The Contributors' Club

IT is curious, the love some people have of definitions. They are the delight of persons who think, but whose thinking has not gone a great way. It is not hard to understand why definitions are in such favor. To begin with, they save a good deal of trouble; it is pleasant to know that we have the result of much patient thought and careful investigation put up for our use in a neat, compact little bundle, easily portable without fatigue. Definitions are compressions of large truth into small compass, and it is plain that they may be very useful things ; but the difficulty with them is that they are not always trustworthy, and it is just this essential point about them which the definitionlover is incompetent to decide. He wants a sure rule of judgment in a certain matter, because he himself does not understand it well enough to do without a definition, or to make one for himself. Oddly enough, he is often ignorant of what a definition is; he needs, first of all, to have the meaning of that word defined for him. For instance, I come upon a sentence in a notice of William Morris’s new book on art, in which the reviewer says that Mr. Morris gives a definition of art which is “ singularly lucid,” and one which is “ not easily forgotten,” and then proceeds to quote the same as follows : “ That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labor.” The reviewer thinks this “ goes to the root of the matter,” and he is much pleased to get hold of this definition, because he thinks that Mr. Morris ought to know what art is, and that he, the reviewer, has gained precisely what he wanted. Now it may be possible that Mr. Morris does not set this forth as a real definition of art, but uses the words only descriptively of his own feeling about art ; the reviewer, however, who takes the words to define art, needs to be told that it is no definition at all. A definition sets limits or boundaries to a thing, thereby placing it apart and distinguishing it from every other thing; to define something by terms which apply equally to some other thing is not to define it at all. Mr. Morris’s phrase is certainly lucid and easily enough remembered ; the only trouble with it is that we are no wiser with regard to the essential nature of art than we were before, and the “ root of the matter ” is left quite untouched. The definitionlover would do well to learn that there are several things it is not worth while to define, — not that art is one of these things, bien entendu, — and which we may manage to comprehend very fairly without the aid of definitions. Sometimes the farther we go in our study of a given subject, and the more deep and thorough our understanding and knowledge of it is, the less need we have of definitions for ourselves, however we may care to make them for the sake of others less advanced in the same line of thought. A certain French historian of philosophy once asked of Hegel a succinct account of his philosophic system. “ Mais, monsieur,” the German replied, “ ces choses ne se disent pas succintement.” I fancy that this little story may wake a smile at the vain expectation of the historian that a German could be got to express his thought with the felicitous brevity of a Frenchman. But Hegel was in the right in not attempting the impossible, and in his implied demand that those who thought his system worth inquiry should cease to look for any royal road to its comprehension, and be at the pains instead of arriving at it by their own labor.

— The only haunted house I was ever in was one not made with hands. It had been built I know not how many generations before the birth of the oldest inhabitant, the architecture a mixture of Greek and Gothic. It had numerous porticoes, long colonnades, winding corridors, many inner courts, halls, and secret passages. Its partitions were of tapestry, sometimes closely woven and wholly impervious to the eye, but oftener of a sleazy embroidered fabric, which scarcely intercepted the arched and columnar vista. The carpets were of plush or velvet, the woof of which was so thrown up as to suppress all sound of footsteps. I have been often in this haunted house, have seen and heard much of its spiritings and sorceries, but am no more able now than at first to account for them ; on the contrary, with every successive visit the mystery deepens, and my perplexity increases. I have to complain of the capricious treatment which I receive. On certain occasions I am made most welcome; bidden to ask all the questions that occur to me; entertained by all manner of pretty illusions and pageants ; instructed in cabala and hieroglyph ; and entrusted with the profoundest state secrets. The queen of all the hamadryads is faithful to the place and hour of tryst. Like the favored peasant youth in the ballad, I cry out, —

The next time I go to the woods all is changed. I am treated with cold unfamiliarity ; none admits my acquaintance ; the humblest retainers and servants will not deign to answer my civil questions; all gossip is hushed, or is carried on in confused whispers, unintelligible to me; the queen of the hamadryads laughs my pretensions to scorn. I beat a humiliating retreat, feeling baffled and misused.

With a comrade it is still the same.

We rove up and down the woods, snapping the flower from its stem, thrusting aside the branch and the brier. The squirrel barks at us like a sort of sylvan canis minor; the brooding bird starts away with an aggrieved and accusing cry ; everything protests at our ruthless and unmannerly haste, our eagerness and curiosity. But let us sit down somewhere in the depths of the woods, quietly observant and gratefulminded; keeping our note-books in our pocket, since the powers that be here are marvelously close and conservative, and always distrustful of the interviewer. It is not long before we are the centre of an increasingly curious circle of spectators. The snappish squirrel comes back to look at us, silent and alert, but not inimical ; the chipmunk darts down before us, and dives through his trapdoor, giving us the impression that the devouring earth has made a clean morsel of him. The birds perch lower, eying us with not unfriendly glances ; we even catch glimpses of that shy partycolored woodlander, the redstart, flitting among the branches overhead. It is so quiet that the slightest noise becomes significant and noteworthy.

as that droning insect sails in from the hot sunshine for a moment’s cool refreshment. Or the wood-pewee, who is a strange little mystic, may be heard in some leafy recess urging its childish, unanswerable query, — always with a rising inflection of voice, as though expecting to be answered by yes or no. So lorn and pathetic is the quality of this wood-note that we sometimes fancy the pewee, like the poet’s nightingale, sings with its breast against a thorn.

