Personality in Literature Part 10

Having in 1891 given up the rectorship of a monastery in Tokyo, he lived for some years as a hermit and devoted himself to the study of Buddhistic books in the Chinese language. In the course of his studies he learnt that there were Tibetan translations of the sacred text which, though inferior in general meaning to the Chinese, were superior as literal translations. He determined, therefore, to undertake a journey to the forbidden land and travel there alone as a mendicant priest. The many presents his friends offered him before his departure he "declined to accept, save in the form of sincerely given pledges" (and the sum of 430 yen, mentioned subsequently).

From a fisherman he exacted the promise to discontinue the cruel habit of catching fish; from a poultry-man he secured a promise not to kill fowls; and "from immoderate smokers I asked the immediate discontinuance of the habit that would end in nicotine poisoning.

About forty persons willingly granted my appeal for this somewhat novel kind of farewell presents." We are reminded of John Wesley's exhortations to his followers to abstain from the pernicious habit of drinking tea--"I proposed it to about forty of those whom I believed to be strong in faith; and the next morning to about sixty more, entreating them all to speak their minds freely. They did so; and in the end saw the good which might ensue." In many moments of dire peril experienced by the Shramana in Tibet, these "effective" gifts, it seems, "contributed largely toward my miraculous escapes."

Before he could begin the most arduous part of his journey it was necessary that he should serve an apprenticeship of no less than three years in Darjeeling and Nepaul, studying the Tibetan language and grammar, and Tibetan Buddhism, befriending beggars with the double object of bestowing charity and gaining information, and ascertaining the possible routes across the Himalayas. Then one day he was conducted to the summit of a lofty and unguarded pa.s.s, whence, on July 4, 1900, with his luggage on his back, alone, he stepped on to the soil of Tibet, and entered upon an unknown and apparently interminable wilderness.

In his wanderings over mountains, deserts, and rivers there was no form of hardship and danger which he had not to encounter. Now he spent a night in the open, nearly frozen by snow, the pain of the cold being interrupted only by the abstraction of "meditation" and the joy of composing _utas_ (short poems). Now he was nearly drowned in fording a river, from which he was saved at the moment he was expressing a desire to be born again. Now he was overtaken by a sandstorm, now bereft of his money, now nearly perishing of hunger.

But from every danger he emerged triumphant. When he approached the tents of nomads or pilgrims and had pointed his staff at the threatening dogs, he was generally received with hospitality, and on one occasion he fell in with a party of robbers who were undergoing a period of penance at Manasarova, and made him their guest for two months. They approach the sacred peak of Kailasa:

It inspired me with the profoundest feelings of pure reverence, and I looked up to it as a "natural mandala," the mansion of a Buddha and Bodhisattvas. Filled with soul-stirring thoughts and fancies I addressed myself to this sacred pillar of nature, confessed my sins, and performed to it the obeisance of one hundred and eight bows. I also took out the ma.n.u.script of my "twenty-two desires," and pledged their accomplishment to the Buddha. I then considered myself the luckiest of men, to have thus been enabled to worship such a holy emblem of Buddha's power and to vow such vows in its sacred presence, and I mused:

Whate'er my sufferings here and dangers dire, Whate'er befalls me on my onward march, All, all, I feel, is for the common good For others treading on Salvation's path

The night of my performance of these devotional practices must have been a matter of wonder and mystery to my companions. They had been watching me like gaping and astonished children, and were all intensely curious to know why I had bowed so many times, and read out such strange Chinese sentences. I was glad to explain to them the general meaning of my conduct and they seemed to be deeply struck with its significance. They said they had never known the Chinese Lamas were men of such Bodhisattvic mind! The upshot was that they asked me to preach to them that night, a request to which I was very glad to accede. The preaching which followed, which I purposely made as simple and as appealing to the heart as possible, seemed to affect them profoundly, and to make the best possible impression on them; so much so that they even shed tears of joy. The preaching over, they said in all sincerity that they were glad of companionship, and even offered to regard me as their guest during the two months which they intended to spend in pilgrimage to and round the Kang Rinpoche. They thought that their pilgrimage over such holy ground, while serving such a holy man as I now was to them, would absolve them completely from their sins.

It was during this pilgrimage that there occurred the tender episode already alluded to, from which the Shramana, though "neither a block of wood, nor a piece of stone," emerged even more creditably than John Wesley when similarly tempted in Georgia.

I can give no account here of his arrival in Lha.s.sa, the reputation he gained as a "Chinese" physician, his kindly reception by the Dalai Lama, or his intimate friendships with the apothecary and the ex-Minister of Finance. He gives a vivid picture of the life of the different cla.s.ses of priests and monks, and the corrupt state of the Tibetan hierarchy. He describes the rudimentary system of education, the harsh and haphazard administration, the brutality of punishments, the system of espionage, the free position of women and the practice of polyandry, the filthy personal habits of the people, their superst.i.tions, their occupations, their festivals. I do not dwell upon these matters, partly because many of the features described are common to other oriental countries, but mainly because I am here considering the peculiar excellence of the book as a book of travel, a "human doc.u.ment"--as the phrase goes--a record of experience which has taken the stamp of a most interesting personality.

