[From The Quarterly Review, January, 1821]
Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. By the Author of Sense and
Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. 4 vols.
New Edition.
The times seem to be past when an apology was requisite from reviewers
for condescending to notice a novel; when they felt themselves bound in
dignity to deprecate the suspicion of paying much regard to such
trifles, and pleaded the necessity of occasionally stooping to humour
the taste of their fair readers. The delights of fiction, if not more
keenly or more generally relished, are at least more readily
acknowledged by men of sense and taste; and we have lived to hear the
merits of the best of this class of writings earnestly discussed by some
of the ablest scholars and soundest reasoners of the present day.
We are inclined to attribute this change, not so much to an alteration
in the public taste, as in the character of the productions in question.
Novels may not, perhaps, display more genius now than formerly, but they
contain more solid sense; they may not afford higher gratification, but
it is of a nature which men are less disposed to be ashamed of avowing.
We remarked, in a former Number, in reviewing a work of the author now
before us, that "a new style of novel has arisen, within the last
fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon
which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing
our imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of
romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain
attributes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence among
those who actually live and die. The substitute for these excitements,
which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious
use of them, was the art of copying from nature as she really exists in
the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the
splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking
representation of that which is daily taking place around him."
Now, though the origin of this new school of fiction may probably be
traced, as we there suggested, to the exhaustion of the mines from which
materials for entertainment had been hitherto extracted, and the
necessity of gratifying the natural craving of the reader for variety,
by striking into an untrodden path; the consequences resulting from this
change have been far greater than the mere supply of this demand. When
this Flemish painting, as it were, is introduced—this accurate and
unexaggerated delineation of events and characters—it necessarily
follows, that a novel, which makes good its pretensions of giving a
perfectly correct picture of common life, becomes a far more
instructive work than one of equal or superior merit of the other
class; it guides the judgment, and supplies a kind of artificial
experience. It is a remark of the great father of criticism, that poetry
(i.e., narrative, and dramatic poetry) is of a more philosophical
character than history; inasmuch as the latter details what has actually
happened, of which many parts may chance to be exceptions to the general
rules of probability, and consequently illustrate no general principles;
whereas the former shews us what must naturally, or would probably,
happen under given circumstances; and thus displays to us a
comprehensive view of human nature, and furnishes general rules of
practical wisdom. It is evident, that this will apply only to such
fictions as are quite perfect in respect of the probability of their
story; and that he, therefore, who resorts to the fabulist rather than
the historian, for instruction in human character and conduct, must
throw himself entirely on the judgment and skill of his teacher, and
give him credit for talents much more rare than the accuracy and
veracity which are the chief requisites in history. We fear, therefore,
that the exultation which we can conceive some of our gentle readers to
feel, at having Aristotle's warrant for (what probably they had never
dreamed of) the philosophical character of their studies, must, in
practice, be somewhat qualified, by those sundry little violations of
probability which are to be met with in most novels; and which so far
lower their value, as models of real life, that a person who had no
other preparation for the world than is afforded by them, would form,
probably, a less accurate idea of things as they are, than he would of a
lion from studying merely the representations on China tea-pots.
Accordingly, a heavy complaint has long lain against works of fiction,
as giving a false picture of what they profess to imitate, and
disqualifying their readers for the ordinary scenes and everyday duties
of life. And this charge applies, we apprehend, to the generality of
what are strictly called novels, with even more justice than to
romances. When all the characters and events are very far removed from
what we see around us,—when, perhaps, even supernatural agents are
introduced, the reader may indulge, indeed, in occasional day-dreams,
but will be so little reminded by what he has been reading, of anything
that occurs in actual life, that though he may perhaps feel some
disrelish for the tameness of the scene before him, compared with the
fairy-land he has been visiting, yet at least his judgment will not be
depraved, nor his expectations misled; he will not apprehend a meeting
with Algerine banditti on English shores, nor regard the old woman who
shews him about an antique country seat, as either an enchantress or the
keeper of an imprisoned damsel. But it is otherwise with those fictions
which differ from common life in little or nothing but the improbability
of the occurrences: the reader is insensibly led to calculate upon some
of those lucky incidents and opportune coincidences of which he has been
so much accustomed to read, and which, it is undeniable, may take
place in real life; and to feel a sort of confidence, that however
romantic his conduct may be, and in whatever difficulties it may involve
him, all will be sure to come right at last, as is invariably the case
with the hero of a novel.
On the other hand, so far as these pernicious effects fail to be
produced, so far does the example lose its influence, and the exercise
of poetical justice is rendered vain. The reward of virtuous conduct
being brought about by fortunate accidents, he who abstains (taught,
perhaps, by bitter disappointments) from reckoning on such accidents,
wants that encouragement to virtue, which alone has been held out to
him. "If I were a man in a novel," we remember to have heard an
ingenious friend observe, "I should certainly act so and so, because I
should be sure of being no loser by the most heroic self-devotion and of
ultimately succeeding in the most daring enterprises."
It may be said, in answer, that these objections apply only to the
unskilful novelist, who, from ignorance of the world, gives an
unnatural representation of what he professes to delineate. This is
partly true, and partly not; for there is a distinction to be made
between the unnatural and the merely improbable: a fiction is
unnatural when there is some assignable reason against the events taking
place as described,—when men are represented as acting contrary to the
character assigned them, or to human nature in general; as when a young
lady of seventeen, brought up in ease, luxury and retirement, with no
companions but the narrow-minded and illiterate, displays (as a heroine
usually does) under the most trying circumstances, such wisdom,
fortitude, and knowledge of the world, as the best instructors and the
best examples can rarely produce without the aid of more mature age and
longer experience.—On the other hand, a fiction is still improbable,
though not unnatural, when there is no reason to be assigned why
things should not take place as represented, except that the
overbalance of chances is against it; the hero meets, in his utmost
distress, most opportunely, with the very person to whom he had formerly
done a signal service, and who happens to communicate to him a piece of
intelligence which sets all to rights. Why should he not meet him as
well as any one else? all that can be said is, that there is no reason
why he should. The infant who is saved from a wreck, and who afterwards
becomes such a constellation of virtues and accomplishments, turns out
to be no other than the nephew of the very gentleman, on whose estate
the waves had cast him, and whose lovely daughter he had so long sighed
for in vain: there is no reason to be given, except from the calculation
of chances, why he should not have been thrown on one part of the coast
as well as another. Nay, it would be nothing unnatural, though the most
determined novel-reader would be shocked at its improbability, if all
the hero's enemies, while they were conspiring his ruin were to be
struck dead together by a lucky flash of lightning: yet many denouements
which are decidedly unnatural, are better tolerated than this would
be. We shall, perhaps, best explain our meaning by examples, taken from
a novel of great merit in many respects. When Lord Glenthorn, in whom a
most unfavourable education has acted on a most unfavourable
disposition, after a life of torpor, broken only by short sallies of
forced exertion, on a sudden reverse of fortune, displays at once the
most persevering diligence in the most repulsive studies, and in middle
life, without any previous habits of exertion, any hope of early
business, or the example of friends, or the stimulus of actual want, to
urge him, outstrips every competitor, though every competitor has every
advantage against him; this is unnatural.—When Lord Glenthorn, the
instant he is stripped of his estates, meets, falls in love with, and is
conditionally accepted by the very lady who is remotely intitled to
those estates; when, the instant he has fulfilled the conditions of
their marriage, the family of the person possessed of the estates
becomes extinct, and by the concurrence of circumstances, against every
one of which the chances were enormous, the hero is re-instated in all
his old domains; this is merely improbable. The distinction which we
have been pointing out may be plainly perceived in the events of real
life; when any thing takes place of such a nature as we should call, in
a fiction, merely improbable, because there are many chances against it,
we call it a lucky or unlucky accident, a singular coincidence,
something very extraordinary, odd, curious, etc.; whereas any thing
which, in a fiction, would be called unnatural, when it actually occurs
(and such things do occur), is still called unnatural, inexplicable,
unaccountable, inconceivable, etc., epithets which are not applied to
events that have merely the balance of chances against them.
Now, though an author who understands human nature is not likely to
introduce into his fictions any thing that is unnatural, he will often
have much that is improbable: he may place his personages, by the
intervention of accident, in striking situations, and lead them through
a course of extraordinary adventures; and yet, in the midst of all this,
he will keep up the most perfect consistency of character, and make them
act as it would be natural for men to act in such situations and
circumstances. Fielding's novels are a good illustration of this: they
display great knowledge of mankind; the characters are well preserved;
the persons introduced all act as one would naturally expect they
should, in the circumstances in which they are placed; but these
circumstances are such as it is incalculably improbable should ever
exist: several of the events, taken singly, are much against the chances
of probability; but the combination of the whole in a connected series,
is next to impossible. Even the romances which admit a mixture of
supernatural agency, are not more unfit to prepare men for real life,
than such novels as these; since one might just as reasonably calculate
on the intervention of a fairy, as on the train of lucky chances which
combine first to involve Tom Jones in his difficulties, and afterwards
to extricate him. Perhaps, indeed, the supernatural fable is of the two
not only (as we before remarked) the less mischievous in its moral
effects, but also the more correct kind of composition in point of
taste: the author lays down a kind of hypothesis of the existence of
ghosts, witches, or fairies, and professes to describe what would take
place under that hypothesis; the novelist, on the contrary, makes no
demand of extraordinary machinery, but professes to describe what may
actually take place, according to the existing laws of human affairs: if
he therefore present us with a series of events quite unlike any which
ever do take place, we have reason to complain that he has not made good
his professions.
When, therefore, the generality, even of the most approved novels, were
of this character (to say nothing of the heavier charges brought, of
inflaming the passions of young persons by warm descriptions, weakening
their abhorrence of profligacy by exhibiting it in combination with the
most engaging qualities, and presenting vice in all its allurements,
while setting forth the triumphs of "virtue rewarded") it is not to be
wondered that the grave guardians of youth should have generally
stigmatized the whole class, as "serving only to fill young people's
heads with romantic love-stories, and rendering them unfit to mind
anything else." That this censure and caution should in many instances
be indiscriminate, can surprize no one, who recollects how rare a
quality discrimination is; and how much better it suits indolence, as
well as ignorance, to lay down a rule, than to ascertain the exceptions
to it: we are acquainted with a careful mother whose daughters while
they never in their lives read a novel of any kind, are permitted to
peruse, without reserve, any plays that happen to fall in their way;
and with another, from whom no lessons, however excellent, of wisdom and
piety, contained in a prose-fiction, can obtain quarter; but who, on
the other hand, is no less indiscriminately indulgent to her children in
the article of tales in verse, of whatever character.
The change, however, which we have already noticed, as having taken
place in the character of several modern novels, has operated in a
considerable degree to do away this prejudice; and has elevated this
species of composition, in some respects at least, into a much higher
class. For most of that instruction which used to be presented to the
world in the shape of formal dissertations, or shorter and more
desultory moral essays, such as those of the Spectator and Rambler,
we may now resort to the pages of the acute and judicious, but not less
amusing, novelists who have lately appeared. If their views of men and
manners are no less just than those of the essayists who preceded them,
are they to be rated lower because they present to us these views, not
in the language of general description, but in the form of
well-constructed fictitious narrative? If the practical lessons they
inculcate are no less sound and useful, it is surely no diminution of
their merit that they are conveyed by example instead of precept: nor,
if their remarks are neither less wise nor less important, are they the
less valuable for being represented as thrown out in the course of
conversations suggested by the circumstances of the speakers, and
perfectly in character. The praise and blame of the moralist are surely
not the less effectual for being bestowed, not in general declamation,
on classes of men, but on individuals representing those classes, who
are so clearly delineated and brought into action before us, that we
seem to be acquainted with them, and feel an interest in their fate.
Biography is allowed, on all hands, to be one of the most attractive and
profitable kinds of reading: now such novels as we have been speaking
of, being a kind of fictitious biography, bear the same relation to the
real, that epic and tragic poetry, according to Aristotle, bear to
history: they present us (supposing, of course, each perfect in its
kind) with the general, instead of the particular,—the probable,
instead of the true; and, by leaving out those accidental
irregularities, and exceptions to general rules, which constitute the
many improbabilities of real narrative, present us with a clear and
abstracted view of the general rules themselves; and thus concentrate,
as it were, into a small compass, the net result of wide experience.
Among the authors of this school there is no one superior, if equal, to
the lady whose last production is now before us, and whom we have much
regret in finally taking leave of: her death (in the prime of life,
considered as a writer) being announced in this the first publication to
which her name is prefixed. We regret the failure not only of a source
of innocent amusement, but also of that supply of practical good sense
and instructive example, which she would probably have continued to
furnish better than any of her contemporaries:—Miss Edgeworth, indeed,
draws characters and details conversations, such as they occur in real
life, with a spirit and fidelity not to be surpassed; but her stories
are most romantically improbable (in the sense above explained), almost
all the important events of them being brought about by most
providential coincidences; and this, as we have already remarked, is
not merely faulty, inasmuch as it evinces a want of skill in the writer,
and gives an air of clumsiness to the fiction, but is a very
considerable drawback on its practical utility: the personages either of
fiction or history being then only profitable examples, when their good
or ill conduct meets its appropriate reward, not from a sort of
independent machinery of accidents, but as a necessary or probable
result, according to the ordinary course of affairs. Miss Edgeworth also
is somewhat too avowedly didactic: that seems to be true of her, which
the French critics, in the extravagance of their conceits, attributed to
Homer and Virgil; viz., that they first thought of a moral, and then
framed a fable to illustrate it; she would, we think, instruct more
successfully, and she would, we are sure, please more frequently, if she
kept the design of teaching more out of sight, and did not so glaringly
press every circumstance of her story, principal or subordinate, into
the service of a principle to be inculcated, or information to be given.
