Part 27

God’s works—paint any one, and count it crime To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works Are here already; nature is complete: Suppose you reproduce her (which you can’t) There’s no advantage! You must beat her then.” For, don’t you mark? we’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, _painted_—better to us Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.

R. BROWNING (_Fra Lippo Lippi_).

* * * * *

For the folk through the fretful hours are hurled On the ruthless rush of the wondrous world, And none has leisure to lie and cull The blossoms, that made life beautiful In that old season when men could sing For dear delight in the risen Spring And Summer ripening fruit and flower. Now carefulness cankers every hour; We are too weary and sad to sing; Our pastime’s poisoned with thought-taking.

JOHN PAYNE (_Tournesol_).

* * * * *

I am much engaged, an old man and out of health, and I cannot spare time to answer your questions fully,—nor indeed can they be answered. Science has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any Revelation. As for a future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. Wishing you happiness, I remain, &c.

CHARLES DARWIN (_Letter to von Müller, June 5, 1879_).

This letter is reproduced in the _Life and Letters_, but evidently Francis Darwin did not know that the “German youth” to whom he says it was written was Baron Ferdinand von Müller, K.C.M.G. (1825-1896), then fifty-three years of age! Von Müller was director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens from 1857 to 1873, and died in Melbourne in 1896. He did important work in Australian botany.

As regards Darwin’s letter, it seems to me that a sufficient reason why a great and lovable man, who was at first a convinced believer in the immortality of the soul, became an agnostic is given in the next quotation. The higher aesthetic part of his brain had become atrophied.

Darwin himself thought that he had not given sufficient consideration to religious questions and was exceedingly anxious that his own agnostic views should not influence others,

* * * * *

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseates me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that (aesthetic) part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.... The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

CHARLES DARWIN.

This is from autobiographical notes made by Darwin for his children, and not intended for publication.

* * * * *

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her!

R. BROWNING (_One Word More_).

* * * * *

CHILDREN’S HYMN ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY.

At length has come the twilight dim. The sun has set, the day has died; And now we sing Thy holy hymn, O Mary maid, at eventide.

To Jewry, to that far-off land, Erstwhile there came a little Child; You led Him softly by the hand, He was so very small and mild.

Like us, He could not find his way, Although He was Our Lord, the King; And so we beg we may not stray, Nor do a sad or foolish thing.

Teach us the prayer that Jesus said, The words you sang and murmured low, When He was in His tiny bed, And all the earth was dark and slow.

Hushed are the trees, and the small wise bees, Our fathers are on the deep,— Little Mother, be good to us, please! It is time to go asleep.

VINCENT O’SULLIVAN.

* * * * *

WESLEY’S MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS

For an Ague:—Make six middling pills of cobwebs. Take one a little before the cold fit; two a little before the next fit (suppose the next day); the other three, if need be, a little before the third fit. This seldom fails.

A Cut:—Bind on toasted cheese. This will cure a deep cut.

A Fistula:—Grind an ounce of sublimate mercury as fine as possible.... (Two quarts of water to be added, then half a spoonful with two spoonfuls of water to be taken fasting every other day), ... In forty days this will also cure any cancer, any old sore or King’s evil.

_The Iliac Passion_:—Hold a live puppy constantly on the belly.

JOHN WESLEY (_Primitive Physic._ Ed. 1780).

The iliac passion, now known as _ileus_, is a severe colic due to intestinal obstruction.

It seems strange that so eminent a man should have believed in these absurd prescriptions, but as a matter of fact the book generally is much more sane and sound than one would expect from the habits and state of knowledge of the time. For example, in his rules of health Wesley strongly advises the practice of _cold bathing_, cleanliness, open-air exercise, moderation of food, etc. Also these prescriptions are chosen for their absurdity—in each case other more sensible remedies are offered. But Wesley in his preface says that he has omitted altogether from his book Cinchona bark, because it is “extremely dangerous.” This means that in regard to ague he omitted the only efficient remedy—which was much more unfortunate than his prescribing cobweb pills.

This book went to _thirty-six_ editions between 1747 and 1840.

* * * * *

“When shall our prayers end?” I tell thee, priest, when shoemakers make shoes, That are well sewed, with never a stitch amiss, And use no craft in uttering of the same; When tinkers make no more holes than they found, When thatchers think their wages worth their work, When Davie Diker digs and dallies not, When horsecorsers beguile no friends with jades, When printers pass no errors in their books, When pewterers infect no tin with lead, When silver sticks not on the Teller’s fingers, When sycophants can find no place in Court, ... When Laïs lives not like a lady’s peer Nor useth art in dyeing of her hair....

GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1525?-1577) (_The Steele Glas_).

* * * * *

All our life is a meeting of cross-roads, where the choice of directions is perilous.

VICTOR HUGO.

* * * * *

Rose-cheeked Laura, come; Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s Silent music, either other Sweetly gracing. Lovely forms do flow From concent divinely framed; Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s Birth is heavenly. These dull notes we sing Discords need for helps to grace them, Only beauty purely loving Knows no discord, But still moves delight, Like clear springs renewed by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them- Selves eternal.

THOMAS CAMPION (died 1619).

