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desires the sense of duty never failed to find the clue. Neither the Acta Sanctorum, nor the records of the uncanonized in modern religious biography, can furnish many lives more full of noble stimulant, and more truly Christian in loftiness and simplicity of motive, sweet purity of life, and zeal for all that was holy, just, and good.

The sceptical spirit which we have noticed in Clough's way of dealing with religious questions pervades every region of thought. He seems, indeed, sometimes (we should be disposed to say in languid intervals coming rarely) ready to accept the doctrine, "Wen Gott betrügt, ist wohl betrogen." People should not be very sceptical about things in general," he thought at times. And it was surely with some consciousness of his own tendencies weakness or strength as we may judge them that he wrote

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"There is something certainly of an over-edu" cated weakness of purpose in Western Europe not in Germany only, or France, but also in more busy England. There is a disposition to press too far the finer and subtler intellectual and moral susceptibilities; to insist upon following out, as they say, to their logical consequences the notices of some single organ of their spiritual nature; a proceeding which is hardly more sensible in the grown man than it would be in the infant to refuse to correct the sensations of sight by those of touch. Upon the whole, we are disposed to follow out, if we must follow out at all, the analogy of the bodily senses; we are inclined to accept rather than investigate, and to put our confidence less in arithmetic and antinmoies than

in

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.'"' Yet certainly what is here commended was far removed from the prevailing habit of his own mind. What instinct, however strong, would he accept without a question? His mind, in its state of vigorous and normal energy, will put everything to the test, He is sure that to be deluded - even by God is unworthy of a man. He will try all things if religion - if the theopathic emotions why not all human loves? And the many problems which the human affections present, he investigates with a rigid analysis in the " Bothie," some of the tales of

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Mari Magno," and especially in " Amours de Voyage." He dissects slowly and carefully, and down to the bone, and does not pause because of the ugly sights that may be disclosed by his scalpel. What is love? Is it a fruit of mystical affinities of which poets sing? Or a fruit of mere "juxtaposition?" Or yet of affinities potent and efficient "by the favour of juxtaposition ?" Or how much is due to natura naturans

through the lichen, the primrose, the slow crustacea, the gilded snake, the dolphin, the leopard :

"The Power, which e'en in stones and earths By blind elections felt, in forms Organic breeds to myriad births?" And how may he who loves dare believe that the future will be always as the present,* or that even now in the shock and convulsion of passion, he carries inextinguished and undimmed the light of his knowledge, and that he sees things as they are? And what, again, if we, in these doubts as to the permanence of the absorbing character of love, should not be asking too much? That feeling gives colour to thought, he knows, and for this he will make allowance; he, at least, come what may, will be truthful to himself. The intellectual element of Clough's nature was and was the ultimate arbiter in all the eventually dominant in all divided counsels, casuistries of the heart. But there can be no greater mistake than to fail to recognize the vigour and strength of his feelings. Thoughtless readers, contrasting him with poets who delight to exhibit their passion uncontrolled, will be sure to underrate the power and depth of the emotion which at times we see tiding up and filling to the full every reach of his heart. Clough's is essentially a strong character, but strong with the strength of two contending lines of force, limiting and counteracting one another. He feels strongly, but he knows as well as feels. And his powerful mind never for a moment loses its grasp of intellectual convictions. One of the highest triumphs of his skill is the manner, exquisitely truthful, in which he portrays the strong strugglings of the heart as circumscribed and restrained by the bonds of

In one of the most charming lyrics in our language, after singing

"That out of sight is out of mind
Is true of most we leave behind;
It is not sure, nor can be true,
My own and only love, of you,".
then showing how naturally and rightly

and

Men, that will not idlers be, Must lend their hearts to things they see,”he concludes,

"But love, the poets say, is blind;
So out of sight and out of mind
Need not, nor will, I think, be true,
My own and only love, of you."

Observe the "nor will, I think " (!) — so thoroughly characteristic. What Clough writes of Thackeray may, it seems to us, be applied with slight modifica tion to himself "Thackeray doesn't sneer: he is really very sentimental; but he sees the silliness sentiment runs into, and so always tempers it by a little banter or ridicule."

He adds," He is much farther into actual life than I am; I always feel that, but one can't be two things at once you know."

