Selections From the Works of John Ruskin. Ruskin John

again, by covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.

      When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim—

      Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.

      You know him; he is near you; point him out.

      Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,

      Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?69

      This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl—

      Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;

      Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;

      Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,

      And winds shall waft it to the powers above.

      But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,

      The wondering forests soon should dance again;

      The moving mountains hear the powerful call,

      And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall.70

      This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:—

      Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid,

      When thus his moan he made:—

      "Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,

      Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie,

      That in some other way yon smoke

      May mount into the sky.

      If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,

      Headlong, the waterfall must come,

      Oh, let it, then, be dumb—

      Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now."71

      Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening: but with what different relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle might be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,—that nature is kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well what is possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,—one might think it could do as much as that!

      I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,—that so far as it is a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily some degree of weakness in the character.

      Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint says:—

      If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray,

      Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,

      "Hope not to find delight in us," they say,

      "For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure."72

      Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:—

      "Ah, why," said Ellen, sighing to herself,

      "Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,

      And nature, that is kind in woman's breast,

      And reason, that in man is wise and good,

      And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,—

      Why do not these prevail for human life,

      To keep two hearts together, that began

      Their springtime with one love, and that have need

      Of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet

      To grant, or be received; while that poor bird—

      O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me

      Been faithless, hear him;—though a lowly creature,

      One of God's simple children that yet know not

      The Universal Parent, how he sings!

      As if he wished the firmament of heaven

      Should listen, and give back to him the voice

      Of his triumphant constancy and love;

      The proclamation that he makes, how far

      His darkness doth transcend our fickle light."73

      The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. But of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly.

      Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. "As if," she says,—"I know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if." The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength.74

      It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith.