From The Quarterly Review. Te, Dea, te fugiunt ventei; te nubila cœli, Adventumque tuum; tibi suaveis dædala tellus Submittit flores: tibi rident æquora ponti, Placatumque nitet, diffuso lumine, cœlum. EURIPIDES has left no more touching story than "Hippolytus the Crownbearing," a play in which, as by some inspiration from another world, the poet canonizes purity, adorns self- She is queen of Epicureans, Cyrenaics, denial with a martyr's death, and, dilettanti, of all who choose to be while his choir of singing women chant" exquisite humanists" rather than the praises of Aphrodite, opens to our humane, who prefer sensations to view a holier faith. If Aphrodite principles, caprice to law, and intoxicaseems victorious, yet she holds but the tion to duty. The pose which these second place; it is her rival, the wood- men assume is more affected than Byland Artemis, chaste and fair, who ron's, and their pleasures are, by defirises in so bright an effulgence above nition, sad ones. These serious triflers these colored mists, stainless as marble marvel exceedingly that so many can from Pentelicus, severe yet by no waste the time which they might have means inhuman, and full of compassion spent in pursuing savors, scents, and for the dying hero. Save him she cau- rhythms, upon the "flaccid interests " not; lift him to the sphere of the im- of law, business, politics, or philan-mortals she can and will. Unlike her thropy. When a sharp touch sums up. dreadful namesake of the Chersonese, their conversation as art and self-inArtemis here shadows forth the better dulgence," they gently applaud. An-Paganism which, scorning Ionian festi- other stroke might annihilate the art, vals, fled to solitude, in the hope of leaving only the indulgence; and this, communion with what was divine. perhaps, would be a return to that Her votaries laid upon themselves a "unity with one's self" which, we are rule and a yoke; their spirit of renun- told, is "the eternal problem of culciation made them not unworthy to be ture," -a problem solved during one disciples, by and by, of a name which brief moment in Hellas when morals had the power not only to cleanse, but held "the clue of unerring instinct," to consecrate. Hippolytus foretells the and the worship of "beautiful aspects"? philosophic Marcus,-a Pagan saint, was religion. and a king after Plato's own heart. This way, if it continues to ascend, will take no small multitude along with it, to the threshold on which they may kneel in adoration, and see the Christian mysteries unveiled. But the lower Paganism looks up to Venus Victrix, whom Lucretius celebrates: 11. John Addington Symonds: a Biography compiled from his Papers and Correspondence. By Horatio F. Brown. London, 1895. 2. The Renaissance in Italy. By J. A. Symonds. London, 1875-86. 3. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive. By the Same. London, 1890. 4. Animi Figura. By the Same. London, 1882. And other Works. 5. The Renaissance, Studies in Art and Poetry. By Walter Pater, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Seventh Thousand. London, 1893. 6. Marius the Epicurean. By the Same. Sixth Thousand. London, 1892. 7. Greek Studies. By the Same. London, 1895. And other Works. 66 Two biographies lately publishedthe one real, the other imaginary yet in some sense no fiction-enable us to survey in detail that æsthetic movement which has been with us these thirty years, and the principles of which run up into Paganism, Cyrenaic, or Stoic, but avowedly pre-Christian. Nor shall we be doing it an injustice whether we assume that the late Mr. Symonds entered deeply into the meaning of a philosophy which, as time went on, he exchanged for another, or that Marius, the Epicurean of Pater's shadowy romance, had many qualities in common with his creator. To follow their windings will not, perhaps, be easy; yet the changes through which they pass, and their final verdict on a movement the effects of which are visible in the fine arts, in literature, and in social intercourse, will have for us something in the nature of an experi- | known his poverty with a frankness ment carried out on our behalf. which cuts to the heart, as we read him. 66 66 Unlike The experiment, to one of those concerned, was tragic enough. In his own So little from so much? pages, where the lights are as intense many children of genius, he was the as the shadows are gloomy, Symonds heir of a noble estate in intellect, with writes himself down a failure. He de- circumstances of gentle nurture, dospairs from the beginning; and after mestic happiness, friends of name, and many years, although friends have the doors into public life open. Six come to him, and fame, and a wide generations of Puritans - whose letters spiritual influence, he despairs still. he should one day burn had beHe moves round the circle from Leo- queathed to him a tradition of strenupardi to Goethe, and thence to Walt ous piety, transfigured or tiled down in Whitman, whose optimism would have his father- a successful