That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it; This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one,-- His hundred 's soon hit; This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That has the world here--should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him.
"Your nerves are out of order," observed the gentleman, with a carelessly easy, though perfectly polite, air. "You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic _soirée_ at the house of a lady of high rank in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the Ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth.... Of course, it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from the sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don't freeze, but when one's in fleshly form, well ... in brief, I didn't think, and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there's such a frost ... at least one can't call it frost, you can fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play--they invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds. But that's only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine it would be enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of it ... if only there could be an ax there."
Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad as their officer--all looked at their commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.
In appearance the great Whig landowners gave their support to Pitt, and in 1794 some of their leaders, the duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Windham, entered the cabinet to serve under him. In reality it was Pitt who had surrendered. The ministry and the party by which it was supported might call themselves Tory still; but the great reforming policy of 1784 was at an end, and the government, unconscious of its own strength, conceived its main function to be at all costs to preserve the constitution, which it believed to be in danger of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of revolutionary feeling. That this belief was idle it is now easy enough to see; at the time this was not so obvious. Thomas Paine's _Rights of Man_, published in 1791, a brilliant and bitter attack on the British constitution from the Jacobin point of view, sold by tens of thousands. Revolutionary societies with high-sounding names were established, of which the most conspicuous were the Revolution Society, the Society for Constitutional Information, the London Corresponding Society, and the Friends of the People. Of these, indeed, only the two last were directly due to the example of France. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the revolution of 1688, had long carried on a respectable existence under the patronage of cabinet ministers; the Society for Constitutional Information, of which Pitt himself had been a member, was founded in 1780 to advocate parliamentary reform; both had, however, developed under the influence of the events in France in a revolutionary direction. The London Corresponding Society, composed mainly of working-men, was the direct outcome of the excitement caused by the developments of the French Revolution. Its leaders were obscure and usually illiterate men, who delighted to propound their theories for the universal reformation of society and the state in rhetoric of which the characteristic phrases were borrowed from the tribune of the Jacobin Club. Later generations have learned by repeated experience that the eloquence of Hyde Park orators is not the voice of England; there were some even then--among those not immediately responsible for keeping order--who urged the government "to trust the people";[6] but with the object-lesson of France before them it is not altogether surprising that ministers refused to believe in the harmlessness of societies, which not only kept up a fraternal correspondence with the National Convention and the Jacobin Club, but, by attempting to establish throughout the country a network of affiliated clubs, were apparently aiming at setting up in Great Britain the Jacobin idea of popular control. Entry: XI
Amongst the chief workers in the modern revival of this art are Claudius Popelin, Alfred Meyer, Paul Grandhomme, Fernand Thesmar, Hubert von Herkomer and Alexander Fisher. The work of Claudius Popelin is characterized by good technical skill, correctness, and a careful copying of the work of the old masters. Consequently it suffers from a lack of invention and individuality. His work was devoted to the rendering of mythological subjects and fanciful portraits of historical people. Alfred Meyer and Grandhomme are both accomplished and careful enamellers; the former is a painter enameller and the author of a book dealing technically with enamelling. Grandhomme paints mythological subjects and portraits in a very tender manner, with considerably more artistic feeling than either Meyer or Popelin. There is a specimen of his work in the Luxemburg Museum. Fernand Thesmar is the great reviver of _plique-à-jour_ enamelling in France. Specimens of his work are possessed by the art museums throughout Europe, and one is to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. They are principally valued on account of their perfect technical achievement. Lucien Falize was an employer of artists and craftsmen, and to him we are indebted for the production of specimens of _basse-taille_ enamel upon silver and gold, as well as for a book reviewing the revival of the art in France, bearing particularly on the work of Claudius Popelin. Until within recent years there was a clear division between the art and the crafts in the system of producing art objects. The artist was one person and the workman another. It is now acknowledged that the artist must also be the craftsman, especially in the higher branches of enamelling. M. Falize initiated the production of a gold cup which was enamelled in the _basse-taille_ manner. The band of figures was designed by Olivier Merson, the painter, and carved by