De Profundis by James Carl

DE PROFUNDIS

Methuen's Shilling Books MESSRS. METHUEN

announce the issue at net of a series of popular books, both Fiction and General Literature, by distinguished authors. The books are reprinted in handy form on good paper, and they are tastefully fcap. 8vo is.

bound

in cloth.

The

first

volumes

will

Fiction Marie Corelli

Jane

Under the Red Robe Stanley Weyman Lady Betty across the Water C. N. & A. M. Williamson E. Temple Thurston Robert Hichens

Mirage Barbary Sheep Spanish Gold

G. A. Birmingham

Virginia Perfect

Peggy Webling

General Literature

Profundis

The Lore

of the

Oscar Wilde

Honey Bee

Tickner Edwardes

Letters from a Self-made Merchant to his Son George Horace Lorimer Oscar Wilde Selected Poems

The

Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

Graham Balfour

The Life of John Ruskin W. The Condition of England

G. Collingwood

C. F. G. Masterman, M.P.

Methuen

Co. Ltd. 36 Essex Street, London,

W.C.

DE PROFUNDIS BY

OSCAR WILDE

METHUEN & 36

CO. LTD.

ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published at Reprinted Reprinted

is.

net

April April April

6th, 1911 6th, 1911

ign

This Book was first published February 1903 Second. Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions 7905 Sixth Edition 1906 Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Editions 7907 Eleventh and Twelfth Edi-

.... ....

tions

jyoS

Thirteenth Edition (With additional matter) Fourteenth Edition (With additional matter) Fifteenth Edition

....

190$ iqoq

/?//

PREFACE FOR

a long time considerable curiosity

has been expressed

script

known

about

PROFUNDIS,

be in

many

quires

other friends.

little

its

was the

existence

The book

introduction, I

manu-

possession,

author having mentioned to

the

which

re-

and scarcely

have only to record

any explanation. it was written by my friend during the last months of his imprisonment,

that

while

was the only work he wrote in prison, and the last work

in prose

he ever wrote.

(The 'Ballad

204698 6

DE PROFUNDIS

of Reading Gaol' was not

composed

nor even planned until he had regained his liberty.)

In sending

instructions with re-

gard to the publication of FUNDIS, Oscar '

it.

/ don't

Wilde wrote

defend

which

development

deal

of my

tellectual attitude

mental

and

the

life

inevit-

and

character

towards

explain

letter certain

with

in prison,

able evolution

PRO-

conduct.

Also there are in

passages

in-

that has

taken place ; and I want you and others wJio still stand by me and have affection

for me to know exactly in what mood and manner I hope to face the world.

course,

know

that

from one on

the

point of view,

day of my

release

PREFACE I shall be

merely passing

and

into another,

the whole

than

Still

and

from one prison when

there are times

world seems

cell,

vii

me no larger

as full of terror for me.

believe that at the

God

beginning

made a world for each separate man, and world, which

in that

should seek to

live.

At any

read

tJiose

pain

tlian the others.

parts of

not remind you is

with

evanescent

made.

you

will

course

need

how fluid a thing thought

substance

rate

letter with less

with us all

Still

within us, one

and of what an

are

our emotions

do see a sort of possible art,

I may

see

people

they really are.

That

goal towards which, through progress. (

Prison

and

life

things as

makes one

DE PROFUNDIS

viii

why

turns one to stone.

the

people outside who are deceived by the illusions

of a

They revolve with its

unreality.

see

life

and

motion.

contribute to

who are immobile both

and know.

constant

life

Whether or not

the letter does

narrow natures and

has done good.

good

hectic brains, to

have " cleansed

my bosom of much perilous

stuff"

I need

wt remind you that mere expression an artist the supreme and only is to mode of live.

which there

Of I is

life.

t/te

have

by utterance that we

many, many things for to thank the Governor

none for which

I am more

grate-

ful than for his permission to write fully to you,

and

at as great

a length as

PREFACE

I have had

desire.

For

within a

growing burden of bitterness, of

nearly two years

much of which the

have now got

rid.

other side of the prison wall there

some

are trees

black

poor

soot-besmirched

which are just breaking out into

buds of an almost

shrill green.

I know

quite well what they are going through.

They are finding I

expression.

venture to hope that

DE PROFUNDIS,

which renders so vividly, and so painfully, the effect of social debacle and imprisonment on a highly intellectual and artificial

nature, will give

many

readers

a different impression of the witty and delightful writer.

ROBERT ROSS

DE PKOFUNDIS .

SUFFERING

ment.

can

one very long mo-

cannot divide

only record

its

With

chronicle their return. itself

does not progress.

seems to

The

pain. life

circle

by seasons. moods, and

us time

It revolves,

round one centre of

paralysing immobility of a

every circumstance of which

re-

gulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that

eat and drink and

and pray, or kneel at

lie

down

least for prayer,

according to the inflexible laws of an iron

formula:

this

immobile

quality,

DE PROFUNDIS

that

makes each dreadful day

very minutest

detail

seems to communicate external

forces

whose existence

the

itself to

those

essence

very

ceaseless

in the

like its brother,

change.

seed-time or harvest, of the reapers

bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines,

of the grass in the orchard

made white

with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit

of these

we know

nothing,

and can know nothing. For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.

The very sun and

moon seem taken from the day

may

us.

Outside,

be blue and gold, but

the light that creeps

down through

the

thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-

DE PROFUNDIS barred is

window beneath which one

grey

and niggard.

sits

always

twilight in

one's

cell, as

always

one's

heart.

And

in the

twilight

sphere of thought, no sphere

The thing

that

you

than in the

less

of time, motion

more.

personally

have

long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is

happening to

happen to

member

this,

understand a

and

me now, and

again to-morrow.

and you little

in this

manner

writing.

week

later, I

Re-

be able to

will

why

will

I .

writing,

transferred here.

Three more months go over and

one knew how deeply mother dies. Her death I loved and honoured her.

was

terrible to

me; but

once a lord

DE PROFUNDIS

of language, have no words in which to express

and

She and

bequeathed

my anguish my father had

name they had made not

honoured,

literature,

archaeology, and

science,

the public history of

my own

art,

disgraced that

made

people.

name

country, I

had

eternally.

had given

that they might

make

to brutes

brutal,

to fools that they might turn

synonym then, and

low byword among low had dragged it through the

very mire.

write

but

evolution as a nation.

its

me and

noble

merely

shame.

for

folly.

still suffer,

What is

and

into a

suffered

not for pen to

paper to record.

wife,

always kind and gentle to me, rather

DE PROFUNDIS that

than

from indifferent she was,

England

all

hear

should lips,

for

irremedi-

who had

personally, hearing

new sorrow had broken

life,

still

Even people who

me.

had not known that a

all

the

herself

of sympathy

Messages

me from

affection

ill

way from Genoa

the

to break to

loss.

reached

news

the

travelled,

tidings of so irreparable, able,

into

wrote to ask that some ex-

pression of their condolence should be

conveyed to me.

Three months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of with

upon

my name and it,

tells

me that

cell door,

sentence written it is

May.

DE PROFUNDIS

pleasure

Prosperity,

may

but sorrow

fibre,

and

be rough of grain and

all

success,

common

the most sensitive

There

created things.

nothing

that stirs in the whole world of thought to which

sorrow does not vibrate in

The

and exquisite pulsation.

terrible

thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold

that chronicles the direction of forces

the

cannot see

eye

coarse.

wound

comparison

that bleeds

when

any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.

Where

there

sorrow

there

Some day people what that means. They

holy ground.

will

realise

will

know nothing

life

till

they

do.

DE PROFUNDIS and natures

When

can realise

like his

it.

was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, waited in between two policemen, I

the long

dreary corridor

the whole crowd,

whom

before

that,

an action so

sweet and simple hushed into silence,

he might gravely as,

him

passed

heaven for It

raise his hat to

me,

handcuffed and with bowed head,

was

mode down

of to

Men

by.

smaller this

love,

that

wash the

have gone to

things

spirit,

than

and with

the

saints

that.

this

knelt

feet of the poor, or

stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I

have never said one single word to

him about what he

did.

know

moment whether

to the present

do not

DE PROFUNDIS

aware that

of his action.

was even conscious not a thing for

which one can render formal thanks in

formal

words.

treasure-house of it

store

there as a secret

heart.

in I

the

keep

debt that I

glad to think I can never possibly reIt

pay.

the

tears.

embalmed and kept sweet

myrrh and cassia of When wisdom has been

many profit-

me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who

less to

give

consolation

us dust and ashes in

mouth, the

have

sought to

memory of of love

that

like a rose,

lovely, silent act

unsealed for

has

wells of pity

little,

made the

and brought

all

the

desert blossom

out of the

DE PROFUNDIS of

bitterness

har-

with the wounded, broken, and

mony

great heart of the world. able

are

into

exile

lonely

When

people

not

merely

understand,

how

beautiful

why

meant

much

was, but

action

me, and

always will mean so much, then, perhaps, they will realise spirit

The poor more

kind,

are wise,

a man's

something

alty,

pathy

who

life,

others.

what .

than

a tragedy

a misfortune, a casu-

that

calls

for

sym-

They speak of one

in prison as of

trouble' simply.

in .

charitable,

sensitive

In their eyes prison

are.

how and

they should approach me.

one

who

'in

the phrase they

always use, and the expression has the

DE PROFUNDIS

perfect

wisdom of love

own rank

people of our

With

us, prison

and such

right to

air

With

it.

different

it is

makes a man a

as I

pariah.

am, have hardly any

Our presence

and sun.

taints the pleasures of others.

are

unwelcome when we reappear.

re-

visit

the glimpses of the

us.

Our very

Those are

lovely

broken.

not for

children are taken away.

with

links

are

solitary, while our sons

are

moon

humanity

doomed still

live.

denied the one thing that might

heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. I

must say

to myself that I ruined

myself, and that nobody great or small

DE PROFUNDIS own

can be ruined except by his I

quite ready to

think

pitiless

at the present

so.

say

trying to say so, though they

hand.

not

may

moment.

This

indictment I bring without pity Terrible as was

against myself.

what

the world did to me, what I did to

myself was far more terrible I

was a man who stood

relations to the art

had

age.

the very forced

and had

afterwards.

hold such a position in their

cerned at

myself at

my manhood,

age to realise

lifetime,

ledged.

in symbolic

and culture of

realised this for

dawn of

Few men own

still.

all,

and have

acknow-

usually discerned,

by the

critic, long after

if dis-

historian, or the

both the

man and

his

DE PROFUNDIS

age have

was

made

With me

passed away. I

different.

others feel

bolic figure,

felt it.

but

myself,

and

Byron was a symwere to

his relations

the passion of his age and

its

weariness

of passion.

Mine were

more permanent, of more

noble,

to something

vital issue, of larger scope.

The

gods

everything.

had

But

given I let

almost

myself be lured

into long spells of senseless and sensual ease.

amused myself with being a

flaneur, a dandy, a

surrounded

man

myself with

of fashion.

the

smaller

natures and the meaner minds.

I be-

my own

genius,

came the

spendthrift of

and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the

DE PROFUNDIS heights,

What

new

the paradox was to

the

sensation

in the

of thought, perversity became

sphere to

went

deliberately

depths in the search for

in the sphere of passion.

at the end,

or both.

of others.

grew I

careless

of the lives

took pleasure

pleased me, and passed on.

that every

Desire,

was a malady, or a madness,

little

action of the

where I

forgot

common

day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore

what one has done

in the

chamber one has some day to I ceased to cry aloud on the housetop. be lord over myself. I was no longer secret

the captain of

know me.

it.

soul,

and did not

I allowed pleasure to

ended

horrible

dominate disgrace.

DE PROFUNDIS

There

only one thing for

me now,

absolute humility. I have lain in prison for nearly years.

two

Out of my nature has come

wild despair; an abandonment to grief

was piteous even to terrible and impotent rage that

look

and scorn

anguish that wept aloud

;

misery that could find no voice that was dumb.

of suffering.

than Wordsworth himself

Wordsworth meant when he Suffering

And

;

sorrow

Better

know what said

permanent, obscure, and dark

has the nature of

But while

;

have passed through

every possible mood

at;

bitterness

;

there

infinity.'

were

times

rejoiced in the idea that

were to be endless,

when

sufferings

could not bear

DE PROFUNDIS them

somewhere away

I find hidden

nature

something that

and suffering least of something hidden away in

the

the last thing

best

which

ultimate

have

arrived,

meaningThat

nature,

Humility. in

left

the

me, and

discovery

the

know

time.

nor

that

right out it

has

come

It could not have

later.

Had any one

It has

myself, so

at the proper

come

before,

me of it, I Had it been

told

would have rejected it. brought to me, I would have refused

found

it,

starting-

point for a fresh development.

come

that

all.

less,

like a treasure in a field, is

tells

nothing in the whole world

Now

without meaning.

want to keep

it.

must

DE PROFUNDIS

do it

so.

the one thing that has in

the elements of

a Vita it is

Nuova

for

life,

me.

that one has. lost

only

one possesses

Now

life,

things

acquire

everything

when one

has

knows that

things, that one

all

One cannot

the strangest.

except by surrendering

it,

new

of a

it.

have

realised that

me, I see quite clearly what I ought

And when

to do; in fact, must do. I use such a

phrase as that,

not say that I

external sanction or

none.

than I

far

need

not alluding to any

command.

more of an

ever was.

I admit

individualist

Nothing seems to

of the smallest value except what

one gets out of

oneself.

nature

DE PROFUNDIS mode

seeking a fresh

That the

of self-realisation.

And

concerned with.

thing that I have got to do

first

is all

free

myself from

any possible

bitterness of feeling against the world. I

completely penniless, and abso-

Yet

lutely homeless.

there are worse

things in the world than that. quite candid

than go bitterness

out in

when from

say this

heart

that rather

prison against

with the

would gladly and readily beg If I bread from door to door.

world, I

got nothing from the house of the rich

would get something at the house of the poor. Those who have much I

are often greedy

always share.