and art-loving struck Leibnitz dumb. What is the physician, Liberal and Broad Church last word? Still Leopardi, "E nau-to moralities and modern progress. fragar m'è dolce in questo mare." In their fine old pedigree might be But you are an optimist, his corre- reckoned a Knight Templar, a Crusadspondent cries. "Yes," he answers, ing captain, a founder of the Garter, an optimist prepared to return to colonists to Ireland and New England, Nirvana, thankful that no proof is a regicide, Cavaliers and non-juring forthcoming to demonstrate immortal- clergymen, all coming down from ity. This hope is sweet in my bosom." Adam FitzSimon, who held lands in He can lie on the knees of Doom, look Hertford, Essex, and Norfolk under down the years past and see that he Bishop Odo. The Roundheads, howhas been what he was to be, "a liter- ever, prevailed in shaping Symonds's ary viveur," and at length disdain the childhood, despite his free-thinking Pagan myths which held his fancy or parent. He is full of indignation at inspired his pen, as a spectral corps the hard noviciate that he endured in de ballet on the empty stage of Na- their Bethesdas and blind asylums, ture." He, if any one, has dedicated thanks to his grandmother Sykes, the his life to learning and its aesthetic Plymouth sister, and her "motley uses; but now, with an energy almost crew of preachers and missionaries, equal to Swift's, he declares that genius, trades-people and cripples." weighed in the scale against character, lady held all things pleasant to be of is light; culture not to be compared the Evil One. Her ailing grandson with action,- that "passion, nerve was haunted by a morbid sense of sin; broke out, and sinew, eating and drinking, even and when the cholera money-getting, the coarsest forms of prayed feverishly that he might not activity," come before it. "Life, not catch it. Religious to this extent he It is clear was, literature," he exclaims. Of the Gospel, in that when Paganism takes a certain these pools where pietism lay stagnant, large sweep, art, which was once its he heard nothing. Mrs. Sykes - her finest flower, may wither on its stem. only human trait seems to have been a But life, unless it fails to drift and love of flowers - took immense delight dross, will demand a standard. We in the minatory chapters of the look for it eagerly in this immense cor- Prophets," and the Apocalypse. We respondence, in the essays, poems, his- cannot be surprised if a child brought tories, flung out to us by the unwearied up in this atmosphere suffered terrors invalid. There is none. Talk we find unimaginable, or was persuaded that of human service; abstract worship"the devil lived near the doormat" in of Law; hymns recommending the a dark corner by his father's bedroom. "cosmic enthusiasm." But a rule of But never any one saw into the solitary conduct, or grounds of hope these mind, which through the brooding Symonds cannot give; and he makes fancy lived a life of its own. no more. That For if his surroundings were dingy | grey skies revealed to him the miracles in that town of Bristol, nearly fifty of cloud-building, which, long after,, years ago, yet the house and garden of when he had made Alpine solitudes his Clifton Hill which his family occupied, retreat, still seemed to possess all the and which he looked upon always as elements of the sublime. Pictures in his true home, had a special air and his father's house told him of that grace of breeding. He learned to sunny marble world, perfect and flawknow pictures and poems, revelled in less, which in the great galleries of the music and in the gloom of St. Mary South, in the Louvre, in our Own Redcliffe, was inspired by Scott's Museum, shines on the sordid back"Marmion" to cry out, "I too will be ground of modern life. Then the rean author," filled his imagination with served, sentimental boy finds himself Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," in a public school. His father, who wept with artistic delight over the had not a dream that John was either vision of the god Hermes, disguised emotional or passionate, sends him to like a shepherd-boy in Homer's Iliad, Harrow, and he is miserable. He went on weaving to himself day-dreams stammers and faints, yet-the spirit of Apollo serving among the herds of which was in him holding on bravely Admetus; he came to distinguish and gains an influence over his comrades, to love the fairest colors, the tones of makes life-long friendships, learns Thethe clouds, the beauty of lightning; ocritus and Shelley by heart, and sits and in idyllic drives with his father, in up during a summer night to finish the pilgrimages to his mother's grave, -she" Phædrus" and the 66 Symposium," died young, leaving a memory of grace which give him back, in all the hues of and brilliant intellect, in readings a style beyond imitation, the enthumiscellaneous, from studies of anatomy to "innocuous Greek and Latin," this strange boy, companionless, not athletic, and, as he says, quite unmalleable, was