BOOKS AND HABITS

from the lectures of

LAFCADIO HEARN

Selected and Edited with an Introduction by

JOHN ERSKINE

Professor of English Columbia University

1922

London: William Heinemann

[Transcriber's note: Contents moved toprecede the Introduction.]

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION I THEINSUPERABLE DIFFICULTY II ONLOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY IIITHE IDEAL WOMAN IN ENGLISHPOETRY IV NOTE UPON THESHORTEST FORMS OF ENGLISHPOETRY V SOME FOREIGNPOEMS ON JAPANESE SUBJECTSVI THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE VII THE"HAVAMAL" VIII BEYOND MANIX THE NEW ETHICS X SOMEPOEMS ABOUT INSECTS XI SOMEFRENCH POEMS ABOUT INSECTSXII NOTE ON THE INFLUENCEOF FINNISH POETRY INENGLISH LITERATURE XIII THEMOST BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE OFTHE MIDDLE AGES XIV"IONICA" XV OLD GREEKFRAGMENTS INDEX

INTRODUCTION

These chapters, for the most part, are

reprinted from Lafcadio Hearn's"Interpretations of Literature," 1915,from his "Life and Literature," 1916,and from his "Appreciations ofPoetry," 1917. Three chapters appearhere for the first time. They are all takenfrom the student notes of Hearn'slectures at the University of Tokyo,1896-1902, sufficiently described in theearlier volumes just mentioned. Theyare now published in this regrouping inresponse to a demand for a furtherselection of the lectures, in a lessexpensive volume and with emphasisupon those papers which illustrateHearn's extraordinary ability tointerpret the exotic in life and in books.

It should be remembered that theselectures were delivered to Japanesestudents, and that Hearn's purpose wasnot only to impart the informationabout Western literature usually to befound in our histories and text-books,but much more to explain to theOriental mind those peculiarities ofour civilization which might be hard tounderstand on the further side of thePacific Ocean. The lectures aretherefore unique, in that they are thefirst large attempt by a Western critic tointerpret us to the East. That we shallbe deeply concerned in the near futureto continue this interpretation on aneven larger scale, no one of us doubts.We wish we might hope for another

genius like Hearn to carry on the work.

The merit of the chapters printed orreprinted in the present volume seemsto me their power to teach us toimagine our familiar traditions asforeign and exotic in the eyes of otherpeoples. We are accustomed, like everyone else, to think of our literature asthe final product of other literatures asa terminal in itself, rather than as achannel through which greatpotentialities might flow. Like othermen, we are accustomed to think ofourselves as native, under allcircumstances, and of other people atall times as foreign. While we werestaying in their country, did we not

think of the French as foreigners Inthese chapters, not originally intendedfor us, we have the piquant and salutaryexperience of seeing what we look likeon at least one occasion when we arethe foreigners; we catch at least aglimpse of what to the Orient seemsexotic in us, and it does us no harm toobserve that the peculiarly Westernaspects of our culture are not self-justifying nor always justifiable whenlooked at through eyes not alreadydisposed in their favour. Hearn wasone of the most loyal advocates theWest could possibly have sent to theEast, but he was an honest artist, andhe never tried to improve his case bytrimming a fact. His interpretation of

us, therefore, touches our sensitivenessin regions and in a degree whichperhaps his Japanese students wereunconscious of; we too marvel as wellas they at his skill in explaining, but weare sensitive to what he foundnecessary to explain. We read less forthe explanation than for the inventoryof ourselves.

Any interpretation of life which looksclosely to the facts will probablyincrease our sense of mystery and ofstrangeness in common things. If onthe other hand it is a theory ofexperience which chiefly interests us,we may divert our attention somewhatfrom the experience to the theory,

leaving the world as humdrum as it wasbefore we explained it. In that case wemust seek the exotic in remote placesand in exceptional conditions, if we areto observe it at all. But Lafcadio Hearncultivated in himself and taught hisstudents to cultivate a quick alertness tothose qualities of life to which we areusually dulled by habit. Education as heconceived of it had for its purposewhat Pater says is the end ofphilosophy, to rouse the human spirit,to startle it into sharp and eagerobservation. It is a sign that dulness isalready spreading in us, if we must gofar afield for the stimulating, thewondrous, the miraculous. Thegrowing sensitiveness of a sound

education would help us to distinguishthese qualities of romance in the veryheart of our daily life. To have sodistinguished them is in my opinion thefelicity of Hearn in these chapters.When he was writing of Japan forEuropean or American readers, wecaught easily enough the exoticatmosphere of the island kingdomeasily enough, since it was the essenceof a world far removed from ours. Theexotic note is quite as strong in thesechapters. We shall begin to appreciateHearn's genius when we reflect thathere he finds for us the exotic inourselves.

The first three chapters deal from

different standpoints with the samesubject the characteristic of Westerncivilization which to the East is mostpuzzling, our attitude toward women.Hearn attempted in other essays also todo full justice to this fascinating theme,but these illustrations are typical of hismethod. To the Oriental it is strange todiscover a civilization in which the loveof husband and wife altogethersupersedes the love of children fortheir parents, yet this is the civilizationhe will meet in English and in mostWestern literatures. He can understandthe love of individual women, as weunderstand the love of individual men,but he will not easily understand ourworship of women as a sex, our esteem

of womankind, our chivalry, our wayof taking woman as a religion. Howdifficult, then, will he find such a poemas Tennyson's "Princess," or mostEnglish novels. He will wonder why themajority of all Western stories are lovestories, and why in English literaturethe love story takes place beforemarriage, whereas in French and otherContinental literatures it usually followsmarriage. In Japan marriages are theconcern of the parents; with us they arethe concern of the lovers, who mustchoose their mates in competition moreor less open with other suitors. Nowonder the rivalries and the precarioustechnique of love-making are with usan obsession quite exotic to the Eastern

mind. But the Japanese reader, if hewould understand us, must also learnhow it is that we have two ways ofreckoning with love a realistic way,which occupies itself in portraying sex,the roots of the tree, as Hearn says, andthe idealistic way, which tries to fix andreproduce the beautiful illusion ofeither happy or unhappy passion. Andif the Japanese reader has learnedenough of our world to understand allthis, he must yet visualize our socialsystem more clearly perhaps than mostof us see it, if he would know why somany of our love poems are addressedto the woman we have not yet met.When we begin to sympathize with himin his efforts to grasp the meaning of

our literature, we are at last awakenedourselves to some notion of what ourcivilization means, and as Hearn guidesus through the discipline, we realize anexotic quality in things which formerlywe took for granted.

Lecturing before the days of Imagism,before the attention of many Americanpoets had been turned to Japanese art,Hearn recognized the scarcity in ourliterature of those short forms of versein which the Greeks as well as theJapanese excel. The epigram with us isor was until recently a classicaltradition, based on the briefinscriptions of the Greek anthology oron the sharp satires of Roman poetry;

we had no native turn for the form asan expression of our contemporary life.Since Hearn gave his very significantlecture we have discovered forourselves an American kind of shortpoem, witty rather than poetic, and fewverse-forms are now practised morewidely among us. Hearn spoke as aprophet or as a shrewd observer whichis the same thing when he pointed outthe possibility of development in thisfield of brevity. He saw that Japan wascloser to the Greek world in thispractice than we were, and that ourindifference to the shorter formsconstituted a peculiarity which wecould hardly defend. He saw, also, inthe work of Heredia, how great an

influence Japanese painting might haveon Western literature, even on thosepoets who had no other acquaintancewith Japan. In this point also hisobservation has proved prophetic; thenew poets in America have adoptedJapan, as they have adopted Greece, as aliterary theme, and it is somewhatexclusively from the fine arts of eithercountry that they draw their idea of itslife.

The next chapters which are broughttogether here, consider the origin andthe nature of English and Europeanethics. Hearn was an artist to the core,and as a writer he pursued withundivided purpose that beauty which,

as Keats reminded us, is truth. In hiscreative moments he was a beauty-lover,not a moralist. But when he turnedcritic he at once stressed the cardinalimportance of ethics in the study ofliterature. The art which strives to endin beauty will reveal even more clearlythan more complex forms ofexpression the personality of the artist,and personality is a matter of character,and character both governs the choiceof an ethical system and is modified byit. Literary criticism as Hearn practisedit is little interested in theology or in thesystem of morals publicly professed; itis, however, profoundly concerned withthe ethical principles upon which theartist actually proceeds, the directions in

which his impulses assert themselves,the verdicts of right and wrong whichhis temperament pronouncesunconsciously, it may be. Here is thetrue revelation of character, Hearnthinks, even though our habitual andinstinctive ethics may differ widelyfrom the ethics we quite sincerelyprofess. Whether we know it or not, weare in such matters the children ofsome educational or philosophicalsystem, which, preached at ourancestors long ago, has come at last toenvelop us with the apparentnaturalness of the air we breathe. It is aspiritual liberation of the first order, toenvisage such an atmosphere as what ittruly is, only a system of ethics

effectively inculcated, and to comparethe principles we live by with those wethought we lived by. Hearn wascontriving illumination for the Japanesewhen he made his great lecture on the"Havamal," identifying in the ancientNorthern poem those precepts whichlaid down later qualities of Englishcharacter; for the Oriental reader itwould be easier to identify the Englishtraits in Thackeray or Dickens orMeredith if he could first considerthem in a dogmatic precept. But thelecture gives us, I think, anextraordinary insight into ourselves, apower of self-criticism almostdisconcerting as we realize not only thepersistence of ethical ideals in the past,

but also the possible career of newethical systems as they may permeatethe books written to-day. To whatstandard will the reader of ourcontemporary literature beunconsciously moulded What accountwill be given of literature a thousandyears from now, when a later criticinforms himself of our ethics in orderto understand more vitally the pages inwhich he has been brought up

Partly to inform his Japanese studentsstill further as to our ethical tendenciesin literature, and partly I think toindulge his own speculation as to themorality that will be found in theliterature of the future, Hearn gave his

remarkable lectures on the ant-world,following Fabre and other Europeaninvestigators, and his lecture on "TheNew Ethics." When he spoke, overtwenty years ago, the socialistic idealhad not gripped us so effectually as ithas done in the last decade, but he hadno difficulty in observing the tendency.Civilization in some later cycle maywonder at our ambition to abandonindividual liberty and responsibility andto subside into the social instincts ofthe ant; and even as it wonders, that far-off civilization may detect in itself ant-like reactions which we cultivated for it.With this description of the ant-worldit is illuminating to read the twobrilliant chapters on English and

French poems about insects. Againstthis whole background of ethicaltheory, I have ventured to set Hearn'ssingularly objective account of theBible.

In the remaining four chapters Hearnspeaks of the "Kalevala," of themediaeval romance "Amis and Amile,"of William Cory's "Ionica," and ofTheocritus. These chapters dealobviously with literary influenceswhich have become part and parcel ofEnglish poetry, yet which remain exoticto it, if we keep in mind the Northernstock which still gives character, ethicaland otherwise, to the English tradition.The "Kalevala," which otherwise

should seem nearest to the basicqualities of our poetry, is almostunique, as Hearn points out, in theextent of its preoccupation withenchantments and charms, with themagic of words. "Amis and Amile,"which otherwise ought to seem moreforeign to us, is strangely close in itsglorification of friendship; for chivalryleft with us at least this one great ethicalfeeling, that to keep faith in friendshipis a holy thing. No wonder Amicus andAmelius were popular saints. The storyimplies also, as it falls here in the book,some illustration of those unconsciousor unconsidered ethical reactionswhich, as we saw in the chapter on the"Havamal," have a lasting influence on

our ideals and on our conduct.

Romanticist though he was, Hearnconstantly sought the romance in thehighway of life, the aspects ofexperience which seem to perpetuatethemselves from age to age, compellingliterature to reassert them underwhatever changes of form. To one whohas followed the large mass of hislectures it is not surprising that heemphasized those ethical positionswhich are likely to remain constant, inspite of much new philosophy, nor thathe constantly recurred to such books asCory's "Ionica," or Lang's translationof Theocritus, in which he foundstatements of enduring human

attitudes. To him the Greek mind madea double appeal. Not only did itrepresent to him the best that has yetbeen thought or said in the world, butby its fineness and its maturity itseemed kindred to the spirit he foundin ancient Japan. Lecturing to Japanesestudents on Greek poetry as it filtersthrough English paraphrases andtranslations, he must have feltsometimes as we now feel in readinghis lectures, that in his teaching the longmigration of the world's culture wasapproaching the end of the circuit, andthat the earliest apparition of the Eastknown to most of us was once morearriving at its starting place, mysteryreturning to mystery, and its path at all

points mysterious if we rightly observethe miracle of the human spirit.

BOOKS AND HABITS

CHAPTER I

THE INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTY

I wish to speak of the greatestdifficulty with which the Japanesestudents of English literature, or ofalmost any Western literature, have tocontend. I do not think that it ever has

been properly spoken about. A foreignteacher might well hesitate to speakabout, it because, if he should try toexplain it merely from the Westernpoint of view, he could not hope to beunderstood; and if he should try tospeak about it from the Japanese pointof view, he would be certain to makevarious mistakes and to utter variousextravagances. The proper explanationmight be given by a Japanese professoronly, who should have so intimate anacquaintance with Western life as tosympathize with it. Yet I fear that itwould be difficult to find such aJapanese professor for this reason, thatjust in proportion as he should findhimself in sympathy with Western life,

in that proportion he would becomeless and less able to communicate thatsympathy to his students. Thedifficulties are so great that it has takenme many years even to partly guess howgreat they are. That they can beremoved at the present day is utterlyout of the question. But somethingmay be gained by stating them evenimperfectly. At the risk of makingblunders and uttering extravagances, Ishall make the attempt. I am impelledto do so by a recent conversation withone of the cleverest students that I everhad, who acknowledged his totalinability to understand some of thecommonest facts in Western life, allthose facts relating, directly or

indirectly, to the position of woman inWestern literature as reflecting Westernlife.

Let us clear the ground it once byputting down some facts in the plainestand lowest terms possible. You musttry to imagine a country in which theplace of the highest virtue is occupied,so to speak, by the devotion of sex tosex. The highest duty of the man is notto his father, but to his wife; and for thesake of that woman he abandons allother earthly ties, should any of thesehappen to interfere with that relation.The first duty of the wife may be,indeed, must be, to her child, when shehas one; but otherwise her husband is

her divinity and king. In that country itwould be thought unnatural or strangeto have one's parents living in the samehouse with wife or husband. You knowall this. But it does not explain for youother things, much more difficult tounderstand, especially the influence ofthe abstract idea of woman uponsociety at large as well as upon theconduct of the individual. Thedevotion of man to woman does notmean at all only the devotion ofhusband to wife. It means actually this,that every man is bound by convictionand by opinion to put all womenbefore himself, simply because they arewomen. I do not mean that any man islikely to think of any woman as being

his intellectual and physical superior;but I do mean that he is bound tothink of her as something deservingand needing the help of every man. Intime of danger the woman must besaved first. In time of pleasure, thewoman must be given the best place. Intime of hardship the woman's share ofthe common pain must be takenvoluntarily by the man as much aspossible. This is not with any view torecognition of the kindness shown.The man who assists a woman indanger is not supposed to have anyclaim upon her for that reason. He hasdone his duty only, not to her, theindividual, but to womankind at large.So we have arrived at this general fact,

that the first place in all things, exceptrule, is given to woman in Westerncountries, and that it is given almostreligiously.

Is woman a religion Well, perhaps youwill have the chance of judging foryourselves if you go to America. Thereyou will find men treating women withjust the same respect formerly accordedonly to religious dignitaries or to greatnobles. Everywhere they are saluted andhelped to the best places; everywherethey are treated as superior beings. Nowif we find reverence, loyalty and allkinds of sacrifices devoted either to ahuman being or to an image, we areinclined to think of worship. And

worship it is. If a Western man shouldhear me tell you this, he would want thestatement qualified, unless he happenedto be a philosopher. But I am trying toput the facts before you in the way inwhich you can best understand them.Let me say, then, that the all-importantthing for the student of Englishliterature to try to understand, is that inWestern countries woman is a cult, areligion, or if you like still plainerlanguage, I shall say that in Westerncountries woman is a god.

So much for the abstract idea ofwoman. Probably you will not find thatparticularly strange; the idea is notaltogether foreign to Eastern thought,

and there are very extensive systems offeminine pantheism in India. Of coursethe Western idea is only in the romanticsense a feminine pantheism; but theOriental idea may serve to render itmore comprehensive. The ideas ofdivine Mother and divine Creator maybe studied in a thousand forms; I amnow referring rather to the sentiment,to the feeling, than to the philosophicalconception.

You may ask, if the idea or sentimentof divinity attaches to woman in theabstract, what about woman in theconcrete individual woman Are womenindividually considered as gods Well,that depends on how you define the

word god. The following definitionwould cover the ground, I think:"Gods are beings superior to man,capable of assisting or injuring him,and to be placated by sacrifice andprayer." Now according to thisdefinition, I think that the attitude ofman towards woman in Westerncountries might be very wellcharacterized as a sort of worship. Inthe upper classes of society, and in themiddle classes also, great reverencetowards women is exacted. Men bowdown before them, make all kinds ofsacrifices to please them, beg for theirgood will and their assistance. It doesnot matter that this sacrifice is not inthe shape of incense burning or of

temple offerings; nor does it matter thatthe prayers are of a different kind fromthose pronounced in churches. There issacrifice and worship. And no saying ismore common, no truth better known,than that the man who hopes tosucceed in life must be able to pleasethe women. Every young man whogoes into any kind of society knowsthis. It is one of the first lessons that hehas to learn. Well, am I very wrong insaying that the attitude of men towardswomen in the West is much like theattitude of men towards gods

But you may answer at once, Howcomes it, if women are thus reverencedas you say, that men of the lower

classes beat and ill-treat their wives inthose countries I must reply, for thesame reason that Italian and Spanishsailors will beat and abuse the imagesof the saints and virgins to whom theypray, when their prayer is not granted. Itis quite possible to worship an imagesincerely and to seek vengeance upon itin a moment of anger. The one feelingdoes not exclude the other. What in thehigher classes may be a religion, in thelower classes may be only asuperstition, and strange contradictionsexist, side by side, in all forms ofsuperstition. Certainly the Westernworking man or peasant does not thinkabout his wife or his neighbour's wifein the reverential way that the man of

the superior class does. But you willfind, if you talk to them, thatsomething of the reverential idea isthere; it is there at least during their bestmoments.

Now there is a certain exaggeration inwhat I have said. But that is onlybecause of the somewhat narrow wayin which I have tried to express a truth.I am anxious to give you the idea thatthroughout the West there exists,though with a difference according toclass and culture, a sentiment aboutwomen quite as reverential as asentiment of religion. This is true; andnot to understand it, is not tounderstand Western literature.

How did it come into existenceThrough many causes, some of whichare so old that we can not knowanything about them. This feeling didnot belong to the Greek and Romancivilization but it belonged to the lifeof the old Northern races who havesince spread over the world, plantingtheir ideas everywhere. In the oldestScandinavian literature you will findthat women were thought of andtreated by the men of the North verymuch as they are thought of andtreated by Englishmen of to-day. Youwill find what their power was in theold sagas, such as the Njal-Saga, or"The Story of Burnt Njal." But we

must go much further than the writtenliterature to get a full knowledge of theorigin of such a sentiment. The ideaseems to have existed that woman wassemi-divine, because she was themother, the creator of man. And weknow that she was credited among theNorsemen with supernatural powers.But upon this Northern foundationthere was built up a highly complexfabric of romantic and artisticsentiment. The Christian worship ofthe Virgin Mary harmonized with theNorthern belief. The sentiment ofchivalry reinforced it. Then came theartistic resurrection of the Renaissance,and the new reverence for the beautyof the old Greek gods, and the Greek

traditions of female divinities; thesealso coloured and lightened the oldfeeling about womankind. Think alsoof the effect with which literature,poetry and the arts have since beencultivating and developing thesentiment. Consider how the great massof Western poetry is love poetry, andthe greater part of Western fiction lovestories.

Of course the foregoing is only thevaguest suggestion of a truth. Reallymy object is not to trouble you at allabout the evolutional history of thesentiment, but only to ask you to thinkwhat this sentiment means in literature.I am not asking you to sympathize with

it, but if you could sympathize with ityou would understand a thousandthings in Western books whichotherwise must remain dim and strange.I am not expecting that you cansympathize with it. But it is absolutelynecessary that you should understandits relation to language and literature.Therefore I have to tell you that youshould try to think of it as a kind ofreligion, a secular, social, artisticreligion, not to be confounded withany national religion. It is a kind ofrace feeling or race creed. It has notoriginated in any sensuous idea, but insome very ancient superstitious idea.Nearly all forms of the highestsentiment and the highest faith and the

highest art have had their beginnings inequally humble soil.

CHAPTER II

ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY

I often imagine that the longer hestudies English literature the more theJapanese student must be astonished atthe extraordinary predominance givento the passion of love both in fictionand in poetry. Indeed, by this time Ihave begun to feel a little astonished atit myself. Of course, before I came tothis country it seemed to me quite

natural that love should be the chiefsubject of literature; because I did notknow anything about any other kind ofsociety except Western society. But to-day it really seems to me a little strange.If it seems strange to me, how muchmore ought it to seem strange to you!Of course, the simple explanation ofthe fact is that marriage is the mostimportant act of man's life in Europeor America, and that everythingdepends upon it. It is quite different onthis side of the world. But the simpleexplanation of the difference is notenough. There are many things to beexplained. Why should not only thenovel writers but all the poets makelove the principal subject of their work

I never knew, because I never thought,how much English literature wassaturated with the subject of love untilI attempted to make selections ofpoetry and prose for class use naturallyendeavouring to select such pages orpoems as related to other subjects thanpassion. Instead of finding a good dealof what I was looking for, I could findscarcely anything. The great prosewriters, outside of the essay or history,are nearly all famous as tellers of lovestories. And it is almost impossible toselect half a dozen stanzas of classicverse from Tennyson or Rossetti orBrowning or Shelley or Byron, whichdo not contain anything about kissing,embracing, or longing for some

imaginary or real beloved. Wordsworth,indeed, is something of an exception;and Coleridge is most famous for apoem which contains nothing at allabout love. But exceptions do not affectthe general rule that love is the themeof English poetry, as it is also ofFrench, Italian, Spanish, or Germanpoetry. It is the dominant motive.

So with the English novelists. Therehave been here also a few exceptionssuch as the late Robert LouisStevenson, most of whose novelscontain little about women; they arechiefly novels or romances ofadventure. But the exceptions are veryfew. At the present time there are

produced almost every year in Englandabout a thousand new novels, and allof these or nearly all are love stories. Towrite a novel without a woman in itwould be a dangerous undertaking; inninety-nine cases out of a hundred thebook would not sell.

Of course all this means that theEnglish people throughout the world,as readers, are chiefly interested in thesubject under discussion. When youfind a whole race interested more inone thing than in anything else, youmay be sure that it is so because thesubject is of paramount importance inthe life of the average person. Youmust try to imagine then, a society in

which every man must choose his wife,and every woman must choose herhusband, independent of all outsidehelp, and not only choose but obtain ifpossible. The great principle ofWestern society is that competitionrules here as it rules in everything else.The best man that is to say, thestrongest and cleverest is likely to getthe best woman, in the sense of themost beautiful person. The weak, thefeeble, the poor, and the ugly have littlechance of being able to marry at all.Tens of thousands of men and womencan not possibly marry. I am speakingof the upper and middle classes. Theworking people, the peasants, thelabourers, these marry young; but the

competition there is just the same justas difficult, and only a little rougher. Soit may be said that every man has astruggle of some kind in order tomarry, and that there is a kind of fightor contest for the possession of everywoman worth having. Taking this viewof Western society not only in Englandbut throughout all Europe, you willeasily be able to see why the Westernpublic have reason to be moreinterested in literature which treats oflove than in any other kind ofliterature.

But although the conditions that I havebeen describing are about the same inall Western countries, the tone of the

literature which deals with love is not atall the same. There are very greatdifferences. In prose they are muchmore serious than in poetry; because inall countries a man is allowed, by publicopinion, more freedom in verse than inprose. Now these differences in the wayof treating the subject in differentcountries really indicate nationaldifferences of character. Northern lovestories and Northern poetry about loveare very serious; and these authors arekept within fixed limits. Certainsubjects are generally forbidden. Forexample, the English public wantsnovels about love, but the love must bethe love of a girl who is to becomesomebody's wife. The rule in the

English novel is to describe the pains,fears, and struggles of the periodbefore marriage the contest in theworld for the right of marriage. A manmust not write a novel about any otherpoint of love. Of course there areplenty of authors who have broken thisrule but the rule still exists. A man mayrepresent a contest between twowomen, one good and one bad, but ifthe bad woman is allowed to conquerin the story, the public will growl. ThisEnglish fashion has existed since theeighteenth century. since the time ofRichardson, and is likely to last forgenerations to come.

Now this is not the rule at all which

governs making of novels in France.French novels generally treat of therelations of women to the world and tolovers, after marriage; consequentlythere is a great deal in French novelsabout adultery, about improperrelations between the sexes, about manythings which the English public wouldnot allow. This does not mean that theEnglish are morally a better people thanthe French or other Southern races. Butit does mean that there are greatdifferences in the social conditions.One such difference can be very brieflyexpressed. An English girl, an Americangirl, a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, isallowed all possible liberty beforemarriage. The girl is told, "You must be

able to take care of yourself, and notdo wrong." After marriage there is nomore such liberty. After marriage in allNorthern countries a woman's conductis strictly watched. But in France, and inSouthern countries, the young girl hasno liberty before marriage. She is alwaysunder the guard of her brother, herfather, her mother, or some experiencedrelation. She is accompanied wherevershe walks. She is not allowed to see herbetrothed except in the presence ofwitnesses. But after marriage her libertybegins. Then she is told for the firsttime that she must take care of herself.Well, you will see that the conditionswhich inspire the novels, in treating ofthe subjects of love and marriage, are

very different in Northern and inSouthern Europe. For this reason alonethe character of the novel produced inEngland could not be the same.

You must remember, however, thatthere are many other reasons for thisdifference reasons of literary sentiment.The Southern or Latin races have beencivilized for a much longer time thanthe Northern races; they have inheritedthe feelings of the ancient world, theold Greek and Roman world, and theythink still about the relation of thesexes in very much the same way thatthe ancient poets and romance writersused to think. And they can do thingswhich English writers can not do,

because their language has power ofmore delicate expression.

We may say that the Latin writers stillspeak of love in very much the sameway that it was considered beforeChristianity. But when I speak ofChristianity I am only referring to anhistorical date. Before Christianity theNorthern races also thought about lovevery much in the same way that theirbest poets do at this day. The ancientScandinavian literature would showthis. The Viking, the old sea-pirate, feltvery much as Tennyson or as Meredithwould feel upon this subject; hethought of only one kind of love asreal that which ends in marriage, the

affection between husband and wife.Anything else was to him mere follyand weakness. Christianity did notchange his sentiment on this subject.The modern Englishman, Swede, Dane,Norwegian, or German regards love inexactly that deep, serious, noble waythat his pagan ancestors did. I think wecan say that different races havedifferences of feeling on sexualrelations, which differences are verymuch older than any written history.They are in the blood and soul of apeople, and neither religion norcivilization can utterly change them.

So far I have been speaking particularlyabout the differences in English and

French novels; and a novel is especiallya reflection of national life, a kind ofdramatic narration of truth, in theform of a story. But in poetry, which isthe highest form of literature, thedifference is much more observable. Wefind the Latin poets of to-day writingjust as freely on the subject of love asthe old Latin poets of the age ofAugustus, while Northern poetsobserve with few exceptions greatrestraint when treating of this theme.Now where is the line to be drawn Arethe Latins right Are the English rightHow are we to make a sharp distinctionbetween what is moral and good andwhat is immoral and bad in treatinglove-subjects

Some definition must be attempted.

What is meant by love As used by Latinwriters the word has a range ofmeanings, from that of the sexualrelation between insects or animals upto the highest form of religiousemotion, called "The love of God." Ineed scarcely say that this definition istoo loose for our use. The Englishword, by general consent, means bothsexual passion and deep friendship.This again is a meaning too wide forour purpose. By putting the adjective"true" before love, some definition isattempted in ordinary conversation.When an Englishman speaks of "true

love," he usually means something thathas no passion at all; he means a perfectfriendship which grows up betweenman and wife and which has nothing todo with the passion which brought thepair together. But when the Englishpoet speaks of love, he generally meanspassion, not friendship. I am onlystating very general rules. You see howconfusing the subject is, how difficultto define the matter. Let us leave thedefinition alone for a moment, andconsider the matter philosophically.

Some very foolish persons haveattempted even within recent years tomake a classification of different kindsof love love between the sexes. They

talk about romantic love, and othersuch things. All that is utter nonsense.In the meaning of sexual affectionthere is only one kind of love, thenatural attraction of one sex for themother; and the only difference in thehighest for of this attraction and thelowest is this, that in the nobler nature avast number of moral, aesthetic, andethical sentiments are related to thepassion, and that in lower natures thosesentiments are absent. Therefore wemay say that even in the highest formsof the sentiment there is only onedominant feeling, complex though itbe, the desire for possession. Whatfollows the possession we may call loveif we please; but it might better be

called perfect friendship and sympathy.It is altogether a different thing. Thelove that is the theme of poets in allcountries is really love, not thefriendship that grows out of it.

I suppose you know that theetymological meaning of "passion" is"a state of suffering." In regard to love,the word has particular significance tothe Western mind, for it refers to thetime of struggle and doubt and longingbefore the object is attained. Now howmuch of this passion is a legitimatesubject of literary art

The difficulty may, I think, be met byremembering the extraordinary

character of the mental phenomenawhich manifest themselves in the timeof passion. There is during that time astrange illusion, an illusion sowonderful that it has engaged theattention of great philosophers forthousands of years; Plato, you know,tried to explain it in a very famoustheory. I mean the illusion that seems tocharm, or rather, actually does charmthe senses of a man at a certain time.To his eye a certain face has suddenlybecome the most beautiful object in theworld. To his ears the accents of onevoice become the sweetest of all music.Reason has nothing to do with this, andreason has no power against theenchantment. Out of Nature's mystery,

somehow or other, this strange magicsuddenly illuminates the senses of aman; then vanishes again, as noiselesslyas it came. It is a very ghostly thing, andcan not be explained by any theory notof a very ghostly kind. Even HerbertSpencer has devoted his reasoning to anew theory about it. I need not gofurther in this particular than to tell youthat in a certain way passion is nowthought to have something to do withother lives than the present; in short, itis a kind of organic memory ofrelations that existed in thousands andtens of thousands of former states ofbeing. Right or wrong though thetheories may be, this mysteriousmoment of love, the period of this

illusion, is properly the subject of highpoetry, simply because it is the mostbeautiful and the most wonderfulexperience of a human life. And why

Because in the brief time of suchpassion the very highest and finestemotions of which human nature iscapable are brought into play. In thattime more than at any other hour in lifedo men become unselfish, unselfish atleast toward one human being. Notonly unselfishness but self-sacrifice is adesire peculiar to the period. The youngman in love is not merely willing to giveaway everything that he possesses to theperson beloved; he wishes to sufferpain, to meet danger, to risk his life for

her sake. Therefore Tennyson, inspeaking of that time, beautifully said:

Love took up the harp of Life, andsmote on all the chords with might,Smote the chord of Self, that,trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.

Unselfishness is, of course, a verynoble feeling, independently of thecause. But this is only one of theemotions of a higher class whenpowerfully aroused. There is pity,tenderness the same kind of tendernessthat one feels toward a child the loveof the helpless, the desire to protect.And a third sentiment felt at such atime more strongly than at any other, is

the sentiment of duty; responsibilitiesmoral and social are thencomprehended in a totally new way.Surely none can dispute these facts northe beauty of them.

Moral sentiments are the highest of all;but next to them the sentiment ofbeauty in itself, the artistic feeling, isalso a very high form of intellectualand even of secondary moralexperience. Scientifically there is arelation between the beautiful and thegood, between the physically perfectand the ethically perfect. Of course it isnot absolute. There is nothing absolutein this world. But the relation exists.Whoever can comprehend the highest

form of one kind of beauty must beable to comprehend something of theother. I know very well that the ideal ofthe love-season is an illusion; in ninehundred and ninety-nine cases out ofthe thousand the beauty of the womanis only imagined. But does that makeany possible difference I do not thinkthat it does. To imagine beauty is reallyto see it not objectively, perhaps, butsubjectively beyond all possibility ofdoubt. Though you see the beauty onlyin your mind, in your mind it is; and inyour mind its ethical influence mustoperate. During the time that a manworships even imaginary bodily beauty,he receives some secret glimpse of ahigher kind of beauty beauty of heart

and mind. Was there ever in this worlda real lover who did not believe thewoman of his choice to be not only themost beautiful of mortals, but also thebest in a moral sense I do not thinkthat there ever was.

The moral and the ethical sentimentsof a being thus aroused call intosudden action all the finer energies ofthe man the capacities for effort, forheroism, for high-pressure work of anysort, mental or physical, for all thatrequires quickness in thought andexactitude in act. There is for the timebeing a sense of new power. Anythingthat makes strong appeal to the bestexercise of one's faculties is beneficent

and, in most cases, worthy of reverence.Indeed, it is in the short season ofwhich I am speaking that we alwaysdiscover the best of everything in thecharacter of woman or of man. In thatperiod the evil qualities, the ungenerousside, is usually kept as much out ofsight as possible.

Now for all these suggested reasons, asfor many others which might besuggested, the period of illusion in loveis really the period which poets andwriters of romance are naturallyjustified in describing. Can they gobeyond it with safety, with proprietyThat depends very much upon whetherthey go up or down. By going up I

mean keeping within the region ofmoral idealism. By going down I meandescending to the level of merelyanimal realism. In this realism there isnothing deserving the highest effort ofart of any sort.

What is the object of art Is it not, orshould it not be, to make us imaginebetter conditions than that which atpresent exist in the world, and by soimagining to prepare the way for thecoming of such conditions I think thatall great art has done this. Do youremember the old story about Greekmothers keeping in their rooms thestatue of a god or a man, morebeautiful than anything real, so that

their imagination might be constantlyinfluenced by the sight of beauty, andthat they might perhaps be able to bringmore beautiful children into the worldAmong the Arabs, mothers also dosomething of this kind, only, as theyhave no art of imagery, they go toNature herself for the living image.Black luminous eyes are beautiful, andwives keep in their tents a little deer, thegazelle, which is famous for thebrilliancy and beauty of its eyes. Byconstantly looking at this charming petthe Arab wife hopes to bring into theworld some day a child with eyes asbeautiful as the eyes of the gazelle.Well, the highest function of art oughtto do for us, or at least for the world,

what the statue and the gazelle wereexpected to do for Grecian and Arabmothers to make possible higherconditions than the existing ones.

So much being said, consider again theplace and the meaning of the passionof love in any human life. It isessentially a period of idealism, ofimagining better things and conditionsthan are possible in this world. Foreverybody who has been in love hasimagined something higher than thepossible and the present. Any idealismis a proper subject for art. It is not at allthe same in the case of realism. Grantthat all this passion, imagination, andfine sentiment is based upon a very

simple animal impulse. That does notmake the least difference in the valueof the highest results of that passion.We might say the very same thing aboutany human emotion; every emotion canbe evolutionally traced back to simpleand selfish impulses shared by manwith the lower animals. But, because anapple tree or a pear tree happens tohave its roots in the ground, does thatmean that its fruits are not beautifuland wholesome Most assuredly wemust not judge the fruit of the treefrom the unseen roots; but what aboutturning up the ground to look at theroots What becomes of the beauty ofthe tree when you do that The realist atleast the French realist likes to do that.

He likes to bring back the attention ofhis reader to the lowest rather than tothe highest, to that which should bekept hidden, for the very same reasonthat the roots of a tree should be keptunderground if the tree is to live.

The time of illusion, then, is thebeautiful moment of passion; itrepresents the artistic zone in which thepoet or romance writer ought to be freeto do the very best that he can. He maygo beyond that zone; but then he hasonly two directions in which he cantravel. Above it there is religion, and anartist may, like Dante, succeed intransforming love into a sentiment ofreligious ecstasy. I do not think that any

artist could do that to-day; this is notan age of religious ecstasy. But upwardsthere is no other way to go.Downwards the artist may travel untilhe finds himself in hell. Between thezone of idealism and the brutality ofrealism there are no doubt manygradations. I am only indicating what Ithink to be an absolute truth, that intreating of love the literary mastershould keep to the period of illusion,and that to go below it is a dangerousundertaking. And now, having tried tomake what are believed to be properdistinctions between great literature onthis subject and all that is not great, wemay begin to study a few examples. Iam going to select at random passages

from English poets and others,illustrating my meaning.

Tennyson is perhaps the most familiarto you among poets of our own time;and he has given a few exquisiteexamples of the ideal sentiment inpassion. One is a concluding verse inthe beautiful song that occurs in themonodrama of "Maud," where thelover, listening in the garden, hears thesteps of his beloved approaching.

She is coming, my own, my sweet, Wereit ever so airy a tread, My heart wouldhear her and beat, Were it earth in anearthy bed; My dust would hear her andbeat, Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.

This is a very fine instance of thepurely idea emotion extravagant, if youlike, in the force of the imagery used,but absolutely sincere and true; for theimagination of love is necessarilyextravagant. It would be quite useless toask whether the sound of a girl'sfootsteps could really waken a deadman; we know that love can fancy suchthings quite naturally, not in onecountry only but everywhere. AnArabian poem written long before thetime of Mohammed contains exactlythe same thought in simpler words; andI think that there are some old Japanese

songs containing something similar. Allthat the statement really means is thatthe voice, the look, the touch, even thefootstep of the woman beloved havecome to possess for the lover asignificance as great as life and death.For the moment he knows no otherdivinity; she is his god, in the sense thather power over him has become infiniteand irresistible.

The second example may be furnishedfrom another part of the samecomposition the little song ofexaltation after the promise to marryhas been given.

O let the solid ground Not fail beneath

my feet Before my life has found Whatsome have found so sweet; Then letcome what come may, What matter if Igo mad, I shall have had my day.

Let the sweet heavens endure, Notclose and darken above me Before I amquite, quite sure That there is one tolove me; Then let come what come mayTo a life that has been so sad, I shallhave had my day.

The feeling of the lover is that nomatter what happens afterwards, thewinning of the woman is enough topay for life, death, pain, or anythingelse. One of the most remarkablephenomena of the illusion is the

supreme indifference to consequencesat least to any consequences whichwould not signify moral shame or lossof honour, Of course the poet issupposed to consider the emotion onlyin generous natures. But the subject ofthis splendid indifference has beenmore wonderfully treated by VictorHugo than by Tennyson as we shall seelater on, when considering anotherphase of the emotion. Before doingthat, I want to call your attention to avery charming treatment of love'sromance by an American. It is one ofthe most delicate of moderncompositions, and it is likely to becomea classic, as it has already been printedin four or five different anthologies.

The title is "Atalanta's Race."

First let me tell you the story ofAtalanta, so that you will be better ableto see the fine symbolism of the poem.Atalanta, the daughter of a Greek king,was not only the most beautiful ofmaidens, but the swiftest runner in theworld. She passed her time in hunting,and did not wish to marry. But as manymen wanted to marry her, a law waspassed that any one who desired to winher must run a race with her. If hecould beat her in running, then shepromised to marry him, but if he lostthe race, he was to be killed. Some saythat the man was allowed to run first,and that the girl followed with a spear

in her hand and killed him when sheovertook him. There are differentaccounts of the contest. Many suitorslost the race and were killed. But finallyyoung man called Hippomenesobtained from the Goddess of Lovethree golden apples, and he was toldthat if he dropped these apples whilerunning, the girl would stop to pickthem up, and that in this way he mightbe able to win the race. So he ran, andwhen he found himself about to bebeaten, he dropped one apple. Shestopped to pick it up and thus hegained a little. In this way he won therace and married Atalanta. Greekmythology says that afterwards she andher husband were turned into lions

because they offended the gods;however, that need not concern us here.There is a very beautiful moral in theold Greek story, and the merit of theAmerican composition is that itsauthor, Maurice Thompson, perceivedthis moral and used it to illustrate agreat philosophical truth.

When Spring grows old, and sleepywinds Set from the South with odourssweet, I see my love, in green, coolgroves, Speed down dusk aisles onshining feet. She throws a kiss and bidsme run, In whispers sweet as roses'breath; I know I cannot win the race,And at the end, I know, is death.

But joyfully I bare my limbs, Anoint mewith the tropic breeze, And feelthrough every sinew run The vigour ofHippomenes.

O race of love! we all have run Thyhappy course through groves ofSpring, And cared not, when at last welost, For life or death, or anything!

There are a few thoughts here requiringa little comment. You know that theGreek games and athletic contests wereheld in the fairest season, and that thecontestants were stripped. They werealso anointed with oil, partly to protectthe skin against sun and temperatureand partly to make the body more

supple. The poet speaks of the youngman as being anointed by the warmwind of Spring, the tropic season oflife. It is a very pretty fancy. What he isreally telling us is this:

"There are no more Greek games, butthe race of love is still run to-day as intimes gone by; youth is the season, andthe atmosphere of youth is theanointing of the contestant."

But the moral of the piece is its greatcharm, the poetical statement of abeautiful and a wonderful fact. Inalmost every life there is a time whenwe care for only one person, and suffermuch for that person's sake; yet in that

period we do not care whether wesuffer or die, and in after life, when welook back at those hours of youth, wewonder at the way in which we thenfelt. In European life of to-day the oldGreek fable is still true; almosteverybody must run Atalanta's race andabide by the result.

One of the delightful phases of theillusion of love is the sense of oldacquaintance, the feeling as if theperson loved had been known andloved long ago in some time and placeforgotten. I think you must haveobserved, many of you, that when thesenses of sight and hearing happen tobe strongly stirred by some new and

most pleasurable experience, the feelingof novelty is absent, or almost absent.You do not feel as if you were seeingor hearing something new, but as if yousaw or heard something that you knewall about very long ago. I rememberonce travelling with a Japanese boy intoa charming little country town inShikoku and scarcely had we enteredthe main street, than he cried out: "Oh,I have seen this place before!" Ofcourse he had not seen it before; he wasfrom Osaka and had never left the greatcity until then. But the pleasure of hisnew experience had given him thisfeeling of familiarity with theunfamiliar. I do not pretend to explainthis familiarity with the new it is a great

mystery still, just as it was a greatmystery to the Roman Cicero. Butalmost everybody that has been in lovehas probably had the same feelingduring a moment or two the feeling "Ihave known that woman before,"though the where and the when aremysteries. Some of the modern poetshave beautifully treated this feeling. Thebest example that I can give you is theexquisite lyric by Rossetti entitled"Sudden Light."

I have been here before, But when orhow I cannot tell: I know the grassbeyond the door, The sweet keen smell,The sighing sound, the lights aroundthe shore.

You have been mine before, How longago I may not know: But just when atthat swallow's soar Your neck turn'd so,Some veil did fall, I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before And shallnot thus time's eddying flight Still withour lives our loves restore In death'sdespite, And day and night yield onedelight once more

I think you will acknowledge that thisis very pretty; and the same poet hastreated the idea equally well in otherpoems of a more complicated kind.But another poet of the period washaunted even more than Rossetti by

this idea Arthur O'Shaughnessy. LikeRossetti he was a great lover, and veryunfortunate in his love; and he wrotehis poems, now famous, out of thepain and regret that was in his heart,much as singing birds born in cages aresaid to sing better when their eyes areput out. Here is one example:

Along the garden ways just now Iheard the flowers speak; The white rosetold me of your brow, The red rose ofyour cheek; The lily of your bendedhead, The bindweed of your hair: Eachlooked its loveliest and said You weremore fair.

I went into the woods anon, And heard

the wild birds sing How sweet youwere; they warbled on, Piped, trill'd theself-same thing. Thrush, blackbird,linnet, without pause The burden didrepeat, And still began again becauseYou were more sweet.

And then I went down to the sea, Andheard it murmuring too, Part of anancient mystery, All made of me andyou: How many a thousand years ago Iloved, and you were sweet Longer Icould not stay, and so I fled back toyour feet.

