Whatsoever the Eternal Master bids me speak, that I speak. What though I am the thorn, and the Loved the rose of the garden,- 'Tis the hand which fosters me,-'tis from that I grow. Oh friends, reproach me not, heart-broken and bewildered; I bear a jewel with me, and I seek one who knows its worth. What though these patched derwish-rags suit ill with the rose-red wine,— Blame me not, for I wash from them all stain of hypocrisy. 1 The human body. 2 This alludes to the manner in which parrots are taught to speak in the East; a looking-glass is placed before the cage, and a man speaks behind the glass, to make the parrot believe that it is a parrot which speaks. Oh from a far other source are the lover's smiles and tears;1 I sing in the night, and at morning-tide I weep. 'Oh Hafiz,' said the teacher, 'smell not of the tavern-door ;' 'Blame me not,' I answered; 'I smell of the musk of Khoten."" XII. "The dust of this body of mine is the veil of the face of the soul; Oh welcome the hour when I shall throw the veil from that face! Ill befits such a cage a sweet singer like' me; I will haste away to the rose-bower of Paradise, for I am a bird of that garden. I know not whither I have come, nor where I was; Ah, woe is me,-I am ignorant of mine own concerns. How shall I make the circuit of the heavenly world's expanse, I who am cabined here in this cell of clay ? My proper dwelling-place and home is the palace of the houris; Why then do I sojourn in the street of the tavern-revellers? Look not at my mantle, with its golden fringe like the taper's; For underneath that mantle burns a hidden fire. Oh come and sweep away the very existence of Háfiz, That in thy presence none may hear of me, that I am at all." 1 Cf. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair." A CURIOUS PRODUCT. I AM a child of the times, and am sorry to be unable to congratulate my Parent. It is not that I am at all disreputable. My vices entitle me to no distinction. To begin by doing justice, I am perfectly free from vanity and may therefore be the more easily believed when I say that probably few men being bachelors and under thirty are better loved and befriended than I am. The number of persons who take a warm interest in me is astonishing and troublesome. There are homes where, unless dissimulation be carried to the height of genius, I am always a welcome guest, and am, on entering, affectionately greeted by old and young, mistress and maid. The fathers and mothers look upon me as a young man who has been well brought up, and who, though not precisely the product his education might have been expected to yield, is yet nevertheless, in a season of doubts and perplexities, a person worthy of commendation. As for the daughters of the house, I am not aware that I flutter their susceptibilities, and should think it unlikely, because in the first place I studiously avoid attempting to do so, and in the second place I am not too disposed to believe that they have any susceptibilities to flutter; but I more than pass with them, for I can quote poetry to those who like to listen to good poetry well quoted, and there are a few who do; I can pretend to talk philosophy to those who pretend to like philosophy, and they are many; and though I can't talk religion, yet I can listen very contentedly to it; and if a lady is High Church, and is doing battle with some person more enthusiastic than I am, I can quietly, and without binding myself in any way, come to the fair combatant's rescue, whenever sore pressed, with a sentence from Dr. Newman, or a line from Faber, and be re warded with a grateful smile; whilst, again, if the lady be more Genevan in her faith, my memory is equally well stored with the sayings of divines and hymn-writers who have grasped with an enviable tenacity the simple and grand doctrines of Calvin and his successors. For the sons of the house, when I say that I smoke, and am not at all scrupulous about what sort of stories I hear and tell, it will be at once understood how perfect is my sympathy with them. But in the meantime, what of myself? Am I as easily satisfied? I can't say I am dissatisfied, that is such a very strong word; but I may say that I am often very much provoked. It would be annoying for a cold man to gaze steadfastly into a blazing fire and yet remain chill. It is provoking to be able nicely to estimate and accurately to appreciate emotions, affections, martyrdoms, heroisms, to perceive the force which naturally belongs to certain feelings and convictions, and yet to remain cool, impassive, and inert. Would to God that I could stir myself up to believe in any of them; and yet as I write this I blush. I have used a passionate imprecation, and yet my hand glides as calmly over the and my paper, heart beats as placidly within my breast as if I had just put down in my account-book the amount of my last week's washing-bill. This inertia, in a great measure, results from the fatal gift of sympathy unchecked by spiritual or moral pressure. It is all very well, indeed it is most delightful in matters of taste, to be able to say, as Charles Lamb does of style, that for him Jonathan Wild is not too coarse, nor Shaftesbury too elegant. Thank Heaven, I can say that too; but in matters of morals and religion this catholicity becomes serious. To find yourself extending the same degree of sympathy to, say, both the Newmansto read, in the course of one summer's day, and with the same unfeigned delight, Liddon and Martineau-to stroll out into the woods and meadows, careless whether it is Keble or Matthew Arnold you have slipped into your pocket-this, too, is a very delightful catholicity, but I am not sure that I ought to thank Heaven for it. I wonder how often in the course of a year Dr. Johnson's saying to Sir Joshua is quoted-" I love a good hater." That it should be so often quoted is a proof that the Doctor's feeling is largely shared by his countrymen. I am sure I share it, and nobody can accuse me of self-love in doing so― for I hate nobody. I haven't brought myself to this painful state without a hard struggle. For a long time I made myself very happy in the thought that I hated Professor Huxley. How carefully I nursed my wrath! By dint of never speaking of the Professor, except in terms of the strongest opprobrium, and never reading a word he had ever written, I kept the happy delusion alive for several years. I had at times, it is true, an uneasy suspicion that it was all nonsense; but I was so conscious how necessary it was to my happiness that I should hate somebody, that I always resolutely suppressed the rising doubt in an ocean of superlatives expressive of the supposed qualities of this mischievous Professor. But one day, in a luckless hour, I opened a magazine at haphazard, and began in a listless fashion to read an article about I knew not what, and written by I knew not whom, and