training himself to be the man we see before us. Limits his powers had, as strongly marked as the vivid perception which his eyes always Oxford succeeded, and to Symonds it brought him, and his facility in writing proved the large liberal abode of freeverse. He could not learn the multi-dom and ideas,-"an ampler ether, a plication table or the subjunctive diviner air," - with spirits so different mood; he fell into trance until he was as Jowett and Conington to furnish twenty-eight, lived more in sleep than him themes of meditation. His career during the daytime, was sensitive had its triumphs. He won the Newdiabout his person, ambitious but "per- gate, took a first class, was elected felmanently discouraged," and, though low of Magdalen. But his life-long seeming candid, impenetrable. travels in search of health over the Pietism and art were struggling, Continent began. For, already, Jowett thus, over the boy's soul, Religion was remarking that he had “no iron in raven-winged, grim, and gaunt, while his composition," while another deculture was Apollo ever fair and scribed him as "worked out in 'preyoung, shining in golden armor. His mature culture." A severe illness eyes alone served him for windows of followed upon this indigestion of the the soul; what hope, then, of victory mind. The cloud which now descended on the side of that dismal phantom was never wholly to lift. Languid which called itself divine, yet never days, long agonies of doubt, suicidal had the glamour of beauty upon it? Though not creative, Symonds had been from the first as if bred in the schools of Athens or Venice. Our siasm whereon his home-life had been nourished. That was the aspect of Plato which decided his future. It saved him from a "torpid cynicism," only too congenial with the less wholesome influences of a place where he was manifestly out of his element. fancies, prepare us for the announcement that he, who never had been a Christian by training or temper, had lost all belief in the supernatural. He wanted guidance, but none was | pelled by fatal, though well-meant, vouchsafed. The Oxford of thirty-five influences, now in words of miraculous years ago, he says, made men rhetori-efficacy, anon by the mere burden of cians and sophists, who would come paralyzing silence, and, too often, with out brilliantly in the Saturday Review, interjections which their victim charmand, if they fell under Jowett's influ-ingly describes as at once "crushing ence, were sceptics. But it gave them and inconsequent." The luminous no principles beyond a vague sense of haze that spreads over so many pages duty; they were taught, instead of of our English Plato proved to Symonds philosophy, mere literature. There an enfolding Alpine mist, with here was no process by which a man would and there a silver-circled glacier piercbe compelled to think, neither robusting through, but the way uncertain, the mental training nor sound gymnastic. guide as perplexed as his followers, Hence the crowd of amateurs, seem- and crevasses opening into unknown ingly omniscient but in fact blind, depths. among whom this candid critic of Down such a crevasse Symonds was himself may be found by his own ad- hurled, almost at the moment when his mission. Endowed with certain "pro-path seemed brightening. Elected felclivities," but no "commanding bias," low of Magdalen, suddenly a charge he wandered aimlessly from one pursuit was brought against him, says Mr. H. to another. It is the year 1862; but in F. Brown, by a "quondam friend," a rich and amusing picture which he resting upon "garbled letters," which draws of his undergraduate flutterings, in its consequences was nearly fatal. we see the dawn of that movement" Deeply wounded in heart, brain, and wherein Mediævalism, the Renaissance, nerves,' - to borrow Symonds's acMr. Ruskin, Japanese ware, old blue count of the matter, he went abroad, china, and the French symbolists, were and for the next three years, until to play their several parts. 1865, his wanderings, laments, and physical distress make a sad story. With eyes useless and brain enfeebled, unequal to serious reading, no man had more need of religion. His emotions called aloud for faith, "it is the oxygen of life," he said; but his intellect rose against every form of Theism. "The old realities have become shadows," he exclaimed, "but the shadows torment me." His dreams were avenging Furies, even in the calmer Oxford season; now they showed him to himself in frightful and disgusting aspects. Music wrought like an anodyne; but it was neither food nor light. He married, and always found in the home life a refuge from trouble. Yet says he mournfully, "Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux." The artist in him feels aged, the man a wreck. And he is five-and-twenty. 