a metal carver and enamelled by an enameller, both able craftsmen employed by M. Falize. Other pieces of enamelling in _champlevé_ and _cloisonné_ were also produced under his supervision and on this system; therefore lacking the one quality which would make them complete as an expression of artistic emotion by the artist's own hands. M. René Lalique is among the jewellers who have applied enamelling to their work in a peculiarly technically perfect manner. In England, Professor Hubert von Herkomer has produced painted enamels of considerable dimensions, aiming at the execution of pictures in enamel, such as have been generally regarded as peculiar to the province of oil or water-colour painting. Among numerous works is a large shield, into which plaques of enamel are inserted, as well as several portraits, one of which, made in several pieces, is 6 ft. high--a portrait of the emperor William II. of Germany. The present writer rediscovered the making of many enamels, the secrets of which had been jealously guarded. He has worked in all these processes, developing them from the art side, and helping to make enamelling not only a decorative adjunct to metal-work, but raising it to a fine art. His work may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Brussels Museum. Others who have been enamelling with success in various branches, and who have shown individuality in their work, are Mr John Eyre, Mrs Nelson Dawson, Miss Hart. Entry: ENAMEL
Up to this point what have we seen? On the stage of Palestine, an outlying district of the Roman Empire, the home of the Jewish nation, now subject but still fired with the hope of freedom and even of universal domination under the leadership of a divinely anointed King, a new figure has appeared. His appearance has been announced by a reforming prophet, who has summoned the nation to return to its God, and promised that a stronger than himself is to follow. In fulfilment of this promise, who is it that has come? Not a rough prophet in the desert like John, not a leader striking for political freedom, not a pretender aiming at the petty throne of the Herods, not even a great rabbi, building on the patriotic foundation of the Pharisees who had secured the national life by a new devotion to the ancient law. None of these, but, on the contrary, an unknown figure from the remote hills of Galilee, standing on the populous shores of its lake, proclaiming as a message from God that the highest hopes were about to be fulfilled, fastening attention on Himself by speaking with authority and attaching a few followers to His person, exhibiting wonderful powers of healing as a sign that He has come to fulfil all needs, manifesting at the same time an unparalleled sympathy, and setting quietly aside every religious convention which limited the outflow of this sympathy; and as the result of all this arousing the enthusiasm of astonished multitudes and evoking the opposition and even the murderous resentment of the religious guides of the nation. Of His teaching we have heard nothing, except in the occasional sentences by which He justified some of His unexpected actions. No party is formed, no programme is announced, no doctrine is formulated; without assuming the title of Messiah, He offers Himself as the centre of expectation, and seems to invite an unlimited confidence in His person. This, then, in brief summary, is what we have seen: the natural development of an historical situation, a march of events leading rapidly to a climax; an unexampled strength and an unexampled sympathy issuing inevitably in an unexampled liberty; and then the forces of orthodox religion combining with the forces of worldly indifference in order to suppress a dangerous innovator. Yet the writer who in a few pages presents us with so remarkable a representation shows no consciousness at all of artistic treatment. He tells a simple tale in the plainest words: he never stops to offer a comment or to point a moral. The wonder of it all is not in the writing, but in the subject itself. We feel that we have here no skilful composition, but a bare transcript of what occurred. And we feel besides that such a narrative as this is the worthy commencement of an answer to the question with which its readers would have come to it: What was the beginning of the Gospel? How did the Lord Jesus speak and act? and why did He arouse such malignant enmity amongst His own people? Entry: 2
Henry's power impressed the imagination of his contemporaries, who credited him with aiming at the conquest of France and the acquisition of the imperial title. But his ambitions of conquest were comparatively moderate in his later years. He attempted to secure Maurienne and Savoy for John by a marriage-alliance, for which a treaty was signed in 1173. But the project failed through the death of the intended bride; nor did the marriage of his third daughter, the princess Joanna (1165-1199), with William II., king of Sicily (1177) lead to English intervention in Italian politics. Henry once declined an offer of the Empire, made by the opponents of Frederick Barbarossa; and he steadily supported the young Philip Augustus against the intrigues of French feudatories. The conquest of Ireland was carried out independently of his assistance, and perhaps against his wishes. He asserted his suzerainty over Scotland by the treaty of Falaise (1175), but not so stringently as to provoke Scottish hostility. This moderation was partly due to the embarrassments produced by the ecclesiastical question and the rebellions of the princes. But Henry, despite a violent and capricious temper, had a strong taste for the work of a legislator and administrator. He devoted infinite pains and thought to the reform of government both in England and Normandy. The legislation of his reign was probably in great part of his own contriving. His supervision of the law courts was close and jealous; he transacted a great amount of judicial business in his own person, even after he had formed a high court of justice which might sit without his personal presence. To these activities he devoted his scanty intervals of leisure. His government was stern; he over-rode the privileges of the baronage without regard to precedent; he persisted in keeping large districts under the arbitrary and vexatious jurisdiction of the forest-courts. But it is the general opinion of historians that he had a high sense of his responsibilities and a strong love of justice; despite the looseness of his personal morals, he commanded the affection and respect of Gilbert Foliot and Hugh of Lincoln, the most upright of the English bishops. Entry: HENRY
