Part 3

(Referring to the Gorham case) The future historian of opinion will write of us in this strain: “The people who spoke the language of Shakespeare were great in the constructive arts: the remains of their vast works evince an extraordinary power of combining and economizing labour: their colonies were spread over both hemispheres, and their industry penetrated to the remotest tribes: they knew how to subjugate nature and to govern men: but the weakness of their thought presented a strange contrast to the vigour of their arm; and though they were an earnest people, their conceptions of human life and its Divine Author seems to have been of the most puerile nature. Some orations have been handed down—apparently delivered before one of their most dignified tribunals—in which the question is discussed: ‘In what way the washing of new-born babes according to certain rules prevented God’s hating them.’ The curious feature is, that the discussion turns entirely upon the manner in which this wetting operated; and no doubt seems to have been entertained by disputants, judges, or audience, that, without it, a child or other person dying would fall into the hands of an angry Deity, and be kept alive for ever to be tortured in a burning cave. Now, all researches into the contemporary institutions of the island show that its religion found its chief support among the classes possessing no mean station or culture, and that the education for the priesthood was the highest which the country afforded. This strange belief must be taken, therefore, as the measure, not of popular ignorance, but of their most intellectual faith. A philosophy and worship embodying such a superstition can present nothing to reward the labour of research.”

JAMES MARTINEAU (_Essay on “The Church of England”_).

In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council, it was decided that Mr. Gorham’s beliefs, although unusual, were not repugnant to the doctrines of the Church of England. His views were that baptism is generally necessary to salvation, that it is a sign of grace by which God works in us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it is not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are certainly saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow on baptism.

In such matters one question stands out very prominently. The priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the eternal truths of Christ—Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration. How can he keep those truths in due perspective when his intellect is engaged in warfare over miserable casuistries.

And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most High, they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of the lawyers paid by one side or the other to argue questions of baptism and prevenient grace! It was precisely this introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality, the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal quibbling and hair-splitting, the “letter” that “killeth” as against the “spirit” that “giveth life,” which led to Christ’s bitter invectives against the “Scribes” or lawyers of His day.

Seeley, in _Ecce Homo_, points out that when Christ summoned the disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not belief in any specific doctrines. As it was not until later that they learnt He was to suffer death and rise again, they could at first have held no belief in the Atonement or the Resurrection. “Nor,” says Seeley, “do we find Him frequently examining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel.... Assuredly those who represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse _theology_, and saying to them peremptorily: ‘Believe or be damned,’ have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world.”

As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good Lord, deliver us.”[10]

* * * * *

For while a youth is lost in soaring thought, And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful, And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth, And while a child, and while a flower is born, And while one wrong cries for redress and finds A soul to answer, still the world is young!

LEWIS MORRIS (_Epic of Hades_).

* * * * *

Poems are painted window panes. If one looks from the square into the church, Dusk and dimness are his gains— Sir Philistine is left in the lurch! The sight, so seen, may well enrage him, Nor anything henceforth assuage him.

But come just inside what conceals; Cross the holy threshold quite— All at once ’tis rainbow-bright, Device and story flash to light, A gracious splendour truth reveals. This to God’s children is full measure, It edifies and gives you pleasure!

GOETHE.

This is George MacDonald’s translation (but never can a translation of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says of the poem: “This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough regarded from the outside; prismatic in its revelation of truth from within.” Among the arts this statement is most applicable to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are often required to assist many persons to “come inside,” to enter into the heart of a poem—to reach the point of vision.

* * * * *

DE TEA FABULA

Do I sleep? Do I dream? Am I hoaxed by a scout? Are things what they seem, Or is Sophists about? Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Which expressions like these May be fairly applied By a party who sees A Society skied Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.

’Twas November the third. And I says to Bill Nye, “Which it’s true what I’ve heard: If you’re, so to speak, fly, There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.”

Which I mentioned its name And he ups and remarks: “If dress-coats is the game And pow-wow in the Parks, Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”

Now the pride of Bill Nye Cannot well be express’d; For he wore a white tie And a cut-away vest: Says I: “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well dress’d.”

But not far did we wend, When we saw Pippa pass On the arm of a friend —Dr. Furnivall ’twas, And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.

“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.” But we came pretty quick To a sort of a quad That was all of red brick, And I says to the porter: “R. Browning: free passes and kindly look slick.”

But says he, dripping tears In his check handkerchief, “That symposium’s career’s Been regrettably brief, For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”

Then we tucked up the sleeves Of our shirts (that were biled), Which the reader perceives That our feelings were riled, And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.

