Dr. Samuel Johnson, during a long life, cherished an aversion, Platonic rather than militant, for Scotland and the Scotch. Had any one told him that out of the land where oats were fed to men there should issue, soon after his death, a master of romance, an incomparable singer, and a historian without rival, we can well imagine the emphasis with which he would have said, “Tut! tut! sir, that is impossible!” Nevertheless, for the best part of a century Scotland has shed her influence through the world in the genius of Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle; and she has taken sweet vengeance on the burly Doctor himself by creating in James Boswell not only the best of British biographers, but one so far the best that no other can be named worthy to stand second to him. We now celebrate the centenary of the last of these great Scotchmen,—Thomas Carlyle,—and it is fitting that we should survey his life and work.[4] In a time like our own, when literature on either side of the Atlantic lacks original energy; when the best minds are busy with criticism rather than with creation; when ephemeral story-tellers and spineless disciples of culture pass for masters, and sincere but uninspired scholars have our respect but move us not,—we shall do well to contemplate anew the man who by his personality and his books has nobly swayed two generations of the English-speaking race, and who, as the years recede, looms more and more certainly as the foremost modern British man of letters. Men may look distorted to their contemporaries, like the figures in a Chinese picture; but Time, the wisest of painters, sets them in their true perspective, gives them their just proportions, and reveals their permanent features in light and shade. And sufficient time has now elapsed for us to perceive that Carlyle belongs to that thrice-winnowed class of literary primates whom posterity crowns. He holds in the nineteenth century a position similar to Johnson’s in the eighteenth, and to Milton’s in the seventeenth,—each masterful, but in a different way; each typifying his age without losing his individuality; all brothers in preËminence. When, for convenience’ sake, we classify Carlyle among men of letters, we fail to describe him adequately. The phrase suggests too little. Charles Lamb, the lovable, is the true type of men of letters, who illuminate, sweeten, delight, and entertain us. Carlyle was far more: he was a mighty moral force, using many forms of literature—criticism, biography, history, pamphlets—as its organs of expression. He had, as the discerning Goethe said of him, “unborrowed principles of conviction,” by which he tested the world. He felt the compulsion of a great message intrusted to him. There rings through most of his utterances the uncompromising “Thus saith the Lord” of the Hebrew prophets,—a tone which, if it do not persuade us, we call arrogant, yet which speaks the voice of conscience to those who give it heed. What, then, was his message?—what those “unborrowed principles of conviction” by which he judged his time? Born in the poor village of Ecclefechan on December 4, 1795, his childhood and youth were spent amid those stern conditions by which, rather than by affluence, brave, self-reliant, earnest characters are moulded. His parents were Calvinists, to whom religion was the chief concern, and who taught him by example the severe virtues of that grim sect. Next to religion, and its active manifestation in a pious life, they prized education, begrudging themselves no sacrifices by which their son might attend the University of Edinburgh. They wished him to be a minister, but when he came to maturity he recognized his unfitness for that vocation and abandoned it. They acquiesced regretfully, little dreaming that he who refused to be confined in some Annandale pulpit should become the foremost preacher of his age. Carlyle’s reluctance was rooted in conscientious scruples. He began by questioning the authority of his Church; he went on to sift the authority of the Bible. Little by little the whole wondrous fabric of supernatural Christianity crumbled before him. He could not but be honest with himself; he could not but see how Hebrew legend had overgrown the stern ethical code attributed to Moses; how the glosses of Paul and Augustine and a hundred later religionists had changed or perverted the simple teaching of Christ. Awestruck, he beheld the God of his youth vanish out of the world. He wandered in the wilderness of doubt; he wrestled daily and nightly with despair. And then slowly, painfully, after brooding through long years, he saw the outlines of a larger faith emerge from the gloom. He fortified himself by acknowledging that, since righteousness is eternal, it cannot perish when we reject whatever opinions some Council of Westminster, of Trent, or of Nice may have resolved about it. Only earnest souls who have experienced the wrench which comes when we first break away from the bondage of an artificial religion, and perceive that the moral law may be something very different from dogmas, know the pang it costs. The dread of losing the truth when errors are thrown over—nay, the apparent hopelessness of being able to decide what is truth—causes many to hesitate, and some to turn back. Carlyle was not, of course, the first in Britain to tread the desolate path from Superstition into Rationalism. In the eighteenth century—to go no farther back—two very eminent minds had preceded him; but in both Hume and Gibbon the intellectual predominated over the moral nature, and to temperaments like theirs the pangs of new birth are always less acute. It is because in Carlyle the moral nature preponderated—intense, fiery, and enduring—that he became the spokesman of myriads who since him have had a similar experience. If we were to hazard a generalization which should sum up the nineteenth century, might we not affirm that the chief business of the century has been to establish a basis of conduct in harmony with what we actually know of the laws governing the universe? Hitherto, for ages together, men have not consciously done this, but they have accepted standards handed down to them by earlier men, who compounded these standards out of little knowledge, much ignorance, legend, and hearsay. Skeptics there have always been, but usually, like the skeptics who flourished in the last century, they have differed from the doubters in ours by the degree of their moral intensity. Whether we turn to Carlyle or to George Eliot, we find each tirelessly busy in substituting for the worn-out tenets of the past, springs of belief and conduct worthy to satisfy a more enlightened conscience. Here, then, we have the corner-stone of Carlyle’s influence. Our world is a moral world; conscience and righteousness are eternal realities, independent of the vicissitudes of any church. If we seek for a definite statement of Carlyle’s creed, we shall be disappointed; he never formulated any. After breaking loose from one prison, he would have scoffed at the idea of voluntarily locking himself up in another. He held that to possess a moral sense is to possess its justification; that conscience is a fact transcending logic just as consciousness or life itself does. In the presence of this supreme fact he cared little for its genealogy. The immanence of God was to him an ever-present, awful verity. Likewise, when we come to examine his philosophy, we discover that he constructed no formal system. He absorbed the doctrine of Kant and his followers, and may be classed, by those who insist that every man shall have a label, among the transcendentalists: but his main interest was the application of moral laws to life, the trial of men and institutions in the court of conscience, rather than the exercise of the intellect in metaphysical speculations. The mystery of evil may not be explained for some ages, if ever; while we argue about it, evil grows: the one indispensable duty for all of us, he would say, is to combat evil in ourselves and in society now and here. The stanch seaman, when his ship founders, does not waste time in meditating why it should be that water will sink a ship, but he lashes together a raft, if haply he may thereby come off safe. In these respects we behold Carlyle a true representative of his time. Before the vast bulk of sin and sorrow and pain he did not cower; he would fight it manfully. But the smoke of battle darkened him. The spectacle of mankind, dwelling in Eternity, yet ignorant of their heritage, pursuing “desires whose purpose ends in Time;” of souls engaged from dawn to dusk of their swift-fleeting existence, not on soul’s business, but on body’s business, worshiping idols they know to be false, deceiving, persecuting, slaying each other,—confirmed a tendency to pessimism to which his early Calvinism had predisposed him. But Carlyle’s pessimism must not be confounded with Swift’s misanthropy, or with Leopardi’s blank despair, or with the despicable Schopenhauer’s cosmic negation of good. Carlyle was neither cynic nor misanthrope. He might exclaim with Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” but he would mean that the ways and works of man are vain in comparison with his possibilities, and with the incalculable worth of righteousness. “Man’s unhappiness, as I construe,” he says, “comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even the Shadow of Ourselves.” These being the elements of Carlyle’s moral nature, let us look for a moment at the world which he was to test by his “unborrowed principles of conviction.” He came on the scene during the decade of reaction which followed the battle of Waterloo. Official Europe, confounding the ambition of Napoleon with the causes underlying the Revolution, supposed that in crushing one it had destroyed the other. The motto of the Old RÉgime had been Privilege, of the New it was Merit. The revived political fashions of the eighteenth century, though cut by such elegant tailors as Metternich, Castlereagh, and Polignac, chafed a generation which had grown used to a freer costume. At any time there yawns between the ideals and the practices of society a discrepancy which provokes the censure of the philosopher and the sarcasm of the cynic; but in a time like the Restoration, when some men consciously repudiated and none sincerely believed the system thrust upon them, the chasm between profession and performance must open wider still, revealing not only the noble failures born of earnest but baffled endeavor, but also all the hideous growths of hypocrisy, of deceptions, insincerities, and intellectual fraud. And in very truth the Old RÉgime resuscitated by Europe’s oligarchs was doubly condemned,—first, as being unfitted to the new age; and, secondly, as having marked in the eighteenth century, when it flourished, the logical conclusion of a political and social epoch. In 1820 the trunk and main branches of the tree of Feudalism were dead: he was not a wise man who imagined that the still surviving upper branches would long keep green. Not alone in the political constitution of society were momentous changes operating. They but represented the attempt of man to work out, in his civic and social relations, ideas which had already penetrated his religion and his philosophy. Distil those ideas to their inmost essence, its name is Liberty. The old Church, whether Roman or Protestant, lay rotting at anchor in the land-locked bayou of Authority; and the pioneers of the new convictions, abandoning her and her cargo of antiquated dogmas, had pushed on across intervening morasses to the shore of the illimitable sea; yea, they were launching thereon their skiffs of modern pattern, and resolutely, hopefully steering whither their consciences pointed. Better the storms of the living ocean than the miasma of that stagnant, scum-breeding pool! But a church is of all institutions that to which men cling most stubbornly, paying it lip-service long after its doctrines have ceased to shape their conduct or to lift their aspirations; trying to believe, in spite of their unbelief, that it will continue to be to them a source of strength as it once was to their fathers; preserving forms, but veneering them with contradictory meanings; coming at last to declare that an institution must be kept, if for no other reason than because it once fulfilled the purposes for which it is now inadequate. The aroma of association has for some minds the potency of original inspiration. Who can ponder on life without perceiving that whereas in their business, their possessions, their love, and their hate, men resent dictation; in matters beyond the scope of experience, and consequently beyond proof,—as the conditions of a future life,—men credulously accept the guidance of others quite as ignorant as themselves, from whom in their business or their passions they would submit to no interference? Needless to say the revived Old RÉgime intrenched itself behind whatever church it found standing,—in Prussia the Lutheran, in England the Anglican, in Scotland the Calvinist, in the Latin countries the Roman. The ecclesiastical institution might not humanize the masses, but at least it held them in check; it might not spiritualize the classes, but it taught them that in rallying to its support they were best guarding their own privileges. Metternich, whom we call the representative of the Restoration, did not scruple to announce that, as the dangers which threatened Church and State were identical, the Church could be saved only by upholding the State. Not for the first time in history was the priest a policeman in disguise. Into this world of transition Thomas Carlyle strode with his store of unborrowed principles. Right or wrong, his convictions were his own; therefore they were realities that need not fear a conflict with ghosts of dead convictions and insincerities. Naturally, one of the first facts that amazed him was the monstrous unreality in that transitional society. By the census the people of Great Britain were rated as Christians; by their acts they seemed little better than barbarians. What availed the Established Church, in which livings were assigned at the pleasure of some dissolute noble, fox-hunting parsons were given the cure of souls, and worldlings or unbelievers rose to be bishops? Could the loudest protestations explain the existence of great, gaunt, brutalized masses, beyond the pale of human charity; every horse sleek, well lodged, and well fed, but innumerable men dying of hunger or lodged in the almshouse? Can that be true civilization in which the various constituents recognize no interdependence, and only a few usurp benefits which are pernicious unless they be free to all? Respectability, and not virtue,—that, Carlyle declared, was John Bull’s ideal, and he opened fire upon its chief allies, Sham and Cant. He spared no prejudices, he respected no institutions. With sarcasm until then unknown in English, he unmasked one artificiality after another, disclosing the cruelty or the hypocrisy which lurked behind it, and setting over against it the true nature of the thing it pretended to be. To interpret such conditions by the criterion of conscience was to condemn them. But Carlyle’s mission was not merely to destroy: he shattered error in order that the clogged fountain of truth might once more gush forth. Before eyes long dimmed with gazing on insincerity, he would hold up shining patterns of sincerity; souls groping for guidance, he would stay and comfort by precedents of strength; hearts pursuing false idols, he would chasten by examples of truth. Men talked—and nowhere more pragmatically than in the churches—as if God, after having imparted his behests to a few Hebrews ages ago, had retired into some remote empyrean, and busied himself no more with the affairs of men. But to Carlyle the immanence of God was an ever-present reality, manifesting itself throughout all history and in every individual conscience, but nowise more clearly than in the careers of great men. Thus he made it his business to set before his contemporaries models worthy of veneration, for he recognized that worship is a primary moral need. “Great men,” he says, “are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.” In this spirit he introduced Goethe, the latest of the heroes, to English readers, as the man who, from amid chaos similar to that which bewildered them, had climbed to a position where life could be lived nobly, rationally, well. “Close your Byron, open your Goethe,” was his advice to those in whom Byron’s mingled defiance and sentimentality found an echo. He showed in Cromwell how religious zeal is something very different from a phantom faith. He laid bare the truth in Mahomet. He made Luther live again. And all to the end that he might convince his dazed contemporaries that in no age, if we look deeply, shall we look in vain for concrete, living examples of those qualities which are indispensable to right action; that salvation—the purging of the character—is won by exercising virtues, and not by conforming to a stereotyped routine; that the authority of conscience is a present fact, not a mere mechanism which God wound up and gave to the Hebrews, and has been transmitted in poor repair by them to us. As an antidote to sterilizing doubt, Carlyle prescribed the simple remedy which sums up the wisdom of all the sages: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.” In this fashion did Carlyle discharge his mission as a moral regenerator. We live as individuals, and to the individual conscience he made his appeal, caring little for the organization of principles into institutions. Rather, like every individualist, did he incline to deprecate the numbing effect of institutions. Let each unit be righteous, in order that whatever the collective units shall establish may be righteous too. Bearing this in mind, we shall understand Carlyle’s attitude toward the great social and intellectual movements of his time. The watchword which had inspired generous minds at the end of the last century was Liberty, and after the thunders of the Napoleonic wars that had drowned it died away, it rang out its summons more clearly than before, never again to be quite deadened, despite all the efforts of the Old RÉgime. The application of the theory of Liberty to government resulted in setting up Democracy as the ideal political system. Since every citizen in the State bears, directly or indirectly, his fraction of the burden of taxation, and since he is affected by the laws, and interested, even to the point of laying down his life, in the preservation of his country, Democracy declares that he should have an equal part with every other citizen in determining what the taxes and policy of his State shall be; and it thrusts upon him the responsibility of choosing his own governors and representatives. To Carlyle this ideal seemed a chimera. Honest, just, and intelligent government is of all social contrivances the most difficult: by what miracle, therefore, shall the sum of the opinions of a million voters, severally ignorant, be intelligent? As well blow a million soap-bubbles, each thinner than gossamer, and expect that collectively they will be hard as steel! Or, admitting that the representatives Demos chooses be not so incompetent as itself, how shall they be kept disinterested? Their very numbers not only make them unmanageable, but so divide responsibility that any individual among them can shift from his own shoulders the blame for corrupt or harmful laws. Moreover, popular government means party government, and that means compromise. To Carlyle, principles were either right or wrong, and between right and wrong he saw no neutral ground for compromise. Party government cleaves to expediency, which at best is only a half-truth; but half-truth is also half-error, and any infinitesimal taint of error vitiates the truth to which it clings. Finally, Democracy substitutes a new, many-headed tyranny—more difficult to destroy because many-headed—for the tyranny it would abolish. Such objections Carlyle urged with consummate vigor. He foresaw, too, many of the other evils which have accompanied the development of this system to impair its efficacy, such as the rise of a class of professional politicians, of political sophists, of corrupt “bosses,” expert in the art of wheedling the ignorant many, and thereby of frustrating the initial purpose of the system. His opposition did not spring from desire to see the masses down-trodden, but from conviction that they need guidance and enlightenment, and that they are therefore no more competent to choose their own law-makers than children are to choose their own teachers. In knowledge of public affairs Demos is still a child, innocent, well-intentioned, if you will; but ignorant, and by this system left to the mercy of the unscrupulous. This brings us to consider the charge that Carlyle, in his exaltation of the Strong Man, worshiped crude force. Let us grant that on the surface the accusation seems plausible; but when we seek deeper, we shall discover that he exalts Cromwell and Frederick, not because they were despots, but because, in his judgment, they knew better than any other man, or group of men, in their respective countries, how to govern. Their ability was their justification; their force, but the symbol of their ability. “Weakness”—Carlyle was fond of quoting—“is the only misery.” What is ignorance but weakness (through lack of training) of the intellect? In the incessant battle of life,—and few men have been more constantly impressed than Carlyle by the battle-aspect of life,—weakness of whatever kind succumbs to strength. Evil perpetually marshals its forces against Good,—positive, aggressive forces, to be overcome neither by inertia, nor indifference, nor half-hearted compromise, but by hurling stronger forces of Good against them. Interpreting Carlyle’s views thus, we perceive why he extolled the Strong Man and distrusted the aggregate ignorance of Democracy. Furthermore, we must not forget that he never considered politics the prime business of life: first, make the masses righteous, next, enlightened, and then they will naturally organize a righteous and enlightened government. When Carlyle rejoined to the zealots of Democracy or other panaceas, “Adopt your new system if you must, will not the same old human units operate it? Were it not wiser to perfect them first?”—he antagonized the spirit of the age: wisely or not, only time can show. Those of us who would reject his arguments would nevertheless admit that Democracy is still on trial. With equal fearlessness he attacked the cheap optimism based on material prosperity, which brags of the enormous commercial expansion made possible by the invention of machinery; which boasts of the rapid increase in population—so many more million mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, and so much more food and raiment produced—from decade to decade. These facts, he insisted, are not of themselves evidences of progress. Your inventions procure greater comfort, a more exuberant luxury; but do comfort and luxury necessarily build up character?—do they not rather unbuild it? Are your newly bred millions of bodies more than bodies? Take a census of souls, has their number increased? Though your steam-horse carries you fifty miles an hour, have you thereby become more virtuous? Though the lightning bears your messages, have you gained bravery? Of old, your aristocracy were soldiers: is the brewer who rises from his vats to the House of Lords—is any other man owing his promotion to the tradesman’s skill in heaping wealth—more worshipful than they? Let us not say that this amazing industrial expansion may not conduce to the uplifting of character; but let us strenuously affirm that it is of itself no indication of moral progress, and that, if it fail to be accompanied by a corresponding spiritual growth, it will surely lead society by the Byzantine high-road to effeminacy, exhaustion, and death. A different gospel, this, from that which Carlyle’s great rival, Macaulay, was preaching,—Macaulay, who lauded the inventor of a useful machine above all philosophers! Different from the optimism—which gauges by bulk—of the newspapers and the political haranguers! Different, because true! Yet, though it sounded harsh, it stirred consciences,—which smug flatterings and gratulations can never do; and it gave a tremendous impetus to that movement which has come to overshadow all others,—the movement to reconstruct society on a basis, not of privilege, not of bare legality, but of mutual obligations. Any inventory, however brief, of Carlyle’s substance, would be incomplete without some reference to his quarrel with Science. To Science a large part of the best intelligence of our age has been devoted,—a sign of the breaking away of the best minds from the cretinizing quibbles of theology into fields where knowledge can be ascertained. It is a truism that Science has advanced farther in our century than in all preceding time. By what paradox, then, should Carlyle slight its splendid achievements? Was it not because he revolted from the materialistic tendency which he believed to be inseparable from Science, a tendency which predominated a generation ago more than it does to-day? Materialism Carlyle regarded as a Gorgon’s head, the sight of which would inevitably petrify man’s moral nature. Moreover, Carlyle’s method differed radically from that of the scientific man, who describes processes and investigates relations, but does not explain causes. Pledged to his allegiance to tangible facts, the man of science looks at things serially, pays heed to an individual as a link in an endless chain rather than as an individual, lays emphasis on averages rather than on particulars. To him this method is alone honest, and, thanks to it, a single science to-day commands more authenticated facts than all the sciences had fifty years ago. But there are facts of supreme importance which, up to the present at least, this method does not solve. The mystery of the origin of life still confronts us. Consciousness, the Sphinx, still mutely challenges the caravans which file before her. The revelations of Science seem, under one aspect, but descriptions of the habitations of life from the protoplasmic cell up to the human body. Immense though the value of such a register be, we are, not deceived into imagining that it explains ultimates. How came life into protoplasm at all? Whence each infinitesimal increment of life, recognizable at last in the budding of some new organ? And when we arrive at man, whence came his personality? Each of us is not only one in a genealogical series stretching back to the unreasoning, conscienceless amoeba, but a clearly defined individual, a little world in himself, to whom his love, his sorrow, his pain and joy and terror, transcend in vividness all the experiences of all previous men: a microcosm, having its own immediate relations—absolute relations—with the infinite macrocosm. Science, bent on establishing present laws, measures by Æons, counts by millions, and has warrant for ignoring your brief span or mine; but to you and me these few decades are all in all. However it may fare with the millions, you and I have vital, pressing needs, to supply which the experience of the entire animal kingdom can give us no help. Upon these most human needs Carlyle fastened, to the exclusion of what he held to be unnecessary to the furtherance of our spiritual welfare. He busied himself with ultimates and the Absolute. Not the stages of development, but the development attained; not the pedigree of conscience, but conscience as the supreme present reality; not the species, but the individual,—were his absorbing interests. Thus we see how Carlyle approached the great questions of life invariably as a moralist. Mere erudition, which too often tends away from the human, did not attract him. Science, which he beheld still unspiritualized, he undervalued: what boots it to know the “mileage and tonnage” of the universe, when our foremost need is to build up character? In politics, in philosophy, in religion, likewise, he set this consideration above all others: before its august presence outward reforms dwindled into insignificance. Such was the substance of Carlyle’s message. Remarkable as is its range, profound as is its import, it required for its consummation the unique powers of utterance which Carlyle possessed. Among the masters of British prose he holds a position similar to that of Michael Angelo among the masters of painting. Power, elemental, titanic, rushing forth from an inexhaustible moral nature, yet guided by art, is the quality in both which first startles our wonder. The great passages in Carlyle’s works, like the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sixtine Chapel, have no peers: they form a new species, of which they are the only examples. They seem to defy the ordinary canons of criticism; but if they break the rules it is because whoever made the rules did not foresee the possibility of such works. Transcendent Power, let it take whatever shape it will,—volcano, torrent, CÆsar, Buonarotti, Carlyle,—proclaims: “Here I am,—a fact: make of me what you can! You shall not ignore me!” Of Carlyle’s style we may say that, whether one likes it or not, one can as little ignore it as fail to perceive that he makes it serve, with equal success, whatever purpose he requires. It can explain, it can laugh, it can draw tears; it can inveigh, argue, exhort; it can tell a story or preach a sermon. Carlyle has, it is computed, the largest vocabulary in English prose. His endowment of imagination and of humor beggars all his competitors. None of them has invented so many new images, or given to old images such fresh pertinence. Your first impression, on turning to other writings after his, is that they are pale, and dim, and cold: such is the fascination inalienable from power. Excess there may be in so vehement a genius; repetition there must be in utterances poured out during sixty years; an individuality so intense must have an equally individual manner; but there is, rightly speaking, no mannerism, for mannerism implies affectation, and Carlyle’s primal instinct was sincerity. His expression is an organic part of himself, and shares his merits and defects. Carlyle won his first reputation as a historian; singularly enough, his achievements in history have temporarily suffered a partial eclipse. Teachers in our colleges refer to them dubiously or not at all. Does the fault lie with these same teachers, or with Carlyle? A glance at the methods of the school of historical students which has sprung up during the last generation will explain the disagreement. History, like every other branch of intellectual activity, has responded to the doctrines of Evolution. That most fertile working hypothesis has proved, when applied here, not less fruitful than in other fields. It has caused the annals of the past to be reinvestigated, every document, record, and monument to be gathered up, and the results have been set forth from the new point of view. Evolutionary science, as we saw above, fixes its attention primarily on the processes of development, and regards the individual, in comparison with a species or the race, as a negligible quantity. A similar spirit has guided historical students. They have turned away from “great captains with their guns and drums,” away from figure-head monarchs, away from the achievements of even the mightiest individuals, to scrutinize human action in its collective forms, the rise and supremacy and fall of institutions, the growth of parties, the waxing and waning of organisms like Church or State, in whose many-centuried existence individual careers are swallowed up. Using the methods of Science, these students have persuaded themselves that history also is a science, which, in truth, it can never be. Judicial temper, patience, veracity,—the qualities which they rightly magnify,—were not invented by them, nor are these the only qualities required in writing history. Speaking broadly, facts lie within the reach of any diligent searcher. But a fact is a mere pebble in a brook until some David comes to put it in his sling. True history is the arrangement and interpretation of facts, and—more difficult still—insight into motives: for this there must be art, there must be imagination. To the disciples of the “scientific school” it may be said that the heaping up of great stores of facts—the collection of manuscripts, the cataloguing of documents, the shoveling all together in thick volumes prefaced by forty pages of bibliography, each paragraph floating on a deep, viscous stream of notes, each volume bulging with a score of appendices—is in no high sense history, but the accumulation of material therefor. It bears the same relation to history as the work of the quarryman to that of the architect; most worthy in itself, and evidently indispensable, but not the same. Stand before some noble edifice,—Lincoln Cathedral, for instance, with its incomparable site, its symmetry and majestic proportions: scan it until you feel its personality and realize that this is a living idea, the embodiment of strength and beauty and aspiration and awe,—and you will not confound the agency of the stone-cutters who quarried the blocks with that of the architect in whose imagination the design first rose. Neither should there be confusion between the historical hodman and the historian. Indubitably, history of the highest kind may be written from the evolutionist’s standpoint, but as yet works of the lower variety predominate. Therefore, in a time when the development of institutions chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, who magnifies individuals, will naturally be neglected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are needed to supplement each other. All institutions originate and exist in the activities of individuals. The hero, the great man, makes concrete and human what would otherwise be abstract. Environment does not wholly explain him. It is easy to show wherein he resembles his fellows; that difference from them which constitutes his peculiar, original gift is the real mystery, which the study of resemblances cannot solve. Men will cease to be men when personality shall lose its power over them. Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism in the two points of view,—antagonism which implies parity and not the necessary extinction of one by the other,—we can judge Carlyle fairly. Among historians he excels in vividness. Perhaps more than any other who has attempted to chronicle the past, he has visualized the past. The men he describes are not lay figures, with wooden frames and sawdust vitals, to be called Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen according as a different costume is draped upon them; but human beings, each swayed by his own passions, striving and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are actors in a real drama: such as they are, Carlyle has seen them; such as he has seen, he depicts them. To go back to Carlyle from one of the “scientific historians” is like passing from a museum of mummies out into the throng of living men. If his portraits differ from those of another artist, it does not follow that they are false. In ordinary affairs, two witnesses may give a different report of the same event, yet each may, from his angle of observation, have given exact testimony. Absolute truth, who shall utter it? Since history of the highest, architectonic kind is interpretation, its value must depend on the character of the interpreter. Not to be greatly esteemed, we suspect, are those grubbers among the rubbish heaps who imagine that Carlyle’s interpretation of the French Revolution, or of Cromwell, or of Frederick, may be ignored. Character, insight, and imagination went to the production of works like these: they require kindred gifts to be appreciated. Neither of Carlyle’s portrait gallery, unparalleled in range, in which from each picture an authentic human face looks out at us; nor of his masterpieces of narration, long since laureled even by the unwilling,—is there space here to speak. In portraiture he used Rembrandt’s methods: seizing on structural and characteristic traits, he displays them in strong, full light, and heightens the effect by surrounding them with shadows. As a biographer he succeeded equally well in telling the story of Schiller and that of John Sterling: the latter a most difficult task, as it must always be to make intelligible to strangers a beautiful character whose charm and force are felt by his friends, but have no proportionate expression in his writings. As an essayist he has left models in many branches: “Mirabeau,” “Johnson,” “Goethe,” “Characteristics,” “Burns,” “History,” stand as foothills before his more massive works. His is creative criticism, never restricted, like the criticism of the schools, to purely literary, academic considerations, but penetrating to the inmost heart of a book or a man, to discover what deepest human significance may there be found. A later generation has, as we have noted, adopted a different treatment in all these fields: bending itself to trace the ancestry and to map out the environment of men of genius; concentrating attention on the chain rather than its links; necessarily belittling the individual to aggrandize the mass. It behooves us, while we recognize the value of this treatment as a new means to truth, not to forget that it is not the only one. By and by—perhaps the time is already at hand—we shall recognize that the other method, which deals with the individual as an ultimate rather than in relation to a series, which is human rather than abstract, cannot be neglected without injury to truth. Either alone is partial; each corrects and enlightens the other. Meanwhile we will indulge in no vain prophecies as to Carlyle’s probable rank with posterity. That a man’s influence shall be permanent depends first on his having grasped elemental facts in human nature, and next on his having given them an enduring form. Systems struggle into existence, mature, and pass away, but the needs of the individual remain. Though we were to wake up to-morrow in Utopia, the next day Utopia would have vanished, unless we ourselves had been miraculously transformed. To teach the individual soul the way of purification; to make it a worthy citizen of Eternity which laps it around; to kindle its conscience; to fortify it with courage; to humanize it with sympathy; to make it true,—this has been Carlyle’s mission, performed with all the vigor of a spirit “in earnest with the universe,” and with intellectual gifts most various, most powerful, most rare. It will be strange if, in time to come, souls with these needs, which are perpetual, lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in the future, Carlyle’s past is secure. He has influenced the Élite of two generations: men as different as Tyndall and Ruskin, as Mill and Tennyson, as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt the infusion of his moral force. And to the new generation we would say: “Open your ‘Sartor;’ there you shall hear the deepest utterances of Britain in our century on matters which concern you most; there, peradventure, you shall discover yourselves.” [5] First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1891. I. HIS LIFE. We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. The men of his epoch hungered for fame, but it was by the splendor of their genius, and not by the details of their personal lives, that they hoped to be known to posterity. The days of judicious Boswells and injudicious Froudes had not then come to pass; so that we are now as ignorant of the lives of the painters of the great school which flourished at Venice during the sixteenth century as of the lives of that group of poets who flourished in England during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Nevertheless, Providence sees to it that nothing essential be lost; and, in the absence of memoirs, the masterpiece itself becomes a memoir for those who have insight. In art, works which proceed from the soul, and not from the skill, are truthful witnesses to the character of the artist. “For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen.” It is not wholly to be regretted, therefore, that the meagreness of our information concerning Tintoret compels us to study his paintings the more earnestly. The lives of artists are generally scanty in those adventures and dramatic incidents which make entertaining biographies. Men of action express their character in deeds: poems, statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot out a few pages of history, and what remains of Hannibal or Scipio? But we should know much about Michael Angelo or Raphael from their paintings, had no written word about either come down to us. The year of Tintoret’s birth is variously stated as 1512 and 1518. Even his name has been a cause of dispute to antiquaries; but since he was content to call and sign himself Jacopo (or Giacomo) Robusti, we may accept this as correct. His father was a dyer of silk (tintore), and as the boy early helped at that trade he got the nickname il tintoretto, “the little dyer.” Vasari, also born in 1512, is the only contemporary who furnishes an account of Tintoret. Unsatisfactory and well-nigh ridiculous it is, if we remember that by 1574, when Vasari died, Tintoret had already produced many of his masterpieces. Yet the Florentine painter-historian did not accord to him so much as a separate chapter in his “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,” but inserted his few pages of criticism and gossip, as if by an afterthought, in the sketch of the forgotten Battista Franco. Since much that has been subsequently written about Tintoret is merely a repetition of Vasari’s shallow opinions, which created a mythical Tintoret, just as English reviewers created a mythical “Johnny Keats,” long believed to be the real Keats, I quote a few sentences from Vasari. “There still lives in Venice,” he says, “a painter called Jacopo Tintoretto, who has amused himself with all accomplishments, and particularly with playing music and several instruments, and is, besides, pleasing in all his actions; but in matters of painting he is extravagant, full of caprice, dashing, and resolute, the most terrible brain that painting ever had, as you may see in all his works, and in his compositions of fantastic subjects, done by him diversely and contrary to the custom of other painters. Nay, he has capped extravagance with the novel and whimsical inventions and odd devices of his intellect, which he has used haphazard and without design, as if to show that this art is a trifle.... And because in his youth he showed himself in many fair works of great judgment, if he had recognized the great endowment which he received from nature, and had fortified it with study and judgment, as those have done who have followed the fine manner of his elders, and if he had not (as he has done) cut loose from practiced rules, he would have been one of the greatest painters that ever Venice had; yet, for all this, we would not deny that he is a proud and good painter, with an alert, capricious, and refined spirit.”[6] Evidently, the originality of this “terrible” Tintoret could not be understood by Vasari, who imagined that he followed successfully the fine manner of his elders in the academic proprieties. But there is no hint that Tintoret heeded this generous advice. Perhaps it came too late,—at threescore years one’s character and methods are no longer plastic; perhaps it had been too often reiterated, for Tintoret had been assured from his youth up that, if he would only be instructed by his fellow-artists, he might hope to become a great painter like them. But, from the first glimpse we get of this perverse Tintoret to the last, one characteristic dominates all,—obedience to his own genius. Censure, coaxing, fashion, envy, popularity, seem never to have swerved him. Like every consummate genius, he drew his inspiration directly from within. “Conform! conform! or be written down a fool!” has always been the greeting of the world to the self-centred, spirit-guided few. “Right or wrong, I cannot otherwise,” has been their invariable reply. By the time that Tintoret made his first essays in painting, the Venetian school was the foremost in the world. The great Leonardo had died in France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a company of pupils who were rapidly enslaved by a graceless mannerism. Even earlier than this, the best talents of Umbria had wandered into feeble eccentricities, or had been absorbed by Raphael’s large humanism. Raphael himself was dead, at the height of his popularity and in the prime of his powers, and his disciples were hurrying along the road of imitation into the desert of formalism. Michael Angelo alone survived in central Italy, a Titan too colossal, too individual, to be a schoolmaster, although there were many of the younger brood (Vasari among them) who called him Maestro, and fancied that the grimaces and contortions they drew sprang from force and grandeur such as his. But in Venice painting was flourishing; there it had the exuberance and the strength, the joyousness and the splendor, of an art approaching its meridian. John Bellini, the eldest of the great Venetians, had died; but not before there had issued from his studio a wonderful band of disciples, some of whom were destined to surpass him. Giorgione, one of these, had been cut off in his thirty-fourth year, having barely had time to give to the world a few handsels of his genius. The fame of Titian had risen to that height where it has ever since held its station. A troop of lesser men—lesser in comparison with him—were embellishing Venice, or carrying the magic of her art to other parts of Italy. The tradition runs that the boy Tintoret amused himself by drawing charcoal figures on the wall, then coloring them with his father’s dyes: whence his parents were persuaded that he was born to be a painter. Accordingly, his father got permission for him to work in Titian’s studio, the privilege most coveted by every apprentice of the time. His stay there was brief, however; hardly above ten days, if the legend be true which tells how Titian returned one day and saw some strange sketches, and how, learning that Tintoret had made them, he bade another pupil send him away. Some say that Titian already foresaw a rival in the youthful draughtsman; others, that the figures were in a style so contrary to the master’s that he discerned no good in them, and judged that it would be useless for Tintoret to pursue an art in which he could never excel. Let the dyer’s son go back to his vats: there he could at least earn a livelihood. We are loth to believe that Titian, whose reputation was established, could have been moved by jealousy of a mere novice: we must remember, nevertheless, that even when Tintoret had come to maturity, and was reckoned among the leading painters of Venice, Titian treated him coldly, and apparently thwarted and disparaged him. Few artists, indeed, have risen quite above the marsh-mists of jealousy. Their ambition regards fame as a fixed quantity, and, like Goldsmith, they look upon any one who acquires a part of this treasure as having diminished the amount they can appropriate for themselves. But in Tintoret’s great soul envy could find no place. “Enmities he has none,” as Emerson says of Goethe. “Enemy of him you may be: if so, you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot, were it only what experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He cannot hate anybody; his time is worth too much.” Under whom Tintoret studied, after being thrust off by Titian, we are not told. Probably he had no acknowledged preceptor except himself. Already his aim was at the highest. On the wall of his studio he blazoned the motto, “The drawing of Michael Angelo and the coloring of Titian.” To blend the excellence of each in a supreme unity,—that was his ambition. Titian might shut him out from personal instruction, but Titian’s works in the churches and palaces were within reach. Tintoret studied them, copied them, and conjured from them the secret their master wished to hide. Having procured casts of Michael Angelo’s statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, he made drawings of them in every position. Far into the night he worked by lamplight, watching the play of light and shade, the outlines and the relief. He drew also from living models, and learned anatomy by dissecting corpses. He invented “little figures of wax and of clay, clothing them with bits of cloth, examining accurately, by the folds of the dresses, the position of the limbs; and these models he distributed among little houses and perspectives composed of planks and cardboard, and he put lights in the windows.” From the rafters he suspended other manikins, and thereby learned the foreshortening proper to figures painted on ceilings and on high places. So indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is known to posterity as “the thunderbolt of painters”! In his prime, he astonished all by his power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at which few masters can even sketch; but that power was nourished by his infinite painstaking in those years of obscurity. Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. Now we hear of him working with the masons at Cittadella; now taking his seat on the bench of the journeymen painters in St. Mark’s Place; now watching some illustrious master decorating the faÇade of a palace. No commission was too humble for him: who knows how many signboards he may have furnished in his ’prentice days? His first recorded works were two portraits,—of himself holding a bas-relief in his hand, and of his brother playing a cithern. As the custom then was, he exhibited these in the Merceria, that narrow lane of shops which leads from St. Mark’s to the Rialto. What the latest novel or yesterday’s political speech is to us, that was a new picture to the Venetians. Their innate sense of color and beauty and their familiarity with the best works of art made them ready critics. They knew whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, as the average Italian of to-day can tell whether a singer keeps the key, and doubtless they were vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret’s portraits attracted attention. They were painted with nocturnal lights and shadows, “in so terrible a manner that they amazed every one,” even to the degree of suggesting to one beholder the following epigram: “Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris, Exorto faciet quid radiante die?” [7] Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge another picture, by which the surprise already excited was increased, and he began thenceforward to get employment in the smaller churches and convents. Important commissions which brought wealth and honors were reserved for Titian and a few favorites; but Tintoret rejected no offer. Only let him express those ideas swarming in his imagination: he asked no further recompense. He seems to have been early noted for the practice of taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide his paints and canvas,—a practice which brought upon him the abuse of his fellows, who cried out that he would ruin their profession. But there was then no law to prohibit artist or artisan from working for any price he chose, and Tintoret, as usual, took his own course. At last a great opportunity offered. On each side of the high altar of the Church of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet high and fifteen or twenty feet broad. “Let me paint you two pictures,” said Tintoret to the friars, who laughed at the extravagant proposal. “A whole year’s income would not suffice for such an undertaking,” they replied. “You shall have no expense but for the canvas and colors,” said Tintoret. “I shall charge nothing for my work.” And on these terms he executed “The Last Judgment” and “The Worship of the Golden Calf.” The creator of those masterpieces could no longer be ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hostility and envy could not gainsay: they must note, though they refused to admire. It was in 1546, or thereabouts, that Tintoret uttered this challenge. In a little while he had orders for four pictures for the School of St. Mark; one of which, “St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave,” soon became popular, and has continued so. “Here is coloring as rich as Titian’s, and energy as daring as Michael Angelo’s!” visitors still exclaim. Other commissions followed, until there came that which the Venetian prized above all others,—an order to paint for the Ducal Palace. As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument in Westminster Abbey, as the Florentine covets a memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the Doges. That was his Temple of Fame. His dream, however, soared beyond the gratification of personal ambition: he desired that through him the glory and beauty of Venice might be enhanced and immortalized. This devotion to the ideal of a city, this true patriotism, has unfortunately almost disappeared from the earth. The very conception of it is now unintelligible to most persons. The city where you live—New York, Boston, London—you value in proportion as it affords advantages for your business, objects for your comfort and amusement; but you quit it without compunction if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. You are interested in its affairs just in so far as they affect your own. When you build a dwelling or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will improve or injure your neighbor’s property, much less whether it will be an ornament to the city; you need not even abate a nuisance until compelled to do so by the law. But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was not merely a convenience: it was a personality. Venezia was a spiritual patroness, a goddess who presided over the destiny of the State; he and every one of his fellow-citizens shared the honor and blessing of her protection. She had crowned with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude and justice, of his ancestors through many centuries. Every act of his had more than a personal, more even than a human, bearing. How would it affect her?