Critical Studies

liberal in thought and nobly independent in opinion, spending his winters on the shores of the Nile, on the edge of the desert, and his summers b

the thrushes, the oak trees and the yew trees, of 'Evelyn's land'; not without love as

erms with Natu

our souls to

nd bareheade

mer which still

-bearer of all lost causes. In few personalities is there united so much which is uncommon, and idiosyncrasies which are so varied. He has been so fortunate, often-times, in his friends and his fortunes, that it is perhaps only to be human that he should, in his editor

s precisely in politics that Mr Blunt is most deligh

over a little tambourine, and used to collect monies for woollen socks and chocolate. They will be little appreciated by the lovers of ballads of blood and fury, and odes of war which scream like a steam-hooter. They are made to be re

to him is great. I know not where he places Shelley, but does Milton ever tou

in his verse as he is also alone (or almost alone) in his opinions and his politics. I dislike comparisons in criticisms. It is a meagre way to define what is, this habit of declaring what it is not; and I love not either the diminution of the living for the exaltation of the dead, or the praise of the living for the depreciation of the dead.

, nor ever effeminate; the thoughts are always the thoughts of a man who has felt the hoof of the desert horse cast up the sand of the desert, and seen the circle of the waiting vultures poised in the blue air; and heard 'God's thunder upon Horeb'; who has read his Augustine and Chrysostom on the shores of the Dead Sea, and his Horace and his Herrick lying on the short sheep-cropped grass

ictum as it stands, is it true, seeing (as its context shows) that he means an Englishman must be judged by what he writes of England? If this were true, where would go the Juan and the Parisina, the Anactoria and the Atalanta in Calydon, the Cenci and the Adona?s, the Lucille and the Clytemnestra? Scott would be greater than Shelley, and Cowper than Coleridge. The theory will not hold water. Which is the greater play of Shakespeare-'King John' or 'The Tempest'? 'Henry the Fifth' or 'Romeo a

sense of melody, indeed, are not rhymes: whilst some words used, such as for instance Revenue, accord ill with verse at all. He deems himself quit of obligation to observe these delicaci

usic, and he should take heed that his syrinx be well chosen, and we

eve. There is the vox humana in their melody. They come from the heart of a man who has suffered. They are unequal, extremely unequal; the poet has gone through the woods and gathered together grass and orchis, and gorse, and

spontaneous, or seem so, to be the subject of great meditation. They are the natural children of a forest-lover. As you read them you receive the ir

love of rural t

canno

ities where no

is to us. Th

her footsteps

thing of the g

e still present

the places w

fields, we in th

ai

is

y miles from

nd blows north,

us, and the gr

city seems t

ms, and grip the

ove them right.

rested, and

f beauty by t

om for beauty

ai

lend me wing

orld which long

did I flee w

8] mantle on th

usty highroa

meadows, shut w

rushes poured

dge and every

kine looked on, w

lay, from n

itting close

the bird

s and companions always, in youth and manhood, and that Wilfrid Blunt had an intense and adoring sentiment for h

agine the house called here Palazzo Pagani is the villa in Bellosgua

house where t

ring and summer

u to the terr

rden long si

lived. How of

usk among the

their coming h

l, till the fr

sound of voi

o of their l

eserted terra

peaking, fro

put forth, and

indow open

is, the scent

last tears I s

is very strong, but it is the influe

e man in especial, constituted the be all, and end all, of the former; the woes of all creation lie heavy on the soul of the latter. The bird with a broken wing is to Wilfrid Blunt as pitiful a tragedy as the human lover with his ruined joys was to the au

rough these lines on

n hart had f

pent for life

die besid

trout leaped

clapped his w

brushed him

upon the gl

opped slowly

he life so

e died. The

ouched upon

ir god had de

al Father

titled from

None ever c

r life thus

oved what Go

say, has conq

d, are the pathos, the value, the infinite sadness, of these free forest, or desert, lives struck down in the fulness of their strength and beauty by th

imagine that it has scared Mr Henley and displeased him. I do not know this, I have not

ity; but it is not so, and Satan has sad reason in his arguments. It was a fine and lofty courage which made the author produce it at a moment when the English people are drunk and

against the other races of the earth, and of the hypocrisy, brutality, and avarice of man, clothed and cultured, against man primitive and helpless. It is a cri de coeur, breaking almost

their chanting? Nay

d Thy hand, like li

r ribald lips

e Fallen Angel dwarfs Deity. The rebel, not t

all those countless races upon earth, who in their birth, and in their death, in their up-rising, an

ost force, Man's

wd will. We may

revailed. There

his greed. We spen

's lost beauty in

parted. Each o

arth moves how fle

ts strength, how

ts raiment tin

us life, the inh

worth which had su

ecay in the Worl

fair past when s

es went, and howled

rath, unclassed am

s doomed. From the

, Man ruleth, piti

royeth. The great

ern ice, and quar

e of wounds in

white bear on th

or his pastime. Th

th young, the wal

his rage, alive

ng heaps, outroote

slayeth. He hat

withstand, nor i

plain, which wou

the valiant, wag

unseen. In pity,

ed plains which he

ude. Where, Lord

n herds, Thy arie

troops, the zeb

ened bones on the

d, where? For ages

city, the hide whi

ce, no sting, no vi

their levers, the lit

eir deep brain. Thou m

nore, advised,

supreme in right.

