Scene III--Lucy Rimmerton, Agnes Rimmerton (her niece)

_A well-furnished comfortable room in_ Lucy Rimmerton's _house. She is seated in front of the fire, in an easy-chair, reading. The door opens, without her noticing it, and_ Agnes _comes in, closes the door gently, crosses the room, and bends over her_.

_Agnes._ A happy New Year to you, Aunt Luce.

_Lucy._ What! Agnes, is that you? I never heard you come in. I really think I must be getting deaf.

_Agnes._ What nonsense! I didn't intend you should hear me. I wanted to wish you a happy New Year first.

_Lucy._ So as to make your Aunt play second fiddle. The same to you, dear.

_Agnes._ Thank you. [_Warms her hands at the fire._] Oh, it _is_ cold; not here I mean, but out of doors; the thermometer is down I don't know how many degrees below freezing.

_Lucy._ It seems to agree with you, at all events. You look as bright and rosy as though you were the New Year itself come to visit me.

_Agnes._ [_Laughs merrily._] So I ought to. I ran nearly all the way, except when I slid, to the great horror of an old gentleman who was busily engaged lecturing some little boys on the enormity of their sins in making a beautifully long slide in the middle of the pavement.

_Lucy._ And what brought you out so early?

_Agnes._ To see you, of course. Besides, the morning is so lovely it seemed a sin to remain indoors. I do hope the frost continues all the holidays.

_Lucy._ It is all very well for you, but it must be terribly trying for many people--the poor, for instance.

_Agnes._ Yes. [_A pause._] Auntie, you don't know anything, do you, about how--how poor people live?

_Lucy._ Not so much as I ought to.

_Agnes._ I didn't mean _very_ poor people, not working people. I meant a person poor like--like I am poor.

_Lucy._ [_Smiling._] Don't you know how you live yourself?

_Agnes._ Of course I do, but--I was thinking of--of a friend of mine, a governess like myself, who has just got engaged; and I--I was wondering on how much, or, rather, how little, they could live. But you don't know of course. You are rich, and----

_Lucy._ But I wasn't always rich. Thirty years ago when I was your age----

_Agnes._ When you were my age! I like that! why you are not fifty.

_Lucy._ Little flatterer. Fifty-two last birthday.

_Agnes._ Fifty-two! Well, you don't look it, at all events.

_Lucy._ Gross flatterer. When I was your age I was poor and a governess as you are.

_Agnes._ But I thought that your Aunt Emily left you all her money.

_Lucy._ So she did, or nearly all; but that was afterwards. It isn't quite thirty years yet since she came back from India, a widow, just after she had lost her husband and only child. I was very ill at the time--I almost died; and she, good woman as she was, came and nursed me.

_Agnes._ Of course, I know. I have heard father talk about it. And then she was taken ill, wasn't she?

_Lucy._ Yes, almost before I was well. It was very unfair that she should leave everything to me; your father was her nephew, just as I was her niece, but he wouldn't hear of my sharing it with----

_Agnes._ I should think not indeed! I should be very sorry to think that my father would ever allow such a thing. Although, at the same time, it is all very well for you to imagine that you don't share it, but you _do_. Who pays for Lillie's and May's and George's schooling? Who sent Alfred to Cambridge, and Frank to----

_Lucy._ Don't, please. What a huge family you are, to be sure.

_Agnes._ And last, but not least, who gave me a chance of going to Girton? Oh, we are not supposed to know anything about it, I know, but you see we do. You thought you had arranged it all so beautifully, and kept everyone of us entirely in the dark, but you haven't one little bit.

_Lucy._ Nonsense, Agnes, you----

_Agnes._ Oh, you are a huge big fraud, you know you are; I am quite ashamed of you. [Lucy _is going to speak_.] You are not to be thanked, I know; and you needn't be afraid, I am not going to do so; but if you could only hear us when we are talking quietly together, you would find that a certain person, who shall be nameless, is simply worship----

_Lucy._ Hush! you silly little girl. You don't know what you are saying. You have nothing to thank me for whatsoever.

_Agnes._ Haven't we just? I know better.

_Lucy._ Young people always do. So you see I do know something of how "the poor" live.

_Agnes._ Yes, but you were never married.

_Lucy._ No, dear.

_Agnes._ That is what I want to----Why weren't you married? Oh, I know I have no business to ask such a question: it is fearfully rude I know, but I have wondered so often. You are lovely now, and you must have been beautiful when you were a girl.

_Lucy._ No, I wasn't--I was barely pretty.

_Agnes._ I can't believe that.

_Lucy._ And I am not going to accept your description of me now as a true one; although I confess I am vain enough--even in my present old age--to look in the glass occasionally, and say to myself: "You are better-looking now than you ever were."

_Agnes._ Well, at all events you were always an angel.

_Lucy._ And men don't like angels; besides--I was poor.

_Agnes._ You were not poor when you got Aunt Emily's money.

_Lucy._ No, but then it was too----I mean I then had no wish to marry.

_Agnes._ You mean you determined to sacrifice yourself for us, that is what you mean.

_Lucy._ I must have possessed a very prophetic soul then, or been gifted with second sight, as none of you, except Reginald, were born. But to come back to your friend, Agnes; has she no money?

_Agnes._ No, none.

_Lucy._ Nor he?

_Agnes._ Not a penny.

_Lucy._ And they want to get married?

_Agnes._ Yes.

_Lucy._ And are afraid they haven't enough.

_Agnes._ They certainly haven't.

_Lucy._ Then why don't they apply to some friend or relative who has more than enough; say, to--an aunt, for instance.

_Agnes._ Auntie!

_Lucy._ And what is his name?

_Agnes._ Geo----Mr. Reddell.

_Lucy._ And hers is?

_Agnes._ Oh, I never intended to tell you. I didn't mean to say a word.

_Lucy._ When did it happen?

_Agnes._ Three days ago. That is to say, he proposed to me then, but of course it has been going on for a long time. I could see that he--at least I thought I could see. But I can hardly realise it yet. It seems all so strange. And I _did_ intend telling you, I felt I _must_ tell somebody, although George doesn't want it known yet, because, as I told you, he--and so I haven't said a word to father yet; but I must soon--and you won't say anything, will you? and--and oh, I am silly.

_Lucy._ There, have your cry out, it will do you good. Now tell me about Mr. Reddell. What is he?

_Agnes._ He is a writer--an author. Don't you remember I showed you a story of his a little time ago?

_Lucy._ I thought I knew the name.

_Agnes._ And you said you liked it; I was so pleased.

_Lucy._ Yes, I did. I thought it clever and----

_Agnes._ He _is_ clever; and I do so want you to know him. He wants to know you, too. You will try to like him, won't you, for my sake?

_Lucy._ I have no doubt I shall.

_Agnes._ He is just bringing out a book. Some of the stories have been published before; the one you read was one, and if that proves a success then it will be all right; we shall be able to get married and----

_Lucy._ Wait a minute, Agnes. How long have you known him?

_Agnes._ Over a year--nearly two years.

_Lucy._ And do you really know him well? Are you quite certain you can trust him?

_Agnes._ What a question! How can you doubt it? You wouldn't for a minute if you knew him.

_Lucy._ I ought not to, knowing you, you mean. And supposing this book is a success. May it not spoil him--make him conceited?

_Agnes._ All the better if it does. He is not conceited enough, and so I always tell him.

_Lucy._ But may it not make him worldly? May he not, after a time, regret his proposal to you if he sees a chance of making a more advantageous----

_Agnes._ Impossible. What a dreadful opinion you must have of mankind. You don't think it really, I know. I have never heard you say or hint anything nasty about anybody before.

_Lucy._ I only do it for your own good, my dear. I once knew a man--just such another as you describe Mr. Reddell to be. He was an author, too, and--and when I knew him his first book was also just about to appear. He was engaged to be married to--to quite a nice girl too, although she was never so pretty as you are.

_Agnes._ Who is the flatterer now?

_Lucy._ The book was published. It was a great success. He became quite the lion of the season--it is many years ago now. The wedding-day was definitely fixed. Two months before the date he suggested a postponement--for six months.

_Agnes._ How horrible!

_Lucy._ And just about the time originally fixed upon for the wedding she received a letter from him--he was abroad at the time--suggesting that their engagement had better be broken off.

_Agnes._ Oh, the brute! the big brute! But she didn't consent, did she?

_Lucy._ Of course. The man she had loved was dead. The new person she was indifferent to.

_Agnes._ But how--but you don't suggest that Mr. Reddell could behave like that? he couldn't. He wouldn't, I feel certain. But there must surely have been something else; I can't believe that any man would behave so utterly unfeelingly--so brutally. They say there are always two sides to every story. Mayn't there have been some reason that you knew nothing about? Mayn't she have done something? She must have been a little bit to blame, too, and this side of the story you never heard.

_Lucy._ Yes--it is possible.

_Agnes._ I can't think that any man would deliberately behave so like a cad as you say he did.

_Lucy._ It may have been her fault. I used to think it might be--just a little, as you say.

_Agnes._ Well, it sha'n't be mine at all events. I won't give any cause--besides even if I did----Oh, no, it is utterly impossible to imagine such a thing!

_Lucy._ I hope it is, for your sake.

_Agnes._ Of course it is; of that I am quite certain. And you don't think it is very wrong of me to--to----

_Lucy._ To say Yes to a man you love. No, my dear, that can never be wrong, although it may be foolish.

_Agnes._ From a worldly point of view, perhaps; but I should never have thought that you----

_Lucy._ I didn't mean that. But love seems to grow so quickly when you once allow it to do so, that it is sometimes wiser to----but never mind, bring him to see me, and--and may you be happy. [_A long pause._]

_Agnes._ You are crying now, Auntie! You have nothing----

_Lucy._ Haven't I? What, not at the chance of losing you? So this is what brought you out so early this morning and occasioned your bright, rosy cheeks? You didn't only come to see me.

_Agnes._ To see you and talk to you, yes, that was all. No, by-the-by, it wasn't all. Have you seen a paper this morning? No? I thought it would interest you so I brought it round. It is bad news, not good news; your favourite author is dead.

_Lucy._ I am afraid my favourite authors have been dead very many years.

_Agnes._ I should say the author of your favourite book.

_Lucy._ You mean----

_Agnes._ Sir Harold Sekbourne. [Lucy _leans back in her chair_.] He died last night. Here it is; here is the paragraph. [_Reads._] "We regret to announce the death of Sir Harold Sekbourne, the well-known novelist, which occurred at his town house, in Prince's Gate, late last evening." Shall I read it to you?

