Alfred Austin

“ But there's one in whose heart has your image still dwelt through many an absent day,
As the scent of a flower will haunt a closed room, though the flower be taken away.
Connie's not quite so young as she was, no doubt, but faithfulness never grows old;
And were beauty the only fuel of love, the warmest heart soon would grow cold.
Once you thought that she had not travelled, and knew neither the world nor life:
Not to roam, but to deem her own hearth the whole world, that's what a man wants in a wife. ”

“ But Veronica is worth all of us put together a hundred times over.‘
‘Quite so,’ said Lamia. ‘Veronica is our Minerva Medica, whose salutary if sometimes unpalatable wisdom keeps us in such tolerable health as moral valetudinarians like myself are capable of; whereas I am but a would-be Egeria, who have not yet succeeded in inducing any one, and you, dear Poet, least of all, to be my Numa. Still, do not judge me altogether by the way in which I conduct myself here, among a people very much after my own heart. ”

“ If the public taste in any direction, in politics, in letters, or any of the other Arts grows debased, and current critical opinion follows the debasement, Literature can only stand apart, or loftily reprehend them. Of all influences, Literature is the most patient, the most persistent, and the most enduring. Unfairness cannot long injure, malevolence cannot permanently damage or depreciate it; for, as I have said, Literature, lofty self-respecting Literature, always has the last word, the final hearing, political partisanship having no power over the final estimation in which it is held. ”

“ When there's gold in the palm, the greedy world is eager to grasp the hand.
I heard them tell of your smart town house, but I always shook my head.
One doesn't grow rich in a year and a day, in the time of my youth 'twas said.
Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are granaries filled in May,
Save it be with the harvest of former years, stored up for a rainy day.
The seasons will keep their own true time, you can hurry nor furrow nor sod:
It's honest labor and steadfast thrift that alone are blest by God. ”

“ I shall never weary, and I hope I shall never weary you, in extolling the power of the Past. Would the descant of those nightingales have the same charm for us, if they had not been singing thus for myriads of Mays? Spring is so irresistibly charming because it recalls and renews the Aprils that are gone. Time consecrates and confirms. The deeper our roots, the loftier our thoughts, and the sounder our hearts. I remember a great poet of this age saying to me that he could not see that, as some one had affirmed, he in his writings so much resembled Keats. ”

“ Arnold’s volume, are among the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for their authors by Childe Harold or Hamlet. But to conclude that Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. ”

“ But certainly it is not true of Veronica, nor yet, I think, of Lamia. Indeed, speaking generally, I think one ought to entertain one’s friends with a record of one’s happiness rather than with a recital of one’s woes; but it does not follow, does it, that there is no pathetic minor in one’s life because one is not always sounding it? Indeed, amid all the enchantments of that Italian season when Spring and Summer are indistinguishable, we had been conscious of the shadow of pain which is cast by the surely approaching extinction of a young life in one’s own immediate precincts ”

“ As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi’s pessimism is not, that the value of Wordsworth’s poetry, on the whole, stands higher for us, I think, than that of Leopardi’s, as it stands higher for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe’s.
Higher, because it is more healthful! That any critic, not an abject Philistine, should say such a thing, amazes us beyond words. ”

“ Shall we not rather believe that the Age is what great Spirits make it?’
‘There,’ said Veronica, ‘do you not press your own theory too far? Without for one moment denying that the sudden appearance of great characters, or the place where they appear, is not to be foretold, one can hardly help feeling that Dante, Savonarola, and Michelangelo, in consequence of something adverse in the Florentine character, did not succeed in making Florence what they would fain have made her.’
‘Truly great characters,’ said Lamia, ‘always fail. Only second-rate people succeed. ”

“ To say this is not to decry Byron, Shelley, and Keats—what lover of poetry would dream of decrying such splendid poets as they?—but only to indicate a certain tendency against which I cannot help feeling it is well to be on our guard. The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and grossness. ”

