The English Novel and the Principle of its Development

  IV.

  The points discussed at our last meeting were mainly of such a naturethat I need not occupy your time with the detailed review which hasseemed advisable heretofore.

  You will remember, in a general way, that we finished examining theclaims of the poetry of the future, as presented by Whitman, and foundreason to believe, from several trains of argument, that its allegeddemocratic spirit was based on a political misconception; that itsreligious spirit was no more than that general feeling of goodfellowship and _cameraderie_ which every man of the world knows to bethe commonest of virtues among certain classes; its strength restedupon purely physical qualifications which have long ago practicallyceased to be strength; its contempt for dandyism was itself only acruder dandyism, and its proposed substitution of power for beauty notonly an artistic blindness but a historical error as to the generalprogress of this world, which has been _from_ strength _to_ beautyever since the ponderous old gods Oceanus and Gaea--representatives ofrude strength--gave way to the more orderly (that is, more beautiful)reign of Saturn, and he in turn to the still more orderly andbeauty-representing Jupiter, whom Chaucer has called the "fadyr ofdelicacye."

  Passing thus from the Whitman school, we attacked that thirdmisconception of literary form which had taken the shape of theso-called naturalistic school, as led by Zola in his novels anddefended by him in his recent work, _The Experimental Romance_. Herewe quickly discovered that if the term "experiment" were used by thisschool in its ordinary and scientific sense, it would, in a largenumber of cases, involve conditions which would exterminate theauthors of the projected experimental romances often at an early stageof the plot; but that secondly, this inconvenience was avoided throughthe very peculiar meaning which was attached to the word by thisschool, and which reveals that they make no more use of experiment, inpoint of fact, than any one of the numerous novelists who have foryears been in the habit of studying real life and nature as the basisof their work.

  In short, it appeared that to support the propriety of circulatingsuch books by calling them experimental romances, was as if a manshould sell profitable poison under the name of scientific milk, andclaim therefor both the gratitude of society and the privileges ofscience. Finally, supplying ourselves with clear ideas as to thedifference between what has become so well known in modern times asthe scientific imagination and the poetic imagination, we determinedto regard the novel as a true work of art, and the novelist as anartist, by reason of the _created forms_ in the novel which were shownto be the distinctive outcome of the poetical imagination as opposedto _the formula_ which is the distinctive outcome of the scientificimagination. Nevertheless, in view of the circumstance that the factsembodied in these forms are facts which must have been collected by agenuine exercise of the true scientific faculty of observing andclassifying, we were compelled to regard the novel as a joint productof science and art, ranking as art by virtue of its final purelyartistic outcome in the shape of beautiful created forms.

  It is with a sense of relief that one turns away from what I fear hasseemed the personal and truculent tone of the last lecture--anappearance almost inseparable from the fact that certain schools ofwriting have become represented by the names of their living founders,and which would, indeed, have prevented your present lecturer fromengaging in the discussion had not his reluctance been overwhelmed bythe sacred duty of protesting against all this forcible occupation ofthe temple of art by those who have come certainly not for worship; itis with a sense of relief that one turns from this to pursue the moregracious and general studies which will now occupy us.

