The Life of John Sterling

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This is a small Piece, but aims at containing great things; a _multum
in parvo_ after its sort; and is executed here and there with
undeniable success. The style is free and flowing, the rhyme dances
along with a certain joyful triumph; everything of due brevity withal.
That mixture of mockery on the surface, which finely relieves the real
earnestness within, and flavors even what is not very earnest and
might even be insipid otherwise, is not ill managed: an amalgam
difficult to effect well in writing; nay, impossible in
writing,--unless it stand already done and effected, as a general
fact, in the writer's mind and character; which will betoken a certain
ripeness there.

As I said, great things are intended in this little Piece; the motto
itself foreshadowing them:--

"_Fluellen_. Ancient Pistol, I do partly understand your
meaning.
_Pistol_. Why, then, rejoice therefor."

A stupid commonplace English Borough has lost its Member suddenly, by
apoplexy or otherwise; resolves, in the usual explosive temper of
mind, to replace him by one of two others; whereupon strange
stirring-up of rival-attorney and other human interests and
catastrophes. "Frank Vane" (Sterling himself), and "Peter Mogg," the
pattern English blockhead of elections: these are the candidates.
There are, of course, fierce rival attorneys; electors of all creeds
and complexions to be canvassed: a poor stupid Borough thrown all
into red or white heat; into blazing paroxysms of activity and
enthusiasm, which render the inner life of it (and of England and the
world through it) luminously transparent, so to speak;--of which
opportunity our friend and his "Muse" take dexterous advantage, to
delineate the same. His pictures are uncommonly good; brief, joyous,
sometimes conclusively true: in rigorously compressed shape; all is
merry freshness and exuberance: we have leafy summer embowering red
bricks and small human interests, presented as in glowing miniature; a
mock-heroic action fitly interwoven;--and many a clear glance is
carelessly given into the deepest things by the way. Very happy also
is the little love-episode; and the absorption of all the interest
into that, on the part of Frank Vane and of us, when once this gallant
Frank,--having fairly from his barrel-head stated his own (and John
Sterling's) views on the aspects of the world, and of course having
quite broken down with his attorney and his public,--handsomely, by
stratagem, gallops off with the fair Anne; and leaves free field to
Mogg, free field to the Hippopotamus if it like. This portrait of
Mogg may be considered to have merit:--

"Though short of days, how large the mind of man;
A godlike force enclosed within a span!
To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog,
And toil as Titans to elect a Mogg.

"And who was Mogg? O Muse! the man declare,
How excellent his worth, his parts how rare.
A younger son, he learnt in Oxford's halls
The spheral harmonies of billiard-balls,
Drank, hunted, drove, and hid from Virtue's frown
His venial follies in Decorum's gown.
Too wise to doubt on insufficient cause,
He signed old Cranmer's lore without a pause;
And knew that logic's cunning rules are taught
To guard our creed, and not invigorate thought,--
As those bronze steeds at Venice, kept for pride,
Adorn a Town where not one man can ride.

"From Isis sent with all her loud acclaims,
The Laws he studied on the banks of Thames.
Park, race and play, in his capacious plan,
Combined with Coke to form the finished man,
Until the wig's ambrosial influence shed
Its last full glories on the lawyer's head.

"But vain are mortal schemes. The eldest son
At Harrier Hall had scarce his stud begun,
When Death's pale courser took the Squire away
To lands where never dawns a hunting day:
And so, while Thomas vanished 'mid the fog,
Bright rose the morning-star of Peter Mogg."[25]

And this little picture, in a quite opposite way:--

"Now, in her chamber all alone, the maid
Her polished limbs and shoulders disarrayed;
One little taper gave the only light,
One little mirror caught so dear a sight;
'Mid hangings dusk and shadows wide she stood,
Like some pale Nymph in dark-leafed solitude
Of rocks and gloomy waters all alone,
Where sunshine scarcely breaks on stump or stone
To scare the dreamy vision. Thus did she,
A star in deepest night, intent but free,
Gleam through the eyeless darkness, heeding not
Her beauty's praise, but musing o'er her lot.