In Keats's first book there was little foretaste of anything greatly or even genuinely good; but between the marshy and sandy flats of sterile or futile verse there were undoubtedly some few purple patches of floral promise. The style was frequently detestable--a mixture of sham Spenserian and mock Wordsworthian, alternately florid and arid. His second book, _Endymion_, rises in its best passages to the highest level of Barnfield and of Lodge, the two previous poets with whom, had he published nothing more, he might most properly have been classed; and this, among minor minstrels, is no unenviable place. His third book raised him at once to a foremost rank in the highest class of English poets. Shelley, up to twenty, had written little or nothing that would have done credit to a boy of ten; and of Keats also it may be said that the merit of his work at twenty-five was hardly by comparison more wonderful than its demerit at twenty-two. His first book fell as flat as it deserved to fall; the reception of his second, though less considerate than on the whole it deserved, was not more contemptuous than that of immeasurably better books published about the same time by Coleridge, Landor and Shelley. A critic of exceptional carefulness and candour might have noted in the first book so singular an example of a stork among the cranes as the famous and notable sonnet on Chapman's Homer; a just judge would have indicated, a partial advocate might have exaggerated, the value of such golden grain amid a garish harvest of tares as the hymn to Pan and the translation into verse of Titian's Bacchanal which glorify the weedy wilderness of _Endymion_. But the hardest thing said of that poem by the _Quarterly_ reviewer was unconsciously echoed by the future author of _Adonais_--that it was all but absolutely impossible to read through; and the obscener insolence of the "Blackguard's Magazine," as Landor afterwards very justly labelled it, is explicable though certainly not excusable if we glance back at such a passage as that where Endymion exchanges fulsome and liquorish endearments with the "known unknown _from whom his being sips such darling (!) essence_." Such nauseous and pitiful phrases as these, and certain passages in his correspondence, make us understand the source of the most offensive imputations or insinuations levelled against the writer's manhood; and, while admitting that neither his love-letters, nor the last piteous outcries of his wailing and shrieking agony, would ever have been made public by merciful or respectful editors, we must also admit that, if they ought never to have been published, it is no less certain that they ought never to have been written; that a manful kind of man or even a manly sort of boy, in his love-making or in his suffering, will not howl and snivel after such a lamentable fashion. One thing hitherto inexplicable a very slight and rapid glance at his amatory correspondence will amply suffice to explain: how it came to pass that the woman so passionately beloved by so great a poet should have thought it the hopeless attempt of a mistaken kindness to revive the memory of a man for whom the best that could be wished was complete and compassionate oblivion. For the side of the man's nature presented to her inspection, this probably was all that charity or reason could have desired. But that there was a finer side to the man, even if considered apart from the poet, his correspondence with his friends and their general evidence to his character give more sufficient proof than perhaps we might have derived from the general impression left on us by his works; though indeed the preface to _Endymion_ itself, however illogical in its obviously implied suggestion that the poem published was undeniably unworthy of publication, gave proof or hint at least that after all its author was something of a man. And the eighteenth of his letters to Miss Brawne stands out in bright and brave contrast with such as seem incompatible with the traditions of his character on its manlier side. But if it must be said that he lived long enough only to give promise of being a man, it must also be said that he lived long enough to give assurance of being a poet who was not born to come short of the first rank. Not even a hint of such a probability could have been gathered from his first or even from his second appearance; after the publication of his third volume it was no longer a matter of possible debate among judges of tolerable competence that this improbability had become a certainty. Two or three phrases cancelled, two or three lines erased, would have left us in _Lamia_ one of the most faultless as surely as one of the most glorious jewels in the crown of English poetry. _Isabella_, feeble and awkward in narrative to a degree almost incredible in a student of Dryden and a pupil of Leigh Hunt, is overcharged with episodical effects of splendid and pathetic expression beyond the reach of either. _The Eve of St Agnes_, aiming at no doubtful success, succeeds in evading all casual difficulty in the line of narrative; with no shadow of pretence to such interest as may be derived from stress of incident or depth of sentiment, it stands out among all other famous poems as a perfect and unsurpassable study in pure colour and clear melody--a study in which the figure of Madeline brings back upon the mind's eye, if only as moonlight recalls a sense of