WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE

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Adelbert von Chamisso
William Ellery Channing
George Chapman
François René Auguste Châteaubriand
Thomas Chatterton
Andre Chénier
Victor Cherbuliez
Rufus Choate
Earl of Clarendon
Matthias Claudius
William Collins
William Wilkie Collins

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ouis Charles Adelaide de Chamisso, known as Adelbert von Chamisso, the youngest son of Count Louis Marie de Chamisso, was born in the paternal castle of Boncourt, in Champagne, January 30th, 1781. Driven into exile by the Revolution, the family of loyalists sought refuge in the Low Countries and afterward in Germany, settling in Berlin in 1797. In later years the other members of the family returned to France and established themselves once more as Frenchmen in their native land; but Adelbert von Chamisso, German by nature and characteristics as well as by virtue of his early education and environment, struck root in Germany and was the genuine product of German soil. In 1796 the young Chamisso became page to Queen Louise of Prussia, and while at court, by the Queen's directions, he received the most careful education. He was made ensign in 1798 and lieutenant in 1801, in the Regiment von Goetze. A military career was repugnant to him, and his French antecedents did not tend to make his life agreeable among the German officers. That the service was not wholly without interest, however, is shown by the two treatises upon military subjects written by him in 1798 and 1799.

As a young officer he belonged to a romantic brotherhood calling itself "The Polar Star," which counted among its members his lifelong friend Hitzig, Alexander zur Lippe, Varnhagen, and other young writers of the day. He diligently applied himself to the mastery of the German tongue, made translations of poems and dramas, and to relieve the irksomeness of his military life incessantly studied Homer. His most ambitious literary effort of this time was a 'Faust' (1803), a metaphysical, somewhat sophomoric attempt, but the only one of his early poems that he admitted into his collected works.

While still in the Prussian army, he edited with Varnhagen and Neumann a periodical called the Musenalmanach (1804), which existed[Pg 3504] three years. After repeated but vain efforts to obtain release from the uncongenial military service, the capitulation of Hameln at length set him free (1806). He left Germany and went to France; but, disappointed in his hopes, unsettled and without plans, he returned, and several years were lost in profitless and desultory wanderings. From 1810 to 1812 he was again in France. Here he became acquainted with Alexander von Humboldt and Uhland, and renewed his friendship with Wilhelm Schlegel. With Helmina von Chézy he undertook the translation into French of Schlegel's Vienna lectures upon art and literature. Chamisso was indifferent to the task, and the translation went on but slowly. To expedite the work he was invited to stay at Chaumont, the residence of Madame de Staël, where Schlegel was a member of her household. Here his careless personal habits and his inevitable pipe brought odium upon him in that polished circle.

Madame de Staël was always his friend, and in 1811 he went to her at Coppet, where by a happy chance he took up the study of botany, with August de Staël as instructor. Filled with enthusiasm for his new pursuit, he made excursions through Switzerland, collecting and botanizing. The period of indecision was at an end, and in 1812, at the age of thirty-one, he matriculated as student of medicine at the University of Berlin, and applied himself with resolution to the study of the natural sciences. During the war against Napoleon he sought refuge in Kunersdorf with the Itzenplitz family, where he occupied his time with botany and the instruction of young Itzenplitz. It was during this time (1813) that 'Peter Schlemihl's Wundersame Geschichte' (Peter Schlemihl's Wonderful History) was written,—one of the masterpieces of German literature. His 'Faust' and 'Fortunatus' had in some degree foreshadowed his later and more famous work,—'Faust' in the compact with the devil, 'Fortunatus' in the possession of the magical wishing-bag. The simple motif of popular superstition, the loss of one's shadow, familiar in folk-stories and already developed by Goethe in his 'Tales,' and by Körner in 'Der Teufel von Salamanca' (The Devil of Salamanca), was treated by Chamisso with admirable simplicity, directness of style, and realism of detail.

Chamisso's divided allegiance to France and Germany made the political situation of the times very trying for him, and it was with joy that he welcomed an appointment as scientist to a Russian polar expedition, fitted out under the direction of Count Romanzoff, and commanded by Captain Kotzebue (1815-1818). The record of the scientific results of this expedition, as published by Kotzebue, was full of misstatements; and to correct these, Chamisso wrote the 'Tagebuch' (Journal) in 1835, a work whose pure and plastic style[Pg 3505] places it in the first order of books of travel, and entitles its author, in point of description, to rank with Von Humboldt among the best writers of travels of the first half of the century.

After three years of voyaging, Chamisso returned to Berlin, and in 1819 he was made a member of the Society of Natural Sciences and received the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Berlin, was appointed adjunct custodian of the botanical garden in New Schöneberg, and in September of the same year he married Antonie Piaste.

An indemnity granted by France to the French emigrants put him in possession of the sum of one hundred thousand francs, and in 1825 he again visited Paris, where he remained some months among old friends and new interests. The period of his great activity was after this date. His life was now peaceful and domestic. Poetry and botany flourished side by side. Chamisso, to his own astonishment, found himself read and admired, and everywhere his songs were sung. To the influence of his wife we owe the cycles of poems, 'Frauen-Liebe und Leben' (Woman's Love and Life), and 'Lebens Lieder und Bilder' (Life's Songs and Pictures), for without her they would have been impossible. The former cycle inspired Robert Schumann in the first days of his happy married life, and the music of these songs has made 'Woman's Love and Life' familiar to all the world. 'Salas y Gomez,' a reminiscence of his voyage around the world, appeared in the Musenalmanach in 1830. The theme of this poem was the development of the romantic possibilities suggested by the sight of the profound loneliness and grandeur of the South Sea island, Salas y Gomez. Chamisso translated Andersen and Béranger, made translations from the Chinese and Tonga, and his version of the Eddic Song of Thrym ('Das Lied von Thrym') is among the best translations from the Icelandic that have been made.

In 1832 he became associate editor of the Berlin Deutscher Musenalmanach, which position he held until his death, and in his hands the periodical attained a high degree of influence and importance. His health failing, he resigned his position at the Botanical Garden, retiring upon full pay. He died at Berlin, August 21st, 1838.

Frenchman though he was, his entire conception of life and the whole character of his writings are purely German, and show none of the French characteristics of his time. Chamisso, as botanist, traveler, poet, and editor, made important contributions in each and every field, although outside of Germany his fame rests chiefly upon his widely known 'Schlemihl,' which has been translated into all the principal languages of Europe.

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After a fortunate, but for me very troublesome voyage, we finally reached the port. The instant that I touched land in the boat, I loaded myself with my few effects, and passing through the swarming people I entered the first and least house before which I saw a sign hang. I requested a room; the boots measured me with a look, and conducted me into the garret. I caused fresh water to be brought, and made him exactly describe to me where I should find Mr. Thomas John.

"Before the north gate; the first country-house on the right hand; a large new house of red and white marble, with many columns."

"Good." It was still early in the day. I opened at once my bundle; took thence my new black-cloth coat; clad myself cleanly in my best apparel; put my letter of introduction into my pocket, and set out on the way to the man who was to promote my modest expectations.

When I had ascended the long North Street, and reached the gate, I soon saw the pillars glimmer through the foliage. "Here it is, then," thought I. I wiped the dust from my feet with my pocket-handkerchief, put my neckcloth in order, and in God's name rang the bell. The door flew open. In the hall I had an examination to undergo; the porter however permitted me to be announced, and I had the honor to be called into the park, where Mr. John was walking with a select party. I recognized the man at once by the lustre of his corpulent self-complacency. He received me very well,—as a rich man receives a poor devil,—even turned towards me, without turning from the rest of the company, and took the offered letter from my hand. "So, so, from my brother. I have heard nothing from him for a long time. But he is well? There," continued he, addressing the company, without waiting for an answer, and pointing with the letter to a hill, "there I am going to erect the new building." He broke the seal without breaking off the conversation, which turned upon riches.

"He that is not master of a million at least," he observed, "is—pardon me the word—a wretch!"[Pg 3507]

"Oh, how true!" I exclaimed, with a rush of overflowing feeling.

That pleased him. He smiled at me and said, "Stay here, my good friend; in a while I shall perhaps have time to tell you what I think about this." He pointed to the letter, which he then thrust into his pocket, and turned again to the company. He offered his arm to a young lady; the other gentlemen addressed themselves to other fair ones; each found what suited him: and all proceeded towards the rose-blossomed mount.

I slid into the rear without troubling any one, for no one troubled himself any further about me. The company was excessively lively; there was dalliance and playfulness; trifles were sometimes discussed with an important tone, but oftener important matters with levity; and the wit flew with special gayety over absent friends and their circumstances. I was too strange to understand much of all this; too anxious and introverted to take an interest in such riddles.

We had reached the rosery. The lovely Fanny, who seemed the belle of the day, insisted out of obstinacy in breaking off a blossomed stem herself. She wounded herself on a thorn, and the purple streamed from her tender hand as if from the dark roses. This circumstance put the whole party into a flutter. English plaster was sought for. A quiet, thin, lanky, longish, oldish man who stood near, and whom I had not hitherto remarked, put his hand instantly into the tight breast-pocket of his old gray French taffeta coat; produced thence a little pocket-book, opened it, and presented to the lady with a profound obeisance the required article. She took it without noticing the giver, and without thanks; the wound was bound up and we went forward over the hill, from whose back the company could enjoy the wide prospect over the green labyrinth of the park to the boundless ocean.

The view was in reality vast and splendid. A light point appeared on the horizon between the dark flood and the blue of the heaven. "A telescope here!" cried John; and already, before the servants who appeared at the call were in motion, the gray man, modestly bowing, had thrust his hand into his coat pocket, drawn thence a beautiful Dollond, and handed it to Mr. John. Bringing it immediately to his eye, he informed the company that it was the ship which went out yesterday, and was detained in view of port by contrary winds. The telescope[Pg 3508] passed from hand to hand, but not again into that of its owner. I however gazed in wonder at the man, and could not conceive how the great machine had come out of the narrow pocket; but this seemed to have struck no one else, and nobody troubled himself any further about the gray man than about myself.

Refreshments were handed round; the choicest fruits of every zone, in the costliest vessels. Mr. John did the honors with an easy grace, and a second time addressed a word to me: "Help yourself; you have not had the like at sea." I bowed, but he did not see it; he was already speaking with some one else.

The company would fain have reclined upon the sward on the slope of the hill, opposite to the outstretched landscape, had they not feared the dampness of the earth. "It were divine," observed one of the party, "had we but a Turkey carpet to spread here." The wish was scarcely expressed when the man in the gray coat had his hand in his pocket, and was busied in drawing thence, with a modest and even humble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet interwoven with gold. The servants received it as a matter of course, and opened it on the required spot. The company, without ceremony, took their places upon it; for myself, I looked again in amazement on the man—at the carpet, which measured about twenty paces long and ten in breadth and rubbed my eyes, not knowing what to think of it, especially as nobody saw anything extraordinary in it.

I would fain have had some explanation regarding the man and have asked who he was, but I knew not to whom to address myself, for I was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's servants than of the served gentlemen. At length I took courage, and stepped up to a young man who appeared to me to be of less consideration than the rest, and who had often stood alone. I begged him softly to tell me who the agreeable man in the gray coat there was.