The woods are full of mysterious stirs, even when there is no wind. A quick, rustling undulation among the low plants and vines hints that the timorous snake is making all haste to get out of our way. (Does the groveling creature think that we still hold the Adamic grudge ?) There is no wind, so what can it be but black sorcery which keeps yonder leaf dancing like a dervise among its motionless and listless comrades? And what spirit of mischief lives in that clump of fern, to keep one lusty plume in continual oscillation ? The fern, we would say, is the magician’s own plant. Although we have never tested its occult powers on St. John’s Eve, we should not be surprised if told that there are those who walk these woods, rendered invisible through its aid. A dense growth of ferns always puts us in mind of the South American tropics. A mystery lurks under the mandrake, also, whether in May it bears its subtly-fragrant white flower, or in August ripens its apple of mellow gold. A cluster of mandrakes crowning a knoll suggests a grove of dwarf palms, sheltering who knows what race of grotesque hop-o’-my-thumbs.

If the time be midsummer, we shall probably find in some warm hollow ground the pale waxen pipes of the monotropa. How uncanny is this plant, that has not one drop of green blood in its veins, no fragrance, not a leaf susceptible to the flattering zephyr ! A flower brought up in the garden of night, under the rays of a gibbous moon, would look like this; and yet there is sometimes a faint blush on its livid cheek, as though it had spied the dawn a long way off. There is no legend told of the monotropa, so we may assign one: say that some evil eye of the woods long ago cast its spell upon a fresh-blooming flower, changing it into the stark effigy of a flower.

In speaking of mythology we ordinarily qualify it as ancient, as though disclaiming participation in the error; but if the Pantheon had not descended to us, would we not have constructed it ourselves, at first hand ? There is an implied myth, a paganish personification, in nearly all our allusions to nature. Within these common haunts of ours, how easy to recreate the whole race of woodland deities and genii! That is a pretty account of the popular origin of field and forest myths given in the Fourth Book of The Excursion. Swift alternations of sunshine and cloud shadows on the distant hills appeared as “ fleet oreads, sporting visibly.” Gnarled dead branches, projecting from a crag or starting out of deep woody shade, figured as Fauni and Panes. The herdsman, stretched out on the summer turf, if he happened to hear a sweet and distant music, instantly accredited it to Apollo’s lute. Have we not seen and heard all these marvels ? Or shall we admit that the imagination of Greek peasants in the old time was of a quicker and more generous order than our own ?

We have said that the woods are haunted. Looking up through an opening in the dense leafy roof, what is that fine point of white light we see in the blue zenith ? Surely, a star ! After this revelation we feel that the woods are in Night’s province, and jealously watched by her Argus eyes. That keen sentinel posted on the meridian is to us as thrilling a surprise as a chance glimpse of Dian and her nimble attendants, seen or fancied by the superstitious forester of old.

It is in vain that we plunder the woods ; all that we bring hence slips from our possession like coin picked up in fairy-land. This handful of woodflowers, how frayed and pale, even common, when seen by the light of outside day ! How drooping these ferns, how tawdry this moss! The truth is, the spirits of these are not with us, having parted from us when we left the woods ; we carry away nothing but their poor remains. Thus the forest holds its own.

— While all this talk about art is going on, would it not be well for us to stop and ask if we really have any clear notion of what art is ? Perhaps we amateurs do not know so much about it as we fancy, for apparently artists themselves and professed devotees of art cannot define its essential nature or cannot agree in their definitions. Mr. William Morris says that “ real art is the expression of man’s pleasure in labor ; ” Mr. P. B. Marston has just told us that art is the worship of a certain kind of beauty; while a Methodist minister, whom I lately heard discoursing on the subject, maintained with tremendous earnestness that art exists essentially to give pleasure. Among diverse theories like these we may pick which we choose, and I don’t know but we conveniently could hold them all at once. Part of the art talk we hear is the idle chatter of persons to whom art is merely the latest fashion ; a good deal of it is the froth of a pretentious sentimentalism, without genuine earnestness or any true apprehension of the art idea. The cultus of beauty of the “ mystic ” sort is of recent importation with us, and happily does not count many worshipers ; but it is some time since Mr. Pater advised his English readers, in carefully - culled phrase, that, “ while all melts under our feet [!], we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, and curious odors, or the work of the artist’s hand, or the face of one’s friend.” There is a false ring in language like this; it does not speak a sane delight in pure beauty, but a kind of counterfeit, unwholesome sentiment, which is worse than no sentiment at all. We are in a transitional state with regard to art just now, and much of what passes at present for intelligent discussion and acute criticism will by and by be seen to be the feeblest “ catching at ” the subject by those who have not had the power or the will to seize upon it with a firmer grasp. Art is not life, though it should be a part of the lives of all of us. The terms of a true definition are convertible, and therefore Mr. Morris’s language is inadequate to its purpose; for not every expression by man of his pleasure in labor is an art product. Art is the revelation of beauty, but by that word must be understood something more than the merely external or sensuous beauty which Mr. Marston worships. That a poet should choose for a theme the simple life and honest love of a sweet-natured country girl seems to Mr. Marston an impudent desecration, the “ emptying of a coal-sack” on the sacred pavement of the temple of beauty. Dorothy is an “ outrage on poetry,” for no reason given by Mr. Marston, unless it be that, because she had hard red hands, the girl herself was not a perfectly beautiful creature. This is curious logic indeed, and remarkable criticism.

