by Walter Pater
Pater’s suggestive and poetical treatment of medieval art fired a train, and tended to liberate an explosive revolutionary force of artistic feeling which manifested itself in intemperate extravagances for which he was indeed in no sense responsible, but which could be to a certain extent referred to his principles. Young men with vehement impulses, with no experience of the world, no idea of the solid and impenetrable weight of social traditions and prejudices, found in the principles enunciated by Pater with so much recondite beauty, so much magical charm, a new equation of values. Pater himself was to pay dearly for his guileless sincerity, his frank confidence.
In 1877, the year in which the second edition of the Renaissance was issued, appeared Mr. Mallock’s New Republic. It is a difficult question to decide to what extent a satire of the kind is justifiable. It was an extraordinarily suggestive and humorous book; and the author would no doubt justly maintain that in Mr. Rose he was merely parodying a type of the aesthetic school; but language was put into Mr. Rose’s mouth which was obviously a faithful parody of Pater’s style of writing, with an added touch of languor and extravagance. The bitterness of the satire was increased by its being cast in a conversational form, so that it would be concluded by those who did not know Pater that his conversation in a mixed society was couched in this exotic and affected vein, reaching a degree of grotesqueness on the one hand and sensuousness on the other which was bound to produce an unpleasant effect on the minds of readers. Mr. Rose is made to discourse in public in a dreamy vein in a manner which draws from Lady Ambrose, a conventional and worldly person, the comment that he always speaks of every one “as if they had no clothes on.” But there are more disagreeable innuendoes than that; and as it was inevitable from the language employed that Mr. Rose should be identified with Pater, it is hard to absolve the author from the charge of sacrificing the scrupulous justice that should have been shown to an individual to the desire for effectiveness and humour, though on the other hand an ample excuse is afforded in the youthful ebullience of the book, written, it is marvellous to reflect, when the author was still an undergraduate. Pater had indeed laid himself in one sense open to the attack, by committing to the impersonal medium of a book sentiments which could be distorted into the sensuous creed of aesthetes; to satirise the advanced type of the aesthetic school was perfectly fair, but it was unduly harsh to cause an affected and almost licentious extravagance of behaviour to be attributed to one whose private life and conversation were of so sober and simple a character. It seems clear that the satire caused Pater considerable distress. If he had been personally vain or socially ambitious, it might have gratified him to be included in so distinguished a company; but all this was entirely foreign to his retired and studious habits; he did not at all desire to have a mysterious and somewhat painful prestige thrust upon him; and though he seldom if ever spoke of the subject even to his most intimate friends, yet it is impossible not to realise that the satire must have caused him sincere pain. It was in this mood that he said to Mr. Gosse, “I wish they wouldn’t call me a ‘hedonist’; it produces such a bad effect on the minds of people who don’t know Greek.” He felt that he had been deliberately misrepresented, made unjustly notorious, and the sober and strenuous ideal of his life cruelly obscured.
Although Pater had been a pupil of Jowett’s, and although there was a rapprochement in later life, when Jowett took occasion warmly to congratulate Pater on his Plato and Platonism, there was a misunderstanding of some kind which resulted in a dissidence between them in the middle years. It has even been said that Jowett took up a line of definite opposition to Pater, and used his influence to prevent his obtaining University work and appointments. It is not impossible that this was the case. Jowett, in spite of his genius, in spite of his liberality of view and his deliberate tolerance, was undoubtedly an opportunist. He was not exactly guided by the trend of public opinion, but he took care not to back men or measures unless he would be likely to have the support of a strong section of the community, or at least conceived it probable that his line would eventually be endorsed by public opinion. Thus his religious position was based not on the fact that he wished to be in opposition to popular orthodoxy, but that he followed an enlightened line, with a belief that, in the long-run, the best intelligence of the country would adopt similar views. That this is not an over-statement is clear from Jowett’s Life, where he is revealed as a far more liberal, even destructive critic of popular religion than he allowed to appear in either his writings or public utterances.