The last stanza especially expresses theidea that I have been telling you about;but in a poem entitled "Greater

Memory" the idea is much more fullyexpressed. By "greater memory" youmust understand the memory beyondthis life into past stages of existence.This piece has become a part of thenineteenth century poetry that will live;and a few of the best stanzas deserve tobe quoted,

In the heart there lay buried for yearsLove's story of passion and tears; Ofthe heaven that two had begun And thehorror that tore them apart; When onewas love's slayer, but one Made a gravefor the love in his heart.

The long years pass'd weary and loneAnd it lay there and changed there

unknown; Then one day from itsinnermost place, In the shamed andruin'd love's stead, Love arose with aglorified face, Like an angel that comesfrom the dead.

It uplifted the stone that was set Onthat tomb which the heart held yet; Butthe sorrow had moulder'd within Andthere came from the long closed doorA dear image, that was not the sin Orthe grief that lay buried before.

* * * * *

There was never the stain of a tear Onthe face that was ever so dear; 'Twas thesame in each lovelier way; 'Twas old

love's holier part, And the dream of theearliest day Brought back to thedesolate heart.

It was knowledge of all that had beenIn the thought, in the soul unseen;'Twas the word which the lips couldnot say To redeem or recover the past.It was more than was taken awayWhich the heart got back at the last.

The passion that lost its spell, The rosethat died where it fell, The look thatwas look'd in vain, The prayer thatseemed lost evermore, They were foundin the heart again, With all that theheart would restore.

Put into less mystical language thelegend is this: A young man and ayoung woman loved each other for atime; then they were separated by somegreat wrong we may suppose thewoman was untrue. The man alwaysloved her memory, in spite of thiswrong which she had done. The twodied and were buried; hundreds andhundreds of years they remainedburied, and the dust of them mixedwith the dust of the earth. But in theperpetual order of things, a pure lovenever can die, though bodies may dieand pass away. So after manygenerations the pure love which thisman had for a bad woman was bornagain in the heart of another man the

same, yet not the same. And the spiritof the woman that long ago had donethe wrong, also found incarnationagain; and the two meeting, are drawnto each other by what people call love,but what is really Greater Memory, therecollection of past lives. But now all ishappiness for them, because the weakerand worse part of each has really diedand has been left hundreds of yearsbehind, and only the higher nature hasbeen born again. All that ought not tohave been is not; but all that ought tobe now is. This is really an evolutionaryteaching, but it is also poetical license,for the immoral side of mankind doesnot by any means die so quickly as thepoet supposes. It is perhaps a question

of many tens of thousands of years toget rid of a few of our simpler faults.Anyway, the fancy charms us andtempts us really to hope that thesethings might be so.

While the poets of our time so extendthe history of a love backwards beyondthis life, we might expect them to dothe very same thing in the otherdirection. I do not refer to reunion inheaven, or anything of that sort, butsimply to affection continued afterdeath. There are some very prettyfancies of the kind. But they can notprove to you quite so interesting as thepoems which treat the recollection ofpast life. When we consider the past

imaginatively, we have some ground tostand on. The past has been there is nodoubt about that. The fact that we areat this moment alive makes it seemsufficiently true that we were alivethousands or millions of years ago. Butwhen we turn to the future for poeticalinspiration, the case is very different.There we must imagine without havinganything to stand upon in the way ofexperience. Of course if born againinto a body we could imagine manythings; but there is the ghostly intervalbetween death and birth which nobodyis able to tell us about. Here the poetdepends upon dream experiences, andit is of such an experience thatChristina Rossetti speaks in her

beautiful poem entitled "A Pause."

They made the chamber sweet withflowers and leaves, And the bed sweetwith flowers on which I lay, While mysoul, love-bound, loitered on its way. Idid not hear the birds about the eaves,Nor hear the reapers talk among thesheaves: Only my soul kept watch fromday to day, My thirsty soul kept watchfor one away: Perhaps he loves, Ithought, remembers, grieves.

At length there came the step upon thestair, Upon the lock the old familiarhand: Then first my spirit seemed toscent the air Of Paradise; then first thetardy sand Of time ran golden; and I

felt my hair Put on a glory, and my soulexpand.

The woman is dead. In the room whereher body died, flowers have beenplaced, offerings to the dead. Also thereare flowers upon the bed. The ghost ofthe woman observes all this, but shedoes not feel either glad or sad becauseof it; she is thinking only of the livinglover, who was not there when shedied, but far away. She wants to knowwhether he really loved her, whether hewill really be sorry to hear that she isdead. Outside the room of death thebirds are singing; in the fields beyondthe windows peasants are working, andtalking as they work. But the ghost does

not listen to these sounds. The ghostremains in the room only for love'ssake; she can not go away until thelover comes. At last she hears himcoming. She knows the sound of thestep; she knows the touch of the handupon the lock of the door. Andinstantly, before she sees him at all, shefirst feels delight. Already it seems toher that she can smell the perfume ofthe flowers of heaven; it then seems toher that about her head, as about thehead of an angel, a circle of glory isshaping itself, and the real heaven, theHeaven of Love, is at hand.

How very beautiful this is. There is stillone line which requires a separate

explanation I mean the sentence aboutthe sands of time running golden.Perhaps you may remember the samesimile in Tennyson's "Locksley Hall":

Love took up the glass of Time, andturn'd it in His glowing hands; Everymoment, lightly shaken, ran itself ingolden sands.

Here time is identified with the sand ofthe hour glass, and the verb "to run" isused because this verb commonlyexpresses the trickling of the sand fromthe upper part of the glass into thelower. In other words, fine sand "runs"just like water. To say that the sands oftime run golden, or become changed

into gold, is only a poetical way ofstating that the time becomes morethan happy almost heavenly or divine.And now you will see how verybeautiful the comparison becomes inthis little poem about the ghost of thewoman waiting for the coming step ofher lover.

Several other aspects of the emotionmay now be considered separately. Oneof these, an especially beautiful one, ismemory. Of course, there are manyaspects of love's memories, some allhappiness, others intensely sorrowfulthe memory of a walk, a meeting, amoment of good-bye. Such memoriesoccupy a very large place in the treasure

house of English love poems. I amgoing to give three examples only, buteach of a different kind. The first poetthat I am going to mention is CoventryPatmore. He wrote two curious booksof poetry, respectively called "TheAngel in the House" and "TheUnknown Eros." In the first of thesebooks he wrote the whole history ofhis courtship and marriage a verydangerous thing for a poet to do, buthe did it successfully. The secondvolume is miscellaneous, and containssome very beautiful things. I am goingto quote only a few lines from the piececalled "Amelia." This piece is the storyof an evening spent with a sweetheart,and the lines which I am quoting refer

to the moment of taking the girl home.They are now rather famous:

... To the dim street I led her sacred feet;And so the Daughter gave, Soft, moth-like, sweet, Showy as damask-rose andshy as musk, Back to her Mother,anxious in the dusk. And now "GoodNight!"

Why should the poet speak of the girlin this way Why does he call her feetsacred She has just promised to marryhim; and now she seems to him quitedivine. But he discovers very plainwords with which to communicate hisfiner feelings to the reader. The street is"dim" because it is night; and in the

night the beautifully dressed maidenseems like a splendid moth the namegiven to night butterflies in England. InEngland the moths are much morebeautiful than the true butterflies; theyhave wings of scarlet and purple andbrown and gold. So the comparison,though peculiarly English, is very fine.Also there is a suggestion of thesoundlessness of the moth's flight.Now "showy as damask rose" is astriking simile only because thedamask-rose is a wonderfully splendidflower richest in colour of all roses inEnglish gardens. "Shy as musk" israther a daring simile. "Musk" is aperfume used by English as well asJapanese ladies, but there is no perfume

which must be used with morediscretion, carefulness. If you use everso little too much, the effect is notpleasant. But if you use exactly theproper quantity, and no more, there isno perfume which is more lovely. "Shyas musk" thus refers to that kind ofgirlish modesty which never commits afault even by the measure of a grainbeautiful shyness incapable of beinganything but beautiful. Nevertheless thecomparison must be confessed onewhich should be felt rather thanexplained.

The second of the three promisedquotations shall be from RobertBrowning. There is one feeling, not

often touched upon by poets, yetpeculiar to lovers, that is here treatedthe desire when you are very happy orwhen you are looking at anythingattractive to share the pleasure of themoment with the beloved. But itseldom happens that the wish and theconditions really meet. Referring to thislonging Browning made a short lyricthat is now a classic; it is among themost dainty things of the century.

Never the time and the place And theloved one all together! This path howsoft to pace! This May what magicweather! Where is the loved one's faceIn a dream that loved one's face meetsmine, But the house is narrow, the place

is bleak Where, outside, rain and windcombine With a furtive ear, if I try tospeak, With a hostile eye at my flushingcheek, With a malice that marks eachword, each sign!

Never can we have things the way wewish in this world a beautiful day, abeautiful place, and the presence of thebeloved all at the same time. Somethingis always missing; if the place bebeautiful, the weather perhaps is bad.Or if the weather and the place bothhappen to be perfect, the woman isabsent. So the poet finding himself insome very beautiful place, andremembering this, remembers also thelast time that he met the woman

beloved. It was a small dark house andchilly; outside there was rain and storm;and the sounds of the wind and of therain were as the sounds of peoplesecretly listening, or sounds of peopletrying to look in secretly through thewindows. Evidently it was necessarythat the meeting should be secret, and itwas not altogether as happy as couldhave been wished.

The third example is a very beautifulpoem; we must content ourselves withan extract from it. It is the memory of abetrothal day, and the poet is FrederickTennyson. I suppose you know thatthere were three Tennysons, andalthough Alfred happened to be the

greatest, all of them were good poets.

It is a golden morning of the spring,My cheek is pale, and hers is warm withbloom, And we are left in that oldcarven room, And she begins to sing;

The open casement quivers in thebreeze, And one large musk-rose leansits dewy grace Into the chamber, like ahappy face, And round it swim thebees;

* * * * *

I know not what I said what she repliedLives, like eternal sunshine, in my heart;And then I murmured, Oh! we never

part, My love, my life, my bride!

* * * * *

And silence o'er us, after that great bliss,Fell like a welcome shadow and I heardThe far woods sighing, and a summerbird Singing amid the trees;

The sweet bird's happy song, thatstreamed around, The murmur of thewoods, the azure skies, Were graven onmy heart, though ears and eyes Markedneither sight nor sound.

She sleeps in peace beneath the chancelstone, But ah! so clearly is the visionseen, The dead seem raised, or Death

has never been, Were I not here alone.

This is great art in its power ofpicturing a memory of the heart. Let usnotice some of the beauties. The loveris pale because he is afraid, anxious; heis going to ask a question and he doesnot know how she may answer him. Allthis was long ago, years and years ago,but the strong emotions of thatmorning leave their every detail paintedin remembrance, with strange vividnessAfter all those years the man stillrecollects the appearance of the room,the sunshine entering and the crimsonrose looking into the room from thegarden, with bees humming round it.Then after the question had been asked

and happily answered, neither couldspeak for joy; and because of thesilence all the sounds of nature outsidebecame almost painfully distinct. Nowhe remembers how he heard in thatroom the sound of the wind in far-away trees, the singing of a bird he alsoremembers all the colours and the lightsof the day. But it was very, very longago, and she is dead. Still, the memoryis so clear and bright in his heart that itis as if time had stood still, or as if shehad come back from the grave. Onlyone thing assures him that it is but amemory he is alone.

Returning now to the subject of love'sillusion in itself, let me remind you that

the illusion does not always pass awaynot at all. It passes away in every caseof happy union, when it has becomeno longer necessary to the greatpurposes of nature. But in case ofdisappointment, loss, failure to win themaiden desired, it often happens thatthe ideal image never fades away, butpersistently haunts the mind throughlife, and is capable thus of making eventhe most successful life unhappy.Sometimes the result of suchdisappointment may be to change all aman's ideas about the world, about life,about religion; and everything remainsdarkened for him. Many a youngperson disappointed in love begins tolose religious feeling from that

moment, for it seems to him, simplybecause he happens to be unfortunate,that the universe is all wrong. On theother hand the successful lover thinksthat the universe is all right; he uttershis thanks to the gods, and feels hisfaith in religion and human naturegreater than before. I do not at thismoment remember any striking Englishpoem illustrating this fact; but there is apretty little poem in French by VictorHugo showing well the relationbetween successful love and religiousfeeling in simple minds. Here is anEnglish translation of it. The subject issimply a walk at night, the girl-brideleaning upon the arm of her husband;and his memory of the evening is thus

expressed:

The trembling arm I pressed Fondly;our thoughts confessed Love'sconquest tender; God filled the vastsweet night, Love filled our hearts; thelight Of stars made splendour.

Even as we walked and dreamed, 'Twixtheaven and earth, it seemed Our soulswere speaking; The stars looked on thyface; Thine eyes through violet spaceThe stars were seeking.

And from the astral light Feeling thesoft sweet night Thrill to thy soul,Thou saidst: "O God of Bliss, Lord ofthe Blue Abyss, Thou madest the

whole!"

And the stars whispered low To theGod of Space, "We know, God ofEternity, Dear Lord, all Love is Thine,Even by Love's Light we shine! Thoumadest Beauty!"

Of course here the religious feelingitself is part of the illusion, but itserves to give great depth and beauty tosimple feeling. Besides, the poemillustrates one truth very forciblynamely, that when we are perfectlyhappy all the universe appears to bedivine and divinely beautiful; in otherwords, we are in heaven. On thecontrary, when we are very unhappy the

universe appears to be a kind of hell, inwhich there is no hope, no joy, and nogods to pray to.

But the special reason I wished to callattention to Victor Hugo's lyric is that ithas that particular quality called byphilosophical critics "cosmic emotion."Cosmic emotion means the highestquality of human emotion. The word"cosmos" signifies the universe notsimply this world, but all the hundredmillions of suns and worlds in theknown heaven. And the adjective"cosmic" means, of course, "related tothe whole universe." Ordinary emotionmay be more than individual in itsrelations. I mean that your feelings may

be moved by the thought or theperception of something relating notonly to your own life but also to thelives of many others. The largest formof such ordinary emotion is whatwould be called national feeling, thefeeling of your own relation to thewhole nation or the whole race. Butthere is higher emotion even than that.When you think of yourselfemotionally not only in relation to yourown country, your own nation, but inrelation to all humanity, then you have acosmic emotion of the third or secondorder. I say "third or second," becausewhether the emotion be second or thirdrate depends very much upon yourconception of humanity as One. But if

you think of yourself in relation not tothis world only but to the wholeuniverse of hundreds of millions ofstars and planets in relation to thewhole mystery of existence then youhave a cosmic emotion of the highestorder. Of course there are degrees evenin this; the philosopher or themetaphysician will probably have afiner quality of cosmic emotion thanthe poet or the artist is able to have. Butlovers very often, according to theirdegree of intellectual culture,experience a kind of cosmic emotion;and Victor Hugo's little poemillustrates this. Night and the stars andthe abyss of the sky all seem to bethrilling with love and beauty to the

lover's eyes, because he himself is in astate of loving happiness; and then hebegins to think about his relation to theuniversal life, to the supreme mysterybeyond all Form and Name.

A third or fourth class of suchemotion may be illustrated by thebeautiful sonnet of Keats, written notlong before his death. Only a veryyoung man could have written this,because only a very young man loves inthis way but how delightful it is! It hasno title.

Bright star! would I were steadfast asthou art Not in lone splendour hungaloft the night And watching, with

eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient,sleepless Eremite, The moving waters attheir priest-like task Of pure ablutionround earth's human shores, Or gazingon new soft-fallen mask Of snowupon the mountains and the moors

No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripeningbreast, To feel forever its soft fall andswell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-takenbreath, And so live ever or else swoonto death.

Tennyson has charmingly represented alover wishing that he were a necklaceof his beloved, or her girdle, or her

earring; but that is not a cosmicemotion at all. Indeed, the idea ofTennyson's pretty song was taken fromold French and English love songs ofthe peasants popular ballads. But in thisbeautiful sonnet of Keats, where thelover wishes to be endowed with theimmortality and likeness of a star onlyto be forever with the beloved, there issomething of the old Greek thoughtwhich inspired the beautiful lineswritten between two and threethousand years ago, and translated byJ.A. Symonds:

Gazing on stars, my Star Would that Iwere the welkin, Starry with myriadeyes, ever to gave upon thee!

But there is more than the Greekbeauty of thought in Keats's sonnet,for we find the poet speaking of theexterior universe in the largest relation,thinking of the stars watching foreverthe rising and the falling of the seatides, thinking of the sea tidesthemselves as continually purifying theworld, even as a priest purifies a temple.The fancy of the boy expands to thefancy of philosophy; it is a blending ofpoetry, philosophy, and sincereemotion.

You will have seen by the exampleswhich we have been reading togetherthat English love poetry, like Japanese

love poetry, may be divided into manybranches and classified according to therange of subject from the very simplestutterance of feeling up to that highestclass expressing cosmic emotion. Veryrich the subject is; the student is onlypuzzled where to choose. I shouldagain suggest to you to observe thevalue of the theme of illusion,especially as illustrated in our examples.There are indeed multitudes ofWestern love poems that wouldprobably appear to you very strange,perhaps very foolish. But you willcertainly acknowledge that there aresome varieties of English love poetrywhich are neither strange nor foolish,and which are well worth studying, not

only in themselves but in their relationto the higher forms of emotionalexpression in all literature. Out of lovepoetry belonging to the highest class,much can be drawn that would serve toenrich and to give a new colour to yourown literature of emotion.

CHAPTER III

THE IDEAL WOMAN IN ENGLISHPOETRY

As I gave already in this class a lectureon the subject of love poetry, you willeasily understand that the subject of

the present lecture is not exactly love. Itis rather about love's imagining ofperfect character and perfect beauty.The part of it to which I think yourattention could be deservedly given isthat relating to the imagined wife of thefuture, for this is a subject little treatedof in Eastern poetry. It is a very prettysubject. But in Japan and othercountries of the East almost everyyoung man knows beforehand whomhe is likely to marry. Marriage isarranged by the family: it is a familymatter, indeed a family duty and not aromantic pursuit. At one time, verylong ago, in Europe, marriages werearranged in much the same way. Butnowadays it may be said in general that

no young man in England or Americacan even imagine whom he will marry.He has to find his wife for himself; andhe has nobody to help him; and if hemakes a mistake, so much the worse forhim. So to Western imagination thewife of the future is a mystery, aromance, an anxiety something todream about and to write poetry about.

This little book that I hold in my handis now very rare. It is out of print, butit is worth mentioning to you because itis the composition of an exquisite manof letters, Frederick Locker-Lampson,best of all nineteenth century writersof society verse. It is called"Patchwork." Many years ago the

author kept a kind of journal in whichhe wrote down or copied all the mostbeautiful or most curious things whichhe had heard or which he had found inbooks. Only the best things remained,so the value of the book is his taste inselection. Whatever Locker-Lampsonpronounced good, the world nowknows to have been exactly what hepronounced, for his taste was very fine.And in this book I find a little poemquoted from Mr. Edwin Arnold, nowSir Edwin. Sir Edwin Arnold is nowold and blind, and he has not beenthought of kindly enough in Japan,because his work has not beensufficiently known. Some people haveeven said his writings did harm to

Japan, but I want to assure you thatsuch statements are stupid lies. On thecontrary, he did for Japan whatevergood the best of his talent as a poetand the best of his influence as a greatjournalist could enable him to do. Butto come back to our subject: when SirEdwin was a young student he had hisdreams about marriage like other youngEnglish students, and he put one ofthem into verse, and that verse was atonce picked out by Frederick Locker-Lampson for his little book of gems.Half a century has passed since then;but Locker-Lampson's judgmentremains good, and I am going to putthis little poem first because it so wellillustrates the subject of the lecture. It

is entitled "A Ma Future."

Where waitest thou, Lady, I am to loveThou comest not, Thou knowest ofmy sad and lonely lot I looked for theeere now!

It is the May, And each sweet sister soulhath found its brother, Only we twoseek fondly each the other, And seekingstill delay.

Where art thou, sweet I long for thee asthirsty lips for streams, O gentlepromised angel of my dreams, Why dowe never meet

Thou art as I, Thy soul doth wait for

mine as mine for thee; We cannot liveapart, must meeting be Never before wedie

Dear Soul, not so, For time doth keepfor us some happy years, And Godhath portioned us our smiles and tears,Thou knowest, and I know.

Therefore I bear This winter-tide asbravely as I may, Patiently waiting forthe bright spring day That cometh withthee, Dear.

'Tis the May light That crimsons all thequiet college gloom, May it shine softlyin thy sleeping room, And so, dear wife,good night!

This is, of course, addressed to thespirit of the unknown future wife. It ispretty, though it is only the work of ayoung student. But some one hundredyears before, another student a verygreat student, Richard Crashaw, had afancy of the same kind, and madeverses about it which are famous. Youwill find parts of his poem about theimaginary wife in the ordinaryanthologies, but not all of it, for it isvery long. I will quote those verseswhich seem to me the best.

WISHES

Whoe'er she be, That not impossible

She, That shall command my heart andme;

Where'er she lie, Locked up frommortal eye, In shady leaves of Destiny;

Till that ripe birth Of studied Fatestand forth, And teach her fair steps toour earth;

Till that divine Idea take a shrine Ofcrystal flesh, through which to shine;

Meet you her, my wishes, Bespeak herto my blisses, And be ye called myabsent kisses.

The poet is supposing that the girl

whom he is to marry may not as yeteven have been born, for though menin the world of scholarship can marryonly late in life, the wife is generallyquite young. Marriage is far away in thefuture for the student, therefore thesefancies. What he means to say in shortis about like this:

"Oh, my wishes, go out of my heartand look for the being whom I amdestined to marry find the soul of her,whether born or yet unborn, and tellthat soul of the love that is waiting forit." Then he tries to describe theimagined woman he hopes to find:

I wish her beauty That owes not all its

duty To gaudy 'tire or glist'ring shoe-tie.

Something more than Taffeta or tissuecan; Or rampant feather, or rich fan.

More than the spoil Of shop or silkworm's toil, Or a bought blush, or a setsmile.

A face that's best By its own beautydrest And can alone command the rest.

A face made up Out of no other shopThan what nature's white hand setsope.

A cheek where grows More than amorning rose Which to no box his

being owes.

* * * * *

Eyes that displace The neighbordiamond and outface That sunshine bytheir own sweet grace.

Tresses that wear Jewels, but to declareHow much themselves more preciousare.

Smiles, that can warm The blood, yetteach a charm That chastity shall takeno harm.

* * * * *

Life, that dares send A challenge to hisend, And when it comes, say "Welcome,friend!"

There is much more, but the best ofthe thoughts are here. They are notexactly new thoughts, nor strangethoughts, but they are finely expressedin a strong and simple way.

There is another composition on thesame subject the imaginary spouse, thedestined one. But this is written by awoman, Christina Rossetti.

SOMEWHERE OR OTHER

Somewhere or other there must surely

be The face not seen, the voice notheard, The heart that not yet never yetah me! Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near orfar; Past land and sea, clean out ofsight; Beyond the wondering moon,beyond the star That tracks her night bynight.

Somewhere or other, may be far ornear; With just a wall, a hedge between;With just the last leaves of the dyingyear, Fallen on a turf grown green.

And that turf means of course the turfof a grave in the churchyard. Thispoem expresses fear that the destined

one never can be met, because deathmay come before the meeting time. Allthrough the poem there is thesuggestion of an old belief that forevery man and for every woman theremust be a mate, yet that it is a chancewhether the mate will ever be found.

You observe that all of these areghostly poems, whether prospective orretrospective. Here is anotherprospective poem:

AMATURUS

Somewhere beneath the sun, Thesequivering heart-strings prove it,Somewhere there must be one Made

for this soul, to move it; Someone thathides her sweetness From neighborswhom she slights, Nor can attaincompleteness, Nor give her heart itsrights; Someone whom I could courtWith no great change of manner, Stillholding reason's fort Though wavingfancy's banner; A lady, not so queenlyAs to disdain my hand, Yet born tosmile serenely Like those that rule theland; Noble, but not too proud; Withsoft hair simply folded, And bright facecrescent-browed And throat by Musesmoulded;

Keen lips, that shape soft sayings Likecrystals of the snow, With pretty half-betrayings Of things one may not

know; Fair hand, whose touches thrill,Like golden rod of wonder, WhichHermes wields at will Spirit and fleshto sunder. Forth, Love, and find thismaid, Wherever she be hidden; Speak,Love, be not afraid, But plead as thouart bidden; And say, that he who taughtthee His yearning want and pain, Toodearly dearly bought thee To part withthee in vain.

These lines are by the author of thatexquisite little book "Ionica" a bookabout which I hope to talk to you inanother lecture. His real name wasWilliam Cory, and he was long thehead-master of an English publicschool, during which time he

composed and published anonymouslythe charming verses which have madehim famous modelling his best work inclose imitation of the Greek poets. Afew expressions in these lines needexplanation. For instance, the allusionto Hermes and his rod. I think youknow that Hermes is the Greek nameof the same god whom the Romanscalled Mercury, commonly representedas a beautiful young man, naked andrunning quickly, having wings attachedto the sandals upon his feet. Runnersused to pray to him for skill in winningfoot races. But this god had manyforms and many attributes, and one ofhis supposed duties was to bring thesouls of the dead into the presence of

the king of Hades. So you will seesome pictures of him standing beforethe throne of the king of the Dead,and behind him a long procession ofshuddering ghosts. He is nearly alwayspictured as holding in his hands astrange sceptre called the caduceus, ashort staff about which two littleserpents are coiled, and at the top ofwhich is a tiny pair of wings. This is thegolden rod referred to by the poet;when Hermes touched anybody with it,the soul of the person touched wasobliged immediately to leave the bodyand follow after him. So it is a verybeautiful stroke of art in this poem torepresent the touch of the hand ofgreat love as having the magical power

of the golden rod of Hermes. It is as ifthe poet were to say: "Should she buttouch me, I know that my spirit wouldleap out of my body and follow afterher." Then there is the expression"crescent-browed." It means onlyhaving beautifully curved eyebrowsarched eyebrows being consideredparticularly beautiful in Westerncountries.

Now we will consider another poem ofthe ideal. What we have been readingreferred to ghostly ideals, to memories,or to hopes. Let us now see how thepoets have talked about realities. Here isa pretty thing by Thomas Ashe. It isentitled "Pansie"; and this flower name

is really a corruption of a French word"Penser," meaning a thought. Theflower is very beautiful, and its name issometimes given to girls, as in thepresent case.

MEET WE NO ANGELS, PANSIE

Came, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet, Inwhite, to find her lover; The grass grewproud beneath her feet, The green elm-leaves above her: Meet we no angels,Pansie

She said, "We meet no angels now;"And soft lights stream'd upon her; Andwith white hand she touch'd a bough;She did it that great honour: What!

meet no angels, Pansie

O sweet brown hat, brown hair, browneyes, Down-dropp'd brown eyes, sotender! Then what said I Gallant repliesSeem flattery, and offend her: But meetno angels, Pansie

The suggestion is obvious, that themaiden realizes to the lover's eye theideal of an angel. As she comes he asksher slyly, for she has been to the church"Is it true that nobody ever sees realangels " She answers innocently,thinking him to be in earnest, "No longago people used to see angels, but inthese times no one ever sees them." Hedoes not dare tell her how beautiful she

seems to him; but he suggests muchmore than admiration by the tone ofhis protesting response to her answer:"What! You cannot mean to say thatthere are no angels now " Of coursethat is the same as to say, "I see an angelnow" but the girl is much too innocentto take the real and flattering meaning.

Wordsworth's portrait of the idealwoman is very famous; it was writtenabout his own wife though that factwould not be guessed from the poem.The last stanza is the most famous, butwe had better quote them all.

She was a phantom of delight Whenfirst she gleamed upon my sight; A

lovely apparition, sent To be amoment's ornament; Her eyes as starsof twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, herdusky hair; But all things else about herdrawn From May-time and the cheerfuldawn; A dancing shape, an image gay,To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yeta Woman too! Her household motionslight and free, And steps of virginliberty; A countenance in which didmeet Sweet records, promises as sweet;A creature not too bright or good Forhuman nature's daily food; Fortransient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise,blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene The verypulse of the machine; A beingbreathing thoughtful breath, A travellerbetwixt life and death; The reason firm,the temperate will, Endurance,foresight, strength, and skill; A perfectwoman, nobly plann'd, To warn, tocomfort and command; And yet aSpirit still, and bright With somethingof angelic light.

I quoted this after the Pansie poem toshow you how much more deeplyWordsworth could touch the samesubject. To him, too, the first apparitionof the ideal maiden seemed angelic; likeAshe he could perceive the mingledattraction of innocence and of youth.

But innocence and youth are by nomeans all that make up the bestattributes of woman; character is morethan innocence and more than youth,and it is character that Wordsworthstudies. But in the last verse he tells usthat the angel is always there,nevertheless, even when the goodwoman becomes old. The angel is theMother-soul.

Wordsworth's idea that character is thesupreme charm was expressed verylong before him by other English poets,notably by Thomas Carew.

He that loves a rosy cheek, Or a corallip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth

seek Fuel to maintain his fires: As oldTime makes these decay, So his flamesmust waste away.

But a smooth and steadfast mind,Gentle thoughts and calm desires,Hearts with equal love combined,Kindle never-dying fires. Where these,are not, I despise Lovely cheeks or lipsor eyes.

For about three hundred years inEnglish literature it was the fashion afashion borrowed from the Latin poetsto speak of love as a fire or flame, andyou must understand the image in theseverses in that signification. To-day thefashion is not quite dead, but very few

poets now follow it.

Byron himself, with all his passion andhis affected scorn of ethicalconvention, could and did, when hepleased, draw beautiful portraits ofmoral as well as physical attraction.These stanzas are famous; they paintfor us a person with equal attraction ofbody and mind.

She walks in beauty, like the night Ofcloudless climes and starry skies; Andall that's best of dark and bright Meetin her aspect and her eyes: Thusmellow'd to that tender light Whichheaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,Had half impair'd the nameless graceWhich waves in every raven tress, Orsoftly lightens o'er her face; Wherethoughts serenely sweet express Howpure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, Thesmiles that win, the tints that glow, Buttell of days in goodness spent, A mindat peace with all below, A heart whoselove is innocent!

It is worth noticing that in each of thelast three poems, the physical beautydescribed is that of dark eyes and hair.This may serve to remind you that there

are two distinct types, opposite types,of beauty celebrated by English poets;and the next poem which I am going toquote, the beautiful "Ruth" of ThomasHood, also describes a dark woman.

She stood breast-high amid the corn,Clasp'd by the golden light of morn,Like the sweetheart of the sun, Whomany a glowing kiss had won.

On her cheek an autumn flush, Deeplyripen'd; such a blush In the midst ofbrown was born, Like red poppiesgrown with corn.

Round her eyes her tresses fell, Whichwere blackest none could tell, But long

lashes veil'd a light, That had else beenall too bright.

And her hat, with shady brim, Madeher tressy forehead dim; Thus shestood among the stooks, Praising Godwith sweetest looks:

Sure, I said, Heav'n did not mean,Where I reap thou shouldst but glean,Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Sharemy harvest and my home.

We might call this the ideal of a peasantgirl whose poverty appeals to thesympathy of all who behold her. Thename of the poem is suggested indeedby the Bible story of Ruth the gleaner,

but the story in the poem is only thatof a rich farmer who marries a verypoor girl, because of her beauty andher goodness. It is just a charmingpicture a picture of the dark beautywhich is so much admired in Northerncountries, where it is less common thanin Southern Europe. There arebeautiful brown-skinned types; and theflush of youth on the cheeks of such abrown girl has been compared to thered upon a ripe peach or a russet applea hard kind of apple, very sweet andjuicy, which is brown instead of yellow,or reddish brown. But the poet makesthe comparison with poppy flowersand wheat. That, of course, meansgolden yellow and red; in English

wheat fields red poppy flowers grow inabundance. The expression "tressyforehead" in the second line of thefourth stanza means a forehead halfcovered with falling, loose hair.

The foregoing pretty picture may beoffset by charming poem ofBrowning's describing a lover's pride inhis illusion. It is simply entitled "Song,"and to appreciate it you must try tounderstand the mood of a young manwho believes that he has actuallyrealized his ideal, and that the womanthat he loves is the most beautifulperson in the whole world. The factthat this is simply imagination on hispart does not make the poem less

beautiful on the contrary, the falseimagining is just what makes itbeautiful, the youthful emotion of amoment being so humanly and franklydescribed. Such a youth must imaginethat every one else sees and thinksabout the girl just as he does, and heexpects them to confess it.

Nay but you, who do not love her, Isshe not pure gold, my mistress Holdsearth aught speak truth above herAught like this tress, see, and this tress,And this last fairest tress of all, So fair,see, ere I let it fall

Because you spend your lives inpraising; To praise, you search the wide

world over; Then why not witness,calmly gazing, If earth holds aughtspeak truth above her Above this tress,and this, I touch But cannot praise, Ilove so much!

You see the picture, I think, probablysome artist's studio for a background.She sits or stands there with her longhair loosely flowing down to her feetlike a river of gold; and her lover,lifting up some of the long tresses inhis hand, asks his friend, who standsby, to notice how beautiful such hair is.Perhaps the girl was having her picturepainted. One would think so from thequestion, "Since your business is tolook for beautiful things, why can you

not honestly acknowledge that thiswoman is the most beautiful thing inthe whole world " Or we might imaginethe questioned person to be a critic byprofession as well as an artist. Like thepreceding poem this also is a picture.But the next poem, also by Browning,is much more than a picture it is veryprofound indeed, simple as it looks. Anold man is sitting by the dead body ofa young girl of about sixteen. He tellsus how he secretly loved her, as a fathermight love a daughter, as a brothermight love a sister. But he would havewished, if he had not been so old, andshe so young, to love her as a husband.He never could have her in this world,but why should he not hope for it in

the future world He whispers into herdead ear his wish, and he puts a flowerinto her dead hand, thinking, "Whenshe wakes up, in another life, she willsee that flower, and remember what Isaid to her, and how much I loved her."That is the mere story. But we mustunderstand that the greatness of thelove expressed in the poem is awakenedby an ideal of innocence and sweetnessand goodness, and the affection is ofthe soul that is to say, it is the love ofbeautiful character, not the love of abeautiful face only, that is expressed.

EVELYN HOPE

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and

watch by her side an hour. That is herbook-shelf, this her bed; She pluckedthat piece of geranium-flower,Beginning to die too, in the glass; Littlehas yet been changed, I think: Theshutters are shut, no light can pass Savetwo long rays through the hinge'schink.

Sixteen years old when she died!Perhaps she had scarcely heard myname; It was not her time to love;beside, Her life had many a hope andaim, Duties enough and little cares,And now was quiet, now astir, TillGod's hand beckoned unawares, Andthe sweet white brow is all of her.

Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope What,your soul was pure and true, The goodstars met in your horoscope, Made youof spirit, fire and dew And just becauseI was thrice as old And our paths in theworld diverged so wide, Each wasnaught to each, must I be told We werefellow mortals, naught beside

No, indeed! for God above, Is great togrant, as mighty to make, And createsthe love to reward the love: I claim youstill, for my own love's sake! Delayed itmay be for more lives yet, Throughworlds I shall traverse, not a few: Muchis to learn, much to forget, Ere the timebe come for taking you.

But the time will come, at last it will,When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (Ishall say) In the lower earth, in the yearslong still, That body and soul so pureand gay Why your hair was amber, Ishall divine, And your mouth of yourown geranium's red And what youwould do with me, in fine, In the newlife come in the old one's stead.

I have lived (I shall say) so much sincethen, Given up myself so many times,Gained me the gains of various men,Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;Yet one thing, one, in my soul's fullscope, Either I missed or itself missedme: And I want and find you, EvelynHope! What is the issue let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! Myheart seemed full as it could hold;There was space and to spare for thefrank young smile, And the red youngmouth, and the hair's young gold. So,hush, I will give you this leaf to keep:See, I shut it inside the sweet coldhand! There, that is our secret: go tosleep! You will wake, and remember,and understand.

No other poet has written so manydifferent kinds of poems on thissubject as Browning; and although Ican not quote all of them, I must notneglect to make a just representation ofthe variety. Here is another example: the

chief idea is again the beauty oftruthfulness and fidelity, but the artisticimpression is quite different.

A simple ring with a single stone, Tothe vulgar eye no stone of price:Whisper the right word, that aloneForth starts a sprite, like fire from ice.And lo, you are lord (says an Easternscroll) Of heaven and earth, lord wholeand sole Through the power in a pearl.

A woman ('tis I this time that say) Withlittle the world counts worthy praise:Utter the true word out and awayEscapes her soul; I am wrapt in blaze,Creation's lord, of heaven and earthLord whole and sole by a minute's

birth Through the love in a girl!

Paraphrased, the meaning will notprove as simple as the verses: Here is afinger ring set with one small stone, onejewel. It is a very cheap-looking stoneto common eyes. But if you know acertain magical word, and, after puttingthe ring on your finger, you whisperthat magical word over the cheap-looking stone, suddenly a spirit, ademon or a genie, springs from thatgem like a flash of fire miraculouslyissuing from a lump of ice. And thatspirit or genie has power to make youking of the whole world and of the skyabove the world, lord of the spirits ofheaven and earth and air and fire. Yet

the stone is only a pearl and it can makeyou lord of the universe. That is theold Arabian story. The word scroll heremeans a manuscript, an Arabianmanuscript.

But what is after all the happiness ofmere power There is a greaterhappiness possible than to be lord ofheaven and earth; that is the happinessof being truly loved. Here is a woman;to the eye of the world, to the sight ofother men, she is not very beautiful norat all remarkable in any way. She is justan ordinary woman, as the pearl in thering is to all appearances just acommon pearl. But let the right wordbe said, let the soul of that woman be

once really touched by the magic oflove, and what a revelation! As the spiritin the Arabian story sprang from thestone of the magical ring, when theword was spoken, so from the heart ofthis woman suddenly her soul displaysitself in shining light. And the manwho loves, instantly becomes, in thesplendour of that light, verily the lordof heaven and earth; to the eyes of thebeing who loves him he is a god.

The legend is the legend of Solomonnot the Solomon of the Bible, but themuch more wonderful Solomon of theArabian story-teller. His power is saidto have been in a certain seal ring, uponwhich the mystical name of Allah, or at

least one of the ninety and ninemystical names, was engraved. When hechose to use this ring, all the spirits ofair, the spirits of earth, the spirits ofwater and the spirits of fire wereobliged to obey him. The name of sucha ring is usually "Talisman."

Here is another of Browning's jewels,one of the last poems written shortlybefore his death. It is entitled"Summum Bonum," signifying "thehighest good." The subject is a kiss; wemay understand that the first betrothalkiss is the mark of affection described.When the promise of marriage hasbeen made, that promise is sealed orconfirmed by the first kiss. But this

refers only to the refined classes ofsociety. Among the English peopleproper, especially the country folk,kissing the girls is only a form ofshowing mere good will, and has noserious meaning at all.

All the breath and the bloom of theyear in the bag of one bee: All thewonder and wealth of the mine in theheart of one gem: In the core of onepearl all the shade and the shine of thesea: Breath and bloom, shade andshine, wonder, wealth, and how farabove them Truth, that's brighter thangem, Trust, that's purer than pearl,Brightest truth, purest trust in theuniverse all were for me In the kiss of

one girl.

There is in this a suggestion of BenJonson, who uses almost exactly thesame simile without any moralsignificance. The advantage ofBrowning is that he has used thesensuous imagery for ethicalsymbolism; here he greatly surpassesJonson, though it would be hard toimprove upon the beauty of Jonson'sverses, as merely describing visualbeauty. Here are Jonson's stanzas:

THE TRIUMPH

See the Chariot at hand here of Love,Wherein my Lady rideth! Each that

draws is a swan or a dove, And well thecar Love guideth. As she goes, all heartsdo duty Unto her beauty; Andenamoured do wish, so they might Butenjoy such a sight, That they still wereto run by her side, Through swords,through seas, whither she would ride.

Do but look on her eyes, they do lightAll that Love's world compriseth! Dobut look on her hair, it is bright Aslove's star when it riseth! Do but mark,her forehead's smoother Than wordsthat soothe her; And from her arch'dbrows such a grace Sheds itselfthrough the face, As alone theretriumphs to the life All the gain, all thegood, of the elements' strife.

Have you seen but a bright lily growBefore rude hands have touched itHave you mark'd but the fall of thesnow Before the soil hath smutch'd itHave you felt the wool of beaver Orswan's down ever Or have smelt o' thebud o' the brier, Or the nard in the fireOr have tasted the bag of the bee O sowhite, O so soft, O so sweet is she!

The first of the above stanzas is a studyafter the Roman poets; but the laststanza is Jonson's own and is veryfamous. You will see that Browningwas probably inspired by him, but Ithink that his verses are much morebeautiful in thought and feeling.

There is one type of ideal woman veryseldom described in poetry the oldmaid, the woman whom sorrow ormisfortune prevents from fulfilling hernatural destiny. Commonly the womanwho never marries is said to becomecross, bad tempered, unpleasant incharacter. She could not be blamed forthis, I think; but there are old maidswho always remain as unselfish andfrank and kind as a girl, and who keepthe charm of girlhood even when theirhair is white. Hartley Coleridge, son ofthe great Samuel, attempted to describesuch a one, and his picture is bothtouching and beautiful.

THE SOLITARY-HEARTED

She was a queen of noble Nature'scrowning, A smile of hers was like anact of grace; She had no winsomelooks, no pretty frowning, Like dailybeauties of the vulgar race: But if shesmiled, a light was on her face, A clear,cool kindliness, a lunar beam Ofpeaceful radiance, silvering o'er thestream Of human thought withunabiding glory; Not quite a wakingtruth, not quite a dream, A visitation,bright and transitory.

But she is changed, hath felt the touchof sorrow, No love hath she, nounderstanding friend; O grief! when

Heaven is forced of earth to borrowWhat the poor niggard earth has not tolend; But when the stalk is snapt, therose must bend. The tallest flower thatskyward rears its head Grows from thecommon ground, and there must shedIts delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surelyThat they should find so base a bridalbed, Who lived in virgin pride, so sweetand purely.

She had a brother, and a tender father,And she was loved, but not as othersare From whom we ask return of love,but rather As one might love a dream; aphantom fair Of something exquisitelystrange and rare, Which all were glad tolook on, men and maids, Yet no one

claimed as oft, in dewy glades, Thepeering primrose, like a suddengladness, Gleams on the soul, yetunregarded fades; The joy is ours, butall its own the sadness.

'Tis vain to say her worst of grief isonly The common lot, which all theworld have known To her 'tis more,because her heart is lonely, And yet shehath no strength to stand alone, Onceshe had playmates, fancies of her own,And she did love them. They are pastaway As fairies vanish at the break ofday; And like a spectre of an agedeparted, Or unsphered angel woefullyastray, She glides along the solitary-hearted.

Perhaps it is scarcely possible for you toimagine that a woman finds itimpossible to marry because of beingtoo beautiful, too wise, and too good.In Western countries it is notimpossible at all. You must try toimagine entirely different socialconditions conditions in whichmarriage depends much more upon theperson than upon the parents, muchmore upon inclination than uponanything else. A woman's chances ofmarriage depend very much uponherself, upon her power of pleasingand charming. Thousands and tens ofthousands can never get married. Nowthere are cases in which a woman can

please too much. Men become afraidof her. They think, "She knows toomuch, I dare not be frank with her" or,"She is too beautiful, she never wouldaccept a common person like me" or,"She is too formal and correct, shewould never forgive a mistake, and Icould never be happy with her." Notonly is this possible, but it frequentlyhappens. Too much excellence makes amisfortune. I think you can understandit best by the reference to the verynatural prejudice against over-educatedwomen, a prejudice founded uponexperience and existing in all countries,even in Japan. Men are not attracted toa woman because she is excellent atmathematics, because she knows eight

or nine different languages, because shehas acquired all the conventions ofhigh-pressure training. Men do not careabout that. They want love and trustand kindliness and ability to make ahome beautiful and happy. Well, thepoem we have been reading is verypathetic because it describes a womanwho can not fulfil her natural destiny,can not be loved this through no faultof her own, but quite the reverse. To betoo much advanced beyond one's timeand environment is even a worsemisfortune than to be too muchbehind.

