Frederick Sessions

“ POOR 'Lile Hartley'—little Hartley, as the neighbours called him—is one of the most pathetic figures in English literature. Undersized in body, of promising intellect from childhood, of child-like simplicity in character, devoid of self-control, and overmastered by the alcoholic habit, as his father was by the opium habit, he is at once pitiable, excusable, and lovable. As you ride from Ambleside to Grasmere you pass a low cottage on your right, just beneath Nab Scarr, where the young farmer and his wife lived who cared so unselfishly for him and for his comfort and welfare. ”

“ Such an outlook, but from a lower altitude, delighted daily the eyes of Nature-loving Wilson, whose very prose was poetry, of a calibre not less than Kingsley's in his celebrated 'Devonshire Idylls,' or than Ruskin's rhapsodies on Switzerland. His ardent temperament and unusual virility compelled him to throw himself heartily into almost every possible form of physical and intellectual enjoyment. There never was such a man as he for undertaking everything and anything, and for doing nothing badly, including the art of 'loafing,' when he was in the cue for it. ”

“ VI THE PHILOSOPHER OF BRANTWOOD JOHN RUSKIN I.—THE MAN
'Alas! there was in John Ruskin a strain of the Knight of La Mancha, and he, too, had to learn that in this world and in our age Knight-errantry, however chivalrous in spirit, medieval romance, however beautiful as poetry, will not avail to reform the world with nothing but a rusty lance and a spavined charger. It is magnificent, it may be war, but it is not a real social philosophy, nor is it a possible religion.'—Frederic Harrison. ”

“ When we turn to a bibliography we stand amazed, not only that any author should be so prolific, or even that he should possess so much first-hand knowledge of so many matters, but that he should have done so much about such a variety of things so marvellously well. A juvenile verse-maker of promise developing into an unrivalled prose-poet and word-painter; a draftsman of capacity from his youth up, if not naturally a colourist, and an insistent teacher of style, yet an art critic with sympathetic feelings, who knew what he was talking about (which, it is to be feared, the majority do not) ”

“ Through the length of the park a pathway traverses the winding summits of the gray limestone rocks, which—clothed with wood, or rising in naked spires from the water far into the sky—afforded resting-places for occasional nightingales, and for all the commoner singing birds of the land, as well as for ravens and innumerable daws. Here she could find romantic spots at every turn that called forth all her poetical aspirations and faculties, and filled her imagination with dreams of the heroes of old Wales, and the stormy warfare of the Marches in the middle ages. ”

“ THIS lovely land of lake and mountain, dale and fell, in which my lot is happily cast in old age, is too full of literary and artistic memories, as well as ethnological and historic associations for anything to be given in great detail. Over and above the beauty of its scenery and the wealth of its natural productions, it offers to the traveller such visions and glimpses of eminent men and women in the world of letters as no other spot in the British Islands can show. ”

“ Herbert Paul is not wide of the mark when he writes of his re-translations of the Bible 'making one feel as if one had suddenly swallowed a fish-bone.' Certainly the perusal of most of his books, such as 'Essays in Criticism,' 'Culture and Anarchy,' 'Paul and Protestantism,' 'Literature and Dogma,' 'God and the Bible,' gives to the thoughtful reader a sensation of being drawn by a swift, high-mettled, blood horse, trying to get his head, and to run away with you over a stony road—the pace is exhilarating, but the jolting is terrible. ”

“ My edition is coloured by hand, though whether by himself or not I cannot say. 'He is a wood-engraver first, and a poet afterwards,' says one friendly critic. The same critic adds, 'As a translator, Mr. Linton has few equals'; and yet, on the whole, heretical as it may seem, I prefer his own utterances to his translations, and like best to have them decorated by his own pencil, for his draughtmanship and his poetic fancies are as the two edges of one sword with which he fought his way to a place in our literary Valhalla. ”

“ Brantwood looks over Coniston Water to the quaint round chimneys and the gables of the century-stained hall of the Le Flemings, and beyond it towers the gigantic cone of the Old Man mountain. Dove Cottage, with its pretty garden laid out by the hands of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, nestles beneath the wooded hill at Grasmere. Greta Hall yet stands in Keswick, and the row of lodging-houses where the author of 'Thorndale' and of 'Gravenhurst' met the wife who proved the soul of his soul, and has written so sweetly of her spouse. ”