A certain portion of moral instruction must accompany every
well-invented narrative. Virtue must be represented as producing, at the
long run, happiness; and vice, misery; and the accidental events, that
in
real life interrupt this tendency, are anomalies which, though true
individually, are as false generally as the accidental deformities which
vary the average outline of the human figure. They would be as much out
of place in a fictitious narrative, as a wen in an academic model. But
any direct attempt at moral teaching, and any attempt whatever to give
scientific information will, we fear, unless managed with the utmost
discretion, interfere with what, after all, is the immediate and
peculiar object of the novelist, as of the poet, to please. If
instruction do not join as a volunteer, she will do no good service.
Miss Edgeworth's novels put us in mind of those clocks and watches which
are condemned "a double or a treble debt to pay": which, besides their
legitimate object, to show the hour, tell you the day of the month or
the week, give you a landscape for a dial-plate, with the second hand
forming the sails of a windmill, or have a barrel to play a tune, or an
alarum to remind you of an engagement: all very good things in their
way; but so it is that these watches never tell the time so well as
those in which that is the exclusive object of the maker. Every
additional movement is an obstacle to the original design. We do not
deny that we have learned much physic, and much law, from Patronage,
particularly the latter, for Miss Edgeworth's law is of a very original
kind; but it was not to learn law and physic that we took up the book,
and we suspect we should have been more pleased if we had been less
taught. With regard to the influence of religion, which is scarcely, if
at all, alluded to in Miss Edgeworth's novels, we would abstain from
pronouncing any decision which should apply to her personally. She may,
for aught we know, entertain opinions which would not permit her, with
consistency, to attribute more to it than she has done; in that case she
stands acquitted, in foro conscientiae, of wilfully suppressing any
thing which she acknowledges to be true and important; but, as a writer,
it must still be considered as a blemish, in the eyes at least of those
who think differently, that virtue should be studiously inculcated with
scarcely any reference to what they regard as the main spring of it;
that vice should be traced to every other source except the want of
religious principle; that the most radical change from worthlessness to
excellence should be represented as wholly independent of that agent
which they consider as the only one that can accomplish it; and that
consolation under affliction should be represented as derived from every
source except the one which they look to as the only true and sure one:
"is it not because there is no God in Israel that ye have sent to
inquire of Baalzebub the God of Ekron?"
Miss Austin has the merit (in our judgment most essential) of being
evidently a Christian writer: a merit which is much enhanced, both on
the score of good taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being
not at all obtrusive. She might defy the most fastidious critic to call
any of her novels (as Caelebs was designated, we will not say
altogether without reason), a "dramatic sermon." The subject is rather
alluded to, and that incidentally, than studiously brought forward and
dwelt upon. In fact she is more sparing of it than would be thought
desirable by some persons; perhaps even by herself, had she consulted
merely her own sentiments; but she probably introduced it as far as she
thought would be generally acceptable and profitable: for when the
purpose of inculcating a religious principle is made too palpably
prominent, many readers, if they do not throw aside the book with
disgust, are apt to fortify themselves with that respectful kind of
apathy with which they undergo a regular sermon, and prepare themselves
as they do to swallow a dose of medicine, endeavouring to get it down
in large gulps, without tasting it more than is necessary.
The moral lessons also of this lady's novels, though clearly and
impressively conveyed, are not offensively put forward, but spring
incidentally from the circumstances of the story; they are not forced
upon the reader, but he is left to collect them (though without any
difficulty) for himself: hers is that unpretending kind of instruction
which is furnished by real life; and certainly no author has ever
conformed more closely to real life, as well in the incidents, as in the
characters and descriptions. Her fables appear to us to be, in their own
way, nearly faultless; they do not consist (like those of some of the
writers who have attempted this kind of common-life novel writing) of a
string of unconnected events which have little or no bearing on one main
plot, and are introduced evidently for the sole purpose of bringing in
characters and conversations; but have all that compactness of plan and
unity of action which is generally produced by a sacrifice of
probability: yet they have little or nothing that is not probable; the
story proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents; the events
which take place are the necessary or natural consequences of what has
preceded; and yet (which is a very rare merit indeed) the final
catastrophe is scarcely ever clearly foreseen from the beginning, and
very often comes, upon the generality of readers at least, quite
unexpected. We know not whether Miss Austin ever had access to the
precepts of Aristotle; but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who
have illustrated them more successfully.
The vivid distinctness of description, the minute fidelity of detail,
and air of unstudied ease in the scenes represented, which are no less
necessary than probability of incident, to carry the reader's
imagination along with the story, and give fiction the perfect
appearance of reality, she possesses in a high degree; and the object is
accomplished without resorting to those deviations from the ordinary
plan of narrative in the third person, which have been patronized by
some eminent masters. We allude to the two other methods of conducting a
fictitious story, viz., either by narrative in the first person, when
the hero is made to tell his own tale, or by a series of letters; both
of which we conceive have been adopted with a view of heightening the
resemblance of the fiction to reality. At first sight, indeed, there
might appear no reason why a story told in the first person should have
more the air of a real history than in the third; especially as the
majority of real histories actually are in the third person;
nevertheless, experience seems to show that such is the case: provided
there be no want of skill in the writer, the resemblance to real life,
of a fiction thus conducted, will approach much the nearest (other
points being equal) to a deception, and the interest felt in it, to that
which we feel in real transactions. We need only instance Defoe's
Novels, which, in spite of much improbability, we believe have been
oftener mistaken for true narratives, than any fictions that ever were
composed. Colonel Newport is well known to have been cited as an
historical authority; and we have ourselves found great difficulty in
convincing many of our friends that Defoe was not himself the citizen,
who relates the plague of London. The reason probably is, that in the
ordinary form of narrative, the writer is not content to exhibit, like a
real historian, a bare detail of such circumstances as might actually
have come under his knowledge; but presents us with a description of
what is passing in the minds of the parties, and gives an account of
their feelings and motives, as well as their most private conversations
in various places at once. All this is very amusing, but perfectly
unnatural: the merest simpleton could hardly mistake a fiction of this
kind for a true history, unless he believed the writer to be endued with
omniscience and omnipresence, or to be aided by familiar spirits, doing
the office of Homer's Muses, whom he invokes to tell him all that could
not otherwise be known;
[Greek: Umeis gar theoi eote pareote te, iote te panta.]
Let the events, therefore, which are detailed, and the characters
described, be ever so natural, the way in which they are presented to us
is of a kind of supernatural cast, perfectly unlike any real history
that ever was or can be written, and thus requiring a greater stretch of
imagination in the reader. On the other hand, the supposed narrator of
his own history never pretends to dive into the thoughts and feelings of
the other parties; he merely describes his own, and gives his
conjectures as to those of the rest, just as a real autobiographer might
do; and thus an author is enabled to assimilate his fiction to reality,
without withholding that delineation of the inward workings of the human
heart, which is so much coveted. Nevertheless novels in the first person
have not succeeded so well as to make that mode of writing become very
general. It is objected to them, not without reason, that they want a
hero: the person intended to occupy that post being the narrator
himself, who of course cannot so describe his own conduct and character
as to make the reader thoroughly acquainted with him; though the attempt
frequently produces an offensive appearance of egotism.
The plan of a fictitious correspondence seems calculated in some measure
to combine the advantages of the other two; since, by allowing each
personage to be the speaker in turn, the feelings of each may be
described by himself, and his character and conduct by another. But
these novels are apt to become excessively tedious; since, to give the
letters the appearance of reality (without which the main object
proposed would be defeated), they must contain a very large proportion
of matter which has no bearing at all upon the story. There is also
generally a sort of awkward disjointed appearance in a novel which
proceeds entirely in letters, and holds together, as it were, by
continual splicing.
Miss Austin, though she has in a few places introduced letters with
great effect, has on the whole conducted her novels on the ordinary
plan, describing, without scruple, private conversations and
uncommunicated feelings: but she has not been forgetful of the important
maxim, so long ago illustrated by Homer, and afterwards enforced by
Aristotle,[1] of saying as little as possible in her own person, and
giving a dramatic air to the narrative, by introducing frequent
conversations; which she conducts with a regard to character hardly
exceeded even by Shakespeare himself. Like him, she shows as admirable a
discrimination in the characters of fools as of people of sense; a merit
which is far from common. To invent, indeed, a conversation full of
wisdom or of wit, requires that the writer should himself possess
ability; but the converse does not hold good: it is no fool that can
describe fools well; and many who have succeeded pretty well in painting
superior characters, have failed in giving individuality to those weaker
ones, which it is necessary to introduce in order to give a faithful
representation of real life: they exhibit to us mere folly in the
abstract, forgetting that to the eye of a skilful naturalist the insects
on a leaf present as wide differences as exist between the elephant and
the lion. Slender, and Shallow, and Aguecheek, as Shakespeare has
painted them, though equally fools, resemble one another no more than
"Richard," and "Macbeth," and "Julius Caesar"; and Miss Austin's "Mrs.
Bennet," "Mr. Rushworth," and "Miss Bates," are no more alike than her
"Darcy," "Knightley," and "Edmund Bertram." Some have complained,
indeed, of finding her fools too much like nature, and consequently
tiresome; there is no disputing about tastes; all we can say is, that
such critics must (whatever deference they may outwardly pay to received
opinions) find the "Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Twelfth Night" very
tiresome; and that those who look with pleasure at Wilkie's pictures, or
those of the Dutch school, must admit that excellence of imitation may
confer attraction on that which would be insipid or disagreeable in the
reality.
[1] [Greek: ouden anthes] Arist. Poet.
Her minuteness of detail has also been found fault with; but even where
it produces, at the time, a degree of tediousness, we know not whether
that can justly be reckoned a blemish, which is absolutely essential to
a very high excellence. Now, it is absolutely impossible, without this,
to produce that thorough acquaintance with the characters, which is
necessary to make the reader heartily interested in them. Let any one
cut out from the Iliad or from Shakespeare's plays every thing (we are
far from saying that either might not lose some parts with advantage,
but let him reject every thing) which is absolutely devoid of importance
and of interest in itself; and he will find that what is left will
have lost more than half its charms. We are convinced that some writers
have diminished the effect of their works by being scrupulous to admit
nothing into them which had not some absolute, intrinsic, and
independent merit. They have acted like those who strip off the leaves
of a fruit tree, as being of themselves good for nothing, with the view
of securing more nourishment to the fruit, which in fact cannot attain
its full maturity and flavour without them.
* * * * *
To say the truth, we suspect one of Miss Austin's great merits in our
eyes to be, the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female
character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the esprit de corps—
can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel
a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se
peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described
by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out
before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own
conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her
heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them
to acknowledge it. As liable to "fall in love first," as anxious to
attract the attention of agreeable men, as much taken with a striking
manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and
firmness, as liable to have their affections biassed by convenience or
fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration
of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss
Crawford and Fanny, vol. iii, p. 102. Fanny's meeting with her father,
p. 199; her reflections after reading Edmund's letter, 246; her
happiness (good, and heroine though she be) in the midst of the misery
of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with
her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong
passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any
authoress but Miss Austin would have ventured to temper the aetherial
materials of a heroine.
But we must proceed to the publication of which the title is prefixed to
this article. It contains, it seems, the earliest and the latest
productions of the author; the first of them having been purchased, we
are told, many years back by a bookseller, who, for some reason
unexplained, thought proper to alter his mind and withhold it. We do not
much applaud his taste; for though it is decidedly inferior to her other
works, having less plot, and what there is, less artificially wrought
up, and also less exquisite nicety of moral painting; yet the same kind
of excellences which characterise the other novels may be perceived in
this, in a degree which would have been highly creditable to most other
writers of the same school, and which would have entitled the author to
considerable praise, had she written nothing better.
We already begin to fear, that we have indulged too much in extracts,
and we must save some room for Persuasion, or we could not resist
giving a specimen of John Thorpe, with his horse that cannot go less
than 10 miles an hour, his refusal to drive his sister "because she has
such thick ankles," and his sober consumption of five pints of port a
day; altogether the best portrait of a species, which, though almost
extinct, cannot yet be quite classed among the Palaeotheria, the Bang-up
Oxonian. Miss Thorpe, the jilt of middling life, is, in her way, quite
as good, though she has not the advantage of being the representative of
a rare or a diminishing species. We fear few of our readers, however
they may admire the naïveté, will admit the truth of poor John Morland's
postscript, "I can never expect to know such another woman."
The latter of these novels, however, Persuasion, which is more
strictly to be considered as a posthumous work, possesses that
superiority which might be expected from the more mature age at which it
was written, and is second, we think, to none of the former ones, if not
superior to all. In the humorous delineation of character it does not
abound quite so much as some of the others, though it has great merit
even on that score; but it has more of that tender and yet elevated kind
of interest which is aimed at by the generality of novels, and in
pursuit of which they seldom fail of running into romantic extravagance:
on the whole, it is one of the most elegant fictions of common life we
ever remember to have met with.
Sir Walter Elliot, a silly and conceited baronet, has three daughters,
the eldest two, unmarried, and the third, Mary, the wife of a
neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Charles Musgrove, heir to a considerable
fortune, and living in a genteel cottage in the neighbourhood of the
Great house which he is hereafter to inherit. The second daughter, Anne,
who is the heroine, and the only one of the family possessed of good
sense (a quality which Miss Austin is as sparing of in her novels, as we
fear her great mistress, Nature, has been in real life), when on a visit
to her sister, is, by that sort of instinct which generally points out
to all parties the person on whose judgment and temper they may rely,
appealed to in all the little family differences which arise, and which
are described with infinite spirit and detail.
* * * * *
We ventured, in a former article, to remonstrate against the
dethronement of the once powerful God of Love, in his own most especial
domain, the novel; and to suggest that, in shunning the ordinary fault
of recommending by examples a romantic and uncalculating extravagance of
passion, Miss Austin had rather fallen into the opposite extreme of
exclusively patronizing what are called prudent matches, and too much
disparaging sentimental enthusiasm. We urged, that, mischievous as is
the extreme on this side, it is not the one into which the young folks
of the present day are the most likely to run: the prevailing fault is
not now, whatever it may have been, to sacrifice all for love:
Venit enim magnum donandi parca juventus,
Nec tantum Veneris quantum studiosa culinae.