"Her garments one by one she laid aside,
And then her knotted hair's long locks untied
With careless hand, and down her cheeks they fell,
And o'er her maiden bosom's blue-veined swell.
The right-hand fingers played amidst her hair,
And with her reverie wandered here and there:
The other hand sustained the only dress
That now but half concealed her loveliness;
And pausing, aimlessly she stood and thought,
In virgin beauty by no fear distraught."

Manifold, and beautiful of their sort, are Anne's musings, in this
interesting attitude, in the summer midnight, in the crisis of her
destiny now near;--at last:--

"But Anne, at last her mute devotions o'er,
Perceived the feet she had forgot before
Of her too shocking nudity; and shame
Flushed from her heart o'er all the snowy frame:
And, struck from top to toe with burning dread,
She blew the light out, and escaped to bed."[26]

--which also is a very pretty movement.

It must be owned withal, the Piece is crude in parts, and far enough
from perfect. Our good painter has yet several things to learn, and
to unlearn. His brush is not always of the finest; and dashes about,
sometimes, in a recognizably sprawling way: but it hits many a
feature with decisive accuracy and felicity; and on the palette, as
usual, lie the richest colors. A grand merit, too, is the brevity of
everything; by no means a spontaneous, or quite common merit with
Sterling.

This new poetic Duodecimo, as the last had done and as the next also
did, met with little or no recognition from the world: which was not
very inexcusable on the world's part; though many a poem with far less
proof of merit than this offers, has run, when the accidents favored
it, through its tens of editions, and raised the writer to the
demigods for a year or two, if not longer. Such as it is, we may take
it as marking, in its small way, in a noticed or unnoticed manner, a
new height arrived at by Sterling in his Poetic course; and almost as
vindicating the determination he had formed to keep climbing by that
method. Poor Poem, or rather Promise of a Poem! In Sterling's brave
struggle, this little _Election_ is the highest point he fairly lived
to see attained, and openly demonstrated in print. His next public
adventure in this kind was of inferior worth; and a third, which had
perhaps intrinsically gone much higher than any of its antecessors,
was cut off as a fragment, and has not hitherto been published.
Steady courage is needed on the Poetic course, as on all courses!--

Shortly after this Publication, in the beginning of 1842, poor
Calvert, long a hopeless sufferer, was delivered by death: Sterling's
faithful fellow-pilgrim could no more attend him in his wayfarings
through this world. The weary and heavy-laden man had borne his
burden well. Sterling says of him to Hare: "Since I wrote last, I
have lost Calvert; the man with whom, of all others, I have been
during late years the most intimate. Simplicity, benevolence,
practical good sense and moral earnestness were his great unfailing
characteristics; and no man, I believe, ever possessed them more
entirely. His illness had latterly so prostrated him, both in mind
and body, that those who most loved him were most anxious for his
departure." There was something touching in this exit; in the
quenching of so kind and bright a little life under the dark billows
of death. To me he left a curious old Print of James Nayler the
Quaker, which I still affectionately preserve.

Sterling, from this greater distance, came perhaps rather seldomer to
London; but we saw him still at moderate intervals; and, through his
family here and other direct and indirect channels, were kept in
lively communication with him. Literature was still his constant
pursuit; and, with encouragement or without, Poetic composition his
chosen department therein. On the ill success of _The Election_, or
any ill success with the world, nobody ever heard him utter the least
murmur; condolence upon that or any such subject might have been a
questionable operation, by no means called for! Nay, my own approval,
higher than this of the world, had been languid, by no means
enthusiastic. But our valiant friend took all quietly; and was not to
be repulsed from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by
mine; he labored at his _Strafford_;--determined to labor, in all
ways, till he felt the end of his tether in this direction.