“ Art looks into the innermost core and centre of phenomena. The true artist sees and makes others see. The greatest Art is that which conveys the greatest number of greatest ideas. It is the declaration of the mind of God-made great men. Fine Art is that in which hand, and head, and heart have worked equally together. In outline, colour, and shade an artist is to discipline himself, that he may become skilful in the seeing of things accurately, and representing them with absolute fidelity. ”

“ THE TRUE POET 'Who wears a singing-robe is richly dight;
The Poet, he is richer than a King.
He plucks the veil from hidden loveliness;
His gusts of music stir the shadowing boughs,
To let in glory on the darkened soul.
Upon the hills of light he plants his feet
To lure the people up with heart and voice;
At humblest human hearths drops dews divine
To feed the violet virtues nestling there. ”

“ From depths of discouragement that would have effectually damped most aspiring authors she at once became a 'society lion,' or rather, to retain our former metaphor, she was hailed as one of the swans of literature, and, as was said of the royal bird in Andersen's parable, 'the most beautiful of them all.' She endured a long and terrible strain, while for several years producing a story a month, which broke down her health seriously, yet she attended nearly every evening some social function, which brought her into intimacy with the most celebrated men and women of her generation. ”

“ Almost every village and hamlet has some connection with a departed worthy of whom it is still proud. Not to speak for the moment of the relation of Keswick to Coleridge and Southey, or of Grasmere to De Quincey and the Wordsworths, or of Coniston to Ruskin, of Ambleside to the Arnolds, or of Windermere to 'Christopher North,'—of all whom I have treated at length—we have roadside cottages, pleasant villas, and town houses, laying claim to special [234] distinction because someone of whom the nation is proud was born, or lived, or died there. ”

“ Linton's books is the vein of mingled passion and tragedy that traverses it. The one charm it has beyond most others is the fresh breeze from the hills that seems to blow through it when the authoress condescends to be simply descriptive of places and people in the region of Wastwater and the Langdales. Her pen-pictures will do not only for her imaginary 'Greyrigg,' but for a hundred other dales and hillsides, lakes, tarns, and waters, and her portraits for a score of other country-folk and rural parsons to be found hereaway half a century ago, besides those she names. ”

“ Coleridge says, and says well, that then it is like a theatre at noon. There are no goings on under a clear sky.... The very snow, which you would perhaps think must monotonize the mountains, gives new varieties; it brings out their recesses and designates all their inequalities, it impresses a better feeling of their height, and it reflects such tints of saffron, or fawn, or rose-colour to the evening sun. O Maria Santissima! Mount Horeb with the glory upon its summit might have been more glorious, but not more beautiful than Skiddaw in his pelisse of ermine. ”

“ His literary output I will neither expound nor criticise, tempting as it is to do both. His poems are on the shelves of every well-selected library, however small. His more solid works are not for the general public. They are too profound, and go far too deeply into the secret springs of life and thought, too far afield into the Divine and human undercurrents of motive and action; are too theological, too speculative, to lay hold of any but those who themselves are, in their spheres, and to some extent, at least, guides and moulders of other men's emotions and duties. ”

“ Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.
'Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honoured of the earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal tapestries of the hills, to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. ”

“ Photography has, in some respects, greater accuracy, yet there is accuracy of insight illuminated by the artist-mind in Linton's wood-cuts, whether these be of some pouring torrent on the river Duddon, a view of the 'Old Man' from Brantwood, a group of castellated boulders on the 'sad seashore,' a jutting crag upon Great Gable, or only a fallen pine on the fell-side, or a banner-like mist clinging to a mountain peak. ”

“ Charles Stolzman, the Pole, he sheltered at Brantwood, tended through his last sad hours, sent to Millom to recruit, and when he finished his earthly career, in the little churchyard beneath the shadow of the lake mountains, Linton laid to rest the body of the one whom he revered as a true, manly, upright patriot. The very appearance of Linton while at Coniston suggests, according to the portraits preserved of him, a man of penetrating intellect, erratic and versatile genius, impulsive generosity, and little common-sense. ”

“ De Quincey writes of him in his 'Literary Reminiscences': 'At Brathay lived Charles Lloyd. Far as he might be below the others I have mentioned, he could not be called a common man. Common! He was a man never to be forgotten! He was somewhat too Rousseauish, but he had in conversation the most extraordinary powers for analysis of a certain kind, applied to the philosophy of manners and the most delicate nuances of social life.' He could not be a mere hanger-on to greater men to whom several poets addressed sonnets of affection and admiration. ”

“ For is it likely that a man, who has written a serious book about anything in the world, should not know more about that thing than one who merely reads his book for the purpose of reviewing it. But so it must be, and a discreet man must just let it be. What I want to know is whether men and women and children who care nothing about me, but take an intelligent interest in the subject, find the book readable. What its other merits are nobody knows so well as I.'—A letter to Lord Tennyson by James Spedding. ”

“ If we turn to Faber's purely devotional writings, such as 'All for Jesus,' and can forget, or slide over, the subtle insinuations of Romish doctrines, and the curious blending of saints and sacraments, popes and priests, confessions and penances, with earnest appeals on behalf of Jesus, at one time as though the soul's salvation depended solely on ceremonials and priestly absolutions, and at another time as if on 'Jesus only,' one may find much help and light in many beautiful passages—as, for example: 'Who can look into the world and not see how God's glory is lost upon the earth? ”

“ Here Robert toiled at literature for his daily bread, living a strenuous life not for his own and his growing family's sake alone, but for the Coleridges during Samuel's sad lapses into the opium habit, and for the widowed Mrs. Lovell and her child also. There was a time when I could not like Robert Southey as man or author. His longer poems seemed prosy, and most of his shorter ones trivial, and his prose lacking in sympathy with humanity, and his books narrow in their outlook on life. ”

“ Take the circuit round the lake, beginning at the Waterhead on the west side, and going southwards towards Furness, past the islands and by Brantwood on the east, as one example of the sweetness and the richness of the place. There is first that grand Old Man, at the foot of which you reverently walk, overshadowed by his huge crags as you pass through the ancient village of Church Coniston—one of those quaint villages with the flavour of old times about them, and the generous beautifying of Nature around, so characteristic of our lake country. ”

“ There are appendices on the antiquity of fly-fishing, and on a day's angling in France. To those of us for whom the mysteries of spring-backs, spring-duns, March-browns, green-tails, ruddy-flies, and black-headed reds, and iron-blues, have slight allurements, the more interesting portions of his life are those spent in making himself acquainted with the growth and habits of fish, and in constructing a pond behind his house that he could stock with finny people from the tarns and becks—a water colony wherein once each year he could handle and examine each member to see how it progressed. ”

“ WOMEN AND POLITICS
'We do not find that European homes are made wretched, or that husbands are set at nought, because our women may choose their own religion, their own priest, and have unchecked intercourse with the family physician.
'Is it impossible to imagine a woman sweet and yet strong, high-minded and yet modest, tender if self-reliant, womanly if well-educated? Would a fine political conscience necessarily deaden-or depress the domestic one? ”

“ Linton was not a very practical man, choosing his gardener, not for his skill, but for his shining blue eyes, and letting his demesne go wild, and his abode to rack and ruin. Ruskin created order and beauty out of the wilderness, with a rose-garden and a garden for wild flowers, greatly enlarged the house, made a little harbour on the shore, and a water-works on the fell, all at considerable outlay, evidencing by the construction of his reservoir and conduits that hydraulics and engineering are not best done by untrained enthusiastic amateurs. ”

“ To this fourth law the greatest poets, such as Goethe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, to say nothing of the still greater Semitic Poets, have helped to introduce mankind, and psychical research has demonstrated their scientific truth. 'Life, consciousness, and thought' are facts not fully explained by physiology. The communion of mind with mind without speech or bodily contact or proximity is as certain as that of X rays or wireless telegraphy. The communion of the human soul with the Oversoul of the Universe is not a dream, but a fact as indubitable as the fact of gravitation. ”

“ With him the primary idea of the Christian Church is of a brotherhood of 'men worshipping Christ as the revelation of the Highest.' Equality of Christian privilege is, in his view, so characteristic of its constitution that the existence of a priestly caste within its borders is destructive of it. Christian faith is in Christ Himself, and not in doctrines or formulas of even the holiest and wisest men. In the true and universal—i.e., the Catholic—Church there can be no majestry, only a ministry. It is a Spiritual Republic in which no worldly distinctions can be recognised. ”

“ The cloud, the currents of trickling water, an interior knot of quartz, help the work of shaping, and the dew "with a touch more tender than a child's finger—as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear on a maiden's cheek" help to fix for ever the form of peak and precipice, and hew the leagues of lifted granite, into shapes that divide the earth and its kingdoms. ”