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mental foresight. It may seem, indeed, a Of cou course we find in Clough's poems sev ruthless thing when the whole soul is mov-eral clever descriptions of natural scenery; ing onward, under the force of a simple and but incomparably the best are those, like beautiful impulse, to take young love and some in the Bothie," which smack of the scrutinize it, and look close into its face. keen relish of the enjoyment imparted by And Clough felt the sacredness of all noble mere healthy physical life, and glow with feelings, but truth too was sacred for him.* the brightness of high spirits. The bathAt this point in our criticism we may ing-place, for instance, by the falls of the notice the fact, that no poet of this century Highland river, "where over a ledge of who can justly claim so high a place in lit- granite, into a granite bason, the amber torerature is so little possessed by the appetite rent descended," would lose much of its for beauty, which is in general a leading charm were it not for the shock of the denote of the poetic temperament. He has a licious plunge which we enjoy as much as free, spontaneous, healthy enjoyment in the glory of headers" himself. external nature, but he is never forced away from thought, or from human interests, to feed upon beauty, and fill himself with its pleasures. His intercourse with nature, when it came, was an exhilarating delight, as of sunshine and fresh breezes; not a brooding lust, as for Keats; not a supersensuous, spiritual communion, with Shelley; not, as with Wordsworth, a perpetual close friendship, with its most sweet confidences. The joys and sorrows of men possessed for him an overmastering attraction, with which nothing else could And we ourselves are ready to shriek and compete. He tells himself that he could to shout in the mere joy of living, as. not sympathize with Wordsworth's repeated. poems to the daisy, that he recoiled from the statement that: :

as

"On the ledge, bare-limbed, an
Apollo, down gazing,
Eyeing one moment the beauty, the life, ere he
flung himself in it;

Eyeing through eddying green waters the green-
tinting floor underneath them;
Eyeing the bead on the surface, the bead, like a
cloud, rising to it;

Drinking in, deep in his soul, the beautiful hue
and the clearness,-

Arthur, the shapely, the brave, the unboasting, the glory of headers."

There, overbold, great Hobbes from a ten-foot

height descended,

Prone, as a quadruped, prone with hands and feet protending;

"To me the meanest flower that blows doth give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." There in the sparkling champagne, ecstatic, they shrieked and shouted." Without stopping here to point out the injustice done to Wordsworth in suggesting Clough explicitly sets forth in one place,a want on his part of sympathy with human with his own acceptance of the principle,nature, it is quite certain that, after a dif- that the object which the phenomena of the ferent sort, Clough was possessed by "the external world were made to fulfil by the enthusiasm of humanity "as by a fierce pas- older and greater poets was to supply ansion. Sincere as he was in his apprecia- alogies and similitudes of the phenomena tion of the pure, elevated calm of Words- of human nature. It is for such a purpose worth's philosophy, and in his admiration he draws the fine picture of the flow and of its chief doctrine of self-supervision, Clough's nature was too robust and its fibre tingling with too vigorous a life to allow him to sit long listening to the piping of the linnet, or resting in contemplation of daisies or celandines.

Clough is as far as possible, we need hardly say,
from approaching the opinion of a certain French
anatomist of the last century, who maintained that
religion and love were juices excreted by the smaller
intestines situated near the pancreas. Yet he quite
clearly sees that a crisis of love may be determined
by morn's early odorous breath" or the charms
of "sea" and "solitude;,' and though Dipsychus
is very indignant, he feels that there is something in
the words of the scoffing spirit that man may,
"Once in fortnight, by lucky chance

Of happier-tempered coffee, gain (great Heaven!)
A pious rapture."

↑ See" Recollections of Wordsworth," by Rev.

Robert Perceval Graves, in the "Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art," 1869.

ebb of the strong tide in the narrow loch of the western Highlands; or, with a few facile touches, shows us Claude, in "Amours de Voyage,"

"Standing, uplifted, alone, on the heaving poop of the vessel,

Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows."

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Here too we may observe that, in artistic execution, Clough cannot occupy a high place among English poets: He was too full, and too eager to give expression to all he had to say, to be very careful about the manner in which it was effected, so only he did effect his end. Nor did he belong to that highest order of poetic minds with whom expression is part of thought, inseparable from it, its vital body,- not a garment fitted to it with a measuring-rod. Seldom can we gather from Clough, as we do from the greater poets, a haunting phrase of melodious words, or a memorable sentence, or a thought compacted and closewrought, that will break off, crystal-like, complete in its own brightness and beauty. There is little of that delicate fastidiousness of form and of diction that marks the poems of Mr. Matthew Arnold, who, in other points, sometimes reminds us of him; and there is a carelessness about the musical modulation of many of his verses, which we feel to be the less excusable when we perceive the fine ear for harmony betrayed in some of his lines.*

*The subjects of his longer poems, and the man

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We have not space left to attempt any detailed criticism of the longer poems, to point out the rich stores of thought contained in them, to illustrate the mastery which they exhibit in humour, irony, and profound pathos, or to notice the delicate skill with which the poet touches the most subtle problems presented by human nature. Indeed, the newly-published poem, Dipsychus," would rightly claim an article to itself. We have, too, to pass over in silence the beauty and charm of his many exquisite little lyrics; saying no more than that the compiler of any future English Anthology must not omit to gather for his garland such flowers as That out of sight," &c., and " Qua cursum ventus." And others scarcely inferior may be found in these volumes.