CHAPTER IV

NOTE UPON THE SHORTESTFORMS OF ENGLISH POETRY

Perhaps there is an idea amongJapanese students that one generaldifference between Japanese andWestern poetry is that the formercultivates short forms and the latterlonger ones, gut this is only in part true.It is true that short forms of poetryhave been cultivated in the Far Eastmore than in modern Europe; but in allEuropean literature short forms ofpoetry are to be found indeed quite asshort as anything in Japanese. Like theJapanese, the old Greeks, who carried

poetry to the highest perfection that ithas ever attained, delighted in shortforms; and the Greek Anthology is fullof compositions containing only twoor three lines. You will find beautifultranslations of these in Symonds's"Studies of Greek Poets," in the secondvolume. Following Greek taste, theRoman poets afterwards cultivatedshort forms of verse, but they chieflyused such verse for satirical purposes,unfortunately; I say, unfortunately,because the first great English poetswho imitated the ancients were chieflyinfluenced by the Latin writers, andthey also used the short forms forepigrammatic satire rarely for a purelyesthetic object. Ben Jonson both wrote

and translated a great number of veryshort stanzas two lines and four lines;but Jonson was a satirist in these forms.Herrick, as you know, delighted in veryshort poems; but he was greatlyinfluenced by Jonson, and many of hiscouplets and of his quatrains areworthless satires or worthless jests.However, you will find some shortverses in Herrick that almost make youthink of a certain class of Japanesepoems. After the Elizabethan Age, also,the miniature poems were still used inthe fashion set by the Roman writers,then the eighteenth century deluged uswith ill-natured witty epigrams of thelike brief form. It was not untilcomparatively modern times that our

Western world fully recognized thevalue of the distich, triplet or quatrainfor the expression of beautifulthoughts, rather than for the expressionof ill-natured ones. But now that therecognition has come, it has beendiscovered that nothing is harder thanto write a beautiful poem of two orfour lines. Only great masters have beentruly successful at it. Goethe, you know,made a quatrain that has become a partof world-literature:

Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,Who ne'er the lonely midnight hours,Weeping upon his bed has sate, Heknows ye not, ye Heavenly Powers!

meaning, of course, that inspirationand wisdom come to us only throughsorrow, and that those who have neversuffered never can be wise. But in theuniversities of England a great deal ofshort work of a most excellent kind hasbeen done in Greek and Latin; andthere is the celebrated case of anEnglish student who won a prize by apoem of a single line. The subject givenhad been the miracle of Christ'sturning water into wine at the marriagefeast; and while other scholarsattempted elaborate composition onthe theme, this student wrote but oneverse, of which the English translationis

The modest water saw its Lord, andblushed.

Of course the force of the ideadepends upon the popular conceptionof wine being red. The Latin andGreek model, however, did not seem toencourage much esthetic effort in shortpoems of English verse until the timeof the romantic movement. Then, bothin France and England, many briefforms of poetry made their appearance.In France, Victor Hugo attemptedcomposition in astonishingly variedforms of verse some forms actuallyconsisting of only two syllables to aline. With this surprisingly shortmeasure begins one of Hugo's most

remarkably early poems, "Les Djins,"representing the coming of evil spiritswith a storm, their passing over thehouse where a man is at prayer, anddeparting into the distance again.Beginning with only two syllables to theline, the measure of the poem graduallywidens as the spirits approach, becomesvery wide, very long and sonorous asthey reach the house, and again shrinksback to lines of two syllables as thesound of them dies away. In England alike variety of experiments has beenmade; but neither in France nor inEngland has the short form yet been assuccessfully cultivated as it was amongthe Greeks. We have some fineexamples; but, as an eminent English

editor observed a few years ago, notenough examples to make a book. Andof course this means that there are veryfew; for you can make a book ofpoetry very well with as little as fiftypages of largely and widely printed text.However, we may cite a few moderninstances.

I think that about the most perfectquatrains we have are those of theextraordinary man, Walter SavageLandor, who, you know, was a rareGreek scholar, all his splendid Englishwork being very closely based upon theGreek models. He made a little epitaphupon himself, which is matchless of itskind:

I strove with none, for none was worthmy strife; Nature I loved, and next toNature, Art; I warmed both handsbefore the fire of life: It sinks; and I amready to depart.

You know that Greeks used the shortform a great deal for their exquisiteepitaphs, and that a considerable partof the anthology consists of epitaphicliterature. But the quatrain has a muchwider range than this funereallimitation, and one such example ofepitaph will suffice.

Only one English poet of our own day,and that a minor one, has attempted to

make the poem of four lines a specialtythat is William Watson. He has writtena whole volume of such little poems,but very few of them are successful. AsI said before, we have not enough goodpoems of this sort for a book; and thereason is not because English poetsdespise the short form, but because it issupremely difficult. The Greekssucceeded in it, but we are still farbehind the Greeks in the shaping ofany kind of verse. The best of Watson'spieces take the form of philosophicalsuggestions; and this kind of verse isparticularly well adapted tophilosophical utterance.

Think not thy wisdom can illume away

The ancient tanglement of night andday. Enough to acknowledge both, andboth revere; They see not clearliest whosee all things clear.

That is to say, do not think that anyhuman knowledge will ever be able tomake you understand the mystery ofthe universe with its darkness and light,its joy and pain. It is best to revere thepowers that make both good and evil,and to remember that the keenest,worldly, practical minds are not theminds that best perceive the greattruths and mysteries of existence. Hereis another little bit, reminding ussomewhat of Goethe's quatrain, alreadyquoted.

Lives there whom pain hath evermorepassed by And sorrow shunned withan averted eye Him do thou pity, himabove the rest, Him, of all haplessmortals most unblessed.

That needs no commentary, and itcontains a large truth in small space.Here is a little bit on the subject of theartist's ambition, which is also good.

The thousand painful steps at last aretrod, At last the temple's difficult doorwe win, But perfect on his pedestal, theGod Freezes us hopeless when weenter in.

The higher that the artist climbs byeffort, the nearer his approach to theloftier truth, the more he understandshow little his very best can achieve. It isthe greatest artist, he who veritablyenters the presence of God that mostfeels his own weakness; the perceptionof beauty that other men can not see,terrifies him, freezes him motionless, asthe poet says.

Out of all of Watson's epigrams Ibelieve these are the best. The rest withthe possible exception of those on thesubject of love seem to me altogetherfailures. Emerson and variousAmerican poets also attempted thequatrain but Emerson's verse is nearly

always bad, even when his thought issublime. One example of Emerson willsuffice.

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Ordip thy paddle in the lake, But it carvesthe bow of beauty there, And theripples in rhyme the oar forsake.

The form is atrociously bad; but thereflection is grand it is another way ofexpressing the beautiful old Greekthought that "God geometrizeseverywhere" that is, that all motion is ingeometrical lines, and full of beauty.You can pick hundreds of fine thingsin very short verse out of Emerson, butthe verse is nearly always shapeless; the

composition of the man invariablymakes us think of diamonds in therough, jewels uncut. So far as formgoes a much better master of quatrainis the American poet Aldrich, whowrote the following little thing, entitled"Popularity."

Such kings of shreds have wooed andwon her, Such crafty knaves her laurelowned, It has become almost anhonour Not to be crowned.

This is good verse. The reference to "aking of shreds and patches" that is, abeggar king you will recognize asShakespearean. But although this prettyverse has in it more philosophy than

satire, it approaches the satiric class ofepigrams. Neither America nor Englandhas been able to do very much in thesort of verse that we have been talkingabout. Now this is a very remarkablething, because at the Englishuniversities beautiful work has beendone in Greek or Latin in poems of asingle line, of two lines, of three linesand other very brief measures. Why canit not be done in English I suspect thatit is because our English language hasnot yet become sufficiently perfect,sufficiently flexible, sufficientlymelodious to allow of great effect witha very few words. We can do the thingin Greek or in Latin because eitherGreek or Latin is a more perfect

language.

So much for theory. I should like tosuggest, however, that it is veryprobable many attempts at thesedifficult forms of poetry will beattempted by English poets within thenext few years. There is now a tendencyin that direction. I do not knowwhether such attempts will besuccessful; but I should like you tounderstand that for Western poets theyare extremely difficult and that youought to obtain from the recognitionof this fact a new sense of the realvalue of your own short forms ofverse in the hands of a master. Effectscan be produced in Japanese which the

Greeks could produce with fewsyllables, but which the English cannot. Now it strikes me that, instead ofeven thinking of throwing away oldforms of verse in order to invent newones, the future Japanese poets oughtrather to develop and cultivate andprize the forms already existing, whichbelong to the genius of the language,and which have proved themselvescapable of much that no English verseor even French verse could accomplish.Perhaps only the Italian is reallycomparable to Japanese in somerespects; you can perform miracles withItalian verse.

CHAPTER V

SOME FOREIGN POEMS ONJAPANESE SUBJECTS

The Western poet and writer ofromance has exactly the same kind ofdifficulty in comprehending Easternsubjects as you have in comprehendingWestern subjects. You will commonlyfind references to Japanese love poemsof the popular kind made in such away as to indicate the writer's beliefthat such poems refer to married life orat least to a courtship relation. NoWestern writer who has not lived formany years in the East, could write

correctly about anything on thissubject; and even after a long stay in thecountry he might be unable tounderstand. Therefore a great deal ofWestern poetry written about Japanmust seem to you all wrong, and I cannot hope to offer you many specimensof work in this direction that coulddeserve your praise. Yet there is somepoetry so fine on the subject of Japanthat I think you would admire it and Iam sure that you should know it. Aproof of really great art is that it isgenerally true it seldom falls into themisapprehensions to which minor art isliable. What do you think of the factthat the finest poetry ever written upona Japanese subject by any Western poet,

has been written by a man who neversaw the land But he is a member of theFrench Academy, a great and true loverof art, and without a living superior inthat most difficult form of poetry, thesonnet. In the time of thirty years heproduced only one very small volumeof sonnets, but so fine are these thatthey were lifted to the very highestplace in poetical distinction. I may saythat there are now only three reallygreat French poets survivals of thegrand romantic school. These areLeconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme,and Jose Maria de Heredia. It is the lastof whom I am speaking. As you cantell by his name, he is not a Frenchmaneither by birth or blood, but a Spaniard,

or rather a Spanish Creole, born inCuba. Heredia knows Japan onlythrough pictures, armour, objects of artin museums, paintings and carvings.Remembering this, I think that you willfind that he does wonderfully well. It istrue that he puts a woman in one of hispictures, but I think that hismanagement of his subject is verymuch nearer the truth than that ofalmost any writer who has attempted todescribe old Japan. And you mustunderstand that the following sonnet isessentially intended to be a picture toproduce upon the mind exactly thesame effect that a picture does, with theaddition of such life as poetry can give.

LE SAMOURAI

D'un doigt distrait frolant la sonorebiva, A travers les bambous tresses enfine latte, Elle a vu, par la plageeblouissante et plate, S'avancer levainqueur que son amour reva.

C'est lui. Sabres au flanc, l'eventail haut,il va. La cordeliere rouge et le glandecarlate Coupent l'armure sombre, et,sur l'epaule, eclate Le blazon de Hizenou de Tokungawa.

Ce beau guerrier vetu de lames et deplaques, Sous le bronze, la soie et lesbrillantes laques, Semble un crustacenoir, gigantesque et vermeil.

Il l'a vue. Il sourit dans la barbe dumasque, Et son pas plus hatif faitreluire au soleil Les deux antennes d'orqui tremblent a son casque.

"Lightly touching her biva with heedlessfinger, she has perceived, through thefinely woven bamboo screen, theconqueror, lovingly thought of,approach over the dazzling level of thebeach.

"It is he. With his swords at his side headvances, holding up his fan. The redgirdle and the scarlet tassel appear insharply cut relief against the darkarmour; and upon his shoulder glitters

a crest of Hizen or of Tokungawa.

"This handsome warrior sheathed withhis scales and plates of metal, under hisbronze, his silk and glimmering lacquer,seems a crustacean, gigantic, black andvermilion.

"He has caught sight of her. Under thebeaver of the war mask he smiles, andhis quickened step makes to glitter inthe sun the two antennae of gold thatquiver upon his helmet."

The comparison of a warrior in fullarmour to a gigantic crab or lobster,especially lobster, is not exactly new.Victor Hugo has used it before in

French literature, just as Carlyle hasused it in English literature; indeed theimage could not fail to occur to theartist in any country where the study ofarmour has been carried on. But herethe poet does not speak of anyparticular creature; he uses only thegeneric term, crustacean, the vaguenessof which makes the comparison muchmore effective. I think you can see thewhole picture at once. It is a Japanesecolour-print, some ancient interior,lighted by the sun of a great summerday; and a woman looking through abamboo blind toward the seashore,where she sees a warrior approaching.He divines that he is seen; but if hesmiles, it is only because the smile is

hidden by his iron mask. The only signof any sentiment on his part is that hewalks a little quicker. Still more amazingis a companion picture, containing onlya solitary figure:

LE DAIMIO (Matin de bataille)

Sous le noir fouet de guerre aquadruple pompon, L'etalon belliqueuxen hennissant se cabre, Et fait bruire,avec de cliquetis de sabre, La cuirassede bronze aux lames du jupon.

Le Chef vetu d'airain, de laque et decrepon, Otant le masque a poils de sonvisage glabre, Regarde le volcan sur unciel de cinabre Dresser la neige ou rit

l'aurore du Nippon.

Mais il a vu, vers l'Est eclabousse d'or,l'astre, Glorieux d'eclairer ce matin dedesastre, Poindre, orbe eblouissant, au-dessus de la mer;

Et pour couvrir ses yeux dont pas uncil ne bouge, Il ouvre d'un seul coupson eventail de fer, Ou dans le satinblanc se leve un Soleil rouge.

"Under the black war whip with itsquadruple pompon the fierce stallion,whinnying, curvets, and makes therider's bronze cuirass ring against theplates of his shirt of mail, with asound like the clashing of sword

blades.

"The Chief, clad in bronze and lacquerand silken crape, removing the beardedmasque from his beardless face, turnshis gaze to the great volcano, lifting itssnows into the cinnabar sky where thedawn of Nippon begins to smile.

"Nay! he has already seen the gold-spattered day star, gloriouslyilluminating the morning of disaster,rise, a blinding disk, above the seas.And to shade his eyes, on both ofwhich not even a single eyelash stirs, heopens with one quick movement hisiron fan, wherein upon a field of whitesatin there rises a crimson sun."

Of course this hasty translation is verypoor; and you can only get from it thesignification and colour of the picturethe beautiful sonority and luminosityof the French is all gone. Nevertheless,I am sure that the more you study theoriginal the more you will see how fineit is. Here also is a Japanese colourprint. We see the figure of thehorseman on the shore, in the light ofdawn; behind him the still dark sky ofnight; before him the crimson dawn,and Fuji white against the red sky. Andin the open fan, with its red sun, wehave a grim suggestion of the day ofblood that is about to be; that is all. Butwhoever reads that sonnet will never

forget it; it burns into the memory. So,indeed, does everything that Herediawrites. Unfortunately he has not yetwritten anything more about Japan.

I have quoted Heredia because I thinkthat no other poet has even approachedhim in the attempt to make a Japanesepicture though many others have tried;and the French, nearly always, havedone much better than the English,because they are more naturally artists.Indeed one must be something of anartist to write anything in the way ofgood poetry on a Japanese subject. Ifyou look at the collection "Poems ofPlaces," in the library, you will see howpoorly Japan is there represented; the

only respectable piece of foreign workbeing by Longfellow, and that is onlyabout Japanese vases. But since thensome English poems have appearedwhich are at least worthy of Japanesenotice.

CHAPTER VI

THE BIBLE IN ENGLISHLITERATURE

It is no exaggeration to say that theEnglish Bible is, next to Shakespeare,the greatest work in English literature,and that it will have much more

influence than even Shakespeare uponthe written and spoken language of theEnglish race. For this reason, to studyEnglish literature without some generalknowledge of the relation of the Bibleto that literature would be to leave one'sliterary education very incomplete. It isnot necessary to consider the workfrom a religious point of view at all;indeed, to so consider it would berather a hindrance to the understandingof its literary excellence. Some personshave ventured to say that it is only sinceEnglishmen ceased to believe in theBible that they began to discover howbeautiful it was. This is not altogethertrue; but it is partly true. For it is onething to consider every word of a book

as the word of God or gods, andanother thing to consider it simply asthe work of men like ourselves.Naturally we should think it our dutyto suppose the work of a divine beingperfect in itself, and to imagine beautyand truth where neither really exists.The wonder of the English Bible canreally be best appreciated by those who,knowing it to be the work of menmuch less educated and cultivated thanthe scholars of the nineteenth century,nevertheless perceive that those menwere able to do in literature what noman of our own day could possibly do.

Of course in considering the work ofthe translators, we must remember the

magnificence of the original. I shouldnot like to say that the Bible is thegreatest of all religious books. Fromthe moral point of view it contains verymuch that we can not to-day approveof; and what is good in it can be foundin the sacred books of other nations.Its ethics can not even claim to beabsolutely original. The ancientEgyptian scriptures contain beautiesalmost superior in moral exaltation toanything contained in the OldTestament; and the sacred books ofother Eastern nations, notably thesacred books of India, surpass theHebrew scriptures in the highestqualities of imagination and ofprofound thought. It is only of late

years that Europe, through the labourof Sanskrit and Pali scholars, hasbecome acquainted with theastonishing beauty of thought andfeeling which Indian scholars enshrinedin scriptures much more voluminousthan the Hebrew Bible; and it is notimpossible that this far-off literaturewill some day influence Europeanthought quite as much as the JewishBible. Everywhere to-day in Europeand America the study of Buddhist andSanskrit literature is being pursued notonly with eagerness but withenthusiasm an enthusiasm whichsometimes reaches to curious extremes.I might mention, in example, the caseof a rich man who recently visited

Japan on his way from India. He had inNew Zealand a valuable property; hewas a man of high culture, and ofconsiderable social influence. One dayhe happened to read an Englishtranslation of the "Bhagavad-Gita."Almost immediately he resolved todevote the rest of his life to religiousstudy in India, in a monastery amongthe mountains; and he gave up wealth,friends, society, everything that Westerncivilization could offer him, in order toseek truth in a strange country.Certainly this is not the only instanceof the kind; and while such incidentscan happen, we may feel sure that theinfluence of religious literature is notlikely to die for centuries to come.

But every great scripture, whetherHebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese,apart from its religious value will befound to have some rare and specialbeauty of its own; and in this respectthe original Bible stands very high as amonument of sublime poetry and ofartistic prose. If it is not the greatest ofreligious books as a literary creation, itis at all events one of the greatest; andthe proof is to be found in theinspiration which millions andhundreds of millions, dead and living,have obtained from its utterances. TheSemitic races have always possessed in avery high degree the genius of poetry,especially poetry in which imagination

plays a great part; and the Bible is themonument of Semitic genius in thisregard. Something in the serious, stern,and reverential spirit of the geniusreferred to made a particular appeal toWestern races having certaincharacteristics of the same kind.Themselves uncultivated in the timethat the Bible was first made known tothem, they found in it almosteverything that they thought and felt,expressed in a much better way thanthey could have expressed it.Accordingly the Northern races ofEurope found their inspiration in theBible; and the enthusiasm for it has notyet quite faded away.

But the value of the original, be itobserved, did not make the value ofthe English Bible. Certainly it was aninspiring force; but it was nothingmore. The English Bible is perhaps amuch greater piece of fine literature,altogether considered, than the HebrewBible. It was so for a particular reasonwhich it is very necessary for thestudent to understand. The EnglishBible is a product of literary evolution.

In studying English criticisms upondifferent authors, I think that you musthave sometimes felt impatient with thecritics who told you, for example, thatTennyson was partly inspired byWordsworth and partly by Keats and

partly by Coleridge; and that Coleridgewas partly inspired by Blake and Blakeby the Elizabethans, and so on. Youmay have been tempted to say, as I usedvery often myself to say, "What does itmatter where the man got his ideasfrom I care only for the beauty that is inhis work, not for a history of hisliterary education." But to-day the valueof the study of such relations appearsin quite a new light. Evolutionalphilosophy, applied to the study ofliterature as to everything else, hasshown us conclusively that man is not agod who can make something out ofnothing, and that every great work ofgenius must depend even less upon theman of genius himself than upon the

labours of those who lived before him.Every great author must draw histhoughts and his knowledge in partfrom other great authors, and theseagain from previous authors, and so onback, till we come to that far time inwhich there was no written literature,but only verses learned by heart andmemorized by all the people of someone tribe or place, and taught by themto their children and to theirgrandchildren. It is only in Greekmythology that the divinity of Wisdomleaps out of a god's head, in fullarmour. In the world of reality themore beautiful a work of art, thelonger, we may be sure, was the timerequired to make it, and the greater the

number of different minds whichassisted in its development.

So with the English Bible. No one mancould have made the translation of1611. No one generation of men couldhave done it. It was not the labour of asingle century. It represented the workof hundreds of translators workingthrough hundreds of years, eachsucceeding generation improving a littleupon the work of the previousgeneration, until in the seventeenthcentury the best had been done ofwhich the English brain and theEnglish language was capable. In noother way can the surprising beautiesof style and expression be explained.

No subsequent effort could improvethe Bible of King James. Every attemptmade since the seventeenth century hasonly resulted in spoiling and deformingthe strength and the beauty of theauthorized text.

Now you will understand why, fromthe purely literary point of view, theEnglish Bible is of the utmostimportance for study. Suppose weglance for a moment at the principalevents in the history of this evolution.

The first translation of the Bible into aWestern tongue was that made byJerome (commonly called Saint Jerome)in the fourth century; he translated

directly from the Hebrew and otherArabic languages into Latin, then thelanguage of the Empire. Thistranslation into Latin was called theVulgate, from vulgare, "to makegenerally known." The Vulgate is stillused in the Roman church. The firstEnglish translations which have beenpreserved to us were made from theVulgate, not from the original tongues.First of all, John Wycliffe's Bible maybe called the foundation of theseventeenth century Bible. Wycliffe'stranslation, in which he was helped bymany others, was published between1380 and 1388. So we may say that thefoundation of the English Bible datesfrom the fourteenth century, one

thousand years after Jerome's Latintranslation. But Wycliffe's version,excellent as it was, could not serve verylong: the English language waschanging too quickly. Accordingly, inthe time of Henry VIII Tyndale andCoverdale, with many others, made anew translation, this time not from theVulgate, but from the Greek text of thegreat scholar Erasmus. This was themost important literary event of thetime, for "it coloured the entirecomplexion of subsequent Englishprose," to use the words of ProfessorGosse. This means that all prose inEnglish written since Henry VIII hasbeen influenced, directly or indirectly,by the prose of Tyndale's Bible, which

was completed about 1535. Almost atthe same time a number of Englishdivines, under the superintendence ofArchbishop Cramner, gave to theEnglish language a literary treasurescarcely inferior to the Bible itself, andcontaining wonderful translations fromthe Scriptures, the "Book of CommonPrayer." No English surpasses theEnglish of this book, still used by theChurch; and many translators havesince found new inspiration from it.

A revision of this famous Bible wasmade in 1565, entitled "The Bishops'Bible." The cause of the revision waslargely doctrinal, and we need nottrouble ourselves about this translation

farther than to remark thatProtestantism was reshaping theScriptures to suit the new state religion.Perhaps this edition may have hadsomething to do with thedetermination of the Roman Catholicsto make an English Bible of their own.The Jesuits began the work in 1582 atRheims, and by 1610 the RomanCatholic version known as the Douay(or Douai) version because of itshaving been made chiefly at theCatholic College of Douai in Francewas completed. This version has manymerits; next to the wonderful KingJames version, it is certainly the mostpoetical; and it has the furtheradvantage of including a number of

books which Protestantism has thrownout of the authorized version, butwhich have been used in the Romanchurch since its foundation. But I amspeaking of the book only as a literaryEnglish production. It was not madewith the help of original sources; itsmerits are simply those of a melodioustranslation from the Latin Vulgate.

At last, in 1611, was made, under theauspices of King James, the famousKing James version; and this is the greatliterary monument of the Englishlanguage. It was the work of manylearned men; but the chief worker andsupervisor was the Bishop ofWinchester, Lancelot Andrews, perhaps

the most eloquent English preacherthat ever lived. He was a natural-bornorator, with an exquisite ear for thecadences of language. To this naturalfaculty of the Bishop's can beattributed much of the musical charmof the English in which the Bible waswritten. Still, it must not be supposedthat he himself did all the work, oreven more than a small proportion ofit. What he did was to tone it; heoverlooked and corrected all the textsubmitted to him, and suffered only thebest forms to survive. Yet whatmagnificent material he had to choosefrom! All the translations of the Biblethat had been made before his timewere carefully studied with a view to

the conservation of the best phrases,both for sound and for form. We mustconsider the result not merely as a studyof literature in itself, but also as a studyof eloquence; for every attention wasgiven to those effects to be expectedfrom an oratorical recitation of the textin public.

This marks the end of the literaryevolution of the Bible. Everything thathas since been done has only been inthe direction of retrogression, of injuryto the text. We have now a great manylater versions, much more scholarly, sofar as correct scholarship is concerned,than the King James version, but nonehaving any claim to literary importance.

Unfortunately, exact scholars are veryseldom men of literary ability; the twofaculties are rarely united. The Bible of1870, known as the Oxford Bible, andnow used in the Anglican state-church,evoked a great protest from the truemen of letters, the poets and criticswho had found their inspirations in theuseful study of the old version. Thenew version was the work of fourteenyears; it was made by the united labourof the greatest scholars in the English-speaking world; and it is far the mostexact translation that we have.Nevertheless the literary quality hasbeen injured to such an extent that noone will ever turn to the new revisionfor poetical study. Even among the

churches there was a decidedcondemnation of this scholarlytreatment of the old text; and many ofthe churches refused to use the book.In this case, conservatism is doing theliterary world a service, keeping the oldKing James version in circulation, andinsisting especially upon its use inSunday schools.

We may now take a few examples ofthe differences between the revisedversion and the Bible of King James.Professor Saintsbury, in an essay uponEnglish prose, published some yearsago, said that the most perfect piece ofEnglish prose in the language was thatcomprised in the sixth and seventh

verses of the eighth chapter of theSong of Songs:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as aseal upon thine arm: for love is strongas death; jealousy is cruel as the grave;the coals thereof are coals of fire,which hath a most vehement flame.

Many waters can not quench love,neither can the floods drown it: if aman would give all the substance of hishouse for love, it would utterly becondemned.

I should not like to say that theProfessor is certainly right in callingthis the finest prose in the English

language; but he is a very great critic,whose opinion must be respected andconsidered, and the passage is certainlyvery fine. But in the revised version,how tame the same text has become inthe hands of the scholarly translators!

The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,a very flame of the Lord.

Now as a description of jealousy, notto speak of the literary execution at all,which is the best What, we may ask, hasbeen gained by calling jealousy "a flameof the Lord" or by substituting theword "flashes" for "coals of fire" Allthrough the new version are things ofthis kind. For example, in the same

Song of Songs there is a beautifuldescription of eyes, like "doves by therivers of waters, washed with milk, andfitly set." By substituting "rivers" onlyfor "rivers of waters" the text may havegained in exactness, but it has lostimmeasurably, both in poetry and insound. Far more poetical is the verse asgiven in the Douai version: "His eyesare as doves upon brooks of waters,which are washed with milk, and sitbeside the beautiful streams."

It may even be said without anyquestion that the mistakes of the oldtranslators were often much morebeautiful than the original. A splendidexample is given in the verse of Job,

chapter twenty-six, verse thirteen: "Byhis spirit he hath garnished theheavens; his hand hath formed thecrooked serpent." By the crookedserpent was supposed to be signifiedthe grand constellation called Draco, orthe Dragon. And the figure is sublime.It is still more sublime in the Douaitranslation. "His obstetric hand hathbrought forth the Winding Serpent."This is certainly a grand imaginationthe hand of God, like the hand of amidwife, bringing forth a constellationout of the womb of the eternal night.But in the revised version, which isexact, we have only "His hand hathpierced the Swift Serpent!" All thepoetry is dead.

There are two methods for the literarystudy of any book the first being thestudy of its thought and emotion; thesecond only that of its workmanship. Astudent of literature should study someof the Bible from both points of view.In attempting the former method hewill do well to consider many works ofcriticism, but for the study of the textas literature, his duty is very plain theKing James version is the only one thatought to form the basis of his study,though he should look at the Douaiversion occasionally. Also he shouldhave a book of references, such asCruden's Concordance, by help ofwhich he can collect together in a few

moments all the texts upon anyparticular subject, such as the sea, thewind, the sky, human life, the shadowsof evening. The study of the Bible isnot one which I should recommend tovery young Japanese students, becauseof the quaintness of the English.Before a good knowledge of Englishforms is obtained, the archaisms are aptto affect the students' mode ofexpression. But for the advancedstudent of literature, I should say thatsome knowledge of the finest books inthe Bible is simply indispensable. Theimportant books to read are not many.But one should read at least the booksof Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Esther, theSong of Songs, Proverbs, and, above

all, Job. Job is certainly the grandestbook in the Bible; but all of thosewhich I have named are books thathave inspired poets and writers in alldepartments of English literature tosuch an extent that you can scarcelyread a masterpiece in which there is notsome conscious or unconsciousreference to them. Another book ofphilosophical importance isEcclesiastes, where, in addition to muchproverbial wisdom, you will find someadmirable world-poetry that is, poetrywhich contains universal truth abouthuman life in all times and all ages. Ofthe historical books and the law booksI do not think that it is important toread much; the literary element in these

is not so pronounced. It is otherwisewith the prophetic books, but here inorder to obtain a few jewels ofexpression, you have to read a greatdeal that is of little value. Of the NewTestament there is very little equal tothe Old in literary value; indeed, Ishould recommend the reading only ofthe closing book the book called theRevelation, or the Apocalypse, fromwhich we have derived a literaryadjective "apocalyptic," to describesomething at once very terrible andvery grand. Whether one understandsthe meaning of this mysterious textmakes very little difference; the sonorityand the beauty of its sentences,together with the tremendous character

of its imagery, can not but powerfullyinfluence mind and ear, and thusstimulate literary taste. At least two ofthe great prose writers of thenineteenth century, Carlyle and Ruskin,have been vividly influenced by thebook of the Revelation. Every periodof English literature shows someinfluence of Bible study, even from theold Anglo-Saxon days; and during thepresent year, the study has so littleslackened that one constantly seesannouncements of new works uponthe literary elements of the Bible.Perhaps one of the best is ProfessorMoulton's "Modern Reader's Bible," inwhich the literary side of the subjectreceives better consideration than in

any other work of the kind publishedfor general use.

CHAPTER VII

THE "HAVAMAL"

OLD NORTHERN ETHICS OFLIFE

Then from his lips in music rolled TheHavamal of Odin old, With soundsmysterious as the roar Of billows on adistant shore.

Perhaps many of you who read this

little verse in Longfellow's "Saga ofKing Olaf" have wished to know whatwas this wonderful song that the ghostof the god sang to the king. I am afraidthat you would be very disappointed insome respects by the "Havamal." Thereis indeed a magical song in it; and it isthis magical song especially thatLongfellow refers to, a song of charms.But most of the "Havamal" is acollection of ethical teaching. All thathas been preserved by it has beenpublished and translated by ProfessorsVigfusson and Powell. It is very oldperhaps the oldest Northern literaturethat we have. I am going to attempt ashort lecture upon it, because it is veryclosely related to the subject of

Northern character, and will help us,perhaps better than almost anythingelse, to understand how the ancestorsof the English felt and thought beforethey became Christians. Nor is this all. Iventure to say that the character of themodern English people still retainsmuch more of the quality indicated bythe "Havamal" than of the qualityimplied by Christianity. The oldNorthern gods are not dead; they rule avery great part of the world to-day.

The proverbial philosophy of a peoplehelps us to understand more aboutthem than any other kind of literature.And this sort of literature is certainlyamong the oldest. It represents only the

result of human experience in society,the wisdom that men get by contactwith each other, the results offamiliarity with right and wrong. Bystudying the proverbs of a people, youcan always make a very good guess asto whether you could live comfortablyamong them or not.

Froude, in one of his sketches of travelin Norway, made the excellentobservation that if we could suddenlygo back to the time of the terrible sea-kings, if we could revisit to-day thehomes of the old Northern pirates, andfind them exactly as they were onethousand or fifteen hundred years ago,we should find them very much like the

modern Englishmen big, simple, silentmen, concealing a great deal ofshrewdness under an aspect ofsimplicity. The teachings of the"Havamal" give great force to thissupposition. The book must have beenknown in some form to the earlyEnglish or at least the verses composingit (it is all written in verse); and as Ihave already said, the morals of the oldEnglish, as well as their character,differed very little from those of themen of the still further North, withwhom they mingled and intermarriedfreely, both before and after the Danishconquest, when for one momentEngland and Sweden were onekingdom.

Of course you must remember thatNorthern society was a very terriblething in some ways. Every man carriedhis life in his hands; every farmer keptsword and spear at his side even in hisown fields; and every man expected todie fighting. In fact, among the men ofthe more savage North the men ofNorway in especial it was considered agreat disgrace to die of sickness, to dieon one's bed. That was not to die like aman. Men would go out and getthemselves killed, when they felt oldage or sickness coming on. But thesefacts must not blind us to the other factthat there was even in that society agreat force of moral cohesion, and

sound principles of morality. If therehad not been, it could not have existed;much less could the people who livedunder it have become the masters of agreat part of the world, which they areat the present day. There was, in spiteof all that fierceness, much kindnessand good nature among them; therewere rules of conduct such as no mancould find fault with rules which stillgovern English society to some extent.And there was opportunity enough forsocial amusement, social enjoyment,and the winning of public esteem by anoble life.

Still, even in the "Havamal," one isoccasionally startled by teachings which

show the darker side of Northern life,a life of perpetual vendetta. As in oldJapan, no man could live under thesame heaven with the murderer of hisbrother or father; vengeance was a dutyeven in the case of a friend. On thesubject of enemies the "Havamal" givesnot a little curious advice:

A man should never step a foot beyondhis weapons; for he can never tellwhere, on his path without, he mayneed his spear.

A man, before he goes into a house,should look to and espy all thedoorways (so that he can find his way outquickly again), for he can never know

where foes may be sitting in anotherman's house.

Does not this remind us of theJapanese proverb that everybody hasthree enemies outside of his own doorBut the meaning of the "Havamal"teaching is much more sinister. Andwhen the man goes into the house, heis still told to be extremely watchful tokeep his ears and eyes open so that hemay not be taken by surprise:

The wary guest keeps watchful silence;he listens with his ears and peers aboutwith his eyes; thus does every wise manlook about him.

One would think that men must havehad very strong nerves to take comfortunder such circumstances, but the poettells us that the man who can enjoynothing must be both a coward and afool. Although a man was to keepwatch to protect his life, that was not areason why he should be afraid oflosing it. There were but three things ofwhich a man should be particularlyafraid. The first was drink becausedrink often caused a man to losecontrol of his temper; the second wasanother man's wife repeatedly thereader is warned never to make love toanother man's wife; and the third wasthieves men who would pretendfriendship for the purpose of killing

and stealing, The man who could keepconstant watch over himself and hissurroundings was, of course, likely tohave the longest life.

Now in all countries there is a greatdeal of ethical teaching, and always hasbeen, on the subject of speech. The"Havamal" is full of teaching on thissubject the necessity of silence, thedanger and the folly of reckless talk.You all know the Japanese proverb that"the mouth is the front gate of allmisfortune." The Norse poet puts thesame truth into a grimmer shape: "Thetongue works death to the head." Hereare a number of sayings on this subject:

He that is never silent talks much folly;a glib tongue, unless it be bridled, willoften talk a man into trouble.

Do not speak three angry words with aworse man; for often the better manfalls by the worse man's sword.

Smile thou in the face of the man thoutrusteth not, and speak against thymind.

This is of course a teaching ofcunning; but it is the teaching, howeverimmoral, that rules in English societyto-day. In the old Norse, however, therewere many reasons for avoiding aquarrel whenever possible reasons

which must have existed also in feudalJapan. A man might not care aboutlosing his own life; but he had to becareful not to stir up a feud that mightgo on for a hundred years. Althoughthere was a great deal of killing, killingalways remained a serious matter,because for every killing there had to bea vengeance. It is true that the lawexonerated the man who killed another,if he paid a certain blood-price; murderwas not legally considered anunpardonable crime. But the family ofthe dead man would very seldom besatisfied with a payment; they wouldwant blood for blood. Accordinglymen had to be very cautious aboutquarreling, however brave they might

personally be.

But all this caution about silence andabout watchfulness did not mean that aman should be unable to speak to thepurpose when speech was required. "Awise man," says the "Havamal," "shouldbe able both to ask and to answer."There is a proverb which you know, tothe effect that you can not shut thedoor upon another man's mouth. Sosays the Norse poet: "The sons of mencan keep silence about nothing thatpasses among men; therefore a manshould be able to take his own part,prudently and strongly." Says the"Havamal": "A fool thinks he knowseverything if he sits snug in his little

corner; but he is at a loss for words ifthe people put to him a question."Elsewhere it is said: "Arch dunce is hewho can speak nought, for that is themark of a fool." And the sum of allthis teaching about the tongue is thatmen should never speak without goodreason, and then should speak to thepoint strongly and wisely.

On the subject of fools there is a greatdeal in the "Havamal"; but you mustunderstand always by the word fool, inthe Northern sense, a man of weakcharacter who knows not what to do intime of difficulty. That was a foolamong those men, and a dangerousfool; for in such a state of society

mistakes in act or in speech might reachto terrible consequences. See these littleobservations about fools:

Open-handed, bold-hearted men livemost happily, they never feel care; but afool troubles himself about everything.The niggard pines for gifts.

A fool is awake all night, worryingabout everything; when the morningcomes he is worn out, and all histroubles are just the same as before.

A fool thinks that all who smile uponhim are his friends, not knowing, whenhe is with wise men, who there may beplotting against him.

If a fool gets a drink, all his mind isimmediately displayed.

But it was not considered right for aman not to drink, although drink was adangerous thing. On the contrary, notto drink would have been thought amark of cowardice and of incapacityfor self-control. A man was expectedeven to get drunk if necessary, and tokeep his tongue and his temper nomatter how much he drank. The strongcharacter would only become morecautious and more silent under theinfluence of drink; the weak manwould immediately show his weakness.I am told the curious fact that in the

English army at the present day officersare expected to act very much after theteaching of the old Norse poet; a manis expected to be able on occasion todrink a considerable amount of wineor spirits without showing the effectsof it, either in his conduct or in hisspeech. "Drink thy share of mead;speak fair or not at all" that was the oldtext, and a very sensible one in its way.

Laughter was also condemned, ifindulged in without very good cause."The miserable man whose mind iswarped laughs at everything, notknowing what he ought to know, thathe himself has no lack of faults." Ineed scarcely tell you that the English

are still a very serious people, notdisposed to laugh nearly so much as arethe men of the more sympathetic Latinraces. You will remember perhaps LordChesterfield's saying that since hebecame a man no man had ever seenhim laugh. I remember about twentyyears ago that there was published bysome Englishman a very learned andvery interesting little book, called "ThePhilosophy of Laughter," in which itwas gravely asserted that all laughterwas foolish. I must acknowledge,however, that no book ever made melaugh more than the volume inquestion.

The great virtue of the men of the

North, according to the "Havamal,"was indeed the virtue which has givento the English race its present greatposition among nations, the simplestof all virtues, common sense. Butcommon sense means much more thanthe words might imply to the Japanesestudents, or to any one unfamiliar withEnglish idioms. Common sense, ormother-wit, means natural intelligence,as opposed to, and independent of,cultivated or educated intelligence. Itmeans inherited knowledge; andinherited knowledge may take even theform of genius. It means foresight. Itmeans intuitive knowledge of otherpeople's character. It means cunning aswell as broad comprehension. And the

modern Englishman, in all times and inall countries, trusts especially to thisfaculty, which is very largely developedin the race to which he belongs. NoEnglishman believes in working frombook learning. He suspects all theories,philosophical or other. He suspectseverything new, and dislikes it, unlesshe can be compelled by the force ofcircumstances to see that this new thinghas advantages over the old. Race-experience is what he invariablydepends upon, whenever he can,whether in India, in Egypt, or inAustralia. His statesmen do not consulthistorical precedents in order to decidewhat to do: they first learn the facts asthey are; then they depend upon their

own common sense, not at all upontheir university learning or uponphilosophical theories. And in the caseof the English nation, it must beacknowledged that this instinctivemethod has been eminently successful.When the "Havamal" speaks ofwisdom it means mother-wit, andnothing else; indeed, there was noreading or writing to speak of in thosetimes:

No man can carry better baggage on hisjourney than wisdom.

There is no better friend than greatcommon sense.

But the wise man should not showhimself to be wise without occasion.He should remember that the majorityof men are not wise, and he should becareful not to show his superiority overthem unnecessarily. Neither should bedespise men who do not happen to beas wise as himself:

No man is so good but there is a flawin him, nor so bad as to be good fornothing.

Middling wise should every man be;never overwise. Those who know manythings rarely lead the happiest life.

Middling wise should every man be;

never overwise. No man should knowhis fate beforehand; so shall he livefreest from care.

Middling wise should every man be,never too wise. A wise man's heart isseldom glad, if its owner be a true sage.

This is the ancient wisdom also ofSolomon "He that increases wisdomincreases sorrow." But how very true asworldly wisdom these little Northernsentences are. That a man who knows alittle of many things, and no one thingperfectly, is the happiest man thiscertainly is even more true to-day thanit was a thousand years ago. Spencerhas well observed that the man who

can influence his generation, is neverthe man greatly in advance of his time,but only the man who is very slightlybetter than his fellows. The man who isvery superior is likely to be ignored ordisliked. Mediocrity can not helpdisliking superiority; and as the oldNorthern sage declared, "the average ofmen is but moiety." Moiety does notmean necessarily mediocrity, but alsothat which is below mediocrity. Whatwe call in England to-day, as MatthewArnold called it, the Philistine element,continues to prove in our own time, toalmost every superior man, the dangerof being too wise.

Interesting in another way, and

altogether more agreeable, are the oldsayings about friendship: "Know this,if thou hast a trusty friend, go and seehim often; because a road which isseldom trod gets choked with bramblesand high grass."

Be not thou the first to break off fromthy friend. Sorrow will eat thy heart ifthou lackest the friend to open thyheart to.

Anything is better than to be false; he isno friend who only speaks to please.

Which means, of course, that a truefriend is not afraid to find fault with hisfriend's course; indeed, that is his

solemn duty. But these teachings aboutfriendship are accompanied with manycautions; for one must be very carefulin the making friends. The ancientGreeks had a terrible proverb: "Treatyour friend as if he should becomesome day your enemy; and treat yourenemy as if he might some day becomeyour friend." This proverb seems to meto indicate a certain amount of doubtin human nature. We do not find thisdoubt in the Norse teaching, but on thecontrary, some very excellent advice.The first thing to remember is thatfriendship is sacred: "He that opens hisheart to another mixes blood withhim." Therefore one should be verycareful either about forming or about

breaking a friendship.

A man should be a friend to his friend'sfriend. But no man should be a friendof his friend's foe, nor of his foe'sfriend.

A man should be a friend with hisfriend, and pay back gift with gift; giveback laughter for laughter (to hisenemies), and lesing for lies.

Give and give back makes the longestfriend. Give not overmuch at one time.Gift always looks for return.

The poet also tells us how trifling giftsare quite sufficient to make friends and

to keep them, if wisely given. A costlygift may seem like a bribe; a little gift isonly the sign of kindly feeling. And as amere matter of justice, a costly gift maybe unkind, for it puts the friend underan obligation which he may not be richenough to repay. Repeatedly we are toldalso that too much should not beexpected of friendship. The value of afriend is his affection, his sympathy; butfavours that cost must always bereturned.

I never met a man so open-hearted andfree with his food, but that boon wasboon to him nor so generous as not tolook for return if he had a chance.

Emerson says almost precisely the samething in his essay on friendshipshowing how little human wisdom haschanged in all the centuries. Here isanother good bit of advice concerningvisits:

It is far away to an ill friend, eventhough he live on one's road; but to agood friend there is a short cut, eventhough he live far out.

Go on, be not a guest ever in the samehouse. The welcome becomeswearisome if he sits too long atanother's table.

