Part 25

Macaulay’s ‘party-spirit’ is another consequence of his positiveness. When he inclines to a side, he inclines to it too much. His opinions are a shade too strong; his predilections some degrees at least too warm. William is too perfect, James too imperfect. The Whigs are a trifle like angels; the Tories like, let us say, ‘our inferiors.’ Yet this is evidently an honest party-spirit. It does not lurk in the corners of sentences, it is not insinuated without being alleged; it does not, like the unfairness of Hume, secrete itself so subtly in the turns of the words, that when you look to prove it, it is gone. On the contrary, it rushes into broad day. William is loaded with panegyric; James is always spoken evil of. Hume’s is the artful pleading of a hired advocate; Macaulay’s the bold eulogy of a sincere friend. As far as effect goes, this is an error. The very earnestness of the affection leads to a reaction; we are tired of having William called the ‘just;’ we cannot believe so many pages; ‘all that’ can scarcely be correct. As we said, if the historian’s preference for persons and parties had been duly tempered and mitigated, if the probably good were only said to be probably good, if the rather bad were only alleged to be rather bad, the reader would have been convinced, and the historian would have escaped the savage censure of envious critics.

The one thing which detracts from the pleasure of reading these volumes, is the doubt whether they should have been written. Should not these great powers be reserved for great periods? Is this abounding, picturesque style suited for continuous history? Are small men to be so largely described? Should not admirable delineation be kept for admirable people? We think so. You do not want Raphael to paint sign-posts, or Palladio to build dirt-pies. Much of history is necessarily of little value,—the superficies of circumstance, the scum of events. It is very well to have it described, indeed you must have it described; the chain must be kept complete; the narrative of a country’s fortunes will not allow of breaks or gaps. Yet all things need not be done equally well. The life of a great painter is short. Even the industry of Macaulay will not complete this history. It is a pity to spend such powers on such events. It would have been better to have some new volumes of essays solely on great men and great things. The diffuseness of the style would have been then in place; we could have borne to hear the smallest _minutiæ_ of magnificent epochs. If an inferior hand had executed the connecting-links, our notions would have acquired an insensible perspective; the works of the great artist, the best themes, would have stood out from the canvas. They are now confused by the equal brilliancy of the adjacent inferiorities.

Much more might be said on this narrative. As it will be read for very many years, it will employ the critics for very many years. It would be unkind to make all the best observations. Something, as Mr. Disraeli said in a budget-speech, something should be left for ‘future statements of this nature.’ There will be an opportunity. Whatever those who come after may say against this book, it will be, and remain, the ‘Pictorial History of England.’

_BERANGER._[12]

(1857.)

The invention of books has at least one great advantage. It has half-abolished one of the worst consequences of the diversity of languages. Literature enables nations to understand one another. Oral intercourse hardly does this. In English a distinguished foreigner says not what he thinks, but what he can. There is a certain intimate essence of national meaning which is as untranslatable as good poetry. Dry thoughts are cosmopolitan; but the delicate associations of language which express character, the traits of speech which mark the man, differ in every tongue, so that there are not even cumbrous circumlocutions that are equivalent in another. National character is a deep thing—a shy thing; you cannot exhibit much of it to people who have a difficulty in understanding your language; you are in strange society, and you feel you will not be understood. ‘Let an English gentleman,’ writes Mr. Thackeray, ‘who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris, say at the end of any given period how much he knows of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends he has made. Intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people. Year by year we live in France, and grow grey and see no more. We play _écarté_ with Monsieur de Trêfle every night; but what do we know of the heart of the man—of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trêfle? We have danced with Countess Flicflac Tuesdays and Thursdays ever since the peace; and how far are we advanced in her acquaintance since we first twirled her round a room? We know her velvet gown and her diamonds; we know her smiles and her simpers and her rouge; but the real, rougeless, _intime_ Flicflac we know not.’[13] Even if our words did not stutter, as they do stutter on our tongue, she would not tell us what she is. Literature has half mended this. Books are exportable; the essence of national character lies flat on a printed page. Men of genius with the impulses of solitude produce works of art, whose words can be read and re-read and partially taken in by foreigners to whom they could never be uttered, the very thought of whose unsympathising faces would freeze them on the surface of the mind. Alexander Smith has accused poetical reviewers of beginning as far as possible from their subject. It may seem to some, though it is not so really, that we are exemplifying this saying in commencing as we have commenced an article on Béranger.

