While minds of
the lower order acquire from novel-reading a cultivation which
they previously lacked, the higher seem proportionately to sink.
the lower order acquire from novel-reading a cultivation which
they previously lacked, the higher seem proportionately to sink.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v12 - Gre to Hen
His letters to his family, gen-
uine as his love for them was, are stilted and unnatural in tone.
It was easy for the wits of his day to jest at his affectation, his
pompous gait, the dramatic appearance which he made on great
debates with his limbs swathed in flannel and his crutch by his
side. Early in life Walpole sneered at him for bringing into the
House of Commons "the gestures and emotions of the stage. "
## p. 6679 (#55) ############################################
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
6679
But the classes to whom Pitt appealed were classes not easily
offended by faults of taste, and saw nothing to laugh at in the
statesman who was borne into the lobby amidst the tortures of
the gout, or carried into the House of Lords to breathe his last
in a protest against national dishonor.
Above all, Pitt wielded the strength of a resistless eloquence.
The power of political speech had been revealed in the stormy.
debates of the Long Parliament, but it was cramped in its utter-
ance by the legal and theological pedantry of the time. Pedantry
was flung off by the age of the Revolution; but in the eloquence
of Somers and his rivals we see ability rather than genius,
knowledge, clearness of expression, precision of thought, the
lucidity of the pleader or the man of business, rather than the
passion of the orator. Of this clearness of statement Pitt had
little or none. He was no ready debater like Walpole, no speaker
of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set speeches were always
his worst, for in these his want of taste, his love of effect, his
trite quotations and extravagant metaphors came at once to the
front. That with defects like these he stood far above every
orator of his time was due above all to his profound conviction,
to the earnestness and sincerity with which he spoke. "I must
sit still," he whispered once to a friend; "for when once I am
up everything that is in my mind comes out. " But the reality of
his eloquence was transfigured by a large and poetic imagination,
an imagination so strong that -as he said himself - "most things.
returned to him with stronger force the second time than the
first, and by a glow of passion which not only raised him high
above the men of his own day, but set him in the front rank
among the orators of the world. The cool reasoning, the wit,
the common-sense of his age made way for a splendid audacity,
a sympathy with popular emotion, a sustained grandeur, a lofty
vehemence, a command over the whole range of human feeling.
He passed without an effort from the most solemn appeal to the
gayest raillery, from the keenest sarcasm to the tenderest pathos.
Every word was driven home by the grand self-consciousness of
the speaker. He spoke always as one having authority. He was
in fact the first English orator whose words were a power,—a
power not over Parliament only, but over the nation at large.
Parliamentary reporting was as yet unknown, and it was only in
detached phrases and half-remembered outbursts that the voice
of Pitt reached beyond the walls of St. Stephen's. But it was
»
## p. 6680 (#56) ############################################
6680
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
especially in these sudden outbursts of inspiration, in these brief
passionate appeals, that the might of his eloquence lay. The few
broken words we have of him stir the same thrill in men of our
day which they stirred in the men of his own.
ATTEMPT ON THE FIVE MEMBERS: PREPARATIONS FOR WAR
From History of the English People'
THE
HE brawls of the two parties, who gave each other the nick-
names of "Roundheads" and "Cavaliers," created fresh
alarm in the Parliament; but Charles persisted in refusing
it a guard. "On the honor of a King," he engaged to defend
them from violence as completely as his own children; but the
answer had hardly been given when his Attorney appeared at
the bar of the Lords and accused Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Strode,
and Haselrig of high treason in their correspondence with the
Scots. A herald-at-arms appeared at the bar of the Commons,
and demanded the surrender of the five members. If Charles
believed himself to be within legal forms, the Commons saw a
mere act of arbitrary violence in a charge which proceeded per-
sonally from the King, which set aside the most cherished privi-
leges of Parliament, and summoned the accused before a tribunal
which had no pretense to a jurisdiction over them. The Com-
mons simply promised to take the demand into consideration, and
again requested a guard. "I will reply to-morrow," said the King.
On the morrow he summoned the gentlemen who clustered
round Whitehall to follow him, and embracing the Queen, prom-
ised her that in an hour he would return master of his kingdom.
A mob of Cavaliers joined him as he left the palace, and remained
in Westminster Hall as Charles, accompanied by his nephew the
Elector Palatine, entered the House of Commons. "Mr. Speaker,"
he said, "I must for a time borrow your chair! "
He paused
with a sudden confusion as his eye fell on the vacant spot where
Pym commonly sate; for at the news of his approach the House
had ordered the five members to withdraw. "Gentlemen," he
began in slow broken sentences, "I am sorry for this occasion of
coming unto you. Yesterday I sent a Sergeant-at-arms upon a
very important occasion, to apprehend some that by my com-
mand were accused of high treason, whereunto I did expect
obedience, and not a message. " Treason, he went on, had no
## p. 6681 (#57) ############################################
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
6681
privilege, "and therefore I am come to know if any of these
persons that were accused are here. " There was a dead silence,
only broken by his reiterated "I must have them, wheresoever I
find them. " He again paused, but the stillness was unbroken.
Then he called out, "Is Mr. Pym here? " There was no answer;
and Charles, turning to the Speaker, asked him whether the five
members were there. Lenthall fell on his knees: "I have neither
eyes to see," he replied, "nor tongue to speak, in this place, but
as this House is pleased to direct me. " "Well, well," Charles
angrily retorted, "'tis no matter. I think my eyes are as good
as another's! " There was another long pause, while he looked
carefully over the ranks of members. "I see," he said at last,
"all the birds are flown. I do expect you will send them to me
as soon as they return hither. " If they did not, he added, he
would seek them himself; and with a closing protest that he
never intended any force, "he went out of the House," says an
eye-witness, "in a more discontented and angry passion than he
came in. "
Nothing but the absence of the five members, and the calm
dignity of the Commons, had prevented the King's outrage from
ending in bloodshed.
Five hundred gentlemen of the best
blood in England would hardly have stood tamely by while the
bravoes of Whitehall laid hands on their leaders in the midst
of the Parliament. . . The five members had taken refuge
in the City, and it was there that on the next day the King him-
self demanded their surrender from the aldermen at Guildhall.
Cries of "Privilege" rang round him as he returned through the
streets; the writs issued for the arrest of the five were disre-
garded by the Sheriffs, and a proclamation issued four days
later, declaring them traitors, passed without notice. Terror
drove the Cavaliers from Whitehall, and Charles stood absolutely
alone; for the outrage had severed him for the moment from his
new friends in the Parliament and from the ministers, Falkland
and Colepepper, whom he had chosen among them. But lonely
as he was, Charles had resolved on war. The Earl of Newcastle
was dispatched to muster a royal force in the North; and on the
tenth of January, news that the five members were about to
return in triumph to Westminster drove Charles from Whitehall.
He retired to Hampton Court and to Windsor, while the Trained
Bands of London and Southwark on foot, and the London water-
men on the river, all sworn "to guard the Parliament, the King-
dom, and the King," escorted Pym and his fellow-members along
·
## p. 6682 (#58) ############################################
6682
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
the Thames to the House of Commons. Both sides prepared for
the coming struggle. The Queen sailed from Dover with the
Crown jewels to buy munitions of war. The Cavaliers again
gathered round the King, and the royalist press flooded the
country with State papers drawn up by Hyde. On the other
hand, the Commons resolved by vote to secure the great arse-
nals of the kingdom,- Hull, Portsmouth, and the Tower; while
mounted processions of freeholders from Buckinghamshire and
Kent traversed London on their way to St. Stephen's, vowing to
live and die with the Parliament.
The great point, however, was to secure armed support from
the nation at large; and here both sides were in a difficulty. Pre-
vious to the innovations introduced by the Tudors, and which had
been already questioned by the Commons in a debate on press-
ing soldiers, the King in himself had no power of calling on his
subjects generally to bear arms, save for purposes of restoring
order or meeting foreign invasion. On the other hand, no one
contended that such a power had ever been exercised by the two
Houses without the King; and Charles steadily refused to con-
sent to a Militia bill, in which the command of the national force
was given in every county to men devoted to the Parliamentary
cause. Both parties therefore broke through constitutional prece-
dent: the Parliament in appointing the Lord-Lieutenants who
commanded the Militia by ordinance of the two Houses, Charles
in levying forces by royal commissions of array. The King's
great difficulty lay in procuring arms; and on the twenty-third
of April he suddenly appeared before Hull, the magazine of the
North, and demanded admission. The new governor, Sir John
Hotham, fell on his knees, but refused to open the gates; and
the avowal of his act by the Parliament was followed by the
withdrawal of the royalist party among its members from their
seats at Westminster.
The two Houses gained in unity
and vigor by the withdrawal of the royalists. The militia was
rapidly enrolled, Lord Warwick named to the command of the
fleet, and a loan opened in the City, to which the women brought
even their wedding-rings. The tone of the two Houses had risen
with the threat of force: and their last proposals demanded the
powers of appointing and dismissing the royal ministers, naming
guardians for the royal children, and of virtually controlling mili-
tary, civil, and religious affairs. "If I granted your demands,"
replied Charles, "I should be no more than the mere phantom of
a king. "
## p. 6683 (#59) ############################################
6683
THOMAS HILL GREEN
(1836-1882)
NE of the most interesting phases of thought in the second
half of the nineteenth century is that known as the Neo-
Hegelian movement in England. Certain English students
of the deeper problems of life, dissatisfied with the prevailing phi-
losophies in their own country, turned to Germany for light and
believed that they found it in the philosophy of Kant, as modified
and supplemented by Hegel. Among the leaders of the movement
were J. W. Stirling, the brothers John and Edward Caird, and Will-
iam Wallace, all of whom have helped to make Hegel's doctrine
known to English and American students; but the most prominent
and influential of the group was the subject of this sketch, Thomas
Hill Green.
Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, on the 7th of April, 1836,
and was the youngest of four children. His mother died in his
infancy, and the children were left to be cared for and educated by
their father. In 1850, when he was fourteen, Thomas went to Rugby,
where he did not shine as a scholar, being uninterested in his studies
and lagging behind his class. In 1855 he entered Balliol College,
Oxford, and came fortunately under the teaching of Benjamin Jowett,
who succeeded in rousing his latent energies. He became interested
in history and philosophy, and in 1860 was elected a Fellow of Balliol,
beginning his career as a teacher by lecturing on ancient and modern
history. Two years later he gained the Chancellor's prize for an
essay on 'The Value and Influence of Works of Fiction. ' In 1864 he
lectured before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on The Eng-
lish Commonwealth,' a favorite subject which he treated with much
ability.
The course of his philosophic studies is not known, nor at what
time he became acquainted with Hegel's works, which were destined
to have so great an influence on his opinions and life. But after
lecturing for a short time on history he began to teach philosophy,
which he had come to recognize as the true field of his life work.
For a time, indeed, he had hesitated in the choice of a profession.
Changes in his religious views prevented him from following his
father's example and entering the ministry; and notwithstanding his
interest in public affairs, he seems to have had no inclination toward
## p. 6684 (#60) ############################################
6684
THOMAS HILL GREEN
journalism. But in teaching philosophy he found a congenial occu-
pation which made him pecuniarily independent. For many years,
however, his position at Oxford was that of a tutor only, and it was
not until 1878 that his abilities received adequate recognition in his
appointment as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy.
