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ESSAYS


_OTHER WORKS BY Mr. A. C. BENSON_

_In Verse_

POEMS, 1893

LYRICS, 1895

_In Prose_

MEMOIRS OF
ARTHUR HAMILTON, 1886

ARCHBISHOP LAUD: A STUDY,
1887

MEN OF MIGHT (in conjunction
with H. F. W. TATHAM), 1890




ESSAYS

BY
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
OF ETON COLLEGE

_Post aliquot, mea regna videns, mirabor aristas!_

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1896

_All rights reserved_


    _To_
    HENRY JAMES
    THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
    BY
    HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND
    THE AUTHOR




PREFACE


It would be easy, if need were, to devise a theory of coherence for the
Essays here selected for re-publication, but the truth is that they are
fortuitous. The only claim that I can consistently make, is that I have
always chosen, for biographical and critical study, figures whose
personality or writings have seemed to me to possess some subtle,
evasive charm, or delicate originality of purpose or view. Mystery,
inexplicable reticence, haughty austerity, have a fascination in life
and literature, that is sometimes denied to sanguine strength and easy
volubility. I am well aware that vitality and majesty are the primary
qualities to demand both in life and literature. I have nothing but
rebellious horror for the view that languor, if only it be subtle and
serpentine, is in itself admirable. But there are two kinds of languor.
Just as the poverty of a man born needy, and incapable of acquiring
wealth, is different in kind from the poverty of one who has sacrificed
wealth in some noble cause, so the deliberate, the self-conscious
languor "about three degrees on this side of faintness," of which Keats
wrote in his most voluptuous mood, is a very different thing from the
languor of Hamlet, the fastidious despair of ever realising some lofty
conception, the prostrate indifference of one who has found the world
too strong. I do not say that the note of failure is a characteristic of
all the figures in my narrow gallery of portraits. But I will say that
they were most of them persons about whom hung an undefined promise of
greater strength than ever issued in performance. The causes of their
comparative failure are difficult to disentangle. With one perhaps it
was the want of a sympathetic _entourage_; with another a dreamy or
mystical habit of thought; with this one, the immersion in uncongenial
pursuits; with that a certain failure in physical vitality; with
another, the work, accomplished in dignified serenity, has fallen too
swiftly into neglect, and we must endeavour to divine the cause: and yet
in no case can we trace any inherent weakness, any moral obliquity, any
degrading or enervating concession.

Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes we make in literature and art is
the passionate individualism into which we are betrayed. We cannot bring
ourselves to speak or think very highly of the level of a man's work,
unless the positive and tangible results of that work are in themselves
very weighty and pure. We forget all about the inspirers and teachers of
poets and artists. How often does the poet, and the artist too, in
autobiographical allusion, speak with absorbing gratitude and devotion
of some humble name of which we take no note, as the "fons et origo" to
himself of enthusiasm and proficiency.

It is with no affectation of fastidious superiority, but with a frank
confession of conscious pettiness, that I say that this book will only
appeal to a few. The critic is no hero: he is at best but a skipping
peltast, engaged as often as not in inglorious flight. To flounder in
images, criticism is nothing but a species of mistletoe, sprouting in a
sleek bunch in the chink of a lofty forest tree. I had rather have been
Lovelace than Sainte-Beuve, and write one immortal lyric than
thirty-five volumes of the acutest discrimination. But a minority has a
right to its opinions, and may claim to be amused: a man who thinks the
Rhine vulgar, and the Jungfrau exaggerated, may be foolishly delighted
with a backwater on the Thames, and a view of the Berkshire downs. In
fact, the only kind of criticism of which one may be impatient is the
criticism which abuses an author for not writing something else. What
critics can do, what I have attempted to do, is to strengthen and define
the impression that a casual reader may derive from a book, a reader who
wishes to see what is good, but has not the knack described by the poet,
who says "what is best he firmly lights upon, as birds on sprays."

On the other hand we may reasonably doubt what is the exact worth of the
cultivation, of the point of view which we meekly accept at the hands
of a convincing critic. Does it not require a special insight to
understand even criticism? After all, we agree with, we do not accept
criticism: we select from it some preference, strongly and convincingly
stated, which jumps with our own preconceived ideas. If we merely
swallow it down, like the camel, to be reproduced in fetid stagnation,
whenever a necessity for it arises, are we so much higher after all? The
delicate psychologist who has accepted my dedication, speaks in one of
his latest stories of the expression on the face of a Royal Princess,
who had been _told_ everything in the world, and had never _perceived_
anything. Culture, criticism, in certain sterile natures, are like
Sheridan's famous apophthegm: they lie "like lumps of marl on a barren
moor, encumbering what it is not in their power to fertilise."

In art, in literature, it is the periods of republicanism that have left
their mark on the world: the periods that have been very conscious of,
and very deferential to authority, have been invariably retrograde.
What a dreary period in English literature was the reign of Dr. Johnson.
The chief legacies of that era to literature are the letters of Gray and
Horace Walpole, and the life of the Dictator himself. But these are not
creative literature at all. Gray, as a poet, was comparatively sterile.
Imagination, the jewel of the soul, had fallen from its elaborate
setting. But the more that literature declined, the more sententious
grew the critics. Nowadays, when literature is very active, and not very
profound--impressionist, journalistic, supremely content if it can
produce lively and superficial sensations--the bludgeoning of the early
part of the century has gone out: no longer does the critic feel it a
duty, as the oracle said to Oenomaus, to "draw the bow and slaughter the
innumerable geese that graze upon the green." Indeed would not some have
us believe that criticism of contemporaries is all a matter of private
interest, apart from any just or earnest conviction?

