Agnes Repplier

“ The Egyptians, owing chiefly to their tender solicitude about their tombs, have taken rank in history as a people enamoured rather of death than of life; and from the misty flower-gardens of Buddha have been gathered for centuries the hemlock and nightshade that adorn the funeral-wreaths of literature.
But the Greeks, the blithe and jocund Greeks, who, as Mr. Arnold justly observed, ought never to have been either sick or sorry,—to them, at least, we can turn for that wholesome joy, that rational delight in mere existence, which we have somehow let slip from our nerveless grasp. ”

“ They turn by instinct from the coarseness, the ugliness, the realness of life, and sing of it with graceful sadness and with delicate laughter, as if the whole thing were a pathetic or a fantastic dream. They are dumb before its riddles and silent in its uproar, standing apart from the tumult, and letting the impetuous crowd—"mostly fools," as Carlyle said—sweep by them unperceived. Herrick is their prototype, the poet who polished off his little glittering verses about Julia's silks and Dianeme's ear-rings when all England was dark with civil war. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader. It is natural that poets and novelists should devoutly believe that the creative faculty alone is of any true service to the world, and that it cannot rightly be put to trial by those to whom this higher gift is rigorously denied. But the critical power, though on a distinctly lower level than the creative, is of inestimable help in its development. Great work thrives best in a critical atmosphere, and the clear light thrown upon the past is the surest of guides to the future. ”

“ In fact, if the young people who live and breathe around us are one third as capable, as strenuous, as clear-sighted, as independent, as patronizing, and as undeniably our superiors as their modern counterparts in literature, who can doubt that the eternal cause of progress would be furthered by the change? And is it, after all, mere pique which inclines us to Miss Edgeworth's ordinary little boys and girls, who, standing half dazed on the threshold of life, stretch out their hands with childish confidence for help? ”

“ Bagehot, analyzing with friendly sympathy the strength and weakness of the Cavalier, should find himself somewhat out of temper with an historian's insensibility to virtues so primitive and recognizable in a not too merry world.
"The greatness of this character is not in Macaulay's way, and its faults are. Its license affronts him, its riot alienates him. He is forever contrasting the dissoluteness of Prince Rupert's horse with the restraint of Cromwell's pikemen. A deep, enjoying nature finds in him no sympathy. He has no tears for that warm life, no tenderness for that extinct mirth. ”

“ But to find fault with Antigone, the noblest figure in classical literature, because she manifests a natural dislike for being buried alive is to carry our ideal of heroism a little beyond reason. Flesh and blood shrink from the sickening horror that lays its cold hand upon her heart. She is young, beautiful, and beloved, standing on the threshold of matrimony, and clinging with womanly tenderness to the sacred joys that are never to be hers. ”

“ We may, if we choose, regard him from a purely moral point of view, as a lamentably dissolute and profligate courtier; or from a purely picturesque point of view, as a gallant and loyal soldier; or we may, if we are wise, take him as he stands, making room for him cheerfully as a fellow-creature, and not vexing our souls too deeply over his brilliant divergence from our present standard. It is like a breath of fresh air blown from a roughening sea to feel, even at this distance of time, that strong young life beating joyously and eagerly against the barriers of the past ”

“ It is always a pleasant task for optimists to dwell as much as possible on the buoyancy with which every healthy man regards his unknown future, and on the natural pleasure he takes in recalling the brightness of the past; but Leopardi, playing the trump card of pessimism, demonstrates with merciless precision the insufficiency of such relief. We cannot in reason expect, he argues, that, with youth behind us and old age in front, our future will be any improvement on our past, for with increasing years come increasing sorrows to all men ”

“ If the test of happiness in the Arabian paradise be to hear the measured beating of one's own heart, Schopenhauer was certainly qualified for admission. Even in this world he was so far from being miserable, that an atmosphere of snug comfort surrounds the man whose very name has become a synonym for melancholy; and to turn from his cold and witty epigrams to the smothered despair that burdens Leopardi's pages is like stepping at once from a pallid, sunless afternoon into the heart of midnight. ”

“ Granted that in these acts of gentleness there are traces of fear and self-consideration; but who shall say that all our good deeds are not built up on some such trestle-work of foibles? "La virtu n'iroit pas si loin, si la vanité ne lui tenoit pas compagnie." And what universal politeness has been fostered by the terror that superstition breeds, what delicate euphemisms containing the very soul of courtesy! ”

“ Pater, who at one time gave us to understand that he would teach us how to enjoy life, has, so far, revealed nothing but its everlasting sadness. If the old Cyrenaics were no gayer than their modern representatives, Aristippus of Cyrene might just as well have been Diogenes sulking in his tub, or Heraclitus adding useless tears to the trickling moisture of his cave.
Even our fiction has grown disconcertingly sad within the last few years, and with a new order of sadness, invented apparently to keep pace with the melancholy march of mind. ”

“ The pessimist does not contend that there is no happiness in life, but that, for the generality of mankind, it is outbalanced by trouble; and this flinty assurance is all he has to offer in place of the fascinating theory of compensation. It would seem as though no sane man could hesitate between them, if he had the choice, for one pleasant delusion is worth a hundred disagreeable facts; but in this serious and truth-hunting age people have forgotten the value of fiction, and, like sulky children, refuse to play at anything. ”