In 1871 he had married Charlotte Symonds, daughter of Dr.
Symonds of Clifton and sister of John Addington Symonds, one of
Green's oldest friends. Whether she was interested in his philosoph-
ical work or not, she shared his sympathy with the poor, and devoted
herself largely to their cause. Only seven years of married life,
however, were granted to Green, and only four years in his profess-
orship; for on March 26th, 1882, after a brief illness, he died.
His biographer, Mr. Nettleship, gives many interesting reminis
cences of this fine thinker. Ordinarily very undemonstrative, he was
capable of strong affection, and whenever he broke through his
reserve was a delightful companion. He had a true love for social
equality and a high sense of the dignity of simple human nature;
and he hoped, he said, for a condition of English society in which
all honest citizens would recognize themselves and be recognized by
each other as gentlemen. "We hold fast," he wrote, "to the faith
that the cultivation of the masses, which has for the present super-
seded the development of the individual, will in its maturity produce
some higher type even of individual manhood than any which the
Old World has known. " With such sentiments he was naturally a
radical in politics; and so far as his professional duties permitted, he
took an active part in political discussion. He declared his political
aim to be "the removal of all obstructions which the law can remove
to the free development of English citizens. " He was a warm friend
of the American Union during the Civil War, and a sympathizer
with liberal movements throughout the world. He was pledged also
to the advancement of popular education, and labored especially, like
Matthew Arnold, for the better education of the middle classes. Tak-
ing him all in all, he stands for the most noble and thoughtful type
of modern citizen, devoted to the pursuit of truth and to the highest
interests of his fellow-man.
Of Green's writings only a small portion were published during
his lifetime; the most important being perhaps the two introductory
essays prepared for the complete edition of Hume edited by him-
self and T. H. Grose in 1874. His principal ethical work, the 'Prole-
gomena to Ethics,' appeared in 1883 under the editorship of his
friend A. C. Bradley; and all his writings except the 'Prolegomena '
were issued a few years later in three volumes, edited with a mem-
oir by R. L. Nettleship. In literary form, his essays display his
most finished work, his philosophical papers being often obscure from
## p. 6685 (#61) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6685
overcrowding of the thought. The main outlines of his ideas and
the leading principles of his philosophy are, however, unmistakable.
"Philosophy was to him," says Mr. Nettleship, "the medium in which
the theoretic impulse, the impulse to see and feel things more clearly
and intensely than every-day life allows, found its most congenial sat-
isfaction. The strength, the repose, the mental purgation which come
to some men through artistic imagination or religious emotion, came
to him through thinking. " From Kant, Green took his theory of
knowledge, according to which substance and cause, and all the re-
lations that subsist between things, are mental creations; while the
material world, which to most men appears so substantial, has no
real existence. From Hegel he took the doctrine of pantheism, which
formed the metaphysical basis of his ethics and his religion. Accord-
ing to this view our minds are only manifestations of God; or as
he otherwise expresses it, the Divine spirit reproduces itself in the
human spirit, while the material world exists only for thought. In
ethics also he was indebted to Hegel, holding with him that the ulti-
mate end of moral action is the self-realization or self-perfection of
the individual a theory not easily reconcilable with Green's political
views nor with his ardent interest in social reforms.
―
The best expression of his doctrines is found in the Prolegomena
to Ethics, his ablest constructive work; which, though mainly de-
voted to the discussion of ethical subjects, contains several chapters
on the metaphysical questions with which ethics is so closely con-
nected. His ethical instructions are the most valuable, not only in
the 'Prolegomena,' but in certain of the essays and in the 'Lectures
on the Principles of Political Obligation. ' If he impresses the impar-
tial critic as an able and earnest inquirer, whose system of philoso-
phy is incomplete, yet the world has reason to be grateful to so
honest and brave a thinker; for Green's writings must long remain
suggestive and stimulating in a high degree.
THE SCOPE OF THE NOVELIST
From the Essay on the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction'
HE novelist not only works on more various elements, he ap-
peals to more ordinary minds than the poet. This indeed
is the strongest practical proof of his essential inferiority as
an artist. All who are capable of an interest in incidents of life.
which do not affect themselves, may feel the same interest more
keenly in a novel; but to those only who can lift the curtain
does a poem speak intelligibly. It is the twofold characteristic,
## p. 6686 (#62) ############################################
6686
THOMAS HILL GREEN
of universal intelligibility and indiscriminate adoption of mate-
rials, that gives the novel its place as the great reformer and
leveler of our time. Reforming and leveling are indeed more
closely allied than we are commonly disposed to admit. Social
abuses are nearly always the result of defective organization.
The demarcations of family, of territory, or of class, prevent the
proper fusion of parts into the whole. The work of the reformer
progresses as the social force is brought to bear more and more
fully on classes and individuals, merging distinctions of privilege
and position in the one social organism. The novel is one of
the main agencies through which this force acts. It gathers up
manifold experiences, corresponding to manifold situations of life;
and subordinating each to the whole, gives to every particular
situation a new character as qualified by all the rest. Every
good novel, therefore, does something to check what may be
called the despotism of situations; to prevent that ossification
into prejudices arising from situation, to which all feel a tend-
ency. The general novel-literature of any age may be regarded
as an assertion by mankind at large in its then development, of
its claims as against the influence of class and position; whether
that influence appear in the form of positive social injustice, of
oppressive custom, or simply of deficient sympathy.
To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large
powers of sympathetic observation. He must have an eye for
the "humanities" which underlie the estranging barriers of social
demarcation, and in relation to which the influence of those bar-
riers can alone be rightly appreciated. We have already spoken
of that acquiescence in the dominion of circumstance to which we
are all too ready to give way, and which exclusive novel-reading
tends to foster. The circumstances, however, whose rule we rec-
ognize, are apt to be merely our own or those of our class. We
are blind to other "idola" than those of our own cave; we do
not understand that the feelings which betray us into "indiscre-
tions" may, when differently modified by a different situation,
lead others to game-stealing or trade outrages. From this nar-
rowness of view the novelist may do much to deliver us. The
variations of feeling and action with those of circumstance, and
the essential human identity which these variations cannot touch,
are his special province. He shows us that crime does not always
imply sin, that a social heresy may be the assertion of a native
right, that an offense which leads to conventional outlawry may
## p. 6687 (#63) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6687
be merely the rebellion of a generous nature against conventional
tyranny.
Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much. Though
he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at least gives a
more adequate conception of its surface. Though he cannot raise.
us to a point of view from which circumstances appear subordi-
nate to spiritual laws, he yet saves us from being blinded, if not
from being influenced, by the circumstances of our own position.
Though we cannot show the prisoners the way of escape from
their earthly confinement, yet by breaking down the partitions
between the cells he enables them to combine their strength for
a better arrangement of the prison-house. The most wounding
social wrongs more often arise from ignorance than from malice,
from acquiescence in the opinion of a class rather than from
deliberate selfishness. The master cannot enter into the feelings
of a servant, nor the servant into those of his master. The mas-
ter cannot understand how any good quality can lead one to
"forget his station "; to the servant the spirit of management in
the master seems mere "driving. " This is only a sample of what
is going on, all society over. The relation between the higher
and lower classes becomes irritating and therefore injurious, not
from any conscious unfairness on either side, but simply from the
want of a common understanding; while at the same time every
class suffers within its own limits from the prevalence of habits
and ideas, under the authority of class convention, which could
not long maintain themselves if once placed in the light of gen-
eral opinion
Against this twofold oppression the novel, from its first estab-
lishment as a substantive branch of literature, has made vigorous
war. From Defoe to Kingsley, its history boasts of a noble army
of social reformers; yet the work which these writers have
achieved has had little to do with the morals-commonly value-
less, if not false and sentimental - which they have severally
believed themselves to convey. Defoe's notion of a moral seems
to have been the vulgar one that vice must be palpably punished
and virtue rewarded; he recommends his 'Moll Flanders' to the
reader on the ground that "there is not a wicked action in any
part of it but is first or last rendered unhappy or unfortunate. "
The moral of Fielding's novels, if moral it can be called, is sim-
ply the importance of that prudence which his heroes might have.
dispensed with but for the wildness of their animal license.
## p. 6688 (#64) ############################################
6688
THOMAS HILL GREEN
both Defoe and Fielding had a real lesson to teach mankind.
The thieves and harlots whom Defoe prides himself on punish-
ing, but whose adventures he describes with the minuteness of
affection, are what we ourselves might have been; and in their
histories we hear, if not the "music," yet the "harsh and grat-
ing" cry of suffering humanity. Fielding's merit is of the same
kind; but the sympathies which he excites are more general, as
his scenes are more varied, than those of Defoe. His coarseness
is everywhere redeemed by a genuine feeling for the contume-
lious buffets to which weakness is exposed. He has the practical
insight of Dickens and Thackeray, without their infusion of sen-
timent. He does not moralize over the contrast between the rich
man's law and the poor man's, over the "indifference" of rural
justice, over the lying and adultery of fashionable life. He sim-
ply makes us see the facts, which are everywhere under our
eyes, but too close to us for discernment. He shows society
where its sores lie, appealing from the judgment of the diseased
class itself to that public intelligence which, in spite of the
cynic's sneer on the task of "producing an honesty from the
combined action of knaves," has really power to override private
selfishness.
The same sermon has found many preachers since, the uncon-
scious missionaries being perhaps the greatest. Scott was a Tory
of the purest water. His mind was busy with the revival of a
pseudo-feudalism; no thought of reforming abuses probably ever
entered it. Yet his genial human insight made him a reformer
against his will. He who makes man better known to man takes
the first steps towards healing the wounds which man inflicts on
man. The permanent value of Scott's novels lies in his pictures
of the Scotch peasantry. He popularized the work which the
Lake poets had begun, of reopening the primary springs of
human passion. "Love he had found in huts where poor men
lie," and he announced the discovery; teaching the "world" of
English gentry what for a century and a half they had seemed
to forget, that the human soul, in its strength no less than in its
weakness, is independent of the accessories of fortune. He left
no equals, but the combined force of his successors has been
constantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done
more than the journalists to produce that improvement in the
organization of modern life which leads to the notion that because
social grievances are less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The
## p. 6689 (#65) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6689
novelist catches the cry of suffering before it has obtained the
strength or general recognition which are presupposed when
the newspaper becomes its mouthpiece. The miseries of the
marriage market had been told by Thackeray with almost weari-
some iteration, many years before they found utterance in the
columns of the Times.
It may indeed be truly said that after all, human selfishness
is much the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sym-
pathy; that riches and poverty have still their old estranging
influence. The novel, as has been shown, cannot give a new
birth to the spirit, or initiate the effort to transcend the separa-
tions of place and circumstance; but it is no small thing that it
should remove the barriers of ignorance and antipathy which
would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It at least brings
man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to see itself
as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympa-
thies thus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which op-
pression of any kind, whether of one class by another, or of
individuals by the tyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in
vain.
The novelist is a leveler also in another sense than that of
which we have already spoken. He helps to level intellects as
well as situations. He supplies a kind of literary food which the
weakest natures can assimilate as well as the strongest, and by
the consumption of which the former sort lose much of their
weakness and the latter much of their strength.