"He there, who looks like an end of thread that has escaped out of a tailor's needle?"

"Yes, he who stands alone."

"I don't know him," he replied, and—in order to avoid a longer conversation with me, apparently—he turned away and spoke of indifferent matters to another.

The sun began now to shine more powerfully, and to inconvenience the ladies. The lovely Fanny addressed carelessly to the gray man—whom, as far as I am aware, no one had yet[Pg 3509] spoken to—the trifling question whether he "had not, perchance, also a tent by him?" He answered her by an obeisance most profound, as if an unmerited honor were done him, and had already his hand in his pocket, out of which I saw come canvas, poles, cordage, iron-work,—in short, everything which belongs to the most splendid pleasure-tent. The young gentlemen helped to expand it, and it covered the whole extent of the carpet, and nobody found anything remarkable in it.

I had already become uneasy—nay, horrified—at heart; but how completely so, as at the very next wish expressed I saw him pull out of his pocket three roadsters I tell you, three beautiful great black horses, with saddle and caparison. Take it in, for Heaven's sake!—three saddled horses, out of the same pocket from which already a pocket-book, a telescope, an embroidered carpet twenty paces long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of equal dimensions and all the requisite poles and irons, had come forth! If I did not protest to you that I saw it myself with my own eyes, you could not possibly believe it.

Embarrassed and obsequious as the man himself appeared to be, little as was the attention which had been bestowed upon him, yet to me his grisly aspect, from which I could not turn my eyes, became so fearful that I could bear it no longer.

I resolved to steal away from the company, which from the insignificant part I played in it seemed to me an easy affair. I proposed to myself to return to the city to try my luck again on the morrow with Mr. John, and if I could muster the necessary courage, to question him about the singular gray man. Had I only had the good fortune to escape so well!

I had already actually succeeded in stealing through the rosery, and on descending the hill found myself on a piece of lawn, when, fearing to be encountered in crossing the grass out of the path, I cast an inquiring glance round me. What was my terror to behold the man in the gray coat behind me, and making towards me! The next moment he took off his hat before me, and bowed so low as no one had ever yet done to me. There was no doubt but that he wished to address me, and without being rude I could not prevent it. I also took off my hat, bowed also, and stood there in the sun with bare head as if rooted to the ground. I stared at him full of terror, and was like a bird which a serpent has fascinated. He himself appeared very much embarrassed. He did not raise his eyes, again bowed[Pg 3510] repeatedly, drew nearer and addressed me with a soft tremulous voice, almost in a tone of supplication:—

"May I hope, sir, that you will pardon my boldness in venturing in so unusual a manner to approach you? but I would ask a favor. Permit me most condescendingly—"

"But in God's name!" exclaimed I in my trepidation, "what can I do for a man who—" we both started, and as I believe, reddened.

After a moment's silence he again resumed:—

"During the short time that I had the happiness to find myself near you, I have, sir, many times,—allow me to say it to you,—really contemplated with inexpressible admiration the beautiful, beautiful shadow which, as it were with a certain noble disdain and without yourself remarking it, you cast from you in the sunshine. The noble shadow at your feet there! Pardon me the bold supposition, but possibly you might not be indisposed to make this shadow over to me."

I was silent, and a mill-wheel seemed to whirl round in my head. What was I to make of this singular proposition to sell my own shadow? He must be mad, thought I; and with an altered tone which was more assimilated to that of his own humility, I answered him thus:—

"Ha! ha! good friend, have not you then enough of your own shadow? I take this for a business of a very singular sort—"

He hastily interrupted me:—"I have many things in my pocket which, sir, might not appear worthless to you; and for this inestimable shadow I hold the very highest price too small."

It struck cold through me again as I was reminded of the pocket. I knew not how I could have called him good friend. I resumed the conversation, and sought to set all right again by excessive politeness if possible.

"But, sir, pardon your most humble servant; I do not understand your meaning. How indeed could my shadow—"

He interrupted me.

"I beg your permission only here on the spot to be allowed to take up this noble shadow and put it in my pocket; how I shall do that, be my care. On the other hand, as a testimony of my grateful acknowledgment to you, I give you the choice of all the treasures which I carry in my pocket,—the genuine 'spring-root,' the 'mandrake-root,' the 'change-penny,' the 'rob-dollar,' the 'napkin of Roland's page,' a 'mandrake-man,' at your own[Pg 3511] price. But these probably don't interest you; rather 'Fortunatus's wishing-cap,' newly and stoutly repaired, and a lucky-bag such as he had!"

"The luck-purse of Fortunatus!" I exclaimed, interrupting him; and great as my anxiety was, with that one word he had taken my whole mind captive. A dizziness seized me, and double ducats seemed to glitter before my eyes.

"Honored sir, will you do me the favor to view and to make trial of this purse?" He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a tolerably large, well-sewed purse of stout Cordovan leather, with two strong strings, and handed it to me. I plunged my hand into it, and drew out ten gold pieces, and again ten. I extended him eagerly my hand. "Agreed! the business is done: for the purse you have my shadow!"

He closed with me; kneeled instantly down before me, and I beheld him, with an admirable dexterity, gently loosen my shadow from top to toe from the grass, lift it up, roll it together, fold it, and finally pocket it. He arose, made me another obeisance, and retreated towards the rosery. I fancied that I heard him there softly laughing to himself, but I held the purse fast by the strings; all round me lay the clear sunshine, and within me was yet no power of reflection.

At length I came to myself, and hastened to quit the place where I had nothing more to expect. In the first place I filled my pockets with gold; then I secured the strings of the purse fast round my neck, and concealed the purse itself in my bosom. I passed unobserved out of the park, reached the highway and took the road to the city. As, sunk in thought, I approached the gate, I heard a cry behind me:

"Young gentleman! eh! young gentleman! hear you!"

I looked round; an old woman called after me.

"Do take care, sir, you have lost your shadow!"

"Thank you, good mother!" I threw her a gold piece for her well-meant intelligence, and stopped under the trees.

At the city gate I was compelled to hear again from the sentinel, "Where has the gentleman left his shadow?" And immediately again from some women, "Jesus Maria! the poor fellow has no shadow!" That began to irritate me, and I became especially careful not to walk in the sun. This could not, however, be accomplished everywhere; for instance, over the broad street I must next take—actually, as mischief would have[Pg 3512] it, at the very moment the boys came out of school. A cursed hunchbacked rogue—I see him yet—spied out instantly that I had no shadow. He proclaimed the fact with a loud outcry to the whole assembled literary street youth of the suburb, who began forthwith to criticize me and to pelt me with mud. "Decent people are accustomed to take their shadow with them when they go into the sunshine." To defend myself from them I threw whole handfuls of gold amongst them, and sprang into a hackney coach which some compassionate soul procured for me. As soon as I found myself alone in the rolling carriage, I began to weep bitterly. The presentiment must already have arisen in me that on earth, far as gold transcends merit and virtue in estimation, so much higher than gold itself is the shadow valued; and as I had earlier sacrificed wealth to conscience, I had now thrown away the shadow for mere gold. What in the world could and would become of me!

Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.

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r. Channing, the recognized leader although not the originator of the Unitarian movement in this country, was a man of singular spirituality, sweetness of disposition, purity of life, and nobility of character. He was thought by some to be austere and cold in temperament, and timid in action; but this was rather a misconception of a life given to conscientious study, and an effort to allow due weight to opposing arguments. He was not liable to be swept from his moorings by momentary enthusiasm. As a writer he was clear and direct, admirably perspicuous in style, without great ornament, much addicted to short and simple sentences, though singularly enough an admirer of those which were long and involved. A critic in Fraser's Magazine wrote of him:—"Channing is unquestionably the first writer of the age. From his writings may be extracted some of the richest poetry and richest conceptions, clothed in language—unfortunately for our literature—too little studied in the day in which we live."

He was of "blue blood,"—the grandson of William Ellery, one of the signers of the Declaration,—and was born at Newport, Rhode Island, April 7th, 1780. He was graduated at Harvard College with high honors in 1798, and first thought of studying medicine, but was inclined to the direction of the ministry. He became a private tutor in Richmond, Virginia, where he learned to detest slavery. Here he laid the seeds of subsequent physical troubles by imprudent indulgence in asceticism, in a desire to avoid effeminacy. He entered upon the study of theology, which he continued in Cambridge; he was ordained in 1803, and soon became pastor of the Federal Street Church in Boston, in charge of which society he passed his ministerial life. In the following year he was associated with Buckminster and others in the liberal Congregational movement, and this led him into a position of controversy with his orthodox brethren,—one he cordially disliked. But he could not refrain from preaching the doctrines of the dignity of human nature, the supremacy of reason, and religious freedom, of whose truth he was profoundly assured.

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It has been truly said that Channing was too much a lover of free thought, and too desirous to hold only what he thought to be true, to allow himself to be bound by any party ties. "I wish," he himself said, "to regard myself as belonging not to a sect but to the community of free minds, of lovers of truth and followers of Christ, both on earth and in heaven. I desire to escape the narrow walls of a particular church, and to stand under the open sky in the broad light, looking far and wide, seeing with my own eyes, hearing with my own ears, and following Truth meekly but resolutely, however arduous or solitary be the path in which she leads."

He was greatly interested in temperance, in the anti-slavery movement, in the elevation of the laboring classes, and other social reforms; and after 1824, when Dr. Gannett became associate pastor, he gave much time to work in these directions. His death occurred at Bennington, Vermont, April 2d, 1842. His literary achievements are mainly or wholly in the line of his work,—sermons, addresses, and essays; but they were prepared with scrupulous care, and have the quality naturally to be expected from a man of broad and catholic spirit, wide interests, and strong love of literature. His works, in six volumes, are issued by the American Unitarian Association, which also publishes a 'Memorial' by his nephew, William Henry Channing, in three volumes.

The passion for ruling, though most completely developed in despotisms, is confined to no forms of government. It is the chief peril of free States, the natural enemy of free institutions. It agitates our own country, and still throws an uncertainty over the great experiment we are making here in behalf of liberty.... It is the distinction of republican institutions, that whilst they compel the passion for power to moderate its pretensions, and to satisfy itself with more limited gratifications, they tend to spread it more widely through the community, and to make it a universal principle. The doors of office being opened to all, crowds burn to rush in. A thousand hands are stretched out to grasp the reins which are denied to none. Perhaps in this boasted and boasting land of liberty, not a few, if called to state the chief good of a republic, would place it in this: that every man is eligible to every office, and[Pg 3515] that the highest places of power and trust are prizes for universal competition. The superiority attributed by many to our institutions is, not that they secure the greatest freedom, but give every man a chance of ruling; not that they reduce the power of government within the narrowest limits which the safety of the State admits, but throw it into as many hands as possible. The despot's great crime is thought to be that he keeps the delight of dominion to himself, that he makes a monopoly of it; whilst our more generous institutions, by breaking it into parcels and inviting the multitude to scramble for it, spread this joy more widely. The result is that political ambition infects our country and generates a feverish restlessness and discontent, which to the monarchist may seem more than a balance for our forms of liberty. The spirit of intrigue, which in absolute governments is confined to courts, walks abroad through the land; and as individuals can accomplish no political purposes single-handed, they band themselves into parties, ostensibly framed for public ends, but aiming only at the acquisition of power. The nominal sovereign,—that is, the people,—like all other sovereigns, is courted and flattered and told that it can do no wrong. Its pride is pampered, its passions inflamed, its prejudices made inveterate. Such are the processes by which other republics have been subverted, and he must be blind who cannot trace them among ourselves. We mean not to exaggerate our dangers. We rejoice to know that the improvements of society oppose many checks to the love of power. But every wise man who sees its workings must dread it as one chief foe.