We may now, without retracting our opinion, bestow unqualified
approbation; for the distresses of the present heroine all arise from
her prudent refusal to listen to the suggestions of her heart. The
catastrophe, however, is happy, and we are left in doubt whether it
would have been better for her or not, to accept the first proposal; and
this we conceive is precisely the proper medium; for, though we would
not have prudential calculations the sole principle to be regarded in
marriage, we are far from advocating their exclusion. To disregard the
advice of sober-minded friends on an important point of conduct, is an
imprudence we would by no means recommend; indeed, it is a species of
selfishness, if, in listening only to the dictates of passion, a man
sacrifices to its gratification the happiness of those most dear to him
as well as his own; though it is not now-a-days the most prevalent form
of selfishness. But it is no condemnation of a sentiment to say, that it
becomes blameable when it interferes with duty, and is uncontrolled by
conscience: the desire of riches, power, or distinction—the taste for
ease and comfort—are to be condemned when they transgress these bounds;
and love, if it keep within them, even though it be somewhat tinged with
enthusiasm, and a little at variance with what the worldly call
prudence, i.e., regard for pecuniary advantage, may afford a better
moral discipline to the mind than most other passions. It will not at
least be denied, that it has often proved a powerful stimulus to
exertion where others have failed, and has called forth talents unknown
before even to the possessor. What, though the pursuit may be fruitless,
and the hopes visionary? The result may be a real and substantial
benefit, though of another kind; the vineyard may have been cultivated
by digging in it for the treasure which is never to be found. What
though the perfections with which imagination has decorated the beloved
object, may, in fact, exist but in a slender degree? still they are
believed in and admired as real; if not, the love is such as does not
merit the name; and it is proverbially true that men become assimilated
to the character (i.e., what they think the character) of the being
they fervently adore: thus, as in the noblest exhibitions of the stage,
though that which is contemplated be but a fiction, it may be realized
in the mind of the beholder; and, though grasping at a cloud, he may
become worthy of possessing a real goddess. Many a generous sentiment,
and many a virtuous resolution, have been called forth and matured by
admiration of one, who may herself perhaps have been incapable of
either. It matters not what the object is that a man aspires to be
worthy of, and proposes as a model for imitation, if he does but
believe it to be excellent. Moreover, all doubts of success (and they
are seldom, if ever, entirely wanting) must either produce or exercise
humility; and the endeavour to study another's interests and
inclinations, and prefer them to one's own, may promote a habit of
general benevolence which may outlast the present occasion. Every thing,
in short, which tends to abstract a man in any degree, or in any way,
from self,—from self-admiration and self-interest, has, so far at
least, a beneficial influence in forming the character.
On the whole, Miss Austin's works may safely be recommended, not only as
among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an
eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct
effort at the former, of which we have complained, as sometimes
defeating its object. For those who cannot, or will not, learn
anything from productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment
which entitles her to thanks; for mere innocent amusement is in itself a
good, when it interferes with no greater: especially as it may occupy
the place of some other that may not be innocent. The Eastern monarch
who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would
have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be
blameless. Those, again, who delight in the study of human nature, may
improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of
that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us.
[From The Quarterly Review, October, 1859]
1. Tennyson's Poems. In Two Volumes. London, 1842.
2. The Princess: a Medley. London, 1847.
3. In Memoriam. London, 1850.
4. Maud, and other Poems. London, 1855.
5. Idylls of the King. London, 1859.
Mr. Tennyson published his first volume, under the title of "Poems
Chiefly Lyrical," in 1830, and his second, with the name simply of
"Poems," in 1833. In 1842 he reappeared before the world in two volumes,
partly made up from the débris of his earlier pieces; and from this
time forward he came into the enjoyment of a popularity at once great,
growing, and select. With a manly resolution, which gave promise of the
rare excellence he was progressively to attain, he had at this time
amputated altogether from the collection about one-half of the contents
of his earliest work, with some considerable portion of the second; he
had almost rewritten or carefully corrected other important pieces, and
had added a volume of new compositions.
The latter handiwork showed a great advance upon the earlier; as,
indeed, 1833 had shown upon 1830. From the very first, however, he had
been noteworthy in performance as well as in promise, and it was plain
that, whatever else might happen, at least neglect was not to be his
lot. But, in the natural heat of youth he had at the outset certainly
mixed up some trivial with a greater number of worthy productions, and
had shown an impatience of criticism by which, however excusable, he was
sure to be himself the chief sufferer. His higher gifts, too, were of
the quality which, by the changeless law of nature, cannot ripen fast;
and there was, accordingly, some portion both of obscurity and of
crudity in the results of his youthful labours. Men of slighter
materials would have come more quickly to their maturity, and might have
given less occasion not only for cavil but for animadversion. It was yet
more creditable to him, than it could be even to the just among his
critics, that he should, and while yet young, have applied himself with
so resolute a hand to the work of castigation. He thus gave a remarkable
proof alike of his reverence for his art, of his insight into its
powers, of the superiority he had acquired to all the more commonplace
illusions of self-love, and perhaps of his presaging consciousness that
the great, if they mean to fulfil the measure of their greatness, should
always be fastidious against themselves.
It would be superfluous to enter upon any general criticism of this
collection, which was examined when still recent in this Review, and a
large portion of which is established in the familiar recollection and
favour of the public. We may, however, say that what may be termed at
large the classical idea (though it is not that of Troas nor of the
Homeric period) has, perhaps, never been grasped with greater force and
justice than in "Oenone," nor exhibited in a form of more consummate
polish. "Ulysses" is likewise a highly finished poem; but it is open to
the remark that it exhibits (so to speak) a corner-view of a character
which was in itself a cosmos. Never has political philosophy been
wedded to the poetic form more happily than in the three short pieces on
England and her institutions, unhappily without title, and only to be
cited, like writs of law and papal bulls, by their first words. Even
among the rejected pieces there are specimens of a deep metaphysical
insight; and this power reappears with an increasing growth of ethical
and social wisdom in "Locksley Hall" and elsewhere. The Wordsworthian
poem of "Dora" is admirable in its kind. From the firmness of its
drawing, and the depth and singular purity of its colour, "Godiva"
stood, if we judge aright, as at once a great performance and a great
pledge. But, above all, the fragmentary piece on the Death of Arthur was
a fit prelude to that lordly music which is now sounding in our ears. If
we pass onward from these volumes, it is only because space forbids a
further enumeration.
The "Princess" was published in 1847. The author has termed it "a
medley": why, we know not. It approaches more nearly to the character of
a regular drama, with the stage directions written into verse, than any
other of his works, and it is composed consecutively throughout on the
basis of one idea. It exhibits an effort to amalgamate the place and
function of woman with that of man, and the failure of that effort,
which duly winds up with the surrender and marriage of the fairest and
chief enthusiast. It may be doubted whether the idea is one well suited
to exhibition in a quasi-dramatic form. Certainly the mode of embodying
it, so far as it is dramatic, is not successful; for here again the
persons are little better than mere personae. They are media, and
weak media, for the conveyance of the ideas. The poem is,
nevertheless, one of high interest, on account of the force, purity and
nobleness of the main streams of thought, which are clothed in language
full of all Mr. Tennyson's excellences; and also because it marks the
earliest effort of his mind in the direction of his latest and greatest
achievements.
* * * * *
With passages like these still upon the mind and ear, and likewise
having in view many others in the "Princess" and elsewhere, we may
confidently assert it as one of Mr. Tennyson's brightest distinctions
that he is now what from the very first he strove to be, and what when
he wrote "Godiva" he gave ample promise of becoming—the poet of woman.
We do not mean, nor do we know, that his hold over women as his readers
is greater than his command or influence over men; but that he has
studied, sounded, painted woman in form, in motion, in character, in
office, in capability, with rare devotion, power, and skill; and the
poet who best achieves this end does also most and best for man.
In 1850 Mr. Tennyson gave to the world, under the title of "In
Memoriam," perhaps the richest oblation ever offered by the affection of
friendship at the tomb of the departed. The memory of Arthur Henry
Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833, at the age of twenty-two, will
doubtless live chiefly in connection with this volume; but he is well
known to have been one who, if the term of his days had been prolonged,
would have needed no aid from a friendly hand, would have built for
himself an enduring monument, and would have bequeathed to his country a
name in all likelihood greater than that of his very distinguished
father. There was no one among those who were blessed with his
friendship, nay, as we see, not even Mr. Tennyson,[1] who did not feel
at once bound closely to him by commanding affection, and left far
behind by the rapid, full, and rich development of his ever-searching
mind; by his
All comprehensive tenderness,
All subtilising intellect.
[1] See "In Memoriam," pp. 64, 84.
It would be easy to show what, in the varied forms of human excellence,
he might, had life been granted him, have accomplished; much more
difficult to point the finger and to say, "This he never could have
done." Enough remains from among his early efforts to accredit whatever
mournful witness may now be borne of him. But what can be a nobler
tribute than this, that for seventeen years after his death a poet, fast
rising towards the lofty summits of his art, found that young fading
image the richest source of his inspiration, and of thoughts that gave
him buoyancy for a flight such as he had not hitherto attained?
It would be very difficult to convey a just idea of this volume either
by narrative or by quotation. In the series of monodies or meditations
which compose it, and which follow in long series without weariness or
sameness, the poet never moves away a step from the grave of his friend,
but, while circling round it, has always a new point of view. Strength
of love, depth of grief, aching sense of loss, have driven him forth as
it were on a quest of consolation, and he asks it of nature, thought,
religion, in a hundred forms which a rich and varied imagination
continually suggests, but all of them connected by one central point,
the recollection of the dead. This work he prosecutes, not in vain
effeminate complaint, but in a manly recognition of the fruit and profit
even of baffled love, in noble suggestions of the future, in
heart-soothing and heart-chastening thoughts of what the dead was and of
what he is, and of what one who has been, and therefore still is, in
near contact with him is bound to be. The whole movement of the poem is
between the mourner and the mourned: it may be called one long
soliloquy; but it has this mark of greatness, that, though the singer is
himself a large part of the subject, it never degenerates into egotism—
for he speaks typically on behalf of humanity at large, and in his own
name, like Dante on his mystic journey, teaches deep lessons of life and
conscience to us all.
* * * * *
By the time "In Memoriam" had sunk into the public mind, Mr. Tennyson
had taken his rank as our first then living poet. Over the fresh hearts
and understandings of the young, notwithstanding his obscurities, his
metaphysics, his contempt of gewgaws, he had established an
extraordinary sway. We ourselves, with some thousands of other
spectators, saw him receive in that noble structure of Wren, the theatre
of Oxford, the decoration of D.C.L., which we perceive he always wears
on his title-page. Among his colleagues in the honour were Sir De Lacy
Evans and Sir John Burgoyne, fresh from the stirring exploits of the
Crimea; but even patriotism, at the fever heat of war, could not command
a more fervent enthusiasm for the old and gallant warriors than was
evoked by the presence of Mr. Tennyson.
In the year 1855 Mr. Tennyson proceeded to publish his "Maud," the least
popular, and probably the least worthy of popularity, among his more
considerable works. A somewhat heavy dreaminess, and a great deal of
obscurity, hang about this poem; and the effort required to dispel the
darkness of the general scheme is not repaid when we discover what it
hides. The main thread of "Maud" seems to be this:—A love once
accepted, then disappointed, leads to blood-shedding, and onward to
madness with lucid alternations. The insanity expresses itself in the
ravings of the homicide lover, who even imagines himself among the dead,
in a clamour and confusion closely resembling an ill-regulated Bedlam,
but which, if the description be a faithful one, would for ever deprive
the grave of its title to the epithet of silent. It may be good frenzy,
but we doubt its being as good poetry. Of all this there may, we admit,
be an esoteric view: but we speak of the work as it offers itself to the
common eye. Both Maud and the lover are too nebulous by far; and they
remind us of the boneless and pulpy personages by whom, as Dr. Whewell
assures us, the planet Jupiter is inhabited, if inhabited at all. But
the most doubtful part of the poem is its climax. A vision of the
beloved image (p. 97) "spoke of a hope for the world in the coming
wars," righteous wars, of course, and the madman begins to receive light
and comfort; but, strangely enough, it seems to be the wars, and not the
image, in which the source of consolation lies (p. 98).
No more shall Commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase.
… a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told …
For the long long canker of peace is over and done:
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, names
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire!
What interpretation are we meant to give to all this sound and fury? We
would fain have put it down as intended to be the finishing-stroke in
the picture of a mania which has reached its zenith. We might call in
aid of this construction more happy and refreshing passages from other
poems, as when Mr. Tennyson is
Certain, if knowledge brings the sword,
That knowledge takes the sword away.[1]
[1] "Poems," p. 182, ed. 1853. See also "Locksley Hall," p. 278.
And again in "The Golden Dream,"—
When shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land?
And yet once more in a noble piece of "In Memoriam,"—
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
But on the other hand we must recollect that very long ago, when the
apparition of invasion from across the Channel had as yet spoiled no
man's slumbers, Mr. Tennyson's blood was already up:[2]—
For the French, the Pope may shrive them …
And the merry devil drive them
Through the water and the fire.
[2] "Poems chiefly Lyrical," 1830, p. 142.
And unhappily in the beginning of "Maud," when still in the best use of
such wits as he possesses, its hero deals largely in kindred
extravagances (p. 7):—
When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,
Is it peace or war? better war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.
He then anticipates that, upon an enemy's attacking this country, "the
smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogue," who typifies the bulk of the British
people, "the nation of shopkeepers," as it has been emasculated and
corrupted by excess of peace, will leap from his counter and till to
charge the enemy; and thus it is to be reasonably hoped that we shall
attain to the effectual renovation of society.