_Lucy._ No--no, give me the paper. And--and, Agnes, do you mind going down to Franklin's room, and telling her that receipt you promised her?

_Agnes._ For the Japanese custard? Of course I will; I quite forgot all about it. There it is. [_Gives her the paper, indicating the paragraph with her finger, then goes out._]

_Lucy._ [_Sits staring at the paper for a few seconds, then reads slowly._] "Sir Harold had been slightly indisposed for some weeks, but no anxiety was felt until two days ago, when a change for the worse set in, and despite all the care, attention, and skill of Drs. Thornton and Douglas, who hardly left his bedside, he never rallied, and passed peacefully away, at the early age of fifty-eight, at the time above mentioned. It is now thirty years ago since the deceased baronet published his first book, 'Grace: a Sketch,' which had such an immediate and great success. This was followed nearly a year afterwards by 'Alain Treven,' the scene of which is laid in Brittany; and from that time until his death his pen was never idle. His last work, 'The Incoming Tide,' has just been published in book form, it having appeared in the pages of _The Illustrated Courier_ during the last year. Despite the rare power of his later works, disclosing thoroughly, as they do, his scholarly knowledge, his masterly construction, vivid imagination, and his keen insight into character and details of every-day life, they none of them can, for exquisite freshness and rare delicacy of execution, compare with his first publication, 'Grace: a Sketch.' We have before us, as we write, a first edition of this delightful story, with its curiously sentimental dedication 'To my Lady Luce,' which in the subsequent editions was omitted. A baronetcy was conferred on Sir Harold by her Majesty two years ago, at the personal instigation, it is said, of the Prime Minister, who is one of his greatest admirers, but the title is now extinct, as Sir Harold leaves no son. He married in June, 1866, a daughter of the late Sir Humphrey Mockton, who survives him. His two daughters are both married--one to Lord Duncan, eldest son of the Earl of Andstar; the other to Sir Reginald de Laver. His loss will be greatly felt, not only in the literary world, but wherever the English tongue is spoken and read."

[Lucy _goes to the bookcase, takes out a book, and opens it_. Agnes _comes in_.]

_Agnes._ Franklin is silly. I had to repeat the directions three times, and even now I doubt if she understands them properly. [_Comes behind_ Lucy _and looks over her shoulder_.] Why, I never knew you had a first edition. [Lucy _starts and closes the book, then opens it again_.] May I look at it? But this is written; the ink is quite faded. "To my Lady Luce. Harold Sekbourne, 3rd November, 1863." What a strong handwriting it is! Luce! how strange that the name should be the same as---- [_Looks suddenly at_ Lucy.] Oh, Auntie, forgive me. I never dreamt----I am so sorry.

The Head of Minos

By J. T. Nettleship

_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_

A Lost Masterpiece

A City Mood, Aug. '93

By George Egerton

I regret it, but what am I to do? It was not my fault--I can only regret it. It was thus it happened to me.

I had come to town straight from a hillside cottage in a lonely ploughland, with the smell of the turf in my nostrils, and the swish of the scythes in my ears; the scythes that flashed in the meadows where the upland hay, drought-parched, stretched thirstily up to the clouds that mustered upon the mountain-tops, and marched mockingly away, and held no rain.

The desire to mix with the crowd, to lay my ear once more to the heart of the world and listen to its life-throbs, had grown too strong for me; and so I had come back--but the sights and sounds of my late life clung to me--it is singular how the most opposite things often fill one with associative memory.

That _gamin_ of the bird-tribe, the Cockney sparrow, recalled the swallows that built in the tumble-down shed; and I could almost see the gleam of their white bellies, as they circled in ever narrowing sweeps and clove the air with forked wings, uttering a shrill note, with a querulous grace-note in front of it.

The freshness of the country still lurked in me, unconsciously influencing my attitude towards the city.

One forenoon business drove me citywards, and following an inclination that always impels me to water-ways rather than roadways, I elected to go by river steamer.

I left home in a glad mood, disposed to view the whole world with kindly eyes. I was filled with a happy-go-lucky _insouciance_ that made walking the pavements a loafing in Elysian fields. The coarser touches of street-life, the oddities of accent, the idiosyncrasies of that most eccentric of city-dwellers, the Londoner, did not jar as at other times--rather added a zest to enjoyment; impressions crowded in too quickly to admit of analysis, I was simply an interested spectator of a varied panorama.

I was conscious, too, of a peculiar dual action of brain and senses, for, though keenly alive to every unimportant detail of the life about me, I was yet able to follow a process by which delicate inner threads were being spun into a fanciful web that had nothing to do with my outer self.

At Chelsea I boarded a river steamer bound for London Bridge. The river was wrapped in a delicate grey haze with a golden subtone, like a beautiful bright thought struggling for utterance through a mist of obscure words. It glowed through the turbid waters under the arches, so that I feared to see a face or a hand wave through its dull amber--for I always think of drowned creatures washing wearily in its murky depths--it lit up the great warehouses, and warmed the brickwork of the monster chimneys in the background. No detail escaped my outer eyes--not the hideous green of the velveteen in the sleeves of the woman on my left, nor the supercilious giggle of the young ladies on my right, who made audible remarks about my personal appearance.

But what cared I? Was I not happy, absurdly happy?--because all the while my inner eyes saw undercurrents of beauty and pathos, quaint contrasts, whimsical details that tickled my sense of humour deliciously. The elf that lurks in some inner cell was very busy, now throwing out tender mimosa-like threads of creative fancy, now recording fleeting impressions with delicate sure brushwork for future use; touching a hundred vagrant things with the magic of imagination, making a running comment on the scenes we passed.

The warehouses told a tale of an up-to-date Soll und Haben, one of my very own, one that would thrust old Freytag out of the book-mart. The tall chimneys ceased to be giraffic throats belching soot and smoke over the blackening city. They were obelisks rearing granite heads heavenwards! Joints in the bricks, weather-stains? You are mistaken; they were hieroglyphics, setting down for posterity a tragic epic of man the conqueror, and fire his slave; and how they strangled beauty in the grip of gain. A theme for a Whitman!

And so it talks and I listen with my inner ear--and yet nothing outward escapes me--the slackening of the boat--the stepping on and off of folk--the lowering of the funnel--the name "Stanley" on the little tug, with its self-sufficient puff-puff, fussing by with a line of grimy barges in tow; freight-laden, for the water washes over them--and on the last a woman sits suckling her baby, and a terrier with badly cropped ears yaps at us as we pass....

And as this English river scene flashes by, lines of association form angles in my brain; and the point of each is a dot of light that expands into a background for forgotten canal scenes, with green-grey water, and leaning balconies, and strange crafts--Canaletti and Guardi seen long ago in picture galleries....

A delicate featured youth with gold-laced cap, scrapes a prelude on a thin-toned violin, and his companion thrums an accompaniment on a harp.

I don't know what they play, some tuneful thing with an undernote of sadness and sentiment running through its commonplace--likely a music-hall ditty; for a lad with a cheap silk hat, and the hateful expression of knowingness that makes him a type of his kind, grins appreciatively and hums the words.

I turn from him to the harp. It is the wreck of a handsome instrument, its gold is tarnished, its white is smirched, its stucco rose-wreaths sadly battered. It has the air of an antique beauty in dirty ball finery; and is it fancy, or does not a shamed wail lurk in the tone of its strings?

The whimsical idea occurs to me that it has once belonged to a lady with drooping ringlets and an embroidered spencer; and that she touched its chords to the words of a song by Thomas Haynes Baily, and that Miss La Creevy transferred them both to ivory.

The youth played mechanically, without a trace of emotion; whilst the harpist, whose nose is a study in purples and whose bloodshot eyes have the glassy brightness of drink, felt every touch of beauty in the poor little tune, and drew it tenderly forth.

They added the musical note to my joyous mood; the poetry of the city dovetailed harmoniously with country scenes too recent to be treated as memories--and I stepped off the boat with the melody vibrating through the city sounds.

I swung from place to place in happy, lightsome mood, glad as a fairy prince in quest of adventures. The air of the city was exhilarating ether--and all mankind my brethren--in fact I felt effusively affectionate.

I smiled at a pretty anaemic city girl, and only remembered that she was a stranger when she flashed back an indignant look of affected affront.

But what cared I? Not a jot! I could afford to say pityingly: "Go thy way, little city maid, get thee to thy typing."

And all the while that these outward insignificant things occupied me, I knew that a precious little pearl of a thought was evolving slowly out of the inner chaos.

It was such an unique little gem, with the lustre of a tear, and the light of moonlight and streamlight and love smiles reflected in its pure sheen--and, best of all, it was all my own--a priceless possession, not to be bartered for the Jagersfontein diamond--a city childling with the prepotency of the country working in it--and I revelled in its fresh charm and dainty strength; it seemed original, it was so frankly natural.

And as I dodged through the great waggons laden with wares from outer continents, I listened and watched it forming inside, until my soul became filled with the light of its brightness; and a wild elation possessed me at the thought of this darling brain-child, this offspring of my fancy, this rare little creation, perhaps embryo of genius that was my very own.

I smiled benevolently at the passers-by, with their harassed business faces, and shiny black bags bulging with the weight of common every-day documents, as I thought of the treat I would give them later on; the delicate feast I held in store for them, when I would transfer this dainty elusive birthling of my brain to paper for their benefit.

It would make them dream of moonlit lanes and sweethearting; reveal to them the golden threads in the sober city woof; creep in close and whisper good cheer, and smooth out tired creases in heart and brain; a draught from the fountain of Jouvence could work no greater miracle than the tale I had to unfold.

Aye, they might pass me by now, not even give me the inside of the pavement, I would not blame them for it!--but later on, later on, they would flock to thank me. They just didn't realise, poor money-grubbers! How could they? But later on.... I grew perfectly radiant at the thought of what I would do for poor humanity, and absurdly self-satisfied as the conviction grew upon me that this would prove a work of genius--no mere glimmer of the spiritual afflatus--but a solid chunk of genius.

Meanwhile I took a 'bus and paid my penny. I leant back and chuckled to myself as each fresh thought-atom added to the precious quality of my pearl. Pearl? Not one any longer--a whole quarrelet of pearls, Oriental pearls of the greatest price! Ah, how happy I was as I fondled my conceit!

It was near Chancery Lane that a foreign element cropped up and disturbed the rich flow of my fancy.

