BOOKS.

DE OONTEMPTU MUNDI.*

Mr. W. H. DRAPER has done an excellent piece of work in placing Petrarch's Seoretunt within the roach of a wider public; and it would be difficult to imagine a more accomplished or a more scholarly translation than this in which a work of singular charm and interest is presented to English readers for the first lime. Mr. Draper's writing, clear, flexible, and vigorous, is an admirable medium of translation ; and if here and there we find a trace of formalism, a manner of speech which ill scarcely idiomatic, it would seem to be only a too faithful reflection of certain characteristics in Petraroh's own self-conscious and somewhat rhetorical style. The matter of the book cannot fail to interest, since it is the record of a Spiritual experience which is suffered by every thoughtful mind ; and, as Mr. Draper says :

"Every man loves the book which tolls the history of conflicts like his own, and which has helped to give him courage in his warfare and its sorrows and joys.

That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more,'

dings the poet, but if one reads the experience of those who have suffered and contended and conquered, and is sure that their load was as heavy as his own, then there is a spirit which is breathed over from one life to another, and which even though it tell us how great is the burden of sorrow in the world, yet also tells us that a man is not alone, but that there are companions in patience, who a little strengthen each other and give the sense of fellowship from ago to ago, donee aspiret dies, et inclinentur umbrae."

Such a passage as the above is suggestive. Our pleasure in most books is caused mainly by recognition; and when we say of any notion or idea that it is profoundly true we mean scarcely more than that we have thought, at one time or another, in a similar way ourselves. The appeal of a book is consequently personal and directed to the individual; and its greatness is indicated, roughly, not by the number but by the variety of the minds upon which the appeal is effective. This, however, is only a partial answer to the many questions raised by the Aristotelian theory of recognition. We may point out the fluid and various nature of truth and claim that the poems of Homer, of Dante, and of Shakespeare are great because they represent more completely than any others the flux and variety ; but, putting this objective truth upon one side, we recognize certain "changing conditions of life, certain emotions and instincts as Common to all mankind; so that there would seem to be a time in the lives of all men when they look upon the world, the transient and ineffectual existence of humanity, from a point of view which is in all oases identical. They may or may not see the issue clearly ; they may escape from their Position by accepting ono of the many widely different hypotheses which offer to their choice ; or, as in some rare eases would seem to have been the case, by a serene and steady contemplation of life they may become gradually reconciled to it and to all its consequences, emerging from that cloud of doubt with, indeed, no assurance, no clear vision of their Ultimate fate, and yet perceptibly strengthened. In any case the experience is common : meoleto mortalia tangun.t. And in this connexion it is interesting to note that the two lines of verse quoted by Mr. Draper contain an allusion to one o the finest instances of dramatic irony in Shakespeare, 'when ilen Hamlet understands from his mother's words that is overwhelming person who sorrow is not shared by the one should share it with him. But if we compare Shakespeare's lines in their rich and various significance with the lines of Tennyson, and the whole passage in which they occur, the latter seem flat and general, and we miss from them th

•

the revelation of character under an immediate storm of emotion

which, simply because it is

definite and objective, draws immediately upon our sympathy and realizes for us what had seemed a vague abstraction. An

• Petrarch Scent. Whadue, [6e. net. Traualated by William H. Draper. Loudon: Chatto and ]

emotional experience will never interest us simply because it is common ; it interests us only in so far as we see it in

its relation to some particular person ; and when Tennyson catalogues the possible causes of death and its possible con- sequences in that passage of his poem which ends with the lines :

"Was drowned in passing through the ford,

Or killed in falling from his horse,"

we are not impressed simply because in the absence of any definite detail our emotion does not find an objective. We are inclined to feel, on reading In Memoriam, that what we may term the functional crisis has passed away, and that reason is seeking to deal with what are only the traces of an emotion that has ceased to be active.

