University of Virginia Library

DIPSYCHUS

PROLOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.

‘I hope it is in good plain verse,’ said my uncle,—‘none of your hurry-scurry anapæsts, as you call them, in lines which sober people read for plain heroics. Nothing is more disagreeable than to say a line over two, or, it may be, three or four times, and at last not be sure that there are not three or four ways of reading, each as good and as much intended as another. Simplex duntaxat et unum. But you young people think Horace and your uncles old fools.’

‘Certainly, my dear sir,’ said I; ‘that is, I mean, Horace and my uncle are perfectly right. Still, there is an instructed ear and an uninstructed. A rude taste for identical recurrences would exact sing-song from “Paradise Lost,” and grumble because “Il Penseroso” doesn't run like a nursery rhyme.’ ‘Well, well,’ said my uncle, ‘sunt certi denique fines, no doubt. So commence, my young Piso, while Aristarchus is tolerably wakeful, and do not waste by your logic the fund you will want for your poetry.’

I. Part I.

—Scene I.

The Piazza at Venice, 9 p.m. Dipsychus and the Spirit.
Di.
The scene is different, and the place, the air
Tastes of the nearer north; the people
Not perfect southern lightness; wherefore, then,
Should those old verses come into my mind
I made last year at Naples? Oh, poor fool!
Still resting on thyself—a thing ill-worked—
A moment's thought committed on the moment
To unripe words and rugged verse:—
‘Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened when my tongue had said—
Christ is not risen!’

Sp.
Christ is not risen? Oh, indeed,
I didn't know that was your creed.

Di.
So it went on, too lengthy to repeat—
‘Christ is not risen.’

Sp.
Dear, how odd!
He'll tell us next there is no God.
I thought 'twas in the Bible plain,
On the third day He rose again.

Di.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
As of the unjust, also of the just—
Yea, of that Just One, too!
Is He not risen, and shall we not rise?
Oh, we unwise!’

Sp.
H'm! and the tone, then, after all,
Something of the ironical?
Sarcastic, say; or were it fitter
To style it the religious bitter?

Di.
Interpret it I cannot. I but wrote it—
At Naples, truly, as the preface tells,
Last year, in the Toledo; it came on me,
And did me good at once. At Naples then,
At Venice now. Ah! and I think at Venice
Christ is not risen either.

Sp.
Nay,
Such things don't fall out every day:
Having once happened, as we know,
In Palestine so long ago,
How should it now at Venice here?
Where people, true enough, appear
To appreciate more and understand
Their ices, and their Austrian band,
And dark-eyed girls.

Di.
The whole great square they fill,
From the red flaunting streamers on the staffs,
And that barbaric portal of St. Mark's,
To where, unnoticed, at the darker end,
I sit upon my step—one great gay crowd.
The Campanile to the silent stars
Goes up, above—its apex lost in air—
While these do what?

Sp.
Enjoy the minute,
And the substantial blessings in it:
Ices, par exemple; evening air,
Company, and this handsome square;
And all the sweets in perfect plenty
Of the old dolce far niente.
Music! Up, up; it is'nt fit
With beggars here on steps to sit.
Up, to the caffé! take a chair,
And join the wiser idlers there.
And see that fellow singing yonder;
Singing, ye gods, and dancing too—
Tooraloo, tooraloo, tooraloo loo—
Fiddledi diddledi, diddle di di;
Figaro sù, Figaro giù—
Figaro quà, Figaro là!
How he likes doing it—Ha, ha!

Di.
While these do what? Ah heaven! too true, at Venice
Christ is not risen either.

Scene II.

—The Public Garden.
Di.
Assuredly, a lively scene!
And, ah, how pleasant something green!
With circling heavens one perfect rose
Each smoother patch of water glows,
Hence to where, o'er the full tide's face,
We see the Palace and the Place,
And the white dome; beauteous, but hot.
Where in the meantime is the spot—
My favourite—where by masses blue,
And white cloud-folds, I follow true
The great Alps, rounding grandly o'er,
Hugh arc, to the Dalmatian shore?

Sp.
This rather stupid place, to-day,
It's true, is most extremely gay;
And rightly—the Assunzione
Was always a gran' funzione.

Di.
What is this persecuting voice that haunts me?
What? whence? of whom? How am I to detect?
Myself or not myself? My own bad thoughts,
Or some external agency at work,
To lead me who knows whither?

Sp.
Eh?
We're certainly in luck to-day:
What crowds of boats before us plying—
Gay parties, singing, shouting, crying—
Saluting others past them flying!
What numbers at the causeway lying!
What lots of pretty girls, too, hieing
Hither and thither—coming, going,
And with what satisfaction showing
Their dark exuberance of hair,
Black eyes, rich tints, and sundry graces
Of classic pure Italian faces!

Di.

Scene III.

—At the Hotel.
Sp.
Come, then,
And with my aid go into good society.
Life little loves, 'tis true, this peevish piety;
E'en they with whom it thinks to be securest—
Your most religious, delicatest, purest—
Discern, and show as pious people can
Their feeling that you are not quite a man.
Still the thing has its place; and, with sagacity,
Much might be done by one of your capacity.
A virtuous attachment formed judiciously
Would come, one sees, uncommonly propitiously:
Turn you but your affections the right way,
And what mayn't happen none of us can say;
For, in despite of devils and of mothers,
Your good young men make catches, too, like others.

