Part 8
Similarly, most of us have been induced, by the Puritanism in the air around us, to take our opinions of the great English classics from text-books compiled by sciolists, who have not gone deep enough to understand the course of the currents of literature. We accept Shakspere at second hand; if we took our impressions of his works from Professor Dowden or Herr Delius or men like George Saintsbury or Horace Furness, or, better than all, from himself, it would be a different thing. But we do not; if we read him at all, we read him hastily; we read “Hamlet” as we would a novel, or we are content to nibble at little chunks from his plays, which the compilers graciously present to us.
The text-book of literature has been an enemy to education, because it has been generally compiled by persons who were incapable of fair judgment. In this country, Father Jenkins’s compilation is the best we have had. It is a brave attempt to remove misapprehensions; but a text-book should be merely a guide to the works themselves. There is more intellectual gain in six months’ close study of the text and circumstances of “Hamlet” than in tripping through a dozen books of “selections.” The Germans found this out long ago, and Dr. Gotthold Böttcher puts it into fitting words in his introduction to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parcival.” The time will doubtless come when even in parochial schools the higher “Reader” will be a complete book—not a thing of shreds and patches, like the little dabs of meat and vegetables the keepers of country hotels set before us on small plates. This book will, of course, be intelligently annotated.
Some of us have a certain timidity about claiming Shakspere as our own and about reading his plays to our young people. This is because we have given in too much to the critical spirit, which finds purity in impure things, and impurity where no impurity is intended. It is time we realize the evil that the English speech has done us by unconsciously impregnating us with alien prejudices.
Surely no man will accuse Cardinal Newman of condoning sensuality or coarseness. His idea of propriety is good enough; it is broad enough and narrow enough for us. That foreign code which would keep young people within artificial barriers and then let them loose to wallow in literary filth, that hypocritical American code which leaves the obscenities of the daily newspaper open and closes Shakspere, is not ours.
Shakspere was the result of Catholic thought and training. There is no Puritanism in him. His plays are Catholic literature in the widest sense; he sees life from the Christian point of view, and, depicting it as it is, his standard is a Catholic standard. There is no doubt that there are coarse passages in Shakspere’s plays—it is easy to get rid of them. But they are few. They seem immodest because the plainness of language of the Elizabethan time and of the preceding times has happily gone out of fashion. It would be well to revise our definition of immorality, by comparing it with the more robust Catholic one, before we condemn Shakspere or the Old Testament, though the scrupulous Tom Paine, who has gone utterly out of fashion, found both immoral!
Hear Cardinal Newman (“Idea of a University,” page 319) speaking of Shakspere: “Whatever passages may be gleaned from his dramas disrespectful to ecclesiastical authority, still these are but passages; on the other hand, there is in Shakspere neither contempt of religion nor scepticism, and he upholds the broad laws of moral and divine truths with the consistency and severity of an Æschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar. There is no mistaking in his works on which side lies the right; Satan is not made a hero, nor Cain a victim, but pride is pride, and vice is vice, and, whatever indulgence he may allow himself in light thoughts or unseemly words, yet his admiration is reserved for sanctity and truth; ... but often as he may offend against modesty, he is clear of a worse charge, sensuality, and hardly a passage can be instanced in all that he has written to seduce the imagination or to excite the passions.”
In arranging a course of reading for young people, it seems to me that those books which _define_ principles should be put first. When a reader has a good grasp of definitions, he is in a mathematical state of mind and ready to assimilate truth and reject error. Books of literature should not be recommended to him until he is sure of his principles; for, unhappily, the tendency of American youth is to imagine that what he cannot refute is irrefutable. If the young reader be thoroughly grounded in the doctrines of his faith and armed with a few clear definitions of the meaning of things, even Milton cannot persuade him that Satan is a more admirable figure than Our Lord, or Byron seduce him into the opinion that Cain was wronged, or Goethe that sin is merely a more or less pleasing experience.
It is remarkable that the Puritanism which lauds Milton as a household god turns its face from Shakspere; and yet Milton’s great epic is not only the deification of intellectual pride, but it contemns Christianity. There are very few men who can to-day say that they have read “Paradise Lost” line after line with pleasure. There are long stretches of aridity in it; and those who pretend to admire it as a whole are no doubt tinctured with literary insincerity. But there are glorious passages in the “Paradise Lost,” unexcelled in any literature; and therefore the epic should be read in parts, and one cannot be blamed if he “skip” many other parts. The great parts of “Paradise Lost,” ought to be read and re-read. The comparative weakness of the “Paradise Regained” shows that Milton had not that sympathy with the Redemption which he had with the revolt of Satan. And yet, in some pious households, where puritanized opinion reigns, Shakspere is locked up, while “Paradise Lost” is put beside the family Bible!