  According to the plan already sketched: having now acquired some clearfundamental conceptions of the correlations among form, science, art,and the like notions often so vaguely used, we are next to inquire, asour first main line of research: Is it really true that what wasexplained as the growth in human personality is the continuing singleprinciple of human progress; is it really true that the differencebetween the time of Aeschylus and the time of (say) George Eliot is thedifference in the strength with which the average man feels the scopeand sovereignty of his age? For upon this fundamental pointnecessarily depends our final proposition that the modern novel isitself the expression of this intensified personality and anexpression which could only be made by greatly extending the form ofthe Greek drama. Pursuing our custom of leaving the abstract andplunging into the concrete as soon as possible, let us determine thisquestion by endeavoring to find some special notable works of antiqueand of modern times in which substantially the same subject matter hasbeen treated; let us then compare the difference in treatment, let ussummarize the picture of things evidently existing in the old, ascontrasted with the modern author's and reader's minds; and finallylet us see whether the differences thus emerging will not forcethemselves upon us as differences growing out of personality. For thepurposes of this comparison I have thought that the _Prometheus Bound_of Aeschylus, the _Prometheus Unbound_ of Shelley, and the _PrinceDeukalion_ of Bayard Taylor offered inviting resources as works whichtreat substantially the same story, although the first was writtensome two thousand three hundred years before the last two. Permit methen, in beginning this comparison, to set before you these threeworks in the broadest possible sketch by reading from each, here andthere a line such as may bring the action freshly before you and atthe same time elucidate specially the differences in treatment we arein search of. As I now run rapidly through the _Prometheus_ ofAeschylus, I ask you to bear along in mind the precise nature of thisspontaneous variation between man and man which I was at some pains todefine in my first lecture; and perhaps I may extend profitably thepartial idea there given by adopting a pretty fancy which I find inNo. 44 of Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, and carrying it to a larger spherethan there intended. The poet is here expressing the conception thatperhaps the main use of this present life of ours is for each one tolearn _himself_,--possibly as preparatory to learning other thingshereafter. He says:

  The baby new to earth and sky What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that 'this is I:'

  But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,' And finds, 'I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.'

  So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined.

  This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due, Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death.

  Now if we extend the process of growth here described as of a singlechild passing through a single life to the collective process ofgrowth effected by humanity from age to age, we have quite clearly theprinciple whose light I wish to shed upon our comparison of the worksI have named. Just as the child learns to know himself--"that I amI"--so man comes in the course of time to feel more and moredistinctly I am I; and the growth of this feeling continually uprootshis old relations to things and brings about new relations with newforms to clothe them in.

  One may say indeed that this recognition of the supreme finality ofthe _ego_ feeling among modern men seems a curious and not unrelatedcounterpart of the theory by which the modern physicist, in order toexplain his physical world, divides it into atoms which atoms arethemselves indivisible. We have here the perplexing problem which inthe poem _De Profundis_, partially read to you, was poetically called"the pain of this divisible, indivisible world." To explain the world,whether the moral or the physical world, we must suppose it divisibleinto atoms; to explain the atom, we must suppose that indivisible. Letus see then in what form this "pain of the divisible, indivisibleworld" with all its attendant pains of contradiction between fate andfree will,--between the Infinite Personality, which should seemboundless, and the finite personality which nevertheless seems tobound it,--let us see, I say under what explicit forms this painappears in the _Prometheus Bound_, for alas it was an old gr
ief whenAeschylus was a baby. Here, then, in the centre of the stage lies thegigantic figure of Prometheus, (let us fancy) stark, prostrate, proud,unmoving throughout the whole action. Two ministers of Jove, Might andForce, have him in charge and Hephaestus--the god more commonly knownas Vulcan--stands by with chain, hammer and bolt. Might acquaints usat once with what is toward.

  At length the utmost bound of earth we've reached, This Scythian soil, this wild untrodden waste. Hephaestus, now Jove's high behests demand Thy care; to these steep, cliffy rocks bind down With close-linked chains of during adamant This daring wretch. For he the bright rayed fire, Mother of arts.... Filched from the gods and gave to mortals. Here

  .....

  Let his pride learn to bow to Jove supreme; And love men well but love them not too much.

  Hephaestus proceeds to chain him, but with many protests, not onlybecause Prometheus' act seems over-punished, but because he isPrometheus' kinsman.

  Would that some other hand

  (He cries)

  "Had drawn the lot To do this deed!"

  To which Might replies

  All things may be, but this: To dictate to the gods. There's one that's free, One only--Jove.

  And Hephaestus sullenly acquiesces, as he beats away at his task,

  "I know it, and am dumb."

