THIS BOOK IS FROM THE LIBRARY OF Rev. James Leach LETTERS AND PAPERS OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS £y JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. In 7 Vols. Vol. I. The Age of the Despots. Vol. II. The Revival of Learning. Vol. III. The Fine Arts. Vols. IV. and V. Italian Literature. Vols. VI. and VII. The Catholic Reaction. With Index 10 the 7 Volumes. SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE. 3 Vols. ESSAYS SPECUL.A.TIVE AND SUGGESTIVE. With an Introduction by Horatio F. Brown. THE SONNETS OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI. The Italian Text is printed on the pages opposite the translation. SHAKSPERE'S PREDECESSORS IN THE ENGLISH DRAMA. NEW AND OLD. A Volume of Verse. MANY MOODS. A Volume of Verse. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. A Biography. By Horatio F. Brown. With Portrait. All rights reserved r ' jrlin ^^r/d ( n atoii C iffnoiicis " ' 'f ijJcUJtc.r' ph. 4-r. LETTERS AND PAPERS OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS COLLECTED AND EDITED BY HORATIO F. BROWN WITH PORTRAIT LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. W. 1923 ^^^Ali JUN 26 1967 y^. ^^ ^ffsITY OF TOVnO^ PRINTED IN GRHA1 BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BBCCl.ES PREFACE It is now close on thirty years since Symonds died in Rome on the 19th of April, 1893. His name is still alive in the world of letters. The man and his work are still discussed in varying tones of sympathy or of dislike which bear witness to his vitality. It seemed, then, that a small selection from his copious correspondence might prove interesting and serve perhaps to deepen, maybe to modify, certainly to enlighten current opinion. Moreover, Symonds, by the accident of time, though hardly by his natural complexion, figures in a period which is attracting consi- derable attention, curiosity and comment, falling into the perspective from which it can be justly examined and portrayed, and incidentally these letters help to define and colour "the Victorian scene," though, to my mind, that is hardly their main import. This volume has been compiled fromSymonds's letters and papers. The letters are addressed chiefly to Henry Sidgwick and myself; this fact, while it implies a certain continuity of theme, and a certain unity of mental attitude, entails, perhaps, vi PREFACE some limitation of range. The papers are taken from Symonds's diaries, and from a series " of literary fragments, which he styled Fragmenta Litteraria," and, subsequently, privately printed or had type-written in three volumes, entitled " Miscellanies," the origin of which is explained in Letter No. 150. A few of the letters published in this volume have already been partially used me in of here by my "Biography" Symonds ; they are given in fuller form. Symonds was a most voluminous letter-writer. It is always a marvel to me how he found time for so much and such varied correspondence in the midst of his ceaseless output of books. The letters to Henry Sidgwick number at least four hundred, and those to myself well over two thousand, besides the stream of letters he was continually pouring forth to family, friends, artists and students, many of whom doubtless possess large collections of Symonds's letters, touching, with his extraordinary versatility and sympathy, on the various topics which mainly occupied their thoughts. Symonds was better in his letters than in his books, and better in his talk than in his letters, but of the latter no record remains save in the memory of his friends. With such a mass of material to hand, it was necessary to select and edit. Some of the multifarious interests and occupations of Symonds's " mind—such as the development of the Demo- PREFACE Vll cratic Idea," as observed by him—the author of " those now famous and popular Hnes, These things shall be," etc., which are included in every Socialist and Democratic hymnology—or the rise of the new school of psycho-analysis, the germs of which Symonds detected, and whose potential implications he divined in the theory of the "subliminal consciousness," when first launched upon the world of Cambridge— are but slightly recorded. My chief purpose in making this selection has been to present a portrait—not the only possible— portrait, of course, no portrait is ever that of a singularly interesting and even challenging personality. I have endeavoured to use the letters as a painter might use his colours, and, with that intent, the extracts are made to run on as continuously as possible, with the barest necessary indication of date and recipient. This method may have caused some loss of the specific quality we look for in letters, but I hope it has enhanced the quality of portraiture and heightened the homogeneity of the book. Symonds belonged — in the category of time, at least—to what is now called the Victorian period, and in his relations with, and attitude towards the current thought and literature of his day he incidentally discloses much of his own individual nature, and we get, to