A Dish of Orts Part 12

"Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture....

And I caught At the flying robe, and, unrepelled, Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, G.o.d's mercy being infinite.

And scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a pa.s.sionate bound, I sprung Out of the wandering world of rain, Into the little chapel again."

Had he dreamed? how then could he report of the sermon and the preacher?

of which and of whom he proceeds to give a very external account. But correcting himself--

"Ha! Is G.o.d mocked, as He asks?

Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead!

Saying .... 'Because the water found Welling up from underground, Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldest, at a word, convulse The world with the leap of its river-pulse,-- Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead.

See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!

One would suppose that the marble bled.

What matters the water? A hope I have nursed, That the waterless cup will quench my thirst.'

--Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!

For the less or the more is all G.o.d's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam.

And here, is there water or not, to drink?"

He comes to the conclusion, that the best for him is that mode of wors.h.i.+p which partakes the least of human forms, and brings him nearest to the spiritual; and, while expressing good wishes for the Pope and the professor--

"Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, Without my own made--I choose here!"

He therefore joins heartily in the hymn which is sung by the congregation of the little chapel at the close of their wors.h.i.+p. And this concludes the poem.

What is the central point from which this poem can be regarded? It does not seem to be very hard to find. Novalis has said: "Die Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh, ein Trieb uberall zu Hause zu sein." (Philosophy is really home-sickness, an impulse to be at home everywhere.) The life of a man here, if life it be, and not the vain image of what might be a life, is a continual attempt to find his place, his centre of recipiency, and active agency. He wants to know where he is, and where he ought to be and can be; for, rightly considered, the position a man ought to occupy is the only one he truly _can_ occupy. It is a climbing and striving to reach that point of vision where the multiplex crossings and apparent intertwistings of the lines of fact and feeling and duty shall manifest themselves as a regular and symmetrical design. A contradiction, or a thing unrelated, is foreign and painful to him, even as the rocky particle in the gelatinous substance of the oyster; and, like the latter, he can only rid himself of it by encasing it in the pearl-like enclosure of faith; believing that hidden there lies the necessity for a higher theory of the universe than has yet been generated in his soul. The quest for this home-centre, in the man who has faith, is calm and ceaseless; in the man whose faith is weak, it is stormy and intermittent. Unhappy is that man, of necessity, whose perceptions are keener than his faith is strong. Everywhere Nature herself is putting strange questions to him; the human world is full of dismay and confusion; his own conscience is bewildered by contradictory appearances; all which may well happen to the man whose eye is not yet single, whose heart is not yet pure. He is not at home; his soul is astray amid people of a strange speech and a stammering tongue. But the faithful man is led onward; in the stillness that his confidence produces arise the bright images of truth; and visions of G.o.d, which are only beheld in solitary places, are granted to his soul.

"O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars!"

What is true of the whole, is true of its parts. In all the relations of life, in all the parts of the great whole of existence, the true man is ever seeking his home. This poem seems to show us such a quest. "Here I am in the midst of many who belong to the same family. They differ in education, in habits, in forms of thought; but they are called by the same name. What position with regard to them am I to a.s.sume? I am a Christian; how am I to live in relation to Christians?" Such seems to be something like the poet's thought. What central position can he gain, which, while it answers best the necessities of his own soul with regard to G.o.d, will enable him to feel himself connected with the whole Christian world, and to sympathize with all; so that he may not be alone, but one of the whole. Certainly the position necessary for both requirements is one and the same. He that is isolated from his brethren, loses one of the greatest helps to draw near to G.o.d. Now, in this time, which is so peculiarly transitional, this is a question of no little import for all who, while they gladly forsake old, or rather _modern_, theories, for what is to them a more full development of Christianity as well as a return to the fountain-head, yet seek to be saved from the danger of losing sympathy with those who are content with what they are compelled to abandon. Seeing much in the common modes of thought and belief that is inconsistent with Christianity, and even opposed to it, they yet cannot but see likewise in many of them a power of spiritual good; which, though not dependent on the peculiar mode, is yet enveloped, if not embodied, in that mode.

"Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort, can I doubt, Which an empire gained, were a loss without."

The love of G.o.d is the soul of Christianity. Christ is the body of that truth. The love of G.o.d is the creating and redeeming, the forming and satisfying power of the universe. The love of G.o.d is that which kills evil and glorifies goodness. It is the safety of the great whole. It is the home-atmosphere of all life. Well does the poet of the "Christmas Eve" say:--

"The loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless G.o.d Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."

Surely then, inasmuch as man is made in the image of G.o.d nothing less than a love in the image of G.o.d's love, all-embracing, quietly excusing, heartily commending, can const.i.tute the blessedness of man; a love not insensible to that which is foreign to it, but overcoming it with good.