—that was his test. He could do nothing unto himself alone; for good or for ill, what he did reacted upon the community, upon the ideal Venezia. The outward city—the churches, palaces, and dwellings—was but the garment and visible expression of that ideal city. Venezia had blessed him, and he was grateful; she was beautiful, and he loved her. His gratitude impelled him to deeds worthy of her protection; his love blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty. This reverence and devotion have, as I remarked, vanished from among men; yet in this ideal beams the conception of the true commonwealth. Observe that those three cities which held such an ideal before them have bequeathed to us the most precious works of beauty. Athens, Florence, Venice,—these are the Graces among the cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins or imposing monuments commemorating the pride and power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, CÆsars, Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find the spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and of Venice. In which modern city will the most diligent search discover it? Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege of consecrating his genius to Venezia. His first work for her seems to have been a portrait of the reigning Doge.[8] Then he painted two historical subjects,—“Frederick Barbarossa being crowned by Pope Adrian,” and “Pope Alexander III excommunicating Frederick Barbarossa;” and “The Last Judgment,” destroyed by the fire of 1557. Not long thereafter began his employment by the brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco. For their church, about 1560, he painted two scenes in the life of St. Roch, and then he joined in competition for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell’ Albergo in the School itself. The brothers called for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Veronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret had outsped them, and when his design was asked for he caused a screen to be removed from the ceiling, and lo! there was a finished picture of the specified subject. Brothers and competitors were astonished, and not greatly pleased. “We asked for sketches,” said the former. “That is the way I make my sketches,” replied Tintoret. They demurred; but Tintoret presented the picture to the School, one of whose rules made it obligatory that all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure of the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret was commissioned to furnish whatever paintings should be required in future. An annual salary of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in return for which he was to give at least one painting a year. Generously did he fulfil the contract; for at his death the School possessed more than sixty of his works, for which he had been paid but twenty-four hundred and forty-seven ducats. In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed many of the paintings, and when the edifice was restored the government looked for artists to replace them. Titian being dead, his opposition had no longer to be overcome; yet even now Tintoret had to compete with men of inferior powers, but of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and Paul Veronese was assigned the lion’s share of the undertaking, and for ten years those two men labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint a “Paradise” in the Hall of the Grand Council, the work was transferred to Tintoret, who devoted to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the highest expression not only of his genius, but of Italian painting.[9] Old age robbed him of none of his energy, but added sublimity to his imagination, and interfused serenity and mellowness throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, he died of a gastric trouble, after a fortnight’s illness, on the 31st of May, 1594.[10] With this clue, spun from the discursive records of Ridolfi (whose Meraviglie dell’ Arte was first published in 1648), we can pass through the labyrinth of Tintoret’s career. There are, besides, several anecdotes which help us to know the man’s personality better: if all be not authentic, at least all agree in attributing to him certain well-defined traits. As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was indefatigable. His lifelong yearning was not for praise, but for opportunity to work. Modesty he had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter, although none seems to have been more confident of his own powers.[11] Like Shakespeare, he wrought his masterpieces swiftly, and left them to their fate, because his imagination, like Shakespeare’s, was already on the wing for higher quarry. There was in the man an inflexible dignity, born of self-respect, which neither the allurements of popularity nor the flattery of the great could bend. When invited by the Duke of Mantua to go to that city and execute some paintings, Tintoret replied that wherever he went his wife wished to accompany him; at which the Duke bade him bring his wife and family, had them conveyed to Mantua in a state barge, and entertained them at his palace “at magnificent expense for many days.” He urged Tintoret to settle there; but the Venetian could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance to Venice. He saw that titles would add nothing to his fame, and refused an offer of knighthood from Henry III of France. Princes and grandees and illustrious visitors to Venice went to his house; but though he received them courteously, he sought no intimacy with them. His time was too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow of aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense of humor, which displayed itself now in some ready reply, now in genial conversation with his familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates and senators who visited him whilst he was making sketches for the “Paradise” asked him why he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and Titian had been deliberate and painstaking. “The old masters,” said Tintoret, “had not so many to bother them as I have.” At another time, at a gathering of amateurs, a woman’s portrait by Titian was lauded. “That’s the way to paint,” said one of the critics. Tintoret went home, took a sketch by Titian and covered it with lampblack, painted a head in Titian’s manner on the same canvas, and showed it at the next meeting of these amateurs. “Ah, there’s a real Titian!” they all agreed. Tintoret rubbed off the lampblack from the original sketch and said: “This, gentlemen, is indeed by Titian; that which you have admired is mine. You see now how authority and opinion prevail in criticism, and how few there are who really understand painting.” Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and most successful blackmailer in literature, was one of Titian’s intimates and partisans. He wished, nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tintoret, who was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel’s enmity, although most of the prominent personages of the time quailed before it. Aretino being posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from under his coat. Aretino was terrified lest he should be punished for his malicious tongue, and cried out, “Jacopo, what are you about?” “I am only going to take your measure,” said Tintoret complacently; and, measuring him from head to foot, he added, “your height is just two and a half hangers.” Aretino’s impudence returned. “You’re a great madman,” he said, “and always up to your pranks.” But this grim hint sufficed; the rascal never after dared to slander Tintoret, but, on the contrary, tried to ingratiate himself into his friendship. In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His wife, Faustina de’ Vescovi, was thrifty and dignified, and perhaps she was not a little annoyed by the “unpracticalness” of her husband. According to tradition, when he went out she tied up money for him in his handkerchief, and bade him give an exact account of it on his return. Having spent his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at some rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the Mermaid, where Elizabethan wits caroused, has been lost, he playfully assured Madonna Faustina that her allowance had gone to help the poor. She was particular that he should wear the dress of a Venetian citizen; but if he happened to go abroad in rainy weather, she called out to him from an upper window to come back and put on his old clothes. We have glimpses of him passing to and fro in Venice with Marietta, his favorite daughter, a painter of merit, whose early death saddened his later years.[12] Of his other children, two daughters entered a nunnery; a third married Casser, a German; his eldest son, Domenico, adopted his father’s profession, and assisted him in his work; another son went to the bad, and was cut off from an inheritance by his father’s will. In spite of his habit of giving away pictures, or of charging a small price for them, Tintoret bequeathed a comfortable fortune to his heirs. A few of his precepts and suggestions concerning art have come down to us through Ridolfi, who had them from Aliense, one of Tintoret’s pupils. “The study of painting is arduous,” he used to say; “and to him who advances farthest in it more difficulties appear, the sea grows ever larger.” “Students must never fail to profit by the example of the great masters, Michael Angelo and Titian.” “Nature is always the same; in painting, therefore, muscles must not be varied by caprice.” “In judging a picture, observe if, at the first examination, the eye is satisfied, and if the author has obeyed the great principles of art; as to the details, each will fall into error. Do not go immediately to look at a new work, but wait till the darts of criticism have all been shot, and men are accustomed to the sight.” Being asked which are the most beautiful colors, he answered, “Black and white; because the former gives force to figures by deepening the shadows, the latter gives the relief.” He insisted that only the experienced artist should draw from living models, which lack, for the most part, grace and symmetrical forms. “Fine colors,” he said, “are sold in the Rialto shops; but design is got from the casket of genius, by hard study and long vigils, and is therefore understood and practiced by but few.” Odoardo Fialeti asked him what to study. “Drawing,” replied Tintoret. Somewhat later, Fialeti sought further advice. “Drawing, and again drawing,” Tintoret reiterated. “Art must perfect nature,” was his guiding rule; and he instanced that Greek artist who modeled an Aphrodite by selecting the best features of the five most beautiful women he could find. His studio was in the most retired part of his house. Few were admitted to it, and they had to find their way thither up a dark staircase and along dark passages, by the light of a candle. There he spent most of his time,—a grave man ordinarily, as must ever be the case with genius which ranges the utmost abysses and sublimities; at heart a solitary man, so far as the absence of flesh-and-blood companions constitutes solitude, but forever attended by the great associates of his imagination. Laconic, too, in speech as with his brush; as when, in reply to a long letter from his brother, he wrote simply, “Sir: no.” But upon occasion—as that anecdote of Madonna Faustina’s allowance shows—he indulged in conviviality; and he had the gift, peculiar to a gentleman, of “being easy with persons of all ranks, and of putting them at ease.” “With his friends he preserved great affability. He was copious in fine sayings and witty hits, putting them forth with much grace, but without sign of laughter; and when he deemed it opportune, he knew also how to joke with the great.” Tintoret’s genius was only partially acknowledged during his lifetime, and his fame has suffered strange vicissitudes since his death. At times he has been extolled with meaningless extravagance; oftener condemned, after Vasari’s lukewarm fashion, or passed over without mention. Not until Mr. Ruskin came and opened the eyes of the world had Tintoret been adequately appreciated for those points of excellence wherein he has neither rival nor second. He has suffered for the same reasons that Shakespeare was long unesteemed in France: his works are bold, very rapid, often unequal, not in the least to be measured by the yardstick of conventionalism; he treats many new subjects, and the old subjects he always treats in new fashion, thereby provoking formalists to accuse him of wilful oddity or caprice; his reputation for swiftness of execution was deemed by many presumptive evidence that he was superficial; above all, his imagination was so rich and so powerful that it required a cognate imagination to follow it. Moreover, Tintoret was the last master of the great era of Italian painting. After him came schools which did not rely upon originality, but upon the inspiration of former masters. Pictures were but specimens of technique, and the models chosen for imitation were naturally those in which technique could be most easily reduced to rules. The public, as well as the painters themselves, gradually lost the power of valuing art as a spiritual expression. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the great language of painting was forgotten, until at last it became as a dead language. It was inevitable that Tintoret’s works, which had not always been understood by his contemporaries, should baffle the interpreters of art grammars and the pedagogues of technique. Again, Tintoret’s pigments have suffered more than those of any other master. The darker colors, in many cases, have become almost black; the lighter have faded, and sometimes completely changed.[13] How far this is due to an original defect in the paints, how far to exposure and neglect, I cannot say. It must always be remembered that, as popular canvases have been frequently varnished and restored, many Titians and Raphaels are as fresh to-day as they were when they left the easel. How much remains of the original painting is another question. Directors of galleries aim at pleasing the public, not at respecting the preferences of connoisseurs, and the public craves lively colors. It would feel itself imposed upon if it traveled to Dresden only to find the “Sixtine Madonna” as dark as would probably be the case if the restorer had not interfered. In every gallery you will observe that the crowds flock to the brightest pictures, irrespective of their merits. The fact that they have been kept bright is an advertisement that they are deemed precious; and besides, it requires less time to glance at a clean canvas and pass on than to recover, after patient scrutiny and an effort of the imagination, some of the beauty which time and dust conceal. It is significant that the one painting by Tintoret which is most commonly mentioned by all classes of tourists—“St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave”—is precisely that one which the directors of the Venice Academy keep polished as good as new. I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding to another cause for the slight attention given to Tintoret: his pictures are almost invariably condemned to oblivion by the position in which they have been hung. You must look for them in dark corners near the ceiling, or in cross-lights which render an examination impossible. Of those which still exist in the churches for which they were painted, some have been injured by the drippings from candles; others have been partly hidden by tabernacles, reliquaries, and other objects of church ceremonial. Travelers in Venice a generation ago record that rain leaked through the roof of the School of San Rocco, and soaked some of the canvases; others, hung near windows, have had to suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries. In the Ducal Palace, one series of ceiling paintings have succumbed to the daubing of restorers, and are now hardly recognizable as being Tintoret’s; while the matchless “Paradise,” when I recently saw it,[14] was falling rapidly to decay. The seams where the vast canvas was originally joined had rotted in many places; the canvas itself was warped and rumpled, forming little shelves and unevennesses on which the dust had collected so as to hide the colors; and from the ceiling dangled a ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places two or three feet long. A few generations hence, when these incomparable works have been irretrievably damaged, posterity will wonder—with a wonder intensified by indignation—that we allowed them to perish. Early Christians, who mutilated pagan works of art because they believed them to be pernicious, may be excused; but what excuse has our age to offer? We pretend to cherish all manifestations of culture, and we have ample means to preserve them; yet whilst our museums are daily adding to their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug up in Arizona, in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, there are surely hastening to destruction scores of the works of the mightiest genius who ever honored painting. During the past twenty years, New York millionaires have paid more for the immoralities and inanities of modern French painters than would be necessary to erect a separate gallery in Venice for the proper preservation of Tintoret’s masterpieces. If there were but a single manuscript of Hamlet in the world, and no printing-presses, what should we say to those who allowed it to perish through neglect? Yet there are many of Tintoret’s pictures, each of them as precious in its way as a page of Hamlet, which we raise no voice to save. In our selfishness, we forget that the treasures which we have inherited from the past are not ours to dissipate and destroy; we hold them in trust for the future, and woe unto us if, unmindful of our responsibility, we prove careless stewards.[15] What, then, are some of the qualities of Tintoret’s genius? First of all, he had vast scope: Christian and classic lore, the legend and story of Venice, contemporary scenes, and portraiture,—all these lay within his province. But scope alone, unguided by rarer powers, does not suffice for the equipment of the supreme master. Rubens had scope, even DorÉ had it, and neither ranks among the foremost. In Tintoret it was accompanied by a most intense imagination, which penetrated to the elemental reality and understood the intertangled relations of life. Imagination operated through him with a vigor more like Nature’s own than that of any other man except Shakespeare; a vigor which seems at once inexhaustible and effortless, which never wastes and never scants. In creating a beggar or a seraph he expended just as much energy as was necessary for each; you do not feel that one was harder for him than the other. Tintoret’s creations have this further resemblance to Shakespeare’s: they live! You do not exclaim, “This is a great picture!” but, “This is a great scene!” He is like a traveler who brings back views from a strange country: albeit you have never been there, yet the views are so real, the figures are painted so freely and lifelike, and not in conscious or conventional attitudes, that you cannot doubt their faithfulness, and are absorbed by the wonders and beauties they present. Tintoret never conspires to startle you by sensational devices. Even in those works where he is most daring he is really painting what his imagination saw naturally, and is no more bent on inventing oddities and marvels than was John in the Apocalypse. Before beginning a Biblical or an historical subject, he seems to have asked himself, “How did this look to a bystander?” and he relies upon the actuality of the scene to produce the desired impression. He has been charged, sometimes, with making Christ and his disciples too vulgar. Other painters have so accustomed you to look for a kingly personage in Christ, and for princely garments on his followers, that when you first see a “Last Supper”: by Tintoret you miss the habitual elegance; for he shows you simple and earnest but not ignoble fishermen and artisans of Judea. If you contemplate them wisely, your astonishment will deepen as you reflect that it was through and by such lowly and zealous men as these, and not by philosophers and prelates and princes, that the gospel of brotherly love was disseminated among mankind. It is legitimate for an artist to invest an historic character with emblems which bespeak the significance posterity has attached to him; but it is wholesome to see him as he probably appeared to his contemporaries, before subsequent generations have discovered a retroactive importance in his career. Tintoret employed now one method and now the other, and whosoever has been moved by the “Christ before Pilate” and “The Crucifixion” of the School of San Rocco needs not to be told that pathos and sublimity belong only to the former method. Tintoret’s versatility would have made a lesser man renowned. He counted it but an amusement, when the learned critics chided him for not obeying academic rules, to imitate the style of Titian, or Paul Veronese, or Schiavone, so that the critics themselves were deceived and confounded. He invariably adapted his treatment to the requirements of each work: if it was to be viewed from a considerable distance, he painted broadly; if it was to be seen near, no one surpassed him in the delicacy and carefulness of his finish. This sense of fitness governed his composition as well as his drawing. In a picture intended for a refectory, for instance, he introduced proportions in harmony with the dimensions of that refectory, causing it to appear more spacious and imposing. Where Tintoret’s figures are not correctly drawn, the apparent fault was often intentional: restore the picture to the position for which he designed it, and the drawing will no longer offend; for he always took into account the distance and angle from which the spectator would look, and he is not responsible for the changes in location. In studying any picture, remember that there is one, and only one, point of view where it can be seen as the artist wished it to be seen. If you stand too far or too near, you will miss his purpose. In a portrait by Titian or Tintoret, no line, no dot of color is superfluous: you must adjust your vision until the tiniest flake of white on the tip of the chin or on the pupils of the eyes shows you its reason for being there. Try to imagine that last perfecting touch away, and you will learn its value. For these men did nothing haphazard: they would as soon have wasted diamonds and rubies as their precious colors; every hair of their pencil was a nerve through which their imagination transmitted itself to the canvas. Although it be well-nigh impossible to describe a painting so that one who has not seen it can derive profit from the description, I shall attempt to point out a few of the characteristics of some of Tintoret’s other works, in the hope of refreshing the memory of readers who are already familiar with them, and of stimulating the interest of those who may see them hereafter. It is the thought Tintoret has expressed, and not the technique of his manner, to which I would call attention, believing that this can be in some measure made real even to those who cannot refer to the paintings themselves. One fact impresses us immediately,—Tintoret’s originality. Previous painters had used all the familiar Christian themes so often, that there had grown up a conventional form of representing each; but, although Tintoret used these themes, his treatment of them rarely recalls that of any other painters, and always demands fresh study. Giotto may be said to have fixed the norm which his successors generally followed, diverging from it only in details. Tintoret established a new norm. Moreover, he never copied himself; his inexhaustible imagination refused to repeat. It represented the same subject under different aspects, never twice alike. We have many replicas of Raphael’s and Titian’s works, but none, so far as I know, of Tintoret’s. In rare cases where two copies of a painting by him exist, one is the sketch. In one famous instance he is brought into direct comparison with his rival, Titian. They both painted “The Presentation of the Virgin,” in somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the scene as follows: In front of a stately pile of buildings, two flights of steps lead up to the threshold of the Temple, where stands a venerable high priest; near him are two other ecclesiastics and a youth. Spectators look out from the windows and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary, a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step of the second staircase, and, looking up at the high priest, prepares to finish the ascent. Immediately back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian column. Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian nobles is gathered near them,—like pleasure-seekers taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to witness a chance episode. An old woman with a basket of eggs sits in the foreground. A colonnade and pyramid close in the picture on the left,[16] and a pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind. This is Tintoret’s conception: A high priest, patriarchal in dignity, stands at the top of a flight of steps leading to the door of the Temple. Just below him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. Behind her is a young woman (probably her mother, Anne) carrying a young child. At the foot of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another mother (one of Tintoret’s matchless creations) is pointing toward Mary, and telling her little daughter that she, too, will erelong be presented at the Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near by. On the left, seven or eight old men and idlers (such as one still sees at the approach to churches in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues in the Orient) are ranged along the stairs, indolently watching the scene. The shadow of the building falls upon them, and prevents their figures from being too prominent. There is no suggestion of Venice or Venetian nobles. The attention is not distracted by costly apparel or imposing architecture, but is fixed upon the chief actors,—upon the venerableness of the high priest, the simplicity and confidingness of the little maiden, and the magnificent forms and naturalness of the women. Critics have disputed whether Titian’s picture or Tintoret’s be the earlier. The presumption is in favor of the former,[17] but there is no reason to cry plagiarism against either, because each master has worked out a similar conception with characteristic independence. The central idea—the youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the Temple to be received by the high priest—may be seen in one of Giotto’s frescoes.[18] What we admire is the originality of treatment in both pictures. To me, Tintoret’s conception seems the more nobly appropriate; and I know not in which of Titian’s works to look for a counterpart of that woman in Tintoret’s foreground, so easy, so living, so superb. As an example of Tintoret’s insight into the spiritual world, turn to his picture of Lucifer.[19] From early Christian times, the Evil One has been represented by very crude and vulgar symbols. A hideous face, horns, a tail, and cloven hoofs have come to be his accepted signs. Such a monster could never tempt even the frailest striver after righteousness; for this conception illustrates the loathsomeness of the results of sin, and not the allurements by which sin entraps us. It would be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crumbling skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he loves. The Devil would make no converts if he announced himself to be the Devil, and dangled before men’s eyes the despair, the degradation, the infinite remorse, which are his actual merchandise, instead of the fleeting pleasures and deceitful promises under which he masks them. He is no bungler or fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning his enticement to the strength of his victim, and very alert in choosing the moment most favorable for attack. Goethe, in his Mephistopheles, has portrayed the enemy of good under one of his aspects, emphasizing the cynical and wicked rather than the seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret has depicted the latter. His Lucifer is still an angel, though fallen. He has a commanding and beautiful form, and a countenance which at first fascinates, until, on searching it more deeply, you fancy you discern a suggestion of duplicity, a hint of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and strong are the plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels sparkles on his left arm, the sole emblem of the wearer’s wealth. Here is indeed a being whose beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive,—one whose presence dazzles and attracts, for it has majesty and grace and charm. Here is a fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks not from crime in order to possess power; or of that false pleasure which decoys men from duty, and, still flying beyond reach, leads its prisoner deeper and deeper into the abominations of the abyss. With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has illustrated the allegory of the temptation of St. Anthony.[20] This subject is usually treated either absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not one of these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are the enemies that a man whose life is dedicated to holiness, and who has taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist? Tintoret’s picture gives the answer. In it one of the figures, typifying Riches, offers gold and precious gems. “Why live a beggar?” she pleads softly; “take these and have power.” A second figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair in body. “Come with me,” she urges; “let us taste of joy together while there is still time.” A third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Heresy, has already dashed the saint’s missal and rosary to the ground, has snatched up his scourge, and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked off his mantle. “Come with me,” this tempter seems to say; “there will be no more scourging, and fasting, and mortification; with me your life shall be without care and unrestrained.” Nevertheless, Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heavenward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not these apt personifications of those lower impulses to which even men of high resolve have succumbed? All the witches of the Brocken and all the bats in a Pharaoh’s tomb have nothing alluring about them. There are few of Tintoret’s paintings which will not make similar revelations, if you look attentively. Often what appears to be only a casual accessory is the key to the whole composition. Let me cite two instances of his imaginative use of color. The first occurs in “The Martyrdom of St. Stephen.”[21] The saint has fallen on his knees beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but there is no melodramatic spurting of blood or sign of physical pain. His face betokens fortitude, resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He gazes up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of red and a black mantle. In the background on earth, behind the martyr, a crowd watch the persecution; they are too far away for us to distinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, is clothed in black and red. It is Paul, soon to acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God. Again, in the “Paradise,” Tintoret gives profound significance to color as a symbol: Moses, the witness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the witness to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors. The Doges’ Palace contains a score of Tintoret’s imaginative paintings and many of his portraits, and there are few churches in Venice which have not at least one altar-piece by him. His best portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian’s best: they have a vital quality, an inevitableness, which can be felt, but not described. What a concourse of doges, senators, procurators, nobles, and soldiers he has portrayed! Their grave, refined faces, their stately carriage, the sobriety as often as the sumptuousness of their dress, bear witness to the glory and power of Venice; that glory and power which had begun to decline in the sixteenth century, though the Venetians perceived it not. They misread the signs. They could not believe that Venice, which had continually grown in wealth during ten centuries, could decline or perish. Esto perpetua!—may she live forever!—was the last prayer of her historian, Sarpi, the abiding dream of all her citizens. It was Tintoret’s pride to immortalize on canvas her legends and her history, and to illustrate her grandeur by means of allegory. He painted the popular stories of the recovery of St. Mark’s body from Alexandria, and of the miracles performed by that holy patron. He painted the siege of Zara, the battle of Lepanto, and the ambassadors of Venice holding head before the haughtiness of Frederick Babarossa. He painted Venice enthroned among the gods, and Venice as mistress of the sea. But his genius was not confined to the expression of pomp and patriotism. It delighted not only in majestic flights of imagination, but also in contemplating and in setting forth pure beauty. In one of the smaller rooms of the Ducal Palace are two classic subjects by him,—“Mercury and the Graces,” “Ariadne and Bacchus,”—which, whether we regard their perfect symmetry, or the grace of their forms, or the delicious poetic spirit that emanates from them like fragrance from a bed of lilies, have few rivals in loveliness. They arouse in some beholders a mood akin to that which a joyous theme in one of Beethoven’s symphonies can arouse,—a mood sweeter than hope itself, or the brightest afterglow of memory; for, while it lasts, the present, flooded with peace and beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the soul. The School of San Rocco possesses sixty-four pictures by Tintoret. This series, illustrating the principal events in the Old and New Testaments, is quite without parallel, not only in extent, but in the excellence of a large number of the separate paintings. You pass from one to another as from scene to scene in Shakespeare; and it is only when you return to the works of lesser men that you realize the richness and strength of the master, who has lifted you to his level so easily that you were conscious of no effort. The halls in which these paintings are kept are utterly inadequate for their proper examination: not one can be seen in a favorable light; many are almost buried in gloom, or hidden in the equally impenetrable glare that falls on their surface from the cross-lights of conflicting windows. Some of the canvases have been injured by water; the colors have grown dim or dingy with age; and in some cases “restorers”[22] have blurred the outlines and brought discord among the tones. Nevertheless, who that has once seen can ever forget many of those paintings? The original conception looms up beautiful and grand from amid the wreck of time and neglect, like a mutilated, earth-stained Greek statue, and your imagination exerts itself to see the work as it must have appeared when the colors were fresh. Who can forget that flock of angels in “The Annunciation;” or “The Visit of the Magi;” or “The Flight into Egypt;” or the terrible “Slaughter of the Innocents,” which seems to have been painted in blood, though there is hardly any blood to be seen; or “The Adoration of the Shepherds;” or “Christ’s Agony in Gethsemane;” or “Christ before Pilate;” or “Christ being led to Calvary”? The series concludes with “The Crucifixion,” a masterpiece before which artists and amateurs, and even academic critics, have stood in mute wonder. It is a panoramic summary of the last acts in the persecution of Christ. No detail which the Evangelists furnish has been omitted, but all details have been subordinated to a unity so vast and impressive that it eludes analysis. Primarily, this is a pictorial representation of an historical event; but for the Christian believer it is an image of the profoundest religious meaning. There are many groups, but if you study each group you will discover that without it something would have been wanting to the whole. Here are Romans, to whom the spectacle has no moral interest; they are soldiers and judges, executing unperturbed the Roman law upon the person of a Jew who has stirred up the wrath of his fellows and caused a popular tumult. Here are Jews, mocking and full of hate. Here, too, is the little remnant of Jews who, believing in the victim as their master, are faithful to him unto death. Is not the indifference or the idle curiosity of some of the spectators as significant as the cruelty of his enemies and the devotion and anguish of his friends? For consider well what it implies that any human being should gaze unmoved, or moved only as by an every-day occurrence, at a fellow creature suffering the penalty of death. Is life, then, so cheap? Is a human soul of so slight account that men can cast lots or jeer while it passes in agony from earth forever? Who can estimate the cruelty which delights in the torments of that struggle? And if this sacrifice be viewed with the eyes of a Christian, and not of an impassive observer, if the victim be esteemed not merely a man, but the Son of God, what words shall describe its solemnity? Tintoret has painted all this into his picture, in which the central object is the cross with Christ upon it. His head has sunk upon his bosom, and we imagine that with his downcast eyes he beholds the group of holy women at the foot of the cross, and says to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son.” That group is the most pathetic that painter ever drew. Some of the women, overwhelmed by grief, have fainted. Not by their faces, but by their drooping, motionless bodies, can you infer the unspeakable burden which is crushing them. One kneels; another—Magdalen, it may be—has risen, and looks up at the expiring Saviour. A venerable disciple gazes tenderly at the face of the Virgin, who has swooned. A younger disciple lifts his eyes toward Christ. They cannot help; they cannot speak; they can only wait and sorrow. Who shall utter the agony that love feels when it is powerless to relieve the suffering of its beloved! Behind this group stands a man holding a bowl, into which another man, who has climbed a ladder resting against the back of the cross, dips a sponge stuck on a spear. At the left, other executioners are raising the cross on which one of the malefactors has been bound. Some men in front are tugging at ropes; others behind are pushing or steadying it. Hammers, adzes, a saw, and other tools bestrew the ground. Farther on are many spectators,—a Roman officer in armor, elders, dignitaries, and a soldier bearing the Roman standard. Some point toward Christ, and evidently say to one another: “That is the impostor who calls himself the Son of God and the King of the Jews. Where is his pretended might?” A little in the background, a mounted spearman has thrown the reins on the neck of his ass, which complacently feeds on withered palm leaves,—an imaginative touch characteristic of Tintoret, which will not be lost on those who recall Christ’s entry into Jerusalem a few days before. In the foreground, to the right, a man is digging a hole for the cross of the second malefactor, while soldiers are drawing lots for Christ’s garments, and other mounted soldiers are watching the proceedings near by. A little beyond, another group is busy attaching that malefactor to his cross; one boring a hole for the spike to pierce his hand, another holding down his legs so that they can be bound, while a third has a rope. In the distance, men hurry toward the scene, lest they be too late to enjoy it; and the foremost camels of a caravan on its way into the city appear just at a turn in the road. For traffic and the daily toil of men are not interrupted by the crucifixion of Christ, though soldiers and idlers have come out to witness it. On the left there is a palace, and then hills succeeded by craggy mountains. The clouds have deepened almost into darkness along the horizon. The sun, as it sinks into this gloom, appears as a huge disk of ghastly light, and this disk forms a dim halo behind Christ’s head. Yet a little while and the earth shall be wholly darkened, and these curious, careless spectators shall flee away in terror.[23] Such, told briefly and inadequately,—for language can only hint at the effects of painting,—is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret’s imagination.[24] We have no evidence that Tintoret visited Rome, nor any record of his journeys, except that to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was familiar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, the little hills and picturesque mountains, which abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, therefore, whether he studied Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from engravings or copies, with the composition of that extraordinary work; yet his own painting of that subject bears so little resemblance to Michael Angelo’s that it seems to have been produced independently. The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so complicated that it bewilders the student, until he observes that the principal groups are roughly arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the points of which are near the bottom of the lower wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes place in the air, the lower portion alone of the fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined condition we cannot guess the original effect of this work; but I doubt whether it could ever have satisfied the beholder’s instinctive demand for harmony. The groups, even the individuals, seem isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing passion. The only characteristic which applies to the whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, can be expressed by the human body, is expressed here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not exhibited in various positions; no posture of limbs or trunk which is not represented. The resurrection of the body is illustrated in a hundred ways, and the expression of the faces is of secondary importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of Titans; saints are as robust as athletes; Christ himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not without reason may we call these effigies of restless, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or horror, or power. The space[25] to which Tintoret had to adapt his picture of “The Last Judgment” is oblong, about fifty feet high and twenty feet broad. In the upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, not in the character of the inexorable Judge, but in that of the Shepherd who welcomes his faithful flock to Paradise; for the resurrection and judgment are coincident. On one side, near Christ, John the Baptist is kneeling, and Mary and the repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are near; on the other side are personifications of the cardinal virtues. Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in her arms two young children to present to the Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the upper part of the painting into sections, in which the saints are ranked; but the distribution seems natural, not arbitrary, and serves to prevent confusion among so many figures. Midway in the scene, angels plunge earthward to rouse the dead. Michael, with his terrible sword unsheathed, pursues the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a low shelf of sand amid the waters, is huddled a crowd of sinners, too indolent or too terrified to struggle against the flood which must soon engulf them. Crouching, they await their doom. In them Tintoret has perhaps typified those miserable creatures whom Dante describes as “a Dio spiacenti ed a’ nemici sui,”—hateful to God and to his enemies. Demons convoy a bark-load of the damned through the hellish torrent. And on the shore what a spectacle! Bodies starting from their graves, some not yet clothed with flesh, some with leafy branches growing from their arms, some striving to free themselves from the earth into which corruption resolved them; everywhere signs of the suddenness and awfulness of that supreme moment when the dead shall rise again in the forms they bore when alive, and go to the eternal abode, of bliss or punishment, for which each has fitted himself by his career on earth. A parallel has frequently been drawn between the genius of Michael Angelo and that of Dante, and many have deplored the loss of that portfolio in which Michael Angelo is known to have made a series of illustrations to The Divine Comedy. The resemblance between the supreme Tuscan poet and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, however, to hold only when we limit our view to Dante as the author of the Inferno. In energy, in intense perception of evil, in unswerving condemnation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the terror of life, the poet and the painter were indeed akin. These are the characteristics which most readers associate with Dante’s genius, for the reason that most readers go no farther than the Inferno, or are unable to comprehend the more spiritual sublimity of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. The Inferno describes torments which the most sluggish person can understand, and the contrasts of lurid flames and impenetrable gloom by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel at the imagination that could traverse unparalyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But Dante’s genius stopped not here: it passed in review all human nature, from its lowest sinful condition to that highest excellence when it merges with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, Dante saw that Love is even more real, the source and the goal of all things, and he proved his universality by his power to describe it. And they whose imagination is strong enough to follow him through the regions of the blessed incline to rank the third canticle of his “sacred poem” even higher than the first. Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, swept through the full circuit of human experience and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish of the damned in his “Last Judgment,” and the peace and bliss of the blessed in his “Paradise.” That “The Last Judgment” should be Michael Angelo’s masterpiece, and that he should have painted it on the altar wall of the Pope’s favorite chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that terrific scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo himself; a righteous man, who looked out upon the iniquities of his time and dared to condemn them; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the religious centre of Christendom, discovered there a second Sodom, in which pope, cardinals, and bishops were the most shameless offenders; a patriotic man, who had fought for the liberty of his beloved Florence, and had beheld her, through the treachery of some and the apathy of others, become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder that the terror and anguish, the depravity and hopelessness, of life should have eaten into Michael Angelo’s soul. As he worked solitarily in the Sixtine Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the retribution which shall overtake the wicked should have possessed his imagination, and transformed the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit mightier than theirs painted the protest which Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had preached,—the spirit of a Job united to that of an Isaiah. Not less appropriate was it that the genius of Tintoret and of Venetian art should culminate in the representation of Paradise. Of all commonwealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosperity; of all peoples, hers had been the most sensitive to the joy of life. Even at the end of the sixteenth century, when her power abroad had been curtailed, and when luxury at home was slowly enervating the integrity of her citizens, she was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by force, in ravishing her independence. Her immemorial glory blazed across the past and irradiated the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue of splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens with golden and purple light. Venice was indeed the abode of Joy; and Tintoret, at the close of a long career, in which he had witnessed all the aspects and pondered all the possibilities of human life, was filled, like Dante, with hope, and felt Joy and Love to be the supreme realities, the everlasting fulfilments, of mankind’s desires. If the Last Judgment is an “unimaginable” theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks, how much more so is Paradise! Men have always found it easier to represent grief than happiness, villainy than virtue, shadows than sunshine; for the former are by their nature limited, and draw their own outlines, while the latter have a quality of boundlessness which to define abridges it. Moreover, pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and always individual; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of self, and is manifest in attributes common to many. Nevertheless, Tintoret has achieved the seeming impossibility of representing, so far as painting may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the celestial host. His painting is known to most visitors at Venice as being the largest in the world. The ordinary traveler, after reading the dimensions in his guidebook, looks up at the canvas, and sees crowds of figures and colors grown dark; wonders what it all means, and why the janitor does not sweep down the dust and cobwebs; and then turns away to devote equal attention to the black panel where Marino Faliero’s portrait would be had he not died a traitor’s death. In like manner, I have seen intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the Acropolis of Athens in a quarter of an hour, and return to their hotel to read the last English newspaper. But let him who would commune with one of the few supreme masterpieces of art sit down patiently and reverently before Tintoret’s “Paradise,” and he will be rewarded by revelations proportioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow used to the dimness of the hall, the tones of the canvas begin to be intelligible to him: it is as if he heard a symphony played in a lower key than the composer intended; many of the original effects are lost, but harmony interpenetrates and unifies all the parts. When he has adjusted his eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures separately; until, little by little, in what seemed a vast confused multitude, he will be aware of the presence of an all-controlling order; and he will gaze at last understandingly, as in a vision, upon the congregations