“ Tranquil survey is not enough, and scrutinising curiosity is fatal.’
‘I am sure,’ said Lamia, ‘Veronica is not intoxicated. She is tranquillity itself.’
‘Veronica, you mean,’ was his reply,7 ‘does not effervesce. But her silence is, perhaps, the measure of her emotion.’
‘O stop! stop! I must have some of those anemones.‘ How often a kindred need of this kind arose on the part of Lamia, it would be hard to say; but, by degrees, every part of the carriage that was not occupied by ourselves was filled with tulips, windflowers, roses, and long branches of early-flowering golden acacia. ”

“ While man busies himself with the world of politics, with the world of commerce, with the rise and fall of empires, with the fortunes and fate of humanity, woman tends the hearth, visits the sick, consoles the suffering—in a word, in all she does, fulfils the sacred offices of love.
Now the highest literature—and Poetry is confessedly the highest literature—is a transfiguring reflex of life; and in its magic mirror we perforce see reflected all the thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, and events of human existence. ”

“ But would it not be more indulgent, and equally true, to say that Italy is the one country, and the Italians are the one race, whose vitality is inexhaustible? They have been well before the world, if you will pardon that expression, for more than two thousand five hundred years; and, during all that period, they have never altogether dropped out of sight. Neither do they now appear in the least disposed to retire into private life, or to preserve their ruins, however much some of us would like them to do so, for the satisfaction of our romantic feelings. ”

“ It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function of poetry is to talk about things, and that a man can get himself accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was Wordsworth’s theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both in prose and verse, over and over again:
O Reader! ”

“ If people love their home, there is no wrong time for coming back to it; and, were it not for the delight of returning, I doubt if it would be wise, save under compulsion, ever to leave it. Tacitus asks, Who would quit Italy for Germany, were it not that Germany is his own country? Over English folk, at all worthy of their great descent, the name of England exercises a more enthralling spell even than that of Italy; and the Garden that I love is all the dearer to me because it is thoroughly English. ”

“ The more ardent admirers of Wordsworth are in the habit of assuming that those persons who approach their favourite poet with a more hesitating homage, fail to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and fancy that a composition is not poetical because it lacks what is called elevation of language and the “grand style.” We can assure them, in all sincerity, that far from that being the basis of our inability to admire all that they admire, we admire Wordsworth most, and we admire him immensely, when he is as simple as it is possible to be. ”

“ Along that magical coast, where we turned our gaze first to the sea-fringe, then to the hill declivities, then back again to the white-laced bays, and never being able to determine which were the more beautiful, I observe that persons who have travelled many hundreds of miles in order to enjoy the sunshine and glamour of the South, are well content to make this entrancing journey in a railway carriage, pulling down the blinds if the sun be a trifle too hot, and conning their newspaper or turning over the leaves of some conventional novel, in any case. ”

“ Art for Art’s sake is a creed that has been embraced by too many critics of our time. Do we not find in this circumstance an explanation of their tendency to extol the quietistic and solitary poets, and, on the other hand, to depreciate the poets who deal with action and the more complex features of life? It is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well as lyrical or idyllic. ”

“ Congratulated to-day, will they not be consigned to oblivion to-morrow, when right taste has resumed its authority, or when some one yet more extravagant creates an impression, equally sudden and equally transitory, of a somewhat similar character?’
‘I think so,’ said the Poet, ‘and I am sufficiently enamoured of venustà di stile to hope so. As great a master of style as this century has produced says somewhere, “On peut tout dire dans le style simple et correct des bons auteurs. Les expressions violentes viennent toujours ou d’une prétention, ou de l’ignorance de nos richesses réelles.” ”

“ We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. ”

“ There is no second Dante, but there are many exiles in this modern world, and I fear their number every day increases. As the struggle for existence waxes fiercer and fiercer, I think I hear them, too, exclaiming, Dona nobis pacem.‘
‘Listening first to Veronica,’ said Lamia, ‘and then to you, I am forced to the conclusion that many things are intolerable which we cannot do without. ”

“ You know how our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows. How differently Chaucer looks upon the panorama of this fair earth of ours! He is a great student, as men in the early days of the Renaissance were, and he tells us that he hath such delight in reading books, and has in his heart for them such reverence, that there is no game which can tear him away from them. ”