This means that we must not impose

on our friends; but there is a furthercaution on the subject of eating at afriend's house. You must not go toyour friend's house hungry, when youcan help it.

A man should take his meal betimes,before he goes to his neighbour or hewill sit and seem hungered like onestarving, and have no power to talk.

That is the main point to remember indining at another's house, that you arenot there only for your own pleasure,but for that of other people. You areexpected to talk; and you can not talk ifyou are very hungry. At this very day agentleman makes it the rule to do the

same thing. Accordingly we see thatthese rough men of the North musthave had a good deal of socialrefinement refinement not of dress orof speech, but of feeling. Still, says thepoet, one's own home is the best,though it be but a cottage. "A man is aman in his own house."

Now we come to some sentencesteaching caution, which are noteworthyin a certain way:

Tell one man thy secret, but not two.What three men know, all the worldknows.

Never let a bad man know thy mishaps;

for from a bad man thou shalt never getreward for thy sincerity.

I shall presently give you some modernexamples in regard to the adviceconcerning bad men. Another thing tobe cautious about is praise. If you haveto be careful about blame, you must bevery cautious also about praise.

Praise the day at even-tide; a woman ather burying; a sword when it has beentried; a maid when she is married; icewhen you have crossed over it; alewhen it is drunk.

If there is anything noteworthy inEnglish character to-day it is the

exemplification of this very kind ofteaching. This is essentially Northern.The last people from whom praise canbe expected, even for what is worthy ofall praise, are the English. A newfriendship, a new ideal, a reform, anoble action, a wonderful poet, anexquisite painting any of these thingswill be admired and praised by everyother people in Europe long beforeyou can get Englishmen to praise. TheEnglishman all this time is studying,considering, trying to find fault. Whyshould he try to find fault So that hewill not make any mistakes at a laterday. He has inherited the terriblecaution of his ancestors in regard tomistakes. It must be granted that his

caution has saved him from a numberof very serious mistakes that othernations have made. It must also beacknowledged that he exercises a fairamount of moderation in the oppositedirection this modern Englishman; hehas learned caution of another kind,which his ancestors taught him."Power," says the "Havamal," "shouldbe used with moderation; for whoeverfinds himself among valiant men willdiscover that no man is peerless." Andthis is a very important thing for thestrong man to know that howeverstrong, he can not be the strongest; hismatch will be found when occasiondemands it. Not only Scandinavian butEnglish rulers have often discovered

this fact to their cost. Another matter tobe very anxious about is publicopinion.

Chattels die; kinsmen pass away; onedies oneself; but I know something thatnever dies the name of the man, forgood or bad.

Do not think that this means anythingreligious. It means only that thereputation of a man goes to influencethe good or ill fortune of hisdescendants. It is something to beproud of, to be the son of a good man;it helps to success in life. On the otherhand, to have had a father of illreputation is a very serious obstacle to

success of any kind in countries wherethe influence of heredity is stronglyrecognized.

I have nearly exhausted the examplesof this Northern wisdom which Iselected for you; but there are twosubjects which remain to beconsidered. One is the law of conductin regard to misfortune; and the otheris the rule of conduct in regard towomen. A man was expected to keepup a brave heart under anycircumstances. These old Northmenseldom committed suicide; and I musttell you that all the talk aboutChristianity having checked the practiceof suicide to some extent, can not be

fairly accepted as truth. In modernEngland to-day the suicides averagenearly three thousand a year; butmaking allowance for extraordinarycircumstances, it is certainly true thatthe Northern races consider suicide inan entirely different way from what theLatin races do. There was very littlesuicide among the men of the North,because every man considered it hisduty to get killed, not to kill himself;and to kill himself would have seemedcowardly, as implying fear of beingkilled by others. In modern ethicaltraining, quite apart from religiousconsiderations a man is taught thatsuicide is only excusable in case ofshame, or under such exceptional

circumstances as have occurred in thehistory of the Indian mutiny. At allevents, we have the feeling still stronglymanifested in England that suicide isnot quite manly; and this is certainlydue much more to ancestral habits ofthinking, which date back to pagandays, than to Christian doctrine. As Ihave said, the pagan English would notcommit suicide to escape mere pain.But the Northern people knew how todie to escape shame. There is an awfulstory in Roman history about the wivesand daughters of the conqueredGerman tribes, thousands in number,asking to be promised that their virtueshould be respected, and all killingthemselves when the Roman general

refused the request. No Southernpeople of Europe in that time wouldhave shown such heroism upon such amatter. Leaving honour aside, however,the old book tells us that a man shouldnever despair.

Fire, the sight of the sun, good health,and a blameless life these are thegoodliest things in this world.

Yet a man is not utterly wretched,though he have bad health, or bemaimed.

The halt may ride a horse; the handlessmay drive a herd; the deaf can fight anddo well; better be blind than buried. A

corpse is good for naught.

On the subject of women there is notvery much in the book beyond theusual caution in regard to wickedwomen; but there is this littleobservation:

Never blame a woman for what is allman's weakness. Hues charming andfair may move the wise and not thedullard. Mighty love turns the son ofmen from wise to fool.

This is shrewd, and it contains a veryremarkable bit of esthetic truth, that itrequires a wise man to see certain kindsof beauty, which a stupid man could

never be made to understand. And,leaving aside the subject of love, whatvery good advice it is never to laugh ata person for what can be considered acommon failure. In the same way anintelligent man should learn to bepatient with the unintelligent, as thesame poem elsewhere insists.

Now what is the general result of thislittle study, the general impression thatit leaves upon the mind Certainly wefeel that the life reflected in thesesentences was a life in which cautionwas above all things necessary cautionin thought and speech and act, neverceasing, by night or day, during thewhole of a man's life. Caution implies

moderation. Moderation inevitablydevelops a certain habit of justice ajustice that might not extend outside ofthe race, but a justice that would beexercised between man and man of thesame blood. Very much of Englishcharacter and of English history isexplained by the life that the "Havamal"portrays. Very much that is good; alsovery much that is bad not bad in onesense, so far as the future of the race isconcerned, but in a social way certainlynot good. The judgment of theEnglishman by all other Europeanpeoples is that he is the mostsuspicious, the most reserved, the mostunreceptive, the most unfriendly, thecoldest hearted, and the most

domineering of all Western peoples.Ask a Frenchman, an Italian, a German,a Spaniard, even an American, what hethinks about Englishmen; and everyone of them will tell you the very samething. This is precisely what thecharacter of men would become whohad lived for thousands of years in theconditions of Northern society. Butyou would find upon the other handthat nearly all nations would speakhighly of certain other English qualitiesenergy, courage, honour, justice(between themselves). They would saythat although no man is so difficult tomake friends with, the friendship of anEnglishman once gained is more strongand true than any other. And as the

battle of life still continues, and mustcontinue for thousands of years tocome, it must be acknowledged that theEnglish character is especially wellfitted for the struggle. Its reserves, itscautions, its doubts, its suspicions, itsbrutality these have been for it in thepast, and are still in the present, the bestsocial armour and panoply of war. It isnot a lovable nor an amiable character;it is not even kindly. The Englishmanof the best type is much more inclinedto be just than he is to be kind, forkindness is an emotional impulse, andthe Englishman is on his guard againstevery kind of emotional impulse. Butwith all this, the character is a grandone, and its success has been the best

proof of its value.

Now you will have observed in thereading of this ancient code of socialmorals that, while none of the teachingis religious, some of it is absolutelyimmoral from any religious standpoint.No great religion permits us to speakwhat is not true, and to smile in theface of an enemy while pretending tobe his friend. No religion teaches thatwe should "pay back lesing for lies."Neither does a religion tell us that weshould expect a return for everykindness done; that we should regardfriendship as being actuated by selfishmotives; that we should never praisewhen praise seems to be deserved. In

fact, when Sir Walter Scott long agomade a partial translation of the"Havamal," he thought himself obligedto leave out a number of sentenceswhich seemed to him highly immoral,and to apologize for others. He thoughtthat they would shock English readerstoo much.

We are not quite so squeamish to-day;and a thinker of our own time wouldscarcely deny that English society isvery largely governed at this moment bythe same kind of rules that Sir WalterScott thought to be so bad. But here weneed not condemn English society inparticular. All European society hasbeen for hundreds of years conducting

itself upon very much the sameprinciples; for the reason that humansocial experience has been the same inall Western countries. I should say thatthe only difference between Englishsociety and other societies is that thehardness of character is very muchgreater. Let us go back even to the mostChristian times of Western societies inthe most Christian country of Europe,and observe whether the social codewas then and there so very differentfrom the social code of the old"Havamal." Mr. Spencer observes in his"Ethics" that, so far as the conduct oflife is concerned, religion is almostnothing and practice is everything. Wefind this wonderfully exemplified in a

most remarkable book of socialprecepts written in the seventeenthcentury, in Spain, under the title of the"Oraculo Manual." It was composed bya Spanish priest, named BaltasarGracian, who was born in the year1601 and died in 1658; and it has beentranslated into nearly all languages. Thebest English translation, published byMacmillan, is called "The Art ofWorldly Wisdom." It is even moreadmired to-day than in the seventeenthcentury; and what it teaches as to socialconduct holds as good to-day ofmodern society as it did of society twohundred years ago. It is one of themost unpleasant and yet interestingbooks ever published unpleasant

because of the malicious cunningwhich it often displays interestingbecause of the frightful perspicacity ofthe author. The man who wrote thatbook understood the hearts of men,especially the bad side. He was agentleman of high rank before hebecame a priest, and his instinctiveshrewdness must have been hereditary.Religion, this man would have said,teaches the best possible morals; butthe world is not governed by religionaltogether, and to mix with it, we mustact according to its dictates.

These dictates remind us in many waysof the cautions and the cunning of the"Havamal." The first thing enjoined

upon a man both by the Norse writerand by the Spanish author is the art ofsilence. Probably this has been theresult of social experience in allcountries. "Cautious silence is the holyof holies of worldly wisdom," saysGracian. And he gives many elaboratereasons for this statement, not the leastof which is the following: "If you donot declare yourself immediately, youarouse expectation, especially when theimportance of your position makesyou the object of general attention. Mixa little mystery with everything, and thevery mystery arouses veneration." Alittle further on he gives us exactly thesame advice as did the "Havamal"writer, in regard to being frank with

enemies. "Do not," he says, "show yourwounded finger, for everything willknock up against it; nor complainabout it, for malice always aims whereweakness can be injured.... Neverdisclose the source of mortification orof joy, if you wish the one to cease, theother to endure." About secrets theSpaniard is quite as cautious as theNorseman. He says, "Especiallydangerous are secrets entrusted tofriends. He that communicates hissecret to another makes himself thatother man's slave." But after a greatmany such cautions in regard to silenceand secrecy, he tells us also that wemust learn how to fight with the world.You remember the advice of the

"Havamal" on this subject, how itcondemns as a fool the man who cannot answer a reproach. The Spaniard is,however, much more malicious in hissuggestions. He tells as that we must"learn to know every man'sthumbscrew." I suppose you know thata thumbscrew was an instrument oftorture used in old times to forceconfessions from criminals. This advicemeans nothing less than that we shouldlearn how to be be able to hurt othermen's feelings, or to flatter other men'sweaknesses. "First guess every man'sruling passion, appeal to it by a word,set it in motion by temptation, and youwill infallibly give checkmate to hisfreedom of will." The term "give

checkmate" is taken from the game ofchess, and must here be understood asmeaning to overcome, to conquer. Akindred piece of advice is "keep a storeof sarcasms, and know how to usethem." Indeed he tells us that this is thepoint of greatest tact in humanintercourse. "Struck by the slightestword of this kind, many fall away fromthe closest intimacy with superiors orinferiors, which intimacy could not bein the slightest shaken by a wholeconspiracy of popular insinuation orprivate malevolence." In other words,you can more quickly destroy a man'sfriendship by one word of sarcasmthan by any amount of intrigue. Doesnot this read very much like sheer

wickedness Certainly it does; but theauthor would have told you that youmust fight the wicked with their ownweapons. In the "Havamal" you willnot find anything quite so openlywicked as that; but we must supposethat the Norsemen knew the secret,though they might not have put it intowords. As for the social teaching, youwill find it very subtly expressed even inthe modern English novels of GeorgeMeredith, who, by the way, has writtena poem in praise of sarcasm andridicule. But let us now see what theSpanish author has to tell us aboutfriendship and unselfishness.

The shrewd man knows that others

when they seek him do not seek "him,"but "their advantage in him and byhim." That is to say, a shrewd man doesnot believe in disinterested friendship.This is much worse than anything inthe "Havamal." And it is diabolicallyelaborated. What are we to say aboutsuch teaching as the following: "A wiseman would rather see men needing himthan thanking him. To keep them onthe threshold of hope is diplomatic; totrust to their gratitude is boorish; hopehas a good memory, gratitude a badone" There is much more of this kind;but after the assurance that only aboorish person (that is to say, anignorant and vulgar man) can believe ingratitude, the author's opinion of

human nature needs no furtherelucidation. The old Norseman wouldhave been shocked at such a statement.But he might have approved thefollowing: "When you hear anythingfavourable, keep a tight rein upon yourcredulity; if unfavourable, give it thespur." That is to say, when you hearanything good about another man, donot be ready to believe it; but if youhear anything bad about him, believe asmuch of it as you can.

I notice also many other points ofresemblance between the Northern andthe Spanish teaching in regard tocaution. The "Havamal" says that youmust not pick a quarrel with a worse

man than yourself; "because the betterman often falls by the worse man'ssword." The Spanish priest gives a stillshrewder reason for the same policy."Never contend," he says, "with a manwho has nothing to lose; for therebyyou enter into an unequal conflict. Theother enters without anxiety; havinglost everything, including shame, he hasno further loss to fear." I think that thisis an immoral teaching, though a veryprudent one; but I need scarcely to tellyou that it is still a principle in modernsociety not to contend with a man whohas no reputation to lose. I think it isimmoral, because it is purely selfish,and because a good man ought not tobe afraid to denounce a wrong because

of making enemies. Another point,however, on which the "Havamal" andthe priest agree, is more commendableand interesting. "We do not think muchof a man who never contradicts us; thatis no sign he loves us, but rather a signthat he loves himself. Original and out-of-the-way views are signs of superiorability."

I should not like you to suppose,however, that the whole of the bookfrom which I have been quoting is ofthe same character as the quotations.There is excellent advice in it; and muchkindly teaching on the subject ofgenerous acts. It is a book both goodand bad, and never stupid. The same

man who tells you that friendship isseldom unselfish, also declares that lifewould be a desert without friends, andthat there is no magic like a good turnthat is, a kind act. He teaches theimportance of getting good will byhonest means, although he advises usalso to learn how to injure. I am surethat nobody could read the bookwithout benefit. And I may close thesequotations from it with the followingparagraph, which is the very best bit ofcounsel that could be given to a literarystudent:

Be slow and sure. Quickly done can bequickly undone. To last an eternityrequires an eternity of preparation.

Only excellence counts. Profoundintelligence is the only foundation forimmortality. Worth much costs much.The precious metals are the heaviest.

But so far as the question of humanconduct is concerned, the book ofGracian is no more of a religious bookthan is the "Havamal" of the heathenNorth. You would find, were such abook published to-day and brought upto the present time by any shrewdwriter, that Western morality has notimproved in the least since the timebefore Christianity was established, sofar as the rules of society go. Society isnot, and can not be, religious, because itis a state of continual warfare. Every

person in it has to fight, and the battleis not less cruel now because it is notfought with swords. Indeed, I shouldthink that the time when every mancarried his sword in society was a timewhen men were quite as kindly andmuch more honest than they are now.The object of this little lecture was toshow you that the principles of theancient Norse are really the principlesruling English society to-day; but Ithink you will be able to take from it astill larger meaning. It is that not onlyone form of society, but all forms ofsociety, represent the warfare of manand man. That is why thinkers, poets,philosophers, in all ages, have tried tofind solitude, to keep out of the

contest, to devote themselves only tostudy of the beautiful and the true. Butthe prizes of life are not to be obtainedin solitude, although the prizes ofthought can only there be won. Afterall, whatever we may think about thecruelty and treachery of the socialworld, it does great things in the end. Itquickens judgment, deepensintelligence, enforces the acquisition ofself-control, creates forms of mentaland moral strength that can not fail tobe sometimes of vast importance tomankind. But if you should ask mewhether it increases human happiness, Ishould certainly say "no." The"Havamal" said the same thing, thetruly wise man can not be happy.

CHAPTER VIII

BEYOND MAN

It seems to me a lecturer's duty to speakto you about any remarkable thought atthis moment engaging the attention ofWestern philosophers and men ofscience, partly because any such newideas are certain, sooner or later, to bereflected in literature, and partlybecause without a knowledge of themyou might form incorrect ideas inrelation to utterances of any importantphilosophic character. I am not going

to discourse about Nietzsche, thoughthe title of this lecture is taken fromone of his books; the ideas aboutwhich I am going to tell you, you willnot find in his books. It is mostextraordinary, to my thinking, that theseideas never occurred to him, for he wasan eminent man of science beforewriting his probably insane books. Ihave not the slightest sympathy withmost of his ideas; they seem to memisinterpretations of evolutionalteachings; and if not misinterpretations,they are simply undeveloped and ill-balanced thinking. But the title of oneof his books, and the idea which hetries always unsuccessfully to explain,that of a state above mankind, a moral

condition "beyond man," as he calls it,that is worth talking about. It is notnonsense at all, but fact, and I thinkthat I can give you a correct idea of therealities in the case. Leaving Nietzscheentirely alone, then, let us ask if it ispossible to suppose a condition ofhuman existence above morality, that isto say, more moral than the most moralideal which a human brain can conceiveWe may answer, it is quite possible, andit is not only possible, but it hasactually been predicted by many greatthinkers, including Herbert Spencer.

We have been brought up to think thatthere can be nothing better than virtue,than duty, than strictly following the

precepts of a good religion. However,our ideas of goodness and of virtuenecessarily imply the existence of theopposite qualities. To do a good thingbecause it is our duty to do it, implies acertain amount of resolve, a struggleagainst difficulty. The virtue of honestyis a term implying the difficulty ofbeing perfectly honest. When we thinkof any virtuous or great deed, we cannot help thinking of the pain andobstacles that have to be met with inperforming that deed. All our activemorality is a struggle againstimmorality. And I think that, as everyreligion teaches, it must be granted thatno human being has a perfectly moralnature.

Could a world exist in which the natureof all the inhabitants would be somoral that the mere idea of what isimmoral could not exist Let me explainmy question more in detail. Imagine asociety in which the idea of dishonestywould not exist, because no personcould be dishonest, a society in whichthe idea of unchastity could not exist,because no person could possibly beunchaste, a world in which no onecould have any idea of envy, ambitionor anger, because such passions couldnot exist, a world in which there wouldbe no idea of duty, filial or parental,because not to be filial, not to beloving, not to do everything which we

human beings now call duty, would beimpossible. In such a world ideas ofduty would be quite useless; for everyaction of existence would represent theconstant and faultless performance ofwhat we term duty. Moreover, therewould be no difficulty, no pain in suchperformance; it would be the constantand unfailing pleasure of life. With us,unfortunately, what is wrong oftengives pleasure; and what is good to do,commonly causes pain. But in theworld which I am asking you toimagine there could not be any wrong,nor any pleasure in wrong-doing; all thepleasure would be in right-doing. Togive a very simple illustration one ofthe commonest and most pardonable

faults of young people is eating,drinking, or sleeping too much. But inour imaginary world to eat or to drinkor to sleep in even the least degreemore than is necessary could not bedone; the constitution of the racewould not permit it. One moreillustration. Our children have to beeducated carefully in regard to what isright or wrong; in the world of which Iam speaking, no time would be wastedin any such education, for every childwould be born with full knowledge ofwhat is right and wrong. Or to state thecase in psychological language I meanthe language of scientific, not ofmetaphysical, psychology we shouldhave a world in which morality would

have been transmuted into inheritedinstinct. Now again let me put thequestion: can we imagine such a worldPerhaps you will answer, Yes, in heavennowhere else. But I answer you thatsuch a world actually exists, and that itcan be studied in almost any part ofthe East or of Europe by a person ofscientific training. The world of insectsactually furnishes examples of such amoral transformation. It is for thisreason that such writers as Sir JohnLubbock and Herbert Spencer have nothesitated to say that certain kinds ofsocial insects have immensely surpassedmen, both in social and in ethicalprogress.

But that is not all that it is necessary tosay here. You might think that I amonly repeating a kind of parable. Theimportant thing is the opinion ofscientific men that humanity will at last,in the course of millions of years, reachthe ethical conditions of the ants. It isonly five or six years ago that some ofthese conditions were established byscientific evidence, and I want to speakof them. They have a direct bearingupon important ethical questions; andthey have startled the whole moralworld, and set men thinking in entirelynew directions.

In order to explain how the study ofsocial insects has set moralists of recent

years thinking in a new direction, it willbe necessary to generalize a great dealin the course of so short a lecture. It isespecially the social conditions of theants which has inspired these newideas; but you must not think that anyone species of ants furnishes us withall the facts. The facts have been arrivedat only through the study of hundredsof different kinds of ants by hundredsof scientific men; and it is only by theconsensus of their evidence that we getthe ethical picture which I shall try tooutline for you. Altogether there areprobably about five thousand differentspecies of ants, and these differentspecies represent many different stagesof social evolution, from the most

primitive and savage up to the mosthighly civilized and moral. The detailsof the following picture are furnishedby a number of the highest speciesonly; that must not be forgotten. Also, Imust remind you that the morality ofthe ant, by the necessity ofcircumstance, does not extend beyondthe limits of its own species.Impeccably ethical within thecommunity, ants carry on war outsidetheir own borders; were it not for this,we might call them morally perfectcreatures.

Although the mind of an ant can notbe at all like to the mind of the humanbeing, it is so intelligent that we are

justified in trying to describe itsexistence by a kind of allegoricalcomparison with human life. Imagine,then, a world full of women, workingnight and day, building, tunnelling,bridging, also engaged in agriculture, inhorticulture, and in taking care ofmany kinds of domestic animals. (Imay remark that ants have domesticatedno fewer than five hundred and eighty-four different kinds of creatures.) Thisworld of women is scrupulously clean;busy as they are, all of them carrycombs and brushes about them, andarrange themselves several times a day.In addition to this constant work, thesewomen have to take care of myriads ofchildren, children so delicate that the

slightest change in the weather may killthem. So the children have to be carriedconstantly from one place to another inorder to keep them warm.

Though this multitude of workers arealways gathering food, no one of themwould eat or drink a single atom morethan is necessary; and none of themwould sleep for one second longer thanis necessary. Now comes a surprisingfact, about which a great deal must besaid later on. These women have nosex. They are women, for theysometimes actually give birth, as virgins,to children; but they are incapable ofwedlock. They are more than vestals.Sex is practically suppressed.

This world of workers is protected byan army of soldiers. The soldiers arevery large, very strong, and shaped sodifferently from the working femalesthat they do not seem at first to belongto the same race. They help in the work,though they are not able to help insome delicate kinds of work they aretoo clumsy and strong. Now comes thesecond astonishing fact: these soldiersare all women amazons, we might callthem; but they are sexless women. Inthese also sex has been suppressed.

You ask, where do the children comefrom Most of the children are born ofspecial mothers females chosen for the

purpose of bearing offspring, and notallowed to do anything else. They aretreated almost like empresses, beingconstantly fed and attended and served,and being lodged in the best waypossible. Only these can eat and drinkat all times they must do so for the sakeof their offspring. They are notsuffered to go out, unless stronglyattended, and they are not allowed torun any risk of danger or of injury Thelife of the whole race circles aboutthem and about their children, but theyare very few.

Last of all are the males, the men. Onenaturally asks why females should havebeen specialized into soldiers instead

of men. It appears that the femaleshave more reserve force, and all theforce that might have been utilized inthe giving of life has been diverted tothe making of aggressive powers. Thereal males are very small and weak.They appear to be treated withindifference and contempt. They aresuffered to become the bridegrooms ofone night, after which they die veryquickly. By contrast, the lives of the restare very long. Ants live for at least threeor four years, but the males live onlylong enough to perform their solitaryfunction.

In the foregoing little fantasy, the onething that should have most impressed

you is the fact of the suppression ofsex. But now comes the last and mostastonishing fact of all: this suppressionof sex is not natural, but artificial Imean that it is voluntary. It has beendiscovered that ants are able, by asystematic method of nourishment, tosuppress or develop sex as they please.The race has decided that sex shall notbe allowed to exist except in just so faras it is absolutely necessary to theexistence of the race. Individuals withsex are tolerated only as necessary evils.Here is an instance of the mostpowerful of all passions voluntarilysuppressed for the benefit of thecommunity at large. It vanisheswhenever unnecessary; when necessary

after a war or a calamity of some kind,it is called into existence again.Certainly it is not wonderful that such afact should have set moralists thinking.Of course if a human communitycould discover some secret way ofeffecting the same object, and couldhave the courage to do it, or rather theunselfishness to do it, the result wouldsimply be that sexual immorality of anykind would become practicallyimpossible The very idea of suchimmorality would cease to exist.

But that is only one fact of self-suppression and the ant-worldfurnishes hundreds. To state the wholething in the simplest possible way, let

me say the race has entirely got rid ofeverything that we call a selfish impulse.Even hunger and thirst allow of noselfish gratification. The entire life ofthe community is devoted to thecommon good and to mutual help andto the care of the young. Spencer says itis impossible to imagine that an ant hasa sense of duty like our own, a religion,if you like. But it does not need a senseof duty, it does not need religion. Itslife is religion in the practical sense.Probably millions of years ago the anthad feelings much more like our ownthan it has now. At that time, toperform altruistic actions may havebeen painful to the ant; to performthem now has become the one pleasure

of its existence. In order to bring upchildren and serve the state moreefficiently these insects have sacrificedtheir sex and every appetite that we callby the name of animal passion.Moreover they have a perfectcommunity, a society in which nobodycould think of property, except as astate affair, a public thing, or as theRomans would say a res publica. In ahuman community so organized, therecould not be ambition, any jealousy,any selfish conduct of any sort indeed,no selfishness at all. The individual issaid to be practically sacrificed for thesake of the race; but such a suppositionmeans the highest moral altruism.Therefore thinkers have to ask, "Will

man ever rise to something like thecondition of ants "

Herbert Spencer says that such is theevident tendency. He does not say, noris it at all probable, that there will be infuture humanity such physiologicalspecialization as would correspond tothe suppression of sex among ants, orto the bringing of women to thedominant place in the human world,and the masculine sex to an inferiorposition. That is not likely ever tohappen, for reasons which it wouldtake very much too long to speak ofnow. But there is evidence that the mostselfish of all human passions willeventually be brought under control

under such control that the presentcause of wellnigh all human suffering,the pressure of population, will bepractically removed. And there ispsychological evidence that the humanmind will undergo such changes thatwrong-doing, in the sense of unkindlyaction, will become almost impossible,and that the highest pleasure will befound not in selfishness but inunselfishness. Of course there arethousands of things to think about,suggested by this discovery of the lifeof ants. I am only telling the moreimportant ones. What I have told youought at least to suggest that the ideaof a moral condition much higher thanall our moral conditions of today is

quite possible, that it is not an idea tobe laughed at. But it was not Nietzschewho ever conceived this possibility. His"Beyond Man" and the real and muchto be hoped for "beyond man," areabsolutely antagonistic conceptions.When the ancient Hebrew writer said,thousands of years ago, "Go to the ant,thou sluggard, consider her ways," hecould not have imagined how good hisadvice would prove in the light oftwentieth century science.

CHAPTER IX

THE NEW ETHICS

Before leaving the subject of theselatter-day intellectual changes, a wordmust be said concerning the ethicalquestions involved. Of course when areligious faith has been shaken to itsfoundation, it is natural to suppose thatmorals must have been simultaneouslyaffected. The relation of morals toliterature is very intimate; and we mustexpect that any change of ideas in thedirection of ethics would showthemselves in literature. The drama,poetry, romance, the novel, all these arereflections of moral emotion inespecial, of the eternal strugglebetween good and evil, as well as ofthe temporary sentiments concerning

right and wrong. And every period oftransition is necessarily accompanied bycertain tendencies to disintegration.Contemporary literature in the West hasshown some signs of ethical change.These caused many thinkers to predicta coming period of demoralization inliterature. But the alarm was really quiteneedless. These vagaries of literature,such as books questioning the moralityof the marriage relation, for example,were only repetitions of older vagaries,and represented nothing more than thetemporary agitation of thought uponall questions. The fact seems to be thatin spite of everything, moral feelingwas never higher at any time in Westernsocial history than it is at present. The

changes of thought have indeed beenvery great, but the moral experience ofmankind remains exactly as valuable asit was before, and new perceptions ofthat value have been given to us by thenew philosophy.

It has been wisely observed by thegreatest of modern thinkers thatmankind has progressed more rapidlyin every other respect than in morality.Moral progress has not been rapidsimply because the moral ideal hasalways been kept a little in advance ofthe humanly possible. Thousands ofyears ago the principles of moralitywere exactly the same as those whichrule our lives to-day. We can not

improve upon them; we can not evenimprove upon the language whichexpressed them. The most learned ofour poets could not make a morebeautiful prayer than the prayer whichEgyptian mothers taught to their littlechildren in ages when all Europe wasstill a land of savages. The best of themoral philosophy of the nineteenthcentury is very little of improvementupon the moral philosophy of ancientIndia or China. If there is anyimprovement at all, it is simply in thedirection of knowledge of causes andeffects. And that is why in all countriesthe common sense of mankinduniversally condemns any attempt tointerfere with moral ideas. These

represent the social experience of manfor thousands and thousands of years;and it is not likely that the wisdom ofany one individual can ever better them.If bettered at all it can not be throughtheory. The amelioration must beeffected by future experience of auniversal kind. We may improve everybranch of science, every branch of art,everything else relating to the work ofhuman heads and hands; but we cannot improve morals by invention or byhypothesis. Morals are not made, butgrow.

Yet, as I have said, there is what may becalled a new system of ethics. But thisnew system of ethics means nothing

more than a new way of understandingthe old system of ethics. By theapplication of evolutional science tothe study of morals, we have beenenabled to trace back the whole historyof moral ideas to the time of theirearliest inception, to understand thereasons of them, and to explain themwithout the help of any supernaturaltheory. And the result, so far fromdiminishing our respect for the wisdomof our ancestors, has immenselyincreased that respect. There is nosingle moral teaching common todifferent civilizations and differentreligions of an advanced stage ofdevelopment which we do not find tobe eternally true. Let us try to study this

view of the case by the help of a fewexamples.

In early times, of course, men obeyedmoral instruction through religiousmotives. If asked why they thought itwas wrong to perform certain actionsand right to perform others, they couldhave answered only that such wasancestral custom and that the gods willit so. Not until we could understandthe laws governing the evolution ofsociety could we understand the reasonof many ethical regulations. But nowwe can understand very plainly that thewill of the gods, as our ancestors mighthave termed it, represents divine lawsindeed, for the laws of ethical

evolution are certainly the unknownlaws shaping all things suns, worlds,and human societies. All that opposesitself to the operation of thoseuniversal laws is what we have beenaccustomed to call bad, and everythingwhich aids the operation of those lawsis what we have been accustomed tothink of as good. The common crimescondemned by all religions, such astheft, murder, adultery, bearing falsewitness, disloyalty, all these are practiceswhich directly interfere with the naturalprocess of evolution; and withoutunderstanding why, men have from theearliest times of real civilisation unitedall their power to suppress them. Ithink that we need not dwell upon the

simple facts; they will at once suggest toyou all that is necessary to know. I shallselect for illustration only one lessfamiliar topic, that of the ascetic ideal.

A great many things which in times oflesser knowledge we imagined to besuperstitious or useless, prove to-dayon examination to have been ofimmense value to mankind. Probablyno superstition ever existed which didnot have some social value; and themost seemingly repulsive or cruelsometimes turn out to have been themost precious. To choose one of thesefor illustration, we must take one notconfined to any particular civilizationor religion, but common to all human

societies at a certain period of theirexistence; and the ascetic ideal best fitsour purpose. From very early times,even from a time long preceding anycivilization, we find men acting underthe idea that by depriving themselvesof certain pleasures and by subjectingthemselves to certain pains they couldplease the divine powers and therebyobtain strength. Probably there is nopeople in the world among whom thisbelief has not had at some one time oranother a very great influence. At a latertime, in the early civilizations, this ideawould seem to have obtained muchlarger sway, and to have affectednational life more and more extensively.In the age of the great religions the idea

reaches its acme, an acme oftenrepresented by extravagances of themost painful kind and sacrifices whichstrike modern imagination as ferociousand terrible. In Europe asceticismreached its great extremes as you knowduring the Middle Ages, and especiallytook the direction of antagonism to thenatural sex-relation. Looking back to-day to the centuries in which celibacywas considered the most moralcondition, and marriage was counted aslittle better than weakness, whenEurope was covered with thousands ofmonasteries, and when the bestintellects of the age deemed it thehighest duty to sacrifice everythingpleasurable for the sake of an

imaginary reward after death, we cannot but recognize that we arecontemplating a period of religiousinsanity. Even in the architecture of thetime, the architecture that Ruskindevoted his splendid talent to praise,there is a grim and terrible somethingthat suggests madness. Again, thecruelties of the age have an insanecharacter, the burning alive of myriadsof people who refused to believe orcould not believe in the faith of theirtime; the tortures used to extortconfessions from the innocent; theimmolation of thousands charged withbeing wizards or witches; the extinctionof little centres of civilization in theSouth of France and elsewhere by

brutal crusades contemplating all this,we seem to be contemplating not onlymadness but furious madness. I neednot speak to you of the Crusades,which also belonged to this period.Compared with the Roman and Greekcivilizations before it, what a horribleEurope it was! And yet the thinkermust recognize that it had a strength ofits own, a strength of a larger kind thanthat of the preceding civilizations. Itmay seem monstrous to assert that allthis cruelty and superstition andcontempt of learning were absolutelynecessary for the progress of mankind;and yet we must so accept them in thelight of modern knowledge. Thechecking of intellectual development

for hundreds of years is certainly a factthat must shock us; but the truequestion is whether such a checkinghad not become necessary. Intellectualstrength, unless supported by moralstrength, leads a people into the waysof destruction. Compared with themen of the Middle Ages, the Greeksand Romans were incomparablysuperior intellectually; compared withthem morally they were very weak. Theyhad conquered the world anddeveloped all the arts, these Greeks andRomans; they had achieved things suchas mankind has never since been able toaccomplish, and then, losing theirmoral ideal, losing their simplicity,losing their faith, they were utterly

crushed by inferior races in whom theprinciples of self-denial had beenintensely developed. And the oldinstinctive hatred of the Church for thearts and the letters and the sciences ofthe Greek and Roman civilizations wasnot quite so much of a folly as wemight be apt to suppose. The priestsrecognized in a vague way that anythinglike a revival of the older civilizationswould signify moral ruin. TheRenaissance proves that the priests werenot wrong. Had the movementoccurred a few hundred years earlier,the result would probably have been auniversal corruption I do not mean tosay that the Church at any time wasexactly conscious of what she was

doing; she acted blindly under theinfluence of an instinctive fear. But theresult of all that she did has nowproved unfortunate. What the Romanand Greek civilizations had lost inmoral power was given back to theworld by the frightful discipline of theMiddle Ages. For a long series ofgenerations the ascetic idea wastriumphant; and it became feeble onlyin proportion as men became strongenough to do without it. Especially itremodelled that of which it firstseemed the enemy, the family relation.It created a new basis for society,founded upon a new sense of theimportance to society of family morals.Because this idea, this morality, came

through superstition, its value is notthereby in the least diminished.Superstitions often represent correctguesses at eternal truth. To-day weknow that all social progress, allnational strength, all national vigour,intellectual as well as physical, dependessentially upon the family, upon themorality of the household, upon therelation of parents to children. It wasthis fact which the Greeks and Romansforgot, and lost themselves byforgetting. It was this fact which thesuperstitious tyranny of the MiddleAges had to teach the West over again,and after such a fashion that it is notlikely ever to become forgotten. Somuch for the mental history of the

question. Let us say a word about thephysical aspects of it.

No doubt you have read that the resultof macerating the body, of deprivingoneself of all comfort, and even ofnourishing food, is not an increase ofintellectual vigour or moral power ofany kind. And in one sense this is true.The individual who passes his life inself-mortification is not apt to improveunder that regime. For this reason thefounder of the greatest of Orientalreligions condemned asceticism on thepart of his followers, except withincertain fixed limits. But the history ofthe changes produced by a universalidea is not a history of changes in the

individual, but of changes broughtabout by the successive efforts ofmillions of individuals in the course ofmany generations. Not in one lifetimecan we perceive the measure of ethicalforce obtained by self-control; but inthe course of several hundreds of yearswe find that the result obtained is solarge as to astonish us. This result,imperceptibly obtained, signifies a greatincrease of that nervous power uponwhich moral power depends; it meansan augmentation in strength of everykind; and this augmentation againrepresents what we might call economy.Just as there is a science of politicaleconomy, there is a science of ethicaleconomy; and it is in relation to such a

science that we should rationallyconsider the influence of all religionsteaching self-suppression. So studying,we find that self-suppression does notmean the destruction of any power, butonly the economical storage of thatpower for the benefit of the race As aresult, the highly civilized man canendure incomparably more than thesavage, whether of moral or physicalstrain. Being better able to controlhimself under all circumstances, he hasa great advantage over the savage.

That which is going on in the newteaching of ethics is really thesubstitution of a rational for anemotional morality. But this does not

mean that the value of the emotionalelement in morality is not recognized.Not only is it recognized, but it is evenbeing enlarged enlarged, however, in arational way. For example, let us takethe very emotional virtue of loyalty.Loyalty, in a rational form, could notexist among an uneducated people; itcould only exist as a feeling, asentiment. In the primitive state ofsociety this sentiment takes the forceand the depth of a religion. And theruler, regarded as divine, really has inrelation to his people the power of agod. Once that people becomeseducated in the modern sense, theirideas regarding their ruler and theirduties to their ruler necessarily undergo

modification. But does this mean thatthe sentiment is weakened in theeducated class I should say that thisdepends very much upon the quality ofthe individual mind. In a mind of smallcapacity, incapable of receiving thehigher forms of thought, it is verylikely that the sentiment may beweakened and almost destroyed. But inthe mind of a real thinker, a man oftrue culture, the sense of loyalty,although changed, is at the same timeimmensely expanded. In order to give astrong example, I should take theexample not from a monarchicalcountry but from a republican one.What does the President of the UnitedStates of America, for example,

represent to the American of thehighest culture He appears to him intwo entirely different capacities. First heappears to him merely as a man, anordinary man, with faults andweaknesses like other ordinary men.His private life is apt to be discussed inthe newspapers. He is expected to shakehands with anybody and witheverybody whom he meets atWashington; and when he ceases tohold office, he has no longer anyparticular distinction from otherAmericans. But as the President of theUnited States, he is also much morethan a man. He represents one hundredmillions of people; he represents theAmerican Constitution; he represents

the great principles of human freedomlaid down by that Constitution; herepresents also the idea of America, ofeverything American, of all the hopes,interests, and glories of the nation.Officially he is quite as sacred as adivinity could be. Millions would givetheir lives for him at an instant's notice;and thousands capable of makingvulgar jokes about the man wouldhotly resent the least word spokenabout the President as therepresentative of America. The verysame thing exists in other Westerncountries, notwithstanding the fact thatthe lives of rulers are sometimesattempted. England is a strikingexample. The Queen has really scarcely

any power; her rule is little more thannominal. Every Englishman knows thatEngland is a monarchy only in name.But the Queen represents to everyEnglishman more than a woman andmore than a queen: she representsEngland, English race feeling, Englishlove of country, English power,English dignity; she is a symbol, and asa symbol sacred. The soldier jokinglycalls her "the Widow"; he makes songsabout her; all this is well and good. Buta soldier who cursed her a few yearsago was promptly sent to prison fortwenty years. To sing a merry songabout the sovereign as a woman is aright which English freedom claims;but to speak disrespectfully of the

Queen, as England, as the government,is properly regarded as a crime; becauseit proves the man capable of itindifferent to all his duties as anEnglishman, as a citizen, as a soldier.The spirit of loyalty is far from beinglost in Western countries; it has onlychanged in character, and it is likely tostrengthen as time goes on.

Broad tolerance in the matter of beliefsis necessarily a part of the new ethics. Itis quite impossible in the present stateof mankind that all persons should bewell educated, or that the great massesof a nation should attain to the higherforms of culture. For the uneducated arational system of ethics must long

remain out of the question and it isproper that they should cling to the oldemotional forms of moral teaching.The observation of Huxley that hewould like to see every unbeliever whocould not get a reason for his unbeliefpublicly put to shame, was anobservation of sound common sense.It is only those whose knowledgeobliges them to see things from anotherstandpoint than that of the masses whocan safely claim to base their rule of lifeupon philosophical morality. The valueof the philosophical morality happensto be only in those directions where itrecognizes and supports the truthtaught by common morality, which,after all, is the safest guide. Therefore

the philosophical moralist will nevermock or oppose a belief which heknows to exercise a good influenceupon human conduct. He willrecognize even the value of manysuperstitions as being very great; and hewill understand that any attempt tosuddenly change the beliefs of man inany ethical direction must bemischievous. Such changes as he mightdesire will come; but they should comegradually and gently, in exactproportion to the expanding capacityof the national mind. Recognizing thisprobability, several Western countries,notably America, have attempted tointroduce into education an entirelynew system of ethical teaching ethical

teaching in the broadest sense, and inharmony with the new philosophy. Butthe result there and elsewhere can onlybe that which I have said at thebeginning of this lecture, namely, theenlargement of the old moral ideas, andthe deeper comprehension of theirvalue in all relations of life.

CHAPTER X

SOME POEMS ABOUT INSECTS

One of the great defects of Englishbooks printed in the last century is thewant of an index. The importance of

being able to refer at once to anysubject treated of in a book was notrecognized until the days when exactscholarship necessitated indexing ofthe most elaborate kind. But even nowwe constantly find good books severelycriticized because of this deficiency. Allthat I have said tends to show that evento-day in Western countries theimmense importance of systematicarrangement in literary collections isnot sufficiently recognized. We have, ofcourse, a great many Englishanthologies, that is to say, collections ofthe best typical compositions of acertain epoch in poetry or in prose. Butyou must have observed that, inWestern countries, nearly all such

anthologies are compiledchronologically not according to thesubject of the poems. To this generalrule there are indeed a few exceptions.There is a collection of love poetry byWatson, which is famous; a collectionof child poetry by Patmore; a collectionof "society verse" by Locker-Lampson;and several things of that sort. Buteven here the arrangement is not of aspecial kind; nor is it ever dividedaccording to the subject of eachparticular poem. I know that somebooks have been published of lateyears with such titles as "Poems of theSea," "Poems of Nature" but these areof no literary importance at all and theyare not compiled by competent critics.

Besides, the subject-heads are always ofmuch too general a kind. The Frenchare far in advance of the English in theart of making anthologies; but even insuch splendid anthologies as those ofCrepet and of Lemerre thearrangement is of the most generalkind, chronological, and little more.

I was reminded to tell you this, becauseof several questions recently asked me,which I found it impossible to answer.Many a Japanese student might supposethat Western poetry has its classifiedarrangements corresponding in somesort to those of Japanese poetry.Perhaps the Germans have somethingof the kind, but the English and

French have not. Any authority uponthe subject of Japanese literature can, Ihave been told, inform himself almostimmediately as to all that has beenwritten in poetry upon a particularsubject. Japanese poetry has beenclassified and sub-classified anddouble-indexed or even quadruple-indexed after a manner incomparablymore exact than anything Englishanthologies can show. I am aware thatthis fact is chiefly owing to the ancientrules about subjects, seasons, contrasts,and harmonies, after which the oldpoets used to write. But whatever besaid about such rules, there can be nodoubt at all of the excellence of thearrangements which the rules

produced. It is greatly to be regrettedthat we have not in English a system ofarrangement enabling the student todiscover quickly all that has beenwritten upon a particular subject suchas roses, for example, or pine trees, ordoves, or the beauties of the autumnseason. There is nobody to tell youwhere to find such things; and as thewhole range of English poetry is sogreat that it takes a great many yearseven to glance through it, a memorizedknowledge of the subjects isimpossible for the average man. Ibelieve that Macaulay would have beenable to remember almost any referencein the poetry then accessible toscholars, just as the wonderful Greek

scholar Porson could remember theexact place of any text in the whole ofGreek literature, and even all thevariations of that text. But such menare born only once in hundreds ofyears; the common memory can notattempt to emulate their feats. And it isvery difficult at the present time for theordinary student of poetry to tell youjust how much has been written uponany particular subject by the bestEnglish poets.