This passion derives strength and vehemence in our country from the common idea that political power is the highest prize which society has to offer. We know not a more general delusion, nor is it the least dangerous. Instilled as it is in our youth, it gives infinite excitement to political ambition. It turns the active talents of the country to public station as the supreme good, and makes it restless, intriguing, and unprincipled. It calls out hosts of selfish competitors for comparatively few places, and encourages a bold, unblushing pursuit of personal elevation, which a just moral sense and self-respect in the community would frown upon and cover with shame.

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One of the great springs of war may be found in a very strong and general propensity of human nature—in the love of excitement, of emotion, of strong interest; a propensity which gives a charm to those bold and hazardous enterprises which call forth all the energies of our nature. No state of mind, not even positive suffering, is more painful than the want of interesting objects. The vacant soul preys on itself, and often rushes with impatience from the security which demands no effort, to the brink of peril. This part of human nature is seen in the kind of pleasures which have always been preferred. Why has the first rank among sports been given to the chase? Because its difficulties, hardships, hazards, tumults, awaken the mind, and give to it a new consciousness of existence, and a deep feeling of its powers. What is the charm which attaches the statesman to an office which almost weighs him down with labor and an appalling responsibility? He finds much of his compensation in the powerful emotion and interest awakened by the very hardships of his lot, by conflict with vigorous minds, by the opposition of rivals, by the alternations of success and defeat. What hurries to the gaming tables the man of prosperous fortune and ample resources? The dread of apathy, the love of strong feeling and of mental agitation. A deeper interest is felt in hazarding than in securing wealth, and the temptation is irresistible.... Another powerful principle of our nature which is the spring of war, is the passion for superiority, for triumph, for power. The human mind is aspiring, impatient of inferiority, and eager for control. I need not enlarge on the predominance of this passion in rulers, whose love of power is influenced by its possession, and who are ever restless to extend their sway. It is more important to observe that were this desire restrained to the breasts of rulers, war would move with a sluggish pace. But the passion for power and superiority is universal; and as every individual, from his intimate union with the community, is accustomed to appropriate its triumphs to himself, there is a general promptness to engage in any contest by which the community may obtain an ascendency over other[Pg 3517] nations. The desire that our country should surpass all others would not be criminal, did we understand in what respects it is most honorable for a nation to excel; did we feel that the glory of a State consists in intellectual and moral superiority, in pre-eminence of knowledge, freedom and purity. But to the mass of the people this form of pre-eminence is too refined and unsubstantial. There is another kind of triumph which they better understand: the triumph of physical power, triumph in battle, triumph not over the minds but the territory of another State. Here is a palpable, visible superiority; and for this a people are willing to submit to severe privations. A victory blots out the memory of their sufferings, and in boasting of their extended power they find a compensation for many woes.... Another powerful spring of war is the admiration of the brilliant qualities displayed in war. Many delight in war, not for its carnage and woes, but for its valor and apparent magnanimity, for the self-command of the hero, the fortitude which despises suffering, the resolution which courts danger, the superiority of the mind to the body, to sensation, to fear. Men seldom delight in war, considered merely as a source of misery. When they hear of battles, the picture which rises to their view is not what it should be—a picture of extreme wretchedness, of the wounded, the mangled, the slain; these horrors are hidden under the splendor of those mighty energies which break forth amidst the perils of conflict, and which human nature contemplates with an intense and heart-thrilling delight. Whilst the peaceful sovereign who scatters blessings with the silence and constancy of Providence is received with a faint applause, men assemble in crowds to hail the conqueror,—perhaps a monster in human form, whose private life is blackened with lust and crime, and whose greatness is built on perfidy and usurpation. Thus war is the surest and speediest way to renown; and war will never cease while the field of battle is the field of glory, and the most luxuriant laurels grow from a root nourished with blood.

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I consider the freedom or moral strength of the individual mind as the supreme good, and the highest end of government. I am aware that other views are often taken. It is said that government is intended for the public, for the community, not for the individual. The idea of a national interest prevails in the minds of statesmen, and to this it is thought that the individual may be sacrificed. But I would maintain that the individual is not made for the State so much as the State for the individual. A man is not created for political relations as his highest end, but for indefinite spiritual progress, and is placed in political relations as the means of his progress. The human soul is greater, more sacred than the State, and must never be sacrificed to it. The human soul is to outlive all earthly institutions. The distinction of nations is to pass away. Thrones which have stood for ages are to meet the doom pronounced upon all man's works. But the individual mind survives, and the obscurest subject, if true to God, will rise to power never wielded by earthly potentates.

A human being is a member of the community, not as a limb is a member of the body, or as a wheel is a part of a machine, intended only to contribute to some general joint result. He was created not to be merged in the whole, as a drop in the ocean or as a particle of sand on the seashore, and to aid only in composing a mass. He is an ultimate being, made for his own perfection as his highest end; made to maintain an individual existence, and to serve others only as far as consists with his own virtue and progress. Hitherto governments have tended greatly to obscure this importance of the individual, to depress him in his own eyes, to give him the idea of an outward interest more important than the invisible soul, and of an outward authority more sacred than the voice of God in his own secret conscience. Rulers have called the private man the property of the State, meaning generally by the State themselves; and thus the many have been immolated to the few, and have even believed that this was their highest destination. These views cannot be too earnestly withstood. Nothing seems to me so needful as to give to the mind the consciousness, which governments have done so much to suppress, of its own separate[Pg 3519] worth. Let the individual feel that through his immortality he may concentrate in his own being a greater good than that of nations. Let him feel that he is placed in the community, not to part with his individuality or to become a tool, but that he should find a sphere for his various powers, and a preparation for immortal glory. To me the progress of society consists in nothing more than in bringing out the individual, in giving him a consciousness of his own being, and in quickening him to strengthen and elevate his own mind.

In thus maintaining that the individual is the end of social institutions, I may be thought to discourage public efforts and the sacrifice of private interests to the State. Far from it. No man, I affirm, will serve his fellow-beings so effectually, so fervently, as he who is not their slave; as he who, casting off every other yoke, subjects himself to the law of duty in his own mind. For this law enjoins a disinterested and generous spirit, as man's glory and likeness to his Maker. Individuality, or moral self-subsistence, is the surest foundation of an all-comprehending love. No man so multiplies his bonds with the community, as he who watches most jealously over his own perfection. There is a beautiful harmony between the good of the State and the moral freedom and dignity of the individual. Were it not so, were these interests in any case discordant, were an individual ever called to serve his country by acts debasing his own mind, he ought not to waver a moment as to the good which he should prefer. Property, life, he should joyfully surrender to the State. But his soul he must never stain or enslave. From poverty, pain, the rack, the gibbet, he should not recoil; but for no good of others ought he to part with self-control, or violate the inward law. We speak of the patriot as sacrificing himself to the public weal. Do we mean that he sacrifices what is most properly himself, the principle of piety and virtue? Do we not feel that however great may be the good which through his sufferings accrues to the State, a greater and purer glory redounds to himself; and that the most precious fruit of his disinterested services is the strength of resolution and philanthropy which is accumulated in his own soul?...

The advantages of civilization have their peril. In such a state of society, opinion and law impose salutary restraint, and produce general order and security. But the power of opinion grows into a despotism, which more than all things represses[Pg 3520] original and free thought, subverts individuality of character, reduces the community to a spiritless monotony, and chills the love of perfection. Religion, considered simply as the principle which balances the power of human opinion, which takes man out of the grasp of custom and fashion, and teaches him to refer himself to a higher tribunal, is an infinite aid to moral strength and elevation.

An important benefit of civilization, of which we hear much from the political economist, is the division of labor, by which arts are perfected. But this, by confining the mind to an unceasing round of petty operations, tends to break it into littleness. We possess improved fabrics, but deteriorated men. Another advantage of civilization is, that manners are refined and accomplishments multiplied; but these are continually seen to supplant simplicity of character, strength of feeling, the love of nature, the love of inward beauty and glory. Under outward courtesy we see a cold selfishness, a spirit of calculation, and little energy of love.

I confess I look round on civilized society with many fears, and with more and more earnest desire that a regenerating spirit from heaven, from religion, may descend upon and pervade it. I particularly fear that various causes are acting powerfully among ourselves, to inflame and madden that enslaving and degrading principle, the passion for property. For example, the absence of hereditary distinctions in our country gives prominence to the distinction of wealth, and holds up this as the chief prize to ambition. Add to this the epicurean, self-indulgent habits which our prosperity has multiplied, and which crave insatiably for enlarging wealth as the only means of gratification. This peril is increased by the spirit of our times, which is a spirit of commerce, industry, internal improvements, mechanical invention, political economy, and peace. Think not that I would disparage commerce, mechanical skill, and especially pacific connections among States. But there is danger that these blessings may by perversion issue in a slavish love of lucre. It seems to me that some of the objects which once moved men most powerfully are gradually losing their sway, and thus the mind is left more open to the excitement of wealth. For example, military distinction is taking the inferior place which it deserves: and the consequence will be that the energy and ambition which have been exhausted in war will seek new directions; and happy shall we be if they[Pg 3521] do not flow into the channel of gain. So I think that political eminence is to be less and less coveted; and there is danger that the energies absorbed by it will be spent in seeking another kind of dominion, the dominion of property. And if such be the result, what shall we gain by what is called the progress of society? What shall we gain by national peace, if men, instead of meeting on the field of battle, wage with one another the more inglorious strife of dishonest and rapacious traffic? What shall we gain by the waning of political ambition, if the intrigues of the exchange take place of those of the cabinet, and private pomp and luxury be substituted for the splendor of public life? I am no foe to civilization. I rejoice in its progress. But I mean to say that without a pure religion to modify its tendencies, to inspire and refine it, we shall be corrupted, not ennobled by it. It is the excellence of the religious principle, that it aids and carries forward civilization, extends science and arts, multiplies the conveniences and ornaments of life, and at the same time spoils them of their enslaving power, and even converts them into means and ministers of that spiritual freedom which when left to themselves they endanger and destroy.

