " seemly arts." But it is not by the 
mere intellect that we can take in the daily occupations of 
mankind: we must sympathize with them, and see them in 
their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, qua chimney- 
sweeper, is not very sentimental: it is in himself that he is 
so interesting. 

Milton's austere character is in some sort the more evident 
because he possessed in large measure a certain relieving 
element, in which those who are eminent in that character 
are very deficient. Generally such persons have but obtuse 
senses: we are prone to attribute the purity of their conduct 
to the dullness of their sensations. Milton had no such 
obtuseness : he had every opportunity for knowing the " world 
of eye and ear " f 1 you cannot open his works without see- 
ing how much he did know of it. The austerity of his 
nature was not caused by the deficiency of his senses, but 
by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he pro- 
fessed to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this in- 
stinct shows itself. Dr. Johnson thought he could discern 
melancholy in " L' Allegro " ; 13 if he had said " solitariness," 
it would have been correct. 

The peculiar nature of Milton's character is very con- 
spicuous in the events of his domestic life, and in the views 
which he took of the great public revolutions of his age. 
We can spare only a very brief space for the examination 
of either of these ; but we will endeavor to say a few words 
upon each of them. 

u Wordsworth, " Tintcrn Abbey." 1JJ " Life of Milton." 



MILTON 187 

The circumstances of Milton's first marriage are as 
singular as any in the strange series of the loves of the 
poets. The scene opens with an affair of business. Milton's 
father, as is well known, was a scrivener, — a kind of pro- 
fessional money-lender, then well known in London; and 
having been early connected with the vicinity of Oxford, 
continued afterwards to have pecuniary transactions of a 
certain nature with country gentlemen of that neighborhood. 
In the course of these he advanced £500 to a certain Mr. 
Richard Powell, a squire of fair landed estate, residing at 
Forest Hill, which is about four miles from the city of 
Oxford. The money was lent on the nth of June, 1627; 
and a few months afterwards- Mr. Milton the elder gave 
£312 of it to his son the pe^iy- who was then a youth at 
college, and made a formal memorandum of the same in the 
form then usual, which still exists. The debt was never 
wholly discharged; "for in 1650-1 we find Milton asserting 
on oath that he had received only about £180, ' in part 
satisfaction of my said just and principal debt, with damages 
for the same, and my costs of suit/ " Mr. Keightley supposes 
him to have taken " many a ride over to Forest Hill " after 
he left Cambridge and was living at Horton, which is not 
very far distant; but of course this is only conjecture. We 
only know that about 1643 " ne took/' as his nephew relates, 
"a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly 
knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey 
of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a 
married man, that went out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, 
the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice 
of the peace " for the county of Oxford. The suddenness 
of the event is rather striking; but Philips was at the time 
one of Milton's pupils, and it is possible that some pains 
may have been taken to conceal the love affair from the 
"young gentlemen." Still, as Philips was Milton's nephew, 
he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably early; and 
as he does not seem to have done so, the denouement was 
probably rather prompt. At any rate, he was certainly mar- 
ried at that time, and took his bride home to his house in 
Aldersgate Street; and there was feasting and gayety ac- 
cording to the usual custom of such events. A few weeks 



188 BAGEHOT 

after, the lady went home to her friends, in which there 
was of course nothing remarkable; but it is singular that 
when the natural limit of her visit at home was come, she 
absolutely refused to return to her husband. The grounds 
of so strange a resolution are very difficult to ascertain. 
Political feeling ran very high; old Mr. Powell adhered to 
the side of the king, and Milton to that of the Parliament: 
and this might be fancied to have caused an estrangement. 
But on the other hand, these circumstances must have been 
well known three months before. Nothing had happened 
in that quarter of a year to change very materially the 
position of the two parties in the state. Some other cause 
for Mrs. Milton's conduct must be looked for. She herself 
is said to have stated that she did not like her husband's 
" spare diet and hard study." 14 No doubt, too, she found 
it dull in London: she had probably always lived in 
the country, and must have been quite unaccustomed 
to the not very pleasant scene in which she found herself. 
Still, many young ladies have married schoolmasters, and 
many young ladies have gone from Oxfordshire to London; 
and nevertheless, no such dissolution of matrimonial har- 
mony is known to have occurred. 

The fact we believe to be, that the bride took a dislike 
to her husband. We cannot but have a suspicion that she 
did not like him before marriage, and that pecuniary reasons 
had their influence. If, however, Mr. Powell exerted his 
paternal influence, it may be admitted that he had unusual 
considerations to advance in favor of the alliance he pro- 
posed. It is not every father whose creditors are handsome 
young gentlemen with fair incomes. Perhaps it seemed no 
extreme tyranny to press the young lady a little to do that 
which some others might have done without pressing. Still 
all this is but hypothesis: our evidence as to the love affairs 
of the time of King Charles I. is but meager. But whatever 
the feelings of Miss Powell may have been, those of Mrs. 
Milton are exceedingly certain. She would not return to 
her husband; she did not answer his letters; and a mes- 
senger whom he sent to bring her back was handled rather 
roughly. Unquestionably she was deeply to blame, by far 

14 Philips. 



MILTON 189 

the most to blame of the two. Whatever may be alleged 
against him is as nothing compared with her offense in 
leaving him. To defend so startling a course, we must 
adopt views of divorce even more extreme than those which 
Milton was himself driven to inculcate; and whatever Mrs. 
Milton's practice may have been, it may be fairly conjec- 
tured that her principles were strictly orthodox. Yet if she 
could be examined by a commission to the ghosts, she would 
probably have some palliating circumstances to allege in 
mitigation of judgment. There were perhaps peculiarities 
in Milton's character which a young lady might not im- 
properly dislike. The austere and ascetic character is of 
course far less agreeable to women than the sensuous and 
susceptible. The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction 
of the former are to the female mind disagreeable; studious 
habits and unusual self-denial seem to it purposeless; lofty 
enthusiasm, public spirit, the solitary pursuit of an elevated 
ideal, are quite out of its way: they rest too little on the 
visible world to be intelligible, they are too little suggested 
by the daily occurrences of life to seem possible. The poet 
in search of an imaginary phantom has never been successful 
with women, — there are innumerable proofs of that; and the 
ascetic moralist is even less interesting. A character com- 
bined out of the two — and this to some extent was Milton's 
— is singularly likely to meet with painful failure; with 
a failure the more painful, that it could never anticipate 
or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere self- 
conscious excellence: it may never have occurred to him 
that a lady might prefer the trivial detail of daily happiness. 
Milton's own view of the matter he has explained to us 
in his book on divorce; and it is a very odd one. His com- 
plaint was that his wife would not talk. What he wished in 
marriage was " an intimate and speaking help " : he en- 
countered "a mute and spiritless mate." One of his prin- 
cipal incitements to the " pious necessity of divorcing " was 
an unusual deficiency in household conversation. A certain 
loquacity in their wives has been the complaint of various 
eminent men; but his domestic affliction was a different one. 
The " ready and reviving associate," whom he had hoped to 
find, appeared to be a " coinhabiting mischief," who was 



190 BAGEHOT 

sullen, and perhaps seemed bored and tired. And at times 
he is disposed to cast the blame of his misfortune on the 
uninstructive nature of youthful virtue. The " soberest and 
best governed men," he says, " are least practiced in these 
affairs," are not very well aware that " the bashful mute- 
ness " of a young lady " may ofttimes hide all the unliveli- 
ness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation," 
and are rather in too great haste to " light the nuptial 
torch " : whereas those " who have lived most loosely, by 
reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in 
their matches; because their wild affections, unsettling at 
will have been as so many divorces to teach them experi- 
ence." And he rather wishes to infer that the virtuous man 
should, in case of mischance, have his resource of divorce 
likewise. 

In truth, Milton's book on divorce — though only contain- 
ing principles which he continued to believe long after he 
had any personal reasons for wishing to do so — was clearly 
suggested at first by the unusual phenomena of his first 
marriage. His wife began by not speaking to him, and 
finished by running away from him. Accordingly, like most 
books which spring out of personal circumstances, his trea- 
tises on this subject have a frankness and a mastery of de- 
tail which others on the same topic sometimes want. He 
is remarkably free from one peculiarity of modern writers 
on such matters. Several considerate gentlemen are ex- 
tremely anxious for the " rights of woman " ; they think 
that women will benefit by removing the bulwarks which the 
misguided experience of ages has erected for their protection. 
A migratory system of domestic existence might suit Ma- 
dame Dudevant, and a few cases of singular exception; but 
we cannot fancy that it would be, after all, so much to the 
taste of most ladies as the present more permanent system. 
We have some reminiscence of the stories of the wolf and the 
lamb, when we hear amiable men addressing a female audi- 
tory (in books, of course) on the advantages of a freer 
" development." We are perhaps wrong, but we cherish an 
indistinct suspicion that an indefinite extension of the power 
of selection would rather tend to the advantage of the sex 
which more usually chooses. But we have no occasion to 



MILTON 191 

avow such opinions now. Milton had no such modern 
views: he is frankly and honestly anxious for the rights of 
the man. Of the doctrine that divorce is only permitted for 
the help of wives, he exclaims, " Palpably uxorious ! who can 
be ignorant that woman was created for man, and not man 
for woman? . . . What an injury is it after wedlock not 
to be beloved! what to be slighted! what to be contended 
with in point of house-rule who shall be the head; not for 
any parity of wisdom, for that were something reasonable, 
but out of female pride ! ' I suffer not/ saith St. Paul, ' the 
woman to usurp authority over the man/ If the Apostle 
could not suffer it," he naturally remarks, " into what mold 
is he mortified that can ? " He had a sincere desire to 
preserve men from the society of unsocial and unsympathiz- 
ing women ; and that was his principal idea. 

His theory, to a certain extent, partakes of the same 
notion. The following passage contains a perspicuous ex- 
position of it: — 

" Moses, Deut. xxiv. i, established a grave and prudent law, full 
of moral equity, full of due consideration towards nature, that can- 
not be resisted, a law consenting with the wisest men and civilest 
nations : that when a man hath married a wife, if it come to pass 
that he cannot love her by reason of some displeasing natural quality 
or unfitness in her, let him write her a bill of divorce. The intent 
of which law undoubtedly was this : that if any good and peaceable 
man should discover some helpless disagreement or dislike, either 
of mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully perform the duty 
of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of offense and dis- 
turbance to his spirit, — rather than to live uncomfortably and un- 
happy both to himself and to his wife, rather than to continue under- 
taking a duty which he could not possibly discharge, he might dismiss 
her whom he could not tolerably, and so not consciona1}ly, retain. 
And this law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov. xxx. 
21, 23, testifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting it that 
'a hated woman' (for so the Hebrew word signifies, rather than 
'odious,' though it come all to one), — that 'a hated woman, when 
she is married, is a thing that the earth cannot bear.' " 

And he complains that the civil law of modern states in- 
terferes with the " domestical prerogative of the husband." 

His notion would seem to have been that a husband was 
bound not to dismiss his wife, except for a reason really 
sufficient; such as a thoroughly incompatible temper, an 
incorrigible "muteness/' and a desertion like that of Mrs. 



192 BAGEHOT 

Milton. But he scarcely liked to admit that in the use of 
this power he should be subject to the correction of human 
tribunals. He thought that the circumstances of each case 
depended upon " utterless facts " ; and that it was practically 
impossible for a civil court to decide on a subject so delicate 
in its essence, and so imperceptible in its data. But though 
amiable men doubtless suffer much from the deficiencies of 
their wives, we should hardly like to intrust them, in their 
own cases, with a jurisdiction so prompt and summary. 

