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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

66

though fallen on evil days,

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 al-
ways 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 charOn evil days though fallen, and evil tongues"6-acter of his subject itself. He can and will of 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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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 bal

ance, 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.

The scene as the fleet passed out of the har

land Reaper. And poems with the peculiar and | Armada took leave of Spain for the last time. unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth produced in considerable number; be-bour must have been singularly beautiful. It sides very many other poems of which the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still exceedingly high.

On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, 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 respects 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 moderns, 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 coöperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better and happier."'

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
(1818-1894)

THE SAILING OF THE SPANISH
ARMADA*

The weather moderating, the fleet was again collected in the Bay of Ferroli by the 6th16th of July. All repairs were completed by the 11th-21st, and the next day, 12th-22nd, the

1 Off northwestern 2 The first date is Old Spain. Style: see note on p. 323. The story of the spectacular but ill-fated expedition of the Spanish Armada has often been told, 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

was a treacherous interval of real summer. The early sun was lighting the long chain of the Galician mountains, marking with shadows the cleft defiles, and shining softly on the white 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 the trucks, the red crosses, the emblem of the crusade, showing bright upon the hanging sails. The fruit boats were bringing off the ast 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.

the

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 doomed expedition against England, the national 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 de feat the fleet as it sailed through the English ('hannel. 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.5 The fastest of the pinnaces was dispatched from thence to Parma, with a letter bidding him expect the Duke's immediate coming.

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 But they had now entered the latitude of of that great picture you will see the spirit the storms which through the whole season had in which the Spanish nation had set out for the raged round the English shore. The same night conquest of England. The scene is the seaa southwest gale overtook them. They lay-to, shore. The Church a naked Andromeda,‡ with not daring to run further. The four galleys dishevelled hair, fastened to the trunk of an unable to keep the sea were driven in upon the ancient disbranched tree. The cross lies at her French coast, and wrecked. The Santa Ana, a feet, the cup overturned, the serpents of heresy galleon of eight hundred tons, went down, car-biting at her from behind with uplifted crests. rying with her ninety seamen, three hundred Coming on before a leading breeze is the sea soldiers, and fifty thousand ducats in gold. The monster, the Moslem fleet, eager for their prey, weather was believed to be under the peculiar while in front is Perseus, the Genius of Spain, care of God, and this first misfortune was of banner in hand, with the legions of the faithful evil omen for the future. The storm lasted two laying not raiment before him, but shield and days, and then the sky cleared, and again gath-helmet, the apparel of war for the Lady of ering into order they proceeded on their way. Nations to clothe herself with strength and On the 19th-29th they were in the mouth of the smite her foes. Channel. At daybreak on the morning of the In the Armada the crusading enthusiasm had 20th-30th the Lizard was under their lee, and reached its point and focus. England was the an English fishing-boat was hanging near them, stake to which the Virgin, the daughter of counting their numbers. They gave chase, but Sion, was bound in captivity. Perseus had the boat shot away down wind and disappeared. come at last in the person of the Duke of MeThey captured another an hour or two later, dina Sidonia, and with him all that was best from which they learnt the English fleet was and brightest in the countrymen of Cervantes,1 in Plymouth, and Medina Sidonia called a to break her bonds and replace her on her council of war to consider whether they should throne. They had sailed into the channel in pigo in, and fall upon it while at anchor. Phil-ous, hope, with the blessed banner waving over ip's orders, however, were peremptory that their heads. 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.

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 Ilead on

the east.

4 Of Biscay.

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

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

The

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. 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.

his crews were companies of angels. He forgot | Duke and his advisers had chosen Calais as that the servants of the evil one might fight the point at which to bring up. It was now for their mistress after all, and that he must Saturday, the 7th of August. The governor of send adequate supplies of powder, and, worst forgetfulness of all, that a great naval expedition required a leader who understood his business. Perseus, in the shape of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, after a week of disastrous battles, found himself at the end of it in an exposed roadstead,2 where he ought never to have been, nine-tenths of his provisions thrown overboard as unfit for food, his ammunition exhausted by the unforeseen demands upon it, the seamen and soldiers harassed and dispirited, officers the whole week without sleep, and the enemy, who had hunted him from Plymouth to Calais, anchored within half a league of him.

Still, after all his misadventures, he had brought the fleet, if not to the North Foreland, yet within a few miles of it, and to outward appearance not materially injured. Two of the galleons had been taken; a third, the Santa Aña, had strayed; and his galleys had left him, being found too weak for the channel sea, but the great armament had reached its destination substantially uninjured so far as English eyes could see. Hundreds of men had been killed and hundreds more wounded, and the spirit of the rest had been shaken. But the loss of life could only be conjectured on board the English fleet. The English admiral* could only see that the Duke was now in touch with Parma. Parma, they knew, had an army at Dunkirk with him, which was to cross to England. He had been collecting men, barges, and transports all the winter and spring, and the backward state of Parma's preparations could not be anticipated, still less relied upon. The Calais anchorage was unsafe; but at that season of the year, especially after a wet summer, the weather usually settled; and to attack the Spaniards in a French port might be dangerous for many reasons. It was uncertain after the day of the Barricades5 whether the Duke of Guise or Henry of Valois was master of France, and a violation of the neutrality laws might easily at that moment bring Guise and France into the field on the Spaniards' side. It was, no doubt, with some such expectation that the

2 Calais Roads.

3 See last note of preceding selection.
4 A port twenty miles east of Calais.
5 May 12, when the Duke of Guise entered Paris
in an attempt to depose Henry III.
*Lord Charles Howard. Sir Francis Drake, vice
admiral, commanded a second division of the
British fleet; Sir Henry Seymour a third.
Commanders of squadrons were Sir John
Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher.