I happened to glance at the side-walk. A woman, a little woman, was hurrying along in a most remarkable way. It annoyed me, for I could not help wondering why she was in such a desperate hurry. Bother the jade! what business had she to thrust herself on my observation like that, and tangle the threads of a web of genius, undoubted genius?

I closed my eyes to avoid seeing her; I could see her through the lids. She had square shoulders and a high bust, and a white gauze tie, like a snowy feather in the breast of a pouter pigeon.

We stop--I look again--aye, there she is! Her black eyes stare boldly through her kohol-tinted lids, her face has a violet tint. She grips her gloves in one hand, her white-handled umbrella in the other, handle up, like a knobkerrie.

She has great feet, too, in pointed shoes, and the heels are under her insteps; and as we outdistance her I fancy I can hear their decisive tap-tap above the thousand sounds of the street.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I return to my pearl--my pearl that is to bring _me_ kudos and make countless thousands rejoice. It is dimmed a little, I must nurse it tenderly.

Jerk, jerk, jangle--stop.--Bother the bell! We pull up to drop some passengers, the idiots! and, as I live, she overtakes us! How the men and women cede her the middle of the pavement! How her figure dominates it, and her great feet emphasise her ridiculous haste! Why should she disturb me? My nerves are quivering pitifully; the sweet inner light is waning, I am in mortal dread of losing my little masterpiece. Thank heaven, we are off again....

"Charing Cross, Army and Navy, V'toria!"--Stop!

Of course, naturally! Here she comes, elbows out, umbrella waving! How the steel in her bonnet glistens! She recalls something, what is it?--what is it? A-ah! I have it!--a strident voice, on the deck of a steamer in the glorious bay of Rio, singing:

"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier, Le seul pompier...."

and _la mióla_ snaps her fingers gaily and trills her _r's_; and the Corcovado is outlined clearly on the purple background as if bending to listen; and the palms and the mosque-like buildings, and the fair islets bathed in the witchery of moonlight, and the star-gems twinned in the lap of the bay, intoxicate as a dream of the East.

"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier, Le seul pompier...."

What in the world is a _pompier_? What connection has the word with this creature who is murdering, deliberately murdering, a delicate creation of my brain, begotten by the fusion of country and town?

"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,..."

I am convinced _pompier_ expresses her in some subtle way--absurd word! I look back at her, I criticise her, I anathematise her, I _hate_ her!

What is she hurrying for? We can't escape her--always we stop and let her overtake us with her elbowing gait, and tight skirt shortened to show her great splay feet--ugh!

My brain is void, all is dark within; the flowers are faded, the music stilled; the lovely illusive little being has flown, and yet she pounds along untiringly.

Is she a feminine presentment of the wandering Jew, a living embodiment of the ghoul-like spirit that haunts the city and murders fancy?

What business had she, I ask, to come and thrust her white-handled umbrella into the delicate network of my nerves and untune their harmony?

Does she realise what she has done? She has trampled a rare little mind-being unto death, destroyed a precious literary gem. Aye, one that, for aught I know, might have worked a revolution in modern thought; added a new human document to the archives of man; been the keystone to psychic investigations; solved problems that lurk in the depths of our natures and tantalise us with elusive gleams of truth; heralded in, perchance, the new era; when such simple problems as Home Rule, Bimetallism, or the Woman Question will be mere themes for schoolboard compositions--who can tell?

Well, it was not my fault.--No one regrets it more, no one--but what could I do?

Blame her, woman of the great feet and dominating gait, and waving umbrella-handle!--blame her! I can only regret it--regret it!

Portrait of a Lady

By Charles W. Furse

_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_

Reticence in Literature

By Arthur Waugh

_He never spoke out._ Upon these four words, gathered by chance from a private letter, Matthew Arnold, with that super-subtle ingenuity which loved to take the word and play upon it and make it of innumerable colours, has constructed, as one may conjecture some antediluvian wonder from its smallest fragment, a full, complete, and intimate picture of the poet Thomas Gray. _He never spoke out._ Here, we are told, lies the secret of Gray's limitation as much in life as in literature: so sensitive was he in private life, so modest in public, that the thoughts that arose in him never got full utterance, the possibilities of his genius were never fulfilled; and we, in our turn, are left the poorer for that nervous delicacy which has proved the bane of the poet, living and dead alike. It is a singularly characteristic essay--this paper on Gray, showing the writer's logical talent at once in its strongest and its weakest capacities, and a complete study of Arnold's method might well, I think, be founded upon its thirty pages. But in the present instance I have recurred to that recurring phrase, _He never spoke out_, not to discuss Matthew Arnold's estimate of Gray, nor, indeed, to consider Gray's relation to his age; but merely to point out, what the turn of Arnold's argument did not require him to consider, namely, the extraordinarily un-English aspect of this reticence in Gray, a reticence alien without doubt to the English character, but still more alien to English literature. Reticence is not a national characteristic--far otherwise. The phrase "national characteristic" is, I know well, a cant phrase, and, as such, full of the dangers of abuse. Historical and ethnographical criticism, proceeding on popular lines, has tried from time to time to fix certain tendencies to certain races, and to argue from individuals to generalities with a freedom that every law of induction belies. And so we have come to endow the Frenchman, universally and without exception, with politeness, the Indian, equally universally, with cunning, the American with the commercial talent, the German with the educational, and so forth. Generalisations of this kind must, of course, be accepted with limitations. But it is not too much, perhaps, to say that the Englishman has always prided himself upon his frankness. He is always for speaking out; and it is this faculty of outspokenness that he is anxious to attribute to those characters which he sets up in the market-places of his religion and his literature, as those whom he chiefly delights to honour. The demigods of our national verse, the heroes of our national fiction, are brow-bound, above all other laurels, with this glorious freedom of free speech and open manners, and we have come to regard this broad, untrammelled virtue of ours, as all individual virtues _will_ be regarded with the revolution of the cycle of provinciality, as a guerdon above question or control. We have become inclined to forget that every good thing has, as Aristotle pointed out so long ago, its corresponding evil, and that the corruption of the best is always worst of all. Frankness is so great a boon, we say: we can forgive anything to the man who has the courage of his convictions, the fearlessness of freedom--the man, in a word, who speaks out.

But we have to distinguish, I think, at the outset between a national virtue in the rough and the artificial or acquired fashion in which we put that virtue into use. It is obvious that, though many things are possible to us, which are good in themselves, many things are inexpedient, when considered relatively to our environment. Count Tolstoi may preach his gospel of non-resistance till the beauty of his holiness seems almost Christ-like; but every man who goes forth to his work and to his labour knows that the habitual turning of the right cheek to the smiter of the left, the universal gift of the cloak to the beggar of our coat, is subversive of all political economy, and no slight incentive to immorality as well. In the same way, it will be clear, that this national virtue of ours, this wholesome, sincere outspokenness, is only possible within certain limits, set by custom and expediency, and it is probably a fact that there was never a truly wise man yet but tempered his natural freedom of speech by an acquired habit of reticence. The man who never speaks out may be morose; the man who is always speaking out is a most undesirable acquaintance.

Now, I suppose everyone is prepared to admit with Matthew Arnold that the literature of an age (we are not now speaking of poetry alone, be it understood, but of literature as a whole), that this literature must, in so far as it is truly representative of, and therefore truly valuable to, the time in which it is produced, reflect and criticise the manners, tastes, development, the life, in fact, of the age for whose service it was devised. We have, of course, critical literature probing the past: we have philosophical literature prophesying the future; but the truly representative literature of every age is the creative, which shows its people its natural face in a glass, and leaves to posterity the record of the manner of man it found. In one sense, indeed, creative literature must inevitably be critical as well, critical in that it employs the double methods of analysis and synthesis, dissecting motives and tendencies first, and then from this examination building up a type, a sample of the representative man and woman of its epoch. The truest fiction of any given century, yes, and the truest poetry, too (though the impressionist may deny it), must be a criticism of life, must reflect its surroundings. Men pass, and fashions change; but in the literature of their day their characters, their tendencies, remain crystallised for all time: and what we know of the England of Chaucer and Shakespeare, we know wholly and absolutely in the truly representative, truly creative, because truly critical literature which they have left to those that come after.

It is, then, the privilege, it is more, it is the duty of the man of letters to speak out, to be fearless, to be frank, to give no ear to the puritans of his hour, to have no care for the objections of prudery; the life that he lives is the life he must depict, if his work is to be of any lasting value. He must be frank, but he must be something more. He must remember--hourly and momently he must remember--that his virtue, step by step, inch by inch, imperceptibly melts into the vice which stands at its pole; and that (to employ Aristotelian phraseology for the moment) there is a sort of middle point, a centre of equilibrium, to pass which is to disturb and overset the entire fabric of his labours. Midway between liberty and license, in literature as in morals, stands the pivot of good taste, the centre-point of art. The natural inclination of frankness, the inclination of the virtue in the rough, is to blunder on resolutely with an indomitable and damning sincerity, till all is said that can be said, and art is lost in photography. The inclination of frankness, restrained by and tutored to the limitations of art and beauty, is to speak so much as is in accordance with the moral idea: and then, at the point where ideas melt into mere report, mere journalistic detail, to feel intuitively the restraining, the saving influence of reticence. In every age there has been some point (its exact position has varied, it is true, but the point has always been there) at which speech stopped short; and the literature which has most faithfully reflected the manners of that age, the literature, in fine, which has survived its little hour of popularity, and has lived and is still living, has inevitably, invariably, and without exception been the literature which stayed its hand and voice at the point at which the taste of the age, the age's conception of art, set up its statue of reticence, with her finger to her lips, and the inscription about her feet: "So far shalt thou go, and no further."

We have now, it seems, arrived at one consideration, which must always limit the liberty of frankness, namely, the standard of contemporary taste. The modesty that hesitates to align itself with that standard is a shortcoming, the audacity that rushes beyond is a violence to the unchanging law of literature. But the single consideration is insufficient. If we are content with the criterion of contemporary taste alone, our standard of judgment becomes purely historical: we are left, so to speak, with a sliding scale which readjusts itself to every new epoch: we have no permanent and universal test to apply to the literature of different ages: in a word, comparative criticism is impossible. We feel at once that we need, besides the shifting standard of contemporary taste, some fixed unit of judgment that never varies, some foot-rule that applies with equal infallibility to the literature of early Greece and to the literature of later France; and such an unit, such a foot-rule, can only be found in the final test of all art, the necessity of the moral idea. We must, in distinguishing the thing that may be said fairly and artistically from the thing whose utterance is inadmissible, we must in such a decision control our judgment by two standards--the one, the shifting standard of contemporary taste: the other, the permanent standard of artistic justification, the presence of the moral idea. With these two elements in action, we ought, I think, to be able to estimate with tolerable fairness the amount of reticence in any age which ceases to be a shortcoming, the amount of frankness which begins to be a violence in the literature of the period. We ought, with these two elements in motion, to be able to employ a scheme of comparative criticism which will prevent us from encouraging that retarding and dangerous doctrine that what was expedient and justifiable, for instance, in the dramatists of the Restoration is expedient and justifiable in the playwrights of our own Victorian era; we ought, too, to be able to arrive instinctively at a sense of the limits of art, and to appreciate the point at which frankness becomes a violence, in that it has degenerated into mere brawling, animated neither by purpose nor idea. Let us, then, consider these two standards of taste and art separately: and first, let us give a brief attention to the contemporary standard.