There are two kinds of poetry—which one may call poems of this world, and poems not of this world. We see a certain society on the earth held together by certain relations, performing certain acts, exhibiting certain phenomena, calling forth certain emotions. The millions of human beings who compose it have their various thoughts, feelings, and desires. They hate, act, and live. The social bond presses them closely together; and from their proximity new sentiments arise which are half superficial and do not touch the inmost soul, but which nevertheless are unspeakably important in the actual constitution of human nature, and work out their effects for good and for evil on the characters of those who are subjected to their influence. These sentiments of the world, as one may speak, differ from the more primitive impulses and emotions of our inner nature as the superficial phenomena of the material universe from what we fancy is its real essence. Passing hues, transient changes have their course before our eyes; a multiplex diorama is for ever displayed; underneath it all we fancy—such is the inevitable constitution of our thinking faculty—a primitive immovable essence, which is modified into all the ever-changing phenomena we see, which is the grey granite whereon they lie, the primary substance whose _débris_ they all are. Just so from the original and primitive emotions of man, society—the evolving capacity of combined action—brings out desires which seem new, in a sense are new, which have no existence out of the society itself, are coloured by its customs at the moment, change with the fashions of the age. Such a principle is what we may call social gaiety: the love of combined amusement which all men feel and variously express, and which is to the higher faculties of the soul what a gay running stream is to the everlasting mountain—a light, altering element which beautifies while it modifies. Poetry does not shrink from expressing such feelings; on the contrary, their renovating cheerfulness blends appropriately with her inspiriting delight. Each age and each form of the stimulating imagination has a fashion of its own. Sir Walter sings in his modernised chivalry:

‘Waken, lords and ladies gay, On the mountain dawns the day; All the jolly chase is here, With hawk and horse and hunting-spear. Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling, Merrily, merrily, mingle they: Waken, lords and ladies gay.

‘Louder, louder chant the lay, Waken, lords and ladies gay; Tell them youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we. Time, stern huntsman, who can balk? Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk; Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladies gay.’

The poet of the people, ‘_vilain et très vilain_,’ sings with the pauper Bohemian:

‘Voir, c’est avoir. Allons courir! Vie errante Est chose enivrante. Voir, c’est avoir. Allons courir! Car tout voir, c’est tout conquérir.

‘Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil, De lois vaines, De lourdes chaines; Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil, Ni berceau, ni toit, ni cercueil. Mais croyez-en notre gaîté, Noble ou prêtre, Valet ou maître; Mais, croyez-en notre gaîté, Le bonheur, c’est la liberté.

‘Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté, Noble ou prêtre, Valet ou maître; Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté, Le bonheur, c’est la liberté.’

The forms of these poems of social amusement are, in truth, as various as the social amusement itself. The variety of the world, singularly various as it everywhere is, is nowhere so various as in that. Men have more ways of amusing themselves than of doing anything else they do. But the essence—the characteristic—of these poems everywhere is, that they express more or less well the lighter desires of human nature;—those that have least of unspeakable depth, partake most of what is perishable and earthly, and least of the immortal soul. The objects of these desires are social accidents; excellent, perhaps, essential, possibly—so is human nature made—in one form and variety or another, to the well-being of the soul, yet in themselves transitory, fleeting, and in other moods contemptible. The old saying was, that to endure solitude a man must either be a beast or a god. It is in the lighter play of social action, in that which is neither animal nor divine, which in its half-way character is so natural to man, that these poems of society, which we have called poems of amusement, have their place.

This species does not, however, exhaust the whole class. Society gives rise to another sort of poems, differing from this one as contemplation differs from desire. Society may be thought of as an object. The varied scene of men,—their hopes, fears, anxieties, maxims, actions,—presents a sight more interesting to man than any other which has ever existed, or which can exist; and it may be viewed in all moods of mind, and with the change of inward emotion as the external object seems to change: not that it really does so, but that some sentiments are more favourable to clear-sightedness than others are; and some bring before us one aspect of the subject, and fix our attention upon it, others a different one, and bind our minds to that likewise. Among the most remarkable of these varied views is the world’s view of itself. The world, such as it is, has made up its mind what it is. Childishly deceivable by charlatans on every other subject,—imposed on by pedantry, by new and unfounded science, by ancient and unfounded reputation, a prey to pomposity, overrun with recondite fools, ignorant of all else,—society knows itself. The world knows a man of the world. A certain tradition pervades it; a _disciplina_ of the market-place teaches what the collective society of men has ever been, and what, so long as the nature of man is the same, it cannot and will not cease to be. Literature, the written expression of human nature in every variety, takes up this variety likewise. Ancient literature exhibits it from obvious causes in a more simple manner than modern literature can. Those who are brought up in times like the present necessarily hear a different set of opinions, fall in with other words, are under the shadow of a higher creed. In consequence, they cannot have the simple _naïveté_ of the old world; they cannot speak with easy equanimity of the fugitiveness of life, the necessity of death, of goodness as a mean, of sin as an extreme. The theory of the universe has ceased to be an open question. Still the spirit of Horace is alive, and as potent as that of any man. His tone is that of prime ministers; his easy philosophy is that of courts and parliaments; you may hear his words where no other foreign words are ever heard. He is but the extreme and perfect type of a whole class of writers, some of whom exist in every literary age, and who give an expression to what we may call the poetry of equanimity, that is, the world’s view of itself; its self-satisfaction, its conviction that you must bear what comes, not hope for much, think _some_ evil, never be excited, admire little, and then you will be at peace. This creed does not sound attractive in description. Nothing, it has been said, is so easy as to be ‘religious on paper:’ on the other hand, it is rather difficult to be worldly in speculation; the mind of man, when its daily maxims are put before it, revolts from anything so stupid, so mean, so poor. It requires a consummate art to reconcile men in print to that moderate and insidious philosophy which creeps into all hearts, colours all speech, influences all action. We may not stiffen common sense into a creed; our very ambition forbids:—