Richard Lovelace (1618-1655) subsequently wrote (_Orpheus to Beasts_):

O, could you view the melodie Of ev’ry grace, And musick of her face, You’d drop a teare, Seeing more harmonie In her bright eye, Then now you heare.

Then = _than_. See next quotation.

* * * * *

I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded blossom-like dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music?—to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years; concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy; blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman’s cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman’s love that moves us in a woman’s eyes—it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness—by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this _impersonal_ expression in beauty, and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the woman’s soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to come in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Adam Bede_).

George Eliot would not know the preceding poem by Campion, whose lyrics had been forgotten until A. H. Bullen revived them in 1889; and most probably also she did not know Lovelace’s poem, as it is not one of the two or three lyrics by which alone he is remembered.

* * * * *

Alas, how soon the hours are over Counted us out to play the lover! And how much narrower is the stage Allotted us to play the sage! But when we play the fool, how wide The theatre expands! beside, How long the audience sits before us! How many prompters! What a chorus!

W. S. LANDOR.

* * * * *

The degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakespeare’s faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet, and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man’s “intellectual nature,” and of his “moral nature,” as if these again were divisible and existed apart.... We ought to know, and to keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man’s spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital Force whereby he is and works?.... Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider it,—without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly _immoral_ man could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathize with it; that is, be _virtuously_ related to it.... Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small.

CARLYLE (_Heroes and Hero Worship, III_).

* * * * *

A little I will speak. I love thee then Not only for thy body packed with sweet Of all this world.... Not for this only do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods; And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where.

STEPHEN PHILLIPS (_Marpessa_).

* * * * *

Sometimes thou seem’st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are.

D. G. ROSSETTI (_Heart’s Compass_)

* * * * *

“IMBUTA”

The new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old, The heart is all athirst again, The drops are all of gold; We thought the cup was broken, And we thought the tale was told, But the new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old!

The flower of life had faded, The leaf was in its fall, The winter seemed so early To have reached us, once for all; But now the buds are breaking, There is grass above the mould, And the new wine, the new wine. It tasteth like the old!

The earth had grown so dreary, The sky so dull and grey; One was weeping in the darkness, One was sorrowing through the day: But a light from heaven gleams again, On water, wood, and wold, And the new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old!

For the loving lips are laughing, And the loving face is fair, Though a phantom hand is on the board, And phantom eyes are there; The phantom eyes are soft and sad, The phantom hand is cold, But the new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old!

We dare not look, we turn away, The precious draught to drain, ’Twere worse than madness, surely now, To lose it all again; To quivering lip, with clinging grasp, The fatal cup we hold, For the new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old! And life is short, and love is life, And so the tale is told, Though the new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old.

G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE.

The title evidently refers to _Horace_ Ep. 1, 2, 69, 70, Quo semel est _Imbuta_ recens servabit odorem testa diu. “The scent which once has flavoured the fresh jar will be preserved in it for many a day.” Moore no doubt had the same passage in his mind when, speaking of the memories of past joys, he wrote:

You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.

So Whyte-Melville says that when love is poured again into the heart of a man who has lost his first love, “The new wine, the new wine, It tasteth like the old.”

* * * * *

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

W. S. LANDOR.

* * * * *

The Toucan has an enormous bill, makes a noise like a puppy dog, and lays his eggs in hollow trees. How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of nature! To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with a bill a yard long, making a noise like a puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees? The Toucans, to be sure, might retort, to what purpose were gentlemen in Bond Street created? To what purpose were certain foolish prating Members of Parliament created?—pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country? There is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics of the Toucan.

SYDNEY SMITH (_Review of “Waterton’s Travels in South America”_).

* * * * *

Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude: a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall’s thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed her....

To-morrow this place will have a memory—the river and the meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries.

GEORGE MEREDITH (_The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_).

* * * * *

LETTY’S GLOBE

When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year, And her young artless words began to flow, One day we gave the child a coloured sphere Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, By tint and outline, all its sea and land. She patted all the world; old empires peeped Between her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss; But when we turned her sweet unlearnèd eye On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry— “Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!” And, while she hid all England with a kiss, Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.

Charles Tennyson, a brother of Lord Tennyson and author with him of _Poems by Two Brothers_, took the name of Turner.

* * * * *

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man’s search To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world.... This is life to come, Which martyr’d men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty— Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense, So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.

GEORGE ELIOT.

There is an infinite pathos in these lines. Having lost her faith in a future life, George Eliot tries to find consolation in the thought that, when she has passed into nothingness—when she “joins the choir invisible”—she will have done something to ennoble the minds of those who come after her. But why should generation after generation of insect-lives waste themselves in raising and purifying the minds of the generations that follow, if all in turn pass into nothingness? The higher and purer men became, the more they would love their fellow-beings and the more they would shudder at the insensate pain and cruelty in the world—the physical torture they themselves endure, and the mental torture both of losing for ever those they love and of seeing the sufferings of others. One should act in conformity with one’s belief. Instead of thus adding greater pain and sorrow to each succeeding generation, the effort should be to coarsen and brutalize our natures, so that love, duty, and moral aspiration shall disappear, and we shall cease to be saddened by the appalling cruelty of our existence. Our lives should, in fact, correspond with the brutal, ugly and stupid scheme of the universe.