The truth is that the refined sensuousness which has lost its relish for simple delights, and searches after the stimulus of “ strange dyes and curious odors,” has also lost its sensibility to the appeal of the higher forms of beauty; and however it may laud them in words has in reality ceased to understand or be in sympathy with their deepest meaning.

We may agree with the Methodist parson that art gives pleasure, but we join issue with him at once when he makes the giving of pleasure its end and aim. He might with equal truth preach to his people that because true goodness brings with it the highest happiness, therefore happiness is the object which must be directly sought by the good man. If we really care to know anything of art, let us begin at the beginning, and learn something of its essential nature and fundamental principles, before we set up to be artists or critics of art. Something is required of us before we can be even simple connoisseurs. “ Il faut avoir de l'âme pour avoir du goût.”

— There are certain good English words which seem to have lost their real meaning, and to have been degraded by long use. The other day I said, with a good deal of enthusiasm, that a person of my acquaintance was a most respectable woman, and my companions looked shocked, as if I had done her great injustice. “ I don’t know anybody for whom I have a higher respect,” I added, feeling that I ought to explain myself; and the faces of my audieuce brightened at once, and the conversation went on as before. The word “ respectable ” means, in the sense in which I had used it, that a person is a plain, ordinary human being, of an every-day sort, who pays his bills aud behaves himself decently, but whom nobody would think of admiring. The word seems to belong to the middle and lower classes in society, but why should we not use it literally, and bravely call any person respectable (whom we can), in the highest rank or in any other ? It is a fine tribute to any character when we can heartily call it respectable.

Words come to have definitions of their own, as if they had been cut from their roots and were growing elsewhere, on their own account and with new properties, like transplanted herbs. It seems sometimes that the early English writers had the chance of using our language while it was fresh and unworn. The words had the clear cutting and shininess of new coins, but after many years’ use they are like the smooth old shillings and sixpences, that are marked with a cross, and will no longer be taken at their first value. When we read the old authors we are delighted with the exactness of their language. There is a quaintness which delights us; but we are most pleased at discovering for ourselves the real meaning of words which we have hitherto mistaken. It is a good thing if we learn something from every page, and drop the false meanings as fast as we learn the true. It is worth while to stop and think what words really were made to mean in the first place. One can hardly look through five lines, or listen to five sentences, without finding some expression that is really wide of the idea which was meant to be conveyed. Preciseness in speech or writing need not show either primness, or self-consciousness, or painstaking, and it would really give one much more liberty. One need not be a Latin scholar, or able to tell himself everything about a word’s derivation and history ; a minute’s thought will serve to take a fresh coin from among the worn ones whose value has been lessened, and to buy with it his reader’s or listener’s quicker and more grateful attention.

— In reading Comus, I am always reminded of Shakespeare’s fairy-and and its elfin agencies. In Comus, the action takes place in the night-time, the scene being laid in an enchanted forest. The same may be noted of the Midsummer Night’s Dream. Comus is prince of nocturnal revel, having the same delight in whimsical frolic and miscreancy that we observe in Puck. Both are zealous to accomplish their malicious spells before “ Aurora’s harbinger ” or the “ blabbing eastern scout ” discovers and denounces them. In the Mask, the lady is lost, and becomes the victim of sorcerous charms; in the Dream, Helena and Hermia wander about the woods, sorely abused in their wits by the magic practice of Puck.

In Shakespeare’s flora, there is a little western flower, wounded by Cupid long ago, and ever since called “ lovein-idleness,” the juice of which, misapplied by Puck, produces such a series of lamentable complications. In Milton’s flora, also, there is a plant of occult properties, — the herb hæmony, very potent against all “ enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp.”

I am impressed with a certain family resemblance traceable in the Attendant Spirit and in the Ariel of the Tempest. The former, to be sure, has a moral gravity and a reasoning faculty not possessed by the other ; but fancy Ariel to to have taken a serious turn, to have mastered Prospero’s books of magic, to have studied some works on humanity and divinity, — would not such a curriculum place him on a level with the Attendant Spirit ? Both are glad to be released from responsibility in the affairs of mortals. Listen to Ariel slipping away into elemental liberty : —

And the spirit in Comus is no less eager to be off : —

but not without a parting word of counsel, characteristic of a Miltonian spirit: