Post Liminium
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Oo ,1 Cornell University Library PR 4826.J5P6 1911 Post liminium: 3 1924 013 489 152 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013489152 POST LIMINIUM Second Impression All rights reserved POST LIMINIUM: ESSAYS AND CRITICAL PAPERS BY LIONEL JOHNSON EDITED BY THOMAS^ WHITTEMORE ELKIN MATHEWS VIGO STREET LONDON MCMXII LVDOVICAE IMOGEN GVINEY HVIVS LIBRIS SCRIPTORI CVRATORIQVE CARISSIMAE SVPERSTES D. D. D. T. W. : PREFACE Lionel Johnson was born on the 15th of March, 1867, at Broadstairs in Kent, Chiefly English and Welsh, with an Anglo-Irish strain especially valued and emphasized by him in the latter part of his short life he cannot correctly be called an " Irishman," even though he so called himself frequently after 1890. He was educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford, graduating with honours. Both places, Winchester especially, took a lasting hold on his memory and affections. On St. Alban's Day, 1 89 1, he was received by the Rev. William Lock- hart, at St. Etheldreda's, London, into the Catholic Church. He read many languages, but did not travel abroad. From first to last, circumstances life enabled him to lead his own recluse and happy ; his only material drawback was a constitution always frail, but he loved the open, and was a great walker. His critical powers were in their full play during the ten years (1891-1901) in which he lived and worked in London. Yet he published three books only The Art of Thomas Hardy, a broadly-planned and Vlll PREFACE masterly prose commentary of 1896 ; and his beautiful verses in two slender volumes : Poems, 1895, and Ireland, 1897. He never married. During the last year of his life he was a house-bound invalid in his Clifford's Inn chambers, but had apparently quite recovered his usual health, when, on September 29, 1902, he met with a pitiful accident which caused his death on October 4. He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green. Lionel Johnson belonged to an English literary group of meteoric brilliancy, over many of whom hung a singularly tragic fate. In the matter of art his, the most reticent and the most sensitive expres- sion among them, was also, beyond all doubt, the soundest and the most robust. Mr. Yeats, his fellow- worker, alludes to " the loneliness and gravity of his mind, its air of high lineage." This is an accurate observation. The young critic's every utterance is remarkable for its individual native balance ; its fear- lessness; its patience and courtesy under stress; its unfailing mental hospitality; its sweet old-fashioned scholarship, full of "ease and pleasantness, and quiet mirth ; " for what he himself calls in another " an almost Latin clearness and weight : " the charming, arresting word of one who lives chiefly in the spirit, above the fogs of human prejudice, with " the best that has been thought and said in the world." He was a very great loss to a hurried generation which did not fail altogether to appreciate him. The papers chosen to form this book comprise — PREFACE about one-fourth of the unpublished material gathered together. The quality in all is much the same. What is here included to represent an excellent output shows primarily the characteristic facets of the writer's austere but opulent mind. Things "occasional" indeed, but written unprofessional with enjoyment ; protests, not heavily worded, which go far and deep ; telling summaries, in a packed space, of great works and great lives ; disquisitions of a wise and humorous mind on fresh subjects, or on subjects never stale, these form the bulk of the contents. It is hard to be sure that one has chosen satisfactorily on behalf of a writer whose own choice was so fastidious. Lionel Johnson, had he been rich in years as in gifts, might have left all these little essays and reviews unpub- lished. To print them, to weld them, is to take their author a little off his guard. Yet we may be thankful to have saved them. The disconnected papers on his old tutor and greatly loved friend, Walter Pater, have been gathered under one heading. They seem to point towards a task never even begun, something similar to the admirable study of Mr. Hardy, only necessarily in- formed with yet more knowledge, insight and affec- tion. If the brilliant early Hobby-Horse critique upon Mr. Robert Bridges be missed from this volume, the reasons are to be found in Mr. Johnson's own letters in The Athencsum^ dated June i, and July 18, 1896. Again, as there is already in print a careful and solidly conceived review by Mr. Johnson of the poetry X PREFACE of James Clarence Mangan,* it