Probably Jowett either identified Pater with the advanced aesthetic school, or supposed that at all events his teaching was adapted to strengthen a species of Hedonism, or modern Paganism, which was alien to the spirit of the age. Or possibly he was alarmed at the mental and moral attitude with which Pater was publicly credited, owing in considerable measure to the appearance of the New Republic — in which he himself was pilloried as the representative of advanced religious liberalism — and thought that on public grounds he must combat the accredited leaders of a movement which was certainly unfashionable, and which was regarded with suspicion by men of practical minds. Whatever his motives were, he certainly meant to make it plain that he did not desire to see the supposed exponents of the aesthetic philosophy holding office in the University.
One feels that Jowett, with his talent for frank remonstrance, had better have employed direct rather than indirect methods; but the fact remains that he not only disliked the tendency of Pater’s thought, but endeavoured, by means that are invariably ineffectual, to subvert his influence.
It is not difficult to arrive at Pater’s view of Jowett; he regarded his qualities, both administrative and mental, with a considerable degree of admiration. He half envied and was half amused by the skilful way in which Jowett contrived, taught by adversity and opposition, to harmonise advanced religious views with popular conceptions, and to subordinate philosophical speculation to practical effectiveness. He considered him an excellent specimen of the best kind of virtuous sophist. A letter on the subject which he contributed in 1894 to the Life of Jowett is interesting.
Speaking of his own undergraduate days, he says that Jowett’s generosity in the matter of giving undergraduates help and encouragement in their work was unprecedented, “on the part of one whose fame among the youth, though he was then something of a recluse, was already established. Such fame rested on his great originality as a writer and thinker. He seemed to have taken the measure not merely of all opinions, but of all possible ones, and to have put the last refinements on literary expression. The charm of that was enhanced by a certain mystery about his own philosophic and other opinions. You know at that time his writings were thought by some to be obscure. These impressions of him had been derived from his Essays on St. Paul’s Epistles, which at that time were much read and pondered by the more intellectual sort of undergraduates. When he lectured on Plato, it was a fascinating thing to see those qualities as if in the act of creation, his lectures being informal, unwritten, and seemingly unpremeditated, but with many a long-remembered gem of expression, or delightfully novel idea, which seemed to be lying in wait whenever, at a loss for a moment in his somewhat hesitating discourse, he opened a book of loose notes. They passed very soon into other note-books all over the University; the larger part, but I think not all of them, into his published introductions to the Dialogues. Ever since I heard it, I have been longing to read a very dainty dialogue on language, which formed one of his lectures, a sort of ‘New Cratylus.’”
At the same time Pater had no sort of inner sympathy with Jowett’s position as a priest of the Anglican Church, considering the opinions on the subject of Christian doctrine which he held, or which Pater believed him to hold. There is practically no doubt that in the review of Robert Elsmere which Pater contributed to the Guardian, he had Jowett in his mind in the following passage: —
“Of course, a man such as Robert Elsmere came to be ought not to be a clergyman of the Anglican Church
. The priest is still, and will, we think, remain, one of the necessary types of humanity; and he is untrue to his type, unless, with whatever inevitable doubts in this doubting age, he feels, on the whole, the preponderance in it of those influences which make for faith. It is his triumph to achieve as much faith as possible in an age of negation. Doubtless, it is part of the ideal of the Anglican Church that, under certain safeguards, it should find room for latitudinarians even among its clergy. Still, with these, as with all other genuine priests, it is the positive not the negative result that justifies the position. We have little patience with those liberal clergy who dwell on nothing else than the difficulties of faith and the propriety of concession to the opposite force.”