Where man loves in his kind, even as G.o.d loves in His kind, then man is saved, then he has reached the unseen and eternal. But if, besides the necessity to love that lies in a man, there be likewise in the man whom he ought to love something in common with him, then the law of love has increased force. If that point of sympathy lies at the centre of the being of each, and if these centres are brought into contact, then the circles of their being will be, if not coincident, yet concentric. We must wait patiently for the completion of G.o.d's great harmony, and meantime love everywhere and as we can.

But the great lesson which this poem teaches, and which is taught more directly in the "Easter Day" (forming part of the same volume), is that the business of a man's life is to be a Christian. A man has to do with G.o.d first; in Him only can he find the unity and harmony he seeks. To be one with Him is to be at the centre of things. If one acknowledges that G.o.d has revealed himself in Christ; that G.o.d has recognized man as his family, by appearing among them in their form; surely that very acknowledgment carries with it the admission that man's chief concern is with this revelation. What does G.o.d say and mean, teach and manifest, herein? If this world is G.o.d's making, and he is present in all nature; if he rules all things and is present in all history; if the soul of man is in his image, with all its circles of thought and multiplicity of forms; and if for man it be not enough to be rooted in G.o.d, but he must likewise lay hold on G.o.d; then surely no question, in whatever direction, can be truly answered, save by him who stands at the side of Christ. The doings of G.o.d cannot be understood, save by him who has the mind of Christ, which is the mind of G.o.d. All things must be strange to one who sympathizes not with the thought of the Maker, who understands not the design of the Artist. Where is he to begin? What light has he by which to cla.s.sify? How will he bring order out of this apparent confusion, when the order is higher than his thought; when the confusion to him is _caused_ by the order's being greater than he can comprehend?

Because he stands outside and not within, he sees an entangled maze of forces, where there is in truth an intertwining dance of harmony. There is for no one any solution of the world's mystery, or of any part of its mystery, except he be able to say with our poet:--

"I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world, Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side: And since the time Thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, Thee before!"

Christianity is not the ornament, or even complement, of life; it is its necessity; it is life itself glorified into G.o.d's ideal.

Dr. Chalmers, from considering the minuteness of the directions given to Moses for the making of the tabernacle, was led to think that he himself was wrong in attending too little to the "_pet.i.te morale_" of dress.

Will this be excuse enough for occupying a few sentences with the rhyming of this poem? Certainly the rhymes of a poem form no small part of its artistic existence. Probably there is a deeper meaning in this part of the poetic art than has yet been made clear to poet's mind. In this poem the rhymes have their share in its humorous charm. The writer's power of using double and triple rhymes is remarkable, and the effect is often pleasing, even where they are used in the more solemn parts of the poem. Take the lines:--

"No! love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it."

A poem is a thing not for the understanding or heart only, but likewise for the ear; or, rather, for the understanding and heart through the ear. The best poem is best set forth when best read. If, then, there be rhymes which, when read aloud, do, by their composition of words, prevent the understanding from laying hold on the separate words, while the ear lays hold on the rhymes, the perfection of the art must here be lost sight of, notwithstanding the completeness which the rhyming manifests on close examination. For instance, in "_equipt yours,"

"Scriptures;" "Manchester," "haunches stir_;" or "_affirm any,"

"Germany_;" where two words rhyme with one word. But there are very few of them that are objectionable on account of this difficulty and necessity of rapid a.n.a.lysis.

One of the most wonderful things in the poem is, that so much of argument is expressed in a species of verse, which one might be inclined, at first sight, to think the least fitted for embodying it.

But, in fact, the same amount of argument in any other kind of verse would, in all likelihood, have been intolerably dull as a work of art.

Here the verse is full of life and vigour, flagging never. Where, in several parts, the exact meaning is difficult to reach, this results chiefly from the dramatic rapidity and condensation of the thoughts. The argumentative power is indeed wonderful; the arguments themselves powerful in their simplicity, and embodied in words of admirable force.

The poem is full of pathos and humour; full of beauty and grandeur, earnestness and truth.

ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS OF LITERATURE

[Footnote: "Essays on some of the Forms of Literature." By T.T. Lynch, Author of "Theophilus Trinal."

Longmans.]

Schoppe, the satiric chorus of Jean Paul's romance of t.i.tan, makes his appearance at a certain masked ball, carrying in front of him a gla.s.s case, in which the ball is remasked, repeated, and again reflected in a mirror behind, by a set of puppets, ludicrously aping the apery of the courtiers, whose whole life and outward manifestation was but a body-mask mechanically moved with the semblance of real life and action.