He sometimes spoke, with a certain zeal, of my starting a Periodical:
Why not lift up some kind of war-flag against the obese platitudes,
and sickly superstitious aperies and impostures of the time? But I
had to answer, "Who will join it, my friend?" He seemed to say, "I,
for one;" and there was occasionally a transient temptation in the
thought, but transient only. No fighting regiment, with the smallest
attempt towards drill, co-operation, commissariat, or the like
unspeakable advantages, could be raised in Sterling's time or mine;
which truly, to honest fighters, is a rather grievous want. A
grievous, but not quite a fatal one. For, failing this, failing all
things and all men, there remains the solitary battle (and were it by
the poorest weapon, the tongue only, or were it even by wise
abstinence and silence and without any weapon), such as each man for
himself can wage while he has life: an indubitable and infinitely
comfortable fact for every man! Said battle shaped itself for
Sterling, as we have long since seen, chiefly in the poetic form, in
the singing or hymning rather than the speaking form; and in that he
was cheerfully assiduous according to his light. The unfortunate
_Strafford_ is far on towards completion; a _Coeur-de-Lion_, of which
we shall hear farther, "_Coeur-de-Lion_, greatly the best of all his
Poems," unluckily not completed, and still unpublished, already hangs
in the wind.

His Letters to friends continue copious; and he has, as always, a
loyally interested eye on whatsoever of notable is passing in the
world. Especially on whatsoever indicates to him the spiritual
condition of the world. Of "Strauss," in English or in German, we now
hear nothing more; of Church matters, and that only to special
correspondents, less and less. Strauss, whom he used to mention, had
interested him only as a sign of the times; in which sense alone do we
find, for a year or two back, any notice of the Church, or its affairs
by Sterling; and at last even this as good as ceases: "Adieu, O
Church; thy road is that way, mine is this: in God's name, adieu!"
"What we are going _to_," says he once, "is abundantly obscure; but
what all men are going _from_, is very plain."--Sifted out of many
pages, not of sufficient interest, here are one or two miscellaneous
sentences, about the date we are now arrived at:--

_To Dr. Symonds_.

"_Falmouth, 3d November_, 1841.--Yesterday was my Wedding-day: eleven
years of marriage; and on the whole my verdict is clear for matrimony.
I solemnized the day by reading _John Gilpin_ to the children, who
with their Mother are all pretty well.... There is a trick of sham
Elizabethan writing now prevalent, that looks plausible, but in most
cases means nothing at all. Darley has real (lyrical) genius; Taylor,
wonderful sense, clearness and weight of purpose; Tennyson, a rich and
exquisite fancy. All the other men of our tiny generation that I know
of are, in Poetry, either feeble or fraudulent. I know nothing of the
Reviewer you ask about."

_To his Mother_

"_December 11th_.--I have seen no new books; but am reading your last.
I got hold of the two first Numbers of the _Hoggarty Diamond_; and
read them with extreme delight. What is there better in Fielding or
Goldsmith? The man is a true genius; and, with quiet and comfort,
might produce masterpieces that would last as long as any we have, and
delight millions of unborn readers. There is more truth and nature in
one of these papers than in all ----'s Novels together."--Thackeray,
always a close friend of the Sterling house, will observe that this is
dated 1841, not 1851, and have his own reflections on the matter!

_To the Same_.

"_December 17th_.--I am not much surprised at Lady ----'s views of
Coleridge's little Book on _Inspiration_.--Great part of the obscurity
of the Letters arises from his anxiety to avoid the difficulties and
absurdities of the common views, and his panic terror of saying
anything that bishops and good people would disapprove. He paid a
heavy price, viz. all his own candor and simplicity, in hope of
gaining the favor of persons like Lady ----; and you see what his
reward is! A good lesson for us all."

_To the Same_.

"_February 1st_, 1842.--English Toryism has, even in my eyes, about as
much to say for itself as any other form of doctrine; but Irish
Toryism is the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and all in
the name of God and the Bible! It is almost enough to make one turn
Mahometan, but for the fear of the four wives."

_To his Father_.

"_March 12th_, 1842.--... Important to me as these matters are, it
almost seems as if there were something unfeeling in writing of them,
under the pressure of such news as ours from India. If the Cabool
Troops have perished, England has not received such a blow from an
enemy, nor anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to
the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with
all its losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured
by mere Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as
foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have
shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four
officers with Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat
Barton; a distinguished man, and the father of five totally unprovided
children. He is a prisoner, if not since murdered. Macnaghten I do
not pity; he was the prime author of the whole mad War. But Burnes;
and the women; and our regiments! India, however, I feel sure, is
safe."