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THREE SONNETS.

BY JEAN INGELOW.

Crying prevailed. A little little way
It opened there fell out a thread of light,
And she saw winged wonders move within,

1.-AN ANCIENT CHESS KING DUG FROM SOME Also she heard sweet talking as they meant

RUINS.

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To comfort her. They said, "Who comes to

night

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Were empty as the ruined Delphian shrine —
Though God did never man, in words benign,

With sense of His great Fatherhood endue,
Though life immortal were a dream untrue,
And He that promised it were not divine
Though soul, though spirit were not, and all
hope

Reaching beyond the bourne, melted away;

She thought by heaven's high wall that she did Though virtue had no goal and good no scope,

stray

Till she beheld the everlasting gate: And she climbed up to it to long, and wait; Feel with her hands (for it was night), and lay Her lips to it with kisses; thus to pray That it might open to her desolate. And lo! it trembled, lo! her passionate

But both were doomed to end with this our

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TO THE EDITOR OF LITTELL'S LIVING AGE. SIR-I send you herewith Cassell's Magazine, containing an article of mine vindicating our American method of spelling Latin words. Will you please read it? If you like it, I should be much gratified if you would insert it in your Living Age, that some of your readers may see how I have endeavored to defend and commend our American orthography in England. I intend to return to the charge and pitch into the London Times itself next. As you glean literature from all quarters, I hope you will be disposed to give a page or two to my essay on a subject so important to English literature the world over.

Yours, truly,

ELIHU BURRITT.

From Cassell's Magazine.

THE SUPERFLUOUS LETTER.

man u has ruled and taxed English literature with a heavy hand. It is not in the to estimate what that little u has cost our power of imagination, if in that of arithmetic, race. Up to the beginning of the present released its hold upon a single word of Latin century its sway was complete. It had not or Teutonic origin which it had seized possession of. Whether the coincidence was accidental or not, soon after the American and French Revolutions, in which many vested interests and dignities were shaken down, the Norman u lost a considerable portion of its dominion, though Great Britain has remained loyal and obedient to it up to this day.

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In America, where the sentiment of homage to Norman genealogy is, naturally, not so hereditary and strong as in England, the u has been turned out bodily and for ever from all words of purely Latin or Saxon origin into which it had interpolated itself. There it will never again tax "labor," or be found in "honor," or intrude upon neighbor," or be taken into "favor," THERE is a familiar saying among common or appear unseemly in behavior," or be people which is very expressive in describ- held in "savor" as anything but a Norman ing arrogant egotism, selfishness, and self-excresence in the last stage of decay. But conceit. Persons addicted to this offensive in England all these words, and a great habit of mind are charged with using "the many others of like origin, are still subjected great I and the little u" in their thoughts, to this Norman tax, which few English talk, and acts. But whatever disrespect or writers or readers have ever estimated duly indifference selfish individuals have shown in labor, paper, ink, or in time and money. to little u, English literature, for five centu- The meaning of a 'peppercorn rent" is ries, has made ample amends for this abuse well known to most people. It signifies by a marked homage to that distinguished something paid periodically to the nominal member of the alphabet. No other member or assumed owner of a certain property, of that literary community has claimed and merely to recognize his title to it. Whether wielded such distinctive power and influ- this rent consists only of a pair of chickens, ence. For five centuries, without a break a birch-broom, or a quart of bilberries, it is in its rule, it has held the Great Seal of enough to acknowledge and establish his English literature, and stamped its Nor- ownership. Now, full one half of English man image and superscription upon every literature, in manuscript or in type, is writprinted or written page that has seen the ten or printed in America, and all this is light in Great Britain in all this space completely emancipated from this pepperof time. William the Conqueror never corn tribute to the Norman lord of the laid his iron sceptre more relentlessly upon manor, or of the alphabet. But in England the Danes, Saxons, and Celts, than did all the private letter-writers, book-writthis despotic u upon their languages, and ers, newspaper-writers, and telegram-writers upon every other that it could master on still pay this homage without a murmur, and the Continent also. Latin and Teutonic without a reason which could satisfy their were all alike subject to its rule. It was no minds if they applied it honestly and serirespecter of classics; and it bored through ously to the subject. They may pooh-pooh the tongues of Virgil and Cicero, and in- it, and call it a peppercorn rent that does serted in the puncture its Norman coinage not amount to anything worth noticing, or, and mark. It would have done the same if it does, that it is worth all it costs merely to the wild Welsh and Gaelic if it could to recognize and honor the grand old Norhave caught them, and penetrated their man régime. Those who believe or say this bristling consonants. cannot have taken into account the vast inFor two hundred years before there was crease in book, magazine, and newspaper any printing done in England, and for all literature since the beginning of the present the centuries since Caxton's day, the Nor-century; nor have they estimated the pro

