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the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweet- Greece did not err in having the idea of beauness and light. The evpuns is the man ty, harmony, and complete human perfection, who tends toward sweetness and light; the so present and paramount. It is impossible to άons on the other hand, is our Philistine. have this idea too present and paramount; only, The immense spiritual significance of the the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, Greeks is due to their having been inspired because we have braced the moral fibre, are with this central and happy idea of the essen- not on that account in the right way, if at the tial character of human perfection; and Mr. same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and Bright's misconception of culture, as a smat-complete human perfection is wanting or mistering of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after apprehended amongst us.

all, from this wonderful significance of the

Greeks having affected the very machinery of NATURAL MAGIC IN CELTIC LITERour education, and is in itself a kind of homage to it.

po

In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with etry. Far more than on our freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious organiza tions to save us. I have called religion a yet more important manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it has worked on a

broader scale for perfection, and with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side,-which is the dominant idea of religion,-has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other.

ATURE†

The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in roof nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling mance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they are Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them something quite different from the woods, waters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. Now of this delicate magie, Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible to believe the power did not come into word for it,--the magic of nature; not merely romance from the Celts. Magic is just the Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the the beauty of nature,-that the Greeks and

soil, a faithful realism,-that the Germans

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in had; but the intimate life of Nature, her weird As the which religion and poetry are one, in which the power and her fairy charm. idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect wholesome smack of the soil in them,-WeathSaxon names of places, with the pleasant on all sides adds to itself a religious and de-ersfield, Thaxted, Shalford,-are to the Celtic vout energy, and works in the strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest and instructiveness for us, though it was, as having regard to the human race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, we must own,-a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed the moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and developed than it had yet been. But

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names of places, with their penetrating, lofty is the homely realism of German and Norse beauty, Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon, so nature to the fairy-like loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: 'Well," says Math, we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blos

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soms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom,
and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and pro-
duced from them a maiden, the fairest and
most graceful that man ever saw. And they
baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-
Aspect.'' Celtic romance is full of exquisite

From On the Study of Celtic Literature (1866).
The Celtic race is represented mainly by the
Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scotch.
This and the following quotations are taken
from the Welsh Mabinogion, translated by
Lady Charlotte Guest.

touches like that, showing the delicacy of the¦ Celt 's feeling in these matters, and how deeply Nature lets him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called "faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of -reed-grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the heaviest." And thus is Olwen described: "More yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony amidst the spray of the meadow fountains.'' For loveliness it would be hard to beat that; and for magical clearness and nearness take the following:

were

"And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him

gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold! a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the raven and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, and to her two cheeks, which were redder than the blood upon the snow appeared to be." And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not

less beautiful:

"And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down and drank the

water. And they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and there they met a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck; and he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a bowl on the mouth of the pitcher.''

And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear beauty, is suddenly magicalized by the romance touch:

"And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one-half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf."

Magic is the word to insist upon,—a magieally vivid and near interpretation of nature; since it is this which constitutes the special charm and power of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for this that the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar aptitude.

WORDSWORTH*

'from

"But turn we," as Wordsworth says, these bold, bad men," the haunters of Social Science Congresses. And let us be on our guard, too, against the exhibitors and extollers of a "scientific system of thought" in Words worth's poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and may be told quite simply. Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.

The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest and most unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is also accessible uniVersally. Wordsworth brings us word, therefore, according to his own strong and characteristic line, he brings us word

"Of joy in widest commonalty spread."1 Here is an immense advantage for a poet. of it at its truest and best source, and yet a Wordsworth tells of what all seek, and tells source where all may go and draw from it.

to talk as if it must be.

Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that Wordsworth, everything is precious which standing even at this perennial and beautiful Wordsworthians are apt source, may give us. They will speak with the same reverence of The Sailor's Mother, for example, as of Lucy Gray. They do their master harm by such lack of discrimination. Lucy Gray is a beautiful success; The Sailor's Mother is a failure.† To give aright what he wishes not always within Wordsworth's own command. to give, to interpret and render successfully, is It is within no poet's command; here is the part of the Muse, the inspiration, the God, the "not ourselves. ''2 In Wordsworth's case, the accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, is of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a new 1 The Recluse, line 771.

2 Arnold elsewhere speaks of deity as the "tendency not ourselves that makes for righteous

ness.

