Mr. Yeats has, however, rescued the bean from its invidious position (The Lake Isle of Innisfree):—

Lady Middleton, a friend of old days in Adelaide and now in England, reminded me of these lines.

This is from Myers’ Poems, 1870, and is one of a pair of sonnets. I do not quote the first in full because its meaning seems obscure, but the last six lines on the shortness of life as compared with eternity are as follow:

In the second sonnet quoted above, Myers is not merely referring to the Biblical account of the future life in heaven as consisting in endless worship—which, if taken literally instead of symbolically, would certainly mean a “drear eternity.” The suggestion is that there must be some equivalent to work, thought, activity, progress, and definite aims to make eternal life preferable to annihilation. (I am reminded here of a curious statement made by the great Adam Smith, “What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience!”) Myers ultimately came to the definite conclusion that the future life will be one of continued progress.

His name, Myers, is purely English, not Jewish. This gifted man was not only a fine poet, but also an important essayist and a remarkable classical scholar. He, Hodgson, and others formed the small band of able men who threw everything else aside and devoted their lives to Psychical Research. Myers’ best poems appeared in The Renewal of Youth and other Poems, 1882, and it was no doubt a loss to poetry that during the remaining eighteen years of his life he added little, if anything, more. However, he and Hodgson considered that the work to which they had devoted themselves was of the very highest importance. Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, the important work in which Myers embodied his conclusions, was left incomplete at his death, but Hodgson, with Miss Alice Johnson’s assistance, completed and edited it.

Myers was quite satisfied before his death, in 1901, that the evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research had already established in itself the fact of survival after death. But the interesting fact is that during the nineteen years since he “passed over to the other side” he has apparently been the principal agent in adding greatly to that evidence. There is every reason to believe that Myers has personally been communicating and arranging and directing much of the evidence that has since been given.

Mimnermus was a fine Greek elegiac poet—about 630-600 B.C.

The evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research indicates that friends do certainly meet. See the remarkably convincing Ear of Dionysius, lately published, where Dr. Verrall and Professor Butcher are clearly having a great time together on the other side.

The teaching of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) led to an important evangelical movement in the Roman Catholic Church. When, however, the Jansenists became subjected to persecution, the usual result followed that numbers of them became fanatics. The more corrupt the French Court and Society became, the more frenzied became this fanaticism. In 1727 the Jansenist deacon, Pâris, a man of very holy life, was buried in the St. Médard churchyard, and shortly afterwards miracles were said to take place at his tomb. In consequence large crowds of convulsionnaires assembled there and very shocking scenes were enacted, men and women in hysterical and epileptic fits and ecstatic delirium, eating the earth of the grave and inflicting frightful tortures on themselves and each other. When in 1732 the Court interposed and closed the churchyard some wit wrote the above couplet on the gate.

Mr. King in his Classical and Foreign Quotations has “De faire des miracles,” but the above version seems correct (See Larousse.)

The first quotation (from the Kritik of Practical Reason) appears to be the same passage that is often rendered in such words as these: “Two things fill my soul with awe—the starry heavens in the still night, and the sense of duty in man.”

Emerson is always an optimist.

What would the wise man have said of “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary”?

This was first published in 1732 as “The Fly—An Anachreontick” and Mr. Gosse in the Encyc. Britt. gave the first six lines as an example of an Anacreontic. He attributed the poem to Oldys, but the authorship is doubtful. (See Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser., I, 21). Vincent Bourne in a copy of his Poematia, 1734, in my possession, has written out and signed the two verses, entitling them “A Song,” the last line of each verse being repeated as a refrain. From this it might appear that he claimed the authorship. In 1743 he published a Latin version of the poem. Vincent Bourne, a beautiful Latinist, was much loved by his pupils, Charles Lamb and Cowper, who each translated into English some of his fine Latin verses.

An inscription on a tomb in Melrose Abbey, but said to be a version of lines by a Fourteenth Century poet, William Billing.

The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 167).

Just as a poet, besides imagination, must have intellect or judgment as a basis, so the higher imaginative faculty comes to the aid of intellect in other departments of life. As Maudsley says, “it performs the initial and essential functions in every branch of human development” (Body and Will). Ehrlich, seeking a substance that would destroy germs without injuring the human tissues, plods through endless tedious processes, and on his 606th experiment, discovers salvarsan, a cure for syphilis. Here the higher faculty has had little to do—but when, on the fall of an apple, Newton’s mind saw in a flash how the world was balanced, intellect soared aloft on the wings of imagination.

We do not always remember in what disheartening conditions the great Elizabethan literature was produced—the inferior position of the writer, his wretched remuneration and his dependence on patrons. It is strange to think that it was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman to write poetry or to acknowledge its authorship—or apparently to show proficiency in other arts or sciences. Such men as Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh were exceptions. The curious fact is that Puttenham himself (assuming, as is probable, that he was the author) issued this important book anonymously. He had, however, acknowledged his Partheniades ten years before.

As Arber points out, the above passage, and another reference by Puttenham to the same subject, indicate that, at least in the earlier Elizabethan period, much talent must have been lost and much literature never reached the printing press. The same feeling that then existed is seen again in Locke’s time (see p. 180), and, if we consider a moment, we shall find that it has persisted to some extent to the present day. Think how miserably inadequate is the attention paid to poetry in our educational system, the methods employed being, indeed, calculated to make the student loathe the subject. (When I was young (“Ah, woful When”[49]) we had as a school text-book Palgrave’s Golden Treasury—a divine gift to us in those days. As we had a sympathetic teacher, we read it as poetry, and the consequence was that I and other boys knew the book practically by heart from cover to cover.)

It is surprising that Englishmen neglect the one great talent which they possess. What distinguishes them above all other nations is their superiority in the higher imaginative faculties.[50] This is shown in such a national characteristic as the love of travel and adventure, which has created the British Empire, and is proved concretely by the fact that England has produced the greatest wealth of poetry which the world has ever seen. This great treasure, which should be employed for encouraging the highest of all faculties, is allowed to lie idle. The fact seems to be overlooked that the study of poetry is not only of enormous intrinsic value in knowledge, and culture, but that it is the finest of all mental training. By analysis and paraphrase it gives knowledge of language, appreciation of style, practice in literary expression, and, above all things, precision of thought. In my opinion, poetry should form an essential part of education, beginning in childhood and continuing throughout the Arts course. It may be found that there are intelligent persons who are incapable of appreciating poetry, and the subject may, therefore, not be made a compulsory one. But my conviction is that, where men imagine themselves to be thus deficient, it is the result of a bad system of education. There is great truth in Stevenson’s fine essay, “The Lantern-Bearers.”

A Celtic flight of imagination.

A pretty compliment to his wife who in 1814 had introduced the dahlia into England from Spain. Previous attempts had failed (Liechtenstein’s Holland House).

Quoted by Austin Dobson:—

Referring to the miracle of Cana. Both Latin and English epigrams are by Crashaw. In the former the water is personified by its Nymph.

Plutarch, in his Apophthegm, Lacon. Incert. XIII, says that a man after plucking a nightingale and finding little flesh on it, said φωνὰ τύ τις ἐσσὶ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο, “Thou art voice and nothing more” (King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations). No doubt this was the origin of the saying. It was applied to the nightingale, and to Echo—and then used in Hamlet’s sense, “Words, words, words.”