;

those

who have

would not a

bit

little

mind

DE PROFUNDIS

sleeping in the cool grass in

and when

winter came

warm

the

myself by

summer,

on sheltering close

thatched

under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. rick, or

The

external things of

me now

seem

life

of no importance at

all.

You

can see to what intensity of individual-

ism

have

rather,

arrived

the journey

for

arriving

long,

and

'where I walk there are thorns.'

know

course I

on the highway that

ever I

night-time to

the

prison,

moon.

on the other

that to ask alms

not to be

lot,

and

lie

in the cool grass at

will

be to write sonnets

When will

be waiting

out of for

side of the big iron-studded

DE PROFUNDIS and he

gate,

own

of his

tion of I

the symbol, not merely

but of the

affection,

if I

may

live

affec-

I believe

others besides.

many

to have

enough about eighteen months that

any

on for rate, so

not write beautiful books,

at least read

beautiful books;

and what joy can be greater ? After that, I hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty.

But were things a friend

different

in the

left

world

am and the

I to accept the wallet

cloak of sheer penury free

from

scorn, life

with

all

had

not

were there

;

not a single house open to

had

in pity

;

and ragged long as I

resentment, hardness,

would be able to

face

mucn more calm and

DE PROFUNDIS

confidence than I would were

and

in purple

fine

my body and the soul

linen,

me sick with hate. And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really want love you will

within

find it waiting for you.

need not say that my task does not end there. It would be comparatively I

easy

before me. climb,

valleys

And

through.

of myself.

There

did.

have

hills

much I

much more

far steeper to

darker

have to get

pass

it all

out

Neither religion, morality,

nor reason can help

all.

Morality does not help me.

born antinomian.

who

exceptions, not for

laws.

are

made

for

But while

one of those

see that there

DE PROFUNDIS

nothing wrong in what one does, that there

one becomes.

I see

something wrong in what It is well to have learned

that.

The

Religion does not help me.

what

that others give to

faith

unseen, I

give to what one can touch, and look

gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of

at.

actual

experience

perfect and

may be, who have it

earth,

complete

for like

many

creed

too

made

complete,

or all of those

placed their heaven in this

I have found in

not merely

the beauty of heaven, but the horror of

hell

religion like

also.

all,

When

as if

feel

think I

about

would

to found an order for those

who

DE PROFUNDIS

cannot

believe

the

Confraternity

the Faithless, one might

on an

altar,

a priest, in

call

it,

where

on which no taper burned, whose heart peace had no

might celebrate with unand a chalice empty of

dwelling,

blessed bread

Every thing to be true must

wine.

become a

religion.

should

have

faith.

own

Its

which makes not

than

martyrs,

faith

must be nothing external symbols must be of my

Only that

creating.

find

its

less

saints, and praise God having hidden Himself from

agnosticism,

to me.

agnosticism

its

But whether

man.

And

ritual

sown

has

should reap daily for

its

own

secret

form.

within

spiritual

If I

may

myself, I

DE PROFUNDIS shall it

never find

already,

it:

have not got

if I

come

will never

to me.

Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am convicted are

wrong and unjust

and

laws,

the system under which I have suffered a

wrong and unjust system.

how,

But, some-

have got to make both of these

And exactly

things just and right to me. as in

what a

Art one

only concerned with

particular thing

moment ethical

at a particular

to oneself, so

also in the

evolution of one's character.

have got to make everything that has

happened to

me good

for

me.

The

plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded finger -tips

into

grow

oakum

dull

till

one's

with pain, the

DE PROFUNDIS

menial

and

offices

finishes,

with which each day begins

the harsh orders that routine

seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that

makes sorrow grotesque to look

at,

the silence, the solitude, the shame

each and

all

of these things I have to

transform into

There

spiritual

experience.

not a single degradation of the

body which

must not

try and

make

into a spiritualising of the soul. T

want

to get to the point

when

shall be able to say quite simply, and

without affectation, that the two great turning-points in

my life

me me

say that prison

father sent society sent

were when

Oxford, and

to prison.

when

I will

not

the best thing that

could have happened to

me;

for that

DE PROFUNDIS

phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. say, or hear

typical a child of perversity, I

would sooner

said of me, that I

and

and the

for that perversity's sake,

turned the good things of

evil,

was so

age, that in

evil things of

my life my life

to to

good.

What by

said,

however, by myself or

others, matters

thing that

remainder

The important

little.

thing, the thing that

lies

before me, the

have to do,

days

the brief

not to

maimed, marred, and incomplete, absorb into

my nature

done to me, to make to accept

reluctance.

without

all it

be to

that has been part of me,

complaint, fear,

The supreme vV?

DE PROFUNDIS

Whatever

shallowness.

realised

right.

When

was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It is It was ruinous advice. first

only by realising what I

that I have

found comfort of any kind.

Now

advised by others to try on

release

to forget that I have ever been in a prison at

equally

all.

fatal.

know

that would be

would mean that

would always be haunted by an

intoler-

able sense of disgrace, and that those

things that are

meant

for

much

beauty of anybody the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the

for

else

the

silence of great nights, the rain falling

DE PROFUNDIS

through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making

would

all

be tainted for me, and lose

their healing

power and

communicating

own

of one's

power of one's

regret

to arrest one's

To deny

development.

their

joy.

experiences

periences

silver

one's

own

own ex-

to put a lie into the lips

own

life.

less

than a

denial of the soul.

For just of

all

kinds,

less

as the

body absorbs things things common and unclean

than those that the priest or a

vision has cleansed,

and converts them

into swiftness or strength, into the play

of beautiful muscles and the moulding of

fair flesh, into

of the hair, the

the curves and colours

lips,

the eye

;

so the soul

DE PROFUNDIS

in its turn has its

nutritive functions

and can transform into noble moods

also,

of thought and passions of high import

what ing

in itself is base, cruel

nay, more,

;

may

most august modes can often reveal

and degrad-

find in

these

its

of assertion, and

itself

most perfectly

through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.

The

fact

common

having

prisoner of a

must frankly

may

been

common

the

gaol I

accept, and, curious as

seem, one of the things I shall have

to teach myself

not to be ashamed of

must accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been

punished, one might just as well never

have been punished at

all.

course

DE PROFUNDIS there are

many

things of which I was

convicted that I had not done, but then there are

many

things of which I was

convicted that I had done, and a greater

which

as the

still

number of things in my life for was never indicted at all. And

gods are strange, and punish us

good and humane in us as much as for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one is

for

what

punished for the good as well as for the

evil

doubt that be.

one does.

that it

helps

one,

not

should

help

and not to be too

conceited about either.

as I

have no

quite right one should

one, to realise both,

ashamed of

And

I then

punishment,

hope not to be, I shall be able

DE PROFUNDIS

40 to

and

think,

walk,

and

live

with

freedom.

Many men on

their release carry their

prison about with them into the

and hide

air,

as a secret disgrace in their

and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched that they should have to hearts,

and

so,

of society that

should force them to

Society takes upon itself the

so.

right

wrong, terribly wrong, it

on the

inflict

appalling punishment

individual, but

has the

also

supreme

vice of shallowness, and fails

to realise

what

has done.

man's punishment to himself; that

him

at the very

over,

to say,

When

the

leaves

him

moment when

abandons its

highest

DE PROFUNDIS

duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those

whom

has punished, as people

shun a creditor whose debt they cannot

whom they

pay, or one on

have

inflicted

an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. I

can claim on

what I have realise

what

side that if I realise

suffered,

society

has inflicted

should

me and ;

that there should be no bitterness or

hate on either side.

Of course

know

that from one point

of view things will be for

made

different

than for others; must indeed,

by the very nature of the case, be so.

The poor

thieves

made

and outcasts who

are imprisoned

here with

many

more fortunate than I

respects

are

DE PROFUNDIS

am.

The

green

field

little

grey city &t

way

that saw their sin

to find those

who know nothing

small

;

of what

they have done they need go no further than a bird might light

fly

and the dawn

world

shrivelled

;

between the twibut for

the

to a handsbreadth,

my name

and everywhere I turn written on the rocks in

lead.

For

have come, not from obscurity into the

momentary notoriety of

crime, but from

a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy, to myself to have

required

showing,

and sometimes seem shown, that

indeed

between

famous and the infamous there one

step, if as

Still,

much

the

but

as one.

in the very fact that people will

DE PROFUNDIS me

recognise all

about

wherever

and know

I go,

life, as far as its follies go, I

can discern something good for me. will

force on

asserting myself

the necessity of again as

and

artist,

If I can pro-

soon as I possibly can.

duce only one beautiful work of art I shall

be able to rob malice of

and cowardice of

its sneer,

its

out the tongue of scorn by the

And

life

be,

problem to me, I to

life.

am no

venom,

and to pluck roots.

surely

less

is,

a problem

People must adopt some

atti-

tude towards me, and so pass judgment

both on themselves and me. Slot

say I

individuals.

care to

need

not talking of particular

The only people with

now

are

would

artists

and

DE PROFUNDIS

who have

people

suffered

know what beauty

know what sorrow demands on

is:

life.

nobody I

all

having been punished

must

my own

making any

life as

my own a whole

;

attain

one of the for

to,

first

the sake

perfection, and because

so imperfect.

Then Once by

else in-

not to be ashamed of

I feel that

points

who

that I have said

simply concerned with

mental attitude towards

and

those

and those who

is,

Nor am

me.

terests

must

knew

instinct.

once in

was akin to

learn

it,

to be happy.

knew

it,

was always springtime

heart.

joy.

how

or thought I

I filled

temperament

my life

to the

very brim with pleasure, as one might

DE PROFUNDIS fill

a cup to the very brim with wine.

Now

pletely

standpoint, and

conceive happiness difficult for

from a com-

life

approaching

new

me.

often

even

extremely

remember during

term at Oxford reading in Pater's Renaissance that book which has had

first

such strange influence over

how Dante those

who

places

low

life

the Inferno

wilfully live in sadness

going to the college library

;

and

and turning

to the passage in the Divine

where beneath the those

who were

dreary

Comedy marsh lie

sullen in the sweet

air,'

saying for ever and ever through their sighs '

Tristi

fummo

Nell aer dolce che dal sol

s'allegra.'

DE PROFUNDIS

46 I

knew

the church condemned acddia,

but the whole idea seemed to

quite

fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied,

a priest life

who knew nothing about real invent. Nor could I under-

would

stand

how Dante, who

says that

sorrow

remarries us to God,' could have been so harsh to those

who were enamoured

if any such there really had no idea that some day this

of melancholy, were.

would become to temptations of

While I

longed to

When I

after

was die.

one of the greatest

life.

Wandsworth was

two months

one

prison desire.

in the infirmary

was transferred here, and found myself

growing

gradually

health, I

was

filled

better

physical

with rage.

I deter-

DE PROFUNDIS mined

commit

day on which I time that I

suicide left

mood

evil

made up my mind

gloom

to smile again I

on the very

prison.

After a

passed away, and

to live, but to wear

as a king wears :

purple:

never

to turn whatever house

entered into a house of mourning:

make my friends walk slowly in with me: to teach them

ness

melancholy

the true secret of

life

maim them with an alien sorrow mar them with my own pain. Now I quite differently.

see

came

to see

their faces

their

me still

to to

feel

would be

both ungrateful and unkind of pull so long a face that

sad-

that

when my

friends

they would have to make longer in order to show

sympathy;

or,

desired

DE PROFUNDIS

to invite

entertain them,

down

them

silently to bitter herbs

baked meats.

sit

and funeral

must learn how to be

cheerful and happy.

The

last

two occasions on which

was allowed to

see

tried to be as cheerful as possible,

show

friends here, I

cheerfulness,

and

order to

make them some

slight return for their

trouble in coming

all

to see me. I

know, but

that pleases for

it is

the

way from town

only a slight return, the one, I feel certain,

them most.

saw

an hour on Saturday week, and I

tried to give the fullest possible expres

sion of the delight I really felt at our

meeting. ideas I

And that, in the views and am here shaping for myself, I

DE PROFUNDIS am

my for

quite right

fact that

now

shown to me by the time since

for the first

imprisonment

have a real desire

life.

There

before

would regard

that I

tragedy

if I

much

see

life,

know what

which

Sorrow, then, and one,

my new

less

mode

world

I think

is ?

is.

have all

than a

you want to

new world

you can guess what world

it.

and

art

a fresh

to me. this

I long to live so that

can explore what

new world

terrible

little

new developments

each one of which

of perfection. I

died before I was allowed

to complete at any rate a I

been

that

the

living.

teaches

DE PROFUNDIS

I used to live entirely for pleasure, I

shunned suffering and sorrow of every I

kind.

ignore

hated both.

them

them, that

resolved

as far as possible is

to say, as

to treat

modes of im-

They were not part of my perfection. scheme of life. They had no place in

my philosophy. My as

life

Goethe's lines

quote

written by Car-

book he had given her years

and translated by him,

ago,

who knew

a whole, used often

lyle in a

also

mother,

fancy,

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the midnight hours Weeping and waiting for the morrow, He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.'

They were the

lines

which that noble

DE PROFUNDIS Queen

whom

Prussia,

Napoleon

treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation and exile;

they were the lines

mother often

quoted in the troubles of her later I

life.

absolutely declined to accept or ad-

mit the enormous truth hidden in them. I

could not understand

how

ber quite well that I did not

it.

used to

want to eat

rememtell

her

bread

in sorrow, or to pass

any night weepand for a more bitter ing watching dawn. I

had no idea that

special

things

store for

my But

life,

me:

was one of the

that the Fates had in that for a whole year of

indeed, I

was to do

has

portion

little else.

been

meted

DE PROFUNDIS

out to

months

and during the

;

after

have,

last

terrible

feM

difficul-

and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in

ties

the

heart

people

who

One

discerns

cerned

without wis-

use phrases

dom sometimes mystery.