We are far from being concerned, however, just now, 
with the doctrine of divorce on its intrinsic merits: we 
were only intending to give such an account of Milton's 
opinions upon it as might serve to illustrate his character. 
We think we have shown that it is possible there may have 
been in his domestic relations, a little overweening pride; 
a tendency to overrate the true extent of masculine rights, 
and to dwell on his wife's duty to be social towards him 
rather than on his duty to be social towards her, — to be 
rather sullen whenever she was not quite cheerful. Still, 
we are not defending a lady for leaving her husband for 
defects of such inferior magnitude. Few households would 
be kept together, if the right of transition were exercised on 
such trifling occasions. We are but suggesting that she 
may share the excuse which our great satirist has suggested 
for another unreliable lady : " My mother was an angel ; 
but angels are not always commodes a vivreT 

This is not a pleasant part of our subject, and we must 
leave it. It is more agreeable to relate that on no occasion 
of his life was the substantial excellence of Milton's char- 
acter more conclusively shown than in his conduct at the 
last stage of this curious transaction. After a very con- 
siderable interval, and after the publication of his book on 
divorce, Mrs. Milton showed a disposition to return to her 
husband; and in spite of his theories, he received her with 
open arms. With great Christian patience, he received her 
relations too. The Parliamentary party was then victorious ; 
and old Mr. Powell, who had suffered very much in the 
cause of the king, lived until his death untroubled, and 
" wholly to his devotion/' as we are informed, in the house 
of his son-in-law. 



MILTON 1S3 

Of th£ other occurrences of Milton's domestic life we 
have left ourselves no room to speak; we must turn to our 
second source of illustration for his character, — his opinions 
on the great public events of his time. It may seem odd, but 
we believe that a man of austere character naturally tends 
both to an excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. 
Of course the circumstances which develop the one must 
be different from those which are necessary to call out the 
other: party spirit requires companionship; isolation, if we 
may be pardoned so original a remark, excludes it. But 
though, as we have shown, this species of character is 
prone to mental solitude, tends to an ntellectual isolation 
where it is possible and as soon as it can, yet when invincible 
circumstances throw it into mental companionship, when 
it is driven into earnest association with earnest men on 
interesting topics, its zeal becomes excessive. Such a man's 
mind is at home only with its own enthusiasm; it is cooped 
up within the narrow limits of its own ideas, and it can 
make no allowance for those who differ from or oppose 
them. We may see something of this excessive party zeal 
in Burke. No one's reasons are more philosophical; yet no 
one who acted with a party went farther in aid of it or was 
more violent in support of it. He forgot what could be 
said for the tenets of the enemy; his imagination made that 
enemy an abstract incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, 
who knows that he formed his opirions originally by a 
genuine and intellectual process is but iittle aware of the 
undue energy those ideas may obtain from the concurrence 
of those around. Persons who first acqu'red their ideas at 
second hand are more open to a knowledge of their own 
weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force 
which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, 
when it acts with the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate 
that feeling for the most part by an almost inevitable con- 
sequence of the feelings which render it isolated. Milton 
is an example of this remark. In the commencement of 
the struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament, he 
sympathized strongly with the popular movement, and 
carried to what seems now a strange extreme his parti- 
sanship. No one could imagine that the first literary 

Vol. 28— g HC 



194 BAGEHOT 

Englishman of his time could write the following passage 
on Charles I. : — 

" Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally fool speak so 
irreverently of persons eminent both in greatness and piety? Dare 
you compare King David with King Charles: a most religious 
king and prophet with a superstitious prince, and who was but a 
novice in the Christian religion ; a most prudent, wise prince with 
a weak one ; a valiant prince with a cowardly one ; finally, a most 
just prince with a most unjust one? Have you the impudence to 
commend his chastity and sobriety, who is known to have committed 
all manner of lewdness in company with his confidant the Duke of 
Buckingham? It were to no purpose to inquire into the private 
actions of his life, who publicly at plays would embrace and kiss 
the ladies." J6 

Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch, — 
and they assuredly were not small, — no one would now 
think this absurd invective to be even an excusable ex- 
aggeration. It misses the true mark altogether, and is 
the expression of a strongly imaginative mind, which has 
seen something that it did not like, and is unable in con- 
sequence to see anything that has any relation to it distinctly 
or correctly. But with the supremacy of the Long Parlia- 
ment Milton's attachment to their cause ceased. No one 
has drawn a more unfavorable picture of the rule which 
they established. Years after their supremacy had passed 
away, and the restoration of the monarchy had covered with 
a new and strange scene the old actors and the old world, 
he thrust into a most unlikely part of his " History of 
England " [Book iii.] the following attack on them : — 

" But when once the superficial zeal and popular fumes that acted 
their New Magistracy were cooled and spent in them, straight every 
one betook himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his private 
ends before) to do as his own profit or ambition led him. Then 
was justice delayed, and soon after denied ; spite and favor deter- 
mined all : hence faction, thence treachery, both at home and in 
the field ; everywhere wrong and oppression ; foul and horrid deeds 
committed daily, or maintained, in secret or in open. Some who had 
been called from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit 
in supreme councils and committees (as their breeding was), fell 
to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did thereafter as men could 
soothe and humor them best ; so he who would give most, or under 
covert of hypocritical zeal insinuate basest, enjoyed unworthily the 
rewards of learning and fidelity, or escaped the punishment of his 

15 " Defense of the People of England," Chap. iv. 



MILTON 195 

crimes and misdeeds. Their votes and ordinances, which men 
looked should have contained the repealing of bad laws, and the 
immediate constitution of better, resounded with nothing else but 
new impositions, taxes, excises, — yearly, monthly, weekly; not to 
reckon the offices, gifts, and preferments bestowed and shared among 
themselves." 

His dislike of this system of committees, and of the 
generally dull and unemphatic administration of the Com- 
monwealth, attached him to the Puritan army and to 
Cromwell; but in the continuation of the passage we have 
referred to, he expresses — with something, let it be said, 
of a schoolmaster's feeling — an unfavorable judgment on 
their career: — 

'* For Britain, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land 
fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in war, so it is natur- 
ally not over- fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in 
peace, trusting only in their mother-wit; who consider not justly 
that civility, prudence, love of the public good more than of money 
or vain honor, are to this soil in a manner outlandish, — grow not 
here, but in minds well implanted with solid and elaborate breeding; 
too impolitic else and rude, if not headstrong and intractable to 
the industry and virtue either of executing or understanding true 
civil government. Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; 
but to know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious and unwise : 
in good or bad success, alike unteachable. For the sun, which we 
want, ripens wits as well as fruits ; and as wine and oil are imported 
to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding and many civil 
virtues be imported into our minds from foreign writings and 
examples of best ages; we shall else miscarry still, and come short 
in the attempts of any great enterprise. Hence did their victories 
prove as fruitless as their losses dangerous, and left them still, 
conquering, under the same grievances that men suffer conquered : 
which was indeed unlikely to go otherwise, unless men more than 
vulgar — bred up, as few of them were, in the knowledge of ancient 
and illustrious deeds, invincible against many and vain titles, impar- 
tial to friendships and relations — had conducted their affairs; but 
then, from the chapman to the retailer, many whose* ignorance was 
more audacious than the rest were admitted with all their sordid rudi- 
ments to bear no mean sway among them, both in church and state." 

We need not speak of Milton's disapprobation of the 
Restoration. Between him and the world of Charles II. the 
opposition was inevitable and infinite. Therefore the general 
fact remains, that except in the early struggles, when he 
exaggerated the popular feeling, he remained solitary in 



196 BAGEHOT 

opinion, and had very little sympathy with any of the 
prevailing parties of his time. 

Milton's own theory of government is to be learned from 
his works. He advocated a free commonwealth, without 
rule of a single person or House of Lords; but the form 
of his projected commonwealth was peculiar. He thought 
that a certain perpetual council, which should be elected by 
the nation once for all, and the number of which should 
be filled up as vacancies might occur, was the best possible 
machine of government. He did not confine his advocacy 
to abstract theory, but proposed the immediate establish- 
ment of such a council in this country. We need not go 
into an elaborate discussion to show the errors of this 
conclusion. Hardly any one, then or since, has probably 
adopted it. The interest of the theoretical parts of Milton's 
political works is entirely historical. The tenets advocated 
are not of great value, and the arguments by which he 
supports them are perhaps of less; but their relation to the 
times in which they were written gives them a very singular 
interest. The time of the Commonwealth was the only 
period in English history in which the fundamental ques- 
tions of government have been thrown open for popular 
discussion in this country. We read in French literature, 
discussions on the advisability of establishing a monarchy, 
on the advisability of establishing a republic, on the advis- 
ability of establishing an empire ; and before we proceed to 
examine the arguments, we cannot help being struck at the 
strange contrast which this multiplicity of open questions 
presents to our own uninquiring acquiescence in the heredi- 
tary polity which has descended to us. " Kings, Lords, and 
Commons " are, we think, ordinances of nature. Yet Mil- 
ton's political writings embody the reflections of a period 
when, for a few years, the government of England was nearly 
as much a subject of fundamental discussion as that of 
France was in 1851. An " invitation to thinkers," to borrow 
the phrase of Necker, was given by the circumstances of 
the time; and with the habitual facility of philosophical 
speculation, it was accepted, and used to the utmost. 

Such are not the kind of speculations in which we ex- 
pect assistance from Milton. It is not in its transactions 



MILTON 197 

with others, in its dealings with, the manifold world, that 
the isolated and austere mind shows itself to the most 
advantage. Its strength lies in itself. It has " a calm and 
pleasing solitariness." It hears thoughts which others can- 
not hear. It enjoys the quiet and still air of delightful 
studies; and is ever conscious of such musing and poetry 
" as is not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame 
Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout prayer to 
that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and 
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed 
fire of his altar." 

" Descend from heaven, Urania, by that name 
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine 
Following, above th' Olympian hill I soar. 
Above the flight of Pegasean wing. 
The meaning, not the name, I call ; for thou 
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top 
Of old Olympus dwell'st, but heavenly born : 
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed, 
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse, 
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 
In presence of th' Almighty Father, pleased 
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee, 
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed, 
An earthly guest, and drav/n empyreal air, 
Thy tempering. With like safety guided down, 
Return me to my native element; 
Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once 
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime), 
Dismounted, on th' Aleian field I fall, 
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn. 
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound 
Within the visible diurnal sphere : 
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, 
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, 
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues ; 
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, 
And solitude : yet not alone, while thou 
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn 
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few; 
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance 
Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race 
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard 
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned 



198 BAGEHOT 

Both harp and voice, nor could the Muse defend 
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores ; 
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream." la 

" An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found 
John Milton in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sit- 
ting in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, 
but not cadaverous. ... He used also to sit in a gray 
coarse-cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill 
Fields, in warm sunny weather;" 17 and the common people 
said he was inspired. 

If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck 
at once with two singular contrasts. The first of them is 
this: — The distinction between ancient and modern art is 
sometimes said, and perhaps truly, to consist in the simple 
bareness of the imaginative conceptions which we find in 
ancient art, and the comparatively complex clothing in 
which all modern creations are embodied. If we adopt this 
distinction, Milton seems in some sort ancient, and in some 
sort modern. Nothing is so simple as the subject-matter of 
his works. The two greatest of his creations, the character 
of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest 
— the latter probably the very simplest — in the whole 
field of literature. On this side Milton's art is clas- 
sical. On the other hand, in no writer is the imagery 
more profuse, the illustrations more various, the dress 
altogether more splendid; and in this respect the style 
of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth, 
however, it is only ancient art in a modern disguise: the 
dress is a mere dress, and can be stripped off when we 
will, — we all of us do perhaps in memory strip it off for 
ourselves. Notwithstanding the lavish adornments with 
which her image is presented, the character of Eve is still 
the simplest sort of feminine essence, — the pure embodi- 
ment of that inner nature which we believe and hope that 
women have. The character of Satan, though it is not so 
easily described, has nearly as few elements in it. The most 
purely modern conceptions will not bear to be unclothed in 
this manner: their romantic garment clings inseparably 
to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of ex- 

10 " Paradise Lost," Book vii. 17 Richardson. 



MILTON 199 

cept as complex characters, with very involved and com- 
plicated embodiments. They are as difficult to draw out in 
words as the common characters of life are: that of Hamlet, 
perhaps, is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we should, 
the characteristic of modern and romantic art that it pre- 
sents us with creations which we cannot think of or delineate 
except as very varied and so to say circumstantial, we must 
not rank Milton among the masters of romantic art. And 
without involving the subject in the troubled sea of an old 
controversy, we may say that the most striking of the 
poetical peculiarities of Milton is the bare simplicity of his 
ideas and the rich abundance of his illustrations. 

Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There 
seems to be such a thing as second-hand poetry : some poets, 
musing on the poetry of other men, have unconsciously shaped 
it into something of their own. The new conception is like 
the original, it would never probably have existed had not the 
original existed previously: still, it is sufficiently different 
from the original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagia- 
rism ; it is a creation, though so to say, a suggested creation. 