It is not necessary that one should read all of Shakspere’s writings; the early poems had better be omitted; but it is necessary for purposes of culture that one should read what one does read with intelligence. Before beginning “Hamlet”—which a thoughtful Catholic can appreciate better than any other man—one should clear the ground by studying Professor Dowden’s little “Primer” on Shakspere (Macmillan & Co.), and Mr. Furnivall’s preface to the Leopold edition of Shakspere, and George H. Miles’s study of “Hamlet.” Then, and not until then, will one be in a position to get real benefit from his reading. To read “Hamlet” without some preparation is like the inane practice of “going to Europe to complete an education never begun at home.” I repeat that a Catholic can better appreciate the marvels of Shakspere’s greatest play, because, even if he know only the Little Catechism, he has the key to the play and to Shakspere’s mind.
The philosophy of “Hamlet” is that sin cankers and burns and ruins and corrupts even in this world, and that the effects do not end in this world. Shakspere, enlightened by the teaching of centuries since St. Austin converted his forefathers, teaches a higher philosophy than that of Æschylus or Euripides or Sophocles—he substitutes will for fate. It is not fate that forces the keen Claudius to murder his brother; it is not fate that obliges him to turn away from the reproaches of an instructed mind and conscience: he chooses; it is his own will that makes the crime; he does not confuse good with evil. The sin of the Queen is not so great; she is ignorant of her husband’s crime; in fact, from the usual modern point of view, she has committed no sin at all. And, as the Danish method of choosing monarchs permitted the nobles to name Claudius king, while her son was mooning at the Saxon university, she had done him no material wrong. But as there is no mention of a dispensation from Rome, and as Shakspere makes the Danes Catholic, the people of Denmark must have looked on the alliance with doubt. The demand made to Horatio to exorcise the spirit, as he was a scholar; the expression, “I’ll cross it,” which Fechter, the actor, rightly interpreted as meaning the sign of the cross; a hundred touches, in fact, show that “Hamlet” can and ought to be studied with special profit by Catholics.
Suppose that one begins with “Hamlet,” having cleared the ground, and then takes the greatest of the tragi-comedies, “The Merchant of Venice.” Here opens a new field. Before beginning this play, it would be well to read Mgr. Seton’s paper on the Jews in Europe, in his excellent “Essays, Chiefly Roman.” It will give one an excellent idea of the attitude of the Church towards Shylock’s countrymen, and do away with the impression that Antonio was acting in accordance with that attitude when he treated Shylock as less than a human being. Portia not only offers a valuable contrast to the weakness of Ophelia and the criminal weakness of Gertrude, but she is a type of the ideal noblewoman of her time, whose only weakness is love for a man of lesser nobility than herself, but who holds his honor as greater than life or love.
Shakspere’s “Julius Cæsar,” for comparison with “Hamlet,” might come next, and after that the most lyrical and poetical of all the comedies, “As You Like It,” or perhaps “The Tempest,” with Prospero’s simple but strong assertion of belief in immortality.
Having studied these four great works, with as much of the literature they suggest as practicable, a distinct advance in cultivation will have been made. The best college in the country can give one no more. But they must be _studied_, not read. He who does not know these plays misses part of his heritage; for the plays of Shakspere belong more to the Catholic than to the non-Catholic. Shakspere was the fine flower of culture nurtured under Catholic influences.
X. Of Talk, Work, and Amusement.
There are too many etiquette books—too much about the outward look of things, and too little about the inward. Manners make a great difference in this world—we all discover that sooner or later; but later we find out that there are some principles which keep society together more than manners. If manners are the flower, these principles are the roots which intricately bind earth and crumbling rocks together and make a safe footing. To-day the end of preaching seems to be to teach the outward form, without the inward light that gives the form all its value. By preaching I mean the talk and advice that permeate the newspapers and books of social instruction.
Manners are only good, after all, when they represent something. What does it matter whether Mr. Jupiter makes a charming host at his own table or not, if he sit silent a few minutes after some of his guests are gone, and listen to the horrors that one who stays behind tells of them? And if Mrs. Juno, whose manners at her “at home” are perfect, sits down and rips and tears at the characters of the acquaintances she has just fed with coffee and whatever else answers to the fatted calf, shall we believe that she is useful to society?
There is harmless gossip which has its place; in life it is like the details in a novel; it is amusing and interesting, because it belongs to humanity—and what that is human is alien to us? So far as gossip concerns the lights and shades of character, the minor miseries and amusing happenings of life, what honest man or woman has not a taste for it? And who values a friend less because his peculiarities make us smile?