Di.
To herd with people that one owns no care for;
Friend it with strangers that one sees but once;
To drain the heart with endless complaisance;
To warp the unfinished diction on the lip,
And twist one's mouth to counterfeit; enforce
Reluctant looks to falsehood; base-alloy
The ingenuous golden frankness of the past;
To calculate and plot; be rough and smooth,
Forward and silent, deferential, cool,
Not by one's humour, which is the safe truth,
But on consideration.

Sp.
That is, act
On a dispassionate judgment of the fact;
Look all the data fairly in the face,
And rule your judgment simply by the case.

Di.
On vile consideration. At the best,
With pallid hotbed courtesies to forestall
The green and vernal spontaneity,
And waste the priceless moments of the man
In regulating manner. Whether these things
Be right, I do not know: I only know 'tis
To lose one's youth too early. Oh, not yet—
Not yet I make the sacrifice.

Sp.
Du tout!
To give up nature's just what would not do.
By all means keep your sweet ingenuous graces,
And use them at the proper times and places.
For work, for play, for business, talk and love,
I own as wisdom truly from above,
That scripture of the serpent and the dove;
Nor's aught so perfect for the world's affairs
As the old parable of wheat and tares;
What we all love is good touched up with evil—
Religion's self must have a spice of devil.

Di.
Let it be enough,
That in our needful mixture with the world,
On each new morning with the rising sun,
Our rising heart, fresh from the seas of sleep,
Scarce o'er the level lifts his purer orb
Ere lost and sullied with polluting smoke—
A noon-day coppery disk. Lo, scarce come forth,
Some vagrant miscreant meets, and with a look
Transmutes me his, and for a whole sick day
Lepers me.

Sp.
Just the one thing, I assure you,
From which good company can't but secure you.
About the individual's not so clear,
But who can doubt the general atmosphere?

Di.
Ay truly, who at first? but in a while—

Sp.
O dear, this o'er-discernment makes me smile.
You don't pretend to tell me you can see
Without one touch of melting sympathy
Those lovely, stately flowers that fill with bloom
The brilliant season's gay parterre-like room,
Moving serene yet swiftly through the dances;
Those graceful forms and perfect countenances,
Whose every fold and line in all their dresses
Something refined and exquisite expresses.
To see them smile and hear them talk so sweetly,
In me destroys all lower thoughts completely;
I really seem, without exaggeration,
To experience the true regeneration.
One's own dress, too—one's manner, what one's doing
And saying, all assist to one's renewing.
I love to see, in these their fitting places,
The bows, the forms, and all you call grimaces.
I heartily could wish we'd kept some more of them,
However much we talk about the bore of them.
Fact is, your awkward parvenus are shy at it,
Afraid to look like waiters if they try at it.
'Tis sad to what democracy is leading—
Give me your Eighteenth Century for high breeding.
Though I can put up gladly with the present,
And quite can think our modern parties pleasant.
One shouldn't analyse the thing too nearly:
The main effect is admirable clearly.
‘Good manners,’ said our great-aunts, ‘next to piety:’
And so, my friend, hurrah for good society!

Scene IV.

—On the Piazza.
Sp.
Insulted! By the living Lord!
He laid his hand upon his sword.
‘Fort,’ did he say? a German brute,
With neither heart nor brains to shoot.

Di.
What does he mean? he's wrong, I had done nothing.
'Twas a mistake—more his, I am sure, than mine.
He is quite wrong—I feel it. Come, let us go.

Sp.
Go up to him!—you must, that's flat.
Be threatened by a beast like that!

Di.
He's violent; what can I do against him?
I neither wish to be killed nor to kill:
What's more, I never yet have touched a sword,
Nor fired, but twice, a pistol in my life.

Sp.
Oh, never mind, 'twon't come to fighting—
Only some verbal small requiting;
Or give your card—we'll do't by writing.
He'll not stick to it. Soldiers too
Are cowards, just like me or you.
What! not a single word to throw at
This snarling dog of a d---d Croat?

Di.
My heavens! why should I care? he does not hurt me.
If he is wrong, it is the worst for him.
I certainly did nothing: I shall go.

Sp.
Did nothing! I should think not; no,
Nor ever will, I dare be sworn!
But, O my friend, well-bred, well-born—
You to behave so in these quarrels
Makes me half doubtful of your morals!
. . . . . . . It were all one,
You had been some shopkeeper's son,
Whose childhood ne'er was shown aught better
Than bills of creditor and debtor.

Di.
By heaven, it falls from off me like the rain
From the oil-coat. I seem in spirit to see
How he and I at some great day shall meet
Before some awful judgment-seat of truth;
And I could deem that I behold him there
Come praying for the pardon I give now,
Did I not think these matters too, too small
For any record on the leaves of time.
O thou great Watcher of this noisy world,
What are they in Thy sight? or what in his
Who finds some end of action in his life?
What e'en in his whose sole permitted course
Is to pursue his peaceful byway walk,
And live his brief life purely in Thy sight,
And righteously towards his brother-men?