66 Conington, indeed, directed his pupil upon the path of literature by "princi- | ples of common sense and manly prosaic taste." The Hegelian Thomas H. Green, afterwards his near kinsman by marriage, could not bestow on him a sense for political or abstract interests, but strengthened his character by exhibiting a noble personality in their long and affectionate intercourse. However, ou the whole, Symonds remained what he had been at Clifton, a self-absorbed dilettante. His apprenticeship to the golden alchemies of the "Opiumeater," whose style was a standing-dish at college breakfast-parties, and his dabbling in Mr. Ruskin's "paint-box of colors," did not seem likely to atone for the loss, not merely of creeds and dogmas about which he had never vexed himself, but of the belief in divine realities now altogether gone. Henceforth, the world invisible was to be an enigma or a torment as he stumbled on, bleeding and solitary, along the Via Mala which he called existence. To such issues was he im But By instinct he had begun to write upon the Elizabethan dramatists. he consulted the oracle in Balliol, and the answer was significant of Professor Jowett's curious infelicity, when genius did not come to his aid. If the master 66 again, and he writes: "I have a deal of faith, not reduced to a creed — Quis Deus incertum, est Deus." But is there a Father in heaven who will listen when he prays, and answer him? Alas, no; the hidden Deity has, perchance, neither ear nor voice. What is left? he asks. To live bravely in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful"? So the wisest of modern men. But Symonds, taking the words to himself, adds a striking comment, "We cannot be Greeks now; ' " and "hasheesh," could have gone through those brilliant | dunghill," borne down by a lethargy in pages of correspondence which we now which will and power of thought are admire, abounding in the perception exhausted. The high Alps revive him of color and form, in exact details of things experienced, and in thought no less solemn than impassioned, he would have pointed the way to literature, but not to the drudgery of translation. Symonds had eloquence; he painted landscape in words as truly as the great writer whom he has sometimes copied, though not servilely; and his prose-sonatas are splendid in their language and rhythm, subtle in exposition, and occasionally very pathetic. Who can doubt that the proper task of Symonds was criticism?-but, as not the vital oxygen of faith, must satMatthew Arnold would say, criticism isfy us. "We can dull the present by touched with emotion. Professor Jow-living the past again," he says to a ett did not think so. He had a way philosophic friend, Mr. Henry Sidgof giving his friends tasks to perform, wick, with whom he corresponded undoubtedly useful," but for which largely, "in reveries or learned studthey were not in the least fitted. And now he talked of Hallam,- that dry, scholarly man who displayed neither rhetoric nor emotion when he was writing, nay, it appeared that a certain Zeller, a German (and Symonds detested Germans), had published a library of books on the Greek philosophers, to dig and quarry in whose mine Jowett enticed his reluctant friend. For years the translation haunted him; a "muddy stream," not even, like Bayle's dictionary, "a mighty tide of ditch-water." It would not flow; and Symonds, at last, gave his unfinished manuscript to another, who has no doubt, by this time, printed his Zeller in English. To the original translator, it was a task which fatigued eyes and brain, threw him upon the wrong track, and brought neither reward nor gratification. ies, by illusions of the fancy and a life of self-indulgent dreaming : Take down the perfumed scrolls. . . Behold, there is the Athens of Plato in your narcotic visions: Buddha and his anchorites appear; the raptures of St. Francis, and the fire-oblations of St. Dominic; the phantasms of mythologies, the birth-throes of religions, the neurotism of chivalry . . . all pass before you in your Maya-world of hasheesh, which is criticism." May we not subjoin that it is decadence? Yet these airy phantoms have no warmth in them; and he is plunged into "the glacial region of the soul," Abyssus abyssum invocat. If there could be reconcilement of his many doubts, Beethoven and the C Minor Symphony, music, rather than metaphysics, might suggest "the height, the space, the gloom, the glory," in His "fatal facility" had been cen- which "we know," but cannot frame a sured at Harrow. It was now thor- creed. Still roaming up and down the oughly curbed by Zeller, and, health world, studying Norman cathedrals at not returning, the uncongenial task left Coutances and scaling the heights of his mind vacant, his spirits depressed. Mont Saint-Michel, he waits for a revHe is one of the world's invalids, who elation or a crisis. The maladies of can but exclaim, "Imus, imus præcip- the spirit seize him while wintering in ites." Not Handel's music, nor the Cannes; there, as Teufelsdröck would garden-landscapes of Monaco, bring say, he wrestles with the everlasthim relief. He is "a saltless soul," ing no, and is almost overthrown. doomed to "rot for thirty years on the "Hours too black for human language |