Part 18

This is quoted in Plutarch’s _Lives_. Isocrates was asked why he taught rhetoric so much and yet spoke so rarely; and this was his reply. Horace (_Ars Poetica_ 304) playfully says that he is no longer able to write verses but he will teach others to write, adding “a whetstone is not used for cutting, but is used for sharpening steel nevertheless.”

The career of Isocrates, “that old man eloquent,”[31] is extremely interesting. He preserved his energy and his influence to the end of his long life of 98 years.

* * * * *

From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods there be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

SWINBURNE (_The Garden of Proserpine_).

A very musical expression of a very ugly thought.

* * * * *

Women never betray themselves to men as they do to each other.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).

* * * * *

THE RETREAT

Happy those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought: When yet I had not walk’d above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of His bright face: When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity: Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to ev’ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th’ enlighten’d spirit sees That shady City of Palm-trees! But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.

HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695).

I include this poem, although it is in the anthologies, because from my own experience a young reader will not see its beauty without some words of explanation. It is the precursor of the greatest ode ever written, Wordsworth’s _Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood_. Wordsworth, Vaughan, and many others believe that we had a separate existence before we came into this world (and there is much in the experience of each of us to warrant that belief). Wordsworth says:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar.

But in order to appreciate either Wordsworth’s or Vaughan’s poem it is not necessary to have this belief in a past separate existence—it is enough to realize that

Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.

* * * * *

One may see the small value God has for riches by the people He gives them to.

ALEXANDER POPE.

* * * * *

There’s a fancy some lean to and others hate— That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world’s congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series; Only the scale’s to be changed, that’s all.

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven’s serene,— When our faith in the same has stood the test— Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labour are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God: And I have had troubles enough, for one.

R. BROWNING (_Old Pictures in Florence_).

Browning in his last poem, the well-known “Epilogue,” speaks with another voice. He wishes his friends to think of him after death as he was when alive:—

One who never turned his back but marched breast-forward. Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, “Strive and thrive!” cry, “Speed,—fight on, fare ever, There as here!”

F. W. H. Myers wrote:—

We need a summons to no houri-haunted paradise, no passionless contemplation, no monotony of prayer and praise; but to endless advance by endless effort, and, if need be, by endless pain. Be it mine, then, to plunge among the unknown Destinies—to dare and still to dare!

Emerson’s heaven also was

Built of furtherance and pursuing, Not of spent deeds, but of doing.

(“Threnody.”)

* * * * *

In life, Love comes first. Indeed, _we_ only come because Love calls for us. We find it waiting with outstretched arms on arrival. Love is the beginning of everything.

F. W. BOREHAM (_Faces in the Fire_).

* * * * *

Our daies are full of dolor and disease, Our life afflicted with incessant paine, That nought on earth may lessen or appease. Why then should I desire here to remaine? Or why should he that loves me, sorie bee For my deliverence, or at all complaine My good to hear, and tóward joyes to see?

EDMUND SPENSER (_Daphnaïda_).

_Tóward_, “approaching.”

* * * * *

My closing remark is as to avoiding debates that are in their very nature interminable.... There is a certain intensity of emotion, interest, bias or prejudice if you will, that can neither reason nor be reasoned with. On the purely intellectual side, the disqualifying circumstances are complexity and vagueness. If a topic necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, the essay may do something for it, but not the debate. Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, and unsettled terms. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects, each, perhaps, in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy terms will make a debate that is pretty sure to end as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, may contain within it capacities of misunderstanding, cross-purposes, and pointless issues, sufficient to occupy the long night of Pandemonium, or beguile the journey to the nearest fixed star.

ALEXANDER BAIN (_Contemporary Review, April, 1877_).

From an address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society.

* * * * *

Diogenes, seeing Neptune’s temple with votive pictures of those saved from wreck, says, “Yea, but where are they painted, that have been drowned?”

BACON.

* * * * *

THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM

I saw her at the County Ball: There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far Of all that set young hearts romancing; She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!

Through sunny May, through sultry June, I loved her with a love eternal; I spoke her praises to the moon, I wrote them to the Sunday Journal: My mother laugh’d: I soon found out That ancient ladies have no feeling; My father frown’d: but how should gout See any happiness in kneeling?...

