William A. Quayle

“ This drama of goodness gives words and form to our perplexity. How can a good life have no visible favors? How are we to explain prosperity coming to a man besotted with every vice and repugnant to our souls, while beside him, with heart aromatic of good as spice-groves with their odors, with hands clean from iniquity as those of a little child, with eyes calm and watching for the advent of God and an opportunity to help men,—and calamities bark at his door, like famine-crazed, ravenous wolves at the shepherd's hut ”

“ Who dreams not is metallic. Dreams redeem deeds from being stereotyped, and make motions sinuous and graceful as a bird's flight across the sky; and when they impregnate conduct, deed becomes instinct with a melody thrilling and sweet as a wood-thrush note. Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough with the unseen. ”

“ Tennyson's genius is lyrical rather than either dramatic or epic. What music is like his? Say of his poems, in words of James Whitcomb Riley,
"O but the sound was rainy sweet!"
Not great Milton was more master of music than he; though Milton's was the melody of wide ocean in open sea, or crash of waves upon the rugged rocks, or wrathing up the yellow sands in tumult of majestic menace. Tennyson's music is rather the voice of gentle waters, or the cadence of summer's winds in the tree-tops, or like human voices heard in some woodland. In either poet is no marred music. ”

“ Dante is the picture of melancholy, Shakespeare the picture of resilient joy. Tennyson beheld "three spirits, mad with joy, dash down upon a wayside flower;" and our dramatist is like them. Life laughs on greeting him; the grave grows dim to sight when he is near, and you see the deep sky instead, and across it wheel wild birds in happy motion. In Tennyson is perpetual melancholy—the mood and destiny of poetry, as I suppose—but Shakespeare is not melancholy, nor does he know how to be. His face is never sad, I think, and he is fonder of Jack Falstaff than we are apt to suppose ”

“ And Arthur had much company, if he knew it not. Such men seem alone, though if they saw all their companionships they would know they walked on in a goodly company and great. Greatness has many fellowships, as stars have; and stars have fellowship of mountains and woods, and kindred stars, and waters where star-shadows lie, and oceans where galaxies tumble like defeated angels. All greatness is self-made. Names are bequeathed us, so much is borrowed. Character and value are self-made. Gold has intrinsic worth. Man has not, but makes his worth by the day's labor of his hands. ”

“ Job is a prince, old, rich, fortunate, benevolent, and good. Life has dealt kindly with him, and looking at his face you would not, from his wrinkles, guess his years. The great honor him; the good trust him; the poor, in his bounty find plenty; no blessing has failed him, so that his name is a synonym of good fortune,—such a man is chief person of this drama, written by some unknown genius. Singular, is it not, that this voice, from an antiquity remoter than literature can duplicate, should be anonymous? ”

“ Philip was the ideal bigot. How far bigotry is native to the soul may well be a question for grave discussion, demanding possibly more attention than has been accorded it hitherto. And how far is bigotry to be looked on as a vice? Though this question will be laughed down, as if to ask it were to stultify the asker; but not so fast, since bigotry is not all bad. To hold an opinion is considered a virtue. To hold an opinion of righteousness against all odds for conscience' sake, we rightly account heroism. Is not a lover or a patriot a bigot? ”

“ To shun the taking up your load when need is, is to be coward when your honor bids you be courageous. This means, be a citizen, neglect no office in that worthy relation; be not wandering knights, pursuing fire-flies, supposing them to be stars; but be as Arthur, who found the Holy Grail, and drained its sacramental wine in truest fashion, in "staying by the stuff;" in being statesman, soldier, defender of the weak, reformer, liver of a clean life in public place, builder of a State, negotiator of schemes which make for the diminution of earth's ills and increase of earth's fairer provinces. ”

“ Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love. Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find them noble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is virile and he is noble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help. ”

“ To be self-dedicated to the help of others; to be courageous as an army which had never met defeat; to be self-forgetful, so that hunger, pain, thirst, fatigue, become trifles; to have love become absorbing; to fill the mind's unfathomed sky with dreams outshining dawns; to count honor to be so much more than life, as that honor is all and life is naught; to interpret all men and women at their best, and so to expect good and not suspicion evil; to meet all men on the high level of manhood ”

“ Mother instinct is in all good lives, and belongs to man. Maternity and paternity are met in the best manhood. The tenderness of motherhood must soften a man's touch to daintiness, like an evening wind's caress, before fatherhood is perfect. All his youthhood, which knew not any woman's lips to kiss; all his manhood, which had never shared a hearth with wife or child,—all this unused tenderness now administers to the wants of this orphan, Cossette. His rescue of her from the Thenardiers is poetry itself. He had the instincts of a gentleman. ”