Gray is as good an example as can be found of a 
poet whose works abound in this species of semi-original 
conceptions. Industrious critics track his best lines back, 
and find others like them which doubtless lingered near his 
fancy while he was writing them. The same critics have 
been equally busy with the works of Milton, and equally 
successful. They find traces of his reading in half his 
works ; not, which any reader could do, in overt similes and 
distinct illustrations, but also in the very texture of the 
thought and the expression. In many cases doubtless, they 
discover more than he himself knew. A mind like his, 
which has an immense store of imaginative recollections, 
can never know which of his own imaginations is exactly 
suggested by which recollection. Men awake with their 
best ideas; it is seldom worth while to investigate very 
curiously whence they carne. Our proper business is to adapt 
and mold and act upon them. Of poets perhaps this is 
true even more remarkably than of other men: their 
ideas are suggested in modes, and according to laws, which 
are even more impossible to specify than the ideas of 



200 BAGEHOT 

the rest of the world. Second-hand poetry, so to say, often 
seems quite original to the poet himself; he frequently does 
not know that he derived it from an old memory : years after- 
wards it may strike him as it does others. Still, in general, 
such inferior species of creation is not so likely to be found 
in minds of singular originality as in those of less. A 
brooding, placid, cultivated mind, like that of Gray, is the 
place where we should expect to meet with it. Great 
originality disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind 
of the poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it 
with its own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the 
second degree is like the secondary rocks of modern ge- 
ology, — a still, gentle, alluvial formation ; the igneous glow 
of primary genius brings forth ideas like the primeval 
granite, simple, astounding, and alone. Milton's case is an 
exception to this rule. His mind has marked originality, 
probably as much of it as any in literature; but it has as 
much of molded recollection as any mind, too. His poetry 
in consequence is like an artificial park, green and soft and 
beautiful, yet with outlines bold, distinct, and firm, and the 
eternal rock ever jutting out; or better still, it is like our 
own lake scenery where nature has herself the same com- 
bination, where we have Rydal Water side by side with 
the everlasting upheaved mountain. Milton has the same 
union of softened beauty with unimpaired grandeur; and it is 
his peculiarity. 

These are the two contrasts which puzzle us at first 
in Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in 
our remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial com- 
plexity in illustration and imagery and metaphor; and in 
contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an 
almost rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts 
are few, though the flowers on the surface are so many. 
We have likewise the perpetual contrast of the soft poetry 
of the memory, and the firm — as it were, fused — and glow- 
ing poetry of the imagination. His words, we may half 
fancifully say, are like his character: there is the same 
austerity in the real essence, the same exquisiteness of sense, 
the same delicacy of form which we know that he had, the 
same music which we imagine there was in his voice. In 



MILTON 201 

both his character and his poetry there was an ascetic 
nature in a sheath of beauty. 

No book, perhaps, which has ever been written is more 
difficult to criticize than " Paradise Lost/' The only way 
to criticize a work of the imagination is, to describe its effect 
upon the mind of the reader, — at any rate, of the critic; and 
this can only be adequately delineated by strong illustrations, 
apt similes, and perhaps a little exaggeration. The task is 
in its very nature not an easy one: the poet paints a picture 
on the fancy of the critic, and the critic has in some sort 
to copy it on the paper; he must say what it is before he 
can make remarks upon it But in the case of " Paradise 
Lost " we hardly like to use illustrations. The subject is one 
which the imagination rather shrinks from. At any rate, 
it requires courage and an effort to compel the mind to view 
such a subject as distinctly and vividly as it views other 
subjects. Another peculiarity of "Paradise Lost" makes 
the difficulty even greater. It does not profess to be a mere 
work of art; or rather, it claims to be by no means that 
and that only. It starts with a dogmatic aim: it avowedly 
intends to 

" assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men." 

In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with 
the Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. 
He said, "After all, ' Paradise Lost ' proves nothing " ; and 
various persons of poetical tastes and temperament have 
been very severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, " after 
all," he was right: Milton professed to prove something; he 
was too profound a critic — rather, he had too profound an 
instinct of those eternal principles of art which criticism 
tries to state — not to know that on such a subject he must 
prove something. He professed to deal with the great 
problem of human destiny: to show why man was created, 
in what kind of universe he lives, whence he came and 
whither he goes. He dealt of necessity with the greatest 
of subjects; he had to sketch the greatest of objects. He 
was concerned with infinity and eternity even more than with 
time and sense: he undertook to delineate the ways and 
consequently the character of Providence, as well as the 



202 BAGEHOT 

conduct and the tendencies of man. The essence of success 
in such an attempt is to satisfy the religious sense of man; 
to bring home to our hearts what we know to be true; to 
teach us what we have not seen; to awaken us to what we 
have forgotten ; to remove the * covering " from all people, 
and the " veil n that is spread over all nations : to give 
us, in a word, such a conception of things divine and human 
as we can accept, believe, and trust The true doctrine of 
criticism demands what Milton invites, — an examination of 
the degree in which the great epic attains this aim. And 
if, in examining it, we find it necessary to use unusual il- 
lustrations, and plainer words than are customary, it must 
be our excuse that we do not think the subject can be made 
clear without them. 

The defect of " Paradise Lost " is that, after all, it is 
founded on a political transaction. The scene is in heaven 
very early in the history of the universe, before the creation 
of man or the fall of Satan. We have a description of a 
court [Book v.] The angels, 

11 by imperial summons called," 

appear : — 

" Under their hierarchs in orders bright 
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced ; 
Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear 
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve 
Of hierarchies, or orders, and degrees." 

To this assemblage " th' Omnipotent " speaks : — 

" Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light, 
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, 
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand : 
This day I have begot whom I declare 
My only Son, and on this holy hill 
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold 
At my right hand ; your Head I him appoint : 
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow 
All knees in heaven, and shall confess him Lord; 
Under his great vicegerent reign abide 
United as one individual soul, 
Forever happy. Him who disobeys, 
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day, 
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls 



MILTON 203 

Int' utter darkness, deep ingulfed, his place 
Ordained without redemption, without end.'* 

This act of patronage was not popular at court ; and why 
should it have been ? The religious sense is against it. The 
worship which sinful men owe to God is not transferable 
to lieutenants and vicegerents. The whole scene of the 
court jars upon a true feeling; we seem to be reading about 
some emperor of history, who admits his son to a share in 
the empire, who confers on him a considerable jurisdiction, 
and requires officials, with " standards and gonfalons," to 
bow before him. The orthodoxy of Milton is quite as ques- 
tionable as his accuracy; the old Athanasian creed was not 
made by persons who would allow such a picture as that of 
Milton to stand before their imaginations. The generation 
of the Son was to them a fact " before all time," an eternal 
fact. There was no question in their minds of patronage 
or promotion : the Son was the Son before all time, just as 
the Father was the Father before all time. Milton had in 
such matters a hold but not very sensitive imagination. He 
accepted the inevitable materialism of Biblical (and to some 
extent of all religious) language as distinct revelation. He 
certainly believed, in contradiction to the old creed, that God 
had both " parts and passions." He imagined that earth is 

"but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to other like more than on earth is thought." 18 

From some passages it would seem that he actually thought 
of God as having " the members and form " of a man. 
Naturally, therefore, he would have no toleration for the 
mysterious notions of time and eternity which are involved 
in the traditional doctrine. We are not, however, now con- 
cerned with Milton's belief, but with his representation of 
his creed, — his picture, so to say, of it in "Paradise Lost"; 
still, as we cannot but think, that picture is almost irre- 
ligious, and certainly different from that which has been 
generally accepted in Christendom. Such phrases as "be- 
fore all time," " eternal generation," are doubtless very 
vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no 

18 Book v., Raphael to Adam. 



204 BAGEHOT 

sensitively orthodox man could have drawn the picture of a 
generation, not to say an exaltation, in time. 

We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows 
in the poem. 

"All seemed well pleased ; all seemed, but were not all." 

One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly 
disapproved, and calls a meeting, at which he explains that 

u orders and degrees 
Jar not with liberty, but well consist ; " 

but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds 
of relationship merely, above — even infinitely above — the old 
angels, with imperial titles, was a " new law," and rather 
tyrannical. Abdiel, 

" than whom none with more zeal adored 
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed," 

attempts a defense: — 

" Grant it thee unjust, 
That equal over equals monarch reign : 
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count, 
Or all angelic nature joined in one, 
Equal to him begotten Son? by whom 
As by his word the mighty Father made 
All things, even thee, and all the spirits of heaven 
By him created in their bright degrees, 
Crowned them with glory, and to their glory named 
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, 
Essential Powers ; nor by his reign obscured, 
But more illustrious made, since he the Head 
One of our number thus reduced becomes, 
His laws our laws, all honor to him done 
Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage, 
And tempt not these ; but hasten to appease 
Th' incensed Father and th' incensed Son, 
While pardon may be found, in time besought." 

Yet though Abdiel's intentions were undeniably good, his 
argument is rather specious. Acting as an instrument in 
the process of creation would scarcely give a valid claim to 
the obedience of the created being. Power may be shown 
in the act, no doubt ; but mere power gives no true claim to 
the obedience of moral beings. It is a kind of principle of 



MILTON 205 

all manner of idolatries and false religions to believe that it 
does so. Satan, besides, takes issue on the fact : — 

"That we were formed then, say'st thou? and the work 
Of secondary hands, by task transferred 
From Father to his Son ? Strange point and new ! 
Doctrine which we would know whence learned." 

And we must say that the speech in which the new ruler 
is introduced to the 'Thrones, dominations, princedoms, 
virtues, powers/' is hard to reconcile with Abdiel's exposi- 
tion. " This day " he seems to have come into existence, and 
could hardly have assisted at the creation of the angels, who 
are not young, and who converse with one another like old 
acquaintances. 

We have gone into this part of the subject at length, be- 
cause it is the source of the great error which pervades 
" Paradise Lost " : Satan is made interesting. This has been 
the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writ- 
ers against Milton. Shelley, on the other hand, has gloried 
in it; and fancied, if we remember rightly, that Milton in- 
tentionally ranged himself on the Satanic side of the uni- 
verse, just as Shelley himself would have done, and that he 
wished to show the falsity of the ordinary theology. But 
Milton was born an age too early for such aims, and was 
far too sincere to have advocated any doctrine in a form so 
indirect. He believed every word he said. He was not con- 
scious of the effect his teaching would produce in an age 
like this, when skepticism is in the air, and when it is not 
possible to help looking coolly on his delineations. Probably 
in our boyhood we can recollect a period when any solemn 
description of celestial events would have commanded our 
respect; we should not have dared to read it intelligently, to 
canvass its details and see what it meant: it was a religious 
book; it sounded reverential, and that would have sufficed. 
Something like this was the state of mind of the seventeenth 
century. Even Milton probably shared in a vague reverence 
for religious language ; he hardly felt the moral effect of the 
pictures he was drawing. His artistic instinct, too, often 
hurries him away. His Satan was to him, as to us, the 
hero of his poem: having commenced by making him resist 



206 BAGEHOT 

on an occasion which in an earthly kingdom would have been 
excusable and proper, he probably a little sympathized with 
him, just as his readers do. 

The interest of Satan's character is at its height in the 
first two books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of 
Napoleon. There is the same pride, the same Satanic ability, 
the same will, the same egotism. His character seems to 
grow with his position. He is far finer after his fall, in 
misery and suffering, with scarcely any resource except in 
himself, than he was originally in heaven; at least, if Ra- 
phael's description of him can be trusted. No portrait which 
imagination or history has drawn of a revolutionary anarch 
is nearly so perfect ; there is all the grandeur of the greatest 
human mind, and a certain infinitude in his circumstances 
which humanity must ever want. Few Englishmen feel a 
profound reverence for Napoleon I. ; there was no French 
alliance in his time; we have most of us some tradition of 
antipathy to him. Yet hardly any Englishman can read the 
account of the campaign of 1814 without feeling his interest 
in the Emperor to be strong, and without perhaps being con- 
scious of a latent wish that he may succeed. Our opinion 
is against him, our serious wish is of course for England; 
but the imagination has a sympathy of its own, and will not 
give place. We read about the great general, — never greater 
than in that last emergency, — showing resources of genius 
that seem almost infinite, and that assuredly have never been 
surpassed, yet vanquished, yielding to the power of circum- 
stances, to the combined force of adversaries each of whom 
singly he outmatches in strength, and all of whom together 
he surpasses in majesty and in mind. Something of the 
same sort of interest belongs to the Satan of the first two 
books of " Paradise Lost." We know that he will be van- 
quished; his name is not a recommendation. Still, we do 
not imagine distinctly the minds by which he is to be van- 
quished; we do not take the same interest in them that we 
do in him ; our sympathies, our fancy, are on his side. 