But by and by there comes into the very corner of the fireside a guest who disregards the crown of roses which every man likes to hang above his door. The roses mean silence—or, at least, that all things that pass under them shall be sweetened by the breath of hospitality; and he adds a little to the smile of kindly tolerance, and he paints it as a sneer. “You must forgive me for telling you,” he whispers, when he is safely sheltered beneath your friend’s garland of roses; “but Theseus spoke of you the other night in a way that made my blood boil.”
And then the friendship of years is snapped; and then the harmless jest, in which Theseus’s friend would have delighted even at his own expense if he had been present, becomes a jagged bullet in an ulcerated wound. _Sub rosâ_ was a good phrase with the old Latins, but who minds it now? It went out of fashion when the public began to pay newspaper reporters for looking through keyholes, and for stabbing the hearts of the innocent in trying to prove somebody guilty. It went out of fashion when private letters became public property and a man might, without fear of disgrace, print, or sell to be printed, any scrap of paper belonging to another that had fallen into his hands.
A very wise man—a gentle man and a loyal man—once said, “A man may be judged by what he believes.” If we could learn the truth of this early in life, what harm could be done us by the creature who tears the thorns out of our hospitable roses, and goes about lacerating hearts with them? When we hear that Jason has called us a fool, we should not be so ready to cry out with all our breath that he is a scoundrel—because we should not be so ready to believe that Jason, who was a decent fellow yesterday, should suddenly have become the hater of a good friend to-day. And when, under stress of unrighteous indignation, we have called Jason a scoundrel, the listener can hardly wait until he has informed Jason of the enormity; “and thereby hangs a tale.”
But when we get older and wiser, we do not ask many people to sit under our roses; and those whom we ask we trust implicitly. In time—so happily is our experience—we believe no evil of any man with whom we have ever cordially shaken hands. Then we begin to enjoy life; and we, too, choose our acquaintances by their unwillingness to believe evil of others. And as for the man who has eaten our salt, we become so optimistic about him that we would not even believe that he could write a stupid book; and that is the _nirvâna_ of belief in one’s friends.
Less manners, we pray—less talk about the handling of a fork and the angle of a bow, and more respect for the roses. Of course, one of us may have said yesterday, after dinner, that Jason ought not to talk so much about his brand-new coat-of-arms; or that Ariadne, who was a widow, you know, might cease to chant the praise of number one in the presence of number two. But do we not admire the solid qualities of both Jason and Ariadne? And yet who shall make them believe that when the little serpent wriggles from our hearthstone to theirs?
It is a settled fact that young people must be amused. It is a settled fact, or rather an accepted fact, that they must be amused much more than their predecessors were amused. It is useless to ask why. Life in the United States has become more complicated, more artificial, more civilized, if you will; and that Jeffersonian simplicity which De Tocqueville and De Bacourt noted has almost entirely disappeared. The theatre has assumed more license than ever; it amuses—it does not attempt to instruct; and spectacles are tolerated by decent people which would have been frowned upon some years ago. There is no question that the drama is purer than it ever was before; but the spectacle, the idiotic farce, and the light opera are more silly and more indecent than within the memory of man. The toleration of these things all shows that, in the craving for amusement, high principle and reasonable rules of conduct are forgotten.
A serious question of social importance is: How can the rage for amusement be kept within proper bounds? How can it be regulated? How can it be prevented from making the heart and the head empty and even corrupt? In many ways our country and our time are serious enough. We need, perhaps, a touch of that cheerful lightness which makes the life of the Viennese and of the Parisian agreeable and bright—which enables him to get color and interest into the most commonplace things. But our lightness and cheerfulness are likely to be spasmodic and extravagant. We are not pleased with little things; it takes a great deal to give us delight; our children are men and women too early; we do not understand simplicity—unless it is sold at a high price with an English label on it. Luxuries have become necessities, and even the children demand refinements of enjoyment of which their parents did not dream in the days gone by.
And yet the essence of American social life ought to be simplicity. We have no traditions to support; a merely rich man without a great family name owes nothing to society, except to help those poorer than himself; he has not inherited those great establishments which your English or Spanish high lord must keep up or tarnish the family name. We have no great families in America whose traditions are not those of simplicity and honesty, and these are the only traditions they are bound to cherish. In this way our aristocracy—if we have such a thing—ought to be the purest in the world and the most simple. There is no reason why we should pick up all the baubles that the effete folk of the Old World are throwing away.