In order, however, that religion should yield its full and best fruit, one thing is necessary; and the times require that I should state it with great distinctness. It is necessary that religion should be held and professed in a liberal spirit. Just as far as it assumes an intolerant, exclusive, sectarian form, it subverts instead of strengthening the soul's freedom, and becomes the heaviest and most galling yoke which is laid on the intellect and conscience. Religion must be viewed, not as a monopoly of priests, ministers, or sects, not as conferring on any man a right to dictate to his fellow-beings, not as an instrument by which the few may awe the many, not as bestowing on one a prerogative which is not enjoyed by all; but as the property of every human being and as the great subject for every human mind. It must be regarded as the revelation of a common Father to whom all have equal access, who invites all to the like immediate communion, who has no favorites, who has appointed no infallible expounders of his will, who opens his works and word to every eye, and calls upon all to read for themselves, and to follow fearlessly the best convictions of their own understandings. Let religion be seized on by individuals or sects, as their special province; let them clothe themselves with God's prerogative[Pg 3522] of judgment; let them succeed in enforcing their creed by penalties of law, or penalties of opinion; let them succeed in fixing a brand on virtuous men whose only crime is free investigation—and religion becomes the most blighting tyranny which can establish itself over the mind. You have all heard of the outward evils which religion, when thus turned into tyranny, has inflicted; how it has dug dreary dungeons, kindled fires for the martyr, and invented instruments of exquisite torture. But to me all this is less fearful than its influence over the mind. When I see the superstitions which it has fastened on the conscience, the spiritual terrors with which it has haunted and subdued the ignorant and susceptible, the dark appalling views of God which it has spread far and wide, the dread of inquiry which it has struck into superior understandings, and the servility of spirit which it has made to pass for piety—when I see all this, the fire, the scaffold, and the outward inquisition, terrible as they are, seem to me inferior evils. I look with a solemn joy on the heroic spirits who have met, freely and fearlessly, pain and death in the cause of truth and human rights. But there are other victims of intolerance on whom I look with unmixed sorrow. They are those who, spell-bound by early prejudice or by intimidations from the pulpit and the press, dare not think; who anxiously stifle every doubt or misgiving in regard to their opinions, as if to doubt were a crime; who shrink from the seekers after truth as from infection; who deny all virtue which does not wear the livery of their own sect; who, surrendering to others their best powers, receive unresistingly a teaching which wars against reason and conscience; and who think it a merit to impose on such as live within their influence, the grievous bondage which they bear themselves. How much to be deplored is it, that religion, the very principle which is designed to raise men above the judgment and power of man, should become the chief instrument of usurpation over the soul!

[Pg 3523]

eorge Chapman, the translator of Homer, is of all the Elizabethan dramatists the most undramatic. He is akin to Marlowe in being more of an epic poet than a playwright; but unlike his young compeer "of the mighty line," who in his successive plays learnt how to subdue an essentially epic genius to the demands of the stage, Chapman never got near the true secret of dramatic composition. Yet he witnessed the growth of the glorious Elizabethan drama, from its feeble beginning in 'Gorbodue' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' through its very flowering in the immortal masterpieces. He was born about 1559, five years before Marlowe, the "morning star" of the English drama, and he died in 1634, surviving Shakespeare, in whom it reached its maturity, and Beaumont, Middleton, and Fletcher, whose works foreshadow decay. From his native town Hitchin he passed on to Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar. Then for sixteen years nothing definite is known about him. His life has been called one of the great blanks of English literature. He is sometimes sent traveling on the Continent, as a convenient means of accounting for this gap, and also to explain the intimate acquaintance with German manners and customs and the language displayed in his tragedy 'Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,' which argues at least for a trip to that country. In 1594 he published the two hymns in the 'Shadow of Night'; and soon after he must have begun writing for the stage, for his first extant comedy, 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,' was acted in 1596, and two years later he appears in Francis Meres's famous enumeration of the poets and wits of the time. Hereafter his life is to be dated by his publications.

He occupies a position unique among the Elizabethans, because of his wide culture and the diverse character of his work. Though held together by his strong personality, it yet can be divided into the distinct groups of comedies, tragedies, poems, and translations.[Pg 3524] The first of these is the weakest, for Chapman was not a comic genius. 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria' and 'An Humorous Day's Mirth' deserve but a passing mention. In 1605 'All Fooles' was published, acted six years earlier under the name 'The World Runs on Wheels.' It is a realistic satire, with some good scenes and character-drawing. 'The Gentleman Usher' is full of poetry and ingenious situations. 'Monsieur D'Oline' contains also some good comedy work. 'The Widow's Tears' tells the well-known story of the Ephesian matron; though coarse, it is handled not without comic talent. In his comedy work Chapman is neither new nor original; he followed in Jonson's footsteps, and suggests moreover Terence, Plautus, Fletcher, and Lyly. He has wit, satire, and sarcasm; but along with these, poor construction and little invention. He was going against his grain, and we have here the frankest expression of "pot-boiling" to be found among the Elizabethan dramatists. Writing for the stage was the only kind of literature that really paid; the playhouse was to the Elizabethan what the paper-covered novel is to a modern reader. This accounts for the enormous dramatic productivity of the time, and also explains why the most finely endowed minds, in need of money, produced dramas instead of other imaginative work. By the time he wrote his comedies, Chapman had already won his place as poet and translator, but it earned him no income. Pope, one hundred and twenty-five years later, made a fortune by his translation of Homer. But then the number of readers had increased, and publishers could afford to give large sums to a popular author. Chapman takes rank among the dramatists mainly by his four chief tragedies: 'Bussy d'Ambois,' 'The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois,' 'The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron,' and 'The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron.' They are unique among the plays of the period, in that they deal with almost contemporary events in French history; not with the purpose of exciting any feeling for or against the parties introduced, but in calm ignoring of public opinion, they bring recent happenings on the stage to suit the dramatist's purpose. He drew his material mainly from the 'Historiæ Sui Temporis' of Jacques Auguste de Thou, but he troubled himself little about following it with accuracy, or even painting the characters of the chief actors as true to life. In these tragedies, more than in the comedies, we get sight of Chapman the man; indeed, it is his great failing as playwright that his own individuality is constantly cropping out. He alone, of all the great Elizabethan dramatists, was unable to go outside of himself and enter into the habits and thoughts of his characters. Chapman was too much of a scholar and a thinker to be a successful delineator of men. His is the drama of the man who thinks about life, not of one who lives it in[Pg 3525] its fullness. He does not get into the hearts of men. He has too many theories. Homer had become the ruling influence in his life, and he looked at things from the Homeric point of view and presented life epically. He is at his best in single didactic or narrative passages, and exquisite bits of poetry are prodigally scattered up and down the pages of his tragedies. Next to Shakespeare he is the most sententious of dramatists. He sounded the depths of things in thought which theretofore only Marlowe had done. He is the most metaphysical of dramatists.

Yet his thought is sometimes too much for him, and he becomes obscure. He packs words as tight as Browning, and the sense is often more difficult to unravel. He is best in the closet drama. 'Cæsar and Pompey,' published in 1631 but never acted, contains some of his finest thoughts.

Chapman also collaborated with other dramatists. 'Eastward Ho,' in 1605, written with Marston and Jonson, is one of the liveliest and best constructed Elizabethan comedies, combining the excellences of the three men without their faults. Some allusion to the Scottish nation offended King James; the authors were confined in Fleet Prison and barely escaped having their ears and noses slit. With Shirley he wrote the comedy 'The Ball' and the tragedy 'Chabot, Admiral of France.'

Chapman wrote comedies to make money, and tragedies because it was the fashion of the day, and he studded these latter with exquisite passages because he was a poet born. But he was above all a scholar with wide and deep learning, not only of the classics but also of the Renaissance literature. From 1613 to 1631 he does not appear to have written for the stage, but was occupied with his translations of Homer, Hesiod, Juvenal, Musæus, Petrarch, and others. In 1614, at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, was performed in the most lavish manner the 'Memorable Masque of the two Honorable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple and Lyncoln Inne.' Chapman also completed Marlowe's unfinished 'Hero and Leander.'

His fame however rests on his version of Homer. The first portion appeared in 1598: 'Seven Bookes of the Iliade of Homer, Prince of Poets; Translated according to the Greeke in judgment of his best Commentaries.' In 1611 the Iliad complete appeared, and in 1615 the whole of the Odyssey; though he by no means reproduces Homer faithfully, he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and grandeur. It is a typical product of the English Renaissance, full of vigor and passion, but also of conceit and fancifulness. It lacks the simplicity and the serenity of the Greek, but has caught its nobleness and rapidity. As has been said, "It is what Homer might have[Pg 3526] written before he came to years of discretion." Yet with all its shortcomings it remains one of the classics of Elizabethan literature. Pope consulted it diligently, and has been accused of at times re-versifying this instead of the Greek. Coleridge said of it:—

Keats's tribute, the sonnet 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' attests another poet's appreciation of the Elizabethan's paraphrase. Keats diligently explored this "new planet" that swam into his ken, and his own poetical diction is at times touched by the quaintness and fancifulness of the elder poet he admired.

Lamb, that most sympathetic critic of the old dramatists, speaks of him as follows:—

[Pg 3527]

[Pg 3531]

iscount de Châteaubriand, the founder of the romantic school in French literature, and one of the most brilliant and polished writers of the first half of the nineteenth century, was born at St. Malo in Brittany, September 14th, 1768. On the paternal side he was a direct descendant of Thierri, grandson of Alain III., who was king of Armorica in the ninth century. Destined for the Church, he became a pronounced skeptic, and entered the army. In his nineteenth year he was presented at court, and became acquainted with men of letters like La Harpe, Le Brun, and Fontanes. At the outbreak of the Revolution he quitted the service, and embarked for America in January, 1791. Tiring of the restraints of civilization, civilization, he plunged into the virgin forests of Canada, and for several months lived with the savages. This remarkable experience inspired his most notable romantic work.

Returning to France in 1792, he cast his lot with the Royalists, was wounded at Thionville, and finally retired to England, where for eight years he earned a bare support by teaching and translating. His first book was the 'Essay on Revolutions' (1797), which displayed some imagination, little reflection, and an affectation of misanthropy and skepticism. The subsequent change in his convictions followed on the death of his pious mother in 1798. Returning to France he published 'Atala,' an idyll á la mode, founded on the loves of two young savages. Teeming with glowing descriptions of nature, and marked by elevation of sentiment combined with a sensuousness almost Oriental, this barbaric 'Paul and Virginia' immediately established the author's fame. Thus encouraged, in the following year he gave the world his 'Genius of Christianity,' in which the poetic and symbolic features of Christianity are painted in dazzling colors and with great charm of style. The enormous success of this book during the first decade of the century unquestionably did more to revive French interest in religion than the establishment of the Concordat itself. Napoleon [Pg 3532]testified his gratitude by appointing the author secretary to the embassy at Rome, and afterward minister plenipotentiary to the Valais. When the Duke d'Enghien was assassinated (March 21st, 1804), Châteaubriand resigned from the diplomatic service, although the ink was scarcely dry in which the First Consul had signed his new commission. Two years later the successful author departed on a sentimental pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Spain, where amid the ruins of the Alhambra he wrote 'The Last of the Abencerrages.' To this interesting tour the world owes the 'Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem' (1811), that book which in Saintsbury's opinion remains "the pattern of all the picturesque travels of modern times."

With the publication of the 'Itinerary' the literary career of Châteaubriand virtually closes. On the return of the Bourbons to power, the man of letters was tempted to enter the exciting arena of politics, becoming successively ambassador at Berlin, at the court of St. James, delegate to the Congress of Verona, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1830, unwilling to pledge himself to Louis Philippe, he relinquished the dignity of peer of the realm accorded him in 1815, and retired to a life of comparative poverty, which was brightened by the friendship and devotion of Madame Récamier. Until his death on the 4th of July, 1848, Châteaubriand devoted himself to the completion of his 'Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe,' an auto-biographical work which was published posthumously, and which, although diffuse and even puerile at times, contains much brilliant writing.