She smiled on many, just for fun,— I knew that there was nothing in it; I was the first—the only one Her heart had thought of for a minute.— I knew it, for she told me so, In phrase which was divinely moulded; She wrote a charming hand,—and oh! How sweetly all her notes were folded! ... We parted; months and years roll’d by We met again four summers after: Our parting was all sob and sigh; Our meeting was all mirth and laughter: For in my heart’s most secret cell There had been many other lodgers; And she was not the ball-room’s Belle, But only—Mrs. Something Rogers!

W. M. PRAED.

* * * * *

A canon of my own in judging verses is that no man has a right to put into metre what he can as well say out of metre. To which I may add, as a corollary, that _a fortiore_ he has no right to put into metre what he can better say out of metre.

W. S. LILLY (_Essay on George Eliot_).

* * * * *

Aujourd’hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.

(Now-a-days when a thing is not worth saying they sing it—_i.e._ put it in a song.)

BEAUMARCHAIS (_Le Barbier de Séville_, Act I. Sc. I.)

* * * * *

I do not know whether I gave you at any time the details of my work here, or the principles upon which I have been proceeding.... Some of the work set down includes Ancient Ethics—which is almost entirely grossly wrong and great rubbish also. This part I have persistently refused to get up, not because I disliked it, but because it is decidedly injurious to warp and twist the brain by impressing it with wrong thoughts and systems—just as it would be insane in the polisher of a mirror to think it would reflect the external world more truly, if he gave it a dint here, a scratch there, a bulge in another place, and so forth. It would take me too long to describe the details. Suffice it to say that one of the examiners in Mental Philosophy and in Moral and Political Philosophy is an old, _blind_ (literally) man of the old school, who gave a very abnormally large amount of questions relating to Ancient Ethics, and an abnormally large amount to the _early_ part of English Ethics—leaving hardly any marks to be scored by thorough understanding and ability to use the principles of the subjects.

The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spencerian. Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because “there was too much of Spencer and myself!” So that instead of _criticism and originality_, he avowedly preferred _mere reproduction_, a good example of the slavishness of that method of examination predominant mostly, which, as Spencer wrote to me some time ago, is devised for testing a man’s “power of acquisition instead of using that which has been acquired.”

RICHARD HODGSON (1855-1905) (_Letter, Dec., 1881_).

This letter was written to me from Cambridge, when Hodgson (see Preface) had found his immediate prospects blasted by the results of the Moral Science Tripos. No one was placed in the First Class and he (although at the head of the Tripos) only in the Second Class. This meant that he had no hope of a Fellowship, which would have enabled him to go on with original work in philosophy, and he would have to employ his time in earning a livelihood. Added to this was the cruel disappointment to his family and friends.

Hodgson was one of the most gifted men that Australia has produced. He had completed his M.A. and LL.D. courses in Melbourne by 1877, when he was twenty-two years of age, and then, discarding the profession of the law, left for Cambridge to read Mental and Moral Science. While still an undergraduate there he had written an article in reply to T. H. Green, and submitted it to Herbert Spencer, who highly approved of it, and sent it to the _Contemporary_. However, as stated above, Hodgson’s immediate future depended on the result of the examination. (He was at the time preparing one of the articles he contributed to _Mind_, and had in view further original work.)

When the result of the Tripos appeared, Henry Sidgwick and Venn who were then Lecturers and by far the best Moral Science men in Cambridge, came to sympathize with Hodgson, on the unfair result. They urged him to go to Germany so that he might acquire that perfect command of the German language which was necessary for his philosophic work. On learning that he was not in a position to do this, Sidgwick insisted—as he said, “in the interests of philosophy”—on defraying _the whole of the expenses_ of Hodgson’s residence in Germany. As he insisted strongly, Hodgson accepted the offer, and went to Jena, armed with a very flattering letter of introduction from Herbert Spencer to Haeckel.

Almost immediately after his return from Germany the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and Hodgson joined it. He came to the conclusion that the work of this Society was more important than any other study, while probably it would also be of fundamental assistance to philosophy. He went out to India in 1884, and thoroughly exposed Madame Blavatsky and her “Theosophy,” and, from about 1886, devoted the rest of his life to Psychical Research. Although maintaining his reading and his intimacy with Henry Sidgwick, William James, and others, his services practically became lost to philosophy. This, however, does not affect the important fact illustrated by the Tripos incident. We learn what ineptitude can exist in a great university, and what grave results must necessarily follow therefrom.

Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity (yet with a dauntless heart—see verse on Dedication page), his remarks on Ancient Ethics are not, in my opinion, exaggerated.

Herbert Spencer’s remark to Hodgson about examinations may also be noted.

