The clever agent of a circus-troupe — sent in advance with bills and flaming posters, to excite the curiosity of the young, and it may be, of the old — generally has some latent charm hidden away under some obscure and unknown phrase, to stimulate all the more the curiosity of his future clients, and assure himself of their sixpences. Somewhat in the same way I was greatly tempted to call this paper by some mysterious name, so that, if the reader did not turn to it for the writer's sake, he might do so through that universal and insatiable little vice — curiosity. And I had no trouble in finding such a phrase: for as Robert Browning is my ideal of an optimist poet — indeed, the only optimist poet of our generation; and as Robert Browning's verses are synonymous with everything that is obscure, involved, or — to use a word that has a special interest at present through Dr. Jameson and Oom Paul — outlandish: I had only to open this little duodecimo volume, and presto! here is the word, ready, cut, and dry — ‘Pippa passes.’ Not to keep you too long on the tenter-hooks of expectation, let me say at once that Pippa is a little Italian girl, working in a silk factory, in Asolo, and Pippa has got a holiday. It is a rare event; and she is determined to enjoy it to the uttermost. She will not ‘squander a wavelet’ of it; no, not ‘one mite of her twelve hours' treasure.’ Now, Pippa, like all Italians, can sing; and she goes around the vine-clad hills, and down the singing valleys, with a carol on her lips, and lightness in her heart; and the burden of her song is this: —
- The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled:
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven —
All's right with the world!
Now, it happens, as she goes along, four distinct groups of persons, unseen by her — four groups, who are contemplating
Now, the burden of her song: —
- God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world.
is the burden of all Browning's poetry. He is essentially — Browning the optimist. ‘All's right with the world.’ This note runs through all his poems. In nature, in man, in science, in social life — everywhere there is either some good, or some tendency towards final good. He will not see gloom anywhere; and should a passing cloud darken his sunlight, he looks only at the silver lining. You remember the melancholy of Tennyson: and how he makes the lonely mere, the sombre sky, the cold grey stones of the sea, etc., typify his own sombre spirit. Browning will not have this.
- The lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews
His ancient rapture!
The same spirit pervades all his poems. Where others spell failure, despair, despondency, Browning spells success, hope, and that lofty elevation of spirit, that passes from mere human joy to the highest dreams of inspiration. Of course there are flaws in the handiwork of creation: but they only show the grace and beauty of the rest of the work, and they, in turn, will be filled up, and polished into perfectness. There are discords in the music, but they only emphasize the harmony: and life, with all its sorrows, is very sweet and good, and a gift from Heaven, and can be rounded into perfect form by our own efforts, that is, if we are generous, hopeful and true.
In strange contradiction to all this, is the melancholy, the despair, the pessimism that is the key-note of all other philosophers and poets. And, as I have here introduced a new word, let me define it, or rather let me define my contradictories. Optimism is the theory that, ‘all that is, is right,’ that it is a glorious world, full of all fine possibilities; and that mankind is ever moving onward, onward, to the goal of perfect happiness. Pessimism, on the other hand, is the sad and terrible doctrine, that life is, at best, a miserable business to be terminated as soon as possible by annihilation, that all this thing, called progress, is really retrogression, and that the sooner it is all over the better. Of course, this dismal teaching was known to the philosophers of old; but in our century, it has permeated all literature, the poem, the novel, the historical work, the treatise on philosophy; and its chief apostles were Schopenhauer and Hartmann in Germany, and a poet, named Leopardi in Italy. One, however, could be disposed to forgive and forget these idle dreamers, but the evil theory has infiltrated down into the lives and souls of men, and made miserable very beautiful and lofty spirits, whose words and deeds have been, instead of a gospel to humanity, a sad legacy of the untruthfulness of despair.
It runs like a black warp through all Carlyle's philosophy. ‘England consists,’ he says, ‘of thirty million people — mostly fools.’ And such expressions as everlasting falsities and negations, want of verity in public men, windbags, and all the rest of the intolerable coarseness of a poor diseased mind, which the world will have us believe was a philosophic one, force themselves on you at every page, and make you believe at last that if ever there was a sham philosopher, it was Carlyle; and if ever there was cant and humbug, it is in the twenty odd volumes which a misapplied industry has left the world. You will find the same in all his successors — in Clifford, Spencer, Martineau. They all set out with the original faith — that science means progress, and that the whole race is moving onward and upward to perfection. Then the disillusion comes with experience: and when the zeal and heat of youth are over, they give place to the blackness of despair.
I think I could forgive this in the philosophers. But how can you pardon it in the poets — the world's singers and prophets? What a frightful deordination it is, that they, whose music should lift up the weary heart of humanity, sing but to depress it, and bring into the lives of men not the songs of gladness and hope,
- Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea,
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me —
but how can you forgive him for this:—
or this:
- There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds —
- Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint;
Cheat and be cheated, and die; who knows? we are ashes and dust.