Perhaps much of this was inevitable ; yet what a defect it 
is ! especially what a defect in Milton's own view, and looked 
at with the stern realism with which he regarded it! Sup- 
pose that the author of evil in the universe were the most 



MILTON 207 

attractive being in it ; suppose that the source of all sin were 
the origin of all interest to us ! We need not dwell upon 
this. 

As we have said, much of this was difficult to avoid, if 
indeed it could be- avoided in dealing with such a theme. 
Even Milton shrank, in some measure, from delineating the 
Divine character. His imagination evidently halts when it 
is required to perform that task. The more delicate im- 
agination of our modern world would shrink still more. 
Any person who will consider what such an attempt must 
end in, will find his nerves quiver. But by a curiously fatal 
error, Milton has selected for delineation exactly that part 
of the Divine nature which is most beyond the reach of the 
human faculties, and which is also, when we try to describe 
our fancy of it, the least effective to our minds. He has 
made God argue. Now, the procedure of the Divine mind 
from truth to truth must ever be incomprehensible to us; 
the notion, indeed, of his proceeding at all is a contradiction : 
to some extent, at least, it is inevitable that we should use 
such language, out we know it is in reality inapplicable. A 
long train of reasoning in such a connection is so out of 
place as to be painful ; and yet Milton has many. He relates 
a series of family prayers im heaven, with sermons after- 
wards, which are very tedious. Even Pope was shocked at 
the notion of Providence talking like a " school-divine." 19 
And there is the still worse error, that if you once attribute 
reasoning to him, subsequent logicians may discover that he 
does not reason very well. 

Another way in which Million has contrived to strengthen 
our interest in Satan is the number and insipidity of the 
good angels. There are old rules as to the necessity of a 
supernatural machinery for an epic poem, worth some frac- 
tion of the paper on which they are written, and derived 
from the practice of Homer, who believed his gods and god- 
desses to be real beings, and would have been rather harsh 
with a critic who called them machinery. These rules had 
probably an influence with Milton, and induced him to ma- 
nipulate these serious angels more than he would have done 
otherwise. They appear to be excellent administrators with 

19 Imitation of Horace's Epistle to Augustus, Book ii„ Ep. i. 



208 BAGEHOT 

very little to do; a kind of grand chamberlains with wings, 
who fly down to earth and communicate information to 
Adam and Eve. They have no character: they are es- 
sentially messengers, — merely conductors, so to say, of the 
Providential will; no one fancies that they have an inde- 
pendent power of action; they seem scarcely to have minds 
of their own. No effect can be more unfortunate. If the 
struggle of Satan had been with Deity directly, the natural 
instincts of religion would have been awakened; but when 
an angel possessed of mind is contrasted with angels pos- 
sessed only of wings, we sympathize with the former. 

In the first two books, therefore, our sympathy with 
Milton's Satan is great ; we had almost said unqualified. The 
speeches he delivers are of well-known excellence. Lord 
Brougham, no contemptible judge of emphatic oratory, has 
laid down that if a person had not an opportunity of access 
to the great Attic masterpieces, he had better choose these 
for a model. What is to be regretted about the orator is, 
that he scarcely acts up to his sentiments. " Better to reign 
in hell than serve in heaven," is at any rate an audacious 
declaration ; but he has no room* for exhibiting similar au- 
dacity in action. His offensive career is limited; in the 
nature of the subject, there was scarcely any opportunity 
for the fallen archangel to display in the detail of his opera- 
tions the surpassing intellect with which Milton has en- 
dowed him. He goes across chaos, gets into a few physical 
difficulties; but these are not much. His grand aim is the 
conquest of our first parents; and we are at once struck with 
the enormous inequality of the conflict. Two beings just 
created, without experience, without guile, without knowl- 
edge of good and evil, are expected to contend with a being 
on the delineation of whose powers every resource of art 
and imagination, every subtle suggestion, every emphatic 
simile has been lavished. The idea in every reader's mind 
is, and must be, not surprise that our first parents should 
yield, but wonder that Satan should not think it beneath him 
to attack them. It is as if an army should invest a cottage. 

We have spoken more of theology than we intended; and 
we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attrib- 
uted to the combatants affect our estimate of the results 



MILTON 209 

of the conflict. The state of man is what it is, because the 
defenseless Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded 
to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. 
Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the 
book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent 
may be subtler than any beast of the field; but he is not 
necessarily subtler or cleverer than man. So far from 
Milton having justified the ways of God to man, he has 
loaded the common theology with a new incumbrance. 

We may need refreshment after this discussion; and we 
cannot find it better than in reading a few remarks of 
Eve: — 

" That day I oft remember, when from sleep 
I first awaked, and found myself reposed 
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where 
And what I was, whence hither brought, and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound 
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved 
Pure as th' expanse of heaven ; I thither went 
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky. 
As I bent down to look, just opposite 
A shape within the watery gleam appeared, 
Bending to look on me. I started back, 
It started back : but pleased I soon returned ; 
Pleased it returned, as soon with answering looks 
Of sympathy and love. There I had fixed 
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire, 
Had not a voice thus warned me : — ' What thou seest, 
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself; 
With thee it came and goes : but follow me, 
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays 
Thy coming, and thy soft embraces; he 
Whose image thou art, him thou shalt enjoy 
Inseparably thine ; to him shalt bear 
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called 
Mother of human race/ What could I do 
But follow straight, invisibly thus led? 
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall, 
Under a platan ; yet methought less fair, 
Less winning soft, less amiably mild, 
Than that smooth watery image. Back I turned; 
Thou following criedst aloud, ' Return, fair Eve; 
Whom fly'st thou?'" 20 

20 Book iv. 



210 BAGEHOT 

Eve's character, indeed, is one of the most wonderful efforts 
of the human imagination. She is a kind of abstract woman; 
essentially a typical being; an official "mother of all liv- 
ing." Yet she is a real interesting woman, not only full 
of delicacy and sweetness, but with all the undefinable fas- 
cination, the charm of personality, which such typical char- 
acters hardly ever have. By what consummate miracle of 
wit this charm of individuality is preserved, without im- 
pairing the general idea which is ever present to us, we can- 
not explain, for we do not know. 

Adam is far less successful. He has good hair, — " hyacin- 
thine locks " that " from his parted forelock manly hung " ; 
a " fair large front " and " eye sublime " : but he has little 
else that we care for. There is, in truth, no opportunity of 
displaying manly virtues, even if he possessed them. He 
has only to yield to his wife's solicitations, which he does. 
Nor are we sure that he does it well: he is very tedious. 
He indulges in sermons which are good; but most men can- 
not but fear that so delightful a being as Eve must have 
found him tiresome. She steps away, however, and goes to 
sleep at some of the worst points. 

Dr. Johnson remarked that after all, " Paradise Lost " was 
one of the books which no one wished longer: we fear, in 
this irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any 
reader would be sorry if some portions of the latter books 
had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered pro- 
found mysteries in the last; but in what could not Coleridge 
find a mystery if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked 
that Milton became tedious when he entered upon a " track 
of Scripture." 21 Nor is it surprising that such is the case. 
The style of many parts of Scripture is such that it will 
not bear addition or subtraction. A word less or an idea 
more, and the effect upon the mind is the same no longer. 
Nothing can be more tiresome than a sermonic amplification 
of such passages. It is almost too much when, as from the 
pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary is prepared for our spirit- 
ual improvement. In deference to the intention, we bear 
it, but we bear it unwillingly; and we cannot endure it at 
all when, as in poems, the object is to awaken our fancy 

» " Essay on Satire." 



MILTON 211 

father than to improve our conduct. The account of the 
creation in the book of Genesis is one of the compositions 
from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota, 
to which it could not bear to add a word. Milton's para- 
phrase is alike copious and ineffective. The universe is, in 
railway phrase, " opened," but not created ; no green earth 
springs in a moment from the indefinite void. Instead, too, 
of the simple loneliness of the Old Testament, several 
angelic officials are in attendance, who help in nothing, but 
indicate that heaven must be plentifully supplied with tame 
creatures. 

There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms and in- 
deed other unfavorable criticisms, on " Paradise Lost." 
There is scarcely any book in the world which is open to 
a greater number, or which a reader who allows plain words 
to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with. Yet what 
book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a 
magic in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly 
sensible of their inferiority till you translate them into your 
own language. Perhaps no style ever written by man ex- 
pressed so adequately the conceptions of a mind so strong 
and so peculiar; a manly strength, a haunting atmosphere 
of enhancing suggestions, a firm continuous music, are only 
some of its excellences. To comprehend the whole of the 
others, you must take the volume down and read it, — the 
best defense of Milton, as has been said most truly, against 
all objections. 

Probably no book shows the transition which our theol- 
ogy has made since the middle of the seventeenth century, 
at once so plainly and so fully. We do not now compose 
long narratives to " justify the ways of God to men." The 
more orthodox we are, the more we shrink from it, the more 
we hesitate at such a task, the more we allege that we have 
no powers for it. Our most celebrated defenses of estab- 
lished tenets are in the style of Butler, not in that of Mil- 
ton. They do not profess to show a satisfactory explanation 
of human destiny: on the contrary, they hint that probably 
we could not understand such an explanation if it were 
given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not given us. 
Their course is palliative: they suggest an "analogy of 



212 BAGEHOT 

difficulties " ; if our minds were greater, so they reason, we 
should comprehend these doctrines, — now we cannot ex- 
plain analogous facts which we see and know. No style 
can be more opposite to the bold argument, the boastful 
exposition of Milton. The teaching of the eighteenth cen- 
tury is in the very atmosphere we breathe: we read it in 
the teachings of Oxford; we hear it from the missionaries 
of the Vatican. The air of the theology is clarified. We 
know our difficulties, at least: we are rather prone to ex- 
aggerate the weight of some than to deny the reality of 
any. 

We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw 
us on too far for the patience of our readers. We must, 
however, make one more remark, and we shall have finished 
our criticism on " Paradise Lost." It is analogous to that 
which we have just made. The scheme of the poem is 
based on an offense against positive morality. The offense 
of Adam was not against nature or conscience, nor against 
anything of which we can see the reason or conceive the 
obligation, but against an unexplained injunction of the Su- 
preme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton describes it, was 
a rebellion not against known ethics or immutable spiritual 
laws, but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained 
edict. We do not say that there is no such thing as positive 
morality, — we do not think so; even if we did, we should 
not insert a proposition so startling at the conclusion of a 
literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a positive 
moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps 
under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the 
very nature of it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. 
It is a difficulty; we need not attempt to explain it away, — 
there are mysteries enough which will never be explained 
away. But it is contrary to every principle of criticism to 
state the difficulty as if it were not one; to bring forward 
the puzzle, yet leave it to itself; to publish so strange a 
problem, and give only an untrue solution of it: and yet 
such, in its bare statement, is all that Milton has done. 

Of Milton's other writings we have left ourselves no 
room to speak; and though every one of them, or almost 
every one of them, would well repay a careful criticism, yet 



MILTON 213 

few of them seem to throw much additional light on his 
character, or add much to our essential notion of his genius, 
though they may exemplify and enhance it. " Comus " is the 
poem which does so the most. Literature has become so 
much lighter than it used to be, that we can scarcely realize 
the position it occupied in the light literature of our fore- 
fathers. We have now in our own language many poems 
that are pleasanter in their subject, more graceful in their 
execution, more flowing in their outline, more easy to read. 
Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent authority on 
the more intangible graces of literature, was disposed to 
deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter liter- 
ature : " Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colos- 
sus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry- 
stones." And it would not be surprising if this generation, 
which has access to the almost infinite quantity of lighter 
compositions which have been produced since Johnson's 
time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, 
the popular taste does so. " Comus " has no longer the 
peculiar exceptional popularity which it used to have: we 
can talk without general odium of its defects; its characters 
are nothing, its sentiments are tedious, its story is not in- 
teresting. But it is only when we have realized the magni- 
tude of its deficiencies that we comprehend the peculiarity 
of its greatness. Its power is in its style. A grave and 
firm music pervades it; it is soft, without a thought of 
weakness; harmonious and yet strong; impressive as few 
such poems are, yet covered with a bloom of beauty and a 
complexity of charm that few poems have either. We have 
perhaps light literature in itself better, that we read oftener 
and more easily, that lingers more in our memories; but we 
have not any, we question if there ever will be any, which 
gives so true a conception of the capacity and the dignity 
of the mind by which it was produced. The breath of so- 
lemnity which hovers round the music attaches us to the 
writer. Every line, here as elsewhere, in Milton excites the 
idea of indefinite power. 