  --Amid similar talk--of protest from Vulcan and pitiless menace fromMight--the great blacksmith proceeds to force an adamantine boltthrough the breast of Prometheus, then to nail his feet to the rock,and so at last cries, in relief,

  Let us away, He's fettered, limb and thew.

  But Might must have his last pitiless speech.

  "There lie,

  he exults,--

  And feed thy pride on this bare rock, Filching god's gifts for mortal men. What man Shall free thee from these woes? Thou hast been called In vain the Provident:

  (_pro-vident_, same as pro-metheus, he who looks ahead, who provides,the provident.)

  had thy soul possessed The virtue of thy name, thou had'st foreseen These cunning toils, and had'st unwound thee from them.

  Here all depart but Prometheus. Up to this time the Titan hasmaintained a proud silence. He now breaks into that large invocationwhich seems still to assault our physical ears across the twenty oddcenturies.

  O divine Aether, and swift-winged Winds, And Fountains of the rivers and multitudinous Laughter of ocean, and thou Earth, Born mother of us all, and thou bright round Of the all-seeing Sun, you I invoke! Behold what ignominy of causeless wrongs I suffer from the gods, myself a god!

  (This, by the way, is one of those passages which our elder poets seemto have regarded as somehow lying outside the pale of moral law--likeumbrellas--and which they have therefore appropriated without athought of blushing. Byron, in _Manfred_, and Shelley, in his_Prometheus Unbound_, have quite fairly translated parts of it.)

  Enter now a chorus of Oceanides, and these continue throughout theplay to perform the functions of exciting sympathy for theProtagonist, and of calling upon him for information when it becomesnecessary that the audience should know this and that fact essentialto the intelligibility of the action.

  For example, after the Oceanides have alighted from their wind-bornecar, and have condoled with the sufferer, Aeschylus makes them themedium of drawing from Prometheus the recital of his wrongs, and thusof freshly placing that whole tremendous story before the minds of hisaudience.

  Speak now,

  say the chorus,

  "And let us know the whole offence Jove charges thee withal."

  And Prometheus relates

  When first the gods their fatal strife began, And insurrection raged in heaven, some striving To cast old Kronos from his heavy throne That Jove might reign, and others to crush i' the bud His swelling mastery--I wise counsel gave To the Titans, sons of primal Heaven and Earth; But gave in vain. Thus baffled in my plans, I deemed it best, As things then were, leagued with my mother Themis, To accept Jove's proffered friendship. By my counsels. From his primeval throne was Kronos hurled Into the pit Tartarean, dark, profound, With all his troop of friends.

  Soon as he sat on his ancestral throne He called the gods together, and assigned To each his fair allotment and his sphere Of sway; but, ah! for wretched man! To him no portion fell: Jove vowed To blot his memory from the Earth, and mould The race anew. I only of the gods Thwarted his will; and, but for my strong aid, Hades had whelmed, and hopeless ruin swamped All men that breathe. Such were my crimes:

  * * * * *

  And here I lie, in cunning torment stretched, A spectacle inglorious to Jove.

  Presently Ocean appears, and advises Prometheus to yield. Prometheusscornfully refuses, and Ocean, fearful of being found in bad company,prudently retires, whereupon, after a mournful hymn from the chorus,reciting the sympathy of all nations and things with Prometheus, heproceeds to relate in detail his ministry in behalf of mankind. Theaccount which he gives of the primal condition of the human race isvery instructive upon our present research, as embodying, or rather asunconsciously revealing, the complete unconsciousness ofpersonality--of what we call personality--among Aeschylus and hiscontemporaries.

  Prometheus begins by calling the whole human race at that time a babe,and goes on to declare that

  ... Having eyes to see, they saw not, And hearing, heard not, but, like dreaming phantoms, A random life they led from year to year, All blindly floundering on. No craft they knew --to build-- But in the dark earth burrowed.... Numbers too I taught them ... and how To fix their shifting thoughts by marshalled signs.