Clergymen and

pain.

talk of suffering as a

really

revelation.

never

dis-

One approaches

the

things

before.

one

whole of history from a different standpoint.

What

through

one

instinct,

had

about

felt art,

lectually and emotionally

dimly, intel-

realised with

perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension. I

now

see

that

sorrow, being the

supreme emotion of which

man

cap-

DE PROFUNDIS able, all

at once the type

great

always

What

art.

looking

for

the

test of

artist

mode

one and indivisible

reveals.

preoccupied with

arts

Of such modes

of existence there are not a few

and the

which the out-

expressive of the inward:

which form

which soul and body are

existence in

ward

and

the

youth youth

serve as a model for us at one

may moment

another

think that, in tiveness

its

we may

subtlety and

impression,

its

like to

sensi-

suggestion

of a spirit dwelling in external things

and making air,

its

raiment of earth and

of mist and city alike, and in

morbid tones,

its

moods, and

sympathy and colours, modern

landscape

DE PROFUNDIS

54 art

was

realising for us pictorially

such plastic perfection

realised in

the

subject

what

Greeks.

Music, in which

all

absorbed in expression and

cannot be separated from

it,

a com-

plex example, and a flower or a child

example, of what I mean

simple

but sorrow in life

and

;

the ultimate type both

art.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous.

But behind sorrow there

always sorrow.

wears no mask.

Pain, unlike pleasure,

Truth in

art is

not

any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence; it

not the resemblance of shape to

shadow,

of the

form

mirrored in

DE PROFUNDIS

the crystal to the form itself;

from a hollow

echo coming

more than in

hill,

moon and

Truth in with

art

itself:

For

the unity of a thing

the soul

made

the body instinct with

spirit.

truth.

illusions

made other,

eye

Other

of the

no truth com-

There are times

sorrow.

when sorrow seems only

the outward rendered ex-

this reason there is

parable

moon

Narcissus to Narcissus.

pressive of the inward:

incarnate

any

a silver well of water

the valley that shows the

the

it is

things or

to be the

may be

the appetite,

blind the one and cloy the

but

worlds been

out

built,

sorrow

have

the

and at the birth of

a child or a star there

pain.

DE PROFUNDIS

More than

there

this,

about sorrow

an intense, an extraordinary

reality.

have said of myself that

who

was one

stood in symbolic relations to the

and

art is

culture

There

age.

man in this with me who

not a single wretched

Wretched

place

along

does not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of

life

For the

life.

suffering.

and

us,

that

what what

is is

sweet

all

so sweet

bitter

inevitably direct

When we

hidden behind everything. begin to live,

secret

what

bitter,

our desires

towards pleasures, and seek not merely for

month

twain

honeycomb,' but for taste

all

feed

our years to

no other food, ignorant

all

the

DE PROFUNDIS we may

while that

really be

starving

the soul.

remember talking once subject to one of the most I

personalities

whose

woman,

have

ever

this

beautiful

known: and

sympathy

noble

kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of

been

not

does

all

else

description;

really assisted

know

it,

me, though

bear the

more than any my in the whole world has, and

burden of one

imprisonment, have

beyond power and

one who has she

troubles

through the mere fact of her exist-

ence, through her

partly

fluence

an a

being what

she

and partly an insuggestion of what one ideal

might become

well as a real help

DE PROFUNDIS

towards becoming

it;

a soul that ren-

ders the

common

air sweet,

what

spiritual

seem as simple and

and makes

natural as sunlight or the sea

whom

beauty and

in hand,

one for

sorrow walk hand

and have the same message.

the occasion of which I

ing I recall distinctly

how

am I

think-

said

her that there was enough suffering in

one narrow London lane to show that

God

did not love man, and that where-

ever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child in

over

some

little

a fault that

garden

had or

weeping had not committed, the whole face of

was completely marred. I waf She told me so, but entirely wrong. I could not believe her. I was not in creation

DE PROFUNDIS

the sphere in which such belief was to

be attained that

possible

Now

to.

of some kind

love

explanation

seems to

the only

the

extraor-

dinary amount of

suffering that there

in the world.

I cannot conceive of

any other explanation. I am convinced is no other, and that if the

that there

world has indeed, as I have built

of sorrow,

been

said,

has been built by

the hands of love, because in no other soul of man, for

way could the the

world

was

made, reach

stature of its perfection.

the

whom

the

full

Pleasure for

body, but pain for the

beautiful

beautiful soul.

When

I say that I

these things

convinced of

speak with too

much

DE PROFUNDIS

Far

pride.

off,

one can see the

it in

so a child

could.

realise

a child

And

But with me and different.

thing

but one loses

seems as

It if

a summer's day.

could reach

God.

city of

wonderful that

such as

a perfect pearl,

One can

a single

moment,

in the long hours that

follow with leaden feet.

diffi-

cult to keep 'heights that the soul

think

gain.' competent eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with

who

in prison I

lie

need not

tell

again, nor of the weariness and despair

that

creep back

and into the

cell

into

one's

cell,

of one's heart, with

such strange insistence

that one

has,

DE PROFUNDIS as

were, to garnish and sweep one's

house for their coming, as for an un-

welcome guest, or a a slave whose slave

bitter master, it

one's chance

or choice to be.

And, though find

may is

at present

friends

a hard thing to believe,

true none the less, that for

freedom and idleness and comfort

more easy to learn the than

for

them living it is

lessons of humility

me, who begin

the day

by going down on ing

the floor

life

with

strictions

most it

its

my knees and washmy cell. For prison

endless privations and re-

makes one

terrible thing

breaks one's heart

to be broken

rebellious.

about

it is

hearts are

but that

The

not that

made

turns one's

DE PROFUNDIS

One sometimes

heart to stone.

feels

only with a front of brass and

that

it is

of scorn that one can get through

lip

the day at

all.

And

he who

in a state

of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use

the phrase of which the Church fond

so rightly fond, I

mood

in life as in art the

dare say

for

of rebellion

closes up the channels of the soul, and

shuts out the airs of heaven.

Yet

learn these lessons here, if I

them anywhere, and must be

my feet

are

to learn

filled

with

on the right road and

joy

face set towards

called beautiful,'

must

the gate which

though

may

fall

many

times in the mire and often in the mist

astray.

This

New Life, as through my

love of

DE PROFUNDIS Dante

sometimes to

I like

course no

new

life

and evolution, of

member when

was

round

ing

call

it, is

but simply the

all,

by means of development,

Continuance,

to one of

former at

friends as

I re-

life.

Oxford saying we were stroll-

Magdalen's

narrow

bird-

haunted walks one morning in the year before I took

degree, that I

wanted

to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the

garden of the world, and that I was going out

into

passion hi

went

out,

the world soul.

and so

And

with that so,

I lived.

indeed,

only

mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of

and

what seemed

the sun-lit side of the garden,

shunned the other

side

for

its

DE PROFUNDIS

64-

shadow and

its

Failure,

gloom.

sorrow, despair, suffer-

grace, poverty,

ing, tears even, the broken

come from

dis-

lips

pain,

words that

remorse that

makes one walk on

thorns, conscience

that

self

condemns,

abasement

that

punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its

head, the anguish that chooses sack-

cloth for

its

raiment and into

drink puts gall

of which

all

was

its

own

these were things

afraid.

And

as I

had

determined to know nothing of them, I

was forced to

turn, to

feed on

taste each of

for a single

having lived for pleasure. full, as

them, to have for a

season, indeed, no other food at

I don't regret

them

all.

moment

I did it to the

one should do everything that one

DE PROFUNDIS

There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul does.

into a cup of wine.

went down the

primrose path to the sound of flutes. lived

tinued the same

wrong because I

ing.

life

had to pass

course

would have been

on.

The

its secrets

all this is

prefigured in

to have con-

would have been

of the garden had

But

on honeycomb.

limit-

other half

for

also.

foreshadowed and

books.

Some

The Happy Prince, some of The Young King, notably in the

it is it

pass-

age where the bishop says to the kneel*

ing boy,

Is not

He who made

misery

wiser than thou art'? a phrase which

when

wrote

seemed to

more than a phrase

;

little

a great deal of

DE PROFUNDIS

66 is

hidden away in the note of

doom

that like a purple thread runs through

the texture of Dorian Gray, in The Critic as Artist it is set forth in

colours

written down, and to read

it is

;

recurring

motifs

refrains

make Salome

a piece of music and bind

a ballad

the

;

the

man who from

moment

the is

incarnate.

make

of one's

life

one less

every is

together of

liveth for

the image ot for

It could not

so like

the bronze of the

Sorrow that abideth

otherwise.

has to

whose

poem

prose

image of the 'Pleasure that '

too easy

in letters

one of the

many

Man

The Soul of

;

single

what

have been

what one

than

ever'

moment is

going

one

has

DE PROFUNDIS Art

been. is

a symbol, because

man

a symbol. It

can fully attain to

if I

is,

it,

ultimate realisation of the artistic

For the

artistic

life

simply self-de-

Humility in the

velopment.

the life.

artist

his frank acceptance of all experiences,

just as love in the artist

simply the

sense of beauty that reveals to the world its

body and

its

soul.

In Marine the

Epicurean Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion, in the deep, sweet, and austere sense of the

word.

But Marius

and one to template

whom

the

appropriate

is little

more than

an ideal spectator indeed,

a spectator:

spectacle

emotions,'

given 'to conof

which

life

with

Words-

DE PROFUNDIS

worth defines

as the poet's true

aim

;

yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a too

little

much occupied with the come-

liness of the

notice

sorrow that he I

benches of the sanctuary

that

the sanctuary of

gazing

at.

see a far more intimate and im-

mediate connection between life

of Christ and the true

artist

;

and

I take a

reflection that

made

Man

that

Christ-like

life

of the

life

keen pleasure

in the

own and bound me The Soul

to her wheel I had written in

true

long before sorrow had

days her

the

who would

must be

lead

entirely and

absolutely himself, and had

taken

types not merely the shepherd on

the

hillside

and the prisoner

in his cell,

DE PROFUNDIS

whom

the world

but also the painter to is

a pageant and the poet for

world

a song.

some Paris

physics had but

cafe,

the

remember saying

once to Andre Gide, as in

whom

sat together

that while

meta-

little real interest for

me,

and morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not

be transferred im-

mediately into the sphere of Art and there find

Nor

its

is it

complete fulfilment.

merely that we can discern

in Christ that close

union of personality

with perfection which forms the real distinction

between

the

romantic movement in basis of his nature

classical

life,

and

but the very

was the same as that

of the nature of the artist

an intense

DE PROFUNDIS

and flamelike imagination. in the entire sphere of

human

realised

relations

that imaginative sympathy which in the

sphere

of Art

creation.

the

sole

secret

the

understood

leprosy

of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those

who

live for

pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich.

Some one wrote you

are not

in trouble,

When

on your pedestal you are How remote was the

not interesting.' writer from

'the Secret

what Matthew Arnold of Jesus.'

calls

Either would

have taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if

you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and for pleasure or for pain, write

up on the walls of your

DE PROFUNDIS house in the

letters for

moon

to silver,

the sun to gild and '

Whatever happens '

to oneself happens to another. Christ's place indeed

His whole sprang

conception

right

out

with the poets.

Humanity

the

imagination

and can only be realised by it. What God was to the pantheist, man was to Him. He was the first to conceive the Before his

divided races as a unity.

time there had

been gods

and men,

and, feeling through the mysticism of

sympathy that

made

in himself each

incarnate,

calls

had been

himself the

Son of the one or the Son of the other,

according to

his

mood.

than any one else in history he wakes hi us that

temper of wonder to which

DE PROFUNDIS

romance always something to

appeals.

There

still

almost incredible in the

idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining

that he could bear on his

own

the burden of the entire world

shoulders :

all

that

had already been done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered :

the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of

Alexander

vi.,

and

him who was

Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun the sufferings of those whose :

and whose dwelling among the tombs oppressed nation-

names is

are legion

alities, factory children, thieves, people

in prison, outcasts, those

who

are

dumb

under oppression and whose silence heard

only of

God; and not merely

this

but actually achieving

imagining

DE PROFUNDIS so that at the present

it,

who come

in contact

even though they

ality,

moment

all

with his person-

may

neither

bow

to his altar nor kneel before his priest,

some way

their sin

find that the ugliness of

taken away and the beauty of

their sorrow revealed to them. I

had

That

and Sophocles are of his entire life also

of poems. is

he ranks

said of Christ that

with the poets.

For

true.

Shelley

company. But the most wonderful his

pity and terror

there

nothing in the entire cycle of Greek

tragedy purity

touch the

it.

The

protagonist

absolute

raises

the

scheme to a height of romantic from which the sufferings of Thebes

entire art

and Pelops'

line are

their very horror

DE PROFUNDIS

excluded, and shows

was when he said

drama that

how wrong Aristotle

in his treatise

on the

would be impossible to

bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain.

Nor in ^Eschylus nor Dante,

stern masters of tenderness, in

human

speare, the most purely

great

artists, in

those

Shakeall

the whole of Celtic

the

myth

and legend, where the loveliness of the world is shown through a mist of tears,

man

and the

life

the

of a flower,

life

that,

for

of a

sheer

no more than there anything

simplicity

pathos

wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic effect, can be said to equal or

even approach the passion.