The truth is that the two temperaments were radically opposed, though they had certain philosophical interests in common. At bottom Jowett was a man of the world, and valued effectiveness above most qualities; while Pater set no particular value upon administrative energy. Jowett was indifferent to art, except in so far as it ministered to agreeable social intercourse; with Pater art provided what were the deepest and most sacred experiences of his life. Not until Pater became a growing power in the literary and artistic world, not until it became clear that he had no practical sympathy with the exponents of a bastard aestheticism, did Jowett recognise the fame of his former pupil; and as the respect of Jowett, when conceded to persons with whom he did not agree, may be recognised as having a certain value of barometrical indication, as reflecting the opinion of the world in a species of enlightened mirror, we may consider that Jowett’s expressed admiration of Plato and Platonism was a belated admission that Pater had indubitably attained to the eminence which the Professor of Greek had long before prophesied for him.
CHAPTER III. OXFORD LIFE
THE years that succeeded the first publication of the Renaissance were not years of very strenuous literary work. Pater was at this time holding the Tutorship of the College, as well as lecturing, and the official business connected with the post was considerable. A tutor is supposed to exert a general supervision over the work of his pupils, to criticise their compositions and essays, and to keep himself informed of their progress. It cannot be said that Pater’s practical effectiveness was strong enough to equip him adequately for the task. He received and criticised the essays; he responded with cordial sympathy to any direct appeals for assistance; but a tutor, to be effective, must have a power of shining, like the sun, upon the eager and the reluctant, the grateful and the unthankful alike; some pupils must be impulsively inspired; some delicately encouraged; some ironically chastised; some few must, like the image of Democracy in Tennyson’s poem, “toil onward, prick’d with goads and stings.”
Pater had little capacity for this kind of work — indeed, he did not even conceive it to be his duty; but in any case the mere routine-work was heavy. Moreover, he had to a certain extent come out of his shell, enjoyed a good deal of quiet sociability, and gained a reputation as a brilliant and paradoxical talker.
Meanwhile, as I have said, his literary output was small. His study of “Wordsworth” (1874) is a very subtle piece of criticism. It is often taken for granted that Wordsworth valued tranquillity above ardour, and thus the essay is peculiarly felicitous in pointing out that not mere contemplation, but impassioned contemplation, was the underlying purpose of the poet’s life. Pater shows that Wordsworth’s choice of incidents and situations from common life was made “not for their tameness, but for (their) passionate sincerity.” He indicates that the reason why Wordsworth selected the homelier figures of the world for his protagonists was that he might display “all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their yearning towards each other, in their darkened houses, or at their early toil.”
It is too customary with critics to draw a sharp line between Wordsworth in his moments of inspired passion and Wordsworth in the mood of solemn ineffectiveness; and thus those who write on Wordsworth too often view his work with a certain impatience, as if by an effort he could have criticised himself, and made a more emphatic selection of his own writings. But Pater, though he echoes the wish that Wordsworth could have been more severe in the matter of omission, shows the essential unity of his work, arising from the deliberate passivity with which he waited dutifully upon the gift of inspiration; and he compares him beautifully to “one of those early Italian or Flemish painters, who, just because their minds were full of heavenly visions, passed, some of them, the better part of sixty years in quiet, systematic industry.”
In fact, Pater realised, perhaps unconsciously, that what Wordsworth had written in the “Poet’s Epitaph” was as true of Wordsworth himself; “And you must love him, ere to you he will seem worthy of your love”; and thus the spirit in which he deals with Wordsworth’s work is one of a reverent tenderness, that cannot even bear to speak with the least roughness or harshness of the writings of one so sincere, so wise, so deep-hearted, even when engaged in the task of producing arid and pompous couplets, or rubbing, as Matthew Arnold says, like Indians in primeval forests, one dry stick upon another in the hope of generating a flame.
Pater is particularly alive to Wordsworth’s deep sense of what may be called the admonitus locorum, the local sanctities, the far-reaching human associations with places, dealing with them largely, “till the low walls, the green mounds, the half-obliterated epitaphs seemed full of voices.”