We frankly own that our divining rod does not enable us to say whether
the poet intends to be in any and what degree sponsor to these
sentiments, or whether he has put them forth in the exercise of his
undoubted right to make vivid and suggestive representations of even the
partial and narrow aspects of some endangered truth. This is at best,
indeed, a perilous business, for out of such fervid partial
representations nearly all grave human error springs; and it should only
be pursued with caution and in season. But we do not recollect that 1855
was a season of serious danger from a mania for peace and its pursuits;
and even if it had been so, we fear that the passages we have quoted far
overpass all the bounds of moderation and good sense. It is, indeed,
true that peace has its moral perils and temptations for degenerate man,
as has every other blessing, without exception, that he can receive from
the hand of God. It is moreover not less true that, amidst the clash of
arms, the noblest forms of character may be reared, and the highest acts
of duty done; that these great and precious results may be due to war as
their cause; and that one high form of sentiment in particular, the love
of country, receives a powerful and general stimulus from the bloody
strife. But this is as the furious cruelty of Pharaoh made place for the
benign virtue of his daughter; as the butchering sentence of Herod
raised without doubt many a mother's love into heroic sublimity; as
plague, as famine, as fire, as flood, as every curse and every scourge
that is wielded by an angry Providence for the chastisement of man, is
an appointed instrument for tempering human souls in the seven-times
heated furnace of affliction, up to the standard of angelic and
archangelic virtue. War, indeed, has the property of exciting much
generous and noble feeling on a large scale; but with this special
recommendation it has, in its modern forms especially, peculiar and
unequalled evils. As it has a wider sweep of desolating power than the
rest, so it has the peculiar quality that it is more susceptible of
being decked in gaudy trappings, and of fascinating the imagination of
those whose passions it inflames. But it is on this very account a
perilous delusion to teach that war is a cure for moral evil in any
other sense than as the sister tribulations are. The eulogies of the
frantic hero in "Maud," however, deviate into grosser folly. It is
natural that such vagaries should overlook the fixed laws of Providence;
and under these laws the mass of mankind is composed of men, women, and
children who can but just ward off hunger, cold, and nakedness; whose
whole ideas of Mammon-worship are comprised in the search for their
daily food, clothing, shelter, fuel; whom any casualty reduces to
positive want; and whose already low estimate is yet further lowered and
ground down when "the blood-red blossom of war flames with its heart of
fire." But what is a little strange is, that war should be recommended
as a specific for the particular evil of Mammon-worship. Such it never
was, even in the days when the Greek heroes longed for the booty of
Troy, and anticipated lying by the wives of its princes and its
citizens. Still it had, in times now gone by, ennobling elements and
tendencies of the less sordid kind. But one inevitable characteristic of
modern war is, that it is associated throughout, in all its particulars,
with a vast and most irregular formation of commercial enterprise. There
is no incentive to Mammon-worship so remarkable as that which it
affords. The political economy of war is now one of its most commanding
aspects. Every farthing, with the smallest exceptions conceivable, of
the scores or hundreds of millions which a war may cost, goes directly
to stimulate production, though it is intended ultimately for waste or
for destruction. Apart from the fact that war destroys every rule of
public thrift, and saps honesty itself in the use of the public treasure
for which it makes such unbounded calls, it therefore is the greatest
feeder of that lust of gold which we are told is the essence of
commerce, though we had hoped it was only its occasional besetting sin.
It is, however, more than this; for the regular commerce of peace is
tameness itself compared with the gambling spirit which war, through the
rapid shiftings and high prices which it brings, always introduces into
trade. In its moral operation it more resembles, perhaps, the finding of
a new gold-field, than anything else. Meantime, as the most wicked
mothers do not kill their offspring from a taste for the practice in the
abstract, but under the pressure of want, and as war always brings home
want to a larger circle of the people than feel it in peace, we ask the
hero of "Maud" to let us know whether war is more likely to reduce or to
multiply the horrors which he denounces? Will more babies be poisoned
amidst comparative ease and plenty, or when, as before the fall of
Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as they now are, and wages not
much more than half as high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much
given to war: but no nations were more sedulous in the cult of Mammon.
Again, the Scriptures are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they
do not recommend this original and peculiar cure. Nay, once more: what
sad errors must have crept into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he
is made to desire that our swords shall be converted into ploughshares,
and our spears into pruning-hooks! But we have this solid consolation
after all, that Mr. Tennyson's war poetry is not comparable to his
poetry of peace. Indeed he is not here successful at all: the work, of a
lower order than his, demands the abrupt force and the lyric fire which
do not seem to be among his varied and brilliant gifts. We say more. Mr.
Tennyson is too intimately and essentially the poet of the nineteenth
century to separate himself from its leading characteristics, the
progress of physical science and a vast commercial, mechanical, and
industrial development. Whatever he may say or do in an occasional fit,
he cannot long either cross or lose its sympathies; for while he
elevates as well as adorns it, he is flesh of its flesh and bone of its
bone. We fondly believe it is his business to do much towards the
solution of that problem, so fearful from its magnitude, how to
harmonise this new draught of external power and activity with the old
and more mellow wine of faith, self devotion, loyalty, reverence, and
discipline. And all that we have said is aimed, not at Mr. Tennyson, but
at a lay-figure which he has set up, and into the mouth of which he has
put words that cannot be his words.
We return to our proper task, "Maud," if an unintelligible or even, for
Mr. Tennyson, an inferior work, is still a work which no inferior man
could have produced; nor would it be difficult to extract abundance of
lines, and even passages, obviously worthy of their author. And if this
poem would have made while alone a volume too light for his fame, the
defect is supplied by the minor pieces, some of which are admirable.
"The Brook," with its charming interstitial soliloquy, and the "Letters"
will, we are persuaded, always rank among Mr. Tennyson's happy efforts;
while the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," written from the
heart and sealed by the conscience of the poet, is worthy of that great
and genuine piece of manhood, its immortal subject.
We must touch for a moment upon what has already been mentioned as a
separate subject of interest in the "Princess." We venture to describe
it as in substance a drama, with a plot imperfectly worked and with
characters insufficiently chiselled and relieved. Its author began by
presenting, and for many years continued to present, personal as well as
natural pictures of individual attitude or movement; and, as in "Oenone"
and "Godiva," he carried them to a very high pitch of perfection. But he
scarcely attempted, unless in his more homely narrations, anything like
grouping or combination. It now appears that for the higher effort he
has been gradually accumulating and preparing his resources. In the
sections of the prolonged soliloquy of "Maud" we see a crude attempt at
representing combined interests and characters with heroic elevation,
under the special difficulty of appearing, like Mathews, in one person
only; in the "Princess" we had a happier effort, though one that still
left more to be desired. Each, however, in its own stage was a
preparation for an enterprise at once bolder and more mature.
We now come to the recent work of the poet—the "Idylls of the King."
The field, which Mr. Tennyson has chosen for this his recent and far
greatest exploit, is one of so deep and wide-reaching an interest as to
demand some previous notice of a special kind.
Lofty example in comprehensive forms is, without doubt, one of the great
standing needs of our race. To this want it has been from the first one
main purpose of the highest poetry to answer. The quest of Beauty leads
all those who engage in it to the ideal or normal man as the summit of
attainable excellence. By no arbitrary choice, but in obedience to
unchanging laws, the painter and the sculptor must found their art upon
the study of the human form, and must reckon its successful reproduction
as their noblest and most consummate exploit. The concern of Poetry with
corporal beauty is, though important, yet secondary: this art uses form
as an auxiliary, as a subordinate though proper part in the delineation
of mind and character, of which it is appointed to be a visible organ.
But with mind and character themselves lies the highest occupation of
the Muse. Homer, the patriarch of poets, has founded his two immortal
works upon two of these ideal developments in Achilles and Ulysses; and
has adorned them with others, such as Penelope and Helen, Hector and
Diomed, every one an immortal product, though as compared with the
others either less consummate or less conspicuous. Though deformed by
the mire of after-tradition, all the great characters of Homer have
become models and standards, each in its own kind, for what was, or was
supposed to be, its distinguishing gift.
At length, after many generations and great revolutions of mind and of
events, another age arrived, like, if not equal, in creative power to
that of Homer. The Gospel had given to the whole life of man a real
resurrection, and its second birth was followed by its second youth.
This rejuvenescence was allotted to those wonderful centuries which
popular ignorance confounds with the dark ages properly so called—an
identification about as rational as if we were to compare the life
within the womb to the life of intelligent though early childhood.
Awakened to aspirations at once fresh and ancient, the mind of man took
hold of the venerable ideals bequeathed to us by the Greeks as a
precious part of its inheritance, and gave them again to the light,
appropriated but also renewed. The old materials came forth, but not
alone; for the types which human genius had formerly conceived were now
submitted to the transfiguring action of a law from on high. Nature
herself prompted the effort to bring the old patterns of worldly
excellence and greatness—or rather the copies of those patterns still
legible, though depraved, and still rich with living suggestion—into
harmony with that higher Pattern, once seen by the eyes and handled by
the hands of men, and faithfully delineated in the Gospels for the
profit of all generations. The life of our Saviour, in its external
aspect, was that of a teacher. It was in principle a model for all, but
it left space and scope for adaptations to the lay life of Christians in
general, such as those by whom the every-day business of the world is to
be carried on. It remained for man to make his best endeavour to exhibit
the great model on its terrestrial side, in its contact with the world.
Here is the true source of that new and noble cycle which the middle
ages have handed down to us in duality of form, but with a nearly
identical substance, under the royal sceptres of Arthur in England and
of Charlemagne in France.
Of the two great systems of Romance, one has Lancelot, the other has
Orlando for its culminating point; these heroes being exhibited as the
respective specimens in whose characters the fullest development of man,
such as he was then conceived, was to be recognised. The one put forward
Arthur for the visible head of Christendom, signifying and asserting its
social unity; the other had Charlemagne. Each arrays about the Sovereign
a fellowship of knights. In them Valour is the servant of Honour; in an
age of which violence is the besetting danger, the protection of the
weak is elevated into a first principle of action; and they betoken an
order of things in which Force should be only known as allied with
Virtue, while they historically foreshadow the magnificent aristocracy
of mediaeval Europe. The one had Guinevere for the rarest gem of beauty,
the other had Angelica. Each of them contained figures of approximation
to the knightly model, and in each these figures, though on the whole
secondary, yet in certain aspects surpassed it: such were Sir Tristram,
Sir Galahad, Sir Lamoracke, Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, in the Arthurian
cycle; Rinaldo and Ruggiero, with others, in the Carlovingian. They were
not twin systems, but they were rather twin investitures of the same
scheme of ideals and feelings. Their consanguinity to the primitive
Homeric types is proved by a multitude of analogies of character and by
the commanding place which they assign to Hector as the flower of human
excellence. Without doubt, this preference was founded on his supposed
moral superiority to all his fellows in Homer; and the secondary prizes
of strength, valour, and the like, were naturally allowed to group
themselves around what, under the Christian scheme, had become the
primary ornament of man. The near relation of the two cycles to one
another may be sufficiently seen in the leading references we have made,
and it runs into a multitude of details both great and small, of which
we can only note a few. In both the chief hero passes through a
prolonged term of madness. Judas, in the College of Apostles, is
represented under Charlemagne in Gano di Maganza and his house, who
appear, without any development in action, in the Arthurian romance as
"the traitours of Magouns," and who are likewise reflected in Sir
Modred, Sir Agravain, and others; while the Mahometan element, which has
a natural place ready made in a history that acknowledges Charlemagne
and France, for its centres, finds its way sympathetically into one
which is bound for the most part by the shores of Albion. Both schemes
cling to the tradition of the unity of the Empire as well as of
Christendom; and accordingly, what was historical in Charlemagne is
represented in the case of Arthur by an imaginary conquest reaching as
far as Rome, the capital of the West: even the sword Durindana has its
counterpart in the sword Excalibur.
The moral systems of the two cycles are essentially allied: and perhaps
the differences between them may be due in greater or in less part to
the fact that they come to us through different media. We of the
nineteenth century read the Carlovingian romance in the pages of Ariosto
and Bojardo, who gave to their materials the colour of their times, and
of a civilization rank in some respects, while still unripe in some
others. The genius of poetry was not at the same period applying its
transmuting force to the Romance of the Round Table. The date of Sir
Thomas Mallory, who lived under Edward IV, is something earlier than
that of the great Italian romances; he appears, too, to have been on the
whole content with the humble offices of a compiler and a chronicler,
and we may conceive that his spirit and diction are still older than his
date. The consequence is, that we are brought into more immediate and
fresher contact with the original forms of this romance. So that, as
they present themselves to us, the Carlovingian cycle is the child of
the latest middle age, while the Arthurian represents the earlier. Much
might be said on the differences which have thus arisen, and on those
which may be due to a more northern and more southern extraction
respectively. Suffice it to say that the Romance of the Round Table, far
less vivid and brilliant, far ruder as a work of skill and art, has more
of the innocence, the emotion, the transparency, the inconsistency of
childhood. Its political action is less specifically Christian than that
of the rival scheme, its individual more so. It is more directly and
seriously aimed at the perfection of man. It is more free from gloss and
varnish; it tells its own tale with more entire simplicity. The ascetic
element is more strongly, and at the same time more quaintly, developed.
It has a higher conception of the nature of woman; and like the Homeric
poems, appears to eschew exhibiting her perfections in alliance with
warlike force and exploits. So also love, while largely infused into the
story, is more subordinate to the exhibition of other qualities. Again,
the Romance of the Round Table bears witness to a more distinct and
keener sense of sin: and on the whole, a deeper, broader, and more manly
view of human character, life, and duty. It is in effect more like what
the Carlovingian cycle might have been had Dante moulded it. It hardly
needs to be added that it is more mythical, inasmuch as Arthur of the
Round Table is a personage, we fear, wholly doubtful, though not
impossible; while the broad back of the historic Charlemagne, like
another Atlas, may well sustain a world of mythical accretions. This
slight comparison, be it remarked, refers exclusively to what may be
termed the latest "redactions" of the two cycles of romance. Their early
forms, in the lays of troubadours, and in the pages of the oldest
chroniclers, offer a subject of profound interest, and one still
unexhausted, although it has been examined by Mr. Panizzi and M.
Fauriel,[1] but one which is quite beyond the scope of our present
subject.