And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an 
infinite one, and if we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in 
miscellaneous commentary, and run on far beyond the pa- 



214 BAGEHOT 

tience of our readers. What we have said has at least a de- 
fined intention : we have wished to state the impression which 
the character of Milton and the greatest of Milton's works 
are likely to produce on readers of the present generation, — 
a generation different from his own almost more than any 
other. 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 

BY 
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) was born at Ealing, near 
London, and having studied medicine went to sea as assistant 
surgeon in the navy. After leaving the Government service, he 
became Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of 
Mines and Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Insti- 
tution, and later held many commissions and received many dis- 
tinctions in the scientific world. His special field was morphology, 
and in it he produced a large number of monographs and several 
comprehensive manuals. 

It is not, however, by his original contributions to knowledge 
that Huxley's name is best known to readers outside of technical 
science, but rather by his labors in popularisation and in polemics. 
He was one of the foremost and most effective champions of 
Darwinism, and no scientist has been more conspicuous in the 
battle between the doctrine of evolution and the older religious 
orthodoxy. Outside of this particular issue, he was a vig- 
orous opponent of supernaturalism in all its forms, and a sup- 
porter of the agnosticism which demands that nothing shall be 
believed "with greater assurance than the evidence warrants" — 
the evidence intended being, of course, of the same kind as that 
admitted in natural science. 

Huxley's interests thus extended from pure science into many 
adjoining fields, such as those of theology, philosophy (where he 
wrote an admirable book on Hume), and education. Of his 
attitude toward this last, a clear idea may be gained from the 
following address on "Science and Culture," a singularly forcible 
plea for the importance of natural science in general education. 

In all his writings Huxley commands a style excellently adapted 
to his purpose: clear, forcible, free from mannerism, yet telling 
and often memorable in phrase. Whatever may be the exact 
magnitude of his services to pure science, he was a master in 
the writing of English for the purposes of exposition and con- 
troversy, and a powerful intellectual influence on almost all 
classes in his generation. 



216 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 1 

SIX years ago, as some of my present hearers may re-* 
member, I had the privilege of addressing a large as- 
semblage of the inhabitants of this city, who had 
gathered together to do honor to the memory of their famous 
townsman, Joseph Priestley; and, if any satisfaction attaches 
to posthumous glory, we may hope that the manes of the 
burnt-out philosopher were then finally appeased. 

No man, however, who is endowed with a fair share of 
common-sense, and not more than a fair share of vanity, will 
identify either contemporary or posthumous fame with the 
highest good; and, Priestley's life leaves no doubt that he, at 
any rate, set a much higher value upon the advancement of 
knowledge, and the promotion of that freedom of thought 
which is at once the cause and the consequence of intellectual 
progress. 

Hence I am disposed to think that, if Priestley could be 
amongst us to-day, the occasion of our meeting would afford 
him even greater pleasure than the proceedings which cele- 
brated the centenary of his chief discovery. The kindly heart 
would be moved, the high sense of social duty would be satis- 
fied, by the spectacle of well-earned wealth, neither squan- 
dered in tawdry luxury and vainglorious show, nor scattered 
with the careless charity which blesses neither him that gives 
nor him that takes, but expended in the execution of a well- 
considered plan for the aid of present and future generations 
of those who are willing to help themselves. 

We shall all be of one mind thus far. But it is needful to 
share Priestley's keen interest in physical science; and to 
have learned, as he had learned, the value of scientific train- 
ing in fields of inquiry apparently far remote from physical 

Originally delivered as an address, in 1880, at the opening of Mason 
College, Birmingham, England, now the University of Birmingham. 

217 



218 HUXLEY 

science ; in order to appreciate, as he would have appreciated, 
the value of the noble gift which Sir Josiah Mason has be- 
stowed upon the inhabitants of the Midland district. 

For us children of the nineteenth century, however, the 
establishment of a college under the conditions of Sir Josiah 
Mason's trust has a significance apart from any which it 
could have possessed a hundred years ago. It appears to be 
an indication that we are reaching the crisis of the battle, or 
rather of the long series of battles, which have been fought 
over education in a campaign which began long before 
Priestley's time, and will probably not be finished just yet. 

In the last century, the combatants were the champions of 
ancient literature, on the one side, and those of modern litera- 
ture on the other; but, some thirty years 2 ago, the contest 
became complicated by the appearance of a third army, 
ranged round the banner of physical science. 

1 am not aware that any one has au .hority to speak in the 
name of this new host. For it must be admitted to be some- 
what of a guerilla force, composed largely of irregulars, each 
of whom fights pretty much for his own hand. But the im- 
pressions of a full private, who has seen a good deal of ser- 
vice in the ranks, respecting the present position of affairs 
and the conditions of a permanent peace, may not be devoid 
of interest ; and I do not know that I could make a better use 
of the present opportunity than by laying them before you. 

From the time that the first suggestion to introduce physi- 
cal science into ordinary education was timidly whispered, 
until now, the advocates of scientific education have met with 
opposition of two kinds. On the one hand, they have been 
poohpoohed by the men of business who pride themselves 
on being the representatives of practicality; while, on the 
other hand, they have been excommunicated by the classical 
scholars, in their capacity of Levites in charge of the ark of 
culture and monopolists of liberal education. 

The practical men believed that the idol whom they wor- 
ship — rule of thumb — has been the source of the past prosper- 
ity, and will suffice for the future welfare of the arts and 

2 The advocacy of the introduction of physical science into general edu- 
cation by George Combe and others commenced a good deal earlier; but the 
movement had acquired hardly any practical force before the time tQ 
which I refer. 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 219 

manufactures. They were of opinion that science is specu- 
lative rubbish; that theory and practice have nothing to do 
with one another; and that the scientific habit of mind is an 
impediment, rather than an aid, in the conduct of ordinary 
affairs. 

I have used the past tense in speaking of the practical men 
— for although they were very formidable thirty years ago, 
I am not sure that the pure species has not been extirpated. 
In fact, so far as mere argument goes, they have been sub- 
jected to such a feu d'enfer that it is a miracle if any have 
escaped. But I have remarked that your typical practical 
man has an unexpected resemblance to one of Milton's angels. 
His spiritual wounds, such as are inflicted by logical weapons, 
may be as deep as a well and as wide as a church door, but 
beyond shedding a few drops of ichor, celestial or otherwise, 
he is no whit the worse. So, if any of these opponents be 
left, I will not waste time in vain repetition of the demon- 
strative evidence of the practical value of science ; but know- 
ing that a parable will sometimes penetrate where syllogisms 
fail to effect an entrance, I will offer a story for their con- 
sideration. 

Once upon a time, a boy, with nothing to depend upon but 
his own vigorous nature, was thrown into the thick of the 
struggle for existence in the midst of a great manufacturing 
population. He seems to have had a hard fight, inasmuch as, 
by the time he was thirty years of age, his total disposable 
funds amounted to twenty pounds. Nevertheless, middle life 
found him giving proof of his comprehension of the practical 
problems he had been roughly called upon to solve, by a 
career of remarkable prosperity. 

Finally, having reached old age with its well-earned sur- 
roundings of " honor, troops of friends/' the hero of my story 
bethought himself of those who were making a like start in 
life, and how he could stretch out a helping hand to them. 

After long and anxious reflection this successful practical 
man of business could devise nothing better than to provide 
them with the means of obtaining " sound, extensive, and 
practical scientific knowledge." And he devoted a large part 
of his wealth and five years of incessant work to this end. 

I need not point the moral of a tale which, as the solid and 



220 HUXLEY 

spacious fabric of the Scientific College assures us, is no 
fable, nor can anything which I could say intensify the force 
of this practical answer to practical objections. 

We may take it for granted then, that, in the opinion of 
those best qualified to judge, the diffusion of thorough scien- 
tific education is an absolutely essential condition of industrial 
progress ; and that the college which has been opened to-day 
will confer an inestimable boon upon those whose livelihood 
is to be gained by the practice of the arts and manufactures 
of the district. 

The only question worth discussion is, whether the condi- 
tions, under which the work of the college is to be carried 
out, are such as to give it the best possible chance of 
achieving permanent success. 

Sir Josiah Mason, without doubt most wisely, has left very 
large freedom of action to the trustees, to whom he proposes 
ultimately to commit the administration of the college, so 
that they may be able to adjust its arrangements in accord- 
ance with the changing conditions of the future. But, with 
respect to three points, he has laid most explicit injunctions 
upon both administrators and teachers. 

Party politics are forbidden to enter into the minds of 
either, so far as the work of the college is concerned; the- 
ology is as sternly banished from its precincts; and finally, 
it is especially declared that the college shall make no pro- 
vision for " mere literary instruction and education." 

It does not concern me at present to dwell upon the first 
two injunctions any longer than may be needful to express 
my full conviction of their wisdom. But the third prohibi- 
tion brings us face to face with those other opponents of 
scientific education, who are by no means in the moribund 
condition of the practical man, but alive, alert, and formi- 
dable. 

It is not impossible that we shall hear this express exclu- 
sion of " literary instruction and education " from a college 
which, nevertheless, professes to give a high and efficient 
education, sharply criticised. Certainly the time was that 
the Levites of culture would have sounded their trumpets 
against its walls as against an educational Jericho. 

How often have we not been told that the study of physical 






SCIENCE AND CULTURE 221 

science is incompetent to confer culture; that it touches none 
of the higher problems of life; and, what is worse, that the 
continual devotion to scientific studies tends to generate a 
narrow and bigoted belief in the applicability of scientific 
methods to the search after truth of all kinds. How fre- 
quently one has reason to observe that no reply to a trouble- 
some argument tells so well as calling its author a " mere 
scientific specialist." And, as I am afraid it is not permis- 
sible to speak of this form of opposition to scientific education 
in the past tense ; may we not expect to be told that this, not 
only omission, but prohibition, of " mere literary instruction 
and education " is a patent example of scientific narrow- 
mindedness? 

I am not acquainted with Sir Josiah Mason's reasons for 
the action which he has taken ; but if, as I apprehend is the 
case, he refers to the ordinary classical course of our schools 
and universities by the name of " mere literary instruction 
and education," I venture to offer sundry reasons of my own 
in support of that action. 

For I hold very strongly by two convictions. The first is, 
that neither the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical 
education is of such direct value to the student of physical 
science as to justify the expenditure of valuable time upon 
either; and the second is, that for the purpose of attaining 
real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as 
effectual as an exclusively literary education. 

I need hardly point out to you that these opinions, espe- 
cially the latter, are diametrically opposed to those of the 
great majority of educated Englishmen, influenced as they 
are by school and university traditions. In their belief, 
culture is obtainable only by a liberal education ; and a liberal 
education is synonymous, not merely with education and in- 
struction in literature, but in one particular form of liter- 
ture, namely, that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold 
that the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, 
is educated; while he who is versed in other branches of 
knowledge, however deeply, is a more or less respectable 
specialist, not admissible into cultured caste. The stamp of 
the educated man, the university degree, is not for him. 

I am too well acquainted with the generous catholicity of 



222 HUXLEY 

spirit, the true sympathy with scientific thought, which per- 
vades the writings of our chief apostle of culture to identify 
him with these opinions ; and yet one may cull from one and 
another of those epistles to the Philistines, which so much 
delight all who do not answer to that name, sentences which 
lend them some support. 