While minds of
the lower order acquire from novel-reading a cultivation which
they previously lacked, the higher seem proportionately to sink.
They lose that aspiring pride which arises from the sense of
walking in intellect on the necks of a subject crowd; they no
longer feel the bracing influence of living solely among the high-
est forms of art; they become conformed insensibly to the gen-
eral opinion which the new literature of the people creates. A
similar change is going on in every department of man's activity.
The history of thought in its artistic form is parallel to its
history in its other manifestation. The spirit descends, that it
may rise again; it penetrates more and more widely into matter,
that it may make the world more completely its own. Political
life seems no longer attractive, now that political ideas and
power are disseminated among the mass, and the reason is
recognized as belonging not to a ruling caste merely, but to all.
XII-419
Γ
## p. 6690 (#66) ############################################
6690
THOMAS HILL GREEN
A statesman in a political society resting on a substratum of
slavery, and admitting no limits to the province of government,
was a very different person from the modern servant of “a na-
tion of shopkeepers," whose best work is to save the pockets of
the poor.
It would seem as if man lost his nobleness when he
ceased to govern, and as if the equal rule of all was equivalent
to the rule of none. Yet we hold fast to the faith that the
"cultivation of the masses," which has for the present superseded
the development of the individual, will in its maturity produce
some higher type even of individual manhood than any which
the old world has known. We may rest on the same faith in
tracing the history of literature. In the novel we must admit
that the creative faculty has taken a lower form than it held in
the epic and the tragedy. But since in this form it acts on
more extensive material and reaches more men, we may well be-
lieve that this temporary declension is preparatory to some higher
development, when the poet shall idealize life without making
abstraction of any of its elements, and when the secret of exist-
ence, which he now speaks to the inward ear of a few, may be
proclaimed on the house-tops to the common intelligence of man-
kind.
## p. 6691 (#67) ############################################
6691
ROBERT GREENE
(1560-1592)
REENE was a true Elizabethan Englishman: impulsive, reck-
less, with a roving instinct that in many a life of that
restless age found a safe vent in adventure on the sea. But
with his gifts and failings, and the conditions in which his life was
cast, the ruin that overwhelmed him was the fate of many poets of
great mind and weak will. Yet with all his sin and weakness, there
were struggles toward a better life and nobler work which should
make our judgment lenient, remembering Burns's lines:-
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted. »
a
•
Greene was born about 1560 in Norwich, and belonged to a fam-
ily of good standing. That his father was a man of some wealth
may be inferred from Greene's tour to Italy and other countries,-
great expense in those days,- which he made after taking his B. A.
degree at Cambridge in 1578. In his 'Repentances' he shows that he
was affected by the vices of Italy, and became fixed in those disso-
lute habits that were his ruin. On his return he was engaged in
literary work at Cambridge, and took his M. A. degree from both
universities. He then went to London and became «< an author of
plays and penner of Love Pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in
that qualitie, that who for that trade growne so ordinary about Lon
don as Robin Greene. "
In 1585 he married, and apparently lived for a time in Norwich.
After the birth of a child he deserted his wife, because she tried to
persuade him from his bad habits. From that time he lived perma-
nently in London, where he seems to have had some influential
patrons. Among those to whom his works are dedicated we find the
names of Lord Derby, the Earl of Cumberland, Lady Talbot, and
Lord Fitzwater. He tells us that "in shorte space I fell into favor
with such as were of honorable and good calling. " Yet his restless
temper made such society irksome to him; and as there was then no
reputable literary Bohemia, such as arose later under Shakespeare
and Ben Jonson, he sank to the company of the lowest classes of
London. In spite of his dissipated life he was constantly at work,
and "his purse, like the sea, sometime sweld, anon like the same sea
## p. 6692 (#68) ############################################
6692
ROBERT GREENE
fell to a low ebbe; yet seldom he wanted, his labours were so well
esteemed. "
Not only did he write for the stage, but it is probable that he ap-
peared at times as an actor. At one time, when a gust of repent-
ance swept over him, he resolved to write no more love pamphlets,
and to devote himself to more serious writings. He then published
a series of tracts exposing the tricks of London swindlers, in "trust
that those my discourses will doe great good and bee very bene-
ficial to the Common wealth of England. " His 'Repentances' were
intended to warn young men by the unhappy example of his own
life. His career was cut short in 1592 by an illness resulting from
too much indulgence in Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. Deserted
by his friends, he died in extreme poverty at the house of a poor
shoemaker who had befriended him. Just before his death he wrote
to his forsaken wife this touching letter:-
Sweet Wife:
As ever there was any good-will or friendship betweene thee and mee, see
this bearer (my Host) satisfied of his debt: I owe him tenne pound, and but
for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wrongs done
unto thee, and Almighty God have mercie on my soule. Farewell till we
meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt never see me more.
This 2 of September 1592.
Written by thy dying husband
ROBERT GREENE.
Gabriel Harvey soon after published in his 'Foure Letters' a
virulent attack on Greene's character. That and Greene's confes-
sions, in which like many another he no doubt exaggerated his sins,
have given rise to a probably too harsh estimate of the poet's failings.
Of his numerous dramatic works but five have survived, all pub-
lished after his death: 'Orlando Furioso'; 'Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay'; 'James the Fourth'; Alphonsus, King of Aragon'; and
'George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield. ' 'A Looking-Glass for
London and England' was the joint work of Thomas Lodge and
Greene. Greene did for the romantic drama what Marlowe accom-
plished for tragedy, and his works form a noteworthy step in the
development of the old English drama. His most popular drama was
'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' in which he pictures Old English
life at Fussingfield, with a touching love story. His 'George-a-
Greene' has the best constructed plot of any of his plays; and in
the Pinner, a popular English hero like Robin Hood, he portrays an
ideal English yeoman, faithful, sturdy, and independent. Nash called
Greene the Homer of women; and it is remarkable that, dissolute as
he was, he has given the charm of modest womanhood to all his
female characters.
## p. 6693 (#69) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6693
Besides Greene's non-dramatic works there are four kinds: first,
the romantic pamphlets; second, the semi-patriotic tracts; third, the
Cony-Catching pamphlets; fourth, his 'Repentances. '
In his love pamphlets may be found traces of the beginnings of
the English novel. Several of the 'Repentances,' the 'Never Too
Late' and 'A Groatsworth of Wit,' are largely autobiographical.
Scattered through his romances are the many charming lyrics on
which his fame mainly rests. In several respects Greene was excep-
tionally in advance of his time: in the 'Pinner' he plainly acknowl-
edges popular rights, and in the 'Looking-Glass' is found a forecast
of coming disaster, resulting from the disorders of the times and the
oppression of the poor. Greene's peasants are portrayed with a sym-
pathetic realism most unusual at that time. He gives the "wise
humor of the low-born clown" as does none but Shakespeare, who
was no doubt indebted to Greene for the material of several of his
plays. 'The Winter's Tale' is founded on 'Pandosto' in all points
but Antigonus, Paulina, Autolycus, and the young shepherd. 'Lear'
has a strong likeness to the 'Looking-Glass'; 'Orlando' points to
'Lear' and 'Hamlet,' and the fairy framework of James IV. ' sug-
gests some features of 'Midsummer Night's Dream. ' Greene and the
university men of his set drew from the old chroniclers for their
dramas; but Shakespeare took whatever was at hand. His ignoring
of their rule, and his growing fame, were the probable cause of the
bitter feeling Greene shows in the address to his fellow dramatists
in the 'Groatsworth of Wit,' when he refers to Shakespeare as "an
upstart Crow beautified with our Feathers, that with his Tygres
heart, wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bom-
bast out a Blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute
Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceyt the onely Shake-scene in
the Countrey. "
Alexander Dyce edited Greene's plays and poems in 1831. Dr.
Grosart edited The Complete Works of Robert Greene' (1881-6) in
fifteen volumes, and A. W. Ward published Friar Bacon' in Old
English Drama' (1892). Both earlier editions contain memoirs; and
accounts are found in J. A. Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors
in English Drama,' and Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of
Shakespeare. '
Greene's writings give vivid pictures of life in the Elizabethan
age, and at the same time form a most interesting autobiography of
that "wrecked life. " Unlike Herrick, who could say that if his verse
were impure his life was chaste, Greene's writings show scarcely any
of the uncleanness so prevalent in books of that period.
## p. 6694 (#70) ############################################
6694
ROBERT GREENE
D
ECEIVING world, that with alluring toys
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorn,
And scornest now to lend thy fading joys
T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;
How well are they that die ere they be born,
And never see thy slights, which few men shun
Till unawares they helpless are undone!
DECEIVING WORLD
From A Groatsworth of Wit
Oft have I sung of love and of his fire;
But now I find that poet was advised,
Which made full feasts increasers of desire,
And proves weak love was with the poor despised;
For when the life with food is not sufficed,
What thoughts of love, what motion of delight,
What pleasance can proceed from such a wight?
Witness my want, the murderer of my wit;
My ravished sense, of wonted fury reft,
Wants such conceit as should in poems fit
Set down the sorrow wherein I am left:
But therefore have high heavens their gifts bereft,
Because so long they lent them me to use,
And I so long their bounty did abuse.
Oh that a year were granted me to live,
And for that year my former wits restored!
What rules of life, what counsel would I give,
How should my sin with sorrow be deplored!
But I must die, of every man abhorred:
Time loosely spent will not again be won;
My time is loosely spent, and I undone.
A"
THE SHEPHERD'S WIFE'S SONG
From The Mourning Garment ›
H, WHAT is love? It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king;
And sweeter too,
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown,
And cares can make the sweetest love to frown:
## p. 6695 (#71) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6695
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
His flocks are folded, he comes home at night,
As merry as a king in his delight;
And merrier too,
For kings bethink them what the State require,
Where shepherds careless carol by the fire:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat
His cream and curds, as doth the king his meat;
And blither too,
For kings have often fears when they do sup,
Where shepherds dread no poison in their cup:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound
As doth the king upon his beds of down;
More sounder too,
For cares cause kings full oft their sleep to spill,
Where weary shepherds lie and snort their fill:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
Thus with his wife he spends the year, as blithe
As doth the king at every tide or sith;
And blither too,
For kings have wars and broils to take in hand,
When shepherds laugh and love upon the land:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain ?
## p. 6696 (#72) ############################################
6696
ROBERT GREENE
DOWN THE VALLEY
From Never Too Late
D
OWN the valley 'gan he track,
Bag and bottle at his back,
In a surcoat all of gray;
Such wear palmers on the way,
When with scrip and staff they see
Jesus's grave on Calvary.
A hat of straw, like a swain,
Shelter for the sun and rain,
With a scallop-shell before;
Sandals on his feet he wore;
Legs were bare, arms unclad;
Such attire this Palmer had.
His face fair like Titan's shine;
Gray and buxom were his eyne,
Whereout dropt pearls of sorrow;
Such sweet tears love doth borrow,
When in outward dews she plains
Heart's distress that lovers pains;
Ruby lips, cherry cheeks;
Such rare mixture Venus seeks,
When to keep her damsels quiet
Beauty sets them down their diet.