  He brings the ox, the ass, and the horse into service, launches thefirst boat on the sea, teaches medicine, institutes divination, andfinally

  ... I probed the earth To yield its hidden wealth ... Iron, copper, silver, gold; ... And thus, with one short word to sum the tale, Prometheus taught all arts to mortal men.

  CHORUS.

  Do good to men, but do it with discretion. Why shouldst thou harm thyself? Good hope I nurse To see thee soon from these harsh chains unbound, As free, as mighty, as great Jove himself.

  PROMETHEUS.

  This may not be; the destined curse of things Fate must accomplish.... Though art be strong, necessity is stronger.

  CHORUS.

  And who is lord of strong necessity?

  PROMETHEUS.

  The triform Fates and the sure-memoried Furies.

  CHORUS.

  And mighty Jove himself must yield to them?

  PROMETHEUS.

  No more than others Jove can 'scape his doom.

  CHORUS.

  * * * * * There's some dread mystery in thy speech Close-veiled.

  PROMETHEUS.

  * * * * The truth thou'lt know In fitting season; now it lies concealed In deepest darkness; for relenting Jove Himself must woo this secret from my breast.

  (This secret--so it is told in the old myths--is that Jove is to meethis own downfall through an unfortunate marriage, and Prometheus is inpossession of the details which would enable Jove to avoid the doom.)

  After a choral hymn, recommending submission to Jove, we have suddenlythe grotesque apparition of Io upon the stage. Io had been beloved byJove; but the jealousy of Hera, or Juno, had transformed her into acow, and had doomed her to wander over the world stung by aninexpugnable gadfly, and watched by the hundred-eyed Argus. Thus,suddenly, upon the spectacle of a man suffering from the hatred ofJove, Aeschylus brings the spectacle of a woman suffering from the loveof Jove. Io enters with this fine outburst:

  What land is this? What race of mortals Owns this desert? Who art thou, Rock-bound wi
th these wintry fetters, And for what crime tortured thus? Worn and weary with far travel, Tell me where my feet have borne me! O pain! pain! pain! it stings and goads me again, The fateful gadfly!--save me, O Earth!--avaunt, Thou horrible shadow of the earth-born Argus! Could not the grave close up thy hundred eyes, But thou must come, Haunting my path with thy suspicious look, Unhoused from Hades? Avaunt! avaunt! why wilt thou hound my track, The famished wanderer on the waste sea-shore?

  After much talk, Io now relates her mournful story, and, supported bythe Chorus, persuades Prometheus to prophesy the very eventful futurewhich awaits her when her wanderings are over. In this propheticaccount of her travels, Aeschylus gives a soul-expanding review of landafter land according to the geographic and ethnic notions of his time;and here Mr. Blackie, whose translation of the Prometheus I have beenpartly quoting from, sometimes reproduces his author in very large andmusical measures. For example, Prometheus chants:

  When thou hast crossed the narrow stream that parts The continents, to the far flame-faced East Thou shalt proceed, the highway of the sun; Then cross the sounding ocean, till thou reach Cisthene and the Gorgon plains, where dwell Phorcys' three daughters, maids with frosty eld, White as the swan, with one eye and one tooth Shared by the three; them Phoebus, beamy-bright Beholds not, nor the nightly moon. Near them Their winged sisters dwell, the Gorgons dire, Man-hating monsters, snaky-locked, whom eye Of mortal ne'er might look upon and live. * * * * One more sight remains That fills the eye with horror. * * * The sharp-beaked Griffins, hounds of Jove, avoid, Fell dogs that bark not; and the one-eyed host Of Arimaspian horsemen with swift hoofs Beating the banks of golden-rolling Pluto. A distant land, a swarthy people next Receives thee: near the fountains of the sun They dwell by Ethiop's wave. This river trace Until thy weary feet shall reach the pass Whence from the Bybline heights the sacred Nile Pours his salubrious flood. The winding wave Thence to triangled Egypt guides thee, where A distant home awaits thee, fated mother Of an unstoried race.