Sp.
And whether, so you're just and fair,
Other folks are so, you don't care;
You who profess more love than others
For your poor sinful human brothers.

Di.
For grosser evils their gross remedies
The laws afford us; let us be content;
For finer wounds the law would, if it could,
Find medicine too; it cannot, let us bear;
For sufferance is the badge of all men's tribes.

Sp.
Because we can't do all we would,
Does it follow, to do nothing's good?
No way to help the law's rough sense
By equities of self-defence?
Well, for yourself it may be nice
To serve vulgarity and vice:
Must sisters, too, and wives and mothers,
Fare like their patient sons and brothers?

Di.
He that loves sister, mother, more than me—

Sp.
But the injustice—the gross wrong!
To whom on earth does it belong
If not to you, to whom 'twas done,
Who saw it plain as any sun,
To make the base and foul offender
Confess, and satisfaction render?
At least before the termination of it
Prove your own lofty reprobation of it.
Though gentleness, I know, was born in you,
Surely you have a little scorn in you?

Di.
Heaven! to pollute one's fingers to pick up
The fallen coin of honour from the dirt—
Pure silver though it be, let it rather lie!
To take up any offence, where't may be said
That temper, vanity—I know not what—
Had led me on!
To have so much as e'en half felt of one
That ever one was angered for oneself!
Beyond suspicion Cæsar's wife should be,
Beyond suspicion this bright honour shall.
Did he say scorn? I have some scorn, thank God.

Sp.
Certainly. Only if it's so,
Let us leave Italy, and go
Post haste, to attend—you're ripe and rank for 't—
The great peace-meeting up at Frankfort.
Joy to the Croat! Take our lives,
Sweet friends, and please respect our wives;
Joy to the Croat! Some fine day,
He'll see the error of his way,
No doubt, and will repent and pray.
At any rate he'll open his eyes,
If not before, at the Last Assize.
Not, if I rightly understood you,
That even then you'd punish, would you?
Nay, let the hapless soul go free—
Mere murder, crime, or robbery,
In whate'er station, age, or sex,
Your sacred spirit scarce can vex:
De minimis non curat lex.
To the Peace Congress! ring the bell!
Horses to Frankfort and to ------!

Di.
I am not quite in union with myself
On this strange matter. I must needs confess
Instinct turns instinct out, and thought
Wheels round on thought. To bleed for others' wrongs
In vindication of a cause, to draw
The sword of the Lord and Gideon—oh, that seems
The flower and top of life! But fight because
Some poor misconstruing trifler haps to say
I lie, when I do not lie,
Why should I? Call you this a cause? I can't.
Oh, he is wrong, no doubt; he misbehaves—
But is it worth so much as speaking loud?
And things so merely personal to myself
Of all earth's things do least affect myself.

Sp.
Sweet eloquence! at next May Meeting
How it would tell in the repeating!
I recognise, and kiss the rod—
The methodistic ‘voice of God;’
I catch contrite that angel whine,
That snuffle human, yet divine.

Di.
It may be I am somewhat of a poltroon;
I never fought at school; whether it be
Some native poorness in my spirit's blood,
Or that the holy doctrine of our faith
In too exclusive fervency possessed
My heart with feelings, with ideas my brain.

Sp.
Yes; you would argue that it goes
Against the Bible, I suppose;
But our revered religion—yes,
Our common faith—seems, I confess,
On these points to propose to address
The people more than you or me—
At best the vulgar bourgeoisie.
The sacred writers don't keep count,
But still the Sermon on the Mount
Must have been spoken, by what's stated,
To hearers by the thousands rated.
I cuff some fellow; mild and meek
He should turn round the other cheek.
For him it may be right and good;
We are not all of gentle blood
Really, or as such understood.

Di.
There are two kindreds upon earth, I know—
The oppressors and the oppressed. But as for me,
If I must choose to inflict wrong, or accept,
May my last end, and life too, be with these.
Yes; whatsoe'er the reason, want of blood,
Lymphatic humours, or my childhood's faith,
So is the thing, and be it well or ill,
I have no choice. I am a man of peace,
And the old Adam of the gentleman
Dares seldom in my bosom stir against
The mild plebeian Christian seated there.

Sp.
Forgive me, if I name my doubt,
Whether you know ‘fort’ means ‘get out.’

Scene V.

—The Lido.
Sp.
What now? the Lido shall it be?
That none may say we didn't see
The ground which Byron used to ride on,
And do I don't know what beside on.
Ho, barca! here! and this light gale
Will let us run it with a sail.

Di.

Sp.

Di.
Vineyards and maize, that's pleasant for sore eyes.

Sp.
And on the island's other side,
The place where Murray's faithful Guide
Informs us Byron used to ride.

Di.
The trellised vines! enchanting! Sandhills, ho!
The sea, at last the sea—the real broad sea—
Beautiful! and a glorious breeze upon it.

Sp.
Look back; one catches at this station
Lagoon and sea in combination.