Adon was not thought more fair:
Curled locks of amber hair,
Locks where love did sit and twine
Nets to snare the gazer's eyne.
Such a Palmer ne'er was seen,
'Less Love himself had palmer been.
Yet, for all he was so quaint,
Sorrow did his visage taint:
Midst the riches of his face,
Grief decyphered high disgrace.
Every step strained a tear;
Sudden sighs showed his fear;
And yet his fear by his sight
Ended in a strange delight;
That his passions did approve,
Weeds and sorrow were for love.
## p. 6697 (#73) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6697
PHILOMELA'S ODE
From Philomela'
SIT
ITTING by a river's side,
Where a silent stream did glide,
Muse I did of many things
That the mind in quiet brings.
I 'gan think how some men deem
Gold their god; and some esteem
Honor is the chief content
That to man in life is lent;
And some others do contend,
Quiet none, like to a friend;
Others hold there is no wealth
Compared to a perfect health;
Some man's mind in quiet stands,
When he is lord of many lands.
But I did sigh, and said all this
Was but a shade of perfect bliss;
And in my thoughts I did approve,
Naught so sweet as is true love.
SWEET ARE THE THOUGHTS
From Farewell to Folly'
SWE
WEET are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown:
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbors quiet rest;
The cottage that affords no pride nor care;
The mean that 'grees with country music best;
The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare;
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss:
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.
## p. 6698 (#74) ############################################
6698
ROBERT GREENE
SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD
From Menaphon›
EEP not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Mother's wag, pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy;
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changèd made him so,
When he left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.
W
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,
Like pearl drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one another's place supplies;
Thus he grieved in every part,
Tears of blood fell from his heart,
When he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
The wanton smiled, father wept,
Mother cried, baby leapt;
More he crowed, more we cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide:
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bless,
For he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
## p. 6699 (#75) ############################################
6699
GERALD GRIFFIN
(1803-1840)
(
NDER the words "Never Acted," and date October 23d, 1842,
the play Gisippus,' "by the late Gerald Griffin, author of
'The Collegians,'» was announced at Drury Lane Theatre,
London. Macready made money and fame out of the work, which
had lain for years in his reading-desk uncared-for, while the patient
poet scribbled his way along a life of little joy to an unnoted grave
in the burying-ground of the voluntary poor. The drama was Grif-
fin's first inspiration; and though he died untimely, the drama gives
him back the honor he bestowed. Chagrined and humiliated with
failure to get a hearing for his play of 'Aguire,' and sick from hope
deferred for 'Gisippus,' he wrote 'The Collegians,' so full of Irish
heart and love that its stage child 'The Colleen Bawn' has delighted
the souls of millions.
Born in Limerick December 12th, 1803, Gerald Griffin, when his
parents came to America to settle in northern Pennsylvania, chose
to go at seventeen years of age, with only the equipment of a home
education, to seek honors and fortune in the paths which led up to
the printing-house. John Banim's recent success had blazed out a new
trail in the stifling, starving jungle of book-making, and the youth
of Ireland was on fire to follow him. One of the sweetest memories
of Griffin's career is the delicacy and generosity of Banim's friendship
for the pale, shy, delicate boy from the distant Shannon-side, during
all the awful and lonely days of his early London residence. After
hovering under Banim's wing about the green-rooms of Covent Gar-
den and Drury Lane, until his sensitive nature could bear the torture
of well-bred and ill-concealed indifference no longer, Griffin made his
way to the office of one of the weekly periodicals with some sketches
of Irish peasant life.
The publication of these brought him to notice, but did not keep
him free from days and nights of enforced fasting. It was not until
1827 that he was able to publish a book. In that year appeared
'Holland-Tide' and the 'Tales of the Munster Festivals,' both to be
forever-treasured heart songs of Irishmen separated world-wide. The
Collegians, in 1828, was eagerly and unstintingly accorded the first.
place in the new order of literature, the sadly joyous romance of con-
temporary Ireland. Griffin now became well and safely established
## p. 6700 (#76) ############################################
6700
GERALD GRIFFIN
in London, easily compeer of the best writers of his race, and in all
affairs but those of pecuniary fortune a favored and envied man. A
nature filled with the instinct of devotion kept him safe from some
of the evils which rode the shoulders of too many of his fellow-
countrymen. In the midst of a scurrying and scoffing rout he kept
the heart of his boyhood innocent and unsullied.
Tired of the shows and shams of the world, in 1838 he asked and
obtained admission into the Society of the Christian Brothers in his
native city. A few days before he entered upon this resolution, he
was interrupted by his brother and biographer Dr. Griffin in the act
of destroying all his manuscripts. It had been his intention to make
a complete renunciation by leaving nothing to the world but his
published works. His brother was able to save but a few fragments
from the great quantity of half-destroyed stories, poems, and plays;
and these, with the earlier publications, were included in the only
collected edition of his works ever made, published in New York in
the decade of 1850.
Two years after he had assumed the habit and duty of a religious
Gerald Griffin died, after many days of patient illness, in the house of
his brothers in religion at Cork, Ireland, June 12th, 1840. His family,
living at Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, has given several distinguished
names to the literature and politics of our country.
HOW MYLES MURPHY IS HEARD ON BEHALF OF HIS PONIES
From The Collegians'
AT FALVEY, supposing that he had remained a sufficient time.
suspicion of any private
ing between him and Mr. Daly, now made his appearance
with luncheon. A collared head, cream cheese, honey, a decanter
of gooseberry wine, and some garden fruit, were speedily ar-
ranged on the table, and the visitors, no way loath, were pressed
to make a liberal use of the little banquet; for the time had not
yet gone by when people imagined that they could not display
their regard for a friend more effectually than by cramming him
up to the throat with food and strong drink. Kyrle Daly was in
the act of taking wine with Mrs. Chute, when he observed Fal-
vey stoop to his young mistress's ear, and whisper something
with a face of much seriousness.
"A boy wanting to speak to me? " said Miss Chute. "Has he
got letters? Let him send up his message. "
## p. 6701 (#77) ############################################
GERALD GRIFFIN
6701
"He says he must see yourself, miss. 'Tis in regard of some
ponies of his that were impounded be Mr. Dawley for trespassing
above here, last night. He hasn't the mains of releasing 'em,
poor craythur, an' he's far from home. I'm sure he's an honest
boy. He says he'd have a good friend in Mr. Cregan, if he
knew he was below. "
"Me? " said Mr. Cregan: "why, what's the fellow's name ? »
Myles Murphy, sir, from Killarney, westwards. "
"Oh, Myles-na-Coppaleen? Poor fellow, is he in tribulation?
We must have his ponies out by all means.
>>
"It requires more courage than I can always command," said
Miss Chute, "to revoke any command of Dawley's. He is an
old man, and whether that he was crossed in love, or from a
natural peevishness of disposition, he is such a morose creature
that I am quite afraid of him. But I will hear this Myles, at all
events. "
She was moving to the door, when her uncle's voice made
her turn.
"Stay, Anne," said Mr. Cregan; "let him come up. "Twill
be as good as a play to hear him and the steward pro and con.
Kyrle Daly here, who is intended for the bar, will be our
assessor, to decide on the points of law. I can tell you, Kyrle,
that Myles will give you a lesson in the art of pleading that
may be of use to you on circuit, at one time or another. "
Anne laughed and looked to Mrs. Chute, who with a smile
of tolerating condescension said, while she cleared with a silken
kerchief the glasses of her spectacles, "If your uncle desires it,
my love, I can see no objection. Those mountaineers are amus-
ing creatures. "
༥
Anne returned to her seat and the conversation proceeded,
while Falvey, with an air of great and perplexed importance,
went to summon Myles up-stairs.
"Mountaineers! " exclaimed Captain Gibson. "You call every
upland a mountain here in Ireland, and every one that lives out
of sight of the sea a mountaineer. "
"But this fellow is a genuine mountaineer," cried Mr. Cre-
gan, "with a cabin two thousand feet above the level of the sea.
If you are in the country next week, and will come down and
see us at the Lakes, along with our friends here, I promise to
show you as sturdy a race of mountaineers as any in Europe.
Doctor Leake can give you a history of 'em up to Noah's flood,
## p. 6702 (#78) ############################################
6702
GERALD GRIFFIN
some time when you're alone together when the country was
first peopled by one Parable, or Sparable. ”
"Paralon," said Dr. Leake; "Paralon, or Migdonia, as the Psalter
sings:
'On the fourteenth day, being Tuesday,
They brought their bold ships to anchor,
In the blue fair port, with beauteous shore,
Of well-defended Inver Sceine. '
>>
"In the rest of Munster, where -
"Yes; well, you'll see 'em all, as the doctor says, if you come
to Killarney," resumed Mr. Cregan, interrupting the latter, to
whose discourse a country residence, a national turn of character,
and a limited course of reading had given a tinge of pedantry;
and who was moreover a firm believer in all the ancient Shana-
chus, from the Yellow Book of Moling to the Black Book of
Molega. "And if you like to listen to him, he'll explain to you
every action that ever befell, on land or water, from Ross Castle
up to Carrigaline. "
Kyrle, who felt both surprise and concern at learning that
Miss Chute was leaving home so soon, and without having
thought it worth her while to make him aware of her intention,
was about to address her on the subject, when the clatter of a
pair of heavy and well-paved brogues on the small flight of stairs
in the lobby produced a sudden hush of expectation amongst
the company. They heard Pat Falvey urging some instructions
in a low and smothered tone, to which a strong and not unmusi-
cal voice replied, in that complaining accent which distinguishes
the dialect of the more western descendants of Heber: "Ah, lay
me alone, you foolish boy; do you think did I never speak to
quollity in my life before? »
The door opened, and the uncommissioned master of horse
made his appearance. His appearance was at once strikingly
majestic and prepossessing, and the natural ease and dignity with
which he entered the room might almost have become a peer
of the realm coming to solicit the interest of the family for an
electioneering candidate. A broad and sunny forehead, light and
wavy hair, a blue cheerful eye, a nose that in Persia might have
won him a throne, healthful cheeks, a mouth that was full of
character, and a well-knit and almost gigantic person, constituted
his external claims to attention, of which his lofty and confident
## p. 6703 (#79) ############################################
GERALD GRIFFIN
6703
although most unassuming carriage showed him to be in some
degree conscious. He wore a complete suit of brown frieze, with
a gay-colored cotton handkerchief around his neck, blue worsted
stockings, and brogues carefully greased; while he held in his
right hand an immaculate felt hat, the purchase of the preced-
ing day's fair. In the left he held a straight-handled whip and
a wooden rattle, which he used for the purpose of collecting his
ponies when they happened to straggle. An involuntary mur-
mur of admiration ran amongst the guests at his entrance. Dr.
Leake was heard to pronounce him a true Gadelian, and Captain
Gibson thought he would cut a splendid figure in a helmet and
cuirass, under one of the arches in the Horse Guards.
Before he had spoken, and while the door yet remained open,
Hyland Creagh roused Pincher with a chirping noise, and gave
him the well-known countersign of "Baithershin! "
Pincher waddled towards the door, raised himself on his
hind legs, closed it fast, and then trotted back to his master's
feet, followed by the staring and bewildered gaze of the mount-
aineer.