Mr. Arnold tells us that the meaning of culture is " to 
know the best that has been thought and said in the world." 
It is the criticism of life contained in literature. That criti- 
cism regards " Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual 
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action 
and working to a common result ; and whose members have, 
for their common outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and 
temporary advantages being put out of account, that modern 
nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most 
progress, which most thoroughly carries out this programme. 
And what is that but saying that we too, all of us, as indi- 
viduals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, shall make the 
more progress? " 

We have here to deal with two distinct propositions. The 
first, that a criticism of life is the essence of culture; the 
second, that literature contains the materials which suffice 
for the construction of such a criticism. 

I think that we must all assent to the first proposition. For 
culture certainly means something quite different from learn- 
ing or technical skill. It implies the possession of an ideal, 
and the habit of critically estimating the value of things by 
comparison with a theoretic standard. Perfect culture should 
apply a complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge 
alike of its possibilities and of its limitations. 

But we may agree to all this, and yet strongly dissent from 
the assumption that literature alone is competent to supply 
this knowledge. After having learnt all that Greek, Roman, 
and Eastern antiquity have thought and said, and all that 
modern literatures have to tell us, it is not self-evident that 
we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation for that 
criticism of life which constitutes culture. 

Indeed, to any one acquainted with the scope of physical 
science, it is not at all evident. Considering progress only in 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 223 

the u intellectual and spiritual sphere," I find myself wholly- 
unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really 
advance, if their common outfit draws nothing from the 
stores of physical science. I should say that an army, without 
weapons of precision, and with no particular base of opera- 
tions, might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the 
Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical 
science has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life. 

When a biologist meets with an anomaly, he instinctively 
turns to the study of development to clear it up. The ra- 
tionale of contradictory opinions may with equal confidence 
be sought in history. 

It is, happily, no new thing that Englishmen should employ 
their wealth in building and endowing institutions for educa- 
tional purposes. But, five or six hundred years ago, deeds of 
foundation expressed or implied conditions as nearly as pos- 
sible contrary to those which have been thought expedient by 
Sir Josiah Mason. That is to say, physical science was prac- 
tically ignored, while a certain literary training was en- 
joined as a means. to the acquirement of knowledge which 
was essentially theological. 

The reason of this singular contradiction between the ac- 
tions of men alike animated by a strong and disinterested de- 
sire to promote the welfare of their fellows, is easily dis- 
covered. 

At that time, in fact, if any one desired knowledge beyond 
such as could be obtained by his own observation, or by com- 
mon conversation, his first necessity was to learn the Latin 
language, inasmuch as all the higher knowledge of the west- 
ern world was contained in works written in that language. 
Hence, Latin grammar, with logic and rhetoric, studied 
through Latin, were the fundamentals of education. With 
respect to the substance of the knowledge imparted through 
this channel, the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, as inter- 
preted and supplemented by the Romish Church, were held to 
contain a complete and infallibly true body of information. 

Theological dicta were, to the thinkers of those days, that 
which the axioms and definitions of Euclid are to the geom- 
eters of these. The business of the philosophers of the 
Middle Ages was to deduce from the data furnished by the 



224 HUXLEY 

theologians, conclusions in accordance with ecclesiastical 
decrees. They were allowed the high privilege of showing, 
by logical process, how and why that which the Church said 
was true, must be true. And if their demonstrations fell 
short of or exceeded this limit, the Church was maternally 
ready to check their aberrations, if need be, by the help of 
the secular arm. 

Between the two, our ancestors were furnished with a 
compact and complete criticism of life. They were told how 
the world began, and how it would end; they learned that all 
material existence was but a base and insignificant blot upon 
the fair face of the spiritual world, and that nature was, to 
all intents and purposes, the play-ground of the devil; they 
learned that the earth is the centre of the visible universe, 
and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more 
especially is it inculcated that the course of nature had no 
fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was, altered 
by the agency of innumerable spiritual beings, good and bad, 
according as they were moved by the deeds and prayers of 
men. The sum and substance of the whole doctrine was to 
produce the conviction that the only thing really worth know- 
ing in this world was how to secure that place in a better, 
which, under certain conditions, the Church promised. 

Our ancestors had a living belief in this theory of life, and 
acted upon it in their dealings with education, as in all other 
matters. Culture meant saintliness — after the fashion of the 
saints of those days; the education that led to it was, of ne- 
cessity, theological; and the way to theology lay through 
Latin. 

That the study of nature — further than was requisite for 
the satisfaction of everyday wants — should have any bearing 
on human life was far from the thoughts of men thus trained. 
Indeed, as nature had been cursed for man's sake, it was an 
obvious conclusion that those who meddled with nature were 
likely to come into pretty close contact with Satan. And, if 
any born scientific investigator followed his instincts, he 
might safely reckon upon earning the reputation, and prob- 
ably upon suffering the fate, of a sorcerer. 

Had the western world been left to itself in Chinese isola- 
tion, there is no saying how long this state of things might 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 225 

have endured. But, happily, it was not left to itself. Even 
earlier than the thirteenth century, the development of Moor- 
ish civilization in Spain and the great movement of the Cru- 
sades had introduced the leaven which, from that day to this, 
has never ceased to work. At first, through the intermedia- 
tion of Arabic translations, afterwards by the study of the 
originals, the western nations of Europe became acquainted 
with the writings of the ancient philosophers and poets, and, 
in time, with the whole of the vast literature of antiquity. 

Whatever there was of high intellectual aspiration or domi- 
nant capacity in Italy, France, Germany, and England, spent 
itself for centuries in taking possession of the rich inherit- 
ance left by the dead civilization of Greece and Rome. 
Marvelously aided by the invention of printing, classical 
learning spread and flourished. Those who possessed it 
prided themselves on having attained the highest culture then 
within the reach of mankind. 

And justly. For, saving Dante on his solitary pinnacle, 
there was no figure in modern literature at the time of the 
Renaissance to compare with the men of antiquity ; there was 
no art to compete with their sculpture ; there was no physical 
science but that which Greece had created. Above all, there 
was no other example of perfect intellectual freedom — of the 
unhesitating acceptance of reason as the sole guide to truth 
and the supreme arbiter of conduct. 

The new learning necessarily soon exerted a profound 
influence upon education. The language of the monks and 
schoolmen seemed little better than gibberish to scholars fresh 
from Vergil and Cicero, and the study of Latin was placed 
upon a new foundation. Moreover, Latin itself ceased to af- 
ford the sole key to knowledge. The student who sought the 
highest thought of antiquity found only a second-hand reflec- 
tion of it in Roman literature, and turned his face to the full 
light of the Greeks. And after a, battle, not altogether dis- 
similar to that which is at present being fought over the 
teaching of physical science, the study of Greek was rec- 
ognized as an essential element of all higher education. 

Thus the humanists, as they were called, won the day ; and 
the great reform which they effected was of incalculable 
service to mankind. But the Nemesis of all reformers is 

Vol. 28— -H HC 



226 HUXLEY 

finality; and the reformers of education, like those of re- 
ligion, fell into the profound, however common, error of 
mistaking the beginning for the end of the work of refor- 
mation. 

The representatives of the humanists in the nineteenth 
century take their stand upon classical education as the sole 
avenue to culture, as firmly as if we were still in the age of 
Renaissance. Yet, surely, the present intellectual relations of 
the modern and the ancient worlds are profoundly different 
from those which obtained three centuries ago. Leaving 
aside the existence of a great and characteristically modern 
literature, of modern painting, and, especially, of modern 
music, there is one feature of the present state of the civilized 
world which separates it more widely from the Renaissance 
than the Renaissance was separated from the Middle Ages. 

This distinctive character of our own times lies in the vast 
and constantly increasing part which is played by natural 
knowledge. Not only is our daily life shaped by it, not only 
does the prosperity of millions of men depend upon it, but 
our whole theory of life has long been influenced, consciously 
or unconsciously, by the general conceptions of the universe, 
which have been forced upon us by physical science. 

In fact, the most elementary acquaintance with the results 
of scientific investigation shows us that they offer a broad 
and striking contradictio . to the opinions so implicitly cred- 
ited and taught in the Middle Ages. 

The notions of the beginning and the end of the world en- 
tertained by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is 
very certain that the earth is not the chief body in the ma- 
terial universe, and that the world is not subordinated to 
man's use. It is even more certain that nature is the ex- 
pression of a definite order with which nothing interferes, 
and that the chief business of mankind is to learn that order 
and govern themselves accordingly. Moreover this scientific 
" criticism of life " presents itself to us with different creden- 
tials from any other. It appeals not to authority, nor to 
what anybody may have thought or said, but to nature. It 
admits that all our interpretations of natural fact are more 
or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek for 
truth not among words but among things. It warns us that 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 227 

the assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder 
but a crime. 

The purely classical education advocated by the represent- 
atives of the humanists in our day gives no inkling of all 
this. A man may be a better scholar than Erasmus, and 
know no more of the chief causes of the present intellectual 
fermentation than Erasmus did. Scholarly and pious per- 
sons, worthy of all respect, favor us with allocutions upon 
the sadness of the antagonism of science to their mediaeval 
way of thinking, which betray an ignorance of the first prin- 
ciples of scientific investigation, an incapacity for understand- 
ing what a man of science means by veracity, and an uncon- 
sciousness of the weight of established scientific truths, which 
is almost comical. 

There is no great force in the tu quoqne argument, or else 
the advocates of scientific education might fairly enough re- 
tort upon the modern humanists that they may be learned 
specialists, but that they possess no such sound foundation for 
a criticism of life as deserves the name of culture. And, in- 
deed, if we were disposed to be cruel, we might urge that 
the humanists have brought this reproach upon themselves, 
not because they are too full of the spirit of the ancient 
Greek, but because they lack it. 

The period of the Renaissance is commonly called that of 
the " Revival of Letters," as if the influences then brought to 
bear upon the mind of Western Europe had been wholly ex- 
hausted in the field of literature. I think it is very commonly 
forgotten that the revival of science, effected by the same 
agency, although less conspicuous, was not less momentous. 

In fact, the few and scattered students of nature of that 
day picked up the clew to her secrets exactly as it fell from 
the hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foun- 
dations of mathematics were so well laid by them that our 
children learn their geometry from a book written for the 
schools of Alexandria two thousand years ago. Modern 
astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the 
work of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy ; modern physics of that 
of Democritus and of Archimedes ; it was long before modern 
biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us 
by Aristotle, by Theophrastus, and by Galen. 



228 HUXLEY 

We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings of the 
Greeks unless we know what they thought about natural phe- 
nomena. We cannot fully apprehend their criticism of life 
unless we understand the extent to which that criticism was 
affected by scientific conceptions. We falsely pretend to be 
the inheritors of their culture, unless we are penetrated, as 
the best minds among them were, with an unhesitating faith 
that the free employment of reason, in accordance with 
scientific method, is the sole method of reaching truth. 

Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern 
humanists to the possession of the monopoly of culture and 
to the exclusive inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be 
abated, if not abandoned. But I should be very sorry that 
anything I have said should be taken to imply a desire on my 
part to depreciate the value of classical education, as it might 
be and as it sometimes is. The native capacities of mankind 
vary no less than their opportunities; and while culture is 
one, the road by which one man may best reach it is widely 
different from that which is most advantageous to another. 
Again, while scientific education is yet inchoate and tentative, 
classical education is thoroughly well organized upon the 
practical experience of generations of teachers. So that, 
given ample time for learning and destination for ordinary 
life, or for a literary career, I do not think that a young 
Englishman in search of culture can do better than follow 
the course usually marked out for him, supplementing its 
deficiencies by his own efforts. 

But for those who mean to make science their serious oc- 
cupation; or who intend to follow the profession of medi- 
cine; or who have to enter early upon the business of life; 
for all these, in my opinion, classical education is a mistake; 
and it is for this reason that I am glad to see " mere literary 
education and instruction " shut out from the curriculum of 
Sir Josiah Mason's college, seeing that its inclusion would 
probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering 
of Latin and Greek. 

Nevertheless, I am the last person to question the impor- 
tance of genuine literary education, or to suppose that intel- 
lectual culture can be complete without it. An exclusively 
scientific training will bring about a mental twist as surely as 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 229 

an exclusive literary training. The value of the cargo does 
not compensate for a ship's being out of trim; and I should 
be very sorry to think that the Scientific College would turn 
out none but lop-sided men. 

There is no need, however, that such a catastrophe should 
happen. Instruction in English, French, and German is pro- 
vided, and thus the three greatest literatures of the modern 
world are made accessible to the student. 

