Part 3 (2/2)

'”... How my heart leaps up To think of that grand living after death In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, And with the pale leaves of some autumn day, The soul, earth's earliest conqueror, becomes earth's last great prey.

'”O think of it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, for we shall hear

'”The thrush's heart beat, and the daisies grow, And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun On sunless days in winter; we shall know By whom the silver gossamer is spun, Who paints the diapered fritillaries, On what wide wings from s.h.i.+vering pine to pine the eagle flies.

'”We shall be notes in that great symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live world's throbbing heart shall be One with our heart; the stealthy, creeping years Have lost their terrors now; we shall not die-- The universe itself shall be our Immortality!”

Have you forgotten how you chanted these, and told me they were Oscar Wilde's. You had set my feet firmly on earth for the first time, there was great darkness with me for many weeks, but, as it lifted, the earth seemed greener than ever of old, the suns.h.i.+ne a goodlier thing, and verily a blessedness indeed to draw the breath of life. I had learnt ”the value and significance of flesh”; I no longer scorned a carnal diet, and once again I turned my eyes on the damsels in the street.

'But an influence soon came to me that kept me from going all the way with you, and taught me to say, ”I know not,” where you would say, ”It is not.” Blessings on thee who didst throw a rainbow, that may mean a promise, across the void, that awoke the old instinct of faith within me, and has left me ”an Agnostic with a faith,” quite content with ”the brown earth,” if that be all, but with the added significance a mystery gives to living;--thou who first didst teach me Love's lore aright, to thee do I owe this thing.

'To J.A.W. I owe the first great knowledge of that other love between man and man, which Whitman has since taught us to call ”the dear love of comrades”; and to him I owe that I never burned those early rhymes, or broke my little reed--an unequivocal service to me, whatever the public, should it be consulted, may think.

'To a dear sister I owe that still more exquisite and subtle comrades.h.i.+p which can only exist between man and woman, but from which the more disturbing elements of s.e.x must be absent. And here, let me also thank G.o.d that I was brought up in quite a garden of good sisters.

'To Messrs. C. and W., Solicitors and Notaries, I owe, albeit I will say no thanks to them, the opportunity of that hardly learned good which dwells for those who can wrest it in a hateful taskwork, that faculty of ”detachment” which Marcus Aurelius learnt so long ago, by means of which the soul may withdraw, into an inaccessible garden, and sing while the head bends above a ledger; or, in other words, the faculty of dreaming with one side of the brain, while calculating with the other. Mrs.

Browning's great _Aurora Leigh_ helped me more to the attainment of that than any book I know.

'In their office, too, among many other great things, I learnt that a man may be a good fellow and hate poetry--possibility undreamed of by sentimental youth; also that Messrs. Ba.s.s and Cope are not unworthy of their great reputation; and I had various nonsense knocked out of me, though they never succeeded in persuading me in that little matter of the ”ambrosial curls.”

'Through Samuel Dale I first came to understand how ”whatever is” _can_ be ”best,” and also won a faith in G.o.d which I rather caught by infection than gained by any process of his reasoning. Of all else I owe to Samuel, how write? He knows.

'To a certain friend, mentioned last because he is not least, I owe: the sum of ten pounds, and a loving companions.h.i.+p, up hill and down dale, for which again I have no words and no--sovereigns.'

When I first read through these, I was somewhat surprised at the omission of all reference to books which I know marked most striking periods in Narcissus' spiritual life: _Sartor Resartus_, Th.o.r.eau's _Walden_, for example, Mr. Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_, and Browning's _Dramatis Personae_. As I reflected, however, I came to the conclusion that such omission was but justice to his own individuality, for none of these books had created an _initiative_ in Narcissus'

thought, but rather come, as, after all, I suppose they come to most of us, as great confirming expressions of states of mind at which he had already arrived, though, as it were, but by moonlight. In them was the sunrise bringing all into clear sight and sure knowledge.