  In this strain Prometheus continues to foretell the adventures of Iountil her son Epaphus, monarch of Egypt, is born, who willbe--through the fifty daughters celebrated in _The Suppliants_ ofAeschylus--the ancestor of Hercules, which Hercules is to be thedeliverer of Prometheus himself.

  Then in a frenzy of pain, Io departs, while the Chorus bursts into ahymn deploring such ill-matched unions as that of Io with Jove, andextolling marriage between equals.

  After the exit of Io--to finish our summary of the play--the actionhastens to the end; the chorus implores Prometheus to submit:presently, Hermes or Mercury appears, and tauntingly counselssurrender, only to be as tauntingly repulsed by Prometheus; and, aftera sharp passage of wits between these two, accompanied by indignantoutbursts from the Chorus at the pitilessness of Hermes, the playceases with a speech from Prometheus describing the new punishment ofJove:

  Now in deed and not in discourse, The firm earth quakes. Deep and loud the ambient thunder Bellows, and the flaring lightning Wreathes his fiery curls around me And the whirlwind rolls his dust, And the winds from rival regions Rush in elemental strife, And the sky is destroyed with the sea. Surely now the tyrant gathers All his hoarded wrath to whelm me. Mighty Mother, worshipped Themis, Circling Aether that diffusest Light, the common joy of all, Thou beholdest these my wrongs!

  Thus in the crash of elements the play ends. Fortunately our purposewith this huge old story thus treated by Aeschylus, lays us under nonecessity to involve ourselves in endless discussions of theSun-myths, of the connection between ox-horned Io and the sacredEgyptian cow Isis; of moral interpretations which vary with everystandpoint. The extent to which these _do_ vary is amusinglyillustrated in an interpretation of the true significance ofPrometheus, which I recently happened to light upon, made by a certainMr. Newton, who published an elaborate work a few years ago in defenceof the strictly vegetable diet. Mr. Newton would not have us misapplyfire to cookery; and in this line of thought he interprets the oldfable that Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was punished by beingchained to Caucasus with a vulture to gnaw his liver. The simple fact,says our vegetarian, is that "Prometheus first taught the use ofanimal food, and of fire with which to render it more pleasing, etc.,to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing theconsequences of the inventions" (these consequences being all mannerof gastric and other diseases which Newton attributes to the use ofanimal food), "were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devicesof the ... creature, and left him to experience the sad effects ofthem." In short, the chaining to a rock, with a vulture to gnaw hisliver, is simply a very satisfactory symbol for dyspepsia.

  Untroubled by these entanglements, which thus reach from Max Muller,with his Sun-wanderings, to the dyspeptic theory of our vegetarian;our present concern is less with what Aeschylus or his fable meant thanwith the frame of mind of the average man who sat in his audience, andwho listened to these matters with favor, who accepted this picture ofgods and men without rebellion. My argument is, that if this averageman's sense of personality had not been most feeble he could _not_have accepted this picture at all. Permit me, then, to specify threeor four of the larger features of it before we go on to contrast thetreatment of this fable by Aeschylus with that by Shelley and Taylor ina later age.

  In the first place, then, since we are mainly meditating upon thegrowth of human personality, I beg you to observe the complete lack ofall provision for such growth, either among the gods or the men ofthis presentation. Consider Hephaestus, for example, or Vulcan. Vulcanmay hammer away, immortal as he is, for a million aeons upon thethunderbolts of Jove; he may fashion and forge until he has exhaustedthe whole science and art of offensive and defensive armament; but howmuch better off is Vulcan for that? he can never step upon a higherplane,--he is to all eternity simply Vulcan, armorer to Jove. And soHermes or Mercury may carry messages eternally, but no more; hisfaculty and apparatus go to that end and no farther. But theselimitations are intolerable to the modern personality. The veryconception of personality seems to me to imply a conception of growth.If I do one thing to-day, another to-morrow, I am twice as muchto-morrow as I was to-day, by virtue of the new thing; or, even if Ido only the same thing to-morrow that I did to-day, I do iteasier,--that is, with a less expenditure of force, which leaves me alittle surplus; and by as much as this surplus (which I can apply tosomething else), I am more than I was yesterday. This "more"represents the growth which I said was implied in the very conceptionof personality, of the continuous individual.

