This is almost exclusively the working of distinguished
personal charms, which are not essential, although helpful.
He dwells next on the eyes, as a lover would describe a
mistress:-
--

And by their flame, so pure and bright,
We see how lately those sweet eyes
Have wandered down from Paradise,
And still are lingering in its light.

To illustrate the miniature beauties of the infant person is one of the standing devices for evoking the charm of infancy; yet it is neither the natural point of departure, nor the most effectual mode of appeal.

The maternal emotions are bodied forth thus:

See all the children gathered there,

Their mother near; so young, so fair,

An elder sister she might be.

This last point is taking an unfair advantage; a mother is not usually so full of charms. The next stanza is more to the purpose:

She wakes their smiles, she soothes their cares,
On that pure heart so like to theirs.

Her spirit with such life is rife,

That in its golden rays we see,
Touched into graceful poesy,

The dull, cold commonplace of life.

A fair, but not a remarkably full or brilliant handling of those motherly assiduities that give evidence and expression of her love emotions.

Hugo is more profuse in a picture he gives of paternal love; but he draws too exclusively on the special accident of the child's being the only one of a widowed father. After exhausting that situation, he has a few touches of properly infantile interest :

Innocence still loves

A brow unclouded and an azure eye;

To me thou seem'st clothed in a holy halo,

My soul beholds thy soul through thy fair body;
Even when my eyes are shut, I see thee still.

This contrives to bring together points of genuine interest -the innocence, the beauty of feature, aggrandized by an elevating image, and the rapt engrossment of the mind. What follows is an example of overdone hyperbole :

Thou art my day-light, and sometimes I wish

That heaven had made me blind that thou might'st be
The sun that lighted up the world for me.

SWINBURNE'S STUDY OF A BABY.

175

The similes are all in keeping, but so common that they need to be used with more reserve.

The following is by Swinburne, and is entitled Étude Reâliste' :

I.

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet,

As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.

II.

A baby's hands, like rose-buds furled
Where yet no leaf expands,

Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
A baby's hands.

Then, fast as warriors grip their brands

When battle's bolt is hurled,

They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.

No rose-buds yet by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,

The sweetest flowers in all the world-
A baby's hands.

2. The reciprocal affection of children to parents, as it is without an instinctive basis, must be traced

solely to the situation; being a growth resembling ordinary friendship.

It is a common mistake to treat the upward regards of child to parent as having a foundation in nature like the downward regards of parent to child. The basis of the reciprocal feeling must be sought in benefits received, in habitual companionship, and in community of interest.

There is a beautiful ideal in this case too. The natural prompting of parents leads them to lavish good things on their children; and there is an equally natural prompting to respond with gratitude, and to contract likings for the givers of benefits. The effect equally arises towards benefactors generally; but there is no other class of benefactors or friends that can be put in comparison with our parents. In the case of a persistent good understanding and harmonious relation between parents and children, the reciprocal feeling attains a high pitch of intensity, and is second only to the sexual and parental emotions themselves. Yet the ideal should not be assumed as a matter of course. There are the unavoidable drawbacks of authority and restraint, and the frequent absence of the disposition or the ability of parents to contribute to the children's happi

ness.

The same strain of remark applies to the relationship of brothers and sisters: a pure case of habitual intimacy and exchange of good offices, although often marred by rivalries and conflicting interests, as well as unsuitability of temper. It is allowable to hold up an ideal here, also, and to point to cases where it is realized. But when Tennyson endeavours to set forth the intensity of his friendship thus

Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me-

he inverts the order of strength.

Cowper's poem on his mother's picture illustrates some of the forms and expressions of filial affection. The feeling is intensified by the sense of his own loss in his mother's early death, while it is also idealized by distance.

*The saying of Victor Hugo- Happy the son of whom we can say he has consoled his mother-is called by Matthew Arnold, fustian'; there being nothing in the language to redeem it from maudlin common-place.

COWPER ON HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE.

Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,

"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"

177

The early kindness of the mother is made to express his own affection; and the picture appropriately suggests these expressions of maternal tenderness.

The poem passes on to trace in vivid and touching lines the grief of the child over the death of his mother :

I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu !
But was it such ?-It was.-Where thou art gone
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting words shall pass my lips no more!
Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
What ardently I wished, I long believed,
And, disappointed still, was still deceived.

The hearing of the bell, the sight of the hearse, the last view from the nursery window, are natural and touching expressions of the child's sorrow and love; and while the pain is lessened by the reference to the hope of meeting, the love is still further expressed by it. The deceptive expectation of the mother's return is an additional token of continued affection.

After a digression, the poet returns to dwell on the kind offices of his mother :

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid;
Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,

The biscuit or confectionary plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd:
All this, and more endearing still than all,

Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks,
That humour interposed too often makes;
All this still legible in memory's page,
And still to be so to my latest age.

The power of these touches depends on their simplicity and their appropriateness to the expression of maternal kind

ness; while they are prevented from appearing commonplace by the halo of sorrow and filial affection.

The whole passage, notwithstanding its intensity, leaves the impression of genuine feeling, and is thus saved from turning to sentimental maudlin.

In his Rugby Chapel,' Matthew Arnold has composed an elegy on his dead father. The bond of filial affection is brought out by memory of the things lost :

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!

That word, gloom, to my mind
Brings thee back in the light
Of thy radiant ardour again;

In the gloom of November we pass'd
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impaired not the ray

Of thine even cheerfulness clear.

This is all general, but dwells on an inspiring reality. The dependence of children comes out more directly in the following:

For fifteen years,

We who till then in thy shade
Rested as under the boughs
Of a mighty oak, have endur'd
Sunshine and rain as we might,
Bare, unshaded, alone,

Lacking the shelter of thee.

An appropriate heightening of the appropriate circumstance of fatherly protection. The poem then goes off in the consolatory strain, to the effect that his father may 'somewhere, surely, afar,' be carrying on his powers of beneficent work. Henceforward, the paternal relation is resolved into that of an elder comrade in the stormful mountain-journey of life and thought :

We were weary, and we

Fearful, and we in our march
Fain to drop down and to die.

Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckoned'st the trembler, and still

Gavest the weary thy hand.

The appeal, here, is to a real situation, but loses by the fewness of those that can respond to it, though the familiar figure of a difficult journey makes it easier to comprehend.