The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-09
"rne crisped snaky golden locks

"Tno CftSpeO HnAKy gOiOen LOCKE
Which make suoh wanton gsmbOls with the wind
Upon supposed fairness"
when all the while they gre discovered from
what wss their original and source of life
'the skull that bred them in the Sc
pulohre."
These with Shakespeare are no transient
whimsical phrases. They are his habitual
thoughts. They are put into the mouths of
the most varied characters, and they are in
tensifed by some of his most powerful
writing. They differ from the Platonic and
Spenserian phantasies so pleasantly dis
coursed upon by Charles Lamb in the essay
on Mrs Conrady. Delicate and true as these
are, there is an air of righteousness about
them by reason of which they strike less
directly home. In them the virtuous soul is
the cause of a beautiful exterior, provided
always that the material is plastic enough.
But the doctrine that the exterior beauty is
proportioned to the internal intellectual light
is too glaringly contrary to facts to be
impressive; and the saving provision that
some material is SO obstinate that it
cannot be worked upon is too general
and too elastic. In Shakespeare the beau
tiful exterior is not attempted TO be account
ed for; but the laws of its life and DEATH
its durability and decay, are delineated with a
fneness and precision of thought which ge-
Mus might inspire, but which nothing but
virtuous soundness of nature could dictate
and render habitual.
If, however, we have mentioned Spenser's
"Hymne in Honour of Beautie," with a
slightly unfavorable contrast on a particular
point, it is impossible to end without stop
ping again to extol it, There is one thought
pervading it in which the two great Eliza
bethan contemporaries could not but agree
in which perhaps all the greatest medic val
and modern poets have agreed-and that is,
ha ip,nnOrfa1itu of haautv Tho linz -,
Keats
thing Of beauty Is joy for ever
has performed such severe and unremitting
duty as quotation that we are ashamed once
more to recall it. But perhaps it is not very
common to recollect that the words, and the
whole passage where they stand, indicate a
thought which is instructive in natures
of a certain degree of feeling and
perception, and which has been
seized and embodied by the loftiest minds in
their loftiest moods. Keats is possessed pri-
marily by the thought of the abiding effect
of things beautiful but he also conveys what
Shakespeare and Spenser and%Iilton express
again and agoin-the idea of permanency in
beauty itself, its association in the mind, not
with what is transient, but with what is
eternal We all know what it is to grudge
even the passing of a beautiful day
The dew shall weep to fall tonight,
fOr IHOu must ulei
we wish to hold fast the 'shapes of sky OF
plain" and, moved by a stronger instiact
still, we cannot lose without unwillingness
the present light and glory of personal human
beauty. Permanency is not only the thought
or emotion of rejecting minds on fronting
beauty; it is more than that; it is the
blind intuition even Of natures that
never were and never will be able to
| compass in thought such distractions as
beauty or permanency at all. Reflection,
stimulated, perhaps, rather than dulled by
frequent loss and familiar disappointment,
| casts about to find what the elements of per-
manency may be, and the great poets, ''in
clear dream and solemn vision, have found it,
and declare it to be the prime germ of beauty
its life and soul. Call it what you will
| grace, virtue, goodness-this ''luce SntelLec.
| tudl, pSend dGInOTe" is the real remedy of loss
or of decay in beauty, the guarantee of per-
petuity it casts ga beam upon the outward
| shape
And turns it by degrees TO the souls essence,
Till all be made immortal.
| And Shakespeare, whenever he has occasion
to do more than merely transmit the name o
beauty through his verse, is never far from
thoughts like these. He is always ready Il
pass from the outward to the inward; from
the form to the idea; from the corporeal re
Fiction to the inextinguished ray which
| Is heavenly born and cannot die,
! Being parcen OF the purest skie