of heaven as they are unfolded in Tintoret’s design. Christ is seated in the central upper part of the painting: his left hand rests on a crystal globe; innumerable rays of light illumine his head and dart in all directions. Opposite to him is the Madonna, above whom sparkles a circlet of stars. At Christ’s left soars the archangel Michael bearing the heavenly scales; at Mary’s right is Gabriel with a spray of lilies. A cloud of countless cherubs hovers at the feet of the Divine Personage; while on each side of the archangels, curving toward the upper extremities of the canvas, sweep companies of seraphim and cherubim, and the thrones, principalities, and powers, and angels with swords, sceptres, and globes. These form the first circle of the angelic host, who from eternity have held their station nearest to their Lord. Below them is a larger circle, composed of those spirits who, by prophecy or preaching, established and extended the kingdom of God on earth. On the left we see the forerunners of Christ,—David playing the cithern, Moses holding up the tables of the law, Noah with his ark, Solomon, Abraham, and the other patriarchs; and near these we distinguish John the Baptist, who displays a scroll on which is written Ecce Agnus. Midway in this circle are the Evangelists, the four corners of the Christian temple, and the intermediaries between the old and new dispensations. Here is Mark accompanied by his lion, Luke and his ox, Matthew with pen in hand, and John with his book resting on an eagle. As the line sweeps on, we see the early fathers, doctors, and great popes,—Peter and Gregory; Paul, the apostle militant, recognizable by his sword; Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. In the centre, between Luke and Matthew, is the third archangel, Raphael, whose clasped hands and upturned face betoken a soul rapt in adoration. The third and lowest circle is made up of many groups of martyrs and holy men and women, the great body of the Church of Christ. Among the throng on the left are Barbara; Catherine with her wheel; Francis of Assisi and Dominick, the founders of the great religious orders; Giustina bearing a palm branch; St. George (with banner), Lawrence, Sebastian, Agnes, and Stephen, each recognizable by a familiar emblem. In the centre, along the bottom of the painting, hover clusters of worshiping angels; beyond them, more saints, Monica, and Magdalen; then Rachel and a troop of lovely children, and Christopher, who carried the boy Christ on his shoulder here below, and now carries a globe. At last, on the extreme right, we reach the assembly of prelates and theologians. With this key to the general distribution, the student who has Tintoret’s “Paradise” before him can recognize scores of other figures. He will compare Tintoret’s portrayal of each saint, or prophet, or martyr with conceptions other painters have drawn; and if he reflect that any one of these groups, and many of these figures singly, would have sufficed to establish the renown of an artist less masterly than Tintoret, his astonishment will swell into admiration, and this into awe, when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can describe the effect of the innumerable multitude? Cast your eyes almost anywhere upon the canvas, and lo! out of the deeper, distant spaces angelic countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly outlined, by some magic seem diaphanous; and the farther your gaze penetrates, the brighter is the light which radiates throughout heaven from the throne of Christ. Still more marvelous is the sense of infinite tranquillity, even in those figures which are moving. These are veritable spirits, though they have human bodies, and they move or rest with equal ease. In this heavenly ether there is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim, whose majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in their rhythmic flight, suggest a certain grand repose begotten of motion itself,—a repose akin to that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myriad little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, whose falling flood seems stationary. The spectator who has risen to this conception will not fail to note the light of a joy, not vehement but profound, which bathes every face; and how the action of every individual and of every group is in some manner addressed to Christ, and would be incomplete but for that divine centre. Christ and the Madonna, and the dove of the Holy Spirit floating between them, he will look at first and turn from last,—the noblest personification of ideal manhood and ideal womanhood that ever painter expressed. The embodiment and essence of Love, which is the author of all good, they are enthroned amid the serenity of the highest heaven. Round them wheels the inner circle of the archangels and the angels, the symbols of divine Power. Then, in ever-widening circles, the saints and apostles and prophets, and the elect of every clime and condition, all children of Faith and exemplars of Charity, float and revolve in bliss forevermore. And it needs no strain of the imagination to hear the hosannas which the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy.[26]
The dark chapel of the Rucellai, in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, has a dingy altar-piece representing the Virgin and the infant Christ. Cimabue painted it; and when it was finished the Florentines made a holiday, and bore the picture through the streets, amid great rejoicing, to the chapel where it now hangs. That stiff and awkward Madonna, that doll-like Child, were hailed by them as the highest achievement of painting. For us Cimabue’s masterpiece has only an historic interest,—we find no charm in its Byzantine rigidness. Yet that crude work was the seed of Italian painting, and if we follow its growth during three centuries we shall be led to the “Paradise” of Tintoret, in which are embodied all the excellences and advances of the painter’s art. Between that humble beginning and that glorious culmination an army of artists and myriads of paintings intervene. If we look deep enough, we shall be conscious that they were all agents whereby a mighty spirit was seeking to express itself to man,—a spirit which first appealed to human piety through the symbols of religion, and which, as its agents acquired skill and reach, bodied itself forth in higher images and in conscious forms. The name of that spirit is Beauty, never to be found perfect in the outer world, but known as it communicates through the senses portents of itself which the soul sublimes into that ideal unity by which the laws of nature and the destiny of man are beheld in their highest aspect. True Worship, as in the sweet piety of Fra Angelico, led to Beauty; to Beauty also, along an inevitable path, led the pursuit of Truth by the sixteenth century masters, latest among whom was Tintoret: for Beauty is the final seal and test of both Holiness and Truth. [27] First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1890. I On Saturday, the 23d of May, 1592, Giovanni Mocenigo, son of the late excellent Marcantonio Mocenigo, addressed to the Father Inquisitor of Venice a letter containing charges of heresy against Giordano Bruno, the Nolan. Among other things, he alleged that Bruno had said “that it is a great blasphemy to say, as Catholics do, that bread is changed to flesh; that he is hostile to the mass; that no religion satisfies him; that Christ was a good-for-nothing, and did wretched tricks to seduce the people, and ought to have been hanged; that there is no separating God into persons; that the world is eternal; that worlds are infinite, and God makes an infinite number of them continually; that Christ wrought apparent miracles and was a magician, and so were the Apostles; that Christ showed that he died unwillingly, and evaded death as long as he could; that there is no punishment of sins; and that souls created by the agency of nature pass from one animal into another; and that as the brutes are begotten of corruption, so also are men. Further, he has denied that the Virgin could have borne a child; he asserted that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that he wished to give himself to the diviner’s art, and draw the whole world after him; that St. Thomas and all the doctors were blockheads compared with himself. Therefore, urged by my conscience and by command of my confessor, I have denounced this Bruno to the Holy Office. Suspecting that he might depart, I have locked him up in one of my rooms, at your requisition; and because I believe him possessed of a demon, I pray you to take speedy resolution concerning him.” Two days later, this Mocenigo, of whom we know no more than that he belonged to one of the illustrious families of Venice, and was thirty-four years of age, added to his accusations: “On that day when I had Giordano Bruno locked up, on my asking him if he would teach me what he had promised, in view of the many courtesies and gifts he had had from me, so that I might not accuse him of the many wicked words which he had said to me, both against our Lord and against the Holy Catholic Church, he replied that he was not afraid of the Inquisition, because he offended nobody in living as he chose; and then that he did not remember to have said anything bad to me, and that even if he had said it he had said it to me alone, and that he did not fear that I could harm him in this way, and that, even should he come under the hand of the Inquisition, it could at the most force him to wear his friar’s gown again.” On May 29, Mocenigo, who had in the mean time, at the suggestion of the Inquisition, dredged in the slimy depths of his memory for other charges, informed the Father Inquisitor that he had heard Bruno say “that the forms which the Church now uses are not those which the Apostles used, because the Apostles, by preaching and by example of a good life, converted the people, but that now he who will not be a Catholic must suffer the rod and punishment, because force is used, and not love; that the world could not go on thus, because now only ignorance, and not religion, is good; that the Catholic religion pleased him more than the others, but that it had need of great formalities, which was not right, but very soon the world would see itself reformed, because it was impossible that such corruption should endure. He told me, too, that now, when the greatest ignorance flourishes which the world ever had, some glory in having the greatest knowledge there ever was, because they say they know what they do not understand,—which is, that God can be one and three,—and that these are impossibilities, ignorances, and most shocking blasphemies against the majesty of God. Besides this, he said that he liked women hugely, and that the Church committed a great sin in calling sin that which is according to nature.” After these charges, we hear no more of this latter-day Judas, Giovanni Mocenigo. Honest we can hardly deem him, for he confesses that he intended to betray Bruno long before he did betray him, and only delayed till he should gather sufficient damning evidence against him. And so we dismiss him to join the despicable crew of those who were traitors to their lords and benefactors. The Inquisition examined four other witnesses. Two booksellers, Ciotto and Bertano, deposed that they had known Bruno at Frankfort-on-the-Main, whither they went to attend the famous book-fairs; that they had not heard him say aught which caused them to believe he was not a Catholic and a good Christian; but that he had the reputation of being a philosopher, who spent his time in writing and “in meditating new things.” Andrea Morosini, a gentleman of noble birth, testified that during the recent months Bruno had been at his house, whither divers gentlemen and also prelates were wont to meet to discuss letters, and principally philosophy; but that he had never inferred from Bruno’s remarks that he held opinions contrary to the faith. Finally, Fra Domenico da Nocera, of the Order of Preachers, deposed that “one day, near the feast of Pentecost, as I was coming out of the sacristy of the church of John and Paul, a layman, whom I did not know, bowed to me, and presently engaged in conversation. He said he was a friar of our province of Naples, a man of letters; Fra Giordano of Nola, his name. So we sought out a retired part of the aforesaid church. Then he told me how he had renounced the gown; of the many kingdoms he had traversed, and the royal courts, with his important exercises in letters; but that he had always lived as a Catholic. And I asking him what he was doing in Venice, and how he was living, he said that he had been in Venice but very few days, and was living comfortably; that he proposed to get tranquillity and write a book he had in his head, and to present it to his Holiness, for the quiet of his conscience and in order to be allowed to remain in Rome, and there devote himself to literary work, to show his ability, and perhaps to obtain a lectureship.” So far as we know, the Holy Office examined no other witnesses. That tribunal of the Inquisition at Venice was composed, in 1592, of the Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Taberna; of the Patriarch, Monsignor Lorenzo Priuli; of the Father Inquisitor, Giovanni Gabriele da Saluzzo, a Dominican; and of three nobles appointed by the State, and called the savii all’ eresia (sages or experts in heresy), who reported all proceedings to the Doge and Senate, and stopped the deliberations when they deemed them contrary to the laws and customs of the State, or to the secret instructions they had received. These three sages were, in that year, Luigi Foscari, Sebastian Barbarigo, and Tomaso Morosini. Before this tribunal, which sat at the prison of the Inquisition, appeared the prisoner, Giordano Bruno, on Tuesday, May 26, 1592. He was a small, lean man, in aspect about forty years old, with a slight chestnut beard. On being bidden to speak, he began:— “I will speak the truth. Several times I have been threatened with being brought to this Holy Office, and I have always held it as a jest, because I am ready to give an account of myself. While at Frankfort last year, I had two letters from Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, in which he invited me to come to Venice, as he wished me to teach him the art of memory and invention, promising to treat me well, and that I should be satisfied with him. And so I came, seven or eight months ago. I have taught him various terms pertaining to these two sciences; living at first outside of his house, and latterly in his own house. And, as it seemed to me that I had done and taught him as much as was necessary, and as was my duty in respect to the things he had sought me for, and deliberating, therefore, to return to Frankfort to publish certain of my works, I took leave of him last Thursday, so as to depart. He, hearing this, and doubting lest I wished to leave his house to teach other persons the very sciences I had taught him and others, rather than to go to Frankfort, as I announced, was most urgent to detain me; but I none the less insisting on going, he began at first to complain that I had not taught him all I had agreed, and then to threaten me by saying that, if I would not remain of my own accord, he would find means to compel me. And the following night, which was Friday, seeing me firm in my resolution of going, and that I had put my things in order, and arranged to send them to Frankfort, he came, when I was in bed, with the pretext of wishing to speak to me; and after he had entered, there followed his servant Bortolo, with five or six others, who were, as I believed, gondoliers of the sort near by. And they made me get out of bed, and conducted me up to an attic, and locked me in there, Master Giovanni saying that, if I would remain and instruct him in the terms of memory and of geometry, as he had wished hitherto, he would set me at liberty; otherwise, something disagreeable would happen to me. And I replying all along that I thought I had taught him enough, and more than I was bound, and that I did not deserve to be treated in that fashion, he left me till the next day, when there came a captain, accompanied by certain men whom I did not know, and had them lead me down to a storeroom on the ground-floor of the house, where they left me till night. Then came another captain, with his assistants, and conducted me to the prison of this Holy Office, whither I believe I have been brought by the work of the aforesaid Ser Giovanni, who, indignant for the reason I have given, has, I think, made some accusation against me. “My name is Giordano, of the Bruno family, of the city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. I was born and brought up in that town; my profession has been, and is, that of letters and every science. My father’s name was Giovanni, my mother’s Fraulissa Savolina; he being a soldier by profession, who died at the same time with my mother. I am about forty-four years old, being born, according to what my people told me, in the year 1548. From my fourteenth year I was at Naples, to learn humanity, logic, and dialectics, and I used to attend the public lectures of a certain Sarnese; I heard logic privately from an Augustinian father, called Fra Theofilo da Vairano, who subsequently lectured on metaphysics at Rome. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I put on the habit of St. Dominick at the convent of St. Dominick at Naples. After the year of probation I was admitted to the profession, and then I was promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood in due time, and sang my first mass at Campagna, a town in the same kingdom. I lived there in a convent of the same order, called St. Bartholomew, and continued in this garb of St. Dominick, celebrating mass and the divine offices, and obedience to the superiors of the said order and of the priors of monasteries, till 1576, the year after the Jubilee. I was then at Rome, in the convent of the Minerva, under Master Sisto de Luca, procurator of the order, whither I had come because at Naples I had been brought to trial twice: the first time for having given away certain representations and images of the saints, and kept only a crucifix, wherefore I was charged with spurning the images of the saints; and, again, for saying to a novice, who was reading The History of the Seven Joys in verse, what business he had with such a book,—to throw it aside, and to read sooner some other work, like The Lives of the Holy Fathers; and this case was renewed against me at the time I went to Rome, together with other charges, which I do not know. On this account I left the order, and put off the gown. “I went to Noli, in Genoese territory, and stayed there about four months, teaching small boys grammar, and reading lectures on the sphere [astronomy] to certain gentlemen; then I went away, first to Savona, where I tarried about a fortnight, and thence to Turin. Not finding entertainment there to my taste, I came to Venice by the Po, and lived a month and a half in the Frezzaria, in the lodging of a man employed at the Arsenal, whose name I do not know. Whilst I was here, I had printed this work [On the Signs of the Times], to make a little money for my support; I showed it first to Father Remigio de Fiorenza. Departing hence, I went to Padua, where I found some Dominican fathers, acquaintances of mine, who persuaded me to wear the habit again, even if I should not choose to return to the order; for it seemed to them more proper to wear that habit than not. With this view I went to Bergamo, and had made a garment of cheap white cloth, and over it I put the scapular, which I had kept when I left Rome. Thus attired I set out for Lyons; and at ChambÈry, going to lodge with the order, and being very decently entertained, and talking about this with an Italian father who was there, he said to me, ‘Be warned, for you will not meet with any sort of friendliness in these parts; and you will find less the farther you go.’ So I set out for Geneva. There I lodged at the hostelry; and, a little after my arrival, the Marquis de Vico, a Neapolitan who was in that city, asked me who I was, and whether I had gone there to settle and to profess the religion of that place. I replied to him, after giving an account of myself and the reason why I had left the order, that I did not intend to profess that religion, because I did not know what it was; and that therefore I wished to abide there to live in liberty and to be safe, rather than for any other purpose. Being persuaded to put off that habit in any case, I took these clothes, and had a pair of hose made, and other things; and the marquis, with some other Italians, gave me a sword, hat, cloak, and other necessary articles, and, in order that I might support myself, they procured proof-reading for me. I kept to that work about two months, going, however, sometimes to preaching and sermons, whether of the Italians or of the French who lectured and preached there: among others, I heard more than once Nicolo Balbani, of Lucca, who read the Epistles of St. Paul, and preached on the Evangelists. But when I was told that I could not stay long in that place unless I should accept its religion, because I would have no employment from them, and finding, too, that I could not earn enough to live on, I went thence to Toulouse, where there is a famous university. Having become acquainted with some intelligent persons, I was asked to lecture on the sphere to divers students, which I did—with other lectures on philosophy—for perhaps six months. At this point, the post of ‘ordinary’ lecturer in philosophy, which is filled by competition, falling vacant, I took my doctor’s degree, presented myself for the said competition, was admitted and approved, and lectured in that city two years continuously on the text of Aristotle’s De Anima and other philosophical works. Then, on account of the Civil Wars, I quitted and went to Paris, where, in order to make myself known, and to give proof of myself, I undertook an ‘extraordinary’ lectureship, and read thirty lectures, choosing for subject Thirty Divine Attributes, taken from the first part of St. Thomas. Later, being requested to accept an ‘ordinary’ lectureship, I would not, because public lecturers in that city go generally to mass and the other divine offices, and I have always avoided this, knowing that I was excommunicated because I had quitted my order and habit; and although I had that ‘ordinary’ lectureship at Toulouse, I was not forced to go to mass, as I should have been at Paris. But conducting the ‘extraordinary’ there, I acquired such a name that the king, Henry III, sent for me, and wished to know whether my memory was natural or due to magic art. I satisfied him, both by what I said, and proved to him, that it was not by magic art, but by science. After this I published a work on the memory, under the title De Umbris Idearum, which I dedicated to his Majesty,—on which occasion he made me ‘lecturer extraordinary,’ with a pension; and I continued to read in that city perhaps five years, when, on account of the tumults which arose, I took my leave, and with letters from the king himself I went into England to reside with his ambassador, Michael de Castelnau. In his house I lived as a gentleman. I stayed in England two years and a half, and when the ambassador returned to France I accompanied him to Paris, where I remained another year. Having quitted Paris on account of the tumults, I betook myself to Germany, stopping first at Mayence, an archiepiscopal city, for twelve days. Finding neither here nor at WÜrzburg, a town a little way off, any entertainment, I went to Wittenberg, in Saxony, where I found two factions,—one of philosophers, who were Calvinists, the other of theologians, who were Lutherans. Among the latter was Alberigo Gentile, whom I had known in England, a law-professor, who befriended me and introduced me to read lectures on the Organon of Aristotle; which I did, with other lectures in philosophy, for two years. At that time, the son of the old Duke having succeeded his father, who was a Lutheran, and the son being a Calvinist, he began to favor the party opposed to those who favored me; so I departed, and went to Prague, and stayed six months. Whilst there, I published a book on geometry, which I presented to the Emperor, from whom I had a gift of three hundred thalers. With this money, having quitted Prague, I spent a year at the Julian Academy in Brunswick; and the death of the Duke[28] happening at that time, I delivered an oration at his funeral, in competition with many others from the university, on which account his son and successor bestowed eighty crowns of those parts upon me; and I went away to Frankfort to publish two books,—one De Minimo, and the other De Numero, Monade, et Figura, etc. I stayed about six months at Frankfort, lodging in the convent of the Carmelites,—a place assigned to me by the publisher, who was obliged to provide me a lodging. And from Frankfort, having been invited, as I have said, by Ser Giovanni Mocenigo, I came to Venice seven or eight months ago, where what has since happened I have already related. I was going anew to Frankfort to print other works of mine, and one in particular on The Seven Liberal Arts, with the intention of taking these and some other of my published works which I approve—for some I do not approve—and of going to Rome to lay them at the feet of his Holiness, who, I have understood, loves the virtuous, and to put my case before him, with a view to obtain absolution from excesses, and permission to live in the clerical garb outside of the order.... I said I wish to present myself at the feet of his Holiness with some of my approved works, as I have some I do not approve, meaning by that that some of the works written by me and sent to the press I do not approve, because in them I have spoken and discussed too philosophically, unbecomingly, and not enough like a good Christian; and in particular I know that in some of these works I have taught and maintained philosophically things which ought to be attributed to the power, wisdom, and goodness of God according to the Christian faith; founding my doctrine on sense and reason, and not on faith. So much for them in general; concerning particulars, I refer to the writings, for I do not now recall a single article or particular doctrine I may have taught, but I will reply according as I