From the Preface to The Poems of Wordsworth, chosen and edited by Arnold (1879). In the passage just preceding, Arnold deprecates the attempt to make Wordsworth sponsor for any complete philosophical or social system, such, for instance, as a Social Science congress might dryly and dismally quote and discuss.

Swinburne thought otherwise. See his MiscelJanics.

and sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it fails him, is so left "weak as is a breaking wave." I remember hearing him say tha' "Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough." The remark is striking and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine Miltonic lines; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like Milton. When he seeks to have a style, he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the Excursion we have his style, as an artistic product of his own creation; and although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize Wordsworth's real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of the Excursion, as a work of poetic style: "This will never do." And yet magical as is that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured and possessed poetic style, he has something which is an equivalent for it.

Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, the heightening, which is given to a poet's verse by his genius for style.

We can feel it in the

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well"5 of Shakespeare; in the

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though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues'6of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic style which gives such worth to Paradise Regained, and makes a great poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high. Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's:

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change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of Laodamia. Still, the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from Michael:

"And never lifted up a single stone."

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most truly expressive kind.

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire fidelity it utters, Burns could show him:

"The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn and wise to know
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;

But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name."8

to Wordsworth; and if Wordsworth did great Every one will be conscious of a likeness here things with this nobly plain manner, we must remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to acknowledge, that

Burns used it before him.

Still, Wordsworth's use of it has something unique and unmatchable. Nature, herself, seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.

Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for Laodamia and for the great Ode; but if I am to tell the very truth, I find Laodamia not wholly free from something artificial, and the great Ode not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as Michael, The Fountain, The High8 A Bard's Epitaph, st. 4.

land Reaper. And poems with the peculiar and Armada took leave of Spain for the last time. unique beauty which distinguishes these, Words- The scene as the fleet passed out of the harworth produced in considerable number; be-bour must have been singularly beautiful. It sides very many other poems of which the was a treacherous interval of real summer. The worth, although not so rare as the worth of early sun was lighting the long chain of the these, is still exceedingly high. Galician mountains, marking with shadows the

walls and vineyards of Coruña. The wind was light, and falling towards a calm; the great galleons drifted slowly with the tide on the purple water, the long streamers trailing from crusade, showing bright upon the hanging sails. The fruit boats were bringing off the st fresh supplies, and the pinnaces hastening to the ships with the last loiterers on shore. Out of thirty thousand men who that morning stood upon the decks of the proud Armada, twenty thousand and more were never again to see the hills of Spain. Of the remnant who in two short months crept back ragged and torn, all but a few hundred returned only to die.

On the whole, then, as I said at the begin-cleft defiles, and shining softly on the white ning, not only is Wordsworth eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us. With the ancients I will not compare him. In many re-the trucks, the red crosses, the emblem of the spects the ancients are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they can never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the mod erns, we are to find his superiors. He is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely as possible and as truly as possible, his own word concerning his poems: "They will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their de gree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better and happier."

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The story of the spectacular but ill-fated expedition of the Spanish Armada has often been fold, but by no one perhaps more graphically than by Froude. His first account is that in the 36th chapter of his History of England (1856-1870), from which has been taken this description of the sailing of the Armada. Later in life, after much additional research, Froude wrote and published The Spanish Story of the Armada (1892). About the same time he was appointed to a lectureship at Oxford, where he delivered some lectures on the subject which were published after his death (English Seamen in the XVIth Century, 1895). From these the second selection above has been taken.

In the summer of 1588, Philip II. of Spain, who

na

The Spaniards, though a great people, were usually over conscious of their greatness, and boasted too loudly of their fame and prowess; but among the soldiers and sailors of the doomed expedition against England, the tional vainglory was singularly silent. They were the flower of the country, culled and chosen over the entire Peninsula, and they were going with a modest nobility upon a service which they knew to be dangerous, but which they believed to be peculiarly sacred. Every one, seaman, officer, and soldier, had confessed and communicated before he went on board. Gambling, swearing, profane language of all kinds had been peremptorily forbidden. Private quarrels and differences had been made up or suspended. . . In every vessel, and in the whole fleet, the strictest order was prescribed and observed. Medina Sidonia led the way in the San Martin, showing lights at night, and firing guns when the weather was hazy. Mount's

was trying to restore the Catholic faith through the Protestant countries of Europe, fitted out his "Invincible Armada" with the purpose of invading England. His great Admiral, Santa Cruz, had just died, and the expedition was given into the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a wealthy nobleman of little experience and less ability, who ought to have been allowed to remain at home among his orange groves. His instructions were to effect a junction with the Duke of Parma, a general in the Spanish service in the Low Countries, and to assist the latter in transporting his army to the English shores. The obvious tactics for the English to pursue was to cripple and if possible defeat the fleet as it sailed through the English Channel. The fleet started from Lisbon on the 29th of May, but was delayed on the route six weeks by bad weather.

