FRIENDSHIP IN ENGLISH POETRY.

MR. JOHN STUART MILL has this remarkable passage in his autobiography:

was a man of very quick and strong sensibilities; but, like most Englishmen who have feelings, he found his feelings very much in his way, . . and, looking for happiness elsewhere than in them, he wished that his feelings should be deadened rather than quickened. And, in truth, the English character and English circumstances make it so seldom possible to derive happiness from the exercise of the sympathies, that it is not wonderful if they count for little in an Englishman's scheme of happiness. In most other countries the paramount importance of the sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness is an axiom, taken for granted, rather than needing any formal statement; but most English thinkers seem to regard them as necessary evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and compassionate, but not as necessary elements of their happiness."

It is well to see ourselves as we appear to the eyes of foreigners, and a foreigner Mr. Mill may be almost said to have been, so entirely had he been brought up aloof from the great currents of English tradition, so persistently had his early views and character been molded in antagonism to the sentiments of English society. We cannot, therefore, expect to learn from him. what is best in the inner life of England; but, as to its defects, we may gather something from his not too favorable verdict.

It is, no doubt, the tradition of the English gentleman, whatever feelings he may have, to do his best to conceal them. The temperament of the Teutonic races, we know, is undemonstrative, as compared with the peoples of the South; and in England this natural self-repression is increased by the training that our cultivated men receive in the public schools and by the discipline of the army and the great public professions. These accustom men not only to control, but to disguise, all their deepest emotions. Indeed, the habitual manner of Englishmen, after they have passed childhood, confines all show of affection to members

of their own home circle, sometimes bestowing it scantily enough even upon these. This, perhaps, is the reason why Englishmen are so little liked by foreigners; the reason, too, why they succeed so badly in conciliating conquered races. All expression of sympathy toward strangers they restrain so sternly, that these believe they have no sympathy to express. Hence, while they respect the strength and the justice of the English, they dislike them.

Strangers who saw only this side of English character might naturally fancy that this rigid self-restraint would stifle all poetry. Yet, in spite of this habitual frigidity, it may be as the natural recoil from it, we have in our poetry as strong and deep a volume of emotion as any European nation can show. It is not only that the poet is by nature a fiery creature, incapable of toning down his spontaneous feelings to the rules of social convention, but he has in his art a safety-valve for the strongest emotion, a medium through which he can express feelings that he would not venture to whisper into the friendliest ear, much less to commit to the language of plain prose. Perhaps, too, the frigid decorum that dominates English society may serve to intensify by contrast the warmth of pent-up emotion that seeks relief in poetry. Just as we see that persons who are habitually reserved, if once they break through their wonted bonds, lay stronger hold on the hearts of their hearers than those who are always effusive.

In turning to our English poets, to see how they have dealt with the affection of friendship, it is necessary to remember that the word with us bears a much more definite and restricted meaning than pikia had among the Greeks. The Greek word includes all finest affection, all highest heart-sympathy, whether bestowed on those within the range of kindred or on those beyond it; while it is to regard for the latter, for those who are not kindred, but chosen by affection, that we generally confine the term friendship. Again, in Greece, for lack of the higher family life, and of a religion in which the heart could rest, phía absorbed into itself most of the pure and tender devotion that in modern life enters into the conjugal and the parental affections. And with us religion wears so much more inward and attractive an aspect, that it draws to itself much for which affectionate and devout natures of the old time found an outlet only in piz. But while this may be said on the one side, it is

no less true, on the other, that hearts into which the Christian spirit has found entrance have thereby gained a great background, to elevate and hallow earthly affection by heavenward sympathy and immortal hope.

If England has poured forth her genuine heart through any literary channel, it is through her poetry. Therein we see the deepest affections, and especially the friendships of many of her most gifted children, age after age, embalmed in forms of undying beauty. And if, in attempting to bring together a few of the most striking of these records, I confine myself to the chief poets of each succeeding period, I am well aware that I must needs pass unnoticed many another record, as worthy of remembrance as those I have cited. Still, it will be something to have suggested, however cursorily, a line of thought that other, younger persons may at leisure follow out for themselves.