shall be questioned and as I shall remember.... “The subject of all my books, speaking broadly, is philosophy. In all of them I have always defined in the manner of philosophy and according to principles and natural light, not having most concern as to what, according to faith, ought to be believed; and I think there is nothing in them from which it can be judged that I professedly wish to impugn religion rather than to exalt philosophy, although I may have set forth many impious matters based on my natural light. “I have taught nothing directly against Catholic Christian religion, although [I may have done so] indirectly; as was judged at Paris, where, however, I was allowed to hold certain disputes under the title of One Hundred and Twenty Articles against the Peripatetics and Other Vulgar Philosophers (printed with permission of the superiors); as it was permitted to treat them by the way of natural principles, without prejudice to the truth according to the light of faith, in which manner the books of Aristotle and Plato may be read and taught, which are in similar fashion, indirectly contrary to faith,—nay, much more so than the articles propounded and defended by me in the manner of philosophy: all these can be known from what is printed in my last Latin books from Frankfort, entitled De Minimo, De Monade, de Immenso et Innumerabilibus, and in part in De Compositione Imaginum. In these particularly you can see my intention and what I have held, which is, in a word, I believe in an infinite universe,—that is, the effect of infinite divine power; because I esteemed it unworthy of the divine goodness and power that, when it could produce besides this world another, and infinite others, it should produce a single finite world: so I have declared that there is an infinite number of particular worlds similar to this of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I consider a star, like which is the moon, other planets, and other stars, which are infinite; and that all these bodies are worlds, without number, which make up the infinite university in infinite space, and we call this the infinite universe, in which are numberless worlds: so that there is a double infinitude, that of the greatness of the universe, and that of the multitude of the worlds,—by which indirectly it is meant to assail the truth according to faith. “Moreover, in this universe I place a universal Providence, in virtue of which everything lives, vegetates, moves, and reaches its perfection; and I understand Providence in two ways: one in which it is present as the soul in all matter, and all in any part whatsoever, and this I call Nature, the shadow and footprint of the Deity; the other in the ineffable way with which God, by essence, presence, and power, is in all things and over all things, not as a part, but as Soul, in a manner indescribable. In the Deity I understand all the attributes to be one and the same substance,—just as theologians and the greatest philosophers hold; I perceive these attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, or will, intelligence, and love, by means of which things have, first, being (by reason of the will), then, orderly and distinct being (by reason of the intelligence), and third, concord and symmetry (by reason of love); this I believe is in all and above all, as nothing is without participation in being, and being is not without its essence, just as nothing is beautiful without the presence of beauty; so nothing can be exempt from the divine presence. In this manner, by use of reason, and not by use of substantial [theological] truth, I discern distinctions in the Deity. “Regarding the world as caused and produced, I meant that, as all being depends on the First Cause, I did not shrink from the term ‘creation;’ which I believe even Aristotle expressed, saying that God is, on whom the world and Nature are dependent; so that, according to the explanation of St. Thomas, be the world either eternal or temporal according to its nature, it is dependent on the First Cause, and nothing exists in it independently. “Next, concerning that which belongs to faith—not speaking in the manner of philosophy—about the divine persons, that wisdom and that son of the mind, called by philosophers intellect and by theologians the Word, which we are to believe took upon itself human flesh, I, standing within the bounds of philosophy, have not understood it; but I have doubted, and with inconstant faith maintained,—not that I recall having shown a sign of it in writing or in speech, excepting as in other things indirectly one might gather from my belief and profession concerning those things which can be proved by the reason and deduced from natural light. And then concerning the divine spirit in a third person, I have been able to comprehend nothing in the way in which one ought to believe; but in the Pythagorean way, conformable to that way which Solomon points out, I have understood it to be the soul of the universe, or assistant in the universe, according to that saying in the Wisdom of Solomon, ‘The Spirit of the Lord filleth the world; and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice.’[29] This seems to me to agree to the Pythagorean doctrine explained by Vergil in this passage of the Æneid:— ‘Principio coelum ac terras camposque liquentes, Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra, Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus “I teach in my philosophy that from this spirit, which is called the Life of the Universe, the life and soul of everything which has life and soul springs; that it is immortal, just as bodies, so far as concerns their substance, are all immortal, death being nothing else than division and coming together; this doctrine seems to be expressed in Ecclesiastes, where it says, ‘There is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?’ and so on.” Inquisitor. “Have you held, do you hold and believe, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one in essence, but distinct in person, as is taught and believed by the Catholic Church?” Bruno. “Speaking as a Christian, and according to theology, and as every faithful Christian and Catholic ought to believe, I have indeed had doubts about the name ‘person’ as applied to the Son and the Holy Spirit; not understanding these two persons to be distinct from the Father, except as I have said above, speaking in the manner of philosophy, and assigning the intelligence of the Father to the Son, and his love to the Holy Spirit, but without comprehending this word ‘persons,’ which in St. Augustine is declared to be not an ancient but a new word, and of his time: and I have held this opinion since I was eighteen years old till now, but in fact I have never denied, nor taught, nor written, but only doubted in my own mind, as I have said.” Inquisitor. “Have you believed, and do you believe, all that the Holy Mother Catholic Church teaches, believes, and holds about the First Person, and have you ever in any wise doubted concerning the First Person?” Bruno. “I have believed and held undoubtingly all that every faithful Christian ought to believe and hold concerning the First Person. Regarding the Second Person, I declare that I have held it to be really one in essence with the First, and so the Third; because, being indivisible in essence, they cannot suffer inequality, for all the attributes which belong to the Father belong also to the Son and Holy Spirit: only I have doubted, as I said above, how this Second Person could become incarnate and could have suffered: nevertheless I have never denied nor taught that, and if I have said anything about this Second Person, I have said it in quoting the opinions of others, like Arius and Sabellius and other followers of theirs. I will tell what I must have said, and which may have caused scandal and suspicion, as was set down in the first charges against me at Naples, to wit: I declared that the opinion of Arius seemed less pernicious than it was commonly esteemed and understood, because it is commonly understood that Arius meant to say that the Word is the first thing created by the Father; whereas I declared that Arius said that the Word was neither creator nor creature, but midway between creator and creature,—as the word is midway between the speaker and the thing spoken,—and therefore that the Word was the first-born before all creatures, not by which, but through which everything has been created, not to which but through which everything is referred and returns to the ultimate end, which is the Father. I exaggerated on this theme so that I was regarded with suspicion. I recall further to have said here in Venice that Arius did not intend to say that Christ, that is the Word, is a creature, but a mediator in the sense I have stated. I do not remember the precise place, whether at a druggist’s or bookseller’s, but I know I said this in one of these shops, arguing with certain priests who made a show of theology: I know not who they were, nor should I recognize them if I saw them. To make my statement more clear, I repeat that I have held there is one God, distinguished as Father, as Word, and as Love, which is the Divine Spirit, and that all these three are one God in essence; but I have not understood, and have doubted, how these three can get the name of persons, for it did not seem to me that this name of person was applicable to the Deity; and I supported myself in this by the words of St. Augustine, who says, ‘Cum formidine proferimus hoc nomen personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et necessitate coacti utimur;’ besides which, in the Old and New Testaments I have not found nor read this expression nor this form of speech.” Inquisitor. “Having doubted the Incarnation of the Word, what has been your opinion about Christ?” Bruno. “I have thought that the divinity of the Word was present in the humanity of Christ individually, and I have not been able to understand that it was a union like that of soul and body, but a presence of such a kind that we could truly say of this man that he was God, and of this divinity that it was man; because between substance infinite and divine and substance finite and human there is no proportion as between soul and body, or any other two things which can make up one existence; and I believe, therefore, that St. Augustine shrank from applying that word ‘person’ to this case: so that, in conclusion, I think, as regards my doubt of the Incarnation, I have wavered concerning its ineffable meaning, but not against the Holy Scripture, which says ‘the Word is made flesh.’” Inquisitor. “What opinion have you had concerning the miracles, acts, and death of Christ?” Bruno. “I have held what the Holy Catholic Church holds, although I have said of the miracles that, while they are testimony of the divinity [of Christ], the evangelical law is, in my opinion, a stronger testimony, because the Lord said ‘he shall do greater than these’ miracles; and it occurred to me that whilst others, like the Apostles, wrought miracles, so that, in their external effect, they seemed like those wrought by him, Christ worked by his own virtue, and the Apostles by virtue of another’s power. Therefore I have maintained that the miracles of Christ were divine, true, real, and not apparent; nor have I ever thought, said, nor believed the contrary. “I have never spoken of the sacrifice of the mass, nor of transubstantiation, except in the way the Holy Church holds. I have believed, and do believe, that the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place really and in substance.” Inquisitor. “Did you ever say that Christ was not God, but a good-for-nothing, and that, doing wretched works, he ought to have expected to be put to death, although he showed that he died unwillingly?” Bruno. “I am astonished that this question is put to me, for I have never had such opinions, nor said such a thing, nor thought aught contrary to what I said just now about the person of Christ, which is that I believe what the Holy Mother Church believes. I know not how these things are imputed to me.” At this he seemed much grieved. Inquisitor. “In reasoning about the Incarnation of the Word, what have you held concerning the delivery of the said Word by the Virgin Mary?” Bruno. “That it was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of Mary as Virgin; and when any one shall find that I have said or maintained the contrary, I will submit myself to any punishment.” Inquisitor. “Do you know the import and effect of the sacrament of penance?” Bruno. “I know that it is ordained to purge our sins; and never, never have I talked on this subject, but have always held that whosoever dies in mortal sin will be damned. It is about sixteen years since I presented myself to a confessor, except on two occasions: once at Toulouse, to a Jesuit, and another time in Paris, to another Jesuit, whilst I was treating, through the Bishop of Bergamo, then nuncio at Paris, and through Don Bernardin de Mendoza, to reËnter my order, with a view to confessing; and they said that, being an apostate, they could not absolve me, and that I could not go to the holy offices, wherefore I have abstained from the confessional and from going to mass. I have intended, however, to emerge some time from these censures, and to live like a Christian and a priest; and when I have sinned I have always asked pardon of God, and I would also willingly have confessed if I could, because I have firmly believed that impenitent sinners are damned.” Inquisitor. “You hold, therefore, that souls are immortal, and that they do not pass from one body into another, as we have information you have said?” Bruno. “I have held, and hold, that souls are immortal, and that they are subsisting substances, that is rational souls, and that, speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from one body into another, but go either to paradise or to purgatory, or to hell; but I have, to be sure, argued, following philosophical reasons, that as the soul subsists in the body, and is non-existent in the body [that is, not an integral part of it], it may, in the same way that it exists in one, exist in another, and pass from one to another; and if this be not true, it at least seems like the opinion of Pythagoras.” Inquisitor. “Have you busied yourself much in theological studies, and are you instructed in the Catholic resolutions?” Bruno. “Not a great deal, having devoted myself to philosophy, which has been my profession.” Inquisitor. “Have you ever vituperated the theologians and their decisions, calling their doctrine vanity and other similar opprobrious names?” Bruno. “Speaking of the theologians who interpret Holy Scripture, I have never spoken otherwise than well. I may have said something about some one in particular, and blamed him,—some Lutheran theologian, for instance, or other heretics,—but I have always esteemed the Catholic theologians, especially St. Thomas, whose works I have ever kept by me, read, and studied, and honored them, and I have them at present, and hold them very dear.” Inquisitor. “Which have you reckoned heretical theologians?” Bruno. “All those who profess theology, but who do not agree with the Roman Church, I have esteemed heretics. I have read books by Melanchthon, Luther, Calvin, and by other heretics beyond the mountains, not to learn their doctrine nor to avail myself of it, for I deemed them more ignorant than myself, but I read them out of curiosity. I despise these heretics and their doctrines, because they do not merit the name of theologians, but of pedants; for the Catholic ecclesiastical doctors, on the contrary, I have the esteem I should.” Inquisitor. “How, then, have you dared to say that the Catholic faith is full of blasphemies, and without merit in God’s sight?” Bruno. “Never have I said such a thing, neither in writing, nor in word, nor in thought.” Inquisitor. “What things are needful for salvation?” Bruno. “Faith, hope, and charity. Good works are also necessary; or it will suffice not to do to others that which we do not wish to have done to us, and to live morally.” Inquisitor. “Have you ever denounced the Catholic religious orders, especially for having revenues?” Bruno. “I have never denounced one of them for any cause; on the contrary, I have found fault when the clergy, lacking income, are forced to beg; and I was surprised, in France, when I saw certain priests going about the streets to beg, with open missals.” Inquisitor. “Did you ever say that the life of the clergy does not conform to that of the Apostles?” Bruno. “I have never said nor held such a thing!” And as he said this he raised his hands, and looked about astonished. In answer to another question, he continued: “I have said that the Apostles achieved more by their preaching, good life, examples, and miracles than force can accomplish, which is used against those who refuse to be Catholics; without condemning this method, I approve the other.” Inquisitor. “Have you ever said that the miracles wrought by Christ and the Apostles were apparent miracles, done by magic art, and not real; and that you have enough spirit to work the same or greater, and wished finally to make the whole world run after you?” Bruno (lifting up both his hands). “What is this? What man has invented this devilishness? I have never said such a thing, nor has it entered my imagination. O God, what is this? I had rather be dead than that this should be proposed to me!” Inquisitor. “What opinion have you of the sin of the flesh, outside of the sacrament of matrimony?” Bruno. “I have spoken of this sometimes, saying, in general, that it was a lesser sin than the others, but that adultery was the chief of carnal sins, whereas the other was lighter, and almost venial. This, indeed, I have said, but I know and acknowledge to have spoken in error, because I remember what St. Paul says. However, I spoke thus through levity, being with others and discussing worldly topics. I have never said that the Church made a great mistake in constituting this a sin.... “I hold it a pious and holy thing, as the Church ordains, to observe fasts and abstain from meat and prohibited food on the days she appoints, and that every faithful Catholic is bound to observe them; which I too would have done except for the reason given above; and God help me if I have ever eaten meat out of contempt [for the Church]. As for having listened to heretics preach, or lecture, or dispute, I did so several times from curiosity and to see their methods and eloquence, rather than from delight or enjoyment; indeed, after the reading or sermon, at the time when they distributed bread according to their form of communion, I went away about my business, and never partook of their bread nor observed their rites.” Inquisitor. “From your explanation of the Incarnation there follows another grave error, namely, that in Christ there was a human personality.” Bruno. “I recognize and concede that these and other improprieties may follow, and I have stated this opinion, not to defend, but only to explain it; and I confess my error such and so great as it is; and had I applied my mind to this adduced impropriety and to others deducible from it, I should not have reached these conclusions, because I may have erred in the premises, but certainly not in the conclusions.” Inquisitor. “Do you remember to have said that men are begotten of corruption, like the other animals, and that this has been since the Deluge down to the present?” Bruno. “I believe this is the opinion of Lucretius. I have read it and heard it talked about, but I do not recall having referred to it as my opinion; nor have I ever believed it. When I reasoned about it, I did so referring it to Lucretius, Epicurus, and their similars, and it is not possible to deduce it from my philosophy, as will readily appear to any one who reads that.” Inquisitor. “Have you ever had any book of conjurations or of similar superstitious arts, or have you said you wished to devote yourself to the art of divination?” Bruno. “As for books of conjurations, I have always despised them, never had them by me, nor attributed any efficacy to them. As for divination, particularly that relating to judicial astrology, I have said, and even proposed, to study it to see if there is any truth or conformity in it. I have communicated my purpose to several persons, remarking that, as I have examined all parts of philosophy, and inquired into all science except the judicial, when I had convenience and leisure I wish to have a look at that, which I have not done yet.” Inquisitor. “Have you said that the operations of the world are guided by Fate, denying the providence of God?” Bruno. “This cannot be found either in my words or in my writings; on the contrary, you will find, in my books, that I set forth providence and free will.... I have praised many heretics and also heretic princes, but not as heretics, but only for the moral virtues they possessed. In particular, in my book De la Causa, Principio et Uno, I praise the Queen of England, and call her ‘divine;’ not as an attribute of religion, but as a certain epithet which the ancients used also to bestow on princes; and in England, where I then was and wrote that book, it is customary to give this title ‘divine’ to the Queen; and I was all the more persuaded to name her thus because she knew me, for I often went with the ambassador to court. I acknowledge to have erred in praising this lady, who is a heretic, and especially in attributing to her the epithet ‘divine.’”... Inquisitor. “Are the errors and heresies committed and confessed by you still embraced, or do you detest them?” Bruno. “All the errors I have committed, down to this very day, pertaining to Catholic life and regular profession, and all the heresies I have held and the doubts I have had concerning the Catholic faith and the questions determined by the Holy Church, I now detest; and I abhor, and repent me of having done, held, said, believed, or doubted of anything that was not Catholic; and I pray this holy tribunal that, knowing my infirmities, it will please to accept me into the bosom of the Holy Church, providing me with remedies opportune for my safety and using me with mercy.” Bruno was then re-questioned concerning the reason why he broke away from his order. He repeated, in substance, the testimony already given, adding that his baptismal name was Philip. Inquisitor. “Have you, in these parts, any enemy or other malevolent person, and who is he, and for what cause?” Bruno. “I have no enemy in these parts, unless it be Ser Giovanni Mocenigo and his followers and servants, by whom I have been more grievously offended than by any other man living, because he has assassinated me in my life, in my honor, and in my goods,—having imprisoned me in his own house, confiscating all my writings, books, and other property; and he has done this, not only because he wished me to teach him all I knew, but also because he wished that I should not teach it to any one else; and he has always threatened my life and honor if I did not teach him what I knew.” Inquisitor. “Your apostacy of so many years renders you very suspicious to the Holy Faith, since you have so long spurned her censures, whence it may happen that you have held sinister opinions in other matters than those you have deposed; you may, therefore, and ought now to purify your conscience.” Bruno. “It seems to me that the articles I have confessed, and all that which I have expressed in my writings, show sufficiently the importance of my excess, and therefore I confess it, whatsoever may be its extent, and I acknowledge to have given grave cause for the suspicion of heresy. And I add to this that I have always had remorse in my conscience, and the purpose of reforming, although I was seeking to effect this in the easiest and surest way, still shrinking from going back to the straitness of regular obedience.... And I was at this very time putting in order certain writings to propitiate his Holiness, so that I might be allowed to live more independently than is possible as an ecclesiastic.... “Beginning with my accuser, who I believe is Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, I think no one will be found who can say that I have taught false and heretical doctrine; and I have no suspicion that any one else can accuse me in matters of holy faith. It may be that I, during so long a course of time, may have erred and strayed from the Church in other matters than those I have exposed, and that I may be ensnared in other censures, but, though I have reflected much upon it, I have discovered nothing; and I now promptly confess my errors, and am here in the hands of your Excellencies to receive remedy, for my salvation. My force does not suffice to tell how great is my repentance for my misdeeds, nor to express it as I should wish.” Having knelt down, he said: “I humbly ask pardon of God and your Excellencies for all the errors committed by me; and I am ready to suffer whatsoever by your prudence shall be determined and adjudged expedient for my soul. And I further supplicate that you rather give me a punishment which is excessive in gravity than make such a public demonstration as might bring some dishonor upon the holy habit of the order which I have worn; and if, through the mercy of God and of your Excellencies, my life shall be granted to me, I promise to make a notable reform in my life, and that I will atone for the scandal by other and as great edification.” Inquisitor. “Have you anything else to say for the present?” Bruno. “I have nothing more to say.” This is the confession and apology of Giordano Bruno, taken from the minutes of the Inquisition of Venice, so far as I have been able to interpret the ungrammatical, ill-punctuated report of the secretary. The examinations were held on May 26 and 30, June 2, 3, 4, and July 30, 1592; and as there were, consequently, many repetitions of statement, I have condensed where it seemed advisable. From Bruno’s lips we hear the explanation of his philosophical system, his doubts, his belief, and his recantation of any opinions which clashed with the dogmas of Catholicism. Was his recantation sincere? Before answering this question, let us glance at his opinions as he expressed them freely in his works; for upon Bruno’s value as a thinker must finally rest the justification of our interest in him. True, the romance of his strange vagabond career and the pathos of his noble death will always excite interest in his personality; but