I never
"Well," he exclaimed, "that flogs cock-fighting!
uine as his love for them was, are stilted and unnatural in tone.
It was easy for the wits of his day to jest at his affectation, his
pompous gait, the dramatic appearance which he made on great
debates with his limbs swathed in flannel and his crutch by his
side. Early in life Walpole sneered at him for bringing into the
House of Commons "the gestures and emotions of the stage. "
## p. 6679 (#55) ############################################
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
6679
But the classes to whom Pitt appealed were classes not easily
offended by faults of taste, and saw nothing to laugh at in the
statesman who was borne into the lobby amidst the tortures of
the gout, or carried into the House of Lords to breathe his last
in a protest against national dishonor.
Above all, Pitt wielded the strength of a resistless eloquence.
The power of political speech had been revealed in the stormy.
debates of the Long Parliament, but it was cramped in its utter-
ance by the legal and theological pedantry of the time. Pedantry
was flung off by the age of the Revolution; but in the eloquence
of Somers and his rivals we see ability rather than genius,
knowledge, clearness of expression, precision of thought, the
lucidity of the pleader or the man of business, rather than the
passion of the orator. Of this clearness of statement Pitt had
little or none. He was no ready debater like Walpole, no speaker
of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set speeches were always
his worst, for in these his want of taste, his love of effect, his
trite quotations and extravagant metaphors came at once to the
front. That with defects like these he stood far above every
orator of his time was due above all to his profound conviction,
to the earnestness and sincerity with which he spoke. "I must
sit still," he whispered once to a friend; "for when once I am
up everything that is in my mind comes out. " But the reality of
his eloquence was transfigured by a large and poetic imagination,
an imagination so strong that -as he said himself - "most things.
returned to him with stronger force the second time than the
first, and by a glow of passion which not only raised him high
above the men of his own day, but set him in the front rank
among the orators of the world. The cool reasoning, the wit,
the common-sense of his age made way for a splendid audacity,
a sympathy with popular emotion, a sustained grandeur, a lofty
vehemence, a command over the whole range of human feeling.
He passed without an effort from the most solemn appeal to the
gayest raillery, from the keenest sarcasm to the tenderest pathos.
Every word was driven home by the grand self-consciousness of
the speaker. He spoke always as one having authority. He was
in fact the first English orator whose words were a power,—a
power not over Parliament only, but over the nation at large.
Parliamentary reporting was as yet unknown, and it was only in
detached phrases and half-remembered outbursts that the voice
of Pitt reached beyond the walls of St. Stephen's. But it was
»
## p. 6680 (#56) ############################################
6680
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
especially in these sudden outbursts of inspiration, in these brief
passionate appeals, that the might of his eloquence lay. The few
broken words we have of him stir the same thrill in men of our
day which they stirred in the men of his own.
ATTEMPT ON THE FIVE MEMBERS: PREPARATIONS FOR WAR
From History of the English People'
THE
HE brawls of the two parties, who gave each other the nick-
names of "Roundheads" and "Cavaliers," created fresh
alarm in the Parliament; but Charles persisted in refusing
it a guard. "On the honor of a King," he engaged to defend
them from violence as completely as his own children; but the
answer had hardly been given when his Attorney appeared at
the bar of the Lords and accused Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Strode,
and Haselrig of high treason in their correspondence with the
Scots. A herald-at-arms appeared at the bar of the Commons,
and demanded the surrender of the five members. If Charles
believed himself to be within legal forms, the Commons saw a
mere act of arbitrary violence in a charge which proceeded per-
sonally from the King, which set aside the most cherished privi-
leges of Parliament, and summoned the accused before a tribunal
which had no pretense to a jurisdiction over them. The Com-
mons simply promised to take the demand into consideration, and
again requested a guard. "I will reply to-morrow," said the King.
On the morrow he summoned the gentlemen who clustered
round Whitehall to follow him, and embracing the Queen, prom-
ised her that in an hour he would return master of his kingdom.
A mob of Cavaliers joined him as he left the palace, and remained
in Westminster Hall as Charles, accompanied by his nephew the
Elector Palatine, entered the House of Commons. "Mr. Speaker,"
he said, "I must for a time borrow your chair! "
He paused
with a sudden confusion as his eye fell on the vacant spot where
Pym commonly sate; for at the news of his approach the House
had ordered the five members to withdraw. "Gentlemen," he
began in slow broken sentences, "I am sorry for this occasion of
coming unto you. Yesterday I sent a Sergeant-at-arms upon a
very important occasion, to apprehend some that by my com-
mand were accused of high treason, whereunto I did expect
obedience, and not a message. " Treason, he went on, had no
## p. 6681 (#57) ############################################
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
6681
privilege, "and therefore I am come to know if any of these
persons that were accused are here. " There was a dead silence,
only broken by his reiterated "I must have them, wheresoever I
find them. " He again paused, but the stillness was unbroken.
Then he called out, "Is Mr. Pym here? " There was no answer;
and Charles, turning to the Speaker, asked him whether the five
members were there. Lenthall fell on his knees: "I have neither
eyes to see," he replied, "nor tongue to speak, in this place, but
as this House is pleased to direct me. " "Well, well," Charles
angrily retorted, "'tis no matter. I think my eyes are as good
as another's! " There was another long pause, while he looked
carefully over the ranks of members. "I see," he said at last,
"all the birds are flown. I do expect you will send them to me
as soon as they return hither. " If they did not, he added, he
would seek them himself; and with a closing protest that he
never intended any force, "he went out of the House," says an
eye-witness, "in a more discontented and angry passion than he
came in. "
Nothing but the absence of the five members, and the calm
dignity of the Commons, had prevented the King's outrage from
ending in bloodshed.
Five hundred gentlemen of the best
blood in England would hardly have stood tamely by while the
bravoes of Whitehall laid hands on their leaders in the midst
of the Parliament. . . The five members had taken refuge
in the City, and it was there that on the next day the King him-
self demanded their surrender from the aldermen at Guildhall.
Cries of "Privilege" rang round him as he returned through the
streets; the writs issued for the arrest of the five were disre-
garded by the Sheriffs, and a proclamation issued four days
later, declaring them traitors, passed without notice. Terror
drove the Cavaliers from Whitehall, and Charles stood absolutely
alone; for the outrage had severed him for the moment from his
new friends in the Parliament and from the ministers, Falkland
and Colepepper, whom he had chosen among them. But lonely
as he was, Charles had resolved on war. The Earl of Newcastle
was dispatched to muster a royal force in the North; and on the
tenth of January, news that the five members were about to
return in triumph to Westminster drove Charles from Whitehall.
He retired to Hampton Court and to Windsor, while the Trained
Bands of London and Southwark on foot, and the London water-
men on the river, all sworn "to guard the Parliament, the King-
dom, and the King," escorted Pym and his fellow-members along
·
## p. 6682 (#58) ############################################
6682
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
the Thames to the House of Commons. Both sides prepared for
the coming struggle. The Queen sailed from Dover with the
Crown jewels to buy munitions of war. The Cavaliers again
gathered round the King, and the royalist press flooded the
country with State papers drawn up by Hyde. On the other
hand, the Commons resolved by vote to secure the great arse-
nals of the kingdom,- Hull, Portsmouth, and the Tower; while
mounted processions of freeholders from Buckinghamshire and
Kent traversed London on their way to St. Stephen's, vowing to
live and die with the Parliament.
The great point, however, was to secure armed support from
the nation at large; and here both sides were in a difficulty. Pre-
vious to the innovations introduced by the Tudors, and which had
been already questioned by the Commons in a debate on press-
ing soldiers, the King in himself had no power of calling on his
subjects generally to bear arms, save for purposes of restoring
order or meeting foreign invasion. On the other hand, no one
contended that such a power had ever been exercised by the two
Houses without the King; and Charles steadily refused to con-
sent to a Militia bill, in which the command of the national force
was given in every county to men devoted to the Parliamentary
cause. Both parties therefore broke through constitutional prece-
dent: the Parliament in appointing the Lord-Lieutenants who
commanded the Militia by ordinance of the two Houses, Charles
in levying forces by royal commissions of array. The King's
great difficulty lay in procuring arms; and on the twenty-third
of April he suddenly appeared before Hull, the magazine of the
North, and demanded admission. The new governor, Sir John
Hotham, fell on his knees, but refused to open the gates; and
the avowal of his act by the Parliament was followed by the
withdrawal of the royalist party among its members from their
seats at Westminster.
The two Houses gained in unity
and vigor by the withdrawal of the royalists. The militia was
rapidly enrolled, Lord Warwick named to the command of the
fleet, and a loan opened in the City, to which the women brought
even their wedding-rings. The tone of the two Houses had risen
with the threat of force: and their last proposals demanded the
powers of appointing and dismissing the royal ministers, naming
guardians for the royal children, and of virtually controlling mili-
tary, civil, and religious affairs. "If I granted your demands,"
replied Charles, "I should be no more than the mere phantom of
a king. "
## p. 6683 (#59) ############################################
6683
THOMAS HILL GREEN
(1836-1882)
NE of the most interesting phases of thought in the second
half of the nineteenth century is that known as the Neo-
Hegelian movement in England. Certain English students
of the deeper problems of life, dissatisfied with the prevailing phi-
losophies in their own country, turned to Germany for light and
believed that they found it in the philosophy of Kant, as modified
and supplemented by Hegel. Among the leaders of the movement
were J. W. Stirling, the brothers John and Edward Caird, and Will-
iam Wallace, all of whom have helped to make Hegel's doctrine
known to English and American students; but the most prominent
and influential of the group was the subject of this sketch, Thomas
Hill Green.
Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, on the 7th of April, 1836,
and was the youngest of four children. His mother died in his
infancy, and the children were left to be cared for and educated by
their father. In 1850, when he was fourteen, Thomas went to Rugby,
where he did not shine as a scholar, being uninterested in his studies
and lagging behind his class. In 1855 he entered Balliol College,
Oxford, and came fortunately under the teaching of Benjamin Jowett,
who succeeded in rousing his latent energies. He became interested
in history and philosophy, and in 1860 was elected a Fellow of Balliol,
beginning his career as a teacher by lecturing on ancient and modern
history. Two years later he gained the Chancellor's prize for an
essay on 'The Value and Influence of Works of Fiction. ' In 1864 he
lectured before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on The Eng-
lish Commonwealth,' a favorite subject which he treated with much
ability.
The course of his philosophic studies is not known, nor at what
time he became acquainted with Hegel's works, which were destined
to have so great an influence on his opinions and life. But after
lecturing for a short time on history he began to teach philosophy,
which he had come to recognize as the true field of his life work.
For a time, indeed, he had hesitated in the choice of a profession.
Changes in his religious views prevented him from following his
father's example and entering the ministry; and notwithstanding his
interest in public affairs, he seems to have had no inclination toward
## p. 6684 (#60) ############################################
6684
THOMAS HILL GREEN
journalism. But in teaching philosophy he found a congenial occu-
pation which made him pecuniarily independent. For many years,
however, his position at Oxford was that of a tutor only, and it was
not until 1878 that his abilities received adequate recognition in his
appointment as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy.
In 1871 he had married Charlotte Symonds, daughter of Dr.
