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mirable balance. He is now sitting opposite to me ON THE BAG OF SILVER, forty pounds (it must be dreadfully hard), writing to Boulogne.

Best love to Mamie and Katie, and dear Plorn, and all the boys left when this comes to Gad's Hill; also to my dear good Anne, and her little woman. Ever affectionately.

The fame of these readings speedily reached the United States, and Dickens was repeatedly importuned and entreated to pay us a professional visit. He held out in his refusal to extend his travels so far until, in 1867, the representations as to the enormous monetary harvest he might expect to reap here overcame his resolution, and on November 19th of that year he landed once more upon our shores. A considerable portion of the second volume is filled with vivid descriptions of his readings in the various Eastern cities; but the scenes themselves can hardly have faded as yet from the popular mind, and it will be more interesting, perhaps, to learn how far the impressions received during the earlier visit were modified during the later one. Between the two visits, the impetuous author had evidently acquired discretion, even if he had not changed his opinions, and there are only two paragraphs in the later correspondence that can be set over against the long letter of 1842. In a letter written from the Parker House, Boston, under date of January 4, 1868, he says:

There are two apparently irreconcilable contrasts here. Down below in this hotel every night are the bar-loungers, dram-drinkers, drunkards, swaggerers, loafers, that one might find in a Boucicault play. Within half an hour is Cambridge, where a delightful domestic life-simple, self-respectful, cordial, and affectionate-is seen in an admirable aspect. All New England is primitive and puritanical. All about and around it is a puddle of mixed human mud, with no such quality in it. Perhaps I may in time sift out some tolerably intelligible whole, but I certainly have not done so yet. It is a good sign, maybe, that it all seems immensely more difficult to understand than it was when I was here before.

In another letter, addressed to Mr. Macready under date of March 21, 1868, he says:

You would find the general aspect of America and Americans decidedly much improved. You would find immeasurably greater consideration and respect for your privacy than of old. You would find a steady change for the better everywhere, except (oddly enough) in the railroads generally, which seem to have stood still, while everything else has moved. But there is an exception westward. There the express trains have now a very delightful carriage drawing-room car," literally a series of little private drawing-rooms, with sofas and a table

called a

in each, opening out of a little corridor. In each, too, is a large plate-glass window, with which you can do as you like. As you pay extra for this luxury, it may be regarded as the first move toward two classes of passengers.

cans.

On the whole, it is evident that Dickens retained his insular prejudices to the last, and that in spite of the enthusiasm which he aroused and the kindnesses which he experienced-he never really liked either America or the AmeriFrom the hour of his landing he was counting the days until his return voyage should begin; and this fact lends an additional pathos to the knowledge that his sufferings while here from "true American catarrh," as he facetiously calls it, so weakened his constitution as to precipitate the attack that ended his life only two years later.

A few other letters must be quoted as illustrating phases of Dickens's character that have not yet been touched upon. Here is a most characteristic one, in which he defends and justifies the first of those numerous attacks which he made in his novels upon religious cant:

[To Mr. David Dickson.]

I DEVONSHIRE Terrace, YORK GATE,
REGENT'S PARK, May 10, 1843.

SIR Permit me to say, in reply to your letter, that you do not understand the intention (I dare say the fault is mine) of that passage in the "Pickwick of "the Shepherd," and of this and every other Papers" which has given you offense. The design allusion to him, is, to show how sacred things are degraded, vulgarized, and rendered absurd when persons who are utterly incompetent to teach the such mysteries, and how, in making mere cant commonest things take upon themselves to expound phrases of divine words, these persons miss the spirit in which they had their origin. I have seen a great deal of this sort of thing in many parts of England, and I never knew it lead to charity or good deeds.

Whether the great Creator of the world and the creature of his hands, molded in his own image, be quite so opposite in character as you believe, is a question which it would profit us little to discuss. I like the frankness and candor of your letter, and thank you for it. That every man who seeks heaven must be born again, in good thoughts of his Maker, I sincerely believe. That it is expedient for every hound to say so in a certain snuffling form of words, to which he attaches no good meaning, I do not believe. I take it, there is no difference between us. Faithfully yours.