His contemporaries pronounced Châteaubriand the foremost man of letters of France, if not of all Europe. During the last half of this century his fame has sensibly diminished both at home and abroad, and in the history of French literature he is chiefly significant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. Yet while admitting the glaring faults, exaggerations, affectations, and egotism of the author of the 'Genius of Christianity,' a fair criticism admits his best passages to be unsurpassed for perfection of style and gorgeousness of coloring. 'Atala' is a classic with real life in it even yet,—powerful, interesting, and even thrilling, in spite of its theatricality, and often magnificent in description.

In 1811 Châteaubriand was elected to the French Academy as the successor of the poet Chénier. Among his works not already mentioned are 'René' (1807), a sort of sequel to 'Atala'; 'The Martyrs' (1810); 'The Natchez' (1826), containing recollections of America; an 'Essay on English Literature' (2 vols.); and a translation of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (1836).

[Pg 3533]

During the reign of the Emperor Julian commenced a persecution, perhaps more dangerous than violence itself, which consisted in loading the Christians with disgrace and contempt. Julian began his hostility by plundering the churches; he then forbade the faithful to teach or to study the liberal arts and sciences. Sensible, however, of the important advantages of the institutions of Christianity, the emperor determined to establish hospitals and monasteries, and after the example of the gospel system to combine morality with religion; he ordered a kind of sermons to be delivered in the pagan temples....

From the time of Julian to that of Luther, the Church, flourishing in full vigor, had no occasion for apologists; but when the Western schism took place, with new enemies arose new defenders. It cannot be denied that at first the Protestants had the superiority, at least in regard to forms, as Montesquieu has remarked. Erasmus himself was weak when opposed to Luther, and Theodore Beza had a captivating manner of writing, in which his opponents were too often deficient....

It is natural for schism to lead to infidelity, and for heresy to engender atheism. Bayle and Spinoza arose after Calvin, and they found in Clarke and Leibnitz men of sufficient talents to refute their sophistry. Abbadie wrote an apology for religion, remarkable for method and sound argument. Unfortunately his style is feeble, though his ideas are not destitute of brilliancy. "If the ancient philosophers," observes Abbadie, "adored the Virtues, their worship was only a beautiful species of idolatry."

While the Church was yet enjoying her triumph, Voltaire renewed the persecution of Julian. He possessed the baneful art of making infidelity fashionable among a capricious but amiable people. Every species of self-love was pressed into this insensate league. Religion was attacked with every kind of weapon, from the pamphlet to the folio, from the epigram to the sophism. No sooner did a religious book appear than the author was overwhelmed with ridicule, while works which Voltaire was the first to laugh at among his friends were extolled to the skies. Such was his superiority over his disciples that he sometimes could not forbear diverting himself with their irreligious[Pg 3534] enthusiasm. Meanwhile the destructive system continued to spread throughout France. It was first adopted in those provincial academies, each of which was a focus of bad taste and faction. Women of fashion and grave philosophers alike read lectures on infidelity. It was at length concluded that Christianity was no better than a barbarous system, and that its fall could not happen too soon for the liberty of mankind, the promotion of knowledge, the improvement of the arts, and the general comfort of life.

To say nothing of the abyss into which we were plunged by this aversion to the religion of the gospel, its immediate consequence was a return, more affected than sincere, to that mythology of Greece and Rome to which all the wonders of antiquity were ascribed. People were not ashamed to regret that worship which had transformed mankind into a herd of madmen, monsters of indecency, or ferocious beasts. This could not fail to inspire contempt for the writers of the age of Louis XIV., who however had reached the high perfection which distinguished them only by being religious. If no one ventured to oppose them face to face, on account of their firmly established reputation, they were nevertheless attacked in a thousand indirect ways. It was asserted that they were unbelievers in their hearts; or at least that they would have been much greater characters had they lived in our times. Every author blessed his good fortune for having been born in the glorious age of the Diderots and d'Alemberts, in that age when all the attainments of the human mind were ranged in alphabetical order in the 'Encyclopédie,' that Babel of the sciences and of reason....

It was therefore necessary to prove that on the contrary the Christian religion, of all the religions that ever existed, is the most humane, the most favorable to liberty and to the arts and sciences; that the modern world is indebted to it for every improvement from agriculture to the abstract sciences, from the hospitals for the reception of the unfortunate to the temples reared by the Michael Angelos and embellished by the Raphaels. It was necessary to prove that nothing is more divine than its morality, nothing more lovely and more sublime than its tenets, its doctrine, and its worship; that it encourages genius, corrects the taste, develops the virtuous passions, imparts energy to the ideas, presents noble images to the writer, and perfect models to the artist; that there is no disgrace in being believers with[Pg 3535] Newton and Bossuet, with Pascal and Racine. In a word, it was necessary to summon all the charms of the imagination and all the interests of the heart to the assistance of that religion against which they had been set in array.

The reader may now have a clear view of the object of our work. All other kinds of apologies are exhausted, and perhaps they would be useless at the present day. Who would now sit down to read a work professedly theological? Possibly a few sincere Christians who are already convinced. But, it may be asked, May there not be some danger in considering religion in a merely human point of view? Why so? Does our religion shrink from the light? Surely one great proof of its divine origin is, that it will bear the test of the fullest and severest scrutiny of reason. Would you have us always open to the reproach of enveloping our tenets in sacred obscurity, lest their falsehood should be detected? Will Christianity be the less true for appearing the more beautiful? Let us banish our weak apprehensions; let us not, by an excess of religion, leave religion to perish. We no longer live in those times when you might say, "Believe without inquiring." People will inquire in spite of us; and our timid silence, in heightening the triumph of the infidel, will diminish the number of believers.

It is time that the world should know to what all those charges of absurdity, vulgarity, and meanness, that are daily alleged against Christianity, may be reduced. It is time to demonstrate that instead of debasing the ideas, it encourages the soul to take the most daring flights, and is capable of enchanting the imagination as divinely as the deities of Homer and Virgil. Our arguments will at least have this advantage, that they will be intelligible to the world at large and will require nothing but common-sense to determine their weight and strength. In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather too much, to speak the language of their readers. It is necessary to be a scholar with a scholar, and a poet with a poet. The Almighty does not forbid us to tread the flowery path, if it serves to lead the wanderer once more to him; nor is it always by the steep and rugged mountain that the lost sheep finds its way back to the fold.

We think that this mode of considering Christianity displays associations of ideas which are but imperfectly known. Sublime in the antiquity of its recollections, which go back to the[Pg 3536] creation of the world; ineffable in its mysteries, adorable in its sacraments, interesting in its history, celestial in its morality, rich and attractive in its ceremonial,—it is fraught with every species of beauty. Would you follow it in poetry? Tasso, Milton, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, will depict to you its miraculous effects. In belles-lettres, in oratory, history, and philosophy, what have not Bossuet, Fénélon, Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bacon, Pascal, Euler, Newton, Leibnitz, produced by its inspiration! In the arts, what masterpieces! If you examine it in its worship, what ideas are suggested by its antique Gothic churches, its admirable prayers, its impressive ceremonies! Among its clergy, behold all those scholars who have handed down to you the languages and the works of Greece and Rome; all those anchorets of Thebais; all those asylums for the unfortunate; all those missionaries to China, to Canada, to Paraguay; not forgetting the military orders whence chivalry derived its origin. Everything has been engaged in our cause—the manners of our ancestors, the pictures of days of yore, poetry, even romances themselves. We have called smiles from the cradle, and tears from the tomb. Sometimes, with the Maronite monk, we dwell on the summits of Carmel and Lebanon; at others we watch with the Daughter of Charity at the bedside of the sick. Here two American lovers summon us into the recesses of their deserts; there we listen to the sighs of the virgin in the solitude of the cloister. Homer takes his place by Milton, and Virgil beside Tasso; the ruins of Athens and of Memphis form contrasts with the ruins of Christian monuments, and the tombs of Ossian with our rural churchyards. At St. Denis we visit the ashes of kings; and when our subject requires us to treat of the existence of God, we seek our proofs in the wonders of Nature alone. In short, we endeavor to strike the heart of the infidel in every possible way; but we dare not flatter ourselves that we possess the miraculous rod of religion which caused living streams to burst from the flinty rock.

[Pg 3537]

It was the twenty-seventh sun since our departure from the Cabins: the lune de fer (month of July) had commenced its course, and all signs indicated the approach of a violent storm. Toward the hour when the Indian matrons hang up the plowshares on the branches of the junipers, and when the paroquets retire into the hollows of the cypress trees, the sky grew overcast. The vague sounds of solitude gradually ceased, the forests were wrapped in universal calm. Suddenly the pealing of distant thunder, re-echoing through these vast woods as old as the world itself, startled the ear with a diapason of noises sublime. Fearing to be overwhelmed in the flood, we hastily disembarked on the river's bank and sought safety in the seclusion of one of the forest glades.

The ground was swampy. We pressed forward with difficulty beneath a roof of smilax, among grape-vines and climbing plants of all kinds, in which our feet were continually entangled. The spongy soil trembled all around us, and every instant we were on the verge of being engulfed in the quagmires. Swarms of insects and enormous bats nearly blinded us; rattlesnakes were heard on all sides; and the wolves, bears, panthers, and badgers which had sought a refuge in this retreat filled the air with their roarings.

Meanwhile the obscurity increased; the lowering clouds entered beneath the shadows of the trees. The heavens were rent, and the lightning traced a flashing zigzag of fire. A furious gale from the west piled up the angry clouds in heavy masses; the mighty trees bowed their heads to the blast. Again and again the sky was rent, and through the yawning crevices one beheld new heavens and vales of fire. What an awful, what a magnificent spectacle! The trees were struck by lightning and ignited; the conflagration spread like a flaming garland; the showers of sparks and the columns of smoke ascended to the very heavens, which vomited their thunders into the sea of fire.

Then the Great Spirit enveloped the mountains in utter darkness; from the midst of this vast chaos came a confused roaring made by the tumult of many winds, the moaning of the trees, the howlings of ferocious beasts, the crackling of the flames,[Pg 3538] and the descent of balls of fire which hissed as they were extinguished in the water.

The Great Spirit knows the truth of what I now say! At this moment I saw only Atala, I had no thought but for her. Beneath the bent trunk of a birch-tree, I succeeded in protecting her from the torrents of rain. Seated myself under the tree, supporting my well-beloved on my knees, and chafing her bare feet between my hands, I was even happier than the young wife who feels for the first time the consciousness of her motherhood.