So roll the months at Falmouth; such is the ticking of the great
World-Horologe as heard there by a good ear. "I willingly add," so
ends he, once, "that I lately found somewhere this fragment of an
Arab's love-song: 'O Ghalia! If my father were a jackass, I would
sell him to purchase Ghalia!' A beautiful parallel to the French
_'Avec cette sauce on mangerait son pere_.'"

CHAPTER IV.
NAPLES: POEMS.

In the bleak weather of this spring, 1842, he was again abroad for a
little while; partly from necessity, or at least utility; and partly,
as I guess, because these circumstances favored, and he could with a
good countenance indulge a little wish he had long had. In the
Italian Tour, which ended suddenly by Mrs. Sterling's illness
recalling him, he had missed Naples; a loss which he always thought to
be considerable; and which, from time to time, he had formed little
projects, failures hitherto, for supplying. The rigors of spring were
always dangerous to him in England, and it was always of advantage to
get out of them: and then the sight of Naples, too; this, always a
thing to be done some day, was now possible. Enough, with the real or
imaginary hope of bettering himself in health, and the certain one of
seeing Naples, and catching a glance of Italy again, he now made a run
thither. It was not long after Calvert's death. The Tragedy of
_Strafford_ lay finished in his desk. Several things, sad and bright,
were finished. A little intermezzo of ramble was not unadvisable.

His tour by water and by land was brief and rapid enough; hardly above
two months in all. Of which the following Letters will, with some
abridgment, give us what details are needful:--

"_To Charles Barton, Esq., Leamington_.
"FALMOUTH, 25th March, 1842.

"MY DEAR CHARLES,--My attempts to shoot you flying with my paper
pellets turned out very ill. I hope young ladies succeed better when
they happen to make appointments with you. Even now, I hardly know
whether you have received a Letter I wrote on Sunday last, and
addressed to The Cavendish. I sent it thither by Susan's advice.

"In this missive,--happily for us both, it did not contain a
hundred-pound note or any trifle of that kind,--I informed you that I
was compelled to plan an expedition towards the South Pole; stopping,
however, in the Mediterranean; and that I designed leaving this on
Monday next for Cadiz or Gibraltar, and then going on to Malta, whence
Italy and Sicily would be accessible. Of course your company would be
a great pleasure, if it were possible for you to join me. The delay
in hearing from you, through no fault of yours, has naturally put me
out a little; but, on the whole, my plan still holds, and I shall
leave this on Monday for Gibraltar, where the _Great Liverpool_ will
catch me, and carry me to Malta. The _Great Liverpool_ leaves
Southampton on the 1st of April, and Falmouth on the 2d; and will
reach Gibraltar in from four to five days.

"Now, if you _should_ be able and disposed to join me, you have only
to embark in that sumptuous tea-kettle, and pick me up under the guns
of the Rock. We could then cruise on to Malta, Sicily, Naples, Rome,
&c., _a discretion_. It is just _possible_, though extremely
improbable, that my steamer of Monday (most likely the _Montrose_) may
not reach Gibraltar so soon as the _Liverpool_. If so, and if you
should actually be on board, you must stop at Gibraltar. But there
are ninety-nine chances to one against this. Write at all events to
Susan, to let her know what you propose.

"I do not wait till the _Great Liverpool_ goes, because the object for
me is to get into a warm climate as soon as possible. I am decidedly
better.

"Your affectionate Brother,
"JOHN STERLING."

Barton did not go with him, none went; but he arrives safe, and not
_hurt_ in health, which is something.

"_To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London_.
"MALTA, 14th April, 1842.

"DEAREST MOTHER,--I am writing to Susan through France, by to-morrow's
mail; and will also send you a line, instead of waiting for the longer
English conveyance.

"We reached this the day before yesterday, in the evening; having had
a strong breeze against us for a day or two before; which made me
extremely uncomfortable,--and indeed my headache is hardly gone yet.
From about the 4th to the 9th of the month, we had beautiful weather,
and I was happy enough. You will see by the map that the straightest
line from Gibraltar to this place goes close along the African coast;
which accordingly we saw with the utmost clearness; and found it
generally a line of mountains, the higher peaks and ridges covered
with snow. We went close in to Algiers; which looks strong, but
entirely from art. The town lies on the slope of a straight coast;
and is not at all embayed, though there is some little shelter for
shipping within the mole. It is a square patch of white buildings
huddled together; fringed with batteries; and commanded by large forts
on the ridge above: a most uncomfortable-looking place; though, no
doubt, there are _cafes_ and billiard-rooms and a theatre within,--for
the French like to have their Houris, &c., on _this_ side of Paradise,
if possible.