The

last act of Christ's

little

companions, one of

supper with his

whom

has already

DE PROFUNDIfc sold

him

for a price

;

quiet moon -lit garden coming close to him

him with

a kiss

the anguish in the

the false friend

;

to betray

the friend

;

believed in him, and on

who

whom

still

on a

rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge

for

Man, denying him

bird cried to the loneliness,

his

dawn;

his

submission,

ance of everything

;

his

the

own

utter

accept-

and along with

it all

such scenes as the high priest of ortho-

doxy rending the for

his

magistrate

raiment in wrath, and of

civil justice

calling

water in the vain hope of cleansing

himself of that stain of innocent blood that

tory

makes him the ;

scarlet figure of his-

the coronation ceremony of sorrow,

one of the most wonderful things

DE PROFUNDIS

the whole of recorded time

;

the cruci-

Innocent One before the eyes

fixion of the

of his mother and of the disciple

he loved;

the

soldiers

gambling

throwing dice for his clothes rible its

whom

;

and

the ter-

death by which he gave the world

most eternal symbol; and

burial in the

tomb of the

rich

his final

man,

his

body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices

and perfumes as though he son. When one con-

had been a king's

from the point of view alone one cannot but be grateful

templates of art

all this

that the supreme office of the Church

should be the playing of the tragedy

without

the

shedding of blood:

the

mystical presentation, by means of dia-

logue and costume and gesture even, of

DE PROFUNDIS the Passion of her Lord

;

a source of pleasure and

and

it is

awe

remember that the ultimate

always

the Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to is

survival of art,

to be found in the servitor answering

the priest at Mass.

Yet the whole tirely

one is

may

life

of Christ

sorrow and beauty be

in their

so en-

made

meaning and manifestation

really an

idyll,

though

ends with

the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over the face of the earth,

and the stone

of the sepulchre.

him

as a

rolled to the door

One always

thinks of

young bridegroom with his com-

panions, as indeed he somewhere describes

himself; as a shepherd straying through

a valley with his sheep in search of green

DE PROFUNDIS

meadow

or cool

stream

;

a singer

trying to build out of the music the walls of the City of

God

;

or as a lover

whose love the whole world was too

for

small. as

His miracles seem to as

exquisite

to be

the coming of spring,

and quite

as natural.

at all in

believing that such was the

charm of

his personality that his

I see

difficulty

mere

presence could bring peace to souls in anguish, and that those

garments or

his

who touched

his

hands forgot their pain by on the highway ;

or that as he passed

life

people

who had

seen nothing of

mystery saw it clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but

life's

that of pleasure heard for the

the

voice

love

and

first

found

time

DE PROFUNDIS '

musical as Apollo's lute

;

or that evil

men

passions fled at his approach, and

whose dull unimaginative but a

mode

the grave

of death rose as

when he

were from

them

called

when he taught on the

had been

lives

;

or that

hillside the

titude forgot their hunger

and

mul-

thirst

and

the cares of this world, and that to his friends

who

him

listened to

as he sat

meat the coarse food seemed

delicate,

and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and sweetness of nard.

Renan gracious

in fifth

cording to St. it

says

his

Vie

Jesus

de the

that

gospel

ac-

Thomas, one might

call

gospel,

somewhere that

Christ's great

achievement was that he made himself

DE PROFUNDIS

much

loved

had been during certainly,

poets, he

his

And

lifetime.

place

among

the leader of

death as he

his

after

all

saw that love was the

the

the lovers. secret

first

men

of the world for which the wise

had been looking, and that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the feet

of God.

And

above

supreme of like

all,

Christ

individualists.

the most

Humility,

the artistic acceptance of

periences, tation.

all

ex-

merely a mode of manifesis

man's soul that Christ

always looking

for.

Kingdom,' and finds

compares

calls it

little

God's

every one.

things,

to a

DE PROFUNDIS

tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a

That

pearl.

because one

realises one's

only by getting rid of

soul

passions, all acquired culture, ternal possessions,

alien

all

and

all

be they good or

ex-

evil.

I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much re-

bellion of nature,

tion,

wealth.

But

had

thing.

left

nothing

lost

till

the

had absolutely

world

my my

name,

happiness,

but

freedom,

one posi-

was a prisoner and a pauper. had my children left. still I

Suddenly they were taken away from the law. It was a blow so

me by

that I

appalling to

do,

knees, and

did

flung

bowed

not

know what

myself

head, and wept,

DE PROFUNDIS

'The body of the body of the Lord

and as

worthy

the only thing for

will

me was

no doubt sound

happier.

am not moment

saw then that

Since then

everything.

child I

That

either.'

seemed to save me.

its

said,

to accept

curious as

have

was of course

been

soul in

ultimate essence that I had reached.

In many ways but I found

waiting

When

friend.

with the soul

had been for

one comes

its

enemy,

me in

contact

makes one simple

a child, as Christ said one should be. It

possess *

Nothing

tragic their is

how few souls'

people

before

rare

they

ever die.

any man/

says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.'

DE PROFUNDIS It

Their

people.

some one

else's

their

mimicry,

Most people

true.

quite

other

83 are

are

thoughts

opinions, their lives a

passions

quotation.

Christ was not merely the supreme individualist,

but he

dividualist

tried

first

People

history.

make him out an

philanthropist, altruist

was the

ranked

in-

have

ordinary

him

with the unscientific and sen-

timental.

But he was

one nor the other.

really

neither

Pity he has, of

who

course, for the poor, for those

are

shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched;

but he has

far

pity for the rich, for the hard hedonists,

for those

who waste

becoming slaves to

their

freedom

things, for those

DE PROFUNDIS

who wear

soft

seemed

him

and

pleasure

be really greater

And

tragedies than poverty or sorrow.

who knew

as for altruism,

he that

and

us,

that

one

grapes of thorns or

gather thistles

better than

vocation not volition that

it is

determines

live

and

Riches

houses.

kings'

raiment

cannot

from

figs

live for others as a definite self-

conscious aim was not his creed.

was not the he says,

basis of his creed.

When

Forgive your enemies,'

not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's

own

sake that he says

because love hate.

his

young man,

so,

and

more beautiful than

own Sell

all

the

that thou

hast

entreaty

DE PROFUNDIS and give to the poor,'

it is

state of the poor that

not of the is

thinking,

but of the soul of the young man, the

was marring. In his he is one with the artist

soul that wealth

view of

life

who knows

that

by the

inevitable law

of self-perfection, the poet must sing,

and the sculptor think the painter for his

and

the world a mirror

moods, as surely and

hawthorn

the

make

in bronze,

must

as certainly

blossom

and the corn turn to gold at harvest time, and the moon in her spring,

ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield.

But while Christ did not say men, 'Live

for others,'

that

was no

there

he pointed out

difference

all

DE FROFUNDIS

between the

lives

of others and one's

own

life.

man

an extended, a Titan personality.

this

means he gave

Since his coming the history of each separate individual

or can be made,

is,

the history of the world.

culture has intensified

personality

of man.

minded.

course,

made us myriadThose who have the artistic Art

has

temperament go into and learn how salt others,

the

and how steep

catch for a

moment

exile is

with Dante

the

bread

their stairs

;

they

the serenity and

calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire cried to

God

Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage contempler mon corps et mon cceur sans

d^gofit.'

DE PROFUNDIS Out

own

their

the secret of his their

own they

handled

and

love

they

may

be,

make

new

eyes on

because they have listened

life,

one

hurt

look with

;

modern

sonnets

Shakespeare's

draw, to

Greek

nocturnes,

Chopin's

read

the

story of the passion of some dead

man

things,

for

some

dead

was

threads

woman

whose mouth was

of as

whose

fine

artistic

tem-

necessarily with what has

perament found expression. colours, in

and

gold,

pomegranate,

But the sympathy of the

the

hair

words

music or in marble, behind

masks of an JEschylean or through some Sicilian shep-

painted

play,

herds'

pierced

and jointed

reeds,

the

DE PROFUNDIS

man and

his

message must have been

revealed.

the

artist,

To him what

all.

But

to Christ

the only

expression

mode under which he can

conceive

dumb

was not

life

dead.

With

so.

width and wonder of imagination that fills

one almost with awe, he took the world

entire

the

inarticulate,

voiceless world of pain, as his

and made of himself Those of

piece.

who *

are

whose

whom

dumb under

silence

deal',

mouth-

have spoken, oppression and I

heard only of God,'

he chose as his brothers.

become eyes

kingdom,

eternal

its

the

sought to

to the blind, ears to the

and a cry in the

whose tongues had been

lips

tied.

those

His desire

DE PUOFUNDIS

was to be to the myriads who had found no utterance a very trumpet through which they might feeling,

with the

whom

call to

artistic

suffering

and

heaven.

And

nature of one

sorrow

modes through which he could

were realise

his conception of the beautiful, that

idea

of no value

nate and

the image of the

Sorrows, and

dominated

becomes

incar-

made an image, he made

of himself

till it

Man

as such has fascinated

art

and

no Greek god ever

succeeded in doing.

For the Greek gods,

in spite of the

white and red of their

fair fleet limbs,

really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the

were not

sun's disc crescent over a hill at

dawn,

DE PROFUNDIS

and

his feet

were

as the wings of the

morning, but he himself had been cruel

Marsyas and had made Niobe childIn the steel shields of Athena's less. to

eyes there had been no pity for Arachne;

the all

pomp and

peacocks of Hera were

that was really noble about her

the Father of the

;

and

Gods himself had

been too fond of the daughters of men.

The two most deeply

suggestive figures

of Greek Mythology were, for religion,

Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of the Olympians, and for the son of a mortal the

moment

the

moment

But Life

art,

woman

Dionysus, to

whom

of his birth had proved also

of her death. itself

from

its

lowliest

most humble sphere produced one

and far

DE PROFUNDIS

more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of Semele.

Out

of the Carpenter's shop at Nazareth had

come

personality

than any made by

infinitely

greater

myth and legend,

and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies

of the

field

none, either on

Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done.

The song of

Isaiah,

despised

and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as

were our faces from him,' had

seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We

must not be Every

single

afraid

of such a phrase.

work of

art

the

fulfil-

DE PttOFUNDIS

ment art

of a prophecy

work

for every

the conversion of an idea into

an image.

Every

single

human being

should be the fulfilment of a prophecy for

every

human

some

realisation of

mind of God

being should be the ideal, either

or in the

the

mind of man.

Christ found the type and fixed

it,

and

the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at

Jerusalem

Babylon, became in

the long progress of the centuries incarnate in

him

for

whom

the

world

was waiting.

To me one

of the things in history

the most to be regretted Christ's

own

renaissance,

duced the Cathedral

that the

which has proChartres, the

Arthurian cycle of legends, the

life

DE PROFUNDIS St.

Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto,

and Dante's Divine Comedy, was not

allowed to develop

but the

was

interrupted

lines,

gave us Petrarch, and Raphael's coes,

and

Renaissance that

classical

dreary

own

its

and spoiled

Palladian

architecture,

formal French tragedy, and Cathedral,

and

Pope's

everything

that

fres-

and

Paul's

St.

poetry,

and

made from with-

out and by dead rules, and does not

some

spring from within through

informing

romantic

But wherever

it.

movement

or the soul of Christ. Juliet,

the

spirit is

in art there some-

how, and under some form,

and

there

Winter's

Christ,

Romeo

Tale,

Proven9al poetry, in the Ancient

Mar-

DE PROFUNDIS

wer, in

Dame

Belle

in Chatterton's

owe

sans merci, and

Ballad of Charity.

him the most

diverse

things and people.

Hugo's Les Mise-

rabks, Baudelaire's

Fkurs du Mai, the

note of pity in Russian novels, Ver-

And Verlaine's poems, the stained glass and tapestries and the quattrocento work of Burne- Jones and Morris, laiiie

belong to him no

less

than the tower of

Giotto, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tannhauser, the troubled romantic

of Michael Angelo, pointed ture,

and

flowers

for

the

love

marbles architec-

of children

and

both of which, indeed, in

classical art there

was but

them

little

place,

enough grow or play in, but which, from the twelfth hardly

for

DE PROFUNDIS century

down

our

own

95 day, have

been continually making their appearances in at

art,

various

under various modes and

times,

coming

fitfully

wilfully, as children, as flowers, are

do:

and apt

spring always seeming to one

the flowers had been in hiding,

and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown up people would grow tired of looking for

them and give up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an April day on which there

and sun It

Christ's

both rain

for the narcissus.

the

own

imaginative

nature

that

centre

this

palpitating

The

strange figures

quality

makes him

romance.

of poetic

drama

DE PROFUNDIS

and ballad are made by the imagination

but

others,

out

own

of his

imagination entirely did Jesus of Naza-

The

reth create himself.

had

really

cry of Isaiah

with his

coming than the song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the

moon

no more, though

less.

perhaps

was the denial

well

no as

the affirmation of prophecy.

For every

expectation that he

there was

another beauty,'

that

says

fulfilled

destroyed.

Bacon,

there

all

some

strangeness of proportion,' and of thosa

who

are born

that

dynamic are like

say,

forces

of the spirit

who

of those,

himself are

Christ says that they

the wind that 'bloweth where

DE PROFUNDIS and no man can

listeth,

cometh and whither

why

has

tell

whence That

goeth.'

so fascinating to artists.

the colour elements of

all

mystery,

<tf

strangeness,

sugges-

pathos,

tion, ecstasy, love.

life

appeals to the

temper of wonder, and creates tha'L mood in which alone he can be understood.