The following extract from a letter to Mr. Macready (written in 1853) testifies to that sturdy faith in the people which was one of the dominating sentiments of Dickens's life. It refers to an

address which he had just previously delivered at such a collection. It was written in reply to a Birmingham: letter from Mr. Makeham remonstrating against a "figure of speech" used in the tenth chapter of "Edwin Drood":

I know you would have been full of sympathy and approval if you had been present at Birmingham, and that you would have concurred in the tone I tried to take about the eternal duties of the arts to the people. I took the liberty of putting the court and that kind of thing out of the question, and recognizing nothing but the arts and the people. The more we see of life and its brevity, and the world and its varieties, the more we know that no exercise of our abilities in any art, but the addressing of it to the great ocean of humanity in which we are drops, and not to by-ponds (very stagnant) here and there, ever can or ever will lay the foundations of an endurable retrospect.

This is from a letter to Mr. Charles Knight defending "Hard Times" against some strictures which the latter had made upon it:

My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else—the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time -the men who, through long years to come, will do more to damage the real useful truths of political economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole life; the addled heads who would take the average of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a soldier in nankeens on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur, and who would comfort the laborer in traveling twelve miles a day to and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one inhabited place from another in the whole area of England is not more than four miles. Bah! What have you to do with these?

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, Wednesday Night, June, 1870. DEAR SIR: It would be quite inconceivable to me-but for your letter-that any reasonable reader could possibly attach a scriptural reference to a passage in a book of mine, reproducing a much-abused social figure of speech, impressed with all sorts of service, on all sorts of inappropriate occasions, without the faintest connection of it with its original source. I am truly shocked to find that any reader can make the mistake.

I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour;

because I feel it; and because I rewrote that history
for my children-every one of whom knew it from
having it repeated to them-long before they could
read, and almost as soon as they could speak.
But I have never made proclamation of this from
the house-tops.

Faithfully yours,
CHARLES DICKENS.

JOHN M. MAKEHAM, ESQ.

The selections which we have made from the "Letters" will probably appear somewhat desultory and altogether inadequate ; but then the letters themselves are desultory in subject, and we have not aimed to do more than indicate their Taken as a whole, they quality and variety. portray with wonderful vividness and fidelity nearly all possible phases of the author's thoughts and feelings; and it may be confidently said, in The last letter of all-written less than an conclusion, that there are very few men whose hour before the fatal stroke ended for ever the hearts and lives could be laid so bare as in this labors of that teeming brain and prolific pen-is correspondence and yet leave upon the reader so in a peculiar degree appropriate as the close of consistently pleasing an impression.

Τ

FRAGMENTS.

MATTHEW ARNOLD ON POETRY.

happiest and best minds," we feel in each of these utterances-too partial to express a universal

truth, too profound to be regarded as a merely casual remark—the dominating bias and instinctive leanings of a lifetime. If, then, we remember that Mr. Matthew Arnold is equally eminent as a critic and a poet, we shall not be too much surprised to read the following account of poetry given in the preface to his selections from Wordsworth:* "It is important, therefore, to hold fast

IT is both interesting and instructive to hear
what masters of a craft may choose to say
upon the subject of their art. The interest is
rather increased than diminished by the limitation
of the imperfection of their view, inseparable from
personal inclination, idiosyncrasy of genius, or ab-
sorbing previous course of study. When Hein-
rich exclaims, "There's no lust like to poetry";
when Goethe asserts, "Die kunst ist nur Gestal-
tung"; when Shelley writes, "Poetry is the rec-
ord of the best and happiest moments of the lan, 1879.
VOL. VIII.-6

"Poems of Wordsworth." Chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. "Golden Treasury Series," Macmil

to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life-to the question, How to live."