[1] Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians: London,
1830. Histoire de la Poésie Provençale: Paris, 1846.
It is to this rich repository that Mr. Tennyson has resorted for his
material. He has shown, as we think, rare judgment in the choice. The
Arthurian Romance has every recommendation that should win its way to
the homage of a great poet. It is national: it is Christian. It is also
human in the largest and deepest sense; and, therefore, though highly
national, it is universal; for it rests upon those depths and breadths
of our nature to which all its truly great developments in all nations
are alike essentially and closely related. The distance is enough for
atmosphere, not too much for detail; enough for romance, not too much
for sympathy. A poet of the nineteenth century, the Laureate has adopted
characters, incidents, and even language in the main, instead of
attempting to project them on a basis of his own in the region of
illimitable fancy. But he has done much more than this. Evidently by
reading and by deep meditation, as well as by sheer force of genius, he
has penetrated himself down to the very core of his being, with all that
is deepest and best in the spirit of the time, or the representation,
with which he deals; and as others, using old materials, have been free
to alter them in the sense of vulgarity or licence, so he has claimed
and used the right to sever and recombine, to enlarge, retrench, and
modify, for the purposes at once of a more powerful and elaborate art
than his original presents, and of a yet more elevated, or at least of a
far more sustained, ethical and Christian strain.
We are rather disposed to quarrel with the title of Idylls: for no
diminutive ([Greek: eidullion]) can be adequate to the breadth,
vigour, and majesty which belong to the subjects, as well as to the
execution, of the volume. The poet used the name once before; but he
then applied it to pieces generally small in the scale of their
delineations, whereas these, even if broken away one from the other, are
yet like the disjoined figures from the pediment of the Parthenon in
their dignity and force. One indeed among Mr. Tennyson's merits is, that
he does not think it necessary to keep himself aloft by artificial
effort, but undulates with his matter, and flies high or low as it
requires. But even in the humblest parts of these poems—as where the
little Novice describes the miniature sorrows and discipline of
childhood—the whole receives its tone from an atmosphere which is
heroic, and which, even in its extremest simplicity, by no means parts
company with grandeur, or ceases to shine in the reflected light of the
surrounding objects. Following the example which the poet has set us in
a former volume, we would fain have been permitted, at least
provisionally, to call these Idylls by the name of Books. Term them what
we may, there are four of them—arranged, as we think, in an ascending
scale.
The simplicity and grace of the principal character in Enid, with which
the volume opens, touches, but does not too strongly agitate, the deeper
springs of feeling. She is the beautiful daughter of Earl Yniol, who, by
his refusal of a turbulent neighbour as a suitor, has drawn upon himself
the ruin of his fortunes, and is visited in his depressed condition by
(p. 1)—
The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great order of the Table Round….
Geraint wins her against the detested cousin. They wed, and she becomes
the purest gem of the court of Guinevere, her place in which is
described in the beautiful exordium of the poem. An accident, slight
perhaps for the weight it is made to carry, arouses his jealousy, and he
tries her severely by isolation and rude offices on one of his tours;
but her gentleness, purity, and patience are proof against all, and we
part from the pair in a full and happy reconciliation, which is
described in lines of a beauty that leaves nothing to be desired.
The treatment of Enid by her husband has appeared to some of Mr.
Tennyson's readers to be unnatural. It is no doubt both in itself
repulsive, and foreign to our age and country. But the brutal element in
man, which now only invades the conjugal relation in cases where it is
highly concentrated, was then far more widely diffused, and not yet
dissociated from alternations and even habits of attachment. Something
of what we now call Eastern manners at one time marked the treatment
even of the women of the West. Unnatural means contrary to nature,
irrespectively of time or place; but time and place explain and warrant
the treatment of Enid by Geraint.
Vivien, which follows Enid, is perhaps the least popular of the four
Books. No pleasure, we grant, can be felt from the character either of
the wily woman, between elf and fiend, or of the aged magician, whose
love is allowed to travel whither none of his esteem or regard can
follow it: and in reading this poem we miss the pleasure of those
profound moral harmonies, with which the rest are charged. But we must
not on these grounds proceed to the conclusion that the poet has in this
case been untrue to his aims. For he has neither failed in power, nor
has he led our sympathies astray; and if we ask why he should introduce
us to those we cannot love, there is something in the reply that Poetry,
the mirror of the world, cannot deal with its attractions only, but must
present some of its repulsions also, and avail herself of the powerful
assistance of its contrasts. The example of Homer, who allows Thersites
to thrust himself upon the scene in the debates of heroes, gives a
sanction to what reason and all experience teach, namely, the actual
force of negatives in heightening effect; and the gentle and noble
characters and beautiful combinations, which largely predominate in the
other poems, stand in far clearer and bolder relief when we perceive the
dark and baleful shadow of Vivien lowering from between them.
Vivien exhibits a well-sustained conflict between the wizard and, in
another sense, the witch; on one side is the wit of woman, on the other
are the endowments of the prophet and magician, at once more and less
than those of nature. She has heard from him of a charm, a charm of
"woven paces, and of waving hands," which paralyses its victim for ever
and without deliverance, and her object is to extract from him the
knowledge of it as a proof of some return for the fervid and boundless
love that she pretends. We cannot but estimate very highly the skill
with which Mr. Tennyson has secured to what seemed the weaker vessel the
ultimate mastery in the fight. Out of the eater comes forth meat. When
she seems to lose ground with him by her slander against the Round Table
which he loved, she recovers it by making him believe that she saw all
other men, "the knights, the Court, the King, dark in his light": and
when in answer to her imprecation on herself a fearful thunderbolt
descends and storm rages, then, nestling in his bosom, part in fear but
more in craft, she overcomes the last remnant of his resolution, wins
the secret she has so indefatigably wooed, and that instant uses it to
close in gloom the famous career of the over-mastered sage.
* * * * *
Nowhere could we more opportunely than at this point call attention to
Mr. Tennyson's extraordinary felicity and force in the use of metaphor
and simile. This gift appears to have grown with his years, alike in
abundance, truth, and grace. As the showers descend from heaven to
return to it in vapour, so Mr. Tennyson's loving observation of Nature,
and his Muse, seem to have had a compact of reciprocity well kept on
both sides. When he was young, and when "Oenone" was first published, he
almost boasted of putting a particular kind of grasshopper into Troas,
which, as he told us in a note, was probably not to be found there. It
is a small but yet an interesting and significant indication that, when
some years after he retouched the poem, he omitted the note, and
generalised the grasshopper. Whether we are right or not in taking this
for a sign of the movement of his mind, there can be no doubt that his
present use of figures is both the sign and the result of a reverence
for Nature alike active, intelligent, and refined. Sometimes applying
the metaphors of Art to Nature, he more frequently draws the materials
of his analogies from her unexhausted book, and, however often he may
call for some new and beautiful vehicle of illustration, she seems never
to withhold an answer. With regard to this particular and very critical
gift, it seems to us that he may challenge comparison with almost any
poet either of ancient or modern times. We have always been accustomed
to look upon Ariosto as one of the greatest among the masters of the art
of metaphor and simile; and it would be easy to quote from him instances
which in tenderness, grace, force, or all combined, can never be
surpassed. But we have rarely seen the power subjected to a greater
trial than in the passages just quoted from Mr. Tennyson, where metaphor
lies by metaphor as thick as shells upon their bed; yet each
individually with its outline as well drawn, its separateness as clear,
its form as true to nature, and with the most full and harmonious
contribution to the general effect.
* * * * *
Mr. Tennyson practises largely, and with an extraordinary skill and
power, the art of designed and limited repetitions. They bear a
considerable resemblance to those Homeric formulae which have been so
usefully remarked by Colonel Mure—not the formulae of constant
recurrence, which tells us who spoke and who answered, but those which
are connected with pointing moral effects, and with ulterior purpose.
These repetitions tend at once to give more definite impressions of
character, and to make firmer and closer the whole tissue of the poem.
Thus, in the last speech of Guinevere, she echoes back, with other ideas
and expressions, the sentiment of Arthur's affection, which becomes in
her mouth sublime:—
I must not scorn myself: he loves me still:
Let no one dream but that he loves me still.
She prays admission among the nuns, that she may follow the pious and
peaceful tenor of their life (p. 260):—
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King.
And it is but a debt of justice to the Guinevere of the romancers to
observe, that she loses considerably by the marked transposition which
Mr. Tennyson has effected in the order of greatness between Lancelot and
Arthur. With him there is an original error in her estimate,
independently of the breach of a positive and sacred obligation. She
prefers the inferior man; and this preference implies a rooted ethical
defect in her nature. In the romance of Sir T. Mallory the preference
she gives to Lancelot would have been signally just, had she been free
to choose. For Lancelot is of an indescribable grandeur; but the limit
of Arthur's character is thus shown in certain words that he uses, and
that Lancelot never could have spoken. "Much more I am sorrier for my
good knight's loss than for the loss of my queen; for queens might I
have enough, but, such a fellowship of good knights shall never be
together in company."
We began with the exordium of this great work: we must not withhold the
conclusion. We left her praying admission to the convent—
She said. They took her to themselves; and she,
Still hoping, fearing, "is it yet too late?"
Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died.
Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had borne,
Was chosen Abbess: there, an Abbess, lived
For three brief years; and there, an Abbess, pass'd
To where beyond these voices there is peace.
No one, we are persuaded, can read this poem without feeling, when it
ends, what may be termed the pangs of vacancy—of that void in heart and
mind for want of its continuance of which we are conscious when some
noble strain of music ceases, when some great work of Raphael passes
from the view, when we lose sight of some spot connected with high
associations, or when some transcendent character upon the page of
history disappears, and the withdrawal of it is like the withdrawal of
the vital air. We have followed the Guinevere of Mr. Tennyson through
its detail, and have extracted largely from its pages, and yet have not
a hope of having conveyed an idea of what it really is; still we have
thought that in this way we should do it the least injustice, and we are
also convinced that even what we have shown will tend to rouse an
appetite, and that any of our readers, who may not yet have been also
Mr. Tennyson's, will become more eager to learn and admire it at first
hand.
We have no doubt that Mr. Tennyson has carefully considered how far his
subject is capable of fulfilling the conditions of an epic structure.
The history of Arthur is not an epic as it stands, but neither was the
Cyclic song, of which the greatest of all epics, the "Iliad," handles a
part. The poem of Ariosto is scarcely an epic, nor is that of Bojardo;
but it is not this because each is too promiscuous and crowded in its
brilliant phantasmagoria to conform to the severe laws of that lofty and
inexorable class of poem? Though the Arthurian romance be no epic, it
does not follow that no epic can be made from out of it. It is grounded
in certain leading characters, men and women, conceived upon models of
extraordinary grandeur; and as the Laureate has evidently grasped the
genuine law which makes man and not the acts of man the base of epic
song, we should not be surprised were he hereafter to realize the great
achievement towards which he seems to be feeling his way. There is a
moral unity and a living relationship between the four poems before us,
and the first effort of 1842 as a fifth, which, though some considerable
part of their contents would necessarily rank as episode, establishes
the first and most essential condition of their cohesion. The
achievement of Vivien bears directly on the state of Arthur by
withdrawing his chief councillor—the brain, as Lancelot was the right
arm, of his court; the love of Elaine is directly associated with the
final catastrophe of the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere. Enid lies
somewhat further off the path, nor is it for profane feet to intrude
into the sanctuary, for reviewers to advise poets in these high matters;
but while we presume nothing, we do not despair of seeing Mr. Tennyson
achieve on the basis he has chosen the structure of a full-formed epic.
In any case we have a cheerful hope that, if he continues to advance
upon himself as he has advanced heretofore, nay, if he can keep the
level he has gained, such a work will be the greatest, and by far the
greatest poetical creation, that, whether in our own or in foreign
poetry, the nineteenth century has produced. In the face of all critics,
the Laureate of England has now reached a position which at once imposes
and instils respect. They are self-constituted; but he has won his way
through the long dedication of his manful energies, accepted and crowned
by deliberate, and, we rejoice to think, by continually growing, public
favour. He has after all, and it is not the least nor lowest item in his
praise, been the severest of his own critics, and has not been too proud
either to learn or to unlearn in the work of maturing his genius and
building up his fame.
From his very first appearance he has had the form and fashion of a true
poet: the insight into beauty, the perception of harmony, the faculty of
suggestion, the eye both in the physical and moral world for motion,
light, and colour, the sympathetic and close observation of nature, the
dominance of the constructive faculty, and that rare gift the thorough
mastery and loving use of his native tongue. Many of us, the common
crowd, made of the common clay, may be lovers of Nature, some as sincere
or even as ardent as Mr. Tennyson; but it does not follow that even
these favoured few possess the privilege that he enjoys. To them she
speaks through vague and indeterminate impressions: for him she has a
voice of the most delicate articulation; all her images to him are clear
and definite, and he translates them for us into that language of
suggestion, emphasis, and refined analogy which links the manifold to
the simple and the infinite to the finite. He accomplishes for us what
we should in vain attempt for ourselves, enables the puny hand to lay
hold on what is vast, and brings even coarseness of grasp into a real
contact with what is subtle and ethereal. His turn for metaphysical
analysis is closely associated with a deep ethical insight: and many of
his verses form sayings of so high a class that we trust they are
destined to form a permanent part of the household-words of England.
Considering the quantity of power that Mr. Tennyson can make available,
it is a great proof of self-discipline that he is not given to a wanton
or tyrannous use of it. An extraordinary master of diction, he has
confined himself to its severe and simple forms. In establishing this
rule of practice his natural gift has evidently been aided by the fine
English of the old romances, and we might count upon the fingers the
cases in which he has lately deviated into the employment of any stilted
phrase, or given sanction to a word not of the best fabric. Profuse in
the power of graphic[1] representation, he has chastened some of his
earlier groups of imagery, which were occasionally overloaded with
particulars; and in his later works, as has been well remarked, he has
shown himself thoroughly aware that in poetry half is greater than the
whole. That the chastity of style he has attained is not from exhaustion
of power may easily be shown. No poet has evinced a more despotic
mastery over intractable materials, or has been more successful in
clothing what is common with the dignity of his art. The Downs are not
the best subjects in the world for verse; but they will be remembered
with and by his descriptive line in the "Idylls"—
Far o'er the long backs of the bushless downs.