Which emotions like these Must be freely indulged By a party who sees A Society bulged On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.

But I ask: Do I dream? _Has_ it gone up the spout; Are things what they seem, Or is Sophists about? Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.

This parody on Bret Harte’s “Plain Language from Truthful James” was written at the time when the Browning Society at Keble College, Oxford, came to an end—apparently, according to these verses, because its funds had been exhausted in afternoon teas!

τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced _toe tee ane einai_). In Oxford special attention is paid to Aristotle; and Quiller-Couch, being an Oxford man, assumes that his readers are familiar with this phrase. It means “the essential nature of a thing,” or, literally, “the question what a thing really is.” Such a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning of Browning’s difficult poems, so that the phrase is as appropriate as it is amusing in its application.

The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides? Mutato nomine _de te Fabula_ narratur” (Sat. 1, 69). “Wherefore do you laugh? Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.” Oxford, which Matthew Arnold called the home of lost causes, still refuses to pronounce Latin correctly, and makes _te_ rhyme with _fee_, _see_, _bee_. It ought of course to rhyme with _fay_, _say_, _bay_. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted to the pronunciation of _ea_ which prevailed until the end of the Eighteenth Century. See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:

Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

_Dr. Furnivall_ (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the founder of the society, the first society ever formed to study the works of a living poet. From the context he may have specially admired, as he certainly threw special light upon, Browning’s _Pippa Passes_.

_Scout_ at Oxford is a (male) college servant.

* * * * *

One fine frosty day, My stomach being empty as your hat.

R. BROWNING (_Fra Lippo Lippi_).

The “cheekiest” line I know.

* * * * *

TO THE MOON

The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover Wheels up and down with a windy scream; The birch has loosen’d her bright locks over The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream: Yet here I linger in London City, Thinking of meadows where I was born— And over the roofs, like a face of pity, Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.

O Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by, I am looking long in those eyes, and thinking Of one who hath loved thee longer than I; I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish The souls that ye witch with a harvest call?— If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish?— If it be idle to dream at all?

The waves of the world roll hither and thither, The tumult deepens, the days go by, The dead men vanish—we know not whither, The live men anguish—we know not why; The cry of the stricken is smothered never, The Shadow passes from street to street; And—o’er us fadeth, for ever and ever, The still white gleam of thy constant feet.

The hard men struggle, the students ponder, The world rolls round on its westward way; The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder Is dim on the dreamer’s cheek all day; The old earth’s voice is a sound of weeping, Round her the waters wash wild and vast, There is no calm, there is little sleeping,— Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past!

Another summer, new dreams departed, And yet we are lingering, thou and I; I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted, Thou, in the void of a violet sky! Thou art there! I am here! and the reaping and mowing Of the harvest year is over and done, And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.

While tower and turret lie silver’d under, When eyes are closed and lips are dumb, In the nightly pause of the human wonder, From dusky portals I see thee come; And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder, Is witch’d like me till his days shall cease,— For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander, Flashes the vision of God’s white Peace.

R. BUCHANAN.

* * * * *

There is no short cut, no patent tramroad, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

GEORGE ELIOT (_The Lifted Veil_).

* * * * *

Let us think less of men and more of God. Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us, Like a small bird winging the still blue air; And then again, at other times, it rises Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless, And just overhead lets itself down on us, Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky, That we should join with God, and give the world The slip: but, while we wish, the world turns round And peeps us in the face—the wanton world; We feel it gently pressing down our arm— The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders; We feel it softly bearing on our side— We feel it touch and thrill us through the body,— And we are fools, and there’s the end of us.

P. J. BAILEY (_Festus_).

* * * * *

It fell upon a merry May morn, I’ the perfect prime of that sweet time When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,— The dear Babe Christabel was born.

...

Look how a star of glory swims Down aching silences of space, Flushing the Darkness till its face With beating heart of light o’erbrims!

So brightening came Babe Christabel, To touch the earth with fresh romance, And light a Mother’s countenance With looking on her miracle.

With hands so flower-like soft, and fair, She caught at life, with words as sweet As first spring violets, and feet As faery-light as feet of air.

...

She grew, a sweet and sinless Child, In shine and shower,—calm and strife; A Rainbow on our dark of Life. From Love’s own radiant heaven down-smiled!

In lonely loveliness she grew,— A shape all music, light, and love, With startling looks, so eloquent of The spirit burning into view.

Such mystic lore was in her eyes, And light of other worlds than ours, She looked as she had fed on flowers, And drunk the dews of Paradise[11]

...