Di.
On her still lake the city sits,
Where bark and boat around her flits;
Nor dreams, her soft siesta taking,
Of Adriatic billows breaking.
I do; I see and hear them. Come! to the sea!
Oh, a grand surge! we'll bathe; quick, quick!—undress!
Quick, quick!—in, in!
We'll take the crested billows by their backs
And shake them. Quick! in, in!
And I will taste again the old joy
I gloried in so when a boy;
Aha! come, come—great waters, roll!
Accept me, take me, body and soul!
That's done me good. It grieves me though,
I never came here long ago.

Sp.
Pleasant, perhaps; however, no offence,
Animal spirits are not common sense;
They're good enough as an assistance,
But in themselves a poor existence.
But you, with this one bathe, no doubt,
Have solved all questions out and out.

II. Part II.

—Scene I.

The interior Arcade of the Doge's Palace.
Sp.
Thunder and rain! O dear, O dear!
But see, a noble shelter here,
This grand arcade where our Venetian
Has formed of Gothic and of Grecian
A combination strange, but striking,
And singularly to my liking!
Let moderns reap where ancients sowed,
I at least make it my abode.
And now let's hear your famous Ode:
‘Through the great sinful’—how did it go on?
For principles of Art and so on
I care perhaps about three curses,
But hold myself a judge of verses.

Di.
‘My brain was lightened when my tongue had said,
“Christ is not risen.”’

Sp.
Well, now it's anything but clear
What is the tone that's taken here:
What is your logic? what's your theology?
Is it, or is it not, neology?
That's a great fault; you're this and that,
And here and there, and nothing flat;
Yet writing's golden word what is it,
But the three syllables ‘explicit?’
Say, if you cannot help it, less,
But what you do put, put express.
I fear that rule won't meet your feeling:
You think half showing, half concealing,
Is God's own method of revealing.

Di.
To please my own poor mind! to find repose;
To physic the sick soul; to furnish vent
To diseased humours in the moral frame!

Sp.
A sort of seton, I suppose,
A moral bleeding at the nose:
H'm;—and the tone too after all,
Something of the ironical?
Sarcastic, say; or were it fitter
To style it the religious bitter?

Di.
Interpret it I cannot, I but wrote it.

Sp.
Perhaps; but none that read can doubt it,
There is a strong Strauss-smell about it.
Heavens! at your years your time to fritter
Upon a critical hair-splitter!
Take larger views (and quit your Germans)
From the Analogy and sermons;
I fancied—you must doubtless know—
Butler had proved an age ago,
That in religious as profane things
'Twas useless trying to explain things;
Men's business-wits, the only sane things,
These and compliance are the main things.
God, Revelation, and the rest of it,
Bad at the best, we make the best of it.
Like a good subject and wise man,
Believe whatever things you can.
Take your religion as 'twas found you,
And say no more of it, confound you!
And now I think the rain has ended;
And the less said, the soonest mended.

Scene II.

—In a Gondola.
Sp.
Per ora. To the Grand Canal.
Afterwards e'en as fancy shall.

Di.

Sp.
Pooh! Nature meant him for no better
Than our most humble menial debtor;
Who thanks us for his day's employment
As we our purse for our enjoyment.

Di.
To make one's fellow-man an instrument—

Sp.
Is just the thing that makes him most content.

Di.

Sp.
Oh come, come, come! By Him that sent us here,
Who's to enjoy at all, pray let us hear?
You won't; he can't! Oh, no more fuss!
What's it to him, or he to us?
Sing, sing away, be glad and gay,
And don't forget that we shall pay.

Di.
Yes, it is beautiful ever, let foolish men rail at it never.
Yes, it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly.
Wise are ye others that choose it, and happy ye all that can use it.
Life it is beautiful wholly, and could we eliminate only
This interfering, enslaving, o'ermastering demon of craving,
This wicked tempter inside us to ruin still eager to guide us,
Life were beatitude, action a possible pure satisfaction.

Sp.
(Hexameters, by all that's odious,
Beshod with rhyme to run melodious!)

Di.
All as I go on my way I behold them consorting and coupling;
Faithful it seemeth, and fond; very fond, very possibly faithful;
All as I go on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly;
But for perfection attaining is one method only, abstaining;
Let us abstain, for we should so, if only we thought that we could so.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.
Nay;
'Fore heaven, enough of that to-day:
I'm deadly weary of your tune,
And half-ennuyé with the moon;
The shadows lie, the glories fall,
And are but moonshine after all.
It goes against my conscience really
To let myself feel so ideally.
Come, for the Piazzetta steer;
'Tis nine o'clock or very near.
These airy blisses, skiey joys
Of vague romantic girls and boys,
Which melt the heart and the brain soften,
When not affected, as too often
They are, remind me, I protest,
Of nothing better at the best
Than Timon's feast to his ancient lovers,
Warm water under silver covers;
‘Lap, dogs!’ I think I hear him say;
And lap who will, so I'm away.

Di.

Sp.
Tre ore. So. The Parthenone
Is it? you haunt for your limone.
Let me induce you to join me,
In gramolate persiche.