some extent, a portrait of his mind, an idiosyncratic a7iinii figura —to use the title of his own self-revealing series viii PREFACE of Sonnets. But he cannot strictly be consi- dered as typical of his period. Ill-health, so prominent and formative a factor in his life, necessitating, as it did, almost continuous exile from England and from London, from the society of his social class and the conversation of his intellectual compeers, encouraged an independence of, and even an antagonism towards, current opinion and accepted standards which had its roots deep down in the anarchic complex of his nature, in the hidden roots of self, where the battle of his dipsychia was fought though never finished. A mind at quarrel with itself, seeking the adjust- ment and reconciliation of its aspirations and appetites with the environment in which it had to function. He died too soon to achieve this. Nevertheless, by birth, breeding, education and social status, Symonds was a part of "that small interior island of upper-middle-class civilization," which formed the backbone of the Victorian which took all and itself in epoch ; life, particular, itself with very seriously ; occupied problems which the present age may be inclined to thrust aside as solved or insoluble, but which will persist and recur, in some form or other, for the exercise, torment and delectation of certain temperaments as long as the mind remains what it is, as long as the cortex of the brain continues unchanged. We commonly condemn such an introspective diathesis as morbid, and imply that, in the region PREFACE ix of is and no doubt ill- psychology, scepsis sepsis ; health played a large part in the spiritual history of men like Nietzsche delicate Rousseau, Amiel, ; instruments are easily thrown off balance. But in Symonds ill-health was conjoined with an astonishing fund of vitality, physical no less than mental, which manifested itself, outwardly, in an amazing joie de vivre. The elasticity of his com- plexion was demonstrated by the ceaseless cere- bration which made his talk so brilliant a display of mental fireworks, no less than in the apparent ease with which he faced physical exertion, and undertook—invalid as he was—walks and climbs which would have tried many a younger and sounder man. His life, physical and mental, was in many ways a stimulating display of resolute " courage and determination, refreshing and in- vigorating," issuing, on the whole, in a singularly successful struggle against bodily weakness. This restless vitality made Symonds the charming, versatile, encouraging companion that he was. But the reactions were inevitable. He was subject to moods of depression, revealed only to his more intimate friends are true to the ; they picture, though they must not be allowed to over- charge it with shadow. They sometimes produced an appearance of irritability and occasionally an effect of shrillness, not absent from the letters, which are, as he himself was, very much alive but sometimes very painful. Symonds would have X PREFACE said that the two qualities are inseparables, and indeed, despite the nervous tension which wore him nearly threadbare, he remained extraordinarily young- to the day of his death. The portrait is the last taken of him. Writing to me on June the 28th, 1892, he says, "I will send you some new photos of myself, unbearded, one is decidedly good. I should like to go down to posterity with that apprehensive yet courageous look upon the wrinkled features. It has the merit of psychological veracity, this photograph." Horatio F. Brown. October ()th, 1922. Chignolo Po, Pavia, Italy. CONTENTS 1865-1870 — Tennyson : Gladstone Tennyson on Homer—Gladstone on Homer—Roden Noel—Coventry Patmore— St. Bernard's " " Hymn—Monaco—Scepticism — Tennyson's Lucretius —Miirren—Clough—Alexandrines—Mountain Scenery— Charles Norton—Clifton : London—Clough—Lecturing— — . Clough Euripides ..... 1-42 1871-1875 Begins "Renaissance" — Chamonix — "Verification of Belief "—On Mind—A. C. Health and — — —Swinburne— — Work Sicily Greece : The Alps Poetry and Reality Umbria : —Social Problems— "Bothwell"— Ruskin— Tuscany — ^J. Poetry and Science—S. Solomon Hegel . 43-75 1876-1880— — — — Umbria— Ill-health— The Literary—Life Chamonix Clifton —Davos— Music and the Arts— Sonnets of Michael Angelo Rome Michael Angelo Naples : Ischia—Monte Cassino : Rome—Work—Tourguenieff—Leaving Clifton— Davos—R.L.Stevenson 76-1 11 1881-1885 Aurelius : Goethe: Whitman—Venice—London—"Never " " " say die — Arosa — Virginibus Puerisque — W. J. Courthope—R. L. Stevenson—Bacchus on the Alps— " " Davos Affairs— Vagabunduli Libellus —Am Hof— Paris: London — Immortality — Benjamin Jowett — Am Hof— D. G. Rossetti—A Partitioned Dream—Tobogganing— xii CONTENTS PAGES " " Pasqualc Villari— Italian Byways "—Green's Pro- " " legomena"—On Proof-reading— Fragment a Litteraria " —San Remo—A Turnfesi— Vagabunduli Libellus"— Paolo Sarpi — On Diaries — Venice—The Renaissance — " Sensitiveness to Nature— Litteraria"— — — Fragmenta Paolo Sarpi Stock-taking The Inquisition in Venice .