VIII

FRANCIS THOMPSON

In _The Blue Bird_ of Maeterlinck we are told of a child who puts on a magic hat and turns a fairy diamond and sees all that was ugly and sordid transformed into something transcendently beautiful. There was no need for Francis Thompson to find a magic hat; the poetic instinct which was always with him gave him the insight into another poet's nature; he saw through, around, and beyond those unlovely pa.s.sages in the life of Sh.e.l.ley which made Matthew Arnold, for once so strangely an adherent of Mrs. Grundy, exclaim, "What a set! What a world!" There are few appreciations in the English language comparable to his essay on Sh.e.l.ley. Fixing his eyes on what seems to him essential in the man, Thompson finds that everything else explains itself to the observer who will see with the poet, who can understand his sufferings, and imagine his delights. And so his essay is no ordinary study in criticism. He sets himself, indeed, as Pater would have done, to find what it is that makes the specific worth of the poet. But there is no laborious calculating of values; rather a lavish pouring forth of the just meed of praise, an interpretation, a vindication of Sh.e.l.ley, like Swinburne's vindication of Blake, in language less pa.s.sionate, perhaps, but more perfect in its melody, and more significant in its imagery, responding to its theme with tremulous beauty.

Mr. Wyndham, I think, did not go far from the truth when he said that this "is the most important contribution to pure letters written in English during the last twenty years." For in a certain sense it seems to reach an even greater height than Thompson's poetry. For whilst he has written exalted poetry, thought-compelling poetry, magnificent in diction and appealing to the deeper emotions, there is in this essay a simplicity which was often lacking in the former, and a pa.s.sionate pleading which combines the cogent lucidity of a Newman with the other-worldness of a St. Francis. If it has a fault, it is that of being too rich in its imagery, too lavish of its judgments, too overbearing in its vision of beauty, so that some critics will say that it is too poetical for prose. It is, indeed, the prose of a poet, and such as only a poet would or could write; but its harmony, its structural balance, its masterly transitions are, save in a few cases, those which are proper to prose.

There is, perhaps, something a little forced in the opening pa.s.sage in which he commends the services of poetry to the charity of the Church, paragraphs which were designed to conciliate the editor of the _Dublin Review_. He pa.s.ses to consider the defect which has "mildewed" all the poetry written since Sh.e.l.ley, "the predominance of art over inspiration, of body over soul." Not, he holds, that inspiration has been lacking--"the warrior is there, but he is hampered by his armour." "We are self-conscious to the finger-tips; and this inherent quality, entailing on our poetry the inevitable loss of spontaneity, ensures that whatever poets, of whatever excellence, may be born to us of the Sh.e.l.leian stock, its founder's spirit can take among us no reincarnation. An age that is ceasing to produce child-like children cannot produce a Sh.e.l.ley. For both as poet and man he was essentially a child."

"To the last," he exclaims, "he was the enchanted child." And he explains what he means in words that may seem fantastic: "It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief." And he suggests that "Sh.e.l.ley never could have been a man, for he never was a boy. And the reason lay in the persecution which over-clouded his school days." He was a grown-up child when he sailed his paper boats on the Isis, when in his loves he gave way to that "straying, strange and deplorable, of the spirit," when he rebelled petulantly but not ungenerously against the order of the world, and when he soared with the cloud or the skylark like the "child-like peoples among whom mythologies have their rise." In his poetry "he is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the G.o.ds give their children. The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall.

He is gold-dusty with his tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon."

And, in the same, full way, Thompson explains in what sense Sh.e.l.ley was a poet of Nature; in what manner images poured naturally from his lips as they ought to have done, but never did, pour from the lips of the metaphysical poets; by what "instinctive perception of the underlying a.n.a.logies, the secret subterranean pa.s.sages, between matter and soul," he was able to make such imaginative play with abstractions; and, finally, how in his shorter poems he "forgets for a while all that ever makes his verse turbid; forgets that he is anything but a poet, forgets sometimes that he is anything but a child." And all the time the essayist is dropping phrases which surely are unforgettable, striking us alike by their truth and their pregnance--"this beautiful, wild, feline poetry, wild because left to range the wilds."--"His Muse has become a veritable Echo, whose body has dissolved from about her voice."--"He stood thus at the very junction-lines of the visible and the invisible, and could shift the points as he willed. His thoughts became a mounted infantry, pa.s.sing with baffling swiftness from horse to foot or foot to horse."

Even to-day, five years after his death, Thompson has not attained the full fame which he merits. It is true his very first book won the highest praise from critics no less distinguished than Coventry Patmore, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Mr. H.D. Traill, and long before his death it was no small circle of admirers who looked eagerly for each new poem from his pen.