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o the third quarter of the eighteenth century belongs the tragedy of the life of Thomas Chatterton, who, misunderstood and neglected during his brief seventeen years of poetic revery, has by the force of his genius and by his actual achievement compelled the nineteenth century, through one of its best critics, to acknowledge him as the father of the New Romantic school, and to accord him thereby a place unique among his contemporaries. His family and early surroundings serve in a way to explain his development. He was born at Bristol, a town rich in the traditions and monuments of bygone times. For nearly two hundred years the office of sexton to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe had been handed down in the family. At the time of the poet's birth it was held by a maternal uncle; for his father, a "musical genius, somewhat of a poet, an antiquary and dabbler in occult arts," was the first to aspire to a position above the hereditary one, and had taken charge of the Pyle free schools in Bristol. He died before his son's birth, and left his widow to support her two children by keeping a little school and by needlework. The boy, reserved and given to revery from his earliest years, was at first considered dull, but finally learned to spell by means of the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio and a black-letter Bible. He spent much of his time with his uncle, in and about the church. St. Mary Redcliffe, one of the finest specimens of mediæval church architecture in England, is especially rich in altar tombs with recumbent carved figures of knights, and ecclesiastic and civic dignitaries of bygone days. These became the boy's familiar associates, and he amused himself on his lonely visits by spelling out the old inscriptions on their monuments. There he got hold of some quaint oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch, filled with parchments old as the Wars of the Roses, and these deeds and charters of the Henrys and Edwards became his primers. In 1760 he entered Colston's "Blue-Coat" charity school, located in a fine old[Pg 3540] building of the Tudor times. The rules of the institution provided for the training of its inmates "in the principles of the Christian religion as laid down in the Church catechism," and in fitting them to be apprenticed in due course to some trade. During the six years of his stay, Chatterton received only the rudiments of a common-school education, and found little to nourish his genius. But being a voracious reader, he went on his small allowance through three circulating libraries, and became acquainted with the older English poets, and also read history and antiquities. He very early entertained dreams of ambition, without however finding any sympathy; so he lived in a world of his own, conceiving before the age of twelve the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary clerk of the fifteenth century, and his patron Master William Canynge, a former mayor of Bristol whose effigy was familiar to him from the tomb in the church. This fiction, which after his death gave rise to the celebrated controversy of the 'Rowley Poems,' matured at this early age as a boy's life-dream, he fashioned into a consistent romance, and wove into it among the prose fragments the ballads and lyrics on which his fame as poet now rests. His earliest literary forgery was a practical joke played on a credulous pewterer at Bristol, for whom he fabricated a pedigree dating back to the time of the Norman Conquest, which he professed to have collected from ancient manuscripts. It is remarkable as the work of a boy not yet fourteen. He was rewarded with a crown piece, and the success of this hoax encouraged him further to play upon the credulity of his townspeople, and to continue writing prose and verse in pseudo-antique style.

In 1767 he was bound apprentice to John Lambert, attorney. The office duties were light. He spent his spare time in poetizing, and sent anonymously transcripts from professedly old poems to the local papers. Their authorship being traced to him, he now claimed that his father had found numerous old poems and other manuscripts in a coffer of the muniment room at Redcliffe, and that he had transcribed them. Under guise of this fiction he produced, within the two years of his apprenticeship, a mass of pseudo-antique dramatic, lyric, and descriptive poems, and fragments of local and general history, connected all with his romance of the clerk of Bristol. A scholarly knowledge of Middle English was rare one hundred and thirty years ago, and the self-taught boy easily gulled the local antiquaries. He even deceived Horace Walpole, who, dabbling in mediævalism, had opened the way for prose romances with his 'Castle of Otranto,' a spurious antique of the same time in which Chatterton had placed his fiction. Walpole at first treated him courteously, even offering to print some of the poems. But when Gray and Mason[Pg 3541] pronounced them modern, he at once gave Chatterton the cold shoulder, entirely forgetting his own imposition on a credulous public.

Chatterton now turned to periodical literature and the politics of the day, and began to contribute to various London magazines. In the spring of 1770 he finally came up to London, to start on the life of a literary adventurer on a capital of less than five pounds. He lived abstemiously and worked incessantly, literally day and night. He had a wonderful versatility; he would write in the manner of any one he chose to imitate, and he tried his hand at every species of book-work. But even under the strain of this incessant productivity he found time to turn back to his boyhood dreams, and produced one of his finest poems, the 'Ballad of Charity.' At first his contributions were freely accepted, but he was poorly paid, and sometimes not at all. Yet out of his scanty earnings he bought costly presents for his mother and sister, as tokens of affection and an earnest of what he hoped to do for them. After scarcely two months in London he was at the end of his resources. He made an attempt to gain a position as surgeon's assistant on board of an African trader, but was unsuccessful. He now found himself face to face with famine; and, too proud to ask for assistance or to accept even the hospitality of a single meal, he on the night of August 25th, 1770, locked himself into his garret, destroyed all his note-books and papers, and swallowed a dose of arsenic. It is believed that he was privately buried in the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe. There a monument has been erected, with an inscription from his poem 'Will':—

His death attracted little notice, for he was regarded merely as the transcriber of the 'Rowley' poems. They were collected after his death, from the various persons to whom he had given the manuscripts, and occasioned a controversy that has lasted almost down to the present generation. But only an age untrained in philological research could ever have received them as genuine productions of the fifteenth century: for Chatterton, who knew little of the old authors antedating Spenser, constructed with the help of Bailey's and Kersey's English dictionaries a lingo of his own; he strung together old words of all periods and dialects, and even coined words himself to suit the metre. His lingo resembles anything rather than Middle English. It is supposed that he wrote first in modern English, and then translated into his own dialect; for the poems do not suffer by retranslation,—on the contrary, they are more intelligible and often[Pg 3542] more rhythmical. Chatterton had a wonderful memory, and having read enormously, there are frequent though perhaps unconscious plagiarisms from Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Gray, and others.

Yet after all has been said against the spurious character of the 'Rowley' poems, Chatterton's two volumes of collected writings, produced under the most adverse circumstances, are a record of youthful precocity unparalleled in literary history. He wrote spirited satires at ten, and some of his best old verse before sixteen. 'Ælla' is a dramatic poem of sustained power and originality, and its songs have the true lyric ring; the 'Ode to Liberty,' a fragment from the tragedy of 'Goddwyn,' is with its bold imagery one of the finest martial lyrics in the language; the 'Ballad of Charity,' almost the last poem he wrote, comes in its objectivity and artistic completeness near to some of Keats's best ballad work. But more wonderful perhaps than this early blossoming of his genius is its absolute originality. At a time when Johnson was the literary dictator of London, and Pope's manner still paramount, Chatterton, unmindful of their conventionalities and the current French influence, instinctively turned to earlier models, and sought his inspiration at the true source of English song. Bishop Percy's 'Reliques of Old English Poetry,' published in 1765, first made the people acquainted with their fine old ballads; but by that year Chatterton had already planned the story of the monk of Bristol and written some of the poems. Gifted with a rich vein of romance, he heralded the coming revival of mediæval literature. But he not only divined the new movements of poetry—he was also responsible for one side of its development. He had a poet's ear for metrical effects, and transmitted this gift to the romantic poets through Coleridge; for the latter, deeply interested in the tragedy of the life of the Bristol boy, studied his work; and traces of this study, resulting in freer rhythm and new harmonies, are found in Coleridge's own verse. The influence of the author of 'Christabel' on his brother poets is indisputable; hence his indebtedness to Chatterton gives to the latter at once his rightful position as the father of the New Romantic school. Keats also shows signs of close acquaintance with Chatterton; and he proves moreover by the dedication of his 'Endymion' that he cherished the memory of the unfortunate young poet, with whom he had, as far as the romantic temper on its objective side goes, perhaps the closest spiritual kinship of any poet of his time.

But quite apart from his youthful precocity and his influence on later poets, Chatterton holds no mean place in English literature because of the intrinsic value of his performance. His work, on the one hand, aside from the 'Rowley' poems, shows him a true poet of[Pg 3543] the eighteenth century, and the best of it entitles him to a fair place among his contemporaries; but on the other hand he stands almost alone in his generation in possessing the highest poetic endowments,—originality of thought, a quick eye to see and note, the gift of expression, sustained power of composition, and a fire and intensity of imagination. In how far he would have fulfilled his early promise it is idle to surmise; yet what poet, in the whole range of English, nay of all literature, at seventeen years and nine months of age, has produced work of such excellence as this "marvelous boy," who, unrecognized and driven by famine, took his own life in a London garret?

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nglish literature, in the strict sense of the word, dates its beginning from the latter half of the fourteenth century. Not but an English literature had existed long previous to that period. Furthermore, it reckoned among its possessions works of value, and a few which in the opinion of some display genius. But though the name was the same, the thing was essentially different. A special course of study is required for any comprehension whatever of the productions of that earliest literature; and for the easy understanding of those written even but a half-century or so before the period indicated, a mastery of many peculiar syntactical constructions is demanded and an acquaintance with a vocabulary differing in a large number of words from that now in use.

But by the middle of the fourteenth century this state of things can hardly be said to exist any longer for us. Everything by that time had become ripe for the creation of a literature of a far higher type than had yet been produced. Furthermore, conditions prevailed which, though their results could not then be foreseen, were almost certain to render the literature thus created comparatively easy of comprehension to the modern reader. The Teutonic and Romanic elements that form the groundwork of our present vocabulary had at last become completely fused. Of the various dialects prevailing, the one spoken in the vicinity of the capital had gradually lifted itself up to a pre-eminence it was never afterwards to lose. In this parent of the present literary speech, writers found for the first time at their command a widely accepted and comparatively flexible instrument of expression. As a consequence, the literature then produced fixed definitely for all time the main lines upon which both the grammar and the vocabulary of the English speech were to develop. The result is that it now presents few difficulties for its full comprehension and appreciation that are not easily surmounted. The most effective deterrent to its wide study is one formidable only in appearance. This is the unfamiliar way in which its words are spelled; for orthography then sought to represent pronunciation, and had not in consequence crystallized into fixed forms with constant disregard of any special value to be attached to the signs by which sounds are denoted.

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Of the creators of this literature—Wycliffe, Langland, Chaucer, and Gower—Chaucer was altogether the greatest as a man of letters. This is no mere opinion of the present time: there has never been a period since he flourished in which it has not been fully conceded. In his own day, his fame swept beyond the narrow limits of country and became known to the outside world. At home his reputation was firmly established, and seems to have been established early. All the references to him by his contemporaries and immediate successors bear witness to his universally recognized position as the greatest of English poets, though we are not left by him in doubt that he had even then met detractors. Still the general feeling of the men of his time is expressed by his disciple Occleve, who terms him

Yet not a single incident of his life has come down to us from the men who admired his personality, who enrolled themselves as his disciples, and who celebrated his praises. With the exception of a few slight references to himself in his writings, all the knowledge we possess of the events of his career is due to the mention made of him in official documents of various kinds and of different degrees of importance. In these it is taken for granted that whenever Geoffrey Chaucer is spoken of, it is the poet who is meant, and not another person of the same name. The assumption almost approaches absolute certainty; it does not quite attain to it. In those days it is clear that there were numerous Chaucers. Still, no one has yet risen to dispute his being the very person spoken of in these official papers. From these documents we discover that Chaucer, besides being a poet, was also a man of affairs. He was a soldier, a negotiator, a diplomatist. He was early employed in the personal service of the king. He held various positions in the civil service. It was a consequence that his name should appear frequently in the records. It is upon them, and the references to him in documents covering transactions in which he bore a part, that the story of his life, so far as it exists for us at all, has been mainly built. It was by them also that the series of fictitious events which for so long a time did duty as the biography of the poet had their impossibility as well as their absurdity exposed.