At first sight this definition will strike most people as a paradox. It would be scarcely less startling to hear, as indeed we might perhaps hear from a new school of writers upon art, that "criticism is at bottom the poetry of things," inasmuch as it is the critic's function to select the quintessential element of all he touches, and to present that only in choice form to the public he professes to instruct. Yet, when we return to Mr. Arnold, and compare the passage above quoted with the fuller expression of the same view upon a preceding page, the apparent paradox is reduced to the proportions of a sound and valuable generalization: "Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble and profound application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness. I said that a great poet receives his distinctive character of superiority from his application, under the conditions immutably fixed by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his application, I say, whatever it may be, of the ideas,

'On man, on nature, and on human life,' which he has acquired for himself." An important element in this description of poetic greatness is the further determination of the ideas in question as moral: "It is said that to call these ideas moral ideas is to introduce a strong and injurious limitation. I answer that it is to do nothing of the kind, because moral ideas are really so main a part of human life. The question, how to live, is itself a moral idea; and it is the question which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or other, he is perpetually occupied."

With the substance of these passages there are few who, after mature reflection on the nature of poetry, will not agree. That the weight of Mr. Arnold's authority should be unhesitatingly given against what he calls the poetry of revolt and the poetry of indifference to morals, is a matter for rejoicing to all who think the dissemination of sound views on literature important. It is good to be reminded at the present moment that Omar Kayam failed of true greatness because he was a reactionary, and that Théophile Gautier took up his abode in what can never be more than a wayside halting-place. From time to time critics arise who attempt to persuade us that it does not so much matter what a poet says as how he says it, and that the highest poetical achievements are those which combine a certain vagueness of meaning with sensuous melody and color of verbal composition. Yet, if one thing is

proved with certainty by the whole history of literature to our time, it is that the self-preservative instinct of humanity rejects such art as does not contribute to its intellectual nutrition and moral sustenance. It can not afford to continue long in contact with ideas that run counter to the principles of its own progress. It can not bestow more than passing notice upon trifles, however exquisitely finished. Poetry will not, indeed, live without style or its equivalent. But style alone will never confer enduring and cosmopolitan fame upon a poet. He must have placed himself in accord with the permanent emotions, the conservative forces of the race; he must have uttered what contributes to the building up of vital structure in the social organism, in order to gain more than a temporary or a partial hearing. Though style is an indispensable condition of success in poetry, it is by matter, and not by form, that a poet has to take his final rank.

Of the two less perfect kinds of poetry, the poetry of revolt and the poetry of indifference, the latter has by far the slighter chance of survival. Powerful negation implies that which it rebels against. The energy of the rebellious spirit is itself a kind of moral greatness. We are braced and hardened by contact with impassioned revolutionaries, with Lucretius, Voltaire, Leopardi. Something necessary to the onward progress of humanity-the vigor of antagonism, the operative force of the antithesis-is communicated by them. They are in a high sense ethical by the exhibition of hardihood, self-reliance, hatred of hypocrisy. Even Omar's secession from the mosque to the tavern symbolizes a necessary and recurring moment of experience. It is, moreover, dignified by the pathos of the poet's view of life. Meleager's sensuality is condoned by the delicacy of his sentiment. Tone counts for much in this poetry of revolt against morals. It is only the Stratons, the Beccadellis, the Baudelaires, who, in spite of their consummate form, are consigned to poetical perdition by vulgarity, perversity, obliquity of vision. But the carving of cherry-stones in verse, the turning of triolets and rondeaux, the seeking after sound or color without heed for sense, is all foredoomed to final failure. The absolute neglect which has fallen on the melodious Italian sonnet-writers of the sixteenth century is due to their cult of art for art's sake, and their indifference to the realities of life. If we ask why Machiavelli's "Mandragora" is inferior to Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor," in spite of its profound knowledge of human nature, its brilliant wit, its irresistible humor, its biting satire, and its incomparably closer workmanship, we can only answer that Shakespeare's conception of life was healthy, natural, exhilarating, while Machiavelli's, without

displaying the earnestness of revolt, was artificial, morbid, and depressing. The sympathies which every great work of art stimulates tend in the case of Shakespeare's play to foster, in the case of Machiavelli's to stunt, the all-essential elements of social happiness and vigor. In point of form, the "Mandragora" has better right to be a classic comedy than the "Merry Wives of Windsor." But the application of ideas to life in it is so unsound and so perverse that common sense rejects it: we tire of living in so false a world.