“ Literature is not properly productive, but reproductive; not creative, but appropriative. As men climb a mountain on a dark, still night, to watch a sunrise, so the race began to climb toward manhood. The night was long, and this mountain taller than Himalayas; and man slept not, but climbed. His groping toward this sunrise of soul is the epic of history. Dante knew not a gentleman, and could not dream him therefore. Mediaevalism learned to paint the Madonna's face, but not manhood's look. Character is the last test of genius. ”

“ Of this ideal gentleman we have had growing hints. Literature, more and more, concerns itself with spiritual quantities. The air of our century is aromatic with these beautiful conceptions, as witness Jean Valjean, Dr. MacLure, Deacon Phoebe, Sidney Carton, Daniel Deronda, Donal Grant, Bayard, Red Jason, Pete, Captain Moray, John Halifax, and Caponsacchi. Some of these pictures seem more than side views. But a gentleman should be, must be, nobly normal. He is a balance of virtue. Symmetry impresses us in him, as when we look at the Parthenon. ”

“ Nor is he a friend who assumes that the poet, because a poet, moves in eccentric paths rather than in concentric circles. Hold with all tenacity to the poet's sanity. He is superior, and lives where the eagles fly and stars run their far and splendid courses; but he is still man, though man grown tall and sublime. To the truth of this view of the great poet bear witness Aeschylus, and Dante, and Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Tennyson, and Browning, in naming whom we are lighting on high summits, as clouds do, and leaving the main range of mountains untouched. Shakespeare is absolutely sane. ”

“ The Iliad and Odyssey were necessities of the age which gave them birth. In so far as a literature is purely human, in so far will it be stamped with the seal of the times, customs, and thoughts in the midst of which it bloomed into beauty. In early Greek times an epic without its gods and demigods, without resounding battle-shout and din of mighty conflict, had been an anachronism for which there could have been offered no apology. The splendid era of Pericles demanded the tragedy, and such a tragedy as only Aeschylus and Sophocles could originate ”

“ To Cervantes, chivalry was grotesque; to Tennyson, chivalry was poetry,—there lay the difference. Our laureate caught not the jest, but the real poetry of that episode in the adventure of manhood; and this I take to be the larger and worthier lesson. Cervantes and Tennyson were both right. But Tennyson caught the vision of the surer, the more enduring truth. With love, as with chivalry, he saw not the humor, but the beauty of it; and beauty is always touched with melancholy. ”

“ Whiteness of life is not an episode foreign to biography. There are many lives running white toward heaven as I have seen a path across the moonlit sea. Not to be credulous is well; not to be incredulous is better, when heavenly visions and heavenly incarnations are the theme. This is affirmed, that King Arthur is not more unreal than others Tennyson delineates. His art lacks the power to flood his people's veins with blood to plethora, with such bounding vitality as marks Shakespeare's creations. They lack, sometimes, color on the cheek and lip and sunlight in the eyes. ”

“ Does not this express our feeling about this poet? He is well, always well, and laughs at the notion of sickness. He starts a-walking, and unconsciously runs, as a schoolboy after school. His smile breaks into ringing laughter; and he, not you, knows why he either smiles or laughs. He and sunlight seem close of kin. A mountain is a challenge he never refuses, but scales it by bounds, like a deer when pursued by the hunter and the hound. He is not tonic, but bracing air and perfect health and youth, which makes labor a holiday and care a jest. Shakespeare is never morose. ”

“ This oration is an apology, a plea of a great soul, pleading for what is above life. The words have pathos, but they lift to sublime heights. Job sweeps on like a rising tide. His false comforters sit silent, perplexed, but silenced. His argument rises as a wind, which first blows lightly as a child's breath on the cheek, then lifts and sways the branches of the trees, then trumpets like a battle troop, then roars like storm-waves beating on the rocks, until we hear naught but Job. What begins an apology, ends a paean. ”

“ And the prowess, the achievement, the discovery, the colonization, the high tide of life, which ran like lightning through the Nation's arteries, made the drama, not only a possibility, but a fact. It was the embodiment of the mighty activities of a mighty age. The tragedy, to use the splendid figure of Milton, "rose like an exhalation." A solitary lifetime brought it from sunrise to high noon; and from that hour what could the sun do but sink?
Our century is one of general iconoclasm. It is the Ishmael among the ages. Its hand is against every man. ”

“ He is a somber hero, but a hero still, with strength like the strength of ten, since his love is as the love of a legion. The power to do is his, and the nobility to surrender the woman of his love; and there his nobility darkens into stoicism, and he waits for the rising tide, watching the outgoing ship that bears his heart away unreservedly—waits, only eager that the tide ingulf him. ”