  Now the feeling of all this appears to be just as completely asleep inAeschylus himself and in all his precedent old Greek theogonists as itis in the most witless boor who gazes open-mouthed at the giganticPrometheus. But if we here descend from the gods, to the men, of thispicture, we find Prometheus almost in terms asserting this absence ofpersonality among the men whom he taught which we have just found byimplication among the gods who tortured him.

  You will remember the lines I read from the first long speech ofPrometheus, in which he describes the utterly brutish, crawlingcave-dwellers to whom he communicated the first idea of every usefulart. The denial of all power in man himself, once he was created, oforiginating these inventions--that is, of growing--that is, ofpersonality--is complete.

  I find nothing so subtly and inconsolably mournful among all theexplicit miseries of the Greek mythology as this fixity of nature inthe god or the man, by which the being is suspended, as it were, at acertain point of growth, there to hang forever. And in this view thewhole multitudinous people, divine and human, of the whole Greekcyclics, seem to me as if sculptured in a half relief upon the blackmarble wall of their fate--in half relief because but half gods andhalf men, who in the lack of personality cannot grow, cannot move.

  When Keats stands regarding the figures sculptured upon the Grecianurn, it is only a cunning sign of the unspeakab
le misery of his ownlife that he finds the youth happy because though he can never succeedin his chase he can never fall any farther behind in it; to Keats'teased aspiration a certain sense of rest comes out of the very fixityof a man suspended in marble.

  "Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss Though winning near the goal! Yet do not grieve: She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss, Forever wilt thou love and she be fair."

  A true old Greek despair fills these lines with a sorrow which is allthe more penetrating when we hear it surging out from among the keenand energetic personalities of modern times,--personalities which willnot accept any youth's happiness of being howsoever near to his loveif that happiness be coupled with the condition that he is never to benearer,--personalities which find their whole summary in continuousgrowth, increase, movement.

  And if we remember that even when the condition of primal man is veryfar from the miserable state depicted by Prometheus, the case growsall the stronger of that Golden Age in which the antique imaginationtook great delight, not all unshared, it must be confessed, by latertimes, fails to please the modern personality. For example inChaucer's poem called _Aetas Prima_, that is, the first or Golden Age,we have the most engaging picture of man in a pre-Promethean time,drawn at a far different point of view from that of Prometheus in ourplay.

  How taking seems this simplicity:

  "A blisful lyfe, a peseable and so swete, Leddyn the peplis in the former age; Thei helde them paied with the frutes they ete, Wich that the feldes gafe them by usage;

  Thei etyn most hawys and such pownage And dronken watyr of the colde welle.

  Yet was the ground not woundyd with the plough, But corne upsprange onsowe of mannes hand;

  No man yit knew the furous of hys land: No man yit fier owt of the flynt fand.

  No flesche ne wyst offence of hegge or spere; No coyne ne knew man whiche was false or trewe: No shyppe yit karfe the wawys grene and blewe: No marchand yit ne fet owtlandische ware.

  Yit were no palys chambris, ne no hallys; In cavys and in wodes soft and swete Sleptyn thys blessyd folk withowte wallys On grasse or levys in parfite joy and quiete.

  Unforgyd was the hauberke and the plate; The lambisshe pepyl, voyd of alle vice, Hadden noo fantasye to debate, But eche of hem wold oder well cheriche: No pride, none envy, none avarice, No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye, Humblesse, and pease, good fayth the emprise.

  Yit was not Jupiter the likerous, That first was fadyr of delicacye Come in thys world, ne Nembroth desirous To raygne hadde not made hys towrys hyghe. Alas! alas! now may men weep and crye, For in owre days is is not but covetyse, Doublenesse, treson, and envye, Poysonne, manslawtyr, mordre in sondri wyse."