Think

digious increase of manuscript literature plentiful. But think of the time and labor which cheap postage has produced within involved in writing these millions of superthe same period. It would probably be be- fluous u's, without counting the hundreds low the real fact to assume that not more of reams of letter-paper they cover. than half of the writing in the United King- of the precious time that eminent English dom is put in type. Of course, one could authors have lost in writing these meaningnot pretend to say that all the private letters less, silent, useless letters. Just conceive written in London, if put in print, would how many of them Sir Walter Scott, Halfill all the books, magazines, and newspa- lam, Milman, Carlyle, Lytton, Dickens, pers issued from the press of the metropolis. and Tennyson have been obliged to pen as But, taking the whole country, the unprinted must equal in amount the printed literature of Great Britain and Ireland.

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a peppercorn homage to the cold, blue blood of the Norman. What earthly object is gained or sought by paying this tribute Now, taking into consideration the almost from generation to generation? Now, take numberless millions of words written annu- these good, noble-minded words that have ally in the United Kingdom, half of which been honored in Latin classics for a thouare put in type, we can arrive at some ap- sand years, and give us the reason why they proximately true conception of the cost in should not be so honored in the English money and time of this pepper-corn tribute - labor, honor, favor, vigor, color, humor. which English literature pays to "little u," Look at them. Are they not fairly writ," the Norman conqueror. A few days ago, I as they were in Latin for fifteen centuries counted all these tribute words in a copy of and more? When you have cut or burnt the London Times in which that letter is re-into them your Norman ear-mark, do they tained, such as honour, labour, favour, look any fairer or more comely to the eye vigour, endeavour, neighbour, etc. I found of the intelligent reader? Does your little that, at the average price of setting type, n impart one iota of additional or different and the cost of paper occupied by these su- meaning to the Latin original? Does it perfluous and intrusive u's, the peppercorn impart to the pronunciation of that original tribute paid yearly by that great oracle of any phonetic quality which your ear can English independence, justice, and freedom, detect? Then why should all the Latin after all, would not be much more than ten scholars, and all the public and private pounds. But it is doubtful if the London writers of England go on for ever paying Times pays so much tribute money as sev- this detracting homage to the Norman coreral other periodicals of the metropolis. ruptions of the Middle Ages? Some of the weekly penny magazines, with their issues of one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand, may give, in the course of a year, more paper and ink to the Norman u than the Times itself. Thus, taking all the London and Provincial newspapers and magazines, and all the books and pamphlets printed in the United Kingdom, the English literature of Great Britain must pay at least ten thousand pounds annually in mere type-setting, paper, and ink, in doing this partial homage to the Norman. This may seem a small sum when spread over all the printed matter of the United Kingdom for a whole year. Still, it is enough to establish a great normal school for the nation, which might turn out one hundred well-educated teachers annually, to instruct the rising generations how to write English words correctly, doing justice to the Latin from which they are taken.

But ten thousand pounds a year is only the money value or amount of the tax paid by English literature to the Norman u on printed matter alone. There is another tax more costly and onerous still. Type-setting, paper, and ink are comparatively cheap and

There is a vigorous movement in progress for uniform international weights, coinage, and copyright; why should not the leaders of English literature in Great Britain adopt a uniform standard for the spelling of this class of words wherever our language is written on the globe? Before twenty years elapse, there will be fifty millions of readers in the American union. The literature produced in the country for their consumption will very likely equal the amount now produced both in England and America. And not in one book of American or English authorship printed on that continent in no newspaper, magazine, primer or tract, manuscript sermon or private letter will that Norman u be seen which now imposes such a tax upon private correspondence and printed matter in England. To produce uniformity in the universal literature of the English language, English writers must repudiate the homage they have paid to that letter. They must expunge it from purely Latin words, and write them as Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Sallust wrote them, and gave them their noblest, widest significance.

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