The court simulates reality. The masks are a multiform mockery at their own unreality, and as such are regarded by Schoppe, who takes them off with the utmost ridicule in his masked puppet-show, which, with its reflection in the mirror, is again indefinitely multiplied in the many-sided reflector of Schoppe's, or of Richter's, or of the reader's own imagination. The successive retreating and beholding in this scene is suggested to the reviewer by the fact that the last of these essays by Mr. Lynch is devoted in part to reviews. So that the reviews review books,--Mr. Lynch reviews the reviews, and the present Reviewer finds himself (somewhat presumptuously, it may be) attempting to review Mr.

Lynch. In this, however, his office must be very different from that of Schoppe (for there is a deeper and more real correspondence between the position of the showman and the reviewer than that outward resemblance which first caused the one to suggest the other). The latter's office, in the present instance, was, by mockery, to destroy the false, the very involution of the satire adding to the strength of the ridicule. His gla.s.s case was simply a review uttered by shapes and wires instead of words and handwriting. And the work of the true critic must sometimes be to condemn, and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroy the false,--scorching and withering its seeming beauty, till it is reduced to its essence and original groundwork of dust and ashes. It is only, however, when it wears the form of beauty which is the garment of truth, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to bewitch, that it is worth the notice and attack of the critic. Many forms of error, perhaps most, are better left alone to die of their own weakness, for the galvanic battery of criticism only helps to perpetuate their ghastly life. The highest work of the critic, however, must surely be to direct attention to the true, in whatever form it may have found utterance. But on this let us hear Mr. Lynch himself in the last of these four lectures which were delivered by him at the Royal Inst.i.tution, Manchester, and are now before us in the form of a book:--

"The kritikos, the discerner, if he is ever saying to us, This is not gold; and never, This is; is either very humbly useful, or very perverse, or very unfortunate. This is not gold, he says. Thank you, we reply, we perceived as much. And this is not, he adds. True, we answer, but we see gold grains glittering out of its rude, dark ma.s.s. Well, at least, this is not, he proceeds. Perverse man! we retort, are you seeking what is not gold? We are inquiring for what is, and unfortunate indeed are we if, born into a world of Nature, and of Spirit once so rich, we are born but to find that it has spent or has lost all its wealth. Unhappy man would he be, who, walking his garden, should scent only the earthy savour of leaves dead or dying, never perceiving, and that afar off, the heavenly odour of roses fresh to-day from the Maker's hands. The discerning by spiritual aroma may lead to discernment by the eye, and to that careful scrutiny, and thence greater knowledge, of which the eye is instrument and minister."

And again:--

"The critic criticized, if dealt with in the worst fas.h.i.+on of his own cla.s.s, must be p.r.o.nounced a mere monster, 'seeking whom he may devour;'

and, therefore, to be hunted and slain as speedily as possible, and stuffed for the museum, where he may be regarded with due horror, but in safety. But if dealt with after the best fas.h.i.+on of his cla.s.s, a very honourable and beneficent office is a.s.signed him, and he is warned only--though zealously--against its perversions. A judicial chair in the kingdom of human thought, filled by a man of true integrity, comprehensiveness, and delicacy of spirit, is a seat of terror and praise, whose powers are at once most fostering to whatever is good, most repressive of whatever is evil.... The critic, in his office of censurer, has need so much to controvert, expose, and punish, because of the abundance of literary faults; and as there is a right and a wrong side in warfare, so there will be in criticism. And as when soldiers are numerous, there will be not a few who are only tolerable, if even that, so of critics. But then the critic is more than the censurer; and in his higher and happier aspect appears before us and serves us, as the discoverer, the vindicator, and the eulogist of excellence."

But resisting the temptation to quote further from Mr. Lynch's book on this matter of Criticism, which seemed the natural point of contact by which the Reviewer could lay hold on the book, he would pa.s.s on with the remark that his duty in the present instance is of the n.o.bler and better sort--n.o.bler and better, that is, with regard to the object, for duty in the man remains ever the same--namely, the exposition of excellence, and not of its opposite. Mr. Lynch is a man of true insight and large heart, who has already done good in the world, and will do more; although, possibly, he belongs rather to the last cla.s.s of writers described by himself, in the extract I am about to give from this same essay, than to any of the preceding:--

"Some of the best books are written avowedly, or with evident consciousness of the fact, for the select public that is const.i.tuted by minds of the deeper cla.s.s, or minds the more advanced of their time.