Now you will recognize somedifficulties in the way of a lecturer inattempting to make classifications ofEnglish poetry after the same mannerthat Japanese classification can be made

of Japanese poetry. One must readenormously merely to obtain one'smaterials, and even then the result isnot to be thought of as exhaustive. Iam going to try to give you a fewlectures upon English poetry thusclassified, but we must not expect thatthe lectures will be authoritativelycomplete. Indeed, we have no time forlectures of so thorough a sort. All thatI can attempt will be to give you an ideaof the best things that English poetshave thought and expressed uponcertain subjects.

You know that the old Greeks wrote agreat deal of beautiful poetry aboutinsects, especially about musical insects,

crickets, cicadas, and other insects suchas those the Japanese poets have beenwriting about for so many hundreds ofyears. But in modern Western poetrythere is very little, comparativelyspeaking, about insects. The Englishpoets have all written a great deal aboutbirds, and especially about singingbirds; but very little has been writtenupon the subject of insects singinginsects. One reason is probably that thenumber of musical insects in Englandis very small, perhaps owing to theclimate. American poets have writtenmore about insects than English poetshave done, though their work is of amuch less finished kind. But this isbecause musical insects in America are

very numerous. On the whole, we maysay that neither in English nor inFrench poetry will you find muchabout the Voices of rickets, locusts, orcicadae. I could not even give you aspecial lecture upon that subject. Wemust take the subject "insect" in arather general signification; and if wedo that we can edit together a nice littlecollection of poetical examples.

The butterfly was regarded by theGreeks especially as the emblem of thesoul and therefore of immortality. Wehave several Greek remains, picturingthe butterfly as perched upon a skull,thus symbolizing life beyond death.And the metamorphosis of the insect

is, you know, very often referred to inGreek philosophy. We might expect thatEnglish poets would have consideredthe butterfly especially from this pointof view; and we do have a fewexamples. Perhaps the best known isthat of Coleridge.

The butterfly the ancient Greciansmade The soul's fair emblem, and itsonly name But of the soul, escaped theslavish trade Of earthly life! For in thismortal frame Ours is the reptile's lot,much toil, much blame, Manifoldmotions making little speed, And todeform and kill the things whereon wefeed.

The allusion to the "name" is of courseto the Greek word, psyche, whichsignifies both soul and butterfly.Psyche, as the soul, was pictured by theGreeks as a beautiful girl, with asomewhat sad face, and butterfly wingsspringing from her shoulders. Coleridgetells us here that although the Greekslikened the soul to the butterfly, wemust remember what the butterflyreally is, the last and highest state ofinsect-being "escaped the slavish tradeof earthly life." What is this so-calledslavish trade It is the necessity ofworking and struggling in order to livein order to obtain food. The butterfly isnot much of an eater; some varieties,indeed, do not eat at all. All the

necessity for eating ended with the lifeof the larva. In the same mannerreligion teaches that the soul representsthe changed state of man. In this life aman is only like a caterpillar; deathchanges him into a chrysalis, and outof the chrysalis issues the winged soulwhich does not have to trouble itselfabout such matters as eating anddrinking. By the word "reptile" in thisverse, you must understand caterpillar.Therefore the poet speaks of all ourhuman work as manifold motionsmaking little speed; you have seen howmany motions a caterpillar must makein order to go even a little distance, andyou must have noticed the manner inwhich it spoils the appearance of the

plant upon which it feeds. There is herean allusion to the strange and terriblefact, that all life and particularly the lifeof man is maintained only by thedestruction of other life. In order tolive we must kill perhaps only plants,but in any case we must kill.

Wordsworth has several poems onbutterflies, but only one of them isreally fine. It is fine, not because itsuggests any deep problem, but becausewith absolute simplicity it pictures thecharming difference of character in alittle boy and a little girl playingtogether in the fields. The poem isaddressed to the butterfly.

Stay near me do not take thy flight! Alittle longer stay in sight! Muchconverse do I find in thee, Historian ofmy infancy! Float near me; do not yetdepart! Dead times revive in thee: Thoubring'st, gay creature as thou art! Asolemn image to my heart, My father'sfamily.

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,The time, when, in our childish plays,My sister Emmeline and I Togetherchased the butterfly! A very hunter didI rush Upon the prey: with leaps andsprings I followed on from brake tobush; But she, God love her, feared tobrush The dust from off its wings.

What we call and what looks like duston the wings of a butterfly, Englishchildren are now taught to know asreally beautiful scales or featherlets, butin Wordsworth's time the real structureof the insect was not so well known asnow to little people. Therefore to theboy the coloured matter brushed fromthe wings would only have seemed somuch dust. But the little girl, with theinstinctive tenderness of the futuremother-soul in her, dreads to touchthose strangely delicate wings; she fears,not only to spoil, but also to hurt.

Deeper thoughts than memory may stillbe suggested to English poets by thesight of a butterfly, and probably will

be for hundreds of years to come.Perhaps the best poem of a half-metaphorical, half-philosophicalthought about butterflies is thebeautiful prologue to Browning's"Fifine at the Fair," which prologue iscuriously entitled "Amphibian"implying that we are about to have areference to creatures capable of livingin two distinctive elements, yetabsolutely belonging neither to the onenor to the other. The poet swims outfar into the sea on a beautiful day; and,suddenly, looking up, perceives abeautiful butterfly flying over his head,as if watching him. The sight of theinsect at once suggests to him itsrelation to Greek fancy as a name for

the soul; then he begins to wonderwhether it might not really be the soul,or be the symbol of the soul, of a deadwoman who loved him. From thatpoint of the poem begins a littlemetaphysical fantasy about the possiblecondition of souls.

The fancy I had to-day, Fancy whichturned a fear! I swam far out in the bay,Since waves laughed warm and clear.

I lay and looked at the sun, The noon-sun looked at me: Between us two, noone Live creature, that I could see.

Yes! There came floating by Me, wholay floating too, Such a strange

butterfly! Creature as dear as new:

Because the membraned wings Sowonderful, so wide, So sun-suffused,were things Like soul and noughtbeside.

So much for the conditions of thepoet's revery. He is swimming in thesea; above his face, only a few inchesaway, the beautiful butterfly is hovering.Its apparition makes him think ofmany things perhaps first about thedangerous position of the butterfly, forif it should only touch the water, it iscertain to be drowned. But it does nottouch the water; and he begins to thinkhow clumsy is the man who moves in

water compared with the insect thatmoves in air, and how ugly a man is bycomparison with the exquisite creaturewhich the Greeks likened to the soul orghost of the man. Thinking aboutghosts leads him at once to the memoryof a certain very dear ghost aboutwhich he forthwith begins to dream.

What if a certain soul Which earlyslipped its sheath, And has for its homethe whole Of heaven, thus lookbeneath,

Thus watch one who, in the world,Both lives and likes life's way, Norwishes the wings unfurled That sleep inthe worm, they say

But sometimes when the weather Isblue, and warm waves tempt To freeoneself of tether, And try a life exempt

From worldly noise and dust, In thesphere which overbrims With passionand thought, why, just Unable to fly,one swims!

This is better understood byparaphrase: "I wonder if the soul of acertain person, who lately died, slippedso gently out of the hard sheath of theperishable body I wonder if she doesnot look down from her home in thesky upon me, just as that little butterflyis doing at this moment. And I wonder

if she laughs at the clumsiness of thispoor swimmer, who finds it so muchlabour even to move through the water,while she can move through whatevershe pleases by the simple act ofwishing. And this man, strangelyenough, does not want to die, and tobecome a ghost. He likes to live verymuch; he does not yet desire thosesoul-wings which are supposed to begrowing within the shell of his body,just as the wings of the butterfly beginto grow in the chrysalis. He does notwant to die at all. But sometimes hewants to get away from the struggle andthe dust of the city, and to be alonewith nature; and then, in order to beperfectly alone, he swims. He would

like to fly much better; but he can not.However, swimming is very much likeflying, only the element of water isthicker than air."

However, more than the poet's words issuggested here. We are really told thatwhat a fine mind desires is spiritual life,pure intellectual life free from all thetrammels of bodily necessity. Is not theswimmer really a symbol of thesuperior mind in its present conditionYour best swimmer can not live underthe water, neither can he rise into thebeautiful blue air. He can only keep hishead in the air; his body must remain inthe grosser element. Well, a greatthinker and poet is ever thus floating

between the universe of spirit and theuniverse of matter. By his mind hebelongs to the region of pure mind, theethereal state; but the hard necessity ofliving keeps him down in the world ofsense and grossness and struggle. Onthe other hand the butterfly, freelymoving in a finer element, betterrepresents the state of spirit or soul.

What is the use of being dissatisfiedwith nature The best we can do is toenjoy in the imagination those thingswhich it is not possible for us to enjoyin fact.

Emancipate through passion Andthought, with sea for sky, We substitute,

in a fashion, For heaven poetry:

Which sea, to all intent, Gives fleshsuch noon-disport, As a finer elementAffords the spirit-sort.

Now you see where the poet's vision ofa beautiful butterfly has been leadinghis imagination. The nearest approachwhich we can make to the act of flying,in the body, is the act of swimming.The nearest approach that we can maketo the heavenly condition, mentally, isin poetry. Poetry, imagination, thepleasure of emotional expression theserepresent our nearest approach toparadise. Poetry is the sea in which thesoul of man can swim even as

butterflies can swim in the air, or happyghosts swim in the finer element of theinfinite ether. The last three stanzas ofthe poem are very suggestive:

And meantime, yonder streak Meets thehorizon's verge; That is the land, toseek If we tire or dread the surge:

Land the solid and safe To welcomeagain (confess!) When, high and dry, wechafe The body, and don the dress.

Does she look, pity, wonder At onewho mimics flight, Swims heavenabove, sea under, Yet always earth insight

"Streak," meaning an indistinct line,here refers to the coast far away, as itappears to the swimmer. It is just such aword as a good Japanese painter oughtto appreciate in such a relation. Insuggesting that the swimmer is glad toreturn to shore again and get warm, thepoet is telling us that however much wemay talk about the happiness of spiritsin heaven however much we may praiseheaven in poetry the truth is that we arevery fond of this world, we likecomfort, we like company, we likehuman love and human pleasures.There is a good deal of nonsense inpretending that we think heaven is abetter place than the world to which webelong. Perhaps it is a better place, but,

as a matter of fact, we do not knowanything about it; and we should befrightened if we could go beyond acertain distance from the real worldwhich we do know. As he tells us this,the poet begins again to think aboutthe spirit of the dead woman. Is shehappy Is she looking at him and pityinghim as he swims, taking good care notto go too far away from the land Or isshe laughing at him, because in hissecret thoughts he confesses that helikes to live that he does not want tobecome a pure ghost at the present time

Evidently a butterfly was quite enough,not only to make Browning's mindthink very seriously, but to make that

mind teach us the truth and seriousnesswhich may attach to very small thingsincidents, happenings of daily life, inany hour and place. I believe that is thegreatest English poem we have on thesubject of the butterfly.

The idea that a butterfly might be, notmerely the symbol of the soul, but invery fact the spirit of a dead person, issomewhat foreign to English thought;and whatever exists in poetry on thesubject must necessarily be quite new.The idea of a relation between insects,birds, or other living creatures, and thespirits of the dead, is enormously oldin Oriental literature; we find it inSanskrit texts thousands of years ago.

But the Western mind has not beenaccustomed to think of spiritual life asoutside of man; and much of naturalpoetry has consequently remainedundeveloped in Western countries. Astrange little poem, "The White Moth,"is an exception to the general rule that Ihave indicated; but I am almost certainthat its author, A.T. Quiller-Couch,must have read Oriental books, orobtained his fancy from some Easternsource. As the knowledge of Indianliterature becomes more general inEngland, we may expect to find poetrymuch influenced by Oriental ideas. Atthe present time, such a composition asthis is quite a strange anomaly.

If a leaf rustled, she would start: And yet shedied, a year ago. How had so frail a thing theheart To journey where she trembled so Anddo they turn and turn in fright, Those littlefeet, in so much night

The light above the poet's headStreamed on the page and on the cloth,And twice and thrice there buffeted Onthe black pane a white-winged moth:'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside,And "Open, open, open!" cried:

"I could not find the way to God;There were too many flaming suns Forsignposts, and the fearful road Led overwastes where millions Of tangledcomets hissed and burned I was

bewildered and I turned.

"Oh, it was easy then! I knew Yourwindow and no star beside. Look upand take me back to you!" He rose andthrust the window wide. 'Twas butbecause his brain was hot Withrhyming; for he heard her not.

But poets polishing a phrase Showanger over trivial things; And as sheblundered in the blaze Towards him,on ecstatic wings, He raised a hand andsmote her dead; Then wrote "That I haddied instead!"

The lover, or bereaved husband, iswriting a poem of which a part is given

in the first stanza which is therefore putin italics. The action proper begins withthe second stanza. The soul of thedead woman taps at the window in theshape of a night-butterfly or mothimagining, perhaps, that she has still avoice and can make herself heard bythe man that she loves. She tells thestory of her wandering in spaceprivileged to pass to heaven, yet afraidof the journey. Now the subject of thepoem which the lover happens to bewriting inside the room is a memory ofthe dead woman mourning for her,describing her in exquisite ways. He cannot hear her at all; he does not heareven the beating of the little wings atthe window, but he stands up and

opens the window because he happensto feel hot and tired. The moth thinksthat he has heard her, that he knows;and she flies toward him in greatdelight. But he, thinking that it is only atroublesome insect, kills her with ablow of his hand; and then sits downto continue his poem with the words,"Oh, how I wish I could have diedinstead of that dear woman!"Altogether this is a queer poem inEnglish literature, and I believe almostalone of its kind. But it is queer onlybecause of its rarity of subject. As forconstruction, it is very good indeed.

I do not know that it is necessary toquote any more poems upon butterflies

or moths. There are several others; butthe workmanship and the thought arenot good enough or original enough tojustify their use here as class texts. So Ishall now turn to the subject ofdragon-flies. Here we must again bevery brief. References to dragon-fliesare common throughout Englishpoetry, but the references signify littlemore than a mere colourless mentionof the passing of the insect. However,it so happens that the finest modernlines of pure description written aboutany insect, are about dragon-flies. Andthey also happen to be by Tennyson.Naturalists and men of science havegreatly praised these lines, because oftheir truth to nature and the accuracy

of observation which they show. Youwill find them in the poem entitled"The Two Voices."

To-day I saw the dragon-fly Comefrom the wells where he did lie.

An inner impulse rent the veil Of hisold husk; from head to tail Came outclear plates of sapphire mail.

He dried his wings; like gauze theygrew; Thro' crofts and pastures wetwith dew A living rush of light he flew.

There are very few real poems, however,upon the dragon-fly in English, andconsidering the extraordinary beauty

and grace of the insect, this may appearstrange to you. But I think that you canexplain the strangeness at a later time.The silence of English poets on thesubject of insects as compared withJapanese poets is due to general causesthat we shall consider at the close ofthe lecture.

Common flies could scarcely seem tobe a subject for poetry disgusting andannoying creatures as they are. But thereare more poems about the house-flythan about the dragon-fly. Last year Iquoted for you a remarkable and rathermystical composition by the poet Blakeabout accidentally killing a fly. Blakerepresents his own thoughts about the

brevity of human life which had beenaroused by the incident. It is charminglittle poem; but it does not describe thefly at all. I shall not quote it here again,because we shall have many otherthings to talk about; but I shall give youthe text of a famous little compositionby Oldys on the same topic. It hasalmost the simplicity of Blake, andcertainly something of the same kindof philosophy.

Busy, curious, thirsty fly, Drink with meand drink as I; Freely welcome to mycup, Couldst thou sip and sip it up:Make the most of life you may, Life isshort and wears away.

Both alike are mine and thineHastening quick to their decline:Thine's a summer, mine's no more,Though repeated to threescore.Threescore summers, when they'regone, Will appear as short as one!

The suggestion is that, after all, time isonly a very relative affair in the cosmicorder of things. The life of the man ofsixty years is not much longer than thelife of the insect which lives but a fewhours, days, or months. Had Oldys,who belongs to the eighteenth century,lived in our own time, he might havebeen able to write something verymuch more curious on this subject. It isnow known that time, to the mind of

an insect, must appear immenselylonger than it appears to the mind of aman. It has been calculated that amosquito or a gnat moves its wingsbetween four and five hundred times asecond. Now the scientific dissectionof such an insect, under themicroscope, justifies the opinion thatthe insect must be conscious of eachbeat of the wings just as a man feelsthat he lifts his arm or bends his headevery time that the action is performed.A man can not even imagine theconsciousness of so short an intervalof time as the five-hundredth part ofone second. But insect consciousnesscan be aware of such intervals; and asingle day of life might well appear to

the gnat as long as the period of amonth to a man. Indeed, we havereason to suppose that to even theshortest-lived insect life does notappear short at all; and that theephemeral may actually, so far as fellingis concerned, live as long as a manalthough its birth and death does occurbetween the rising and the setting ofthe sun.

We might suppose that bees wouldform a favourite subject of poetry,especially in countries where agricultureis practised upon such a scale as inEngland. But such is not really the case.Nearly every English poet makes somereference to bees, as Tennyson does in

the famous couplet

The moan of doves in immemorialelms, And murmuring of innumerablebees.

But the only really remarkable poemaddressed to a bee is by the Americanphilosopher Emerson. The poem inquestion can not be compared as tomere workmanship with some otherswhich I have cited; but as to thinking, itis very interesting, and you mustremember that the philosopher whowrites poetry should be judged for histhought rather than for the measure ofhis verse. The whole is not equallygood, nor is it short enough to quote

entire; I shall only give the best parts.

Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thouart is clime for me.

* * * * *

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let mechase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer,me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs andvines.

Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thydominion! Sailor of the atmosphere;Swimmer through the waves of air;Voyager of light and noon; Epicureanof June; Wait, I prithee, till I comeWithin earshot of thy hum, All without

is martyrdom.

* * * * *

Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of theunderwoods, The green silence dostdisplace With thy mellow, breezy bass.

* * * * *

Aught unsavory or unclean Hath myinsect never seen;

* * * * *

Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher! Seeing only whatis fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou

dost mock at fate and care, Leave thechaff, and take the wheat.

This is really the poetry of the beevisiting only beautiful flowers, andsucking from them their perfumedjuices always healthy, happy, andsurrounded by beautiful things. A greatrover, a constant wanderer is the beevisiting many different places, seeingmany different things, but stoppingonly to enjoy what is beautiful to thesight and sweet to the taste. NowEmerson tells us that a wise manshould act like the bee never stoppingto look at what is bad, or what ismorally ugly, but seeking only what isbeautiful and nourishing for the mind.

It is a very fine thought; and themanner of expressing it is greatlyhelped by Emerson's use of curiousand forcible words such as "burly,""zigzag," and the famous expression"yellow-breeched philosopher" whichhas passed almost into an Americanhousehold phrase. The allusion ofcourse is to the thighs of the bee,covered with the yellow pollen offlowers so as to make them seemcovered with yellow breeches, ortrousers reaching only to the knees.

I do not of course include in thelecture such child songs about insectsas that famous one beginning with thewords, "How doth the little busy bee

improve each shining hour." This is nodoubt didactically very good; but Iwish to offer you only examples ofreally fine poetry on the topic.Therefore leaving the subject of beesfor the time, let us turn to the subjectof musical insects the singers of thefields and woods grasshoppers andcrickets.

In Japanese poetry there are thousandsof verses upon such insects. Thereforeit seems very strange that we havescarcely anything on the subject inEnglish. And the little that we do haveis best represented by the poem ofKeats on the night cricket. Thereference is probably to what we call in

England the hearth cricket, an insectwhich hides in houses, making itself athome in some chink of the brickworkor stonework about a fireplace, for itloves the warmth. I suppose that thesmall number of poems in Englishabout crickets can be partly explainedby the scarcity of night singers. Onlythe house cricket seems to be very wellknown. But on the other hand, we cannot so well explain the rarity ofcomposition in regard to the day-singers the grasshoppers and locustswhich can be heard, though somewhatfaintly, in any English country placeafter sunset during the warm season.Another queer thing is that the exampleset by Keats has not been imitated or at

least followed even up to the presenttime.

The poetry of earth is never dead:When all the birds are faint with thehot sun, etc.

In this charming composition you willhave noticed the word "stove"; but youmust remember that this is not a stoveas we understand the term now, andsignifies only an old-fashioned fireplaceof brick or tile. In Keats's day therewere no iron stoves. Another wordwhich I want to notice is the word"poetry" in the first line. By the poetryof nature the poet means the voices ofnature the musical sounds made by its

idle life in woods and fields. So theword "poetry" here has especially themeaning of song, and corresponds veryclosely to the Japanese word whichsignifies either poem or song, butperhaps more especially the latter. Thegeneral meaning of the sonnet is that atno time, either in winter or in summer,is nature silent. When the birds do notsing, the grasshoppers make music forus; and when the cold has killed orbanished all other life, then the housecricket begins with its thin sweet songto make us think of the dead voices ofthe summer.

There is not much else of note aboutthe grasshopper and the cricket in the

works of the great English poets. Butperhaps you do not know thatTennyson in his youth took up thesubject and made a long poem uponthe grasshopper, but suppressed it afterthe edition of 1842. He did not think itgood enough to rank with his otherwork. But a few months ago the poemswhich Tennyson suppressed in the finaledition of his works have beenpublished and carefully edited by aneminent scholar, and among thesepoems we find "The Grasshopper." Iwill quote some of this poem, becauseit is beautiful, and because the fact ofits suppression will serve to show youhow very exact and careful Tennysonwas to preserve only the very best

things that he wrote.

Voice of the summer wind, Joy of thesummer plain, Life of the summerhours, Carol clearly, bound along, NoTithon thou as poets feign (Shame fall'em, they are deaf and blind), But aninsect lithe and strong Bowing theseeded summer flowers. Prove theirfalsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting onthine airy feet Clap thy shielded sidesand carol, Carol clearly, chirrups sweet.Thou art a mailed warrior in youth andstrength complete; Armed cap-a-pie,Full fair to see; Unknowing fear,Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier, Sanspeur et sans reproche. In sunlight and inshadow, The Bayard of the meadow.

The reference to Tithonus is a referenceof course to a subject afterwardsbeautifully elaborated in another poemby Tennyson, the great poem of"Tithonus." The Bayard here referred towas the great French model of perfectchivalry, and is sometimes called the lastof the feudal knights. He was said to bewithout fear and without blame. Youmay remember that he was killed by aball from a gun it was soon after theuse of artillery in war had beenintroduced; and his dying words wereto the effect that he feared there wasnow an end of great deeds, becausemen had begun to fight from a distancewith machines instead of fighting in

the old knightly and noble way withsword and spear. The grasshopper,covered with green plates and bearingso many little sharp spines upon itslong limbs, seems to have suggested toTennyson the idea of a fairy knight ingreen armour.

As I said before, England is poor insinging insects, while America is rich inthem almost, perhaps, as rich as Japan,although you will not find as manydifferent kinds of singing insects in anyone state or district. The singing insectsof America are peculiar to particularlocalities. But the Eastern states haveperhaps the most curious insect of thiskind. It is called the Katydid. This

name is spelt either Katydid, or Catydidthough the former spelling ispreferable. Katy, or Katie, is theabbreviation of the name Catherine;very few girls are called by the full nameCatherine, also spelt Katherine; becausethe name is long and unmusical, theirfriends address them usually as Katy,and their acquaintances, as Kate. Well,the insect of which I am speaking, akind of semi, makes a sound resemblingthe sound of the words "Katie did!"Hence the name one of the fewcorresponding to the names given tothe Japanese semi, such as tsuku-tsuku-boshi, or minmin-semi. The mostinteresting composition upon thiscicada is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, but

it is of the lighter sort of verse, with atouch of humour in it. I shall quote afew verses only, as the piece containssome allusions that would requireexplanation at considerable length.

I love to hear thine earnest voice,Wherever thou art hid, Thou testy littledogmatist, Thou pretty Katydid! Thoumindest me of gentlefolks, Oldgentlefolks are they, Thou say'st anundisputed thing In such a solemn way.

* * * * *

Oh tell me where did Katy live, Andwhat did Katy do And was she very fairand young, And yet so wicked, too Did

Katy love a naughty man, Or kiss morecheeks than one I warrant Katy did nomore Than many a Kate has done.

* * * * *

Ah, no! The living oak shall crash, Thatstood for ages still, The rock shall rendits mossy base And thunder down thehill, Before the little Katydid Shall addone word, to tell The mystic story ofthe maid Whose name she knows sowell.

The word "testy" may be a littleunfamiliar to some of you; it is a goodold-fashioned English term for "cross,""irritable." The reference to the "old

gentlefolks" implies the well-knownfact that in argument old persons areinclined to be much more obstinatethan young people. And there is also ahint in the poem of the tendencyamong old ladies to blame the conductof young girls even more severely thanmay be necessary. There is nothing elseto recommend the poem except its witand the curiousness of the subject.There are several other verses about thesame creature, by different Americanpoets; but none of them is quite sogood as the composition of Holmes.However, I may cite a few verses fromone of the earlier American poets,Philip Freneau, who flourished in theeighteenth century and the early part of

the nineteenth. He long anticipated thefancy of Holmes; but he spells theword Catydid.

In a branch of willow hid Sings theevening Catydid: From the lofty locustbough Feeding on a drop of dew, Inher suit of green arrayed Hear hersinging in the shade Catydid, Catydid,Catydid!

While upon a leaf you tread, Or reposeyour little head On your sheet ofshadows laid, All the day you nothingsaid; Half the night your cheery tongueRevelled out its little song, Nothing elsebut Catydid.

* * * * *

Tell me, what did Caty do Did shemean to trouble you Why was Caty notforbid To trouble little Catydid Wrong,indeed, at you to fling, Hurting no onewhile you sing, Catydid! Catydid!Catydid!

To Dr. Holmes the voice of the cicadaseemed like the voice of an oldobstinate woman, an old prude,accusing a young girl of some fault, butto Freneau the cry of the little creatureseemed rather to be like the cry of alittle child complaining a little girl,perhaps, complaining that somebodyhad been throwing stones at her, or had

hurt her in some way. And, of course,the unfinished character of the phraseallows equally well either supposition.

Before going back to more seriouspoetry, I want while we are speaking ofAmerican poets to make one referenceto the ironical or satirical poetry whichinsects have inspired in some minds,taking for example the poem byCharlotte Perkins Stetson about abutterfly. This author is rather a personof note, being a prominent figure ineducational reforms and the author ofa volume of poems of a remarkablystrong kind in the didactic sense. Inother words, she is especially a moralpoet; and unless moral poetry be really

very well executed, it is scarcely worthwhile classing it as literature. I think,however, that the symbolism in thefollowing verses will interest youespecially when we comment uponthem. The composition from whichthey are taken is entitled "AConservative."

The poet, walking in the garden onemorning, sees a butterfly, very unhappy,and gifted with power to express thereason of its unhappiness. Thebutterfly says, complaining of its wings,

"My legs are thin and few Where once Ihad a swarm! Soft fuzzy fur a joy toview Once kept my body warm, Before

these flapping wing-things grew, Tohamper and deform!"

At that outrageous bug I shot The furyof mine eye; Said I, in scorn all burninghot, In rage and anger high, "Youignominious idiot! Those wings aremade to fly!"

"I do not want to fly," said he, "I onlywant to squirm!" And he drooped hiswings dejectedly, But still his voice wasfirm: "I do not want to be a fly! I wantto be a worm!"

O yesterday of unknown lack! To-dayof unknown bliss! I left my fool in redand black, The last I saw was this, The

creature madly climbing back Into hischrysalis.

Of course the wings here represent thepowers of the mind knowledge, reason,will. Men ought to use these in order toreach still nobler and higher states oflife. But there are men who refuse touse their best faculties for this end.Such men are like butterflies who donot want to take the trouble to fly, butprefer the former condition of thecaterpillar which does nothing but eatand sleep. As applied to certain formsof conservatism the satire is strong.

Something may now be said as topoems about spiders. But let me remind

you that a spider is not an insect.Scientifically it has no relation to thegreat family of true insects; it belongsto the very distinct family of thearthropoda or "joint-footed" animals.But as it is still popularly called aninsect in most European countries, wemay be excused for including it in thesubject of the present lecture. Isuppose you know that one of thescientific names for this whole class ofcreatures is Arachnida, a name derivedfrom the Greek name Arachne. Thestory of Arachne is interesting, andeverybody studying natural historyought to know it. Arachne was a younggirl, according to the Greek story, whowas very skilful at weaving. She wove

cloths of many different colours andbeautiful patterns, and everybodyadmired her work. This made her vainso vain that at last she said that even thegoddess of weaving could not weavebetter than she. Immediately after shehad said that, the terrible goddessherself Pallas Athena entered the room.Pallas Athena was not only the goddessof wisdom, you know, but especiallythe goddess of young girls, presidingover the chastity, the filial piety, and thedomestic occupations of virgins; andshe was very angry at the conceit ofthis girl. So she said to her, "You haveboasted that you can weave as well as Ican; now let me see you weave!" SoArachne was obliged to sit down at her

loom and weave in the presence of thegoddess; and the goddess also wove, farsurpassing the weaving of Arachne.When the weaving was done, thegoddess asked the girl, "Now see!which is the better, my work or yours "And Arachne was obliged to confessthat she had been defeated and put toshame. But the goddess was notthoroughly satisfied; to punishArachne, she touched her lightly withthe distaff, saying, "Spin forever!" andthereupon Arachne was changed into aspider, which forever spins and weavesperishable films of perishable shinythread. Poetically we still may call aspider Arachne.

I have here a little poem of a touchingcharacter entitled "Arachne," by RoseTerry Cooke, one of the symbolicpoems which are becoming sonumerous in these days of newer anddeeper philosophy. I think that you willlike it: a spinster, that is, a maidenpassed the age of girlhood, is thespeaker.

I watch her in the corner there, As,restless, bold, and unafraid, She slipsand floats along the air Till all hersubtile house is made.

Her home, her bed, her daily food, Allfrom that hidden store she draws; Shefashions it and knows it good, By

instinct's strong and sacred laws.

No tenuous threads to weave her nest,She seeks and gathers there or here; Butspins it from her faithful breast,Renewing still, till leaves are sere.

Then, worn with toil, and tired of life,In vain her shining traps are set. Herfrost hath hushed the insect strife Andgilded flies her charm forget.

But swinging in the snares she spun,She sways to every wintry wind: Herjoy, her toil, her errand done, Her corsethe sport of storms unkind.

The symbolism of these verses will

appear to you more significant when Itell you that it refers especially toconditions in New England in thepresent period. The finest Americanpopulation perhaps the finest Anglo-Saxons ever produced were the NewEnglanders of the early part of thecentury. But with the growth of thenew century, the men found themselvesattracted elsewhere, especially westward;their shrewdness, their energies, theirinventiveness, were needed in newerregions. And they wandered away bythousands and thousands, never tocome back again, and leaving thewomen behind them. Gradually theplace of these men was taken byimmigrants of inferior development

but the New England women hadnothing to hope for from thesestrangers. The bravest of them alsowent away to other states; but myriadswho could not go were condemned bycircumstances to stay and earn theirliving by hard work without anyprospect of happy marriage. Thedifficulty which a girl of culture mayexperience in trying to live by the workof her hands in New England issomething not easily imagined. But it isgetting to be the same in most Westerncountries. Such a girl is watching aspider weaving in the corner of thesame room where she herself isweaving; and she thinks, "Am I not likethat spider, obliged to supply my every

need by the work of my own hands,without sympathy, without friends Thespider will spin and catch flies until theautumn comes; then she will die.Perhaps I too must continue to spinuntil the autumn of my own life until Ibecome too old to work hard, and dieof cold and of exhaustion."

Poor sister of the spinster clan! I toofrom out my store within My daily lifeand living plan, My home, my rest, mypleasure spin.

I know thy heart when heartless handsSweep all that hard-earned web away;Destroy its pearled and glittering bands,And leave thee homeless by the way.

I know thy peace when all is done.Each anchored thread, each tiny knot,Soft shining in the autumn sun; Asheltered, silent, tranquil lot.

I know what thou hast never known,Sad presage to a soul allowed That notfor life I spin, alone, But day by day Ispin my shroud.

The reference to the sweeping away ofthe spider's web, of course, implies thepain often caused to such hardworkinggirls by the meanness of men whoemploy them only to cheat themshopkeepers or manufacturers whotake their work without justly paying

for it, and who criticize it as bad inorder to force the owner to accept lessmoney than it is worth. Again areference may be intended to thedestruction of the home by some legaltrick some unscrupulous method ofcheating the daughter out of theproperty bequeathed to her by herparents.

Notice a few pretty words here. The"pearled" as applied to the spider'sthread gives an intimation of the effectproduced by dew on the thread, butthere is also the suggestion of tearsupon the thread work woven by thehands of the girl. The participle"anchored" is very pretty in its use here

as an adjective, because this word isnow especially used for rope-fastening,whether the rope be steel or hemp; andparticularly for the fastening of thecables of a bridge. The last stanzamight be paraphrased thus: "SisterSpider, I know more than you and thatknowledge makes me unhappy. You donot know, when you are spinning yourlittle web, that you are really weavingyour own shroud. But I know this, mywork is slowly but surely killing me.And I know it because I have a soul atleast a mind made otherwise thanyours."

The use of the word "soul" in the laststanza of this poem, brings me back to

the question put forth in an earlier partof the lecture why European poets,during the last two thousand years, havewritten so little upon the subject ofinsects Three thousand, four thousandyears ago, the most beautiful Greekpoetry poetry more perfect thananything of English poetry was writtenupon insects. In old Japanese literaturepoems upon insects are to be found bythousands. What is the signification ofthe great modern silence in Westerncountries upon this delightful topic Ibelieve that Christianity, as dogma,accounts for the long silence. Theopinions of the early Church refusedsoul, ghost, intelligence of any sort toother creatures than man. All animals

were considered as automata that is, asself-acting machines, moved by asomething called instinct, for want of abetter name. To talk about the souls ofanimals or the spirits of animals wouldhave been very dangerous in the MiddleAges, when the Church had supremepower; it would indeed have been torisk or to invite an accusation ofwitchcraft, for demons were thenthought to take the shape of animals atcertain times. To discuss the mind of ananimal would have been for theChristian faith to throw doubt uponthe existence of human souls as taughtby the Church; for if you grant thatanimals are able to think, then youmust acknowledge that man is able to

think without a soul, or you mustacknowledge that the soul is not theessential principle of thought andaction. Until after the time ofDescartes, who later arguedphilosophically that animals were onlymachines, it was scarcely possible toargue rationally about the matter inEurope.

Nevertheless, we shall soon perceivethat this explanation will not cover allthe facts. You will naturally ask how ithappens that, if the question be aquestion of animal souls, birds, horses,dogs, cats, and many other animals havebeen made the subject of Westernpoems from ancient times. The silence

is only upon the subject of insects.And, again, Christianity has one saintthe most beautiful character in allChristian hagiography who thought ofall nature in a manner that, at first sight,strangely resembles Buddhism. Thissaint was Francis of Assisi, born in thelatter part of the twelfth century, sothat he may be said to belong to thevery heart of the Middle Ages, the mostsuperstitious epoch of Christianity.Now this saint used to talk to trees andstones as if they were animated beings.He addressed the sun as "my brothersun"; and he spoke of the moon as hissister. He preached not only to humanbeings, but also to the birds and thefishes; and he made a great many

poems on these subjects, full of astrange and childish beauty. Forexample, his sermon to the doves,beginning, "My little sisters, the doves,"in which he reminds them that theirform is the emblem or symbol of theHoly Ghost, is a beautiful poem; andhas been, with many others, translatedinto nearly all modern languages. Butobserve that neither St. Francis nor anyother saint has anything to say on thesubject of insects.

Perhaps we must go back further thanChristianity to guess the meaning ofthese distinctions. Among the ancientraces of Asia, where the Jewish faitharose, there were strange and sinister

beliefs about insects old Assyriansuperstitions, old Babylonian beliefs.Insects seemed to those early peoplesvery mysterious creatures (which theyreally are); and it appears to have beenthought that they had a close relation tothe world of demons and evil spirits. Isuppose you know that the name ofone of their gods, Beelzebub, signifiesthe Lord of Flies. The Jews, as is shownby their Talmudic literature, inheritedsome of these ideas; and it is quiteprobable that they were passed on tothe days of Christianity. Again, in theearly times of Christianity in NorthernAfrica the Church had to fight againstsuperstitions of an equally strange sortderived from old Egyptian beliefs.

Among the Egyptians, certain insectswere sacred and became symbols ofdivinity, such as the beetle. Now Iimagine that for these reasons thesubject of insects became at an earlytime a subject which Christianitythought dangerous, and that thereaftera kind of hostile opinion prevailedregarding any literature upon this topic.

However, to-day things are verydifferent. With the development ofscientific studies especially ofmicroscopic study it has been foundthat insects, far from being the lowliestof creatures, are the most highlyorganized of all beings; that theirspecial senses are incomparably

superior to our own; and that in naturalhistory, from the evolutionalstandpoint, they have to be given firstplace. This of course renders itimpossible any longer to consider theinsect as a trifling subject. Moreover,the new philosophy is teaching thethinking classes in all Western countriesthe great truth of the unity of life.With the recognition of such unity, aninsect must interest the philosopherseven the man of ordinary culture quiteas much as the bird or any otheranimal.

Nearly all the poems which I havequoted to you have been poems ofvery modern date from which we may

infer that interest in the subject ofinsects has been developing of lateyears only. In this connection it isinteresting to note that a very religiouspoet, Whittier, gave us in the last daysof his life a poem upon ants. Thiswould have seemed strange enough in aformer age; it does not seem strange to-day, and it is beautiful. The subject istaken from old Jewish literature.

KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS

Out from Jerusalem The King rodewith his great War chiefs and lords ofstate, And Sheba's queen with them;

Comely, but black withal, To whom,

perchance, belongs That wondrousSong of Songs, Sensuous and mystical,

Whereto devout souls turn In fond,ecstatic dream, And through its earth-born theme The Love of Lovesdiscern.

Proud in the Syrian sun, In gold andpurple sheen, The dusky Ethiop queenSmiled on King Solomon.

Wisest of men, he knew The languagesof all The creatures great or small Thattrod the earth or flew.

Across an ant-hill led The king's path,and he heard Its small folk, and their

word He thus interpreted:

"Here comes the king men greet Aswise and good and just, To crush us inthe dust Under his heedless feet."

The king, understanding the languageof insects, turns to the queen andexplains to her what the ants have justsaid. She advises him to pay noattention to the sarcasm of the antshow dare such vile creatures speak thusabout a king! But Solomon thinksotherwise:

"Nay," Solomon replied, "The wise andstrong should seek The welfare of theweak," And turned his horse aside.

His train, with quick alarm, Curvedwith their leader round The ant-hill'speopled mound, And left it free fromharm.

The jewelled head bent low; "Oh,king!" she said, "henceforth The secretof thy worth And wisdom well I know.

"Happy must be the State Whose rulerheedeth more The murmurs of thepoor Than flatteries of the great."

The reference to the Song of Songsalso the Song of Solomon and Canticleof Canticles may require a littleexplanation. The line "Comely but

black withal," is borrowed from a verseof this song "I am black but beautiful,oh, ye daughters of Jerusalem, as thetents of Kedar, as the curtains ofSolomon." In another part of the songthe reason of this blackness is given: "Iam black, because the sun hath lookedupon me." From which we can see thatthe word black only means dark,brown, tanned by the sun. Perhaps youdo not know that as late as the middleof the eighteenth century it was still thecustom in England to speak of aperson with black hair and eyes as "ablack man" a custom which CharlesLamb had reason to complain of evenat a later day. The tents referred to inthe text were probably tents made of

camel-skin, such as the Arabs stillmake, and the colour of these is notblack but brown. Whether Solomonwrote the so-called song or not we donot know; but the poet refers to alegend that it was written in praise ofthe beauty of the dark queen who camefrom Sheba to visit the wisest man ofthe world. Such is not, however, theopinion of modern scholars. Thecomposition is really dramatic, althoughthrown into lyrical form, and asarranged by Renan and others itbecomes a beautiful little play, of whicheach act is a monologue. "Sensuous"the poet correctly calls it; for it is aform of praise of woman's beauty inall its details, as appears in such famous

verses as these: "How beautiful are thyfeet in shoes, O prince's daughter; thejoints of thy thighs are like jewels, thework of the hands of a cunningworkman. Thy two breasts are like twoyoung roes that are twins which feedamong the lilies." But Christianity,instead of dismissing this part of theBible, interpreted the song mysticallyinsisting that the woman describedmeant the Church, and the lover,Christ. Of course only very piouspeople continue to believe this; eventhe good Whittier preferred the legendthat it was written about the Queen ofSheba.

I suppose that I ought to end this

lecture upon insect poetry by somequotation to which a moral orphilosophical meaning can be attached.I shall end it therefore with a quotationfrom the poet Gray. The poetry ofinsects may be said to have firstappeared in English literature duringthe second half of the eighteenthcentury, so that it is only, at the most,one hundred and fifty years old. Butthe first really fine poem of theeighteenth century relating to thesubject is quite as good as anythingsince composed by Englishmen uponinsect life in general. Perhaps Grayreferred especially to what we call May-flies those delicate ghostly insectswhich hover above water surfaces in

fine weather, but which die on the sameday that they are born. He does notspecify May-flies, however, and we mayconsider the moral of the poem quiteapart from any particular kind ofinsect. You will find this reference inthe piece entitled "Ode on the Spring,"in the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas.

Still is the toiling hand of care: Thepanting herds repose: Yet hark, howthrough the peopled air The busymurmur glows! The insect youth are onthe wing, Eager to taste the honiedspring, And float amid the liquid noon:Some lightly o'er the current skim,Some show their gaily-gilded trimQuick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye Such isthe race of man: And they that creep,and they that fly, Shall end where theybegan. Alike the Busy and the Gay Butflutter through life's little day, Infortune's varying colours dressed:Brushed by the hand of roughMischance, Or chilled by Age, their airydance They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low Thesportive kind reply: Poor moralist! andwhat art thou A solitary fly! Thy joys noglittering female meets, No hive hastthou of hoarded sweets, No paintedplumage to display: On hasty wings thyyouth is flown; Thy sun is set; thy

spring is gone We frolic, while 'tis May.

The poet Gray was never married, andthe last stanza which I have quotedrefers jocosely to himself. It is anartistic device to set off the moral by alittle mockery, so that it may not appeartoo melancholy.

CHAPTER XI

SOME FRENCH POEMS ABOUTINSECTS

Last year I gave a lecture on the subjectof English poems about insects, with

some reference to the old Greek poemson the same subject. But I did not thenhave an opportunity to make anyreference to French poems upon thesame subject, and I think that it wouldbe a pity not to give you a fewexamples.

Just as in the case of English poemsabout insects, nearly all the Frenchliterature upon this subject is new.Insect poetry belongs to the newer andlarger age of thought, to the age thatbegins to perceive the great truth of theunity of life. We no longer find, even innatural histories, the insect treated as amere machine and unthinkingorganism; on the contrary its habits, its

customs and its manifestation both ofintelligence and instinct are being verycarefully studied in these times, and acertain sympathy, as well as a certainfeeling of respect or admiration, maybe found in the scientific treatises ofthe greatest men who write about insectlife. So, naturally, Europe is slowlyreturning to the poetical standpoint ofthe old Greeks in this respect. It is notimprobable that keeping caged insectsas pets may again become a Westerncustom, as it was in Greek times, whencages were made of rushes or straw forthe little creatures. I suppose you haveheard that the Japanese custom is verylikely to become a fashion in America.If that should really happen, the fact

would certainly have an effect uponpoetry. I think that it is very likely tohappen.

