he continue to dwell in this little planet, or be transplanted to some more dignified abode, the world about him is likely to see itself still reflected in his mind. Whatever the Creative Power immanent in the world may be, His methods of working appear to be cognate to the mind of man. They often puzzle men by their greatness; they always yield to the mind's attack, however, when a sufficient foundation of experience has been laid for it to stand upon.

This assurance which man has won out of the adventure of science emboldens him to renew certain old claims upon the Universe. He feels that he has a right to his own integrity; that is, to a certain wholeness of life and experience for which three score and ten years do not suffice. Having once tasted food for mind and soul he is as little disposed as was Oliver Twist to be put off with a single helping. Though the beadles of science and religion stare, and conventional voices cry out upon his audacity, he will, often no doubt awkwardly enough, insist that he was made for life instead of death, for faith instead of unbelief, for conquest rather than defeat. He will refuse to be put to confusion by circumstance. He will reiterate as his Magna Charta the passage in Hebrew tradition which bids him "replenish the earth and subdue it"; and persist in regarding his claim to the venture of religion as strengthened rather than invalidated by the teaching of science.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DOUBTERS AND THE MYSTICS

It is said that preachers are most inclined toward themes of loss and sorrow in their youth. Then, more than in later years, they aspire to set forth the contradictions and uncertainties of life, and to bring mourners into vital touch with springs of comfort. In this attempt they sometimes illustrate one of the very contradictions that oppress them, as out of their seemingly unharassed experience they essay to deal with deep and harrowing things. The incongruity, humourous as it often seems, is, however, more apparent than real. Many men who have had a full share of danger and defeat may be found to confess that their days of deepest anxiety came in the relatively sheltered and outwardly placid period of youth. The fears of childhood are often unique in their intensity; its burdens heavier than those of later life; its loneliness more desolating. Nor is the reason far to seek. It is the intelligent child who feels most keenly his inadequacy to circumstance, and it is the youth who is most conscious of the uniqueness of experience. Later on the man learns how great a store of resources and compensations life may furnish; and he per

ceives at the same time that the problems which baffle him are the problems of every age, his burdens are those under which other men have staggered, and his path, however rugged and lonely, yet proves to be—

Worn of frequent feet.

The difficult situations of youth bode irrevocable disaster; those of maturity, with its more philosophic mind, as often whisper between their threats the old Virgilian solace, "Perhaps even these things it will some day be helpful to remember." Children within speaking distance of their parents still sometimes fear the dark; and youth, with years of goodly life before it, has as naturally and as perversely sung of death, parting, and faith's eclipse. It is a part, one suspects, of that revulsion of feeling which all men know who try their 'prentice hand at a new trade, -even the trade of living, only to find the easy tricks of it transformed into vexations at the touch of their inexperience.

Be this as it may, however, the fact remains that the most haunting songs of doubt and disillusion have been sung by men well under forty. Clough and Matthew Arnold in their different styles are eminent illustrations of what I mean. One cannot pass to a consideration of their work and the sources of their influence, however, without regret that lack of space excludes a group of half-forgotten poets, like the Chartist, Ernest Jones, whose "Songs of

Democracy" deserve a place beside, if not above, Elliott's "Corn-law Rhymes"; Charles Mackay, whose simplicity still retains some power of real refreshment; the irreproachable Tupper, with his sure faith in the popular appetite for platitude, and his facility in feeding it; and "Festus" Bailey. The last named antedated, as he outlived, his fellows, and still advances claims to the notice of posterity. In a recent critical notice Mr. James Douglas has collected a considerable number of passages from "Festus," which certainly help to bolster his enthusiastic praise of the poem.

And age but presses with a halo's weight,

may be admitted to be a worthy line, which Mr. Douglas has succeeded in matching with a fair array of peers. Yet "Festus" as it has come down to us, expanded by numerous additions, fattened, as it were, upon the choicer morsels of younger and less successful brethren, is likely to remain an essentially unreadable poem. There are fine lines: the poetic adventure essayed is inspiring; the style is often worthy the attempt;-still the thing is dreary. The reader finds himself wondering at the reason for twelve English and thirty American editions; and is driven to seek his answer in the fact that Bailey dealt in a large, free, and forceful way with the perennial theme of man's origin, destiny, and accountability to God. A comparison with Milton is inevitable- and of course disastrous.

The "Devil's Sermon" in Book Five reminds the reader of the address of Satan to Beelzebub; but it is Satan modernized, belittled, and robbed of his steadfast philosophy of rebellion.

Think ye your souls are worth nothing to God?
Are they so small? What can be great with God?
The sun and moon he wears on either arm,
Seals of his sovereignty.

There is good reasoning- by suggestion-here; the metaphor is bold and fine, after a barbaric sort; but the design as a whole lacks Milton's large epic quality as completely as its expression misses the majesty of Miltonic blank verse. "Festus" proclaimed a goodly number of little heresies — at least they were thought to be heresies in 1840-out of which many readers doubtless snatched a fearful joy; and it set forth a genuine evangel, defined by the author himself as a "belief in the benignant providence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in the harmonized gospel of faith and reason combined, and in the just, discriminative, and equitable judgement of the spirit after death by Deity."'

It was the possibility of such truth as this that haunted Clough. In some respects he seems to me to embody uniquely the higher traits of English character. The late R. H. Hutton was insistent upon his essential kinship to Chaucer; and Clough has indeed much of Chaucer's tolerant, humourous,

1 Quoted by J. H. Brown in Miles's Poets and Poetry of the Century, p. 474.