French and German, and especially the latter language, are 
absolutely indispensable to those who desire full knowledge 
in any department of science. But even supposing that the 
knowledge of these languages acquired is not more than suf- 
ficient for purely scientific purposes, every Englishman has, 
in his native tongue, an almost perfect instrument of literary 
expression ; and, in his own literature, models of every kind 
of literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get literary 
culture out of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton, neither, 
in my belief, will the profoundest study of Homer and 
Sophocles, Vergil and Horace, give it to him. 

Thus, since the constitution of the college makes sufficient 
provision for literary as well as for scientific education, and 
since artistic instruction is also contemplated, it seems to me 
that a fairly complete culture is offered to all who are willing 
to take advantage of it. 

But I am not sure that at this point the " practical " man, 
scotched but not slain, may ask what all this talk about 
culture has to do with an institution, the object of which is 
defined to be " to promote the prosperity of the manufactures 
and the industry of the country." He may suggest that what 
is wanted for this end is not culture, nor even a purely scien- 
tific discipline, but simply a knowledge of applied science. 

I often wish that this phrase, " applied science," had never 
been invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scien- 
tific knowledge of direct practical use, which can be studied 
apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which is of 
no practical utility, and which is termed " pure science." But 
there is no more complete fallacy than this. What people call 
applied science is nothing but the application of pure science 
to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions 
from those general principles, established by reasoning and 



230 HUXLEY 

observation, which constitute pure science. No one can 
safely make these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the 
principles; and he can obtain that grasp only by personal 
experience of the operations of observation and of reasoning 
on which they are founded. 

Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manu- 
factures fall within the range either of physics or of chem- 
istry. In order to improve them one must thoroughly under- 
stand them ; and no one has a chance of really understanding 
them, unless he has obtained that mastery of principles and 
that habit of dealing with facts which is given by long-con- 
tinued and well-directed purely scientific training in the 
physical and chemical laboratory. So that there really is no 
question as to the necessity of purely scientific discipline, even 
if the work of the college were limited by the narrowest in- 
terpretation of its stated aims. 

And, as to the desirableness of a wider culture than that 
yielded by science alone, it is to be recollected that the im- 
provement of manufacturing processes is only one of the 
conditions which contribute to the prosperity of industry. 
Industry is a means and not an end ; and mankind work only 
to get something which they want. What that something is 
depends partly on their innate, and partly on their acquired, 
desires. 

If the wealth resulting from prosperous industry is to be 
spent upon the gratification of unworthy desires, if the in- 
creasing perfection of manufacturing processes is to be ac- 
companied by an increasing debasement of those who carry 
them on, I do not see the good of industry and prosperity. 

Now it is perfectly true that men's views of what is de- 
sirable depend upon their characters; and that the innate 
proclivities to which we give that name are not touched by 
any amount of instruction. But it does not follow that even 
mere intellectual education may not, to an indefinite extent, 
modify the practical manifestation of the characters of men 
in their actions, by supplying them with motives unknown to 
the ignorant. A pleasure-loving character will have pleasure 
of some sort; but, if you give him the choice, he may prefer 
pleasures which do not degrade him to those which do. And 
this choice is offered to every man who possesses in literary 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 231 

or artistic culture a never-failing source of pleasures, which 
are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor em- 
bittered in the recollection by the pangs of self-reproach. 

If the institution opened to-day fulfils the intention of its 
founder, the picked intelligences among all classes of the 
population of this district will pass through it. No child born 
in Birmingham, henceforward, if he have the capacity to 
profit by the oportunities offered to him, first in the primary 
and other schools, and afterward in the Scientific College, 
need fail to obtain, not merely the instruction, but the culture 
most appropriate to the conditions of his life. 

Within these walls the future employer and the future arti- 
san may sojourn together for awhile, and carry, through 
all their lives, the stamp of the influences then brought to 
bear upon them. Hence, it is not beside the mark to remind 
you that the prosperity of industry depends not merely upon 
the improvement of manufacturing processes, not merely 
upon the ennobling of the individual character, but upon a 
third condition, namely, a clear understanding of the con- 
ditions of social life on the part of both the capitalist and the 
operative, and their agreement upon common principles of 
social action. They must learn that social phenomena are as 
much the expression of natural laws as any others; that no 
social arrangements can be permanent unless they harmonize 
with the requirements of social statics and dynamics; and 
that, in the nature of things, there is an arbiter whose deci- 
sions execute themselves. 

But this knowledge is only to be obtained by the applica- 
tion of the methods of investigation adopted in physical re- 
searches to the investigation of the phenomena of society. 
Hence, I confess I should like to see one addition made to the 
excellent scheme of education propounded for the college, in 
the shape of provision for the teaching of sociology. For 
though we are all agreed that party politics are to have no 
place in the instruction of the college; yet in this country, 
practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every 
man who does his duty must exercise political functions. 
And, if the evils which are inseparable from the good of 
political liberty are to be checked, if the perpetual oscillation 
of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced 



232 SCIENCE AND CULTURE 

by the steady march of self-restraining freedom; it will be 
because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with 
political, as they now deal with scientifical questions ; to be as 
ashamed of undue haste and partisan prejudice in the one 
case as in the other; and to believe that the machinery of 
society is at least as delicate as that of a spinning-jenny, and 
as little likely to be improved by the meddling of those who 
have not taken the trouble to master the principles of its 
action. 

In conclusion, I am sure that I make myself the mouth- 
piece of all present in offering to the venerable founder of 
the institution, which now commences its beneficent career, 
our congratulations on the completion of his work; and in 
expressing the conviction that the remotest posterity will 
point to it as a crucial instance of the wisdom which natural 
piety leads all men to ascribe to their ancestors. 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 

BY 

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-92), one of the most dis- 
tinguished of recent English historians, was born at Harborne, 
in Staffordshire, and educated at Oxford, where he was a Fellow 
of Trinity College, and later Regius Professor of Modern His- 
tory. His earlier writings show great interest in architecture, 
and it was one of his distinctions to be the first historian to make 
extensive use in his subject of the evidences and illustrations 
supplied by the study of that art. His most famous and most 
elaborate work was his "History of the Norman Conquest" 
(1867-79), a monument which is likely long to remain the great 
authority on its period. 

Freeman believed in the unity of the study of history, and in 
the wide range of his own writings he went far toward realizing 
the universality he preached. Outside of the field just mentioned 
he wrote on ancient Greece, on Sicily, on the Ottoman Empire, 
on the United States, on the methods of historical study, and on 
many other subjects. His interests were primarily political, and 
he took an active part in the politics of his own day, writing for 
many years for the "Saturday Review." As a teacher he influ- 
enced profoundly the scientific study of history in England. 

Of few terms in general use has the average man a less exact 
or less accurate comprehension than of the word "race." The 
speculative philologists of last century, with their attempts to 
classify the peoples of the earth according to linguistic evidences, 
succeeded, as far as the layman is concerned, chiefly in adding to 
the confusion by popularizing prematurely facts whose significa- 
tion was improperly understood. The anthropologists of a more 
recent time, with their study of skull-shapes and complexions, 
have sought to correct misapprehensions ; but the popular mind is 
still in a mist about the whole matter. In the following essay 
Freeman brings his knowledge of modem scientific results and 
his enormous historical information to the rescue of the bewil- 
dered student, and does much to clear up the perplexing relations 
of race with language, custom, and blood. 



234 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 1 



IT IS no very great time since the readers of the English 
newspapers were, perhaps a little amused, perhaps a 
little startled, at the story of a deputation of Hungarian 
students going to Constantinople to present a sword of honor 
to an Ottoman general. The address and the answer enlarged 
on the ancient kindred of Turks and Magyars, on the long 
alienation of the dissevered kinsfolk, on the return of both 
in these later times to a remembrance of the ancient kindred 
and to the friendly feelings to which such kindred gave birth. 
The discourse has a strange sound when we remember the 
reigns of Sigismund and Wladislaus, when we think of the 
dark days of Nikopolis and Varna, when we think of Hunia- 
des encamped at the foot of Hsemus, and of Belgrade beat- 
ing back Mahomet the Conqueror from her gates. The 
Magyar and the Ottoman embracing with the joy of reunited 
kinsfolk is a sight which certainly no man would have looked 
forward to in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. At an 
earlier time the ceremony might have seemed a degree less 
wonderful. If a man whose ideas are drawn wholly from the 
modern map should sit down to study the writings of Con- 
stantine Porphyrogennetos, he would perhaps be startled at 
finding Turks and Franks spoken of as neighbors, at finding 
Tarda and Francia — we must not translate Toopxla and 
0payy(a by Turkey and France — spoken of as border-lands. 
A little study will perhaps show him that the change lies 
almost wholly in the names and not in the boundaries. The 
lands are there still, and the frontier between them has 
shifted much less than one might have looked for in nine 
hundred years. Nor has there been any great change in the 
population of the two countries. The Turks and the Franks 
of the Imperial geographer are there still, in the lands which 

1 From " Historical Essays," Third Series, 1879. 

235 



236 FREEMAN 

he calls Turcia and Francia ; only we no longer speak of them 
as Turks and Franks. The Turks of Constantine are Mag- 
yars; the Franks of Constantine are Germans. The Magyar 
students may not unlikely have turned over the Imperial 
pages, and they may have seen how their forefathers stand 
described there. We can hardly fancy that the Ottoman 
general is likely to have given much time to lore of such a 
kind. Yet the Ottoman answer was as brimful of ethno- 
logical and antiquarian sympathy as the Magyar address. It 
is hardly to be believed that a Turk, left to himself, would 
by his own efforts have found out the primeval kindred be- 
tween Turk and Magyar. He might remember that Magyar 
exiles had found a safe shelter on Ottoman territory; he 
might look deep enough into the politics of the present mo- 
ment to see that the rule of Turk and Magyar alike is 
threatened by the growth of Slavonic national life. But the 
idea that Magyar and Turk owe each other any love or any 
duty, directly on the ground of primeval kindred, is certainly 
not likely to have presented itself to the untutored Ottoman 
mind. In short, it sounds, as some one said at the time, 
rather like the dream of a professor who has run wild with 
an ethnological craze, than like the serious thought of a 
practical man of any nation. Yet the Magyar students seem 
to have meant their address quite seriously. And the Turk- 
ish general, if he did not take it seriously, at least thought it 
wise to shape his answer as if he did. As a piece of practical 
politics, it sounds like Frederick Barbarossa threatening to 
avenge the defeat of Crassus upon Saladin, or like the 
French of the revolutionary wars making the Pope Pius of 
those days answerable for the wrongs of Vercingetorix. 
The thing sounds like comedy, almost like conscious comedy. 
But it is a kind of comedy which may become tragedy, if the 
idea from which it springs get so deeply rooted in men's 
minds as to lead to any practical consequences. As long as 
talk of this kind does not get beyond the world of hot-headed 
students, it may pass for a craze. It would be more than a 
craze, if it should be so widely taken up on either side that 
the statesmen on either side find it expedient to profess to 
take it up also. 
To allege the real or supposed primeval kindred between 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 237 

Magyars and Ottomans as a ground for political action, or at 
least for political sympathy, in the affairs of the present mo- 
ment, is an extreme case — some may be inclined to call it a 
reductio ad absurdnm — of a whole range of doctrines and 
sentiments which have in modern days gained a great power 
over men's minds. They have gained so great a power that 
those who may regret their influence cannot afford to de- 
spise it. To make any practical inference from the primeval 
kindred of Magyar and Turk is indeed pushing the doctrine 
of race, and of sympathies arising from race, as far as it 
well can be pushed. Without plunging into any very deep 
mysteries, without committing ourselves to any dangerous 
theories in the darker regions of ethnological inquiry, we 
may perhaps be allowed at starting to doubt whether there 
is any real primeval kindred between the Ottoman and the 
Finnish Magyar. It is for those who have gone specially 
deep into the antiquities of the non-Aryan races to say 
whether there is or is not. At all events, as far as the great 
facts of history go, the kindred is of the vaguest and most 
shadowy kind. It comes to little more than the fact that 
Magyars and Ottomans are alike non-Aryan invaders who 
have made their way into Europe within recorded times, and 
that both have, rightly or wrongly, been called by the name 
of Turks. These do seem rather slender grounds on which 
to build up a fabric of national sympathy between two na- 
tions, when several centuries of living practical history all 
pull the other way. It is hard to believe that the kindred of 
Turk and Magyar was thought of when a Turkish pacha 
ruled at Buda. Doubtless Hungarian Protestants often 
deemed, and not unreasonably deemed, that the contemptuous 
toleration of the Moslem sultan was a lighter yoke than trie 
persecution of the Catholic emperor. But it was hardly on 
grounds of primeval kindred that they made the choice. The 
ethnological dialogue held at Constantinople does indeed 
sound like ethnological theory run mad. But it is the very 
wildness of the thing which gives it its importance. The 
doctrine of race, and of sympathies springing from race, 
must have taken very firm hold indeed of men's minds before 
it could be carried out in a shape which we are tempted to 
call so grotesque as this. 