And if you protest and say: He rose above all that, even in that poem from which you have quoted ( Maud), and wound up his awful philippics against society by declaring ‘It is better to fight for the good than rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land. I am one with my kind; I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assigned’ — yet he retracted again in his extreme old age, and passed his final sentence of eternal reprobation against humanity in the very last extended poem which he wrote.
The same is true in even a more intense sense of a still more delicate and refined nature — Matthew Arnold. Many more modern critics will place his name even higher than that of Tennyson; and it is more true of his poetry than of Tennyson's that one long wail of sadness runs through it all. In that well-known poem Dover Beach, he, too, makes the eternal sea re-echo his own despair: —
- The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
- Let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To be before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here, as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight
Where ignorant arms clash by night.
and so on, through pages of ‘most musical, most melancholy’ verse.
Of course I have not quoted Byron, who was a professed pessimist; nor Swinburne, who tries to infuse into his poems a Greek lightness and joy, and would have succeeded, but that the curse of Paganism is on all he wrote, and his pages are floating into the waters of Lethe. Nor do I quote John Ruskin, who, as you know, thinks we are all rushing, on the wings of modern science, to certain damnation. Neither shall I mention any of our modern novelists, but to say, that if any lingering doubt remained in the minds of men, that our literature is also in a state of decadence, I need only quote Trilby, and the far worse abominations that pour forth from men and alas! women novelists, until one is inclined to believe that this awful flood of prurient literature will sweep away every old and venerated landmark of decency and propriety. But, as I half share John Ruskin's detestation of the ravages on the face of Nature made by modern science, here is a rather sharp echo and confirmation of his worst predictions.
All the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle are sullied with factory smoke and blasting powder.
The Bay of Amalfi and the shore of Posilippo are defiled by cannon foundries.
All the Ardennes are scorched and soiled and sickened with stench of smoke and suffocating slag.
The Peak country and the Derwent vales are being scarred and charred for railway lines, mines, and factories.
What has been done to Venice is such outrage, that it might wake Tiziano from under his weight of marble in the Frati Church and call the Veronese back from his grave.
The finest torrent in Scotland is about to be deviated from its course and used for aluminium works.
The fumes of these aluminium works will, when they are in full blast, emit hydrofluoric acid gas which will destroy all the vegetation on Loch Ness for miles.
The lakes of Maggiore, of Como, and Garda, are all being defiled by factories and steam-engines. Thirlmere and Loch Katrine have been violated; and all the other English and Scotch lakes will be similarly ravaged. Fucina has been dried up as a speculation, and Thrasymene has been threatened. The Rhone is dammed up, and tapped, and tortured, until all its rich alluvial deposits are lost to the soil of Provence.
So says ‘Ouida’ in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1896. And so all the beauty and grandeur of the old world is blighted and poisoned by the insatiable lust of men and peoples for gold. It is a dismal prospect; and some will think, that amongst the few consolations we have left us in Ireland, we may number the probability that our blue skies will never be altogether blackened by belching chimneys, nor our fair vales seamed and scarred as are the sweetest spots that the great Artist, God, framed and beautified for the delight of the children of men.
And so the litany of despair goes on. In science, in literature, in the relations of great powers towards each other, in the impending and inevitable cataclysm that will rend Europe from the Ural mountains to the Atlantic seaboard, in the total absence of honour and sincerity amongst nations as among individuals, in the new ideas that are being advanced about social, parental and marital relations, in the lust of the rich for more wealth, which is so insatiable, in the subterranean thunders that herald a terrible revolution amongst the working classes — above all, in the ever growing indifference to religion in protestant lands, and the substitution of some new code of ethics for the eternal gospel of Christ: in all these things the prophets of despair, — and they are legion — forecast a future, pregnant with possibilities that may not be imagined, and full of doubt and gloom that should make sick at heart anyone who thought well of his race, or yet entertained a lingering regard for a humanity that appears to be bent on destruction. Where now is little Pippa?—
- God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world.
Where is the great optimist poet who sings: —
- Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made;
Our times are in his hand
Who saith: 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, nor be afraid!'
You will ask however, very naturally here, where is the point for discussion: what is your thesis, which we are to support or contradict? It is simple, apparently, a very easy question for solution; yet I venture to say, that you never discussed a question in this hall, which is so many-sided, or which leaves the decision so uncertain. The thesis is:—
The optimistic, the hopeful view of the world and humanity, is the view that commends itself to us, as fraught with the larger and higher possibilities for our race.
The contradictory thesis is:—
The pessimists are the thinkers that really, and in very deed, by their criticism, their dissatisfaction, their sublime restlessness, are pushing on the race towards the very perfection in which they do not believe.