“ We spend a great deal of our time in learning what literature is good, and a great deal more in attuning our minds to its reception, rightly convinced that, by the training of our intellectual faculties, we are unlocking one of the doors through which sweetness and light may enter. We are fond of reading, too, and have always maintained with Macaulay that we would rather be a poor man with books than a great king without, though luckily for our resolution, and perhaps for his, such a choice has never yet been offered. ”

“ But even this armed neutrality, this genuine and admirable indifference, cannot always save us from the rough knocks of a burly and aggressive world. The revolution, which he ignored, drove Herrick from his peaceful vicarage into the poverty and gloom of London; the siege of Paris played sad havoc with Gautier's artistic tranquillity, and devoured the greater part of his modest fortune. We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle. Vexation is no heavier than ennui, and "he who lives without folly," says Rochefoucauld, "is hardly so wise as he thinks." ”

“ We are stifled by the literary gossip which fills the newspapers and periodicals. Nothing is too trivial, nothing too irrelevant, to be told; and when, in the midst of an article on any subject, from grand-dukes to gypsies, a writer gravely stops to explain that a perfectly valueless remark was made to him on such an occasion by his friend such a one, whose interesting papers on such a topic will be well remembered by the readers of such a magazine, we are forcibly reminded of the late Master of Trinity's sarcasm as to the many things that are too unimportant to be forgotten. ”

“ At ten or twelve the little girl aspires to something partly grown-up, to those nondescript tales which, trembling ever on the brink of sentiment, seem afraid to risk the plunge; and with her appetite whetted by a course of this unsatisfying diet, she is soon ripe for a little more excitement and a great deal more love-making, so graduates into Rhoda Broughton and the "Duchess," at which point her intellectual career is closed. She has no idea, even, of what she has missed in the world of books. ”

“ It is a humiliating fact that, notwithstanding our avaricious greed for novelties, we are forced, when sincere, to confess that "les anciens out tout dit," and that it is probable the contending schools of thought have always held the same relative positions they do now: optimism glittering in the front ranks as a deservedly popular favorite; pessimism speaking with a still, persistent voice to those who, unluckily for themselves, have the leisure and the intelligence to attend. ”

“ Yet Rokeby and Childe Harold are both in sad disgrace with modern critics, and Old Mortality stands gathering dust upon our bookshelves. Mr. Howell's, who ought to know, tells us that fiction has become a finer art in our day than it was in the days of our fathers, and that the methods and interests we have outgrown can never hope to be revived. So if the masterpieces of the present, the triumphs of learned verse and realistic prose, fail to lift their readers out of themselves, like the masterpieces of the past, the fault must be our own. ”

“ War is a rough trade, and if we choose to call names, it is as easy any time to say "butcher" as "hero." Stronger words have not been lacking to vilify Dundee, and many of these choice anathemas belong, one fears, to Luther's catalogue of "downright, infamous, scandalous lies." Their freshness, however, is as amazing as their ubiquity, and they confront us every now and then in the most forlorn nooks and crannies of literature. ”

“ It is the key-note of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth's Practical Education, a book which must have driven over-careful and scrupulous mothers to the verge of desperation. In it they are solemnly counseled never to permit their children to walk or talk with servants, never to let them have a nursery or a school-room, never to leave them alone either with each other or with strangers, and never to allow them to read any book of which every sentence has not been previously examined. In the matter of books, it is indeed almost impossible to satisfy such searching critics. ”

“ Women, workmen, and skeptics all have reason enough to be grateful they were not born a few generations earlier; but the children of to-day are favored beyond their knowledge, and certainly far beyond their deserts. Compare the modern schoolboy with any of his ill-fated predecessors, from the days of Spartan discipline down to our grandfathers' time. Turn from the free-and-easy school-girl of the period to the miseries of Mrs. Sherwood's youth, with its steel collars, its backboards, its submissive silence and rigorous decorum. ”

“ Here at least we see the imaginative faculty playing a vigorous and wholesome part in a child's mental training. The little solitary French girl who filled up her lonely hours with such pretty musings as these, could scarcely fail to attain that rare distinction of mind which all true critics have been so prompt to recognize and love. It was with her the natural outgrowth of an intelligence, quickened by sympathy and fed with delicate emotions. ”

“ But when supplied with a too lavish hand, a child is tempted to read nothing else, and his mind becomes shrunken for lack of a vigorous stimulant to excite and expand it. "Children," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "derive impulses of a powerful and important kind from hearing things that they cannot entirely comprehend. It is a mistake to write down to their understanding. Set them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out." Sir Walter himself, be it observed, in common with most little people of genius, got along strikingly well without any juvenile literature at all. ”

“ On either side lurk shadowy forms of elf and fairy, half hidden by the swelling trunks; the wind whispers in the heavy boughs, and he hears their low, malicious laughter; the dry leaves rustle beneath his feet,—he knows their stealthy steps are close behind; a broken twig falls on his shoulder, and he starts trembling, for unseen hands have touched him. Around his neck hang a silver medal of Our Lady and a bit of ash wood given him by a wise woman, whom many believe a witch ”