99*

the Books,-"the two noblest of things, sweet- | Greece did not err in having the idea of beauness and light. The cvpvýs2 is the man ty, harmony, and complete human perfection, who tends toward sweetness and light; the so present and paramount. It is impossible to άons on the other hand, is our Philistine. have this idea too present and paramount; only, The immense spiritual significance of the the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, Greeks is due to their having been inspired | because we have braced the moral fibre, are with this central and happy idea of the essential character of human perfection; and Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our education, and is in itself a kind of homage to it.

In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious organiza tions to save us. I have called religion a yet more important manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side, which is the dominant idea of religion,-has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other.

not on that account in the right way, if at the
same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and
complete human perfection is wanting or mis-
apprehended amongst us.

NATURAL MAGIC IN CELTIC LITER-
ATURE†

The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble
and distinguished gave his poetry style; his
indomitable personality gave it pride and pas-
sion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation
it a better gift still, the gift of render-
gave
of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling
ing with wonderful felicity the magical charm
spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in ro-
mance. They have a mysterious life and grace
there; they are Nature's own children, and
utter her secret in a way which makes them
something quite different from the woods, wa-
ters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry.
Now of this delicate magic, Celtic romance is
so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impos-
sible to believe the power did not come into
word for it, the magic of nature; not merely
romance from the Celts. Magic is just the
Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the
the beauty of nature,-that the Greeks and

soil, a faithful realism,-that the Germans

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in had; but the intimate life of Nature, her weird As the which religion and poetry are one, in which the power and her fairy charm. idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect wholesome smack of the soil in them,-WeathSaxon names of places, with the pleasant on all sides adds to itself a religious and deersfield, Thaxted, Shalford,-are to the Celtic vout energy, and works in the strength of that, names of places, with their penetrating, lofty is on this account of such surpassing interest beauty, Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon, so and instructiveness for us, though it was, as is the homely realism of German and Norse having regard to the human race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks them nature to the fairy-like loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: selves, we must own,-a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed the moral. Well," says Math, "we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and developed than it had yet been. But for him out of flowers. So they took the blos

soms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom,
and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and pro-
duced from them a maiden, the fairest and
most graceful that man ever saw. And they
baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-
Aspect. ''‡ Celtic romance is full of exquisite

From On the Study of Celtic Literature (1866).
The Celtic race is represented mainly by the
Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scotch.
This and the following quotations are taken
from the Welsh Mabinogion, translated by
Lady Charlotte Guest.

And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear beauty, is suddenly magical-inspiration, is of peculiar importance. ized by the romance touch: poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a new

and sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it fails him, is so left "weak as is a breaking wave." I remember hearing him say tha' "Goethe's poetry was not inevitables enough." The remark is striking and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine Miltonic lines; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like Milton. When he seeks to have a style, he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the Excursion we have his style, as an artis tic product of his own creation; and although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize Wordsworth's real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of the Excursion, as a work of poetic style: This will never do." And yet magical as is that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured and possessed poetic style, he has something which is an equivalent for it.

Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, the heightening, which is given to a poet's verse by his genius for style.

We can feel it in the

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well"5 of Shakespeare; in the

though fallen on evil days,

change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of Laodamia. Still, the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from Michael:

"And never lifted up a single stone."

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most truly expressive kind.

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire fidelity it utters, Burns could show him:

"The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn and wise to know
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;

But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name."8

to Wordsworth; and if Wordsworth did great
Every one will be conscious of a likeness here
things with this nobly plain manner, we must
remember, what indeed he himself would al-
ways have been forward to acknowledge, that

Burns used it before him.

Still, Wordsworth's use of it has something unmatchable. Nature, herself, unique _ and seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand,

and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural charOn evil days though fallen, and evil tongues"6-acter of his subject itself. He can and will of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic style which gives such worth to Paradise Regained, and makes a great poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high. Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonie lines; we find it in such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's:

treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.

Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for Laodamia and for the great Ode; but if I am to tell the very truth, I find Laodamia not wholly free from something artificial, and the great Ode not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as Michael, The Fountain, The High8 A Bard's Epitaph, st. 4.

land Reaper. And poems with the peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth produced in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still exceedingly high.

Armada took leave of Spain for the last time. The scene as the fleet passed out of the harbour must have been singularly beautiful. It was a treacherous interval of real summer. The early sun was lighting the long chain of the Galician mountains, marking with shadows the

walls and vineyards of Coruña. The wind was light, and falling towards a calm; the great galleons drifted slowly with the tide on the purple water, the long streamers trailing from the trucks, the red crosses, the emblem of the crusade, showing bright upon the hanging sails. The fruit boats were bringing off the ast fresh supplies, and the pinnaces hastening to the ships with the last loiterers on shore. Out of thirty thousand men who that morning stood upon the decks of the proud Armada, twenty thousand and more were never again to see the hills of Spain. Of the remnant who in two short months erept back ragged and torn, all but a few hundred returned only to die.

On the whole, then, as I said at the begin-cleft defiles, and shining softly on the white ning, not only is Wordsworth eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us. With the ancients I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they ean never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the mod erns, we are to find his superiors. He is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely as possible and as truly as possible. his own word concerning his poems: "They will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their de gree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better and happier."

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
(1818-1894)

THE SAILING OF THE SPANISH
ARMADA*

The weather moderating, the fleet was again collected in the Bay of Ferrol by the 6th16th of July. All repairs were completed by the 11th-21st, and the next day, 12th-22nd, the

1 Off north western 2 The first date is Old
Spain.
Style: see note on
p. 323.
The story of the spectacular but ill-fated expe-
dition of the Spanish Armada has often been
told, but by no one perhaps more graphically
than by Froude. His first account is that in
the 36th chapter of his History of England
(1856-1870), from which has been taken this
description of the sailing of the Armada.
Later in life, after much additional research.
Froude wrote and published The Spanish
Story of the Armada (1892). About the same
time he was appointed to a lectureship at
Oxford, where he delivered some lectures on i
the subject which were published after his
death (English Seamen in the XVIth Cen-
tury, 1895). From these the second selection
above has been taken.

In the summer of 1588, Philip II. of Spain, who

The Spaniards, though a great people, were usually over conscious of their greatness, and boasted too loudly of their fame and prowess; but among the soldiers and sailors of the doomed expedition against England, the national vainglory was singularly silent. They were the flower of the country, culled and chosen over the entire Peninsula, and they were going with a modest nobility upon a service which they knew to be dangerous, but which they believed to be peculiarly sacred. Every one, seaman, officer, and soldier, had confessed and communicated before he went on board. Gambling, swearing, profane language of all kinds had been peremptorily forbidden. Private quarrels and differences had been made up or suspended. . . In every vessel, and in the whole fleet, the strictest order was prescribed and observed. Medina Sidonia led the way in the San Martin, showing lights at night, and firing guns when the weather was hazy. Mount's

was trying to restore the Catholic faith through the Protestant countries of Europe. fitted out his "Invincible Armada" with the purpose of invading England. His great Admiral. Santa Cruz, had just died. and the expedition was given into the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a wealthy nobleman of little experience and less ability, who ought to have been allowed to remain at home among his orange groves. His instruetions were to effect a junction with the Duke of Parma, a general in the Spanish service in the Low Countries, and to assist the latter in transporting his army to the English shores. The obvious tactics for the English to pursue was to cripple and if possible defeat the feet as it sailed through the English Channel. The fleet started from Lisbon on the 29th of May. but was delayed on the route six weeks by bad weather.

Bay3 was to be the next place of rendezvous if on the evening of the 19th-29th, the beacons they were again separated. along the coast had told England that the hour of its trial was come.