More Pages from a Journal Part 18

If we will be content with admiring, we are on much surer ground.

It is by admiration and not by criticism that we live, and the main purpose of criticism should be to point out something to admire, which we should not have noticed. One great advantage of studying Nature is that we are not tempted to criticise her. We go to the Academy, and for a whole morning contrast faults with merits. If the time so spent had been pa.s.sed in the fields with the clouds we should have gone home less conceited.

It is an awful thought that behind human speech, incapable by its very nature of anything but approximate expression, and distorted by weakness and wilfulness, lies the TRUTH as it is, exact without qualification.

The long apprenticeship has ended in little or nothing. What I was fifty years ago I am now; certainly no better, with no greater self- control, with no greater magnanimity. How much I might have gained had I taken life as an art I cannot say.

I have been looking at a cabinet of flies. Hundreds of them, each different, were arranged in order and named. Some I had to examine through a microscope. Their beauty was marvellous, but more marvellous was their variety. The differences, although the type was preserved, seemed inexhaustible, and all reasons for them broke down. If a particular modification is an advantage, why is it confined to one species? Why this range of colour? Why these purely fantastic forms? The only word we can say with certainty is that Nature is infinite and tends to infinite expression. Verum ego me satis clare ostendisse puto, a summa Dei potentia sive infinita natura infinita infinitis modis, hoc est, omnia necessario effluxisse, vel semper eadem necessitate sequi; eodem modo, ac ex natura trianguli ab aeterno et in aeternum sequitur ejus tres angulos aequari duobus rectis. Quare Dei omnipotentia actu ab aeterno fuit et in aeternum in eadem actualitate manebit.

Johnson is religious through and through, but there are pa.s.sages in the Rambler and Idler dark as starless, moonless midnight. 'None would have recourse to an invisible power, but that all other subjects have eluded their hopes . . . That misery does not make all virtuous, experience too certainly informs us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greatest part.'

There is seldom in life any occasion for great virtues, and we must not be disappointed if it pa.s.ses without great pa.s.sion. We must expect to be related to one another by nothing more than ordinary bonds and satisfied if human beings give us pleasure without excitement.

I have good reason to believe that I am pa.s.sing on life's journey through what almost all wayfarers therein have had to pa.s.s through, but n.o.body has told me of it.

How wonderful is the withdrawal of heat! It silently departs, the iron grows cold, but the heat spreads and lives!

'Who knows, though he sees the snow-cold blossom shed, If haply the heart that burned within the rose, The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?

If haply the wind that slays with storming snows Be one with the wind that quickens?'

SWINBURNE, A Reminiscence.

With increase of reading we have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of G.o.d the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and there is Darkness.

SHAKESPEARE

'Glory to thee in the highest, thou confidant of our Creator!'

(Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Delille and Landor).

2 Henry VI. iii. 3.--The lines beginning with the one which follows are not in the old play and are Shakespeare's own:

'O thou eternal Mover of the heavens,' etc.

Johnson's note is: 'This is one of the scenes which have been applauded by the criticks, and which will continue to be admired when prejudices shall cease, and bigotry give way to impartial examination. These are beauties that rise out of nature and of truth; the superficial reader cannot miss them, the profound can image nothing beyond them.' We talk idly of Johnson's pompous redundance. His sentences are balanced, and it is therefore supposed that the second part repeats the first, but the truth is that each part contains a new thought. It was his manner to throw successive ideas into this form. Those who are acquainted with his history and his awful mental struggles will find infinite pathos in this restrained comment.

Midsummer Night's Dream.--Shakespeare's overlooking quality, as that of a G.o.d surveying human affairs, is shown in this play:

'When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.'

'Her dotage now I do begin to pity.'

'And think no more of this night's accidents But as the fierce vexation of a dream.'

All this night's storm from a drop of magic juice! Oberon has been watching t.i.tania's courtship of Bottom. She sleeps, and he touches her eyes with Dian's bud:

'Now, my t.i.tania, wake you, my sweet queen'

Romeo and Juliet.--The love of Juliet is a thing altogether by itself, not to be cla.s.sed, never antic.i.p.ated by any other author, and not imitable. It is sensuous. Look at her soliloquy, 'Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,' etc., and yet it is woven through and through with immortal threads of fidelity and contempt of death:

'O! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower.

Or bid me go into a new-made grave.'

How great this girl is! If I were to meet her, how I should be awed! The Juliets I have seen on the stage fail here. They do not bend my knees in that adoration which is inspired by the sea and stars. The love of Romeo for Juliet and of Juliet for Romeo does not stimulate pa.s.sion, but rather controls it. I never become hot in reading the play. What a solemnity there is in its movement!

The lovers are not merely two human beings with no other meaning.

The Eternal Powers are at work throughout. Romeo's love for Rosaline is taken over from Brooke's poem. Shakespeare adds the touch that it was not genuine. He makes Friar Laurence say:

'O she knew well!

Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.'

The love for Rosaline is different altogether from the love for Juliet.

'O heavy lightness! serious vanity!'

is artificial.

Shakespeare also follows Brooke in Juliet's momentary outburst against Romeo when she hears of Tybalt's death, but the contradiction of the echo by the nurse is Shakespeare's own:

'Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish! he was not born to shame.'