But, before you argue the question, it may well be asked what practical bearing has such a discussion on daily life, or the real progress of the race. It would be unkind in us, who owe so much to our poets and philosophers, to ask what influence do they exercise on the first movements and the generic ideas which are the wellsprings of all human actions. There are thinkers who trace every resolution, progressive or reactionary, to our sages of the attic and the closet, on the theory: Give me the making of a nation's ballads, and I will give you the making of a nation's laws. But, apart from all that, does not this vital question enter into our daily life, colouring all our ideas, and giving a bias towards all our emotions and actions? You will say: ‘But we never have met your optimists and pessimists in daily life.’ Have you not? Let me come down from the Olympians for a moment, and challenge the man in the street.
When you are down below zero in spirits, unable to meet that little bill at the bank, with your sick child at home — when you walk under dripping December skies, your hands stuck deep in your pockets, a picture of misery and despair, do you know the man, that comes up with a smile, slaps you on the back till you gasp for breath, shouts at you to cheer up — that the banker will be considerate, that your child's sickness is a trifle, that the sun is
Do you know the man, who tells you just as you are starting on that picnic in the middle of June, with high hopes and presages of the good time you are going to have, that it will rain cats and dogs before twelve o'clock, that you will eat your muddy sandwiches and watery pies under dripping umbrellas, and that you need take no water to dilute Jameson, Heaven will supply it by the gallon? There's your social pessimist.
Do you know the man that buttonholes you on the street, when you are rushing for a train, asks you how many miles to Sirius, and would trouble you to calculate how long an express train (just coming in to your station) at 45 miles an hour would take to reach the nearest fixed star? Do you recognise the same idiot, who asks you how many microbes there are in a spoonful of milk; and how many will there be if you leave it standing for twenty-four hours in a temperature of 77 Fahrenheit? Do you remember your delight, when he informed you that you have 24,176,348 microbes waltzing around your mouth, and that is only the advance guard, lying in ambush for the countless legions that you swallow every time you sit down to a meal, for that innocent spoonful of milk contains 10,548,000 microbes, and in twenty-four hours, if you have the courage to swallow it, you will add to the population of your interior 17,402,000,000 of the same fertile and interesting subjects? Is it not the same individual who informs you that early in the 20th century, you can carry all your meals in your waistcoat pocket — breakfast, luncheon, dinner and supper; and that, when you wish to breakfast, you just take out a capsule, as you now take a pinch of snuff, and presto, here is the concentrated essence of a beefsteak, two rashers of bacon, two poached eggs, two cups of tea, and several cuts of toast? And, when you invite your friend to dine, no more courses, no more waiters, no more napkins, nor knives and forks, nor flowers, nor glass, nor silver — no toasts, no after-dinner speeches! You touch an electric button, and lo! you have a delicious heat, and a soft lambent light playing around the room; you take out your silver box, tap it, ask your friend to take a pill, and — he has done, in a moment and in a simple way, all that we do through the long hours and exquisite tortures of an eleven course dinner à la Russe. He expects you to be enthusiastic. But if you are still dull and uncomprehensive, he will excite your
But don't you know that man that damns science, wishes back the good old times when it took four days to go to Dublin, dilates on the morning coaches à la Dickens, the early breakfast on cold beef and tankards of ale, the bugle cheerily waking up the sleepy echoes, the good nature and fellowship of your passengers, the glorious scenery by wood and lake and river, the new towns you come to, the curiosity your arrival excites, the glorious dinner of veal pie, pigeon pie, legs of mutton, sirloin of beef, oceans of claret, and plenty of time to eat it and digest it, not like your leather sandwich and your boiling coffee, a whistling engine and a shouting guard. Ah! the good old times, when science
And the educational optimist — with his piles of statistics about the Intermediate Examinations — 5,340 boys and girls passing in Botany, Mineralogy, Metallurgy, Trigonometry, Physiology, Differential and Integral Calculus, Latin, Greek, Italian, German, French, Gaelic, etc. Ah! my dear sir, what advantages young people have now that we never enjoyed! And what a glorious future lies before our country, when these young people grow to manhood and womanhood, and form the commercial and professional classes — the backbone of the country! Educate ! educate! educate! Take your stand amongst the nations of the earth, and sweep away the curse of illiteracy. We are doing it. In Primary, Intermediate, and very soon in University Education, we will come into line with the best intellects of England, Germany, and America; and then the rest is easy. Ireland's future is assured!