238 FREEMAN 

The plain fact is that the new lines of scientific and his- 
torical inquiry which have been opened in modern times have 
had a distinct and deep effect upon the politics of the age. 
The fact may be estimated in many ways, but its existence as 
a fact cannot be denied. Not in a merely scientific or liter- 
ary point of view, but in one strictly practical, the world is 
not the same world as it was when men had not yet dreamed 
of the kindred between Sanscrit, Greek, and English, when 
it was looked on as something of a paradox to him that there 
was a distinction between Celtic and Teutonic tongues and 
nations. v Ethnological and philological researches — I do not 
forget the distinction between the two, but for the present I 
must group them together — have opened the way for new 
national sympathies, new national antipathies, such as would 
have been unintelligible a hundred years ago. A hundred 
years ago a man's political likes and dislikes seldom went 
beyond the range which was suggested by the place of his 
birth or immediate descent. Such birth or descent made him 
a member of this or that political community, a subject of 
this or that prince, a citizen — perhaps a subject — of this or 
that commonwealth. The political community of which he 
was a member had its traditional alliances and traditional 
enmities, and by those alliances and enmities the likes and 
dislikes of the members of that community were guided. 
But those traditional alliances and enmities were seldom de- 
termined by theories about language or race. The people of 
this or that place might be discontented under a foreign gov- 
ernment; but, as a rule, they were discontented only if subjec- 
tion to that foreign government brought with it personal 
oppression or at least political degradation. Regard or dis- 
regard of some purely local privilege or local feeling went 
for more than the fact of a government being native 
or foreign. What we now call the sentiment of nationality 
did not go for much; what we call the sentiment of race 
went for nothing at all. Only a few men here and there 
would have understood the feelings which have led 
to those two great events of our own time, the political 
reunion of the German and Italian nations after their long- 
political dissolution. Not a soul would have understood the 
feelings which have allowed Panslavism to be a great prac- 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 239 

tical agent in the affairs of Europe, and which have made 
talk about " the Latin race," if not practical, at least pos- 
sible. Least of all, would it have been possible to give any 
touch of political importance to what would have then seemed 
so wild a dream as a primeval kindred between Magyar and 
Ottoman. 

That feelings such as these, and the practical consequences 
which have flowed from them, are distinctly due to scientific 
and historical teaching there can, I think, be no doubt Re- 
ligious sympathy and purely national sympathy are both feel- 
ings of much simpler growth, which need no deep knowl- 
edge nor any special teaching. The cry which resounded 
through Christendom when the Holy City was taken by the 
Mussulmans, the cry which resounded through Islam when 
the same city was taken by the Christians, the spirit which 
armed England to support French Huguenots and which 
armed Spain to support French Leaguers, all spring from 
motives which lie on the surface. Nor need we seek for any 
explanation but such as lies on the surface for the natural 
wish for closer union which arose among Germans or 
Italians who found themselves parted off by purely dynastic 
arrangements from men who were their countrymen in every- 
thing else. Such a feeling has to strive with the counter- 
feeling which springs from local jealousies and local dislikes; 
but it is a perfectly simple feeling, which needs no subtle 
research either to arouse or to understand it. So, if we 
draw our illustrations from the events of our own time, 
there is nothing but what is perfectly simple in the feeling 
which calls Russia, as the most powerful of Orthodox states, 
to the help of her Orthodox brethren everywhere, and which 
calls the members of the Orthodox Church everywhere to 
look to Russia as their protector. The feeling may have to 
strive against a crowd of purely political considerations, and 
by those purely political considerations it may be outweighed. 
But the feeling is in itself altogether simple and natural. 
So again, the people of Montenegro and of the neighboring 
lands in Herzegovina and by the Bocche of Cattaro feel 
themselves countrymen in every sense but the political ac- 
cident which keeps them asunder. They are drawn together 
by a tie which everyone can understand, by the same tie 



240 FREEMAN 

which would draw together the people of three adjoining Eng- 
lish counties, if any strange political action should part them 
asunder in like manner. The feeling here is that of nation- 
ality in the strictest sense, nationality in a purely local or 
geographical sense. It would exist all the same if Panslavism 
had never been heard of; it might exist though those who 
feel it had never heard of the Slavonic race at all. It is 
altogether another thing when we come to the doctrine of 
race, and of sympathies founded on race, in the wider sense. 
Here we have a feeling which professes to bind together, 
and which as a matter of fact has had a real effect in binding 
together, men whose kindred to one another is not so obvious 
at first sight as the kindred of Germans, Italians, or Serbs 
who are kept asunder by nothing but a purely artificial politi- 
cal boundary. It is a feeling at whose bidding the call to union 
goes forth to men whose dwellings are geographically far 
apart, to men who may have had no direct dealings with 
one another for years or for ages, to men whose languages, 
though the scholar may at once see that they are closely akin, 
may not be so closely akin as to be mutually intelligible for 
common .purposes. A hundred years back the Servian might 
have cried for help to the Russian on the ground of common 
Orthodox faith ; he would hardly have called for help on the 
ground of common Slavonic speech and origin. If he had 
done so, it would have been rather by way of grasping at 
any chance, however desperate or far-fetched, than as put- 
ting forward a serious and well understood claim which he 
might expect to find accepted and acted on by large masses 
of men. He might have received help, either out of genuine 
sympathy springing from community of faith or from the 
baser thought that he could be made use of as a convenient 
political tool. He would have got but little help purely on 
the ground of a community of blood and speech which had 
had no practical result for ages. When Russia in earlier 
days interfered between the Turk and his Christian subjects, 
there is no sign of any sympathy felt or possessed for Slaves 
as Slaves. Russia dealt with Montenegro, not, as far as one 
can see, out of any Slavonic brotherhood, but because an in- 
dependent Orthodox State at enmity with the Turk could not 
fail to be a useful ally. The earlier dealings of Russia with 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 241 

the subject nations were far more busy among the Greeks 
than among the Slaves. In fact, till quite lately all the Ortho- 
dox subjects of the Turk were in most European eyes looked 
on as alike Greeks. The Orthodox Church has been com- 
monly known as the Greek Church; and it has often been 
very hard to make people understand that the vast mass of 
the members of that so-called Greek Church are not Greek in 
any other sense. In truth we may doubt whether, till com- 
paratively lately, the subject nations themselves were fully 
alive to the differences of race and speech among them. A 
man must in all times and places know whether he speaks 
the same language as another man; but he does not always 
go on to put his consciousness of difference into the shape 
of a sharply drawn formula. Still less does he always make 
the difference the ground of any practical course of action. 
The Englishman in the first days of the Norman Conquest 
felt the hardships of foreign rule, and he knew that those 
hardships were owing to foreign rule. But he had not learned 
to put his sense of hardship into any formula about an op- 
pressed nationality. So, when the policy of the Turk found 
that the subtle intellect of the Greek could be made use of 
as an instrument of dominion over the other subject nations, 
the Bulgarian felt the hardship of the state of things in 
which, as it was proverbially said, his body was in bondage 
to the Turk and his soul in bondage to the Greek. But we 
may suspect that this neatly turned proverb dates only from 
the awakening of a distinctly national Bulgarian feeling in 
modern times. The Turk was felt to be an intruder and an 
enemy, because his rule was that of an open oppressor be- 
longing to another creed. The Greek, on the other hand, 
though his spiritual dominion brought undoubted practical 
evils with it, was not felt to be an intruder and an enemy in 
the same sense. His quicker intellect and superior refine- 
ment made him a model. The Bulgarian imitated the Greek 
tongue and Greek manners; he was willing in other lands 
to be himself looked on as a Greek. It is only in quite 
modern times, under the direct influence of the preaching 
of the doctrine of race, that a hard and fast line has been 
drawn between Greeks and Bulgarians. That doctrine has 
cut two ways. It has given both nations, Greek and Bui- 



242 FREEMAN 

garian alike, a renewed national life, national strength, na- 
tional hopes, such as neither of them had felt for ages. In 
so doing, it has done one of the best and most hopeful 
works of the age. But in so doing, it has created one of 
the most dangerous of immediate political difficulties, In 
calling two nations into a renewed being, it has arrayed them 
in enmity against each other, and that in the face of a com- 
mon enemy in whose presence all lesser differences and 
jealousies ought to be hushed into silence. 

There is then a distinct doctrine of race, and of sym- 
pathies founded on race, distinct from the feeling of com- 
munity of religion, and distinct from the feeling of national- 
ity in the narrower sense. It is not so simple or easy a feel- 
ing as either of those two. It does not in the same way lie 
on the surface ; it is not in the same way grounded on obvi- 
ous facts wKch are plain to every man's understanding. 
The doctrine of race is essentially an artificial doctrine, a 
learned doctrine. It is an inference from facts which the 
mass of mankind could never have found out for themselves ; 
facts which, without a distinctly learned teaching, could 
never be brought home to them in any intelligible shape. 
Now what is the value of such a doctrine? Does it follow 
that, because it is confessedly artificial, because it springs, 
not from a spontaneous impulse, but from a learned teach- 
ing, it is therefore necessarily foolish, mischievous, perhaps 
unnatural? It may perhaps be safer to hold that like many 
other doctrines, many other sentiments, it is neither uni- 
versally good nor universally bad, neither inherently wise 
nor inherently foolish. It may be safer to hold that it may, 
like other doctrines and sentiments, have a range within 
which it may work for good, while in some other range it 
may work for evil. It may in short be a doctrine which is 
neither to be rashly accepted, nor rashly cast aside, but one 
which may need to be guided, regulated, modified, according 
to time, place, and circumstance. I am not now called on 
so much to estimate the practical good and evil of the 
doctrine as to work out what the doctrine itself is, and to 
try to explain some difficulties about it, but I must emphatic- 
ally say that nothing can be more shallow, nothing more 
foolish, nothing more purely sentimental, than the talk of 



RACE AND LANGUAGE 243 

those who think that they can simply laugh down or shriek 
down any doctrine or sentiment which they themselves do not 
understand. A belief or a feeling which has a practical ef- 
fect on the conduct of great masses of men, sometimes on 
the conduct of whole nations, may be very false and very 
mischievous ; but it is in every case a great and serious fact, 
to be looked gravely in the face. Men who sit at their ease 
and think that all wisdom is confined to themselves and 
their own clique may think themselves vastly superior to the 
great emotions which stir our times, as they would doubtless 
have thought themselves vastly superior to the emotions 
which stirred the first Saracens or the first Crusaders. But 
the emotions are there all the same, and they do their work 
all the same. The most highly educated man in the most 
highly educated society cannot sneer them out of being. 

But it is time to pass to the more strictly scientific aspect 
of the subject. The doctrine of race, in its popular form, 
is the direct offspring of the study of scientific philology; 
and yet it is just now, in its popular form at least, some- 
what under the ban of scientific philologers. There is noth- 
ing very wonderful in this. It is in fact the natural course 
of things which might almost have been reckoned on be- 
forehand. When the popular mind gets hold of a truth it 
seldom gets hold of it with strict scientific precision. It 
commonly gets hold of one side of the truth; it puts forth 
that side of the truth only. It puts that side forth in a form 
which may not be in itself distorted or exaggerated, but 
which practically becomes distorted and exaggerated, be- 
cause other sides of the same truth are not brought into 
their due relation with it. The popular idea thus takes a 
shape which is naturally offensive to men of strict preci- 
sion, and which men of strict scientific precision have natu- 
rally, and from their own point of view quite rightly, risen 
up to rebuke. Yet it may often happen that, while the 
scientific statement is the only true one for scientific pur- 
poses, the popular version may also have a kind of practical 
truth for the somewhat rough and ready purposes of a 
popular version.