  Surely this is all soothing and enchanting enough; one cannot escapethe amiable complacencies which breathe out from this placid scene;but what modern man would soberly agree to exchange a single moment ofthis keen, breezy, energetic, growing existence of ours for aMethusaleh's life in this golden land where nature does not offerenough resistance to educe manhood or to furnish material for art, andwhere there is absolutely no room, no chance, no need, no conceptionof this personality that if rightly felt makes the humblest life onelong enchantment of the possible. The modern personality confrontedwith these pictures, after the first glamour is gone, is much mindedto say, with the sharp-witted Glaucon, in Plato's _Republic_,according to Jowett: "after all, a state of simplicity is a city ofpigs."

  But secondly, the cumbrous apparatus of power with which Aeschyluspresents us in this play is a conception of people not acquainted withthat model of infinite compactness which every man finds in his own_ego_. Jove, instead of speaking a word and instantly seeing the deedresult, must rely first upon his two ministers, Might and Force, whoin the first scene of our play have hauled in the Titan Prometheus;these, however, do not suffice, but Hephaestus must be summoned inorder to nail him to the rocks; and Jove cannot even learn whether ornot his prisoner is repentant until Hermes, the messenger, visitsPrometheus and returns. The modern _ego_ which, though oneindivisible, impalpable unit, yet remembers, reasons, imagines, loves,hates, fears and does a thousand more things all within its littlescope, without appliances or external apparatus--such an _ego_ regardssuch a Jove much in the light of that old Spanish monarch in whosecourt various duties were so minutely distributed and punctiliouslydischarged, that upon a certain occasion (as is related), the monarchbeing seated too near the fire, and the proper functionary forremoving him being out of call, his majesty was roasted to death inthe presence of the entire royal household.

  And as the third feature of the unpersonality revealed in this play,consider the fact that it is impossible for the modern reader to findhimself at all properly terror-stricken by the purely physicalparaphernalia of thunder, of storms, of chains, of sharp bolts, andthe like, which constitute the whole resources of Jove for thepunishment of Prometheus.

  The modern direct way of looking at things--the perfectly naturaloutcome of habit of every man's dealing with a thing for himself andof first necessarily looking to see what the thing actually is--thisdirectness of vision cannot help seeing that Prometheus is a god,that he is immortal, that thunder cannot kill him, that the boltthrough his breast makes no wound, but will repair itself with ease,that he not only knows all this, but knows further that it is to end(as Prometheus himself declares in the play), in his own triumph.Under these circumstances the whole array of whirlwinds and lightningsbecome a mere pin-scratch; the whole business is a matter of thatpurely physical pain which every man is ashamed to make a noise of. Wecan conceive a mere man fronting all these terrors of storm andthunder with unbowed head and serene countenance, in the consciousnessthat the whitest of these lightnings cannot singe an eyelash of hisimmortal personality; how, then, can it be expected that we shall begreatly impressed with the endurance of these ills by a god to whosegreater resistive endowment the whole system of this grossthrust-and-smite of iron and fire is no more than the momentary teaseof a gnat! To the audience of Aeschylus, not so; they shiver and groan;they know not themselves.

  I do not know how I can better show the grossness of this conceptionof pain than by opposing to it a subtile modern conception thereofwhose contrast will fairly open out before us the truly prodigiousgulf between the average personality of the time of Aeschylus and thatof ourselves. The modern conception, I refer to is Keats' Ode onMelancholy; which, indeed, if one may say a word _obiter_, out of thefullness of one's heart--I am often inclined to think for all-in-all,that is, for thoughts most mortally compacted, for words which comeforth, each trembling and giving off light like a morning-star, andfor the pure beauty of the spirit and strength and height of thespirit,--which, I say, for all-in-all, I am often inclined to think,reaches the highest height yet touched in the lyric line.

  ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

  No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By night-shade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

  But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave, Or in the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

  She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turn
ing to poison while the bee-moth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.