And

ber that

the

compact,'

world

"same substance.

a joy

remem-

'of imagination itself

I said in

all

of the

Dorian Gray

that the great sins of the world take

place

the brain

but

in the

brain that everything takes place.

know now

that

we do not

see

the eyes or hear with the ears. G

We with

They

DE PROFUNDIS

are really channels for the transmission,

adequate or inadequate, of sense imIt

pressions.

red, that the apple is odorous,

poppy

in the brain that the

that the skylark sings.

late

have been studying with

diligence the four prose

Christ.

poems about

Christmas I managed to

get hold of a

Greek Testament, and

every morning,

after I

cell

and of

little

taken

polished

tins,

by chance anywhere.

way

Every one, even in disciplined

Endless

read a

the Gospels, a dozen verses

delightful

has

had cleaned

life,

for

should

repetition, in

spoiled

opening

the

day.

turbulent,

the

ill-

same.

and out of season, the freshness, the

DE PROFUNDIS

naivetd, the simple romantic

charm of

the Gospels. too

often

repetition

and is

far all

When

anti-spiritual.

returns to the into

them read

too badly, and

hear

far

a garden

Greek, of

out

lilies

one

going

of some

narrow and dark house.

And by the

to me, the pleasure reflection that

bable that

we have

it is

doubled

extremely pro-

the actual terms, the

ipsissima verba, used

Christ.

was

always supposed that Christ talked in

Aramaic. Even Renan thought

now we know that

so.

But

the Galilean peasants,

like the Irish peasants of

our own day,

were bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary

language

intercourse

over Palestine, as indeed

all

over the

DE PROFUNDIS

100

Eastern world. that

I never liked the idea

we knew

own words

Christ's

only through a translation of a transIt

lation.

a delight to

to think

that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have listened

him,

and

with

reasoned

Socrates

him, and Plato understood him:

he really said eyw that

when he thought of the

che field and

how they

lilies

neither

spin, his absolute expression

toil

nor

was Kara-

rov aypov TTWS av^ai/et" ov

TO, Kpiva.

ouSe vyOei,

when he

that

et/u 6 TTOL^V 6 /eaXos,

and that

cried out

completed, has

'my

reached

his last life

its

word

has been fulfilment,

has been perfected/ was exactly as St.

John

tells

was

TereXeorai

no more.

DE PROFUNDIS While ticularly

101

reading the Gospels

that of St.

John

whatever early Gnostic took

and mantle

par-

himself, or his

name

I see the continual asser-

tion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual

and material

life,

1 see also

that to Christ imagination was simply a form of love, and that to

him love was

meaning of the phrase. weeks ago I was allowed by

lord in the fullest

Some

six

the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse

black or brown

bread of ordinary prison great delicacy.

It will

fare.

sound strange

that dry bread could possibly be a deli-

cacy to any one.

To me

it is

much

so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat

whatever crumbs

may be

left

DE PROFUNDIS

102

have

tin plate, or

on the

fallen

rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one's table

not from hunger

get

;

and

now

quite

do so suffi-

but simply in order that

cient food

nothing should be wasted of what given to me. Christ,

So one should look on love.

all

person-

fascinating

had the power of not merely beautiful things himself, but of saying

alities,

making other people say beautiful things him and I love the story St. Mark tells us about the Greek woman, who, to

when

;

as a trial

of her faith he said to

her that he could not give her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that

dogs'

the it

little

dogs

(/cwapta,

should be rendered)

'little

who

are

DE PROFUNDIS

103

under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let for love

fall.

Most people live But it is by

and admiration.

love and admiration that If

any love

Nobody

should

live.

shown us we should recog-

nise that

are quite

unworthy of

it.

The worthy to be loved. loves man shows us that

God

fact that

in the divine order of ideal things it is

written that eternal love to

what

to be given

eternally unworthy.

that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every

of love, except is.

Love

one

worthy

him who thinks that he

a sacrament that should be

taken kneeling, and Domine, non sum dignus should be on the hearts of those

who

lips

receive

it.

and

in the

DE FROFUNDIS

104

If ever I write again, in the sense of

producing

two

I desire

Christ

work, there are just

and through to express myself: one

subjects

which is

artistic

which

the

romantic movement in is

'The

relation

artistic

precursor life':

the other

considered

life

The

to conduct.'

course, intensely fascinating,

the

first

its

is,

for

of see

in Christ not merely the essentials of

the supreme romantic type, but

all

the

accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the

romantic temperament the

first

person

who

that they should live

fixed the phrase.

become.

was

flower-like fives.'

He took

children

what people should try He held them up as

as the type of

also.

ever said to people

DE PROFUNDIS examples to their

elders,

which

105 I

myself

have always thought the chief use of children, if

a use.

Dante

perfect should have

describes the soul of a

coming from the hand of God weeping and laughing like a little child,'

man *

what

and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be a guisa di fandulla che

piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia. felt

that

life

was changeful,

and that to allow into

fluid, active,

to be stereotyped

any form was death.

saw that

people should not be too serious over material,

common

interests: that to

unpractical was to be a great thing

that

one should not bother too much over affairs.

man ?

The

birds

didn't,

why

should

charming when he

says,

DE PROFTJNDIS

106

'Take no thought for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat ? is not the

body more than raiment?'

Greek

might have used the latter phrase. It But only Christ is full of Greek feeling. could have said both, and so life

His

perfectly for us.

morality

all

what morality should thing '

Her

that

ever

sympathy, just

said

had

been,

sins are forgiven her because she

loved much,'

all

If the only

be.

would have been worth

while dying to have said is

summed

poetical

justice should be.

justice,

it.

His

exactly

justice

what

The beggar goes

heaven because he has been unhappy. I

eannot conceive a better reason for

his

being sent there.

The people who

DE PROFUNDIS work

for

107

an hour in the vineyard in the

cool of the evening receive just as

reward as those in the

day long they

thing.

who have

toiled there all

hot sun.

Why

Or perhaps they were

with the dull

treat

mechanical systems

lifeless

tions merely, as if

they were things,

there were excep-

anybody, or anything,

was

for that matter,

aught

else in

That which romantic

everybody alike: for him

there were no laws

the world

a different

Christ had no patience

that treat people as

art

the very keynote of

was to

basis of natural basis.

shouldn't

Probably no one deserved any-

kind of people.

and so

much

life.

And when

him the proper He saw no other

they brought

him

DE PROFUNDIS

108

one taken

in the very act of sin

showed him her sentence written

him what was

law, and asked

done, he wrote with

and

in the

on the

his finger

ground as though he did not hear them, and finally, when they pressed him again, 'Let him of you who has never sinned be the first to looked up and

said,

throw the stone at

her.'

was worth

while living to have said that.

all

poetical

He knew

ignorant people.

natures

that in the

soul of one

who

always room

for a great idea.

loved

ignorant there

But he

could not stand stupid people, especially those

who

tion

people

are

made

who

stupid by educa-

are full of opinions not

one of which they even understand, a

DE PROFUNDIS peculiarly

modern

when he

Christ

of one

who

cannot use

summed up by

describes

as the type

has the key of knowledge,

and does not allow

himself,

other people to use

made

type,

109

though

it,

may be

to open the gate of God's King-

His chief war was against the That is the war every child Philistines.

dom.

of light has to wage.

was

Philistinism

the note of the age and community in

which he

accessibility

spectability,

their worship

entire

In their heavy

lived.

ideas,

their

dull

re-

orthodoxy,

of vulgar success, their

preoccupation

materialistic

their

tedious

in-

side

ridiculous estimate

with

the

gross

life,

and

their

of themselves and

their importance, the

Jews of Jerusalem

DE PROFUNDIS

110

in Christ's day were the exact counter-

own.

Christ

mocked

the 'whited

sepulchre' of respectability, and that phrase for ever.

our

part of the British Philistine

fixed

He treated worldly

success as a thing absolutely to be despised.

saw nothing

all.

looked on wealth as an encumbrance

to a man.

would not hear of

life

being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals.

pointed out that forms

and ceremonies were made

man

for forms

for

and ceremonies.

man, not

took

Sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should be set at nought. philanthropies, the

The

ostentatious

cold

public

charities, the tedious

formalisms so dear

to the middle-class

mind, he exposed

DE PROFUNDIS

111

with utter and relentless scorn.

what

termed orthodoxy

facile unintelligent

them, and

acquiescence

their

hands,

us,

merely a

;

but to

was

and paralysing tyranny. Christ He showed that the swept it aside. alone was of value. He took a spirit terrible

keen pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always reading

the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest idea of

them meant.

what

either of

In opposition to their

tithing of each

separate day into the

of prescribed duties, as

fixed routine

they tithe mint and rue, he preached the enormous importance of living completely for the

Those

moment.

whom

he saved from their sins

DE PROFUNDIS

112

are saved simply for beautiful in their lives.

moments

Mary Magdalen, when

she sees Christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers

had given

her,

and

spills

the odorous

spices over his tired dusty feet, and for

that one moment's

sake

sits

for

with Ruth and Beatrice in the

of the snow-white rose of Paradise. that Christ says to us little

warning

that

ever

tresses

All

by the way of a every

moment

should be beautiful, that the soul should

always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man's nature that

illumined by the imagination. all

the lovely influences of

life

not

sees

modes

DE PROFUNDIS of light:

113

the imagination itself

world of light.

The world

the

made by

and yet the world cannot understand that

because the imagination

a manifestation of love, and

it,

simply is

love

and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another.

But

it is

that Christ

of most

when he is

deals with a sinner

most romantic,

real.

in the sense

The world had always

loved the saint as

being

the

nearest

possible approach to the perfection of

God.

Christ, through

stinct in him,

some divine

in-

seems to have always loved

the sinner as being the nearest possible

approach to the perfection of man.

His

primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to

DE PROFUNDIS

114

relieve suffering.

turn an interesting

thief into a tedious honest his aim.

He would

man was

have thought

not

little

Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The

of the Prisoners'

conversion of a publican into a Pharisee

would not have seemed to him a great achievement But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded

and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of persin

fection.

It seems a very dangerous idea. is

all

was

That

great ideas are dangerous. Christ's creed admits of

it is

That

no doubt

the true creed I don't doubt

myself.

course the

sinner

must repent

DE PROFUNDIS But why?

116

Simply because otherwise realise what he

he would be unable to

The moment of repentance moment of initiation. More than

had done. is

the

that

the means

The Greeks thought

alters one's past.

that impossible.

Gnomic

aphorisms,

cannot alter the

that

Christ,

Even the Gods

past.'

commonest

Christ showed

sinner could

it,

was the one thing he could do* had he been asked, would have

I feel quite certain

said

the

often say in their

They '

that the

by which one

moment

about

the prodigal son

knees and wept, he

made

fell

his

that

his

having

wasted his substance with harlots, his swine-herding

husks

they

and ate,

hungering for beautiful

and

the

holy

116

DE PROFUNDIS

moments

in his

life.

difficult for

most people to grasp the

idea.

I dare

say one has to

stand

it.

go to prison to underso, it may be worth while

going to prison.

There Christ. false

something so unique about

course just

dawns before the dawn

there

are

itself,

and

winter days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into its

squandering

make some

gold before

its

time, and

foolish bird call to its

mate

to build on barren boughs, so there were Christians before Christ.

should be grateful. thing I

that there have been none since,

make one

Ass^v.

For that we

The unfortunate

exception,

St.

Francis of

But then God had given him

DE PROFUNDIS

117

at his birth the soul of a poet, as he

himself

when

quite

young had

mys-

marriage taken poverty as his bride :

tical

and with the soul of a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not difficult.

Christ, and so he became

like him.

understood

do not require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us that the life of St. Francis

was the true Imitatio compared to

name

Christi,

poem

which the book of that

merely prose.

Indeed, that is the charm about Christ,

when

all is

of art

anything, his

just like a

work

does not really teach one

but by being brought

presence

And

said

becomes

one

everybody

into

something.

predestined

his

DE PROFUNDIS

118

Once

presence.

at least in his life each

man walks with Christ to Emmaus. As regards the other subject,

the

Relation of the Artistic Life to Conduct,

no doubt seem strange to

will

should select

you that I

it.

People

point to Reading Gaol and say, is

where the

Well,

on a

That

artistic life leads

a man.'

might lead to worse

places.

The more mechanical people life

whom

a shrewd speculation depending careful

means, always

calculation

of ways

know where they

going, and go there.

the ideal desire

They

of being

start

the

and are

with parish

beadle, and in whatever sphere they are

placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and

no more.

man whose

DE PROFUNDIS desire

119

to be something separate from

be a member of Parliament,

himself, to

or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or

tedious,

a judge, or something equally

what he wants to

wear

be.

That

and those in

whose

whom

incarnate,

desire

life,

People

solely for self-realisation

know where they know.

are going.

They

In one sense of the word

of course necessary, as the Greek

oracle said, to first

forces of

it is different.

can't is

being

his

those dynamic forces

never

it.

But with the dynamic become

punThose who want a mask have

ishment. to

succeeds

invariably

know

oneself

that

achievement of knowledge.

to recognise that the soul of a

the

But

man

DE PROFUNDIS

120

unknowable,

The

ment of wisdom. oneself.

ultimate

the

When

final

achieve-

mystery

one has weighed the

sun in the balance, and measured the

moon, and mapped out the

steps of the

seven heavens star by

Who

remains oneself.

own

orbit of his

soul

went out to look

star,

still

can calculate the

When

for his

he did not know that a

was waiting

there

the son

father's asses,

man

God

him with the very

for

chrism of coronation, and that his

own

soul was already the soul of a king. live long enough and to work of such a character that produce I shall be able at the end of my days to

hope to

say, life

Yes

this

leads a

just where the artistic

man

Two

of the most

DE PROFUNDIS come

perfect lives I have

own

121

across in

experience are the lives of Verlaine

and of Prince Kropotkin both of them have passed years in prison :

men who the

first,

Dante

;

the one Christian poet since

the other, a

man

with a soul of

that beautiful white Christ which seems

And

coming out of Russia. last

for the

seven or eight months, in spite of

a succession of great troubles reaching

me from

the outside world almost with-

out intermission,

have been placed in

direct contact with a in this prison

through

that has helped bility

spirit

working

man and

things,

me beyond any

of expression in words

while for the

ment

new

first

year of

did nothing else,

possi-

so that

my imprisonand can

re-

DE PROFUNDIS

122

member doing nothing

else,

but wring

hands in impotent despair, and say, 'What an ending, what an appalling

ending!'

now

I try to say to myself,

and sometimes when

not tortur-

ing myself do really and sincerely say, '

What

a beginning, what a wonderful It

beginning!'

may

really

so.

may become so. If it does I shall owe much to this new personality that has altered every man's

You may had

life

realise it

been released

tried to be, I

loathing

in this place.

when last

would have

and every

I say that

May,

left this place

official in it

with

a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned

life.

have had a year

longer of imprisonment, but humanity

DE PROFUNDIS

123

has been in the prison along with us all

and now when

go out

I shall

remember great kindnesses that

always I

have

received here from

almost everybody,

and on the day of

give

many thanks

release I shall

many

people,

and ask to be remembered by them

turn.