Bays was to be the next place of rendezvous if on the evening of the 19th-29th, the beacons they were again separated. along the coast had told England that the hour of its trial was come.

On the first evening the wind dropped to a calm. The morning after, the 13th-23rd, a fair fresh breeze came up from the south and southwest; the ships ran flowingly before it; and in two days and nights they had crossed the bay, and were off Ushant. The fastest of the pinnaces was dispatched from thence Parma, with a letter bidding him expect the Duke's immediate coming.

to

But they had now entered the latitude of the storms which through the whole season had raged round the English shore. The same night a southwest gale overtook them. They lay-to, not daring to run further. The four galleys unable to keep the sea were driven in upon the French coast, and wrecked. The Santa Aña, a galleon of eight hundred tons, went down, carrying with her ninety seamen, three hundred soldiers, and fifty thousand ducats in gold. The weather was believed to be under the peculiar care of God, and this first misfortune was of evil omen for the future. The storm lasted two days, and then the sky cleared, and again gathering into order they proceeded on their way. On the 19th-29th they were in the mouth of the Channel. At daybreak on the morning of the 20th-30th the Lizard was under their lee, and an English fishing-boat was hanging near them, counting their numbers. They gave chase, but the boat shot away down wind and disappeared. They captured another an hour or two later, from which they learnt the English fleet was in Plymouth, and Medina Sidonia called a council of war to consider whether they should go in, and fall upon it while at anchor. ip's orders, however, were peremptory that they should turn neither right nor left, and make straight for Margate roads and Parma. The Duke was unenterprising, and consciously unequal to his work; and already bending under his responsibilities, he hesitated to add to them.

Phil

Had he decided otherwise it would have made no difference, for the opportunity was not allowed him. Long before the Spaniards saw the Lizard they had themselves been seen, and 3 On the English coast of Cornwall, between

Land's End on the west and Lizard Head on the east.

4 Of Biscay.

DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA

In the gallery at Madrid there is a picture, painted by Titian, representing the Genius of Spain coming to the delivery of the afflicted Bride of Christ. Titian was dead, but the temper of the age survived, and in the study of that great picture you will see the spirit in which the Spanish nation had set out for the conquest of England. The scene is the seashore. The Church a naked Andromeda,‡ with dishevelled hair, fastened to the trunk of an ancient disbranched tree. The cross lies at her feet, the cup overturned, the serpents of heresy biting at her from behind with uplifted crests. Coming on before a leading breeze is the sea monster, the Moslem fleet, eager for their prey, while in front is Perseus, the Genius of Spain, banner in hand, with the legions of the faithful laying not raiment before him, but shield and helmet, the apparel of war for the Lady of Nations to clothe herself with strength and smite her foes.

Perseus had

In the Armada the crusading enthusiasm had reached its point and focus. England was the stake to which the Virgin, the daughter of Sion, was bound in captivity. come at last in the person of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and with him all that was best and brightest in the countrymen of Cervantes,1 to break her bonds and replace her on her throne. They had sailed into the channel in pious hope, with the blessed banner waving over their heads.

To be the executor of the decrees of Providence is a lofty ambition, but men in a state of high emotion overlook the precautions which are not to be dispensed with even on the sublimest of errands. Don Quixote, when he set out to redress the wrongs of humanity, forgot that a change of linen might be necessary, and that he must take money with him to pay his hotel bills. Philip II., in sending the Armada to England, and confident in supernatural protection, imagined an unresisted triumphal procession. He forgot that contractors might be rascals, that water four months in the casks

5 An island off the extreme northwestern coast of in a hot climate turned putrid, and that putrid

France.

Just north of Dover, opposite Calais.

Vessels sailing up the English Channel and through Dover Strait would round the North Foreland and Margate to pass into the Thames. The passage of the fleet up the Channel was vir tually a running fight, beginning at Plymouth and lasting for a week.

water would poison his ships' companies, though

1 Creator of Don Quixote, the half-mad knighterrant.

Andromeda, according to the Greek legend, was exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, but was rescued by Perseus.

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