Yet his genius is not of that kind which instantly communicates itself to a generation. Living apart in a spiritual atmosphere of his own, his heart divested of the desires which form half the life of most men, his gaze was fixed on the inner mysteries of the spirit and on those outer forms which are the vehicles of beauty. The very language he used was as far remote as possible from "the brutish jargon we inherit." He belonged to the hierarchy of the poets of all ages, and pressed into his service lovely, half-forgotten words which made his poetry seem strange and bizarre to those who were too much immersed in the language and literature of their day. And those subtler minds who instantly perceived its beauty, and saw how his language and his imagery often recalled those of the seventeenth-century metaphysicals, such as Crashaw, too readily perhaps a.s.serted a bond between his thought and theirs. Like them, it is true, he turned his back on the delusive splendours of the world; he accepted and expressed in song the divine ordinance of the universe. But he was afflicted with the pain of modern doubt; fear and speculative curiosity struggled with his faith; sometimes the sheer beauty of the external world, so far from proving the divine beauty, seemed to him as a possible refuge in his vain flight from the "Hound of Heaven."

He cannot be allocated to a single school. In his reading he had ranged through the poets of all ages, and he had a.s.similated a mighty variety of emotions, and we may see how his form shows the influence now of one poet, now another--Milton, Cowley, Sh.e.l.ley, Hood, Poe, and Rossetti--yet each influence, as it came upon him, was pa.s.sed through the crucible of his own defined temperament, and the resultant is wholly his own, a creature which speaks of half-suppressed emotion, yet fantastically rich in phrase, rhythm, and image. His study of all the poets seems to have opened to him more avenues of beauty than were open to any poet of the middle seventeenth century. There is in his blood the fantastical romance of the Elizabethans; the love of spiritual contemplation which marked the seventeenth-century mystic; the pa.s.sionate adoration of Nature and the open air which came with the early nineteenth century; modern introspectiveness; and that habit of symbolism with which Rossetti and his school have made us familiar.

Sometimes his pregnant phrases, his literary imagery, his stately, sweeping rhetoric, and the note of underlying melancholy would lead us to compare him with Virgil rather than with any modern poet.

Under this dreadful brother uterine, This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-mother-like, To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st, Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, And break the tomb of life; here I shake off The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun, And to the antique order of the dead I take the tongueless vows.

But those last lines:

And to the antique order of the dead I take the tongueless vows.

we cannot compare with any model. They stand by themselves, unsurpa.s.sable, lines such as are only to be found here and there even in the great poets.

The more one reads this poetry of Thompson's the more one discovers that it is something essentially individual. Harmonies that one may miss on a first reading become more apparent and more insistent as one reads again, and the exquisite, haunting melody of his verse pursues us, and its faultless, rich rhythms seem to create new patterns of form. One may miss not a little of his thought, because the engrossing beauty of the language lays hold of the senses. In almost every poem one finds some lingering phrase:

Whatso looks lovelily Is but the rainbow on life's weeping rain.

Or:

The little sweetness making grief complete.

Often he shows that exact sense of lyrical fitness which Milton pre-eminently possessed, and, second only to him, Sh.e.l.ley. We see it in the pa.s.sage which begins:

Suffer me at your leafy feast To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, And watch your mirth, Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth.

_The Hound of Heaven_, I think, has rightly been p.r.o.nounced his greatest poem, for whilst in its wealth of melody, its magnificence of imagery, and its pathos, it is unsurpa.s.sed, it reveals also the finest depths of his thought as he takes us "down the labyrinthine ways" of his mind's flight. But next to that I would put _The Making of Viola_, a poem which no other, except Rossetti or his sister Christina, could have written:

I

_The Father of Heaven._ Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Twirl your wheel with silver din; Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Spin a tress for Viola.

_Angels._ Spin, Queen Mary, a Brown tress for Viola!

II

_The Father of Heaven._ Weave, hands angelical, Weave a woof of flesh to pall Weave, hands evangelical-- Flesh to pall our Viola.

_Angels._ Weave, singing brothers, a Velvet flesh for Viola!

III

_The Father of Heaven._ Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes, Wood-browned pools of Paradise-- Young Jesus, for the eyes, For the eyes of Viola.

_Angels._ Tint, Prince Jesus, a Dusked eye for Viola!

It may be that he will always be a poet for the few; that his mystical, esoteric spirit, finding its proper expression in baffling imagery and elusive, other-worldly rhythms, will never be wholly congenial to the many. But his place is a.s.sured; for he had no traffic with the things of a day or the language of a day. The beauty which haunts his prose and his verse is of that universal order which can hardly fade by the mere pa.s.sing of time. Only a change in the human spirit can make it dim.

_TWO NEW VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES_

WALT WHITMAN

A CRITICAL STUDY

BY