"Our party of fifty people (we had taken some on board at Gibraltar)
broke up, on reaching this; never, of course, to meet again. The
greater part do not proceed to Alexandria. Considering that there was
a bundle of midshipmen, ensigns, &c., we had as much reason among us
as could perhaps be looked for; and from several I gained bits of
information and traits of character, though nothing very
remarkable....

"I have established myself in an inn, rather than go to Lady
Louis's;[27] I not feeling quite equal to company, except in moderate doses. I
have, however, seen her a good deal; and dine there to-day, very
privately, for Sir John is not quite well, and they will have no
guests. The place, however, is full of official banqueting, for
various unimportant reasons. When here before, I was in much distress
and anxiety, on my way from Rome; and I suppose this it was that
prevented its making the same impression on me as now, when it seems
really the stateliest town I have ever seen. The architecture is
generally of a corrupt Roman kind; with something of the varied and
picturesque look, though much more massive, of our Elizabethan
buildings. We have the finest English summer and a pellucid sky....
Your affectionate

"JOHN STERLING."

At Naples next, for three weeks, was due admiration of the sceneries
and antiquities, Bay and Mountain, by no means forgetting Art and the
Museum: "to Pozzuoli, to Baiae, round the Promontory of
Sorrento;"--above all, "twice to Pompeii," where the elegance and
classic simplicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much; and again
to Paestum, where "the Temple of Neptune is far the noblest building I
have ever seen; and makes both Greek and Revived Roman seem quite
barbaric.... Lord Ponsonby lodges in the same house with me;--but, of
course, I do not countenance an adherent of a beaten Party!"[28]--Or
let us take this more compendious account, which has much more of
human in it, from an onward stage, ten days later:--

"_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_.
"ROME, 13th May, 1842,

"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--I hope I wrote to you before leaving England, to
tell you of the necessity for my doing so. Though coming to Italy,
there was little comfort in the prospect of being divided from my
family, and pursuits which grew on me every day. However, I tried to
make the best of it, and have gained both health and pleasure.

"In spite of scanty communications from England (owing to the
uncertainty of my position), a word or two concerning you and your
dear Wife have reached me. Lately it has often occurred to me, that
the sight of the Bay of Naples, of the beautiful coast from that to
this place, and of Rome itself, all bathed in summer sunshine, and
green with spring foliage, would be some consolation to her.[29] Pray
give her my love.

"I have been two days here; and almost the first thing I did was to
visit the Protestant burial-ground, and the graves of those I knew
when here before. But much as being now alone here, I feel the
difference, there is no scene where Death seems so little dreadful and
miserable as in the lonelier neighborhoods of this old place. All
one's impressions, however, as to that and everything else, appear to
me, on reflection, more affected than I had for a long time any notion
of, by one's own isolation. All the feelings and activities which
family, friends and occupation commonly engage, are turned, here in
one's solitude, with strange force into the channels of mere
observation and contemplation; and the objects one is conversant with
seem to gain a tenfold significance from the abundance of spare
interest one now has to bestow on them. This explains to me a good
deal of the peculiar effect that Italy has always had on me: and
something of that artistic enthusiasm which I remember you used to
think so singular in Goethe's _Travels_. Darley, who is as much a
brooding hermit in England as here, felt nothing but disappointment
from a country which fills me with childish wonder and delight.

"Of you I have received some slight notice from Mrs. Strachey; who is
on her way hither; and will (she writes) be at Florence on the 15th,
and here before the end of the month. She notices having received a
Letter of yours which had pleased her much. She now proposes spending
the summer at Sorrento, or thereabouts; and if mere delight of
landscape and climate were enough, Adam and Eve, had their courier
taken them to that region, might have done well enough without
Paradise,--and not been tempted, either, by any Tree of Knowledge; a
kind that does not flourish in the Two Sicilies.

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