the final question which mankind asks of prophet, philosopher, poet, preacher, or man of science is, “What can you tell us concerning our origin and our destiny?” Be warned at the outset that Bruno furnished no complete, systematic reply to this question. He did not, like Spinoza, reduce his system to the precision of a geometrical text-book, all theorems and corollaries; nor, like Herbert Spencer, did he stow the universe away in a cabinet of pigeonholes. He is often inconsistent, often contradicts himself. Perhaps his chief merit is that he stimulated thought on every subject he touched, and that he made sublime guesses which experiment, toiling patiently after him, has established as truths. Like all searchers for truth, his purpose was to discover the all-embracing Unity. Our reason shows us an unbridgeable chasm between matter and mind; the world of ideas and the outward world are in perpetual flux; nature is composed of innumerable separate objects, yet a superior unity pervades them. Life and death subsist antagonistically side by side: what is that, greater than both, which includes both? What is the permanence underlying this shifting, evanescent world? Conscience likewise reports the conflict between good and evil: what is the cause anterior to both? Many solutions have been offered; perhaps the commonest is that which, taught by the Manicheans and adopted by early Christians, announces that there are two principles in the universe,—one good, God, the other evil, Satan. But insuperable difficulties accompany this view. If God be, as assumed, all-powerful, why does he not exterminate Satan; if he be just, why does he permit evil to exist at all? Bruno, as we have seen in his deposition, proclaims that God is one and indivisible, the Soul of the universe; that his attributes are power, wisdom, and love; that he is in all things, yet above all things, not to be understood, ineffable, and whether personal or impersonal, man cannot say; that Nature is his footprint, God being the nature of Nature; that since every material atom is part of him, by virtue of his immanence in Nature, it is eternal, and so are human souls immortal, being emanations from his immortal spirit; but whether souls preserve their identity, or whether, like the atoms, they are forever re-composed into new forms, Bruno does not decide. This, speaking broadly, is pantheism; and pantheism is a system from which we are taught to recoil with almost as much horror as from atheism. “That is mere pantheism!” exclaimed John Sterling, aghast, at one of Carlyle’s conclusions. “And suppose it were pot-theism? If the thing is true!” replied Carlyle,—a reply not to be taken for valid argument, perhaps, yet worthy of being pondered. As a pantheist, then, we must classify Bruno,—in that wide class which includes Spinoza, Goethe, Shelley, and Emerson. “Within man is the soul of the whole,” says Emerson; “the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.” The Inquisition in 1600 would have burned Emerson for those two sentences. Coming to details, we find that Bruno shakes himself free from the tyranny of Aristotle,—a mighty audacity, to measure which we must remember that upon Aristotle’s arbitrary dicta the fathers and doctors of the Catholic Church had based their dogmas. Though a pagan, he had been for fifteen hundred years the logical pillar of Christendom, uncanonized, yet deserving canonization along with St. Thomas and St. Augustine. Bruno dared to attack the mighty despot in his very strongholds, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and, by so doing, helped to clear the road for subsequent explorers of philosophy and science. Equally courageous was his championship of the discoveries and theories of Copernicus. Bruno, we may safely say, was the first man who realized the full meaning of the Copernican system,—a meaning which even to-day the majority have not grasped. He saw that it was not merely a question as to whether the earth moves round the sun, or the sun moves round the earth; but that when Copernicus traced the courses of our solar system, and saw other and yet other systems beyond, he invalidated the strong presumption upon which dogmatic Christianity was reared. According to the old view, the earth was the centre of the universe, the especial gem of God’s creation; as a final mark of his favor, God created man to rule the earth, and from among men he designated a few—his “chosen people”—who should enjoy everlasting bliss in heaven. But it follows from Copernicus’s discoveries, that the earth is but one of a company of satellites which circle round the sun; that the sun itself is but one of innumerable other suns, each with its satellites; that there are probably countless inhabited orbs; that the scheme of salvation taught by the old theology is inadequate to the new conceptions we are bound to form of the majesty, justice, and omnipotence of the Supreme Ruler of an infinite universe. The God whom Bruno apprehended was not one who narrowed his interests to the concerns of a Syrian tribe, and of a sect of Christians on this little ball of earth, but one whose power is commensurate with infinitude, and who cherishes all creatures and all things in all worlds. Copernicus himself did not foresee the full significance of the discovery which dethroned the earth and man from their supposed preeminence in the universe; but Bruno caught its mighty import, and the labors of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and Darwin have corroborated him. Inspired by this revelation, Bruno was the first to envisage religions as human growths, just as laws and customs are human growths, expressing the higher or lower needs and aspirations of the people and age in which they exist. His famous satire, The Expulsion of the Beast Triumphant,[31] has a far deeper purpose than to travesty classic mythology, or to ridicule the abuses of Romanists and Protestants, or to scoff at the exaggerated pretensions of the Pope. Under the form of an allegory, it is a prophecy of the ultimate passing away of all anthropomorphic religion. It shows how the god whom men have worshiped hitherto has been endowed by them with human passions and attributes, “writ large,” to be sure, but still unworthy of being associated with that Soul of the World which is in all things, yet above all things. Everywhere he assails the doctrine that faith, without good works, can lead to salvation. He denounces celibacy, and other unnatural rules of the Catholic Church. He denounces still more vigorously the monstrous theory of original sin, according to which an assumedly just God punishes myriads of millions of human beings for the alleged trespass of two of their ancestors. Bruno also cites the discovery of new races in America as evidence that mankind are not all descended from Adam and Eve; whence he infers that, since the Mosaic cosmogony is too narrow to explain the creation and growth of mankind, the Hebrew scheme of vicarious punishment and vicarious redemption must be inadequate. He laughs at the idea of a “chosen people.” Over and over again Bruno derides the assertion that, in order to be saved, we must despise our divinest guide, Reason, and be led blindly by Faith, reducing ourselves so far as we can to the level of donkeys. His satire, La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, which supplements The Beast Triumphant, is a mock eulogy of this “holy asininity, holy ignorance, holy stupidity, and pious devotion, which alone can make souls so good that human genius and study cannot surpass them.” “What avails, O truth-seeker,” he exclaims in one of his finest sonnets, “your studying and wishing to know how Nature works, and whether the stars also are earth, fire, and sea? Holy donkeydom cares not for that, but with clasped hands wills to remain on its knees, awaiting from God its doom.” In a striking passage, Bruno explains that evil is relative. “Nothing is absolutely bad,” he says; “because the viper is not deadly and poisonous to the viper, nor the lion to the lion, nor dragon to dragon, nor bear to bear; but each thing is bad in respect to some other, just as you, virtuous gods, are evil towards the vicious.” Again he says, “Nobody is to-day the same as yesterday.” The immanence of the universal soul in the animal world he illustrated thus: “With what understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat, lest it should sprout in her underground habitation! The fool says this is instinct, but we say it is a species of understanding.” These are some of Bruno’s characteristic opinions. Their influence upon subsequent philosophers has been much discussed. His conception of the universe as an “animal” corresponds with Kepler’s well-known view. Spinoza, the great pantheist of the following century, took from him the idea of an immanent God, and the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata. Schelling, who acknowledged Bruno as his master, found in him the principle of the indifference of contraries; Hegel, that of the absolute identity of subject and object, of the real and the ideal, of thought and things. La Croze discovers in Bruno the germs of most of Leibnitz’s theories, beginning with the monad. Symonds declares that “he anticipated Descartes’s position of the identity of mind and being. The modern theory of evolution was enunciated by him in pretty plain terms. He had grasped the physical law of the conservation of energy. He solved the problem of evil by defining it to be a relative condition of imperfect energy.... We have indeed reason to marvel how many of Bruno’s intuitions have formed the stuff of later, more elaborated systems, and still remain the best which these contain. We have reason to wonder how many of his divinations have worked themselves into the common fund of modern beliefs, and have become philosophical truisms.”[32] Hallam, who strangely undervalued Bruno, states that he understood the principle of compound forces. After making due allowance for the common tendency to read back into men’s opinions interpretations they never dreamed of, we shall find that much solid substance still remains to Bruno’s credit. He is, above all, suggestive. We come now to that perplexing question, “Why did he recant? How could he, who was so evidently a freethinker and a rationalist, honestly affirm his belief in the Roman Catholic dogmas?” His confession seems to be straightforward and candid: had he wished to propitiate the Inquisitors, he needed only not to mention his philosophical doubts about the Incarnation and the Trinity; he needed only to admit that there were in his writings errors which he no longer approved, and to throw himself on the mercy of his tribunal. What, then, was the motive? Was it physical fear? Did life and liberty seem too tempting to him who loved both so intensely; preferable to death, no matter how great the sacrifice of honor? Did he simply perjure himself? Or was he suddenly overcome by a doubt that his opinions might be, after all, wrong, and that the Church might be right? He testified, and others testified, that before he had any thought of being brought to trial he had determined to make his peace with the Pope, and to obtain leave, if he could, to pass the remainder of his life in philosophical tranquillity. Did the early religious associations and prejudices, which he supposed had long ago ceased to influence him, unexpectedly spring up, to reassert a temporary tyranny over his reason? Many men not in jeopardy of their lives have had this experience of the tenacious vitality of the doctrines taught to them before they could reason. Did it seem to him a huge Aristophanic joke that a church which then had but little real faith and less true religion in it should call any one to account for any opinions, and that therefore the lips might well enough accept her dogmas without binding the heart to them? Many men, who believed themselves sincere, have subscribed in a “non-natural sense” to the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism; did Bruno subscribe to the Catholic Articles under a similar mental reservation? Or, believing, as he did, that every religion contains fragments of the truth, could he not honestly say he believed in Catholicism, at the same time holding that her symbols had a deeper significance than her theologians perceived, and that the truth he apprehended was immeasurably wider?—just as a mathematician might subscribe to the multiplication table, knowing that it is not the final bound of mathematical truth, but only the first step towards higher and unlimited investigations. Throughout his examination Bruno was careful to make the distinction between the province of faith and the province of speculation. “Speaking after the manner of philosophy,” he confessed that he had reached conclusions which, “speaking as a Catholic,” he ought not to believe. This distinction, which we now think uncandid and casuistical, was nevertheless admitted in his time. All through that century, men had argued “philosophically” about the immortality of the soul; but “theologically” such an argument was impossible, because the Church pronounced the immortality of the soul to be an indisputable fact. But, we ask, can a man honestly hold two antagonistic, mutually destroying beliefs; saying, for instance, that his reason has disproved the Incarnation, but that his faith accepts that doctrine? Or was Bruno unaware of his contradictions? Of how many of your opinions concerning the ultimate mysteries of life do you, reader, feel so sure that, were you suddenly seized, imprisoned, brought face to face with a pitiless tribunal, and confronted by torture and burning, you—one man against the world—would boldly, without hesitation, publish and maintain them? Galileo, one of mankind’s noblest, could not endure this ordeal, although the evidence of his senses and the testimony of his reason contradicted the denial which pain and dread wrung from him. Savonarola, another great spirit, flinched likewise. These are points we are bound to consider before we pronounce Bruno a hypocrite or a coward. The last news we have of him in Venice is when, “having been bidden several times,” he rose from his knees, after confessing his penitence, on that 30th of July, 1592. The authorities of the Inquisition at Rome immediately opened negotiations for his extradition. The Doge and Senate demurred; they hesitated before establishing the precedent whereby Rome could reach over and punish Venetian culprits. Time was, indeed, when Venice allowed no one, though he were the Pope, to meddle in her administration; but, alas! the lion had died out in Venetian souls. Finally, “wishing to give satisfaction to his Holiness,” Doge and Senators consented to deliver Bruno up; the Pope expressed his gratification, and said that he would never force upon the Republic “bones hard to gnaw.” So Bruno was taken to Rome. In the “list of the prisoners of the Holy Office, made Monday, April 5, 1599,” we find that he was imprisoned on February 27, 1593. What happened during almost seven years we can only surmise. We may be sure the Inquisitors searched his books for further heretical doctrine. We hear that they visited him in his cell from time to time, and exhorted him to recant, but that he replied that he had nothing to abjure, and that they had misinterpreted him. A memorial which he addressed to them they did not read. Growing weary of their efforts to save his soul, they would temporize no more; on a given day he must retract, or be handed over to the secular arm. That day came: Giordano Bruno stood firm, though he knew the penalty was death. We cannot tell when he first resolved to dare and suffer all. Some time during those seven years of solitude and torment, he awoke to the great fact that “’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.” Mere existence he could purchase with the base coin of cowardice or casuistry; but that would be, not life, but a living shame, and he refused. Who can tell how hard instinct pleaded,—how the thoughts of freedom, how the longings for companions, how the recollections of that beautiful Neapolitan home which he loved and wished to revisit, how the desire to explore yet more freely the beauties and the mysteries of the divine universe, came to him with reasons and excuses to tempt him from his resolution? But conscience supported him. He took Truth by the hand, turned his back on the world and its joy and sunshine, and followed whither she led into the silent, sunless unknown. Let us dismiss the theory that he was impelled by the desire to escape in this way from an imprisonment which threatened to be perpetual; let us dismiss, and contemptuously dismiss, the insinuation of an English writer, that Bruno’s purpose was, by a theatrical death, to startle the world which had begun to forget him in his confinement. To impute a low motive to a noble deed is surely as base as to extenuate a crime. Bruno had no sentimental respect for martyrs; but on the day when he resolved to die for his convictions, he proved his kinship with the noblest martyrs and heroes of the race. On February 8, 1600, he was brought before Cardinal Mandruzzi, the Supreme Inquisitor. He was formally degraded from his order, sentence of death was pronounced against him, and he was given up to the secular authorities. During the reading, he remained tranquil, thoughtful. When the Inquisitor ceased, he uttered those memorable words, which still, judging from the recent alarm in the Vatican, resound ominously in the ears of the Romish hierarchy: “Peradventure you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.” After nine days had been allowed for his recantation, he was led forth, on February 17, to the Campo di Fiora,—once an amphitheatre, built by Pompey, and now a vegetable market. When he had been bound to the stake, he protested, according to one witness, that he died willingly, and that his soul would mount with the smoke into paradise. Another account says that he was gagged, to prevent his uttering blasphemies. As the flames leaped up, a crucifix was held before him, but he turned his head away. He uttered no scream, nor sigh, nor murmur, as Hus and Servetus had done; even that last mortal agony of the flesh could not overcome his spirit. And when nothing remained of his body but ashes, these were gathered up and tossed to the winds. Berti, to whose indefatigable and enlightened researches, extending over forty years, we owe our knowledge of Bruno’s career,[33] says justly that Bruno bequeathed to his countrymen the example of an Italian dying for an ideal,—a rare example in the sixteenth century, but emulated by thousands of Italians in the nineteenth. To us and to all men his death brings not only that lesson, but it also teaches that no tribunal, whether religious or political, has a right to coerce the conscience and inmost thoughts of any human being. Let a man’s deeds, so far as they affect the community, be amenable to its laws, but his opinions should be free and inviolable. We can grant that the Torquemadas and Calvins and Loyolas were sincere, and that, from their point of view, they were justified in persecuting men who differed from them in religion; for the heretic, they believed, was Satan’s emissary, and deserved no more mercy than a fever-infected rag; but history admonishes us that their point of view was not only cruel, but wrong. No man, no church, is infallible: therefore it may turn out that the opinions which the orthodoxy of yesterday deemed pernicious have infused new blood into the orthodoxy of to-day. Bruno declared that the universe is infinite and its worlds are innumerable; the Roman Inquisition, in its ignorance, knew better. Galileo declared that the earth moves round the sun; the Inquisition, in its ignorance, said, No. It burned Bruno, it harried Galileo; yet, after three centuries, which do we believe? And if the Roman Church was fallible in matters susceptible of easy proof, shall we believe that it, or any other church, is infallible in matters immeasurably deeper and beyond the scope of finite demonstration? Cardinal Bellarmine, an upright man, and perhaps the ablest Jesuit of any age, was the foremost Inquisitor in bringing Bruno to the stake, and in menacing Galileo with the rack; but should a schoolboy of ten now uphold Bellarmine’s theory of the solar system, he would be sent into the corner with a fool’s-cap on his head. Strange is it that mankind, who have the most urgent need for truth, should have been in all ages so hostile to receiving it. Starving men do not kill their rescuers who bring them bread; whereas history is little more than the chronicle of the persecution and slaughter of those who have brought food for the soul. Doubtless the first savage who suggested that reindeer-meat would taste better cooked than raw was slain by his companions as a dangerous innovator. Ever since that time, the messengers of truth have been stoned, and burned, and ganched, and crucified; yet their message has been delivered, and has at last prevailed. This is, indeed, the best encouragement we derive from history, and the fairest presage of the perfectibility of mankind. The study of the works of Giordano Bruno, which has been revived and extended during this century, is one evidence of a more general toleration, and of a healthy desire to know the opinions of all kinds of thinkers. One reason why Bruno has attracted modern investigators is because so many of his doctrines are in tune with recent metaphysical and scientific theories; and it seems probable that, for a while at least, the interest awakened in him will increase rather than diminish, until, after the republication and examination of all his writings, a just estimate of his speculations shall have been made. Much will undoubtedly have to be thrown out as obsolete or fanciful; much as flippant and inconsistent; much as vitiated by the cumbrous methods of scholasticism, and the tedious fashion of expounding philosophy by means of allegory and satire. But, after all the chaff has been sifted and all the excrescences have been lopped off, something precious will remain. The very diversity of opinions about the upshot and value of his teaching insures for him the attention of scholars for some time to come. Those thinkers who can be quickly classified and easily understood are as quickly forgotten; only those who elude classification, and constantly surprise us by turning a new facet towards us, and provoke debate, are sure of a longer consideration. And see how conflicting are the verdicts passed upon Bruno. Sir Philip Sidney and that fine group of men who just preceded the Shakespearean company were his friends, and listened eagerly to his speculations. Hegel says: “His inconstancy has no other motive than his great-hearted enthusiasm. The vulgar, the little, the finite, satisfied him not; he soared to the sublime idea of the Universal Substance.” The French philosophes of the eighteenth century debated whether he were an atheist; the critics of the nineteenth century declare him to be a pantheist. Hallam thought that, at the most, he was but a “meteor of philosophy.” Berti ranks him above all the Italian philosophers of his epoch, and above all who have since lived in Italy except Rosmini, and perhaps Gioberti. Some have called him a charlatan; some, a prophet. Finally, Leo XIII, in an allocution which was read from every Romish pulpit in Christendom, asserted that “his writings prove him an adept in pantheism and in shameful materialism, imbued with coarse errors, and often inconsistent with himself;” and that “his talents were to feign, to lie, to be devoted wholly to himself, not to bear contradiction, to be of a base mind and wicked heart.” As we read these sentences of Leo XIII, and his further denunciation of those who, like Bruno, ally themselves to the Devil by using their reason, we reflect that, were popes as powerful now as they were three centuries ago, they would have found reason enough to burn Mill and Darwin, and many another modern benefactor. Bruno’s character, like his philosophy, offers so many points for dispute that it cannot soon cease to interest men. He is so human—neither demigod nor demon, but a creature of perplexities and contradictions—that he is far more fascinating than those men of a single faculty, those monotones whom we soon estimate and tire of. His vitality, his daring, his surprises, stimulate us. In an age when the growing bulk of rationalism casts a pessimistic shadow over so many hopes, it is encouraging to know that the rationalist Bruno saw no reason for despair; and when some persons are seriously asking whether life be worth living, it is inspiring to point to a man to whom the boon of life was so precious and its delights seemed so inexhaustible. At any period, when many minds, after exploring all the avenues of science, report that they perceive only dead matter everywhere, it must help some of them to learn that Bruno beheld throughout the whole creation and in every creature the presence of an infinite Unity, of a Soul of the World, whose attributes are power, wisdom, and love. He was indeed “a God-intoxicated man.” Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas spun their cobwebs round the border of the narrow circle in which, they asserted, all truth, mundane and celestial, was comprehended; Bruno’s restless spirit broke through the cobwebs, and discovered limitless spaces, innumerable worlds, beyond. To his enraptured eyes, all things were parts of the One, the Ineffable. “The Inquisition and the stake,” says Mr. Symonds, “put an end abruptly to his dream. But the dream was so golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs of martyrdom. Can we say the same for Hegel’s system, or for Schopenhauer’s, or for the encyclopÆdic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?” By his death Bruno did not prove that his convictions are true, but he proved beyond peradventure that he was a true man; and by such from the beginning has human nature been raised towards that ideal nature which we believe divine. There are many good reasons why we should celebrate the one hundredth birthday of William Cullen Bryant.