[1] We use the word in what we conceive to be its only legitimate
meaning; namely, after the manner and with the effect of painting.
It signifies the quid, not the quale.
How becoming is the appearance of what we familiarly term the "clod" in
the "Princess"! (p. 37)—
Nor those horn-handled breakers of the glebe.
Of all imaginable subjects, mathematics might seem the most hopeless to
make mention of in verse; but they are with him
The hard-grained Muses of the cube and square.
Thus at a single stroke he gives an image alike simple, true, and
poetical to boot, because suited to its place and object in his verse,
like the heavy Caryatides well placed in architecture. After this, we
may less esteem the feat by which in "Godiva" he describes the clock
striking mid-day:—
All at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers.
But even the contents of a pigeon-pie are not beneath his notice, nor
yet beyond his powers of embellishment, in "Audley Court":—
A pasty, costly made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied.
What excites more surprise is that he can, without any offence against
good taste, venture to deal with these contents even after they have
entered the mouth of the eater ("Enid," p. 79):—
The brawny spearman let his cheek
Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning, stared.
The delicate insight of fine taste appears to show him with wonderful
precision up to what point his art can control and compel his materials,
and from what point the materials are in hopeless rebellion and must be
let alone. So in the "Princess" (p. 89) we are introduced to—
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
And labour.
It was absolutely necessary for him to heighten, nay, to coarsen, the
description of these masses of animated beef, who formed the standing
army of the woman-commonwealth. Few would have obeyed this law without
violating another; but Mr. Tennyson saw that the verb was admissible,
while the adjective would have been intolerable.
In 1842 his purging process made it evident that he did not mean to
allow his faults or weaknesses to stint the growth and mar the
exhibition of his genius. When he published "In Memoriam" in 1850, all
readers were conscious of the progressive widening and strengthening,
but, above all, deepening of his mind. We cannot hesitate to mark the
present volume as exhibiting another forward and upward stride, and that
by perhaps the greatest of all, in his career. If we are required to
show cause for this opinion under any special head, we would at once
point to that which is, after all, the first among the poet's gifts—the
gift of conceiving and representing human character.
Mr. Tennyson's Arthurian essays continually suggest to us comparisons
not so much with any one poet as a whole, but rather with many or most
of the highest poets. The music and the just and pure modulation of his
verse carry us back not only to the fine ear of Shelley, but to Milton
and to Shakespeare: and his powers of fancy and of expression have
produced passages which, if they are excelled by that one transcendent
and ethereal poet of our nation whom we have last named, yet could have
been produced by no other English minstrel. Our author has a right to
regard his own blank verse as highly characteristic and original: but
yet Milton has contributed to its formation, and occasionally there is a
striking resemblance in turn and diction, while Mr. Tennyson is the more
idiomatic of the two. The chastity and moral elevation of this volume,
its essential and profound though not didactic Christianity, are such as
perhaps cannot be matched throughout the circle of English literature in
conjunction with an equal power: and such as to recall a pattern which
we know not whether Mr. Tennyson has studied, the celestial strain of
Dante.[1] This is the more remarkable, because he has had to tread upon
the ground which must have been slippery for any foot but his. We are
far from knowing that either Lancelot or Guinevere would have been safe
even for mature readers, were it not for the instinctive purity of his
mind and the high skill of his management. We do not know that in other
times they have had their noble victims, whose names have become
immortal as their own.
Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto
Di Lancilotto, e come amor lo strinse.
* * * * *
Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.[2]
[1] It is no reproach to say that neither Dante nor Homer could have
been studied by Mr. Tennyson at the time—a very early period of his
life—when he wrote the lines which are allotted to them
respectively in "The Palace of Art."
[2] "Inferno," c. V, v. 127.
How difficult it is to sustain the elevation of such a subject, may be
seen in the well-meant and long popular "Jane Shore" of Rowe. How easily
this very theme may be vulgarised, is shown in the "Chevaliers de la
Table Ronde" of M. Creuzé de Lesser, who nevertheless has aimed at a
peculiar delicacy of treatment.
But the grand poetical quality in which this volume gives to its author
a new rank and standing is the dramatic power: the power of drawing
character and of representing action. These faculties have not been
precocious in Mr. Tennyson: but what is more material, they have come
out in great force. He has always been fond of personal delineations,
from Claribel and Lilian down to his Ida, his Psyche, and his Maud; but
they have been of shadowy quality, doubtful as to flesh and blood, and
with eyes having little or no speculation in them. But he is far greater
and far better when he has, as he now has, a good raw material ready to
his hand, than when he draws only on the airy or chaotic regions of what
Carlyle calls unconditioned possibility. He is made not so much to
convert the moor into the field, as the field into the rich and gorgeous
garden. The imperfect nisus which might be remarked in some former
works has at length reached the fulness of dramatic energy: in the
Idylls we have nothing vague or dreamy to complain of: everything lives
and moves, in the royal strength of nature: the fire of Prometheus has
fairly caught the clay: every figure stands clear, broad, and sharp
before us, as if it had sky for its background: and this of small as
well as great, for even the "little novice" is projected on the canvas
with the utmost truth and vigour, and with that admirable effect in
heightening the great figure of Guinevere, which Patroclus produces for
the character of Achilles, and (as some will have it) the modest
structure of Saint Margaret's for the giant proportions of Westminster
Abbey. And this, we repeat, is the crowning gift of the poet: the power
of conceiving and representing man.
We do not believe that a Milton—or, in other words, the writer of a
"Paradise Lost"—could ever be so great as a Shakespeare or a Homer,
because (setting aside all other questions) his chief characters are
neither human, nor can they be legitimately founded upon humanity; and,
moreover, what he has to represent of man is, by the very law of its
being, limited in scale and development. Here at least the saying is a
true one: Antiquitas saeculi, juventus mundi; rendered by our poet in
"The Day-dream,"
For we are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
The Adam and Eve of Paradise exhibit to us the first inception of our
race; and neither then, nor after their first sad lesson, could they
furnish those materials for representation, which their descendants have
accumulated in the school of their incessant and many-coloured, but on
the whole too gloomy, experience. To the long chapters of that
experience every generation of man makes its own addition. Again we ask
the aid of Mr. Tennyson in "Locksley Hall":—
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
The substitution of law for force has indeed altered the relations of
the strong and the weak; the hardening or cooling down of political
institutions and social traditions, the fixed and legal track instead of
the open pathless field, have removed or neutralised many of those
occasions and passages of life, which were formerly the schools of
individual character. The genius of mechanism has vied, in the arts of
both peace and war, with the strong hand, and has well-nigh robbed it of
its place. But let us not be deceived by that smoothness of superficies,
which the social prospect offers to the distant eye. Nearness dispels
the illusion; life is still as full of deep, of ecstatic, of harrowing
interests as it ever was. The heart of man still beats and bounds,
exults and suffers, from causes which are only less salient and
conspicuous because they are more mixed and diversified. It still
undergoes every phase of emotion, and even, as seems probable, with a
susceptibility which has increased and is increasing, and which has its
index and outer form in the growing delicacy and complexities of the
nervous system. Does any one believe that ever at any time there was a
greater number of deaths referable to that comprehensive cause a broken
heart? Let none fear that this age, or any coming one, will extinguish
the material of poetry. The more reasonable apprehension might be lest
it should sap the vital force necessary to handle that material, and
mould it into appropriate forms. To those especially, who cherish any
such apprehension, we recommend the perusal of this volume. Of it we
will say without fear, what we would not dare to say of any other recent
work; that of itself it raises the character and the hopes of the age
and the country which have produced it, and that its author, by his own
single strength, has made a sensible addition to the permanent wealth of
mankind.
[From The Quarterly Review, July, 1860]
On the Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection; or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By CHARLES
DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S. London, 1860.
Any contribution to our Natural History literature from the pen of Mr.
C. Darwin is certain to command attention. His scientific attainments,
his insight and carefulness as an observer, blended with no scanty
measure of imaginative sagacity, and his clear and lively style, make
all his writings unusually attractive. His present volume on the Origin
of Species is the result of many years of observation, thought, and
speculation; and is manifestly regarded by him as the "opus" upon which
his future fame is to rest. It is true that he announces it modestly
enough as the mere precursor of a mightier volume. But that volume is
only intended to supply the facts which are to support the completed
argument of the present essay. In this we have a specimen-collection of
the vast accumulation; and, working from these as the high analytical
mathematician may work from the admitted results of his conic sections,
he proceeds to deduce all the conclusions to which he wishes to conduct
his readers.
The essay is full of Mr. Darwin's characteristic excellences. It is a
most readable book; full of facts in natural history, old and new, of
his collecting and of his observing; and all of these are told in his
own perspicuous language, and all thrown into picturesque combinations,
and all sparkle with the colours of fancy and the lights of imagination.
It assumes, too, the grave proportions of a sustained argument upon a
matter of the deepest interest, not to naturalists only, or even to men
of science exclusively, but to every one who is interested in the
history of man and of the relations of nature around him to the history
and plan of creation.
With Mr. Darwin's "argument" we may say in the outset that we shall have
much and grave fault to find. But this does not make us the less
disposed to admire the singular excellences of his work; and we will
seek in limine to give our readers a few examples of these. Here, for
instance, is a beautiful illustration of the wonderful interdependence
of nature—of the golden chain of unsuspected relations which bind
together all the mighty web which stretches from end to end of this full
and most diversified earth. Who, as he listened to the musical hum of
the great humble-bees, or marked their ponderous flight from flower to
flower, and watched the unpacking of their trunks for their work of
suction, would have supposed that the multiplication or diminution of
their race, or the fruitfulness and sterility of the red clover, depend
as directly on the vigilance of our cats as do those of our well-guarded
game-preserves on the watching of our keepers? Yet this Mr. Darwin has
discovered to be literally the case:—
From experiments which I have lately tried, I have found that the
visits of bees are necessary for the fertilisation of some kinds of
clover; but humble-bees alone visit the red clover (Trifolium
pratense), as other bees cannot reach the nectar. Hence I have very
little doubt, that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or
very rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very
rare or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district
depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy
their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the
habits of humble-bees, believes that "more than two-thirds of them are
thus destroyed all over England." Now the number of mice is largely
dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Mr. Newman
says, "near villages and small towns I have found the nests of
humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the
number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence, it is quite credible
that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district
might determine, through the intervention, first of mice, and then of
bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district.—p. 74.
* * * * *
Now, all this is, we think, really charming writing. We feel as we walk
abroad with Mr. Darwin very much as the favoured object of the attention
of the dervise must have felt when he had rubbed the ointment around his
eye, and had it opened to see all the jewels, and diamonds, and
emeralds, and topazes, and rubies, which were sparkling unregarded
beneath the earth, hidden as yet from all eyes save those which the
dervise had enlightened. But here we are bound to say our pleasure
terminates; for, when we turn with Mr. Darwin to his "argument," we are
almost immediately at variance with him. It is as an "argument" that the
essay is put forward; as an argument we will test it.
We can perhaps best convey to our readers a clear view of Mr. Darwin's
chain of reasoning, and of our objections to it, if we set before them,
first, the conclusion to which he seeks to bring them; next, the leading
propositions which he must establish in order to make good his final
inference; and then the mode by which he endeavours to support his
propositions.
The conclusion, then, to which Mr. Darwin would bring us is, that all
the various forms of vegetable and animal life with which the globe is
now peopled, or of which we find the remains preserved in a fossil state
in the great Earth-Museum around us, which the science of geology
unlocks for our instruction, have come down by natural succession of
descent from father to son,—"animals from at most four or five
progenitors, and plants from an equal or less number" (p. 484), as Mr.
Darwin at first somewhat diffidently suggests; or rather, as, growing
bolder when he has once pronounced his theory, he goes on to suggest to
us, from one single head:—
Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that ALL
ANIMALS and PLANTS have descended from some one prototype. But analogy
may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have much in
common in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their
cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction….
Therefore I shall infer from analogy that probably all the organic
beings which have ever lived on this earth (man therefore of course
included) have descended from some one primordial form into which life
was first breathed by the Creator.—p. 484.
This is the theory which really pervades the whole volume. Man, beast,
creeping thing, and plant of the earth, are all the lineal and direct
descendants of some one individual ens, whose various progeny have
been simply modified by the action of natural and ascertainable
conditions into the multiform aspect of life which we see around us.
This is undoubtedly at first sight a somewhat startling conclusion to
arrive at. To find that mosses, grasses, turnips, oaks, worms, and
flies, mites and elephants, infusoria and whales, tadpoles of to-day and
venerable saurians, truffles and men, are all equally the lineal
descendants of the same aboriginal common ancestor, perhaps of the
nucleated cell of some primaeval fungus, which alone possessed the
distinguishing honour of being the "one primordial form into which life
was first breathed by the Creator "—this, to say the least of it, is no
common discovery—no very expected conclusion. But we are too loyal
pupils of inductive philosophy to start back from any conclusion by
reason of its strangeness. Newton's patient philosophy taught him to
find in the falling apple the law which governs the silent movements of
the stars in their courses; and if Mr. Darwin can with the same
correctness of reasoning demonstrate to us our fungular descent, we
shall dismiss our pride, and avow, with the characteristic humility of
philosophy, our unsuspected cousinship with the mushrooms,—
Claim kindred there, and have our claim allowed,
—only we shall ask leave to scrutinise carefully every step of the
argument which has such an ending, and demur if at any point of it we
are invited to substitute unlimited hypothesis for patient observation,
or the spasmodic fluttering flight of fancy for the severe conclusions
to which logical accuracy of reasoning has led the way.
Now, the main propositions by which Mr. Darwin's conclusion is attained
are these:—
1. That observed and admitted variations spring up in the course of
descents from a common progenitor.
2. That many of these variations tend to an improvement upon the parent
stock.
