Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1896-04-30
The .Qrgds,
A Democratic Newspaper.
THE sANcTITY OF LITERATURE.

III OFO1 oSS CIOA AN~
been held more sacr ed by its
professors than it is held to-day.
The modern oracle speaks not
for beings who bend the knee be-
fore the tripod, butfor those that
drop coin of the realm into the
slot of the machine it has
adopted. The makers of litera
ture r only the ''flles de jole, .
Robert Louis Stevenson once
said; and no maker of literature
ever uttered a more debased sens
timent. When literature puts on
the garb Of the dancer and lives
for '.joie" and money, one of the
glories of life will have departed.
But no people can live without
ideals, and literature will always
puhold, reaectand illuminatethese
ideals. This it has always done;
and in spite Of the devotees of
mere form at the end Of u cen
fury, it has done so among the
greatest of this century. Ten
nyson and Newman, Aubrey DE
We're and Ruskin, Longfellow
and Loweil;--there is no lack Of
beauty or dignity or sanctity in
the works of these men.
Tennyson is as reverent as
Newman; but he ''feels" that God
must exist; he has not the logic
or the faith of the chanter Of the
Dream of Gerontius." With
Newman, life is the life OF the
soul; the Inspired Word and
Cicero are his guides. He is a
humorist; he writes for the elect;
but, as he himself says, 1.-THE
elect are few to choose out of,
and the world is inexhaustiole.'
Tennyson is Of the world, but he
idealizes and lights up the world.
Theocritus, Byron, Spenser,
Keats-above all, Milton-and
Chaucer influence him: he takes
his own whenever he finds it, and
makes bits out of Dante as must
cal as they are in Tuscan. He is
pure and true;in his best work he
turns to the highest manifesto
tons Of religion. He takes up
the harp of time and sings of St.
Agnes and Sir Galahad, and of
the Lady Of Shallott, who loved
from her serene place the forms
Of earth for a moment. He sings
an allegory. He cannot lid him
self of the mysticism of Sir Gal>
ahad and Sir Percival and the
thought Of the Holy Grail. He
might have tuned his Tyre to
lower themes, but genius chooses
to limit itself. The old stories
of Sir Thomas Malroy held him
aud the light flashing from the
sword Excalibur led him on. And
the three queens were with him.
And the symbolic azure, vert and
red fell upon him through the
stained glass Of the religious
light he loved; and~so he wrote
1.-The Idyls of the King" There
arose women and men of the
present in the garb Of the past
men and women somewhat ars
chaic, as the figures composed
for tapestry by Sir Edward
Burne Jones, but men and women
with the God of the Christians
in their minds, if not always in
their hearts Some think the
form Of Tennyson's poems to
be too exquisite; but there is
vitality beneath it. The poet
who could, in an age which most
call perplexity doubt, express
the chastity of Arthur, and the
repentance Of Guinevere could
have had no timid question as to
the sacredness of his Office. Tens
nyson drew M generation to-
wards purity, as Newman led it,
towards Faith; and one helps the
other.
Wordsworth took himself as a
priest from the beginning, a very
patriarch of poetry. His chas
suble was the color Of the sun
when it is low, and his stole
was of the t1nts of the rainbow.
No great poet, except Dante, ever
felt more deeply the sanctity of
his Office. Aubrey De We're had
not yet been heard of by all the
people; he is of the elect, but the
time is coming when he, after
waiting, like Wordsworth, shall
be heard "urbi ct orbi." In the
epilogue to "Asolando," Robert
Browning cries:
stNever doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were
worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baff1ed to
fight better, sleep to wake.n