Scene III.

—The Academy at Venice.
Di.

Sp.
I come, I come.

Di.
So quick, so eager; ha!
Like an eaves-dropping menial on my thought,
With something of an exultation too, methinks,
Out-peeping in that springy, jaunty gait.
I doubt about it. Shall I do it? Oh! oh!
Shame on me! come! Shall I, my follower,
Should I conceive (not that at all I do,
'Tis curiosity that prompts my speech)—
But should I form, a thing to be supposed,
A wish to bargain for your merchandise,
Say what were your demands? what were your terms?
What should I do? what should I cease to do?
What incense on what altars must I burn?
And what abandon? what unlearn, or learn?
Religion goes, I take it.

Sp.
Oh,
You'll go to church of course, you know;
Or at the least will take a pew
To send your wife and servants to.
Trust me, I make a point of that;
No infidelity, that's flat.

Di.
Religion is not in a pew, say some;
Cucullus, you hold, facit monachum.

Sp.

Di.
On that, my friend, you'd better not insist.

Sp.
Well, well, 'tis but a good thing miss'd.
The item's optional, no doubt;
But how to get you bread without?
You'll marry; I shall find the lady.
Make your proposal, and be steady.

Di.
Marry, ill spirit! and at your sole choice?

Sp.
De rigueur! can't give you a voice.
What matter? Oh, trust one who knows you,
You'll make an admirable sposo.

Di.
Enough. But action—look to that well, mind me;
See that some not unworthy work you find me;
If man I be, then give the man expression.

Sp.
Of course you'll enter a profession;
If not the Church, why then the Law.
By Jove, we'll teach you how to draw!
Besides, the best of the concern is
I'm hand and glove with the attorneys.
With them and me to help, don't doubt
But in due season you'll come out;
Leave Kelly, Cockburn, in the lurch.
But yet, do think about the Church.

Di.
'Tis well, ill spirit, I admire your wit;
As for your wisdom, I shall think of it.
And now farewell.

Scene IV.

—In St. Mark's. Dipsychus alone.
Sp.
(from within).

Scene V.

—The Piazza at Night.
Di.

Sp.
O yes.
To moon about religion; to inhume
Your ripened age in solitary walks,
For self-discussion; to debate in letters
Vext points with earnest friends; past other men
To cherish natural instincts, yet to fear them
And less than any use them; oh, no doubt,
In a corner sit and mope, and be consoled
With thinking one is clever, while the room
Rings through with animation and the dance.
Then talk of old examples; to pervert
Ancient real facts to modern unreal dreams,
And build up baseless fabrics of romance
And heroism upon historic sand;
To burn, forsooth, for action, yet despise
Its merest accidence and alphabet;
Cry out for service, and at once rebel
At the application of its plainest rules:
This you call life, my friend, reality;
Doing your duty unto God and man—
I know not what. Stay at Venice, if you will;
Sit musing in its churches hour on hour
Cross-kneed upon a bench; climb up at whiles
The neighbouring tower, and kill the lingering day
With old comparisons; when night succeeds,
Evading, yet a little seeking, what
You would and would not, turn your doubtful eyes
On moon and stars to help morality;
Once in a fortnight say, by lucky chance
Of happier-tempered coffee, gain (great Heaven!)
A pious rapture: is it not enough?

Di.
'Tis well: thou cursed spirit, go thy way!
I am in higher hands than yours. 'Tis well;
Who taught you menaces? Who told you, pray,
Because I asked you questions, and made show
Of hearing what you answered, therefore—

Sp.
Oh,
As if I didn't know!

Di.
Come, come, my friend,
I may have wavered, but I have thought better.
We'll say no more of it.

Sp.
Oh, I dare say:
But as you like; 'tis your own loss; once more,
Beware!

Di.
(alone).
Must it be then? So quick upon my thought
To follow the fulfilment and the deed?
I counted not on this; I counted ever
To hold and turn it over in my hands
Much longer, much: I took it up indeed,
For speculation rather; to gain thought,
New data. Oh, and now to be goaded on
By menaces, entangled among tricks;
That I won't suffer. Yet it is the law;
'Tis this makes action always. But for this
We ne'er should act at all; and act we must.
Why quarrel with the fashion of a fact
Which, one way, must be, one time, why not now?

Sp.

Scene VI.

—On a Bridge.
Di.

Sp.
O yes! you thought you had escaped, no doubt,
This worldly fiend that follows you about,
This compound of convention and impiety,
This mongrel of uncleanness and propriety.
What else were bad enough? but, let me say,
I too have my grandes manières in my way;
Could speak high sentiment as well as you,
And out-blank-verse you without much ado;
Have my religion also in my kind,
For dreaming unfit, because not designed.
What! you know not that I too can be serious,
Can speak big words, and use the tone imperious;
Can speak, not honiedly, of love and beauty,
But sternly of a something much like duty.
Oh, do you look surprised? were never told,
Perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold.
The Devil oft the Holy Scripture uses,
But God can act the Devil when He chooses.
Farewell! But, verbum sapienti satis—
I do not make this revelation gratis.
Farewell: beware!