* * * * *

_Prometheus._ And thou, O Mother Earth! _Earth._ I hear, I feel Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down Even to the adamantine central gloom Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy, And, through my withered, old, and icy frame The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down Circling. Henceforth the many children fair Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants, And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom Draining the poison of despair, shall take And interchange sweet nutriment.

SHELLEY (_Prometheus Unbound_, III, 3).

In Shelley’s great poem, Prometheus is not merely the Titan who, having stolen fire from heaven to benefit man, was chained to a pillar while an eagle tore at his vitals, he is the spirit of humanity. Man has (through superstition) given the god, Zeus, great powers which he uses to enslave and oppress man’s own mind and body. Ultimately the god is overthrown, Prometheus, the spirit of man, is released, and the world enters upon its progress towards perfection.

This and the following quotations are from a collection of references to Mother-Earth.

* * * * *

Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess, Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled, Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee!... Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement. Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold instincts. Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels; Laughed on their shores the wide seas; the yearning ocean swelled upward; Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains, Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Hymn to the Earth_).

An imitation of Stolberg’s _Hymne an die Erde_.

* * * * *

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun.

SHELLEY (_The Cloud_).

* * * * *

For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, ’Twill be time enough to die. Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover.

EMERSON (_Woodnotes_).

* * * * *

Long have I loved what I behold, The night that calms, the day that cheers; The common growth of mother-earth Suffices me—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears.

WORDSWORTH (_Peter Bell_).

* * * * *

So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother’s lap.

MILTON (_Paradise Lost_, XI, 535).

* * * * *

SONG OF PROSERPINE.

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.

If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the Hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.

SHELLEY.

Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, whilst gathering flowers with her playmates at Enna in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, also called Dis, god of the dead. (For two-thirds, or, according to later writers, one-half of each year, she returns to the earth, bringing spring and summer.)

That fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Was gathered; which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.

(_Paradise Lost_, IV, 269).

* * * * *

And ... the rich winds blow, And ... the waters go, And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer, Bowing their heads in the sunny air.... All make a music, gentle and strong, Bound by the heart into one sweet song; And amidst them all, the mother Earth Sits with the children of her birth.... Go forth to her from the dark and the dust And weep beside her, if weep thou must; If she may not hold thee to her breast, Like a weary infant, that cries for rest; At least she will press thee to her knee And tell a low, sweet tale to thee, Till the hue to thy cheek, and the light to thine eye Strength to thy limbs, and courage high To thy fainting heart return amain.

G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).

_Hold thee to her breast_, give rest in death.

* * * * *

Ne deeth, allas; ne wol nat han my life; will not take Thus walke I, lyk a restèlees caityf, restless wretch And on the ground, which is my modres gate, mother’s I knokke with my staf, both erly and late, And seyè, “levè moder, leet me in! say, “Dear mother Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin! waste away” Allas! whan shul my bonès be at reste?”

CHAUCER (1340-1400) (_The Pardoner’s Tale_).

* * * * *

Like a shadow thrown Softly and lightly from a passing cloud, Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay For noontide solace on the summer grass, The warm lap of his mother earth.

WORDSWORTH (_Excursion_ VII, 286).

* * * * *

And O green bounteous Earth! Bacchante Mother! stern to those Who live not in thy heart of mirth; Death shall I shrink from, loving thee? Into the breast that gives the rose Shall I with shuddering fall?

G. MEREDITH (_Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn_).

* * * * *

THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river....

“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan, (Laughed while he sat by the river,) “The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.” Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

E. B. BROWNING

* * * * *

There is little merit in inventing a happy idea, or attractive situation, so long as it is only the author’s voice which we hear. As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts, as soon as it has received existence, acts independently of the master’s impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relates what they do and say. Such creation is poetry in the literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. The gushing fullness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to its nature.

NIEBUHR (_Letters_, &c., Vol. III, 196).

* * * * *

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but, when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

SHELLEY (_A Defence of Poetry_).

* * * * *

Who would loose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night?

MILTON (_Paradise Lost_ ii., 146)

“Loose”—by committing suicide.

* * * * *

When the white block of marble shines so solid and so costly, who remembers that it was once made up of decaying shell and rotting bones and millions of dying insect-lives, pressed to ashes ere the rare stone was?

(_Chandos_).

* * * * *

The madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful—except to the future. And for the future, who cares—save those madmen themselves?

* * * * *

... The gods that most of all have pity on man, the gods of the Night and of the Grave.

* * * * *

Our eyes are set to the light, but our feet are fixed in the mire.

(_Folle-Farine_).

* * * * *