We may, I think, take it as a rough working axiom that the point of reticence in literature, judged by a contemporary standard, should be settled by the point of reticence in the conversation of the taste and culture of the age. Literature is, after all, simply the ordered, careful exposition of the thought of its period, seeking the best matter of the time, and setting it forth in the best possible manner; and it is surely clear that what is written in excess of what is spoken (in excess I mean on the side of license) is a violence to, a misrepresentation of, the period to whose service the literature is devoted. The course of the highest thought of the time should be the course of its literature, the limit of the most delicate taste of the time the limit of literary expression: whatever falls below that standard is a shortcoming, whatever exceeds it a violence. Obviously the standard varies immensely with the period. It would be tedious, nor is it necessary to our purpose, to make a long historical research into the development of taste; but a few striking examples may help us to appreciate its variations.

To begin with a very early stage of literature, we find among the Heracleidae of Herodotus a stage of contemporary taste which is the result of pure brutality. It is clear that literature adjusted to the frankness of the uxorious pleasantries of Candaules and Gyges would justifiably assume a degree of license which, reasonable enough in its environment, would be absolutely impossible, directly the influences of civilisation began to make themselves felt. The age is one of unrestrained brutality, and the literature which represented it would, without violence to the contemporary taste, be brutal too. To pass at a bound to the Rome of Juvenal is again to be transported to an age of national sensuality: the escapades of Messalina are the inevitable outcome of a national taste that is swamped and left putrescent by limitless self-indulgence; and the literature which represented this taste would, without violence, be lascivious and polluted to its depth. In continuing, with a still wider sweep, to the England of Shakespeare, we find a new development of taste altogether. Brutality is softened, licentiousness is restrained, immorality no longer stalks abroad shouting its coarse phrases at every wayfarer who passes the Mermaid or the Globe. But, even among types of purity, reticence is little known. The innuendoes are whispered under the breath, but when once the voice is lowered, it matters little what is said. Rosalind and Celia enjoy their little _doubles entendres_ together. Hero's wedding morning is an occasion for delicate hints of experiences to come. Hamlet plies the coarsest suggestions upon Ophelia in the intervals of a theatrical performance. The language reflects the taste: we feel no violence here. To take but one more instance, let us end with Sheridan. By his time speech had been refined by sentiment, and the most graceful compliments glide, without effort, from the lips of the adept courtier. But even still, in the drawing-rooms of fashion, delicate morsels of scandal are discussed by his fine ladies with a freedom which is absolutely unknown to the Mayfair of the last half-century, where innuendo might be conveyed by the eye and suggested by the smile, but would never, so reticent has taste become, find the frank emphatic utterance which brought no blush to the cheek of Mrs. Candour and Lady Sneerwell. In the passage of time reticence has become more and more pronounced; and literature, moving, as it must, with the age, has assumed in its normal and wholesome form the degree of silence which it finds about it.

The standard of taste in literature, then, so far as it responds to contemporary judgment, should be regulated by the normal taste of the hale and cultured man of its age: it should steer a middle course between the prudery of the manse, which is for hiding everything vital, and the effrontery of the pot-house, which makes for ribaldry and bawdry; and the more it approximates to the exact equilibrium of its period, the more thoroughly does it become representative of the best taste of its time, the more certain is it of permanent recognition. The literature of shortcoming and the literature of violence have their reward:

"They have their day, and cease to be";

the literature which reflects the hale and wholesome frankness of its age can be read, with pleasure and profit, long after its openness of speech and outlook has ceased to reproduce the surrounding life. The environment is ephemeral, but the literature is immortal. But why is the literature immortal? Why is it that a play like _Pericles_, for instance, full as it is of scenes which revolt the moral taste, has lived and is a classic forever, while innumerable contemporary pieces of no less genius (for _Pericles_ is no masterpiece) have passed into oblivion? Why is it that the impurity of _Pericles_ strikes the reader scarcely at all, while the memory dwells upon its beauties and forgets its foulness in recollection of its refinement? The reason is not far to seek. _Pericles_ is not only free of offence when judged by the taste of its age, it is no less blameless when we subject it to the test by which all literature is judged at last; it conforms to the standard of art; it is permeated by the moral idea. The standard of art--the presence of the idea--the two expressions are, I believe, synonymous. It is easy enough to babble of the beauty of things considered apart from their meaning, it is easy enough to dilate on the satisfaction of art in itself, but all these phrases are merely collocations of terms, empty and meaningless. A thing can only be artistic by virtue of the idea it suggests to us; when the idea is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable, the object that suggests it is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable; art and ethics must always be allied in that the merit of the art is dependent on the merit of the idea it prompts.

Perhaps I shall show my meaning more clearly by an example from the more tangible art of painting; and let me take as an instance an artist who has produced pictures at once the most revolting and most moral of any in the history of English art. I mean Hogarth. We are all familiar with his coarsenesses; all these have we known from our youth up. But it is only the schoolboy who searches the Bible for its indecent passages; when we are become men, we put away such childish satisfactions. Then we begin to appreciate the idea which underlies the subject: we feel that Hogarth--

"Whose pictured morals charm the mind, And through the eye correct the heart"--

was, even in his grossest moments, profoundly moral, entirely sane, because he never dallied lasciviously with his subject, because he did not put forth vice with the pleasing semblance of virtue, because, like all hale and wholesome critics of life, he condemned excess, and pictured it merely to portray the worthlessness, the weariness, the dissatisfaction of lust and license. Art, we say, claims every subject for her own; life is open to her ken; she may fairly gather her subjects where she will. Most true. But there is all the difference in the world between drawing life as we find it, sternly and relentlessly, surveying it all the while from outside with the calm, unflinching gaze of criticism, and, on the other hand, yielding ourselves to the warmth and colour of its excesses, losing our judgment in the ecstasies of the joy of life, becoming, in a word, effeminate.

The man lives by ideas; the woman by sensations; and while the man remains an artist so long as he holds true to his own view of life, the woman becomes one as soon as she throws off the habit of her sex, and learns to rely upon her judgment, and not upon her senses. It is only when we regard life with the untrammelled view of the impartial spectator, when we pierce below the substance for its animating idea, that we approximate to the artistic temperament. It is unmanly, it is effeminate, it is inartistic to gloat over pleasure, to revel in immoderation, to become passion's slave; and literature demands as much calmness of judgment, as much reticence, as life itself. The man who loses reticence loses self-respect, and the man who has no respect for himself will scarcely find others to venerate him. After all, the world generally takes us at our own valuation.

We have now, I trust, arrived (though, it may be, by a rather circuitous journey) at something like a definite and reasonable law for the exercise of reticence; it only remains to consider by what test we shall most easily discover the presence or absence of the animating moral idea which we have found indispensable to art. It seems to me that three questions will generally suffice. Does the work, we should ask ourselves, make for that standard of taste which is normal to wholesomeness and sanity of judgment? Does it, or does it not, encourage us to such a line of life as is recommended, all question of tenet and creed apart, by the experience of the age, as the life best calculated to promote individual and general good? And does it encourage to this life in language and by example so chosen as not to offend the susceptibilities of that ordinarily strong and unaffected taste which, after all, varies very little with the changes of the period and development? When creative literature satisfies these three requirements--when it is sane, equable, and well spoken, then it is safe to say it conforms to the moral idea, and is consonant with art. By its sanity it eludes the risk of effeminate demonstration; by its choice of language it avoids brutality; and between these two poles, it may be affirmed without fear of question, true taste will and must be found to lie.

These general considerations, already too far prolonged, become of immediate interest to us as soon as we attempt to apply them to the literature of our own half-century, and I propose concluding what I wished to say on the necessity of reticence by considering, briefly and without mention of names, that realistic movement in English literature which, under different titles, and protected by the ægis of various schools, has proved, without doubt, the most interesting and suggestive development in the poetry and fiction of our time. During the last quarter of a century, more particularly, the English man-of-letters has been indulging, with an entirely new freedom, his national birthright of outspokenness, and during the last twelve months there have been no uncertain indications that this freedom of speech is degenerating into license which some of us cannot but view with regret and apprehension. The writers and the critics of contemporary literature have, it would seem, alike lost their heads; they have gone out into the byways and hedges in search of the new thing, and have brought into the study and subjected to the microscope mean objects of the roadside, whose analysis may be of value to science but is absolutely foreign to art. The age of brutality, pure and simple, is dead with us, it is true; but the age of effeminacy appears, if one is to judge by recent evidence, to be growing to its dawn. The day that follows will, if it fulfils the promise of its morning, be very serious and very detrimental to our future literature.

Every great productive period of literature has been the result of some internal or external revulsion of feeling, some current of ideas. This is a commonplace. The greatest periods of production have been those when the national mind has been directed to some vast movement of emancipation--the discovery of new countries, the defeat of old enemies, the opening of fresh possibilities. Literature is best stimulated by stirrings like these. Now, the last quarter of a century in English history has been singularly sterile of important improvements. There has been no very inspiring acquisition to territory or to knowledge: there has been, in consequence, no marked influx of new ideas. The mind has been thrown back upon itself; lacking stimulus without, it has sought inspiration within, and the most characteristic literature of the time has been introspective. Following one course, it has betaken itself to that intimately analytical fiction which we associate primarily with America; it has sifted motives and probed psychology, with the result that it has proved an exceedingly clever, exact, and scientific, but scarcely stimulating, or progressive school of literature. Following another course, it has sought for subject-matter in the discussion of passions and sensations, common, doubtless, to every age of mankind, interesting and necessary, too, in their way, but passions and sensations hitherto dissociated with literature, hitherto, perhaps, scarcely realised to their depth and intensity. It is in this development that the new school of realism has gone furthest; and it is in this direction that the literature of the future seems likely to follow. It is, therefore, not without value to consider for a moment whither this new frankness is leading us, and how far its freedom is reconciled to that standard of necessary reticence which I have tried to indicate in these pages.