Symonds of Clifton and sister of John Addington Symonds, one of
Green's oldest friends. Whether she was interested in his philosoph-
ical work or not, she shared his sympathy with the poor, and devoted
herself largely to their cause. Only seven years of married life,
however, were granted to Green, and only four years in his profess-
orship; for on March 26th, 1882, after a brief illness, he died.
His biographer, Mr. Nettleship, gives many interesting reminis
cences of this fine thinker. Ordinarily very undemonstrative, he was
capable of strong affection, and whenever he broke through his
reserve was a delightful companion. He had a true love for social
equality and a high sense of the dignity of simple human nature;
and he hoped, he said, for a condition of English society in which
all honest citizens would recognize themselves and be recognized by
each other as gentlemen. "We hold fast," he wrote, "to the faith
that the cultivation of the masses, which has for the present super-
seded the development of the individual, will in its maturity produce
some higher type even of individual manhood than any which the
Old World has known. " With such sentiments he was naturally a
radical in politics; and so far as his professional duties permitted, he
took an active part in political discussion. He declared his political
aim to be "the removal of all obstructions which the law can remove
to the free development of English citizens. " He was a warm friend
of the American Union during the Civil War, and a sympathizer
with liberal movements throughout the world. He was pledged also
to the advancement of popular education, and labored especially, like
Matthew Arnold, for the better education of the middle classes. Tak-
ing him all in all, he stands for the most noble and thoughtful type
of modern citizen, devoted to the pursuit of truth and to the highest
interests of his fellow-man.
Of Green's writings only a small portion were published during
his lifetime; the most important being perhaps the two introductory
essays prepared for the complete edition of Hume edited by him-
self and T. H. Grose in 1874. His principal ethical work, the 'Prole-
gomena to Ethics,' appeared in 1883 under the editorship of his
friend A. C. Bradley; and all his writings except the 'Prolegomena '
were issued a few years later in three volumes, edited with a mem-
oir by R. L. Nettleship. In literary form, his essays display his
most finished work, his philosophical papers being often obscure from
## p. 6685 (#61) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6685
overcrowding of the thought. The main outlines of his ideas and
the leading principles of his philosophy are, however, unmistakable.
"Philosophy was to him," says Mr. Nettleship, "the medium in which
the theoretic impulse, the impulse to see and feel things more clearly
and intensely than every-day life allows, found its most congenial sat-
isfaction. The strength, the repose, the mental purgation which come
to some men through artistic imagination or religious emotion, came
to him through thinking. " From Kant, Green took his theory of
knowledge, according to which substance and cause, and all the re-
lations that subsist between things, are mental creations; while the
material world, which to most men appears so substantial, has no
real existence. From Hegel he took the doctrine of pantheism, which
formed the metaphysical basis of his ethics and his religion. Accord-
ing to this view our minds are only manifestations of God; or as
he otherwise expresses it, the Divine spirit reproduces itself in the
human spirit, while the material world exists only for thought. In
ethics also he was indebted to Hegel, holding with him that the ulti-
mate end of moral action is the self-realization or self-perfection of
the individual a theory not easily reconcilable with Green's political
views nor with his ardent interest in social reforms.
―
The best expression of his doctrines is found in the Prolegomena
to Ethics, his ablest constructive work; which, though mainly de-
voted to the discussion of ethical subjects, contains several chapters
on the metaphysical questions with which ethics is so closely con-
nected. His ethical instructions are the most valuable, not only in
the 'Prolegomena,' but in certain of the essays and in the 'Lectures
on the Principles of Political Obligation. ' If he impresses the impar-
tial critic as an able and earnest inquirer, whose system of philoso-
phy is incomplete, yet the world has reason to be grateful to so
honest and brave a thinker; for Green's writings must long remain
suggestive and stimulating in a high degree.
THE SCOPE OF THE NOVELIST
From the Essay on the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction'
HE novelist not only works on more various elements, he ap-
peals to more ordinary minds than the poet. This indeed
is the strongest practical proof of his essential inferiority as
an artist. All who are capable of an interest in incidents of life.
which do not affect themselves, may feel the same interest more
keenly in a novel; but to those only who can lift the curtain
does a poem speak intelligibly. It is the twofold characteristic,
## p. 6686 (#62) ############################################
6686
THOMAS HILL GREEN
of universal intelligibility and indiscriminate adoption of mate-
rials, that gives the novel its place as the great reformer and
leveler of our time. Reforming and leveling are indeed more
closely allied than we are commonly disposed to admit. Social
abuses are nearly always the result of defective organization.
The demarcations of family, of territory, or of class, prevent the
proper fusion of parts into the whole. The work of the reformer
progresses as the social force is brought to bear more and more
fully on classes and individuals, merging distinctions of privilege
and position in the one social organism. The novel is one of
the main agencies through which this force acts. It gathers up
manifold experiences, corresponding to manifold situations of life;
and subordinating each to the whole, gives to every particular
situation a new character as qualified by all the rest. Every
good novel, therefore, does something to check what may be
called the despotism of situations; to prevent that ossification
into prejudices arising from situation, to which all feel a tend-
ency. The general novel-literature of any age may be regarded
as an assertion by mankind at large in its then development, of
its claims as against the influence of class and position; whether
that influence appear in the form of positive social injustice, of
oppressive custom, or simply of deficient sympathy.
To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large
powers of sympathetic observation. He must have an eye for
the "humanities" which underlie the estranging barriers of social
demarcation, and in relation to which the influence of those bar-
riers can alone be rightly appreciated. We have already spoken
of that acquiescence in the dominion of circumstance to which we
are all too ready to give way, and which exclusive novel-reading
tends to foster. The circumstances, however, whose rule we rec-
ognize, are apt to be merely our own or those of our class. We
are blind to other "idola" than those of our own cave; we do
not understand that the feelings which betray us into "indiscre-
tions" may, when differently modified by a different situation,
lead others to game-stealing or trade outrages. From this nar-
rowness of view the novelist may do much to deliver us. The
variations of feeling and action with those of circumstance, and
the essential human identity which these variations cannot touch,
are his special province. He shows us that crime does not always
imply sin, that a social heresy may be the assertion of a native
right, that an offense which leads to conventional outlawry may
## p. 6687 (#63) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6687
be merely the rebellion of a generous nature against conventional
tyranny.
Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much. Though
he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at least gives a
more adequate conception of its surface. Though he cannot raise.
us to a point of view from which circumstances appear subordi-
nate to spiritual laws, he yet saves us from being blinded, if not
from being influenced, by the circumstances of our own position.
Though we cannot show the prisoners the way of escape from
their earthly confinement, yet by breaking down the partitions
between the cells he enables them to combine their strength for
a better arrangement of the prison-house. The most wounding
social wrongs more often arise from ignorance than from malice,
from acquiescence in the opinion of a class rather than from
deliberate selfishness. The master cannot enter into the feelings
of a servant, nor the servant into those of his master. The mas-
ter cannot understand how any good quality can lead one to
"forget his station "; to the servant the spirit of management in
the master seems mere "driving. " This is only a sample of what
is going on, all society over. The relation between the higher
and lower classes becomes irritating and therefore injurious, not
from any conscious unfairness on either side, but simply from the
want of a common understanding; while at the same time every
class suffers within its own limits from the prevalence of habits
and ideas, under the authority of class convention, which could
not long maintain themselves if once placed in the light of gen-
eral opinion
Against this twofold oppression the novel, from its first estab-
lishment as a substantive branch of literature, has made vigorous
war. From Defoe to Kingsley, its history boasts of a noble army
of social reformers; yet the work which these writers have
achieved has had little to do with the morals-commonly value-
less, if not false and sentimental - which they have severally
believed themselves to convey. Defoe's notion of a moral seems
to have been the vulgar one that vice must be palpably punished
and virtue rewarded; he recommends his 'Moll Flanders' to the
reader on the ground that "there is not a wicked action in any
part of it but is first or last rendered unhappy or unfortunate. "
The moral of Fielding's novels, if moral it can be called, is sim-
ply the importance of that prudence which his heroes might have.
dispensed with but for the wildness of their animal license.
## p. 6688 (#64) ############################################
6688
THOMAS HILL GREEN
both Defoe and Fielding had a real lesson to teach mankind.
The thieves and harlots whom Defoe prides himself on punish-
ing, but whose adventures he describes with the minuteness of
affection, are what we ourselves might have been; and in their
histories we hear, if not the "music," yet the "harsh and grat-
ing" cry of suffering humanity. Fielding's merit is of the same
kind; but the sympathies which he excites are more general, as
his scenes are more varied, than those of Defoe. His coarseness
is everywhere redeemed by a genuine feeling for the contume-
lious buffets to which weakness is exposed. He has the practical
insight of Dickens and Thackeray, without their infusion of sen-
timent. He does not moralize over the contrast between the rich
man's law and the poor man's, over the "indifference" of rural
justice, over the lying and adultery of fashionable life. He sim-
ply makes us see the facts, which are everywhere under our
eyes, but too close to us for discernment. He shows society
where its sores lie, appealing from the judgment of the diseased
class itself to that public intelligence which, in spite of the
cynic's sneer on the task of "producing an honesty from the
combined action of knaves," has really power to override private
selfishness.
The same sermon has found many preachers since, the uncon-
scious missionaries being perhaps the greatest. Scott was a Tory
of the purest water. His mind was busy with the revival of a
pseudo-feudalism; no thought of reforming abuses probably ever
entered it. Yet his genial human insight made him a reformer
against his will. He who makes man better known to man takes
the first steps towards healing the wounds which man inflicts on
man. The permanent value of Scott's novels lies in his pictures
of the Scotch peasantry. He popularized the work which the
Lake poets had begun, of reopening the primary springs of
human passion. "Love he had found in huts where poor men
lie," and he announced the discovery; teaching the "world" of
English gentry what for a century and a half they had seemed
to forget, that the human soul, in its strength no less than in its
weakness, is independent of the accessories of fortune. He left
no equals, but the combined force of his successors has been
constantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done
more than the journalists to produce that improvement in the
organization of modern life which leads to the notion that because
social grievances are less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The
## p. 6689 (#65) ############################################
THOMAS HILL GREEN
6689
novelist catches the cry of suffering before it has obtained the
strength or general recognition which are presupposed when
the newspaper becomes its mouthpiece. The miseries of the
marriage market had been told by Thackeray with almost weari-
some iteration, many years before they found utterance in the
columns of the Times.
It may indeed be truly said that after all, human selfishness
is much the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sym-
pathy; that riches and poverty have still their old estranging
influence. The novel, as has been shown, cannot give a new
birth to the spirit, or initiate the effort to transcend the separa-
tions of place and circumstance; but it is no small thing that it
should remove the barriers of ignorance and antipathy which
would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It at least brings
man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to see itself
as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympa-
thies thus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which op-
pression of any kind, whether of one class by another, or of
individuals by the tyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in
vain.
The novelist is a leveler also in another sense than that of
which we have already spoken. He helps to level intellects as
well as situations. He supplies a kind of literary food which the
weakest natures can assimilate as well as the strongest, and by
the consumption of which the former sort lose much of their
weakness and the latter much of their strength.