Whether we are to achieve simplicity, and consequently cheerfulness, in every-day life depends entirely on the women. It is remarkable how many Catholic women bred in good schools enter society and run a mad race in search of frivolities. In St. Francis de Sales’s “Letters to People in the World” there is a record of a lady “who had long remained in such subjection to the humors of her husband, that in the very height of her devotions and ardors she was obliged to wear a low dress, and was all loaded with vanity outside; and, except at Easter, could never communicate unless secretly and unknown to every one—and yet she rose high in sanctity.”
But St. Francis de Sales had other words for those women of the world who rushed into all the complications of luxury, and yet who defended their frivolity by the phrase “duty to society.” The woman who serves her children best serves society. And she best serves her children by cultivating her heart and mind to the utmost; and by teaching them that one of the best things in life is simplicity, and that it is much easier to be a Christian when one is content with a little than when one is constantly discontented with a great deal. If the old New England love for simplicity in the ordinary way of life could be revived among Catholics, and sanctified by the amiable spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, the world would be a better place.
Father Faber tells us what even greater men have told us before—that each human being has his vocation in life. And we nearly all accept it as true, but the great difficulty is to realize it. Ruskin says that work is not a curse; but that a man must like his work, feel that he can do it well, and not have too much of it to do. The sum of all this means that he shall be contented in his work, and find his chief satisfaction in doing it well. It is not what we do, but _how_ we do it, that makes success.
The greatest enemy to a full understanding of the word vocation among Americans is the belief that it means solely the acquirement of money. And the reason for this lies not in the character of the American—who is no more mercenary than other people—but in the idea that wealth is within the grasp of any man who works for it. The money standard, therefore, is the standard of success. But success to the eyes of the world is not always success to the man himself. The accumulation of wealth often leaves him worn-out, dissatisfied, with a feeling that he has somehow missed the best of life. That man has probably missed his vocation and done the wrong thing, in spite of the opinion outside of himself that he has succeeded.
The frequent missing of vocations in life is due to false ideas about education. The parent tries to throw all the responsibility of education on the teacher, and the teacher has no time for individual moulding. A boy grows up learning to read and to write, like other boys. He may be apt with his head or his hands, but how few parents see the aptitude in the right light! It ought to be considered and seriously cultivated. The tastes of youth may not always be indications of the future: they often change with circumstances and surroundings. But they are just as often unerring indications of the direction in which the child’s truest success in the world will lie. If a boy play at swinging a censer when he is little, or enjoy the sight of burning candles on a toy altar, it is not an infallible sign that he will be a priest. And yet the rosary that young Newman drew on his slate, when he was a boy, doubtless meant something.
“The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” Longfellow sings. He who comprehends them gets near to the heart of youth. But who tries to do it? The boy is as great an enigma to his father, as a rule, as the old sphinx in the Egyptian desert is to passing travellers. And who but his father ought to have the key to the boy’s mind, and find his way into its recesses so gently and carefully that the question of his child’s vocation would be an easy one for him to answer?
If the religious vocations in this country are not equal in number to what they ought to be, we may attribute it to these two causes: the general desire to make money, and the placid indifference of parents. A boy is sent to “school”—school implying a sort of factory from which human creatures are turned out polished and finished, but not ready for any special work in a world which demands specialists. And what is specialism but the industrious working out of a vocation?
God is very good to a man when that man is true to his vocation. To be content in one’s work is almost happiness. To do one’s work for the eyes of God is to be as near happiness as any creature can come to it in this world. Fortunate are they who, like the old sculptors of the roof of “the cathedral over sea,” learn early in life, as Miss Eleanor Donnelly puts it,—
“That nothing avails us under the sun, In word or in work, save that which is done For the honor and glory of God alone.”
Direction and coercion are two different things. The parents who mistake one for the other make a fatal error. Direction is the flower, coercion the weed that grows beside it, and kills its strength and sweetness.
The true gospel of work begins with the consideration of vocation, and the prayers and the appeals to the sacraments that ought to accompany it. This is the genesis of that gospel. It is true that if a man can be helped to take care of the first twenty years of his life, the last twenty years will take care of him. Those who find their vocation are blessed—
“And they are the sculptors whose works shall last, Whose names shall shine as the stars on high, When deep in the dust of a ruined past The labors of selfish souls shall lie.”
XI. The Little Joys of Life.
Has enthusiasm gone out of fashion? Are the young no longer hero-worshippers? A recent writer complains of the sadness of American youth. “The absence of animal spirits among our well-to-do young people is a striking contrast to the exuberance of that quality in most European countries,” says this author, in the _Atlantic Monthly_.
Our young people laugh very much, but they are not, as a rule, cheerful; and they are amiable only when they “feel like being amiable.” This is the most fatal defect in American manners among the young. The consideration for others shown only when a man is entirely at peace with himself is not politeness at all: it is the most unrefined manifestation of selfishness.