This present tendency to literary frankness had its origin, I think, no less than twenty-eight years ago. It was then that the dovecotes of English taste were tremulously fluttered by the coming of a new poet, whose naked outspokenness startled his readers into indignation. Literature, which had retrograded into a melancholy sameness, found itself convulsed by a sudden access of passion, which was probably without parallel since the age of the silver poets of Rome. This new singer scrupled not to revel in sensations which for years had remained unmentioned upon the printed page; he even chose for his subjects refinements of lust, which the commonly healthy Englishman believed to have become extinct with the time of Juvenal. Here was an innovation which was absolutely alien to the standard of contemporary taste--an innovation, I believe, that was equally opposed to that final moderation without which literature is lifeless.

Let us listen for one moment:

"By the ravenous teeth that have smitten Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain.

As of old when the world's heart was lighter, Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, The white wealth of thy body made whiter By the blushes of amorous blows, And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers, And branded by kisses that bruise; When all shall be gone that now lingers, Ah, what shall we lose?

Thou wert fair in thy fearless old fashion, And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain."

This was twenty-eight years ago; and still the poetry lives. At first sight it would seem as though the desirable reticence, upon which we have been insisting, were as yet unnecessary to immortality. A quarter of a century has passed, it might be argued, and the verse is as fresh to-day and as widely recognised as it was in its morning: is not this a proof that art asks for no moderation? I believe not. It is true that the poetry lives, that we all recognise, at some period of our lives, the grasp and tenacity of its influence; that, even when the days come in which we say we have no pleasure in it, we still turn to it at times for something we do not find elsewhere. But the thing we seek is not the matter, but the manner. The poetry is living, not by reason of its unrestrained frankness, but in spite of it, for the sake of something else. That sweet singer who charmed and shocked the audiences of 1866, charms us, if he shocks us not now, by virtue of the one new thing that he imported into English poetry, the unique and as yet imperishable faculty of musical possibilities hitherto unattained. There is no such music in all the range of English verse, seek where you will, as there is in him. But the perfection of the one talent, its care, its elaboration, have resulted in a corresponding decay of those other faculties by which alone, in the long run, poetry can live. Open him where you will, there is in his poetry neither construction nor proportion; no development, no sustained dramatic power. Open him where you will, you acquire as much sense of his meaning and purpose from any two isolated stanzas as from the study of a whole poem. There remains in your ears, when you have ceased from reading, the echo only of a beautiful voice, chanting, as it were, the melodies of some outland tongue.

Is this the sort of poetry that will survive the trouble of the ages? It cannot survive. The time will come (it must) when some newer singer discovers melodies as yet unknown, melodies which surpass in their modulations and varieties those poems and ballads of twenty-eight years ago; and, when we have found the new note, what will be left of the earlier singer, to which we shall of necessity return? A message? No. Philosophy? No. A new vision of life? No. A criticism of contemporary existence? Assuredly not. There remains the melody alone; and this, when once it is surpassed, will charm us little enough. We shall forget it then. Art brings in her revenges, and this will be of them.

But the new movement did not stop here. If, in the poet we have been discussing, we have found the voice among us that corresponds to the decadent voices of the failing Roman Republic, there has reached us from France another utterance, which I should be inclined to liken to the outspoken brutality of Restoration drama. Taste no longer fails on the ground of a delicate, weakly dalliance, it begins to see its own limitations, and springs to the opposite pole. It will now be virile, full of the sap of life, strong, robust, and muscular. It will hurry us out into the fields, will show us the coarser passions of the common farm-hand; at any expense it will paint the life it finds around it; it will at least be consonant with that standard of want of taste which it falsely believes to be contemporary. We get a realistic fiction abroad, and we begin to copy it at home. We will trace the life of the travelling actor, follow him into the vulgar, sordid surroundings which he chooses for the palace of his love, be it a pottery-shed or the ill-furnished lodging-room with its black horsehair sofa--we will draw them all, and be faithful to the lives we live. Is that the sort of literature that will survive the trouble of the ages? It cannot survive. We are no longer untrue to our time, perhaps, if we are to seek for the heart of that time in the lowest and meanest of its representatives; but we are untrue to art, untrue to the record of our literary past, when we are content to turn for our own inspiration to anything but the best line of thought, the highest school of life, through which we are moving. This grosser realism is no more representative of its time than were the elaborate pastiches of classical degradation; it is as though one should repeople Eden with creatures imagined from a study of the serpent's head. In the history of literature this movement, too, will with the lapse of time pass unrecognised; it has mourned unceasingly to an age which did not lack for innocent piping and dancing in its market-places.

The two developments of realism of which we have been speaking seem to me to typify the two excesses into which frankness is inclined to fall; on the one hand, the excess prompted by effeminacy--that is to say, by the want of restraints which starts from enervated sensation; and on the other, the excess which results from a certain brutal virility, which proceeds from coarse familiarity with indulgence. The one whispers, the other shouts; the one is the language of the courtesan, the other of the bargee. What we miss in both alike is that true frankness which springs from the artistic and moral temperament; the episodes are no part of a whole in unity with itself; the impression they leave upon the reader is not the impression of Hogarth's pictures; in one form they employ all their art to render vice attractive, in the other, with absolutely no art at all, they merely reproduce, with the fidelity of the kodak, scenes and situations the existence of which we all acknowledge, while taste prefers to forget them.

But the latest development of literary frankness is, I think, the most insidious and fraught with the greatest danger to art. A new school has arisen which combines the characteristics of effeminacy and brutality. In its effeminate aspect it plays with the subtler emotions of sensual pleasure, on its brutal side it has developed into that class of fiction which for want of a better word I must call chirurgical. In poetry it deals with very much the same passions as those which we have traced in the verse to which allusion has been made above; but, instead of leaving these refinements of lust to the haunts to which they are fitted, it has introdduced them into the domestic chamber, and permeated marriage with the ardours of promiscuous intercourse. In fiction it infects its heroines with acquired diseases of names unmentionable, and has debased the beauty of maternity by analysis of the process of gestation. Surely the inartistic temperament can scarcely abuse literature further. I own I can conceive nothing less beautiful.

It was said of a great poet by a little critic that he wheeled his nuptial couch into the area; but these small poets and smaller novelists bring out their sick into the thoroughfare, and stop the traffic while they give us a clinical lecture upon their sufferings. We are told that this is a part of the revolt of woman, and certainly our women-writers are chiefly to blame. It is out of date, no doubt, to clamour for modesty; but the woman who describes the sensations of childbirth does so, it is to be presumed--not as the writer of advice to a wife--but as an artist producing literature for art's sake. And so one may fairly ask her: How is art served by all this? What has she told us that we did not all know, or could not learn from medical manuals? and what impression has she left us over and above the memory of her unpalatable details? And our poets, who know no rhyme for "rest" but that "breast" whose snowinesses and softnesses they are for ever describing with every accent of indulgence, whose eyes are all for frills, if not for garters, what have they sung that was not sung with far greater beauty and sincerity in the days when frills and garters were alluded to with the open frankness that cried shame on him who evil thought. The one extremity, it seems to me, offends against the standard of contemporary taste; ("people," as Hedda Gabler said, "do not say such things now"); the other extremity rebels against that universal standard of good taste that has from the days of Milo distinguished between the naked and the nude. We are losing the distinction now; the cry for realism, naked and unashamed, is borne in upon us from every side:

"Rip your brother's vices open, strip your own foul passions bare; Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare."

But there was an Emperor once (we know the story) who went forth among his people naked. It was said that he wore fairy clothes, and that only the unwise could fail to see them. At last a little child raised its voice from the crowd! "Why, he has nothing on," it said. And so these writers of ours go out from day to day, girded on, they would have us believe, with the garments of art; and fashion has lacked the courage to cry out with the little child: "They have nothing on." No robe of art, no texture of skill, they whirl before us in a bacchanalian dance naked and unashamed. But the time will come, it must, when the voices of the multitude will take up the cry of the child, and the revellers will hurry to their houses in dismay. Without dignity, without self-restraint, without the morality of art, literature has never survived; they are the few who rose superior to the baser levels of their time, who stand unimpugned among the immortals now. And that mortal who would put on immortality must first assume that habit of reticence, that garb of humility by which true greatness is best known. To endure restraint--_that_ is to be strong.

A Lady Reading

By Walter Sickert

_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._

Modern Melodrama

By Hubert Crackanthorpe

The pink shade of a single lamp supplied an air of subdued mystery; the fire burned red and still; in place of door and windows hung curtains, obscure, formless; the furniture, dainty, but sparse, stood detached and incoördinate like the furniture of a stage-scene; the atmosphere was heavy with heat, and a scent of stale tobacco; some cut flowers, half withered, tissue-paper still wrapping their stalks, lay on a gilt, cane-bottomed chair.

"Will you give me a sheet of paper, please?"

He had crossed the room, to seat himself before the principal table. He wore a fur-lined overcoat, and he was tall, and broad, and bald; a sleek face, made grave by gold-rimmed spectacles.

The other man was in evening dress; his back leaning against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets: he was moodily scraping the hearthrug with his toe. Clean-shaved; stolid and coarsely regular features; black, shiny hair, flattened on to his head; under-sized eyes, moist and glistening; the tint of his face uniform, the tint of discoloured ivory; he looked a man who ate well and lived hard.

"Certainly, sir, certainly," and he started to hurry about the room.

"Daisy," he exclaimed roughly, a moment later, "where the deuce do you keep the note-paper?"

"I don't know if there is any, but the girl always has some." She spoke in a slow tone--insolent and fatigued.

A couple of bed-pillows were supporting her head, and a scarlet plush cloak, trimmed with white down, was covering her feet, as she lay curled on the sofa. The fire-light glinted on the metallic gold of her hair, which clashed with the black of her eyebrows; and the full, blue eyes, wide-set, contradicted the hard line of her vivid-red lips. She drummed her fingers on the sofa-edge, nervously.

"Never mind," said the bald man shortly, producing a notebook from his breast-pocket, and tearing a leaf from it.

He wrote, and the other two stayed silent; the man returned to the hearthrug, lifting his coat-tails under his arms; the girl went on drumming the sofa-edge.