The tirely

prison style

wrong.

absolutely and en-

would give anything to

be able to alter intend to try.

when

But there

out.

nothing in

the world so

wrong but that the spirit of humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ churches,

may make

least possible to

much

who

it, if

not in

not right, at

be borne without too

bitterness of heart.

DE PROFUNDIS

124

know

also that

outside that

much

waiting for

very delightful, from

what St Francis of brother the wind, and

Assisi

calls

'my

my sister the

rain,'

down

to the

shop-windows and sunsets of great

cities.

lovely things both of them,

If I to

made

list

all

that

still

me, I don't know where

stop

for,

just as

for

God made the world me as for any one else.

may go

out with something

that I had not got before. tell

should

indeed,

much

Perhaps I

remains

you that to

need not

reformations

morals are as meaningless

Reformations in theology. propose to be a better

and vulgar ab But while to

man

a piece

of unscientific cant, to have become a

deeper

man

the privilege of those

who

DE PROFUNDIS hare suffered.

And

125

such I think I have

become. If after I

am free

a friend of mine gave

a feast, and did not invite

should not mind a

can be per-

bit.

it,

With freedom, fectly happy by myself. flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy

Besides, feasts

are not for

too

to care about them.

many

side of life

any more.

have given

That

over for me, very fortu-

nately, I dare say.

But

if after I

am free

a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow

most

to share

bitterly.

it,

should feel

If he shut the doors of

the house of mourning against me, I would

come back again and again and beg

to be

admitted, so that I might share in what

DE PROFUNDIS

126 I

was

If he thought

entitled to share in.

unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I it as the most poignant humi-

should feel liation,

as the

most

terrible

which disgrace could be

But that could not

be.

inflicted

its

on me.

have a right

to share in sorrow, and he at the loveliness of the

mode

who can

look

world and share

sorrow, and realise something of the

wonder of both,

immediate contact

with divine things, and has got as near

any one can

to God's secret as

Perhaps there also,

less

may come

than into

get.

into life,

my a

art

still

deeper note, one of greater unity of Not passion, and directness of impulse.

width but intensity

modern

art.

are

the true aim of

no longer

in art

DE PROFUNDIS concerned with the type. exception that

put

we have

127

to do.

with the I cannot

sufferings into any form they

took, I need hardly say.

Art only begins

where Imitation ends, but something

must come

into

of words

memory

cadences, of more

perhaps, curious

architectural

simpler

work, of

fuller

richer

effects,

order,

of some

aesthetic quality at

any rate. was 'torn from the Marsyas

When

scabbard of his limbs

membre terrible

delta vagina della

sue, to use one of Dante's

Tacitean phrases

most

he had no

more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. The lyre had vanquished the reed. mistaken.

But perhaps the Greeks were I hear in much modern Art

DE PROFUNDIS

128

the cry of

Marsyas.

bitter in

Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in La-

martine, mystic in Verlaine.

in the

deferred resolutions of Chopin's music. It

in the discontent that haunts Burne-

Even Matthew Arnold,

women.

Jones's

whose song of

Callicles

tells

'the

triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre/ and the 'famous final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a

little

;

in the troubled

undertone

of doubt and distress that haunts his verses, neither

Goethe nor Wordsworth

could help him, though he followed each in turn,

and when he seeks to mourn

for Thyrsis

or to sing of the Scholar

it is

the reed that he has to take

Gipsy,

for the

rendering of his strain.

But

DE FROFUNDIS

129

whether or not the Phrygian Faun was I

silent,

cannot

necessary to

be.

Expression

as leaf

and blossoms are

to the black branches of the trees that

show themselves above the and are so

prison walls

the wind.

and the world there

art

wide

gulf,

there

restless in

Between is

now

but between art and myself

none.

hope at

least that there

none.

each

meted

out.

of us

public infamy,

different

lot

fates

are

has been one of

of long

imprisonment,

of misery, of ruin, of disgrace, but I

not worthy of I

rate.

that

tragedy

not yet, at any

remember that thought I if it

came

could to

used to say bear

a real

with purple

DE PROFUNDIS

130

and a mask of noble sorrow, but

pall

that the dreadful thing about modernity

was that

put tragedy into the raiment

of comedy, so that the great

seemed commonplace It

lacking in style.

modernity.

or grotesque 01

quite true about

It has probably always

true about actual all

life.

martyrdoms seemed

looker on.

realities

been

said that

mean

to the

The nineteenth century

no exception to the Everything

rule.

about

tragedy

h&s

been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in

style;

our

very

dress

makes

We are the zanies of sorWe are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to

grotesque.

row.

appeal to the

sense

of humour.

DE PROFUNDIS November

down

From two

here from London.

two on that day on had to stand the centre platform

o'clock I

was brought

1895,

13th,

131

till

half-past

of Clapham Junction in convict dress,

and handcuffed, had

at.

ward

hospital

notice possible

laughed.

without

When Each

of the

moment's

me.

was

objects

grotesque.

out

taken

given

being

world to look

for the

been

people saw

train

all

most

the

they

came up

Nothing could amusement. That was, of

swelled the audience.

exceed their

course, before A.S

they

knew who

soon as they had

they

laughed

an hour

still

stood

been

more. there

was.

informed

For

half

the

grey

DE PROFUNDIS

132

November

rain surrounded

by a jeering

mob.

For a year

after

that was done to

wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That not such a tragic thing as possibly

is it

sounds to you.

prison

those

who

are in

a part of every day's

tears are

day in prison on which experience. one does not weep is a day on which one's heart

one's heart

Well, feel

is is

now

hard, not a

happy. I

regret

laughed than

for

really beginning to

for the people

myself.

when they saw me pedestal, I is

day on which

was

was not on

in the pillory.

who

course

But

very unimaginative nature that only

DE PROFUNDIS cares for people

pillory

should have

terrific

known

behind sorrow there

sorrow there

mock

still

to inter-

have said that

always sorrow.

to say that behind

always a

at a soul in pain

thing.

how

thing'.

They

reality.

also

pret sorrow better.

It were wiser

their pedestals.

be a very unreal

may

pedestal

133

And

soul. is

a dreadful

In the strangely simple economy

of the world people only get what they give,

and to those who have not enough

imagination to penetrate the mere out-

ward of

things,

and

feel pity,

can be given save that of scorn I write this account of the

my it

what

pity

mode

being transferred here simply that

should be realised

how hard

has

DE PROFUNDIS

134

been for

to get anything out of

punishment but bitterness and despair. I have,

then

however, to do

it,

and now and

have moments of submission

and acceptance.

All the spring

may

be hidden in the single bud, and the

low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that

many

ever beauty of is

to herald the feet of

rose-red dawns. life

So perhaps what-

moment

render, abasement, and can, at lines

any

accepting

rate,

of sur-

humiliation.

merely proceed on the

my own development, all

remains to

still

contained in some

and,

that has happened to me,

make myself worthy of it. People used to say of too individualistic.

that I was

must be

far

DE PROFUNDIS of an individualist than I

must get

far

135

ever

was.

more out of myself than

ever I got, and ask far less of the world

than ever I asked.

Indeed,

ruin

came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful,

unpardonable,

time contemptible action

and of

all life

was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have been from the

individualist

point

view

bad

enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward

for

having

made

it?

course once I had put into motion

the forces of society, society turned on

me and this

said,

Have you been

time in defiance of

living all

laws,

and

DE PROFUNDIS

136

do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the

You

full.

shall abide

by what you have appealed result

ever

fell

The

to.'

Certainly no man so ignobly, and by such ignoble

in gaol.

instruments, as I did.

The

Philistine element in life

the failure to understand

art.

not

Charm-

ing people, such as fishermen, shepherds,

ploughboys, peasants and the

nothing salt

tine

about

art,

of the earth.

like,

know

and are the very

who upholds and

the Philis-

aids

the heavy,

cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society,

dynamic in a

man

and who force

or a

does

not

when he meets

movement.

recognise it

either

DE PROFUNDIS it

People thought

aave

entertained

things

dreadful of

dinner

and

life,

137

have

the

evil

found

But then, company. from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach them pleasure in

their

they were delightfully suggestive and

The danger was

stimulating.

excitement. artist

was with

great friend of

ten years' standing

some time

business as an

Ariel.

wrestle with Caliban.

ago,

I set .

said

know

against

myself to

mine

came

and told

did not believe a single

was

half the

a friend of to see

that he

word of what

me, and wished

that he considered

quite

innocent, and the victim of a hideous

DE PROFUNDIS

138 I

plot. said,

burst into tears

what he

and told him that while there was

much amongst

the definite charges that

was quite untrue and transferred to

life

still

by revolting ma/ice, had been full of perverse

that

pleasures,

and

that unless he accepted that as a fact

about

me and

realised it to the full I

could not possibly be friends with him

any more, or ever be in his company. It was a terrible shock to him, but

are friends,

friendship on Emotional

and

have not got

forces,

where in Intentions, are

physical energy.

made

The

to hold so

some-

say

limited in

extent and duration as the

his

false pretences.

forces of

little

much can

cup that hold so

DE PROFUNDIS

139

much and no more, though purple vats of Burgundy be

wine to

the

all

the

filled

with

brim, and the treaders

stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain. is

error

There

more common than that of

thinking that those

who

are the causes

or occasions of great tragedies share in

the feelings suitable to the tragic

error

fatal

may be

than expecting it of shirt of flame

The martyr in his

them.

mood

looking on the face of God,

but to him

who

piling the faggots or

^osening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying of an

to the butcher, or the felling of a

tree to the charcoal burner in the forest,

or the

fall

of a flower to one

who

DE PROFUNDIS

140

mowing down

the grass with a scythe.

Great passions are for the great of

soul,

and great events can be seen only by who are on a level with them.

those

know

of nothing

all

drama

more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in

its

subtlety

observation,

than

Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's

companions.

They have been his They bring with them

memories

pleasant

college friends.

the

him

days

together.

moment when they come

in the play he

across

staggering under

the weight of a burden intolerable to

one

of his

temperament.

The dead

DE PROFUNDIS

141

have come armed out of the grave to

impose on him a mission at once too He is great and too mean for him. a dreamer, and he

act.

and he

with

upon to

has the nature of the poet,

common

called

asked to grapple with the

complexity of cause and

effect,

in its practical realisation, of

life

which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows

so much.

what to folly.

do,

has no conception of

and

folly is

to feign

Brutus used madness as a cloak

conceal the

sword of

the dagger of his

madness

a mere

of weakness.

and

his

jests

will,

his

purpose,

but the Hamlet

mask

for the hiding

In the making of fancies

he sees a chance of delay.

DF PROFUNDIS

142

He an

keeps artist

with

playing

with

plays

action

theory.

makes himself the spy of

his

actions, and listening to knows them to be but

own words

his *

proper

words, words,

words.'

Instead of trying to be the

hero of

his

own

history,

be the spectator of

disbelieves

his

he seeks to

own

everything,

tragedy. includ-

ing himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as

comes not from scepticism but

from a divided

all this

will.

Guildenstern and Rosen-

crantz realise nothing.

smirk says

and the

intonation.

smile,

other

They bow and

and what

echoes

When,

the

with last,

one

sickliest

by means

of the play within the play, and the

DE PROFUNDIS *

their

puppets

catches the conscience

his

Hamlet

dalliance,

of the King,

man

and drives the wretched from

143

in terror

and

Guilder) stern

throne,

Rosencrantz see no more

con-

in his

duct than a rather painful breach of

Court etiquette.

That

as far as they

can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of

life

emotions.'

are close to his very

secret

would them.

They

with appropriate

and know nothing of there

They

are the little

use

telling

cups that

much and no more.

can hold so

wards the close in

any

Nor

it.

suggested

Tothat,

for cunning spring another, they have met, or may meet,

caught

set

With a violent and sudden death.

But

DE PROFUNDIS

144

a tragic ending of this

touched

kind, though

humour

Hamlet's

with

something of the surprise and justice of comedy,

order

not for such as

really

They never

they. in

die.

who

Horatio,

Hamlet and

'report

his

cause aright to the unsatisfied,' '

Absents him from

And

felicity a while,

in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,

but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz

dies,

are as immortal as

and

tuffe,

are

They

should

Angelo and Tarrank

what modern

with life

them.

has con-

tributed to the antique ideal of friend-

He who

ship. citia

must

praise

are

find a niche

them

types

writes a

new De Amifor them,

Tusculan prose.

fixed

for

all

time.

and

They

DE PROFUNDIS

145

them would show 'a

censure

They

appreciation.'

their sphere: that

of soul there

and

thoughts

are merely out of all

In sublimity

no contagion.

high

lack of

emotions

High are

their very existence isolated.

to be released, if all goes well

with me, towards the end of May, and

hope to go at once to some side

village

abroad

with

little sea-

and

The

sea, as

his plays

Euripides says in one of

about Iphigeneia, washes away

the stains and wounds of the world. I

hope to be at least a month with friends, and to gain peace and

balance, and a less troubled heart, and K

DE PROFUNDIS

146

sweeter

mood.

have a strange

longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to

me no

of a mother than the Earth. to

that

much, and

all

look at Nature too

with her too

live

discern great sanity in the

They never

tude.

less

It seems

little.