But here suddenly as the stream of optimistic eloquence flows on, a big block is flung across it by the no less fervid, but denunciatory eloquence of the pessimist: —
Education! there's no such thing in Ireland! There are not ten educated men in Ireland from Malin Head to Cape Clear. Your systems of education are a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. You cram for examinations, as turkeys are crammed for Christmas: and your boys and girls are consequently suffering from intellectual plethora and indigestion, resulting in mental atrophy and paralysis. Take any of your gold medallists or exhibitioners three months after examination; and he cannot translate a line or sentence in the very books in which he passed with glowing colours. And if
There is your educational pessimist. Who does not know the political pessimist?
‘The country gone to the dogs — Ireland once more on the dissecting table — the spirit of faction dominant — the world laughing at us — the country flung back fifty years, etc., etc.’ It's all well, if he does not quote poetry, and tell us: —
- Thy treasure with taunts shall be taken,
Thy valour with jibes be repaid,
And of millions who see thee, now sad and forsaken,
Not one shall step forth to thy aid.
Thou art doomed for the proud to disdain,
And the blood of thy sons, and the wealth of thy soil
Shall be lavished, and lavished in vain.
Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe
By links that the world cannot sever,
With thy tyrant through sunshine and storm shalt thou go,
And thy sentence is ‘Banished for ever.’
Who does not know him, particularly in these latter days when hardly a rift appears in an ever ominous and darkening sky?
But, is there not a political optimist, who tells you to cheer up? The darkest hour is just before the dawn. We don't want mechanical unity. Better Ireland free, than Ireland united. Ça ira! all will come right. Wait till you see the scattered battalions reforming on the floor of the House of Commons, and the reveillé of the new campaign sounded, and the fighting men putting on their armour, and all opposing forces marshalled together for the fiercest, bravest, angriest Session, yet recorded in the annals of the British Parliament. Ay de mi! says the pessimist.6
I have now drawn portraits of these two classes, into which,
- God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world.
We feel a powerful attraction towards these bright sunny souls, who hold their heads aloft, with an eternal sursum corda! on their lips. We feel a no less powerful repulsion against these sallow, cadaverous, dyspeptic, despondent cynics, who are for ever railing against the world, and clamouring for the better things in which they have no hope. But when we come down to reasoning, perhaps the case differs. For, after all, shorn of his benevolence, what is your optimist, but the easy, self-satisfied lover of good things, who hates to have his rest disturbed, and who has ever on his lips the watchwords of reaction and retrogression: ‘Can't you let well alone?’ ‘Aren't we just as well where we are?’ ‘What was good enough for our fathers, is it not quite good enough for us?’ etc., etc. And is there not something inspiring ever in the despairful, yet lofty dissatisfaction which protests: ‘Certainly not! Everything is not right, in your stagnancy and self-possession. You must rise up, and onwards. En avant! Everything is wrong, and we shall try to right it, though we should fail. Better failure a thousand times than to see, without protest, the lies that are daily before us, on men's lips, and in their lives. Better one sharp struggle, though it end in failure, than the ignoble fate of those who stand up with folded arms, and witness the eternal tragedy that is going on around them.’
‘Troublesome fellows, dangerous fellows, revolutionaries,’ says the optimist, ‘these fellows will upset all decent society, ruin our digestions, bring down our stocks and shares, and scatter to the winds all our dreams of present and possible happiness.’
‘No matter,’ says the pessimist, ‘anything is better than to live a lie. Come, you sleek hypocrite, and look at the world. Here, in the midst of your civilisation, human beings are rotting in misery and hunger, whilst their souls are in the grasp of the Evil One. Can you sit down to your comfortable dinner and know that thousands of your fellow beings are starving? In want and ignorance, in sin and sorrow, half mankind live out their weary
‘Yes! but you say you cannot correct it?’ says the optimist. ‘Where's the use in beating the air?’
Where indeed? And so the eternal discussion goes on: the one side maintaining that it is best to let well alone, and enjoy life as best you can — the other, that the progress of the race is due to the sublime dissatisfaction, the eternal restlessness, issuing in healthy or unhealthy revolution. For ‘out of the black smoke cometh flame,’ say they; and out of the brooding thunder-cloud the lightning that breaks the burden of the storm; and from the hot hearts of angry men the thoughts that shape themselves into burning words. And from the words come deeds, fraught with the germs of all the great things, and all the noble things, and all the inspirement, that drew man from the beast, and pushed him ever higher and higher, until now he can see in the future that looms before him —
‘What?’ says the optimist.
And he must acknowledge with bent head and faltering tongue that all his visions and dreams, all the vivid splendours of his hopes and fancy, are blotted out, like a shower of fireworks on a black, frowning sky, on which is written in lurid lights one word, Despair!
Meanwhile Pippa, tired out, lies down to rest.
- God bless me! I can pray no more to-night.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service ranks the same with God—
With God, whose puppets, best or worst,
Are we; there is no last, nor first.