“ The material discoveries of the Age do it much honour; but man’s triumph over matter is most nobly displayed when he triumphs over the matter of which he is himself composed; when he ignores physical pain, and tramples on his non-spiritual passions. Science is the language of the Intellect, Literature of the Soul; and Poetry, the highest expression of Literature, does for language, and sometimes for life, what the Soul does for the body, and what this glorious Italian sun does for mountain and plain: it spiritualises matter. ”

“ Ideal, or the Ideal pure and simple. In other words, as I long since endeavoured to show, Poetry is Transfiguration. Attempts are made in these days, as we all well know, to get you to accept Realism pure and simple as the newest and most inspired utterance of the Heavenly Maid. But they will not be successful. In that great hall of the Vatican, whither throng pilgrims from every quarter of the world, and to whose walls Raphael has bequeathed the ripest and richest fruits of his lucid, elevated, and elevating genius, is a presentation of the Muse. ”

“ I made some observation of the kind to Veronica, imagining we were alone, and got for reply,—
‘My dear, you will never understand women.’
‘How is it possible,’ I asked, a little nettled by the implied rebuke,162 ‘when no two women are alike?’
‘No one woman is alike,’ said Lamia, suddenly emerging from a luxuriance of leaf and flower that had concealed her from view; and, though Veronica was there to disprove the universal application of her aphorism, I think she spoke from the very depths of her own inner consciousness. ”

“ There are many excellent persons who accept as poetry any sentiment, or any opinion expressed in metre with which they happen to agree. But neither sound opinion nor wholesome sentiment suffices to produce that exceedingly delicate and subtle thing which alone is rightly termed poetry, and, in abandoning lofty themes, and descending to humbler ones, writers of verse unquestionably expose themselves to the danger not only of not rising above the level of their subject, but even of sinking below it. ”

“ O this young green corn, with its purple anemones, its crimson tulips, its pale almond and intensely bright peach blossom, its fantastically growing fig-trees with their budding tips, its burgeoning vines and spectral olive-trees, all dwelling together on the fair hillside that seems to be smiling self-complacently at its own loveliness! Look at that bank of irises, not yet broken from their sheath! But when they have, what a sight they will be!’
It is always delightful to have one’s feelings expressed by some one else in language of enthusiasm one might oneself be afraid to employ ”

“ We seem to have travelled centuries away from the Troilus and Cressida, or the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer, from the Red Cross Knight and Una, from the Britomart, the Florimel, the Calidore, the Gloriana of Spenser, from the kingly ambitions and princely passions of Shakespeare, from the throes and denunciations of Paradise Lost, and equally from the coffee-house epigrams and savage satire of Pope. We have at last got among ordinary people, among humble folk, people of our own flesh and blood, with simple joys and simple sorrows. ”

“ Save for Beatrice, there is an austerity even in the most tender passages of his verse. He seems never to relax in his gravity, I had almost said in his severity. His very love for Florence is expressed, for the most part, in harsh upbraiding. An unrelenting awe dominates his poetry. For Virgil he entertains a humble far-off reverence. There is no poet of whom it can be so truly said that he remained unchanged from first to last, and presents to us only one aspect throughout his works. ”

“ Politics and literature are distinct, and though, as abundant experience has shown, one and the same man may make his mark in both, they are separate spheres of the same brain, and a man may be a good poet and a bad politician, or a bad poet and a good politician, or either good or bad in each capacity alike. Once you care one straw what are the political opinions of a poet, there is an end of you as a critic. ”

“ What constitutes, not the superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticise life overmuch. It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticise life, as present it. He holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness. ”

“ We are all rather in awe of him, for he never stoops to playfulness; and Chaucer, who is rather irreverent sometimes, says he is so uniformly sublime as now and then to be ridiculous. But, in our hearts, we greatly revere him. To tell the truth, I think he prefers Wordsworth’s company to ours; and we find more congenial society from time to time in—look! that handsome youth, who carries his head with unconscious pride, and even here seems half-discontented. The best is never good enough for him, and he cannot be deluded even by his own illusions, poor fellow! ”

“ Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of existence, of the individual life, and of the world’s destiny should from time to time find expression in the poet’s verse. There is quite enough pain in the experience of the individual, [Pg 171] quite enough vicissitude in the history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to change sometimes into the pathetic minor. ”