Di.
Ill spirits can quote holy books I knew;
What will they not say? what not dare to do?

Sp.
Beware, beware!

Di.

Sp.
(from within).

Di.
O God, O God! The great floods of the soul
Flow over me! I come into deep waters
Where no ground is!

Sp.

Di.
Is the hour here, then? Is the minute come—
The irreprievable instant of stern time?
O for a few, few grains in the running glass,
Or for some power to hold them! O for a few
Of all that went so wastefully before!
It must be then, e'en now.

Sp.
(from within).

Scene VII.

—At Torcello. Dipsychus alone.
Di.
I had a vision; was it in my sleep?
And if it were, what then? But sleep or wake,
I saw a great light open o'er my head;
And sleep or wake, uplifted to that light,
Out of that light proceeding heard a voice
Uttering high words, which, whether sleep or wake,
In me were fixed, and in me must abide.

Scene VIII.

In the Piazza.
Di.

Sp.
(aside).
A truly admirable proceeding!
Could there be finer special pleading
When scruples would be interceding?
There's no occasion I should stay;
He is working out, his own queer way,
The sum I set him; and this day
Will bring it, neither less nor bigger,
Exact to my predestined figure.

Scene IX.

—In the Public Garden.
Di.
Twenty-one past—twenty-five coming on;
One-third of life departed, nothing done.
Out of the mammon of unrighteousness
That we make friends, the Scripture is express,
My Spirit, come, we will agree;
Content, you'll take a moiety.

Sp.
A moiety, ye gods, he, he!

Di.
Three-quarters then? O griping beast!
Leave me a decimal at least.

Sp.
Oh, one of ten! to infect the nine
And make the devil a one be mine!
Oh, one! to jib all day, God wot,
When all the rest would go full trot!
One very little one, eh? to doubt with,
Just to pause, think, and look about with?
In course! you counted on no less—
You thought it likely I'd say yes!

Di.
Be it then thus—since that it must, it seems.
Welcome, O world, henceforth; and farewell dreams!
Yet know, Mephisto, know, nor you nor I
Can in this matter either sell or buy;
For the fee simple of this trifling lot
To you or me, trust me, pertaineth not.
I can but render what is of my will,
And behind it somewhat remaineth still.
O, your sole chance was in the childish mind
Whose darkness dreamed that vows like this could bind;
Thinking all lost, it made all lost, and brought
In fact the ruin which had been but thought.
Thank Heaven (or you) that's past these many years,
And we have knowledge wiser than our fears.
So your poor bargain take, my man,
And make the best of it you can.

Sp.
With reservations! oh, how treasonable!
When I had let you off so reasonable.
However, I don't fear; be it so!
Brutus is honourable, I know;
So mindful of the dues of others,
So thoughtful for his poor dear brothers,
So scrupulous, considerate, kind—
He wouldn't leave the devil behind
If he assured him he had claims
For his good company to hell-flames!
No matter, no matter, the bargain's made;
And I for my part will not be afraid.
With reservations! oh! ho, ho!
But time, my friend, has yet to show
Which of us two will closest fit
The proverb of the Biter Bit.

Di.
Tell me thy name, now it is over.

Sp.
Oh!
Why, Mephistophiles, you know—
At least you've lately called me so.
Belial it was some days ago.
But take your pick; I've got a score—
Never a royal baby more.
For a brass plate upon a door
What think you of Cosmocrator?

Di.
Τους κοσμοκρατορας του αιωνος τουτου.
And that you are indeed, I do not doubt you.

Sp.
Ephesians, aint it? near the end
You dropt a word to spare your friend.
What follows, too, in application
Would be absurd exaggeration.

Di.
The Power of this World! hateful unto God.

Sp.
Cosmarchon's shorter, but sounds odd:
One wouldn't like, even if a true devil,
To be taken for a vulgar Jew devil.

Di.
Yet in all these things we—'tis Scripture too—
Are more than conquerors, even over you.

Sp.
Come, come, don't maunder any longer.
Time tests the weaker and the stronger;
And we, without procrastination,
Must set, you know, to our vocation.
O goodness! won't you find it pleasant
To own the positive and present;
To see yourself like people round,
And feel your feet upon the ground!

(Exeunt.)

EPILOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.

‘I don't very well understand what it's all about,’ said my uncle. ‘I won't say I didn't drop into a doze while the young man was drivelling through his latter soliloquies. But there was a great deal that was unmeaning, vague, and involved; and what was most plain, was least decent and least moral.’

‘Dear sir,’ said I, ‘says the proverb—“Needs must when the devil drives;” and if the devil is to speak—’

‘Well,’ said my uncle, ‘why should he? Nobody asked him. Not that he didn't say much which, if only it hadn't been for the way he said it, and that it was he who said it, would have been sensible enough.’