‘It hears a voice within us tell Calm’s not life’s crown, though calm is well: ’Tis all perhaps which man acquires; But ’tis not what our youth desires.’

Still a great artist may succeed in making ‘calm’ interesting. Equanimity has its place in literature; the poetry of equipoise is possible. Poems of society have, thus, two divisions: that which we mentioned first, the expression of the feelings which are called out by the accidents of society; next, the harmonised expression of that philosophy of indifference with which the world regards the fortunes of individuals and its own.

We have said that no modern nation can produce literature embodying this kind of cool reflection and delineation as it was once produced. By way of compensation, however, it may be, it no doubt is, easier now to produce the lyrical kind of poems of society—the light expression of its light emotions—than it was in ancient times. Society itself is better. There is something hard in Paganism, which is always felt even in the softest traits of the most delicate society in antiquity. The social influence of women in modern times gives an interest, a little pervading excitement, to social events. Civilisation, besides, has made comfort possible; it has, at least in part, created a scene in which society can be conducted. Its petty conveniences may or may not be great benefits according to a recondite philosophy; but there can be no doubt that for actual men and women in actual conversation it is of the greatest importance that their feet should not be cold; that their eyes and mouths should not be troubled with smoke; that sofas should be good, and attractive chairs many. Modern times have the advantage of the ancient in the scenery of flirtation. The little boy complained that you could not find ‘drawing-room’ in the dictionary. Perhaps even because our reflections are deeper, our inner life less purely pagan, our apparent life is softer and easier. Some have said, that one reason why physical science made so little progress in ancient times was, that people were in doubt about more interesting things; men must have, it has been alleged, a settled creed as to human life and human hopes, before they will attend to shells and snails and pressure. And whether this be so or not, perhaps a pleasant society is only possible to persons at ease as to what is beyond society. Those only can lie on the grass who fear no volcano underneath, and can bear to look at the blue vault above.

Among modern nations it is not difficult to say where we should look for success in the art of social poetry. ‘Wherever,’ said Mr. Lewes the other day, ‘the French go, they take what they call their civilisation—that is, a _café_ and a theatre.’ And though this be a trifle severe, yet in its essence its meaning is correct. The French have in some manner or other put their mark on all the externals of European life. The essence of every country remains little affected by their teaching; but in all the superficial embellishments of society they have enjoined the fashion; and the very language in which those embellishments are spoken of, shows at once whence they were derived. Something of this is doubtless due to the accidents of a central position, and an early and prolonged political influence; but more to a certain neatness of nature, a certain finish of the senses, which enables them more easily than others to touch lightly the light things of society, to see the _comme-il-faut_. ‘I like,’ said a good judge, ‘to hear a Frenchman talk; he strikes a light.’ On a hundred topics he gives the bright sharp edge, where others have only a blunt approximation.

Nor is this anticipation disappointed. Reviewers do not advance such theories unless they correspond with known results. For many years the French have not been more celebrated for memoirs which professedly describe a real society than they have been for the light social song which embodies its sentiments and pours forth its spirit. The principle on which such writings are composed is the taking some incident—not voluntarily (for the incident doubtless of itself takes a hold on the poet’s mind)—and out of that incident developing all which there is in it. A grave form is of course inconsistent with such art. The spirit of such things is half-mirthful; a very profound meaning is rarely to be expected; but little incidents are not destitute of meaning, and a delicate touch will delineate it in words. A profound excitement likewise such poems cannot produce; they do not address the passions or the intuitions, the heart or the soul, but a gentle pleasure, half sympathy, half amusement, is that at which they aim. They do not please us equally in all moods of mind: sometimes they seem nothing and nonsense, like society itself. We must not be too active or too inactive, to like them; the tension of mind must not be too great; in our highest moods the littlenesses of life are petty; the mind must not be obtusely passive; light touches will not stimulate a sluggish inaction. This dependence on the mood of mind of the reader makes it dangerous to elucidate this sort of art by quotation; Béranger has, however, the following:—

‘_Laideur et Beauté._

‘Sa trop grande beauté m’obsède; C’est un masque aisément trompeur. Oui, je voudrais qu’elle fût laide, Mais laide, laide à faire peur. Belle ainsi faut-il que je l’aime! Dieu, reprends ce don éclatant; Je le demande à l’enfer même: Qu’elle soit laide et que je l’aime autant.

‘A ces mots m’apparaît le diable; C’est le père de la laideur. “Rendons-la,” dit-il, “effroyable, De tes rivaux trompons l’ardeur. J’aime assez ces métamorphoses. Ta belle ici vient en chantant; Perles, tombez; fanez-vous, roses: La voilà laide, et tu l’aimes autant.”

‘—Laide! moi? dit-elle étonnée. Elle s’approche d’un miroir, Doute d’abord, puis, consternée, Tombe en un morne désespoir. “Pour moi seul tu jurais de vivre,” Lui dis-je, à ses pieds me jetant; “A mon seul amour il te livre. Plus laide encore, je t’aimerais autant.”

‘Ses yeux éteints fondent en larmes, Alors sa douleur m’attendrit. “Ah! rendez, rendez-lui ses charmes.” “—Soit!” répond Satan, qui sourit. Ainsi que naît la fraîche aurore, Sa beauté renaît à l’instant. Elle est, je crois, plus belle encore: Elle est plus belle, et moi je l’aime autant.

‘Vite au miroir elle s’assure Qu’on lui rend bien tous ses appas; Des pleurs restent sur sa figure, Qu’elle essuie en grondant tout bas. Satan s’envole, et la cruelle Fuit et s’écrie en me quittant: “Jamais fille que Dieu fit belle Ne doit aimer qui peut l’aimer autant.”’

And this is even a more characteristic specimen:

‘_La Mouche._

‘Au bruit de notre gaîté folle, Au bruit des verres, des chansons, Quelle mouche murmure et vole, Et revient quand nous la chassons? (_bis._) C’est quelque dieu, je le soupçonne, Qu’un peu de bonheur rend jaloux. Ne souffrons point qu’elle bourdonne, } Qu’elle bourdonne autour de nous. } (_bis._)

‘Transformée en mouche hideuse, Amis, oui, c’est, j’en suis certain, La Raison, déité grondeuse, Qu’irrite un si joyeux festin. L’orage approche, le ciel tonne, Voilà ce que dit son courroux. Ne souffrons point qu’elle bourdonne, Qu’elle bourdonne autour de nous.

‘C’est la Raison qui vient me dire: “A ton âge on vit en reclus. Ne bois plus tant, cesse de rire, Cesse d’aimer, ne chante plus.” Ainsi son beffroi toujours sonne Aux lueurs des feux les plus doux. Ne souffrons point qu’elle bourdonne, Qu’elle bourdonne autour de nous.

‘C’est la Raison, gare à Lisette! Son dard la menace toujours. Dieux! il perce la collerette: Le sang coule! accourez, Amours! Amours! poursuivez la félonne; Qu’elle expire enfin sous vos coups. Ne souffrons point qu’elle bourdonne, Qu’elle bourdonne autour de nous.

‘Victoire! amis, elle se noie Dans l’aï que Lise a versé. Victoire! et qu’aux mains de la Joie Le sceptre enfin soit replacé. (_bis._) Un souffle ébranle sa couronne; Une mouche nous troublait tous. Ne craignons plus qu’elle bourdonne, } Qu’elle bourdonne autour de nous.’ } (_bis._)

To make poetry out of a fly is a difficult operation. It used to be said of the Lake school of criticism, in Mr. Wordsworth’s early and more rigid days, that there was no such term as ‘elegant’ in its nomenclature. The reason is that, dealing, or attempting to deal, only with the essential aboriginal principles of human nature, that school had no room and no occasion for those minor contrivances of thought and language which are necessary to express the complex accumulation of little feelings, the secondary growth of human emotion. The underwood of nature is ‘elegant;’ the bare ascending forest-tree despises what is so trivial,—it is grave and solemn. To such verses, on the other hand, as have been quoted, ‘elegance’ is essential; the delicate finish of fleeting forms is the only excellence they can have.