Ah! she was one of those who come With pledgèd promise not to stay Long, ere the Angels let them stray To nestle down in earthly home:

And, thro’ the windows of her eyes, We often saw her saintly soul, Serene, and sad, and beautiful, Go sorrowing for lost Paradise.

She came—like music in the night Floating as heaven in the brain, A moment oped, and shut again, And all is dark where all was light.

...

In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies, The Angels with us unawares.

Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled; Awhile she sat with folded wings— Sang round us a few hoverings— Then straightway into glory sped.

And white-wing’d Angels nurture her; With heaven’s white radiance robed and crown’d, And all Love’s purple glory round, She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.

Thro’ Childhood’s morning-land, serene She walked betwixt us twain, like Love; While, in a robe of light above, Her better Angel walked unseen,—

Till Life’s highway broke bleak and wild; Then, lest her starry garments trail In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail, The Angel’s arms caught up the child.

Her wave of life hath backward roll’d To the great ocean; on whose shore We wander up and down, to store Some treasures of the times of old:

And aye we seek and hunger on For precious pearls and relics rare, Strewn on the sands for us to wear At heart, for love of her that’s gone.

GERALD MASSEY (_The Ballad of Babe Christabel_).

These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.

* * * * *

If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: Make the low nature better by your throes! Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

R. BROWNING (_James Lee’s Wife_).

* * * * *

... He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.

Hereditary bent That hedges in intent He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain. He loves the souls He made, He knows His own hand laid On each the mark of some ancestral stain.

ANNA REEVE ALDRICH.

* * * * *

I have lost the dream of Doing, And the other dream of Done, The first spring in the pursuing, The first pride in the Begun,— First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Lost Bower_).

It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.

* * * * *

The other (maiden) up arose[12] And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose: Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around. And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned: So that fair spectacle from him was reft, Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found: So, hid in lockes and waves from looker’s theft, Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.

Withall she laughèd, and she blushed withall, That blushing to her laughter gave more grace, And laughter to her blushing.

SPENSER (_Faerie Queene 2_, XII, 67).

* * * * *

I love and honour Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. Nor can you excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, “He acted, and thou sittest still.” I see action to be good when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.

R. W. EMERSON (_Spiritual Laws_).

* * * * *

You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. By a strange chance in these latter days, it happened that, alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. When I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of the Mussulmans, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, pray heaven there still may be heard there the voice of free innocent girls. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer the timid flock will gather round you with their large burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain; and if you imagine evil against them they will know of your ill-thought before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gone in the moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you; and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to your side, and touch the hem of your coat in playful defiance of the danger; and then the rest will follow the daring of their youthful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill controversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you with cloth so fine; and then, growing more profound in their researches, they will pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of delight and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with the hues of your sunburnt face, or with their own warmer tints. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; with tremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you, even then still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surely quite harmless and innocent—a lion that makes no spring—a bear that never hugs; and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and a controversy. But the one—the fairest and the sweetest of all—is yet the most timid; she shrinks from the daring deeds of her playmates, and seeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen her glowing consciousness from the eyes that look upon her. But her laughing sisters will have none of this cowardice; they vow that the fair one _shall_ be their _complice_—_shall_ share their dangers—_shall_ touch the hand of the stranger; they seize her small wrist and draw her forward by force, and at last, whilst yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up her whole soul under the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmost strength, they vanquish her utmost modesty and marry her hand to yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers and throbs like a whisper upon your listening palm. For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you—in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter as though they had played too perilously and harmed their gentle sister. A moment, and all with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer; yet soon again like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze upon the danger, until they grow brave once more.

A. W. KINGLAKE (_Eothen_).

Let us hope that the present war will be a successful “Crusade” and that the Turks will disappear from the land which is sacred to the memory of our Lord.

* * * * *

Discedant nunc amores; maneat Amor.

(Loves, farewell; let Love, the sole, remain.)

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Compare Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXI:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead, ... for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.

* * * * *

I saw a son weep o’er a mother’s grave: “Ay, weep, poor boy—weep thy most bitter tears That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love, Forgetfulness grows over it like grass; _That_ is the thing to weep for, not the dead.”

ALEXANDER SMITH (_A Boy’s Poem_)

* * * * *

UNTIL DEATH

If thou canst love another, be it so. I would not reach out of my quiet grave To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go. Love shall not be a slave....

It would not make me sleep more peacefully, That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me Bestow it ere I go....

Forget me when I die. The violets Above my rest will blossom just as blue Nor miss thy tears—E’en Nature’s self forgets— But while I live be true.

F. A. WESTBURY.