A friend and younger contemporary of Shakspere, one of his boon companions, who had shared with him many a merrymeeting, and, as tradition says, that last merry-meeting at Stratford immediately before his fatal illness, has left a record of his admiration and affection for him. Ben Jonson, who was a stern enough censor of most men, speaks of gentle Will as "honest, and of an open and free nature," and says that his "mind and manners are reflected in his well-tuned and wellfiled lines." In the poem addressed "To the Memory of my Beloved Master, William Shakspere," Jonson apostrophizes him as

"Soul of the age!

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!"

"Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time."

"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,

That so did take Eliza and our James!

Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage

Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.”

These lines, if less grand than Milton's well-known epitaph, show quite as high an appreciation of Shakspere's genius. In

all that Ben Jonson has said of him, both in verse and in his recorded sayings, there is not only admiration for him as a poet, but love for him as a friend.

With so many more important things before me, I need hardly pause over the lines that Jonson's host, Drummond of Hawthornden, styling himself "Damon," addressed to his friend, or brother poet, Sir William Alexander, as "Alexis." Pass on a little later, and we come to Abraham Cowley. No poet's reputation ever underwent such a strange revolution. In his own day he was esteemed the greatest poet of the time, the equal of the best of the Greeks and Romans. Within seventy years from his death, Pope asked, "who now reads Cowley?" If that question could be asked in Pope's time, how much more may it be asked now? What is the cause of this strange reversal of contemporary judgment? Cowley was the victim of that false taste which, with many changes, had reigned since euphuism set in. He was the king of the fantastic school of poetry, in which pedantry, conceit, metaphysics, and forced wit took the place of natural thought and feeling and of natural language. In him the fashion of the day culminated, and he has paid the penalty by permanent oblivion. Yet, when moved by genuine affection and sorrow, he could shake off all his mannerisms and contortions, and pour forth his feelings in as pure, simple, and manly a style as any poet. The poetry of the seventeenth century contains no more feelingly expressed lament than that in which Cowley mourned the death of Mr. William Hervey :

"My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,
Thy end forever, and my life to moan?
O, thou hast left me all alone!

Thy soul and body, when death's agony
Besieged around thy noble heart,

Did not with more reluctance part,

Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.

"My dearest friend, would I had died for thee!
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be,
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do,

If now my griefs prove tedious, too.

"He was my friend, the truest friend on earth;
A strong and mighty influence joined our birth;
Nor did we envy the most sounding name

By friendship given of old to fame.

"Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two!

“O, if the glorious saints cease not to know
Their wretched friends who fight with life below;
Thy flame to me does still the same abide,
Only more pure and rarefied.

There while immortal hymns thou dost rehearse,
Thou dost with holy pity see

Our dull and earthly poesy,

Where grief and misery can be joined with verse."

Compare this with most of Cowley's poetry, and you will at once see the difference. It is a perilous thing for a poet to commit himself to the fashions of the hour. For not only the fashions of style change, but the fashions of thought also change, and with them the intellectual language. Only the pure language of the heart changes not. That is simple and universal, and for all time.

Milton was a solitary, self-sustained soul, and needed less than most men the support of intimate friendship. Either he dwelt apart, feeding on "the lonely rapture of a lonely mind," or he threw himself into the current of political and ecclesiastical strife. Once, however, in his twenty-ninth year, he deigned to dedicate one poem to the memory of a friend. Over his college companion, Edward King, a young man of great promise, who perished by shipwreck in the Irish Channel, Milton made a lament that for splendor of imagery and diction has been well said to be "unmatched in the whole range of English poetry, and was never again equaled by himself." "Lycidas" has been well called the tide-mark of the brightest inspiration of the seventeenth century. It glows, indeed, with a burning passion, but it is not the passion of personal affection, mourning an irreparable loss; for Milton's relation to King was not that of devoted friendship. Rather the passion of the poem comes from his long-pent brooding over the fallen state of the church, and