"There," sliding back his chair, and looking from the one to the other, evidently uncertain which of the two he should address. "Here is the prescription. Get it made up to-night, a table-spoonful at a time, in a wine-glassful of water at lunch-time, at dinner-time and before going to bed. Go on with the port wine twice a day, and (to the girl, deliberately and distinctly) you _must_ keep quite quiet; avoid all sort of excitement--that is extremely important. Of course you must on no account go out at night. Go to bed early, take regular meals, and keep always warm."

"I say," broke in the girl, "tell us, it isn't bad--dangerous, I mean?"

"Dangerous!--no, not if you do what I tell you."

He glanced at his watch, and rose, buttoning his coat.

"Good-evening," he said gravely.

At first she paid no heed; she was vacantly staring before her: then, suddenly conscious that he was waiting, she looked up at him.

"Good-night, doctor."

She held out her hand, and he took it.

"I'll get all right, won't I?" she asked, still looking up at him.

"All right--of course you will--of course. But remember you must do what I tell you."

The other man handed him his hat and umbrella, opened the door for him, and it closed behind them.

* * * * *

The girl remained quiet, sharply blinking her eyes, her whole expression eager, intense.

A murmer of voices, a muffled tread of footsteps descending the stairs--the gentle shutting of a door--stillness.

She raised herself on her elbow, listening; the cloak slipped noiselessly to the floor. Quickly her arm shot out to the bell-rope: she pulled it violently; waited, expectant; and pulled again.

A slatternly figure appeared--a woman of middle-age--her arms, bared to the elbows, smeared with dirt; a grimy apron over her knees.

"What's up?--I was smashin' coal," she explained.

"Come here," hoarsely whispered the girl--"here--no--nearer--quite close. Where's he gone?"

"Gone? 'oo?"

"That man that was here."

"I s'ppose 'ee's in the downstairs room. I ain't 'eard the front door slam."

"And Dick, where's he?"

"They're both in there together, I s'ppose."

"I want you to go down--quietly--without making a noise--listen at the door--come up, and tell me what they're saying."

"What? down there?" jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

"Yes, of course--at once," answered the girl, impatiently.

"And if they catches me--a nice fool I looks. No, I'm jest blowed if I do!" she concluded. "Whatever's up?"

"You must," the girl broke out excitedly. "I tell you, you must."

"Must--must--an' if I do, what am I goin' to git out of it?" She paused, reflecting; then added: "Look 'ere--I tell yer what--I'll do it for half a quid, there?"

"Yes--yes--all right--only make haste."

"An' 'ow d' I know as I'll git it?" she objected doggedly. "It's a jolly risk, yer know."

The girl sprang up, flushed and feverish.

"Quick--or he'll be gone. I don't know where it is--but you shall have it--I promise--quick--please go--quick."

The other hesitated, her lips pressed together; turned, and went out.

And the girl, catching at her breath, clutched a chair.

* * * * *

A flame flickered up in the fire, buzzing spasmodically. A creak outside. She had come up. But the curtains did not move. Why didn't she come in? She was going past. The girl hastened across the room, the intensity of the impulse lending her strength.

"Come--come in," she gasped. "Quick--I'm slipping."

She struck at the wall; but with the flat of her hand, for there was no grip. The woman bursting in, caught her, and led her back to the sofa.

"There, there, dearie," tucking the cloak round her feet. "Lift up the piller, my 'ands are that mucky. Will yer 'ave anythin'?"

She shook her head. "It's gone," she muttered. "Now--tell me."

"Tell yer?--tell yer what! Why--why--there ain't jest nothin' to tell yer."

"What were they saying? Quick."

"I didn't 'ear nothin'. They was talking about some ballet-woman."

The girl began to cry, feebly, helplessly, like a child in pain.

"You might tell me, Liz. You might tell me. I've been a good sort to you."

"That yer 'ave. I knows yer 'ave, dearie. There, there, don't yer take on like that. Yer'll only make yerself bad again."

"Tell me--tell me," she wailed. "I've been a good sort to you, Liz."

"Well, they wasn't talkin' of no ballet-woman--that's straight," the woman blurted out savagely.

"What did he say?--tell me." Her voice was weaker now.

"I can't tell yer--don't yer ask me--for God's sake, don't yer ask me."

With a low crooning the girl cried again.

"Oh! for God's sake, don't yer take on like that--it's awful--I can't stand it. There, dearie, stop that cryin' an' I'll tell yer--I will indeed. It was jest this way--I slips my shoes off, an' I goes down as careful--jest as careful as a cat--an' when I gets to the door I crouches myself down, listenin' as 'ard as ever I could. The first things as I 'ears was Mr. Dick speakin' thick-like--like as if 'ee'd bin drinkin'--an t'other chap 'ee says somethin' about lungs, using some long word--I missed that--there was a van or somethin' rackettin' on the road. Then 'ee says 'gallopin', gallopin',' jest like as 'ee was talkin' of a 'orse. An' Mr. Dick, 'ee says, 'ain't there no chance--no'ow?' and 'ee give a sort of a grunt. I was awful sorry for 'im, that I was, 'ee must 'ave been crool bad, 'ee's mostly so quiet-like, ain't 'ee? An', in a minute, ee sort o' groans out somethin', an' t'other chap 'es answer 'im quite cool-like, that 'ee don't properly know; but, anyways, it 'ud be over afore the end of February. There I've done it. Oh! dearie, it's awful, awful, that's jest what it is. An' I 'ad no intention to tell yer--not a blessed word--that I didn't--may God strike me blind if I did! Some'ow it all come out, seein' yer chokin' that 'ard an' feelin' at the wall there. Yer 'ad no right to ask me to do it--'ow was I to know 'ee was a doctor?"

She put the two corners of her apron to her eyes, gurgling loudly.

"Look 'ere, don't yer b'lieve a word of it--I don't--I tell yer they're a 'umbuggin' lot, them doctors, all together. I know it. Yer take my word for that--yer'll git all right again. Yer'll be as well as I am, afore yer've done--Oh, Lord!--it's jest awful--I feel that upset--I'd like to cut my tongue out, for 'avin' told yer--but I jest couldn't 'elp myself." She was retreating towards the door, wiping her eyes, and snorting out loud sobs--"An', don't you offer me that half quid--I couldn't take it of yer--that I couldn't."

* * * * *

She shivered, sat up, and dragged the cloak tight round her shoulders. In her desire to get warm she forgot what had happened. She extended the palms of her hands towards the grate: the grate was delicious. A smoking lump of coal clattered on to the fender: she lifted the tongs, but the sickening remembrance arrested her. The things in the room were receding, dancing round: the fire was growing taller and taller. The woollen scarf chafed her skin: she wrenched it off. Then hope, keen and bitter, shot up, hurting her. "How could he know? Of course he couldn't know. She'd been a lot better this last fortnight--the other doctor said so--she didn't believe it--she didn't care----Anyway, it would be over before the end of February!"

Suddenly the crooning wail started again: next, spasms of weeping, harsh and gasping.

By-and-by she understood that she was crying noisily, and that she was alone in the room; like a light in a wind, the sobbing fit ceased.

"Let me live--let me live--I'll be straight--I'll go to church--I'll do anything! Take it away--it hurts--I can't bear it!"

Once more the sound of her own voice in the empty room calmed her. But the tension of emotion slackened, only to tighten again: immediately she was jeering at herself. What was she wasting her breath for? What had Jesus ever done for her? She'd had her fling, and it was no thanks to Him.

"'Dy-sy--Dy-sy----'"

From the street below, boisterous and loud, the refrain came up. And, as the footsteps tramped away, the words reached her once more, indistinct in the distance:

"'I'm jest cryzy, all for the love o' you.'"

She felt frightened. It was like a thing in a play. It was as if some one was there, in the room--hiding--watching her.

Then a coughing fit started, racking her. In the middle, she struggled to cry for help; she thought she was going to suffocate.

Afterwards she sank back, limp, tired, and sleepy.

The end of February--she was going to die--it was important, exciting--what would it be like? Everybody else died. Midge had died in the summer--but that was worry and going the pace. And they said that Annie Evans was going off too. Damn it! she wasn't going to be chicken-hearted. She'd face it. She'd had a jolly time. She'd be game till the end. Hell-fire--that was all stuff and nonsense--she knew that. It would be just nothing--like a sleep. Not even painful: she'd be just shut down in a coffin, and she wouldn't know that they were doing it. Ah! but they might do it before she was quite dead! It had happened sometimes. And she wouldn't be able to get out. The lid would be nailed, and there would be earth on the top. And if she called, no one would hear.

Ugh! what a fit of the blues she was getting! It was beastly, being alone. Why the devil didn't Dick come back?

That noise, what was that?

Bah! only some one in the street. What a fool she was!

She winced again as the fierce feeling of revolt swept through her, the wild longing to fight. It was damned rough--four months! A year, six months even, was a long time. The pain grew acute, different from anything she had felt before.

"Good Lord! what am I maundering on about? Four months--I'll go out with a fizzle like a firework. Why the devil doesn't Dick come?--or Liz--or somebody? What do they leave me alone like this for?"

She dragged at the bell-rope.

* * * * *

He came in, white and blear-eyed.

"Whatever have you been doing all this time?" she began angrily.

"I've been chatting with the doctor." He was pretending to read a newspaper: there was something funny about his voice.

"It's ripping. He says you'll soon be fit again, as long as you don't get colds, or that sort of thing. Yes, he says you'll soon be fit again"--a quick, crackling noise--he had gripped the newspaper in his fist.

She looked at him, surprised, in spite of herself. She would never have thought he'd have done it like that. He was a good sort, after all. But--she didn't know why--she broke out furiously:

"You infernal liar!--I know. I shall be done for by the end of February--ha! ha!"

Seizing a vase of flowers, she flung it into the grate. The crash and the shrivelling of the leaves in the flames brought her an instant's relief. Then she said quietly:

"There--I've made an idiot of myself; but" (weakly) "I didn't know--I didn't know--I thought it was different."

He hesitated, embarrassed by his own emotion. Presently he went up to her and put his hands round her cheeks.

"No," she said, "that's no good, I don't want that. Get me something to drink. I feel bad."

He hurried to the cupboard and fumbled with the cork of a champagne bottle. It flew out with a bang. She started violently.

"You clumsy fool!" she exclaimed.

She drank off the wine at a gulp.

"Daisy," he began.

She was staring stonily at the empty glass.

"Daisy," he repeated.

She tapped her toe against the fender-rail.

At this sign, he went on:

"How did you know?"

"I sent Liz to listen," she answered mechanically.

He looked about him, helpless.

"I think I'll smoke," he said feebly.