sunshine, the nuptial picture of Marlowe's Hero and the sleeping presence of Shakespeare's Imogen. Beside this poem should always be placed the less famous but not less precious _Eve of St Mark_, a fragment unexcelled for the simple perfection of its perfect simplicity, exquisite alike in suggestion and in accomplishment. The triumph of _Hyperion_ is as nearly complete as the failure of _Endymion_; yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not, as we may gather from his correspondence on the subject, for the pitiful reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the reception given to his former work, but on the solid and reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body of a subject so little charged with tangible significance. The faculty of assimilation as distinguished from imitation, than which there can be no surer or stronger sign of strong and sure original genius, is not more evident in the most Miltonic passages of the revised _Hyperion_ than in the more Shakespearian passages of the unrevised tragedy which no radical correction could have left other than radically incorrigible. It is no conventional exaggeration, no hyperbolical phrase of flattery with more sound than sense in it, to say that in this chaotic and puerile play of _Otho the Great_ there are such verses as Shakespeare might not without pride have signed at the age when he wrote and even at the age when he rewrote the tragedy of _Romeo and Juliet_. The dramatic fragment of _King Stephen_ shows far more power of hand and gives far more promise of success than does that of Shelley's _Charles the First_. Yet we cannot say with any confidence that even this far from extravagant promise would certainly or probably have been kept; it is certain only that Keats in these attempts did at least succeed in showing a possibility of future excellence as a tragic or at least a romantic dramatist. In every other line of high and serious poetry his triumph was actual and consummate; here only was it no more than potential or incomplete. As a ballad of the more lyrical order, _La Belle dame sans merci_ is not less absolutely excellent, less triumphantly perfect in force and clearness of impression, that as a narrative poem is _Lamia_. In his lines on Robin Hood, and in one or two other less noticeable studies of the kind, he has shown thorough and easy mastery of the beautiful metre inherited by Fletcher from Barnfield and by Milton from Fletcher. The simple force of spirit and style which distinguishes the genuine ballad manner from all spurious attempts at an artificial simplicity was once more at least achieved in his verses on the crowning creation of Scott's humaner and manlier genius--Meg Merrilies. No little injustice has been done to Keats by such devotees as fix their mind's eye only on the more salient and distinctive notes of a genius which in fact was very much more various and tentative, less limited and peculiar, than would be inferred from an exclusive study of his more specially characteristic work. But within the limits of that work must we look of course for the genuine credentials of his fame; and highest among them we must rate his unequalled and unrivalled odes. Of these perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn; the most radiant, fervent and musical is that to a Nightingale; the most pictorial and perhaps the tenderest in its ardour of passionate fancy is that to Psyche; the subtlest in sweetness of thought and feeling is that on Melancholy. Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that is in these; lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see. From the divine fragment of an unfinished ode to Maia we can but guess that if completed it would have been worthy of a place beside the highest. His remaining lyrics have many beauties about them, but none perhaps can be called thoroughly beautiful. He has certainly left us one perfect sonnet of the first rank and as certainly he has left us but one. Entry: KEATS
His great work is the _Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière_; and it can undoubtedly claim the merit of having been the first work to present the previously isolated and apparently disconnected facts of natural history in a popular and generally intelligible form. The sensation which was made by its appearance in successive parts was very great, and it certainly effected much good in its time by generally diffusing a taste for the study of nature. For a work so vast, however--aiming, as it did, at being little less than a general encyclopaedia of the sciences--Buffon's capacities may, without disparagement, be said to have been insufficient, as is shown by the great weakness of parts of the work (such as those relating to mineralogy). The _Histoire naturelle_ passed through several editions, and was translated into various languages. The edition most highly prized by collectors, on account of the beauty of its plates, is the first, which was published in Paris (1749-1804) in forty-four quarto volumes, the publication extending over more than fifty years. In the preparation of the first fifteen volumes of this edition (1749-1767) Buffon was assisted by Daubenton, and subsequently by P. Guéneau de Montbéliard, the abbé G.L.C.A. Bexon, and C.N.S. Sonnini de Manoncourt. The following seven volumes form a supplement to the preceding, and appeared in 1774-1789, the famous _Époques de la nature_ (1779) being the fifth of them. They were succeeded by nine volumes on the birds (1770-1783), and these again by five volumes on minerals (1783-1788). The remaining eight volumes, which complete this edition, appeared after Buffon's death, and comprise reptiles, fishes and cetaceans. They were executed by B.G.E. de Lacépède, and were published in successive volumes between 1788 and 1804. A second edition begun in 1774 and completed in 1804, in thirty-six volumes quarto, is in most respects similar to the first, except that the anatomical descriptions are suppressed and the supplement recast. Entry: BUFFON