The French poets who have writtenpretty things about insects are nearly allpoets of our own times. Some of themtreat the subject from the old Greekstandpoint indeed the beautiful poemof Heredia upon the tomb of agrasshopper is perfectly Greek, andreads almost like a translation from theGreek. Other poets try to express theromance of insects in the form of amonologue, full of the thought of ourown age. Others again touch thesubject of insects only in connectionwith the subject of love. I will give one

example of each method, keeping thebest piece for the last, and beginningwith a pretty fancy about a dragonfly.

MA LIBELLULE

En te voyant, toute mignonne, Blanchedans ta robe d'azure, Je pensais aquelque madone Drapee en un pen deciel pur.

Je songeais a ces belles saintes Que l'onvoyait au temps jadis Sourire sur lesvitres peintes, Montrant d'un doigt leparadis:

Et j'aurais voulu, loin du monde Quipassait frivole entre nous, Dans quelque

retraite profonde T'adorer seul a deuxgenoux.

This first part of the poem is addressedof course to a beautiful child, some girlbetween the age of childhood andwomanhood:

"Beholding thee, Oh darling one, allwhite in thy azure dress, I thought ofsome figure of the Madonna robed in ashred of pure blue sky.

"I dreamed of those beautiful figuresof saints whom one used to see inolden times smiling in the stained glassof church windows, and pointingupward to Paradise.

"And I could have wished to adore youalone upon my bended knees in somefar hidden retreat, away from thefrivolous world that passed betweenus."

This little bit of ecstasy over the beautyand purity of a child is pretty, but notparticularly original. However, it is onlyan introduction. Now comes the prettypart of the poem:

Soudain un caprice bizarre Change lascene et le decor, Et mon esprit au loins'egare Sur des grands pres d'azure etd'or

Ou, pres de ruisseaux musculesGazouillants comme des oiseaux, Sepoursuivent les libellules, Ces fleursvivantes des roseaux.

Enfant, n'es tu pas l'une d'elles Qui mepoursuit pour consoler Vainement tucaches tes ailes; Tu marches, mais tu saisvoler.

Petite fee au bleu corsage, Que j'aiconnu des mon berceau, En revoyantton doux visage, Je pense aux joncs demon ruisseau!

Veux-tu qu'en amoureux fideles Nousrevenions dans ces pres verts Libellule,reprends tes ailes; Moi, je brulerai tous

mes vers!

Et nous irons, sous la lumiere, D'un cielplus frais et plus leger Chacun dans saforme premiere, Moi courir, et toivoltiger.

"Suddenly a strange fancy changes forme the scene and the scenery; and mymind wanders far away over greatmeadows of azure and gold.

"Where, hard by tiny streams thatmurmur with a sound like voices oflittle birds, the dragon-flies, those livingflowers of the reeds, chase each otherat play.

"Child, art thou not one of thosedragon-flies, following after me toconsole me Ah, it is in vain that thoutryest to hide thy wings; thou dost walk,indeed, but well thou knowest how tofly!

"O little fairy with the blue corsagewhom I knew even from the time I wasa baby in the cradle; seeing again thysweet face, I think of the rushes thatborder the little stream of my nativevillage!

"Dost thou not wish that even now asfaithful lovers we return to those greenfields O dragon-fly, take thy wingsagain, and I I will burn all my poetry,

"And we shall go back, under the lightof the sky more fresh and pure thanthis, each of us in the original form I torun about, and thou to hover in the airas of yore."

The sight of a child's face has revivedfor the poet very suddenly and vividly,the recollection of the village home, thegreen fields of childhood, the littlestream where he used to play with thesame little girl, sometimes running afterthe dragon-fly. And now the queerfancy comes to him that she herself isso like a dragon-fly so light, graceful,spiritual! Perhaps really she is a dragon-fly following him into the great city,

where he struggles to live as a poet, justin order to console him. She hides herwings, but that is only to prevent otherpeople knowing. Why not return oncemore to the home of childhood, backto the green fields and the sun "Littledragon-fly," he says to her, "let us goback! do you return to your beautifulsummer shape, be a dragon-fly again,expand your wings of gauze; and Ishall stop trying to write poetry. I shallburn my verses; I shall go back to thestreams where we played as children; Ishall run about again with the joy of achild, and with you beautifully flittinghither and thither as a dragon-fly."

Victor Hugo also has a little poem

about a dragon-fly, symbolic only, butquite pretty. It is entitled "LaDemoiselle"; and the other poem wasentitled, as you remember, "MaLibellule." Both words mean a dragon-fly, but not the same kind of dragon-fly. The French word "demoiselle,"which might be adequately renderedinto Japanese by the term ojosan, refersonly to those exquisitely slender,graceful, slow-flitting dragon-fliesknown to the scientist by the name ofCalopteryx. Of course you know thedifference by sight, and the reason ofthe French name will be poeticallyapparent to you.

Quand la demoiselle doree S'envole au

depart des hivers, Souvent sa robediapree, Souvent son aile est dechireeAux mille dards des buissons verts.

Ainsi, jeunesse vive et frele, Qui,t'egarant de tous cotes, Voles ou toninstinct t'appele, Souvent tu dechireston aile Aux epines des voluptes.

"When, at the departure of winter, thegilded dragon-fly begins to soar, oftenher many-coloured robe, often herwing, is torn by the thousand thorns ofthe verdant shrubs.

"Even so, O frail and joyous Youth,who, wandering hither and thither, inevery direction, flyest wherever thy

instinct calls thee even so thou dostoften tear thy wings upon the thorns ofpleasure."

You must understand that pleasure iscompared to a rose-bush, whosebeautiful and fragrant flowers attractthe insects, but whose thorns aredangerous to the visitors. However,Victor Hugo does not use the word forrose-bush, for obvious reasons; nordoes he qualify the plants which aresaid to tear the wings of the dragon-fly.I need hardly tell you that thecomparison would not hold good inreference to the attraction of flowers,because dragon-flies do not care in theleast about flowers, and if they happen

to tear their wings among thorn bushes,it is much more likely to be in theirattempt to capture and devour otherinsects. The merit of the poem ischiefly in its music and colour; asnatural history it would not bearcriticism. The most beautiful modernFrench poem about insects, beautifulbecause of its classical perfection, is Ithink a sonnet by Heredia, entitled"Epigramme Funeraire" that is to say,"Inscription for a Tombstone." This isan exact imitation of Greek sentimentand expression, carefully studied afterthe poets of the anthology. Severalsuch Greek poems are extant,recounting how children mourned forpet insects which had died in spite of

all their care. The most celebrated oneamong these I quoted in a formerlecture the poem about the little Greekgirl Myro who made a tomb for hergrasshopper and cried over it. Herediahas very well copied the Greek feelingin this fine sonnet:

Ici git, Etranger, la verte sauterelle Quedurant deux saisons nourrit la jeuneHelle, Et dont l'aile vibrant sous le pieddentele. Bruissait dans le pin, le cytise,ou l'airelle.

Elle s'est tue, helas! la lyre naturelle, Lamuse des guerets, des sillons et du ble;De peur que son leger sommeil ne soittrouble, Ah, passe vite, ami, ne pese

point sur elle.

C'est la. Blanche, au milieu d'une touffede thym, Sa pierre funeraire estfraichement posee. Que d'hommesn'ont pas eu ce supreme destin!

Des larmes d'un enfant la tombe estarrosee, Et l'Aurore pieuse y fait chaquematin Une libation de gouttes de rosee.

"Stranger, here reposes the greengrasshopper that the young girl Hellecared for during two seasons, thegrasshopper whose wings, vibratingunder the strokes of its serrated feet,used to resound in the pine, the trefoiland the whortleberry.

"She is silent now, alas! that natural lyre,muse of the unsown fields, of thefurrows, and of the wheat. Lest herlight sleep should be disturbed, ah! passquickly, friend! do not be heavy uponher.

"It is there. All white, in the midst of atuft of thyme, her funeral monument isplaced, in cool shadow; how many menhave not been able to have thissupremely happy end!

"By the tears of a child the insect'stomb is watered; and the pious goddessof dawn each morning there makes alibation of drops of dew."

This reads very imperfectly in a hastytranslation; the original charm is due tothe perfect art of the form. But thewhole thing, as I have said before, isreally Greek, and based upon a closestudy of several little Greek poems onthe same kind of subject. Little Greekgirls thousands of years ago used tokeep singing insects as pets, every dayfeeding them with slices of leek andwith fresh water, putting in their littlecages sprigs of the plants which theyliked. The sorrow of the child for theinevitable death of her insect pets atthe approach of winter, seems to haveinspired many Greek poets. With alltenderness, the child would make a

small grave for the insect, bury itsolemnly, and put a little white stoneabove the place to imitate a grave-stone.But of course she would want aninscription for this tombstone perhapswould ask some of her grown-upfriends to compose one for her.Sometimes the grown-up friend mightbe a poet, in which case he wouldcompose an epitaph for all time.

I suppose you perceive that thesolemnity of this imitation of theGreek poems on the subject is only atender mockery, a playful sympathywith the real grief of the child. Theexpression, "pass, friend," is oftenfound in Greek funeral inscriptions

together with the injunction to treadlightly upon the dust of the dead.There is one French word to which Iwill call attention, the word "guerets."We have no English equivalent for thisterm, said to be a corruption of theLatin word "veractum," and meaningfields which have been ploughed butnot sown.

Not to dwell longer upon the phase ofart indicated by this poem, I may turnto the subject of crickets. There aremany French poems about crickets.One by Lamartine is known to almostevery French child.

Grillon solitaire, Ici comme moi, Voix

qui sors de terre, Ah! reveille-toi! J'attisela flamme, C'est pour t'egayer; Mais ilmanque une ame, Une ame au foyer.

Grillon solitaire, Voix qui sors de terre,Ah! reveille-toi Pour moi.

Quand j'etais petite Comme ce berceau,Et que Marguerite Filait son fuseau,Quand le vent d'automne Faisait toutgemir, Ton cri monotone M'aidait adormir.

Grillon solitaire, Voix qui sors de terre,Ah! reveille-toi Pour moi.

Seize fois l'annee A compte mes jours;Dans la cheminee Tu niches toujours.

Je t'ecoute encore Aux froides saisons.Souvenir sonore Des vieilles maisons.

Grillon solitaire, Voix qui sors de terre,Ah! reveille-toi Pour moi.

It is a young girl who thus addressesthe cricket of the hearth, the housecricket. It is very common in countryhouses in Europe. This is what shesays:

"Little solitary cricket, all alone here justlike myself, little voice that comes upout of the ground, ah, awake for mysake! I am stirring up the fires, that isjust to make you comfortable; but therelacks a presence by the hearth; a soul to

keep me company.

"When I was a very little girl, as little asthat cradle in the corner of the room,then, while Margaret our servant satthere spinning, and while the autumnwind made everything moan outside,your monotonous cry used to help meto fall asleep.

"Solitary cricket, voice that issues fromthe ground, awaken, for my sake.

"Now I am sixteen years of age andyou are still nestling in the chimneys asof old. I can hear you still in the coldseason, like a sound memory, asonorous memory of old houses.

"Solitary cricket, voice that issues fromthe ground, awaken, O awaken for mysake."

I do not think this pretty little songneeds any explanation; I would onlycall your attention to the natural truthof the fancy and the feeling. Sittingalone by the fire in the night, themaiden wants to hear the cricket sing,because it makes her think of herchildhood, and she finds happiness inremembering it.

So far as mere art goes, the poem ofGautier on the cricket is very muchfiner than the poem of Lamartine,

though not so natural and pleasing. Butas Gautier was the greatest master ofFrench verse in the nineteenth century,not excepting Victor Hugo, I think thatone example of his poetry on insectsmay be of interest. He was very poor,compared with Victor Hugo; and hehad to make his living by writing fornewspapers, so that he had no time tobecome the great poet that natureintended him to be. However, he didfind time to produce one volume ofhighly finished poetry, which isprobably the most perfect verse of thenineteenth century, if not the mostperfect verse ever made by a Frenchpoet; I mean the "Emaux et Camees."But the little poem which I am going to

read to you is not from the "Emaux etCamees."

Souffle, bise! Tombe a flots, pluie!Dans mon palais tout noir de suie, Je risde la pluie et du vent; En attendant quel'hiver fuie, Je reste au coin du feu,revant.

C'est moi qui suis l'esprit de l'atre! Legaz, de sa langue bleuatre, Leche plusdoucement le bois; La fumee en filetd'albatre, Monte et se contourne a mavoix.

La bouilloire rit et babille; La flammeaux pieds d'argent sautille Enaccompagnant ma chanson; La buche

de duvet s'habille; La seve bout dans letison.

* * * * *

Pendant la nuit et la journee Je chantesous la cheminee; Dans mon langage degrillon J'ai, des rebuts de son ainee,Souvent console Cendrillon.

* * * * *

Quel plaisir Prolonger sa veille,Regarder la flamme vermeille Prenant adeux bras le tison, A tous les bruitspreter l'oreille, Entendre vivre lamaison.

Tapi dans sa niche bien chaude, Sentirl'hiver qui pleure et rode, Tout bleme, etle nez violet, Tachant de s'introduire enfraude Par quelque fente du volet!

This poem is especially picturesque,and is intended to give us thecomfortable sensations of a winternight by the fire, and the amusement ofwatching the wood burn and ofhearing the kettle boiling. You will findthat the French has a particular qualityof lucid expression; it is full ofclearness and colour.

"Blow on, cold wind! pour down, Orain. I, in my soot-black palace, laugh atboth rain and wind; and while waiting

for winter to pass I remain in mycorner by the fire dreaming.

"It is I that am really the spirit of thehearth! The gaseous flame licks thewood more softly with its bluishtongue when it hears me; and thesmoke rises up like an alabaster thread,and curls itself about (or twists) at thesound of my voice.

"The kettle chuckles and chatters; thegolden-footed flame leaps, dancing tothe accompaniment of my song (or inaccompaniment to my song); the greatlog covers itself with down, the sapboils in the wooden embers ("duvet,"meaning "down," refers to the soft

fluffy white ash that forms upon thesurface of burning wood).

"All night and all day I sing below thechimney. Often in my cricket-language,I have consoled Cinderella for thesnubs of her elder sister.

"Ah, what pleasure to sit up at night,and watch the crimson flamesembracing the wood (or hugging thewood) with both arms at once, and tolisten to all the sounds and to hear thelife of the house!

"Nestling in one's good warm nook,how pleasant to hear Winter, whoweeps and prowls round about the

house outside, all wan and blue-nosedwith cold, trying to smuggle itselfinside some chink in the shutter!"

Of course this does not give us muchabout the insect itself, which remainsinvisible in the poem, just as it reallyremains invisible in the house wherethe voice is heard. Rather does thepoem express the feelings of theperson who hears the cricket.

When we come to the subject ofgrasshoppers, I think that the Frenchpoets have done much better than theEnglish. There are many poems on thefield grasshopper; I scarcely knowwhich to quote first. But I think you

would be pleased with a littlecomposition by the celebrated Frenchpainter, Jules Breton. Like Rossetti hewas both painter and poet; and in botharts he took for his subjects bypreference things from country life.This little poem is entitled "LesCigales." The word "cigales," thoughreally identical with our word "cicala,"seldom means the same thing. Indeedthe French word may mean severaldifferent kinds of insects, and it is onlyby studying the text that we can feelquite sure what sort of insect is meant.

Lorsque dans l'herbe mure ancun epine bouge, Qu'a l'ardeur des rayonscrepite le frement, Que le coquelicot

tombe languissament Sous le faiblefardeau de sa corolle rouge,

Tous les oiseaux de l'air out fait taireleur chants; Les ramiers paresseux, auplus noir des ramures, Somnolents,dans les bois, out cesse leurs murmuresLoin du soleil muet incendiant leschamps.

Dans le ble, cependant, d'intrepidescigales Jetant leurs mille bruits, fanfarede l'ete, Out frenetiquement et sanstreve agite Leurs ailes sur l'airaine deleurs folles cymbales.

Tremoussantes, deboutes sur les longsepis d'or, Virtuoses qui vont s'eteindre

avant l'automne, Elles poussent au delleur hymne monotone Que dansI'ombre des nuits retentisse encore.

Et rien n'arretera leurs cris intarissables;Quand on les chassera de l'avoine etdes bles. Elles emigreront sur lesbuissons brules Qui se meurent de soifdans les deserts de sable.

Sur l'arbuste effeuille, sur les chardonsfletris Qui laissent s'envoler leurblanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte ala forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse,toujours s'exalter dans ses cris.

Jusqu'a ce qu'ouvrant l'aile en lambeauxarrachee, Exaspere, brulant d'un feu

toujours plus pur, Son oeil de bronzefixe et tendu vers l'azur, II expire enchantant sur la tige sechee.

For the word "encolure" we have noEnglish equivalent; it means the line ofthe neck and shoulder sometimes thegeneral appearance of shape of thebody.

"When in the ripening grain field not asingle ear of wheat moves; when in thebeaming heat the corn seems to crackle;when the poppy languishes and bendsdown under the feeble burden of itsscarlet corolla,

"Then all the birds of the air have

hushed their songs; even the indolentdoves, seeking the darkest part of thefoliage in the tree, have become drowsyin the woods, and have ceased theircooing, far from the fields, which thesilent sun is burning.

"Nevertheless, in the wheat, the bravegrasshoppers uttering their thousandsounds, a trumpet flourish of summer,have continued furiously andunceasingly to smite their wings uponthe brass of their wild cymbal.

"Quivering as they stand upon the longgold ears of the grain, master musicianswho must die before the coming ofFall, they sound to heaven their

monotonous hymn, which re-echoeseven in the darkness of the night.

"And nothing will check theirinexhaustible shrilling. When chasedaway from the oats and from the wheat,they will migrate to the scorchedbushes which die of thirst in the wastesof sand.

"Upon the leafless shrubs, upon thedried up thistles, which let their whitehair fall and float away, there thesturdily-built insect can be seen again,filled with enthusiasm, even more andmore excited as he cries,

"Until, at last, opening his wings, now

rent into shreds, exasperated, burningmore and more fiercely in the frenzy ofhis excitement, and with his eyes ofbronze always fixed motionlessly uponthe azure sky, he dies in his song uponthe withered grain."

This is difficult to translate at allsatisfactorily, owing to the multitude ofimages compressed together. But theidea expressed is a fine one the courageof the insect challenging the sun, andonly chanting more and more as theheat and the thirst increase. The poemhas, if you like, the fault ofexaggeration, but the colour and musicare very fine; and even the exaggerationitself has the merit of making the

images more vivid.

It will not be necessary to quoteanother text; we shall scarcely have thetime; but I want to translate to yousomething of another poem upon thesame insect by the modern French poetJean Aicard. In this poem, as in the littlepoem by Gautier, which I quoted toyou, the writer puts his thought in themouth of the insect, so to say that is,makes the insect tell its own story.

"I am the impassive and noble insectthat sings in the summer solstice fromthe dazzling dawn all the day long inthe fragrant pine-wood. And my songis always the same, regular as the equal

course of the season and of the sun. Iam the speech of the hot and beamingsun, and when the reapers, weary ofheaping the sheaves together, lie downin the lukewarm shade, and sleep andpant in the ardour of noonday thenmore than at any other time do I utterfreely and joyously that double-echoingstrophe with which my whole bodyvibrates. And when nothing else movesin all the land round about, I palpitateand loudly sound my little drum.Otherwise the sunlight triumphs; andin the whole landscape nothing is heardbut my cry, like the joy of the lightitself.

"Like a butterfly I take up from the

hearts of the flowers that pure waterwhich the night lets fall into them liketears. I am inspired only by the almightysun. Socrates listened to me; Virgilmade mention of me. I am the insectespecially beloved by the poets and bythe bards. The ardent sun reflectshimself in the globes of my eyes. Myruddy bed, which seems to bepowdered like the surface of fine ripefruit, resembles some exquisite key-board of silver and gold, all quiveringwith music. My four wings, with theirdelicate net-work of nerves, allow thebright down upon my black back to beseen through their transparency. Andlike a star upon the forehead of somedivinely inspired poet, three exquisitely

mounted rubies glitter upon my head."

These are fair examples of the Frenchmanner of treating the interestingsubject of insects in poetry. If youshould ask me whether the Frenchpoets are better than the English, Ishould answer, "In point of feeling,no." The real value of such examples tothe student should be emotional, notdescriptive. I think that the Japanesepoems on insects, though notcomparable in point of mere form withsome of the foreign poems which Ihave quoted, are better in another waythey come nearer to the true essence ofpoetry. For the Japanese poets havetaken the subject of insects chiefly for

the purpose of suggesting humanemotion; and that is certainly the way inwhich such a subject should be used.Remember that this is an age in whichwe are beginning to learn things aboutinsects which could not have been evenimagined fifty years ago, and the morethat we learn about these miraculouscreatures, the more difficult does itbecome for us to write poetically abouttheir lives, or about their possible waysof thinking and feeling. Probably nomortal man will ever be able to imaginehow insects think or feel or hear oreven see. Not only are their sensestotally different from those of animals,but they appear to have a variety ofspecial senses about which we can not

know anything at all. As for theirexistence, it is full of facts so atrociousand so horrible as to realize most ofthe imaginations of old about thetorments of hell. Now, for thesereasons to make an insect speak inpoetry to put one's thoughts, so tospeak, into the mouth of an insect isno longer consistent with poetical goodjudgment. No; we must think ofinsects either in relation to the mysteryof their marvellous lives, or in relationto the emotion which their sweet andmelancholy music makes within ourminds. The impressions produced byhearing the shrilling of crickets at nightor by hearing the storm of cicadae insummer woods those impressions

indeed are admirable subjects forpoetry, and will continue to be for alltime.

When I lectured to you long ago aboutGreek and English poems on insects, Itold you that nearly all the Englishpoems on the subject were quitemodern. I still believe that I was rightin this statement, as a general assertion;but I have found one quaint poemabout a grasshopper, which must havebeen written about the middle of theseventeenth century or, perhaps, a littleearlier. The date of the author's birthand death are respectively 1618 and1658. His name, I think, you arefamiliar with Richard Lovelace, author

of many amatory poems, and of oneespecially famous song, "To Lucasta, onGoing to the Wars" containing thecelebrated stanza

Yet this inconstancy is such As you tooshall adore; I could not love thee, Dear,so much, Loved I not honour more.

Well, as I said, this man wrote onepretty little poem on a grasshopper,which antedates most of the Englishpoems on insects, if not all of them.

THE GRASSHOPPER

O Thou that swing'st upon the wavingear Of some well-filled oaten beard,

Drunk every night with a delicious tearDropt thee from heaven, where nowth'art rear'd!

The joys of earth and air are thineentire, That with thy feet and wingsdost hop and fly; And when thy poppyworks, thou dost retire To thy carvedacorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thouwelcom'st then, Sport'st in the gilt plaitsof his beams, And all these merry daysmak'st merry men Thyself, andmelancholy streams.

A little artificial, this poem written atleast two hundred and fifty years ago;

but it is pretty in spite of its artifice.Some of the conceits are so quaint thatthey must be explained. By the term"oaten beard," the poet means an ear ofoats; and you know that the grain ofthis plant is furnished with very longhair, so that many poets have spokenof the bearded oats. You mayremember in this connectionTennyson's phrase "the bearded barley"in the "Lady of Shalott," andLongfellow's term "bearded grain" inhis famous poem about the ReaperDeath. When a person's beard is verythick, we say in England to-day "a fullbeard," but in the time of Shakespearethey used to say "a well filled beard"hence the phrase in the second line of

the first stanza.

In the third line the term "delicioustear" means dew, which the Greekscalled the tears of the night, andsometimes the tears of the dawn; andthe phrase "drunk with dew" is quiteGreek so we may suspect that theauthor of this poem had been readingthe Greek Anthology. In the third lineof the second stanza the word "poppy"is used for sleep a very common similein Elizabethan times, because from thepoppy flower was extracted the opiatewhich enables sick persons to sleep.The Greek authors spoke of poppysleep. "And when thy poppy works,"means, when the essence of sleep

begins to operate upon you, or moresimply, when you sleep. Perhaps thephrase about the "carved acorn-bed"may puzzle you; it is borrowed fromthe fairy-lore of Shakespeare's time,when fairies were said to sleep in littlebeds carved out of acorn shells; thesimile is used only by way of calling theinsect a fairy creature. In the secondline of the third stanza you may noticethe curious expression about the "giltplaits" of the sun's beams. It was thecustom in those days, as it still is inthese, for young girls to plait their longhair; and the expression "gilt plaits"only means braided or plaited goldenhair. This is perhaps a Greek conceit;for classic poets spoke of the golden

hair of the Sun God as illuminating theworld. I have said that the poem is alittle artificial, but I think you will findit pretty, and even the whimsical similesare "precious" in the best sense.

CHAPTER XII

NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OFFINNISH POETRY IN ENGLISHLITERATURE

The subject of Finnish poetry ought tohave a special interest for the Japanesestudent, if only for the reason thatFinnish poetry comes more closely in

many respects to Japanese poetry thanany other form of Western poetry.Indeed it is supposed that the Finnishrace is more akin to the Tartar races,and therefore probably to the Japanese,than the races of Europe proper.Again, through Longfellow, the valueof Finnish poetry to English poetrywas first suggested, and I think youknow that Longfellow's Indian epic,"The Song of Hiawatha," wasmodelled entirely upon the Finnish"Kalevala."

But a word about the "Kalevala," whichhas a very interesting history. I believeyou know that at the beginning of thenineteenth century, the "Kalevala" was

not known to exist. During the firsthalf of the century, Finnish scholars inthe University of Helsingfors (wherethere is now a great and flourishinguniversity) began to take literary interestin the popular songs of Finland. Foryears the people had been singingextraordinary songs full of a strangebeauty and weirdness quite unlike anyother popular songs of Europe; andfor centuries professional singers hadbeen wandering about the countryteaching these songs to theaccompaniment of a kind of biwacalled Kantela. The scholars of theUniversity began to collect these songsfrom the mouths of the peasants andmusicians at first with great difficulty,

afterwards with much success. Thedifficulty was a very curious one. InFinland the ancient pagan religion hadreally never died; the songs of thepeasants were full of allusions to theold faith and the old gods, and theorthodox church had often attemptedin vain to prevent the singing of thesesongs, because they were not Christian.So the peasants at first thought that thescholars who wanted to copy the songswere government spies or church spieswho wanted evidence to justifypunishments. When the fears of thepeople had been removed and whenthey came to understand that thequestioners were only scholarsinterested in literary beauty, all the

secret stores of songs were generouslyopened, and an immense collection oforal literature was amassed in theUniversity at Helsingfors.

The greatest of the scholars engaged inthe subsequent work of arranging andclassifying was Doctor Loennrot. Whileexamining the manuscript of thesepoems he was struck by the fact that,put together in a particular order, theynaturally made one great continuousstory or epic. Was it possible that theFinnish people had had during all thesecenturies an epic unknown to the worldof literature Many persons would haveridiculed the idea. But Loennrotfollowed up that idea, and after some

years' study he disengaged from all thatmass of song something in the shapeof a wonderful epic, the epic of the"Kalevala." Loennrot was probably,almost certainly, the only one who hadeven understood the idea of an epic ofthis kind. The peasants did not know.They only had the fragments of thewhole; parts of the poem existed inone province, parts in another; noFinnish musician had ever known thewhole. The whole may have been madefirst by Loennrot. At all events he wasthe Homer of the "Kalevala," and itwas fortunate for Finland that hehappened to be himself both a scholarand a poet qualifications seldom unitedin the same person.

What is the "Kalevala" as we nowpossess it It is an epic, but not like anyother epic in the world, for the subjectof it is Magic. We might call it the Epicof Magic. It is the story of how theworld and the heaven and the sun andthe moon and the stars, the elementsand the races of living creatures and allother things were created by magic; alsohow the first inhabitants of the worldlived, and loved, and fought. But thereis another thing to be said in a generalwas about this magic. The magic of"Kalevala" is not like anything elseknown by that name in Europeanliterature. The magic of "Kalevala" isentirely the magic of words. These

ancient people believed in the existenceof words, by the utterance of whichanything might be accomplished.Instead of buying wood and hiringcarpenters, you might build a house byuttering certain magical words. If youhad no horse and wanted to travelrapidly, you could make a horse foryourself out of bits of bark and oldsticks by uttering over them certainmagical words. But this was not all.Beings of intellect, men and women,whole armies of men, in fact, might becreated in a moment by the utteranceof these mystical words. There is thereal subject of the "Kalevala."

I told you that the epic is not like

anything else in European literature andnot like anything else in the world as tothe subject. But this is not the case asregards the verse. The verse is not likeJapanese verse, indeed, but it comesnearer to it than any other Europeanverse does. Of course even in Finnishverse, accents mean a great deal, andaccent means nothing at all in Japaneseverse. But I imagine something verymuch like Finnish verse might bewritten in Japanese, provided that inreciting it a slight stress is thrown oncertain syllables. Of course you knowsomething about Longfellow's"Hiawatha" such lines as these:

And the evening sun descending Set

the clouds on fire with redness, Burnedthe broad sky like a prairie, Left uponthe level water One long track and trailof splendour, Down whose stream, asdown a river, Westward, westwardHiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset,Sailed into the purple vapours, Sailedinto the dusk of evening.

You will observe this is verse of eightsyllables with four trochees to a line.Now it is perhaps as near to Finnishverse as English verse can be made. Butthe Finnish verse is more musical, andit is much more flexible, and the rulesof it can be better carried out than inEnglish. There is much more to bethought about than the placing of four

trochaic feet to a line. Not only mustthe verse be trochaic, it must also bealliterative, and it must also be, to someextent, rhymed verse a matter whichLongfellow did not take intoconsideration. That would havedoubled his difficulty. To make versetrochaic, alliterative and rhymed, is verydifficult indeed that is, to do it well.Only one liberty is allowed; it is notnecessary that the rhyme shall beregular and constant; it is necessaryonly that it should be occasional. Butthe interest of Finnish verse does notend here. I have not yet mentioned themost important law of Finnish poetrythe law of parallelism or repetition.Parallelism is the better word. It means

the repetition of a thought in a slightlymodified way. It is parallelism especiallythat makes so splendid the Englishtranslation of the Bible, and themajesty of such passages in the Bookof Common Prayer as the FuneralService. So that Finnish poetry isanything but very simple. We may nowsum it up thus trochaic verse of eightsyllables, with alliteration and rhyme, acaesura in the same part of every line,and every line reiterated in parallelism.

A little above I mentioned the Englishof the Bible. Long ago I explained whythat English is so beautiful and sostrong. But remember that much of thebest of the Bible, in the original

Hebrew, was not prose but verse, andthat the fine effects have beenproduced by translating the verse intomusical prose. The very effect can beproduced by translating the "Kalevala"into prose. Occasionally the passagesare of surprising beauty, and they arealways of surprising strangeness.

It is in parallelism especially thatFinnish poetry offers a contrast toJapanese, but there is no reasonwhatever why, in the longer poems ofJapanese poetry, parallelism could notbe used. All things have valueaccording to place and time, and thishas value provided that it has a specialeffect on a special occasion. All

through the "Kalevala," all through fivehundred pages, large pages, theparallelism is carried on, and yet onenever gets tired. It is not monotonous.But that is because the subject is so welladapted to this form of poetry. Seehow the poem opens, when the poetbegins to talk about what he is going tosing:

"Anciently my father sang me thesewords in hewing the handle of his ax;anciently my mother taught me thesewords as she turned her spindle. In thattime I was only a child, a little child atthe breast, a useless little being creepingupon the floor at the feet of its nurse,its cheek bedaubed with milk. And

there are other words which I drewfrom the spring of knowledge, which Ifound by the wayside, which I snatchedfrom the heart of the thickets, which Idetached from the branches of thetrees, which I gathered at the edges ofthe pastures when, In my infancy, Iused to go to guard the flocks, in themidst of the honey-streamingmeadows, upon the gold-shining hills,behind the black Murikki, behind thespotted Kimmo, my favourite cows.

"Also the cold sang the songs, the rainsang me verses, the winds of heaven,the waves of the sea made me heartheir poems, the birds instructed mewith their melodies, the long-haired

trees invited me to their concerts. Andall the songs I gathered together, Irolled them up in a skin, I carried themaway in my beautiful little holidaysledge, I deposited them in the bottomof a chest of brass, upon the highestshelf of my treasure house."

Now when a poem opens that way wemay be sure that there are great thingsin it; and some of these great things weshall read about presently. The"Kalevala" is full of wonderful stories,But in the above quotation, I want youto see how multiple it is, and yet it isbeautiful. Now there is a veryinteresting thing yet to tell you aboutthis parallelism. Such poems as those

of the "Kalevala" have always to besung not by one singer but by two. Thetwo singers straddle a bench facing eachother and hold each other's hands.Then they sing alternately, eachchanting one line, rocking back andforward, pulling each other to and froas they sing so that it is like the motionof rowing. One chants a line and pullsbackward, then the other chants thenext line and pulls in the oppositedirection. Not to be able to answer atonce would be considered a greatdisgrace; and every singer has to be ableto improvise as well as to sing. And thatis the signification of the followingverse:

"Put thy hand to my hand place thyfingers between my fingers that we maysing of the things which are."

The most beautiful story in thiswonderful book is the story ofKullervo. It was after reading this storythat Longfellow imagined his story ofthe Strong Man Kwasind. Kullervo isborn so strong that as an infant hebreaks his cradle to pieces, and as a boyhe can not do any work, for all thetools and instruments break in hisgrasp. Therefore he gives a great deal oftrouble at home and has to go out intothe world to seek his fortune. In theworld, of course, he has just the sametrouble; for nobody will employ him

very long. However, the story ofKullervo's feats of strength, thoughinteresting, need not now concern us.The great charm of this composition isin the description of a mother's lovewhich it contains. Kullervo broughtmisfortune everywhere simply by hisstrength and by his great passions atlast committing a terrible crime, causingthe death of his own sister, whom hedoes not recognize. He goes back homein desperation and remorse; and thereeverybody regards him with horror,except only his mother. She alone triesto console him; she alone tells him thatrepentance may bring him rest. He thenproposes to go away and amend hiswrong-doing in solitude. But first he

bids them all goodbye, and the episodeis characteristic.

Kullervo, the son of Kalervo, gets himready to depart; he goes to his oldfather and says: "Farewell now, O mydear father. Wilt thou regret me bitterly,when thou shalt learn that I am deadthat I have disappeared from amongthe multitude of the living that I nolonger am one of the members of thyfamily " The father answered: "No,certainly I will not regret thee when Ishall hear that thou art dead. Anotherson perchance will be born to me a sonwho will grow up better and wiser thanthou."

Kullervo, son of Kalervo, answered:"And I also will not be sorry if I hearthat thou art dead. Without any troubleI can find me such a father as thou astone-hearted father, a clay-mouthedfather, a berry-eyed father, a straw-bearded father, a father whose feet aremade of the roots of the willow tree, afather whose flesh is decaying wood."Why does Kullervo use theseextraordinary terms It is a reference tomagic out of stone and clay and straw,a phantom man can be made, andKullervo means to say that his father isno more to him than a phantom father,an unreal father, a father who has nofatherly feeling. His brothers and sistersall questioned in turn if they will be

sorry to hear that he is dead, make thesame cruel answer; and he replies tothem with the same angry words. But itis very different when he speaks to hismother.

For to his mother he said "Oh mysweet mother, my beautiful nurse, myloved protectress, wilt thou regret mebitterly when thou shalt learn that I amdead, that I have disappeared from themultitude of the living, that I am nolonger one of the members of thyfamily "

The mother made answer: "Thou doesnot comprehend the soul of themother thou canst not understand the

heart of the mother. Assuredly will Iregret thee most bitterly when I shalllearn that thou art dead, that thou hastdisappeared, from among the multitudeof the living, that thou hast ceased tobe one of the members of my family.Floods of tears shall I weep in mychamber. The waves of tears willoverflow on the floor. And upon thestairway lamentably shall I weep; and inthe stable loudly shall I sorrow. Uponthe icy ways the snow shall melt undermy tears under my tears the earth ofthe roads shall melt away; under mytears new meadow grass shall grow up,green sprouting, and through that grasslittle streams shall murmur away." Tothis mother, naturally, Kullervo says no

unkind words. He goes away, able atleast to feel that there is one person inthe world who loves him and oneperson in the world whom he loves.But how much his mother really loveshim he does not yet know; he willknow that later it forms the mostbeautiful part of the poem.

"Kullervo directed his steps once moreto the home of his fathers. Desolate hefound it, desolate and deserted; noperson advanced to salute him, noperson came to press his hand, to givehim welcome.

"He drew near to the hearth: theembers were extinguished. By that he

knew that his mother had ceased to be.

"He drew near to the fire-place, and thestones of the fire-place were cold. Bythat he knew that his father had ceasedto be.

"He turned his eyes upon the floor ofhis home; the planks of the floor werecovered with dirt and rubbish. By thathe knew that his sister had ceased to be.

"To the shore of the sea he went; theboat that used to be there was there nolonger. By that he knew that his brotherhad ceased to be.

"Then he began to weep. For a whole

day he wept, for two whole days hewept; then he cried aloud: 'O mymother, O my sweet mother, what didstthou leave thy son yet in the world Alas!now thou canst hear me no longer; andit is in vain that I stand above thy tomb,that I sob over the place of thineeyebrows, over the place of thy temples;it is in vain that I cry out my griefabove thy dead forehead.'

"The mother of Kullervo awakened inher tomb, and out of the depth of thedust she spake to him: 'I have left thedog Mastif, in order that thou mayst gowith him to the chase. Take thereforethe faithful dog, and go with him intothe wild forest, into the dark

wilderness, even to the dwelling place,far away, of the blue-robed Virgins ofthe wood, and there thou wilt seek thynourishment, thou wilt ask for thegame that is necessary to thy existence.'"

It was believed that there was aparticular forest god, who protected thetrees and the wild things of the wood.The hunter could be successful in thechase only upon condition ofobtaining his favour and permission tohunt. This explains the reference to theabode of the forest god. But Kullervocan not go far; his remorse takes him bythe throat.

"Kullervo, son of Kalervo, took his

faithful dog, and directed his stepstoward the wild forest, toward the darkwilderness. But when he had gone onlya little way he found himself at the veryplace where he had outraged the younggirl, where he had dishonoured thechild of his mother. And all thingsthere mourned for her all things; thesoft grass and the tender foliage, andthe little plants, and the sorrowfulbriars. The grass was no longer green,the briars no longer blossomed, theleaves and the plants hung witheredand dry about the spot where the virginhad been dishonoured, where thebrother had dishonoured his sister.

"Kullervo drew forth his sword, his

sharpedged sword; a long time helooked at it, turning it in his hand, andasking it whether it would feel nopleasure in eating the flesh of the manthus loaded with infamy, in drinkingthe blood of the man thus coveredwith crime.

"And the sword knew the heart of theman: it understood the question of thehero. And it made answer to himsaying: 'Why indeed should I not gladlydevour the flesh of the man who isloaded with infamy Why indeed shouldI not drink with pleasure the blood ofthe man who is burdened with crimeFor well I devoured even the flesh ofthe innocent man, well can I drink even

the blood of the man who is free fromcrime.'

"Then Kullervo fixed his sword in theearth, with the handle downwards andthe point upwards, and he threwhimself upon the point, and the pointpassed through all the depth of hisbreast.

"This was the end of all, this was thecruel destiny of Kullervo, theirrevocable end of the son of theheroes the death of the 'Man ofMisfortune.'"

You can see how very much unlikeother Western poetry this poetry is. The

imagination indeed is of another raceand another time than those to whoseliterary productions we have becomeaccustomed. But there is beauty here;and the strangeness of it indicates apossible literary value by which anyliterature may be more or less enriched.Many are the particular episodes whichrival the beauty and strangeness of theepisode of Kullervo; and I wish thatwe could have time to quote them. ButI can only refer to them. There is, forexample, the legend of the inventionof music, when the hero Wainamoinen(supposed to represent the Spirit of theWind, and the sound of the nameindicates the wailing of the wind)invents the first musical instrument. In

no other literature is there anythingquite like this except in the Greek storyof Orpheus. Even as the trees bentdown their heads to listen to the songof Orpheus, and as the wild beastsbecame tamed at the sound, and as thevery stones of the road followed to thesteps of the musician, so is it in the"Kalevala." But the Finnish Orpheus isthe greater magician. To hear him, thesun and moon come nearer to theearth, the waves of the sea stop short,bending their heads; the cataracts ofthe rivers hang motionless and silent;the fish raise their heads above thewater. And when he plays a sad melody,all nature weeps with him, even thetrees and the stones and the little plants

by the wayside. And his own tears infalling become splendid pearls for thecrowns of kings.

Then very wonderful too is the story ofthe eternal smith, Ilmarinen, whoforged the foundations of the world,forged the mountains, forged the bluesky, so well forging them that nowherecan be seen the marks of the pincer, themarks of the hammer, the heads of thenails. Working in his smithy we see himall grime and black; upon his headthere is one yard deep of iron firing,upon his shoulders there is one fathomdeep of soot the soot of the forge; forhe seldom has time to bathe himself.But when the notion takes him to get

married, for the first time he batheshimself, and dresses himselfhandsomely, then he becomes the mostbeautiful of men. In order to win hiswife he is obliged to perform miraclesof work; yet after he wins her she iskilled by wild beasts. Then he sets towork to forge himself a wife, a wife ofsilver, a bride of gold. Very beautifulshe is, but she has no heart, and she isalways cold, and there is no comfort inher; even all the magic of the world-maker can not give her a warm heart.But the work is so beautiful that hedoes not like to destroy it. So he takesthe wife of silver, the bride of gold, tothe wisest of heroes, Wainamoinen, andoffers her to him as a gift. But the hero

will have no such gift, "Throw her backinto your forged fire, O Ilmarinen," thehero makes answer "What greater folly,what greater sorrow can come uponman than to love a wife of silver, abride of gold "

This pretty story needs no explanation;the moral is simply "Never marry formoney."

Then there is the story ofLemminkainen (this personalitysuggested the Pau-puk-keewis ofLongfellow) the joyous, reckless,handsome, mischievous pleasure-lover,always falling into trouble, because hewill not follow his mother's advice, but

always loved by her in spite of hisfollies. The mother of Lemminkainenis a more wonderful person than themother of Kullervo. Her son has beenmurdered, thrown into a river thedeepest of all rivers, the river of thedead, the river of hell. And his mothergoes out to find him. She asks the treesin the forest to tell her where her son is,and she obliges them to answer. Butthey do not know. She asks the grass,the plants, the animals, the birds; sheobliges even the road upon which hewalked to talk to her, she talks to thestars and the moon and the sun. Onlythe sun knows, because he seeseverything and he answers, "Your son isdead, torn to pieces; he has been

thrown into the river of Tuoni, theriver of hell, the river of the dead." Butthe mother does not despair. Umarinen,the eternal smith, must make for her arake of brass with teeth long enough toreach into the world of the dead, intothe bottom of the abyss; and out ofthe abyss she brings up the parts of thetorn body of her son; she puts themtogether; she sings over them a magicsong; she brings her son to life again,and takes him home. But for a longtime he is not able to remember,because he has been dead. After a longtime he gets back his memory only toget into new mischief out of which hismother must help him afresh.

The names of the three heroes quotedto you represent also the names ofthree great stories, out of the manystories contained in the epics. But inthis epic, as in the Indian epics (I meanthe Sanskrit epic), there is much morethan stories. There are also chapters ofmoral instruction of a very curiouskind chapters about conduct, theconduct of the parents, the conduct ofthe children, the conduct of thehusband, the conduct of the bride. Theinstructions to the bride are containedin the twenty-third Rune; there arealtogether fifty Runes in the book. Thisappears to me likely to interest you, forit is written in relation to a familysystem not at all like the family system

of the rest of Europe. I think you willfind in it not a little that may remindyou of Chinese teaching on the samesubject the conduct of the daughter-in-law. But there are of course manydifferences, and the most pleasingdifference is the tone of greattenderness in which the instructions aregiven. Let us quote some of them:

"O young bride, O my young sister, Omy well beloved and beautiful youngflower, listen to the words which I amgoing to speak to you, harken to thelesson which I am going to teach you.You are going now very far away fromus, O beautiful flower! you are going totake a long journey, O my wild-

strawberry fruit! you are about to flyaway from us, O most delicate down!you are about to leave us forever, Ovelvet tissue far away from thishabitation you must go, far away fromthis beautiful house, to enter anotherhouse, to enter into a strange family.And in that strange house yourposition will be very different. Thereyou will have to walk about with care,to conduct yourself with prudence, toconduct yourself with thoughtfulness.There you will not be able, as in thehouse of your father, as in the dwellingof your mother, to run about whereyou please, to run singing through thevalleys, to warhle out your songs uponthe roadway.