Again, Pater skilfully divines Wordsworth’s peculiar power “of realising, and conveying to the consciousness of the reader, abstract and elementary impressions — silence, darkness, absolute motionlessness: or, again, the whole complex sentiment of a particular place, the abstract expression of desolation in the long white road, of peacefulness in a particular folding of the hills.”
It is abundantly clear that, in the case of Wordsworth, Pater felt himself drawing near to a highly congenial personality. He speaks in another essay of the poet’s “flawless temperament, his fine mountain atmosphere of mind.” The dignity, the seriousness, the quietness, the impassioned quality of the poet’s life made a strong appeal to him, and not less the high purpose to which he dedicated his whole life: the rendering and interpreting of beautiful impressions, the desire to impart to others what gave him joy and tranquillity; and thus the whole essay is redolent of a sort of trustful affection, the mood in which a man speaks simply and sincerely of a point of view which he instinctively admires, a character that is very dear to his heart. Pater goes, indeed, so far as to say in a later essay that a careful reading of Wordsworth is probably the very best thing that can be found to counteract the faults and offences of our busy and restless generation, as helping to remind us, “amid the enormous expansion of all that is material and mechanical in life, of the essential value, the permanent ends, of life itself.”
The essay on “Charles Lamb” (1878) is another instance of Pater’s power of selecting and emphasising the congenial elements of a character. It is not the inconsequent, the reckless humour of Charles Lamb that Pater values most, his power of pursuing a humorous image, of clinging to it, as Lamb did among the rubs and adversities of the world, as a man in a beating sea might cling to a spar for his life. Pater is rather in love with the contrast of Lamb’s life, the tragic undercurrent of fate, that ran like a dark stream below his lightness, his pathetic merriment. He admires him as an artist first, because “in the making of prose he realises the principle of art for its own sake, as completely as Keats in the making of verse.” He values him for the “little arts of happiness he is ready to teach to others,” for his deep and patient friendships; he sees in him “a lover of household warmth everywhere,” a collector of things which gain a colour for him “by the little accidents which attest previous ownership.” He loves him because he “has a care for the sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak people, down to their little pathetic ‘gentili
ties,’ even; while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like Shakespeare.”
“Unoccupied,” he says, “as he might seem, with great matters, he is in immediate contact with what is real, especially in its caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart of things, and meets it more than half-way with a perfect understanding of it.” He realises, too, the fineness and largeness of Lamb’s criticism; he says that when Lamb comments on Shakespeare, he is like “a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky, and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits might seem to be abroad upon the air”; and he does, too, full justice to Lamb’s poetical appreciation of London. “Nowhere,” he says, in the melodious concluding sentence, “is there so much difference (as in London) between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the clouds roll together more grandly... the background of the great city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone steeples.”
Perhaps it may be thought that Pater’s judgment of Lamb is coloured by too strong an infusion of his own personality, and that the Charles Lamb of the essay is hardly recognisable, clothed, as he appears to be, in his critic’s very wardrobe; that Pater puts aside certain broad aspects of Lamb’s character as being less congenial to himself; but I should rather myself feel that he has indeed passed behind the smiling mask which Lamb often wore, or has, perhaps, persuaded him to doff it; and that he has thus got nearer, in fact, to this melancholy loving spirit, with its selfcondemned indulgences, its vein of mockery, its long spaces of dreariness, its acute sensibilities. Lamb, one feels, was a pilgrim in hard places, and, like Bunyan’s pilgrims, caught desperately at the fruits that hung over the wall to relieve his sadness; and yet, in another mood, he was full of a tender quietism, with a large and loving outlook upon humanity and life. Pater seems to have come from reading Lamb like a friend who has been communing with a friend. They have talked without affectation and without disguises; and thus one feels that, though there has been, under the influence of sympathy, a certain suppression or suspension of modes of speech, of aspects of thought, that had a real bearing on Lamb’s character, yet that Pater has seen the innermost heart of the man with the insight that only affection can give, an insight which subtler and harder critics seem to miss, even though the picture they may draw is incontestably truer to detail.