was thought well to include here only the slighter but more animated account of that little-known genius, which figured in a London daily. Once more, an account of the Gordon Riots (pub- lished by the Catholic Truth Society), and two narra- tives which were printed by The Pageant, 1896 and 1897, though expressive in a spirited way of their author's feeling about literary decadence and about the trials of the Church in France, were regretfully excluded from a volume such as this, where narrative has no place, because the colouring of each part must be more or less blended in, if it is hoped to make upon the reader any homogeneous impression. The contributions to The Spectator were all unsigned. So were those which appeared in The Academy, save the four entitled Thackeray, Byron, Hardy and Friends that Fail Not ; the same may be said of all the papers from that interesting and long-extinct journal, The Anti-Jacobin, excepting the Marie Bashkirtseff, signed in full " Lionel Johnson," and one brief chapter called Voluntary Paupers (on the same general subject as Friends that Fail Not, and here incorporated with it under due indications), which bears a signature reversed, "J.L." Anonymous also were the criticisms in The Daily Chronicle, with the single reservation of Thoughts on Bacon, signed "L.J." The Outlook and Speaker articles were all * "A Treasury of Irish Poetry," edited by Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolleston, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1900. Pp. 241-250. PREFACE XI signed in full. The Fools of Shakspere, a boy's attempt, naturally over-florid, was signed " L. P. John- son." The " P." indicates Pigot, a middle name figur- ing as his in College registers, but never used, either in private or in public, in later life. Lastly, it should perhaps be stated that the above list, as well as a very few verbal alterations, base their genuineness upon the Editor's access to Mr. Johnson's published papers, as filed by his own hand, and kindly lent by his sister, Miss Isabella Johnson. The Latin title, an old legal one, alludes to the right of a man, after a lapse of time, to enter again into his own, over his former threshold. It is hoped that in this unpretentious book there may be newly heard the idiosyncratic footfall, always light, of one untimely gone away, " Where clowdless Quires sing without teares." Lionel Johnson had a genius for friendship. May he still, under cover of these not least deliberate of his moods, make and keep new friends. CONTENTS PAGE Notes on Walter Pater— I. Mr. Pater upon Plato i II. Mr. Pater's Humour n III. Mr. Pater and his Public 14 IV. The Work of Mr. Pater 19 Charlotte Bronte and her Champion .... 42 Savonarola 50 Lucretius and Omar 58 The Fools of Shakspere 64 William Blake 81 Saint Francis 90 The "Hardness" of Dante 97 Leonardo da Vinci . 101 R. L. Stevenson . .106 _^-The Soul of Sacred Poetry 112 — - The Poets of the Nineteenth Century . 120 Renan truly Shewn 127 Thoughts on Bacon 131 Boswell 136 Mr. Hardy's later Prose and Verse . .142 Charles Stewart Parnell 150 xiii XIV CONTENTS PAGE Pascal , 155 Erasmus, my Darling 161 Poetry and Patriotism in Ireland .... 165 The Inimitable Lucian 188 -Lord Byron 193 O rare George Borrow ! 200 Octavius Pulleyn 204 Friends that Fail Not 209 Clarence Mangan 218 Santo Virgilio 223 Archbishop Laud 229 A Word about Thackeray 235 Coventry Patmore's Genius 238 Marie Bashkirtseff 245 "Father Izaak" 250 — The Strain of Mysticism in the English . 255 Cant 257 Burke 260 An Old Debate 266 Henry Vaughan, Silurist 270 Thomas X Kempis 276 The Age of Dryden 283 Matthew Arnold 288 Cardinal Newman 298 — POST LIMINIUM NOTES ON WALTER PATER I. Mr. Pater upon Plato* [The Westminster Gazette, Mar. 2, 1893 ; The Speaker, Oct. 28, 1893.] " Oh, to be reading Greats at B.N.C. ! " is the wish spring- ing from the heart of a Platonic reader fresh from the study of these most winning lectures ; lectures full of a golden wisdom, full of a golden humour. In some sort they are perfect expressions of the academic spirit : that leisurely travel of the mind among great things, under a wise and persuasive guidance, which Plato, founder of the Academy, loved and valued. There is so little of the confident dogmatist, with iron bonds for the constraint of thought, in this lecturer ; he does but put before young students, the comrades of his " Emerald Uthwart," his vision of Plato, a living vision, quick with the colours and the play of life. Unlike so many Platonists, Mr. Pater is not careful to find a fully-formed scheme of thought, German for complete- ness, in the lively, elusive, variegated thoughts of Plato.