n earth, Thy natur

fear. For age

y deep forest swa

ow, Lord God? A

ving targets by

ard skill to plant

ime spoiled, thei

s may laugh. Nay, Lo

es in tears for T

we bring,-this last

iest spoil from Thy

he Earth, unwinged

ly women: pluma

teach, such purp

n showeth, hardly

sea's, such green

derest buds of wat

t pearls as on

ealeth to night's

rd of Beauty, L

on, Thou who met

ld fair for less t

f joy, lost, tortu

rumpets' whim. Ar

and dead! These dea

ord, and

ords in others, as for instance the word 'plain' recurs three times in seven lines. But when hypercriticism has said and done its worst, the work remains a just and generous indictment; heroic in its courage and vigorous in its eloquence, pleading the cause of those who ca

ence sa

the rest, equippe

ributes, low crouch

ng all

stock of the bare

on Rome erewhile

, the Goth, Gaul, V

m the white Nort

ern lands, with f

r van, armed to th

f of all men ca

n dog who goeth

hers went in c

e, in his

glorious Britain of our

knaves of

the rest and giv

eir thought, thei

, priests, in their

th avowed and the

gh fires each day

ates too, their me

of Thee as maste

eir acts, no word

obedience, and

e law, the enforce

g arm in the wo

he earth. They grant

e heavens, seeing

y man, a space

which they, as lo

to Thee to deal w

rong throne or lo

to gather in th

thou art, they know

"God," and pay The

r-lord and pen

lind monarch of

ling clothes, which

pelgoers alike, uphold the campaign of blood and plunder; who prate of Helots, and treat the Kaffir worse than any Helot that ever lived; who seek warrant in their Scriptures for endless slaug

e of his own virtue, in blood-lust of his own religious aims, the portrait of Man as given here i

med seas, and in the azure space of highest air, and in the green twilight of virgin forests, the god of cruelty reigns and prevails; that the elephant and the rhinoceros wrestled and the keen cheetah sprang on the meek cameleopard, and the jaws of the crocodile opened for the playful gazelle before ever the steel and the lead of the

fall under the breechloaders of princes and lords and gentlemen; to penetrate into virgin forests and plunge in untroubled streams to seize the heron on her nest, and poison the lyre-bird in his haunts, and snatch his golden plumes from the bird of paradise, and his rosy wings from the flamingo, that commerce may flourish and women be adorned-all these things, and more lik

the grotesque like the 'old world furniture,' the 'linen long in press' of Heaven in the first page had been altered; and the destiny and mission of Satan at the close are enwrapped in a mystery which is to me at least incompr

on, and is not ushered in by Mr Henley. It is enough to say that the introduction, like the work, is worthy of the Englishma

bsolute independence of judgment; he refuses to see through other men's spectacles, whether of smoked or of rose-coloured glass. Again and again has he had the courage to oppose the policy of ministers who were his personal friends. He opposed Mr Gladstone's and Lord Granville's policy in Egypt, considering it alike unjust and unwise; and he appealed alike to Parliament and to the nation against it, uselessly but not the less manfully. The eloquence which he used so nobly at that time must r

governing themselves much better than we can

w great cities and in a few rich hands, the public revenues spent to a large extent abroad, and by an absentee Government. I have been unable to convince myself that India is not a poorer country, now, than it was a hundred years ago, when we first began to manage its finances. I believe, in common with all native economists, that its modern system of finance

d facilities of litigation and usury. Also, great centralisation of power in the hands of officers daily more and more automatons and less and less interested in the special districts they administer. In a word, new machinery replacing, on many points disadvantageously, the old. I do no

e he says with

e of money that one sees in Turkey. The result is the same; and I don't see much difference between making the starving Hindoo pay for a cath

h, if it be not allayed by a more generous treatment, will in a few years make the continued connection between England and India altogether impossible, and that a final rupture of friendly relations will ensue between the two countries, which will be an incalculable misfortune for both, and may possibly be marked by scenes of violence such as nothing in the past history of either will have equalled. The people are beginning to awake and to resent the stupidity of those who, representing England in India, wantonly affront them, and unless the English public at home, with whom as yet the Indian races have no quarrel, becomes awake, too, to the danger of its own indifference, the irreparable result of a general race hatred will follow. Only it should be reme

rnings with ten times greater force to the India of to-day, which, with the three-fold curse upon it of famine, of drought, and of plague, finds the British Government too engrossed in its