"New habits you must now learn, andforget all the old. You must abandonthe love of your father and contentyourself with the love of your father-in-law; you must bow very low, youmust learn to be generous in the use ofcourteous words. You must give up oldhabits and form new ones; you mustresign the love of your mother andcontent yourself with the love of yourstep-mother: lower must you bow, andyou must learn to be lavish in the useof kindly words.

"New habits you must learn and forgetthe old: you must leave behind you thefriendship of your brother, and content

yourself with the friendship of yourbrother-in-law; you must bow lowerthan you do now; you must learn to belavish of kindly words.

"New habits you must acquire andforget the old ones; you must leavebehind you the friendship of yoursister, and be satisfied with thefriendship of your sister-in-law; youmust learn to make humble reverence,to bow low, to be generous in kindlywords.

"If the old man in the corner be to youeven like a wolf, if the old woman inher corner be to you even as a she-bearin the house, if the brother-in-law be to

you even as a serpent upon thethreshold, if the sister-in-law be to youeven as a sharp nail, none the less youmust show them each and all exactlythe same respect and the sameobedience that you have beenaccustomed to display to your father, todisplay to your mother, under the roofof your childhood home."

Then follows a really terrible list of theduties that she must perform every dayfrom early morning until late at night;to mention them all would take toolong. I quote only a few, enough toshow that the position of a Finnishwife was by no means an easy one.

"So soon as the cock crows in themorning you must be quick to rise; youmust keep your ears awake to hear thecry of the cock. And if there be nocock, or the cock does not crow, thenlet the moon be as a cock for you, letthe constellation of the great Bear tellyou when it is time to rise. Then youmust quickly make the fire, skilfullyremoving the ashes, without sprinklingthem upon the floor. Then quickly goto the stable, clean the stable, take foodto the cattle, feed all the animals on thefarm. For already the cow of yourmother-in-law will be lowing for food;the horse of your father-in-law will bewhinnying; the milch cow of yoursister-in-law will be straining at her

tether; the calf of your brother-in-lawwill be bleating; for all will be waitingfor her whose duty it is to give themhay, whose duty it is to give themfood."

Like instructions are given aboutfeeding the younger animals and thefowls and the little pigs. But she mustnot forget the children of the house atthe same time:

"When you have fed the animals andcleaned the stables come back quickly,quickly as a snow-storm. For in thechamber the little child has awakenedand has begun to cry in his cradle. Hecannot speak, poor little one; he cannot

tell you, if he be hungry or if he becold, or if anything extraordinary hashappened to him, before someone thathe knows has come to care for him,before he hears the voice of his ownmother."

After enumerating and inculcating inthe same manner all the duties of theday, the conduct to be observed towardevery member of the family father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister, and brother-in-law, and the children of them wefind a very minute code of conduct setforth in regard to neighbours andacquaintances. The young wife isespecially warned against gossip,against listening to any stories about

what happens in other people's houses,and against telling anybody what goeson within her own. One piece ofadvice is memorable. If the young wifeis asked whether she is well fed, sheshould reply always that she has thebest of everything which a house canafford, this even if she should havebeen left without any propernourishment for several days. Evidentlythe condition of submission to whichFinnish women were reduced bycustom was something much lessmerciful than has ever been known inEastern countries. Only a very generousnature could bear such discipline; andwe have many glimpses in the poem ofcharming natures of this kind.

You have seen that merely as acollection of wonderful stories theKalevala is of extraordinary interest,that it is also of interest as describingthe social ethics of a little knownpeople finally that it is of interest, ofvery remarkable interest, merely asnatural poetry poetry treating of wildnature, especially rivers and forests andmountains, of the life of the fisher andhunter and wood-cutter. Indeed, so faras this kind of poetry is concerned, the"Kalevala" stands alone among theolder productions of European poetry.You do not find this love of nature inScandinavian poetry, nor in Anglo-Saxon poetry, nor in old German

poetry, much less in the earlier form ofFrench, Italian, or Spanish poetry. Theold Northern poetry comes nearest toit; for in Anglo-Saxon composition wecan find at least wonderful descriptionsof the sea, of stones, of the hard lifeof sailors. But the dominant tone inNorthern poetry is war; it is indescriptions of battle, or in accountsof the death of heroes, that the ancientEnglish or ancient Scandinavian poetsexcelled In Finnish poetry, on the otherhand, there is little or nothing aboutwar. These peaceful people never hadany warlike history; their life wasagricultural for the most part, with littleor no violence except such as theexcitement of hunting and fishing

could produce. Therefore they hadplenty of time to think about nature, tolove nature and to describe it as noother people of the same perioddescribed it. Striking comparisons havebeen made between the Anglo-SaxonRunes, or charm songs, and Finnishsongs of the same kind, which fullyillustrate this difference. Like the Finns,the early English had magical songs tothe gods of nature songs for thehealing of wounds and the banishingof sickness. But these are verycommonplace. Not one of them cancompare as poetry with the verses ofthe Finnish on the same subject. Hereare examples in evidence. The first is aprayer said when offering food to the

Spirit of the forest, that he might aidthe hunter in his hunting.

"Look, O Kuntar, a fat cake, a cake withhoney, that I may propitiate the forest,that I may propitiate the forest, that Imay entice the thick forest for the dayof my hunting, when I go in search ofprey. Accept my salt, O wood, acceptmy porridge, O Tapio, dear king of thewood with the hat of leaves, with thebeard of moss."

And here is a little prayer to thegoddess of water repeated by a sickman taking water as a medicine.

"O pure water, O Lady of the Water,

now do thou make me whole, lovely asbefore! for this beg thee dearly, and inoffering I give thee blood to appeasethee, salt to propitiate thee!"

Or this:

"Goddess of the Sea, mistress ofwaters, Queen of a hundred caves,arouse the scaly flocks, urge on thefishy-crowds forth from their hidingplaces, forth from the muddy shrine,forth from the net-hauling, to the netsof a hundred fishers! Take now thybeauteous shield, shake the goldenwater, with which thou frightenest thefish, and direct them toward the netbeneath the dark level, above the

borders black."

Yet another:

"O vigorous mistress of the wildbeasts, sweet lady of the earth, comewith me, be with me, where I go. Comethou and good luck bring me, to happyfortune help me. Make thou to movethe foliage, the fruit tree to be shaken,and the wild beasts drive thither, thelargest and the smallest, with theirsnouts of every kind, with their pawsof fur of all kinds!"

Now when you look at these littleprayers, when you read them over andobserve how pretty they are, you will

also observe that they make littlepictures in the mind. Can not you seethe fish gliding over the black borderunder the dark level of the water, to thenet of a hundred fishers Can you notsee the "dear king of the wood," withhis hat of leaves and his beard of mossCan you not also see in imagination thewild creatures of the forest with theirsnouts of many shapes, with their furof all kinds But in Anglo-Saxon poetryyou will not find anything like that.Anglo-Saxon Rune songs create noimages. It is this picturesqueness, thisactuality of imagery that is distinctive inFinnish poetry.

In the foregoing part of the lecture I

have chiefly tried to interest you in the"Kalevala." But aside from interestingyou in the book itself as a story, as apoem, I hope to direct your attention toa particular feature in Finnish poetrywhich is most remote from Japanesepoetry. I have spoken of resemblancesas to structure and method; but it isjust in that part of the method mostopposed to Japanese tradition that thegreatest interest lies. I do not mean onlythe use of natural imagery; I meanmuch more the use of parallelism toreinforce that imagery. That is the thingespecially worthy of literary study.Indeed, I think that such study mightgreatly help towards a newdevelopment, a totally new departure in

Japanese verse. In another lecture Ispoke as sincerely as I could of the veryhigh merit in the epigrammatic formsof Japanese poetry. These brief formsof poetry have been developed in Japanto perfection not equalled elsewhere inmodern poetry, perhaps not surpassed,in some respects, even by Greek poetryof the same kind. But there can be nodoubt of this fact, that a nationalliterature requires many other forms ofexpression than the epigrammatic form.Nothing that is good should ever bedespised or cast aside; but because ofits excellences, we should not be blindto the possibility of other excellences.Now Japanese literature has otherforms of poetry forms in which it is

possible to produce poems of immenselength, but the spirit of epigrammaticpoetry has really been controlling eventhese to a great degree.

I mean that so far as I am able tounderstand the subject, the tendency ofall Japanese poetry is to terseexpression. Were it not well therefore toconsider at least the possible result of atotally opposite tendency, expansion offancy, luxuriance of expressionTerseness of expression, pithiness,condensation, are of vast importance inprose, but poetry has other methods,and the "Kalevala" is one of the bestpossible object lessons in the study ofsuch methods, because of the very

simplicity and naturalness with whichthey are followed.

Of course there was parallelism inWestern poetry, and all arts ofrepetition, before anybody knewanything about the "Kalevala." Themost poetical part of Bible English, asI said, whether in the Bible itself or inthe Book of Common Prayer, dependsalmost entirely for its literary effectupon parallelism, because the oldHebrews, like the old Finns, practisedthis art of expression. Loosely andvaguely it was practised also by manypoets almost unconsciously, who hadbeen particularly influenced by thesplendour of the scriptural translation.

It had figured in prose-poetry as earlyas the time of Sir Thomas Browne. Ithad established quite a new idea ofpoetry even in America, where the greatAmerican poet Poe introduced it intohis compositions before Longfellowstudied the "Kalevala." I told you thatthe work of Poe, small as it is, hadinfluenced almost every poet of thegreat epoch, including Tennyson andthe Victorian masters. But the workeven of Poe was rather instinctive thanthe result of any systematic idea. Thesystematic idea was best illustratedwhen the study of the "Kalevala"began.

Let us see how Longfellow used the

suggestion; but remember that he wasonly a beginner, dealing with somethingentirely new that he did not have thestrength of Tennyson nor the magicalgenius of Swinburne to help him. Heworked very simply, and probably veryrapidly. There is a good deal of hissong of "Hiawatha" that is scarcelyworthy of praise, and it is difficult toquote effectively from it, because thecharm of the thing depends chieflyupon its reading as a whole.Nevertheless there are parts which sowell show or imitate the Finnish spirit,that I must try to quote them. Take forinstance the teaching of the littleIndian child by his grandmother suchverses as these, where she talks to the

little boy about the milky way in thesky:

Many things Nokomis taught him Ofthe stars that shine in heaven; Showedhim Ishkoodah, the comet, Ishkoodah,with fiery tresses; Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, Warriors withtheir plumes and war-clubs, Flaring faraway to northward In the frosty nightsof Winter; Showed the broad, whiteroad in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts,the shadows, Running straight acrossthe heavens, Crowded with the ghosts,the shadows.

Or take again the story of the origin ofthe flower commonly called

"Dandelion":

In his life he had one shadow, In hisheart one sorrow had he. Once, as hewas gazing northward, Far away upon aprairie He beheld a maiden standing,Saw a tall and slender maiden All aloneupon a prairie; Brightest green were allher garments And her hair was like thesunshine. Day by day he gazed uponher, Day by day he sighed with passion,Day by day his heart within him Grewmore hot with love and longing For themaid with yellow tresses.

Observe how the repetition served torepresent the growing of the lover'sadmiration. The same repetition can be

used much more effectively indescribing weariness and pain, as In thelines about the winter famine:

Oh, the long and dreary Winter! Oh,the cold and cruel Winter! Ever thicker,thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lakeand river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeperFell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fellthe covering snow, and drifted Throughthe forest, round the village. Hardlyfrom his buried wigwam Could thehunter force a passage; With his mittensand his snow-shoes Vainly walked hethrough the forest, Sought for bird orbeast and found none, Saw no track ofdeer or rabbit, In the snow beheld nofootprints, In the ghastly, gleaming

forest Fell, and could not rise fromweakness, Perished there from cold andhunger. Oh, the famine and the fever!Oh, the wasting of the famine! Oh, theblasting of the fever! Oh, the wailingof the children! Oh, the anguish of thewomen! All the earth was sick andfamished; Hungry was the air aroundthem, Hungry was the sky above them,And the hungry stars in heaven Likethe eyes of wolves glared at them!

This is strong, emotionally strong,though it is not great poetry; but itmakes the emotional effect of greatpoetry by the use of the same meanswhich the Finnish poets used. The bestpart of the poem is the famine chapter,

and the next best is the part entitled"The Ghosts." However, the charm ofa composition can be fully felt only bythose who understand something ofthe American Indian's life and the wildnorthwestern country described. Thatis not the immediate matter to beconsidered, notwithstanding. Thematter to be considered is whether thismethod of using parallelism andrepetition and alliteration can give newand great results. I believe that it can,and that a greater Longfellow wouldhave brought such results into existencelong ago. Of course, the form isprimitive; it does not follow that anEnglish poet or a Japanese poet shouldattempt only a return to primitive

methods of poetry in detail. The detailis of small moment; the spirit iseverything. Parallelism means simplythe wish to present the same idea undera variety of aspects, instead ofattempting to put it forward in oneaspect only. Everything great in the wayof thought, everything beautiful in theway of idea, has many sides. It is merelythe superficial which we can see fromthe front only; the solid can beperceived from every possible direction,and changes shape according to thedirection looked at.

The great master of English verse,Swinburne is also a poet much given toparallelism; for he has found it of

incomparable use to him in managingnew forms of verse. He uses it in animmense variety of ways waysimpossible to Japanese poets or toFinnish poets; and the splendour ofthe results can not be imitated inanother language. But his case isinteresting. The most primitive methodsof Finnish poetry, and of ancientpoetry in general, coming into hishands, are reproduced into music. Ipropose to make a few quotations, inillustration. Here are some lines from"Atalanta in Calydon"; they are onlyparallelisms, but how magnificent theyare!

When thou dravest the men Of the

chosen of Thrace, None turned himagain, Nor endured he thy face Closeround with the blush of the battle,with light from a terrible place.

Look again at the following lines from"A Song in Time of Revolution":

There is none of them all that is whole;their lips gape open for breath; Theyare clothed with sickness of soul, andthe shape of the shadow of death.

The wind is thwart in their feet; it is fullof the shouting of mirth; As oneshaketh the sides of a sheet, so itshaketh the ends of the earth.

The sword, the sword is made keen; theiron has opened its mouth; The corn isred that was green; it is bound for thesheaves of the south.

The sound of a word was shed, thesound of the wind as a breath, In theears of the souls that were dead, in thedust of the deepness of death.

Where the face of the moon is taken,the ways of the stars undone, The lightof the whole sky shaken, the light ofthe face of the sun.

* * * * *

Where the sword was covered and

hidden, and dust had grown in its side,A word came forth which was bidden,the crying of one that cried:

The sides of the two-edged sword shallbe bare, and its mouth shall be red, Forthe breath of the face of the Lord thatis felt in the bones of the dead.

All this is indeed very grand comparedwith anything in the "Kalevala" or inLongfellow's rendering; but do you notsee that the grandeur is also thegrandeur of parallelism Here is proofof what a master can do with a methodolder than Western civilization. Butwhat is the inference Is it not that theold primitive poetry contains

something of eternal value, a valueranging from the lowest even to thehighest, a value that can lend beautyequally to the song of a little child or tothe thunder of the grandest epic verse

CHAPTER XIII

THE MOST BEAUTIFULROMANCE OF THE MIDDLEAGES

The value of romantic literature, whichhas been, so far as the Middle Ages areconcerned, unjustly depreciated, doesnot depend upon beauty of words or

beauty of fact. To-day the immensedebt of modern literature to theliterature of the Middle Ages is betterunderstood; and we are generallybeginning to recognize what we owe tothe imagination of the Middle Ages, inspite of the ignorance, the superstitionand the cruelty of that time. If the evilsof the Middle Ages had really beenuniversal, those ages could not haveimparted to us lessons of beauty andlessons of nobility having nothing todo with literary form in themselves, yetprofoundly affecting modern poetry ofthe highest class. No; there was verymuch of moral goodness as well as ofmoral badness in the Middle Ages; andwhat was good happened to be very

good indeed. Commonly it used to besaid (though I do not think any goodcritic would say it now) that the fervidfaith of the time made the moralbeauty. Unless we modify this statementa great deal, we can not now accept it atall. There was indeed a religious beauty,particularly mediaeval, but it was notthat which created the romance of theperiod. Indeed, that romantic literaturewas something of a reaction against thereligious restraint upon imagination.But if we mean by mediaeval faith onlythat which is very much older than anyEuropean civilization, and which doesnot belong to the West any more thanto the East the profound belief inhuman moral experience then I think

that the statement is true enough. At notime in European history were menmore sincere believers in the value ofcertain virtues than during the MiddleAges and the very best of the romancesare just those romances which illustratethat belief, though not written for amerely ethical purpose.

But I can not better illustrate what Imean than by telling a story, which hasnothing to do with Europe, or theMiddle Ages, or any particular form ofreligious belief. It is not a Christianstory at all; and it could not be told youexactly as written, for there are somevery curious pages in it. But it is a goodexample of the worth that may lie in a

mere product of imagination.

There was a king once, in Persia orArabia, who, at the time of hisaccession to power, discovered awonderful subterranean hall under thegarden of his palace. In one chamberof that hall stood six marvellousstatues of young girls, each statue beingmade out of a single diamond. Thebeauty as well as the cost of the workwas beyond imagination. But in themidst of the statues, which stood in acircle, there was an empty pedestal, andon that pedestal was a precious casketcontaining a letter from the dead fatherof the king. The letter said:

"O my son, though these statues ofgirls are indeed beyond all praise, thereis yet a seventh statue incomparablymore precious and beautiful which Icould not obtain before I died. It isnow your duty, O my son, to obtainthat statue, that it may be placed uponthe seventh pedestal. Go, therefore, andask my favourite slave, who is still alive,how you are to obtain it." Then theyoung king went in all haste to that oldslave, who had been his father'sconfidant, and showed him the letter.And the old man said, "Even now, Omaster, I will go with you to find thatstatue. But it is in one of the threeislands in which the genii dwell; and itis necessary, above all things, that you

do not fear, and that you obey myinstructions in all things. Also,remember that if you make a promiseto the Spirits of that land, the promisemust be kept."

And they proceeded upon their journeythrough a great wilderness, in which"nothing existed but grass and thepresence of God." I can not try now totell you about the wonderful things thathappened to them, nor about themarvellous boat, rowed by a boatmanhaving upon his shoulders the head ofan elephant. Suffice it to say that at lastthey reached the palace of the king ofthe Spirits; and the king came to meetthem in the form of a beautiful old

man with a long white beard. And hesaid to the young king, "My son, I willgladly help you, as I helped your father;and I will give you that seventh statueof diamond which you desire. But Imust ask for a gift in return. You mustbring to me here a young girl of aboutsixteen years old; and she must be veryintelligent; and she must be a truemaiden, not only as to her body, but asto her soul, and heart, and all herthoughts." The young king thought thatwas a very easy thing to find, but theking of the Spirits assured him that itwas not, and further told him this, "Myson, no mortal man is wise enough toknow by his own wisdom the puritythat is in the heart of a young girl. Only

by the help of this magical mirror,which I now lend you, will you be ableto know. Look at the reflection of anymaiden in this mirror, and then, if herheart is perfectly good and pure, themirror will remain bright. But if therebe any fault in her, the mirror will growdim. Go now, and do my bidding."

You can imagine, of course, whathappened next. Returning to hiskingdom, the young king had broughtbefore him many beautiful girls, thedaughters of the noblest and highest inall the cities of the land. But in no casedid the mirror remain perfectly clearwhen the ghostly test was applied. Forthree years in vain the king sought; then

in despair he for the first time turnedhis attention to the common people.And there came before him on the veryfirst day a rude man of the desert, whosaid, "I know of just such a girl as youwant." Then he went forth andpresently returned with a simple girlfrom the desert, who had been broughtup in the care of her father only, andhad lived with no other companionthan the members of her own familyand the camels and horses of theencampment. And as she stood in herpoor dress before the king, he saw thatshe was much more beautiful than anyone whom he had seen before; and hequestioned her, only to find that shewas very intelligent; and she was not at

all afraid or ashamed of standingbefore the king, but looked about herwith large wondering eyes, like the eyesof a child; and whoever met thatinnocent gaze, felt a great joy in hisheart, and could not tell why. Andwhen the king had the mirror brought,and the reflection of the girl wasthrown upon it, the mirror becamemuch brighter than before, and shonelike a great moon.

There was the maid whom the Spirit-king wished for. The king easilyobtained her from her parents; but hedid not tell her what he intended to dowith her. Now it was his duty to giveher to the Spirits; but there was a

condition he found very hard to fulfil.By the terms of his promise he was notallowed to kiss her, to caress her, oreven to see her, except veiled after themanner of the country. Only by themirror had he been able to know howfair she was. And the voyage was long;and on the way, the girl, who thoughtshe was going to be this king's bride,became sincerely attached to him, afterthe manner of a child with a brother;and he also in his heart became muchattached to her. But it was his duty togive her up. At last they reached thepalace of the Spirit-king; and the figureof the old man came forth and said,"My son, you have done well and keptyour promise. This maiden is all that I

could have wished for; and I accept her.Now when you go back to your palace,you will find on the seventh pedestalthe statue of the diamond which yourfather desired you to obtain." And,with these words, the Spirit-kingvanished, taking with him the girl, whouttered a great and piercing cry toheaven at having been thus deceived.Very sorrowfully the young king thenbegan his journey home. All along theway he kept regretting that girl, andregretting the cruelty which he hadpractised in deceiving her and herparents. And he began to say tohimself, "Accursed be the gift of theking of the Spirits! Of what worth tome is a woman of diamond any more

than a woman of stone What is there inall the world half so beautiful or halfso precious as a living girl such as Idiscovered Fool that I was to give herup for the sake of a statue!" But hetried to console himself byremembering that he had obeyed hisdead father's wish.

Still, he could not console himself.Reaching his palace, he went to hissecret chamber to weep alone, and hewept night and day, in spite of theefforts of his ministers to comfort him.But at last one of them said, "O myking, in the hall beneath your gardenthere has appeared a wonderful statueupon the seventh pedestal; perchance if

you go to see it, your heart will becomemore joyful."

Then with great reluctance the kingproperly dressed himself, and went tothe subterranean hall.

There indeed was the statue, the gift ofthe Spirit-king; and very beautiful itwas. But it was not made of diamond,and it looked so strangely like the girlwhom he had lost, that the king's heartleapt in his breast for astonishment. Heput out his hand and touched thestatue, and found it warm with life andyouth. And a sweet voice said to him,"Yes, it is really I have you forgotten "

Thus she was given back to him; andthe Spirit-king came to their wedding,and thus addressed the bridegroom, "Omy son, for your dead father's sake Idid this thing. For it was meant to teachyou that the worth of a really pure andperfect woman is more than the priceof any diamond or any treasure that theearth can yield."

Now you can see at once the beauty ofthis story; and the moral of it is exactlythe same as that of the famous verse, inthe Book of Proverbs, "Who can find avirtuous woman for her price is farabove rubies." But it is simply a storyfrom the "Arabian Nights" one ofthose stories which you will not find in

the ordinary European translations,because it is written in such a way thatno English translator except Burtonwould have dared to translate it quiteliterally. The obscenity of parts of theoriginal does not really detract in theleast from the beauty and tenderness ofthe motive of the story; and we mustremember that what we call moral orimmoral in style depends very muchupon the fashion of an age and time.

Now it is exactly the same kind ofmoral charm that distinguishes the bestof the old English romances a charmwhich has nothing to do with the style,but everything to do with the feelingand suggestion of the composition.

But in some of the old romances, thestyle too has a very great charm ofquaintness and simplicity and sinceritynot to be imitated to-day. In this respectthe older French romances, from whichthe English made their renderings, aremuch the best. And the best of all issaid to be "Amis and Amile," which theEnglish rendered as "Amicus andAmelius." Something of the storyought to interest you.

The whole subject of this romance isthe virtue of friendship, though this ofcourse involves a number of othervirtues quite as distinguished. Amis andAmile, that is to say Amicus andAmelius, are two young knights who at

the beginning of their career becomeprofoundly attached to each other. Notcontent with the duties of this naturalaffection, they imposed uponthemselves all the duties which chivalryalso attached to the office of friend.The romance tells of how theytriumphed over every conceivable testto which their friendship was subjected.Often and often the witchcraft ofwoman worked to separate them, butcould not. Both married, yet aftermarriage their friendship was just asstrong as before. Each has to fightmany times on account of the other,and suffer all things which it is mosthard for a proud and brave man tobear. But everything is suffered

cheerfully, and the friends are such trueknights that, in all their trials, neitherdoes anything wrong, or commits theslightest fault against truth until acertain sad day. On that day it is theduty of Amis to fight in a trial by battle.But he is sick, and can not fight; then tosave his honour his friend Amile putson the armour and helmet of Amis,and so pretending to be Amis, goes tothe meeting place, and wins the fightgloriously. But this was an act ofuntruthfulness; he had gone into battleunder a false name, and to do anythingfalse even for a good motive is bad. Soheaven punishes him by afflicting himwith the horrible disease of leprosy.

The conditions of leprosy in theMiddle Ages were of a peculiar kind.The disease seems to have beenintroduced into Europe from Asiaperhaps by the Crusaders. Micheletsuggests that it may have resulted fromthe European want of cleanliness,brought about by ascetic teachings forthe old Greek and Roman public bath-houses were held in horror by themediaeval Church. But this is not at allcertain. What is certain is that in thethirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies leprosy became very prevalent.The disease was not then at allunderstood; it was supposed to beextremely contagious, and the manafflicted by it was immediately

separated from society, and not allowedto live in any community under suchconditions as could bring him intocontact with other inhabitants. His wifeor children could accompany him onlyon the terrible condition of beingconsidered lepers. Every leper wore akind of monk's dress, with a hoodcovering the face; and he had to carry abell and ring it constantly to give noticeof his approach. Special leper-houseswere built near every town, where suchunfortunates might obtainaccommodation. They were allowed tobeg, but it was considered dangerous togo very near them, so that in most casesalms or food would be thrown to themonly, instead of being put into their

hands.

Now when the victim of leprosy in thisromance is first afflicted by the disease,he happens to be far away from hisgood friend. And none of his ownfamily is willing to help him; he isregarded with superstitious as well aswith physical horror. There is nothingleft for him to do but to yield up hisknighthood and his welfare and hisfamily, to put on the leper's robe, and togo begging along the roads, carrying aleper's bell. And this he does. For long,long months he goes begging fromtown to town, till at last, by merechance, he finds his way to the gate ofthe great castle where his good friend is

living now a great prince, and marriedto the daughter of the king. And heasks at the castle gate for charity and forfood.

Now the porter at the gate observesthat the leper has a very beautiful cup,exactly resembling a drinking cupbelonging to his master, and he thinksit his duty to tell these things to thelord of the castle. And the lord of thecastle remembers that very long ago heand his friend each had a cup of thiskind, given to them by the bishop ofRome. So, hearing the porter's story, heknew that the leper at the gate was thefriend who "had delivered him fromdeath, and won for him the daughter

of the King of France to be his wife."Here I had better quote from theFrench version of the story, in whichthe names of the friends are changed,but without changing the beauty of thetale itself:

"And straightway he fell upon him, andbegan to weep greatly, and kissed him.And when his wife heard that, she ranout with her hair in disarray, weepingand distressed exceedingly for sheremembered that it was he who hadslain the false Ardres. And thereuponthey placed him in a fair bed, and saidto him, 'Abide with us until God's willbe accomplished in thee, for all that wehave is at thy service.' So he abode with

them."

You must understand, by the allusionto "God's will," that leprosy was in theMiddle Ages really considered to be apunishment from heaven so that intaking a leper into his castle, the goodfriend was not only offending againstthe law of the land, but risking celestialpunishment as well, according to thenotions of that age. His charity,therefore, was true charity indeed, andhis friendship without fear. But it wasgoing to be put to a test more terriblethan any ever endured before. Tocomprehend what followed, you mustknow that there was one horriblesuperstition of the Middle Ages the

belief that by bathing in human bloodthe disease of leprosy might be cured.Murders were often committed underthe influence of that superstition. Ibelieve you will remember that the"Golden Legend" of Longfellow isfounded upon a mediaeval story inwhich a young girl voluntarily offers upher life in order that her blood maycure the leprosy of her king. In thepresent romance there is much moretragedy. One night while sleeping in hisfriend's castle, the leper was awakenedby an angel from God Raphael whosaid to him:

"I am Raphael, the angel of the Lord,and I am come to tell thee how thou

mayst be healed. Thou shalt bid Amilethy comrade that he slay his twochildren and wash thee in their blood,and so thy body shall be made whole."And Amis said to him, "Let not thisthing be, that my comrade shouldbecome a murderer for my sake." Butthe angel said, "It is convenient that hedo this." And thereupon the angeldeparted.

The phrase, "it is convenient," must beunderstood as meaning, "it is ordered."For the mediaeval lord used such gentleexpressions when issuing hiscommands; and the angel talked like afeudal messenger. But in spite of thecommand, the sick man does not tell

his friend about the angel's visit, untilAmile, who has overheard the voice,forces him to acknowledge whom hehad been talking with during the night.And the emotion of the lord may beimagined, though he utters it only inthe following gentle words "I wouldhave given to thee my man servants andmy maid servants and all my goods andthou feignest that an angel hath spokento thee that I should slay my twochildren. But I conjure thee by the faithwhich there is between me and theeand by our comradeship, and by thebaptism we received together, that thoutell me whether it was man or angel saidthat to thee."

Amis declares that it was really an angel,and Amile never thinks of doubting hisfriend's word. It would be a pity to tellyou the sequel in my own words; let mequote again from the text, translated byWalter Pater. I think you will find itbeautiful and touching:

"Then Amile began to weep in secret,and thought within himself, 'If thisman was ready to die before the Kingfor me, shall I not for him slay mychildren Shall I not keep faith with himwho was faithful to me even unto death' And Amile tarried no longer, butdeparted to the chamber of his wife,and bade her go to hear the SacredOffice. And he took a sword, and went

to the bed where the children werelying, and found them asleep. And helay down over them and began to weepbitterly and said, 'Has any man yetheard of a father who of his own willslew his children Alas, my children! Iam no longer your father, but yourcruel murderer.'

"And the children awoke at the tears oftheir father, which fell upon them; andthey looked up into his face and beganto laugh. And as they were of ageabout three years, he said, 'Yourlaughing will be turned into tears, foryour innocent blood must now beshed'; and therewith he cut off theirheads. Then he laid them back in the

bed, and put the heads upon thebodies, and covered them as thoughthey slept; and with the blood which hehad taken he washed his comrade, andsaid, 'Lord Jesus Christ! who hastcommanded men to keep faith onearth, and didst heal the leper by Thyword! cleanse now my comrade, forwhose love I have shed the blood ofmy children.'" And of course the leperis immediately and completely cured.But the mother did not know anythingabout the killing of the children; wehave to hear something about her sharein the tragedy. Let me again quote, thistime giving the real and very beautifulconclusion

"Now neither the father nor the motherhad yet entered where the childrenwere, but the father sighed heavilybecause they were dead, and the motherasked for them, that they might rejoicetogether; but Amile said, 'Dame! let thechildren sleep.' And it was already thehour of Tierce. And going in alone tothe children to weep over them, hefound them at play in the bed; only, inthe place of the sword-cuts about theirthroats was, as it were, a thread ofcrimson. And he took them in his armsand carried them to his wife and said,'Rejoice greatly! For thy children whomI had slain by the commandment ofthe angel, are alive, and by their bloodis Amis healed.'"

I think you will all see how fine a storythis is, and feel the emotional force ofthe grand moral idea behind it. There isnothing more to tell you, except thecurious fact that during the MiddleAges, when it was believed that thestory was really true, Amis and Amileor Amicus and Amelius were actuallyconsidered by the Church as saints, andpeople used to pray to them. Whenanybody was anxious for his friend, orfeared that he might lose the love of hisfriend, or was afraid that he might nothave strength to perform his duty asfriend then he would go to church toimplore help from the good saintsAmicus and Amelius. But of course it

was all a mistake a mistake which lasteduntil the end of the seventeenthcentury! Then somebody called theattention of the Church to theunmistakable fact that Amicus andAmelius were merely inventions ofsome mediaeval romancer. Then theChurch made investigation, and greatlyshocked, withdrew from the list of itssaints those long-loved names ofAmicus and Amelius a reform in whichI cannot help thinking the Churchmade a very serious mistake. Whatmatter whether those shadowy figuresrepresented original human lives oronly human dreams They werebeautiful, and belief in them made menthink beautiful thoughts, and the

imagined help from them hadcomforted many thousands of hearts.It would have been better to have leftthem alone; for that matter, how manyof the existent lives of saints are reallytrue Nevertheless the friends are notdead, though expelled from the heavenof the Church. They still live inromance; and everybody who readsabout them feels a little better for theiracquaintance.

What I read to you was from theFrench version that is much the morebeautiful of the two. You will findsome extracts from the English versionin the pages of Ten Brink. But as thatgreat German scholar pointed out, the

English story is much rougher than theFrench. For example, in the Englishstory, the knight rushes out of hiscastle to beat the leper at the gate, andto accuse him of having stolen the cup.And he does beat him ferociously, andabuses him with very violent terms. Infact, the English writer reflected toomuch of mediaeval English character,in trying to cover, or to improve upon,the French story, which was the first. Inthe French story all is knightly smooth,refined as well as simple and strong.And where did the mediaevalimagination get its material for the storyPartly, perhaps, from the story ofJoseph in the Bible, partly from thestory of Abraham; but the scriptural

material is so admirably worked overthat the whole thing appears deliciouslyoriginal. That was the great art of theMiddle Ages to make old, old thingsquite new by the magic of spiritualimagination. Men then lived in a worldof dreams. And that world still attractsus, for the simple reason that happinesschiefly consists in dreams. Exact sciencemay help us a great deal no doubt, butmathematics do not make us anyhappier. Dreams do, if we can believethem. The Middle Ages could believethem; we, at the best, can only try.

CHAPTER XIV

"IONICA"

I am going now to talk about a veryrare kind of poetry in a very rare littlebook, like fine wine in a small andprecious flask. The author never put hisname to the book indeed for manyyears it was not known who wrote thevolume. We now know that the authorwas a school teacher called WilliamJohnson who, later in life, coming intoa small fortune, changed his name toWilliam Cory. He was born sometimeabout 1823, and died in 1892. He was,I believe, an Oxford man and wasassistant master of Eton College for anumber of years. Judging from his

poems, he must have found pleasure inhis profession as well as pain. There is astrange sadness nearly always, but thissadness is mixed with expressions oflove for the educational establishmentwhich he directed, and for the studentswhose minds he helped to form. Hemust have been otherwise a very shyman. Scarcely anything seems to beknown about him after his departurefrom educational circles, althougheverybody of taste now knows hispoems. I wish to speak of thembecause I think that literary graduatesof this university ought to be at leastfamiliar with the name "Ionica." At allevents you should know somethingabout the man and about the best of

his poems. If you should ask why solittle has yet been said about him inbooks on English literature, I wouldanswer that in the first place he was avery small poet writing in the time ofgiants, having for competitorsTennyson, Browning and others. Hecould scarcely make his small pipeheard in the thunder of those greatorgan tones. In the second place hisverses were never written to please thepublic at all. They were written only forfine scholars, and even the titles ofmany of them cannot be explained by aperson devoid of some Greek culture.So the little book, which appeared quiteearly in the Victorian Age, was soonforgotten. Being forgotten it ran out of

print and disappeared. Then somebodyremembered that it had existed. I havetold you that it was like the tone of alittle pipe or flute as compared with theorgan music of the larger poets. But thelittle pipe happened to be a Greek pipethe melody was very sweet and verystrange and old, and people who hadheard it once soon wanted to hear itagain. But they could not get it. Copiesof the first edition fetchedextraordinary sums. Some few years agoa new edition appeared, but this too isnow out of print and is fetching fancyprices. However, you must not expectanything too wonderful from this wayof introducing the subject. The factsonly show that the poems are liked by

persons of refinement and wealth. Ihope to make you like some of them,but the difficulties of so doing areconsiderable, because of the extremelyEnglish character of some pieces andthe extremely Greek tone of others.There is also some uneven work. Thepoet is not in all cases successful.Sometimes he tried to write societyverse, and his society verse must beconsidered a failure. The best pieces arehis Greek pieces and somecompositions on love subjects of amost delicate and bewitching kind.

Of course the very name "Ionica"suggests Greek work, a collection ofpieces in Ionic style. But you must not

think that this means only repetitionsof ancient subjects. This author bringsthe Greek feeling back again into thevery heart of English life sometimes, ormakes an English fact illustrate a Greekfable. Some delightful translations fromthe Greek there are, but less than half adozen in all.

I scarcely know how to begin whatpiece to quote first. But perhaps thelittle fancy called "Mimnermus inChurch" is the best known, and the onewhich will best serve to introduce us tothe character of Cory. Before quotingit, however, I must explain the titlebriefly. Mimnermus was an old Greekphilosopher and poet who thought that

all things in the world are temporary,that all hope of a future life is vain, thatthere is nothing worth existing forexcept love, and that without affectionone were better dead. There are, nodoubt, various modern thinkers whotell you much the same thing, and thislittle poem exhibits such modernfeeling in a Greek dress. I mean that wehave here a picture of a young man, ayoung English scholar, listening inchurch to Christian teaching, butanswering that teaching with thethought of the old Greeks. There is ofcourse one slight difference; themodern conception of love is perhapsa little wider in range than that of theold Greeks. There is more of the ideal

in it.

MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH

You promise heavens free from strife,Pure truth, and perfect change of will;But sweet, sweet is this human life, Sosweet, I fain would breathe it still; Yourchilly stars I can forego, This warmkind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here, Onegreat reality above: Back from that voidI shrink in fear And child-like hidemyself in love; Show me what angelsfeel. Till then I cling, a mere weak man,to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires Fromfaltering lips and fitful veins To sexlesssouls, ideal choirs, Unwearied voices,wordless strains; My mind with fonderwelcome owns One dear dead friend'sremembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give Tothat which cannot pass away; Allbeauteous things for which we live Bylaws of time and space decay. But oh,the very reason why I clasp them, isbecause they die.

The preacher has been talking to hiscongregation about the joys of Heaven.There, he says, there will be noquarrelling, no contest, no falsehood,

and all evil dispositions will be entirelychanged to good. The poet answers,"This world and this life are full ofbeauty and of joy for me. I do not wantto die, I want to live. I do not wish togo to that cold region of stars aboutwhich you teach. I only know thisworld and I find in it warm hearts andprecious affection. You say that thisworld is a phantom, unsubstantial,unreal, and that the only reality isabove, in Heaven. To me that Heavenappears but as an awful emptiness. Ishrink from it in terror, and like a childseek for consolation in human love. Itis no use to talk to me about angelsuntil you can prove to me that angelscan feel happier than men. I prefer to

remain with human beings. You saythat I ought to wish for higher thingsthan this world can give, that hereminds are unsteady and weak, heartsfickle and selfish, and you talk of soulswithout sex, imaginary concerts ofperfect music, tireless singing inHeaven, and the pleasure ofconversation without speech. But allthe happiness that we know is receivedfrom our fellow beings. I remember thevoice of one dead friend with deeperlove and pleasure than any images ofHeaven could ever excite in my mind."

The last stanza needs no paraphrasing,but it deserves some comment, for it isthe expression of one great difference

between the old Greek feeling in regardto life and death, and all modernreligious feeling on the same subject.You can read through hundreds ofbeautiful inscriptions which wereplaced over the Greek tombs. They arecontained in the Greek Anthology. Youwill find there almost nothing abouthope of a future life, or about Heaven.They are not for the most part sad; theyare actually joyous in many cases. Youwould say that the Greek mind thoughtthus about death "I have had my shareof the beauty and the love of thisworld, and I am grateful for thisenjoyment, and now it is time to go tosleep." There is actually an inscriptionto the effect, "I have supped well of the

banquet of life." The Eastern religions,including Christianity, taught thatbecause everything in the world isuncertain, impermanent, perishable,therefore we ought not to allow ourminds to love worldly things. But theGreek mind, as expressed by the oldepigraphy in the cemeteries, not lessthan by the teaching of Mimnermus,took exactly the opposite view. "Ochildren of men, it is because beautyand pleasure and love and light can lastonly for a little while, it is exactlybecause of this that you should lovethem. Why refuse to enjoy the presentbecause it can not last for ever " And ata much later day the Persian poet Omartook, you will remember, precisely the

same view. You need not think that itwould be wise to accept such teachingfor a rule of life, but it has a certainvalue as a balance to the other extremeview, that we should make ourselvesmiserable in this world with the idea ofbeing rewarded in another, concerningwhich we have no positive knowledge.The lines with which the poemconcludes at least deserve to be thoughtabout

But oh, the very reason why I claspthem, is because they die.

We shall later on take some of thepurely Greek work of Cory for study,but I want now to interest you in the

more modern part of it. The charm ofthe following passage you will betterfeel by remembering that the writer wasthen a schoolmaster at Eton, and thatthe verses particularly express the lovewhich he felt for his students a love themore profound, perhaps, because thecircumstances of the teacher's positionobliged him to appear cold and severe,obliged him to suppress naturalimpulses of affection and generosity.The discipline of the masters inEnglish public schools is much moresevere than the discipline to which thestudents are subjected. The boys enjoy agreat deal of liberty. The masters maybe said to have none. Yet there are menso constituted that they learn to greatly

love the profession. The title of thispoem is "Reparabo," which means "Iwill atone."

The world will rob me of my friends,For time with her conspires; But theyshall both, to make amends, Relight myslumbering fires.

For while my comrades pass away Tobow and smirk and gloze, Come others,for as short a stay; And dear are these asthose.

And who was this they ask; and thenThe loved and lost I praise: "Like youthey frolicked; they are men; Bless yemy later days."

Why fret The hawks I trained areflown; 'Twas nature bade them range; Icould not keep their wings half-grown,I could not bar the change.

With lattice opened wide I stand Towatch their eager flight; With brokenjesses in my hand I muse on theirdelight.

And oh! if one with sullied plumeShould droop in mid career, My lovemakes signals, "There is room, Obleeding wanderer, here."

This comparison of the educator to afalconer, and of the students to young

hawks eager to break their jesses seemsto an Englishman particularly happy inreference to Eton, from which so manyyouths pass into the ranks of the armyand navy. The line about bowing,smirking and glozing, refers to thecomparative insincerity of the highersociety into which so many of thescholars must eventually pass."Smirking" suggests insincere smiles,"glozing" implies tolerating or lightlypassing over faults or wrongs or seriousmatters that should not be consideredlightly. Society is essentially insincereand artificial in all countries, butespecially so in England. The old Etonmaster thinks, however, that he knowsthe moral character of the boys, the

strong principles which make itsfoundation, and he trusts that they willbe able in a general way to do onlywhat is right, in spite of conventionsand humbug.

As I told you before, we know verylittle about the personal life of Cory,who must have been a very reservedman; but a poet puts his heart into hisverses as a general rule, and there aremany little poems in this book thatsuggest to us an unhappy love episode.These are extremely pretty andtouching, the writer in most casesconfessing himself unworthy of theperson who charmed him; but thefinest thing of the kind is a

composition which he suggestivelyentitled "A Fable" that is to say, a fablein the Greek sense, an emblem orsymbol of truth.

An eager girl, whose father buys Someruined thane's forsaken hall, Exploresthe new domain and tries Before therest to view it all.

I think you have often noted the facthere related; when a family moves to anew house, it is the child, or theyoungest daughter, who is the first toexplore all the secrets of the newresidence, and whose young eyesdiscover things which the older folkshad not noticed.

Alone she lifts the latch, and glides,Through many a sadly curtained room,As daylight through the doorway slidesAnd struggles with the muffled gloom.

With mimicries of dance she wakesThe lordly gallery's silent floor, Andclimbing up on tiptoe, makes The old-world mirror smile once more.

With tankards dry she chills her lips,With yellowing laces veils the head,And leaps in pride of ownership Uponthe faded marriage bed.