3. That, by a continued selection of these improved specimens as the
progenitors of future stock, its powers may be unlimitedly increased.
4. And, lastly, that there is in nature a power continually and
universally working out this selection, and so fixing and augmenting
these improvements.
Mr. Darwin's whole theory rests upon the truth of these propositions and
crumbles utterly away if only one of them fail him. These, therefore, we
must closely scrutinise. We will begin with the last in our series, both
because we think it the newest and the most ingenious part of Mr.
Darwin's whole argument, and also because, whilst we absolutely deny the
mode in which he seeks to apply the existence of the power to help him
in his argument, yet we think that he throws great and very interesting
light upon the fact that such self-acting power does actively and
continuously work in all creation around us.
Mr. Darwin finds then the disseminating and improving power, which he
needs to account for the development of new forms in nature, in the
principle of "Natural Selection," which is evolved in the strife for
room to live and flourish which is evermore maintained between
themselves by all living things. One of the most interesting parts of
Mr. Darwin's volume is that in which he establishes this law of natural
selection; we say establishes, because—repeating that we differ from
him totally in the limits which he would assign to its action—we have
no doubt of the existence or of the importance of the law itself.
* * * * *
We come then to these conclusions. All the facts presented to us in the
natural world tend to show that none of the variations produced in the
fixed forms of animal life, when seen in its most plastic condition
under domestication, give any promise of a true transmutation of
species; first, from the difficulty of accumulating and fixing
variations within the same species; secondly, from the fact that these
variations, though most serviceable for man, have no tendency to improve
the individual beyond the standard of his own specific type, and so to
afford matter, even if they were infinitely produced, for the supposed
power of natural selection on which to work; whilst all variations from
the mixture of species are barred by the inexorable law of hybrid
sterility. Further, the embalmed records of 3,000 years show that there
has been no beginning of transmutation in the species of our most
familiar domesticated animals; and beyond this, that in the countless
tribes of animal life around us, down to its lowest and most variable
species, no one has ever discovered a single instance of such
transmutation being now in prospect; no new organ has ever been known to
be developed—no new natural instinct to be formed—whilst, finally, in
the vast museum of departed animal life which the strata of the earth
imbed for our examination, whilst they contain far too complete a
representation of the past to be set aside as a mere imperfect record,
yet afford no one instance of any such change as having ever been in
progress, or give us anywhere the missing links of the assumed chain, or
the remains which would enable now existing variations, by gradual
approximations, to shade off into unity. On what then is the new theory
based? We say it with unfeigned regret, in dealing with such a man as
Mr. Darwin, on the merest hypothesis, supported by the most unbounded
assumptions. These are strong words, but we will give a few instances to
prove their truth:—
All physiologists admit that the swim-bladder is homologous or
"ideally similar" in position and structure with the lungs of the
higher vertebrate animals; hence there seems to me to be no great
difficulty in believing that natural selection has actually converted
a swim-bladder into a lung, or organ used exclusively for
respiration.—p. 191.
I can indeed hardly doubt that all vertebrate animals having true
lungs have descended by ordinary generation from the ancient
prototype, of which we know nothing, furnished with a floating
apparatus or swim-bladder—p. 191.
We must be cautious
In concluding that the most different habits of all could not
graduate into each other; that a bat, for instance, could not have
been formed by natural selection from an animal which at first could
only glide through the air.—p. 204.
Again:—
I see no difficulty in supposing that such links formerly existed,
and that each had been formed by the same steps as in the case of the
less perfectly gliding squirrels, and that each grade of structure was
useful to its possessor. Nor can I see any insuperable difficulty in
further believing it possible that the membrane-connected fingers and
forearm of the galeopithecus might be greatly lengthened by natural
selection, and this, as far as the organs of flight are concerned,
would convert it into a bat.—p. 181.
For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an
air-breathing lung.—p. 181.
And again:—
The electric organs of fishes offer another case of special
difficulty: It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous
organs have been produced; but, as Owen and others have remarked,
their intimate structure closely resembles that of common muscle; and
as it has lately been shown that rays have an organ closely analogous
to the electric apparatus, and yet do not, as Matteucci asserts,
discharge any electricity, we must own that we are far too ignorant to
argue that no transition of any kind is possible.—pp. 192-3.
Sometimes Mr. Darwin seems for a moment to recoil himself from this
extravagant liberty of speculation, as when he says, concerning the
eye,—
To suppose that the eye, with its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different
amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I
freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.—p. 186.
But he soon returns to his new wantonness of conjecture, and, without
the shadow of a fact, contents himself with saying that—
he suspects that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to
light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which
produce sound.—p-187.
And in the following passage he carries this extravagance to the highest
pitch, requiring a licence for advancing as true any theory which cannot
be demonstrated to be actually impossible:—
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find
no such case.—p. 189.
Another of these assumptions is not a little remarkable. It suits his
argument to deduce all our known varieties of pigeons from the
rock-pigeon (the Columba livia), and this parentage is traced out,
though not, we think, to demonstration, yet with great ingenuity and
patience. But another branch of the argument would be greatly
strengthened by establishing the descent of our various breeds of dogs
with their perfect power of fertile inter-breeding from different
natural species. And accordingly, though every fact as to the canine
race is parallel to the facts which have been used before to establish
the common parentage of the pigeons in Columba livia, all these are
thrown over in a moment, and Mr. Darwin, first assuming, without the
shadow of proof, that our domestic breeds are descended from different
species, proceeds calmly to argue from this, as though it were a
demonstrated certainty.
It seems to me unlikely in the case of the dog-genus, which is
distributed in a wild state throughout the world, that since man first
appeared one species alone should have been domesticated.—p. 18.
In some cases I do not doubt that the intercrossing of species
aboriginally distinct has played an important part in the origin of
our domestic productions.—p. 43.
What new words are these for a loyal disciple of the true Baconian
philosophy?—"I can conceive"—"It is not incredible"—"I do not doubt"
—"It is conceivable."
For myself, I venture confidently to look back thousands on
thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra,
but perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent
of our domestic horse, whether or not it be descended from one or more
wild stocks of the ass, hemionous, quagga, or zebra.—p. 167.
In the name of all true philosophy we protest against such a mode of
dealing with nature, as utterly dishonourable to all natural science, as
reducing it from its present lofty level of being one of the noblest
trainers of man's intellect and instructors of his mind, to being a mere
idle play of the fancy, without the basis of fact or the discipline of
observation. In the "Arabian Nights" we are not offended as at an
impossibility when Amina sprinkles her husband with water and transforms
him into a dog, but we cannot open the august doors of the venerable
temple of scientific truth to the genii and magicians of romance. We
plead guilty to Mr. Darwin's imputation that
the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species
has given birth to other and distinct species is that we are always
slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the
intermediate steps.—p. 481.
In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested by the imagination,
but the steps of which we cannot see, is the true spirit of philosophy.
Analysis, says Professor Sedgwick, consists in making experiments and
observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by
induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusions but
such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths; for
hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy.[1]
[1] "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," by A. Sedgwick, p.
102.
The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think,
unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of
time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his
magician's rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during which certain
forms of animal life prevailed, is gathered up into a point, whilst an
unlimited expanse of years, "impressing his mind with a sense of
eternity," is suddenly interposed between that and the next series,
though geology proclaims the transition to have been one of gentle and,
it may be, swift accomplishment. All this too is made the more startling
because it is used to meet the objections drawn from facts. "We see none
of your works," says the observer of nature; "we see no beginnings of
the portentous change; we see plainly beings of another order in
creation, but we find amongst them no tendencies to these altered
organisms." "True," says the great magician, with a calmness no
difficulty derived from the obstinacy of facts can disturb; "true, but
remember the effect of time. Throw in a few hundreds of millions of
years more or less, and why should not all these changes be possible,
and, if possible, why may I not assume them to be real?"
Together with this large licence of assumption we notice in this book
several instances of receiving as facts whatever seems to bear out the
theory upon the slightest evidence, and rejecting summarily others,
merely because they are fatal to it. We grieve to charge upon Mr. Darwin
this freedom in handling facts, but truth extorts it from us. That the
loose statements and unfounded speculations of this book should come
from the author of the monograms on Cirripedes, and the writer, in the
natural history of the Voyage of the "Beagle," of the paper on the Coral
Reefs, is indeed a sad warning how far the love of a theory may seduce
even a first-rate naturalist from the very articles of his creed.
This treatment of facts is followed up by another favourite line of
argument, namely, that by this hypothesis difficulties otherwise
inextricable are solved. Such passages abound. Take a few, selected
almost at random, to illustrate what we mean:—
How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation!—p.
436.
Such facts as the presence of peculiar species of bats and the absence
of other mammals on oceanic islands are utterly inexplicable on the
theory of independent acts of creation.—pp. 477-8.
It must be admitted that these facts receive no explanation on the
theory of creation.—p. 478.
The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of
Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand
fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of
independent creation.—pp. 398-9.
Now what can be more simply reconcilable with that theory than Mr.
Darwin's own account of the mode in which the migration of animal life
from one distant region to another is continually accomplished?
Take another of these suggestions:—
It is inexplicable, on the theory of creation, why a part developed in
a very unusual manner in any one species of a genus, and therefore, as
we may naturally infer, of great importance to the species, should be
eminently liable to variation.—p. 474.
Why "inexplicable"? Such a liability to variation might most naturally
be expected in the part "unusually developed," because such unusual
development is of the nature of a monstrosity, and monsters are always
tending to relapse into likeness to the normal type. Yet this argument
is one on which he mainly relies to establish his theory, for he sums
all up in this triumphant inference:—
I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me
that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large
classes of facts above specified.—p. 480.
Now, as to all this, we deny, first, that many of these difficulties are
"inexplicable on any other supposition." Of the greatest of them (128,
194) we shall have to speak before we conclude. We will here touch only
on one of those which are continually reappearing in Mr. Darwin's pages,
in order to illustrate his mode of dealing with them. He finds, then,
one of these "inexplicable difficulties" in the fact, that the young of
the blackbird, instead of resembling the adult in the colour of its
plumage, is like the young of many other birds spotted, and triumphantly
declaring that—
No one will suppose that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the
spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to these animals, or are
related to the conditions to which they are exposed.—pp. 439-40—
he draws from them one of his strongest arguments for this alleged
community of descent. Yet what is more certain to every observant
field-naturalist than that this alleged uselessness of colouring is one
of the greatest protections to the young bird, imperfect in its flight,
perching on every spray, sitting unwarily on every bush through which
the rays of sunshine dapple every bough to the colour of its own
plumage, and so give it a facility of escape which it would utterly want
if it bore the marked and prominent colours, the beauty of which the
adult bird needs to recommend him to his mate, and can safely bear with
his increased habits of vigilance and power of wing?
But, secondly, as to many of these difficulties, the alleged solving of
which is one great proof of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory, we are
compelled to join issue with him on another ground, and deny that he
gives us any solution at all. Thus, for instance, Mr. Darwin builds a
most ingenious argument on the tendency of the young of the horse, ass,
zebra, and quagga, to bear on their shoulders and on their legs certain
barred stripes. Up these bars (bars sinister, as we think, as to any
true descent of existing animals from their fancied prototype) he mounts
through his "thousands and thousands of generations," to the existence
of his "common parent, otherwise perhaps very differently constructed,
but striped like a zebra."—(p. 67.) "How inexplicable," he exclaims,
"on the theory of creation, is the occasional appearance of stripes on
the shoulder and legs of several species of the horse genus and in their
hybrids!"—(p. 473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species was
created with a tendency "like this, is to make the works of God a mere
mockery and deception"; and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is
gone when he refers the stripes to his hypothetical thousands on
thousands of years removed progenitor. But how is his difficulty really
affected? for why is the striping of one species a less real difficulty
than the striping of many?
Another instance of this mode of dealing with his subject, to which we
must call the attention of our readers, because it too often recurs, is
contained in the following question:—
Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created
as eggs, or seed, or as full grown? and, in the case of mammals, were
they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother's
womb?—p. 483.
The difficulty here glanced at is extreme, but it is one for the
solution of which the transmutation-theory gives no clue. It is inherent
in the idea of the creation of beings, which are to reproduce their like
by natural succession; for, in such a world, place the first beginning
where you will, that beginning must contain the apparent history of a
past, which existed only in the mind of the Creator. If, with Mr.
Darwin, to escape the difficulty of supposing the first man at his
creation to possess in that framework of his body "false marks of
nourishment from his mother's womb," with Mr. Darwin you consider him to
have been an improved ape, you only carry the difficulty up from the
first man to the first ape; if, with Mr. Darwin, in violation of all
observation, you break the barrier between the classes of vegetable and
animal life, and suppose every animal to be an "improved" vegetable, you
do but carry your difficulty with you into the vegetable world; for, how
could there be seeds if there had been no plants to seed them? and if
you carry up your thoughts through the vista of the Darwinian eternity
up to the primaeval fungus, still the primaeval fungus must have had a
humus, from which to draw into its venerable vessels the nourishment of
its archetypal existence, and that humus must itself be a "false mark"
of a pre-existing vegetation.
We have dwelt a little upon this, because it is by such seeming
solutions of difficulties as that which this passage supplies that the
transmutationist endeavours to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of
guess and speculation.
There are no parts of Mr. Darwin's ingenious book in which he gives the
reins more completely to his fancy than where he deals with the
improvement of instinct by his principle of natural selection. We need
but instance his assumption, without a fact on which to build it, that
the marvellous skill of the honey-bee in constructing its cells is thus
obtained, and the slave-making habits of the Formica Polyerges thus
formed. There seems to be no limit here to the exuberance of his fancy,
and we cannot but think that we detect one of those hints by which Mr.