The exact date of Chaucer's birth we do not know. The most that can be said is that it must have been somewhere in the early years of the reign of Edward III. (1327-77). The place of his birth was in all probability London. His father, John Chaucer, was a vintner of that city, and there is evidence to indicate that he was to [Pg 3553]some extent connected with the court. In a deed dated June 19th, 1380, the poet released his right to his father's former house, which is described as being in Thames Street. The spot, however unsuitable for a dwelling-place now, was then in the very heart of urban life, and in that very neighborhood it is reasonable to suppose that Chaucer's earliest years were spent.

The first positive information we have, however, about the poet himself belongs to 1356. In that year we find him attached to the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. He is there in the service of the wife of that prince, but in what position we do not know. It may have been that of a page. He naturally was in attendance upon his mistress during her various journeyings; but most of her time was passed at her residence in Hatfield, Yorkshire. Chaucer next appears as having joined the army of Edward III. in his last invasion of France. This expedition was undertaken in the autumn of 1359, and continued until the peace of Bretigny, concluded in May, 1360. During this campaign he was captured somewhere and somehow—we have no knowledge of anything beyond the bare fact. It took place, however, before the first of March, 1360; for on that date the records show that the King personally contributed sixteen pounds towards his ransom.

From this last-mentioned date Chaucer drops entirely out of our knowledge till June, 1367, when he is mentioned as one of the valets of the King's chamber. In the document stating this fact he is granted a pension—the first of several he received—for services already rendered or to be rendered. It is a natural inference from the language employed, that during these years of which no record exists he was in some situation about the person of Edward III. After this time his name occurs with considerable frequency in the rolls, often in connection with duties to which he was assigned. His services were varied; in some instances certainly they were of importance. From 1370 to 1380 he was sent several times abroad to share in the conduct of negotiations. These missions led him to Flanders, to France, and to Italy. The subjects were very diverse. One of the negotiations in which he was concerned was in reference to the selection of an English port for a Genoese commercial establishment; another was concerning the marriage of the young monarch of England with the daughter of the king of France. It is on his first journey to Italy of which we have any record—the mission of 1372-73 to Genoa and Florence—that everybody hopes and some succeed in having an undoubting belief that Chaucer visited Petrarch at Padua, and there heard from him the story of Griselda, which the Clerk of Oxford in the 'Canterbury Tales' states that he learned from the Italian poet.

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But Chaucer's activity was not confined to foreign missions or to diplomacy; he was as constantly employed in the civil service. In 1374 he was made controller of the great customs—that is, of wool, skins, and leather—of the port of London. In 1382 he received also the post in the same port of controller of the petty customs—that is, of wines, candles, and other articles. The regulations of the office required him to write the records with his own hand; and it is this to which Chaucer is supposed to refer in the statement he makes about his official duties in the 'House of Fame.' In that poem the messenger of Jupiter tells him that though he has done so much in the service of the God of Love, yet he has never received for it any compensation. He then goes on to add the following lines, which give a graphic picture of the poet and of his studious life:—

In 1386 Chaucer was elected to Parliament as knight of the shire for the county of Kent. In that same year he lost or gave up both his positions in the customs. The cause we do not know. It may have been due to mismanagement on his own part: it is far more likely that he fell a victim to one of the fierce factional disputes that were going on during the minority of Richard II. At any rate, from this time he again disappears for two years from our knowledge. But in 1389 he is mentioned as having been appointed clerk of the King's works at Westminster and various other places; in 1390 clerk of the works for St. George's chapel at Windsor. Both of these places he [Pg 3555]held until the middle of 1391. In that last year he was made one of the commissioners to repair the roadway along the Thames, and at about the same time was appointed forester of North Petherton Park in Somerset, a post which he held till his death. After 1386 he seems at times to have been in pecuniary difficulties. To what cause they were owing, or how severe they were, it is the emptiest of speculations to form any conjectures in the obscurity that envelops this portion of his life. Whatever may have been his situation, on the accession of Henry IV. in September, 1399, his fortunes revived. The father of that monarch was John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III. That nobleman had pretty certainly been from the outset the patron of Chaucer; it is possible—as the evidence fails on one side, it cannot be regarded as proved—that by his marriage with Katharine Swynford he became the poet's brother-in-law. Whatever may have been the relationship, if any at all, it is a fact that one of the very first things the new king did was to confer upon Chaucer an additional pension. But the poet did not live long to enjoy the favor of the monarch. On the 24th of December, 1399, he leased for fifty-three years or during the term of his life a tenement in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel, Westminster. But after the 5th of June, 1400, his name appears no longer on any rolls. There is accordingly no reason to question the accuracy of the inscription on his tombstone which represents him as having died October 25th, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was the first, and still remains perhaps the greatest, of the English poets whose bones have there found their last resting-place.

This comprises all the facts of importance we know of Chaucer's life. Before leaving this branch of the subject, however, it may be well to say that many fuller details about his career can be found in all older accounts of the poet, and in spite of the repeated exposure of their falsity still crop up occasionally in modern books of reference. Some are objectionable only upon the ground of being untrue. Of these are such statements as that he was born in 1328; that he was a student of Oxford, to which Cambridge is sometimes added; that he was created poet-laureate; and that he was knighted. But others are objectionable not only on the ground of being false, but of being slanderous besides. Of these the most offensive is the widely circulated and circumstantial story that he was concerned in the conflict that went on in 1382 between the city of London and the court in regard to the election of John of Northampton to the mayoralty; that in consequence of his participation in this contest he was compelled to seek refuge in the island of Zealand; that there he remained for some time, but on his return to England was arrested and thrown into the Tower; and that after having been imprisoned [Pg 3556]for two or three years he was released at last on the condition of betraying his associates, which he accordingly did. All these details are fictitious. They were made up from inferences drawn from obscure passages in a prose work entitled 'The Testament of Love.' This was once attributed to the poet, but is now known not to have been written by him. Even had it been his, the statements derived from it and applied to the life of the poet would have been entirely unwarranted, as they come into constant conflict with the official records. Not being his, this piece of spurious biography has the additional discredit of constituting an unnecessary libel upon his character.

From Chaucer the man, and the man of affairs, we proceed now to the consideration of Chaucer the writer. He has left behind a body of verse consisting of more than thirty-two thousand lines, and a smaller but still far from inconsiderable quantity of prose. The latter consists mainly if not wholly of translations—one a version of that favorite work of the Middle Ages, the treatise of Boëtius on the 'Consolation of Philosophy'; another the tale of Melibeus in the 'Canterbury Tales,' which is taken directly from the French; thirdly, the Parson's Tale, derived probably from the same quarter, though its original has not as yet been discovered with certainty; and fourthly, an unfinished treatise on the Astrolabe, undertaken for the instruction of his son Lewis. The prose of any literature always lags behind, and sometimes centuries behind, its poetry. It is therefore not surprising to find Chaucer displaying in the former but little of the peculiar excellence which distinguishes his verse. In the latter but little room is found for hostile criticism. In the more than thirty thousand lines of which it is composed there occur of course inferior passages, and some positively weak; but taking it all in all, there is comparatively little in it, considered as a whole, which the lover of literature as literature finds it advisable or necessary to skip. In this respect the poet holds a peculiar position, which makes the task of representation difficult. As Southey remarked, Chaucer with the exception of Shakespeare is the most various of all English authors. He appeals to the most diversified tastes. He wrote love poems, religious poems, allegorical poems, occasional poems, tales of common life, tales of chivalry. His range is so wide that any limited selection from his works can at best give but an inadequate idea of the variety and extent of his powers.

The canon of Chaucer's writings has now been settled with a reasonable degree of certainty. For a long time the fashion existed of imputing to him the composition of any English poem of the century following his death which was floating about without having attached to it the name of any author. The consequence is that the older [Pg 3557]editions contain a mass of matter which it would have been distinctly discreditable for any one to have produced, let alone a great poet. This has now been gradually dropped, much to the advantage of Chaucer's reputation; though modern scholarship also refuses to admit the production by him of two or three pieces, such as 'The Court of Love,' 'The Flower and the Leaf,' 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,' none of which was unworthy of his powers. It is possible indeed that the poet himself may have had some dread of being saddled with the responsibility of having produced pieces which he did not care to father. It is certainly suggestive that he himself took the pains on one occasion to furnish what it seems must have been at the time a fairly complete list of his writings. In the prologue to the 'Legend of Good Women' he gave an idea of the work which up to that period he had accomplished. The God of Love, in the interview which is there described as having taken place, inveighs against the poet for having driven men away from the service due to his deity, by the character of what he had written. He says:—

Against this charge the queen Alcestis is represented as interposing to the god a defense of the poet, in which occurs the following account of Chaucer's writings:—

This prologue is generally conceded to have been written between 1382 and 1385. Though it does not profess to furnish a complete list of Chaucer's writings, it can fairly be assumed that it included all which he then regarded as of importance either on account of their merit or their length. If so, the titles given above would embrace the productions of what may be called the first half of his literary career. In fact, his disciple Lydgate leads us to believe that 'Troilus and Cressida' was a comparatively early production, though it may have undergone and probably did undergo revision before assuming its present form. The 'Legend of Good Women'—in distinction from its prologue—would naturally occupy the time of the poet during the opening period of what is here termed the second half of his literary career. The prologue is the only portion of it, however, that is of distinctly high merit. The work was never completed, and Chaucer pretty certainly came soon to the conclusion that it was not worth completing. It was in the taste of the times; but it did not take him long to perceive that an extended work dealing exclusively with the sorrows of particular individuals was as untrue to art as it was to life. It fell under the ban of that criticism which in the 'Canterbury Tales' he puts into the mouth of the Knight, who interrupts the doleful recital of the tragical tales told by the Monk with these words:—

Accordingly, from the composition of pieces of the one-sided and unsatisfactory character of those contained in the 'Legend of Good [Pg 3559]Women,' Chaucer turned to the preparation of his great work, the 'Canterbury Tales.' This gave him the fullest opportunity to display all his powers, and must have constituted the main literary occupation of his later life.

It will be noticed that two of the works mentioned in the prologue to the 'Legend of Good Women' are translations, and are so avowed. One is of the 'Roman de la Rose,' and the other of the philosophical treatise of Boëtius. In regard to the version of the former which has come down, it is sufficient to say that there was not long ago a disposition to deny the genuineness of all of it. This now contents itself with denying the genuineness of part of it. The question cannot be considered here: it is enough to say that in the opinion of the present writer, while the subject is attended with certain difficulties, the evidence is strongly in favor of Chaucer's composition of the whole. But setting aside any discussion of this point, there can scarcely be any doubt that Chaucer began his career as a translator. At the period he flourished he could hardly have done otherwise. It was an almost inevitable method of procedure on the part of a man who found neither writers nor writings in his own tongue worthy of imitation, and who could not fail to be struck not merely by the excellence of the Latin classic poets but also by the superior culture of the Continent. In the course of his literary development he would naturally pass from direct translation to adaptation. To the latter practice he assuredly resorted often. He took the work of the foreign author as a basis, discarded what he did not need or care for, and added as little or as much as suited his own convenience. In this way the 5704 lines of the 'Filostrato' of Boccaccio became 8246 in the 'Troilus and Cressida' of Chaucer; but even of the 5704 of the Italian poet, 2974 were not used by the English poet at all, and the 2730 that were used underwent considerable compression. In a similar way he composed the 'Knight's Tale,' probably the most perfect narrative poem in our tongue. It was based upon the 'Theseide' of Boccaccio. But the latter has 9896 lines, while the former comprises but 2250; and of these 2250 fully two-thirds are entirely independent of the Italian poem.