Without multiplying instances, it can be affirmed, with no dread of opposition, that all art, to be truly great art, to be permanent and fresh and satisfying through a hundred generations, to yield the bread and wine of daily sustenance to men and women in successive ages, must be moralized-must be in harmony with those principles of conduct, that tone of feeling, which it is the self-preservative instinct of civilized humanity to strengthen. This does not mean that the artist should be consciously didactic or obtrusively ethical. The objects of ethics and of art are distinct. The one analyzes and instructs; the other embodies and delights. But, since all the arts give form to thought and feeling, it follows that the greatest art is that which includes in its synthesis the fullest complex of thoughts and feelings. The more complete the poet's grasp of human nature as a whole, the more complete his presentation of life in organized complexity, the greater he will be. Now the whole struggle of the human race from barbarism to civilization is one continuous effort to maintain and to extend its moral dignity. It is by the conservation and alimentation of moral qualities that we advance. The organization of our faculties into a perfect whole is moral harmony. Therefore artists who aspire to greatness can neither be adverse nor indifferent to ethics. In each case they proclaim their own inadequacy to the subject-matter of their art, humanity. In each case they present a maimed and partial portrait of their hero, man. In each case they must submit, however exquisite their style, however acute their insight, to be excluded from the supreme company of the immortals. We need do no more than name the chiefs of European poetry-Homer, Pindar, Eschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Molière-in order to recognize the fact that they owe their superiority to the completeness of their representation, to their firm grasp upon the harmony of human faculties in large morality. It is this which makes classical and humane literature convertible terms. It is this which has led all classes and ages of men back and back to these great poets as to their familiar friends and teachers, the everlasting solace of mankind."

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While substantially agreeing with Mr. Arnold, it may be possible to take exception to the form of his definition. He lays too great stress, perhaps, on the phrases, application of ideas, and criticism. The first might be qualified as misleading, because it seems to attribute an ulterior purpose to the poet; the second as tending to confound two separate faculties, the creative and the judicial. Plato's conception of poetry as an inspiration, a divine instinct, may be nearer to the truth. The application of ideas should not be too conscious, else the poet sinks into the preacher. The criticism of life should not be too much his object, else the poet might as well have written essays. What is wanted is that, however spontaneous his utterance may be, however he may aim at only beauty in his work, or "sing but as the linnet sings," his message should be adequate to healthy and mature humanity. His intelligence of what is noble and enduring, his expression of a full, harmonious personality, is enough to moralize his work. It is even better that he should not turn aside to comment. That is the function of the homilist. We must learn how to live from him less by his precepts than by his examples and by being in his company. It would no doubt be misunderstanding Mr. Arnold to suppose that he estimates poetry by the gnomic sentences conveyed in it, or that he intends to say that the greatest poets have deliberately used their art as the vehicle of moral teaching. Yet there is a double danger in the wording of his definitions. On the one hand, if we accept them too literally, we run the risk of encouraging that false view of poetry which led the Byzantines to prefer Euripides to Sophocles, because he contained a greater number of quotable maxims; which brought the humanists of the sixteenth century to the incomprehensible conclusion that Seneca had improved upon the Greek drama by infusing greater gravity into his speeches; which caused Tasso to invent an ex post facto allegory for the "Gerusalemme," and Spenser to describe Ariosto's mad Orlando, the triumphant climax of that poet's irony, as "a good governor and a virtuous man." On the other hand, there is the peril of forgetting that the prime aim of all art is at bottom only presentation. That, and that alone, distinguishes the arts, including poetry, from every other operation of the intellect, and justifies Hegel's general definition of Art as "Die sinnliche Erscheinung der Idee." Poetry is not so much a criticism of life as a revelation of life, a presentment of life according to the poet's capacity for observing and displaying it in forms that reproduce it for his readers. The poet is less a judge than a seer and reporter. If he judges, it is as light, falling upon an object, showing its inequalities, discov.

ering its loveliness, may be said to judge. The greatest poet is not the poet who has said the best things about life, but he whose work most fully and faithfully reflects life in its breadth and largeness, eliminating what is accidental, trivial, temporary, local, or rendering insignificant details the mirror of the universal by his treatment. He teaches less by what he inculcates than by what he shows; and the truth of Plato's above-mentioned theory is that he may himself be unaware of the far-reaching lessons he communicates. From Shakespeare we could better afford to lose the profound remarks on life in "Timon" or "Troilus and Cressida " than the delineation of Othello's passion. The speeches of Nestor in the "Iliad are less valuable than the portrait of Achilles; and what Achilles says about fame, heroism, death, and friendship, could be sooner spared than the presentment of his action.