Greek

atti-

chattered about sun-

sets, or discussed whether the shadows

on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand

They loved the

the runner. the

shadow that they

forest

for

for the feet of

its

silence

cast,

trees

for

and

the

noon.

The

vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with

ivy that he might keep off the rays

of the

sun

stooped over the

DE PROFUNDIS young

and

shoots,

147

for the artist

and

the athlete, the two types that Greece us,

gave

they plaited with garlands the

leaves of the bitter laurel

and of the

wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.

ours a utilitarian age, and

call

we do not know thing.

the uses of any single

have forgotten that water

can cleanse, and the Earth

fire

purify,

mother to us

consequence our art

and that all.

of the

As a moon

and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals directly with

and

things.

elemental I

forces

want

feel

there

sure is

that

purification,

go back to them and

live in their presence*

DE PROFUNDIS

148

course to one

am, 'Enfant de look

mon

siecle,'

world

the

modern

will

merely to

always

I tremble with pleasure

lovely. I

when

think that on the very day of

leaving prison both the laburnum and

the

lilac

be blooming in the gar-

will

dens, and that stir

into

restless

shall

that

all

Linnaeus

make

pale purple of

the fell

air shall

his

heath

swaying the other

plumes so be Arabia for me. its

knees and wept for

joy when he saw for the long

the wind

beauty the

gold of the one, and toss the

see

some

first

time the upland

English

made yellow with the tawny aromatic blossoms of the

know

that

for

common me,

furze

whom

;

and

flowers

DE PROFUNDIS

149

are part of desire, there are tears wait-

ing in the petals of

some

always been so with

There

hood.

not

rose.

from

It has

boy-

single colour

hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by

some subtle sympathy with the very soul

of things,

nature

Like Gautier,

answer.

does

not

have always

been one of those 'pour qui

monde

visible existe.' Still,

hind it

all this

may

conscious

now

that be-

beauty, satisfying though

be, there

some

spirit

hidden

of which the painted forms and shapes are but is

modes of

with this

come

manifestation,

spirit that I

harmony.

and

desire to be-

have grown tired

DE PROFUNDIS

150

of the articulate utterances of

The Mystical

things. in

tical

this is

men and

Art, the

Mys-

the Mystical in Nature

Life,

what

for.

looking

absolutely necessary for

to find

somewhere. All

trials

are trials for one's

life,

just

as all sentences are sentences of death

and three times have first

time

I left

been

;

The

tried.

the box to be arrested,

the second time to be led back to the

house

to pass

into

Society, as

have offer

;

the

detention,

a prison

we have

place

for

time

third

two

constituted

years. it,

will

me, has none to

but Nature, whose sweet rains

on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide,

fall

DE PROFUNDIS and secret valleys

may weep the

night

whose

She

undisturbed.

with

walk abroad

stars

151

silence I will

so that

hang

may

darkness without

the

stumbling, and send the wind over footprints so that

great

hurt

waters,

make me

none may track

she will cleanse

and

whole.

with

bitter

my me in

herbs

A FEW OF

MESSRS. METHUEN-S PUBLICATIONS Bain

(P.

W.)

THE GREAT GOD'S

Also Third Edition.

5S.net.

Fcap. 8vo,

A DRAUGHT OF THE BLUE. Edition.

Fcap. 8vo,

HAIR.

Quarto,

as. 6d. net.

Quarto.Ss.net.

AlsoTAird

as. 6d. net.

AN INCARNATION OF THE SNOW. Quarto, 53. net. A MINE OF FAULTS. Quarto, 5$. net. A DIGIT OF THE MOON. Sixth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 3S.

6d. net.

THE DESCENT OF THE SUN.

Fourth Edition.

Fcap.

Fourth Edition.

Fcap.

Svo, 35. 6d. net.

A HEIFER OF THE DAWN. 8vo, is. 6d. net.

AN ESSENCE OF THE DUSK. Fcap. Svo, 2s. 6d. net. THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS Balfour (Graham). STEVENSON. Crown

Svo,

With a

buckram,

Portrait.

Fifth Edition in On* Volume.

6s.

Baring-Gould (S). THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. Illustrated. Second Edition. Wide Royal Svo, los. 6d. net.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE OESARS

A STUDY

THE CHARACTERS OF TUB CAESARS OF THE JULIAN AND CLAUDIAN HOUSES.

Illustrated.

Seventh Edition.

Royal Svo,

THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW. With a

Portrait.

Third Edition.

Crown

los. 6d. net.

Revised

Edition.

Svo, 35. 6d.

SONGS OF THE WEST.

Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall. Collected from the Mouths of the People. By S. BARINGGOULD, and H. FLKKTWOOD SHEPPARD. New and Revised Edition, under the musical editorship of CECIL J. SHARP. Imperial Svo, 55. net.

A BOOK OF CORNWALL. Crown

Second Edition. Second Edition.

Svo, 6s.

A BOOK OF DEVON. Crown

Illustrated.

Svo, 6s.

A BOOK OF DARTMOOR. Crown

Large

Svo, 6s.

Illustrated.

Third

Edition.

MESSRS. METIIUEN'S PUBLICATIONS

A BOOK OF NORTH WALES.

Crown

Illustrated.

8vo,

6s.

A BOOK OF SOUTH WALES. Illustrated. A BOOK OF BRITTANY. Illustrated. Crown

Stcand Edition.

Illustrated.

Crown

A BOOK OF THE RIVIERA.

CLEVE To MAINZ.

8vo, 6s.

Second Edition.

Illustrated.

8vo, 6s.

A BOOK OF THE PYRENEES. Belloc (H.). Crown 8vo,

PARIS.

Crown 8vo,

Illustrated.

Second Edition.

Fcap. 8vo,

ON NOTHING AND KINDRED SUBJECTS. Edition.

6s.

Second Edition, Revised.

Illustrated.

6s.

HILLS AND THE SEA. Fcap. 8vo,

55,

Third

55.

ON EVERYTHING. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, ON SOMETHING. Fcap. 8vo, 53. MARIE ANTOINETTE. Illustrated. Third Demy

6s.

Second Edition.

8vo, 6s.

A BOOK OF THE RHINE: FROM Crown

Crown 8vo,

55.

Edition.

8vo, 15$. net.

THE PYRENEES.

Second Edition.

Illustrated.

Demy

8vo, 75. 6d. net.

Brabant

(P. 0.),

trated.

Crown

RAMBLES

IN SUSSEX.

Illus-

ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE.

Illus-

M.A.

8vo, 6s.

Bradley

(A. 0.). trated. Second Edition.

Crown

8vo, 6s.

THE ROMANCE OF NORTHUMBERLAND. Second Edition.

Demy

Illustrated.

8vo, ?s. 6d. net.

Braid (James), Open Champion, 1901, 1905, 1906, 1908, and ADVANCED GOLF. Illustrated. Fifth Edition. Demy 1910. 8vo, tos. 6d. net.

Carlyle

(Thomas).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Edited by C. R. L. FLETCHER, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Three Volumes. Crown 8vo, i8s.

THE LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

With an Introduction by C. H. FIRTH, M.A., and Notes and Appendices by Mrs. S. C. LOMAS. Three Volumes. Demy gvo, iSs, net.

Chesterton (Q.

K.).

CHARLES DICKENS.

Portraits in Photogravure.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. Illustrated.

AIMS AND IDEALS IN ART. to the Students of the

Edition.

SIX

Third Edition.

With Two

8vo, 6s.

Fifth Edition.

Fourth Edition.

Clausen (George), A.R.A., R.W.S.

PAINTING.

Crown

Sixth Edition.

Fcap. 8vo,

55.

LECTURES ON

Large Post 8vo,

33. 6d.

Eight Lectures delivered

Royal Academy of Arts. Large Post 8ro, 5*. ntt.

Illustrated.

Stctnd

MESSRS. METHUEN'S PUBLICATIONS Conrad

(Joseph).

MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS. Dillon (Edward).

BEE.

Illustrated.

Crown

Third Edition.

Crown

8vo, 6s.

HOW TO

PORCELAIN AND

LECT IT. Illustrated. Edwardes (Tickner).

COL-

8vo, 6s.

THE LORE OF THE HONEY-

Third Edition.

Crown

8vo, 6s.

ON SOUTHERN ROADS.

LIFT-LUCK

THE MIRROR OF THE SEA:

Illustrated.

8vo, 6s.

Gibbon (Edward). THE MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF EDWARD GIBBON. Edited by G. BIRKBECK HILL, LL.D. Crown

8vo, 6s.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Edited, with Notes, Appendices, and Maps, by J. B. BURY, M.A., IllusLitt.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. In Seven Volumes. Demy Svo, gilt top, ios. 6d. net each. trated.

THE YOUNG CARPENTER.

Hall (Cyril). Crown

Illustrated.

Svo, 55.

THE YOUNG ELECTRICIAN. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Harper (Ckarles G.). THE AUTOCAR ROAD-BOOK. Four Volumes, with Maps. Crown Svo, Vol. I. SOUTH or THE THAMES. Vol. II.

Button (Edward).

THE

Third Edition.

trated.

net each.

OF UMBPJA.

CITIES

Crown

Illus-

8vo, 6s.

THE CITIES OF SPAIN. Crown

75. 6d.

NORTH AMD SOUTH WALES AND WEST MIDLANDS.

Illustrated.

Third Edition.

Svo, 6s.

FLORENCE AND THE CITIES OF NORTHERN TUSCANY, WITH GENOA.

Second Edition.

Illustrated.

Crown

Svo, 6s.

ENGLISH LOVE POEMS. Fcap. Svo,

Edited with an Introduction.

35. 6d. net.

COUNTRY WALKS ABOUT FLORENCE. Fcap. Svo,

Illustrated.

55. net.

UNKNOWN TUSCANY. HEYWOOD.

Illustrated.

With an Appendix by WILLIAM Stand Edition. Demy 8vo, 75. 6d. net.

ROME. Illustrated. Second Edition. Crown SIENA AND SOUTHERN TUSCANY. Crown

Svo, 6s. Illustrated.

Svo, 6s.

Ibsen (Henrik). IN FIVE ACTS.

THE PRETENDERS A HISTORIC :

Fcap. Svo,

PLAY

is. net.

M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford. CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. (The Bampton Lectures for 1899.) Demy Svo, izs. 6d. net,

Inge (W.

R.).

Kipling

(Rudyard).

BARRACK ROOM BALLADS. -

Tvutnty-stvcnth Edition. cyf* Thousand. Fcap. Svo, leather, 55. net.

THE SEVEN Crown

Svo, 6s.

SEAS.

Crown

Siti Thousand.

Also Fcap. Svo, leather,

5$.

net.

8vo, 6s.

A\*

Sixteenth Edition

MESSRS. METHUBN'S PUBLICATIONS

THE

FIVE NATIONS.

Crown

8vo, 6s.

6%th Thousand.

Also Fcap. 8vo, leather,

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Also Fcap. 8vo, leather,

8vo, 6s.

Lamb

(Charles and Mary),

LUCAS.

Crown

55. net.

THE WORKS.

In Seven Volumes.

Illustrated.

Sixth Edition.

55. net.

Eighteenth Edition.

Edited by E. V.

Demy

fid.

8vo, 75.

each.

Lodge (Sir Oliver). F.R.S. THE SUBSTANCE OF FAITH, ALLIED WITH SCIENCE: A CATECHISM FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS.

Crown

Tenth Edition.

8vo, 25. net.

MAN AND THE UNIVERSE A

STUDY OF THE INFLD-

ENCE OF THE ADVANCE IN SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE UPON OU UNDERSTANDING OF CHRISTIANITY. Seventh Edition. Demy 8vo, 7 s. 6d. net.

THE SURVIVAL OF MAN A

STUDY IN UNRECOGNISED HUMAN FACULTY. Fourth Edition. Demy 8vo, 7$. 6d. net. Lorimer (George Horace). LETTERS FROM A SELF:

MADE MERCHANT TO Crown

Edition.

HIS SON.

Crown

Lucas

Second Edition.

Illustrated.

8vo, 6s.

THE

Illustrated. 7 s. 6d. net.

A WANDERER Crown

Edition.

Crown

HOLLAND.

Dtmy 8vo. Tenth

Illustrated.

8vo, 6s.

A WANDERER Edition.

OF CHARLES LAMB.

LIFE Y.). Fifth ttnd Revised Edition in Out Volume.

(B.

LONDON.

Illustrated.

Eighth

8vo, 6s.

A WANDERER IN Crown

Seventeenth

Illustrated.

8vo, 35. 6d.

OLD GORGON GRAHAM.

PARIS.

Fourth Edition.

Illustrated.

8vo, 6s.

THE OPEN ROAD A :

Fifteenth Edition.

LITTLE BOOK FOR WAYFARERS.

Fcap. 8vo, 55; India paper,

75.

6d.

Gilt top,

leather, 55. net.

THE FRIENDLY TOWN: A URBANE.

Fifth Edition.

LITTLE BOOK FOR THE

Fcap. 8vo,

53.

India paper,

;

75. 6d.

Gilt

top, leather, 55. net.

AND SUNSHINE.

FIRESIDE Svo, 55.

Edition.

Fcap.

Fifth

Edition.

Fcap.

Gilt top, leather, 55. net.

CHARACTER AND COMEDY. Svo, 53.

Fifth

Gilt top, leathr, 55. net.

THE GENTLEST ART: A ENTERTAINING HANDS.

CHOICE

Fifth Edition.

OF LETTERS BY

Fcap. 8vo,

55.