“ He was selfish, immoral, barren of finer instincts, who was loved by his dog and by Penelope, though for no reason we can discover. Ten years he fought before Troy, and ten years he tasted the irony of the seas—in these episodes displaying bravery and fortitude, but no homesick love for Penelope, who waited at the tower of Ithaca for him, a picture of constancy sweet enough to hang on the palace walls of all these centuries. We do not think to love Ulysses, nor can we work ourselves up to the point of admiration; and he is the best hero classic Rome and Greece can offer. ”

“ Emerson acutely remarks that all men admire Napoleon because he was themselves in possibility. They were in miniature what he was developed. For a like though nobler reason, all men love heroes. They are ourselves grown tall, puissant, victorious, and sprung into nobility, worth, service. The hero electrifies the world; he is the lightning of the soul, illuminating our sky, clarifying the air, making it thereby salubrious and delightful. ”

“ A breath from behind the world blew in his face; nay, more, a breath from behind the world blew noble ideas into his soul, and he spake as one inspired of the gods. This conception of a poet is high and worthy; nothing gross grimes it with common dust. Yet from so noble a thought—because the thought was partial—grew the gross misconception of the poet as beyond law, as not amenable to social and moral customs, as one who might transgress the moral code with impunity, and stand unreproved, even blameless. ”

“ Philip was Spaniard to the exclusion of all else. Charles, if he was anything, was brilliant; Philip was as lacking in color as a bank of winter clouds, no more conceiving brilliancy than he conceived of greatness of soul or manly honor.
In Spanish character were chivalrous qualities, mixed with ferocity and pitiless cruelty. Pizarro and Cortes were attractive; we like to look at them a second time. Much we condemn, but much we admire. Their sagacity, their prowess, their heroic spirit, take us captive despite their baser qualities. In them was duplicity, revenge, bigotry, heathenish cruelty ”

“ Let your imagination, as well as the poet's, spread wings. Become creative yourself; for this is true: No one can rightly conceive any work of imagination and be himself unimaginative. Read and re-read, and at length, like the cliffs of shore rising out of ocean mists, dim, but stable and increasingly palpable, will come a scheme of meaning. Miss nothing. Let no beauty elude you. Odors must not waste; we, in a spirit of lofty economy, must inhale them. Watch the drift of verbal trifles; for Shakespeare uses no superfluities. ”

“ In many instances the motto of investigation in the domain of history, criticism, and science has been, "Believe all things false until you prove them true." If such is the spirit of the age, and if literature be colored with the light of the century which produces it, shall we wonder if the nineteenth-century literature is distinctively an iconoclastic one?
All about us is the battle of the books. War rages along the entire line. No work of antiquity is free from this belligerency. Mars has the field. The investigation has been crucial. ”

“ Love made him great. And Macdonald, in Donal Grant, has shown us a strong, pure soul of moral strength, religious appetencies, determined goodness, of elevation of character, of strength and wisdom, so that in his accustomed walk he might have met Sir Percivale or Sir Launfal. Good, and given over to God, he was found out by love; and love did with him as with us all—love glorified him. In his clean life is something sturdy you might lean on, as on a staff, and have no fear. So is Enoch Arden made hero by love. In love, remembrance, and absence of self, he is manhood. ”

“ God was his secret, as God is the secret of us all. To scan his process of recovery is worth while. The bishop reminded him of God. Goodness and love in man are wings to help us soar to where we see that service, love, and goodness are in God—see that God is good and God is love. Seeing God, Jean Valjean does good. Philanthropy is native to him; gentleness seems his birthright; his voice is low and sweet; his face—the helpless look to it for help; his eyes are dreamy, like a poet's; he loves books; he looks not manufacturer so much as he looks poet ”

“ The sky is ample and open. Not a cloud flecks it with its foam. From desert line to the blue zenith is only bewildering blue; when, black as a stormy midnight, driving as if lightnings were its chariot steeds, comes the whirlwind whereon the Almighty rides, and halts; and God pitches his midnight pavilion in front of silent Job on the silent desert, and from this tent, whose curtains are not drawn, there trumpets a voice. God is come! And God speaks! "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." Eloquence like this on forum like this, literature knows nothing of. Sublimity is come to its noon. ”

“ Indeed, grasping the state of civilization as then existing, and comprehending Christ's non-earthly idea of what a gentleman was, we can not be slow to perceive how ludicrous this conception would be to the Roman world. Tall dreams seem madness. Hamlet's feigned madness puzzles us even yet. Many an auditor heard Columbus with a smile ill-concealed behind his beard. All high ideality sounds a madman's babble. To see a true life live truly will strike many as a jest, and others as pathos too deep for sobs.
Don Quixote conceived a man ought to live for virtue. ”