She made no answer.

"Here, put the glass down," she said.

He obeyed.

He lit a cigarette over the lamp, sat down opposite her, puffing dense clouds of smoke.

And, for a long while, neither spoke.

"Is that doctor a good man?"

"I don't know. People say so," he answered.

Two Songs

By John Davidson

I--London

Athwart the sky a lowly sigh From west to east the sweet wind carried; The sun stood still on Primrose Hill; His light in all the city tarried: The clouds on viewless columns bloomed Like smouldering lilies unconsumed.

"Oh, sweetheart, see, how shadowy, Of some occult magician's rearing, Or swung in space of Heaven's grace, Dissolving, dimly reappearing, Afloat upon ethereal tides St. Paul above the city rides!"

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing Abbey, Tower, and Palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.

II-Down-a-down

Foxes peeped from out their dens, Day grew pale and olden; Blackbirds, willow-warblers, wrens, Staunched their voices golden.

High, oh high, from the opal sky, Shouting against the dark, "Why, why, why must the day go by?" Fell a passionate lark.

But the cuckoos beat their brazen gongs, Sounding, sounding so; And the nightingales poured in starry songs A galaxy below.

Slowly tolling the vesper bell Ushered the stately night. Down-a-down in a hawthorn dell A boy and a girl and love's delight.

The Love-Story of Luigi Tansillo

By Richard Garnett

Now that my wings are spread to my desire, The more vast height withdraws the dwindling land, Wider to wind these pinions I expand, And earth disdain, and higher mount and higher Nor of the fate of Icarus inquire, Or cautious droop, or sway to either hand; Dead I shall fall, full well I understand; But who lives gloriously as I expire? Yet hear I my own heart that pleading cries, Stay, madman! Whither art thou bound? Descend! Ruin is ready Rashness to chastise. But I, Fear not, though this indeed the end; Cleave we the clouds, and praise our destinies, If noble fall on noble flight attend.

The above sonnet, one of the finest in Italian literature, is already known to many English readers in another translation by the late Mr. J. Addington Symonds, which originally appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and is prefixed to his translation of the sonnets of Michael Angelo and Campanella (London, 1878), under the title of "The Philosopher's Flight." In his preface Mr. Symonds says: "The sonnet prefixed as a proem to the whole book is generally attributed to Giordano Bruno, in whose Dialogue in the 'Eroici Furori' it occurs. There seems, however, good reason to suppose that it was really written by Tansillo, who recites it in that dialogue. Whoever may have been its author, it expresses in noble and impassioned verse the sense of danger, the audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers of modern thought, for whom philosophy was a voyage of discovery into untravelled regions." Mr. Symonds's knowledge of Italian literature was so extensive that he must have had ground for stating that the sonnet is generally attributed to Giordano Bruno; as it certainly is by De Sanctis, though it is printed as Tansillo's in all editions of his works, imperfect as these were before the appearance of Signor Fiorentino's in 1882. It is, nevertheless, remarkable that he should add: "_There seems good reason to suppose_ that it was really written by Tansillo," as if there could be a shadow of doubt on the matter. "Eroici Furori" is professedly a series of dialogues between Luigi Tansillo the Neapolitan poet, who had died about twenty years before their composition, and Cicero, but is in reality little more than a monologue, for Tansillo does nearly all the talking, and Cicero receives his instructions with singular docility. The reason of Tansillo's selection for so great an honour was undoubtedly that, although born at Venosa, he belonged by descent to Nola, Bruno's own city. In making such free use of Tansillo's poetry as he has done throughout these dialogues, Bruno was far from the least idea of pillaging his distinguished countryman. In introducing the four sonnets he has borrowed (for there are three besides that already quoted) he is always careful to make Tansillo speak of them as his own compositions, which he never does when Bruno's own verses are put into his mouth. If a particle of doubt could remain, it would be dispelled by the fact that this sonnet, with other poems by Tansillo, including the three other sonnets introduced into Bruno's dialogue, is published under his name in the "Rime di diversi illustri Signori Napoletani," edited by Lodovico Dolce at Venice, in 1555, when Bruno was about seven years old!

Mr. Symonds's interpretation of the sonnet also is erroneous--in so far, at least, as that the meaning assigned by him never entered into the head of the author. It is certainly fully susceptible of such an exposition. But Tansillo, no philosopher, but a cavalier, the active part of whose life was mainly spent in naval expeditions against the Turks, no more thought with Mr. Symonds of "the pioneers of modern philosophy," than he thought with Bruno of "arising and freeing himself from the body and sensual cognition." On the contrary, the sonnet is a love-sonnet, and depicts with extraordinary grandeur the elation of spirit, combined with a sense of peril, consequent upon the poet having conceived a passion for a lady greatly his superior in rank. The proof of this is to be found in the fact that the sonnet is one of a series, unequivocally celebrating an earthly passion; and especially in the sonnet immediately preceding it in Dolce's collection, manifestly written at the same time and referring to the same circumstance, in which the poet ascribes his Icarian flight, not to the influence of Philosophy, but of Love:

Love fits me forth with wings, which so dilate, Sped skyward at the call of daring thought, I high and higher soar, with purpose fraught Soon to lay smiting hand on Heaven's gate. Yet altitude so vast might well abate My confidence, if Love not succour brought, Pledging my fame not jeopardised in aught, And promising renown as ruin great. If he whom like audacity inspired, Falling gave name immortal to the flood, As sunny flame his waxen pinion fired; Then of thee too it shall be understood, No meaner prize than Heaven thy soul required, And firmer than thy life thy courage stood.

The meaning of the two sonnets is fully recognised by Muratori, who prints them together in his treatise, "Della perfetta poesia," and adds: "_volea dire costui che s'era imbarcato in un'amor troppo alto, e s'andava facendo coraggio_."

This is surely one of the most remarkable instances possible to adduce of the infinite significance of true poetry, and its capacity for inspiring ideas and suggesting interpretations of which the poet never dreamed, but which are nevertheless fairly deducible from his expressions.

It is now a matter of considerable interest to ascertain the identity of this lady of rank, who could inspire a passion at once so exalted and so perilous. The point has been investigated by Tansillo's editor, Signor F. Fiorentino, who has done so much to rescue his unpublished compositions from oblivion, and his view must be pronounced perfectly satisfactory. She was Maria d'Aragona, Marchioness del Vasto, whose husband, the Marquis del Vasto, a celebrated general of Spanish descent, famous as Charles the Fifth's right hand in his successful expedition against Tunis, and at one time governor of the Milanese, was as remarkable for his jealousy as the lady, grand-daughter of a King of Naples, was for her pride and haughtiness. Fiorentino proves his case by showing how well all personal allusions in Tansillo's poems, so far as they can be traced, agree with the circumstances of the Marchioness, and in particular that the latter is represented as at one time residing on the island of Ischia, where del Vasto was accustomed to deposit his wife for security, when absent on his campaigns. He is apparently not aware that the object of Tansillo's affection had already been identified with a member of the house of Aragon by Faria e Sousa, the Portuguese editor of Camoëns, who, in his commentary on Camoëns's sixty-ninth sonnet, gives an interminable catalogue of ladies celebrated by enamoured poets, and says, "Tansillo sang Donna Isabel de Aragon." This lady, however, the niece of the Marchioness del Vasto, was a little girl in Tansillo's time, and is only mentioned by him as inconsolable for the death of a favourite dwarf.

The sentiment, therefore, of the two sonnets of Tansillo which we have quoted, is sufficiently justified by the exalted station of the lady who had inspired his passion, and the risk he ran from the power and jealousy of her husband. It seems certain, however, that the Marquis had on his part no ground for apprehension. Maria d'Aragona does not seem to have had much heart to bestow upon anyone, and would, in any case, have disdained to bestow what heart she had upon a poor gentleman and retainer of Don Garcia de Toledo, son of the Viceroy of Naples. She would think that she honoured him beyond his deserts by accepting his poetical homage. Tansillo, on his part, says in one of his sonnets that his devotion is purely platonic; it might have been more ardent, he hints, but he is dazzled by the splendour of the light he contemplates, and intimidated by the richness of the band by which he is led. So it may have been at first, but as time wore on the poet naturally craved some proof that his lady was not entirely indifferent to him, and did not tolerate him merely for the sake of his verses. This, in the nature of things, could not be given; and the poet's raptures pass into doubt and suspicion, thence into despairing resignation; thence into resentment and open hostility, terminating in a cold reconciliation, leaving him free to marry a much humbler but probably a more affectionate person, to whom he addresses no impassioned sonnets, but whom he instructs in a very elegant poem ("La Balia") how to bring up her infant children. These varying affections are depicted with extreme liveliness in a series of sonnets, of which we propose to offer some translated specimens. The order will not be that of the editions of Tansillo, where the pieces are distributed at random, but the probable order of composition, as indicated by the nature of the feeling expressed. It is, of course, impossible to give more than a few examples, though most deserve to be reproduced. Tansillo had the advantage over most Italian poets of his time of being in love with a real woman; hence, though possibly inferior in style and diction to such artists in rhyme as Bembo or Molza, he greatly surpasses them in all the qualities that discriminate poetry from the accomplishment of verse.

The first sonnet which we shall give is still all fire and rapture:--

I

Lady, the heart that entered through your eyes Returneth not. Well may he make delay, For if the very windows that display Your spirit, sparkle in such wondrous wise, Of her enthroned within this Paradise What shall be deemed? If heart for ever stay, Small wonder, dazzled by more radiant day Than gazers from without can recognise. Glory of sun and moon and silver star In firmament above, are these not sign Of things within more excellent by far? Rejoice then in thy kingdom, heart of mine, While Love and Fortune favourable are, Nor thou yet exiled for default of thine.

Although, however, Tansillo's heart might well remain with its lady, Tansillo's person was necessitated to join the frequent maritime expeditions of the great nobleman to whom he was attached, Don Garcia de Toledo, against the Turks. The constant free-booting of the Turkish and Barbary rovers kept the Mediterranean in a state of commotion comparable to that of the Spanish Main in the succeeding age, and these expeditions, whose picturesque history remains to be written, were no doubt very interesting; though from a philosophical point of view it is impossible not to sympathise with the humane and generous poet when he inquires:--

Che il Turco nasca turco, e 'l Moro moro, È giusta causa questa, ond'altri ed io Dobbiam incrudelir nel sangue loro?