The main thing to keep in mind is this, that the world will very willingly let die in poetry what does not contribute to its intellectual strength and moral vigor. In the long run, therefore, poetry full of matter and moralized wins the day. But it must, before all else, be poetry. The application of the soundest moral ideas, the finest criticism of life, will not save it from oblivion, if it fails in the essential qualities that constitute a work of art. Imagination, or the power to see clearly and to project forcibly; fancy, or the power to flash new light on things familiar, and by their combination to delight the mind with novelty; creative genius, or the power of giving form and substance, life and beauty to the figments of the brain; style, or the power to sustain a flawless and unwavering distinction of utterance; dramatic energy, or the power to make men and women move before us with self-evident reality in fiction; passion, sympathy, enthusiasm, or the power of feeling and communicating feeling, of understanding and arousing emotion; lyrical inspiration, or the power of spontaneous singing-these are among the many elements that go to make up poetry. These, no doubt, are alluded to by Mr. Arnold in the clause referring to "poetic beauty and poetic truth." But it is needful to insist upon them, after having dwelt so long upon the matter and the moral tone of poetry. No sane critic can deny that the possession of one or more of these qualities in any very eminent degree will save a poet from the neglect to which moral revolt or indifference might otherwise condemn him. Ariosto's vulgarity of feeling, Shelley's crude and discordant opinions, Leopardi's overwhelming pessimism, Heine's morbid sentimentality, Byron's superficiality and cynicism, sink to nothing beneath the saving virtues of imagination, lyrical inspiration, poetic style, humor, intensity, and sweep of pas

sion. The very greatest poets of the world have combined all these qualities, together with that grand humanity which confers upon them immortal freshness. Of Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Eschylus, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare, Molière, Goethe, it is only possible to say that one or other element of poetic achievement has been displayed more eminently than the rest, that one or other has been held more obviously in abeyance, when we come to distinguish each great master from his peers. But lesser men may rest their claims to immortality upon slighter merits ; and among these merits it will be found impossible to exclude what we call form, style, and the several poetic qualities above enumerated.

The final test of greatness in a poet is his adequacy to human nature at its best; his feeling for the balance of sense, emotion, will, intellect in moral harmony; his faculty for regarding the whole of life, and representing it in all its largeness. If this be true, dramatic and epical poetry must be the most enduring, the most instructive monuments of creative genius in verse. These forms bring into quickest play and present in fullest activity the many-sided motives of our life on earth. Yet the lyrist has a sphere scarcely second in importance to that of the epic and dramatic poets. The thought and feeling he expresses may, if his nature be adequate, embrace the whole gamut of humanity; and if his expression be sufficient, he may give the form of ̧ universality to his experience, creating magic mirrors wherein all men shall see their own hearts reflected and glorified without violation of reality or truth.

J. A. SYMONDS (Fortnightly Review).

IRVING'S SHYLOCK.

THAT no artist has so much actual enjoyment of success as the actor, and that no fame is so evanescent as his, has been generally accepted as a truth. But only the first part of the saying is altogether true; the last part will, at least, bear modification. Were it entirely and unfailingly true, neither actors nor spectators would be beset by traditions, no fulfilled renown would interpose its laurels between the student-artist and the dramatist's creation, or stir the air about his audience with the distant echo of its trumpets. On the contrary, the traditions of the great actors of the past are always with us—and, although we can not point to handiwork of theirs in stone or on canvas, they are the most interesting of memories, because the aiguillon of curiosity and question pricks all discussion of them. Did Garrick give this passage so? Did the Siddons make

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