Such books may have but a restricted circulation and limited esteem in their own day, and may afterwards extend both their fame and the circle of their readers. Others of the best books, written with a pathos and a power that may be universally felt, appeal at once to the common humanity of the world, and get a response marvellously strong and immediate. An ordinary human eye and heart, whose glances are true, whose pulses healthy, will fit us to say of much that we read--This is good, that is poor. But only the educated eye and the experienced heart will fit us to judge of what relates to matters veiled from ordinary observation, and belonging to the profounder region of human thought and emotion. Powers, however, that the few only possess, may be required to paint what everybody can see, so that everybody shall say, How beautiful! how like! And powers adequate to do this in the finest manner will be often adequate to do much more--may produce, indeed, books or pictures, whose singular merit only the few shall perceive, and the many for awhile deny, and books or pictures which, while they give an immediate and pure pleasure to the common eye, shall give a far fuller and finer pleasure to that eye that is the organ of a deeper and more cultivated soul. There are, too, men of _peculiar_ powers, rare and fine, who can never hope to please the large public, at least of their own age, but whose writings are a heart's ease and heart's joy to the select few, and serve such as a cup of heavenly comfort for the earth's journey, and a lamp of heavenly light for the shadows of the way."

One other extract from the general remarks on Books in this essay, and we will turn to another:--

"In all our estimation of the various qualities of books, if it be true that our reading a.s.sists our life, it is true also that our life a.s.sists our reading. If we let our spirit talk to us in undistracted moments--if we commune with friendly, serious Nature, face to face, often--if we pursue honourable aims in a steady progress--if we learn how a man's best work falls below his thought, yet how still his failure prompts a tenderer love of his thought--if we live in sincere, frank relations with some few friends, joying in their joy, hearing the tale and sharing the pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of honest, household sensibility--if we look about us on character, marking distinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting of a hundred questions concerning what is out of our ken:--if we live thus, we shall be good readers and critics of books, and improving ones."

The second and third of these essays are on Biography and Fiction respectively and princ.i.p.ally; treating, however, of collateral subjects as well. Deep is the relation between the life shadowed forth in a biography, and the life in a man's brain which he shadows forth in a fiction--when that fiction is of the highest order, and written in love, is beheld even by the writer himself with reverence. Delightful, surely, it must be; yes, awful too, to read to-day the embodiment of a man's n.o.blest thought, to follow the hero of his creation through his temptations, contests, and victories, in a world which likewise is--

"All made out of the carver's brain;"

and to-morrow to read the biography of this same writer. What of his own ideal has he realized? Where can the life-fountain be detected within him which found issue to the world's light and air, in this ideal self?

Shall G.o.d's fiction, which is man's reality, fall short of man's fiction? Shall a man be less than what he can conceive and utter? Surely it will not, cannot end thus. If a man live at all in harmony with the great laws of being--if he will permit the working out of G.o.d's idea in him, he must one day arrive at something greater than what now he can project and behold. Yet, in biography, we do not so often find traces of those struggles depicted in the loftier fiction. One reason may be that the contest is often entirely within, and so a man may have won his spiritual freedom without any outward token directly significant of the victory; except, if he be an artist, such expression as it finds in fiction, whether the fiction be in marble, or in sweet harmonies, or in ink. Nor can we determine the true significance of any living act; for being ourselves within the compa.s.s of the life-mystery, we cannot hold it at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Nor of a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is not ours, but G.o.d's, and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension is finite; we ourselves infinite. We can only trust in G.o.d and do the truth; then, and then only, is our life safe, and sure both of continuance and development.

But the reviewer perhaps too often merely steals his author's text and writes upon it; or, like a man who lies in bed thinking about a dream till its folds enwrap him and he sinks into the midst of its visions, he forgets his position of beholding, and pa.s.ses from observation into spontaneous utterance. What says our author about "biography, autobiography, and history?" This lecture has pleased the reviewer most of the four. Reading it in a lonely place, under a tree, with wide fields and slopes around, it produced on his mind the two effects which perhaps Mr. Lynch would most wish it should produce--namely, first, a longing to lead a more true and n.o.ble life; and, secondly, a desire to read more biography. Nor can he but hope that it must produce the same effect on every earnest reader, on every one whose own biography would not be altogether a blank in what regards the individual will and spiritual aim.

"In meditative hours, when we blend despair of ourself with complaint of the world, the biography of a man successful in this great business of living is as the visit of an angel sent to strengthen us. Give the soldier his sword, the farmer his plough, the carpenter his hammer and nails, the manufacturer his machines, the merchant his stores, and the scholar his books; these are but implements; the man is more than his work or tools. How far has he fulfilled the law of his being, and attained its desire? Is his life a whole; the days as threads and as touches; the life, the well-woven garment, the well-painted picture?