Essays

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Benson Arthur Christopher. Essays

PREFACE

THE EVER-MEMORABLE JOHN HALES

A MINUTE PHILOSOPHER

HENRY MORE, THE PLATONIST

ANDREW MARVELL

VINCENT BOURNE

THOMAS GRAY

WILLIAM BLAKE

THE POETRY OF KEBLE

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

THE LATE MASTER OF TRINITY (DR. W. H. THOMPSON)

HENRY BRADSHAW

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

THE POETRY OF EDMUND GOSSE

EPILOGUE

Отрывок из книги

THE churchyard at Eton is a triangular piece of ground, converging into a sharp remote angle, bordered on one side by the Long Walk, and screened from it by heavy iron railings. On the second side it is skirted and overlooked by tall irregular houses, and on the third side by the deep buttressed recesses of the chapel, venerable with ivy and mouldering grey stone.

It is a strangely quiet place in the midst of bustling life; the grumbling of waggons in the road, the hoarse calling of the jackdaws, awkwardly fluttering about old red-tiled roofs, the cracked clanging of the college clock, the voices of boys from the street, fall faintly on the ear: besides, it has all the beauty of a deserted place, for it is many years since it has been used for a burial-ground: the grass is long and rank, the cypresses and yews grow luxuriantly out of unknown vaults, and push through broken rails; the gravestones slant and crumble; moss grows into the letters of forgotten names, and creepers embrace and embower monumental urns; here and there are heaps of old carven, crumbling stones; on early summer mornings a resident thrush stirs the silence with flute-notes marvellously clear; and on winter evenings when wet, boisterous winds roll steadily up, and the tall chapel windows flame, the organ's voice is blown about the winding overgrown paths, and the memorials of the dead.

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But it would be easy to quote and quote, yet give no real idea of the fertility, the wit, the pathos of the man. All humanity is before him, and must be handled tenderly because he is a part of it himself, and because faults, like ugly features, are sent us to be modified, perhaps; to be eradicated, no!

The one strain in character which throughout afflicts him most, and for which he reserves his most distilled contempt, is the strain of unreality – the affectation whose sin is always to please, and which fails so singularly of its object. Hypocrisy, pretension, falseness – against everything which has that lack of simplicity so fatal to true life he sets his face. For the rest he can hardly read the enigma; he only states it reverently. Like the old Persian poet, he seems to say:

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