With such free treatment of his material, Chaucer's next step would be to direct composition, independent of any sources, save in that general way in which every author is under obligation to what has been previously produced. This finds its crowning achievement in the 'Canterbury Tales'; though several earlier pieces—such as the 'House of Fame,' the 'Parliament of Fowls,' and the prologue to the 'Legend of Good Women,'—attest that long before he had shown his ability to produce work essentially original. But though in his literary development Chaucer worked himself out of this exact [Pg 3560]reproduction of his models, through a partial working over of them till he finally attained complete independence, the habits of a translator clung to him to the very end. Even after he had fully justified his claim to being a great original poet, passages occur in his writings which are nothing but the reproduction of passages found in some foreign poem in Latin, or French, or Italian, the three languages with which he was conversant. His translation of them was due to the fact that they had struck his fancy; his insertion of them into his own work was to please others with what had previously pleased himself. Numerous passages of this kind have been pointed out; and doubtless there are others which remain to be pointed out.

There is another important thing to be marked in the history of Chaucer's artistic development. Not only was poetic material lacking in the tongue at the time of his appearance, but also poetic form. The measures in use, while not inadequate for literary expression, were incapable of embodying it in its highest flights. Consequently what Chaucer did not find, he had either to borrow or to invent. He did both. In the lines which have been quoted he speaks of the "ballades, roundels, and virelayes" which he had composed. These were all favorite poetical forms in that Continental country with whose literature Chaucer was mainly conversant. There can be little question that he tried all manner of verse which the ingenuity of the poets of Northern France had devised. As many of his shorter pieces have very certainly disappeared, his success in these various attempts cannot be asserted with positiveness. Still, what have survived show that he was a great literary artist as well as a great poet. His feats of rhyming, in particular in a tongue so little fitted for it as is ours, can be seen in his unfinished poem of 'Queen Anelida and False Arcite,' in the 'Complaint to Venus,' and in the envoy which follows the Clerk's Tale. In this last piece, though there are thirty-six lines, the rhymes are only three; and two of these belong to fifteen lines respectively.

But far more important than such attempts, which prove interest in versification rather than great poetic achievement, are the two measures which he introduced into our tongue. The first was the seven-line stanza. The rhyming lines in it are respectively the first and third; the second, fourth, and fifth; and the sixth and seventh. At a later period this was frequently called "rhyme royal," because the 'Kingis Quair' was written in it. For fully two centuries it was one of the most popular measures in English poetry. Since the sixteenth century, however, it has been but little employed. Far different has been the fate of the line of ten syllables, or rather of five accents. On account of its frequent use in the 'Canterbury Tales' it [Pg 3561]was called for a long period "riding rhyme"; but it now bears the title of "heroic verse." As employed by Chaucer it varies in slight particulars from the way it is now generally used. With him the couplet character was never made prominent. The sense was not apt to end at the second line, but constantly tended to run over into the line following. There was also frequently with him an unaccented eleventh syllable; and this, though not unknown to modern verse, is not common. Still, the difference between the early and the later form are mere differences of detail, and of comparatively unimportant detail. The introduction of this measure into English may be considered Chaucer's greatest achievement in the matter of versification. The heroic verse may have existed in the tongue before he himself used it. If so, it lurked unseen and uninfluential. He was the first to employ it on a grand scale, if not to employ it at all, and to develop its capabilities. Much the largest proportion of his greatest work is written in that measure. Yet in spite of his example, it found for two centuries comparatively few imitators. It was not till the end of the sixteenth century that the measure started on a new course of life, and entered upon the great part it has since played in English versification.

The most important of what are sometimes called the minor works of Chaucer are the 'Parliament of Fowls,' the 'House of Fame,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and the 'Legend of Good Women.' These are all favorable examples of his genius. But however good they may be in particular portions and in particular respects, in general excellence they yield place unquestionably to the 'Canterbury Tales.' It seems to have been very clearly the intention of the poet to embody in this crowning achievement of his literary life everything in the shape of a story he had already composed or was purposing to compose. Two of the pieces, the love of Palamon and Arcite and the Life of St. Cecilia, as we know from the words of his already quoted, had appeared long before. The plan of the work itself was most happily conceived; and in spite of most painstaking efforts to find an original for it or suggestion of it somewhere else, there seems no sufficient reason for doubting that the poet himself was equal to the task of having devised it. No one certainly can question the felicity with which the framework for embodying the tales was constructed. All ranks and classes of society are brought together in the company of pilgrims who assemble at the Tabard Inn at Southwark to ride to the shrine of the saint at Canterbury. The military class is represented by the Knight, belonging to the highest order of the nobility, his son the Squire, and his retainer the Yeoman; the church by the Abbot, the Friar, the Parson, the Prioress with her attendant Nun, and the three accompanying Priests, [Pg 3562]and less distinctly by the Scholar, the Clerk of Oxford, and by the Pardoner and the Summoner. For the other professions are the Doctor of Physic and the Serjeant of Law; for the middle-class landholders the Franklin; and for the various crafts and occupations the Haberdasher, the Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, the Upholsterer, the Cook, the Ploughman, the Sailor, the Reeve, the Manciple, and (joining the party in the course of the pilgrimage) the assistant of the alchemist, who is called the Canon's Yeoman. Into the mouths of these various personages were to be put tales befitting their character and condition. Consequently there was ample space for stories of chivalry, of religion, of love, of magic, and in truth of every aspect of social life in all its highest and lowest manifestations. Between the tales themselves were connecting links, in which the poet had the opportunity to give an account of the incidents that took place on the pilgrimage, the critical opinions expressed by the hearers of what had been told, and the disputes and quarrels that went on between the various members of the party. So far as this portion of his plan was finished, these connecting links furnish some of the most striking passages in the work. In one of them—the prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale—the genius of the poet reaches along certain lines its highest development; while the general prologue describing the various personages of the party, though not containing the highest poetry of the work as poetry, is the most acute, discriminating, and brilliant picture of men and manners that can be found in our literature.

Such was the plan of the work. It was laid out on an extensive scale, perhaps on too extensive a scale ever to have been completed. Certain it is that it was very far from ever reaching even remotely that result. According to the scheme set forth in the prologue, the work when finished should have included over one hundred and twenty tales. It actually comprises but twenty-four. Even of these, two are incomplete: the Cook's Tale, which is little more than begun, and the romantic Eastern tale of the Squire, which, in Milton's words, is "left half told." To those that are finished, the connecting links have not been supplied in many cases. Accordingly the work exists not as a perfect whole, but in eight or nine fragmentary parts, each complete in itself, but lacking a close connection with the others, though all are bound together by the unity of a common central interest. The value of what has been done makes doubly keen the regret that so much has been left undone. Politics, religion, literature, manners, are all touched upon in this wide-embracing view, which still never misses what is really essential; and added to this is a skill of portrayal by which the actors, whether narrating the tales themselves, or themselves forming the heroes of the narration,[Pg 3563] fairly live and breathe before our eyes. Had the work been completed on the scale upon which it was begun, we should have had a picture of life and opinion in the fourteenth century more vivid and exact than has been drawn of any century before or since.

The selections given are partly of extracts and partly of complete pieces. To the former class belong the lines taken from the opening of the 'Canterbury Tales,' with the description of a few of the characters; the description of the temples of Mars, of Venus, and of Diana in the Knight's Tale; and the account of the disappearance of the fairies at the opening of the Wife of Bath's Tale. The complete pieces are the tales of the Pardoner, and of the Nun's Priest. From the first, however, has been dropped the discourse on drunkenness, profanity, and gambling, which, though in keeping with the character of the narrator, has no connection with the development of the story. The second, the tale of the Nun's Priest, was modernized by Dryden under the title of the 'Cock and the Fox.' All of these are in heroic verse. The final selection is the ballade now usually entitled 'Truth.' In it the peculiar ballade construction can be studied—that is, the formation in three stanzas, either with or without an envoy; the same rhymes running through the three stanzas; and the final line of each stanza precisely the same. One of Chaucer's religious poems—the so-called 'A B C'—can be found under Deguileville, from whose 'Pèlerinage la de Vie Humaine' it is translated.

Chaucer's style, like that of all great early writers, is marked by perfect simplicity, and his language is therefore comparatively easy to understand. In the extracts here given the spelling has been modernized, save occasionally at the end of the line, when the rhyme has required the retention of an earlier form. The words themselves and grammatical forms have of course undergone no change. There are two marks used to indicate the pronunciation: first, the acute accent to indicate that a heavier stress than ordinary is to be placed on the syllable over which it stands; and secondly, the grave accent to indicate that the letter or syllable over which it appears, though silent in modern pronunciation, was then sounded. Thus landès, grovès, friendès, knavès, would have the final syllable sounded; and in a similar way timè, Romè, and others ending in e, when the next word begins with a vowel or h mute. The acute accent can be exemplified in words like couráge, reasón, honoúr, translatéd, where the accent would show that the final syllable would either receive the main stress or a heavier stress than is now given it. Again, a word like cre-a-ture consists, in the pronunciation here given, of three syllables and not of two, and is accordingly represented by a grave accent over the a to signify that this vowel forms a separate syllable, and by the acute accent over the ture to indicate that this final syllable [Pg 3564]should receive more weight of pronunciation than usual. It accordingly appears as creàtúre. In a similar way con-dit-i-on would be a word of four syllables, and its pronunciation would be indicated by this method conditìón. It is never to be forgotten that Chaucer had no superior in the English tongue as a master of melody; and if a verse of his sounds inharmonious, it is either because the line is corrupt or because the reader has not succeeded in pronouncing it correctly.

The explanation of obsolete words or meanings is given in the foot-notes. In addition to these the following variations from modern English that occur constantly, and are therefore not defined, should be noted. Hir and hem stand for 'their' and 'them.' The affix y- is frequently prefixed to the past participle, which itself sometimes omits the final en or -n, as 'ydrawe,' 'yshake.' The imperative plural ends in -th, as 'dreadeth.' The general negative ne is sometimes to be defined by 'not,' sometimes by 'nor'; and connected with forms of the verb 'be' gives us nis, 'is not'; nas, 'was not.' As is often an expletive, and cannot be rendered at all; that before 'one' and 'other' is usually the definite article; there is frequently to be rendered by 'where'; mo always means 'more'; thilke means 'that' or 'that same'; del is 'deal' in the sense of 'bit,' 'whit'; and the comparatives of 'long' and 'strong' are lenger and strenger. Finally it should be borne in mind that the double negative invariably strengthens the negation.

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