Gilt top,

leather, 55. net.

A SWAN AND HER FRIENDS. i as. fid. net.

Demy

Fourth Edition.

Fcap. 8vo,

FEMININE PORTRAIT 55.

Gilt top, leather, 55. net.

LISTENER'S LURE: AN OBLIQUE NARRATION. Edition.

SYO,

Gilt top, leather, 53. net.

HER INFINITE VARIETY: GALLERY.

Illustrated.

Fcap. 8vo,

55.

Giit top, leather, 55. net.

Sixth

MESSRS. METHUEN'S PUBLICATIONS

5OOD COMPANY Fcap. 8vo,

A RALLY

OF MEN.

Second Edition.

Gilt top, leather, 55. net.

ss.

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER.

Fourth

Edition.

Fcap.

Gilt top, leather, 55. net.

Svo, 55.

OVER BEMERTON'S Seventh Edition.

THE SECOND

Fcap. 8vo,

POST.

EASY-GOING

Gilt top, leather, 55. net.

ss.

Gilt top, leather,

8vo, 55.

Fcap.

55. net.

CHRONICLE.

THE BLUE BIRD: A

Maeterlinck (Maurice).

FAIRY

PLAY IN FIVE ACTS. Translated by ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DB MATTOS. Eighth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, deckle edges, 33. 6d. net. Also Fcap. Svo, paper covers,

MARY MAGDALENE.

is. net.

Gilt top, Fcap. Svo, 35. 6d. net.

G. Chiozza), (L. Ninth Edition. Demy Svo, 55.

Money

RICHES AND POVERTY. net.

Also Crown Svo,

MONEY'S FISCAL DICTIONARY,

is. net.

Demy

1910.

Svo,

Pet5e (W. M.

Professor

of A HISTORY OF EGYPT. Egyptology at University College. In Six Volumes. Crown Svo, 6s. each. Illustrated. Vol. I. FROM THE IST TO XVIrn DYNASTY. Sixth Edition. Fourth Vol. II. THE XVIlTH AND XVIIIra DYNASTIES. Edition. Vol. III. Vol. IV.

Flinders), D.C.L.,

XIXTH TO XXXTH

LL.D.,

DYNASTIES.

EGYPT UNDER THB PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY. J. P. MAHAFFY, Litt.D. Vol. V. EGVPT UNDER ROMAN RULE. J. G. MILNE, M.A. STANLEY LAKEVol. VI. EGYPT IN THE MIDDLE AGES. POOLS, M.A.

RELIGION AND CONSCIENCE IN ANCIENT EGYPT. Lectures

Crown

SYRIA

delivered

University

College,

London.

Illustrated.

Svo, is. 6d.

AND

EGYPT,

LETTERS. Crown

FROM THE TELL EL AMARNA

Svo, as. 6d.

EGYPTIAN TALES.

Translated from the Papyri. First Edited by W. M. FLINDERS PETRIB. Crown Svo, 35. 6d.

Series, ivth to xnth Dynasty. Second Edition. Illustrated.

EGYPTIAN TALES. Series,

xvnith

to xixth

Translated from the Papyri. Crown Svo, Illustrated.

Dynasty.

Second 35.

6d.

EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE ART. A delivered at the

Royal

Sheringham (H.

Institution.

Course of Lectures Illustrated. Crown Svo, 3$. 6d.

AN OPEN CREEL. Crown Svo, OF ROBERT

T.)

THE LETTERS Stevenson (R. L.). LOUIS STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY Selected and Edited

Volumes.

Crown

Svo,

by SIDNEY COLVIN.

VAILIM A LETTERS. STRANG.

With an Etched

Seventh Edition.

THE LIFE OF

AND FRIENDS.

Eighth Edition.

Two

us.

R. L,

Portrait Crown Svo, buckram, 6s.

STEVENSON.

by WILLI A M

See Balfour (G.).

MESSRS. METHUEN'S PUBLICATIONS

Thompson

(Francis).

FRANCIS THOMPSON. MEYNELL.

With a

SELECTED

POEMS

With a Biographical Note by WILFRID Stcend Edition. Fcap.

Portrait in Photogravure.

8vo, 55. net.

Waterhonse (Elizabeth). AND DEATH. Thirteenth net

;

A LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE Edition.

Small Pott 8vo, cloth,

is. 6d.

leather, 2s. 6d. net.

COMPANIONS pF THE WAY. Being Chosen and and Evening Reading. Large Crown 8vo,

Morning

WATERHOUSE.

Selections for Arranged by ELIZABETH

55. net.

THOUGHTS OF A TERTIARY. Pott 8vo,

Second Edition.

Small

is. net.

WITH THE SIMPLE-HEARTED.

Little

Homilies to

Women in Country Places. Second Edition. Small Pott 8vo, as. Wilde (Oscar). THE WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE.

net.

Fcap. 8vo, 55. net each volume. ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME AND THK

Twelve Volumes.

LORD I. W. H. H. THE DUCHESS OF PADUA,

PORTRAIT OF MR. POEMS, iv. LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN. v. A WOMAN OF No IMPORTANCE, vi. AN IDEAL HUSBAND. VH. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, vm. A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES, ix. INTENTIONS, x. DE PROFUNDIS AND PRISON LETTERS, xi. ESSAYS, xn. SALOME A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY, and LA SAINTE COURTISANE. in.

THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL.

Fcap.

8vo,

is.

net.

General

The Antiquary's Books Editor, J. CHARLES Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.

With Numerous Illustrations. Demy Svo, 75. 6d. net ARCHAEOLOGY AND FALSR ANTIQUITIES ; THE BELLS OF ENGLAND ; THK BRASSES OF ENGLAND; CELTIC AKT IN PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN TIMES; THE DOMESDAY INQUEST; ENGLISH CHURCH FURNITURE; ENGLISH COSTUME, from Prehistoric Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century; ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE; ENGLISH SEALS; FOLK-LORE AS AN HISTORICAL SCIENCE; THE GILDS AND COMPANIES OF LONDON THB MANOR AND MANORIAL RECORDS THE MEDIEVAL HOSPITALS OF ENGLAND; OLD SERVICE BOOKS OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH PARISH LIFE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND THE PARISH REGISTERS OF ENGLAND; REMAINS OF THE PREHISTORIC AGE IN ENGLAND THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND SHRINES OF ;

;

BRITISH SAINTS.

The Arden Shakespeare Demy Svo, 2s. 6d. net

An edition of Shakespeare in Single Plays. Edited with a Introduction, Textual Notes, and a Commentary at the foot of the page. Twenty-nine Volumes are now ready,

full

Classics of Art Edited by Dr. J. H. W.

With numerous

LAING Wide Royal Svo,

Illustrations.

from

gilt

top,

IDS. 6d. net to 255. net.

THE ART OF THE GREEKS CHARDIN FLORENTINE SCULPTORS OF THB RENAISSANCE; GEORGE ROMNEY GHIRLANDAIO MICHELANGELO ; RUBENS RAPHAEL TINTORETTO TITIAN TURNER'S SKETCHES AMD ;

;

DRAWINGS;

;

MESSRS. METHUEN'S PUBLICATIONS

The "Complete" Series

Demy

Fully Illustrated.

8vo, from 55. net to 155. net.

THI COMPLETE COOK; THE COMPLETE CRICKETER; THE COMPLETE FOXHUNTER THE COMPLETE GOLFER THE COMPLETE HOCKEYPLAYER THE COMPLETE LAWN TENNIS PLAYER THE COMPLETE MOTORIST; THE COMPLETE MOUNTAINEER; THE COMPLETE OARSMAN THK COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHER THE COMPLETE RUGBY FOOTBALLER, ON THE NEW ZEALAND SYSTEM; THE COMPLETE ;

;

SHOT.

The Connoisseur's Library Wide Royal 8vo, 255. net Illustrations. ENGLISH FURNITURE ENGLISH COLOURED BOOKS EUROPEAN ENAMELS ; ILLUMINATED GLASS GOLDSMITHS' AND SILVERSMITHS' WORK MANUSCRIPTS; IVORIES; JEWELLERY; MEZZOTINTS; MINIATURES; PORCELAIN SEALS. With numerous

;

The

and

Illustrated Pocket Library of Plain

Coloured Books Fcap. 8vo,

35. 6d.

net

A series, in small form, of some of the famous illustrated books of Fiction and General Literature. These are faithfully reprinted from the first or best editions without introduction or notes.

The

Illustrations are chiefly in colour.

now

Thirty -Jive Volumes are

ready,

The Library of Devotion With Introductions and (where necessary) Notes Small Pott 8vo, cloth,

2s.; leather, 2s. 6d. net

THB CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE; THE IMITATION OF CHRIST; THE CHRISTIAN YEAR; LYRA INNOCENTIUM THE TEMPLE; A BOOK OF DEVOTIONS A SERIOUS CALL TO A DEVOUT AND HOLY LIFE; A GUIDE TO ETEKNITY; THE INNER WAY; ON THE Lovs OF GOD THE PSALMS OF DAVID LYRA APOSTOLICA THE SONG OF SONGS; THE THOUGHTS OF PASCAL; A MANUAL OF CONSOLA;

;

FROM THE SAINTS AND FATHERS; DEVOTIONS FROM THK APOCRYPHA THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT THE DEVOTIONS OF ST. ANSELM BISHOP WILSON'S SACRA PRIVATA GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS LYRA SACRA A Book of Sacred Verse A DAY BOOK FROM THE SAINTS AND FATHERS A LITTLE BOOK OF HEAVENLY WISDOM AN INTROLIGHT, LIFE, AND LOVE DUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF THK GLORIOUS MESSER ST. FRANCIS AND OF HIS FRIARS DEATH AND IMMORTALITY THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE DEVOTIONS FOR EVERT DAY IN THE WEEK AND THK GREAT FESTIVALS PRECES PKIVATAK HOJ \B MYSTICAE. TION

;

Little Books on Art With many Illustrations. Demy i6mo, 2s. 6d. net Each volume consists of about 200 pages, and contains from

30 to 40 Illustrations, including a Frontispiece in Photogravure. ALBRECHT DURER THE ARTS OF JAPAN BOOKPLATES BOTTICELLI BURNE-JONES CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM; CHRIST IN ART; CLAUDE; CONSTABLE COROT ENAMELS FREDERIC LEIC.HTON GEORGB ROMNEY GREEK ART GREUZE AND BOUCHER HOLBKJN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS; JEWELLERY; JOHN HOPPNER SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS; MILLET; MINIATUKES; OUK LADY IN ART; RAPHAEL REMBKANDT TURNER VANDYCK VELASI^UKZ WATT. ;

;

MESSRS. METHUEN'S PUBLICATIONS The

With many

Little Guides

by E. H. NEW and other and from Photographs.

Illustrations

Small Pott 8vo, cloth,

2s. 6d.

net

;

Artists,

leather, 35. 6d. net

CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COLLEGES THE CHANNEL ISLANDS THE ENGLISH LAKES THE ISLE OF WIGHT THE MALVERN COUNTRY NORTH WALES OXFORD AND ITS COLLEGES SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL WESTMINSTER ABBEY. ;

;

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE; CHESHIRE; CORNWALL; DERBYSHIRE; DEVON DORSET ESSEX HAMPSHIRE HERTFORDSHIRE KENT KERRY MIDDLESEX; MONMOUTHSHIRE; NORFOLK; NORTHAMPTONSHIRE NORTHUMBERLAND NOTTINGHAMSHIRE OXFORDSHIRE SOMERSET STAFFORDSHIRE SUFFOLK SURREY SUSSEX WILTSHIRE THB EAST RIDING or YORKSHIRE THE NORTH RIDING or YORKSHIRE. BRITTANY NORMANDY ROME SICILY. ;

;

Fiction Novels by MARIE CORELLI, RICHARD BAGOT, G. A. BIRMINGHAM,

JOSEPH CONRAD, JANE AND MARY FINDLATER, BEATRICE HARRADEN, R. S. HICHENS, ANTHONY HOPE, W. W. JACOBS, E. V. LUCAS, LUCAS MALET, Mrs. M. E. MANN, W. B. MAXWELL, ARTHUR MORRISON, SIR GILBERT PARKER, C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON. Also Novels by H. BELLOC, E. F. BENSON, Mrs. W. K. CLIFFORD, S. R. CROCKETT, Mrs. B. M. CROKER, A. CONAN DOYLE, GEO. GISSING, HENRY JAMES, EDNA LYALL, MAARTEN MAARTENS, A. E. W. MASON, ALICE PERRIN, MARJORIE BOWEN, Mrs. A. SIDGWICK, H. B. MARRIOTT

WATSON, W. PETT RIDGE, B. E. CAPES, MADAME E. MARIA ALBANESI, PERCY WHITE, JOHN OXENHAM, MAX PEMBERTON, EDEN PHIU.POTTS, Q," BARONESS VON HUTTEN, and STANLEY WEYMAN. 1

The Hovels of Alexandra Dumas Medium 8vo, price 6d. Double Volumes, Messrs.

Novels of

is.

Methuen are publishing a complete series of the Dumas, newly translated into English. All the

novels will be unabridged.

Many

of these romances have never

been translated into English, and there which at all approaches completeness.

at present

series

Fifty-three Volumes are tunv ready,

Methuen's Sixpenny Books

Medium 8vo Messrs.

Methuen's

Sixpenny books

are

well-known

and

some of the best work of RICHARD BAGOT, S. BARINGGOULD, E. F. BENSON, Mrs. B. M. CROKER, ANTHONY HOPB, LUCAS MALET, ARTHUR MORRISON, Sir GILBERT PARKER, MAX PEMBERTON, EDEN PHILLPOTTS, W. PETT RIDG*, W. CLARK RUSSELL.

Include

000 033 823