But there is still a class of readers, not very large or important
perhaps, haunted by a native instinct for literature, a relish for fine
phrases, a hankering for style--to whom the manner of saying a thing is
as important, or more important than the matter, readers, who are not
satisfied with fiction, unless it be combined, as by Robert Louis
Stevenson, with a wealth, a curiousness, a preciosity of phrase, to
which in criticism only Walter Pater can lay claim, and which may secure
for these two a station in literature to which the majority of our busy,
voluble, graphic writers must aspire in vain.

A. C. B.

ETON, _July, 1895_.




CONTENTS


                                PAGE

THE EVER-MEMORABLE JOHN HALES      1

A MINUTE PHILOSOPHER              19

HENRY MORE, THE PLATONIST         35

ANDREW MARVELL                    68

VINCENT BOURNE                    96

THOMAS GRAY                      119

WILLIAM BLAKE                    147

THE POETRY OF KEBLE              180

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING       203

THE LATE MASTER OF TRINITY       238

HENRY BRADSHAW                   252

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI               268

THE POETRY OF EDMUND GOSSE       292

EPILOGUE                         310




_Eight of these Essays have appeared in "Macmillan's Magazine," viz.:
"The Ever-Memorable John Hales," "A Minute Philosopher," "Andrew
Marvell." "Vincent Bourne," "Thomas Gray," "Elizabeth Barrett Browning,"
"Henry Bradshaw," "The Late Master of Trinity"; two in the "Contemporary
Review," viz.: "Henry More, the Platonist" and the "Poetry of Keble";
one in the "National Review," "Christina Rossetti"; and one in the "New
Review," the "Poetry of Edmund Gosse." My acknowledgements and thanks
are due to the proprietors and editors of these periodicals for the
leave kindly accorded me to republish them. The Study, "William Blake,"
is now printed for the first time._

_I desire also to record my gratitude to F. E. B. Duff, Esq., of King's
College, Cambridge, who has revised the book throughout, and made many
valuable suggestions._




THE EVER-MEMORABLE JOHN HALES


The churchyard at Eton is a triangular piece of ground, converging into
a sharp remote angle, bordered on one side by the Long Walk, and
screened from it by heavy iron railings. On the second side it is
skirted and overlooked by tall irregular houses, and on the third side
by the deep buttressed recesses of the chapel, venerable with ivy and
mouldering grey stone.

It is a strangely quiet place in the midst of bustling life; the
grumbling of waggons in the road, the hoarse calling of the jackdaws,
awkwardly fluttering about old red-tiled roofs, the cracked clanging of
the college clock, the voices of boys from the street, fall faintly on
the ear: besides, it has all the beauty of a deserted place, for it is
many years since it has been used for a burial-ground: the grass is long
and rank, the cypresses and yews grow luxuriantly out of unknown vaults,
and push through broken rails; the gravestones slant and crumble; moss
grows into the letters of forgotten names, and creepers embrace and
embower monumental urns; here and there are heaps of old carven,
crumbling stones; on early summer mornings a resident thrush stirs the
silence with flute-notes marvellously clear; and on winter evenings when
wet, boisterous winds roll steadily up, and the tall chapel windows
flame, the organ's voice is blown about the winding overgrown paths, and
the memorials of the dead.

Just inside the gate, visible from the road among the dark evergreens,
stands a tall, conspicuous altar-tomb, conspicuous more for the
miserable way in which a stately monument has been handled, than for its
present glories. It has been patched and slobbered up with grey stucco;
and the inscription scratched on the surface is three-quarters
obliterated. Let into the sides are the grey stone panels of the older
tomb, sculptured with quaint emblems of life and death, a mattock and an
uncouth heap of bones, an hourglass and a skull, a pot of roses and
lily-flowers--such is the monument of one of Eton's gentlest servants
and sons. "I ordain," runs the quaint conclusion of his will, "that at
the time of the next evensong after my departure (if conveniently it may
be), my body be laid in the church-yard of the town of Eton (if I chance
to die there), as near as may be [a strangely pathetic touch of love
from the childless philosopher, the friend of courtiers and divines], to
the body of my little godson, Jack Dickenson the elder; and this to be
done in plain and simple manner, without any sermon or ringing the bell,
or calling the people together; without any unseasonable commessation or
compotation, or other solemnity on such occasions usual; _for as in my
life I have done the church no service, so I will not that in my death
the church do me any honour_."

And the prophecy is fulfilled to the letter; in such a tomb he rests;
and by a strange irony of fate, the pompous title claiming so universal
and perennial a fame--the "ever-memorable"--is the only single fact
which is commonly mentioned about him--he has even been identified with
Sir Matthew Hale of just memory.

John Hales was neither an Etonian nor a Kingsman: he was of a
Somersetshire family; and was educated at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, where he spent no less than six years before taking his degree
(in 1603), from the age of thirteen to the age of nineteen.

The Warden of Merton at that time was Sir Henry Savile, Queen
Elizabeth's Greek tutor, supposed the most learned savant of the time,
founder of the Savilian professorships for astronomy and geometry, a
severe, clear-headed student. It is recorded of him that he had a great
dislike for brilliant instinctive abilities, and only respected the slow
cumulative processes.