I’ the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,
    There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake
    O’erstunk their feet.

But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the ‘Pan’ of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast.

    You taught me language, and my profit on’t
    Is, I know how to curse.

Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God?  It may be either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor ’On the Heights.’

1906.

THE LIVES OF THE POETS[1]

No one needs an excuse for re-opening the Lives of the Poets; the book is too delightful.  It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but who re-opens Boswell?  Boswell is in another category; because, as every one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut.  But, on its different level, the Lives will always hold a firm and comfortable place in our affections.  After Boswell, it is the book which brings us nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson.  That is its primary import.  We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought.  Doubtless, during the process, we are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a mountain walk.  It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; but for the sake of the view.  The view from the mountain which is Samuel Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and admired, that further description would be superfluous.  It is sufficient for us to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that is due.  In one of Emerson’s poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to discuss each other’s merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing.  The parallel is close enough between this impudence and the attitude—­implied, if not expressed—­of too much modern criticism towards the sort of qualities—­the easy, indolent power, the searching sense of actuality, the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence of thought—­which went to the making of the Lives of the Poets.  There is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy:  that, in this particular instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than any squirrel that ever lived.