It would seem, indeed, that the growth of the soul in the higher spirits of our race is a.n.a.logous to the growth of a child in the womb, in this respect: that in each case the whole gamut of earlier types is run through, before the ultimate form is attained in which it is decreed that the particular vital energy shall culminate. And, as in the physical world the various 'halts,' so to say, of the progress are ill.u.s.trated by the co-existence and continual succession of those earlier types; so in the world of mind, at every point of spiritual evolution, a man may meet with an historical individuality who is a concrete embodiment of the particular state to which he has just attained. This, of course, was what Goethe meant when he referred to mysticism as being a frame of mind which one could experience all round and then leave behind. To quote Whitman, in another connection:--

'We but level that lift To pa.s.s and continue beyond.'

But an individuality must 'crystallise out' somewhere, and its final value will not so much depend on the number of states it has pa.s.sed through, as how it has lived each on the way, with what depth of conviction and force of sincerity. For a modern young man to thus experience all round, and pa.s.s, and continue beyond where such great ones as St. Bernard, Pascal, and Swedenborg, have anch.o.r.ed their starry souls to s.h.i.+ne thence upon men for all time, is no uncommon thing. It is more the rule than the exception: but one would hardly say that in going further they have gone higher, or ended greater. The footpath of pioneer individualism must inevitably become the highway of the race. Every American is not a Columbus.

There are two ways in which we may live our spiritual progress: as critics, or poets. Most men live theirs in that critical att.i.tude which refuses to commit itself, which tastes all, but enjoys none; but the greatest in that earnest, final, rooted, creative, fas.h.i.+on which is the way of the poets. The one is as a man who spends his days pa.s.sing from place to place in search of a dwelling to his mind, but dies at last in an inn, having known nought of the settled peace of a home; but the other, howsoever often he has to change his quarters, for howsoever short a time he may remain in any one of his resting-places, makes of each a home, with roots that shoot in a night to the foundations of the world, and blossomed branches that mingle with the stars.

Criticism is a good thing, but poetry is a better. Indeed, criticism properly _is_ not; it is but a process to an end. We could really do without it much better than we imagine: for, after all, the question is not so much _how_ we live, but _do_ we live? Who would not a hundred times rather be a fruitful Pa.r.s.ee than a barren _philosophe_? Yes, all lies, of course, in original greatness of soul; and there is really no state of mind which is not like Hamlet's pipe--if we but know the 'touch of it,' 'it will discourse most eloquent music.'

Now, it was that great sincerity in Narcissus that has always made us take him so seriously. And here I would remark in parenthesis, that trivial surface insincerities, such as we have had glimpses of in his dealings, do not affect such a great organic sincerity as I am speaking of. They are excrescences, which the great central health will sooner or later clear away. It was because he never held an opinion to which he was not, when called upon, practically faithful; never dreamed a dream without at once setting about its translation into daylight; never professed a creed for a week without some essay after the realisation of its new ideal; it was because he had the power and the courage to glow mightily, and to some purpose; because his life had a fiery centre, which his eyes were not afraid of revealing--that I speak of his great sincerity, a great capacity for intense life. Shallow patterers of divine creeds were, therefore, most abhorrent to him. 'You must excuse me, sir,' I remember his once saying to such a one, 'but what are you doing with cigarette and salutaris? If I held such a belief as yours, I would stand sandalled, with a rope round my waist, before to-morrow.'

One quaint instance of this earnest att.i.tude in all things occurs to me out of his schooldays. He was a Divine Right man, a fiery Jacobite, in those days; and, probably not without some absurd unconfessed dream in his heart that it might somehow help the dead old cause, he one afternoon fluttered the Hanoverian hearts--all the men we meet in street and mart are Hanoverians, of course--of our little literary club by solemnly rising 'to give notice' that at the following meeting he would read a paper to prove that 'the House of Hanover has no right to the English throne.' Great was the excitement through the fortnight intervening, extending even to the masters; and the meeting was a full one, and no little stormy.

Narcissus rose with the air of a condemned Strafford, and with all his boyish armoury of eloquence and scorn fought over again the long-lost battle, hiss and groan falling unheeded into the stream of his young voice. But vain, vain! hard is the Hanoverian heart in boy, as in man, and all your glowing periods were in vain--vain as, your peroration told us, 'was the blood of gallant hearts shed on Culloden's field.' Poor N., you had but one timorous supporter, even me, so early your _fidus Achates_--but one against so many. Yet were you crestfallen? Galileo with his 'E pur si muove,' Disraeli with his 'The time will come,' wore such a mien as yours, as we turned from that well-foughten field. Yes!

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