the town came off in the evening to the San Martin. He expressed surprise to see the Spanish fleet in so exposed a position, but he was profuse in his offers of service. Anything which the Duke required should be provided, especially every facility for communicating with Dunkirk and Parma. The Duke thanked him, said that he supposed Parma to be already embarked with his troops, ready for the passage, and that his own stay in the roads would be but brief. On Monday morning at latest he expected that the attempt to cross would be made. The governor took his leave, and the Duke, relieved from his anxieties, was left to a peaceful night. He was disturbed on the Sunday morning by an express from Parma informing him that, so far from being embarked, the army could not be ready for a fortnight. The barges were not in condition for sea. The troops were in camp. The arms and stores were on the quays at Dunkirk. As for the fly-boats and ammunition which the Duke had asked for, he had none to spare. He had himself looked to be supplied from the Armada. He promised to use his best expedition, but the Duke, meanwhile, must see to the safety of the fleet.

Unwelcome news to a harassed landsman thrust into the position of an admiral and eager to be rid of his responsibilities. If by evil fortune the northwester should come down upon him, with the shoals and sandbanks close under his lee, he would be in a bad way. Nor was the view behind him calculated for comfort. There lay the enemy almost within gunshot, who, though scarcely more than half his numbers, had hunted him like a pack of bloodhounds, and, worse than all, in double strength; for the Thames squadron-three Queen's ships and thirty London adventurers-under Lord H. Seymour and Sir John Hawkins, had crossed in the night. There they were between him and Cape Grisnez,7 and the reinforcements meant plainly enough that mischief was in the wind.

After a week so trying the Spanish crews would have been glad of a Sunday's rest if they could have had it; but the rough handling which they had gone through had thrown everything into disorder. The sick and wounded had to be cared for, torn rigging looked to, splintered timbers mended, decks scoured, and guns and arms cleaned up and put to rights. And so it was that no rest could be allowed; so

6 "Gunboats worked with oars."
7 Eighteen miles S. W. of Calais.

much had to be done, and so busy was every one, that the usual rations were not served out and the Sunday was kept as a fast. In the afternoon the stewards went ashore for fresh meat and vegetables. They came back with their boats loaded, and the prospect seemed a little less gloomy. Suddenly, as the Duke and a group of officers were watching the English fleet from the San Martin's poop deck, a small smart pinnace, carrying a gun in her bow, shot out from Howard's lines, bore down on the San Martin, sailed round her, sending in a shot or two as she passed, and went off unhurt. The Spanish officers could not help admiring such airy impertinence. Hugo de Monçadas sent a ball after the pinnace, which went through her mainsail, but did no damage, and the pinnace again disappeared behind the English ships.

often, now ordering the fleet to prepare for sea, then recalling her instructions and paying off the men, that those whom Howard had with him had been enlisted in haste, had come on board as they were, and their clothes were hanging in rags on them. The fighting and the sight of the flying Spaniards were meat and drink, and clothing, too, and had made them careless of all else. There was no fear of mutiny; but there was a limit to the toughest endurance. If the Armada was left undisturbed, a long struggle might be still before them. The enemy would recover from its flurry, and Parma would come out from Dunkirk. To attack them directly in French waters might lead to perilous complications, while delay meant famine. The Spanish fleet had to be started from the roads in some way. Done it must be, and done immediately.

try what could be done with fire ships, and the excursion of the pinnace, which was taken for bravado, was probably for a survey of the Armada's exact position. Meantime eight use

So a Spanish officer describes the scene. The English story says nothing of the pinnace, but Then, on that same Sunday afternoon a memshe doubtless came and went as the Spaniard orable council of war was held in the Ark's10 says, and for sufficient purpose. The English, main cabin. Howard, Drake, Seymour, Hawtoo, were in straits, though the Duke did not kins, Martin Frobisher and two or three others dream of it. You will remember that the last met to consult, knowing that on them at that supplies which the Queen had allowed to the moment the liberties of England were dependfleet had been issued in the middle of June. ing. Their resolution was taken promptly. They were to serve for a month, and the con- There was no time for talk. After nightfall a tractors were forbidden to prepare more. The strong flood tide would be setting up along Queen had clung to her hope that her differ-shore to the Spanish anchorage. They would ences with Philip were to be settled by the Commission at Ostend; and she feared that if Drake and Howard were too well furnished they would venture some fresh rash stroke on the coast of Spain, which might mar the nego-less vessels were coated with pitch-hulls, spars tiations. Their month's provisions had been stretched to serve for six weeks, and when the Armada appeared but two full days' rations remained. On these they had fought their way up Channel. Something had been brought out by private exertion on the Dorsetshire coast, and Seymour had, perhaps, brought a little more. But they were still in extremity. The contractors had warned the Government that they could provide nothing without notice, and notice had not been given. The adventurers were in better state, having been equipped by private owners. But the Queen's ships in a day or two more must either go home or their crews would be starving. They had been on reduced rations for near two months. Worse than that, they were still poisoned by the sour beer. The Queen had changed her mind so

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and rigging. Pitch was poured on the decks and over the sides, and parties were told off. to steer them to their destination and then fire and leave them.

The hours stole on, and twilight passed into dark. The night was without a moon. The Duke paced his deck late with uneasy sense of danger. He observed lights moving up and down the English lines, and imagining that the endemoniada gente—the infernal devils-might be up to mischief, ordered a sharp lookout. A faint westerly air was curling the water, and towards midnight the watchers on board the galleons made out dimly several ships which seemed to be drifting down upon them. Their experience since the action off Plymouth had been so strange and unlooked for that anything unintelligible which the English did was alarming.

The phantom forms drew nearer, and were almost among them when they broke into a blaze from water-line to truck, and the two fleets were seen by the lurid light of the con

10 The Ark Raleigh, Howard's flagship.

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