1898] Herbert Spencer Proposes a Poem 297 



ter in the ' Times ' of yesterday is given in one of the Psalms for this 

 morning's service, viz., Psalm lviii, verses 10-1 1 : ' The righteous 

 shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps 

 in the blood of the ungodly, so that a man shall say, Verily, there is a 

 reward for the righteous, doubtless there is a God that judgeth the 

 earth." A more important letter, however, was to follow from no less 

 a personage than Herbert Spencer. Spencer was not at the time known 

 to me personally, nor had I at that time ranked myself among his dis- 

 ciples, and the letter came to me as a surprise. It reached me 4th 

 October. 



" 4th Oct. — A most interesting letter has come to me from Herbert 

 Spencer on the subject of my letter about Omdurman, and mentioning 

 also an article on my poem, ' The Wind and the Whirlwind.' [This 

 article, I afterwards learned, was by Francis Thompson.] Spencer 

 has long looked out, he says, for a poet who should write a poem, the 

 main lines of which he sketches in his letter and he asks me to undertake 

 it. (It was to be a dialogue in Heaven after the manner of Goethe's 

 ' Faust,' between God and Satan, Satan complaining that mankind has 

 surpassed him in wickedness, sacrificing to Thor and Odin while 

 nominally sacrificing to Jehovah.) I wish I could think myself capable 

 of doing this with any effect, but I am too hopeless of getting such a 

 subject listened to at the present moment and too little believing in the 

 divine government of the world." 



This led to a correspondence between me and the philosopher and 

 eventually to my undertaking to write a poem, " Satan Absolved," more 

 or less on the lines suggested. In a second letter, dated 6th October, 

 Spencer writes : " My beliefs are pretty much as pessimistic as those 

 you express. . . . Did I think that men would remain in the far future 

 anything like what they now are I should contemplate with equanimity 

 the sweeping away of the whole human race." [For the first letter see 

 Appendix III.] 



" 12th Oct. — A visit from Mrs. Meynell and her husband, and 

 Francis Thompson at Newbuildings. I had invited them to come for 

 the night, but Meynell had explained that this was impossible, ' the poet 

 (Thompson), having an inconvenient habit of setting his bed on fire.' 

 They came down, however, for the day. I met them at the station, a 

 very lovely day, and as we drove through the woods Meynell pointed 

 out to me that ' the poet of nature ' was wholly absorbed in the ' Globe ' 

 newspaper he had brought down with him in the train, such being the 

 way with London poets. Thompson, though born in Lancashire and 

 speaking English with a broad provincial accent, is a true Cockney. 

 He is a little weak-eyed, red-nosed young man of the degenerate Lon- 

 don type, with a complete absence of virility and a look of raptured 

 dependence on Mrs. Meynell which is most touching. He is very shy, 