With such feelings it may well be believed that in his enforced absence he was thinking at least as much of love as of war, and that the following sonnet is as truthful as it is an animated picture of his feelings:--

II

No length of banishment did e'er remove My heart from you, nor if by Fortune sped I roam the azure waters, or the Red, E'er with the body shall the spirit rove: If by each drop of every wave we clove, Or by Sun's light or Moon's encompassèd, Another Venus were engenderèd, And each were pregnant with another Love: And thus new shapes of Love where'er we went Started to life at every stroke of oar, And each were cradled in an amorous thought; Not more than now this spirit should adore; That none the less doth constantly lament It cannot worship as it would and ought.

Before long, however, the pangs of separation overcome this elation of spirit, while he is not yet afraid of being forgotten:--

III

Like lightning shining forth from east to west, Hurled are the happy hours from morn to night, And leave the spirit steeped in undelight In like proportion as themselves were blest. Slow move sad hours, by thousand curbs opprest, Wherewith the churlish Fates delay their flight; Those, impulses of Mercury incite, These lag at the Saturnian star's behest. While thou wert near, ere separation's grief Smote me, like steeds contending in the race, My days and nights with equal speed did run: Now broken either wheel, not swift the pace Of summer's night though summer's moon be brief; Or wintry days for brevity of sun.

IV

Now that the Sun hath borne with him the day, And haled dark Night from prison subterrene, Come forth, fair Moon, and, robed in light serene, With thy own loveliness the world array. Heaven's spheres, slow wheeled on their majestic way, Invoke as they revolve thy orb unseen, And all the pageant of the starry scene, Wronged by thy absence, chides at thy delay. Shades even as splendours, earth and heaven both Smile at the apparition of thy face, And my own gloom no longer seems so loth; Yet, while my eye regards thee, thought doth trace Another's image; if in vows be troth, I am not yet estranged from Love's embrace.

Continual separation, however, and the absence of any marked token that he is borne in memory, necessarily prey more and more on the sensitive spirit of the poet. During the first part, her husband's tenure of office as Governor of the Milanese, the Marchioness, as already mentioned, took up her residence in the island of Ischia, where she received her adorer's eloquent aspirations for her welfare--heartfelt, but so worded as to convey a reproach:

V

That this fair isle with all delight abound, Clad be it ever in sky's smile serene, No thundering billow boom from deeps marine, And calm with Neptune and his folk be found. Fast may all winds by Æolus be bound, Save faintest breath of lispings Zephyrene; And be the odorous earth with glowing green Of gladsome herbs, bright flowers, quaint foliage crowned. All ire, all tempest, all misfortune be Heaped on my head, lest aught thy pleasure stain, Nor this disturbed by any thought of me, So scourged with ills' innumerable train, New grief new tear begetteth not, as sea Chafes not the more for deluge of the rain.

The "quaint foliage" is in the original "Arab leaves," _arabe frondi_, an interesting proof of the cultivation of exotic plants at the period.

The lady rejoins her husband at Milan, and Tansillo, landing on the Campanian coast, lately devastated by earthquakes and eruptions, finds everywhere the image of his own bosom, and rejoices at the opportunity which yawning rifts and chasms of earth afford for an appeal to the infernal powers:--

VI

Wild precipice and earthquake-riven wall; Bare jagged lava naked to the sky; Whence densely struggles up and slow floats by Heaven's murky shroud of smoke funereal; Horror whereby the silent groves enthral; Black weedy pit and rifted cavity; Bleak loneliness whose drear sterility Doth prowling creatures of the wild appal: Like one distraught who doth his woe deplore, Bereft of sense by thousand miseries, As passion prompts, companioned or alone; Your desert so I rove; if as before Heaven deaf continue, through these crevices, My cry shall pierce to the Avernian throne.

The poet's melancholy deepens, and he enters upon the stage of dismal and hopeless resignation to the inevitable:

VII

As one who on uneasy couch bewails Besetting sickness and Time's tardy course, Proving if drug, or gem, or charm have force To conquer the dire evil that assails: But when at last no remedy prevails, And bankrupt Art stands empty of resource, Beholds Death in the face, and scorns recourse To skill whose impotence in nought avails. So I, who long have borne in trust unspent That distance, indignation, reason, strife With Fate would heal my malady, repent, Frustrate all hopes wherewith my soul was rife, And yield unto my destiny, content To languish for the little left of life.

A lower depth still has to be reached ere the period of salutary and defiant reaction:--

VIII

So mightily abound the hosts of Pain, Whom sentries of my bosom Love hath made, No space is left to enter or evade, And inwardly expire sighs born in vain, If any pleasure mingle with the train, By the first glimpse of my poor heart dismayed, Instant he dies, or else, in bondage stayed, Pines languishing, or flies that drear domain. Pale semblances of terror keep the keys, Of frowning portals they for none displace Save messengers of novel miseries: All thoughts they scare that wear a gladsome face; And, were they anything but Miseries, Themselves would hasten from the gloomy place.

Slighted love easily passes from rejection into rebellion, and we shall see that such was the case with Tansillo. The following sonnet denotes an intermediate stage, when resignation is almost renunciation, but has not yet become revolt:--

IX

Cease thy accustomed strain, my mournful lute; New music find, fit for my lot forlorn; Henceforth be Wrath and Grief resounded, torn The strings that anciently did Love salute, Not on my own weak wing irresolute But on Love's plumes I trusted to be borne, Chanting him far as that remotest bourne Whence strength Herculean reft Hesperian fruit. To such ambition was my spirit wrought By gracious guerdon Love came offering When free in air my thought was bold to range: But otherwhere now dwells another's thought, And Wrath has plucked Love's feather from my wing, And hope, style, theme, I all alike must change.

This, however, is not a point at which continuance is possible, the mind must go either backward or forward. The lover for a time persuades himself that he has broken his mistress's yoke, and that his infatuation is entirely a thing of the past. But the poet, like the lady, protests too much:--

X

If Love was miser of my liberty, Lo, Scorn is bounteous and benevolent, Such scope permitting, that, my fetter rent, Not lengthened by my hand, I wander free. The eyes that yielded tears continually Have now with Lethe's drops my fire besprent, And more behold, Illusion's glamour spent, Than fabled Argus with his century. The tyrant of my spirit, left forlorn As vassal thoughts forsake him, doth remove, And back unto her throne is Reason borne, And I my metamorphosis approve, And, old strains tuning to new keys, of Scorn Will sing as anciently I sang of Love.

Several solutions of this situation are conceivable. Tansillo's is that which was perhaps that most likely in the case of an emotional nature, where the feelings are more powerful than the will. He simply surrenders at discretion, retracts everything disparaging that he has said of the lady (taking care, however, not to burn the peccant verses, which are much too good to be lightly parted with), and professes himself her humble slave upon her own terms:--

XI

All bitter words I spoke of you while yet My heart was sore, and every virgin scroll Blackened with ire, now past from my control, These would I now recall; for 'tis most fit My style should change, now Reason doth reknit, Ties Passion sundered, and again make whole; Be then Oblivion's prey whate'er my soul Hath wrongly of thee thought, spoke, sung, or writ. Not, Lady, that impeachment of thy fame With tongue or pen I ever did design; But that, if unto these shall reach my name, Ages to come may study in my line How year by year more streamed and towered my flame, And how I living was and dying thine.

There is no reason to doubt the perfect sincerity of these lines at the period of their composition; but Tansillo's mistress had apparently resolved that his attachment should not henceforth have the diet even of a chameleon; and it is small wonder to find him shortly afterwards a tender husband and father, lamenting the death of an infant son in strains of extreme pathos, and instructing his wife on certain details of domestic economy in which she might have been supposed to be better versed than himself. His marriage took place in 1550, and in one of his sonnets he says that his unhappy attachment had endured sixteen years, which, allowing for a decent interval between the Romeo and the Benedict, would date its commencement at 1532 or 1533.

Maria d'Aragona died on November 9, 1568, and Tansillo, whose services had been rewarded by a judicial appointment in the kingdom of Naples, followed her to the tomb on December 1. If her death is really the subject of the two poems in terza rima which appear to deplore it, he certainly lost no time in bewailing her, but the interval is so brief, and the poems are so weak, that they may have been composed on some other occasion. With respect to the latter consideration, however, it must be remembered that he was himself, in all probability, suffering from disabling sickness, having made his will on November 29. It is also worthy of note that the first sonnets composed by Petrarch upon the death of Laura are in general much inferior in depth of tenderness to those written years after the event. "In Memoriam" is another proof that the adequate poetical expression of grief, unlike that of life, requires time and study. Tansillo, then, may not have been so completely disillusioned as his editor thinks. If the poems do not relate to Maria d'Aragona, we have no clue to the ultimate nature of his feelings towards her.

A generally fair estimate of Tansillo's rank as a poet is given in Ginguéné's "History of Italian Literature," vol. ix., pp. 340-343. It can scarcely be admitted that his boldness and fertility of imagination transported him beyond the limits of lyric poetry--for this is hardly possible--but it is true that they sometimes transcended the limits of good taste, and that the germs may be found in him of the extravagance which so disfigured Italian poetry in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, he has the inestimable advantage over most Italian poets of his day of writing of genuine passion from genuine experience. Hence a truth and vigour preferable even to the exquisite elegance of his countryman, Angelo di Costanzo, and much more so to the mere amatory exercises of other contemporaries. After Michael Angelo he stands farther aloof than any contemporary from Petrarch, a merit in an age when the study of Petrarch had degenerated into slavish imitation. His faults as a lyrist are absent from his didactic poems, which are models of taste and elegance. His one unpardonable sin is want of patriotism; he is the dependant and panegyrist of the foreign conqueror, and seems equally unconscious of the past glories, the actual degradation, or the prospective regeneration of Italy. Born a Spanish subject, his ideal of loyalty was entirely misplaced, and he must not be severely censured for what he could hardly avoid. But Italy lost a Tyrtæus in him.

A Book Plate for J. L. Propert, Esq. By Aubrey Beardsley

A Book Plate for Major-General Gosset By R. Anning Bell

_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._

The Fool's Hour

The First Act of a Comedy

By John Oliver Hobbes and George Moore

CHARACTERS OF THE COMEDY

Lord Doldrummond Cyril, _his Son_ (Viscount Aprile) Sir Digby Soame Charles Mandeville, _a tenor_ Mr. Banish, _a banker_ The Hon. Arthur Featherleigh Mr. Samuel Benjamin, _a money-lender_ Lady Doldrummond Julia, _an heiress_ The Hon. Mrs. Howard de Trappe, _her mother, a widow_ Sarah Sparrow, _an American prima donna_