A harp in some dark nook she seesLong left a prey to heat and frost, She

smites it; can such tinklings please Isnot all worth, all beauty, lost

Ah, who'd have thought suchsweetness clung To loose neglectedstrings like those They answered towhate'er was sung, And sounded as alady chose.

Her pitying finger hurried by Eachvacant space, each slackened chord;Nor would her wayward zeal let dieThe music-spirit she restored.

The fashion quaint, the timeworn flaws,The narrow range, the doubtful tone,All was excused awhile, because Itseemed a creature of her own.

Perfection tires; the new in old, Themended wrecks that need her skill,Amuse her. If the truth be told, Sheloves the triumph of her will.

With this, she dares herself persuade,She'll be for many a month content,Quite sure no duchess ever playedUpon a sweeter instrument.

And thus in sooth she can beguileGirlhood's romantic hours, but soonShe yields to taste and mood and style,A siren of the gay saloon.

And wonders how she once could likeThose drooping wires, those failing

notes, And leaves her toy for bats tostrike Amongst the cobwebs and themotes.

But enter in, thou freezing wind, Andsnap the harp-strings, one by one; Itwas a maiden blithe and kind: They felther touch; their task is done.

In this charming little study we knowthat the harp described is not a harp; itis the loving heart of an old man, atleast of a man beyond the usual age oflovers. He has described and perhapsadored some beautiful person whoseemed to care for him, and who playedupon his heart, with her whims,caresses, smiles, much as one would

play upon the strings of a harp. She didnot mean to be cruel at all, nor eveninsincere. It is even probable that shereally in those times thought that sheloved the man, and under the charmsof the girl the man became a differentbeing; the old-fashioned mindbrightened, the old-fashioned heartexposed its hidden treasures oftenderness and wisdom and sympathy.Very much like playing upon a longforgotten instrument, was the relationbetween the maiden and the man notonly because he resembled such aninstrument in the fact of belongingemotionally and intellectually toanother generation, but also because hiswas a heart whose true music had long

been silent, unheard by the world.Undoubtedly the maiden meant noharm, but she caused a great deal ofpain, for at a later day, becoming a greatlady of society, she forgot all about thisold friendship, or perhaps wonderedwhy she ever wasted her time in talkingto such a strange old-fashionedprofessor. Then the affectionate heart iscondemned to silence again, to silenceand oblivion, like the harp thrownaway in some garret to be covered withcobwebs and visited only by bats. "Is itnot time," the old man thinks, "that thestrings should be broken, the strings ofthe heart Let the cold wind of deathnow come and snap them." Yet, afterall, why should he complain Did he not

have the beautiful experience of loving,and was she not in that time at leastwell worthy of the love that she calledforth like music

There are several other poems referringto what would seem to be the sameexperience, and all are beautiful, butone seems to me nobler than the rest,expressing as it does a generousresignation. It is called "Deteriora," aLatin word signifying lesser, inferior, ordeteriorated things not easy to translate.Nor would you find the poem easy tounderstand, referring as it does toconditions of society foreign toanything in Japanese experience. Butsome verses which I may quote you will

like.

If fate and nature screen from me Thesovran front I bowed before, And setthe glorious creature free, Whom Iwould clasp, detain, adore, If I foregothat strange delight, Must all be lostNot quite, not quite.

Die, Little Love, without complaint, Whomhonour standeth by to shrive: Assoiled from allselfish taint, Die, Love, whom Friendship willsurvive. Not hate nor folly gave thee birth;And briefness does but raise thy worth.

This is the same thought whichTennyson expressed in his famous lines,

'Tis better to have loved and lost Thannever to have loved at all.

But it is still more finely expressed tomeet a particular personal mood. Onemust not think the world lost because awoman has been lost, he says, and sucha love is not a thing for any man to beashamed of, in spite of the fact that ithas been disappointed. It washonourable, unselfish, not inspired byany passion or any folly, and the verybrevity of the experience only serves tomake it more precious. Observe the useof the words "shrive" and "assoiled."These refer to the old religious customof confession; to "shrive" signifies toforgive, to free from sin, as a priest is

supposed to do, and "assoiled" means"purified."

If this was a personal experience, itmust have been an experience ofadvanced life. Elsewhere the story of aboyish love is told very prettily, underthe title of "Two Fragments ofChildhood." This is the first fragment:

When these locks were yellow as gold,When past days were easily told, Well Iknew the voice of the sea, Once hespake as a friend to me. Thunder-rollings carelessly heard, Once thatpoor little heart they stirred, Why, Oh,why Memory, memory! She that Iwished to be with was by.

Sick was I in those misanthrope daysOf soft caresses, womanly ways; Oncethat maid on the stair I met Lip onbrow she suddenly set. Then flushedup my chivalrous blood, Like Swissstreams in a mid-summer flood. Then,Oh, then, Imogen, Imogen! Hadst thoua lover, whose years were ten.

This is evidently the charming memoryof a little sick boy sent to the seasidefor his health, according to the Englishcustom, and unhappy there, unable toplay about like stronger children, andobliged to remain under the constantcare of nurses and female relatives. Butin the same house there is another

family with a beautiful young daughter,probably sixteen or eighteen years old.The little boy wishes, wishes so muchthat the beautiful lady would speak tohim and play with him, but he is shy,afraid to approach her only looks at herwith great admiring loving eyes. Butone day she meets him on the stairs,and stoops down and kisses him on theforehead. Then he is in Heaven.Afterward no doubt she played withhim, and they walked up and down bythe shore of the sea together, and now,though an old man, whenever he hearsthe roar of the sea he remembers thebeautiful lady who played with him andcaressed him, when he was a little sickchild. How much he loved her! But she

was a woman, and he was only ten yearsold. The reference to "chivalrousblood" signifies just this, that at themoment when she kissed him he wouldhave given his life for her, would havedared anything or done anything toshow his devotion to her. No prettiermemory of a child could be told.

We can learn a good deal about eventhe shyest of the poets through a closeunderstanding of his poetry. From theforegoing we know that Cory musthave been a sickly child; and from otherpoems referring to school life we cannot escape the supposition that he wasnot a strong lad. In one of his verses hespeaks of being unable to join in the

hearty play of his comrades; and in thepoem which touches on the life of themature man we find himacknowledging that he believed his lifea failure a failure through want ofstrength. I am going to quote this poemfor other reasons. It is a beautifuladdress either to some favouritestudent or to a beloved son it isimpossible to decide which. But thatdoes not matter. The title is "A NewYear's Day."

Our planet runs through liquid space,And sweeps us with her in the race;And wrinkles gather on my face, AndHebe bloom on thine: Our sun with hisencircling spheres Around the central

sun careers; And unto thee withmustering years Come hopes which Iresign.

'Twere sweet for me to keep thee stillReclining halfway up the hill; But timewill not obey the will, And onwardthou must climb: 'Twere sweet to pauseon this descent, To wait for thee andpitch my tent, But march I must withshoulders bent, Yet further from myprime.

I shall not tread thy battlefield, Nor see theblazon on thy shield; Take thou the sword Icould not wield, And leave me, and forget. Befairer, braver, more admired; So win whatfeeble hearts desired; Then leave thine arms,

when thou art tired, To some one nobler yet.

How beautiful this is, and howprofoundly sad!

I shall return to the personal poetry ofCory later on, but I want now to giveyou some examples of his Greek work.Perhaps the best of this is little morethan a rendering of Greek into English;some of the work is pure translation.But it is the translation of a very greatmaster, the perfect rendering of Greekfeeling as well as of Greek thought.Here is an example of pure translation:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told meyou were dead, They brought me bitter

news to hear and bitter tears to shed. Iwept, as I remembered, how often youand I Had tired the sun with talkingand sent him down the sky. And nowthat thou art lying, my dear old Carianguest, A handful of grey ashes, long,long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasantvoices, thy nightingales, awake; ForDeath, he taketh all away, but them hecannot take.

What are "thy pleasant voices, thynightingales" They are the songs whichthe dear dead poet made, still sung inhis native country, though his body wasburned to ashes long ago has beenchanged into a mere handful of greyashes, which, doubtless, have been

placed in an urn, as is done with suchashes to-day in Japan. Death takes awayall things from man, but not his poems,his songs, the beautiful thoughts whichhe puts into musical verse. These willalways be heard like nightingales. Thefourth line in the first stanza containsan idiom which may not be familiar toyou. It means only that the two friendstalked all day until the sun set in theWest, and still talked on after that.Tennyson has used the same Greekthought in a verse of his poem, "ADream of Fair Women," whereCleopatra says,

"We drank the Libyan sun to sleep."

The Greek author of the above poemwas the great poet Callimachus, and theEnglish translator does not think itnecessary even to give the name, as hewrote only for folk well acquaintedwith the classics. He has another shorttranslation which he accompanies withthe original Greek text; it is very pretty,but of an entirely different kind, a kindthat may remind you of some Japanesepoems. It is only about a cicada and apeasant girl, and perhaps it is twenty-four or twenty-five hundred years old.

A dry cicale chirps to a lass making hay,"Why creak'st thou, Tithonus " quothshe. "I don't play; It doubles my toil,your importunate lay, I've earned a

sweet pillow, lo! Hesper is nigh; I claspa good wisp and in fragrance I lie; Butthou art unwearied, and empty, anddry."

How very human this little thing is howactually it brings before us the figure ofthe girl, who must have become dustsome time between two and threethousand years ago! She is workinghard in the field, and the constantsinging of the insect prompts her tomake a comical protest. "Oh, Tithonus,what are you making that creakingnoise for You old dry thing, I have notime to play with you, or to idle in anyway, but you do nothing but complain.Why don't you work, as I do Soon I

shall have leave to sleep, because I haveworked well. There is the evening star,and I shall have a good bed of hay,sweet-smelling fresh hay, to lie upon.How well I shall sleep. But you, youidle noisy thing, you do not deserve tosleep. You have done nothing to tireyou. And you are empty, dry and thirsty.Serves you right!" Of course yourecognize the allusion to the story ofTithonus, so beautifully told byTennyson. The girl's jest has a doublemeaning. The word "importunate" hasthe signification of a wearisomerepetition of a request, a constantasking, impossible to satisfy. Tithonuswas supposed to complain because hewas obliged to live although he wanted

to die. That young girl does not want todie at all. And she says that the noise ofthe insect, supposed to repeat thecomplaint of Tithonus, only makes itmore tiresome for her to work. She wasfeeling, no doubt, much as a Japanesestudent would feel when troubled bythe singing of semi on some very hotafternoon while he is trying to mastersome difficult problem.

That is pure Greek pure as anothermingling of the Greek feeling with themodern scholarly spirit, entitled "AnInvocation." Before quoting from it Imust explain somewhat; otherwise youmight not be able to imagine what itmeans, because it was written to be read

by those only who are acquainted withTheocritus and the Greek idylists.Perhaps I had better say something too,about the word idyl, for the use of theword by Tennyson is not the Greek useat all, except in the mere fact that theword signifies a picturing, a shadowingor an imagining of things. Tennyson'spictures are of a purely imaginativekind in the "Idyls of the King." But theGreek poets who first invented thepoetry called idyllic did not attempt theheroic works of imagination at all; theyonly endeavoured to make perfectlytrue pictures of the common life ofpeasants in the country. They wroteabout the young men and young girlsworking on the farms, about the way

they quarrelled or rejoiced or madelove, about their dances and theirsongs, about their religious festivals andtheir sacrifices to the gods at the parishtemple. Imagine a Japanese scholar ofto-day who, after leaving the university,instead of busying himself with thefashionable studies of the time, shouldgo out into the remoter districts orislands of Japan, and devote his life tostudying the existence of thecommoner people there, and makingpoems about it. This was exactly whatthe Greek idylists did, that is, the bestof them. They were great scholars andbecame friends of kings, but they wrotepoetry chiefly about peasant life, andthey gave all their genius to the work.

The result was so beautiful thateverybody is still charmed by thepictures or idyls which they made.

Well, after this disgression, to return tothe subject of Theocritus, the greatestof the idylists. He has often introducedinto his idyls the name of Comatas.Who was Comatas Comatas was aGreek shepherd boy, or more strictlyspeaking a goatherd, who kept theflocks of a rich man. It was his duty tosacrifice to the gods none of hismaster's animals, without permission;but as his master was a very avariciousperson, Comatas knew that it would beof little use to ask him. Now thisComatas was a very good singer of

peasant songs, and he made manybeautiful poems for the people to sing,and he believed that it was the godswho had given him power to make thesongs, and the Muses had inspired himwith the capacity to make good verse.In spite of his master's will, Comatastherefore thought it was not very bad totake the young kids and sacrifice to thegods and the Muses. When his masterfound out what had been done withthe animals, naturally he became veryangry, and he put Comatas into a greatbox of cedar-wood in order to starvehim to death saying, as he closed andlocked the lid, "Now, Comatas, let ussee whether the gods will feed you!" Inthat box Comatas was left for a year

without food or drink, and when themaster, at the end of the year, openedthe box, he expected to find nothingbut the bones of the goatherd. ButComatas was alive and well, singingsweet songs, because during the yearthe Muses had sent bees to feed himwith honey. The bees had been able toenter the box through a very little hole.I suppose you know that bees wereheld sacred to the Muses, and that thereis in Greek legend a symbolic relationbetween bees and poetry.

If you want to know what kind ofsongs Comatas sang and what kind oflife he represented, you will find all thisexquisitely told by Theocritus; and

there is a beautiful little translation inprose of Theocritus, Bion andMoschus, made by Andrew Lang,which should delight you to read.Another day I shall give you examplesof such translations. Then you will seewhat true idyllic poetry originallysignified. These Greeks, althoughtrained scholars and philosophers,understood not only that human naturein itself is a beautiful thing, but alsothat the best way to study humannature is to study the life of thepeasants and the common people. It isnot to the rich and leisurely, not to rankand society, that a poet must go forinspiration. He will not find it there.What is called society is a world in

which nobody is happy, and in whichpure human nature is afraid to showitself. Life among the higher classes inall countries is formal, artificial,theatrical; poetry is not there. Of courseno kind of human community isperfectly happy, but it is among thesimple folk, the country folk, who donot know much about evil and deceit,that the greater proportion ofhappiness can be found. Among theyouths of the country especially,combining the charm of childhoodwith the strength of adult maturity, thebest possible subjects for fine purestudies of human nature can be found.May I not here express the hope thatsome young Japanese poet, some

graduate of this very university, willeventually attempt to do in Japan whatTheocritus and Bion did in ancientSicily A great deal of the very samekind of poetry exists in our own ruraldistricts, and parallels can be found inthe daily life of the Japanese peasantsfor everything beautifully described inTheocritus. At all events I am quite sureof one thing, that no great newliterature can possibly arise in thiscountry until some scholarly mindsdiscover that the real force and truthand beauty and poetry of life is to befound only in studies of the commonpeople not in the life of the rich andthe noble, not in the shadowy life ofbooks.

Well, our English poet felt with theGreek idylists, and in the poem called"An Invocation" he beautifullyexpresses this sympathy. All of us, hesays, should like to see and hearsomething of the ancient past if it werepossible. We should like, some of us, tocall back the vanished gods andgoddesses of the beautiful Greekworld, or to talk to the great souls ofthat world who had the experience oflife as men to Socrates, for example, toPlato, to Phidias the sculptor, toPericles the statesman. But, as a poet,my wish would not be for the return ofthe old gods nor of the old heroes somuch as for the return to us of some

common men who lived in the Greekworld. It is Comatas, he says, that hewould most like to see, and to see insome English park in theneighbourhood of CambridgeUniversity, or of Eton College. Andthus he addresses the spirit ofComatas:

O dear divine Comatas, I would thatthou and I Beneath this brokensunlight this leisure day might lie;Where trees from distant forests, whosenames were strange to thee, Shouldbend their amorous branches withinthy reach to be, And flowers thineHellas knew not, which art hath mademore fair, Should shed their shining

petals upon thy fragrant hair.

Then thou shouldst calmly listen withever-changing looks To songs ofyounger minstrels and plots of modernbooks, And wonder at the daring ofpoets later born, Whose thoughts areunto thy thoughts as noontide is tomorn; And little shouldst them grudgethem their greater strength of soul, Thypartners in the torch-race, thoughnearer to the goal.

* * * * *

Or in thy cedarn prison thou waitestfor the bee: Ah, leave that simple honeyand take thy food from me. My sun is

stooping westward. Entranced dreamer,haste; There's fruitage in my garden thatI would have thee taste. Now lift the lida moment; now, Dorian shepherd,speak; Two minds shall flow together,the English and the Greek.

A few phrases of these beautifulstanzas need explanation. "Brokensunlight" refers, of course, to theimperfect shade thrown by the treesunder which the poet is lying. Theshadow is broken by the light passingthrough leaves, or conversely, the lightis broken by the interposition of theleaves. The reference to trees fromdistant forests no doubt intimates thatthe poet is in some botanical garden, a

private park, in which foreign trees arecarefully cultivated. The "torch race" isa simile for the pursuit of knowledgeand truth. Greek thinkers compare thetransmission of knowledge from onegeneration to another, to the passing ofa lighted torch from hand to hand, as inthe case of messengers carrying signalsor athletes running a mighty race. As arunner runs until he is tired, or until hereaches the next station, and thenpasses the torch which he has beencarrying to another runner waiting toreceive it, so does each generation passon its wisdom to the succeedinggeneration, and disappear. "My sun isstooping westward" is only a beautifulway of saying, "I am becoming very

old; be quick, so that we may see eachother before I die." And the poetsuggests that it is because of his ageand his experience and his wisdom thathe could hope to be of service to thedear divine Comatas. The expression,"there is fruitage in my garden," refersto no material garden, but to thecultivated mind of the scholar; he isonly saying, "I have strange knowledgethat I should like to impart to you."How delightful, indeed, it would be,could some university scholar reallyconverse with a living Greek of the olddays!

There is another little Greek study ofgreat and simple beauty entitled "The

Daughter of Cleomenes." It is only anhistorical incident, but it is so relatedfor the pleasure of suggesting aprofound truth about the instinct ofchildhood. Long ago, when thePersians were about to make an attackupon the Greeks, there was an attemptto buy off the Spartan resistance, andthe messenger to the Spartan generalfound him playing with his littledaughter, a child of six or seven. Theconference was carried on in whispers,and the child could not hear what wasbeing said; but she broke up the wholeplot by a single word. I shall quote afew lines from the close of the poem,which contain its moral lessons. Theemissary has tried to tempt him with

promises of wealth and power.

He falters; for the waves he fears, Theroads he cannot measure; But rates fullhigh the gleam of spears And dreamsof yellow treasure. He listens; he isyielding now; Outspoke the fearlesschild: "Oh, Father, come away, lest thouBe by this man beguiled." Her lowlyjudgment barred the plea, So low, itcould not reach her. The man knows moreof land and sea, But she's the truer teacher.

All the little girl could know about thematter was instinctive; she only saw thecunning face of the stranger, and feltsure that he was trying to deceive herfather for a bad purpose so she cried

out, "Father, come away with me, orelse that man will deceive you." Andshe spoke truth, as her fatherimmediately recognized.

There are several more classical studiesof extraordinary beauty; but yourinterest in them would depend uponsomething more than interest in Greekand Roman history, and we can notstudy all the poems. So I prefer to goback to the meditative lyrics, and to givea few splendid examples of these morepersonal compositions. The followingstanzas are from a poem whose Latintitle signifies that Love conquers death.In this poem the author becomes theequal of Tennyson as a master of

language.

The plunging rocks, whose ravenousthroats The sea in wrath and mockeryfills, The smoke that up the valleyfloats, The girlhood of the growinghills;

The thunderings from the miners'ledge, The wild assaults on nature'shoard, The peak that stormward baresan edge Ground sharp in days whenTitans warred;

Grim heights, by wandering cloudsembraced Where lightning's ministersconspire, Grey glens, with tarns andstreamlet laced, Stark forgeries of

primeval fire.

These scenes may gladden many a mindAwhile from homelier thoughtsreleased, And here my fellow men mayfind A Sabbath and a vision-feast.

I bless them in the good they feel; And yet Ibless them with a sigh; On me this grandeurstamps the seal Of tyrannous mortality.

The pitiless mountain stands so sure. Thehuman breast so weakly heaves, That brainsdecay while rocks endure. At this the insatiatespirit grieves.

But hither, oh ideal bride! For whomthis heart in silence aches, Love is

unwearied as the tide, Love is perennialas the lakes.

Come thou. The spiky crags will seemOne harvest of one heavenly year, Andfear of death, like childish dream, Willpass and flee, when thou art here.

Very possibly this charming meditationwas written on the Welsh coast; there isjust such scenery as the poem describes,and the grand peak of Snowdon wouldwell realize the imagination of the lineabout the girlhood of the growing hills.The melancholy of the latter part ofthe composition is the samemelancholy to be found in"Mimnermus in Church," the first of

Cory's poems which we read together.It is the Greek teaching that there isnothing to console us for the greatdoubt and mystery of existence exceptunselfish affection. All through thebook we find the same philosophy,even in the beautiful studies of studentlife and the memories of childhood. Soit is quite a melancholy book, thoughthe sadness be beautiful. I have givenyou examples of the sadness of doubtand of the sadness of love; but there isyet a third kind of sadness the sadnessof a childless man, wishing that hecould have a child of his own. It is avery pretty thing, simply entitled"Scheveningen Avenue" probably thename of the avenue where the incident

occurred. The poet does not tell ushow it occurred, but we can very wellguess. He was riding in a street car,probably, and a little girl next to him,while sitting upon her nurse's lap, fellasleep, and as she slept let her head fallupon his shoulder. This is a very simplething to make a poem about, but whata poem it is!

Oh, that the road were longer A mile,or two, or three! So might the thoughtgrow stronger That flows from touchof thee.

Oh little slumbering maid, If thou wert fiveyears older, Thine head would not be laid Sosimply on my shoulder!

Oh, would that I were younger, Oh, were Imore like thee, I should not faintly hunger Forlove that cannot be.

A girl might be caressed Beside mefreely sitting; A child on knee mightrest, And not like thee, unwitting.

Such honour is thy mother's, Whosmileth on thy sleep, Or for the nursewho smothers Thy cheek in kisses deep.

And but for parting day, And but forforest shady, From me they'd take awayThe burden of their lady.

Ah thus to feel thee leaning Above the

nursemaid's hand, Is like a stranger'sgleaning Where rich men own the land;

Chance gains, and humble thrift, Withshyness much like thieving, No noticewith the gift, No thanks with thereceiving.

Oh peasant, when thou starvestOutside the fair domain, Imaginethere's a harvest In every treasuredgrain.

Make with thy thoughts high cheer, Saygrace for others dining, And keep thypittance clear From poison of repining.

There is an almost intolerable acuity of

sadness in the last two mocking verses,but how pretty and how tender thewhole thing is, and how gentle-heartedmust have been the man who wrote it!The same tenderness reappears inreferences to children of a largergrowth, the boys of his school.Sometimes he very much regrets thenecessity of discipline, and advocates awiser method of dealing with theyoung. How very pretty is this littleverse about the boy he loves.

Sweet eyes, that aim a level shaft, Atpleasure flying from afar, Sweet lips,just parted for a draught Of Hebe'snectar, shall I mar By stress ofdisciplinal craft The joys that in your

freedom are

But a little reflection further on in thesame poem reminds us how necessarythe discipline must be for the battle oflife, inasmuch as each of thosecharming boys will have to fight againstevil

yet shall ye cope With worldingwrapped in silken lies, With pedant,hypocrite, and pope.

One might easily lecture about this littlevolume for many more days, sobeautiful are the things which fill it. Butenough has been cited to exemplify itsunique value. If you reread these

quotations, I think you will find eachtime new beauty in them. And thebeauty is quite peculiar. Such poetrycould have been written only under twoconditions. The first is that the poet bea consummate scholar. The second isthat he must have suffered, as only agreat mind and heart could suffer, fromwant of affection.

CHAPTER XV

OLD GREEK FRAGMENTS

The other day when we were readingsome of the poems in "Ionica," I

promised to speak in another shortessay of Theocritus and his songs oridyls of Greek peasant life, but inspeaking of him it will be well also tospeak of others who equally illustratethe fact that everywhere there is truthand beauty for the mind that can see. Ispoke last week about what I thoughtthe highest possible kind of literary artmight become. But the possiblebecoming is yet far away; and inspeaking of some old Greek writers Iwant only to emphasize the fact thatmodern literary art as well as ancientliterary art produced their best resultsfrom a close study of human nature.

Although Theocritus and others who

wrote idyls found their chiefinspiration in the life of the peasants,they sometimes also wrote about thelife of cities. Human nature may bestudied in the city as well as in thecountry, provided that a man knowshow to look for it. It is not in thecourts of princes nor the houses ofnobles nor the residences of thewealthy that such study can be made.These superior classes have found itnecessary to show themselves to theworld very cautiously; they live by rule,they conceal their emotions, they movetheatrically. But the ordinary, everydaypeople of cities are very different; theyspeak their thoughts, they keep theirhearts open, and they let us see, just as

children do, the good or the evil sideof their characters. So a good poet anda good observer can find in the life ofcities subjects of study almost as easilyas in the country. Theocritus has donethis in his fifteenth idyl. This idyl isvery famous, and it has been translatedhundreds of times into variouslanguages. Perhaps you may have seenone version of it which was made byMatthew Arnold. But I think that theversion made by Lang is even better.

The scene is laid in Alexandria,probably some two thousand years ago,and the occasion is a religious holiday amatsuri, as we call it in Japan. Twowomen have made an appointment to

go together to the temple, to see thefestival and to see the people. The poetbegins his study by introducing us tothe chamber of one of the women.

GORGO. "Is Praxinoe at home "

PRAXINOE. "Dear Gorgo, how longis it since you have been here! She is athome. The wonder is that you have gothere at last! Eunoe, come and see thatshe has a chair and put a cushion onit!"

G. "It does most charmingly as it is."

P. "Do sit down."

How natural this is. There is nothingGreek about it any more than there isJapanese; it is simply human. It issomething that happens in Tokyo everyday, certainly in houses where there arechairs and where it is a custom to put acushion on the chair for the visitor. Butremember, this was two thousand yearsago. Now listen to what the visitor hasto say.

"I have scarcely got to you at all,Praxinoe! What a huge crowd, whathosts of carriages! Everywhere cavalryboots, everywhere men in uniform!And the road is endless; yes, you reallylive too far away!"

Praxinoe answers:

"It is all for that mad man of mine.Here he came to the ends of the earthand took a hall, not a house, and allthat we might not be neighbours. Thejealous wretch, always the same, everfor spite."

She is speaking half in jest, half inearnest; but she forgets that her littleboy is present, and the visitor remindsher of the fact:

"Don't talk of your husband like that,my dear girl, before the little boy, lookhow he is staring at you! Never mind,Zaphyrion, sweet child, she is not

speaking about papa."

P. "Our Lady! (Persephone) The childtakes notice!"

Then the visitor to comfort the childsays "Nice papa," and the conversationproceeds. The two talk about theirhusbands, about their dresses, aboutthe cost of things in the shops; but inorder to see the festival Praxinoe mustdress herself quickly, and woman, twothousand years ago, just as now, takes along time to dress. Hear Praxinoetalking to her maid-servant while shehurries to get ready:

"Eunoe, bring the water and put it

down in the middle of the room, lazycreature that you are. Cat-like, alwaystrying to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bringthe water; quicker! I want water first,and how she carries it! Give it me allthe same; don't pour out so much, youextravagant thing! Stupid girl! Why areyou wetting my dress There, stop, Ihave washed my hands as heavenwould have it. Where is the key of thebig chest Bring it here."

This is life, natural and true; we can seethose three together, the girlish youngwife hurrying and scolding andchattering naturally and half childishly,the patient servant girl smiling at thehurry of her mistress, and the visitor

looking at her friend's new dress,wondering how much it cost andpresently asking her the price. At last allis ready. But the little boy sees hismother go out and he wants to go outtoo, though it has been decided not totake him, because the crowd is toorough and he might be hurt. Here themother first explains, then speaksfirmly:

"No, child, I don't mean to take you.Boo! Bogies! There is a horse that bites!Cry as much as you please, but I cannothave you maimed."

They go out, Praxinoe and Gorgo andthe maid-servant Eunoe. The crowd is

tremendous, and they find it very hardto advance. Sometimes there are horsesin the way, sometimes wagons,occasionally a legion of cavalry. Weknow all this, because we hear thechatter of the women as they maketheir way through the press.

"Give me your hand, and you, Eunoe,catch hold of Eutychis, for fear lest youget lost.... Here come the kings onhorses! My dear man, don't trample onme. Eunoe, you fool-hardy girl, will younever keep out of the way Oh! Howtiresome, Gorgo, my muslin veil is tornin two already.... For heaven's sake, sir,if you ever wish to be fortunate, takecare of my shawl!"

STRANGER. "I can hardly helpmyself, but for all that I will be ashelpful as I can."

The strange man helps the women andchildren through the pushing crowd,and they thank him very prettily,praying that he may have good fortuneall his life. But not all the strangers whocome in contact with them happen tobe so kind. They come at last into thatpart of the temple ground where theimage of Adonis is displayed; thebeauty of the statue moves them, andthey utter exclamations of delight. Thisdoes not please some of the malespectators, one of whom exclaims,

"You tiresome women, do cease yourendless cooing talk! They bore one todeath with their eternal broad vowels!"

They are country women, and theircritic is probably a purist somebodywho has studied Greek as it ispronounced and spoken in Athens. Butthe women bravely resent thisinterference with their rights.

GORGO. "Indeed! And where may thisperson come from What is it to you ifwe are chatterboxes Give orders to yourown servants, sir. Do you pretend tocommand the ladies of Syracuse If youmust know, we are Corinthians bydescent, like Bellerophon himself, and

we speak Peloponnesian. Dorianwomen may lawfully speak Doric, Ipresume."

This is enough to silence the critic, butthe other young woman also turnsupon him, and we may suppose that heis glad to escape from their tongues.And then everybody becomes silent, forthe religious services begin. Thepriestess, a comely girl, chants the psalmof Adonis, the beautiful old paganhymn, more beautiful and moresensuous than anything uttered by thelater religious poets of the West; and alllisten in delighted stillness. As the hymnends, Gorgo bursts out in exclamationof praise:

"Praxinoe! The woman is cleverer thanwe fancied! Happy woman to know somuch! Thrice happy to have so sweet avoice! Well, all the same, it is time to bemaking for home; Diocleides has nothad his dinner, and the man is allvinegar, don't venture near him whenhe is kept waiting for dinner. Farewell,beloved Adonis may you find us glad atyour next coming."

And with this natural mingling of thesentimental and the commonplace thelittle composition ends. It is as thoughwe were looking through some windowinto the life of two thousand years ago.Read the whole thing over to yourselves

when you have time to find the book inthe library, and see how true to humannature it is. There is nothing in it exceptthe wonderful hymn, which does notbelong to to-day as much as to the longago, to modern Tokyo as much as toancient Greece. That is what makes theimmortality of any literary productionnot simply truth to the life of one time,but truth to the life of every time andplace.

Not many years ago there wasdiscovered a book by Herodas, a Greekwriter of about the same period. It iscalled the "Mimes," a series of littledramatic studies picturing the life ofthe time. One of these is well worthy

of rank with the idyl of Theocritusabove mentioned. It is the study of aconversation between a young womanand an old woman. The young womanhas a husband, who left her to join amilitary expedition and has not beenheard of for several years. The oldwoman is a go-between, and she comesto see the young person on behalf ofanother young man, who admires her.But as soon as she states the nature ofher errand, the young lady becomesvery angry and feigns much virtuousindignation. There is a quarrel. Thenthe two become friends, and we knowthat the old woman's coming is likely tobring about the result desired. Now thewonder of this little study also is the

play of emotion which it reveals. Suchemotions are common to all ages ofhumanity; we feel the freshness of thisreflection as we read, to such a degreethat we cannot think of the matter ashaving happened long ago. Yet even thecity in which these episodes took placehas vanished from the face of the earth.

In the case of the studies of peasantlife, there is also value of another kind.Here we have not only studies ofhuman nature, but studies of particularsocial conditions. The quarrels ofpeasants, half good natured and nearlyalways happily ending; their account oftheir sorrows; their gossip about theirwork in the fields all this might happen

almost anywhere and at almost anytime. But the song contest, the prizegiven for the best composition upon achosen subject, this is particularlyGreek, and has never perhaps existedoutside of some place among thepeasant folk. It was the poetical side ofthis Greek life of the peasants, asrecorded by Theocritus, which so muchinfluenced the literatures of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries inFrance and in England. But neither inFrance nor in England has there everreally been, at any time, any liferesembling that portrayed byTheocritus; to-day nothing appears tous more absurd than the eighteenthcentury habit of picturing the Greek

shepherd life in English or Frenchlandscapes. What really may haveexisted among the shepherds of theantique world could not possibly existin modern times. But how pretty it is! Ithink that the tenth idyl of Theocritusis perhaps the prettiest example of thewhole series, thirty in number, whichhave been preserved for us. The plan isof the simplest. Two young peasants,respectively named Battus and Milon,meeting together in the field, talk abouttheir sweethearts. One of them workslazily and is jeered by the other inconsequence. The subject of the jeeringacknowledges that he works badlybecause his mind is disturbed he hasfallen in love. Then the other expresses

sympathy for him, and tells him that thebest thing he can do to cheer himselfup will be to make a song about thegirl, and to sing it as he works. Then hemakes a song, which has been theadmiration of the world for twentycenturies and lifts been translated intoalmost every language possessing aliterature.

"They all call thee a gipsy, graciousBombyca, and lean, and sunburnt; 'tisonly I that call thee honey-pale.

"Yea, and the violet is swart and swartthe lettered hyacinth; but yet theseflowers are chosen the first in garlands.

"The goat runs after cytisus, the wolfpursues the goat, the crane follows theplough, but I am wild for love of thee.

"Would it were mine, all the wealthwhereof Croesus was lord, as men tell!Then images of us, all in gold, shouldbe dedicated to Aphrodite, thou withthy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple,and I in fair attire and new shoon ofAmyclae on both my feet.

"Ah, gracious Bombyca, thy feet arefashioned like carven ivory, thy voice isdrowsy sweet, and thy ways I can nottell of them."

Even through the disguise of an

English prose translation, you will seehow pretty and how simple this littlesong must have been in the Greek, andhow very natural is the language of it.Our young peasant has fallen in lovewith the girl who is employed to playthe flute for the reapers, as the peasantslike to work to the sound of music. Hiscomrades do not much admireBombyca; one calls her "a longgrasshopper of a girl"; another findsher too thin; a third calls her a gipsy,such a dark brown her skin has becomeby constant exposure to the summersun. And the lover, looking at her, isobliged to acknowledge in his ownmind that she is long and lean and darkand like a gipsy; but he finds beauty in

all these characteristics, nevertheless.What if she is dark The sweetest honeyis darkish, like amber, and so arebeautiful flowers, the best of allflowers, flowers given to Aphrodite;and the sacred hyacinth on whoseleaves appear the letters of the word oflamentation "Ai! Ai!" that is also darklike Bombyca. Her darkness is that ofhoney and flowers. What a charmingapology! He cannot deny that she islong and lean, and he remains silent onthese points, but here we must allsympathize with him. He shows goodtaste. It is the tall slender girl that isreally the most beautiful and the mostgraceful, not the large-limbed, strong-bodied peasant type that his

companions would prefer. Withoutknowing it, he has fallen in love like anartist. And he is not blind to the, graceof slenderness and of form, though hecannot express it in artistic language.He can only compare the shape of thegirl's feet to the ivory feet of thedivinities in the temples perhaps he isthinking of some ivory image ofAphrodite which he has seen. But howcharming an image does he make toarise before us! Beautiful is thedescription of the girl's voice as"drowsy sweet." But the most exquisitething in the whole song is the finaldespairing admission that he can notdescribe her at all "and thy ways, I cannot tell of them"! This is one of the

most beautiful expressions in any poemancient or modern, because of itssupreme truth. What mortal ever coulddescribe the charm of manner, voice,smile, address, in mere words Suchthings are felt, they can not bedescribed; and the peasant boy reachesthe highest height of true lyrical poetrywhen he cries out "I can not tell ofthem." The great French critic Sainte-Beuve attempted to render this line asfollows "Quant a ta maniere, je ne puis larendre!" This is very good; and you cantake your choice between it and anyEnglish translation. But good judgessay that nothing in English of Frenchequals the charm of the original.

You will find three different classes ofidyls in Theocritus; the idyl which is asimple song of peasant life, a pure lyricexpressing only a single emotion; theidyl which is a little story, usually astory about the gods or heroes; andlastly, the idyl which is presented in theform of a dialogue, or even of aconversation between three or fourpersons. All these forms of idyl, butespecially the first and the third, wereafterward beautifully imitated by theRoman poets; then very imperfectlyimitated by modern poets. Theimitation still goes on, but the very bestEnglish poets have never really beenable to give us anything worthy ofTheocritus himself.

However, this study of the Greekmodel has given some terms to Englishliterature which every student ought toknow. One of these terms isamoebaean, amoebaean poetry beingdialogue poetry composed in the formof question and reply. The originalGreek signification was that ofalternate speaking. Please do not forgetthe word. You may often find it incritical studies in essays uponcontemporary literature; and when yousee it again, remember Theocritus andthe school of Greek poets who firstintroduced the charm of amoebaeanpoetry. I hope that this little lecture willinterest some of you in Theocritus

sufficiently to induce you to read himcarefully through and through. Butremember that you can not get thevalue of even a single poem of his at asingle reading. We have become somuch accustomed to conventionalforms of literature that the simple artof poetry like this quite escapes us atfirst sight. We have to read it over andover again many times, and to thinkabout it; then only we feel thewonderful charm.

INDEX

[Transcriber's note: Page numbers have

been converted to chapter numbers inthis index.]

"A dry cicale chirps to a lass makinghay," 14 Aicard, Jean, 11 Aldrich,Thomas Bailey, 4 "Along the gardenways just now," 2 "Amaturus," 3 "A MaFuture," 3 "Amelia," 2 "Amis andAmile," Introduction, 13 "Amphibian,"10 Andrews, Bishop Lancelot, 6 "Angelin the House, The," 2 "An Invocation,"14 "Appreciations of Poetry,"Introduction "Arabian Nights, The," 13"Arachne," 10 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 3Arnold, Matthew, 7, 15 "Art of WorldlyWisdom, The," 7 Ashe, Thomas, 3 "Asimple ring with a simple stone," 3"Atalanta in Calydon," 12 "Atalanta's

Race," 2

"Bhagavad-Gita, The," 6 Bible, The,Introduction, 3, 6, 12, 13 Bion, 14Blake, William, 6, 10 Book ofCommon Prayer, The, 12 Breton, Jules,11 "Bright star, would I were steadfastas thou art," 2 Browning, Robert, 2, 3,10, 14 "Burly, dozing humble bee," 10"Busy, curious thirsty fly," 10 Byron,George Gordon, Lord, 2, 3

Carew, Thomas, 3 Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 6Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope,Fourth Earl of, 7 Cicero, MarcusTullius, 2 Coleridge, Hartley, 3Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2, 6, 10"Conservative, A," 10 Cooke, Rose

Terry, 10 Cory, William, Introduction,3, 14 Crashaw, Richard, 3

Dante Alighieri, 2 "Daughter ofCleomenes, The," 14 Descartes, Rene,10 "Deteriora," 14 Dickens, Charles,Introduction "Djins, Les," 4 "Dream ofFair Women, A," 14

"Emaux et Camees," 11 Emerson,Ralph Waldo, 4, 10 "EpigrammeFuneraire," 11 "Evelyn Hope," 3

"Fable, A," 14 "Fifine at the Fair," 10Francis of Assisi, Saint, 10 Freneau,Philip, 10

Gautier, Theophile, 11 "Gazing on

stars, my star " 2 Goethe, JohannWolfgang von, 4 "Golden Legend,The," 13 Gracian, Baltasar, 7"Grasshopper, The," 11 Gray, Thomas,10 "Greater Memory," 2 GreekAnthology, Introduction, 4, 14 "Grillonsolitaire," 11

"Havamal, The," Introduction, 6Hearn, Lafcadio, Introduction Heredia,Jose, Maria de, Introduction, 5, 11Herodas, 15 Herrick, Robert, 4 "Hethat loves a rosy cheek," 3 Holmes,Oliver Wendell, 10 Hood, Thomas, 3Hugo, Victor, 2, 2, 4, 5, 11

"Idyls of the King," 14 "I love to hearthine earnest voice," 10 "In a branch of

willow hid," 10 "Interpretations ofLiterature," Introduction "Ionica,"Introduction, 3 "I strove with none, fornone was worth my strife," 4 "It is agolden morning of the spring," 2

Jonson, Ben, 3, 4

"Kalevala, The," Introduction, 12Keats, John, Introduction, 2, 6, 10"King Solomon and the Ants," 10

"La Demoiselle," 11 "Lady of Shalott,The," 11 Landor, Walter Savage, 4 Lang,Andrew, Introduction, 15 Lamartine,11 Lamb, Charles, 10 "Le Daimio," 5Lemerre, Alphonse, 10 "Le Samourai,"5 "Les Cigales," 11 "Life and

Literature," Introduction de Lisle,Leconte, 87 "Lives there whom painhas evermore passed by," 4 Locker-Lampson, Frederic, 3, 10 "LocksleyHall," 2 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,5, 7, 11, 12, 13 Loennrot, 12 Lovelace,Richard, 11 Lubbock, Sir John, 8

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 10 "MaLibellule," 11 "Maud," 2 Meredith,George, Introduction, 7 "Mimes," 15"Mimnermus in church," 14 Moschus,14

"Nay but you, who do not love her," 3"Never the time and the place," 2 "NewEthics, The," Introduction "New Year'sDay, A," 14 Nietzsche, Friedrich

Wilhelm, 8 "Njal-Saga, The." 1

"Ode on the Spring," 10 Oldys,William, 10 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, 2

"Pansie," 3 "Patchwork," 3 Pater, Walter,Introduction, 13 Patmore, Coventry, 2,10 "Pause, A," 2 Plato, 2 Poe, EdgarAllan, 12 "Poems of Places," 5 Porson,Richard, 10 Powell, Frederick York, 7"Princess, The," Introduction

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas, 10

"Reparabo," 14 Rossetti, Christina, 2, 3Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 2, 11 Ruskin,John, 6, 9 "Ruth," 3

"Saga of King Olaf, The," 7 Sainte-Beuve, 15 Saintsbury, ProfessorGeorge, 6 "Scheveningen Avenue," 14Scott, Sir Walter, 7 Shakespeare,William, 11 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 2"She walks in beauty, like the night," 3"She was a phantom of delight," 3"Solitary-Hearted, The," 3 "Somewhereor other," 3 "Song in time ofRevolution, A," 12 "Song of Hiawatha,The," 12 "Song of Songs," 10 Spencer,Herbert, 2, 7, 8 "Stay near me, do nottake thy flight" 10 Stetson, CharlottePerkins, 10 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 2"Story of Burnt Njal, The," 1 "Studiesin Greek Poets," 4 "Such Kings ofshreds have wooed and won her," 4"Sudden Light," 2 Sully-Prudhomme,

Rene, Francois Armande, 5 "SummumBonum," 3 Swinburne, AlgernonCharles, 12 Symonds, John Addington,2, 4

Ten Brink, Bernhard Egidius Konrad,13 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord,Introduction, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14Tennyson, Frederick, 2 Thackeray,William Makepeace, Introduction "Thebutterfly the ancient Grecians made,"10 Theocritus, Introduction, 14, 15"The poetry of earth is never dead," 10"The thousand painful steps at last aretrod," 4 "The trembling arm I pressed,"2 "They told me, Heraclitus, they toldme you were dead," 14 "Think not thywisdom can illume away," 4

Thompson, Maurice, 2 "Thou canst notwave thy staff in air," 4 "To Lucasta, onGoing to the Wars," 11 "TwoFragments of Childhood," 14 "TwoVoices, The," 10

"Unknown Eros, The," 2

Vigfusson, Gudbrandt, 7 "Voice of thesummer wind," 10

Watson, William, 4, 10 "When springgrows old," 2 "White Moth, The," 10Whittier, John Greenleaf, 10 "Wishes tothe Supposed Mistress Wordsworth,William, 2, 3, 6, 10 Wycliffe, John, 6

THE END