While minds of
the lower order acquire from novel-reading a cultivation which
they previously lacked, the higher seem proportionately to sink.
They lose that aspiring pride which arises from the sense of
walking in intellect on the necks of a subject crowd; they no
longer feel the bracing influence of living solely among the high-
est forms of art; they become conformed insensibly to the gen-
eral opinion which the new literature of the people creates. A
similar change is going on in every department of man's activity.
The history of thought in its artistic form is parallel to its
history in its other manifestation. The spirit descends, that it
may rise again; it penetrates more and more widely into matter,
that it may make the world more completely its own. Political
life seems no longer attractive, now that political ideas and
power are disseminated among the mass, and the reason is
recognized as belonging not to a ruling caste merely, but to all.
XII-419
Γ
## p. 6690 (#66) ############################################
6690
THOMAS HILL GREEN
A statesman in a political society resting on a substratum of
slavery, and admitting no limits to the province of government,
was a very different person from the modern servant of “a na-
tion of shopkeepers," whose best work is to save the pockets of
the poor.
It would seem as if man lost his nobleness when he
ceased to govern, and as if the equal rule of all was equivalent
to the rule of none. Yet we hold fast to the faith that the
"cultivation of the masses," which has for the present superseded
the development of the individual, will in its maturity produce
some higher type even of individual manhood than any which
the old world has known. We may rest on the same faith in
tracing the history of literature. In the novel we must admit
that the creative faculty has taken a lower form than it held in
the epic and the tragedy. But since in this form it acts on
more extensive material and reaches more men, we may well be-
lieve that this temporary declension is preparatory to some higher
development, when the poet shall idealize life without making
abstraction of any of its elements, and when the secret of exist-
ence, which he now speaks to the inward ear of a few, may be
proclaimed on the house-tops to the common intelligence of man-
kind.
## p. 6691 (#67) ############################################
6691
ROBERT GREENE
(1560-1592)
REENE was a true Elizabethan Englishman: impulsive, reck-
less, with a roving instinct that in many a life of that
restless age found a safe vent in adventure on the sea. But
with his gifts and failings, and the conditions in which his life was
cast, the ruin that overwhelmed him was the fate of many poets of
great mind and weak will. Yet with all his sin and weakness, there
were struggles toward a better life and nobler work which should
make our judgment lenient, remembering Burns's lines:-
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted. »
a
•
Greene was born about 1560 in Norwich, and belonged to a fam-
ily of good standing. That his father was a man of some wealth
may be inferred from Greene's tour to Italy and other countries,-
great expense in those days,- which he made after taking his B. A.
degree at Cambridge in 1578. In his 'Repentances' he shows that he
was affected by the vices of Italy, and became fixed in those disso-
lute habits that were his ruin. On his return he was engaged in
literary work at Cambridge, and took his M. A. degree from both
universities. He then went to London and became «< an author of
plays and penner of Love Pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in
that qualitie, that who for that trade growne so ordinary about Lon
don as Robin Greene. "
In 1585 he married, and apparently lived for a time in Norwich.
After the birth of a child he deserted his wife, because she tried to
persuade him from his bad habits. From that time he lived perma-
nently in London, where he seems to have had some influential
patrons. Among those to whom his works are dedicated we find the
names of Lord Derby, the Earl of Cumberland, Lady Talbot, and
Lord Fitzwater. He tells us that "in shorte space I fell into favor
with such as were of honorable and good calling. " Yet his restless
temper made such society irksome to him; and as there was then no
reputable literary Bohemia, such as arose later under Shakespeare
and Ben Jonson, he sank to the company of the lowest classes of
London. In spite of his dissipated life he was constantly at work,
and "his purse, like the sea, sometime sweld, anon like the same sea
## p. 6692 (#68) ############################################
6692
ROBERT GREENE
fell to a low ebbe; yet seldom he wanted, his labours were so well
esteemed. "
Not only did he write for the stage, but it is probable that he ap-
peared at times as an actor. At one time, when a gust of repent-
ance swept over him, he resolved to write no more love pamphlets,
and to devote himself to more serious writings. He then published
a series of tracts exposing the tricks of London swindlers, in "trust
that those my discourses will doe great good and bee very bene-
ficial to the Common wealth of England. " His 'Repentances' were
intended to warn young men by the unhappy example of his own
life. His career was cut short in 1592 by an illness resulting from
too much indulgence in Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. Deserted
by his friends, he died in extreme poverty at the house of a poor
shoemaker who had befriended him. Just before his death he wrote
to his forsaken wife this touching letter:-
Sweet Wife:
As ever there was any good-will or friendship betweene thee and mee, see
this bearer (my Host) satisfied of his debt: I owe him tenne pound, and but
for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wrongs done
unto thee, and Almighty God have mercie on my soule. Farewell till we
meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt never see me more.
This 2 of September 1592.
Written by thy dying husband
ROBERT GREENE.
Gabriel Harvey soon after published in his 'Foure Letters' a
virulent attack on Greene's character. That and Greene's confes-
sions, in which like many another he no doubt exaggerated his sins,
have given rise to a probably too harsh estimate of the poet's failings.
Of his numerous dramatic works but five have survived, all pub-
lished after his death: 'Orlando Furioso'; 'Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay'; 'James the Fourth'; Alphonsus, King of Aragon'; and
'George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield. ' 'A Looking-Glass for
London and England' was the joint work of Thomas Lodge and
Greene. Greene did for the romantic drama what Marlowe accom-
plished for tragedy, and his works form a noteworthy step in the
development of the old English drama. His most popular drama was
'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' in which he pictures Old English
life at Fussingfield, with a touching love story. His 'George-a-
Greene' has the best constructed plot of any of his plays; and in
the Pinner, a popular English hero like Robin Hood, he portrays an
ideal English yeoman, faithful, sturdy, and independent. Nash called
Greene the Homer of women; and it is remarkable that, dissolute as
he was, he has given the charm of modest womanhood to all his
female characters.
## p. 6693 (#69) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6693
Besides Greene's non-dramatic works there are four kinds: first,
the romantic pamphlets; second, the semi-patriotic tracts; third, the
Cony-Catching pamphlets; fourth, his 'Repentances. '
In his love pamphlets may be found traces of the beginnings of
the English novel. Several of the 'Repentances,' the 'Never Too
Late' and 'A Groatsworth of Wit,' are largely autobiographical.
Scattered through his romances are the many charming lyrics on
which his fame mainly rests. In several respects Greene was excep-
tionally in advance of his time: in the 'Pinner' he plainly acknowl-
edges popular rights, and in the 'Looking-Glass' is found a forecast
of coming disaster, resulting from the disorders of the times and the
oppression of the poor. Greene's peasants are portrayed with a sym-
pathetic realism most unusual at that time. He gives the "wise
humor of the low-born clown" as does none but Shakespeare, who
was no doubt indebted to Greene for the material of several of his
plays. 'The Winter's Tale' is founded on 'Pandosto' in all points
but Antigonus, Paulina, Autolycus, and the young shepherd. 'Lear'
has a strong likeness to the 'Looking-Glass'; 'Orlando' points to
'Lear' and 'Hamlet,' and the fairy framework of James IV. ' sug-
gests some features of 'Midsummer Night's Dream. ' Greene and the
university men of his set drew from the old chroniclers for their
dramas; but Shakespeare took whatever was at hand. His ignoring
of their rule, and his growing fame, were the probable cause of the
bitter feeling Greene shows in the address to his fellow dramatists
in the 'Groatsworth of Wit,' when he refers to Shakespeare as "an
upstart Crow beautified with our Feathers, that with his Tygres
heart, wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bom-
bast out a Blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute
Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceyt the onely Shake-scene in
the Countrey. "
Alexander Dyce edited Greene's plays and poems in 1831. Dr.
Grosart edited The Complete Works of Robert Greene' (1881-6) in
fifteen volumes, and A. W. Ward published Friar Bacon' in Old
English Drama' (1892). Both earlier editions contain memoirs; and
accounts are found in J. A. Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors
in English Drama,' and Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of
Shakespeare. '
Greene's writings give vivid pictures of life in the Elizabethan
age, and at the same time form a most interesting autobiography of
that "wrecked life. " Unlike Herrick, who could say that if his verse
were impure his life was chaste, Greene's writings show scarcely any
of the uncleanness so prevalent in books of that period.
## p. 6694 (#70) ############################################
6694
ROBERT GREENE
D
ECEIVING world, that with alluring toys
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorn,
And scornest now to lend thy fading joys
T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;
How well are they that die ere they be born,
And never see thy slights, which few men shun
Till unawares they helpless are undone!
DECEIVING WORLD
From A Groatsworth of Wit
Oft have I sung of love and of his fire;
But now I find that poet was advised,
Which made full feasts increasers of desire,
And proves weak love was with the poor despised;
For when the life with food is not sufficed,
What thoughts of love, what motion of delight,
What pleasance can proceed from such a wight?
Witness my want, the murderer of my wit;
My ravished sense, of wonted fury reft,
Wants such conceit as should in poems fit
Set down the sorrow wherein I am left:
But therefore have high heavens their gifts bereft,
Because so long they lent them me to use,
And I so long their bounty did abuse.
Oh that a year were granted me to live,
And for that year my former wits restored!
What rules of life, what counsel would I give,
How should my sin with sorrow be deplored!
But I must die, of every man abhorred:
Time loosely spent will not again be won;
My time is loosely spent, and I undone.
A"
THE SHEPHERD'S WIFE'S SONG
From The Mourning Garment ›
H, WHAT is love? It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king;
And sweeter too,
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown,
And cares can make the sweetest love to frown:
## p. 6695 (#71) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6695
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
His flocks are folded, he comes home at night,
As merry as a king in his delight;
And merrier too,
For kings bethink them what the State require,
Where shepherds careless carol by the fire:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat
His cream and curds, as doth the king his meat;
And blither too,
For kings have often fears when they do sup,
Where shepherds dread no poison in their cup:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound
As doth the king upon his beds of down;
More sounder too,
For cares cause kings full oft their sleep to spill,
Where weary shepherds lie and snort their fill:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
Thus with his wife he spends the year, as blithe
As doth the king at every tide or sith;
And blither too,
For kings have wars and broils to take in hand,
When shepherds laugh and love upon the land:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain ?
## p. 6696 (#72) ############################################
6696
ROBERT GREENE
DOWN THE VALLEY
From Never Too Late
D
OWN the valley 'gan he track,
Bag and bottle at his back,
In a surcoat all of gray;
Such wear palmers on the way,
When with scrip and staff they see
Jesus's grave on Calvary.
A hat of straw, like a swain,
Shelter for the sun and rain,
With a scallop-shell before;
Sandals on his feet he wore;
Legs were bare, arms unclad;
Such attire this Palmer had.
His face fair like Titan's shine;
Gray and buxom were his eyne,
Whereout dropt pearls of sorrow;
Such sweet tears love doth borrow,
When in outward dews she plains
Heart's distress that lovers pains;
Ruby lips, cherry cheeks;
Such rare mixture Venus seeks,
When to keep her damsels quiet
Beauty sets them down their diet.
Adon was not thought more fair:
Curled locks of amber hair,
Locks where love did sit and twine
Nets to snare the gazer's eyne.
Such a Palmer ne'er was seen,
'Less Love himself had palmer been.
Yet, for all he was so quaint,
Sorrow did his visage taint:
Midst the riches of his face,
Grief decyphered high disgrace.
Every step strained a tear;
Sudden sighs showed his fear;
And yet his fear by his sight
Ended in a strange delight;
That his passions did approve,
Weeds and sorrow were for love.
## p. 6697 (#73) ############################################
ROBERT GREENE
6697
PHILOMELA'S ODE
From Philomela'
SIT
ITTING by a river's side,
Where a silent stream did glide,
Muse I did of many things
That the mind in quiet brings.
I 'gan think how some men deem
Gold their god; and some esteem
Honor is the chief content
That to man in life is lent;
And some others do contend,
Quiet none, like to a friend;
Others hold there is no wealth
Compared to a perfect health;
Some man's mind in quiet stands,
When he is lord of many lands.
But I did sigh, and said all this
Was but a shade of perfect bliss;
And in my thoughts I did approve,
Naught so sweet as is true love.
SWEET ARE THE THOUGHTS
From Farewell to Folly'
SWE
WEET are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown:
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbors quiet rest;
The cottage that affords no pride nor care;
The mean that 'grees with country music best;
The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare;
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss:
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.
## p. 6698 (#74) ############################################
6698
ROBERT GREENE
SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD
From Menaphon›
EEP not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Mother's wag, pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy;
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changèd made him so,
When he left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.
W
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,
Like pearl drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one another's place supplies;
Thus he grieved in every part,
Tears of blood fell from his heart,
When he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
The wanton smiled, father wept,
Mother cried, baby leapt;
More he crowed, more we cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide:
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bless,
For he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
## p. 6699 (#75) ############################################
6699
GERALD GRIFFIN
(1803-1840)
(
NDER the words "Never Acted," and date October 23d, 1842,
the play Gisippus,' "by the late Gerald Griffin, author of
'The Collegians,'» was announced at Drury Lane Theatre,
London. Macready made money and fame out of the work, which
had lain for years in his reading-desk uncared-for, while the patient
poet scribbled his way along a life of little joy to an unnoted grave
in the burying-ground of the voluntary poor. The drama was Grif-
fin's first inspiration; and though he died untimely, the drama gives
him back the honor he bestowed. Chagrined and humiliated with
failure to get a hearing for his play of 'Aguire,' and sick from hope
deferred for 'Gisippus,' he wrote 'The Collegians,' so full of Irish
heart and love that its stage child 'The Colleen Bawn' has delighted
the souls of millions.
Born in Limerick December 12th, 1803, Gerald Griffin, when his
parents came to America to settle in northern Pennsylvania, chose
to go at seventeen years of age, with only the equipment of a home
education, to seek honors and fortune in the paths which led up to
the printing-house. John Banim's recent success had blazed out a new
trail in the stifling, starving jungle of book-making, and the youth
of Ireland was on fire to follow him. One of the sweetest memories
of Griffin's career is the delicacy and generosity of Banim's friendship
for the pale, shy, delicate boy from the distant Shannon-side, during
all the awful and lonely days of his early London residence. After
hovering under Banim's wing about the green-rooms of Covent Gar-
den and Drury Lane, until his sensitive nature could bear the torture
of well-bred and ill-concealed indifference no longer, Griffin made his
way to the office of one of the weekly periodicals with some sketches
of Irish peasant life.
The publication of these brought him to notice, but did not keep
him free from days and nights of enforced fasting. It was not until
1827 that he was able to publish a book. In that year appeared
'Holland-Tide' and the 'Tales of the Munster Festivals,' both to be
forever-treasured heart songs of Irishmen separated world-wide. The
Collegians, in 1828, was eagerly and unstintingly accorded the first.
place in the new order of literature, the sadly joyous romance of con-
temporary Ireland. Griffin now became well and safely established
## p. 6700 (#76) ############################################
6700
GERALD GRIFFIN
in London, easily compeer of the best writers of his race, and in all
affairs but those of pecuniary fortune a favored and envied man. A
nature filled with the instinct of devotion kept him safe from some
of the evils which rode the shoulders of too many of his fellow-
countrymen. In the midst of a scurrying and scoffing rout he kept
the heart of his boyhood innocent and unsullied.
Tired of the shows and shams of the world, in 1838 he asked and
obtained admission into the Society of the Christian Brothers in his
native city. A few days before he entered upon this resolution, he
was interrupted by his brother and biographer Dr. Griffin in the act
of destroying all his manuscripts. It had been his intention to make
a complete renunciation by leaving nothing to the world but his
published works. His brother was able to save but a few fragments
from the great quantity of half-destroyed stories, poems, and plays;
and these, with the earlier publications, were included in the only
collected edition of his works ever made, published in New York in
the decade of 1850.
Two years after he had assumed the habit and duty of a religious
Gerald Griffin died, after many days of patient illness, in the house of
his brothers in religion at Cork, Ireland, June 12th, 1840. His family,
living at Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, has given several distinguished
names to the literature and politics of our country.
HOW MYLES MURPHY IS HEARD ON BEHALF OF HIS PONIES
From The Collegians'
AT FALVEY, supposing that he had remained a sufficient time.
suspicion of any private
ing between him and Mr. Daly, now made his appearance
with luncheon. A collared head, cream cheese, honey, a decanter
of gooseberry wine, and some garden fruit, were speedily ar-
ranged on the table, and the visitors, no way loath, were pressed
to make a liberal use of the little banquet; for the time had not
yet gone by when people imagined that they could not display
their regard for a friend more effectually than by cramming him
up to the throat with food and strong drink. Kyrle Daly was in
the act of taking wine with Mrs. Chute, when he observed Fal-
vey stoop to his young mistress's ear, and whisper something
with a face of much seriousness.
"A boy wanting to speak to me? " said Miss Chute. "Has he
got letters? Let him send up his message. "
## p. 6701 (#77) ############################################
GERALD GRIFFIN
6701
"He says he must see yourself, miss. 'Tis in regard of some
ponies of his that were impounded be Mr. Dawley for trespassing
above here, last night. He hasn't the mains of releasing 'em,
poor craythur, an' he's far from home. I'm sure he's an honest
boy. He says he'd have a good friend in Mr. Cregan, if he
knew he was below. "
"Me? " said Mr. Cregan: "why, what's the fellow's name ? »
Myles Murphy, sir, from Killarney, westwards. "
"Oh, Myles-na-Coppaleen? Poor fellow, is he in tribulation?
We must have his ponies out by all means.
>>
"It requires more courage than I can always command," said
Miss Chute, "to revoke any command of Dawley's. He is an
old man, and whether that he was crossed in love, or from a
natural peevishness of disposition, he is such a morose creature
that I am quite afraid of him. But I will hear this Myles, at all
events. "
She was moving to the door, when her uncle's voice made
her turn.
"Stay, Anne," said Mr. Cregan; "let him come up. "Twill
be as good as a play to hear him and the steward pro and con.
Kyrle Daly here, who is intended for the bar, will be our
assessor, to decide on the points of law. I can tell you, Kyrle,
that Myles will give you a lesson in the art of pleading that
may be of use to you on circuit, at one time or another. "
Anne laughed and looked to Mrs. Chute, who with a smile
of tolerating condescension said, while she cleared with a silken
kerchief the glasses of her spectacles, "If your uncle desires it,
my love, I can see no objection. Those mountaineers are amus-
ing creatures. "
༥
Anne returned to her seat and the conversation proceeded,
while Falvey, with an air of great and perplexed importance,
went to summon Myles up-stairs.
"Mountaineers! " exclaimed Captain Gibson. "You call every
upland a mountain here in Ireland, and every one that lives out
of sight of the sea a mountaineer. "
"But this fellow is a genuine mountaineer," cried Mr. Cre-
gan, "with a cabin two thousand feet above the level of the sea.
If you are in the country next week, and will come down and
see us at the Lakes, along with our friends here, I promise to
show you as sturdy a race of mountaineers as any in Europe.
Doctor Leake can give you a history of 'em up to Noah's flood,
## p. 6702 (#78) ############################################
6702
GERALD GRIFFIN
some time when you're alone together when the country was
first peopled by one Parable, or Sparable. ”
"Paralon," said Dr. Leake; "Paralon, or Migdonia, as the Psalter
sings:
'On the fourteenth day, being Tuesday,
They brought their bold ships to anchor,
In the blue fair port, with beauteous shore,
Of well-defended Inver Sceine. '
>>
"In the rest of Munster, where -
"Yes; well, you'll see 'em all, as the doctor says, if you come
to Killarney," resumed Mr. Cregan, interrupting the latter, to
whose discourse a country residence, a national turn of character,
and a limited course of reading had given a tinge of pedantry;
and who was moreover a firm believer in all the ancient Shana-
chus, from the Yellow Book of Moling to the Black Book of
Molega. "And if you like to listen to him, he'll explain to you
every action that ever befell, on land or water, from Ross Castle
up to Carrigaline. "
Kyrle, who felt both surprise and concern at learning that
Miss Chute was leaving home so soon, and without having
thought it worth her while to make him aware of her intention,
was about to address her on the subject, when the clatter of a
pair of heavy and well-paved brogues on the small flight of stairs
in the lobby produced a sudden hush of expectation amongst
the company. They heard Pat Falvey urging some instructions
in a low and smothered tone, to which a strong and not unmusi-
cal voice replied, in that complaining accent which distinguishes
the dialect of the more western descendants of Heber: "Ah, lay
me alone, you foolish boy; do you think did I never speak to
quollity in my life before? »
The door opened, and the uncommissioned master of horse
made his appearance. His appearance was at once strikingly
majestic and prepossessing, and the natural ease and dignity with
which he entered the room might almost have become a peer
of the realm coming to solicit the interest of the family for an
electioneering candidate. A broad and sunny forehead, light and
wavy hair, a blue cheerful eye, a nose that in Persia might have
won him a throne, healthful cheeks, a mouth that was full of
character, and a well-knit and almost gigantic person, constituted
his external claims to attention, of which his lofty and confident
## p. 6703 (#79) ############################################
GERALD GRIFFIN
6703
although most unassuming carriage showed him to be in some
degree conscious. He wore a complete suit of brown frieze, with
a gay-colored cotton handkerchief around his neck, blue worsted
stockings, and brogues carefully greased; while he held in his
right hand an immaculate felt hat, the purchase of the preced-
ing day's fair. In the left he held a straight-handled whip and
a wooden rattle, which he used for the purpose of collecting his
ponies when they happened to straggle. An involuntary mur-
mur of admiration ran amongst the guests at his entrance. Dr.
Leake was heard to pronounce him a true Gadelian, and Captain
Gibson thought he would cut a splendid figure in a helmet and
cuirass, under one of the arches in the Horse Guards.
Before he had spoken, and while the door yet remained open,
Hyland Creagh roused Pincher with a chirping noise, and gave
him the well-known countersign of "Baithershin! "
Pincher waddled towards the door, raised himself on his
hind legs, closed it fast, and then trotted back to his master's
feet, followed by the staring and bewildered gaze of the mount-
aineer.
I never
"Well," he exclaimed, "that flogs cock-fighting!