speedily grew interested in it. The style was so lucid and urbane, the diction so vigorous and expressive, the tone so free from exaggeration and extravagance, and the substance so far from uninteresting, that my fated sympathies began to swell up, and when half-way down the next column I saw awaiting me one of my favourite quotations from Goethe, I mentally embraced the author and hastily turned to the end to see what favoured man was writing so well, and there, lo and behold! was appended the name of the only man I had ever hated. Of course the illusion could not be put together again, and the chair once filled by the learned Professor stands empty. The other day I made an effort to raise Archbishop Manning to it. He has not the playful humour, the exquisite urbanity of the great modern Pervert, but I have heard him preach, he has the accents of sincerity and conviction, and represents what I believe to be in a great degree indestructible on this earth. Failing the Archbishop, the name of Fitzjames Stephen occurred to me, but as he himself has told us, he has so many claims to distinction that it would be a shame to hate him; and, after all, I am nearer his position by many a mile than I am to the Archbishop's, and so in despair I have given up the attempt of finding a successor to Professor Huxley, and repeat that, poor limping Christian as I am, I hate nobody. Why not read your Carlyle? it will be indignantly asked. Is not "Sartor Resartus" upon your shelves? Why, bless me ! hear the man talk! Carlyle is my favourite prose author. I have all his books, in the nice old editions, round about me, and not only have read them all, but am constantly reading them. You won't outdo me in my admiration for the old man. I think his address to the Scotch students, if bound up within the covers of the New Testament would not be the least effective piece of writing there. Carlyle has long taught me this-to lay no flattering unction to my soul, and to go about my business. He has tried to do more than this, and at times I have almost thought he has done more, but it is not for man to beget a faith. Carlyle has planted, he has digged, he has watered, but there has been no one to give the increase. He has taught us, like the Greek Tragic Poets, "moral prudence," and to behave ourselves decently and after a dignified fashion between Two eternities, and for a time I thought I had learnt the lesson, but I am at present a good deal agitated by a dangerous symptom and a painful problem. The dangerous symptom is that nothing pains me. I don't mean physically or aesthetically, for I am very sensitive in both those quarters, but morally. There was a time when I did draw a line with my jokes and stories, never a very steady line, but still a line, I now disport myself at large, and a joke-if good qua joke-causes me to shake my sides, even though it outrages religion, which I believe to be indestructible on this earth, and morality, which I believe to be essential to our well-being upon it. The painful problem arises in connection with quite another subject. AlAlthough not in love, I have some idea of prosecuting a little suit of mine in a certain direction, and have to own that at odd hours and spare seasons, when my thoughts are left to follow their own bent I find them dwelling upon, lingering over, returning to, a face, which though no artist on beholding, would be led to exclaim "A face to lose youth for, occupy age With the dream of, meet death with," is yet in my opinion, a very pleasant and companionable face, one well suited to spend life with, which is after all what you want a wife for. This is not the painful problem-that comes on a step later. Supposing I was married, and blessed, as after most all men are, with children, how on earth shall I educate them to keep them out of Newgate? "Bolts and shackles !" as Sir Toby Belch exclaimed-the thought is bewildering. If I, educated on Watts's Hymns and the New Testament, am yet so hazy on moral points and distinctions, which can hardly be described as nice, such as paying my bills, using profane language, going to Church, and the like, my son, brought up on Walter Scott and George Eliot, and the writers of his own day, will surely never pay his bills at all, his oaths will be atrocious, and he will die incapable of telling the nave from the transept-and how I am to teach him better I really do not see. The old régime was particularly strong on this point; and if one could only bring one's conscience to it, the difficulty is at an end, and the education of children, so long at any rate as they are in the nursery or the schoolroom, goes forward quite easily and naturally. If anybody has had the patience to wade so far in my company, he will probably here exclaim, "My dear sir, you must have been abominably educated yourself;" and though I don't altogether deny the statement, I can't allow it to pass unchallenged. I remember at school a boy, whom it happened to be the fashion of the day to torment, bearing with a wonderful patience the jeers and witticisms of half a score of his companions, until one of them made some remark, boldly reflecting upon the character of the boy's father, whereupon he at once, clenching his puny fist, bravely advanced upon the last speaker, exclaiming, "You may insult me as much as you like, but you shan't insult my parents." So, in my case, you may call me as many hard names as you like, but you mustn't blame anybody else, but the Timespirit-if the Time-spirit is a body(and really, body or no body, it is the fashion now to speak of it as if it were the most potent of beings, dwelling far above argument or analogy). I had what is called every advantage. Religion was presented to me in its most pleasing aspect, living illustrations of its power and virtuous effects moved around me, my taste was carefully guarded from vitiating influences. Our house was crowded with books, all of which were left open to us, because there were none that could harm us; money, which was far from plentiful, was lavished on education and books, and on these alone. How on earth did the Time-spirit enter into that happy Christian home? Had it not done so, I might now have been living in the Eden of Belief, and spending my days "bottling moonshine," like the rest of my brethren. But enter it did, and from almost the very first it subtly mixed itself with all spiritual observances, which, though it did not then venture to attack, it yet awaited to 262 And yet I have advantages over some money a necessary condition to my hap- O NOBLE heart! full heavy on thee lay Life's grievous burden; for thy soul was fair, For freedom found a varnished slavery, Falsehood for truth, and seeming for to be. Yet didst thou struggle on, though worn with care, In darkness, yet still bent the way to see. Of this world's "uses"; where the mean-souled cease J. W. HALES. |