mastery as in the lists of tournament, we are tempted to think of the Large Testament as of one long-drawn epical grimace, pulled by a merry-andrew, who has found a certain despicable eminence 5 over human respect and human affections by perching himself astride upon the gallows. Between these two views, at best, all temperate judgments will be found to fall; and rather, as I imagine, 10 toward the last. There were two things on which he felt with perfect and, in one case, even threatening sincerity. beseeching here in the street, but I would not go down a dark road with him for a large consideration. - The second of the points on which he was genuine and emphatic was common to the middle ages; a deep and somewhat sniveling conviction of the transitory nature of this life and the pity and horror of death. Old age and the grave, with some dark and yet half-sceptical terror of an after-world - these were ideas that clung about his bones like a disease. An old ape, as he says, may play all the tricks in its repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience into good humor. Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant. It is not the old jester who receives most recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best ac25 quainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing pathos, shall remain in the original for me. Horace has disgraced himself to something the same tune; but what Horace throws out with an ill-favored laugh, Villon dwells on with an almost maudlin whimper. 20 30 The first of these was an undisguised 15 envy of those richer than himself. He was forever drawing a parallel, already exemplified from his own words, between the happy life of the well-to-do and the miseries of the poor. Burns, too proud and honest not to work, continued through all reverses to sing of poverty with a light, defiant note. Béranger waited till he was himself beyond the reach of want, before writing the Old Vagabond or Jacques. Samuel Johnson, although he was very sorry to be poor, 'was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty in his ill days. Thus it is that brave men carry their crosses, and smile with the fox burrowing in their vitals. But Villon, who had not the courage to be poor with honesty, now whiningly implores our sympathy, now shows his teeth upon the dung-heap with an ugly 35 snarl. He envies bitterly, envies passionately. Poverty, he protests, drives men to steal, as hunger makes the wolf sally from the forest. The poor, he goes on, will always have a carping word to 40 say, or, if that outlet be denied, nourish rebellious thoughts. It is a calumny on the noble army of the poor. Thousands in a small way of life, ay, and even in the smallest, go through life with tenfold 45 as much honor and dignity and peace of mind, as the rich gluttons whose dainties and state-beds awakened Villon's covetous temper. And every morning's sun sees thousands who pass whistling to 50 than letters and a legend. 'Where are their toil. But Villon was the mauvais pauvre': defined by Victor Hugo, and, in its English expression, so admirably. stereotyped by Dickens. He was the first wicked sans-culotte [tatterdemalion]. 55 He is the man of genius with the moleskin cap. He is mighty pathetic and It is in death that he finds his truest inspiration; in the swift and sorrowful change that overtakes beauty; in the strange revolution by which great fortunes and renowns are diminished to a handful of churchyard dust; and in the utter passing away of what was once lovable and mighty. It is in this that the mixed texture of his thought enables him to reach such poignant and terrible effects, and to enhance pity with ridicule, like a man cutting capers to a funeral march. It is in this, also, that he rises out of himself into the higher spheres of art. So, in the ballade by which he is best known, he rings the changes on names that once stood for beautiful and queenly women, and are now no more the snows of yester year?' runs the burden. And so, in another not so famous, he passes in review the different degrees of bygone men, from the holy Apostles and the golden Emperor of the East, down to the heralds, pursuivants, and trumpeters, who also bore their part in 5 BED IN SUMMER In winter I get up at night I have to go to bed and see the world's pageantries and ate greedily And does it not seem hard to you, SYSTEM Every night my prayers I say, The child that is not clean and neat, HAPPY THOUGHT The world is so full of a number of things, 30 I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. The date of the Large Testament is the last date in the poet's biography. After having achieved that admirable and 25 despicable performance, he disappears into the night from whence he came. How or when he died, whether decently in bed or trussed up to a gallows, remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators. It appears his health had suffered in the pit at Méun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald; with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, this is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A sinister dog, in all 40 kelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly the sorriest figtre on the rolls of fame. (1877) FROM A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN I child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: least as far as he is able. 35 45 50 GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1909) Meredith is perhaps most widely known by his novels, but during recent years his poetry has come in for an increasing share of attention. His radical ideas, especially with respect to the emancipation of women, which are suggested rather than openly advocated in the novels, are explicitly avowed in the poems; and the form of his poetry, while no less characteristic than the style of his prose, is equally distinguished, and at times exquisitely musical. Meredith had to wait a long time to come by his own; his first volume of poems was published as long ago as 1851, and his first work of fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat, appeared in 1856. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) established his position in the world of fiction, as Modern Love (1862) won him recognition as one of the leading poets of the day; an unappreciative review provoked Swinburne to a letter of vigorous protest, in the course of which he said: 'Mr. Meredith is one of the three or four poets now alive whose work, perfect or imperfect, is always as noble in design as it is often faultless in result.' But after winning the suffrages of contemporary men of letters, Meredith had still to conquer the public. The Egoist (1879) is usually regarded as turning the tide in his favor, but in reviewing the Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth in 1883 Mark Pattison could still write: Mr. Meredith is well known, by name, to the widest circle of readers the novel readers. By name, because his name is a label warning them not to touch.' Diana of the Crossways (1885) opened the way for a larger circle of readers not only of this, but of the earlier and later novels, especially in the United States; the poems have made their way much more slowly to any considerable popularity, if indeed they can be said, as a whole, to have won it yet. Except in a few love lyrics and wayside studies, Meredith makes large demands upon his readers' powers of comprehension. He has his own system of philosophy, which needs some familiarity with his modes of expressing it before it can be understood. 'Where other writers appeal to the christian divinities or to humanity,' says a recent critic, he speaks, somewhat insistently, of the Earth, a term to which he attaches his own mystic meaning. The Earth is Nature, considered not as the malign stepmother which she is in pessimistic theory, but as a stern yet genial mother and instructress. The Earth gives us our bodies, our fund of power, and our basis of instinct. Life is an adjustment and realization of the inward forces that the Earth generates, and love it is that both tasks and rewards most completely our power of controlling these forces.' These are high themes for young readers, and they may well leave them till they are older and wiser. If they can appreciate Meredith's simpler poems, the understanding of the more difficult ones will come later. Of the external events of Meredith's life there is little to be said. Of Welsh descent, he was born in Hampshire, and educated in Germany. During his early manhood he worked as a journalist, and in 1866 he was a war correspondent in Italy and Austria, his sympathy with the cause of Italian unity and independence being shown in his novel Vittoria, published the following year. The last thirty years of his life were spent in quiet retirement at Boxhill, near London, and the enjoyment of the admiration of an ever-widening circle of readers. In 1905 he received the Order of Merit, perhaps the most distinguished of British decorations, and in 1908, on his eightieth birthday, an address of congratulation was presented to him from the leading writers of the English-speaking world. |