This is certainly not the ease with Petraroh's Secret, partly because the dialogue form gives a slightly dramatic quality to this "three days' discussion concerning Contempt of the World," but most of all because the discussion never separates itself from the character of Tetrarch ; it is carried forward only in its relation to his character, and is illustrated by events in his own life. As Mr. Draper says in his admir-

able introduction, "the fundamental question raised by these dialogues is the question of what was the real nature and character of Tetrarch, and wherein lay the secret of his extra- ordinary charm and influence among his contemporaries, and especially of contemporary men." We do not think, how- ever, that charm and influence depend wholly upon the finer qualities in a character; we do not think that in real life we strike a balance between the excellences and the defects of any parson; we simply are attracted or repelled by the assembled qualities as a whole. In these dialogues there is mach which we instinctively discount, as we discount Hamlet's self-condemnation in the nunnery scene. Saint Augustine, as presented by Tetrarch, seems to us mainly a typical figure, and the accusations he brings against Tetrarch, as well as the latter's admissions, serve only to increase our sympathy. At the same time we have to admit that the words which the saint uses have been put into his mouth by Tetrarch, and that to a certain extent they should be accepted as a confession. It gives an exquisite poignancy to the third dialogue, in which the poet's relations with Laura are handled with a relentless purpose. We almost revolt against this utter self-abasement, and the alternating passages of praise and of remorse move us to an extraordinary degree. We quote the following passages

"St. Augustine: I think you will not have forgotten that time when you feared the contrary event, and made a song of your beloved as if she were about to die, a song full of moving sorrow. "Patrarch Certainly I remember very well, but the thought that filled me then with grief, and the memory of which still makes mo shiver, was a jealous indignation at the bare possibility of my outliving her who is the best part of my life and whose presence makes all its sweetness. For that is the motive of that song; I remember it well and how I was overcome with tears. Its spirit is still with me, if with you perchance are the words."

The subsequent course of the dialogue throws no cloud upon this figure of singular strength and sweetness. Laura remains for us in the fresh radiance of the earlier vision " in forma di Ninfa o d' a/tra Diva," whom the poet sees, rising from the

still pools of a stream to rest upon the margin under the cool shadow of the trees, and haunting with her imagined presence the green sanctuaries of peace in which he loved to walk. It is Tetrarch who is humiliated. "Without seeing I fell into the snare. But if in past days my feelings were other than they

are now, love and youth were the cause. Now I know what I wish and what I desire, and I have at last made firm my staggering soul. She for her part has ever been firm and of the same mind. . . . Saint Augustine: If your flame is calmed

and softened yet it is not for certain quite put out. But you who set such price on her you love, do you not see how deeply by absolving her you condemn yourself P

But even here, the whole personality being revealed to NA and the springs of action laid bare, a sympathy remains with us ; and our feeling is less one of condemnation toward

Tetrarch than one of passionate protest against the attitude of the medieval mind toward humanity, and against the doctrine which saw perfection only in the absolute divorce of the spiritual nature from the substance of life, Such an ideal is very far removed from the spirit of Christ, the spirit of

pity and of irony, of tenderness and of imagination. When we see Tetrarch questioning the nature of that ideal which SO largely inspired his life we understand that he never emerged out of the cloud and shadow of medievalism. His eyes saw the first greyness of the dawn in the east, and be prophesied the coming of a new light. But he himself was a man in whom the older ideals, frozen into conventions, resisted that dis- solving warmth of the new day, It is the conflict in him of these two opposed forces and the consequent refinement of both ; the continual effort to preserve a perfect balance in the mind, the continual surrender and readjustment of this delicate instrument which such an effort involves, that con- stitute the charm which he still exercises upon us. We know from our own experience how this scrupulous and fastidious spirit expresses itself in real life, seeking always a compromise between opposites, often deluded by its desires, and passing easily from enthusiasm into disillusion. Its very weakness attracts us. With its slight taint of amiable vanity, its some- what rhetorical ambition, its desire and effort to please, its surrender to a voluptuous melancholy, it cannot fail to charm. And when we speak of Petrarch's voluptuous melancholy we are reminded that there may be even a subtle pleasure in re- pentance, a mood of profound egotism in which we consider ourselves as separated from our fellows and marked for a peculiar fate. In such moods the Augustinian doctrine of grace and predestination reveal endless possibilities. But whatever we may think of the theology expounded in Tetrarch's Secret, we cannot but be fascinated by that con- flict of self-questioning, that intimate revelation of the indwelling soul ; and, with our own questions to ask and answer, we can do no better than echo the prayer with which the Secret ends :

May God lead me safe and whole out of so many crooked ways ; that I may follow the Voice that calls me; that I may raise up no cloud of dust before my eyes ; and with my mind calmed down and at peace, I may hear the world grow still and silent, and the winds of adversity die away."