‘But, sir,’ said I, ‘perhaps he wasn't a devil after all. That's the beauty of the poem; nobody can say. You see, dear sir, the thing which it is attempted to represent is the conflict between the tender conscience and the world. Now, the over-tender conscience will, of course, exaggerate the wickedness of the world; and the Spirit in my poem may be merely the hypothesis or subjective imagination formed—’

‘Oh, for goodness' sake, my dear boy,’ interrupted my uncle, ‘don't go into the theory of it. If you're wrong in it, it makes bad worse; if you're right, you may be a critic, but you can't be a poet. And then you know very well I don't understand all those new words. But as for that, I quite agree that consciences are much too tender in your generation—schoolboys' consciences, too! As my old friend the Canon says of the Westminster students, “They're all

so pious.” It's all Arnold's doing; he spoilt the public schools.’

‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘how can so venerable a sexagenarian utter so juvenile a paradox? How often have I not heard you lament the idleness and listlessness, the boorishness and vulgar tyranny, the brutish manners alike, and minds—’

‘Ah,’ said my uncle, ‘I may have fallen in occasionally with the talk of the day; but at seventy one begins to see clearer into the bottom of one's mind. In middle life one says so many things in the way of business. Not that I mean that the old schools were perfect, any more than we old boys that were there. But whatever else they were or did, they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did not disqualify the country's youth for after-life and the country's service.’

‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmony with public opinion is exactly—’

‘Don't interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you'll quote me a leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy head of your college said to me touching a case of rustication. “My dear sir,” said I, “I only wish to heaven they would be; but as for my own nephews, they seem to me a sort of hobbadi-hoy cherub, too big to be innocent, and too simple for anything else. They're full of the notion of the world being so wicked, and of their taking a higher line, as they call it. I only fear they'll never take any line at all.” What is the true purpose of education? Simply to make plain to the young understanding the laws of the life they will have to enter. For example—that lying won't do, thieving still less; that idleness will get punished; that if they are cowards, the whole world will be against them; that if they will have their own way, they must fight for it. As for the conscience,

mamma, I take it—such as mammas are now-a-days, at any rate—has probably set that agoing fast enough already. What a blessing to see her good little child come back a brave young devil-may-care!’

‘Exactly, my dear sir. As if at twelve or fourteen a round-about boy, with his three meals a day inside him, is likely to be over-troubled with scruples.’

‘Put him through a strong course of confirmation and sacraments, backed up with sermons and private admonitions, and what is much the same as auricular confession, and really, my dear nephew, I can't answer for it but he mayn't turn out as great a goose as you—pardon me—were about the age of eighteen or nineteen.’

‘But to have passed through that, my dear sir! surely that can be no harm.’

‘I don't know. Your constitutions don't seem to recover it quite. We did without these foolish measles well enough in my time.’

‘Westminster had its Cowper, my dear sir; and other schools had theirs also, mute and inglorious, but surely not few.’

‘Ah, ah! the beginning of troubles.’—

‘You see, my dear sir, you must not refer it to Arnold, at all at all. Anything that Arnold did in this direction—’

‘Why, my dear boy, how often have I not heard from you, how he used to attack offences, not as offences—the right view—against discipline, but as sin, heinous guilt, I don't know what beside! Why didn't he flog them and hold his tongue? Flog them he did, but why preach?’

‘If he did err in this way, sir, which I hardly think, I ascribe it to the spirit of the time. The real cause of the evil you complain of, which to a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement of the last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last in

Puseyism. This over-excitation of the religious sense, resulting in this irrational, almost animal irritability of conscience, was, in many ways, as foreign to Arnold as it is proper to—’

‘Well, well, my dear nephew, if you like to make a theory of it, pray write it out for yourself nicely in full; but your poor old uncle does not like theories, and is moreover sadly sleepy.’

‘Good night, dear uncle, good night. Only let me say you six more verses.’

DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED.

[An interval of thirty years.]

Scene I.

—In London. Dipsychus in his Study.
Dipsychus.
O God! O God! and must I still go on
Doing this work—I know not, hell's or thine;
And these rewards receiving—sure not thine;
The adulation of a foolish crowd,
Half foolish and half greedy; upright judge—
Lawyer acute—the Mansfield and the Hale
In one united to bless modern Courts.
O God! O God! According to the law,
With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,
Doing the justice that is but half just;
Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!
Administering, alas, God! not Thy law. (Knock at the door.)

What? Is the hour already for the Court?
Come in. Now, Lord Chief Justice, to thy work.

(Enter a Servant.)
Serv.
My lord, a woman begging to be seen.

Di.
A woman begging to be seen? What's this?
'Tis not the duty of your post, my friend,
To give admittance on the busy days
Of a hard labourer in this great world
To all poor creatures begging to be seen.
Something unusual in it? Bid her wait
In the room below, I'll see her as I pass.
Is the horse there?

Serv.
He's coming round, my lord.

Di.

Wom.
Once you knew me well enough.

Di.
Oh, you! I had been told that you were dead.

Wom.
So your creatures said;
But I shall live, I think, till you die too.

Di.
What do you want? Money, subsistence, bread?

Wom.
I wanted bread, money, all things, 'tis true,
But wanted, above all things, to see you.

Di.
This cannot be. What has been done is o'er.
You have no claim or right against me more;
I have dealt justly with you to the uttermost.

Wom.
I did not come to say you were unjust—
I came to see you only.