Darwin indicates the application of his system from the lower animals to
man himself, when he dwells so pointedly upon the fact that it is always
the black ant which is enslaved by his other coloured and more
fortunate brethren. "The slaves are black!" We believe that, if we had
Mr. Darwin in the witness-box, and could subject him to a moderate
cross-examination, we should find that he believed that the tendency of
the lighter-coloured races of mankind to prosecute the negro slave-trade
was really a remains, in their more favoured condition, of the
"extraordinary and odious instinct" which had possessed them before they
had been "improved by natural selection" from Formica Polyerges into
Homo. This at least is very much the way in which (p. 479) he slips in
quite incidentally the true identity of man with the horse, the bat, and
the porpoise:—
The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a
bat, fin of a porpoise, and leg of the horse, the same number of
vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant, and
innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory
of descent with slow and slight successive modifications.—p. 479.
Such assumptions as these, we once more repeat, are most dishonourable
and injurious to science; and though, out of respect to Mr. Darwin's
high character and to the tone of his work, we have felt it right to
weigh the "argument" again set by him before us in the simple scales of
logical examination, yet we must remind him that the view is not a new
one, and that it has already been treated with admirable humour when
propounded by another of his name and of his lineage. We do not think
that, with all his matchless ingenuity, Mr. Darwin has found any
instance which so well illustrates his own theory of the improved
descendant under the elevating influences of natural selection
exterminating the progenitor whose specialities he has exaggerated as he
himself affords us in this work. For if we go back two generations we
find the ingenious grandsire of the author of the Origin of Species
speculating on the same subject, and almost in the same manner with his
more daring descendant.
* * * * *
Our readers will not have failed to notice that we have objected to the
views with which we have been dealing solely on scientific grounds. We
have done so from our fixed conviction that it is thus that the truth or
falsehood of such arguments should be tried. We have no sympathy with
those who object to any facts or alleged facts in nature, or to any
inference logically deduced from them, because they believe them to
contradict what it appears to them is taught by Revelation. We think
that all such objections savour of a timidity which is really
inconsistent with a firm and well-instructed faith:—
"Let us for a moment," profoundly remarks Professor Sedgwick, "suppose
that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of
geology. How, then, are we to solve them? Not by making a world after
a pattern of our own—not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata
of the earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to play the
game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis—not by shutting our eyes
to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses—but by patient
investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by
learning to reject every consequence not warranted by physical
evidence."[1]
He who is as sure as he is of his own existence that the God of Truth is
at once the God of Nature and the God of Revelation, cannot believe it
to be possible that His voice in either, rightly understood, can differ,
or deceive His creatures. To oppose facts in the natural world because
they seem to oppose Revelation, or to humour them so as to compel them
to speak its voice, is, he knows, but another form of the ever-ready
feebleminded dishonesty of lying for God, and trying by fraud or
falsehood to do the work of the God of truth. It is with another and a
nobler spirit that the true believer walks amongst the works of nature.
The words graven on the everlasting rocks are the words of God, and they
are graven by His hand. No more can they contradict His Word written in
His book, than could the words of the old covenant graven by His hand on
the stony tables contradict the writings of His hand in the volume of
the new dispensation. There may be to man difficulty in reconciling all
the utterances of the two voices. But what of that? He has learned
already that here he knows only in part, and that the day of reconciling
all apparent contradictions between what must agree is nigh at hand. He
rests his mind in perfect quietness on this assurance, and rejoices in
the gift of light without a misgiving as to what it may discover:—
"A man of deep thought and great practical wisdom," says Sedgwick,[2]
"one whose piety and benevolence have for many years been shining
before the world, and of whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever
school) will dare to start a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great
assembly of the men of science who during the past year were gathered
from every corner of the Empire within the walls of this University,
'that Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the
advancement of philosophy.'"[3]
[1] "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," p. 149.
[2] Ibid., p. 153.
[3] Speech of Dr. Chalmers at the Meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, June, 1833.
This is as truly the spirit of Christianity as it is that of philosophy.
Few things have more deeply injured the cause of religion than the busy
fussy energy with which men, narrow and feeble alike in faith and in
science, have bustled forth to reconcile all new discoveries in physics
with the word of inspiration. For it continually happens that some
larger collection of facts, or some wider view of the phenomena of
nature, alter the whole philosophic scheme; whilst Revelation has been
committed to declare an absolute agreement with what turns out after all
to have been a misconception or an error. We cannot, therefore, consent
to test the truth of natural science by the Word of Revelation. But this
does not make it the less important to point out on scientific grounds
scientific errors, when those errors tend to limit God's glory in
creation, or to gainsay the revealed relations of that creation to
Himself. To both these classes of error, though, we doubt not, quite
unintentionally on his part, we think that Mr. Darwin's speculations
directly tend.
Mr. Darwin writes as a Christian, and we doubt not that he is one. We do
not for a moment believe him to be one of those who retain in some
corner of their hearts a secret unbelief which they dare not vent; and
we therefore pray him to consider well the grounds on which we brand his
speculations with the charge of such a tendency. First, then, he not
obscurely declares that he applies his scheme of the action of the
principle of natural selection to MAN himself, as well as to the animals
around him. Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion is
absolutely incompatible not only with single expressions in the word of
God on that subject of natural science with which it is not immediately
concerned, but, which in our judgment is of far more importance, with
the whole representation of that moral and spiritual condition of man
which is its proper subject-matter. Man's derived supremacy over the
earth; man's power of articulate speech; man's gift of reason; man's
free-will and responsibility; man's fall and man's redemption; the
incarnation of the Eternal Son; the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit,—
all are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of
the brute origin of him who was created in the image of God, and
redeemed by the Eternal Son assuming to himself his nature. Equally
inconsistent, too, not with any passing expressions, but with the whole
scheme of God's dealings with man as recorded in His word, is Mr.
Darwin's daring notion of man's further development into some unknown
extent of powers, and shape, and size, through natural selection acting
through that long vista of ages which he casts mistily over the earth
upon the most favoured individuals of his species. We care not in these
pages to push the argument further. We have done enough for our purpose
in thus succinctly intimating its course. If any of our readers doubt
what must be the result of such speculations carried to their logical
and legitimate conclusion, let them turn to the pages of Oken, and see
for themselves the end of that path the opening of which is decked out
in these pages with the bright hues and seemingly innocent deductions of
the transmutation-theory.
Nor can we doubt, secondly, that this view, which thus contradicts the
revealed relation of creation to its Creator, is equally inconsistent
with the fullness of His glory. It is, in truth, an ingenious theory for
diffusing throughout creation the working and so the personality of the
Creator. And thus, however unconsciously to him who holds them, such
views really tend inevitably to banish from the mind most of the
peculiar attributes of the Almighty.
How, asks Mr. Darwin, can we possibly account for the manifest plan,
order, and arrangement which pervade creation, except we allow to it
this self-developing power through modified descent?
As Milne-Edwards has well expressed it, Nature is prodigal in variety,
but niggard in innovation. Why, on the theory of creation, should this
be so? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings,
each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in
nature, be so commonly linked together by graduated steps? Why should
not Nature have taken a leap from structure to structure?—p. 194.
And again:—
It is a truly wonderful fact—the wonder of which we are apt to
overlook from familiarity—that all animals and plants throughout all
time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to
group, in the manner which we everywhere behold, namely, varieties of
the same species most closely related together, species of the same
genus less closely and unequally related together, forming sections
and sub-genera, species of distinct genera much less closely related,
and genera related in different degrees, forming sub-families,
families, orders, sub-classes, and classes.—pp. 128-9.
How can we account for all this? By the simplest and yet the most
comprehensive answer. By declaring the stupendous fact that all creation
is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of
the Most High—that order in the utmost perfectness of its relation
pervades His works, because it exists as in its centre and highest
fountain-head in Him the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the
fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers, that Man himself,
the Prince and Head of this creation, passes in the earlier stages of
his being through phases of existence closely analogous, so far as his
earthly tabernacle is concerned, to those in which the lower animals
ever remain. At that point of being the development of the protozoa is
arrested. Through it the embryo of their chief passes to the perfection
of his earthly frame. But the types of those lower forms of being must
be found in the animals which never advance beyond them—not in man for
whom they are but the foundation for an after-development; whilst he
too, Creation's crown and perfection, thus bears witness in his own
frame to the law of order which pervades the universe.
In like manner could we answer every other question as to which Mr.
Darwin thinks all oracles are dumb unless they speak his speculation. He
is, for instance, more than once troubled by what he considers
imperfections in Nature's work. "If," he says, "our reason leads us to
admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature,
this same reason tells us that some other contrivances are less
perfect."
Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as
far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be
abhorrent to our idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of
the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such
vast numbers for one single act, and with the great majority
slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of
pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee
for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within the
live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The wonder
indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the
want of absolute perfection have not been observed.—p. 472.
We think that the real temper of this whole speculation as to nature
itself may be read in these few lines. It is a dishonouring view of
nature.
That reverence for the work of God's hands with which a true belief in
the All-wise Worker fills the believer's heart is at the root of all
great physical discovery; it is the basis of philosophy. He who would
see the venerable features of Nature must not seek with the rudeness of
a licensed roysterer violently to unmask her countenance; but must wait
as a learner for her willing unveiling. There was more of the true
temper of philosophy in the poetic fiction of the Pan-ic shriek, than in
the atheistic speculations of Lucretius. But this temper must beset
those who do in effect banish God from nature. And so Mr. Darwin not
only finds in it these bungling contrivances which his own greater skill
could amend, but he stands aghast before its mightier phenomena. The
presence of death and famine seems to him inconceivable on the ordinary
idea of creation; and he looks almost aghast at them until reconciled to
their presence by his own theory that "a ratio of increase so high as to
lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection
entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved
forms, is decidedly followed by the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals" (p.
490). But we can give him a simpler solution still for the presence of
these strange forms of imperfection and suffering amongst the works of
God.
We can tell him of the strong shudder which ran through all this world
when its head and ruler fell. When he asks concerning the infinite
variety of these multiplied works which are set in such an orderly
unity, and run up into man as their reasonable head, we can tell him of
the exuberance of God's goodness and remind him of the deep philosophy
which lies in those simple words—"All thy works praise Thee, O God, and
thy saints give thanks unto Thee." For it is one office of redeemed man
to collect the inarticulate praises of the material creation, and pay
them with conscious homage into the treasury of the supreme Lord.
* * * * *
It is by putting restraint upon fancy that science is made the true
trainer of our intellect:—
"A study of the Newtonian philosophy," says Sedgwick, "as affecting
our moral powers and capacities, does not terminate in mere negations.
It teaches us to see the finger of God in all things animate and
inaminate [Transcriber's note: sic], and gives us an exalted
conception of His attributes, placing before us the clearest proof of
their reality; and so prepares, or ought to prepare, the mind for the
reception of that higher illumination which brings the rebellious
faculties into obedience to the Divine will."—Studies of the
University, p. 14.
It is by our deep conviction of the truth and importance of this view
for the scientific mind of England that we have been led to treat at so
much length Mr. Darwin's speculation. The contrast between the sober,
patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy, and the writings
of Lamarck and his followers and predecessors, of MM. Demaillet, Bory de
Saint Vincent, Virey, and Oken,[1] is indeed most wonderful; and it is
greatly owing to the noble tone which has been given by those great men
whose words we have quoted to the school of British science. That Mr.
Darwin should have wandered from this broad highway of nature's works
into the jungle of fanciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that
he is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his
converts. We know indeed the strength of the temptations which he can
bring to bear upon his geological brother. The Lyellian hypothesis,
itself not free from some of Mr. Darwin's faults, stands eminently in
need for its own support of some such new scheme of physical life as
that propounded here. Yet no man has been more distinct and more logical
in the denial of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and
that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigour
and maturity.
[1] It may be worth while to exhibit to our readers a few of Dr. Oken's
postulates or arguments as specimens of his views:—
I wrote the first edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration.
4. Spirit is the motion of mathematical ideas.
10. Physio-philosphy [Transcriber's note: sic] has to … pourtray
the first period of the world's development from nothing; how the
elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by
self-evolution into higher and manifold forms they separated into
minerals, became finally organic, and in man attained
self-consciousness.
42. The mathematical monad is eternal.
43. The eternal is one and the same with the zero of mathematics.
Sir C. Lyell devotes the 33rd to the 36th chapter of his "Principles of
Geology" to an examination of this question. He gives a clear account of
the mode in which Lamarck supported his belief of the transmutation of
species; he interrupts the author's argument to observe that "no
positive fact is cited to exemplify the substitution of some entirely
new sense, faculty, or organ—because no examples were to be found";
and remarks that when Lamarck talks of "the effects of internal
sentiment," etc., as causes whereby animals and plants may acquire new
organs, he substitutes names for things, and with a disregard to the
strict rules of induction, resorts to fictions.
He shows the fallacy of Lamarck's reasoning, and by anticipation
confutes the whole theory of Mr. Darwin, when gathering clearly up into
a few heads the recapitulation of the whole argument in favour of the
reality of species in nature. He urges:—[Transcriber's note: numbering
in original]
1. That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate themselves to
a certain extent to a change of external circumstances.
4. The entire variation from the original type … may usually be
effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can
be obtained.
5. The intermixing distinct species is guarded against by the sterility
of the mule offspring.
6. It appears that species have a real existence in nature, and that
each was endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and
organization by which it is now distinguished.[1]
[1] "Principles of Geology," edit. 1853.
We trust that Sir C. Lyell abides still by these truly philosophical
principles; and that with his help and with that of his brethren this
flimsy speculation may be as completely put down as was what in spite of
all denials we must venture to call its twin though less-instructed
brother, the "Vestiges of Creation." In so doing they will assuredly
provide for the strength and continually growing progress of British
science.
Indeed, not only do all laws for the study of nature vanish when the
great principle of order pervading and regulating all her processes is
given up, but all that imparts the deepest interest in the investigation
of her wonders will have departed too. Under such influences a man soon
goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and
hippogriffs of fancy, or if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes like
Oken to write a scheme of creation under "a sort of inspiration"; but it
is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole
world of nature is laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour,
and he becomes capable of believing anything: to him it is just as
probable that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes with
their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the
cervical vertebrae; and he is able, with a continually growing neglect
of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion,
to look back to any past and to look on to any future.