[34] Not the least of them is this, that in bringing him our tribute we also commemorate the birthday of American poetry. He was our earliest poet, and “Thanatopsis” our earliest poem. Through him, therefore, we make festival to the Muse who has taught many since him to sing. Older than Bryant were three single-poem men,—Francis Scott Key, Joseph Hopkinson, and John Howard Payne; yet, so far as I can learn, their three poems were written later than “Thanatopsis,” and, after all, neither “The Star Spangled Banner,” nor “Hail Columbia,” nor “Home, Sweet Home,” would rank high as poetry. Likewise, though Fitz-Greene Halleck was older than Bryant by four years, and once enjoyed a considerable vogue, his verse is now obsolescent, if not obsolete. In the anthologies—those presses of faded poetical flowers—you will still find some of his pieces; but which of us now regards “Marco Bozzaris” as the “finest martial poem in the language”? Bryant’s priority among his immediate contemporaries is thus clearly established; furthermore, a considerable interval separated him from that group of American poets who rose to eminence in the two decades before the civil war. Bryant was born in 1794, Emerson in 1803, Longfellow and Whittier in 1807, Holmes and Poe in 1809, Lowell and Whitman in 1819. An almost unexampled precocity also set Bryant’s pioneership beyond dispute. But when we call Bryant the earliest American poet, and “Thanatopsis” the earliest American poem, we must not suppose that both had not had many ineffectual predecessors. Versifiers, like milliners, flourish from age to age, and their works are forgotten in favor of a later fashion. Who the forgotten predecessors of Bryant were, he himself will tell us. Being asked in February, 1818, to write an article on American poetry for the North American Review he replied:— “Most of the American poets of much note, I believe, I have read,—Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys, Honeywood, Clifton, Paine. The works of Hopkins I have never met with. I have seen Philip Freneau’s writings, and some things by Francis Hopkinson. There was a Dr. Ladd, if I am not mistaken in the name, of Rhode Island, who, it seems, was much celebrated in his time for his poetical talent, of whom I have seen hardly anything; and another, Dr. Church, a Tory at the beginning of the Revolution, who was compelled to leave the country, and some of whose satirical verses which I have heard recited possess considerable merit as specimens of forcible and glowing invective. I have read most of Mrs. Morton’s poems, and turned over a volume of stale and senseless rhymes by Mrs. Warren. Before the time of these writers, some of whom are still alive, and the rest belong to the generation which has just passed away, I imagine that we could hardly be said to have any poetry of our own; and indeed it seems to me that American poetry, such as it is, may justly enough be said to have had its rise with that knot of Connecticut poets, Trumbull and others, most of whose works appeared about the time of the Revolution.”[35] Bryant’s list contains the name of not one poet whose works are read to-day. All these volumes belong to fossil literature,—literature, that is, which may be dug up and studied for the light it may throw on the customs of a time, or its intellectual development, but which, so far as its own vitality is concerned, has passed away beyond hope of resuscitation. The historical student of American poetry may read Barlow’s “Columbiad” as a matter of duty; but those of us to whom poetry is the breath of life will not seek it in that literary graveyard. Reverently, rather, will we read the titles on the tombstones and pass on. Almost coeval with American independence itself was the notion that there ought to be an independent American literature. The Revolution had resulted in the formation of a republic new in pattern, in opportunities, in ideals; a republic which, having broken forever with the political system of Britain, would gladly have been freed from all obligations—including intellectual and Æsthetic obligations—to her. We hardly realize how acute was the sensitiveness of our great-grandfathers on this point. The satisfaction they took in recalling the victories of Bennington and Yorktown vanished when they were reminded—and there was always some candid foreigner at hand to remind them—that a nation’s real greatness is measured, not by the size of its crops, nor by its millions of square miles of surface, nor by the rapidity with which its population doubles, nor even by its ability to whip King George the Third’s armies, but by its contributions to philosophy, to literature, to art, to religion. “What have you to show in these lines?” we imagine the candid foreigner to have been perpetually asking; and the patriotic American to have winced, as he had to reply, “Nothing;” unless, indeed, he happened to have Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical poise. To the slur of AbbÉ Raynal, that “America had not produced a single man of genius,” Jefferson replied: “When we shall have existed as a people as long as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded that the other countries of Europe and other quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name of ours on the roll of poets.” Very few Americans, however, could bear with Jeffersonian equanimity the imputation of inferiority. All were well aware that they had just achieved a revolution without parallel in history; they were honestly proud of it; and they could not help feeling touchy when their critics, ignoring this stupendous achievement, censured them for failure in fields they had never entered. A few, like Jefferson, would respond, “Give us time;” the majority either masked their irritation under pretended contempt for the opinion of foreigners, or silently admitted the impeachment. There grew up, on the one hand, “spread-eagleism,”—brag over our material and political bigness,—and, on the other, an impatient desire to produce masterpieces which should not fear comparison with the best the world could show. The Hebrew patriarchs, whose faith Jehovah tested by denying them children till the old age of their wives, were not less troubled at the postponement of their dearest wishes than were those eager watchers for the advent of American genius. Long before Bryant’s little volume was published, in 1821, those watchers had begun to speculate as to the sort of work in which that genius would manifest itself, and then was conjured up that bogy, “The American Spirit,” which has flitted up and down through our college lecture-rooms and fluttered the minds of immature critics ever since. It was generally agreed that the question to be asked about each new book should be, “Has it The American Spirit?” and not, “Is it excellent?” Nobody knew how to define that spirit, but everybody had a teasing conviction that, unless it were conspicuous, the offspring of American genius could not prove their legitimacy. Foreigners, especially the English, encouraged this conviction. They expected something strange and uncouth; they would accept nothing else as genuine. Hence, years afterward, when Whitman, with cowboy gait, came swaggering up Parnassus, shouting nicknames at the Muses and ready to slap Apollo on the back, our perspicacious English cousins exclaimed, “There! there! that’s American! At last we’ve found a poet with The American Spirit!” For quite other reasons Whitman deserves serious attention; not for those extravagances which he deluded himself and his unrestrained admirers into thinking were most precious manifestations of The American Spirit. This bogy has now been pretty thoroughly exorcised, its followers being chiefly the writers of bad grammar, bad spelling, and slang,—which pass for dialect stories,—and an occasional student of literature, who finds very little of the American product that could not have been produced elsewhere. We may dismiss The American Spirit, bidding it seek its spectral companion, The Great American Novel, but we must remember that, even before Bryant began to write, it was worrying the minds of our literary folk. Bryant himself must have been subjected, consciously or unconsciously, to the influences we have surveyed,—for who can escape breathing the common atmosphere? But he had within him that which is more potent than any external mould, and is the one trait hereditary in genius of every kind,—he had sincerity. What he saw, he saw with his own eyes; what he spake, he spake with his own lips; and inevitably it followed that men proclaimed him original. His secret, his method, were no more than this. “I saw some lines by you to the skylark,” he writes to his brother in 1838. “Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some foreign country, when, of course, you will learn what you can from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never visited Europe has no right to be in raptures about it.” That last sentence explains Bryant; it is worth a hundred essays on The American Spirit; it should be the warning of every writer. The raptures of Americans over English skylarks they had never seen were then, and have always been, the bane of our literature. Eighty years ago the lowlands at the foot of our Helicon had been turned into a slough by the tears of rhymesters who did not feel the griefs they sang of, and the woods howled with sighs which caused no pang to the sighers. Bryant, by merely being natural and sincere, was instantly recognized as belonging to that lineage every one of whose children is a king. The story of his entry into literature, though well known, cannot be too often told. Born at Cummington, a little village on the Hampshire hills, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794, his father was a genial, fairly cultivated country doctor; his mother, Sarah Snell, an indefatigable housewife, with Yankee common-sense and deep-grained Puritan principles. William Cullen, the second of several children, was precocious; both parents encouraged his aptitude for verse-making, and a satire which he wrote in 1807 on Jefferson and the Embargo his father was proud to have printed in Boston. In 1810 young Bryant entered the sophomore class of Williams College, and spent a year there. He hoped to pass from Williams to Yale, where he looked for more advanced instruction, but his father’s means did not permit, and the son, instead of finishing his course at Williams, went into a country lawyer’s office and fitted himself for the bar. Just at the moment of indecision, in the autumn of 1811, Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis.” Contrary to his custom, he did not show it to his father, but laid it away with other papers in a drawer. Six years later Dr. Bryant, whose duties as a member of the Massachusetts legislature took him often to Boston, and whose bright parts and liberal views made him welcome in the foremost circles there, was asked by his friends, who edited the North American Review, for some contribution. On returning to Cummington, he happened to find his son’s sequestered papers, and, choosing “Thanatopsis”—of which, the original being covered with many corrections, he made a copy—and “The Waterfowl,” he sent them off to Boston, and they appeared in the Review for September, 1817. The young poet, having meanwhile completed his legal studies, was practicing law at Great Barrington, unconscious of the fame about to descend upon him. Owing to the handwriting of the copy of the poems sent to the Review, however, Dr. Bryant had for a moment the credit of being the author of “Thanatopsis.” After duly allowing for the common tendency to make fame retroactive, we cannot doubt that “Thanatopsis” secured immediate and, relatively, immense recognition. The best judges agreed that at last a bit of genuine American literature was before them; the uncritical but appreciative, from ministers to school children, read, learned, admired, and quoted the grave, sonorous lines. Thanatopsis,—a Vision of Death! A strange corner-stone for the poetic literature of the nation which had only recently sprung into life,—a nation conscious as no other had been of its exuberant vitality, of its boundless material resources, of its expansiveness and invincible will. Yet neither the glory achieved nor the ambition cherished fired the imagination of the youthful poet. He looked upon the earth, and saw it but a vast grave; he looked upon men and beheld, not their high ambitions nor the great deeds which blazon human story, but their transience, their mortality. Nothing in life could so awe him as the majestic mystery of death. The mood, I believe, is not rare among sensitive and thoughtful youths, who, just as their faculties have ripened sufficiently to enable them to feel a little of the unspeakable delight of living, are staggered at realizing for the first time that death is inevitable, and that the days of the longest life are few. That this terrific discovery should kindle thoughts full of sublimity need not surprise us; but we may well be astonished that Bryant at seventeen should have had power to express them in a poem which is neither morbid nor religiously commonplace. In 1821 Bryant received what was then the blue ribbon of recognition in being asked to deliver a poem before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He wrote “The Ages,” read it in Cambridge and printed it, together with “Thanatopsis” and a few other pieces, in a little volume. The previous conviction was confirmed; every one spoke of Bryant as the American poet. Even the professional critics—those sapient fellows whose obtuseness is the wonder of posterity, the clique which pooh-poohed Keats, and ha-hahed Wordsworth, and bear-baited Carlyle—made in Bryant’s case no mistake. Although one of them, indeed, declared that there was “no more poetry in Bryant’s poems than in the Sermon on the Mount,” yet the opinions were generally laudatory, and the critics were quick in defining the qualities of the new poet. They found in him something of Cowper and something of Wordsworth, but the resemblances did not imply imitation; Bryant might speak their language, but it was his also. No one questioned the genuineness of his inspiration, and not for a quarter of a century after the publication of “Thanatopsis,” that is, not until the early forties,—when Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, and Emerson began to have a public for their poetry,—did any one question Bryant’s primacy. He had been so long the only American poet that it was naturally assumed that he would always be the best. He had redeemed America from the reproach of barrenness in poetry, as Irving and Cooper redeemed its prose, and Americans could feel toward no others as they felt toward him. A hundred years have elapsed since his birth; three generations have known his works: what is Bryant to us, who are posterity to him? Is he, like Cimabue in painting, a mere name to date from,—a pioneer whom we respect,—and nothing more? Far from it. Bryant’s poetry is not only chronologically but absolutely interesting: it lives to-day, and the qualities which have vitalized it for three quarters of a century show no signs of decay. It would be incorrect, of course, to assert that Bryant holds relatively so high a place in our literature as he held fifty years ago; his estate then was the first poetic clearing in the wilderness; its boundaries are still the same; but subsequent poets have made other clearings all round his, and brought different prospects into view and different talents under cultivation. Let us look briefly at Bryant’s domain. Intimate and faithful portrayal of Nature is the product which first draws our attention; next we perceive that the observer who makes the picture is a sober moralist. He delights in Nature for her own sake, for her beauty and variety; and then she suggests to him some rule of conduct, some parallel between her laws and the laws of human life, by which he is comforted and uplifted. Bryant, I have said elsewhere, interprets Nature morally, Emerson spiritually, and Shelley emotionally. We need not stop to inquire which of these methods of interpretation is the highest. Suffice it for us to realize that all of them are valuable, and that the poet who succeeds in identifying himself in a marked degree with any one of them will not soon be forgotten. That Wordsworth preceded Bryant in the moral interpretation of Nature detracts nothing from Bryant’s merit. The latest prophet is no less original than the earliest; for originality lies in being a prophet at all. Young Bryant, wandering over the bleak Hampshire hills or in the woods or along the brawling streams, had original impressions, which he trustingly recorded; and to-day, if you go to Cummington, you will marvel at the fidelity of his record. But his poetry is true not only there; it is true in every region where Nature has similar aspects; symbolically, it is true everywhere. There being no doubt as to the veracity of his pictures, what shall we say of that other quality, the moral tone which pervades them? That, too, is of a kind men will not soon outgrow. It inculcates courage, patience, fortitude, trust; it springs from the optimism of one who believes in the ultimate triumph of good, not because he can prove it, but because his whole being revolts at the thought of evil triumphant. He has the stoic’s dread of flinching before any shock of misfortune, the Christian’s dread of the taint of sin. Here are two ideals, each the complement of the other, which the world cannot outgrow, and the poet who—pondering on a fringed gentian or the flight of a waterfowl, or on a rivulet bickering among its grasses—found new incitements to courage and virtue, thereby associated himself with the eternal. To interpret nature morally in this fashion, which is Bryant’s fashion, is to rise far above the level of the common didacticism of our pulpits. Professional moralists go to nature for figures of speech to furnish forth their sermons and religious verse, as they go to their kitchen garden for vegetables; but they do not enter Bryant’s world. Moreover, in painting the scenery of the Hampshire hills, and in saturating his descriptions with the moral tonic I have spoken of, Bryant became the representative of a phase of New England life which has had an incalculable influence on the development of this nation. The mitigated Spartanism amid which his youth was passed bred those colonists who carried New England standards with them to the shores of the Pacific. A Puritan by derivation and environment, Bryant was by training and conviction a Unitarian,—a combination which made him in a sense the exemplar both of the austerity which had characterized New England ideals in the past, and of the liberalism which during this century has nowhere found more strenuous supporters than in New England. On many positive grounds, therefore, Bryant’s title to fame rests; he was one of Nature’s men, he shed moral health, he uttered the ideals of a great race in a transitional epoch. His temperament, in making his poetic product small, gave him yet another hostage against oblivion. The poet who, having so many claims to the consideration of posterity, can also plead brevity, need not worry himself about what is called literary immortality. Bryant’s typical and best work is comprised in a dozen poems, the longest not exceeding 140 lines. Read “Thanatopsis,” “The Yellow Violet,” “Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,” “To a Waterfowl,” “Green River,” “A Winter Piece,” “The Rivulet,” “A Forest Hymn,” “The Past,” “To a Fringed Gentian,” “The Death of the Flowers,” and “The Battlefield,” and you have Bryant’s message; the rest of his work either echoes the notes already sounded in these, or represents uncharacteristic, and therefore transitory, moods. Not less conspicuous than his excellences are Bryant’s limitations. We may say of him that, like Wordsworth, he did not always overcome a tendency to emphasize the obvious, and that, like almost all contemplative poets, he sometimes made the didactic unnecessarily obtrusive. We have all heard parsons who, after finishing their sermon, sum it up in a valedictory prayer, with a hint as to its application, for the benefit of the Lord; equally superfluous, even for mortal readers, is the moral too often appended to a poem which is well able to convey its meaning without it. In this respect Bryant resembles most of our American poets, in whom didacticism has prevailed to an extent that will lessen their repute with posterity; for each generation manufactures more than enough of this commodity for its own consumption, and cannot be induced to try stale moralities left over from the fathers. Bryant’s self-control, the backbone of a character of high integrity, prevented him from indulging in emotions which, if they be not the substance of great poetry, are the color, the glow, which give great poetry its charm. He addresses the intellect; he has, if not heat, light; and he does not, as emotional poets sometimes do, play the intellect false or lead it astray. In his versification he is compact and stately, though occasionally stiff. He came at the end of that metrical drought which lasted from Milton’s death to Burns, when the instinct for writing musical iambics was lost, and, instead, men wrote in measured thuds, by rule. That phenomenon the psychologist should explain. How was it that a people lost, during a century and a half, its ear for metrical music, as if a violinist should suddenly prefer a tom-tom to a violin? Probably the exorbitant use of hymn and psalm singing, that came in with the Puritans, helped to degrade English poetry. The spirit which expelled emotion from worship, and destroyed whatever it could of the beauty of England’s churches, had no understanding for metrical harmony. Any poor shred of morality, the tritest dogmatic platitude, if stretched thin, chopped into the required number of feet, rhymed, and packed into six or eight stanzas, with clumsy variations on the doxology at the end, made a hymn, for the edification of persons whose object was worship and not beauty. As a means to unction, mere doggerel, sung out of tune, would serve as well as anything. At any rate, the taste for rigid iambics would naturally be acquired by Bryant at his church-going in childhood, and from the eighteenth century poets whom he read earliest. The beautiful variety of modulations which Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson have shown this verse—the historic metre of our race—to be susceptible of, lay beyond Bryant’s range. His verse is either simple, almost colloquial, or dignified, as befits his theme; even in ornament he is sober. As he never surpassed the grandeur of conception of “Thanatopsis,” so, I think, he did not afterward equal the splendid metrical sweep of certain passages in that wonderful poem. And this fact points to another: Bryant is one of the few poets of genuine power whose poetic career shows no advance. The first arrow he drew from his quiver was the best, and with it he made his longest shot; many others he sent in the same direction, but they all fell behind the first. This accounts for the singleness and depth of the impression he has left; he stands for two or three elementals, and thereby keeps his force unscattered. He was not, indeed, wholly insensible to the romanticist stirrings of his time, as such effusions as “The Damsel of Peru,” “The Arctic Lover,” and “The Hunter’s Serenade,” bear witness. He wrote several pieces about Indians,—not the real red men, but those imaginary noble savages, possessors of all the primitive virtues, with whom our grandfathers peopled the American forests. He wrote strenuously in behalf of Greek emancipation and against slavery; but even here, though the subject lay very near his heart, he could not match the righteous vehemence of Whittier, or Lowell’s alternate volleys of sarcasm and rebuke. Like Antaeus, Bryant ceased to be powerful when he did not tread his native earth. We have thus surveyed his poetical product and genius, for to these first of all is due the celebration of his centennial, and we conclude that his contemporaries were right and that we are right in holding his work precious. But while it is through his poetry that Bryant survives, let us not forget the worth of his personality. For sixty years he was the dean of American letters. By his example he swept away the old foolish idea that unwillingness to pay bills, addiction to the bottle and women, and a preference for frowsy hair and dirty linen are necessary attributes of genius, especially of poetic genius. He disdained the proverbial backbiting and envy of authors. As the editor of a newspaper which for half a century had no superior in the country, he exercised an influence which cannot be computed. We who live under the rÉgime of journalists who conceive it to be the mission of newspapers to deposit at every doorstep from eight to eighty pages of the moral and political garbage of the world every morning,—we may well magnify Bryant, whose long editorial career bore witness that being a journalist should not absolve a man from the common obligations of moral cleanliness, of veracity, of scandal-hating, of delicacy, of honor. Finally, Bryant was a great citizen,—that last product which it is the business of our education and our political and social life to bring forth. In a monarchy the soldier is the type most highly prized; but in a democracy, if democratic forms shall long endure, citizens of the Bryant pattern, whose chief concern in public not less than in private life is to “make reason and the will of God prevail,” must abound in constantly increasing numbers. Happy and grateful should we be that, in commemorating our earliest poet, we can discern no line of his which has not an upward tendency, no trait of his character unfit to be used in building a noble, strong, and righteous State. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. Transcriber’s Note The cover has been created by the transcriber using elements from the original publication and placed in the public domain. The only known changes to the original publication are as follows: - Page 60
Acompanying this suppression of changed to
Accompanying this suppression of - Page 71
as a national anniversary! changed to
as a national anniversary!’ - Page 80
when the French Revotion changed to
when the French Revolution - Page 110
The Magyar Government and changed to
The Magyar government and - Page 126
Rio Janeiro changed to
Rio de Janeiro and - Page 267
One Hundred and Twenty Artiticles changed to
One Hundred and Twenty Articles - Page 316
by the tears of rhymsters changed to
by the tears of rhymesters - Page 319
but their transcience changed to
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