Di.
Hear me now.
Remember, it was not the marriage vow,
Nor promise e'er of chaste fidelity,
That joined us thirty years ago in a tie
Which I, I think, scarce sought. It was not I
That took your innocence; you spoiled me of mine.
And yet, as though the vow had been divine,
Was I not faithful? Were you so to me?
Had you been white in spotless purity,
Could I have clung to you more faithfully?
I left you, after wrongs I blush with shame
E'en now through all my fifty years to name.
I left you; yet I stinted still my ease,—
Curtailed my pleasures—toil still extra toil,—
To repay you for what you never gave.
Is it not true?

Wom.
Go on, say all and more.
Upon this body, as the basis, lies
The ladder that has raised you to the skies.

Di.
Is that so much? am I indeed so high?
Am I not rather
The slave and servant of the wretched world,
Liveried and finely dressed—yet all the same
A menial and lacquey seeking place
For hire, and for his hire's sake doing work?

Wom.
I do not know; you have wife and child, I know,
Domestic comfort and a noble name,
And people speak in my ears too your praise.
O man, O man! do you not know in your heart
It was for this you came to me—
It was for this I took you to my breast?
O man, man, man!
You come to us with your dalliance in the street,
You pay us with your miserable gold,
You do not know how in the—

Di.
(looks at his watch).
You must go now. Justice calls me elsewhere;
Justice—might keep you here.
You may return again; stay, let me see—
Six weeks to-morrow you shall see me again;
Now you must go. Do you need money? here,
It is your due: take it, that you may live;
And see me, six weeks from to-morrow, elsewhere.

Wom.
I will not go;
You must stay here and hear me, or I shall die!
It were ill for you that I should.

Di.
What! shall the nation wait?
Woman, if I have wronged you, it was for good—
Good has come of it. Lo, I have done some work.
Over the blasted and the blackened spot
Of our unhappy and unhallowed deed
I have raised a mausoleum of such acts
As in this world do honour unto me,
But in the next to thee.

Wom.
Hear me, I cannot go!

Di.
It cannot be; the court, the nation waits.
Is not the work, too, yours?

Wom.
I go, to die this night!

Di.
I cannot help it. Duty lies here. Depart!

Wom.
Listen; before I die, one word! In old times
You called me Pleasure—my name now is Guilt.

Scene II.

—In Westminster Hall.
1st Barrister.
They say the Lord Chief Justice is unwell;
Did you observe how, after that decision
Which all the world admired so, suddenly
He became pale and looked in the air and staggered,
As if some phantom floated on his eyes?
He is a strange man.

Bar. 2.
He is unwell, there is no doubt of that,
But why or how is quite another question.
It is odd to find so stern and strong a man
Give way before he's sixty. Many a mind,
Apparently less vigorous than his,
Has kept its full judicial faculty,
And sat the woolsack past threescore and ten.

Bar. 3.
No business to be done to-day. Have you heard
The Chief Justice is lying dangerously ill?
Apoplexy, paralysis, Heaven knows what—some seizure.

Bar. 1.
Heavens! that will be a loss indeed!

Bar. 2.
A loss
Which will be some one's gain, however.

Bar. 1.
Not the nation's,
If this sage Chancellor give it to ---.
But is he really sure to die, do you think?

Bar. 3.
A very sudden and very alarming attack.
And now you know to the full as much as I,
Or, as I fancy, any lawyer here.

Bar. 2.
Do you know anything of his early life?

Bar. 1.
My father knew him at college: a reading man,
The quietest of the quiet, shy and timid.
And college honours past,
No one believed he ever would do anything.

Bar. 2.
He was a moral sort of prig, I've heard,
Till he was twenty-five; and even then
He never entered into life as most men.
That is the reason why he fails so soon.
It takes high feeding and a well-taught conscience
To breed your mighty hero of the law.
So much the worse for him; so much the better
For all expectants now.

Bar. 3.
For ------, for one.

Bar. 2.
Well, there'll be several changes, as I think.
Not that I think the shock of new promotion
Will vibrate quite perceptibly down here.
There was a story that I once was told,
Some woman that they used to tease him with.

Bar. 1.
He grew too stern for teasing before long;
A man with greater power of what I think
They call, in some new sense of the word, Repulsion,
I think I never saw in all my life.

Bar. 2.
A most forbidding man in private life,
I've always heard. What's this new news?

Bar. 4.
The Lord Chief Justice has resigned.

Bar. 1, 2, 3.
Is it true?
Really? Quite certain?

Bar. 4.
Publicly announced.
You're quite behind. Most probably ere this
The Times has got it in a new edition.

Scene III.

—Dipsychus in his own house, alone.
Di.
She will come yet, I think, although she said
She would go hence and die; I cannot tell.
Should I have made the nation's business wait,
That I might listen to an old sad tale
Uselessly iterated? Ah—ah me!
I am grown weak indeed; those old black thoughts
No more as servants at my bidding go,
But as stern tyrants look me in the face,
And mock my reason's inefficient hand
That sways to wave them hence.

Serv.
You rung, my lord?

Di.
[Exit Servant.